Yes. Neil has done some good stuff already.

Alan Moore has had a horrible experience with Hollywood. Some of that is Hollywood, some of that is Moore being an anarchist who does not play well with corporations or other people. He has a hard time sharing.

About a year ago the idea for American Gods was to make this a HBO series. The first season would be about 10 episodes and cover the book. Not sure what the plans were for the next 6 seasons but Neil said he had something up his sleeve.

The HBO project has been officially killed but I would not be surprised if something similar cropped up for the American Gods TV shows.

For Sandman, I have no idea. There have been some horrible scripts floating out there since the early 90s but I don’t think that is what is going forward.

o.k. then - what would have been the right answer?

Direct supervision is not an answer. Indirect supervision either by multiple layers of bureaucracy (what you were talking about) or by the board were both ruled out by the board.

It is the rare case where conflicts of interest can be completely eliminated. I would argue that either of these methods would have been robust enough to minimize conflict. There are tons of cases where you have married couples working together, parent and child, etc. and organizations have come up with polices to handle and minimize the issue.

I personally feel that shipping her over to the State Department was overkill, but obviously that is not your opinion. What does that leave us with? Fire her because her boyfriend got a job? That seems unfair to her. Maybe soften the blow with a fat severance package? But that would be open to abuse. Any better ideas?

If you are referring to Shaha Riza, that happened over at the World Bank, which is not part of the State Department or the US Government. Rice was not even involved.

I also think it was also a complete hack political job taking Wolfowitz down. He is dating a girl, he then becomes her boss (with 2 or 3 layers of bureaucracy between them, so it is not like he is doing performance reports or salary decisions on her), but before he becomes the boss the girlfriend is moved from her job so there can no hint on impropriety. The whole thing smells rank.

Maybe – hindsight is 20/20. Everybody believed that the US would win the initial ground war. The long game was a different matter. My point is that the neocons felt that a small military force could rapidly democratize Iraq – that the population was yearning for a western democratic system. Some neocons where talking about probably regime change in Syria and Iran within a few years. Widely optimistic.

From what I have read about counter insurgency / pacification, it takes large committed force years on the ground to get the job done.

That is not quite true. To simplify, she was a neocon who was overconfident of what US military force could do. That would put her on the side of Dick Cheney, but on the opposite side of Rumsfeld and Powell who were urging caution.

I will second you point on that she is very sharp but that her management of the state department was subpar.

IIRC, the shells will have a guidance system that will allow them to be guided, which is something that they will need if they plan on hitting a moving target – it does take over a minute for the shell to travel 100+ miles – the target will not be in the place where it was when the shell was launched.

Yes. It is going to be powered by (indirectly) by diesel, which is flexible – in the sense that it is widely available, can be used for lots of things, etc. It does not have its own oxidizer, so it is safer to handle, has higher energy density, etc. So a single ship could fire more rounds at a lower cost than a traditional big gun battle ship.

Energy is not the issue – it is the rate of fire. Diesel engines power the supper capacitors, they discharge to fire the gun, and then fill them up again. I have read that this cycle might be measured in minutes instead of seconds. How big of an issue that it will be is a big question.

So, the German and Japanese bosses who move manufacturing plants to the US are assholes? If that is true, since they are exploiting lower American wages for their unadulterated greed, how come they are not failing like American manufactures?

No – those are challenges to Detroit. They might explain why Detroit is no longer the undisturbed, preeminent auto manufacturing center of the world. The rest of the world got better. Those are some of the external factors that I was eluding too. It does not explain the failure to evolve and adapt. The failure to respond is an internal factor that lies on the doorstep of Detroit and the Big 3 - these factors they did have control over.

But what caused the decline in American manufacturing? I can point to certain self-destructive behaviors on both the management and labor side that drove the Detroit auto sector into the ground. Heck, I can even point to the city management and city unions for their fair share. Did they face some hard external challenges? Yes, they did – but the ultimate responsibility of their failure lays in Detroit.

And I can say this as a trained economist and historian. (armature status today, but still.)

No, the weight of a kilogram is completely arbitrary. They are trying to fix it to something but right now it is just a weight.

A atomic clock works by counting the vibrations in an atom. The atomic clock fails when it miscounts the vibration of an atom, causing the error. The new clock is so good at counting that errors rarely occur.

And probably it can't be - sadly.

Legally it can be challenging to release early drafts of the script â" there are in a weird in-between state between the original book and the final product. Also, you don't want to burn your bridges. Piss off people by doing a tell all and you can't get them for your next project. Brad Pitt's input on this project may have been iodic but you many need Brad Pitt (or his wife) in a future project.

Slightly off topic, but this is one of the reasons why I am interested in seeing "Jodorowsky's Dune". It is a documentary about a early attempt to film Dune in the 70s - not David Lynch's 80s attempt. Most everybody is dead or out of the business so people can be honest. Personally I would like a good look at the preproduction art but I suspect that the rights to that are just a overlapping mess between Herberts estate, the production company, and the individual artist.

We can debate if a weaker dollar would have a overall positive or negative impact, or on whom it would have impact on.

However, it would mean higher interest rates. Bonds that have been issued would go down in value but we don’t care about those – we care about the new bonds that will be issued.

As you pointed out, a weaker dollar means more expensive imports, more expensive imports means higher inflation, and higher inflation means a higher interest rate.

Also, a weaker dollar reduces the return of US bonds held by foreign owners, so they would demand a higher interest rate to compensate.

You have it mostly right, and I don’t think Russia has the power, but let us take this a step further. Damage, in theory, could be inflicted. Consider 2 things – supply and demand and that bonds are basically cash. Dump the bonds, demand for cash / bonds remains the same, Supply goes up, ergo the price of USD cash goes down. The US dollar becomes weaker relative to other currencies, fueling inflation. Everybody can buy the bonds that Russia is selling, so newly issued bonds would have to have a higher real interest rate.

See what George Soros did – he broke the bank of England. Now the US is nowhere near the irrational state the Bank of England was, but you can get an idea of the damage that can be done.