The Millennium Shrimp

From the Financial Times:

The federal debt was equivalent to 41 per cent of GDP at the end of 2008; the Congressional Budget Office projects it will increase to 82 per cent of GDP in 10 years. With no change in policy, it could hit 100 per cent of GDP in just another five years.

Democrats blame it on the cost of the war in Iraq, but the debt was decreasing for most of Bush’s second term (see the bar graph here at Instapundit.) Not that Bush was all that thrifty, but we’ve seen a sharp decrease in tax revenues because of the economic downturn. The Obama team is predicting that the economic stimulus ( a big chunk of the deficit increase) will increase tax revenues in 2011, but that remains to be seen. Can you really spend your way out of a recession? Or are we going to see higher levels of inflation? Inflation that will sharply decrease the real earning power of wages that have largely stagnated in the past 30 years.

Wait, why are we doing this again?

Geeks are antithetical to the herd mentality.

Word Geek Examiner: City of Sodom in the Bronze Age — or is the Iron Age?

Posted using Word Geek Examiner: City of Sodom in the Bronze Age — or is the Iron Age?

Just some responses to Word Geek’s critique of the press release for Tall al Hammam.

(a) Tall versus Tell - “Tell” is generally considered the “Israeli” transliteration of the word. “Tall” is the preferred transliteration in Jordanian archaeology. Just like Hebrew uses “el” and arabic uses “al” as a definitive article.

(b) neolithic is an English word, the same as television. It is, of course, a long hallowed tradition of English-speaking academics to coin new words out of their Greek and Latin roots. That doesn’t make them “Greek” or “Latin” words.

(c) the intermediate Bronze age - these “ages” do not refer to chronological periods per se, but to cultural assemblages - i.e., clusters of artifacts that are consistently found together, and generally in a certain progression. In other words, the Early Bronze Age IV refers to an assemblage of pottery styles that are consistently found together. We know the pottery from the Bronze Age IV is younger than the pottery from the Bronze Age III, because it’s generally found higher up in the stratigraphy of a mound. The term “intermediate bronze age” is used because there are sites or strata within sites where we find artifacts that are typical both of the later Early Bronze phases and the earlier Middle Bronze Age. Basically these strata represent periods of continuous occupation from the Early Bronze Age through the Middle Bronze Age. Think of walking into a house that has a mixture of furniture from the 1960s through 1980s.

(d) Jordan disk - this is a rather uncommon rendering of the Hebrew phrase “kikkar hayyarden” which is a specific area of the Jordan river where the River Valley widens into a circle when viewed from the air. According to this biblicalarchaeology.org web page it is the arabah or “plains” of Moab. I agree, however, this is an obscure term that the writer could clarify better.

I’ll write some more about the significance of the site’s identification as “Sodom” in a later post. Read the rest of her article.

from Wired.com

The world’s oldest automaker hitched its electric wagon to Tesla on Tuesday when it bought nearly 10 percent of the company and a seat on its board. Neither side is discussing specifics of the deal, reportedly worth $50 million, but both sides walk away winners.

Awesome! I was scared that Tesla would be a victim of the recession, but it looks like Daimler is coming to the rescue. Is Telsa proof that Americans can still build innovative new automobiles even if Detroit can’t? As the Wired article says, having the company that invented the automobile investing in you certainly doesn’t hurt when you’re looking for investors. Also, having Daimler’s parts bin makes the 2011 time frame for producing the S Sedan more realistic. It might be easy to read this as the collapse of the fordist economic model

From /.
Google Tricycles To Map Footpaths For Street View

heh:

I shall be twittering this with a sigh
On someone’s blogs and blogs hence:
Two paths diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less googled by,
And that has made all the difference.

–RFrostie1977

Maybe they can use these in Pinecraft!