Mr. Ed's Mild Ride

Hierarchy of needs

2005-06-22T11:19:00.000-04:00

I was glad to read that they found the missing Utah boy scout, and I was amused by the following tidbit from the AP story: After downing bottles of water and eating all the granola bars carried by a group of volunteer searchers, the boy asked to play a video game on one rescuer's cell phone, the sheriff said.

Fun with language

2005-06-03T10:38:00.000-04:00

The front page of today's Wall Street Journal has a piece on the increasing numbers of books that are returned to publishers when they don't sell. Quote:

In 2003, 34% of adult hardcover books were returned to publishers...That's more than one in three adult hardcover books that publishers edit, print, distribute, and market.

What I find odd about this sentence is its failure to distinguish between two different meanings of the word "book": the abstract intellectual-property sense in which a book is a long string of words (the entity that is edited and marketed), versus the individual, physical copy of the book (the entity that is printed and distributed and possibly returned.) The distinction is important here, because 34% of the physical copies is not the same as 34% of the published titles. It reminds me of this post from the great blog Language Log, which gives this example of the same phenomenon:

The Cambridge Grammar is careful in its scholarship and eleven pounds in weight.

Spreading the Gödel news

2005-03-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

Mathematics doesn't get too much attention in the popular press, but Slate magazine today has a column about Gödel's incompleteness theorem, written by Jordan S. Ellenberg, and honest-to-goodness mathematician at Princeton. I see it's part of a series of columns called "Do the Math," although most of the columns are more about statistics and common sense than they are about serious theorems. Much like relativity and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Gödel's theorem tends to capture the imagination of literary types and other armchair philosophers. Also like those other landmarks of 20th century science, it is easy to misconstrue. Ellenberg writes:

But what's most startling about Gödel's theorem, given its conceptual importance, is not how much it's changed mathematics, but how little. No theoretical physicist could start a career today without a thorough understanding of Einstein's and Heisenberg's contributions. But most pure mathematicians can easily go through life with only a vague acquaintance with Gödel's work. So far, I've done it myself.

This sounds right to me, although I'm not sure I quite understand Gödel's theorem myself, despite actually finishing Gödel, Escher, Bach. I think mathematical dilettantes should pay more attention to another eccentric genius who's work revolutionized mathematics in the last century, Georg Cantor. Cantor's set theory really is fundamental to all of modern mathematics, and his simple ideas about the differences between countably and uncountably infinite sets are both simple to understand and profound, yet little known by non mathematicians.

I'm going to the opera!

2005-02-10T10:07:00.000-05:00

New tactics from PETA:

They've spent years burning fur coats and tossing paint at people wearing them. But today, the Norfolk-based animal-rights group PETA tried something completely different -— handing out dozens of furs to homeless people at a Washington, D.C., shelter.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Fur is great for warmth, that's why animals wear it. And who needs a warm coat more than the homeless? If fur coats were to become part of the standard homeless uniform, that would probably be more effective than any advertising campaign PETA could dream up. Here's a quote from another story:

"I'm going to the opera!" joked Marie Ravix, snatching up a dramatic, long brown fur coat with delight as animal rights group PETA handed the symbols of sartorial luxury to the homeless poor.

Price Indexing

2005-02-09T10:33:00.000-05:00

Tyler Cowen has a good post on proposals to freeze social security benefits (in real terms).

Notes from someone who didn't watch the speech

2005-02-03T09:48:00.000-05:00

I only caught the very end of the state of the union address, and I only read part of the transcript. Nevertheless I have a couple of comments.

Bush's stated intentions with regard to Social Security sounded a lot more reasonable than I expected. His descriptions of the problems in the system were pretty fair. He put the issue of limiting the growth in benefits in the forefront, and only later talked about private accounts. And he labeled those accounts as a way of making the system a better deal for younger workers in tandem with the necessary benefit reductions. I still think it's a bit misleading to use words like "bankrupt" to describe the Social Security problem, but overall I thought this was responsible rhetoric and better than some of what I've heard before from the administration on the topic. Now if he could just get this worked up about the current deficit...

The Democratic response from Sen. Harry Reid was such a pile of claptrap that it was difficult to watch. Here's an excerpt:

Ding, dong. The sound of the Liberty Bell. Ding. Freedom. Dong. Opportunity. Ding. Excellent schools. Dong. Quality hospitals.

Oh, wait, sorry...that's actually an entry in an essay contest for children under twelve from an episode of The Simpsons. But it's remarkably close both spirit and content to the remarks offered by Reid.

Civics teachers needed

2005-02-01T09:59:00.000-05:00

I was surprised to read this morning about a study showing that American high school students are ignorant and ambivalent about the rights guaranteed in the first amendment.

[W]hen told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

That last sentence is especially surprising. I'm concerned, but skeptical. If the study is accurate, it's interesting that this all takes place against a backdrop of a society that has adopted an increasingly expansive view of "rights" over the past decades. Perhaps this can lead to the erosion of support for more basic constitutional rights.

Democracy in Iraq

2005-01-28T15:21:00.000-05:00

Here is what the LA Times reports is going in Iraq now that President Bush has personally "planted the flag of liberty."

At Medical City in Baghdad, doctors are dragging mattresses into their offices and bunking in vacant nursing-home beds, preparing for the possibility of widespread bloodshed.... Amid excitement and fear over Sunday's election, Iraqis are in a mad rush to prepare for an unprecedented three-day national lockdown. With insurgents vowing to disrupt the balloting and kill voters, U.S. and Iraqi security forces have imposed a lengthy set of emergency security measures. Starting Saturday, borders will be sealed and the airport will be shut down. Government offices and most companies will take a three-day holiday. Nightly curfews begin at 7 p.m. and last until 6 a.m....In addition, cars will be banned from roads unless occupants have special election badges, except in cases of medical emergency....
Demand for gas, food and emergency supplies has spurred a price surge. Black-market prices for gasoline doubled from $1.30 a gallon last week to $2.70 a gallon Thursday. Potatoes that sold for 22 cents for a little more than two pounds on Monday sold for 55 cents Thursday. Long lines snaked out of bakeries selling samoun, a popular bread. Grocery stores were selling out of water, eggs, canned food and rice.

Seriously, I hope the elections go well, and I have nothing but respect for those who plan to participate despite danger to themselves.

Whither linguistics?

2005-01-28T15:00:00.000-05:00

Language Log's Mark Liberman has an interesting post on the fate of linguistics as a discipline.

[I]t may help to view the past 150 years of intellectual history as a poker game. We [linguists] began with a bigger stake than almost anyone else at the table, and have been dealt a series of very strong hands. However, our field is now a marginal player, in danger of being busted out of the game entirely.

He goes on to point out that, at least at Stanford, it is apparently easy to get a Ph.D. in "English" without having any exposure to the discipline of linguistics at all. Something seems very wrong about that. You can't get a degree in business without taking economics.

What not to wear

2005-01-28T14:43:00.000-05:00

Most of us have had the experience of being under-dressed at a social function. It's especially embarrassing if you're Vice President of the United States. Here's Dick Cheney at the Auschwitz memorial service. (Click link for larger photo).

Light blogging

2005-01-28T14:35:00.000-05:00

My blogging has been light the last couple of weeks. I've just started teaching a statistics class, and I've been preparing. Blogging will likely continue to be somewhat lighter for the next couple of months.

Going down with the partisanship

2005-01-15T22:27:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Paul Krugman, a friend pointed out this site evaluating newspaper columnists on a "partisanship index." Krugman comes out the second most partisan of all, just behind Ann Coulter. This doesn't surprise me that much--I find Krugman's NYT columns so relentlessly partisan that I can hardly read them (and I hardly ever do anymore).

It's weird. Before he took on the NYT column, Krugman was a first rate mainstream academic economist who was known for being outspoken in criticizing democrats as well as republicans. He also produced some of the best popular writing about of economics I know of...for example, check out this classic essay on the value of economic models, or this archive of his not-especially-partisan columns for Slate from the late 1990s. I never would have suspected when he took this gig that he would end up the democratic version of Ann Coulter.

Good Krugman

2005-01-12T09:24:00.000-05:00

Read Paul Krugman's article (PDF) on Social Security privatization from The Economists' Voice. It's amazing how much smarter Paul Krugman gets if you give him more than 700 words (although I could have done without some of the political attacks near the end). Excerpt:

The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security’s future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it’s just part of the federal budget: there can’t be a Social Security crisis. All you can have is a general budget crisis. Rising Social Security benefit payments might be one reason for that crisis, but it’s hard to make the case that it will be central....
Now it’s true that rising benefit costs will be a drag on the federal budget. So will rising Medicare costs. So will the ongoing drain from tax cuts. So will whatever wars we get into.... What we really have is a looming crisis in the General Fund. Social Security, with its own dedicated tax, has been run responsibly; the rest of the government has not. So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis?

He also agrees with a point I've made before:

Now let’s return slightly more to the world outside science fiction, and ask the question: can we really count purported savings several decades out as an offset to huge borrowing today? The answer should be a clear no, for one simple reason: a bond issue is a true commitment to repay, while a purported change in future benefits is just a suggestion to whoever is running the country decades from now.

Tyler Cowen also agrees.

Going down with the ship

2005-01-11T10:59:00.000-05:00

So, finally some heads are rolling at CBS News after an independent panel concluded what everyone already knew: CBS continued to defend the bogus national guard memos long after they should have realized their mistake.

I was completely fascinated watching the memo story unfold back in September. What still amazes me is the psychology of those defending the memos, both inside and outside CBS. It was pretty clear to me the memos were fake as soon as I read this post by Charles Johnson on his blog "little green footballs," posted less than 24 hours after the 60 Minutes story aired. That a random, obscure 1973 memo-for-the-files would be typed on a proportional-spaced machine is unlikely. But the idea that it would happen to come out looking exactly like a Microsoft Word document is beyond unlikely.

Of course many CBS critics made claims that did not stand up under scrutiny--for example, that there were no typewriters in 1973 that could do proportional fonts, or that the Times Roman typeface did not exist. CBS defenders were able to successfully refute these and other claims. The problem was, many defenders seemed to take these refutations as evidence that the memos were genuine, and they failed to look carefully at the remaining arguments, or to fully consider the preponderance of evidence. Lesson: just because you're critics are mistaken about some things, it doesn't mean you are right.

The reaction of CBS insiders was, to me, even more puzzling. They defended the memos for over a week, despite the fact that they were in the best position to know of the memos' shaky provenance. Their necks were on the line, questions were coming in from all over, and they didn't even bother to do any more than the most cursory investigation. That's just astounding. I'm just amazed at people's willingness to go down with the ship. I guess some people are more trusting than I am.

The incident reminded me a little of when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke back in 1998. Clinton sounded evasive to me (and to others) on the very first day when interviewed by Jim Lehrer, (e.g. "There is no improper relationship." Huh? That's a denial?). Within a couple of days information had leaked out about white house logs and other things that made it seem very likely that something fishy was going on. Yet as soon as Clinton shook his finger, many prominent democrats seemed willing to line up behind him without skepticism.

I still think that the issues raised in the "little green footballs" post have never gotten the attention that they deserve (although the post is mentioned in the panel's report). For days afterwards the mainstream media was debating whether any typewriters in the 1970s had proportional spacing or "th" superscripts. But they almost completely ignored how colossally unlikely it would be that they would have exactly the same spacing as Microsoft Word.

My favorite take on the situation came from David at cronaca.com, who compared the memos to forgeries in the art world:

For after having given a listen to the memos' defenders (Kos thread here) and dismissers (Instapundit's list of links here), the picture that emerges is that while the memos might have been able to have been typed on an early-'70s typewriter, their overall appearance is both anomalous for the era and disturbingly consistent with the norms of our own.
This is, of course, a classic red flag for art historians on the lookout for fakes: not just the anachronistic detail, but that more fundamental anachronism arising from the forger's inability to recognize (and suppress) the impress of his own time. And when I read attempts to explain how the memos could be genuine, they sound just like a tenaciously deluded owner of a painting, purportedly the work of some great old master, who points to one feature after another that can be paralleled in the master's oeuvre, while failing to see how they add up to a whole that is entirely modern in conception.

Optical harassment

2005-01-10T12:49:00.000-05:00

Slate has a cool piece on an attempt to use "science" to win at basketball. The idea is for fans to create the appearance of a moving background for opposing free-throw shooters (rather than just waving stuff around randomly). The piece includes this cool idea (which probably wouldn't be legal):

Whitney suggests that it would be easy to create an improved version of the thunder stick that becomes more noticeable when waved in one direction. One such device might work by hanging LEDs inside a hollow tube with holes in it. When swung to the right, the LEDs would be visible through the holes, creating spots of light that would vanish when the stick went back to the left. As hundreds of fans shook the sticks wildly, the shooter would see something that looked like a flurry of snow drifting in one direction.

Substandard standards

2005-01-08T16:32:00.000-05:00

Joanne Jacobs links to a pair of new reports from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation evaluating educational standards in English and Mathematics across the states. These standards have become more important since the passage of the No Child Left Behind act, and the foundation is none too pleased with the standards as they are now.

I spent some time reading The State of State Math Standards 2005 (PDF) and it's pretty interesting. If you can't find any good reality programming on television, but you still want some entertainment that is both humorous and disturbing, you might want to check out this report. The standards requiring that probability be taught to Kindergartners are amusing, but the prize for "funniest standard" goes to Missouri-- the Show-Me-State requires that high school students be able to:

Evaluate the logic and aesthetics of mathematics as they relate to the universe.

At the end of the report is the following suggestion, which I think makes a lot of sense:

A simple and effective way to improve standards is to adopt those of one of the top scoring states: California, Indiana, or Massachusetts. At the time of this writing, the District of Columbia was considering replacing its standards with the high quality standards from one of these states. That makes good sense. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The goal of standards should not be innovation for its own sake; the goal is to implement useful, high-quality standards, regardless of where they originated.

I think there is a general tendency for educators to want to reinvent the wheel. Most of the hardworking, dedicated teachers I know write all their own lesson plans basically from scratch. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone who was especially good at writing lesson plans to write them for everybody?

The foundation reports that the new superintendent for the District of Columbia is, in fact, now planning to "simply jettison D.C.'s woeful standards and adopt the excellent schema already in use in Massachusetts." Good for him.

Electric Avenue

2005-01-08T09:47:00.000-05:00

Todd Zywicki of the Volokh Conspiracy brings up an interesting issue reported today in the Washington Post: apparently hybrid cars are now clogging up the carpool lanes in Northern Virginia. These lanes may normally be used only by cars carrying 2, or sometimes 3 passengers, but hybrid drivers get a free pass.

But all hybrids are not created equal. Compared to the Honda Civic hybrid, the Toyota Prius has a smaller gasoline engine and a much larger electric motor, which is connected to the drivetrain in a different way. This gives it significantly higher mileage, especially in the city.

And now Honda is coming out with an Accord "hybrid" that has a huge 3.0 liter V-6(!!!) engine, plus a small electric motor that improves acceleration and fuel efficiency somewhat. I wonder if this 255 hp car will be allowed to use the carpool lanes, while more fuel efficient cars like the conventional Civic are shut out. According to the WaPo story, the "hybrid exemption is scheduled to expire in June 2006, and the HOV task force of Virginia transportation officials and experts urged...that state leaders not extend it."

And some people question whether hybrids are really any better for the environment at all (an opinion which I am not qualified to evalulate).

Zywicki also links to this classic Onion article: "Report: 98 Percent of Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others"

Fake diamond

2005-01-06T22:54:00.000-05:00

Jared Diamond's new book Collapse, currently ranked number 3 on Amazon, has been getting some rather skeptical reviews in the blogosphere lately. I suppose his discussion of the downfall of Easter Island and the Norse settlements in Greenland are interesting enough, although one wonders how much to trust his interpretations given the obvious environmentalist agenda behind the book. And sure, maybe we have something to learn from these failed societies, although you can't help but notice that they were pretty marginal and atypical to begin with.

But while I fully agree with all the criticisms expressed by Matt Yglesias (here, here, and here) and Tyler Cowen, they don't really express just how spectacularly bad the last part of the book is. It's just one specious argument, contradiction, or misuse of statistics after another. I almost can't believe this was written by the same man who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Coincidentally, I also received Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist for Christmas. I'm reading it with a skeptical eye, as Lomborg would probably want me to. The litany of environmental woes knocked down by Lomborg might seem like a straw man, but Diamond really brings it to life!

There are so many problems with Diamond's arguments in the book's final chapter that it is difficult to pick one to focus on (kind of like how Diamond describes environmental problems!) Here's just one small example...on page 504 Diamond writes:

The value of one statistical life in the U.S.--i.e. the cost to the U.S. economy resulting from the death of an average American...is usually estimated around $5 million. Even if one takes the conservative estimate of annual U.S. deaths due to air pollution as 130,000, then deaths due to air pollution cost us about $650 billion per year.

First of all, I don't know where Diamond gets his "conservative" estimate. All the sources I find on the web put the number at closer to half that (for example here.) But worse, those who die are not "average Americans," they are overwhelmingly the sick and old. I'm not arguing that air pollution is good, but Diamond is grossly abusing the statistical methodology to make the problem look worse. The whole final chapter is similarly sloppy and misleading, and I'm thinking of doing a series of posts over the next days with some more examples.

Objection...leading the witness!

2005-01-02T21:57:00.000-05:00

The latest issue of Legal Affairs has a piece on New Jersey's reform of procedures for having witnesses identify perpetrators:

In 2001, New Jersey made two major changes to the procedures that govern all state and local identifications. It became the first state to take into account the decades of psychological research that had been devoted to these procedures.... The first was straightforward: To avoid leading the witness, the person running the lineup shouldn't know who the suspect is. The second was a bit less obvious: In a lineup, show the faces one by one instead of all at once to discourage guessing.

I'd say these changes are long overdue. In fact, decades after double blind designs have become standard in medical research, I'm amazed that courts apparently still allow detectives to stand by as suspects are led into a lineup. The sequential approach is interesting too, for reasons explained in the piece. Also discussed is the phenomenon where people are more likely to mis-identify someone of another race than someone of their own race.

I've long been puzzled by the seeming gold-standard status given to eye-witness testimony, as opposed to "circumstantial" evidence. A few years ago I would regularly shake my head when I would hear about court battles over DNA testing where the issue was whether jury could be told that the evidence provided a certainty of "one-in-a-billion" or merely "one-in-a-million." I mean, what do you think you get from an eye-witness...one in twenty? That might be optimistic.

Perhaps the primacy of eye-witness evidence is a common law carry-over from pre-urban times when everyone knew everyone else in the village. People are obviously much more likely to correctly identify people they know rather than strangers.

Tsunami

2004-12-30T13:54:00.000-05:00

I have absolutely nothing of value to say about the horrible disaster in Asia, but I hope the death toll stabilizes soon. For a while, every time I checked the news it seemed to have doubled...5,000 , then 10,000, and so on. CNN is now reporting 116,00. I just hope relief workers can get to most of the survivors before the toll gets even worse.

Is there a chance the track could bend?

2004-12-29T09:51:00.000-05:00

Well, sir, there's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car Monorail! So I found this news from Las Vegas a bit amusing:

When it debuted in mid-July, this city's sleek $650 million monorail was supposed to be the envy of the nation....But during a busy convention season, bits and pieces of the trains started falling off, potentially endangering anything below, and the system was shut down indefinitely for major repairs. By Thanksgiving, newspaper cartoonists and tourists alike were dubbing it "monofail" and deriding the futuristic cars sitting idle on the costly tracks.

Monorail!

Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?

2004-12-28T10:54:00.000-05:00

Brad Plummer's blog has this interesting post on what he could contribute to society if he were transported back in time to the Dark Ages. His conclusion: not much.

Let's start with what I know: A lot, it seems, about Galois Theory and algebraic topology. I can explain, step by step, why Hilbert's Tenth Problem is unsolvable. But who would care?...Meanwhile, I have nothing to offer them on the engineering front. Nothing. I know what gravity is, and they wouldn't. But I'm not sure I could figure out how to "produce" electricity, or explain the principles of bridge-building (there's...a keystone...right?). Certainly no amount of fiddling on my part would ever produce a light-bulb, or a telephone, or the steam engine.

I have a recurring fantasy where I host a time traveler from the past and show him around our modern world. My favorite fantasy guests are scientists, like Isaac Newton. It would be great fun to explain modern science and technology to him. Of course this would be much, much harder If I were on his turf rather than he on mine.

Merry Commonmas!

2004-12-24T13:52:00.000-05:00

I was thinking today about the terms "BCE" and "CE," which in academic circles are replacing the designations "BC" and "AD" for specifying historical dates. "BCE" stands for "Before the Common Era." This might seem like a ridiculous piece of political correctness, but I can see one good reason for it: "AD" literally means "Anno Domini," or "The year of our Lord." I can understand why Jews, Muslims, or Athiests might not want to be forced to refer to "our Lord" in order to make themselves understood.

On the other hand, it is the Christian calendar. Calling it "Common" is pretty silly, especially since Muslims and others have their own calendars that they actively use. So maybe the right thing to do is to keep the new abreviations, but let the "CE" stand for "Christian Era." That's what it really is, and using a silly euphemism doesn't change that.

Where's teacher?

2004-12-19T22:43:00.000-05:00

When I saw this headline from the Christian Science Monitor,

India's troubling truants: teachers A new study finds 25 percent of teachers absent on any given day.

my instinctive reaction was: "I didn't know India had teachers' unions!" Sure enough:

The political clout of teachers and unions is a significant problem, says John Dreze, a local economist who worked on PROBE. As civil servants, teachers can almost never be fired, and are seldom transferred. "During elections, they also manage voting booths. No political party wants to antagonize them," he says.

Hello kitty

2004-12-18T14:13:00.000-05:00

First come the deer, then come the lions.

State records show that mountain lions disappeared from Iowa in 1867. But with increasing and unnerving regularity, the ambush predator -- which will kill and eat house pets, livestock and humans but much prefers deer -- is back on the prowl, in Iowa and across the Midwest. It is turning up on farms, in suburbs and even in occasional appearances downtown....With deer nearly everywhere, the big cats, it seems, are finding haute cuisine in the land of big-box stores.
State game officials say mountain lions have triggered widespread paranoia, with many Iowans worrying about the beasts in an excessive and unhealthy way. False sightings are rampant. Scouting groups have canceled field trips.

When I lived in Palo Alto last year, a mountain lion wandered into a residential neighborhood. The 99-pound cat was found sitting in a tree, where it was shot dead by a police officer.

Central planning is hard

2004-12-17T14:55:00.000-05:00

Story about flu shots from MSNBC:

Two months after the government recommended that scarce flu shots be reserved for people most at risk, health officials are now worried that tens of thousands of doses could go to waste, and they are considering easing the restrictions.
The demand for flu shots has turned out to be lower than expected because the flu season has been mild so far. Also, it turns out that more than half of all elderly or chronically ill adults have not even tried to get vaccinated because they figured no shots would be available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday

Hayek was right...central planning is hard.

The academic publishing goose

2004-12-16T23:15:00.000-05:00

Slate has an interesting piece on attempts to make research from leading medical journals available for free online.

[S]ome physicians and members of Congress have pointed out that much of the best literature, published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, is not immediately available for free to the public, and they have begun to argue that it should be.
To the consternation of journal publishers, many of them not-for-profit associations that rely heavily on journal subscription fees for their revenue, the National Institutes of Health has thrown its considerable weight behind the notion of free access to biomedical research....As the NIH considers final guidelines, a vitriolic debate has erupted in the scientific community: How best to balance the needs of journal publishers against those of scientists, students, and members of the general public who would benefit from unfettered access?

It's an interesting problem. Both suppliers and consumers of academic research benefit if the research is freely available. Furthermore, neither writers nor referees are paid by the journals. In my view, the "needs" of journal publishers should get very little weight, except to the degree that it is necessary to give them the proper incentives. The aim should be to make the research available as widely as possible, while somehow preserving the services journals provide as certifiers of and archivers of quality research.

The "market" for academic journals is a strange and interesting one. Economist Ted Bergstrom has written several papers on the topic which you can find at his webpage devoted to the issue. In economics, the top few journals are run by non-profit organizations such as the American Economic Association and the Econometric Society. However, about 2/3 of the total journals, including a few very good ones, are published by for-profit companies, especially the Dutch publisher Elsevier. Despite being cited much less frequently than the top journals, the for-profit journals are far more expensive, and their prices have increased much faster than the prices of most non-profit journals over the past decades. This interesting powerpoint presentation gives lots of details.

Elsevier's business has been very lucrative. But there are several stories on the sidebar at Bergstrom's site that make me wonder if they may be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It appears that lots of university libraries are getting tough with Elsevier. For example, Cornell apparently announced plans "to cancel several hundred Elsevier journals for 2004." In some cases, journal editorial boards have resigned en masse to start new, non-profit journals because of their unhappiness with Elsevier's pricing.

The right to be cold?

2004-12-15T13:54:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports:

The Eskimos, or Inuit, about 155,000 seal-hunting peoples scattered around the Arctic, plan to seek a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the United States, by contributing substantially to global warming, is threatening their existence....They are casting the issue as no longer simply an environmental problem but as an assault on their basic human rights.

The piece does not specify which "basic human rights" are believed to be under threat. In my view it makes sense to be concerned about the effects of global warming on humans, including Inuit humans, but framing this as a "human rights" issue seems odd (but not surprising).

Languageplug

2004-12-14T14:30:00.000-05:00

This post is a simple plug for the blog Language Log, which features a bunch of linguists talking about issues related to language. (It even includes minor-celebrity linguist Geoffrey Nunberg of "Fresh Air" fame). Of course like most modern linguists they tend to be descriptivists more than prescriptivists, but you can still detect a whiff of regret when they, for example, provide photo evidence for the coming death of whom. And they can still get their dander (gander?) up when they see someone as prominent as Daily Show host Jon Stewart declare that "terror" is not a noun.

"There's something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck"

2004-12-10T13:59:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting piece at Slate today by economist Steve Landsburg on why Ebenezer Scrooge is, contrary to popular belief, a generous guy. The basic argument is that he consumes very few human and non-human resources, leaving more for others to enjoy. His "generosity" is widely dispersed and invisible, but real nonetheless. I'd never thought about it that way!

Just for kicks I looked at the responses to the piece posted in Slate's forum "The Fray." As usual, most of the posters think Landsburg is a morally obtuse idiot, but they fail to see the value of the basic idea.

I've been reading Landsburg's pieces for a while, and this is typical. He usually makes some statement that is widely believed (e.g. "Scrooge is a bad guy") and attacks one or more of its foundations. He usually oversimplifies, but he gets at some core issues in a novel way. Readers who are too quick to object are missing the whole point. The value of the column is not that Scrooge is actually a good guy (he isn't), but that he's not bad for the reasons you may have thought (because his hoarding of money impoverishes others). The right reaction is not indignation, but to think of what Landsburg might have left out and whether that might change the conclusion somewhat (e.g. what if Scrooge passes his wealth on to his children and they spend it). Years ago Paul Krugman wrote a great essay about how people tend to overreact to simplified economic models rather than learn from them.

My favorite Landsburg column explains why nobody should be upset about the budget deficit (if you don't know why, you should read the column). I'm still upset about the deficit, but not as strongly and not for the same reasons as I was before I understood his argument. A somewhat related idea is that privatizing social security is nothing more than a "debt-swap," which I posted about here.

One aspect of the miser-as-benefactor argument that Landsburg doesn't address is the difference between putting your money in a mattress and lending it out to a bank. If you lend it, it lowers the interest rate, helping borrowers (who tend to be poor) but hurting lenders (who tend to be rich). If you put it in a mattress, it increases the value of the money held by those who have it (the rich). So in this respect Ebeneezer Scrooge is preferable to Scrooge McDuck, but both are still more "generous" than if they consumed resources themselves.

Bonus trivia: what movie does the title of this post come from?

The truth about "The Truth About the Drug Companies"

2004-12-08T13:14:00.000-05:00

I recently did some in-store-browsing of the recent book The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It by Marcia Angell, who is, among other things, the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. It's really a dreadful book. Angell certainly knows more about medicine and drug research than I do, and there is probably some truth behind most of the problems she cites. (For example, I'll admit I don't quite understand why financial statements from the pharmaceutical firms show them spending twice as much on administration and marketing as they do on research.) But her book is not just about technology, it's about markets and investment decisions. And Angell clearly doesn't understand markets, and doesn't even seem to try.

For example, she echoes other critics in decrying the fact that the drug companies' profits as a share of revenues are higher than in most other sectors. But she doesn't even seem to consider the question of what should determine reasonable profit levels. It is quite natural that different sectors will have different accounting profit levels (as a share of revenues) in order to achieve the same real return on investment. In particular, sectors that rely heavily on long term investments that do not pay off for several years will need higher accounting profits, especially if these investments are financed through equity. Can anyone think of an sector like that? I can...

(Some people attempt to justify high profits as a compensation for the high risk inherent in drug development. But most of this risk is probably diversifiable, and therefore should not command a risk premium. One possible exception might be the risk that government might impose onerous new regulations or price controls, a risk that is actually worsened by people like Angell!)

Angell's main target is the phenomenon of "me-too" drugs. In fact, her number one policy recommendation is that new drugs would have to be proven more effective than existing drugs to get approved. Her complete lack of any attention to any of the possible downsides of such a policy is typical. (If this research about Celebrex holds up, it will provide one convenient counterargument.)

For a much more interesting and thoughtful take on "me-too" drugs, Alex Tabarrok is doing a series of posts on the subject at Marginal Revolution. Tabarrok and others also question whether we should even have any effectiveness requirement for new drugs...after all, we don't require effectiveness to be shown for off-label uses, and most doctors believe that this benefits patients.

Productivity differences

2004-12-06T17:03:00.000-05:00

Workers with similar job titles often have radically different levels of productivity. Here's an extreme example--today's New York Times has story about a Federal District Court judge:

But there is one unchallenged king of delayed decisions: Judge George B. Daniels of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who, the latest statistics show, had 289 motions in civil cases pending for more than six months, by far the highest total of any federal judge in the nation.

On the other hand, here's an unbelievably, ridiculously, absurdly long list of what Federal Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner has written and published in 2003-2004. To call him prolific would be a vast understatement. Maybe his productivity will go down now that he's starting a blog.

Mongol hordes finally make it to Japan

2004-12-01T10:38:00.000-05:00

Here's a trend in globalization involving people who look a little like globes themselves: Japanese sumo wrestling is increasingly being dominated by gaijin (foreigners). Since Akebono became the first foreign born yokozuna (grandmaster) in 1993, three of five wrestlers promoted to yokozuna have been foreigners. The first gaijin champions were gigantic Hawaiians, but now they are being replaced by relatively svelte Mongolians.

Hawaiian-born yokozuna Musashimaru stepped down from the ring for the final time at the end of the November 2003 Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament. With Musashimaru's retirement, the line of Hawaiian wrestlers that captivated sumo fans for so long and included such stars as Takamiyama, Konishiki, and Akebono has now come to an end. Just as the Hawaiian wrestlers fade, however, a new force of sumo exponents from Mongolia has come to the fore, the most prominent of which is yokozuna Asashoryu. As sumo gains greater international recognition, wrestlers from countries like Russia and Georgia are also making their presence felt.

At 235 kilograms, Hawaiian Musashimaru weighed over 200 pounds more than Mongolian Asashoryu. This year Asashoryu became the first wrestler in 18 years to win 5 out of the 6 yearly tournaments. Fellow Mongolian Hakuho is only 19 years old and looks to be the next rising star of the sport.

Great Moments in Law and Economics

2004-11-30T13:24:00.000-05:00

With the growing importance of economic reasoning at top law schools, perhaps the future will bring fewer exchanges like this one between Justice Stevens and law professor Randy Barnett from the oral arguments of the Raich case at the Supreme Court yesterday:

Stevens: What is your view on the effect [of allowing medical marijuana users to grow their own drugs for personal use] on the interstate market [for marijuana]? Increase prices, no effect on prices, or decrease in prices?
Barnett: Can I choose trivial reduction of price?
Stevens: If you reduce demand, then you will reduce prices? Wouldn't it increase prices?
Barnett: No, if you reduce demand, you reduce price.
Stevens: Are you sure?
Barnett: Yes.

(From Lawrence Solum's detailed account of oral arguments, which is very interesting. Also see this piece by Slate's Dahlia Lathwick. And Barnett himself will likely be blogging on the case soon at the Volokh Conspiracy.)

War is hell

2004-11-22T11:11:00.000-05:00

If you want to cut through all the spin and counter-spin about the Marine shooting of an unarmed Iraqui in Fallujah, go straight to the source and check out this blog entry from the reporter who shot the video. He comes across both as sympathetic to the difficult situation faced by the Marines, yet shocked at what occurred.

Through my viewfinder I can see him raise the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of the wounded Iraqi. There are no sudden movements, no reaching or lunging.
However, the Marine could legitimately believe the man poses some kind of danger. Maybe he's going to cover him while another Marine searches for weapons.
Instead, he pulls the trigger. There is a small splatter against the back wall and the man's leg slumps down.....
For a moment, I'm paralyzed still taping with the old man in the foreground. I get up after a beat and tell the Marines again, what I had told the lieutenant -- that this man -- all of these wounded men -- were the same ones from yesterday. That they had been disarmed treated and left here.
At that point the Marine who fired the shot became aware that I was in the room. He came up to me and said, "I didn't know sir-I didn't know." The anger that seemed present just moments before turned to fear and dread.

Easy as pi?

2004-11-18T11:48:00.000-05:00

Newspapers today are reporting on a Brookings study written by Tom Loveless, claiming that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math assessment tests for 8th graders are too easy. I haven't read the report carefully, but I can't really see what the fuss is about.

According to the press release, there are two problems: the questions are too easy, and many of the students still can't answer them. To me, testing students on mastery of basic skills seems an entirely sensible and appropriate goal of this kind of testing. It would be a problem if the questions had gotten easier over time, making it difficult to measure improvements, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

Quoting from the study:

Recall that NAEP scores offer a ballpark estimate that today’s eighth graders know about as much mathematics as tenth graders in 1990. If this were true—and if the scores represent real gains in knowledge of mathematics—then a positive impact would be expected in enrollment figures for higher level math courses. That is, the courses that eighth graders are taking today should be relatively similar to the courses taken by tenth graders in 1990.
The two cohorts are not even close. There have been gains in Algebra I enrollments of eighth graders, from 16% in 1990 to 28% in 2003. Still, twice as many tenth graders had completed Algebra I in 1990 as there were eighth graders enrolled in the course in 2003. Almost half of all tenth graders (45%) had completed geometry in 1990, compared to a paltry 3% of eighth graders enrolled in geometry in 2003.

I don't think this follows at all. Even if students are taking the same courses (or at least courses with the same names) as before, but learning more, that is real progress. It is likely that poorly prepared students are often passed along from class to class without having mastered the material. Furthermore, even with better prepared students, schools will not always offer more advanced classes because of a lack of qualified teachers. When I was in 8th grade, I had to travel to the high school every day to take Algebra I. In 12th grade, my large high school had no math teachers on staff who could teach calculus, so someone had to be brought in from outside. (You can find a sample of NAEP questions here.)

More on welfare

2004-11-18T11:40:00.000-05:00

Jane Galt has a good post on welfare reform. She praises to the heavens the new book American Dream by Jason DeParle, the same book that was discussed and praised in the "Slate" dialogue that I mentioned yesterday. I guess I'm going to need to read that book. She also gives some of her own thoughts on the problems of welfare:

it's clear to me from the research I've done to write about poverty, and from reading books like DeParle's, that the poor suffer from three main problems: their own poor impulse control or decision making; a culture that encourages poor decision making; and limited means, which give them no buffer against the results of their poor decision making.....
But it's not enough to say to these women "Get married" or "Ignore your friends and pay attention to school". Some extraordinary people do, of course, but we all tend to overestimate how easy it is to be that extraordinary. Most of us reading this blog, after all, went to college and/or got nice steady jobs because we had enormous social and familial pressure on us to do so. How many of us were strong enough to overcome our environment, drop out of high school, and sell drugs?

Welfare reform

2004-11-17T15:43:00.000-05:00

There's a good dialogue about welfare reform going on this week on Slate...check it out.

Debt swap?

2004-11-15T09:23:00.000-05:00

Lots of smart people like Arnold Kling have been pointing out that the transition costs of moving social security to private accounts are an illusion. We can finance the transition by issuing bonds, and in exchange we don't have to pay out as many social security benefits. So it's just a debt swap...we exchange our implicit obligation to pay retirees with an explicit obligation to pay bond holders.

It's a good point, but I don't think it's quite right. Here's a thought experiment: suppose that tomorrow congress votes to either (A) phase in a higher social security retirement age, or (B) default on a portion of the debt, only paying (say) .98 on the dollar on the face value of all existing government bonds. How will the financial markets react to each of these announcements? (Hint: quite differently.)

Implicit debt is different than explicit debt, because it's implicit. That means we can alter the social security obligations, effectively "defaulting" on part of this implicit "debt," without destroying the economy. Andrew Samwick seems to agree with my point when he writes:

None of us are sure what would happen to interest rates if an implicit debt (unfunded obligations of an entitlement program) of $10.4 trillion were eliminated but explicit debt (Treasury bonds held by the public) were increased by a few trillion before being repaid.

To me the most sensible take on the topic is coming from the reliable Tyler Cowen.

One State Two States Red States Blue States

2004-11-14T14:07:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum has an interesting post on the origins of the "red states-blue states" meme. The usage only goes back to the 2000 election--in prior presidential elections, democrats were usually denoted by red in election maps. Matthew Yglesias laments this, wishing to retain the link between red and the left. I admit it's a bit strange that the party that not-too-long ago was "better red than dead" is now red. But since the end of the cold war, I'd say that the color most associated with the left is green. Anyway, there's no going back, and it makes sense that "red," "right," and "republican" all start with R. Plus you can think about rednecks.

(I originally titled this post "The Red and the Blue," but then I noted that Yglesias already used that title, so I had to resort to a more juvenile literary reference.)

Prescott disappoints

2004-11-12T11:21:00.000-05:00

Ed Prescott is a very smart economist who deserved his recent Nobel prize, but he doesn't seem so smart in today's WSJ:

Some politicians have vilified the idea of giving investment freedom to citizens, arguing that those citizens will be exposed to risks inherent in the market. But this is political scaremongering. U.S. citizens already utilize IRAs, 401Ks, PCOs, Keoghs, SEPs and other investment options just fine, thank you....Consumers already know how to invest their money -- why does the government feel the need to patronize them when it comes to Social Security?

So just because consumers are now exposed to some risk it makes sense to expose them to more risk.

It would be one thing if the government's Social Security system paid a decent return, but as the President's Commission reported, for a single male worker born in 2000 with average earnings, the real annual return on his currently-scheduled contributions to Social Security will be just 0.86%. ... A bank would have to offer a pretty fancy toaster to get depositors at those rates of return.

You'd think Prescott would know what he's talking about, since he co-authored, with Rajnish Mehra, the a paper on the equity premium puzzle that is one of the most famous papers in economics. But according to a recent paper by Mehra on the topic, the mean real return from 1947-2000 on a "relatively riskless security" was 0.6%. And this is for T-bills and the like, your average bank will do even worse. Prescott seems to be trying to win his point with naive readers by ignoring the distinction between real and nominal interest rates.

There may be some good arguments for adding private accounts to social security, but these aren't them. (via Alex Tabarrok, who liked the piece a lot more than I did.)

A thousand points of light

2004-11-11T15:09:00.000-05:00

Check out this very cool map from the International Dark-Sky Association, showing where cities light up the night sky. I love stuff like this. (Here's a smaller version.)

(I found it via this page, which has some very cool election-result maps.)

Weapons of Misleading Designation

2004-11-09T21:26:00.000-05:00

I do not like the term "Weapons of Mass Destruction." It lumps together things that are vastly different: nuclear and biological weapons (which are a big threat but very different) and chemical weapons (which are less threatening than conventional weapons.) This kind of lumping-together just makes for sloppy thinking.

Then tonight I was watching the Nova Program "America's Stone Age Explorers" on PBS, and they called the stone spearpoints of the Clovis people "weapons of mass destruction," I guess because they apparently were used to wipe out mammoths and giant sloths.

By these standards, I guess Saddam had WMD's after all!

Always look on the bright side of life

2004-11-09T11:57:00.000-05:00

The election is over, and the candidate I voted against did not lose. So now it's time to look on the bright side. One thing that I believe is less likely to happen with Bush in the white house than with Kerry is price regulation of prescription drugs.

Treating the drug companies as villains is one of my pet peeves. Yes, I wish the drug companies would spend more resources developing vaccines, and less on slick marketing campaigns for doctors, and I'm all in favor of designing a system to give them right incentives in these areas. But I don't begrudge drug companies their profits...I hope they're profitable enough to attract lots of new investment into that business! Drug research has huge benefits, and I would like to see more investment in this area, not less.

It is also annoying when people talk about how drugs are getting more expensive. What is happening is that there are lots of new drugs that people want. The drugs we have today will only get cheaper and cheaper as patents expire and new competing drugs emerge.

I was wrong

2004-11-08T16:43:00.000-05:00

My prediction that Bush would again lose the popular vote but win the election was way off...in fact, it almost went the other way 'round. Where did I go wrong? I thought that Bush was hated in the blue states and would lose by an even bigger margin than before. Instead, Bush significantly increased his share of the two-party vote in most blue states, most especially in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Could this be a "world trade center" effect?

Endorsing W

2004-10-31T12:35:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for reasons to vote for Bush, Megan McArdle gives the best arguments I've seen. I'm more critical of Bush than she is on "The Economy" and "Civil Liberties," but the big question for both of us is Foreign Policy. To me it seems that the whole Iraq invasion has been handled so badly that I trust Bush even less than I trust Kerry. And Bush's large failings in most areas of domestic policy (where I'm in a better position to evaluate his actions) erode this trust even further. Plus, even if Kerry is wrong about some things, a hostile House and Senate should keep him from doing too much damage.

What to put on your hot dog

2004-10-29T16:41:00.000-04:00

Here's a great New Yorker piece by Malcom Gladwell about ketchup, made even more relevant now that big-ketchup money is so close to the white house. It also includes the story of what must be one of the greatest TV ads of all time:

Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?

(I actually prefer French's to Grey Poupon myself, but what I really like is spicy yellow mustard.)

A very Kerry column

2004-10-27T22:51:00.000-04:00

Slate magazine has posted their regular election-year feature where all their contributors reveal who they will vote for for president. This year it's Kerry in a landslide. He picks up the liberal majority of course, but also gets all the centrists and a few of the conservatives. One can't help notice that most of the votes are against Bush rather than for Kerry. There are many good comments I could quote, but I'll just state my agreement with this from Jacob Weisberg:

If elected, Kerry would probably be a mediocre, unloved president on the order of Jimmy Carter. And I won't have a second's regret about voting for him. Kerry's failings are minuscule when weighed against the massive damage to America's standing in the world, our economic future, and our civic institutions that would likely result from a second Bush term.

Swappin' votes

2004-10-26T16:10:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting Slate piece on "vote pairing," and the even more interesting story of a few overzealous secretaries of state who tried to bully it into submission.

Creepy hotel

2004-10-21T11:54:00.000-04:00

North Korea is a very weird place. You must check out this page about perhaps "the single most unsettling structure ever erected by the hand of man:" the Ryugyong hotel. (via Marginal Revolution.)

And still more about drugs...

2004-10-18T11:19:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting article in the Times about musicians using beta-blockers to help quell performance anxiety. (via Medpundit)

The little secret in the classical music world - dirty or not - is that the drugs have become nearly ubiquitous. So ubiquitous, in fact, that their use is starting to become a source of worry. Are the drugs a godsend or a crutch?

Vioxx

2004-10-18T10:50:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post has a good piece on the decision by drug company Merck to take the drug Vioxx off the market. News accounts often try to spin these kind of stories as melodramas, with clear heros and villains, but I thought this article was notable for its attempt to portray the complexity of a difficult issue. Merck is actually portrayed in a favorable light overall. Quote:

Gilmartin was clear that the trial should be halted and that the drug might have to be taken off the market . "Look Peter, we're going to make this decision based on what's in the best interest of science and patient safety," Gilmartin recalled saying. "It's not that we're unaware of the consequences, but it's a deep-seated belief that if you do the right thing, rewards will follow," he said of the decision to pull the drug.
The decision was also sound litigation strategy. The company was already facing two class action lawsuits alleging patient harm from Vioxx. Anything that smacked of a cover-up would have strengthened the plaintiffs' hands.
"Running away from your problems, denial, is the worst possible choice," said Anthony M. Sabino, professor of business law at St. John's University.

The article also notes that experts still don't agree that the drug should be removed from the market. The safety of similar Cox-2 drugs is still in question.

The needle and the damage done

2004-10-14T13:12:00.000-04:00

I'm hoping the unfortunate shortage of flu vaccine this winter will have one silver lining: it could bring attention to the problems with regulation in the market for vaccines. Check out this excellent post by Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution on the topic. One quote:

Note that even if the prices are high enough to earn the company a modest profit the point is that they are not high enough to make it worthwhile to make a surplus of vaccine that can be sold in the event of a contamination problem, as has happened this year. If the firms can't price high during a shortage then there is no incentive to plan for a shortage. Even without legal price caps there are significant disincentives to high prices. Here is a CDC spokesperson (link to audio file) on recent price increases:

Shame on the people who are price gouging. This is a reprehensible thing to be doing. I think an immoral thing.
Is it any wonder that firms don't want in on this market?

Mistakes were made

2004-10-08T22:55:00.000-04:00

This story reports new lows in evading responsibility. A ceramic mural by artist Maria Alquilar just installed outside the new library in Livermore, CA, was found to contain several misspelled names of historical figures, including "Eistein" and "Shakespere." The artist's unapologetic response:

There were plenty of people around during the installation who could and should have seen the missing and misplaced letters, she said.
"Even though I was on my hands and knees laying the installation out, I didn't see it," she said.

Anyway, she said, the mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan.

On the bright side, she was somehow able to spell "Tonantzin (the Aztec goddess of motherhood), Tutankhamen (an Egyptian pharaoh) and Archipenko (an American sculptor)

Tall Guys

2004-09-09T12:55:00.000-04:00

Another interesting article about stature, this from Richard Steckel of Ohio State. He claims that europeans in the early middle ages were nearly as tall as modern Americans. (Via Tyler Cowen).

This is dumb

2004-08-26T21:38:00.000-04:00

I just found out that the IOC is preventing athletes from posting any online diaries or blogss from the olympics:

The IOC's rationale for the restrictions is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists — and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first.

Overtime - What They're Saying

2004-08-24T10:59:00.000-04:00

There has been a fair amount of press coverage of the new overtime rules from the Department of Labor that took effect this week, but the range of opinions has been strangely limited. I checked the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and the LA Times for stories on the topic. I found a few quotes from politicians, labor leaders, and some others, and not a single op-ed piece. The Kerry campaign blasted the changes as being a "a shameful assault on the paychecks of hard-working Americans." The biggest disagreement seems to be over how many workers will be affected by the change (somewhere between 107,000 and 6 million).

I found virtually nothing acknowledging that the labor market is, in fact, a market. Most of the opinions expressed seem imply that empoyers will just take away the overtime premiums and pocket them, with no compensating effects on wages or hours, although there are a few mentions of the idea that overtime pay encourages employers to create new jobs rather than increasing worker hours. In fact, according to this story in the LA Times, even such a suggestion might be politically incorrect:

Many provisions in the draft plan that had become political lightning rods were removed or changed.... Gone is language suggesting that employers could reduce overtime costs by cutting the hourly wages of newly eligible workers and adding back the overtime to equal the original salary.

The lone opinon piece I found is this "Ask an Expert" column from Steve Strauss in USA Today's "Money" section. He also takes a dim view of the changes:

Overtime pay serves two useful functions. First, it allows applicable employees to supplement their income. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, overtime pay accounts for up to 25% of weekly earnings of eligible employees, with the average amount being $161.
Secondly, overtime pay serves a useful position in the overall economy. By requiring overtime, the federal government crafts an incentive for busy employers to create new jobs; rather than pay overtime, a new employee can be brought on. So the old system helped in many ways.

I found almost no quotes in favor of the change, although the very end of this Washington Post article did have this:

But the Department of Labor disputes that analysis and says it changed the rules because they desperately needed updating. The old rules did not mesh with the new economy, causing increased litigation, officials argued. Overtime class-action suits have doubled since 1997 and outnumber discrimination suits for the first time. Labor recovered $212 million in back wages in fiscal 2003

Most interesting for me as an economist, I found not a single quote from an economist. Economists seem to have surprisingly little to say on this topic, for reason's I'll comment on in a future post.

Posner poses a question

2004-08-24T10:55:00.000-04:00

The brilliant, controversial, and unbelievably prolific Judge Richard Posner is guest blogging over at Larry Lessig's blog. In addition to a lot of interesting posts about copyright, check out his views on terrorism:

Although the 9/11 Commission’s report is a good read, and has other virtues as well, one of its greatest weaknesses is its failure to address, other than in passing, terrorist risks that are even greater than that of another 9/11: in particular the risks of bioterrorism, nuclear terrorism, and cyberterrorism. The Commission’s recommendations are concerned essentially with preventing a more or less exact repetition of the 9/11 attacks, which are any event the least likely form of a future terrorist attack, since surprise has been lost. We give our adversaries little credit if we suppose that the only attack they can launch is the one we’ve anticipated. They didn’t make that mistake on 9/11; why should they now?

Marginalia

2004-08-20T10:47:00.000-04:00

The issue of how to interpret statistical margins of error seems to come up on various blogs all the time, the latest being this post from Matthew Yglesias. It seems to be very difficult, even for intelligent people, to understand why it is not quite right to say things like "there's a 95 percent chance that Kerry is in the lead." Perhaps the easiest way to see why this is wrong is to think about how you would interpret multiple polls.

Suppose you take two polls on the same day with two different samples, asking each person if they plan to vote for Kerry. You are interested in knowing the true percentage of people in the sampled population who would say they are planning to vote for Kerry on that day. Let's say in your first poll, 53% of the people say they are going to vote for Kerry, and in the second poll 47% say they are going to vote for Kerry. If these polls have a 3% margin of error, then the first poll gives you a 95% confidence interval of [50%,56%], and the second one gives you a confidence 95% interval of [44%,50%]. It would be unusual for the polls to come out that far apart, but these things can happen with random sampling (just like you sometimes might toss a coin and get 8 straight heads.)

Now, how do you interpret the results? It makes no sense, from either a Bayesian or frequentist perspective, to say both that there is a 95% chance that Kerry is in the lead, and there is a 95% chance that Kerry is behind. What could such a statement possibly mean?

The correct (although a bit cumbersome) interpretation is to say that both intervals are "constructed using a procedure such that the interval will contain the true value 95% of the time." In other words, if we were to take a million samples and construct confidence intervals for each, we would expect about 950,000 of the intervals to contain the true K, whatever that might be.

In this example we can see that at least one of the polls failed to contain the true value, so we know we've observed a somewhat unusual sample (or two). But the correct interpretation still makes sense, while the incorrect one doesn't.

(BTW, I agree with Matt that statements about "a statistical tie" are usually hogwash.)

A Bold Prediction

2004-08-20T10:27:00.000-04:00

I've been away from the blog for a while, so let me return with a bold prediction. I predict that Bush will win the election, but lose the popular vote by an even greater margin than in 2000. I'm surprised I haven't seen this prediction anywhere else (yet).

Actually I'd put the likelihood of this occurring at somewhat less than 50%, but I do think it's a serious possibility. Bush seems to be really disliked in the blue states, even by libertarian leaning moderates like me who voted for him last time. I can't imagine that he won't lose by a much bigger margin in most of these states than he did in 2000, and I can't imagine he is inspiring much new enthusiasm in the red states among those who didn't vote for him last time. So I think it's very likely he'll lose the popular vote. On the other hand, while Bush may not win a lot of new supporters, I think he inspires loyalty in a lot of his previous supporters, and I don't think Kerry is the right candidate to pry many of these Red state voters away from Bush. If Bush can manage to just win Florida and a couple of other swing states, he'll likely get the election.

The prediction futures markets seem to agree with me: on the Iowa Electronic Markets, the latest prices give Bush about a 50.5% to 51% chance of winning the election (despite Kerry's lead in current polls), but the vote share market has him dead even with Kerry with 49% of the vote each. The differences in the markets at www.tradesports.com are even more extreme: the latest prices give Bush about a 51.5% chance of winning the election, but only a 46% chance of winning the popular vote.

Prediction number two: If this happens, a lot of people will be very angry. There will be efforts to amend the constitution to get rid of the electoral college, but they will fail. I don't think the republic will crumble, but I think it will be pretty bad for public confidence in our system.

What I'm doing for national defense

2004-07-09T13:48:00.000-04:00

I've been away a while, but I've decided now that I've settled down in my new place and new job, I'd start posting again.

I just switched over to the Firefox browser. I was listening to Kojo Nmamdi talking to The Computer Guys on the radio about how with IE you can now get a virus just by visiting a website. They posed the question:

The Department of Homeland Security's US-CERT -- the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team -- is warning about vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser. What are you doing to help with the national defense right now?

(6%) A. I'm still using Internet Explorer and ignoring all the fuss.

(7%) B. I'm still using Internet Explorer, but I followed CERT's recommendation to turn off JavaScript and Active X, set security to high, and install the latest patches.

(33%) C. No problem for me -- I use the FireFox, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, or another non-Microsoft browser.

(39%) D. No problem for me -- I use a Mac.

(6%) E. No problem for me -- I use Linux.

(6%) F. I'm just a powerless cog -- I use whatever web browser my IT masters tell me to use.

(3%) G. I've stopped using the Internet.

I decided it was time to choose option C. So far I like Firefox a lot. It seems to be faster than IE, and it has this cool tab feature that I'm finding very useful. Plus I get to feel like I'm sticking it to Microsoft! Maybe I'll switch over to Thunderbird for mail next...

Movin'

2004-05-28T03:18:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted here much lately since I'm in the middle of moving across the country. I'll be skipping my graduation ceremonies and instead starting my new job in Washington, DC. So in lieu of that, I'll just read this classic graduation speech by Conan O'Brien. (via Dan Drezner).

Dude, here's my post

2004-05-21T16:47:00.000-04:00

I never saw the 2000 movie "Dude, Where's my Car?." Both critics and audiences hated it. But it sure had a great title. Michael Moore ripped it off for his bestseller Dude, Where's my Country, and lately I've noticed the "Dude, where's my ___" construction popping up in various places. I think my favorite is "Dude, Where's My Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy?"

Talkin' baseball oddities

2004-05-19T00:38:00.000-04:00

Power pitcher Randy Johnson just became the first 40-year-old player to throw a perfect game. Bill James has found that power pitchers tend to age better than finesse pitchers, with the notable exception of pitchers who specialize in that odd pitch, the knuckleball.

I've always wondered why there aren't more knucklball pitchers in the major leagues. There may soon be more, according to this Ben McGrath piece in The New Yorker. (See also this accompanying interview.) I've always been a fan of knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, and I'm rooting for him to keep pitching until he's 50.

And if that isn't odd enough for you, here's a story about outfielder Moises Alou peeing on his hands.

Dumb Republicans?

2004-05-18T02:40:00.000-04:00

Perhaps you've recently seen a chart showing that the average IQ of people in states that voted for Gore in 2000 is generally higher than in states that went for Bush. The chart was linked by many bloggers, including Matthew Yglesias. Apparently it even makes it into this week's edition of The Economist.

The chart is a hoax. It's pretty obvious if you think about it--the range of average IQs is much too large, and the low states are much too low, especially states like South Dakota and Utah which actually do fairly well on standardized tests. There is much more information debunking the hoax at Steve Sailer's blog, here. There is also an extremely lame "apology" from The American Assembler.

Some good news from Iraq

2004-05-14T19:55:00.000-04:00

According to the website that tracks coalition casualties, the rate of American military fatalities in Iraq seems to have fallen off from the very high level seen throughout most of April. In the last week or so there have been around one or two a day, instead of four or five. Hopefully this trend will continue (or improve).

UPDATE: I may have spoken too soon...

The agency formerly known as the INS

2004-05-13T14:36:00.000-04:00

The word "Kafkaesque" comes to mind upon reading this Dahlia Lithwick piece in Slate about the arbitrary tyranny of U.S. immigration officials. Reading about this kind of thing makes me feel angry and powerless. I'm just glad I'm not subjected to it myself. Excerpt:

[A]t least 15 journalists from friendly countries being forcibly detained, interrogated, fingerprinted, and held in cells overnight, with most denied access to phones, pens, lawyers, or their consular officials. Their friendly welcome at the detention center included lights that shone all night long and video surveillance of the entire cell, often including toilets. David James Smith of the Times of London described being denied a blanket, coffee, or a pen during his overnight detention last March...

The INS (now known as Citizenship and Immigration Services) has a long, proud tradition of marrying limitless government discretion to obscure Byzantine rules that cannot be understood through ordinary inquiry. Virtually anyone in this country on a visa is in violation of some regulation, although any attempt to understand or clarify one's status is systematically thwarted by an agency that cannot be reached by telephone and cannot be visited in under seven hours. The INS has for years contributed to widespread ignorance and punished it after the fact.

Not so junky after all.

2004-05-12T19:07:00.000-04:00

This article on the Nature website discusses so called "junk DNA," sections of the genome that do not code for any protein. Apparently there are several such sections that are 100% identical among virtually all vertebrates. The lack of variations indicates that this apparent junk actually has some as-yet-unknown but important purpose.

Molecular biology is pretty cool.

Unplugged

2004-05-11T04:34:00.000-04:00

Frank Levy has what might be a good idea for an internet addict such as myself:

"For me, one day a week is unplugged," said Levy, who has a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University and who, before moving to Seattle three years ago, was a researcher for 15 years at the Palo Alto Research Center....
Because he is an observant Jew (and his wife is a rabbi), his unplugged day is the Sabbath. From sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, Levy does not use e-mail, the Internet, the telephone or the television. Instead, there is candlelighting, a dinner with friends and services on Saturday morning.

Off his case?

2004-05-11T04:19:00.000-04:00

I was quite surprised when I read the quote from Dick Cheney regarding Rumsfeld that "people ought to get off his case." This phrasing seems more befitting a sullen teenager ("Mom, get off my case!") than the vice president of the USA. Now I see that I wasn't the only one bothered by it. From this E. J. Dionne column:

Let's see. A couple of congressional committees get roughly a half-day each to ask Rumsfeld about one the most appalling moral disasters in our military's history, at the Abu Ghraib prison, and now they should shut up. Cheney knows Rumsfeld is the best. That should be enough.
This was too much for Sen. Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina. Last week's Senate hearing, Graham said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," was not about "being on Secretary Rumsfeld's back. . . . The Congress has an independent duty to find out what happened in that prison. It affects us all."

Evil designs in the hearts of conspiring men

2004-05-09T11:39:00.000-04:00

How do they design slot machines so addictive that grandma will want to sit there and gamble away your entire inheritance? Find out in this New York Times Magazine article. (The writing is unfortunately sloppy and sensationalistic, but the subject is so interesting it's worth it.)

Meta-metacritic

2004-05-07T17:02:00.000-04:00

I've long been a fan of the Internet Movie Database. (I think it might be the very first site I bookmarked when I first started using the web back in back in 1995, using a text-based browser!) If you like that, you should check out the metacritic site . It's especially good if you know you want to go to a movie but you're not sure what you want to see.

Hollywood whines

2004-05-06T16:54:00.000-04:00

These two pieces in USA Today report on "ClearPlay," one of a number of new technologies and services (mostly coming out of Utah) that remove objectionable content from DVD movies.

The Directors' Guild of America is complaining that this violates the rights of the "artists," and they are suing ClearPlay and others for copyright infringement. What a bunch of whiners. (And where have they been for the last 30 years while their movies were edited for TV and airplanes?)

Fortunately, I think they'll lose in the courts. Plus, congress is threatening to get involved. I think ClearPlay is here to stay.

I don't know much about art, but....

2004-05-06T16:15:00.000-04:00

would you pay $104 million for this painting?

Terribly sorry

2004-05-06T04:42:00.000-04:00

The New Republic has recently published two separate pieces about apologies: Jacob Levy argues that President Bush never apologizes for anything, while Chris Strohm analyzes recent public apologies for the events at Abu Ghraib, and finds most of them lacking.

This reminds me of the debate a few years ago about whether the U.S. government should apologize for slavery. My opinion was that we should just read Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, which is much more eloquent than anything current speechwriters are likely to come up with. (It's especially poignant when you read it engraved in the wall of the Lincoln memorial.) Excerpt:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Unfortunately this doesn't meet the New Republic standards for apologies because it doesn't include the words "I'm Sorry."

Friendly Iranians

2004-05-05T16:53:00.000-04:00

From today's Nicholas Kristof column, "Those Friendly Iranians":

Finally, I've found a pro-American country.
Everywhere I've gone in Iran, with one exception, people have been exceptionally friendly and fulsome in their praise for the United States, and often for President Bush as well....
Oh, that one instance when I was treated inhospitably? That was in a teahouse near the Isfahan bazaar, where I was interviewing religious conservatives. They were warm and friendly, but a group of people two tables away went out of their way to be rude, yelling at me for being an American propagandist. So I finally encountered hostility in Iran — from a table full of young Europeans.

The whole column is worth reading.

"Gore Plans To Launch New Cable TV Network"

2004-05-05T00:19:00.000-04:00

The headline says it all: internet-inventor Al Gore will now turn his hand to re-inventing cable television. Soon the country will have a failing liberal TV network to go with it's failing liberal radio network.

Speaking of fatty foods...

2004-05-04T19:55:00.000-04:00

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Ralph Nader spinoff group, used to make headlines every few months by publishing the horrible fat content of some kind of restaurant food. I remember seeing a report on TV a few years ago where they had just tested the "cheese-fries with ranch dressing" (at Black Angus, I think), and found it had over 200 grams of fat. The CSPI representative had a stunned look on her face as she reported "it's the worst thing we've ever analyzed!"

This CSPI page includes a "Hall of Shame" of the worst restaurant foods they have tested.

Regularsize Me!

2004-05-03T22:26:00.000-04:00

Earlier this year, McDonald's announced that it would phase out the "Supersize" option on it's McValue meals. They claim that this was not done in response to the new award-winning film 'Super Size Me', in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days and documents his increasing girth and declining health. Critics point out that he didn't just eat McDonald's food, he ate a lot of McDonald's food.

One such critic is filmmaker Sosa Whaley, who is making her own documentary in response to Spurlock. She also ate every meal at McDonald's for 30 days, but while attempting to lose weight. She recently finished her 30 days and reports that she achieved her goal of losing 10 pounds. Her online diary can be found here.

I'm sympathetic to the point she is trying to make, and I agree that McDonald's is unfairly singled out. I doubt their food is much less healthy than the food at more expensive restaurants (many of which do not publish their nutrition information). Still, obesity is a real problem, and McDonald's isn't' doing much to help. I'm not sorry to see the Supersize option go away...I never understood how someone could eat that many fries anyway.

Worst...songs...ever

2004-05-03T11:53:00.000-04:00

Blender magazine counts down the 50 worst songs ever (here's part 2). It's a pretty entertaining read, even when they pick songs that I kind of like even though I have to admit they're a little embarrassing, such as “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies. And I heartily agree with their pick for number 1.

I'm going to Dinosaur Adventure Land!

2004-05-02T21:43:00.000-04:00

After thanking Jesus for helping him win the Super Bowl, today's young Christian athlete might consider skipping Disney World and going to the theme park described here:

Robert and Schön Passmore took their children to Disney World last fall and left bitterly disappointed. As Christians who reject evolutionary theory, the family scoffed at the park's dinosaur attractions, which date the apatosaurus, brachiosaurus and the like to prehistoric times....
So this week, the Passmores sought out a lower-profile Florida attraction: Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationist theme park and museum here that beckons children to "find out the truth about dinosaurs" with games that roll science and religion into one big funfest with the message that Genesis, not science, tells the real story of the creation.

(via Crescat Sententia)

Roughed Justice

2004-05-01T17:42:00.000-04:00

They say a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. If so, get ready for an ideological shift on the supreme court: Justice David Souter was assaulted by a group of young men while he was out jogging Friday evening. Fortunately he suffered only "minor injuries" and was not robbed.

And now for some good news

2004-04-30T02:54:00.000-04:00

"US government figures suggest that terrorist attacks have fallen to the lowest level for more than 30 years," according to this story at BBC News. I'm not sure exactly what this means, or how the terms are defined, but it certainly seems encouraging. (Note that the count does not include attacks against our troops in Iraq.) The report cites increased international cooperation as a factor.

UPDATE: more detailed info here.

Diamond says

2004-04-27T15:43:00.000-04:00

Larry Diamond is an expert in democracy formation who has spent the last few months working as an adviser to the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq. This is what he said in an interview last June:

Peter Robinson: One other question. Be honest. Ten years from now, will Afghanistan and Iraq be functioning as democracies....Larry?
Larry Diamond: Afghanistan, I'm very skeptical about because I don't think we're willing to make the commitment. Iraq, I think--I will be pleased if it's functioning in the most minimal sense, Peter, because that would be a historic breakthrough. I think they've got a decent chance...
Peter Robinson: You do?
Larry Diamond: ...if we're committed.

This is what he said to the San Francisco Chronicle this week (via Dan Drezner):

The story of Iraq, this onetime optimist believes, is a tale of missed opportunities.
"We just bungled this so badly," said Diamond, a 52-year-old senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "We just weren't honest with ourselves or with the American people about what was going to be needed to secure the country."
"You can't develop democracy without security," he said. "In Iraq, it's really a security nightmare that did not have to be. If you don't get that right, nothing else is possible. Everything else is connected to that...."
Last Thursday, when it came time for Diamond to return, he did not get on the plane.
Instead, he was in his office at the Hoover Tower, disillusioned over the desperate turn of events he had witnessed and what he feels was a country allowed to spin out of control, in large part, he says, because of the Bush administration's unwillingness to commit a big enough force to protect Iraqis from militias and insurgents.

Sad, very sad.

That wonderful word, flag

2004-04-27T05:36:00.000-04:00

The image above is the new Iraqi flag, as announced today by the Iraqi Governing Council. As anyone can see, it is very lame; it would probably earn no more than a "D" grade at this amusing site. Even worse, it looks a little like the flag of Israel. What were they thinking?

Fine the DJ

2004-04-27T04:05:00.000-04:00

It seems the FCC has fined a spanish-language radio station after a pair of DJs made a prank phone call to Fidel Castro, but failed to obtain permission for putting his voice on the air. This FCC document contains an amusingly dry account of the episode:

The Commission received an informal complaint that Station WXDJ(FM) broadcast a telephone conversation between radio personalities Joe Ferrero and Enrique Santos of WXDJ and President Fidel Castro of the Republic of Cuba and four officials of the Cuban government. According to the complaint, and a recording of the broadcast available on WXDJ(FM)’s website, Mr. Santos and Mr. Ferrero pretended to be President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and a high-ranking Venezuelan government official, and telephoned the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations, requesting to speak to President Castro. Each Cuban official was informed that President Chavez was on the line waiting to speak to President Castro on an urgent matter and each official transferred the caller to another official closer to the intended recipient until President Castro answered the phone. When Mr. Castro answered the phone, Mr. Ferrero informed him that President Chavez was on the line and wished to speak to him concerning the loss of some sensitive material. Moments later, Mr. Ferrero revealed the ruse to Mr. Castro and identified himself and Mr. Santos as employees of Station WXDJ(FM).

They then called Castro an assassin, and the conversation broke down pretty fast.

Enemy combatant

2004-04-27T01:32:00.000-04:00

If you (like me) haven't been following the Jose Padilla saga, this New York Times article is a good way to catch up.

After reading the article, I remain concerned about the idea of detaining a US citizen in this way. I can see where something like this might be necessary for national security, but I hope the courts impose oversight requirements of some kind. Especially since the "wartime" used to justify such detentions is likely to go on indefinitely.

Hand off

2004-04-23T11:13:00.000-04:00

I've been wondering about the administration's insistence that it would hand over power in Iraq on June 30, even though they don't yet know to whom they will be handing it over. The New York Times clears it up:

WASHINGTON, April 22 — The Bush administration's plans for a new caretaker government in Iraq would place severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws, administration officials said Thursday.

Lawmakers are p***ed off

2004-04-21T17:01:00.000-04:00

This proposed House bill known as the "Clean Airways Act," dealing with broadcast decency standards, would define eight words as being 'profane,' along with "other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)." I doubt it will pass, but since the Janet Jackson incident it's been picking up sponsors. (Via Stuart at the Volokh Conspiracy).

I was quite surprised to see that the word "piss" made the list. I think that's the only one of the profane words that is used in the Bible.

Oh, Canada...

2004-04-21T05:43:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been reading reports from right-wing types that Canada (among other countries) has recently been adopting hate-speech laws that are far more restrictive than what would be allowed in the U.S. under the first amendment. This recent U.S. News piece reports on a new law that would prohibit "public criticism of homosexuality," as well as stories about people who have already been punished for expressing such views.

I'm not sure how accurate these reports are. But I'm very surprised to see a defense of these laws from law professor Brian Leiter. I don't know a lot about Brian Leiter, but he's apparently "the youngest chairholder in the history of the law school at Texas," as well as being a prominent law-blogger. His defense of these laws is basically that he considers them to be "civilized." David Bernstein offers a detailed rebuttal over at the Volokh conspiracy, which is worth reading. I'm shocked and appalled that a respected legal theorist at a top law school would defend these laws, especially with such a dismissive argument. I just hope the first amendment can stand up to a nation of lawyers trained by people like Leiter.

One surprising and ridiculous part of Leiter's rant that goes unmentioned by Bernstein is this quote:

It's also true that if you're skeptical about U.S. motives in Iraq (and elsewhere) and think the invasion was on a par, morally, with the Soviet invasion of Aghanistan [sic]; if you believe nationalized health care is preferable to a system which caters to the needs of the insurance industry; if you think redistributive taxation is a requirement of justice; if, in short, you dissent from the neoliberal paradigm and chauvinist nationalism that dominate the public sphere in the United States, you will have far more freedom of speech in Canada: for example, your views might be expressible outside your living room, perhaps, say, in major newspapers, or even on television.

Perhaps Leiter is being a bit facetious here, but I can't imagine what he's talking about. People say those things in the media all the time. And this is a guy who spends his days at a law school, where I'm sure it's more risky to disagree with any of the propositions he lists than it is to promote them. Talk about a persecution complex.

Cheaters Prosper

2004-04-20T00:38:00.000-04:00

Here's a Washington Post piece about the ever-dwindling level of enforcement of tax laws by the IRS. The audit rates and the number of auditors have decreased while the sophistication of cheaters has increased. The money quotes:

What isn't so easy to understand is why the Bush administration and Congress aren't falling all over themselves to give the IRS more money. Tax enforcement pays for itself many times over, and it would seem to be a good way to cut the deficit.....
So what does this mean for you as a taxpayer? Well, you've got four choices:
- Pay more taxes to make up for the cheats.
- Settle for less service from the government.
- Become a cheat yourself (I don't recommend it).
- Start screaming to your representatives in Congress that you want the tax laws enforced.

This is a little worrisome...toleranceance for cheating can spread like a virus. I hope the politicians don't let the voters' general dislike for the IRS turn the U.S. into Italy.

Here today, guano tomorrow

2004-04-19T08:45:00.000-04:00

Here's a BBC News article about the woes of the small island republic of Nauru. I remember reading a newspaper story about Nauru, the richest little island in the world, with it's natural deposits of bird poop, as a child back in the 1970s. But now they have fallen on hard times:

Nauru's rich reserves of phosphates - an ingredient for high-grade fertiliser - created enormous wealth during the 1970s and 1980s.
The island's 10,000 inhabitants enjoyed one of the world's highest standards of living, as well as exemption from tax and immigrant labour to perform all menial jobs.
But once the phosphates started to run out, Nauru's finances collapsed - and it has emerged that much of the money salted away in investments has been either lost or stolen.
Infrastructure has collapsed, and payment problems have frequently led to the island being cut off from supplies, including fresh food.
And unpaid bills mean that Nauruans, among the unhealthiest people in the world after decades of prosperous idleness, are no longer able to fly to Australia for subsidised medical care.

This all sounds like a cautionary fable right out of Dr. Seuss, but I'm not sure what the practical moral is. Obviously it's dangerous to have an economy built on a single natural resource, (or even a man-made resource, like legal gambling on an Indian reservation.) Some Naruans apparently realized this, too, but it's not an easy problem to fix:

The island has made strenuous attempts to diversify its economy. A major shift into offshore financial services during the 1990s seemed promising, but has resulted in Nauru becoming a major haven for organised-crime financing - and being blacklisted for money laundering by both the US Government and international bodies

Here's another page with some pictures of Nauru. (Via Crescat Sententia)

Getting digits

2004-04-18T05:28:00.000-04:00

Here's a piece in the Washington Post about retailers' common practice of asking for a phone number or zip code when a customer purchases an item. I usually decline to give this information, although I haven't yet come up with an easy, polite way to do this. The only place I have ever had any trouble declining was Radio Shack, who discontinued the practice in 2002:

"At one point in time it was no big deal for most people, but in recent years we had found more and more resistance from people wanting to give that kind of information," said Charles Hodges, a spokesman for the chain. Eventually, Radio Shack found that the quality of the information it was gathering was going down. A customer might say his name was Joe Smith and lived at 123 Main Street, for example.
When the company stopped gathering phone numbers, Hodges said, "we got nothing but praise from our customers and our sales associates, because they're the ones who took the heat."

It's not so much that I resent the privacy implications of giving my phone number, it's just that I don't want to be bothered. I don't really have a problem with using my "club card" at the grocery store, but I don't feel any obligation to keep the information up to date either.

I had a friend who registered his club card using an implausible name, something like "Trung Nguyen." I suspect he didn't like the idea of giving out private information, but he didn't want to be deceitful either, and he probably saw it as a form of civil disobedience. Bemused checkers would look at my friend, (who looks more like Woody Allen than Ho Chi Minh), and say "have a good day Mr....," followed by some attempt at pronouncing "Nguyen."

Poesy

2004-04-16T22:03:00.000-04:00

What if famous poets wrote poems whose titles were anagrams of their own names? This important question is answered at this Modern Humorist page. I enjoy the restrained anxiety captured in "Toilets," by T. S. Eliot:

Let us go then, to the john,
Where the toilet seat waits to be sat upon
Like a lover's lap perched upon ceramic;
Let us go, through doors that do not always lock,
Which means you ought to knock
Lest opening one reveal a soul within
Who'll shout, "Stay out! Did you not see my shin,
Framed within the gap twixt floor and stall?"
No, I did not see that at all.
That is not what I saw, at all.

To the stall the people come to go,
Reading an obscene graffito.

We have lingered in the chamber labeled "Men"
Till attendants proffer aftershave and mints
As we lather up our hands with soap, and rinse.

Can you guess who wrote the poems "Skinny Domicile" and "I Will Alarm Islamic Owls?"

Tax and Spend

2004-04-16T02:55:00.000-04:00

Now that we've finally sent in our tax returns, it's a good time to contemplate where the money is going. Tyler Cowen gives a good breakdown here. (His source is a Washington Times article.) The bottom line:

The federal government is projected to spend $21,671 per household in 2004...$3,500 more than in 2001. Tax revenues will reach $16,981 per household through a combination of the income tax, payroll tax, gas tax, estate tax and assorted business taxes typically passed on through higher prices and smaller investment returns. The remaining $4,690 represents the deficit per household, which will be dumped in the laps of our children.

Read the whole thing for more details.

April is the cruelest month

2004-04-14T15:31:00.000-04:00

April isn't even half over, and it is already the worst month yet in terms of American deaths in Iraq, including the months of the invasion, according to this website that tracks coalition casualties. March was pretty bad, too.

Fortunately, these sacrifices are worth making, since our president has given clear and realistic explanations about why we went into Iraq and what we will accomplish there. </sarcasm>

Hey, you, get offa my cloud

2004-04-13T17:11:00.000-04:00

I recently signed up for an email address with the German domain name "wolke7.net." It turns out that "Wolke sieben" has the same idiomatic meaning in German as "cloud nine" in English. I'm not sure how the numbers got to be different, but it's interesting to know that even when transported to a realm of ecstatic bliss, we will still be segregated by language so that we can understand the other people on our cloud.

This site discusses the origin of the English expression "cloud nine." Apparently it's been around since the 1930s, although it took some time to settle on the number "nine."

Perhaps "Wolke sieben" is not far from "seventh heaven." According to someone here (in German), the Koran also speaks of a seventh heaven. So don't go there unless you enjoy cultural diversity.

Different ways of seeing Rashômon

2004-04-12T19:51:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I finally saw the famous Kurasawa film "Rashomon." [Warning: possible spoiler ahead]. I have to admit I didn't much like it, but what got me was that the different witnesses weren't just seeing things from their own perspective, they were actually lying. Why then do so many people use "Rashomon" as a shorthand for the idea that there are many ways to see the same thing and truth is subjective (for example, here)?

Organ transplant?

2004-04-12T11:45:00.000-04:00

James Lileks' site features this amusing page from an old Popular Mechanics magazine. I have to agree with him that this is indeed "Do-it-yourself hell." I wonder if anyone actually built one of these organs? Actually, his whole Institute of Official Cheer is entertaining....if you visit, don't miss "The Art of Art Frahm."

Mind the gap

2004-04-10T08:42:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed looking at this website that has descriptions of subway systems for cities all over the world. If you like looking at maps and you like reminiscing about places you've been, you might enjoy it too.