It's probably true, or based on something true. A lot of those old processes were very dependent on the mix of impurities at a certain location... you could only make [sword/knife/dagger] using an ore from [some hill/bluff/valley]. They didn't know that at the time, or if they did they had no idea why.

Then indeed that sounds like a low salary. Except that those states without pensions also tend to have low costs of living, so what do I know?

I didn't say there was "sloth". But they run 1 shift and quite literally build them as slowly as is feasible. We don't need the number that they are turning out, but we do need the skill set and facilities.

Depending on where you are employed, government jobs also give you a pension that would be worth around $1 million if you had to buy it as an annuity.

I assumed a retirement age of 55 after working for 30 years to get your full pension. I assumed your salary would not increase over time and that the annuity would track cost-of-living. I assumed half-salary upon retirement, for life, with a spousal benefit upon your death. These assumptions are very conservative and probably seriously understate the real value of the pension, especially if it includes a health benefit.

Wow, cool site. Check out the column from 1939, which is the year Germany invaded Poland, to 1945 when the war ended:
Battleships: 15 to 23 (not amazing, but still impressive given their utility to expense ratio)
Carriers: 5 to 99
Cruisers: 36 to 72
Destroyers: 127 to 377
Frigates: 0 to 361
Subs: 58 to 232

And that is while taking losses the whole time!

Interesting that the 80s re-activation of the old WW2 Iowa-class battleships does not seem to be reflected in your data.

This is exactly right, and is why the US continues to build new nuclear subs at the slowest... possible... rate...

If you are a business, you want your capital returned as soon as possible. If you are a peacetime military, you just want to retain capability in the cheapest possible way. Totally different goals. During WW2, you saw the goals of industry and the military align, and it was kind of breathtaking.

It's amazing how quickly that happens. I work in an industry where we have a very cyclical business climate, so we have frequent layoffs. It usually keeps the engineering staff pretty top-notch. We haven't had a down cycle since the 2008 crash, so the cruft has certainly built up. I can only imagine what happens at a place like Google where the only turnover is people quitting!

I feel the need to plug the Pandas module for Python. It does a lot of R-like operations on huge datasets. It takes care of time-series alignment and has many other nicey-nices. Basically almost everything you think you need to invent to manipulate your dataset is probably already implemented in Pandas.

Or a gigantic application, like Photoshop or MATLAB, that sits in your "Applications" folder. Have you guys never heard of the term "killer app"??? Am I that old?

I think "app" came naturally to long-time Mac people, since there has long been an "Applications" folder which a lot of (most?) people just called the "Apps" folder. This lingo followed the jump to mobile on the iPhone and Windows people were introduced to the term for the first time. MATLAB has long been an "app" for Mac folks.

I actually agree on the "old style" Thinkpads, but recent models look more and more like Lenovo's other stuff so I don't know how confidant I am. We all have Thinkpads at work and even the last generation was uneven, with the cheaper models acting... well, cheap. The old-school stuff was very high-quality.

Punishments have not gotten weaker, instead there are fewer crimes being committed. I'm sure people will make all sorts of claims why... the Freakonomics guys claim it was abortion, others say the end of the crack epidemic, and others point to the crackdown on crime and harsh sentences enacted during the late 80s and 90s. Whatever the reasons, the jails are not filling up because there are fewer criminals - not because we've changed attitudes.

Between going to hourly contracting and having kids, I value my time more than ever. That afternoon is worth several hundred dollars IMHO. I was very different as a young man.

In a calamity where resources become scarce, I'd bet on the non-pacifists. The Amish would be completely screwed without their food stocks, farmland, and livestock.

No matter how you look at it, they are completely dependent on the good will of the society around them.