China's carbon emissions: how much are ours?

One of the big hangups in a global climate agreement has been the interest of the United States in holding developing economies accountable for their climate emissions.  But there's one big problem - a lot of the carbon emissions in China and India serve their export businesses, ones that U.S. firms often set up to obtain cheap labor and more relaxed environmental standards. 

In other words, we own a great deal of China's carbon emissions, because they serve U.S. consumption.  In fact, at least 23% of China's emissions are from exports to industrialized countries. 

I think our share is a bit bigger than we've admitted.

The power to declare war

An interesting look at the Constitutional authority to declare war, including a letter written by Abraham Lincoln on why it's important for Congress to retain it.

Want a quick way to strengthen democracy?

Serve as an election judge.  You work at the polls for the primary or general election (or both), basically just helping people vote.  No experience needed - in many municipalities you get a training session beforehand.  And by law, your employer must give you the day off to work the polls (and pay you). 

So call your city officials and support democracy at home!

A plan for our energy future?

Support for drilling offshore, in the Arctic, and just about everywhere has been rising along with gas prices.  Some enterprising cost-conscious folks have even launched an internet petition drive to encourage more drilling to increase supply and lower prices - a move I'd describe as "drill here, drill now, pay later."

Because, first of all, with the number of oil consumers increasing daily in China and India, there's no supply of oil large enough to bring prices back to $20 a barrel.  The supply/demand effect works both ways and more oil -> cheaper oil -> greater demand. 

And second, increasing oil supply to lower prices (which will increase consumption) ignores all the shitty environmental effects we've been trying to avoid, from wrecking the Arctic landscape to adding to the global warming problem. 

And of course, we're not going to see any of that new oil in the next 10 years, anyway, so if folks are looking for immediate relief, they're out of luck.  Sorry.

Flat panel TV helps global warming?

If it wasn't enough to find out that LCD televisions are power hungry beasts, now we find out that you're helping contribute to global warming, too.

Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions, and as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes.

As a driver of global warming, nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, yet no one knows how much of it is being released into the atmosphere by the industry.

 I guess my old TV set is just fine...

Rhythm and Boooooms!

To the 94 who flip-flopped: you suck

Of the 94 Democrats who flip-flopped on FISA, 83 received PAC contributions from the three telecom giants, according to MAPlight's research, some as high as $29,500 for Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. Other notables in the top ten include Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel ($28,000) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ($24,500.)

Hat tip to MinnPost, nod to MAPlight, the bird to Pelosi, Emanuel, and the 81 other chickenshits who traded campaign contributions for immunity for illegal phone taps.

Things that make me pissed #6

Pity-me item-wanted Craigslist cheapskates

This guy wants an Airport Express 802.11n wifi base station. He wants it for $35 (instead of the $180 retail price) because:

"I'm looking for this for some one (sic) else. He's out of work and can't afford much."

Cry me a river. If you are out of work, you don't need a $200 router. You need a job.


P.S. What is it about June and things that piss me off? All previous pissed list items were posted in June 2007...

Oil: on the other hand, we're not producing as much

Congress is holding hearings on oil speculation, the process where big institutions and individuals bet on the price of oil via the futures market. The issue, of course, is the sharp spike in oil prices in the past year. My previous post links to Paul Krugman's argument, that speculation is not a big factor.

On the other hand, a lot of folks are pointing fingers at the recent deregulation of oil commodity trading, at the end of the Clinton administration:

Several changes over the past decade have relaxed the agency's oversight of commodities markets. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA) allowed energy commodities for the first time to be traded on deregulated "exempt commercial markets," meaning exchanges exempt from CFTC or any other U.S. government oversight. This law was a departure from the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, which had confined commodities trading to CFTC-regulated exchanges.

I'll let you decide for yourself. Here's a chart I threw together with oil prices ($/barrel, normalized for the falling value of the dollar v. the Euro), oil stocks (days supply in OECD countries), and the supply margin (world oil supply minus demand). All oil price, supply, and demand data is from the EIA. The dollar-Euro exchange rate is from FXHistory.

The supply margin has decreased in the past four years. But is it enough to have driven the price up over double in 12 months?

Oil market - speculative nonsense?

Economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman has been tackling the issue of high oil prices and he soundly debunks the notion of speculator-driven oil prices.

Any effect [of speculation] on the spot market has to be indirect: someone who actually has oil to sell decides to sell a futures contract to Joe Shmoe, and holds oil off the market so he can honor that contract when it comes due; this is worth doing if the futures price is sufficiently above the current price to more than make up for the storage and interest costs.

As I’ve tried to point out, there just isn’t any evidence from the inventory data that this is happening. (emphasis mine)

So there's no hoarding. And to boot, spot prices (what people actually are paying for oil based on supply and demand) have been higher than futures prices. In other words, it's supply and demand.

RIP George

When you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

"In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.

Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you.

He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!"

Good questions on Iraq for Senator McCain

Courtesy of political writer Eric Black:

1. If, as you hope, U.S. troops will be in Iraq for 100 years, what will that do to the perception that the U.S. seeks to dominate Middle East? Given the widespread dislike in Iraq and in the Arab world for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, what would the 100-year bases do to the standing — among its own people and among its neighbors -- of an Iraqi government that would reach such a long-term basing deal? Are you concerned about that?


2. Your reference to the long-term U.S. troop presence in Germany, Japan and Korea is designed to illustrate that U.S. troops can be present in foreign bases without facing daily combat or casualties. My question is: How soon and at what cost in blood and treasure do you believe that the situation in Iraq — specifically the situation regarding the safety and normalcy of U.S. troops in Iraq — will resemble the situations in Germany, Japan and Korea?


3. Your stay-until-victory policy (we'll leave for another day the question of how, precisely, to describe and define "victory"), will impose more costs, new costs, in blood and treasure...what might those additional costs be, in lives lost and lives shattered and dollars extracted from U.S. taxpayers and damage to the U.S. reputation in the world, before the situation of the U.S. military in Iraq resembles the situation in Germany?

The Truth about Barack

From Slate, hat tip to Shadoweyes:

Here are many things people do not know about BARACK OBAMA. It is every American's duty to read this message and pass it along to all of their friends and loved ones.

Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower.

Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he sees an American flag. He also ends every sentence by saying, "WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." Click here for video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE in his sleep.

A tape exists of Michelle Obama saying the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at a conference on PATRIOTISM.

Every weekend, Barack and Michelle take their daughters HUNTING.

Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG.

Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It's upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups.

There's only one artist on Barack Obama's iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW.

Barack Obama's new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.

Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.

Barack Obama says that Americans cling to GUNS and RELIGION because they are AWESOME.

Compost your plate?

There's been a number of companies that have introduced tableware that can be composted instead of landfilled, but the problem has often been that the materials break down with heat. In other words, your compostable coffee cup starts to biodegrade as you use it.

Solution? Water and leaves.

This company makes compostable flatware that be reused, refrigerated, and microwaved! And it takes about three months to compost.

Hat tip to Triple Pundit for the story.

Good energy policy: efficiency pays back 2 to 1

From wind power to biofuels, there's a lot of time and money spent on replacing our carbon-emitting fossil fuel power sources with renewable and green ones. But the cheapest and most effective way to save the planet (and money) is energy efficiency. And a new study finds that for every dollar states spent on energy efficiency in the past 15 years, it paid back two.

Support energy efficiency standards, it may be the easiest way to save the planet.

Road rage and bumper stickers: it's a territorial thing

The more personalized your automobile, from steering wheel covers to bumper stickers, the more likely you are to commit road rage.

“The number of territory markers predicted road rage better than vehicle value, condition or any of the things that we normally associate with aggressive driving,”

Marking one's territory. Sounds like we should watch out for other "markers," too.

Does free trade lead to lower prices?

Maybe.

I'm no economist, so I found this analysis of free trade to be enlightening.

When a country opens up to trade (or liberalizes its trade), it is the relative price of imports that comes down; by necessity, the relative prices of its exports must go up! Consumers are better off to the extent that their consumption basket is weighted towards importables...

...And in the U.S., the Wal-Mart effect has to be qualified to take into account the fact that the relative price of the goods that the U.S. exports (including for example agricultural commodities) is higher than it would have been absent trade.

So cheap things at Wal-Mart make food more expensive. Unless you just use the credit card, that is:

Of course, if you are running a huge trade deficit like the U.S., you can have cheaper prices all around—for all to go on a consumption binge as long as the party lasts.

The last thing I found interesting was that globalization advocates tout the economies of scale in large-scale production, but Rodrik puts the kibosh on that:

Scale economies raise a whole set of new conundrums (which is why I had stuck with the standard comparative advantage story). In particular, since scale economies are not compatible with perfect competition, we find ourselves in a second-best world with all kinds of strange possibilities.

In other words, free trade can give us cheap imports (Chinese lead toys), but may make our exports more expensive, especially if we stop having trade deficits.

Only $30 million for our energy future?

The U.S. spends $30 billion a month on oil imports, but only ponied up $30 million (with an 'm') to research plug-in hybrid cars, our best chance to reduce our reliance on oil.

Hmm. Nothing to do but count the days.

Bring back the socialists

Paul Krugman has a column today on food regulation, and how we need to get back to the socialism of real food and drug regulation. He notes that a number of powerful, vociferous, and neolithic conservatives have tried to beat back effective regulation of the American food supply, leading to recent scares over American beef, spinach, tomatoes, peanut butter (and let's not forget things like lead toys).

Thus, when Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate, was asked about his ultimate goal, he replied that he wanted a restoration of the way America was “up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that.” (emphasis mine)

Republican Congresses have steadily cut FDA funding and, with it, oversight.

Perhaps even more important, however, was the systematic appointment of foxes to guard henhouses.

Thus, when mad cow disease was detected in the U.S. in 2003, the Department of Agriculture was headed by Ann M. Veneman, a former food-industry lobbyist. And the department’s response to the crisis — which amounted to consistently downplaying the threat and rejecting calls for more extensive testing — seemed driven by the industry’s agenda.

As Krugman says, let's bring back the socialists.

The SUV is dead

Gas is $4 a gallon and the SUV is dead.

Industry watchers predicted sales of passenger cars would surpass those of trucks within in a couple of years. Instead, it happened almost overnight...Need more proof the SUV is a goner? Ford's venerable F150 pickup ended its 17-year-run as the best-selling vehicle in America last month, dethroned by the Honda Civic and three other Japanese sedans.

Good riddance.

Getting over 100 MPG!

An Ontario blogger got to borrow a plug-in hybrid Prius over the last week and he regularly got over 100 mpg! Driving on electricity is the way to go!

A phrase I hope to hear more

I had a slim hope I may have thought of it first, but according to Google, I'm only second.

"We're on more tangents than a high school geometry class."

The silliness of athletic "recovery" products

Despite the sleek runner in the TV ad and the bold claims on the crinkly package, special "recovery" food for athletes often takes advantage of unfounded science to make itself a market. It truth, regular old food (fruit, bread, juice) is more than enough to provide the nutrition the working body needs.

I like my pre-ultimate frisbee PBJ and my special "carb-loaded" beverage (read: beer) for afters.

If not Hillary, then McCain?

I read through many of the comments on HillaryClinton.com and am dismayed to realize how many writers claim that they will vote Republican if Hillary is not available.

Really?

I understand the indignation at being asked to quit before the race is over. But once you lose, it's time to exit gracefully and support the winner.

Should Hillary quit?

There's a great debate in the blogosphere, among political pundits, and the other 1% of America interested in the Democratic primary race. The arguments are generally:
1. She should drop out because it's numerically unfeasible for her to win
2. She should drop out to unify the party
3. She should drop out because women should defer to men

I'm an Obama supporter, so from the "I want to win" perspective, I'd like Hillary to give up.

But let's be honest here - most of the quit advocates are Obama supporters. So here's an analogy:

In 2000, Democrats could have contested the Florida results, but the Bushies quickly labeled the Democrats "Sore Loserman" and the media picked it up. How did you feel then?

What's wrong with a contested convention with the race this close? I think we can pound McCain no matter when we select the nominee.

Federal budget game!

I capped carbon emissions, covered everyone with health insurance and ended the Iraq War and still had money in the bank. How about you? See the game intro below or go to the Budget Hero website to play.



See my budget here

The danger (and cost) of carbon markets

This post at Triple Pundit notes that a study of the largest carbon market, the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism, finds that most of the carbon offset money is being sent to coal and oil companies and that "much of the market does not reflect actual reductions in emissions."

This is why a world offset market - as opposed to a local offset market - is a really bad idea. And why we shouldn't be giving carbon emissions credits away for free.

High oil prices explained - 1 chart

In addition to an excoriation of the ridiculous pagentry over oil prices on Capitol Hill, R-Squared provides the chart that explains it all. When world supply is lower than demand, prices go up. (R-Squared credits Optimist for this chart)

The gas pump Y2K bug

An amusing story on analog gas pumps - those old things you see in front of a small-town general store. Apparently, these pumps can't be set for a price higher than $3.99 a gallon, so when the actual price gets there, they have to be shut down.

The entertaining tidbit was this, from an interview with an owner of a set of these older gas pumps:

"If it gets too bad, maybe we'll just pull" the pumps out, said Hammett, unnerved by a recent TV program with apocalyptic predictions of $8-a-gallon gas.

OMGWTFBBQ - $8.00 a gallon? That's almost as much as they pay in Belgium, and France, and Germany, and Italy, and the Netherlands, and the UK...

Thought experiment: replacing gas with solar power

No, not rooftop panels for your Prius, but using a lot of solar panels to make electricity to drive electric cars. Robert Rapier's analysis tries to uncover how much solar it would take to supplant gasoline (if we had the battery technology to drive on electricity only - we may, actually - the GM EV-1 got 75-150 miles per charge, more than enough to commute on).

How much land area do we need for PV panels? 36 x 36 miles.

How much would 444,000 MW of solar PV cost? $1.8 billion
(if you believe the price Southern California Edison is forecasting for their upcoming solar project). Even at double the cost, that's less than 0.1% of the federal budget.

Food for thought (not biofuels)

You've probably heard about how biofuels are causing world hunger. Well, world hunger's sadly been around for a lot longer than biofuels, and agricultural economist Daryll Ray tries to provide some perspective:

Even if no corn were to be used for ethanol production, over 800 million people around the world would suffer from malnutrition...when corn prices were below $2.00 per bushel [they're now close to $6.00], 800 million people were still food insecure and the US subsidies that enabled prices to remain at those levels were being blamed for impoverishing farmers in the rest of the world.

Ray also notes that during the last world food crisis in the 1970s, we blamed cattle for the food shortages in the developing world, since getting energy from meat requires much more grain than just eating grains.

So corn to ethanol may not be the best environmental or nutritional solution to high oil prices or global warming, but it's not the source of malnutrition.

From a conversation about high gas prices

Shadoweyes and I frequently shoot the breeze about politics, energy policy, and inanities of western civilization. Today we discussed how the average American doesn't really get the idea of supply and demand (see: bitching about high oil prices). I see the following as the epitome of the average American's support for capitalism:

Capitalism is great until it makes you pay too much for something you want.

Electricity: an addition to fueled power plants

Why do we go to so much effort to find, process, and combust or react fuels to generate heat for electricity when all that heat is already provided? This nice essay reflects on the follies of power generation from fossil fuels and nuclear when there's an abundance of free heat (read: geothermal) underground to meet all our water boiling (for steam turbine) needs. Here's a taste:

An even more popular way to boil water with fuel is to blast the tops off of mountains and then dig out the carbon that was sequestered by nature eons ago. We then crush and wash this carbon and store the poisonous residue in ponds. We hope to find a way to safely dispose of this waste someday too, but the rest of the poison, the sulfur, mercury, and heavy and radioactive metals fly out of the smokestack when we burn the coal to boil water. Every ton of carbon we burn unites with oxygen atoms from the air to go up the stack as 3.7 tons of CO2. Since this CO2 has been causing nasty climate problems, we are working on a way to hide it in underground caverns. Unfortunately hiding this much CO2 costs a lot of money so we're spending $407 million next year hoping for a breakthrough idea.

It's raining in Munich

And so I give you this post of a video map of the Middle East, visualizing what empires have controlled that territory since early recorded history. If you ever wonder what makes the Middle East such a complicated mess of political, religious and social struggle, look no further than this 90 second map.

Tip 'o the hat to shadoweyes.

Gas prices: we're 111th highest!

Out of almost 200 countries, the U.S. has the 111th highest gas prices. But we use three times the oil per capita of our European counterparts, who responded to the oil shocks of the 1970s with steep taxes that have kept demand level. Americans, on the other hand, went nuts with far-flung suburbs and big-ass cars.

How's that Hummer feel now? Patriotic?

Great reporting from TV news

I really don't think there's anything more to say.

Bueller, Bueller... Ben Stein talks Wall Street

In Wall Street Run Amok, financial commentator and one-time sleep-inducing high school teacher Ben Stein talks about the SEC's loosening of rules for investment firms in 2004, which he calls the Bear Stearns Future Insolvency Act of 2004.

In these rules, the SEC did two things:

1. Reduced the amount of capital that firms had to have backing their investments (e.g. less money in the piggy bank).
2. Let the firms themselves value their assets, allowing them to fudge how much was in the already reduced piggy bank.

Quote of the piece?

The S.E.C. told me that all of its actions were helpful to investors and that no one could have prevented the Bear Stearns collapse because it was caused by liquidity issues, not capital issues. My respectful response is that if Bear were thoroughly well capitalized, why would liquidity issues come up at all?

Voodoo economics, anyone?

Five things our next president must do on energy

From Robert Rapier at R-Squared

1. Raise gas taxes by $2 a gallon, offset by income tax rebates
   
2. Rebates for high-efficiency vehicles, penalties for low-efficiency ones.
3. Find renewable energy substitutes that do not rely on fossil fuel inputs.
4. Extend tax credits for solar, geothermal, and other pure renewables.
5. Increase funding for research on converting to an electric-driven transportation system.
   

Your favorite Atari 2600 games

I don't think I can do it justice. Just check it out.

"Military Analysts" means "Pentagon lackeys"

A New York Times investigation has uncovered that those generals you see on CNN aren't just post-career pundits, but are often in bed with the Pentagon publicity machine. Just how cozy is that relationship?

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

And the Pentagon strategy was worthy of the greatest psyops efforts of our time.

• These analysts want a business relationship with the Pentagon. Many of these ex-soldiers are responsible for drumming up business for defense contractors. Being cozy is their job.
• The analysts continue to be loyal to the Pentagon, from their careers in the military.
  
• The Pentagon provides the analysts with regular talking points briefings, including at least 18 meetings with the Secretary of Defense. The briefings include the sharing of classified information.
• The Pentagon has flown them to Iraq and given the analysts carefully orchestrated tours to enable them to push the administration's talking points.

Of course, nothing is done right in the Bush administration if it's not a secret:

The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.

And the analysts weren't just offering their opinion on the skewed reality shoveled to them by the Pentagon. They were toeing the line. Or else.

When [retired marine colonel and analyst Mr. Cowan] told Bill O’Reilly that the United States was “not on a good glide path right now” in Iraq, the repercussions were swift. Mr. Cowan said he was “precipitously fired from the analysts group” for this [2005] appearance.

Just another reason to be thankful that the Constitution puts a civilian as commander-in-chief. Now we just need to elect an honest one.

Thank you, Motorola

My cell phone died about 10 days ago. I went through the repair process and everything, only to discover this fine tidbit: "phone repairs take 10-15 business days."

Lovely.

Except that it didn't. My phone got to the service center on April 17. It was in the mail on April 20 and at my door on April 22.

Hooray Motorola!

the GOP has a magic inequality spell that it chants while in office

Krugman has been examining the impact of party control of the executive (e.g. which party has the presidency) on economic inequality in the United States. He's skeptical that the executive could have so much to do with it, but the data are pretty robust: Republican presidents seem to have a magical inequality spell.

Bush administration: Let's do more domestic spying

A spy program, dubious legal authority, and an agency head determined to go ahead regardless? Just the latest episode in the Bush Administration's serial: You Weren't Really Using Those Civil Liberties, Were You?

Here's my favorite part. After submitting woefully incomplete documents about the program to Congress, the Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff said:

"There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans," Chertoff wrote..."I think we've fully addressed anybody's concerns,"

Now that you say it like that...

Poor Mr Gonzales

After showing that loyalty to a corrupt SOB was his greatest trait, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is having a bit of trouble finding a new job. Can you imagine that there are law firms that don't want to hire a guy who can't recall...anything?

Pay to indoctrinate

From Paul Krugman, news that conservative businesses are paying universities to require students to read Ayn Rand. Nice to know the canon is for sale.

As long as they understand Atlas Shrugged is fiction...

The Monty Hall Problem

It's a game show and there are three doors to choose from, with two goats and one sports car. You select Door 1, but before you open it, the host opens Door 3 to reveal a goat. Do you stick with Door 1 or go with Door 2?

My mathematical training says you're indifferent, that the probability is 50/50 you'll get the car behind either Door 1 or 2. But I'm wrong, and the implications are poor for a number of psychological experiments performed in the past 50 years.

Follow the first link for the real probability, and try your hand at the game itself here.

Update: as reader rick reveals, it's all about timing:

in fact, monty reveals the goat *after* we made our initial choice. that is, that goat was relevant to our first choice.

in particular, when we made the first choice, what was the chance of picking the sports car? answer: 1/3

thus there was a 2/3 chance that the car was behind one of the two remaining doors.

which of those two doors? we don't know unless somebody shows us...

Lessons from a loaner dog

We're caring for a family dog while folks are out of town, and it's a novel experience for someone like me who has never owned a dog. I have come to understand why I would want a dog.

I would like a dog because...

• I love having someone watch me eat, intently
• I love the clicking sound of toenails across the wood floor, as you make sure to stay in my line of sight as I prepare dinner
  
• I love having an obstacle to hurdle when you wait near the door to a room or just behind me
  
• I love going outside [first thing in the morning/before I leave for work/right when I get home/before I go to bed] to let you pee...
  
• Holding your leash, because you are a disobedient wretch and do not come when called
• Because if I don't, you pee on...
• The basement floor
• The living room rug
• I love cleaning your barf off our handmade quilt
• I love the 4 AM whining when you hear a strange noise
• I love that you must re-sniff the cat's butt each time it re-enters the room
• I love that telling you to get off the furniture results in the quickest hop-off, hop-on the world has ever seen

I think I'll stick with cats.

Gun taken from Charlton Heston's cold, dead hands

Beverly Hills, CA - No more than a few moments after the famous actor expelled his last breath on Sunday, gun rights activists stormed his California home and violated his deathbed to snatch Mr Heston's gun. The move surprised police, though Mr Heston had long been a target of such activists as a leader of the National Rifle Association. Investigators think it may have been this statement that incited the activists and led them to pry Mr Heston's rapidly cooling digits to obtain the colonial musket:

Food price spikes: not so crazy if we kept some in the bank

I read this weekly farm policy column and it occasionally translates into the vernacular. This week's post notes the political unrest in many parts of the world as higher prices for food staples - corn, rice, and wheat - are creating significantly problems for developing countries. Part of the problem? The U.S. government nixed its policy of grain storage in 1996 as part of the ill-fated "Freedom to Farm" Act. Thus, a couple droughts or short seasons is all it takes to make people go hungry.

Dumb.

Why these games could be called the 'genocide Olympics'

You may have heard news reports about the protests during the carrying of the Olympic flame in Europe, but may not know why. Two reasons:

• China's human rights violations in Tibet
• China's prevention of action in the genocide in Darfur, via the UN Security Council.

There's a great NY Times Magazine piece about how one group, Dream for Darfur, hopes to change China's behavior via action during the Olympics.

There are also those who point out that Western countries could be doing more, as much as China is a convenient scapegoat.

Science and drug companies: follow the money

A new cholesterol drug, Zetia, was being studied in the past two years. It got FDA approval for lowering LDL (bad cholesterol) more than statins alone, but was being studied for its efficacy at reducing arterial plaque (the actual goal of a cholesterol drug).

The findings weren't what the company hoped for - despite hitting lower LDL targets, it turns out that it was no more effective than existing drugs.

So what was the big deal in the recent announcement?

1. The lag time - the study was completed two years ago (April 2006), but the company only released preliminary data in fall 2007 under intense public pressure.
2. The money factor - Merck/Schering-Plough made $5.2 billion off the drug last year. Why tell people it was no more effective than other drugs?
3. The science issue - how can we trust the efficacy of our medicine when so many studies are funded by those with a financial interest in the outcome?
4. The regulatory issue - the FDA approved the drug because it lowered LDL, but it turns out that's not sufficient to improve health. It's like approving teeth whitening toothpaste because it makes teeth look better, not because it makes teeth stronger or healthier. Should this practice continue?

In the end, no one's health was harmed by this company's action, though no doubt a lot of folks paid more for medicine that was no better than the alternative. Science was stymied by the company's financial interest, and the FDA gets egg on its face for fast-tracking approval of a drug that doesn't do much.

Sounds like free market health care is working great.

RNC in St. Paul (MN): no 4 AM bar close

The city of St. Paul rejected the idea of leaving bars open to 4 AM during the upcoming Republican National Convention, and I think Councilmember Thune, of the downtown area, said it best:

"Remember whose ward this is going to end up in -- it's mine. And I've got 8,000 people living downtown who don't want a bunch of puking Republican lobbyists on the streets at 4 in the morning," Council Member Dave Thune said, according to the Pioneer Press.

Democrats - a party of prosperity for everyone (data)

I'm lifting this chart straight from Paul Krugman's blog. Read his caveats. And marvel at this graphic:

Chart summary: Everyone is more prosperous (in terms of average annual income growth) under Democratic presidents. The rate of growth is also more equitable than under Republicans, who heavily skew income gains to the rich.

And that's why rich folks mostly vote for Republicans.

Anyone can cook...with a microwave?

So suggests this NY Times article, arguing that the microwave isn't just for leftovers and frozen burritos.

Mmm, burritos.

Paying for the war isn't the half of it

War is costly. We have a war in Iraq that's costing us $4 billion a year to support over 160,000 troops. And it was over in 1991.

America was still supporting vets from World War I until last year, 90 years later!

Get some more scary facts about the cost of war from Shadoweyes.

Let science, not activists, figure out autism

There's been some interesting news lately from the presidential race, with Sen. John McCain repeated the completely false notion that vaccines are related to the increasing prevalence of autism.

The scientific evidence shows that vaccines do NOT cause autism.

It's understandable that parents either want a scapegoat for their child's condition or to avoid having their child have autism. But finding the cause should be left to scientists, not activists.

And it works. A recent study suggests that autism may be related to premature births. As medical technology enables babies to live when born very early, it also may open the door to developmental problems. The study is still being vigorously discussed in the scientific community and is by no means the conclusive smoking gun, but at least it has basis in fact, unlike McCain's belief.

If you liked [Polish joke], you may also like...

Slashdot has the story today on UC Berkeley's joke recommender, called Jester. I was curious (and it's lunch time), so I gave it a shot. You get 8 filter jokes to rate before the system starts feeding you jokes tailored to your tastes. I'd say it works pretty well. Here's two of my favorites:

A group of managers were given the assignment to measure the height of a flagpole. So they go out to the flagpole with ladders and tape measures, and they're falling off the ladders, dropping the tape measures--the whole thing is just a mess. An engineer comes along and sees what they're trying to do, walks over, pulls the flagpole out of the ground, lays it flat, measures it from end to end, gives the measurement to one of the managers and walks away.

After the engineer has gone, one manager turns to another and laughs. "Isn't that just like an engineer? We're looking for the height and he gives us the length."

------

Don't read this if you prefer to keep your Disney characters pure.

Mickey Mouse is having a nasty divorce with Minnie Mouse. Mickey spoke to the judge about the separation. "I'm sorry Mickey, but I can't legally separate you two on the grounds that Minnie is mentally insane..." Mickey replied, "I didn't say she was mentally insane, I said that she's fucking Goofy!"

No more "juiced" milk

You have to hand it to Wal-Mart, they know how to respond to customer demand. With customers already indicating a preference for milk without rBGH (bovine growth hormones) - 80%, in this survey - Wal-Mart decided that they won't carry it any more. You'll only be able to buy milk from naturally lactating cows.

The FDA approved rBGH in 1993 and there have been some studies showing adverse effects in cows, though none in humans. On the grounds of its potential harm to cattle, rBGH is banned in Canada and Europe.

Lowering the drinking age?

I just heard of a few state proposals to lower the legal age of drinking alcohol in bars and restaurants to 18 from 21. The proposals would leave the age for purchasing alcohol from a liqour store at 21. I can't decide if I think the former is:

• A Good Idea, to bring college-age consumption into the open. "Better to have them do it in public than hiding in a dorm."
• A Bad Idea, given that alcohol impairs healthy brain development all the way into your 20s (and thus we should want kids to drink less).
  

Thoughts? Reactions?

Because I have cats

When only the wrong get callbacks

Krugman has an insightful piece about the state of America's ability to problem solve. For many of the major crises facing the country - the Iraq War, the financial crisis - those we ask for solutions are the very same ones who got us into the mess.

• Alan Greenspan played down the subprime crisis and is being asked for advice on solving it.
• President Bush and Cheney lied repeatedly about the Iraq War and got re-elected in 2004 (and still have their jobs).
• And many major pundits keep getting airtime despite being wrong, wrong, wrong.

Heck, there's even a book on the subject.

To Bear Stearns stockholders: STFU

Dear Bear Stearns Whiners,

A week ago, your "investment bank" was in danger of going belly up because of really stupid gambles such as subprime mortgages and "highly leveraged" (read: debt-financed) speculation.

My government stepped in and gave $30 billion in loan guarantees to JP Morgan Chase to buy you out at $2 a share, saving you from bankruptcy.

This week, you whined that the price was too low. And so the Fed relented and said that JP Morgan could pay up to $10 a share.

Excuse me? But for the Federal Reserve and $30 billion in taxpayer collateral, you were about to be worthless. If you'd like to go without a bailout, be my guest.

So do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.

-jff

P.S. And for the Fed: what the fuck? Let them sink if they don't want $2 a share.

Two words from political theater: denounce, renounce

Bill Clinton says something dumb. The media wants to know if Hillary denounces him. Does she denounce him vigorously enough? How much vigor was there?

Obama's pastor says something dumb. The media wants to know if he renounces the words. The man himself. The church. Pastors. God.

The denounce/renounce game is stupid:

This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns...but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round.

Get over it. I want to know how we're going to get out of Iraq, shore up our efforts in Afghanistan, rebuilding the American image abroad, provide universal health care, balance the budget, protect our borders, respect our immigrants, make college affordable, reduce carbon emissions, and save the whales.

Bush administration cut red tape, and safety lines

Many people act as thought the subprime mortgage crisis and Bear Stearns collapse were inevitable motions of the "invisible hand." But the truth is that regulators deliberately turned their backs on the problem, touting the reduction of onerous regulation.

Nice work, fellas. Some Scotch tape is in the mail for all those regs you slashed.

Easter: the season of combat bunnies

KMF and I were at Easter Mass on Sunday and, as always, I like the people-watching aspect of church. Seated a short distance away was a family, with two kids between 3 and 7 (I'm lousy at kid ages). Probably for Easter, each had a small stuffed bunny clutched in their hands.

For the first half of the service, each held their own bunny. Somewhere in the middle, the younger girl somehow acquired her brother's bunny and had one in each hand. During a particularly lively musical interlude, both bunnies could be seen dancing furiously, often rising in unison above her head and then falling to the ground together.

This musical harmony didn't last. Shortly after the end of the song, the bunny battle began. At first they simply met in front of the girl, with a short tussle followed by one pinning the other to her leg. Then the victorious rabbit would leap high in the air and come crashing down - BODY SLAM! Lagomorph combat continued for several minutes until mom intervened.

Happy Easter!

Sharia: a route to rule of law?

If you're like most Americans, this sums up your understanding of sharia.

To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed.

The author of a piece in this week's NY Times Magazine sets out to correct this fallacy and to discuss how sharia may actually be an aid to Islamic countries hoping to establish rule of law. He starts with the definition, noting that sharia is not actually a set of rules, but principles.

Shariah, properly understood, is not just a set of legal rules. To believing Muslims, it is something deeper and higher, infused with moral and metaphysical purpose. At its core, Shariah represents the idea that all human beings — and all human governments — are subject to justice under the law...The word “Shariah” connotes a connection to the divine, a set of unchanging beliefs and principles that order life in accordance with God’s will.

He goes on to explain how sharia was used in a balance of powers in traditional muslim societies, with leaders subject to the law that was interpreted by scholars (much like today's executives are checked by judges). In other words, it was used as a check on abuse of power, a problem plaguing many muslim countries from Iran to Saudi Arabia.

Interesting stuff.

Supreme Court considers 2nd Amendment in DC gun law case

The conventional wisdom is that federal courts have generally held that the 2nd Amendment is a collective right to bear arms via state militias (at least in all the radio commentaries I've heard today). That issue is being tested in a case heard before the court today, DC v. Heller. Get complete coverage, including audio and analysis from Scotusblog.

And if you're wondering why this debate is so heated in the United States, look no farther than my friend Gamerz Thinking, who posted a cool video that is - literally - a techno remix of gun sounds from the video game Call of Duty 4. Yes, America loves its guns enough to make a video, of a techno remix, of the gun sounds, from a military game, that simulates the use of firearms.

Star Wars: as described by a 3-year old

Hilarious

The current financial crisis: a crowded theater, a fire...

Paul Krugman has the most cogent and understandable assessment of the country's financial crisis on his blog. Today he upped the ante on clear explanations with this excellent metaphor about two kinds of bank runs:

In some cases, the bank run is a pure self-fulfilling prophecy: the bank is “fundamentally sound,” but a panic by depositors forces a too-hasty liquidation of its assets, and it goes bust. It’s as if someone calls “fire!” in a crowded theater, provoking a stampede that kills many people, even though there wasn’t actually a fire.

In other cases, the bank is fundamentally unsound — but the bank run magnifies its losses. It’s as if someone calls “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and there really is a fire — but the stampede kills people who would have survived an orderly evacuation.

We’re in the second case. The Fed has spent the last 7 months trying to assure people that there isn’t any fire. But there is.

Worse yet, thanks to decades of deregulation, the theater doesn’t have a sprinkler system - and the town the theater is in doesn’t have a fire department.

And if you're a Republican, we can't do anything because raising taxes to build a fire department would hurt business....

Domestic spying began BEFORE 9/11

Yeah, I got a shock when I read that. I figured the Bush Administration, for all its dictatorial hubris, had at least waited until after 9/11 to start assaulting civil liberties.

Nope.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week. [link]

Are we really still debating experience?

Apparently the Clinton campaign is asserting that John McCain is more experienced than Obama, with the conclusion that Democrats would be better off voting for the Republican Senator than Mr Obama(?). I already covered the inanity of the experience argument, but here's another taste.

From the Votemaster, a table of presidents ranked by greatness (a consensus among many different surveys) with their respective experience. An analysis freebie: the top ten presidents averaged 10 years experience; the bottom ten had 14 years. So much for learning from your mistakes. And then there's this anecdote:

Suppose you had to choose between two Presidential candidates, one of whom had spent 20 years in Congress plus had considerable other relevant experience and the other of whom had about half a dozen years in the Illinois state legislature and 2 years in Congress. Which one do you think would make a better President? If you chose #1, congratulations, you picked James Buchanan over Abraham Lincoln. Your pick disagrees with that of most historians, who see Lincoln as the greatest President ever and Buchanan as the second worst ever...

Oil consumption mirrors economic growth

In a post on Peak Lite, Robert Rapier has an interesting chart showing how economic growth tends to be mirrored by an increase in per capita oil consumption. Makes you wonder what will happen in the coming years with $100 per barrel oil.

Testing feedburner feed

If you haven't switched your feed yet, this is the first post with the new RSS feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Moldybluecheesecurds

CHANGE: a new RSS feed

With apologies to all my regular readers, I'm going to be running my RSS feed through Feedburner from now on. It lets me see some readership stats that I've been missing as more people use RSS readers instead of visiting the blog page.

Add the new feed to your RSS reader right here, or click one of the links to the right:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Moldybluecheesecurds

Artificial sweeteners may screw with your appetite

Think a switch to diet drinks will help cut pounds? Possibly not.

Scientists found that rats consuming artificial sweeteners actually ate more than other rats and gained more weight. The hypothesis is that the body controls appetite by learning to match food flavor and sweetness to fullness. When the body gets sweetness but not as many calories, it may get fooled into thinking that sweetness doesn't provide fullness and cause the body to eat more to compensate.

Caveats:

• The research was in rats, not humans
• The rats had never encountered artificial sweeteners before. Most humans have.

Maybe this finding will eventually play out in humans as well, reminding us that there's no such things as a (calorie) free lunch.

• 
  

We're back: on the psychology of closing doors

I saw this article earlier this week on the mental advantages of making decisions. Researchers found that people who refuse to eliminate options for themselves performed worse in choice experiments. There's apparently a strong feeling of need to keep a door open, even if that's clearly not in a person's best interest.

I love the example of the reverse: an ancient Chinese general who burned his ships to give his troops motivation to go forward.

Burn those bridges and move on!

What's nostalgia worth? $270

For those of you intently awaiting the results of my nerd auction, the wait is over. My Nintendo Power collection will be leaving for Canada, into the loving hands of a collector. We wish them a safe journey, especially the fold-out overworld map of Zelda I.

Don't read this post

I'm selling some of my nerd gear on eBay and needed a place to post photos. So please skip this post unless you like nostalgic photos of Nintendo Power magazine.

A few bonus notes to collectors: volumes 7-14 were staple-bound instead of glue. This meant that the front/back cover tended to work itself loose with little effort. About half the issues in this set have a slightly loose cover. Vol. 7, by far the worst, is pictured below...

[posting in progress...]

Photo 1: Vol 1 centerfold damage

Vol. 1 (Jul/Aug '88) and Vol. 7 (Sept/Oct 89) covers [these are by far the ones with the worst wear of the whole collection]

Vol. 2 - a fairly representative sample of the first 25 volumes. Tiny rip in binding at the bottom, some cover/corner creases. Most later issues have significantly less cover wear.

Health care plans: comparing Clinton and Obama

A nice, relatively brief write-up on the difference in the two Democratic candidates' health care plans.

An editor's assessment of the McCain lobbyist story

If you missed the big brouhaha yesterday, the NY Times published a piece about a longstanding (professional) relationship between Senator John McCain and a lobbyist. The point of the article was to express the disconnect between McCain's principled stand against lobbyists ever since his humiliation in the Keating Five scandal and the relationship he cultivated. The angle of the story was lost in the heated media debate about it, with many people calling it a "smear."

For those interested, the NY Times editors responded today to questions about the article. It's a nice counterpoint to those blaming the "liberal media" and is worth considering in the larger context of the story.

I should note that I think the article spent too much time hinting at a possible romantic connection between the Senator and the lobbyist, since the purported point was to illustrate the issue of his political principles.

There is a god: an example

Wonderful Wife and I have been plotting a trip to Europe in the fall and figuring out just how many meals of ramen noodles we'd need to eat to save up enough to compensate for the infernal exchange rate. Europe, if you've gone recently, is not cheap when Republicans have mortgaged your nation's future in a stupid war.

So imagine my expression when I get an email from a colleague inviting me to spend an all-expense-paid week in Denmark in a couple months. He's a college professor on a sabbatical learning about the renewable energy policies I've been working on and his partner backed out on him. So it's a week in Denmark - where I've never been - researching policy directly related to my interests, in May.

Is there a better phrase than THANK YOU?

Store credit cards not good for your credit score

How not good? Try -20 points to your credit score for each card. The article explains that if you sign up for a great promo deal, close the account as soon as you pay the balance off.

Hmm, time to cut up that Sears card...

A basement remodel: the turning point

My wife and I are finishing our basement in our 1940s-era home. It's a hybrid DIY-get some help project that started in late August. So far, we've had the concrete floor ripped up for plumbing, a huge new electric box and meter installed, and a bunch of electrical run throughout the basement. We did all the framing ourselves, which is why this project extended from August until February before the drywall was up.

But today's the day. The drywall guy is in the basement, right now, listening to oldies and rocking the 'rock. Today it goes from a plastic-sheeted, wood framed, not-unfinished-but-not-finished basement to a Basement. A finished basement. A place where guests can stay with their own bathroom. Where I can watch LOTR and play Wii with surround sound.

To quote RL: "It's a great day in John and Kristin's apartmenthouse."

Texas primary: by the numbers

Political writer Eric Black tackles the intricate numbers in the Texas primary on March 4, and one that Sen. Clinton hopes to win to slow Sen. Obama's momentum. The numerical tussling comes down to this: Clinton's edge among Hispanics won't be worth as much as she thinks.

Proportionately, fewer Hispanics are citizens, registered to vote, and turn out to vote. That dilutes Clinton's support. Furthermore, the Texas vote is actually a primary-caucus hybrid. The delegates awarded by caucus go to state senate districts with higher Democratic turnout. Those are...districts with a high proportion of black voters. Latinos narrowly went for Kerry in 2004, but blacks went for Kerry by a 4-1 margin.

In other words, when you see the Texas polls right now, it may not add up on March 4.

Obama: you better stick to universal health care

The time is ripe for universal health care, so as much as I want Obama to win, he better be planning to go for gold. This news about the company he keeps is not impressive. In other words, get on the stick, Obama!

Moldy's cookie baking tips

I've liked chocolate chip cookies forever and have usually just used the Toll House recipe. When I met my wife, she noted that my cookies were very "cakey," and that chewy cookies were preferable. (Note: though I tended to eat as much in dough as cookie, therefore not noticing, others have confirmed this preferential state).

Thus, I set upon Google with the intention of finding the secret to chewier cookies and have set out to help all you faithful readers in your cookie-baking endeavors.

Secrets to chewier cookies:

1. Less flour (subtract 1/4 c. or so)
2. Higher proportion of brown sugar to white
3. Butter, butter, butter (instead of margarine)
4. Higher temp, shorter time baking (let cookies finish baking on the sheet)
5. 3-4 T of buttermilk (or 2-3 T of milk with a splash of vinegar)
6. Fewer eggs (for Toll House, 1 egg instead of 2)
7. Halve the amount of baking soda

There you have it. Now go out and bake cookies. And be sure to share :-)

Live Art: freezing in place

Wicked cool



Tip of the hat to shadoweyes for this one.

Bush: I regret that I have but one life to give to my country telco

In the ongoing coverage of the FISA renewal, mcjoan of Dailykos notes that President Bush has immunity for telecommunications companies as his litmus test for the "Protect America Act" (gag me with a spoon).

The interesting twist? Bush has already declared that Americans could die if this renewal is not passed by Congress. In other words:

Let's just remember Sen. Kennedy's summation of Bush's position on FISA:

The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retro-active immunity. No immunity, no FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he's willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies. (emphasis mine)

You can get more on the new wiretap law from Moldy's ongoing FISA coverage.

Torture: we only do it when we have to

Jon Stewart's new "Torture Show" explores the Bariyshnikov-like dancing around the definition of torture by the Bush administration. He learns:

• Waterboarding has been called torture since the Spanish Inquisition and Japanese soldiers were prosecuted by American litigators for using it during World War II.
• At least three Al Qaeda suspects have been waterboarded by the CIA.
• The official policy on waterboarding is that we would only use it if we thought a suspect had information about a calamitous attack.

In other words, we use torture on terrorism suspects, despite evidence that it is ineffective, when we feel we have to. Gee, something tells me it wouldn't hold up in international court.

Stewart also notes that:

• No Bush administration will admit that waterboarding=torture
• Attorney General Mukasey will not begin criminal proceedings against CIA officials who waterboarded Al Qaeda suspects.

Yeah, land of the free.

Here's Stewart's video segment:

How to write your senator about the wiretap debate

Here's a copy of the letter I wrote to my two senators about the current wiretap debate in the U.S. Senate. Please feel free to copy and paste:

Dear Senator XXX,

I'm writing to you about the wiretapping legislation currently being debated in the Senate. I'm extremely disappointed in the course of the debate. There are two provisions that I strongly urge you to support:

1) Exclusivity. Without this provision, the legislation is meaningless. It would allow a president to simply ignore the civil liberties protections supposedly guaranteed by the act. It was part of the original FISA law for a good reason and its violation by President Bush shows that it is just as important now.

2) No immunity for violators. Telecommunications companies who willfully violated FISA are using the Nuremberg defense and it's tragic that the Senate is accepting it. President Bush acted illegally. Whether or not he is brought to account should have no impact on the guilt of these private companies who were fully aware of the illegality of their behavior. I strongly encourage you to oppose immunity for lawbreakers.

Sincerely,

Think wiretapping is over? Think again

If you haven't heard much on illegal wiretapping since a judge struck down the program, the big decisions about it are being made in the U.S. Senate today. And the decisions aren't positive for rule of law and liberty:

• The Senate rejected amendments that would have held telecommunications companies responsible for their participation in illegal wiretapping. Basically, the Senate is saying, "you broke the law, but because Bush told you to, you're forgiven." Nuremberg defense, anyone?
• The Senate rejected "exclusivity," a provision from the original FISA law that would say that this wiretap law covers ALL wiretapping done by the U.S. government. To leave it out says, "this law covers wiretapping, except if the President decides to do some other kinds of wiretapping and says it's not covered under this law. Basically, he can do whatever he wants."

Dailykos has several ongoing threads about the FISA debate. Call your Senator and tell them to protect civil liberties and punish those who break laws about illegally spying on Americans!

For more on the wiretap legislatio, read up on what provisions SHOULD be included.

Why tax incentives for jobs fail

Minnesota has a program to create tax-free "Job Zones (JOBZ)" to give an incentive to companies to create more jobs in distressed areas. It seems to work as well as most corporate welfare. Here's a story on the report from the Legislative Auditor and here's a brief summary of the boondoggle:

• There is no formal mechanism within JOBZ for evaluating whether a subsidy is needed, and, if so, whether a more limited subsidy could achieve the same business expansion.
• Within the business subsidy agreement itself, there is no deadline for creating the promised jobs, and no requirement to maintain the jobs through the life of the tax forgiveness.
• Using state unemployment tax data submitted by the firms benefiting from the program, the auditor's office found that the increase in employment at JOBZ businesses was 20 to 30 percent lower than what DEED was reporting.
• Although JOBZ was supposed to target economically distressed areas for business tax relief, need has not been a factor in designating JOBZ zones

The Wonderful World of Cheney

With more fantasy than Walt could have every hoped for.

Romney the latest Republican to surrender to terror

Mitt Romney's concession speech lobbed a fecal shot at the Democrats vis-a-vis the War on Terror. For those of you who missed it, he basically accused Democrats of being surrender monkeys and so democracy had to stand aside. Skemono at the Dead Racists Society has the best analysis I've seen:

Of course, Mitt's party already has surrendered to terror. They are so bowel-liquifyingly scared that they would give up their sovereign rights to be shielded from it; they would flush our national dignity and esteem down the toilet by engaging in, and legitimizing, torture; they would dismiss the Constitution--the very soul of our country--as a "suicide pact" if they deem it provides insufficient protection from their night terrors; they would turn their backs on legal traditions that date back centuries before the founding of our nation; they would allow the president to violate the law he swore to uphold whenever he fucking feels like it, if only he promises to protect them from their Muslim phantoms. And all because they are terrified of the terrorists under their beds.

Sleep tight, Mitt.

Book review: The Progress Paradox

Recently I joined Shelfari, a social networking/book club thing, because I clearly was not wasting enough time blogging or surfing the web. At any rate, it has helped me remember the books I promised myself to read and I've decided to write reviews of the nonfiction I read to both share something of my interests with y'all and to help me remember what I've read.

So here's the latest: The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook. It's a part of my "read the books you get as gifts" program - this one's from Dad.

I'd call the book 1/3 excellent and 2/3 overdone. The first third of the book focuses on the litany of ways the Western world has improved: environment, health, longevity. More people than ever have sufficient food, shelter, and material goods. Things are better than they ever have been, says Easterbrook. That this litany takes so long is probably the point, but by page 20 I was pretty done with hearing how great life is. I believe it, but that's not the "paradox," so let's get to it, eh?

The paradox is that despite all this material progress, happiness in Western countries hit a plateau in the 1950s. In fact, while portion of people saying they are happy has leveled off, the number reporting being "very happy" has declined and the number of depressed has increased. Why, amidst all this abundance, would that be?

Easterbrook initially fingers a number of social pressures. The news has a penchant for the negative, highlighting what's wrong instead of what's right. People seem configured to complain, to find the pieces of their life that are going wrong instead of right. Commercials help cram people into the role of victims. He even wonders if complaint was perhaps an evolutionary tactic to encourage people to continue to pursue progress.

But these are universal social pressures and wouldn't explain some of the deviations. For example, the disabled and chronically ill generally report being happier than the population at large. Happiness generally increases with age. And while lacking money makes a person unhappy, having it does not make someone happy.

And this is where The Progress Paradox gets interesting. Easterbrook examines some of the psychology behind our life of abundance and wonders if we have "woken up from the American Dream." In other words, we've achieved the material objectives of the Dream, and no longer have something to look forward to. Material wants and needs are met, so there's nothing to aspire to. He offers a tantalizing illustration: most people would be happier with an income of $50,000 that would increase by $5000 a year than with a flat annual income of $250,000. Happiness is a sense of progress, not achievement.

He also examines two components of modern Western life that may exacerbate any sense of unhappiness: privacy and freedom. He notes that for people living in crowded space, falling over family members and villagers, the private space accorded the typical Westerner would seem wonderful. Houses with twice as many rooms as occupants! On the other hand, this privacy and space leaves us with less context for our personal failings - who do we rely on when we fail? How do we see the big picture of the community when we are isolated from it?

The freedom accorded to individuals may also affect happiness. When we fail or are rejected, we can't explain it to ourselves as a class bias or caste system. Instead, rejection is much more personal. Easterbrook says this is particularly hard for women, for whom roles were much more prescribed in earlier days.

The one piece Easterbrook dismisses is the idea that we are more stressed. He notes that the subsistence farmer of the 19th century had his and his entire family's livelihood on the line with each season and that the idea we are more stressed is laughable. But he concedes that we are given more to stress about thanks to 24-hour disaster coverage from the news. Furthermore, our chronic sleep shortage (2-3 hours less per night than our forbears) causes a buildup of more stress-related chemicals. The human brain is also remarkably efficient at creating mental pathways for stress and fear, and the constant repetition of fears via the media can make us more fearful of minimal threats.

The solution, according to Easterbrook, is pretty much "doing good." First, he notes that feeling good about the world is completely natural. Darwin, for example, thought that emotional states were also evolutionary and that good emotions (such as cooperation and love) served an evolutionary purpose. Although the feelings may be innate, Easterbrook notes that they take work - you have to train yourself to think positively. But it works. "Quadriplegics, as a group, have a higher sense of well-being than lottery winners." It probably wasn't innate.

There's also a selfish reason to do good - it makes you happier. "Men and women should forgive most of the wrongs and offenses they experience in life...for the self-interested reason that people who let go of their grievances are better off as a result."

Easterbrook should have ended the book there, but I think he felt obligated to note that there are many challenges in the world and that they are solvable. So you end up being dragged away from his main premise into "here's how we might save the world" chapter before you finally hit the endnotes. But I think the take-away is still worth the read: do well unto others because it will do well unto you.

Every holiday is shopping holiday

I got an email newsletter from a tech company the other day about early Easter shopping for gifts. And this Lifehacker column asks about Valentine's gifts for geeks.

I'm sorry, but do we have any holidays where we do something other than shop?

How to lie with numbers, from the WSJ

Tip to Paul Krugman for this funny and yet not funny illustration of how you can lie with numbers.

The WSJ chart on defense spending (note the title):

And here's Krugman's correction:

My Obama spin

I'm for Obama and it was a great night for him on Super Duper Tuesday. He overcame all the polls of the past couple weeks and is now effectively neck and neck with Hillary. The only disappointment of the night was California, where Hillary maintained a fairly solid lead with 90% reporting (52-42%) this morning.

But here's a couple things to think about from the California exit polls:

• Many Californians voted early via absentee ballot. Of those who decided their vote in the last three days, it was Clinton by 49-46%. Of those who decided earlier, it was Clinton 56-39%. In other words, Obama was surging, but many people may have already voted.
• Racism still has a grip. Of those who said race of the candidate was important, 62% went for Clinton. Of those who didn't, only 51% did.
  

At any rate, what a fantastic election. It's going to be contested far into the primary season!

Obama's health care plan (and rhetoric) needs a tweak

Paul Krugman has taken Obama to task several times in recent weeks for holes in his health care plan. For some of the campaign rhetoric from the Obama camp, check out Factcheck.org's recent post on an Obama health care mailer.

Krugman's criticism is tough love, since it addresses a couple shortcomings in the Obama plan: the issue of free riding and enforcement. Basically, if healthy people opt to not have insurance until they get sick, they get a "free ride." To make health care more economical, you make them sign up. Which takes enforcement. Obama's been criticizing Hillary for having an enforcement provision, but you really can't go universal without it.

Unless...you go with my idea. Which is that people are automatically signed up for health insurance on the government employee's plan unless they opt out. And you can only opt out if you have other health care coverage. You can opt for a monthly premium payment or just pay it from your taxes. In other words, leave the enforcement to people who already do it (the IRS) and the health care to an existing health care group (government employees).

And Obama, get your wonks and rhetoric around free riders and enforcement. Because we can't solve the health care problem without addressing both.

Disclosure: I'm supporting Obama on Super Tuesday.

From Edwards to who: two female Democrats pick their second choice

The story introduces the conversation as two John Edwards supporters looking for their second choice, but it's a powerful essay on why Barack Obama should be the Democratic nominee and our next president.