Study: Real Men Do Apologize

Miller-McCune.: "men are, indeed, less likely to say “I’m sorry.” But they’re also less likely to take offense and expect an apology from someone else.

Their conclusion is that “men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior.” Whether on the giving or receiving end, males are less likely to feel an unpleasant incident is serious enough to warrant a statement of remorse."

Interesting. They go on to talk about how mixed gender relationships can suffer when the female takes offense at something the man doesn't think is an offense, and the lack of acknowledgment (or apology) can rankle.

FactChecking ‘The Pledge’ | FactCheck.org

FactChecking ‘The Pledge’ | FactCheck.org:

Summary

The Republican “Pledge to America,” released Sept. 23, contains some dubious factual claims:

* It declares that “the only parts of the economy expanding are government and our national debt.” Not true. So far this year government employment has declined slightly, while private sector employment has increased by 763,000 jobs.
* It says that “jobless claims continue to soar,” when in fact they are down eight percent from their worst levels.
* It repeats a bogus assertion that the Internal Revenue Service may need to expand by 16,500 positions, an inflated estimate based on false assumptions and guesswork.
* It claims the stimulus bill is costing $1 trillion, considerably more than the $814 billion, 10-year price tag currently estimated by nonpartisan congressional budget experts.
* It says Obama’s tax proposals would raise taxes on “roughly half the small business income in America,” an exaggeration. Much of the income the GOP is counting actually comes from big businesses making over $50 million a year.

For details on these and other examples please read on to the Analysis section.

Republican promise to repeal would toss kids off health care

Who is affected?

Andrew (13) and Emily Thompson (11).  She has autism, he has attention deficit disorder.  And until we got health care reform, insurance companies refused to cover them.

Ryan, age 6.  He survived leukemia.  Insurance companies refused to cover him.

Tucker Morefield.  He's 15 and lives with cerebral palsy and hit the $1 million lifetime maximum coverage on his parent's insurance, so the insurance company stopped paying the bills. 

Health care reform means that these kids will get health insurance and proper health care.

And Republicans want to take it away.

Voting, Learning, Happiness, America, Nutrition, iPhone photos, Cats, Flight Search Engine

• Are you registered to vote?  If you live in Minnesota, check online!
• Need focus as you learn, mix it up!  Changing locations and varying your topics helps you learn better than cramming a single subject in the library.
• More money makes you happy to a point, but freedom means more.
• What it means to be America, a thoughtful 9/11 editorial.
• The false security of nutrition-based eating, and the value of focusing on food.
• a) the percentage calories from fat in a food is meaningless,
  b) the percentage of saturated fat in a food is meaningless,
  c) the human body does not need to eat grains, be they whole or refined,
  d) you can forget about reading the Nutrition Facts altogether.
  
• Finding the date/time for your iPhone photos: a free app
• Cats should wear collars outside
• Awesome, visual flight search website

It's about effing time

U.S. Zeroes In on Use of Antibiotics by Pork Producers - NYTimes.com: "Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to human health. They would end farm uses of the drugs simply to promote faster animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians."

Slowing antibiotic resistance

Key To Slowing Rise Of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections Is Pharmaceutical Conservation: "'This is a war we cannot win unless we adopt a two-pronged strategy: one that would boost the supply of new drugs and at the same time preserve the ones we have left,' says Aaron Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., one of the paper's co-authors."

I write about antibiotic resistance a lot, because I think its one of the most pressing issues of our time. We take for granted that when we get seriously ill, there will be a cure. But the truth is that we give so many antibiotics to animals and to sick people that don't need them, that we are in danger of losing all our cures.

And this article points out that the market cannot keep pace with antibiotic resistance because the incentive is to overuse drugs once they are newly developed, leading to accelerated resistance.

The article proposes changing the incentives and rewarding pharmaceutical companies for promoting judicious use of new drugs. It's something that needs to happen.

A decent analysis of the federal deficit

Contributing Columnist - One Nation, Two Deficits - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com: "Let’s look at the facts. The projected deficit for 2015 is 4 percent to 5 percent of G.D.P., depending on whose assumptions you use. A sustainable level is more like 3 percent or lower. So we need deficit reduction of 1 percent to 2 percent of G.D.P., or about $200 billion to $400 billion a year by 2015. These figures are uncertain, but they’re the best we have (and they may well turn out to be too optimistic)."

I think it's a dumb idea to be so deficit-crazy when our economy is in shambles, but this is a pretty objective analysis of the situation. You'll note that he's not suggesting we can balance the budget and keep the Bush tax cuts permanent. He's also not suggesting that we can't raise taxes (although there's obviously no political courage for that, either).

We don't just eat poorly, we make food poorly

NYTimes.com: "the larger truth is: industrial agriculture is itself unhealthy.

Repeated studies have found that cramming hens into small cages results in more eggs with salmonella than in cage-free operations. As a trade journal, World Poultry, acknowledged in May: “salmonella thrives in cage housing.”

Industrial operations — essentially factories of meat and eggs — excel at manufacturing cheap food for the supermarket. But there is evidence that this model is economically viable only because it passes on health costs to the public — in the form of occasional salmonella, antibiotic-resistant diseases, polluted waters, food poisoning and possibly certain cancers. That’s why the president’s cancer panel this year recommended that consumers turn to organic food if possible — a stunning condemnation of our food system."

It's pretty sad when your government tells you to avoid buying conventional food because of the dangers in the food itself (pathogens) but also because of the extreme environmental and human impact of making food industrially. And as I just wrote about, we can grow our food organically and get better food and a healthier environment, without significantly sacrificing yields.

As to the profits of the agribusiness sector, that's another story. When it comes to the unhealthy food we eat, follow the money.

Study confirms organic food is healthier, tastier, better for soil

Grist: "Does growing food organically really matter?"

The study design was both careful and comprehensive in scope. The strawberries were grown on 13 conventional and 13 organic fields, with organic/conventional field pairs located adjacently in order to control for soil type and weather patterns. The data was drawn from repeated harvests over a two-year period, and the strawberries were picked, transported, and stored under identical conditions to replicate retail practices. And just as farming is a complex business, scientists contributing to the study range from soil and food scientists to genetics experts and statistics specialists, who analyzed 31 soil properties, soil DNA, and the relative taste and nutritional quality of three strawberry varieties in California.

The results are pretty convincing: organic strawberries are healthier, tastier, and better for the soil than conventional strawberries.

What I find fascinating and heartening, however, is the results regarding soil quality.

Despite the conventional practice of spraying soils with synthetic fertilizers, the study found that organic fields contained significantly higher amounts of nutrients. Organic and conventional soils contained similar levels of most extractable nutrients, but organic soil had higher levels of zinc, boron, sodium, and iron. Organic soils also performed better through a number of biological properties, such as enzyme activities, micronutrient levels, and carbon sequestration.

In other words, all that effort being expended denuding soil of microorganisms with pesticides and fumigants and then replenishing a few key nutrients (e.g. nitrogen) is a colossal waste. And it means that even as fossil fuels run down, we can still grow high quality produce. And according to a UCS study cited in the same article, we can also keep high crop yields to feed the world.

QED

Be still my beating heart

The Minnesota DFL put together a video about the GOP candidate for governor. It's clever, pointed, and well put together. I didn't know they had it in them...

We don't have WWII to save us from this economy

Op-Ed Columnist - 1938 in 2010 - NYTimes.com: "Here’s the situation: The U.S. economy has been crippled by a financial crisis. The president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed. Yet the public has soured on government activism, and seems poised to deal Democrats a severe defeat in the midterm elections.

The president in question is Franklin Delano Roosevelt"

Frankly, I find this comparison frightening. The Democrats held on to Congress in 1938, and World War II came just before the 1942 elections might have ended their time at the helm. Will there be a similar savior for the Democrats and our economy, or will the party of Hoover get a second chance at a Great Depression?

Just one more reason to breast feed if you can

Breast Milk Sugars Give Infants a Protective Coat - NYTimes.com: "Such findings have made the three researchers keenly aware that every component of milk probably has a special role. “It’s all there for a purpose, though we’re still figuring out what that purpose is,” Dr. Mills said. “So for God’s sake, please breast-feed.”"

Who agrees on the mosque in NYC?

NYTimes.com: "In short, the proposed community center is not just an issue on which Sarah Palin and Osama bin Laden agree. It is also one in which opponents of the center are playing into the hands of Al Qaeda."

What, really, is the harm of a religious center devoted to tolerance? It could be a powerful symbol of healing, built so close to a place where religious extremists caused so much harm.

Voting for 'None of the Above'

In Nevada, No One Is Someone to Watch - NYTimes.com: "Since 1975, Nevadans have had the choice of voting for “None of These Candidates,” which appears as a ballot line along with the named candidates. The option has waxed and waned in popularity. But in 1976, None of These Candidates actually won the plurality of votes in the Republican primary for a United States House seat. (The nomination was awarded to the second-place finisher, Walden Earhart.) And in other cases, the ballot option has played a spoiler role: the 1.2 percent of voters who selected None of These Candidates in the 1996 presidential race was larger than the margin separating Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. And in the 1998 Senate race, the 8,125 votes for None of These Candidates easily outdistanced the 395-vote margin between Harry Reid and John Ensign, allowing Mr. Reid to be re-elected."

Fascinating look at the impact of a "none of the above" option on the ballot. In short, there's somewhat of an incentive to go negative, because it can draw away your opponent's leaners.

Where Did Our Water Go? Trading Public Water Fountains for Private Bottled Water

Peter H. Gleick: Where Did Our Water Go? Trading Public Water Fountains for Private Bottled Water: "It is time to stand up and demand that our public places and spaces have clean, working, water fountains. It used to be that no city in ancient Greece and Rome could call itself civilized unless public fountains were available for everyone. Even today, when our tap water is remarkably safe and inexpensive, we need water in our public areas."

An interesting piece highlighting a few particular public places (stadiums) where public water fountains are being removed for expensive, wasteful bottled water. Stupid.

Duke Nukem Forever is back: coming to both consoles and PC

Duke Nukem Forever is back: coming to both consoles and PC: "According to Pitchford, Gearbox began finishing “Duke Nukem Forever” in late 2009. “Clearly the game hadn’t been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created,” he says. “The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn’t quite make it and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It’s the game it was meant to be.”"

Pigs can fly!

Moralizing trumps governing for MN GOP

He's decided to turn [a free federal comprehensive sex education] program away in favor of failed abstinence-only policy, for which the state of Minnesota will shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars...Research has repeatedly found that teens who report that they received comprehensive sex education are 50 percent less likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy.

But why base your decision on facts when it feels so good to be righteous.  Oh yeah.  So good.  Mmmmm....

This is journalism - and the NY Times got it

Welcome (and Welcome Back) to FiveThirtyEight - NYTimes.com: "Instead, there seems to be something about politics that can make the rational parts of the brain turn off. FiveThirtyEight was designed to be the antidote to that. For readers just becoming acquainted with FiveThirtyEight, the blog is devoted to the rational analysis of politics, and sometimes other data-rich subjects. In Congressional and presidential elections — for which there is a lot of high-quality data available — this will sometimes take the form of quite explicit forecasts, like Harry Reid having a 42 percent chance of keeping his seat in Nevada (hypothetically) or the Republicans having a 20 percent chance of winning the Senate (again, hypothetically). In other cases, it simply means trying to prioritize objective information over subjective information in dealing with issues in the news."

This blog debuted during the 2008 elections and is the most coherent, fact-based election analysis you can get. Read it. Daily.

Rubber Made from Chewed Gum Could Replace Plastic : TreeHugger

This could be a gum game-changer...

Rubber Made from Chewed Gum Could Replace Plastic : TreeHugger: "Designer Anna Bullus read the statistics of the gum problem in London -- that the government spends 150 million [pounds] annually to clean up gum, over 30,000 pieces of which end up stuck to Oxford street alone each day -- and she decided there must be a better way to deal with the problem. So, she headed to the laboratory and came up with a way to transform chewed gum into a useful rubber that can be made into anything from toys to boots. But she's starting out by making chewed gum into discrete but identifiable waste bins for used gum."

FOX News hates the mosque, and helps fund it

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Parent Company Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Where you vote can affect how you vote

Miller-McCune Online: "The researchers suspected voters who had to walk by classroom doors or rows of lockers to cast their ballot would be more likely to vote for the school-funding measure. The numbers showed their hunch was right: “People who voted at schools were more likely to support raising taxes to fund education (55.0 percent) than people who voted at other polling locations (53.09 percent).”"

The article also notes that the closer your polling place (or more convenient it is to you) the more likely you are to vote. It highlights a Colorado county that created 32 "Vote Centers" closer to areas of travel. Voter turnout increased "significantly."

What 3G really means

Ksplice: "“Oh, I’m sorry sir. We’ve changed the labeling of that model. That phone doesn’t have true 3G. It doesn’t say that on the back any more. If you like I would be happy to sell you the next model, the SCP-6400, which has true 3G.”"

• What Sprint sold as “3G” in 2002 (1xRTT voice), it rescinded later that year and relabeled the phones.
• What counted as “3G” for Sprint in 2003 (1xRTT data), isn’t any more either.
• What in 2004 constituted “true ‘third generation’ (3G)” to Cingular/AT&T, the company had retroactively downgraded to 2G or 2.5G or 2.9G by 2007.

Read more.

Freedom of religion

If Catholics can build churches near playgrounds, then Muslims should be allowed to build a combination mosque / community center in New York City, even if it is two blocks from the former World Trade Center. 

On the principle of freedom of religion, that should be enough.  But the irony is that this proposed building, Cordoba House, was intended to promote cross-cultural understanding and counter extremism.

Here's the original story about the community board vote to approve the center. 
And here's a nice quote from the folks who want to build this and why they chose this location:

When Khan’s organization found a vacant property on Park Place, the former site of a Burlington Coat Factory that had been damaged by airplane debris on September 11, 2001, the potent symbolism of the site also became a compelling rationale for the project. “We decided we wanted to look at the legacy of 9/11 and do something positive,” she explained in an interview. Her group represents moderate Muslims who want “to reverse to trend of extremism and the kind of ideology that the extremists are spreading.”

So, who's the extremist here?  The Muslim organization wanting to promote moderation and worship, or the people like Newt Gingrich who suggests that every American Muslim must be held accountable for 9/11?

Turning off the Free Wifi

TreeHugger: "Coffee shops were the retail pioneers of Wi-Fi, flipping the switch to lure customers. But now some owners are pulling the plug. They're finding that Wi-Fi freeloaders who camp out all day nursing a single cup of coffee are a drain on the bottom line. Others want to preserve a friendly vibe and keep their establishments from turning into 'Matrix'-like zombie shacks where people type and don't talk."

I'd think a decent compromise might be to limit free wifi access to 30 minutes. After that, you have to pay (or buy more food/drink). That allows casual patrons to take advantage, but not someone who wants to freeload all day.

This Would Beat Pumping Water in the BWCA

Super Cheap Nanotech "Tea Bag" Cleans Water Instantly (Video) : TreeHugger: "Could a simple 'tea bag' of carbon and antimacrobial fibers that costs just pennies be the solution for quickly filtered drinking water on the go? Scientists from Stellenbosch University in South Africa hope they've found the solution to drinking water problems in rural African communities. Lacking water sanitation services, the communities can turn to a simple water bottle that uses cheap, removable sachets to clean their drinking water. And comparing the clean water solution to tea bags isn't far off -- they're using the same material that go into producing bags of rooibos tea."

In this family we take the philosophies of Ayn Rand seriously

Our Daughter Isn't a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn't Read "Atlas Shrugged".:

"I'd like to start by saying that I don't get into belligerent shouting matches at the playground very often. The Tot Lot, by its very nature, can be an extremely volatile place—a veritable powder keg of different and sometimes contradictory parenting styles—and this fact alone is usually enough to keep everyone, parents and tots alike, acting as courteous and deferential as possible. The argument we had earlier today didn't need to happen, and I want you to know, above all else, that I'm deeply sorry that things got so wildly, publicly out of hand.

Now let me explain why your son was wrong.

When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, 'Have a ball, peas [sic]?' And I'm sure you were very proud of him for using his manners.

To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, 'No! Looter!' right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.

The thing is, in this family we take the philosophies of Ayn Rand seriously...

Read the rest here.

An illustrated guide to using i.e. and e.g.

When to use i.e. in a sentence - The Oatmeal

The bigots die off and things get better

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: CNN Poll is First To Show Majority Support for Gay Marriage: "A landmark of sorts was achieved today as CNN just came out with a poll showing a 52 percent majority of Americans agreed with the statement that 'gays and lesbians should have a constitutional right to get married and have their marriage recognized by law as valid.' Some 46 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement."

The perfect board game?

Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre: "Since its introduction, The Settlers of Catan has become a worldwide phenomenon. It has been translated into 30 languages and sold a staggering 15 million copies (even the megahit videogame Halo 3 has sold only a little more than half that). It has spawned an empire of sequels, expansion packs, scenario books, card games, computer games, miniatures, and even a novel—all must-haves for legions of fans. And it has made its 56-year-old inventor a household name in every household that's crazy about board games, and a lot that aren't."

Seen on twitter regarding urban design

It's a good question. There was no green space on the Death Star, but it was certainly dense and mixed-use.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me again and again, and I'm a fscking idiot

NYTimes.com: "[Rep. Paul] Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”

But it’s the audacity of dopes."

Krugman goes on to show how this "plan" involves unspecified cuts of 25% in non-defense spending as well as privatizing Medicare. Oh, and it raises taxes on the lower 95% of Americans to give whopping tax cuts to the top 1%.

I think Krugman's analysis of why Rep. Ryan's sham-plan in getting attention is also worthwhile:

So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power — the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes. [emphasis mine]

For these folks, I think "tea bagger" is appropriate

Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered: "A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.

“The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.”
-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)"

Boycotting big box stores in favor of a big box internet retailer might not be the solution.

In the news recently, Best Buy and Target have been outed for making big donations to a PAC supporting Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. Calls to boycott these stores have arisen, but leave people with the question: where else do I go?

For Best Buy, I have to say that Newegg.com replaced them years ago for me. They have the best customer service of any retailer I frequent and they couple that with better prices than Best Buy, no $30 Monster cables (that only cost $2) and quick shipping.

Target is harder, and one Minnpost writer suggests a solution:

Now that Best Buy has threw some money into MNForward as well, where should people who are not interested in supporting Target or Best Buy turn to buy household items and electronics? David Brauer brainstormed Amazon.com:

This seems like a poor choice. Yes, Amazon doesn't give large sums to either political party, but Amazon is just another big box store, but without paying taxes. Since internet purchases remain a tax-free zone, Amazon doesn't contribute to local infrastructure (e.g. those roads that carry their delivery trucks) in the way a local store does. And local businesses provide 2-3 times the economic return on dollar spent.

I don't have a great answer to this, if your goal is to shop not-Target and local, but I'd love some tips.

For Hybrid Cars, a Hybrid Invention - Green Blog - NYTimes.com

This is an interesting new tech story about a way to make hybrid vehicles with a combination of batteries and capacitors. Read on for a description of the latter and how it could be an improvement over a battery-only hybrid.

NYTimes.com: "Capacitors store only small amounts of electricity, but they can accept it or deliver it very quickly without damaging themselves. By contrast, lithium ion batteries, the kind now favored for cars, can store large amounts but have trouble delivering it fast enough to allow good acceleration. What is more, they don’t capture energy very well, a problem in electric cars. Electric cars are designed so that when a driver hits the brake pedal, the electric motors switch functions and become generators, converting momentum back into current. But the current flows very fast.

Engineers refer to these two qualities – the ability to store energy, and the ability to deliver it quickly, as energy and power. Lithium ion has good energy storage but poor power; capacitors are the opposite.

So AFS Trinity marries lithium ion and capacitors."

The on-road, straddling subway

TreeHugger: "What if there was a way to get most of the benefits of a subway, but without the costs of digging up all those tunnels? The Chinese company Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co. thinks it might be able to do just that with a concept it calls the 3D Fast Bus (which has also been called the straddling bus), and kind of giant bus/train that straddles the street and allows cars to drive right under it."

Weekly roundup #2

What we don't know about sunscreens.  A fascinating discussion of the tradeoff between slathering on active chemicals and getting roasted by the sun.  Lesser of two evils?  Note: the one thing we know for sure is don't use sunscreens with Vitamin A.

If you think property taxes are high, start thinking about how much of those tax dollars are going to support your car.

Does the 10th amendment give the states power to nullify federal laws that are beyond the scope of the constitution?  Eric Black asks whether lawsuits to the Supreme Court would be more appropriate than threats of nullification.

Weekly roundup

• Increased focus on tests means lest time for physical education in schools: read more
• There's no scientific evidence that special running shoes provide any benefit: read more
• Pork-filled Counter-Islamic Bomb Device: would it ruin a suicide bomber's day to be covered in pork (unclean) when they detonate their device?  read more
• Financial Reform: what's in it and how does it work?  read more

Dear Apple,

I got your iPhone 4 after wanting an iPhone for a long time.  It's nice.  I like the apps, the internets, and the camera.  However, I think you should call it an iPuter, because the phone part blows.

If I hold it with no case, the amazing AT&T bar thief takes all my bars.  No calls.

If I have the case on, but the network is congested, I get voicemail notifications several hours after the call (and the phone never rang).  Text messages come through in clumps when you have a spare moment.  Sometimes the phone has to be reset to be a phone (Hello, are you Windows?)

If I have the case on and the phone to my ear in my dining room and a plane flies over, the call dies. 

And although my phone does 100,000 more things than my Motorola RAZR on the Sprint network, I never dropped a call with the RAZR.  Ever.  I've dropped at least 10 calls in 1 month oh this shiny piece of industrial design. 

Really, it's sad.  And I hope it's AT&T's fault, because it's more fun to blame the phone company than someone who knows how to advertise cool.

Was this giving a fish or teaching to fish?

TreeHugger: "Circle of Blue writes, 'A technology once heralded as a simple solution to Africa's drinking water problem now stands as a broken, unused and poorly planned reminder of international water aid's latest misstep.'"

You may have read about the PlayPump a couple years ago, an innovative concept where kids playing on a playground merry-go-round would pump water for parched African villages. Sadly, it never worked as promised. Like so many clever concepts to help the developing world, this one lacked sufficient follow-through.

Read more...

John McCain: climate coward

NYTimes.com: "There was a time when Mr. McCain was considered a friend of the environment. Back in 2003 he burnished his maverick image by co-sponsoring legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. He reaffirmed support for such a system during his presidential campaign, and things might look very different now if he had continued to back climate action once his opponent was in the White House. But he didn’t — and it’s hard to see his switch as anything other than the act of a man willing to sacrifice his principles, and humanity’s future, for the sake of a few years added to his political career."

We’re Gonna Be Sorry

Congress gave up on climate change legislation last week, and I think Tom Friedman's summary expresses my sentiments well.

NYTimes.com: "The last word goes to the contrarian hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, who in his July letter to investors, noted: “Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for ... what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? I have a much simpler but plausible ‘conspiracy theory’: the fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”"

Are conservatives allowed to ride bikes?

MinnPost - Mitch Berg

An entertaining read.

Post-vacation catch-all

• The call for government fiscal austerity sounds a lot like the Iraq War run-up, with about the same level of factual integrity.
• Lies and the lying liars who tell them, 50th edition.
• Our beaker is boiling - glacial melting is happening at a non-glacial pace, but we still dither on climate change policy.
• BP finally halts the massive gulf oil spill; get a good understanding of the spill with NRDC's excellent interactive graphic (hat tip, Treehugger)
• Minnesota Governor Pawlenty tries to manufacture another Franken-Coleman election myth. but Minnpost's Jay Weiner has the facts. (remember his disappearing ballots riff in 2009?).
• Have a kid?  I'm sure you have many memories of when you found out you were pregnant, but did you save your pee test in a remembrance bag?  Ugh.
• Look for a nonprofit site to get your health information if you like accuracy and full disclosure.  Here's a list of certified sites that have been reviewed by the Health On the Net Foundation.
• Be skeptical of what you hear, because your brain likes facts that reinforce your beliefs, rather than developing beliefs based on facts.
• Speaking of myths, here are a few kitchen myths (hat tip to Lifehacker)
• Baking soda is poor at absorbing odors (that orange box in the fridge was a waste!)
• Alcohol boils off when used in cooking

Tom Emmer is an idiot

His first idea for transforming Minnesota government is the completely politically safe proposal to cut legislator pay and per diems. 

First of all, this will make no difference in the budget.  Even a 10% cut (steep by any standard) would save maybe $1 million in a budget of over $15 billion (0.1%).

Emmer thinks that the salary and benefits for legislators create "career politicians," a vague term that seems to imply he would prefer laws to come from amateurs rather than professionals. 

Not to mention, I doubt there are many legislators in it for the pay.

Legislators make $35,000 a year for "part-time" work that includes three months of full time labor (January-March) and two months of 18-hour days (April-May) followed by district meetings, fundraising, and campaign work. 

I'll be waiting to hear his next amazing proposal for transforming government with bated breath.

NASA Releases Time-Lapse Video of Gulf Oil Spill : TreeHugger

TreeHugger

The most striking thing about this video to me is not the oil spill, which is horrific, but the dead zone in the Mississippi river delta from agricultural runoff. Farmland spills nutrients and chemicals into the Gulf like this every year. And the dead zone looks a lot bigger than the spill.

Is your iPhone killing Congolese children?

Op-Ed Columnist:

A fascinating column on the minerals that go into modern electronics and smartphones and how they cause civil strife in exporting nations (like blood diamonds).

Kristof talks about pressure building on manufacturers to ensure that their minerals are not coming from conflict areas, but this strikes me as insufficient. Much like the U.S. getting off Middle East oil will only encourage other countries to stick with them (lower prices!), action solely by U.S. manufacturers would be insufficient. Wouldn't sanctions organized at the U.N. level be more effective? We need to stop everyone from buying, not just American tech companies.

I'm not really familiar with the historical consensus on South Africa, but from what I remember divestment was a good part of the strategy for putting pressure on the South African government to end apartheid. In that case, perhaps what Kristof suggests is enough. But I'm not convinced.

Spongebob sells Snickers

Study: Cartoon characters attract kids to junk food - CNN.com: "In the study, which is published this week in the journal Pediatrics, Roberto and her colleagues presented 40 children ages 4 to 6 with paired samples of graham crackers, gummy fruit snacks, and baby carrots. Each pair of sample foods was identical down to the clear packaging, except that one of the packages had a sticker of Shrek, Dora the Explorer, or Scooby Doo on it.

Between 50 percent and 55 percent of the children said that the food with the sticker on it tasted better than the same food in the plain package. (The percentage varied with each food.) And between 73 percent and 85 percent selected the food in the character packaging as the one they'd prefer to eat as a snack."

Rational parenting

Schneier on Security: "Here are the facts: About 61 children each year choke to death on food, or one in a million. Of them, 17 percent—or about 10—choke on franks. So now we are talking 1 in 6 million. This is still tragic; the death of any child is. But to call it 'high-risk' means we would have to call pretty much all of life 'high-risk.' Especially getting in a car! About 1,300 kids younger than 14 die each year as car passengers, compared with 10 a year from hot dogs."

Maybe the American Academy of Pediatrics is overreacting in its call for large-type warning labels on the foods that kids most commonly choke on...

Why don't women buy at Best Buy?

MinnPost: "when it comes to chains, there seems to be a weird gender split. While men go to Best Buy, women go to Target. Burger King is for men; Wendy's is for women. Wal-Mart refers to its generic customer as 'she.'"

Fascinating look at how businesses learn to cater to the opposite gender, and how it can pay off.

Context for terrorism

Schneier on Security: Fear in a Political Ad: "Yes, terrorists kill -- about as often as home appliances."

We've met the enemy and he is us

President Obama is addressing the nation about the oil spill on Tuesday.  I hope what he says will sound something like this.

Another food post: salt, snake oil and ketchup

Salt, from NY Times (via Minnpost):

Since processed foods account for most of the salt in the American diet, national health officials, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Michelle Obama are urging food companies to greatly reduce their use of salt. Last month, the Institute of Medicine went further, urging the government to force companies to do so.

But the industry is working overtly and behind the scenes to fend off these attacks, using a shifting set of tactics that have defeated similar efforts for 30 years, records and interviews show. Industry insiders call the strategy “delay and divert” and say companies have a powerful incentive to fight back: they crave salt as a low-cost way to create tastes and textures. Doing without it risks losing customers, and replacing it with more expensive ingredients risks losing profits.

Why can't the processed food companies cut back? 

Companies argued that foods already low in sugar and fat would not sell with less salt.

Read more for a description of a Cheez-It sans salt, and you may believe them.

On "Snake Oil", From Minnpost:

In essence, say [Forbes] reporters Matthew Herper and Rebecca Ruiz, these foods are “masquerading as drugs”:

The world's biggest food companies are stuffing ostensibly beneficial bacteria, omega-3 fatty acids and other additives into packaged foods. They are funding clinical research in order to justify health claims — often deliberately vague — that blur the line between nutrition and medicine. The foods promise to boost immunity, protect your heart and digestive system or help you sleep. In some cases, like the ProBugs kefir, manufacturers aren't adding new ingredients but merely repackaging old foods with bold new health claims.

Finally, for those feeling proactive, a recipe to make your own ketchup, sans salt if you desire, and without high fructose corn syrup.

Banks renege on agreement to buy back bad loans

Banks got loan coverage from government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they went out offering subprime loans.  They signed agreements that they would buy the loans back if they failed to "meet certain standards relating to borrower incomes, job status or assets."

Just kidding!

Freddie also said that as of the end of March, 34 percent of its buyback requests had been outstanding for 90 days or more. Three months earlier, that figure was 30 percent. That increase suggests a greater reluctance among banks to respond to Freddie’s demands.

And who's left holding the bag as bank profits are rising?

taxpayers are the ones holding the bag when institutions try to avoid losses by refusing to buy back problem loans they have sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants that are wards of the state.

What your email address says about your computer skills

The inanity of page counts

When debating actual legislation, there's one sure-fire attack to levy at your opponents: "your legislation is longer than [insert complex sounding document]." A good recent example is the Facebook privacy policy, which was accused of being longer than the U.S. Constitution. This is a particularly inane comparison, because the trim 4,400 words in the U.S. Constitution make it the shortest of any country's.

The recent conversation over energy legislation is a good example, and I am ashamed to say that I've been guilty of it with regard to the House Waxman-Markey climate legislation. But here's a great refutation of that point, from a Grist chat with energy analyst Trevor Houser:

"Our litmus test for legislation that will fundamentally alter the behavior of the U.S. energy sector -- a $2.2 trillion part of the U.S. economy -- for the next 40 years is whether or not it can be kept under 100 pages?"

Sometimes wanting simple is just being simple. Brilliant.

Has education reform finally come?

This extensive piece in the NY Times Magazine discusses the federal Race to the Top education funding that provides cash in exchange for schools coupling teacher compensation and tenure with student performance. 

My gut reaction is that this is a good thing, that there should be an element of accountability for performance for teachers.  But at the same time, there are many factors out of a teacher's control. 

The article does discuss a fascinating anecdote, where a charter school and a public school in Harlem share the same building, but the charter school's very different style (and performance-linked pay for teachers) is getting much better results:

A building on 118th Street is one reason that the parents who are Perkins’s constituents know that charters can work. On one side there’s the Harlem Success Academy, a kindergarten-through-fourth-grade charter with 508 students. On the other side, there’s a regular public school, P.S. 149, with 438 pre-K to 8th-grade students. They are separated only by a fire door in the middle; they share a gym and cafeteria.

On the charter side, the children are quiet, dressed in uniforms, hard at work — and typically performing at or above grade level. Their progress in a variety of areas is tracked every six weeks, and teachers are held accountable for it. They are paid about 5 to 10 percent more than union teachers with their levels of experience. The teachers work longer than those represented by the union: school starts at 7:45 a.m., ends at 4:30 to 5:30 and begins in August. The teachers have three periods for lesson preparation, and they must be available by cellphone (supplied by the school) for parent consultations, as must the principal. They are reimbursed for taking a car service home if they stay late into the evening to work with students. There are special instruction sessions on Saturday mornings. The assumption that every child will succeed is so ingrained that (in a flourish borrowed from the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a national charter network) each classroom is labeled with the college name of its teacher and the year these children are expected to graduate (as in “Yale 2026” for one kindergarten class I recently visited). The charter side of the building spends $18,378 per student per year...

Although the city’s records on spending per student generally and in any particular school are difficult to pin down because of all of the accounting intricacies, the best estimate is that it costs at least $19,358 per year to educate each student on the public side of the building, or $980 more than on the charter side.

But while the public side spends more, it produces less...

To take one representative example, 51 percent of the third-grade students in the public school last year were reading at grade level, 49 percent were reading below grade level and none were reading above. In the charter, 72 percent were at grade level, 5 percent were reading below level and 23 percent were reading above level. In math, the charter third graders tied for top performing school in the state, surpassing such high-end public school districts as Scarsdale.
Same building. Same community. Sometimes even the same parents. And the classrooms have almost exactly the same number of students...

Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University of Washington, reported, “The effect of increases in teacher quality swamps the impact of any other educational investment, such as reductions in class size.”

Is tying teacher compensation to performance the answer?  Or does it require a much more comprehensive effort (note the much longer hours of the charter school teachers, among other requirements)?  In reality, the charter teachers probably get paid less per hour.  It'd be interesting to know if their job satisfaction is better...

Combo update: high MPG in trains, taxes and economic growth get along, discipline beats IQ

Freight trains have doubled fuel efficiency since 1980
Cars are the big news in fuel economy because of the recent increase in CAFE standards, but it's trains that really scoop the efficiency scores.  One ton of freight ( on a train moves 480 miles per gallon.  For comparison, and Honda Accord would have to get 320 MPG to match it).  That's probably why liberals love commuter rail, beneficiary of $9.3 billion in stimulus dollars.

High taxes don't cause growth, but they don't kill it either
A nice chart by Paul Krugman exploding the conservative-spread myth that high taxes and growth aren't good bedfellows.  Also note that the federal debt wasn't rising back then, either.

Hard work trumps natural ability
In the long run, it's hard work that matters, not innate IQ (and IQ can be increased through study).  A study of students found that "Students who were more self-disciplined and were able to delay gratification performed better than their peers who had higher IQs."  In other words, keep at it.

Red pens make you see more errors?

MinnPost: This is an example of an interesting hypothesis and good reporting.

"But, as a study [PDF] published online in the European Journal of Social Psychology earlier this month reports, “people using red pens to correct essays marked more errors and awarded lower grades than people using blue pens.”"

Fascinating, but the article also includes the study limitations.

The current study has limitations, of course. The study did not control for the volunteers’ age, level of education or other possibly confounding factors. And none of the volunteers were experienced teachers.

In other words, it was true for this set of volunteers, but may not have a significant impact on people who grade for a living.

The Oil Spill: Obama failing at his 9/11

Op-Ed Columnist: "President Obama seems intent on squandering his environmental 9/11 with a Bush-level failure of imagination. So far, the Obama policy is: “Think small and carry a big stick.” He is rightly hammering the oil company executives. But he is offering no big strategy to end our oil addiction."

It's time to transition to a clean energy economy and Obama couldn't have asked for a better rhetorical tool. If only there were pending legislation he could champion...

Senator tries to fight banks on ATM fees

Sen. Tom Harkin:

"The national average per ATM transaction is $2.50...on average, the real cost of processing a transaction today is only 36 cents or less."

Why should we care? First, because ATMs are like slots to the casino, they're a serious money generator disproportionate to their customer value.

But second, because it punishes folks who don't withdraw a lot at one time:

Some people may think that $2.00 is not much, but here is the other unfair thing about it. The average person going to an ATM machine takes out on average $20.00 or $50.00 to get them through a day or two, and they are charged $2.50 for accessing that money. Yet someone else may withdraw $500.00, and they pay the same $2.50. The burden falls more heavily on low-income and moderate-income people. That is grossly unfair.

Sen. Harkin has an amendment to the The Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 (financial reform bill), but he faces uphill slogging.

Shoot your Senator a note and tell them you're tired of being Bank of America's hot nickel slot machine.

Libertarians and the real world

If libertarianism requires incorruptible politicians to work, it’s not serious.

From a nice blog post by Paul Krugman about the inanity of self-regulation by oil companies like BP.

Go figure: bees and neurotoxins don't mix

Results are in from a pesticide ban in Italy, and it turns out that the mysterious colony collapse disorder that was decimating honeybee populations was the disorienting result of neurotoxins in "nicotine-based neonicotinoids" pesticides. 

Yet another example of the unintended consequences of a chemical policy that assumes things are safe. 

The new climate bill - American Power Act

A new climate bill was introduced in the Senate yesterday and it establishes a much-improved cap-and-trade program compared to the House version. It still has some gaping holes (see links for descriptions of the 2 billion tons of carbon offsets) but it's a reasonable framework.

Click around for a comprehensive review and some commentary on the bill from the author himself, Sen. John Kerry.

Taxes at lowest level since 1950

When we are running deficits and taxes are at historic lows, we have a revenue problem.  It's time to pay the bills.

Understanding the Gulf oil spill

Here's a very thorough analysis of the causes of the leak and explosion at the oil platform, by one of the gubernatorial candidates in Texas (with a fair amount of experience in the field).  A very well-reasoned assessment of the oil leak causes.

Ditching pesticides to kill mosquitos more effectively

The U.S. used a lot of the pesticide DDT to rid itself of malaria-carrying mosquitoes before the chemical was largely banned and the DDT is still one of the more effective chemicals to attack mosquitoes.  And yet, as Mexico has discovered, landscaping can be more effective than DDT (to which bugs can develop resistance).

According to Yale 360, Mexico once used DDT and other insecticides to fight Malaria, even spraying it inside people's homes (though pesticide-soaked wallpaper seems to be slightly safer...). As much as 70,000 tons of DDT was used between 1957 and 1999 in the effort to prevent malaria. However, in 1998, Oaxaca introduced methods of clearing vegetation along waterways and it showed effective - so effective that the number of malaria cases dropped from 17,500 to 254 in two years, and Mexico incorporated the more eco-friendly methods.

By 2008, Mexico had ditched insecticides including DDT in all its anti-malaria efforts and the number of deaths from malaria reported during that year was a whopping zero. 

Just a lesson that what seems easiest often isn't, and that chemicals are not the be-all, end-all of preventing pests or disease.

Combo update: excess of corporate power, psychiatry gets medicated, political assassinations, and the Herbicide Merry-Go-Round

Though I wish I had time for in-depth analysis, I'll have to resort to a quick summary of some interesting stories:

Eight Words That Could Save Our Country - a constitutional amendment proposed to limit the power and legal rights of corporations, reserving those rights for people.  This essay offers arguments about the benefits of limiting corporate rights and the rather tawdry legal history of the debate.

Psychiatry gets medicated - a fascinating look at how mental health therapy has shifted the couch to the back seat, and drugs to the front, despite little medical evidence that drugs are more effective.  Given that there's money to be made in drugs and not couch time, don't count me surprised. 

One thing the story leaves out is whether therapy also makes a patient more resilient to other types of related mental health problems, versus a drug that may only address one.

Political assassinations - not only is it awful that President Obama has authorized the killing of an American citizen without due process (as a terrorist), it seems that this tactic has a rather poor history of making us safer.

The Herbicide Merry-Go-Round continues - much like the problems with overusing antibiotics causing disease resistance, overuse of herbicides on agricultural land creates super weeds.  Only this time, it's happening with "Roundup Ready" genetically modified crops.  These super crops were bred to be resistance to a particularly effective weed killer, so you could spray your mutant crops with impunity. It was so effective that everyone is doing it:

Today, Roundup Ready crops account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States.

Unfortunately, the overzealous use of Roundup Ready crops and Roundup herbicide has created resistant super weeds, scarcely 10 years after the genetically modified crops were introduced.  Hello, agribusiness!  You're already making antibiotics less useful by giving them to pigs.  Maybe that should have been a hint.

How to be an immigrant in Arizona

Arizona recently passed an illegal immigration law, summarized by the Economist:

Illegal immigration is a federal crime. Mr Pearce’s law, however, would also make it a state crime and would require the police, as opposed to federal agents, to make arrests and check the immigration status of individuals who look suspicious to them. Citizens who think their cops are not vigilant enough would be encouraged to sue their cities or counties, and no city or county may remain a “sanctuary” where this law is not enforced.

I think this image sums up the law even more succintly:

Drill, baby, drill

Need I note that when a wind turbine fails, it creates a much smaller mess?

The dangers of putting your data in the cloud

This post is for CM.

Google has email and documents.  With them, your emails, documents, and spreadsheets are safely stored on their servers.  Better than having them on just one computer, have the hard drive die, and *POOF*  Right?

Perhaps not.  If your cloud-stored email is over 6 months old, did you know that the government can read it without a warrant?  This email is held to a lower standard by a 1986 law, that only "requires the authorities to make a probable-cause showing to a judge."  In a recent court case, the government was planning to assert it had that same right for recent emails, as well, but they decided they did not need them for their investigation. 

It's not just the issue of warrants, either, but of notification.  If the government wants to read your personal papers, they get a warrant, and you get to see it (and know they've taken them) because they bust down your door.  But if they want to read your email, they serve the warrant to your host (e.g. Google) and you'll never know they were there.  The FBI found this a very useful tactic when pursuing a couple spammers, getting access to their documents on Google Docs.

So cloud computing simplifies data backup and access to files, but it makes surveillance and government access to your data somewhat easier, as well.

Cool things I learned so far today

Gmail adds drag and drop file attachments.  w00t!

Lifehacker covers ways to skip to the menu on a DVD.  Can we finally be better off than when we had VCRs?

Guns That Look Like Toys

Baltimore Police Department:

I'll just throw this out there and see if anyone bites. Is there any legitimate reason that someone would want a gun colored to look like a toy? Channeling your inner Hello Kitty (Ak-47)?

Ugh.


Hat tip to Schneier

Combo update: trash, tax breaks, assassination, internets, ok go, and hexane free food

Should the U.S. Burn or Bury its Trash?
A fascinating debate about the best strategy for our garbage.  I highly recommend the response by Neil Seldman of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who notes that incinerators aren't just lousy environmental choices, but are more expensive and provide fewer jobs than waste diversion like recycling.

Why are the Feds Giving Away $900 Billion in Tax Breaks a Year?
A good question.  David Morris asks why we should use the tax system for so many programs, where these tax breaks skew toward the wealthy.  For example, is it better to own a home if you are wealthy?  The mortgage interest deduction implies that it is. 

He notes that a quick fix would be making all tax credits and deductions refundable, so that they have equal benefit for all citizens.

President Authorizes Assassination of American Citizen
No, it's not President Bush, but Obama.  This U.S. citizen has clearly gotten involved in anti-American activities, but does that strip him of his constitutional rights to face his accusers and have a jury of his peers? 

How to Teach Kids about the Internet
Is a blog/diary private if its on the internet?  What information and ideas are wise to share online?  Kids don't see the internet as adults do, and teaching them about the risks is no easy task.

Raquel Kusunoki, a sixth-grade teacher at Spangler, recently asked Mr. Jenkins, now an educational technology specialist for the school district, to teach Common Sense classes to her students. The class listened as Mr. Jenkins read a story about a girl who got annoyed when her parents quizzed her about details from her online journal.

Mr. Jenkins asked the class if there is a difference between a private diary on paper and a public online diary. But the class could not agree.

Ok Go (the treadmill music video guys) are back.  And better.
See the new video and also a nice "making of" story at Wired.  Amazing.  Not to mention, also a cool song.

Does Your Veggie Burger Come with Neurotoxins?
A rather disturbing report about how best selling supermarket veggie burgers are often made using a petroleum byproduct, hexane. 

The good news?  You can avoid it, but it requires some label reading:

For hexane free food, instead look for Boca Burgers "Made with organic soy"; Helen's Kitchen; Morningstar "Made with organic"; Superburgers by Turtle Island; Tofurky and Wildwood.

Note: I don't think we should have to shop around for "hexane free food."   Read more at Mother Jones, and see the Cornucopia Institute report.

Quotes from George Will, born again nuclear enthusiast

In his most recent column, George Will seems to have discovered how nuclear power can save America.  Here's what else he's had to say about nuclear power:

August 30, 2004 (Charleston Daily Mail): "Often, an underpaid guard and a chain-link fence are the only security at the more than 130 nuclear reactors and other facilities using highly enriched uranium in 40 countries."



April 21, 2002 (Cleveland Plain Dealer): "the failure to solve the problem of waste disposal is one reason why no nuclear power generating plant has been built in a quarter of a century."

Other things George should keep in mind:

• Unlike wind and solar, nuclear fuel is not free.  Uranium and plutonium will be more expensive once we stop getting free government fuel from dismantled arms.  
• Based on capital costs alone, wind power is the same cost or less than new nuclear power plants.  And did I mention wind is free?
• If he's so concerned about energy sprawl, why doesn't he worry about the fact that coal mines, natural gas fields, and uranium mines are "sprawled" all over the place, as are the rail and pipelines to bring them to power plants.  With wind and solar, you don't need fuel infrastructure, just power plants. 

Stick to heckling Democrats, Mr Will.

Exurban sprawl hits the wall of gas prices

StarTribune.com: "New estimates suggest that the movement into suburban and exurban counties within commuting distance of Minneapolis and St. Paul has stopped cold for the first time in recent memory."

Cheap energy made living on the urban fringe, if not desirable, but as gas prices rise, home values fall. The worst for a lot of folks is that now that they want to move closer in, their home values have fallen too much to make it possible. Ugh.

Apple iWork Pages problem

Apologies to my regular readers, but I have a rather intractable computer problem and I'm hoping that by posting to the internet, I may find some help.

The Pages Problem
Here's the deal.  I use iWork's Pages document program for most of my reports at work.  In the past couple months, I routinely have a problem crop up where I can no longer switch objects (images, tables, text boxes) from floating to inline.  A secondary symptom is that I can no longer drag and drop items off the Dock.

Things I've tried:

• Trashing the Pages preference files
• Trashing the Dock preference files
• Killing the Dock in Terminal: killall -Dock
• Repairing disk permissions
• Screaming, pounding my desk, searching Apple's support forums

A workaround
I can reliably solve the problem temporarily by logging out of my account.  The problem seems to crop up at random some time after I've been using Pages.

System Setup
OS X 10.6.3
Pages 4.0.3
MacBook Pro (late 2006)

Signs your anti-terrorism program has flaws

Schneier on Security: The Effectiveness of Air Marshals: "Air marshals are being arrested faster than air marshals are making arrests."

Can't add anything to that.

Dear Conservatives,

I don't believe that you hate poor people, the environment, or think that every big business should be able to do whatever it wants. No, I actually agree with the first part of this quote.

NYTimes.com: "On the right, people are for smaller government as a matter of principle — smaller government for its own sake. And so they naturally imagine that their opponents must be their mirror image, wanting bigger government as a goal in itself."

But that's not true. As a liberal, it's true I don't believe in the simple (or simplistic) principle of small government. But I don't have a goal of large government. Government simply needs to be as big as is necessary to ensure equal opportunity in education, universal health care, a secure retirement, a clean environment, and economic justice (among other things) for all its citizens.

Government doesn't need to be small, it needs to be effective.

Thanks,
-Moldy

P.S. Plus, that free market you like is really a creature of government.

Up Next: Financial Reform

Health care is a done deal and the immediate economic crisis has past (with years of recovery to come).  Next up for Obama and Congress is financial reform, which can be summed up as "how do we keep this from happening again."

The Plan
First, a look at the Obama administration's recommended financial regulation plan:

1. Giving regulators more monitoring authority (like the Consumer Product Safety Commission for toys).  "If your mortgage is a choking hazard, the government will issue a warning or a recall."
2. Financial firms must reduce their debt and hold more capital in reserve.  "If things go bad, there will be more money around to plug holes on the leaking ship."
3. Government can seize collapsing firms.  "If it's a total SNAFU, we'll just take them over."

Obama has also endorsed two other ideas.  First is the so-called Volcker Rule, which would prohibit banks from trading for their own profit, as opposed to on behalf of their clients.  Second is a bank tax, which would help recover the cost of the last bailout and help prepare for the next.

The Problems
However, there's a fair amount of criticism (same article) that these new rules will fall short.  On #2, the administration (and Senate) is being fairly loose about actual numbers.  So it's not clear if debt-to-capital ratios will be clear enough, e.g. "do I have to have a 20% down payment or a 1% down payment?"

And #3 is also problematic if left to regulators, since the folks in charge of the financial system for this crisis clearly used too little of their authority.

The Volcker Rule has also drawn a lot of flak for being insufficient or misdirected (check out the great chart explanation).

The weakness and vagueness of the Obama plan is the heart of Paul Krugman's criticism (did I mention he's a Nobel-winning economist?):

The Dodd [Senate] bill is similar to my concern that it’s too Hellenistic and not sufficiently Roman: it sets up a system that will work fine if we have first-rate regulators, but doesn’t seem robust to the mediocrity that is all too likely to prevail, sooner or later. [emphasis mine]

Without good regulation, what will happen is what just happened.  In good times (the 90s), investment banks make obscene profits.  In bad times, investment banks get bailed out by the government.  This concept is called lemon socialism, and it basically means that you privatize profits and socialize risk.

The History
Before we get to the proposed fixes, the history is really relevant.  Before the Great Depression, the banking sector had a panic every decade.  Banks speculated with deposits, and people lost everything.  Boo.

The Roosevelt administration responded to the Depression forcefully, and its new regulations (the Glass-Steagall Act) created a fairly inflexible system of rules to keep banks boring.

1. All deposits were insured (FDIC).  Bank runs stopped.
2. Banks must be boring - no more speculating with deposits or underwriting securities. 

The rules worked and the financial sector was stable for 50 years.  But in the 1980s, the rules left banks with a competition problem.  Banks (with savings deposits) had competition from mutual funds.  And businesses started borrowing money in the bond market instead of from banks. 

Since banks couldn't expand their business portfolio to compete (until the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall), "shadow banks" (Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, etc) rose up to fill the void.  They had none of the rules about reserve capital or speculation that regular banks did, so they made fabulous profits on borrowed money throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.  And then the financial crisis hit and they went broke.  Ooops! 

Because government regulations hadn't kept pace, the government was forced to bail out these financial buccaneers to keep the entire credit market from collapsing (this actually is a big deal, since many companies make payroll by borrowing for very short terms, like overnight).  When the shadow banks fell, nobody wanted to lend, and this was locking up the economy.

So, will the Obama Plan fix everything?  Probably not.

Fixing the Obama Plan 
Krugman describes the fix pretty well:

"So what the legislation needs are explicit rules, rules that would force action even by regulators who don’t especially want to do their jobs. There should, for example, be a preset maximum level of allowable leverage — the financial reform that has already passed the House sets this at 15 to 1, and the Senate should follow suit. There should be hard rules determining when regulators have to seize a troubled financial firm. There should be no-exception rules requiring that complex financial derivatives be traded transparently. "

Canada, for example, has a very large banking sector but with very strict limits (a debt-to-capital ratio of 20:1, whereas the shadow banks in the U.S. were at 30:1 on the eve of the financial crisis).  And Canadian banks have weathered the downturn much better than their American counterparts.


The flexible parts of the Obama plan don't have to be discarded.  As pointed out in the first article on the Obama plan, discretion can be important.  An illustration is the "Schumer box," a requirement for all credit cards offers requiring the company to display the interest rate and annual fee prominently.  Card companies quickly learned to hide their fees in a variety of ways that did not require disclosure in the Schumer box.  Regulators must have the authority to be similarly nimble.

The Politics

Ultimately, financial regulation is a political issue and the position of the major players if fairly predictable:

Well, how about John Boehner, the House minority leader? Recently Mr. Boehner gave a talk to bankers in which he encouraged them to balk efforts by Congress to impose stricter regulation. “Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you, and stand up for yourselves,” he urged — where by “taking advantage” he meant imposing some conditions on the industry in return for government backing.

Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, promptly had “Little Punk Staffer” buttons made up and distributed to Congressional aides. 

These punk staffers may be the only thing standing between the taxpayer and another boondoggle of a bailout.  Time to get a button.

It's not about who has the kids

Grist: Last week there was a silly article I ran across discussing the environmental benefits of being childless. I think this this response strikes the right chord. Humans are social and tribal creatures, and we need children. Only in a fragmented society like the U.S. could we end up having a discussion of the cost of children.

"Only if we view ourselves as isolated consumers do we end up thinking that having a child or not is a competing choice, as if the question is, 'Who's getting the most for their money?' If we think of ourselves as parts of a human ecosystem -- a community -- such a question seems silly, akin to asking which is better, a tree or a meadow. The choice of whether to have a child or not is obviously significant for the person in question, but real communities should be able to incorporate, and benefit from, everyone, whatever their choices."

The cost of things

The first two are Bush tax cuts, the third is the Iraq War.  The last is the recently passed health care reform act.  Guess which one has "deficit hawks" worried...

A greener future with no kids?

I saw a post on Grist touting a new concept, GINKs (green-inclined without kids).  The implication is that every new person is a carbon-emission-creating burden on the planet. 


Good for GINKs, but I prefer to raise a voter to counterbalance birthers, climategaters, etc.  They aren't forgoing children.

Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief | Magazine

Wired:Magazine:

"Blanchard pulled off his first heist when he was a 6-year-old living with his single mother in Winnipeg. The family couldn’t afford milk, and one day, after a long stretch of dry cereal, the boy spotted some recently delivered bottles on a neighbor’s porch. “I snuck over there between cars like I was on some kind of mission,” he says. “And no one saw me take it.” His heart was pounding, and the milk was somehow sweeter than usual. “After that,” he says, “I was hooked.”"

A fascinating tale of a high-tech thief who was finally rounded up by a couple Winnepeg cops. Reminds me of Catch Me If You Can.

The Case for Teaching Less Math in Schools

Psychology Today: A fascinating article on the dangers of teaching kids math by rote, without the context for using it.

In an article published in 2005, Patricia Clark Kenschaft, a professor of mathematics at Montclair State University, described her experiences of going into elementary schools and talking with teachers about math. In one visit to a K-6 elementary school in New Jersey she discovered that not a single teacher, out of the fifty that she met with, knew how to find the area of a rectangle.[2] They taught multiplication, but none of them knew that multiplication is used to find the area of a rectangle. Their most common guess was that you add the length and the width to get the area. Their excuse for not knowing was that they did not need to teach about areas of rectangles; that came later in the curriculum. But the fact that they couldn't figure out that multiplication is used to find the area was evidence to Kenschaft that they didn't really know what multiplication is or what it is for. She also found that although the teachers knew and taught the algorithm for multiplying one two-digit number by another, none of them could explain why that algorithm works.

The article also describes an earlier experiment with teaching math, where a school deliberately did not give children much math instruction before grade 6. The lesson? Less is more.

"In sum, Benezet showed that kids who received just one year of arithmetic, in sixth grade, performed at least as well on standard calculations and much better on story problems than kids who had received several years of arithmetic training."

Crazy.

Energy Star Wars

Green Inc. Blog

Does this count as an air purifier? It does under Energy Star, and that's the kind of problem the program is having right now.