By George he's got it!

Despite reading mathematics at university many moons ago, I never formally studied quantum mechanics or relativity. This was because I was much stronger in the general areas of probability theory and statistics than in physical methods so I chose my options accordingly. I still try and catch up with what's going on in the world of theoretical physics from time to time but though I think I have a decent heuristic grasp of quantum mechanics and special relativity (i.e. I think I 'get' what the mathematics mean though I couldn't actually work the math) until yesterday I really struggled with general relativity. So yesterday I was poking around some nifty stuff on the Caltech website and I suddenly realised where I had been going wrong. The fourth dimension of the standard space-time geometry isn't t as my brain had been insisting all these years (which is ironic as I know Maxwell's equations perfectly well) but ct. Suddenly space-time as a geometry makes sense and the effect of the distribution of mass-energy also falls into place. And it has only taken me just short of thirty years to figure this out!

GIP

I made this in celebration of this morning's intellectual breakthrough.

The language of priorities is the religion of socialism

The debate over whether the invasion of Iraq was or was not morally justified flared up chez itchyfidget today. I wasn't happy about the terms of the debate because I don't believe that the policy options were restricted to invade Iraq or do nothing. Let's look at this on an opportunity cost basis.

The latest estimate that I have seen of the cost to the US taxpayer of the war in Iraq is $248 billion based on Congressional appropriations. If the impact of an inflated oil price on the US economy and the effect on the US government's ability to borrow were factored in the cost would surely be much higher. But let's stick with $248 billion.

If the object of the invasion of Iraq was to promote democracy in the region, or even just a desire to remove Saddam, was an invasion cost-effective? How much would it have cost to persuade Saddam to retire gracefully to Algeria or Paraguay? A lot less than a quarter of a trillion dollars I'll wager. Hell, for $248 billion dollars one could probably persuade the entire non Jewish population of Palestine to settle someplace else and bribe the recipient governments into accepting them thus removing the festering sore of the refugee camps.

I'm sure there area whole host of policy options I haven't even dreamed of. One can do a lot with $248 billion dollars.