This is an amazing examination, using the ideas of Hobbes, of how the politics of national security play out in America.

He uses three chief claims to show not only why Democrats lose, time and again, on matters of national security, but also why some dissenting voices are tolerated while others are not. 

1. States have a great deal of freedom to determine what threatens a people and how to respond to those threats, and in making those determinations, they are influenced by the interests and ideologies of their primary constituencies.

2. States have strong incentives and have been given strong justifications for exaggerating threats.

3. While states aspire, rhetorically, to a unity of will and judgment, they seldom achieve it in practice.

This is really wonderful stuff.

So here’s a good place to question the march of progress. The downside to all that data is that the government has it all. Let’s hope democracy continues to work!

Too many articles on neuroscience in the media give disproportionate share of attention to ‘implications’ of research. These are often no more than speculation. This article on the actual science behind a relatively new technique in neuroscience while still leaving room at the end for a few speculations and lessons.

I hope this succeeds, I think. It seems like a really interesting way to reinvest in a community. Memphis could take advantage of it if it were more dense. On the other hand, it seems ripe for abuse. We’ll see.