History Revisited?

I have just finished re-watching Jacob Bronowski's wonderful 'The Ascent of Man' series, which I first saw as a teenager.

In his segment on Isaac Newton, he notes that Newton couldn't get the attention of the rich and influential in his middle years. The reason was that there was little interest in science and technology, since so many were making fortunes in the South Sea Bubble scam.

It struck me at that moment that the disinvestment in science and technology in the US and UK for the past 30 years may be due to a similar set of cicumstances, since so much money was being conjured out of thin air, first in the dotcom bubble, and then in artificial housing prices.

Welcome, the Gurkhas

If we're not a country fit for heroes, we're a country fit for nothing. By righting this injustice, we have recovered a little of our honour.

The next Mr Speaker

Vince Cable? Frank Field?

The biggest bubble: human population

I've been watching BBC1's "Countryfile" and there was a reference to some CO2 reduction target, required because the world's population will be 9 billion by some date.

This is cart before horse. If we don't want the world to become composed solely of (a) people (b) things we need for food and drink c) weapons and (d) radioactive and otherwise polluted and barren desert, we need to:

1. limit human population growth...
2. ... without creating demographic gender imbalance
3. ... or demographic age imbalance

I read "Blueprint for Survival" in a Penguin edition in the 70s. One point it discussed, which had not occurred to me, was that the deceleration - population stabilisation/reduction - has to be slow and planned, otherwise we will develop serious imbalances that will destroy the economy and trigger a crash - a real, lethal one, not just the loss of some savings.

Time - time long overdue - for a plan to tackle this super-bubble. Wind farms and CO2 targets are near-irrelevancies.

The memory hole

From The Grumbler, but strangely, on page 9 in the dead tree version, rather than the front page:

Tony Blair dodged possible fire over his housing deals after hundreds of expenses claims were 'accidentally' shredded.

Documents itemising some of the then Prime Minister's receipts for 2001-02 were destroyed by Commons officials 'by mistake'.

Raising his voice above the shredders' roar, a source close to a former Prime Minister bawled that he was a pretty straight kind of a guy. Your correspondent made his excuses and left, pursued by an alcoholic pugilist making dark references to discoveries in woods.

Still stuck on the 'B' Ark

At the university where I work, we have a few good science programs, and a well-respected engineering college.

In the past few years, we have seen significant increases in enrollment. I attribute that to:

a) the fact that there are fewer good jobs out there

and

b) while the typical 18-year-old is lazy and ignorant, they are not stupid. Consequently, they are flocking to the analytical fields (where the jobs are), including mathematics and science education.

However, our student services people are convinced that it is because of the advertisements, 'student appreciation days', and the like, not the teaching that we do.

Accordingly, they recently brought in management experts to help us in recruitment and retention efforts.

And where did these experts come from, to help out academia? The Disney corporation!

I must really work for a Mickey Mouse operation.

Dow 4,000 yet again

The Mogambo Guru is off on one of his comedy riffs again, and reiterating his devotion to gold, but here's a statistic he quotes midway:

“the price-to-earnings ratio for the Dow Jones Industrial Index is now a hefty 43.1! It should be, historically, less than 20!”

Do the math, as they say. In fact, I'll do it for you now: take the Dow at close the night before Mogambo ranted (8,469.11) and multiply by 20/43.1. Result: 3,929.98.

I gues the question is, is the current low level of company earnings a temporary matter caused by recent dislocations, or is it set to continue as the economic climate darkens?

Plus, as we all know, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. But I still think that, adjusted for what now seems inevitable high inflation, we're going to see Dow 4,000 sometime, as I graphed back in December: