Assault of Thoughts - 10/13/2010 "Looking to the future" edition

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" - JMK

- Paul Krugman is finally having his paper "The Theory of Interstellar Trade" published. No details on when or where. The abstract:

"This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved."

- The AHA blog announces a new exhibit at the National Building Museum I saw advertised on the metro that looks interesting. It's called "Building Tomorrow: America's World Fairs of the 1930s". It looks at the impact of six world fairs held during the depression years, and how they conceived of the future, particularly with respect to architecture and design.

- Mises.org republishes a 1979 Libertarian Review article by Murray Rothbard criticizing what he called the "space cadet" contingent among the libertarians. These were the guys that saw a sci-fi libertarian utopia in our future, although Rothbard contends their dedication to libertarianism was weak. This reminds me - does anyone know a good book on utopians - particularly social/economic utopians of the last century and a half or so? I know Cohn, although he covers slightly different material. This, like many things, is a perspective that has interested me a lot more since reading Lovecraft's letters and essays.

- The Long Now blog looks at what the constellations will look like in 50,000 years.