Look to your left! New links to Alan Anderson, Rob Schaap, Tex’s Pre-whacked snakes and Tom Vogelgesang.

For me, the old days means:
(1) The days when I first got to use a terminal instead of punch cards
(2) The first two years of Macintosh
(3) The Web circa 1995

Anyway, having reverse-engineered Tim Dunlop’s site, I’ve figured out how to add comments to my blog (so much more satisfying than just asking!). Please send comments, remembering that this is a PG site.

While I’m talking about Tim, I have one (hyphenated) word for him — Control-Click. (If Tim can get his archive working under Windoze, I’ll link to the relevant post)

The Australian: IG Index betting stoush spreads [August 12, 2002]
These guys are offering stock market bets as an untaxed substitute for pokies and ponies. It will be interesting to see how all this pans out.

Mainly, a lot of issues of Scientific American and Prospect that all arrived at once. SciAm discusses the great SETI problem “If there’s life elsewhere in the galaxy, why aren’t they talking to us”. More on this soon.
I also picked up the latest Peter Corris, #25 in the adventures of Cliff Hardy, but I was a bit disappointed – maybe it’s time for Cliff to retire. Not that there’s anything wrong with this one, but there’s not much new to be said after 25 novels.

Jason Soon proves he’s definitely not a warblogger with a very sensible analysis of the problems that would follow a successful US invasion of Iraq.
As I said a month or so ago,

“The NY Times says that America ought to be discussing Battle Plans for Iraq. The bigger question, I would have thought, is, what do they do once they’ve got rid of Saddam? Bush senior had no answer to this one, and therefore decided to leave him in place.”

Ray Cassin at The Age has an interesting piece, pointing out the discrepancies between Tony Abbott’s social conservatism and his economic radicalism. I made much the same point in the Financial Review a couple of years ago.
Along the way, Ray gets stuck into “Theodore Dalrymple” the pseudonymous social commentator for the UK Spectator who is currently much-beloved of the Australian right.

Business Week may have its doubts about Greenspan, but the Brits love him. Forbes.com reports that the British Treasury announced on Tuesday that Queen Elizabeth had approved an honorary knighthood (KBE) for Greenspan.
“The award is in recognition of his outstanding contribution to global economic stability and the benefit that … (Britain) has received from the wisdom and skill with which he has led the U.S. Federal Reserve Board,” according to press release issued by the British Treasury.
I have a feeling this will look about as good a judgement as Yasser Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize in a year or two. Of course, in a year or two, Yasser Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize could look prescient.

In a Business Week interview, William Wolman gives a very sensible take on the current US economy (that is, he and I agree on almost every point). Highlights are
(i) His critique of Greenspan for not deflating the bubble earlier
(ii) His discussion of pension liabilities, particularly those for firms with defined benefit plans
On the latter point, it’s also worth looking at The New Pinch from Pensions. Paul Krugman estimates the impact at “50 WorldComs”, but doesn’t say how much a WorldCom is. I assume he means the $4 billion in outright fraud, making the total impact $200 billion. Since this would occur with -6 per cent returns, it looks conservative.
More on pensions as a 50+ supporter of Social security privatisation recants.
And a bit more from Floyd Norrisat the NYT

Brad DeLong says Mac OS X gives Five Nines Instead of Nine Fives (reliability that is).

The great Kaus vs Krugman war rolls on. The first round was about whether Krugman misstated the details of an allegedly cosy deal that Bush got in relation to his baseball team in Texas. The second deals with the saga of an Office of Management and Budget press release which grossly underestimated the impact of the Bush tax cuts on the Budget balance. Krugman called it a “lie” and Kaus says this is unfair, it’s really only a “mistake”.
Few will have the patience to wade through the details on such fine semantic points. The real issues in this feud are:
(1) Was Bush the beneficiary of a series of dubious deals in his Texas days ?
(2) Are the Bush administration’s budget projections honest ?
Unless Kaus can answer “No” and “Yes” respectively, his criticisms of Krugman are nothing more than nitpicking.