The Human Use of Human Beings: A Brief History of Suicide Bombing

A nice little overview of this rather interesting phenomena of suicide bombing. It's a very complex situation and cannot be reduced to simplistic solutions. All one can do is to keep an open mind, not easy to do when every body else around you - both on your side and their side has either lost their minds and/or have a closed mind. The lesson here is to stay flexible, resolute and to be brutal about it a bit. And one more thing, don't muck around in foreign adventures. The USA hasn't learnt from history. Take the uk. In the past 3 centuries, we buggered around the world. Leaving our dead in most corners of the world. We got terrorism and and and millions of our young men dead around the world. For what? 

The Human Use of Human Beings: A Brief History of Suicide Bombing | Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective
http://origins.osu.edu/article/human-use-human-beings-brief-history-suicide-bombing

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On February 1, 2013, a suicide bomber killed himself and a security guard at America’s embassy in Ankara, Turkey. This attack, carried out more than a decade after 9/11, reveals a great deal about the phenomenon we have come to know as suicide bombing.

First, a radical left-wing group with a vaguely Marxist agenda (The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party in Turkey) claimed responsibility, demonstrating that suicide bombing is not the exclusive domain of religious fanatics.

Second, the bomber detonated his explosives before he had the opportunity to enter the embassy complex. This shows that individual initiative and fallibility are important aspects of the organizational process of suicide bombing—a process that requires expertise and practice to be truly effective.

Finally, the attack confirms that suicide bombing will continue to be a dangerous security nuisance for the foreseeable future.

Princeton's Marriage Market Theory Worked for Me

From an aesthetic and romantic perspective it sounds cold blooded and far too planned. But there is truth in this article. Human behaviour can be modelled. Even if you are not interested in economics, your behaviour and the way society and fellow individuals act behave and are structured are based in economics. 

The benefits of marriage are many and are well known. So in terms of maximising your life's happiness, be on the lookout for a good partner at LSE or Oxford or Cambridge wherever you go. This is the best population for you to find your partner. After this, the chances drop dramatically. It's simple statistics and macroeconomics that you will never come across such watering holes with such high density of potential mates. Don't rely on blind luck son. 

So find a mate by the time you graduate in 20-22 years in uni. This doesn't mean you become celibate. Far from it. Explore. But when you find the one and the point is to find the one in uni. Be with them. Marriage around 25-28 and life will be good. Any changes to this timeline and your lifetime happiness will be reduced or be suboptimal. Simple economics. 

Of course shit happens but plan and aim for the best and prepare for the worst. 

Love

Baba

Princeton's Marriage Market Theory Worked for Me - Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-03/princeton-s-marriage-market-theory-worked-for-me.html

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Most of my research deals with the economics of cities, but I have a smattering of knowledge in the minor field of spouse-meeting at Princeton.

There is usually little demand for such arcana — the American Economic Association has never held a symposium on the topic — but the blogospheric explosion after an alumna’sletter to the Daily Princetonian advising female students to “find a husband on campus before you graduate” led my editor to urge me to weigh in.

While I don’t feel I can provide advice to young women, I am comfortable, based on both personal experience and the infallible majesty of economic theory, urging young male Princetonians to view your female classmates as prospective long-term friends and spouses (the qualifications for the two roles having much in common), rather than short-term amorous encounters.

The letter writer, Susan Patton, is surely right that for many people, college years provide the high point of intense exposure to a wide range of prospective life partners.       

However, my own finely tuned algebraic simulations of an optimal spousal-search model find that while college provides an ideal time to accumulate a large stock of good friends (prospective spouses), it is typically suboptimal to wed at age 21 because of preference uncertainty and the benefits of continuing to meet alternatives.

How to Save American Finance from Itself

In a previous email Kannu, I told you that we are living in a complicated world which is getting even more complicated. The grand poobahs recognise this. Instead of simplifying they decide to add to complexity by adding giant rafts of regulation. Adding much more complexity. And that's just now. 

Here's an economics Nobel prize winner talking about his student who is the fed chief and asking for a more complex set of instruments to manage the economies and financial markets. And taking a gratuitous swing at hedgies. 

The result? Another crash is coming. Guaranteed. Before you are 25. So what can you do? Avoid debt son. As much as possible. Have your investments in good solid sectors and companies who will keep on operating despite downturns and crashes. Have a technical skill son that will always give you a job. Or if you are running a firm, then be in one which will always have demand. Keep an eye on your cash flow. Or marry a rich girl :) 

But the article is interesting from a macroeconomics perspective. It's people like these who will be running the world when you graduate and start looking for work or are working. It takes time for macroeconomic prescriptions to work it's way through the economy and hit individuals. So decisions taken today will impact you in 3-5 years time. 

I studied wave theory once. Ocean waves. The science is poorly understood even now. Which wave will just give you a ripple or give you a dunking or a great surf is difficult to know. The ocean interacts with temperature, wind, continental shelf topology, currents, gravitation, climate, seashore landscape in poorly understood ways. So what does a surfer do? Understand as much as possible. Be prepared. Take chances. 

Love

Baba. 

How to Save American Finance from Itself | New Republic
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112679/how-save-american-finance-itself

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TNR Player

TODAY’S EDITION

Other stories from April 27, 2013

BOOKS APRIL 8, 2013

How to Save American Finance from Itself Has financialization gone too far?

BY ROBERT M. SOLOW

Central banking is not rocket science, but neither is it a trivial pursuit. Excellent books have continued to be written about the art and craft of central banking, from Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street in 1873 to Alan Blinder’s Central Banking in Theory and Practice in 1998. Running a central bank is in one way a little bit like flying a plane or sailing a boat: much of the time standard responses and small adjustments will do just fine, but every so often a situation arises in which fundamental understanding, knowledge of history, and good judgment can make the difference between riding out the storm and crashing. There was no such person in charge in 1929, and the result was disaster. There was one in 2008.

In his earlier scholarly life, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, had been a careful student of the general interaction between the financial system and the real economy and especially of its working out in the Great Depression of the 1930s. So he had done his homework. His decisive and innovative actions at the Fed saved our economy from free fall with a possibly catastrophic end. I once non-joked that Bernanke was the Captain Kirk of central banking: he had loaned where no man had loaned before. In a life before turning to government service, first as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, then briefly as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and then returning to the Fed as chairman in 2006, Bernanke was a well-known and highly respected academic economist. (The reader should know that I was one of his teachers in graduate school at MIT, and have remained a friend.) My opinion is that, after a briefly hesitant start as Fed chairman, probably still under the considerable aura of Alan Greenspan, Bernanke rose admirably to a difficult occasion and has been generally right in his judgments and his decisions, and in his willingness and his ability to explain both.

In March 2012, George Washington University invited Bernanke to give four lectures as part of a course devoted to the role of the Federal Reserve in the economy. The lectures are now reproduced in book form, apparently from lightly edited transcripts. Each lecture ends with half a dozen questions from anonymous “students” and Bernanke’s answers. Some of the questions are smart, some less so, in which case Bernanke exhibits the professorial skill of seamlessly answering a slightly different question. We are not told anything about the audience. I imagine a lot of people wanted to hear about the Federal Reserve and the financial crisis from the chairman himself. It’s rather like hearing Admiral Nelson reminisce about the battle of Trafalgar.

Search for the USS Thresher

A fascinating account of the search for a sunken submarine son. Put yourself in the seat of the commander of the operation. So many difficult decisions to take. 

April 10, 1963: Search for the USS Thresher | Naval History Blog
http://www.navalhistory.org/2013/04/10/april-10-50th-anniversary-of-the-loss-of-the-uss-thresher

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This article was published in the May 1964 issue of Proceedings as “Searching for the Thresher” by Frank A. Andrews, Captain, U.S. Navy.

The Thresher search was very much an ad hoc operation. On 10 April 1963, the day of theThresher‘s loss, there was no real search organization, no search technique, nor specific operating procedures for locating an object lying on the ocean bottom at 8,400 feet. In the first frantic hours after the Thresher‘s loss, a full scale search effort consisting of 13 ships was laid on with the aim of scouring the ocean for possible life or floating signs from the Thresher. Within 20 search hours, all hope for survivors had passed, and the entire Thresher project began to change character from that of a standard Navy search and rescue opera­tion to that of an oceanographic expedition. This special expedition soon consisted of three ad hoc elements, which, as later events were to show, combined in a most successful and harmonious manner in support of searching out the Thresher‘s hull.

Review of Rachel Duffett’s The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War

Kannu

Hope you liked the omelette of last night. Perhaps too many greens in there but have them son, it gives you a nice high protein diet with tons of vitamins and minerals. 

This is a great book review about food. Food for soldiers. Remember I told you the quote? Amateurs talk about tactics. Professionals talk about logistics. In whichever field of work son, you have to have a firm grasp of logistics. Most activities are won or lost due to logistics. In the business world as well. That's what is going to give you the reputation of competence. As and how you rise through the ranks, your job is to ensure that men materials and money are available in the right time at the right place at the right amounts. Alexander said, if I lose a battle I come back and kill my logistician. 

Details son details. That's the key. Think of the logistics of feeding a million soldiers in the middle of wartime. 

Love

Baba. 

Canadian Military History – Review of Rachel Duffett’s The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War by Matthew Walthert
http://www.canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/review-of-rachel-duffetts-the-stomach-for-fighting-food-and-the-soldiers-of-the-great-war-by-matthew-walthert/

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Rachel Duffett, The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 269 pages.

Reviewed by Matthew Walthert (Carleton University)

Anyone who has studied the First World War has read about the food. Complaints about bully beef, alternate uses for rock-hard biscuits, and generals fattening themselves behind the lines while the troops suffered from ration shortages at the front are common features of many Great War histories. Despite these oft-repeated stories, the enlisted man’s relationship with his food (official ration and otherwise) has not been the subject of a scholarly, book-length study, until now. Using the diaries and memoirs of the rank-and-file soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Rachel Duffett has put together a detailed review of ordinary soldiers’ experiences with food on the Western Front.

In The Stomach for Fighting, Duffett exposes truisms –  such as the enlisted men having better diets in the military than in pre-war, working-class England – which have crept out of sometimes self-congratulatory official statistics and histories, or overly-optimistic army ration scales. In The Last Great War, Adrian Gregory explored some of these clichés, particularly as they related to the British home front. Here, Duffett turns to the actual soldiers, whose caloric needs were being met, but were often less-than-thrilled with their food. Using a variety of published and unpublished letters, diaries and memoirs, she breaks new ground in looking not only at what (and how much) enlisted men ate, but also their reactions to their food.

[Letter from Lima] | All Politics Is Local, by Daniel Alarcón

This is such a foreign world to us Kannu. We live in a bubble where people like Avi only appear in magazines or in news stories. But we are locking up more and more people. They need to be locked up. They need to be tried. They need to be rehabilitated. And and. Interesting society we are raising. 

Love

Baba

[Letter from Lima] | All Politics Is Local, by Daniel Alarcón | Harper's Magazine
http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/all-politics-is-local/?single=1

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Single Page

To understand a place like Lurigancho, it’s best not to dwell on words like prison or inmateor cell, or on the images these terms generally connote. The 7,400 men who live in Lurigancho, Peru’s largest and most notorious penal institution, do not wear uniforms; there is no roll call or lockdown or lights-out. Whatever control the prison authorities have inside Lurigancho is nominal. They secure the gate to the prison, and little else.

The complex’s twenty housing blocks can be divided roughly into two sections: the better-off inmates live in El Jardín (the Garden), the odd-numbered blocks. The greenery withered long ago, but the name and its cachet have remained. Many residents carry the keys to their own cells and are free to wander the grounds as they wish, though some prefer not to leave the relative calm of their territory. The other side of Lurigancho is known as La Pampa (the Plain), the even-numbered blocks, home to thousands of accused murderers and petty thieves. The density here can be twice that of El Jardín, the conditions unsanitary and often violent.

My Hyperinflation Vacation

Day before, I raised a cheer son. This was when I read that USA was paying back it's debt after many years. While I recognise that a debt market is required for the proper functioning of a modern economy, too much debt can be bad. 

At end of the day, somebody has to lend to you. You have a choice, you do thus voluntarily or involuntarily. Voluntarily is fine, you can ask for higher returns commensurate with the potential higher risk. But when this avenue is cut off, then govt's will go down the involuntary route by forcing banks insurance companies and pension funds to hold govt debt. 

And the returns are paltry. Like India and Egypt and Argentina, so many countries have done so. And when govt's spend too much, like now, they have to print money when debt financing is not possible. Then inflation raises its head. Inflation is the silent economy killer son. 

This is another reason why govt's and govt spending must be kept on check because inflation hits the poorest and eldest who are on low or fixed incomes without any way out. 

Love

Baba

My Hyperinflation s Vacation - Graeme Wood - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/my-hyperinflation-vacation/309263/?single_page=true

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Vets  

Continue to the TheAtlantic.com

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The Money Report April 2013

A trip to the Iranian resort island of Kish illuminates the pressures, limits, and strange consequences of economic sanctions.

Graeme Wood Mar 20 2013, 9:50 PM ET

Kevin van Aelst

For years, I have been advising my cash-poor friends: the secret to an ultracheap international holiday is a Google News search for the words runaway inflation. The place listed in the dateline of any recent articles including that phrase should be your destination. En route to your home airport, visit the bank and withdraw U.S. dollars in crisp hundreds and fifties. At your beleaguered landing place, the local currency’s value will be melting away like a snowman in July. Your greenbacks will remain pleasantly solid. Everyone at your destination—hoteliers, restaurant staff, tour guides—will covet them and cut you deals. For you, luxuries will suddenly become affordable. Until your return flight (assuming you make it back safely, and are not robbed by an increasingly desperate local mob), you will experience the dismal science at its most cheery.

Economists’ name for truly berserk runaway inflation is hyperinflation. America’s most nightmarish bout of inflation—in recent memory, at least—came and went at the end of the Carter administration, when prices rose by about 14 percent in 1980, the peak year. Hyperinflation, by contrast, is beyond nightmarish: a rise in prices of at least 50 percent amonth, according to the generally accepted definition. Thankfully, it is rare. Steve Hanke, an economist at Johns Hopkins University, has documented 56 instances since 1795, ranging from a comparatively benign monthlong burst in Taiwan in 1947 (prices rose by a little more than half in that month, then the increase slowed), to a truly surreal year in Hungary in 1945–46, when at one point prices doubled every 15 hours. In Slobodan Milošević’s Yugoslavia in 1994, hyperinflation stopped only when the presses at the national mint, in Topčider, overheated to their breaking point.

Aethelflaed: Iron Lady of Mercia

An example of another Iron Lady, poignant when another Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher just died. Interesting character kids. And one which isn't taught enough in history. Fascinating. 

We live in London and this place is absolutely drenched in history. Battles were fought few kilometres from our homes between the Romans and native tribes. 

Fascinating

Love

Baba

Aethelflaed: Iron Lady of Mercia | Alex Burghart - Academia.edu
http://www.academia.edu/3214814/Aethelflaed_Iron_Lady_of_Mercia

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Æthelflæd: of Mercia warrior queen 60 BBC History Magazine Anglo-Saxon kings Viking victory Æthelflæd was a far superior ruler to her husband Æthelred, and made Mercia a kingdom to be feared, repelling foes from her borders and bringing unruly neighbours under her control Her deeds are largely forgotten, but as Alex Burghart explains, Æthelflæd turned a cornered kingdom into a powerhouse that defeated the Welsh and the Vikings xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx A ALAMY nglo-Saxon history is full of forgotten heroes. This year marks the 1100th anniversary of the accession of one of the most forgotten and, in some ways, one of the most remarkable. In 911, Æthelflæd, daughter of King Alfred the Great (871-99), succeeded her husband, Æthelred, as ruler of the midland realm of Mercia. In doing so she became one of the only Anglo-Saxon women to rule in her own right, and a key player in the period that would shape the formation of England. Rarely has British politics been so turbulent as it was in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. In 866 a huge Danish force had landed in eastern England and started, systematically, to occupy regions and kill kings. By 877 roughly all the territories to the east of Watling Street (the A2) – the kingdoms of Essex and East Anglia, East Mercia (the east Midlands), Lindsey (Lincolnshire) and Northumbria – lay in Danish hands. Nor were they the only hostile power. From early in the ninth century Norse Vikings (from Norway and no friends to the Danes) had established bases in Ireland and were using them as springboards to launch forays on mainland Britain, attacking and sometimes allying themselves with the Welsh kingdoms. Anglo-Saxon England appeared to be on the brink of becoming AngloScandinavian England. It was under these pressures – and others from the Welsh kingdoms to the west – that, in about 879, Æthelred, the new leader of the remaining Mercians, chose to submit to King Alfred of Wessex. Asser, Alfred’s biographer, says that Æthelred agreed ‘that in every respect he would be obedient to the royal will’, and it seems that he was as good as his word. In our sources, Æthelred is never called ‘king’ only ‘ealdorman’ or ‘lord’ – there was to be one king: Alfred, and it is his name alone which appears on the royal charters and coins of the time. So seriously did Alfred take this new alliance that he gave his eldest daughter, Æthelflæd, to Æthelred in marriage. Exactly when this happened is not known

There's No Turning Back': My Interview With a Hunted American Jihadist

Son

What happens when people go loopy over religion. I was talking with somebody about the situation in Bangladesh. Where the secular govt is battling Islamists and genocidal bastards. And then INDIAN Muslim organisations decided to join in with their Bangladeshi morons. And somebody said, good Muslims don't do this. I replied, I'm sorry but do you think that when the razakars and Pakistani troops were killing Bangladeshis, they thought that they were bad Muslims? No. They thought they were good Muslims. Their priests told them that they were doing good with Allah. Look at the jihadi videos. When they are killing and slitting throats, they shout Allah u Akhbar. God is great. Good Muslims?  The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Like this fellow. 

You don't need religion to tell you not to kill. Still an interesting read son. 

Love

Baba. 

'There's No Turning Back': My Interview With a Hunted American Jihadist | Danger Room |Wired.com
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/omar-hammami/all/

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Omar Hammami at a press conference in Mogadishu. Photo: Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP

‘There’s No Turning Back’: My Interview With a Hunted American Jihadist

Omar Hammami, the most prominent American jihadi left alive, probably should be running. When Hammami came to Somalia for jihad in 2006, he never anticipated that al-Qaida’s local affiliate would pledge to kill its former propaganda asset. And last month, the U.S. government put a $5 million bounty on the head of the 28-year-old Alabama native. These could be the last moments of Hammami’s life.

But Hammami tells Danger Room in an extremely rare and exclusive interview that he’s staying put. From an undisclosed location in Somalia, he grows vegetables, helps his wives around the house, and trolls his one-time colleagues in al-Shebab on Twitter, his newfound passion. As @abumamerican, he’s tweeting his ongoing jihad in 140-character installments, and is happy to debate it with U.S. national security professionals. Uniquely among jihadis, Hammami shoots the breeze with the people whose job it is to study and even hunt people like him.

That’s caused a cognitive and emotional dissonance within U.S. counterterrorism circles. Several openly say they like the charismatic Hammami, who’s quick with a joke and a touch of irony. Their Twitter interactions with him have led to a worry about his well-being, and a dim hope that maybe, just maybe, they can convince Hammami to give up a path that seems to promise a violent and imminent end. “It’s just a process of talking about what it is he believes and trying to understand it,” says J.M. Berger, Hammami’s main interlocutor, “and seeing if there’s an escape hatch for him from this life.

Niven's laws

One of my friends shared this link with me. Very amusing some of them son. Perfect to sprinkle in your conversation or essays. Provides a bit of zest. Btw, a bit of a sneaky tip. In your exam papers and essays, just a small hint of humour increases your marks. Marking papers is a bloody boring job. One of the main reasons why i couldn't be full time in academia. So when I read something a bit amusing, it increases my marking generosity. And many other teachers have said so to me as well. 

Love

Baba. 

Niven's laws - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niven%27s_laws#Niven.27s_Law_.28re_Time_travel.29

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Niven’s laws were named after science fiction author Larry Niven, who has periodically published them as “how the Universe works” as far as he can tell. These were most recently rewritten on January 29, 2002 (and published in Analog Magazine in the November 2002 issue). Among the rules are:

Never fire a laser at a mirror.

Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naïve.

It is easier to destroy than to create.

Ethics change with technology.

The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.

Others

Niven’s Law (re Time travel)

See also: Novikov self-consistency principle

A different law is given this name in Niven’s essay “The Theory and Practice of Time Travel”:

Niven’s Law

If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe.

Hans Moravec glosses this version of Niven’s Law as follows:

There is a spookier possibility. Suppose it is easy to send messages to the past, but that forward causality also holds (i.e. past events determine the future). In one way of reasoning about it, a message sent to the past will “alter” the entire history following its receipt, including the event that sent it, and thus the message itself. Thus altered, the message will change the past in a different way, and so on, until some “equilibrium” is reached—the simplest being the situation where no message at all is sent. Time travel may thus act to erase itself (an idea Larry Niven fans will recognize as “Niven’s Law”).

Ryan North examines this law in Dinosaur Comics #1818.

This proposition is also extensively examined in James P. Hogan’s Thrice Upon a Time.

(stories)

is also the title of a 1984 collection of Niven’s short stories.

Included in the 1989 collection N-Space are six laws titled Niven’s Laws for Writers. They are:

Writers who write for other writers should write letters.

Never be embarrassed or ashamed about anything you choose to write. (Think of this before you send it to a market.)

Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don’t.

It is a sin to waste the reader’s time.

If you’ve nothing to say, say it any way you like. Stylistic innovations, contorted story lines or none, exotic or genderless pronouns, internal inconsistencies, the recipe for preparing your lover as a cannibal banquet: feel free. If what you have to say is important and/or difficult to follow, use the simplest language possible. If the reader doesn’t get it then, let it not be your fault.

Everybody talks first draft.

In the acknowledgments of his 2003 novel Conquistador, S.M. Stirling wrote:

And a special acknowledgment to the author of Niven’s Law: “There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is ‘idiot’.”

(from Known Space)

Drawn from Known Space: The Future Worlds of Larry Niven

1. Never throw shit at an armed man.
2. Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man.

Never fire a laser at a mirror.

Mother Nature doesn’t care if you’re having fun.

F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa

Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.

It is easier to destroy than create.

Any damn fool can predict the past.

History never repeats itself.

Ethics change with technology.

Anarchy is the least stable of social structures. It falls apart at a touch.

There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.

The ways of being human are bounded but infinite.

The world’s dullest subjects, in order:

Somebody else’s diet.

How to make money for a worthy cause.

Special Interest Liberation.

The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.
Niven’s corollary: The gene-tampered turkey you’re talking to isn’t necessarily one of them.

Fuzzy Pink Niven’s Law: Never waste calories.

There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
in variant form in Fallen Angels as “Niven’s Law: No cause is so noble that it won’t attract fuggheads.”

No technique works if it isn’t used.

Not responsible for advice not taken.

Old age is not for sissies.