"Pelosi the Hammer", Hogberg, and the Savage Nation

Think the death panels will let Stephen Hawking live? Think again.Those to whom the title of this post refers sound like characters from Dungeons and Dragons, which resembles the fantasy world they are apparently living in.  Investors Business Daily, for a long time just a boring trade paper, made waves last summer when it claimed in an editorial against public healthcare that:

(Steven Hawking) wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless. 

Hawking himself took time out of his busy schedule figuring out which parallel universe the IBD editorial staff lives in to establish the fact that he is indeed British: Hawking was born in the U.K., works in the U.K., and receives healthcare from the NHS.

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BrewDog: Anarchy in the U.K.

BrewDog's grassroots financial campaign: Equity for PunksScottish nonconformist beermaker, BrewDog, just released the world's strongest beer: at 32% alcohol content, Tactical Nuclear Penguin is almost as strong as whiskey and will sell for 30 pounds (about 49 dollars as of press time) per bottle.  Founded in 2007 by 24-year-old friends James Watt and Martin Dickie, BrewDog has been in business for less than three years, but those three years have been loud, boisterous, and whirling: nearly everything BrewDog has done in its short rise to greatness has been very public and very controversial.  From the company's website: "BrewDog is about breaking rules, taking risks, upsetting trends, unsettling institutions but first and foremost, great tasting beers." 

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Tamerlane for the Twenty-First Century

Several months ago, I read John Darwin's book "After Tamerlane".  It chronicles the history of empire-building from the Central-Asian-controlled world empire paradigm to the coastal-powers paradigm with which the world is now most familiar.  China, India, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and the West all originated or suffered sweeping dynastic and social changes from this paradigm shift.

Money to be made by controlling the Silk Road had before 1399 created an incentive for consolidation.  The conventional wisdom is that, as sea power became more important for global trade, control of the Silk Road became obsolete.  Naval powers such as Portugal, Britain, Japan, and the United States took over, while cities such as Samarkand, once the cultural, military, and commercial center of the world, were forgotten.

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