Coursera provides online classes taught by professors from the country’s best schools—Stanford and Princeton among them, in a wide-range of subjects. Co-founder Daphne Koller explains:

“The universities produce and own the content, and we are the platform that hosts and streams it,” explained Daphne Koller, a Stanford computer science professor who founded Coursera with Ng after seeing tens of thousands of students following their free Stanford lectures online.

This has incredible potential. Imagine community colleges and universities where students receive lectures from the top people in the field, and the classes held are discussion or work-based. This could allow far-flung schools to be much, much more effective.

Arnold Kling:

Mauldin’s claim is that we are in what he calls the “endgame,” meaning that the Keynesian option of increasing government borrowing is no longer available to European countries. The only willing lenders are banks, which in turn need to be propped up, and ultimately they can only be propped up by printing money.

My take-away from Mauldin is that, contra the mainstream media narrative, the real dilemma in Europe is not fiscal–deciding whether to maintain government spending or not. The real dilemma is financial–whether to recognize losses and absorb defaults (by both governments and banks) or turn loose the monetary printing presses.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)

When a Foreign Ministry spokesman was asked to explain why Chen Guangcheng had been imprisoned in his own home, this was his reply:

“After Chen Guangcheng was released from prison, he is a free person as far as I know. He has been living in his own house,” Mr. Liu stated. Challenged on that, he responded: “That’s what you said. As far as I know, he’s living in his hometown.” He also deflected a spate of other questions about Mr. Chen and Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, mostly saying that China’s legal system ensures proper treatment of all citizens.

“That’s what you said.” Asked about a fact that every one is aware of, a fact whose validity is unchallenged, the Chinese government’s official position is to pretend it doesn’t exist. Rather than deal with the reality and therefore that the government imprisoned a man for concocted crimes and, when set free, imprisoned him again in his own home, the Chinese government pretends that isn’t the case.

That’s what an authoritarian government that tries to mold what people perceive as reality into something convenient for them looks like. That’s this government’s strategy for maintaining power—deny inconvenient truths, prevent people from learning of them (the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, Liu Xiaobo, Chen Guangcheng), and focus people’s attention on what you want them to look at: economic growth and, when convenient, “meddling” from foreign aggressors.

And that’s why the Chinese government is so afraid of Chen. Here is a blind, self-taught lawyer who escaped cordons and fences around his home, went to the nation’s capital, and evaded police. He revealed the Chinese state—the all-powerful Chinese state—to be incapable of finding a blind man with an injured foot in Beijing. In one night, he undermined the government’s work to deny what they do to people who are inconvenient to them, and what has been done to people as a result of the nation’s one-child policy. In other words, he not only embarrassed the government, he threw their abuses back in their faces, and in the world’s face.

Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese lawyer who escaped house arrest and fled to the U.S. embassy in Beijing, has left the embassy for medical treatment and has been reunited with his family after U.S. negotiators received assurances from the Chinese government that Chen and his family would be safe and that he could continue studying law at a university.

Chen, though, now says he left the embassy due to threats to his family:

But in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his hospital bed late Wednesday evening, Mr. Chen said American officials told him while he was under American protection that Chinese authorities had threatened to beat his wife to death unless Mr. Chen left the American embassy, and that Mr. Chen therefore left under coercion.

U.S. officials deny this and say that, instead, his wife would be sent back to Shandong, their hometown, by the Chinese government (and no one could offer her protection there) unless Chen left the embassy to see her. That may well be the case, but U.S. officials seem to be intentionally clouding the issue. Perhaps Chinese officials never explicitly threatened to beat his wife to death, but that doesn’t matter—sending her back to Shandong is threat enough, because once there, she will be under control of local police—the same local police which placed Chen, his wife and daughter under house arrest and beat him. Threatening to send her back with no protection is little different than explicitly threatening to beat her to death.

Chen has also now stated that he regrets losing American protection and now wants to leave China for safety abroad. Chen’s reversal seems contradictory, though, because when he arrived at the U.S. embassy last week, he was said to not want asylum, but rather assurances from the Chinese government of his safety and the safety of his family, which he has received. Moreover, while leaving the embassy for the hospital, Chen reportedly told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “I would like to kiss you,” apparently in reference to her advocacy on his behalf and on the behalf of other human rights activists. Perhaps he simply wanted to thank her for her work, despite the circumstances of his leaving the embassy. That’s possible, but it seems to be a strange comment to make while leaving the embassy’s protection under duress.

Or perhaps Chen was threatened later, after arriving at the hospital and after U.S. officials had left. That seems plausible and would fit with the Chinese government’s interests: make promises for his safety and future so he’ll leave the embassy, and once he’s outside U.S. protection, make threats so he’ll shut up and the problem can go away. Of course, Chen kept talking, and did so to international media, no less, so who knows.

This story has taken a very strange turn, because Chen left the embassy so abruptly, his desires have apparently flipped and now U.S. officials are disputing his account of events. I hope the U.S. acted in good faith here, and I hope that if Chen and his family are now in danger, or will be in the future, the U.S. advocates on his behalf. As the days and weeks pass, media interest in this story will pass as well, and at that point the Chinese government could have the upper hand. And it is at that point they could place him under house arrest again, or some other kind of scheme to prevent him from making trouble. We can’t let that happen.

Bob Fu says the U.S. must fight for Chen Guangcheng:

This is a pivotal moment for U.S. human rights diplomacy. The United States must stand firmly with this broadly popular individual or risk losing credibility as a defender of freedom and the rule of law.

I understand being cautious about harming relations with China. But what I also understand is the Chinese government brutally represses individuals who have done absolutely nothing wrong, and uses the law as a tool to advance the government and party’s interests, rather than to provide for justice. When someone who suffers under the government’s arbitrary rule stands up to it, we should support them. And we should support them when they are silenced, too, because that’s especially when they need spoken for.

The Chinese government argues that advocating on behalf of persecuted lawyers, human rights activists and dissidents is meddling in their own domestic affairs and is an attempt to violate their sovereignty. That’s bullshit. We have every right to, in the course of our relations with a country as large and powerful as China, to demand that basic human dignity be respected, and the rule of law operate unfettered. Not only do we have a right to, we have a responsibility to recognize and oppose repression of people whose only crime is pointing out the government and party’s wrongs. It isn’t about politics or advancing our interests. It’s about respecting human dignity.

Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese lawyer and human rights activist, escaped extralegal house arrest last week and is believed to be hiding in the U.S. embassy or somewhere else in Beijing. The event, and the U.S.’s involvement, could stir up tensions once again between the U.S. and China.

I hope that Chen is indeed in the U.S. embassy, because no where else is safe. Chen’s escape is highly problematic for Beijing because it makes house arrests—one of China’s favorite tools for silencing dissidents and something they’d much rather not discuss at all—very public, and it weakens the government’s perceived power. After all, if even a blind man can escape police cordons and evade capture in the nation’s capital, how capable is it?

Worse, it means how they will deal with Chen will be very public, too. Do they allow Chen to go free, and weaken their perceived strength even more? Do they put Chen in prison, and receive international condemnation? And if Chen is in the U.S. embassy, do they risk relations with the U.S. by demanding that the U.S. hand him over?

There’s no good answer for Beijing. Their preferred approach, I would assume, would be to imprison Chen and let the controversy fade away, but with his escape being such an incredible story and embarrassment to the government, that may not be possible. Moreover, the government (and party) already feels particularly wounded after Bo Xilai’s downfall, so Chen’s escape piles on. This may be the most destabilizing period for the CCP since 1989.

Planetary Resources, a new venture supported by Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and James Cameron, plans on mining asteroids for rare-earth metals.

It’s a long-term, ambitious plan that is more likely to fail than it is to succeed. Granted. But they’re trying to expand space exploration beyond low-earth orbit, and that’s awesome. I want to see manned exploration of our solar system in my lifetime, and this is a step toward it. I hope it succeeds.

The Economist reports that over the last thirty years, China’s fertility rate (the number of children a woman can expect to have throughout her life) has fallen from 2.6 to 1.56. This means China’s population will peak sometime around 2026 and then begin to decline. Worse, though, their population will continue getting older:

The differences between the two countries are even more striking if you look at their average ages. In 1980 China’s median (the age at which half the population is younger, half older) was 22. That is characteristic of a young developing country. It is now 34.5, more like a rich country and not very different from America’s, which is 37. But China is ageing at an unprecedented pace. Because fewer children are being born as larger generations of adults are getting older, its median age will rise to 49 by 2050, nearly nine years more than America at that point. Some cities will be older still. The Shanghai Population and Family Planning Committee says that more than a third of the city’s population will be over 60 by 2020.

Think about that. China is a developing (that is, still relatively poor) nation with an average age comparable to developed (rich) nations, and it will only get older in the coming decades. This means two things: first, China’s cheap labor advantage—which was largely responsible for China’s remarkable record of economic growth since the 1980s—will dry up as their youth decline as a percentage of population; and second, their aging population will require significant financial support. Traditionally, this support comes from the elderly’s children, but because the country’s birth rate is declining, they will be less able to do so.

In other words, China is growing old before it grows rich. That presents profound challenges both for China¹ and the rest of the world².

1. How do they quickly move from an unskilled labor-fueled economy toward a more productive, value-add economy? do they import workers to help augment their declining workforce? If so, how do they adapt their rather exclusionary society to help integrate workers? As economic growth inevitably slows, how will they decide to split up limited funds between government interests and costs for supporting the elderly? [↩]
2. As China’s ability to manufacture products cheaply declines, consumer product prices could rise as a result—which means that unless wages increase commensurately, consumers will face lower real wages. China’s rise has effectively subsidized the poor and middle class in the U.S. and Europe by making goods cheaper. [↩]

The meteorite which killed the dinosaurs may have seeded the solar system—and even Gliese 581—with life-bearing earth material:

But perhaps most surprising is the amount that makes its way across interstellar space. Last year, we looked at calculations suggesting that more Earth ejecta must end up in interstellar space than all the other planets combined.

Hara and co go further and estimate how much ought to have made its way to Gliese 581, a red dwarf some 20 light years from here that is thought to have a super-Earth orbiting at the edge of the habitable zone.

They say about a thousand Earth-rocks from this event would have made the trip, taking about a million years to reach their destination.

The study concludes that Jupiter’s moon Europa would have picked up nearly as much as our own Moon, because Jupiter’s gravity sucks in so much material passing by.

Incredible to think about.

John Garnaut in an excellent piece about Wen Jiabao and a long-running schism within China’s Communist party:

“In the past I did not have a fully positive view of Wen Jiabao, because he said a lot of things but didn’t deliver,” says a leading media figure with lifelong connections to China’s leadership circle. “Now I realize just to be able to say it, that’s important. To speak up, let the whole world know that he could not achieve anything because he was strangled by the system.”

Hu Yaobang’s most faithful protégé, who carried his funeral casket to its final resting place, is building on the groundwork laid by Hu and his children ostensibly to prevent a return of the Cultural Revolution. Wen Jiabao is defending the party line set by Deng Xiaoping’s 1981 historical resolution against attack from the left. Between the lines, however, he is challenging the Communist Party’s 30-year consensus from the liberal right.

If you have any interest in China (or would just like to learn about a very opaque country), this is a must-read. Garnaut uses Wen Jiabao’s recent speech where he warned that a similar tragedy to the Cultural Revolution could reoccur if there are no political reforms and Bo Xilai’s sacking to consider a long-ranging debate that’s fractured the CCP: should the party open China’s government, push for greater rule of law, and eventually allow democratic elections? Or should it solidify the party’s control and use it to shape Chinese society toward revolutionary, communist ideals, and crush those who oppose it?

On the very far left, you have Mao Zedong, who pioneered the latter argument, and Bo Xilai, who advanced that argument; on the a-bit-closer-to-the-center-but-still-the-left, you have Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, who both pushed for a smaller role in society for the government and party, separating the government and party, fighting corruption and free markets, and Wen Jiabao, China’s outgoing Premier and protégé of Hu Yaobang, who has quietly continued his legacy.

This debate cuts to the core of the party and to China’s future, and it’s been thrown into the public sphere in a way that I’m sure makes many in the party extremely uncomfortable by Wen’s speech and the downfall of Bo Xilai. This is especially important because China is transitioning now to its next set of leaders, so this debate—and the very-public show of what happens behind closed doors when certain leaders lose favor and are removed—couldn’t have popped up again at a more pertinent and sensitive time.

China is increasing repression of Tibetans once again:

Communist Party leaders have also introduced a “monastic management” plan to more directly control religious life. As part of the plan, 21,000 party officials have been sent to Tibetan communities with the goal of “befriending” monks — and creating dossiers on each of them. Compliant clergy members are rewarded with health care benefits, pensions and television sets; the recalcitrant are sometimes expelled from their monasteries.

At some temples, monks and nuns have been forced to publicly denounce the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader whose name is often invoked by self-immolators. The freedom of movement that allowed monks to study at distant monasteries across Tibet and four adjacent provinces has been curtailed.

Protests have increased, and there have been 29 self-immolations—where someone sets themselves on fire as a form of protest—in the past year, seven in the last month.

Bo Xilai, the son of a CCP official from when the CCP was still fighting the KMT for control of China, was removed from his position as party chief of Chongqing for a scandal surrounding his police chief. Here’s more on what happened. (It’s worth reading if you’re interested, by the way. It’s a weird story.)

Bo was, until this scandal, considered not just a rising star in Chinese politics, but almost guaranteed a seat on China’s politburo. Bo’s politics are, even by Chinese standards, far to the left—using his position, he favored state-owned enterprises and tried to create a revival of communist culture by promoting Mao quotations, singing “red” songs (including some from the Cultural Revolution), and by encouraging youth to work in the countryside. His rise in Chinese politics was seen as a possible sign that China’s next generation of leaders could move away from the relatively liberal views of current Premier Wen Jiabao and the country’s general progression toward a more free economy since Deng Xiaoping. His removal makes that shift less likely.

His fall also provides a look into China’s opaque political system that we rarely get. The Economist writes:

Welcome, too, is the little window the affair opens into the corrupt, fratricidal ways of party politics. Mr Bo’s downfall was precipitated by the flight to an American consulate of Wang Lijun, his former police chief and right hand in the anti-mafia drive. Mr Wang is now under investigation in China. Mr Bo, too, may soon find himself answering awkward questions. That Chongqing’s dirty linen was aired in front of American diplomats on his watch may matter more than the dirt itself. But his sacking will not herald a new era in which party and government officials are to account for their actions. Crimes and misdemeanours, like ideology, are merely weapons in a power struggle. Winners can still get away with it.

China’s leaders like to pretend that the party is a singular thing, and that China’s politics are very orderly and harmonious. But they’re far from it. Clausewitz wrote that war is the continuation of politics by other means, but in China, threats, harassment, house arrest, being jailed and being killed are all a part of political struggles within the party. Because the party has primary power at the expense of a civil system, and political struggles happen behind closed doors, those struggles inevitably involve the rest of society. When there is no transparent system for transferring political power nor the rule of law enforced by an independent judicial system, everything in society is, necessarily, political.

A U.S. soldier murdered 16 Afghan civilians:

A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five after entering their homes in Kandahar province, senior local officials say.

This is sickening. He may not represent U.S. armed forces, but it’s not going to matter. Our position in Afghanistan was already precarious, but now, I think, it is untenable. I don’t believe we have a chance of succeeding, and this murdering spree may have been the final push over the edge.

The Obama administration believes that an executive branch review of facts counts as due process before killing American citizens:

The Obama administration believes that executive branch reviews of evidence against suspected al-Qaeda leaders before they are targeted for killing meet the constitution’s “due process” requirement and that American citizenship alone doesn’t protect individuals from being killed, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech Monday.

Doesn’t that make you feel safe knowing that the executive branch reviewed evidence before killing an American?

The issue here isn’t that the government shouldn’t be able to kill American citizens fighting against the U.S. in a war zone. I don’t know of anyone who thinks that. The issue is that Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by U.S. drones in Yemen, a country the U.S. is not (officially) at war in. Effectively, the administration is arguing the U.S. should be able to assassinate U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, if the executive branch deems they are planning to kill U.S. citizens and they cannot be captured.

I sympathize with the Obama administration, because they’re trying to fight a different kind of an enemy. Al Qaeda has no national affiliation nor are they congregated in a single area, so fighting them with the rules of war for nations is, well, difficult. But rather than just say that the executive branch should be able to decide on its own when to assassinate U.S. citizens, we need to create new standards for when it is permissible and when it isn’t. And there must be some kind of oversight, because it’s absolutely insane to allow the executive branch to be jury and executioner, however solemnly they carry that responsibility.

New evidence suggests the first Americans may have come from Europe, not Siberia:

Archaeologists have long held that North America remained unpopulated until about 15,000 years ago, when Siberian people walked or boated into Alaska and then moved down the West Coast.

But the mastodon relic found near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay turned out to be 22,000 years old, suggesting that the blade was just as ancient.

Whoever fashioned that blade was not supposed to be here.

Fascinating story.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)