The big dog

This picture (via Barry Ritholtz) illustrates that the US is still the dominant economy in the world.

Note, though, that the growth rate differential between the US and China is currently around 7 percent per year (e.g., 10 vs 3). If that persists for another decade, China’s PPP GDP will exceed that of the US.

See here for a list of PPP adjusted GDPs by country.

70% of US GDP is consumer-related. One can expect significant consequences abroad from any slowdown here — for example due to freezing of home equity lines of credit 😉

Nuclear weapons sites in China’s earthquake zone

I was wondering about this. Interesting detail from the Times on China’s nuclear weapons sites in the earthquake zone. So far so good; let’s hope the dams are OK as well.

Related: China Builds the Bomb, a history of China’s early atomic weapons program. See page 44 for profiles of two of the leading scientists, including Peng Huanwu, a quantum field theorist and student of Max Born.

NYTimes: China’s main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone, leading Western experts to look for signs of any damage that might allow radioactivity to escape.

A senior federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said the United States was using spy satellites and other means to try to monitor the sprawling nuclear plants. “There appear to be no immediate concerns,” the official said.

Nonetheless, “it’s potentially a serious issue,” Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear arms expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, said in an interview. “Radioactive materials could be released if there’s damage.”

China began building the plants in the 1960s, calculating that their remote locations would make them less vulnerable to enemy attack.

China’s main complex for making nuclear warhead fuel, codenamed Plant 821, is beside a river in a hilly, forested part of the earthquake zone. It is some 15 miles northwest of Guangyuan in Sichuan Province. The vast site holds China’s largest production reactor and factories that mine its spent fuel for plutonium — the main ingredient for modern nuclear arms.

Jeffrey G. Lewis, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research group in Washington, said the military buildings that make up Plant 821 were probably unusually strong compared with civilian structures.

“I’d rather have been in the reactor building than a grade school” on Monday when the quake struck, he said. The site’s various plants “were built as military facilities, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if, by and large, they came through pretty well,” he added. …

“From what I know, they’re a really brilliant people and I think they do things the right way,” said Danny B. Stillman, a former director of intelligence at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an expert on the Chinese nuclear program because of extensive travels in the 1990s to its secretive sites and bases.

Closer to the epicenter of the quake that struck Monday is Mianyang, a science city whose outskirts house the primary laboratory for the design of Chinese nuclear arms. It is considered the Chinese equal to Los Alamos. Known as the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, it too, Mr. Stillman said, houses a reactor, though a smaller one meant for research.

In China, the academy leads in the research, development and testing of nuclear weapons and has centers throughout Sichuan Province.

…North of the city, for example, is a plant that shapes plutonium into the compact spheres that ignite nuclear weapons.

Nuclear experts said that closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, in rugged hills a two-hour drive west of Mianyang, China runs a highly secretive center that houses a prompt-burst reactor. It mimics the rush of speeding subatomic particles that an exploding atom bomb spews out in its first microseconds.

North in an even more rugged and inaccessible region, nuclear experts said, China maintains a hidden complex of large tunnels in the side of a mountain where it stores nuclear arms.

“It’s very close to the epicenter,” said one specialist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because, to the best of his knowledge, the exact location of the secret complex had never been publicly disclosed.

Dr. Stillman, the former intelligence chief at Los Alamos, said he had immense regard for the Chinese weapons scientists and assumed that many of their nuclear plants had been built to ride out the pounding of an earthquake or other disasters, natural or man-made.

“All the Chinese I met in the program were really brilliant,” he said. “So I think they do it the right way. I hope.”

Nuclear weapons sites in China’s earthquake zone

I was wondering about this. Interesting detail from the Times on China’s nuclear weapons sites in the earthquake zone. So far so good; let’s hope the dams are OK as well.

Related: China Builds the Bomb, a history of China’s early atomic weapons program. See page 44 for profiles of two of the leading scientists, including Peng Huanwu, a quantum field theorist and student of Max Born.

NYTimes: China’s main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone, leading Western experts to look for signs of any damage that might allow radioactivity to escape.

A senior federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said the United States was using spy satellites and other means to try to monitor the sprawling nuclear plants. “There appear to be no immediate concerns,” the official said.

Nonetheless, “it’s potentially a serious issue,” Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear arms expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, said in an interview. “Radioactive materials could be released if there’s damage.”

China began building the plants in the 1960s, calculating that their remote locations would make them less vulnerable to enemy attack.

China’s main complex for making nuclear warhead fuel, codenamed Plant 821, is beside a river in a hilly, forested part of the earthquake zone. It is some 15 miles northwest of Guangyuan in Sichuan Province. The vast site holds China’s largest production reactor and factories that mine its spent fuel for plutonium — the main ingredient for modern nuclear arms.

Jeffrey G. Lewis, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research group in Washington, said the military buildings that make up Plant 821 were probably unusually strong compared with civilian structures.

“I’d rather have been in the reactor building than a grade school” on Monday when the quake struck, he said. The site’s various plants “were built as military facilities, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if, by and large, they came through pretty well,” he added. …

“From what I know, they’re a really brilliant people and I think they do things the right way,” said Danny B. Stillman, a former director of intelligence at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an expert on the Chinese nuclear program because of extensive travels in the 1990s to its secretive sites and bases.

Closer to the epicenter of the quake that struck Monday is Mianyang, a science city whose outskirts house the primary laboratory for the design of Chinese nuclear arms. It is considered the Chinese equal to Los Alamos. Known as the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, it too, Mr. Stillman said, houses a reactor, though a smaller one meant for research.

In China, the academy leads in the research, development and testing of nuclear weapons and has centers throughout Sichuan Province.

…North of the city, for example, is a plant that shapes plutonium into the compact spheres that ignite nuclear weapons.

Nuclear experts said that closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, in rugged hills a two-hour drive west of Mianyang, China runs a highly secretive center that houses a prompt-burst reactor. It mimics the rush of speeding subatomic particles that an exploding atom bomb spews out in its first microseconds.

North in an even more rugged and inaccessible region, nuclear experts said, China maintains a hidden complex of large tunnels in the side of a mountain where it stores nuclear arms.

“It’s very close to the epicenter,” said one specialist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because, to the best of his knowledge, the exact location of the secret complex had never been publicly disclosed.

Dr. Stillman, the former intelligence chief at Los Alamos, said he had immense regard for the Chinese weapons scientists and assumed that many of their nuclear plants had been built to ride out the pounding of an earthquake or other disasters, natural or man-made.

“All the Chinese I met in the program were really brilliant,” he said. “So I think they do it the right way. I hope.”

Nuclear weapons sites in China’s earthquake zone

I was wondering about this. Interesting detail from the Times on China’s nuclear weapons sites in the earthquake zone. So far so good; let’s hope the dams are OK as well.

Related: China Builds the Bomb, a history of China’s early atomic weapons program. See page 44 for profiles of two of the leading scientists, including Peng Huanwu, a quantum field theorist and student of Max Born.

NYTimes: China’s main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone, leading Western experts to look for signs of any damage that might allow radioactivity to escape.

A senior federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said the United States was using spy satellites and other means to try to monitor the sprawling nuclear plants. “There appear to be no immediate concerns,” the official said.

Nonetheless, “it’s potentially a serious issue,” Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear arms expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, said in an interview. “Radioactive materials could be released if there’s damage.”

China began building the plants in the 1960s, calculating that their remote locations would make them less vulnerable to enemy attack.

China’s main complex for making nuclear warhead fuel, codenamed Plant 821, is beside a river in a hilly, forested part of the earthquake zone. It is some 15 miles northwest of Guangyuan in Sichuan Province. The vast site holds China’s largest production reactor and factories that mine its spent fuel for plutonium — the main ingredient for modern nuclear arms.

Jeffrey G. Lewis, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research group in Washington, said the military buildings that make up Plant 821 were probably unusually strong compared with civilian structures.

“I’d rather have been in the reactor building than a grade school” on Monday when the quake struck, he said. The site’s various plants “were built as military facilities, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if, by and large, they came through pretty well,” he added. …

“From what I know, they’re a really brilliant people and I think they do things the right way,” said Danny B. Stillman, a former director of intelligence at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an expert on the Chinese nuclear program because of extensive travels in the 1990s to its secretive sites and bases.

Closer to the epicenter of the quake that struck Monday is Mianyang, a science city whose outskirts house the primary laboratory for the design of Chinese nuclear arms. It is considered the Chinese equal to Los Alamos. Known as the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, it too, Mr. Stillman said, houses a reactor, though a smaller one meant for research.

In China, the academy leads in the research, development and testing of nuclear weapons and has centers throughout Sichuan Province.

…North of the city, for example, is a plant that shapes plutonium into the compact spheres that ignite nuclear weapons.

Nuclear experts said that closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, in rugged hills a two-hour drive west of Mianyang, China runs a highly secretive center that houses a prompt-burst reactor. It mimics the rush of speeding subatomic particles that an exploding atom bomb spews out in its first microseconds.

North in an even more rugged and inaccessible region, nuclear experts said, China maintains a hidden complex of large tunnels in the side of a mountain where it stores nuclear arms.

“It’s very close to the epicenter,” said one specialist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because, to the best of his knowledge, the exact location of the secret complex had never been publicly disclosed.

Dr. Stillman, the former intelligence chief at Los Alamos, said he had immense regard for the Chinese weapons scientists and assumed that many of their nuclear plants had been built to ride out the pounding of an earthquake or other disasters, natural or man-made.

“All the Chinese I met in the program were really brilliant,” he said. “So I think they do it the right way. I hope.”

Elbow strikes

A bankers’ utopia

Not exactly the opinion piece I expected to find in the Wall Street Journal!

WSJ: Our Great Economic U-Turn
THOMAS FRANK

…The top 20% of households earned more, after taxes, than the rest of the country combined in 2005, while the topmost 1% of the population took home more than the bottom 40%. …Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers’ productivity has increased by 60%. What’s more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven’t read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what’s happened to workers’ health insurance and pension plans.

I confess that I am fascinated by the mechanics of this huge social reconfiguration – in the same sense that I am fascinated by the industrial procedures of a slaughterhouse… How the big change was brought off is the subject of Steven Greenhouse’s important new book, “The Big Squeeze,” which is also my source for many of the statistics in the preceding paragraphs. …

…It is, in other words, a political disaster, with tax cuts, trade agreements, deregulatory measures, and enforcement decisions all finely crafted to benefit one part of society and leave the rest behind. Few of the voters who gave Ronald Reagan his landslide victories, it is fair to say, intended for this to be the outcome. They wanted their country to stand tall again, certainly; they wanted the scary regulators off their backs, maybe; but I can recall no conservative who trumpeted those long-ago elections – or any of the succeeding contests, for that matter – as a referendum on plutocracy.

So let us have one now. Instead of pleasant talk about “change” and feats of beer drinking at the corner tavern, let us hear our candidates address this greatest issue of them all: What kind of country are we to be? A land of equality? Or a bankers’ utopia – where the law of the land has achieved mystical oneness with the higher law of classical economics, and devil take the bottom 80%.

A bankers’ utopia

Not exactly the opinion piece I expected to find in the Wall Street Journal!

WSJ: Our Great Economic U-Turn
THOMAS FRANK

…The top 20% of households earned more, after taxes, than the rest of the country combined in 2005, while the topmost 1% of the population took home more than the bottom 40%. …Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers’ productivity has increased by 60%. What’s more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven’t read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what’s happened to workers’ health insurance and pension plans.

I confess that I am fascinated by the mechanics of this huge social reconfiguration – in the same sense that I am fascinated by the industrial procedures of a slaughterhouse… How the big change was brought off is the subject of Steven Greenhouse’s important new book, “The Big Squeeze,” which is also my source for many of the statistics in the preceding paragraphs. …

…It is, in other words, a political disaster, with tax cuts, trade agreements, deregulatory measures, and enforcement decisions all finely crafted to benefit one part of society and leave the rest behind. Few of the voters who gave Ronald Reagan his landslide victories, it is fair to say, intended for this to be the outcome. They wanted their country to stand tall again, certainly; they wanted the scary regulators off their backs, maybe; but I can recall no conservative who trumpeted those long-ago elections – or any of the succeeding contests, for that matter – as a referendum on plutocracy.

So let us have one now. Instead of pleasant talk about “change” and feats of beer drinking at the corner tavern, let us hear our candidates address this greatest issue of them all: What kind of country are we to be? A land of equality? Or a bankers’ utopia – where the law of the land has achieved mystical oneness with the higher law of classical economics, and devil take the bottom 80%.

A bankers’ utopia

Not exactly the opinion piece I expected to find in the Wall Street Journal!

WSJ: Our Great Economic U-Turn
THOMAS FRANK

…The top 20% of households earned more, after taxes, than the rest of the country combined in 2005, while the topmost 1% of the population took home more than the bottom 40%. …Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers’ productivity has increased by 60%. What’s more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven’t read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what’s happened to workers’ health insurance and pension plans.

I confess that I am fascinated by the mechanics of this huge social reconfiguration – in the same sense that I am fascinated by the industrial procedures of a slaughterhouse… How the big change was brought off is the subject of Steven Greenhouse’s important new book, “The Big Squeeze,” which is also my source for many of the statistics in the preceding paragraphs. …

…It is, in other words, a political disaster, with tax cuts, trade agreements, deregulatory measures, and enforcement decisions all finely crafted to benefit one part of society and leave the rest behind. Few of the voters who gave Ronald Reagan his landslide victories, it is fair to say, intended for this to be the outcome. They wanted their country to stand tall again, certainly; they wanted the scary regulators off their backs, maybe; but I can recall no conservative who trumpeted those long-ago elections – or any of the succeeding contests, for that matter – as a referendum on plutocracy.

So let us have one now. Instead of pleasant talk about “change” and feats of beer drinking at the corner tavern, let us hear our candidates address this greatest issue of them all: What kind of country are we to be? A land of equality? Or a bankers’ utopia – where the law of the land has achieved mystical oneness with the higher law of classical economics, and devil take the bottom 80%.

On data mining

Last week we had Jiawei Han of UIUC here to give a talk: Exploring the Power of Links in Information Network Mining. He’s the author of a well-known book on data mining.

During our conversation we discussed a number of projects his group has worked on in the past, all of which involve teasing out the structure in large bodies of data. Being a lazy theorist, my attitude in the past about data mining has been as follows: sit and think about the problem, come up with list of potential signals, analyze data to see which signals actually work. The point being that the good signals would turn out to be a subset (or possibly combination) of the ones you could think of a priori — i.e., for which there is a plausible, human-comprehensible, reason.

In many of the examples we discussed I was able to guess the main signals that turned out to be useful. However, Han impressed on me that, these days, with gigantic corpora of data available, one often encounters very subtle signals that are identified only by algorithm — that human intuition completely fails to identify. (Gee, why that weird linear combination of those inputs, with alternating signs, even?! 🙂

Our conversation made me want to get my hands dirty on some big data mining project. Of course, it’s much easier for him — his group has something like ten graduate students at a time! Interestingly, he identified this ability to tap into large chunks of manpower as an advantage of being in academia as opposed to, e.g., at Microsoft Research. Of course, if you are doing very commercially applicable research you can access even greater resources at a company lab/startup, but for blue sky academic work it wouldn’t be the case.

Conference fun

My summer schedule is filling up already!

Paris, May 26-28: Black hole information at Institut Henri Poincaré.

Foo camp, Sebastapol, July 11-13: woo hoo! O’Reilly Media’s annual un-conference. My report from last year, including video.

Sci Foo, Googleplex, Aug 8-10: co-organized by Google, O’Reilly Media and Nature. Flickr photos from last year (2007).

Trento, Italy Sept. 1-5: statistical thermalization, at the European Center for Nuclear Theory (ECT).