Unmasking Perception

Fall Of Angels - L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

2012-01-27T08:13:00.001-07:00

Not too often does a book have my heartpounding, my eyes racing across the text, concerned for the fate ofthe protagonists, eager yet fearful to find out how the story willunfold. Fall of Angels is one of those books – a gripping storyabout the fate of a ship-wrecked crew on an unknown planet.

Unlike so many in the genre, however,the crew encounters not some alien race, but a human civilizationthat was the result of some previous colonization – a civilizationcut off from the colonizers for generations that has evolved backinto a relatively low-tech society.

The story becomes one of survival. Thecrew must use what they have to construct a sustainable outpost,learn the local customs, trade with the people to gain the suppliesthey need, using their technology at first to create the things theywill need when their technology (and battery-stored power) wears out.

Modesitt doesn't wave his hands andexpect us to just accept that the crew will survive. He outlines thestruggles as they plant crops, learn to harvest the variety of localfood, build their shelter, determine where to obtain their heat,encounter problems with sanitation, and even struggle with theirsometimes strained relationships as they adapt to a lifestyle noneknew before. Through the efforts of Nylan, the ship's engineer,Modesitt takes us on a tour of the sorts if problems that plaguedhuman civilization for generations, nay, thousands of years prior toour own period.

Although the survival efforts windthroughout the story, this story is not about survival or aliens oreven magic: It is a classic tale of Good versus Evil, but told in anew and compelling manner.

For the Evil that the crew (Angels tothe locals) encounter is not that of some malevolent individual benton world destruction or domination. Instead, the evil arises as aresult of fear, tradition, and subjugation.

The local civilization resembles manyin our past: Tradition-bound, xenophobic, and built upon maledominance and female subjugation. Women are property, to be used,abused, and cast off when no longer needed. The ship-wrecked crewrepresents an affront to all three elements: They lack thetraditions, they are new, and most profoundly, they are egalitarian(both the ship's captain and the head of the marine contingent arewomen.) When the first marauding group of locals stops by to raidtheir women and is wiped out, word spreads of the 'evil' Angelsamongst the locals, and the seeds for a show-down confrontation aresown.

As the story unfolds, we get insightsinto both groups. The antagonist is revealed to be thoughtful,against the wars he feels compelled to wage, a family man: I startedwishing a different fate for him than what I expected might be. Heends up being driven, again, not by evil desires, but by the evilthat exists in the society he is in.

Fall Of Angels is a tragedy – atragedy born of the fears of individuals. Modesitt shines a light onthe evil that arises when society values conformity over progress,devalues some individuals (or entire classes of individuals), andwages war to 'hold' something they have no use for.

This becomes the real value of thestory. Through elegant story-telling that sweeps us along, Modesittencourages us to think about our position in society and oursociety's traditions and values: He clearly drives us to considerthat a society that values all individuals will be stronger than onethat discounts or abuses significant portions; and that those abusesand lines of thinking will drive us to acts that are both detrimentaland evil.

The Deficit, Part Two...

2012-01-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

One of the things that drives me nuts about politicians and politics is that they rarely are required to keep even a superficially consistent story. It would make so much more sense if we had on the one side those who believe that less should be privately controlled and more publicly controlled, offset by those who wish for stronger protections for private property, both balanced by the conservatives who just want to slow the pace of change and keep the status quo (and let's face it, changing for change's sake is not usually a good policy!). But instead, we get this:

In August we were treated to the spectacle of the deficit ceiling colliding with the rising deficit, and the hand-wringing of that singular (okay, so it turns out it wasn't that singular!) event: We were going to drive the country into ruin! We must cut the deficit! We must, must, must! One party in particular was driving the debate as the #1 issue facing the nation, now and into the future. We may disagree about the seriousness of the event, but they certainly can take a stand on it...

So, I would expect (especially after the collapse of the Deficit Reduction Commission - DRC) that any Republican candidate for the Presidency would continue to campaign on that idea - that the current policies followed by the current administration continue to increase the deficit and take us towards ruin. But, I am wrong.

Turns out that now candidates feel the best way to win the White House is to campaign on a promise to increase the deficit - on average by the amount the DRC was targeted to reduce: $1 trillion dollars. Say it with me: ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!

I am speechless. I'll let James Kwak tell the story:

The Times has a story out today: Surprise, all the Republican candidates’ tax plans increase the national deficit! The numbers (reduction in 2015 tax revenues, from the Tax Policy Center):
Romney: $600 billion
Gingrich: $1.3 trillion
(Late lamented) Perry: $1.0 trillion
Santorum: $1.3 trillion

*Paul is excluded, see fn1.

If I were an Independent or Democrat candidate for the Presidency, I would jump all over this (heck, if I were just an average journalist, I'd be all over this!) "Mr Candidate: Why isn't the deficit an issue any more and you feel that you are free to accelerate it's growth over the four years of your presidency if you were to be elected?"

I have an idea why, though: Tax cuts are always popular - cutting programs is not. Sadly, though, all four candidates plans cut taxes for the rich and then wait for the resulting deficit to materialize so that they are 'forced' to cut government programss: Which usually are programs that aid the middle and lower class. You don't still doubt that we are governed by an oligarchy of the rich now, do you?

fn1: Mr Paul doesn't have a specific plan - other than to eliminate the IRS and wave his hands and hope that the reduction will be offset somehow - which leaves his plan well north of $1 trillion in deficit increase. But, he hasn't published specifics, so the Tax Policy Center can't run specifics...

Ridiculous Statements

2012-01-19T08:16:00.001-07:00

As I'm listening to the evening news, a story came on about the Keystone XL Pipeline project, and the fact that the President had denied the application for permit. Angry Republicans retorted that the President was choosing the environment over the economy.

In what alternate universe would that be an epithet? The President chose long term over short term, the health of our aquifers and rivers and lands over a few jobs. I've got to side with our President on this one: Killing a project of dubious benefit due to real environmental concerns is a good choice.

Making the claim even more preposterous is the relatively few number of jobs the pipeline would create: 6-10,000. Let's put that into perspective: It takes the creation of 200,000 new jobs each month to keep up with our growth (that's 2,400,000 new jobs per year) - and that's just to stay even! We need more if we are to bring down our current unemployment. So, the killing of one 6,000 job project does not deter the economy (it's a literal drop in the bucket!) Sure, if our government was killing the equivalent every week, that would have a real impact, but once? That reduces the President's decision to choosing the Environment (something we all own and share) over the benefit of a few at a particular corporation.

My Nebraska friends have fought long and hard to prevent the construction of this pipeline across the fragile sandhills region and above/through the valuable Ogallala Aquifer (an enormous sandstone underground water storage formation that provides the drinking and irrigation water for a substantial number of people, ranches, and farms from S. Dakota to Nebraska to Kansas).

Perhaps someone can explain to me why building the pipeline is a good idea, because it sure doesn't appear so from the surface. It's objective is to move oil from the tar sands of Canada to Oil Refineries on the Gulf Coast.

It is projected that the cost of the pipeline is over $6 billion dollars. According to what I can find, it would only cost $2-$4 billion dollars to build a refinery - Why not build a refinery next to the tar sands, and transport the finished product (gasoline, kerosene, diesel) - which is worth approximately 50% more per gallon?

Since it is reported that our current refineries are running at near capacity, a new refinery would be a benefit to both the Canadian and US populations. Besides -since the refined products would be solely for domestic use (we wouldn't be shipping the oil from Canada for processing in the Gulf Coast to be loaded onto tankers to export, would we? Not since dependence on foreign oil is a major concern of our population and elected officials (not to mention the military which sees a potential threat to their abilities if an oil producer decides to shut off our supply at a critical time)).

Let's face it: Technology breaks. No matter how well the pipeline is designed and built, it will break and spill thousands (if not millions) of gallons of oil during its lifetime. Transporting oil and gas via rail and tanker through well known and hardened corridors is already a risk, but one we at least have a handle on. Adding new risk to the system doesn't seem beneficial - especially in this case.

Kudos to the President for once standing firm and choosing the public over the few!

Lawrence Lessig's Plan to Reduce Congressional Corruption

2011-12-22T20:30:00.000-07:00

I've been very impressed with Lawrence Lessig's thinking ever since reading Free Culture, his book on the dangers and distortions of current copyright law. He's back with a new book to fight Congressional Corruption: 'Republic Lost'. I'm thinking this is a must read!

Here's the extended interview on The Daily Show to whet your appetite...

The Pledge Has Been Broken

2011-12-15T08:19:00.002-07:00

Remember the Republican Pledge To America? The 'We will stop packing unpopular legislation with must pass bills' - The 'We won't force votes on large legislation until sufficient time for everyone to read it'?

According to Bloomberg News - pledge broken. The Republican sponsered spending bill now hitting the house (all 1200 pages of it) breaks both of those pledges...

Who would'a thunk? Politicians lying for their own gain...

Just drop the integrity crap during the election cycle - those running for office don't have it, won't have it, and never had it. It's not about integrity - although maybe it should be.

One Trillion Frames Per Second...

2011-12-13T21:30:00.003-07:00

This is so unbelievably cool - The folks at MIT have built an imaging system that allows them to produce video shot at one trillion frames per second - fast enough to allow them to photograph the propagation of light. The science behind it is just as fascinating - the Titanium Sapphire Laser they use as a pulsed illumination source, the electromagnetic field used to bend the light to their will - the multiple layering of subsequent images to produce the final, 2d video. Check it out:

One Trillion Frames Per Second

It's Not About Us

2011-11-30T07:15:00.001-07:00

Writing is a good way of making sense of ideas, and hence the world. I've not had much to say lately because the input of ideas has been low: My reading is down as I pursue some other activities. (I've also run across many who say things so well that I feel less compelled to add to it...)

So, this post isn't really about the world or ideas - it really is a trail to see how facebook's new functionality regarding importing blogs works. Supposedly, it won't import, and I'll have to link to it.

Not that it really matters. I've noticed increasingly that facebook is choosing my content for me, and although I've sorted my friends into lists (so that the quiet or intermittent posters are less likely to be drowned out by my 'chatty' friends), I still miss posts - sometimes posts of a certain nature, sometimes it appears that I miss entire posts from some.

I've specifically noticed that I no longer see posts from two of my friends who blog on a regular basis. True, I only sometimes read their posts, and true, I even more infrequently interacted via commenting or 'liking' the posts - but I want to see that they have said something, even if I choose not to read very far.

But, I have to remember: Although we use it as a means of interacting and keeping in touch, Facebook is not about us: It's about funneling consumers and money to corporations that can afford to play.

If you've ever had any doubt, then the possibility of a $100 billion IPO from facebook should remind you exactly who and what facebook is for.

We may think of ourselves as the primary users as we post and play, but it's not about us.

What? The Fed is an Old-Boys Club of Backscratching Bankers!

2011-10-20T22:30:00.000-06:00

The GAO released its report on the Federal Reserve Wednesday: Yves Smith has a nice summary.

And, just as many have long known: Those at the top build networks to ensure they remain at the top regardless of how they perform - the meritocracy breaks down under their myriad conflicts of interest. Everyone screams about individual accountability when its some poor individual who cannot afford to repay their bank loan, but no-one seems to care that none (as in zero!) of the major bank executives were held accountable for their roles in undermining the worth of their banks, counterfeiting the nation's currency through liar's loans, and their ultimate thievery of the production of a nation. Now we have it a little clearer: Literally, the fox is guarding the hen house!

We need leaders (are you listening, candidates?) who will make it a priority to wind-down the financial sector back to a size that is beneficial to society, rather than a cancer that sucks more and more of the life-blood of a nation in its greed. Candidates that will vow to staff the regulatory agencies (the Fed, the SEC) with people of diverse backgrounds and affiliations who will regulate, rather than remunerate, those under regulation.

Anyone? Anyone?

Taxing Capital

2011-10-19T06:50:00.000-06:00

With the election season beginning, I think there is a question that needs to be clearly answered:

Is there any legitimate reason why the tax schedules for capital (investment return) should be any different than the tax schedules for labor (wages)?

When the marginal tax rate for labor rises above 15%, shouldn't the marginal rate for capital income do the same? And shouldn't the total tax rate for an individual begin with the simple sum of labor and capital income, without distinction between them?

If one individual were to earn $75,000 from labor, and another $75,000 from investment return, is there any good argument that they should not pay the same taxes? Ditto if the amounts were $100k, $200k, etc?

Playing with the tax codes appears to be the most prominent campaign rhetoric of our candidates, a favorite tactic to gain acceptance from voters. So, it's only fair if we, the voters, really start having a conversation and determine beforehand what a good, fair tax code would look like, then we lessen the chance that we'll be hoodwinked into voting for a design that is unfair, and worse, damages our society.

Logical Fallacies and Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-12T08:17:00.000-06:00

You've seen the picture: Protesters of Occupy Wall Street, with call-outs to each mass-produced (corporation) item they are carrying: Their cell-phones, their cameras, their music devices, their clothing, etc. The obvious point is that the protesters are somehow hypocrites for protesting the institutions that have produced so much that they carry and use.

The more insidious point is that it is somehow wrong to criticize anything that has any beneficial aspects. Ironically, however, adopting that point of view is just has destructive: If we must be silent about anything that has a benefit, no matter how egregious the violations committed on its behalf, we have lost our ability to challenge anything in our society, lost our ability to move society forward.

True, the creation of the corporation has allowed for the allocation of money to advance our manufacturing of the items that bring greater leisure, greater connectivity, and greater productivity to our society. But that's not what Occupy Wall Street is about. They are protesting the outsized influence corporations have on our political lives, and the resulting outsized influence they have on our daily lives; by their ability to constrain the uses to which we put our money (preventing taxation to support beneficial government services), our ideas (through the support of strong forms of patent and copyright law), and our land and water (through pollution).

Corporations have also become anti-democratic forces - rigid hierarchies that exploit many to move money to the few in outsized compensation for their 'work'. As such, there is a strong tension between those who view autonomy and participation as a right (democracy) versus those who believe that submission to the will of the 'elite' is not only better, but proper (oligarchy).

So, the protesters' position is that there are aspects of corporations that don't fit with our conception of freedom and equality, and that society would become better if those aspects were changed or eliminated.

The job for corporate supporters is to address the issues head on: to contend and offer proof that corporations don't pollute more per-capita or leave behind their private messes for social clean-up; that strong, 99-year copyright laws don't constrain innovation and advancement; that immense rewards to the few don't undermine our ability as a society to advance and prosper as a whole.

And so we see the logical fallacy committed by supporters of the picture: That somehow the fact that the protesters have also benefited refutes that there is anything to protest. It's a cop-out by corporate apologists and their tools. (I saw Elisabeth Hasselback on the View talking about this picture like she was making some great point; the only point she was cementing is that she is a doofus, incapable of logical thought, a perfect tool of the corporation that employs her.)

Criticizing the bad in an institution or an individual is not logically inconsistent with recognizing the good brought about by the institution or individual - the two are mutually supportive: For without criticizing the bad (and working to overcome or improve), we can't increase the good that is possible or that we can realize.

Occupying History

2011-10-09T22:53:00.000-06:00

As I listened to the news this evening I couldn't help but be struck by the hyperbole in the segments about the Occupy Wallstreet movement. The newscasters were beside themselves, looking for anger, reason, demands, clearly attempting to understand Occupy Wallstreet on their (the newscasters') terms, rather than on the terms of the people in the movement. And, just as clearly, the fear, anger, and confusion was on the part of those reporting, not the participants.

We live, theoretically, in a democracy. Each individual their voice, each understanding of the world to be brought to the decisions that affect us.

But we've watched as the financial sector has ballooned, feeding like a parasite on the remainder of the economy and the populace (for the financial industry makes nothing but money, and their charge is to make that in accordance with the general growth of the nation: True, they are to facilitate that growth where possible, to ensure money moves where it is most needed, but nothing gives them leeway to overproduce, indeed, the efficient market's hypothesis proposes that they can't produce more, since the resulting inflation and busting would bring them to heel in short order.), creating an enormous asset bubble in the housing market, and fooling investors worldwide into purchasing their fancy derivatives. When the bubble burst, these incapable gamblers came to us, hat in hand, and asked for a bailout, which we, although not willingly, gave.

With that money they've rebuilt, and turned on us: Blaming us for the ills of the country, and demanding that we make concessions, reduce our standards, move towards austerity. They've asked for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, they fight against any meaningful Health Care reform for all, and why? Because our willingness to share and hedge against the unknown is inefficient? No, of course not. It's because in so doing we reduce the amount of money they could potentially pillage, and having gotten a taste of kingly amounts, they thirst for more.

The Tea Party got it (mostly) wrong. They blamed the government, the employees, perhaps even the form that we have, but their unwillingness to give up their medicare showed them to be confused. They know that something is wrong, that something is not as it should be, but they can't identify it. (And, they were quickly co-opted by the wealthy to become a tool to use against 'us' – even though there are many of 'us' in the Tea Party itself!)

Occupy Wallstreet has identified the true source of the problem: The outsized influence, even outright control that is exercised now by a moneyed minority of the population that is no longer willing to even pretend that the good of society is the purpose of a government. They accurately point their fingers at the undemocratic nature of corporations – rigid hierarchies that resemble feudal monarchies in all but name. If that minority manage their wish of repealing the Estate Tax once and for all, we will see the reestablishment of the heredity aristocracy, and the Nation of Opportunity will become a moment in history. (Evidence indicates that it is already passing, that social mobility in America is far less than most European countries, that children of the bottom 20% are much more likely to stay there. See fn1.)

Having identified the problem, what is the correct solution? Ideas have been proposed: Re-enactment of Glass-Steagall (admittedly, it must be put on steroids to have a positive effect this time around). Establish the Tobin Tax (a tax on each financial transaction, not large, but enough to put some “sand in the gears” - remember that Efficient Market Hypothesis mentioned above? Debunked. Doesn't hold.) How about a Consumer Protection Agency with a strong, knowledgeable, no-nonsense leader (yep, they kicked Elizabeth Warren out because she possessed precisely those qualities!) Changes to the Federal Reserve so that it can manage the money supply in favor of the nation, not the wealthy few.

But each idea is likely stillborn or bound to be so diluted that it will effectively become trivial, and the looting will continue. So, the pressing question becomes: How does a movement grow that will motivate those currently in power to pay attention, to not talk out of one side of their mouths while accepting money from Wall Street?

Sure, editorials and letter writing are a start, but what's a stack of letters in a congressman's office compared to a face-to-face with the likes of Peter Peterson or Edward Koch and the promise of money and a high paying lobbying job after retirement? We need a presence, a means of showing the size and strength of population that doesn't want their well being suborned by the prima-donnas of Wall Street. And, we know the wrong way to go about it: Violence. There need be no torches, pitchforks, knives, guns or guillotines – We are still a democracy, and, has been shown time and again around the world, a peaceful but forceful democratic assembly gets attention, and over time, can move a cause forward.

They need our support, not our ridicule. Those who would attempt to undermine or cast aspersion upon them show themselves to be either a tool of the wealthy or unsupportive of the notion of democracy. Sure, those present will largely be the youthful and the unemployed: Those of us with corporate overlords must keep our masters happy. Sure, they may seem disorganized, but that is the nature of true democracy. (We are so accustomed to the faux democracy of a presidential election or corporate life that we have a hard time recognizing, let alone accepting, something that closely approaches true, free, democratic association and decision making.) They don't have a media machine hammering the message (fn2), but listen to the interviews: They (individually), know what they want, and are exploring a means to bring it about.True, too: Some of their ideas are much more than just bringing Wall Street to heel: They are about re-imagining society. But, it takes grand ideas to sometimes make small or medium improvements.

The moment is ripe with possibility. Possibility that the population of America is approaching its tipping point – the point where the 95% make themselves heard, where they take the country for themselves. Sure, the 5% will fight – just as they did in Philadelphia when the Constitution was being written, just has they did (via proxy) during the Civil War, just as they have since the setbacks (to them) of the 14th and 15th amendments, since the setback of the New Deal. Just possibly these occupiers will start something that will culminate in the reduction of the outsized presence and influence of the financial sector, and a movement towards a land of greater democracy, opportunity, and equality.

Fn1: See the study done by Haskins and Sawhill of the Brookings Institute (2009) – I ran across the information in John Quiggin's “Zombie Economics”. See especially pages 159-161. In summary, Haskins and Sawhill looked at the male children of men in the bottom quintile (20%) - in a mobile society, one would expect only about 20% to remain. In America, it is 42%, Denmark 25%, Sweden 26%, Britain 30%.

fn2. Of course, after I write this I see that Occupy Wall Street has published the Occupy Wall Street Journal, Issue #2!

If Only...

2011-10-05T19:59:00.000-06:00

We all could constantly raise our salaries above the median for our peer group -- think what we would earn in a few short years! A Nice Racket...

On The Invention Of Money

2011-09-18T09:40:00.000-06:00

So, it turns out that we actually don't know how or why money was invented, but we pretty conclusively now know that it wasn't invented as the evolution of a barter economy! This article by David Graeber is fascinating for its account of the anthropological record and insights into possibilities. I really, really like the questions he poses at the close of the article: In short, is Economics a science designed to empirically provide answers about the way the world works, or is it a non-science, designed instead to teach us modes of behavior that are beneficial (and beneficial to whom?) in the societies of today? Read the article, and the relevance of the question becomes not only obvious, but understandably important...

A Tale of Two Cities

2011-08-08T06:00:00.001-06:00

I've been reading Dickens' classic - something I somehow managed to avoid during my formal education! I've been enjoying it, and fully appreciate why it is a classic. However, it has made me realize there is another hole in my knowledge: The French Revolution itself: Causes, Actors, Outcomes. I know from a biography of Thomas Jefferson that he was horrified by the actions of the French, and quite dismayed that they could interpret the move to democracy in such a violent manner.

I need a recommendation of a good history of the French, especially one that covers the Revolution in depth. I'd like very much to gain an understanding of what forces led to their revolutionary experience being different from our own (or is that just a perception?), and perhaps some insight into how their revolution plays into the attitudes the French have today.

Sometimes, too, the best histories are biographies, so if a biography of a central figure is available, that could be a good approach, also. I'm open to your ideas!

Thanks!

Children's Humor

2011-08-07T15:23:00.001-06:00

Seriously, the recent events have left me dumbstruck - and, besides, there is lots of discussion around the blogosphere about the various expected outcomes, along with plenty of analysis (often dire). So, in an effort to lighten things up a little and remind us that our (important) lives go on, here's a sampling of recent utterances from the littlest members of my household:

Me (on recent camping trip, contemplating the pine beetle devastation): I read recently that it is somewhat cyclical, that around 100 years ago there was a similar outbreak, with similar consequences...
10yr-old: Wow, Dad! Do you remember what it was like, you were, what, a teenager?
Me: Thanks for thinking me so young! No, I was already married...(!)

Me: Snacktime! Everyone pick their snacks.
5yr-old: (Holding up package): Dad! You have GOT to try these!
Me: No, that's ok. I have my own, and I wouldn't want to eat yours...
5yr-old: Dad! I don't like these!

Me: Watching TV wasn't the same when I was young, we didn't get to just watch anytime we wanted...
10yr-old: I remember! Like during the war, when you all had to huddle around the radio instead?
Me: We need to work on your concept of time! No, I meant that we only had 1, and had to share...

How Did The Deficit Get So Large?

2011-07-24T22:06:00.000-06:00

If you are like me, you are a little peeved at the actions of the politicians, apparently willing to throw the entire nation under the bus for who-knows-what reason, and, even more peeved at the media for not providing real, in-depth analysis of the causes that got us here so that we can all be informed...

I've seen hints, and even attempted to look at some of the numbers myself, but realistically, I've got more to do - and let's face it: That's why we pay the investigative journalistic profession. They should be delving into the reasons for our current state, and laying it out clearly, and repeatedly when some politician, for power gain, attempts to say otherwise.

This article, in the NYTimes, does exactly what I've been waiting for: A solid presentation of the causes of the deficit, including clearly understandable graphs. Read it, and cogitate on this most salient point:

"...non-
defense discretionary spending on areas like foreign aid, education and food safety was not a driving factor in creating the deficits. In fact, such spending, accounting for only 15 percent of the budget, has been basically flat as a share of the economy for decades."

It's not the welfare for the public good that has gotten us here...

A little babysitting economics

2011-07-11T21:40:00.000-06:00

Dr Krugman says it so well with this story about babysitting...(and notice the pub date - its not recent!)

I seriously wonder that maybe every one of our elected officials is compromised - compromised in the sense that if they were to be seen as the ones who allowed inflation they legitimately fear that not only will they become unelectable, but that cushy jobs as lobbyists or in the banking industry will evaporate, since inflation will hurt lenders (bankers) most... (and so we get a kabuki debate that will only end in the destructive actions of reducing the deficit though government cuts rather than revenue increases...)

I also believe that we don't make enough here - sure, we could pull out with the help of a little inflation, but to what? What would prevent us from falling right back in? Sadly, Krugman's tale doesn't go that far...

Friday Shorts - Buffett, Huckabee, Debt, Anthony

2011-07-08T07:23:00.000-06:00

The Republican stance on the debt shows that they have no enduring ideology, other than obtaining and staying in control. Remember that Reagan said that deficits don't matter? As Warren Buffett pointed out, congress raised the debt ceiling 7 times during Bush's term, without nary a whimper. But, they'd hold a gun to America's head over this, threatening to shut down the government? If they hate government that much, perhaps they should seek employment in the private sector...

Ever wonder if maybe Mike Huckabee was forced into politics because he was thrown out of the ministry for a lack of compassion? Every time I see his ad calling for the repeal of the Health Care Plan he just comes across as completely, totally heartless.

Speaking of the debt, have you ever wondered about the history of it? What our ancestor's thought and did related to it? How long has America had government debt? You can hear all these questions answered, and more on Backstory Radio's recent coverage of exactly this topic. Download the podcast, and do whatever it is you do this weekend while you learn why Alexander Hamilton could say, “A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing."

Casey Anthony. Everyone I know is certain she committed the murder of her daughter, but her acquittal is actually proof that our judicial system works, and works well. We have to demand sufficient proof of a crime to convict, and if the prosecution fails to bring that proof to trial, then the accused must go free. For there is the distinct possibility in all trials that if there is a lack of proof, then the accused is innocent of the crime in question. We certainly don't want to err on the side of locking up innocent people - even though it means that we must err on the side of occasionally setting the guilty free. (Which I must point out, we don't know has been done here.)

Which brings to mind an excellent campaign question for our congressional and presidential candidates: Do you feel that America's incarceration rate is too high? Are we locking up individuals for 'crimes' that shouldn't require it - and what and how do other nations, who all have much lower incarceration rates, deal with the activities in question? And, the real kicker: Do you support the privatization of our jails and penitentiaries - and do you see any conflict of interests between a private organization which will want to increase the quantity of incarcerated to increase their profits with America's desire to decrease its costs and reduce its government debt?

Big Pancakes

2011-07-04T10:05:00.000-06:00

“Daddy, are you staying home today?”
“Yes, hon. It's a holiday.”
“Goody! That means we can have BIG pancakes!”

Big pancakes in my daughter's language are those pancakes that I make on the griddle, not the tiny microwave ones that come in a box. Although it will be more time consuming than I had planned this morning, it is such a simple request, and will give her lots of happiness, so I acquiesce. The real joy, for both of us, is determining what shape the pancake will take. Today, it is to be Pooh Bear. I've made many in the past: Micky Mouse (easy), Brontosaurus, T-Rex, Triceratops, (harder), Thomas (The tank engine – fairly hard). Since batter spreads, it requires a large paddle to flip the rather large pancakes that result.

“Pooh has a big belly,” as I pour an oblong ellipse, “and a pretty big head” as a connecting circle appears. “Tiny ears,” to my daughter's hand clap and exclamation of delight. “Don't forget the feet, Daddy!” she admonishes, and two more pours provide feet. “And arms!” We make some arms, which end up being closer to clubs. “It's Pooh Bear!” she cries, and laughs. This is the moment I love: Seeing the misshapen blob of batter on the griddle through her 5-year-old eyes and imagination as the beloved story-book character of Winnie the Pooh.

It doesn't go completely as planned: During the flip, one of Pooh's feet comes off, but we reconnect it, and the magic is restored. She sits down to eat her pancake, and I set about making a bunch (standard round) for me.

Then the demands start. “I want some orange juice!” “Dad, I need some orange juice!” when it doesn't come fast enough. “And my vitamin!” “Syrup! I want syrup!” Then, in a switch worthy of the Jekyll and Hyde duo, my beautiful, inquisitive, laughing daughter becomes a monster: “I've gotten syrup in my hair! Aaaahhhh, AAAAhhhhhhhh, AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

And so, the challenge of parenthood begins, as we balance providing for our little dependents while not giving in to their every demand. It's a tightrope that every parent walks, providing what is reasonable while they cannot, teaching them to do for themselves what they can, instilling in them the confidence they need to negotiate life. Its a work in progress. We won't know the outcome in my daughter's case for 15, 20, maybe 25 years. Has she become capable of balancing her needs and wants against the needs and wants of those around her? Will she politely wait her turn? Will she only ask for what she needs of others, or will she attempt to manipulate them into providing for her things she can do and obtain for herself? Will she quietly tolerate some unfairness, not demanding that she always go first, even if it is her right? Conversely, will she have the confidence to step up and ensure that her needs are met when required (for while there is grace in holding our needs and wants secondary, there are times when it is crucial that we look after ourselves)?

It's tough work. Punishment is not an adult strategy: We've learned it from our children. They punish us for not jumping to their needs, which is quickly extended to their wants. They scream, they throw tantrums (and sometimes things), and will repeat incessantly the demand in too often successful attempts to wear us down. They haven't learned our adult strategies of masking our demands in feigned kindness, proceeded with 'please', 'if you don't mind', 'Could you do me a favor'. They also don't know when to accept defeat, or when it is impolite to ask, skills we hopefully all have. Everything is primal, raw, tears and yells and actions.

Of course, too, our responses depend upon how rested we are. Fortunately for us this morning, I've had a very restful night's sleep. I procure her orange juice (with the admonishment that she ask “Please”), and ask her to wait on the vitamin until I've finished my pancakes. And, in one of those insightful moments, instead of berating her for not keeping her hair out of her plate, I demonstrate to her how to remove the syrup from her hair and have her brush the tangles out. In the process, the monster disappears, and my daughter returns to finish breakfast with me.

This I can count as a parenting success. We've enjoyed a good breakfast together, we've navigated the interactions without growing angry at each other, and my little girl has acquired a necessary skill for those who will wear their hair long and eat big pancakes in the morning.

Could You Kill A Friend?

2011-07-01T07:10:00.002-06:00

At the end of my last post I took a subtle jab at the Harry Potter series, curious of anyone would rise to the bait. I don't think that the series is pointless, nor that it is particularly bad. I have outlined before how I don't especially like the model of the protagonist that is chosen, that all others defer to him or her, and they end up saving the world in spite of themselves or their efforts. In real life, success takes effort, confidence, and the support of others (and a little chance.)

I think the real heroes of the series are Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, and amongst the children, Hermione Granger. Harry succeeds largely upon the backs of these three, plus the efforts of many others who have been working to defeat Voldemort for longer than Harry has been alive.

Hermione exhibits those qualities that generally lead to real life success, foremost perseverance. She keeps after something until she understands it, researching, practicing, and researching some more. Her timely revelations throughout the series provide Harry the information and spells he needs to move forward. Without Hermione, Harry likely would have fallen into a trap early on, and never recovered.

My advice to my children: Be like Hermione, not Harry.

But what is intriguing to me are the behind the scenes machinations and interplay between Snape and Dumbledore that ultimately bring about the fall of Voldemort. These two have been working for decades to uncover the horcrux, to work out the secrets of Voldemort's power, and to devise a plan to weaken him and then lure him out where he can be killed. Harry stumbles into this when he comes to Hogwarts, and provides a useful decoy for Dumbledore to deploy and distract Voldemort. Again, in an almost deux ex machina fashion, Dumbledore provides Harry with just the information he needs just when he needs it to rise to the occasion and avoid (presumably) death at the hands of Voldemort.

But what of the sacrifice by Dumbledore at the end of the 6th book that ultimately robs Voldemort of the power of the Elder Wand? By having Snape kill him, Dumbledore really sets up Voldemort's defeat. Imagine the conversations those two must have had: “If ever Voldemort gets the upper hand, you must kill me instead.” “My friend, I cannot do that.” “You MUST, or all will be lost.”

Could you kill a friend?

Our minds rightly recoil at the thought – taking a life in a Machiavellian manner to further our ends seems wrong, no manner how it plays out. In the story, Snape's actions not only eliminate an enormous source of power for Voldemort, but they also provide cover for Snape to continue to work towards his former master's defeat. That one action is really the pivotal point of the series.

Snape ultimately succeeds in destroying Voldemort, but per the series, is forced (by Rowling) to do it through Harry, spoon feeding the final information Harry needs as he (Snape) is dying. Armed again through the efforts of others, Harry is able to make the final blow, and the long fall from innocence is complete.

Snape is the hero. But what a dark hero he is! My mind keeps returning to these facts about the story, buried, glossed over; I'm certain missed or misunderstood by many, if not most, of the young readers of Rowling's narrative.

Imagine the conversations that could be had: Is Snape justified in killing Dumbledore? Why or why not? Could we transfer this to situations that could occur in our world (where Elder wands and the Dark Arts don't exist)?

Despite my early misgivings on the series, has Rowling actually written an allegory from which we can learn, or is it just a children's series?

Kraken

2011-06-24T22:30:00.000-06:00

My English teacher and I had this repeating conversation that arose after the completion of each assigned book. It starting when the teacher asked his stock question, “Why did the author write this book?” and I would answer something like “To make the money he needs to live.” “No,” my teacher would patiently reply, “What’s the author’s point, his message?” “Oh, it was born of a wager with another English teacher: I’ll bet I can get millions of school-kids to read this piece of literary drivel; I’ll call it ‘The Lord of the Flies’”

I could never tell if the ensuing choking sounds emanating from my instructor were signs of amusement, exasperation, or admiration that one so young could already discern the crasser motives that sometimes drive activities, even those of our literary heroes.

Of course, he was right: Authors often do have a point or message and the story is just a vehicle for bringing it to us – and, of course, I was right: Authors don’t always have any high aspirations, and the story is just a story. I am unwilling to ascribe a strong message to authors of more formulaic stories, and grow weary of authors that are so obtuse that we have to go on a major investigation to pry out their meaning. Besides, if there is a large question or disagreement over what the author was attempting to convey, can we be certain that was their motive, or are we attempting after the fact to create something when perhaps they simply thought, “Hey, this would be an interesting story!”?

(I’m even more skeptical of the ‘meanings’ of classical music: I still think that Mahler was a pre-Keynesian works program, “If I don’t continue to write these massive symphonies and score them for hundreds, there will be many out-of-work musicians, and with their feeble, non-calloused hands, what else can they possibly do?” )

Too, there is the personal aspect of a story: Depending upon our particular prior experiences, any specific story may invoke in us ideas, thoughts, or allow us to connect some previously unconnected dots. However, the 'take-away' that we obtain is often more telling of us than perhaps the author: Can we be certain, unless the author had similar experiences, that we understood their point? But, if we read a book, and gain something, even some feelings, experience, or understanding that we didn't have, does it matter if the author intended or predicted it? We've gained...

So I still approach most fiction with a sense of skepticism: Entertain me, don't let me predict the outcome or the sequence (keep me guessing!) - and if it doesn't make a major point about the human condition or society's problems, etc. I'll not be unkind. If the author brings the characters to life, instills them with purpose, and entertains me, that is enough. If, however, the author does manage to convey a point or observation, even better.

I recently picked up Kraken by China Mieville on the basis of the general esteem of Mieville by Dr Farrell of George Washington University and was not disappointed: It is a rollicking good romp through the London underground, if that London underground was populated by the sorts of characters you might meet while playing World of Warcraft, D&D, etc. Mieville is a good writer, and manages to reconstruct the English language while constructing his scenes – standard turns of phrase are largely absent, instead, words appear in uncommon positions, phrases continue past normal, as if to leave no doubt that I was reading something new. “They all stared at the spot where the squid was not.” The meter is comfortable, though, and before long I was drawn in to the plot, wondering just how it could possibly shake out.

I'll say, too, that the characters that appear have purpose – purpose outside of the story, in a very vivid, we're not just here to prop up the plot kind of way. It is easy to imaging them existing outside of the narrative, with goals and desires that have been affected by the situation being described. Very much like encountering others on a massive on-line role-playing game. I would have to guess that some of that milieu provided a basis for Mieville as he wrote the story.

I was entertained thoroughly, but the real surprise came at the story's climax: The surprise villain, known, but unsuspected throughout, the tying together of the themes into a reasonable relationship, and then, whoa! A point emerged from the interchange between the protagonist and his adversary. I literally had to pinch myself, go back and re-read the chapter, but yes, Mieville has something to say. Even better, he made getting to and receiving it fun!

(Wouldn't my English teacher be proud?)

I see that 'The City & The City', Mieville's 2010 novel won the Hugo last year – guess I will have to put that on my 'to read' list, as, by Dr Farrell's account, its even better and more intellectually challenging than Kraken. If its just as good, I'm a fan!

(If you go: People in London swear. People in the seamy underground swear more. If the depiction of what a crime boss might actually say when things get out of hand and not in his favor might bother you, let me recommend instead something by J.K. Rowling. You'll have to forgo the point, but no swearing, either.)

Sharing The Sacrifice

2011-04-15T20:52:00.001-06:00

Everyone else has a tax day proposal - figured I should offer one of my own. Mine is built around the idea of shared sacrifice (or shared boon.)

When a CEO forces the layoff of a portion of his company's workforce to reduce expenses (and likely increase both the stock value and his compensation), in a well-functioning, robust economy, those displaced workers can find other work at or near their former pay. The transition may not be completely seamless, but it should occur.

However, when an economy is stumbling, fizzing, or recessing, those same displaced workers may not be able to find other jobs even close to their former compensation - they may not be able to find jobs at all, or they may take jobs and displace others. The net result is that many find themselves chronically unemployed, with neither prospects nor income for lengthy periods. They make a 100% sacrifice, whereas the management and CEO that oversaw their layoff often suffer nothing or very little.

So, to spread the sacrifice (or force at least a rudimentary sharing), I propose that the top marginal tax rate be directly tied to the unemployment rate. National unemployment rises - so does the top tax rate. Unemployment drops - so does the top tax rate.

I would use the extra money pulled in from the increase in top tier taxation to fund a government work program that would pay any takers for as long as they are willing - or, as long as they are unable to find a job in another sector of the economy. To borrow an idea from Hyman Minsky, such a guaranteed program could, potentially, even replace the minimum wage - the wage the government pays would generally be a new minimum (although one could see that for part-time work, especially that taken by teenagers, it might be possible for a franchise to pay slightly less in return for more flexible working hours our conditions...)

The money could also pay for re-training programs, to handle contractions in one sector that force massive skills re-alignment. Since we may have a surplus of workers that lack the proper training, and a shortage of workers in a new, growing sector, until their skills get re-aligned, we have higher unemployment.

This is not a silver-bullet solution, to be sure. It doesn't address the structural problems in our economy that promote the creation of monopoly - and although they may see their tax rate rise, many at the top would still likely benefit more from a decision to throw workers out of work than they would ultimately pay in increased taxes. But, it has a nice reciprocity to it: Instead of the sacrifice of a sputtering economy be forced on the few, it is spread more evenly on the top and the bottom.

Additionally, it does avoid the problem of a growing government deficit when demands on the government are raised by a chronically unemployed populace - and it would 'claw back' some of the excess compensation taken by those at the top.

I know one of the arguments against this is the idea that the wealthy create jobs. We can dispense with that (hopefully once and for all!): First, we will simply observe that at the start of the recent recession, wealthy pay had risen sharply and was continuing to rise, even as jobs were being shed - if the wealthy create jobs, this should not have happened. Second, we'll observe that most economists blame the slowdown on over-leverage, the collapse of the housing bubble, and market opacity - none of which are related to wealthy pay (well, ok, market opacity does relate in that it allows CEOs and their ilk to vastly overpay themselves without it being evident). Third, the idea that wealth creates jobs runs completely counter to the idea that productivity and increases in productivity are what fuel and grow an economy (and by extension, fuel and grow the ability of the economy to employ more) - the latter ideas which form the core of the observations made by Adam Smith in 'Wealth of Nations', and Fourth and Finally: Any ideology that draws direct casual connections between two elements of a modern economy is likely false or misleading - observe how easily statistics can be employed to both 'prove' and 'falsify' many economic statements - proof that neither captures much useful information about the myriad connections and forces that are at work.

We can, and should, simply assert that the ability to work and provide is a right in an affluent society, and since we are a community, all should be working before we allow those who are more skilled and productive take a larger share. Tying the top marginal tax rate to the unemployment rate is a start in aligning the interests of the few with the interests of the many.

Mr Greg Daniel

2011-04-11T06:38:00.000-06:00

I was out riding the other day. Just after turning around at the far end of our local reservoir, (which involves a small climb), this cyclist came zooming past. Descending the hill he freewheeled, and his cassette made a sound I hadn't heard since the old Suntour freewheel days. I wondered if that was the SRAM freewheel (I swear, it was even louder than Campy!)

Hitting the flat, I could see that perhaps he wasn't going all out, and I wondered if I had a strong enough interval in me to catch him. I figured if I could, then I could see if I was right on his components, if not, well, I needed some interval training anyway. So, off I went.

I did catch him, and to forestall a counter push by him, quickly asked him about his components and his bicycle. Yep, he was riding the SRAM group set, and yes, he really liked them (good news to me since I've been considering getting a new bike so equipped.)

We rode along together and talked - one of those geeky conversations that only cyclists have: Length of crank arms, training patterns, peaking, etc. He mentioned an upcoming trip to Belgium to do some racing, so I asked who he was. Turns out he is local a local phenom and pro rider Greg Daniel. He's heading to Europe to try his hand against the best juniors over there.

Nice guy. I wish him well, and it will be fun to have a local name to watch in the cycling stats. Might even get me interested again.

Oh, he was polite, too. Even asked me if I raced!

Eddie B says...

2011-03-23T19:18:00.000-06:00

As in Borycewicz, US Olympic cycling coach for the early eighties: "You must cover your knees until it is at least 65 degrees."

I was amazed (or appalled) at the sheer number of uncovered cyclist knees I saw on my ride tonight. Red, chapped knees suffering in the spring breeze, the rider they were connected to probably wondering why they couldn't go any faster.

I guess I shouldn't care, it's their knees, but now that we're all in the same insurance pool*, I resent having to pay for the eventual knee replacement they'll require because they were too macho to cover their knees at 55 degrees. This goes for the women riders, too, who apparently suffer the same foolishness as their male counterparts.

Kudos, then, to the rider on the sleek black carbon Pinarello sporting their new Pearl Izumi knickers, a bargain at $185 compared to knee surgery (if my wife is reading this, don't I deserve a pair?) I was positively filled with knicker envy, my 20-year-old team issue leg warmers bunching up under my shorts of similar vintage.

But, hey, we were all out tonight chasing that elusive entity called fitness on a fine spring day! Given the number of riders I did see, I would think that one of us should corner and catch him/her/it - maybe with my warm, protected knees, it'll be me!

*A gross and inaccurate generalization, used here purely for the comedic effect. Or maybe not. I already get my insurance from the government, and the addition of those 30 million has already driven my costs up. I gotta say that I enjoyed having my needs socialized, even though I'm certain that it will prove a corrupting influence on others.**

**You didn't think this referred to me, did you? Of course not, that's the Boehner dude at his finest! (paraphrased by yours truly.)

No Motor Vehicle Parking

2011-03-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

I paused as I passed the new sign on may way into the office this morning. 'No Motor Vehicle Parking' it proudly proclaimed. Interesting. It was on the sidewalk... Clearly, we are henceforth forbidden from leaving our cars on the sidewalks surrounding the office. Of course, ten years I've been working here, and not once have I noticed that any of my co-workers have availed themselves of the sidewalk as a parking place. Not that I might have missed someone...

But what really gets me is that apparently before today I could have been parking on the sidewalks - parking much closer than I usually do, parking where my vehicle would have been under prime observation of the security cameras.

A golden opportunity missed!

A Citizen's Dilemma

2011-02-26T08:06:00.001-07:00

As an individual, I'm fairly certain that I will benefit from the recent Citizens United ruling. As an employee of a corporation in a sector that does substantial lobbying to get laws passed to its benefit, it stands to reason that I will benefit also. Those favorable laws and actions keep employment and wages in this sector high, likely increasing my future income. So, in my role of individual, my best interest lies with maintaining the status quo.

However, as a citizen, I worry about the distortions that occur when money is used to amplify demands upon the government - especially when those amplifications are unequal, sometimes brought about by sector profitability that in turn is enlarged by increased sector lobbying. I might easily take up the argument, presented by Robert Reich in his book Supercapitalism, that only citizens have the right of free speech, and all political contributions should have to come directly from a citizen's income (after tax, take home pay!) - and that as non-citizens, businesses, corporations, non-profits, foreigners - in short, any entity that is not directly a citizen of the country, cannot make contributions nor lobby our government.

So, instead of the corporation for which I work being able to take company profits and lobby the government for more favorable laws to maintain and increase those profits, I would have to do so myself (if I thought it worthwhile), or perhaps pool with my fellow employees and do so.

Since it would be straightforward to assume that laws will be passed (under this second idea) that prevent a corporation from making contributions by funneling the money into an employee's hands with the purpose of passing on to lobbying, this sort of regime should level the playing field, and allow those in society that don't have access to such deep pockets a greater voice. That, in turn, should create more even laws across all sectors of our society, but the effect may be that in my particular sector, the reduction in lobbying power will curtail future profits, and perhaps my future wages (fn1) also (or, more likely, future wage growth).

So, we have a citizen's dilemma: How does one choose between courses of action when the interests of the individual conflict with the interests of the citizen? What is the moral basis for determining which is the correct decision?

(fn1: Those who know me and my work my find it unlikely that the outcomes will be much different, i.e., Neither outcome is likely to see me flirting with either poverty nor riches, nor would it for most individual/citizens. The likely difference is probably just a few percent over many years, so the moral arguments will have to be similarly nuanced and subtle. However, one can easily see that for some individuals in our society, the difference in outcomes is much larger, and hence the personal dilemma they face.)

Women Are Not Moral Agents And Must Be Subjugated For Their Protection (And Male Gratification)

2011-02-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

That would be your conclusion if you listen to the current rhetoric or view the pending legislation emanating from the Republican members of Congress. Clearly, women are incapable of making moral decisions, and must remain subjugated in the best interests of society.

We have a long history of the difficulties women face when accusing a man of rape. They, rather than the accused, often go on trial: How were they dressed, how did they act – it's not enough that they didn't wish to have sex, or that they perhaps indicated as much; unless they took every precaution, denied him at every turn, perhaps they wished it? And now, we have bills presented that would change a rape victim's status to that of 'rape accuser'.

Notice how that changes our perception: A victim is somehow noble, pure, while an accuser can be dirty, have hidden motives, perhaps even speak falsely.

The underlying issue is this: How are men to engage in pre- or extra-marital sex if they can be easily convicted of rape? Their reputations can be tarnished, their marriages split, if women are empowered to accuse them of their dirty actions. No, better to cast doubt on the woman's actions, make it difficult for her to prove, have society aid by labeling her a tramp, a floozy, a trollop. She's not a victim, but just an accuser (it wasn't rape, until she realized he wouldn't leave his wife for her, he'll argue.)

Strange how father-daughter chastity balls have become popular amongst the conservative crowd: But where are the mother-son chastity balls? Why isn't abstention of equal importance for men as it is for women? Why shouldn't the penalties for pre- and extra-marital sex be high for men, also?

Men have had it good for so long: In the dominant position, women were property, sex could be taken at will, and any women who dared to speak up would have to suffer humiliation, while the men could brag about their exploits, free from any pejoratives.

The attempts to keep women subjugated continue, by denying them moral agency. Movements abound to force a rehearing of Roe v. Wade, in the hopes that it will be overturned. More stringent anti-abortion laws have been proposed (including the condoning of vigilantism in South Dakota!). Strangely, even the availability of contraceptives (which can prevent the conditions that would lead to abortion!) have been under continued attack (I see that Planned Parenthood faces a major funding cut under the proposed Republican budget). All appears to be part of an effort to force women to bear more children – which continues the power asymmetry, forcing women into marriage for economic reasons, or forcing them to bear the economic difficulties of attempting to raise children alone while working (which aids in keeping them from rising as far in the workplace.)

The position taken is that abortion is an absolute moral wrong. Interestingly, though, allowances are made for medical reasons, and instances of rape (and the aforementioned changes appear to be an attack on closing this loophole.) Most religious organizations have accepted that abortion in cases of rape and incest is allowable.

But that reveals that abortion is not an absolute: That it is a decision, that a choice can be made between this life and that life. It sets up judges and doctors as moral arbiters, but denies moral agency to those most affected by the decision: The pregnant woman. It continues our history of female subjugation, suggesting that men are more capable moral agents, and that women are not suited to make difficult decisions for themselves.

Our views of personal liberty should suggest otherwise. Our views should always motivate us to give individual moral agency as freely as possible – that is the very meaning of liberty. We want those closest to the question, those who will live with the consequences, to have the freedom to make the decision. Equality is there, too: If we tier our giving of moral agency, then we are creating inequality, also.

Women are equal moral agents to men (and there is absolutely no evidence to the contrary!), fully capable of engaging in moral and civic life to the same degree as men. And in the case of abortion, the woman, who for whatever reasons is considering it, is the individual who will be most affected, who will most carry the consequences, who will remember. So, it only stands to reason in a free and equal society, that the pregnant woman, perhaps in consult with her friend, her clergy, her doctor, her husband, or perhaps alone, is given the right to exercise her moral agency and make the decision without interference.

There is nothing in these proposed laws that make society a better, freer place in which to exercise our individual liberty. They are decidedly skewed towards female subjugation, towards returning to a previous time. But when the previous time involved deep subjugation, an asymmetry of power, there is nothing noble about either the time or the conditions that made it so.

Sure, some men will argue that without these laws they are losing some of their liberty. But, any freedom that comes from inequality is a false freedom, for it can be quickly lost if power shifts. No, real, enduring liberty comes only when it is derived from the interactions of equal members of society, exercising their moral agency, and equally free to do so. Equal members who have to adhere to the same social mores, the same customs, where an interaction is not asymmetrical, but equally acceptable or equally unacceptable.

It also means the freedom to choose the life that we will live, defined by the choices we make. We have the liberty to choose as unacceptable some behavior, and refrain from that behavior ourselves (and perhaps influence others to copy our actions!). But in claiming that freedom, we must have the courage to grant the same freedom to all others, and the wisdom to comprehend that they won't all make the same choices we make, and will live different lives. Freedom is multifaceted, and attempts to constrain it to a single viewpoint, such as these Republican proposed laws, must be met and beaten back in the interests of all.

Copyright Tax?

2011-02-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

In our current state of affairs, everything written gets copyright protection from the moment it is created, and for the next 99 years. This blanket protection now outlives the creator of any new work, and provides a major hurdle for new creators to derive or build upon previous work.

Sure, the answer is easy: They just have to get permission of the copyright holder to use his or her work. However, as outlined in 'Free Culture' by Dr L. Lessig, identifying the copyright holder can be more than just difficult, and in the case of music remixing, require so many holders to be identified and tracked down to post inquires to that making the derivative work is no longer viable.

I question society's benefit from such stringent and long-lived copyright laws. Not only do they restrict creativity, but they lower the possibility of competition (remember, the golden tenet of a free market society?), and pump up salaries in several fields beyond what a non-monopolized market would produce (think sports, movies, performers).

Initial copyright protection was granted for just 7 years, with a one-time renewal of an additional 7 years if the creator so wished. I would think this would be quite sufficient for the majority of cases: Either the creation is no longer worth much (if anything!) after 14 years, and could freely enter the public domain, or so much income has been received by the creator (think JKRowling) that allowing the creation to enter the public domain will not have any real affect upon their well-being.

But there are those who feel that having control of their creation is important, regardless of whether they are earning income. Perhaps Ms Rowling wouldn't want to have others writing stories featuring Harry Potter (and doing a much worse / the same / better job).

So, in the interests of getting the bulk of human creativity into the public domain quickly where it can be used as a springboard for more creativity, but allowing those few instances where there is a compelling interest in keeping it out, (and recognizing that giving copyright protection is to create a form of property), perhaps we should just allow those who want to extend their exclusive rights to their creation the option of doing so by paying a tax.

The tax would be proportional to the property's value (like all property taxes), but have a high enough minimum to prevent speculative holding of copyrights. Granted, this would still give large corporations an advantage of maintaining long-lived copyrights, but at least they would have to continually evaluate (and pay!) to do so, rather than periodically extending copyright (via legislative lobbying) in a blanket manner that prevents all works from entering the public domain.

It doesn't solve all problems surrounding copyright, but if we were to return to a seven year copyright, and then force those who want to extend their rights to at least pay a tax, perhaps it would solve many.

A reasonable proposition? Or seriously flawed? I submit this idea to a jury of my peers...

The Bigotry Of Bankers

2011-02-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

Last week I labored. I didn't do my normal, sit-in-my-chair job of programming, but instead really worked. I framed my basement. Twelve hour days, late dinners, tired muscles. And, I realized just how much a life of leisure I live. I sit for eight hours, take my lunch at the proscribed time, make up activities just to get a little physical exertion. Sure, lifting and bicycling get my heart-rate up, but in the end, I have nothing to show for the effort: The world has not been changed, other than some extra calories burned.

But physically building, assembling something – making a structure where none stood before: That is real work. As I labored, I thought about how those who have forgotten what it means to work with their hands often look down on those who still remember: The economists for whom a day laborer is just an interchangeable unit of output, unable to command a higher salary due to the low level of education required; The Banker who believes his or her output is somehow superior due to the extra education attained and money's fungible nature.

But during the last decade, when the financiers of Wall Street paid themselves ever greater salaries and bonuses as they repackaged ever more mortgage backed securities, justifying it on the grounds that they were making large contributions to the economy, who was it that was really providing the wealth of the nation? Why, it was the laborers who were building the houses that were being securitized: The framers, the drywallers, the electricians and plumbers, the surveyors and roofers and concrete workers. Wall Street extracted its profits on the backs of those who do the work – and to add insult, the unscrupulous mortgage brokers who had nothing to lose by writing liar's loans, often saddled those same laborers with houses they couldn't afford.

When Wall Street's house of cards came tumbling down, who has paid a disproportionate share of the cost through extended and high unemployment? Why, it is those same individuals who created the wealth that Wall Street pilfered.

Yet, an unrepentant Financial Industry has beaten back attempts to write regulations and increase taxes that would move some of their ill-gotten wealth back to those who did the actual creating. Crying foul, they continue to justify what they do as something vitally important: That without them and their expertise, the economy couldn't run.

However, they are only partially correct: Money and finance are necessary components of our world, but not sufficient. In order for money to have any value, in order for a loan to return a profit, there must by some underlying worker who is actually creating something of use; building, modifying, molding. Wealth comes from the bottom up.

Bankers are experts in obfuscating this simple fact by the language they use, their allusions to (unproven) economic principles, their appeals to politicians who receive their money.

Fortunately for us, however, by pretending that they aren't riding on the backs of all of the workers of society, by claiming theirs is a privileged position that must be paid 20, 30, 100+ times what a laborer makes, their bigotry is plainly visible for all to see.

Protecting One's Nose

2011-02-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose." A libertarian would probably rephrase it thus: "Your right to complain about my swinging fist begins at the tip of your nose."

In many ways, the libertarian viewpoint on when we can complain, when we can limit another's behavior is the right stance to take. It helps us remember that we don't want to overly constrain others, because we want to retain the right for ourselves to pursue our version of happiness without interference from the rest of society.

I find it strangely odd that pushes to limit who we can choose as living partners, as life partners, as marriage partners, issues from the pro-libertarian party. Sure, for decades they trumped up reasons why limiting marriage to heterosexuals protected society's (metaphorical) nose, but as each was debunked, their continued stance against same-sex marriage reveals instead a very non-libertarian viewpoint.

True libertarianism requires a highly developed sense of reciprocity - the ability to recognize that creating societal restrictions requires a strong proof that society will improve as a result, and that the restrictions don't constrain a minority's choices (paradoxically, at least to much of what is espoused as libertarian thinking, regulations fit this test: Requiring that businesses adhere to minimum quality standards allows consumers greater freedom to choose from competing products without fear of becoming the guinea pig for poison, and still gives business the options to select how and what to make). Restricting others simply because you don't like what they are doing is a form of tyranny, not liberty.

Choosing who we associate with, who we share our lives with, should be a fundamental right of all in society. Everyone should be free to make that choice without restrictions - sure, you can impose limits on yourself based upon your world-view, but really, it endangers your nose not one bit if instead of choosing Jill, Jack prefers John, and Ann and Beth want to move in next door.

It is high time that true, reciprocal thinking enters our debate on same-sex marriage, and that those who would maintain true liberty for choosing our lives stand up and drown out the tyrannical calls of those pseudo-libertarians who would instead impose their views - views that increase our liberty not one bit!

Motivation, Manipulation

2011-01-18T03:01:00.000-07:00

This post is more of a question than an essay. What is the difference between motivation and manipulation: When does a motivating action cross the line and become a manipulating action? What is the salient characteristic of manipulation that motivation lacks (or vice verse)? Or, as I started suspecting, is the difference purely in the eye of the beholder (the one being motivated or manipulated)?

I know: We could all look up the dictionary definition for clues, but that's cheating. With your current knowledge and experience, what would you say?

Violent References

2011-01-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

One of the notable achievements of an electoral democracy, like ours, is that the ballot box replaces violence as the mechanism of power change. As the different would be leaders contend for their time in control, the pen replaces the sword, words replace bullets, oration the cannonball.

In support of this ideal, many realize that allusions to violence have no place in the process either: Criticize your opponent (or those from a different power group), speak out with specific remedies you prefer, frame it as a contest if you will, but leave the violent metaphors (no 'targeting' your opponent, no 'assassinating' their view, etc.) out of the conversation or debate.

You would think that removing violent speech from the process would be so uncontroversable as to gain universal acceptance - that even those who've perhaps used such speech in the past would realize the undesirability, and join with those who call for all to abstain.

But, no. It seems that there are some who so identify with their idols that a call for them to refrain from violence as metaphor or allusion is a personal attack - and in defending the right (?) to violent speech, they show themselves to be morally unanchored.

For their very defense is to deny the interconnectedness of society - to deny that our actions ripple outwards and affect and influence those around us - that leading a moral life is not just for our benefit, but benefits (by example and support) our family, our friends, our colleagues, our fellow citizens.

Their defense, too, espouses the ultimate 'me first' attitude - recast as 'me only' - an abdication of any and all responsibility to anyone else, to society, to country.

But, for an electoral democracy to succeed requires that the citizenry accept shared responsibility for society's problems, that they build an inclusive community of shared ideals and values, and, foremost, that violence as a solution is eschewed in favor of open debate, with ideas carrying the day.

You Are Not A Rational Actor In A Free Market Economy!

2011-01-05T06:14:00.005-07:00

I'm not trying to insult you, but I wanted to get your attention and start you thinking. I know you believe that you are rational, and in the sense that you aren't irrational, you are. However, when an economist postulates rational actors in an economy, he or she actually means something more. They mean that you have perfect knowledge about the market, that there is no asymmetry of information between you and whomever you are dealing with. They also mean that you plan your actions according to those which will provide you with the most good.

And that's so patently false in the real world in which we live and act economically that I can say that you aren't a rational actor! We all act economically with partial information, we sometimes (Oftentimes?) make economic decisions on a whim, not really considering whether the outcome will be good or bad. We also don't all act alike, and we often are willing to withhold information (or lie!) during a transaction if we think it will give us an advantage.

Given that rational (knowing, utility maximizing) actors provide a major underpinning of neoclassical economics (the kind that holds sway in our policy makers - Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan (an extreme case)), one has to wonder if the predictions made are as bad as the axiom (oh, wait! We don't have to wonder: The evidence is in, and the predictions don't mean squat - one can clearly see that they don't know what's going to happen next in the economy!)

What about the Free Market Economy? Again, a fuzzy definition would be that it is unregulated, with free trade across boundaries and within. But, again, economists mean something much more restrictive: Not only that trade is unregulated, but that any of the aforementioned rational actors can buy or sell at any time without effecting the market!

But, that only works if the actors are small: During 2008, when the financial industry started melting down, we saw how the actions of the major banks (Lehman, Bear Sterns, AIG) to liquidate their positions in hopes of raising capital to cover their margin calls caused the market to fall further, which required more selling, which led to more selling, until some (notably Lehman and Bear Sterns) could no longer change their positions, and were forced into bankruptcy or a bailout (I shouldn't say 'forced', since I really think it was optional to save them...)

We've never seen a 'free' market - so economists have absolutely no data that would indicate that a free market could exist, or that it would be optimum. Again, however, this tenet provides one of the underpinnings of neoclassical economics.

Think about it: In physics, theorems hold sway as long as they provide useful predictions about events, and when an event or experiment occurs that contradicts theory, scientists search for a better theorem that can explain (predict) the event - and the theorems are built to support the empirical evidence. Additionally, axioms are never adopted unless they have been solidly proven (and if they are ever dis-proven, they cast their dependent theorems into doubt!).

But in economics, we have an entire class of 'predictive' theorems built on at least two very shaky (false?) axioms - with our policy leaders using those economic models to determine our national economic and monetary policy. Any wonder they didn't predict the potential downside to the actions of the major banks and investment houses as they grew ever larger trading Credit Default Swaps and Collateralized Debt Obligations, a majority based upon the subprime lending market?

Our Libraries

2011-01-03T06:30:00.001-07:00

I have a bookmark with a saying of Erasmus: "When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes."

My love of reading is such that could apply to me; I would seriously be in jeopardy of purchasing more books than I should afford. Fortunately, my city has a reasonable library system, and I don't have to.

It was actually better than reasonable a few years ago, before the recession. Seeing that the revenue was falling, and likely to fall farther, a ballot initiative was floated to make a separate, dedicated income stream for the city libraries based on property tax. It wasn't to be much, the estimates were $60-$70 for a median valued home. I for one know that in books alone I save far more than that each year; plus, with its computers, many city residents who cannot afford one of their own can search for information for school, look for work, even keep an email account they otherwise would not.

Unfortunately, many in the city either didn't know firsthand the value of the library, or think it worthwhile (perhaps because of misinformation like this), and the measures failed. Several of our libraries were closed, and hours at the remaining curtailed.

Sadly, yesterday I read in the paper that the sharing agreement with the county libraries for our residents to check out books there will be sharply curtailed. Not unreasonably so, since our residents don't contribute to their funding, it was extremely generous of them to allow us to check out books at their branches.

So it was with a little anxiety that I rushed to the library. I had requested an inter-library transfer of a book and had received confirmation that it had arrived. However, I wanted to get it in my hands before they changed their minds and took it back!

So, for now, I finally have a copy of "Econned" by Yves Smith to read (she of the blog Naked Capitalism), with the hopes that these transfers will continue for our beleaguered libraries, since I have a few more to request.

Hopefully, too, the residents of our city will change their minds and decide that they, like me, value our libraries much more, and perhaps we'll be able to bring them back.

Conflict of Interest (oweno.com should be Oh No! What a load of crap Part 2)

2011-01-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

The national debt is growing. We are currently running a deficit, spending more than we take in in taxes from our people. To some, this is a cause for alarm. To others, it is an acceptable situation, given the current recession, and, as long as it proves temporary, a good thing for the government to do.

Everyone has their favorite villain: The two wars, The growth of social welfare (including medical spending), The financial industry, China. Of course, it is actually a combination of all of them that contributes to our current deficit: We would need to get all under control to balance the budget, if that were a worthy goal (again, it's not clear that it needs to be balanced at the Federal level.)

But there is one sector of the current budget that is balanced, that hasn't, ever, contributed to the deficit. One sector that does not need to be tampered, changed, realigned, etc. One sector that has its own, dedicated income stream, a stream that has always exceeded the payments made on its behalf.

You would think that fact alone would prevent every honest politician from including it in a list of items to be adjusted to balance the budget. That it would prevent any special interest group from attacking it under the rubric of balancing the budget. That it would assure our citizens of the viability of the program, and remove concerns about its ties to our deficit.

But, that's not what we see. Every time the subject of the budget comes up, this program heads the list of those that need adjustment or cutting. Every conversation about congressional spendthrifts includes mention of this program. It has become so ingrained in our consciences that reference is made in seemingly unrelated articles.

Why should that be? Why would a solvent, money making program get included when the subject of the budget comes up? Why would it be disparagingly referred to as a cause of our woes when in fact is does not?

My guess is two-fold. First, not every citizen is aware of this fact. They haven't seen the numbers, they don't know that the program is, in fact, solvent. But, it is: In 2009, income was $899 billion, expenditures were $678 billion. That's a pretty good surplus.

Second is the propaganda machine that continually couples this program with the deficit and the debt, that has so infiltrated our thinking that the program is mentioned, to the exclusion of all others, when government growth is the topic.

But, whence this propaganda machine? Who's behind it? For what purpose?

I have to admit that I don't know. But I can take a guess. Remember oweno.com? They include this program in their list of items that need to be cut back to balance the budget. Who is oweno.com? Why, it's none other than the Peter G Peterson Foundation, run by investment banker Peter G Peterson.

And the program? Social Security.

And the purpose? Conflict of Interest.

Social Security is a retirement vehicle, run by the US Government. It doesn't have great returns, but it does have guaranteed returns. And, it is big: $900 billion in 2009 alone.

Investment Banking is a retirement vehicle run by banks and Wall Street. They sometimes have great returns, but there are no guarantees. Think about how they must be salivating to get their hands on the $900 billion collected by the US Government each year to fund Social Security? A significant portion of that $900 billion would go to line their pockets, rather than finding its way into the hands of our retirees.

So, who cares if Social Security contributes to the deficit? Since worry about the deficit is on people's minds, it can be used to whip up concern of a solvent program for the very purpose of moving that money into private hands to increase private empires.

But only if we listen. Only if we follow the faulty reasoning that it somehow is tied to the debt.

And only if we are silent. We have an obligation, on behalf of the 3.5 million people who will retire this year, and similar numbers for the next several years, to tell everyone we meet that Social Security is solvent, that it doesn't contribute to the debt, and that it has proven itself a societal good.

We have an obligation to pressure our law makers, and the president, to stand down from tampering with it in their pursuit of 'fiscal accountability'.

And, we have an obligation to remain informed about matters fiscal, so that we aren't easily led into believing we need to fix problems that don't need fixing (which are presented by those who just want to get their hands on the money!)

HVAC Work (Inintended Comedy!)

2010-12-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

The first step to completing my basement was to have some HVAC and plumbing work done. The furnace and water heater were smack in the middle, which just cut up the space horribly. Figuring that we'll be in the house for the next 14-16 years (and maybe more, who knows?), I decided that it would pay back to have both replaced with high efficiency units that could be mounted at the crawl space wall and vented horizontally - which allowed for the placement away from my existing flue (the existing units couldn't be moved far because of flue rise/run requirements.)

I called five companies, got four to visit the house, three provided bids. I fired questions back about each to ensure they were doing what I wanted (and had accounted for the various complexities of the job!). Additionally, I researched each with the BBB and time in service. Through the question period, two took themselves out of the running due to lax responses (one company decided that their estimator perhaps didn't do a good job and wanted to send another person back out!) The final company, based upon everything, decided that they could do it for a little less than initially proposed, had a spotless BBB record, and 63 years in business. How could I go wrong?

My wife calls them Frick and Frack, the clowns. I think they are just good Christians, and since it took God 6 days to create the universe, and not wanting to show God up, they'll get nothing done in less time. (Mind you, the initial estimate was for two full days, one for furnace, one for water heater.) They started last Monday. That was a 14 hour day. Tuesday was a parts gathering day. Wednesday was 8 hours, as was Thursday. The furnace was installed on Monday, and up and running Monday night (11:30pm!), but it was the wrong unit (not what was specified on my bid sheet.) Wednesday they brought in the water heater, (after carrying out my old one) and replaced the blower motor on the furnace. Thursday, the water heater was set in place, hooked up, vented, complete: But wouldn't light. Diagnostics indicated a bad gas valve (that's just pure, dumb luck!). After they left, the furnace wouldn't run. Turns out the plumber had had to do a little electrical to hook up the water heater, and had mis-wired the switch to the furnace, robbing it of power. I looked up the schematics, and rewired the switch myself, restoring power (and heat)at 9pm Thursday night. (It was in the low 20s outside, and down to 65 degrees inside when I got it restarted.) Friday, they showed up late, which required that we get a house sitter so my wife and I could leave to pick up our dog from the vet (another story, another time.) While we were gone, they determined that they couldn't repair the water heater, and removed it. To make us feel good, the HVAC guy wanted to install a humidifier, free of charge. I told him no. I wanted the correct furnace and water heater (oh, yes, it was an incorrect unit too, same part #, but not correct type per the bid sheet), and didn't want anything else with water. Did I mention that the furnace dripped water for 4 days due to a leak in the flue? That the overburdened condensate pump they installed also overflowed for 4 days? Both of those problems were fixed on Friday with the repair of the flue and the installation of a floor drain, rendering the pump unnecessary. I don't want anything else that can leak water!

It appears that they can't get either of the units specified (furnace or water heater) - although both are in the catalogs of the respective companies. They are upgrading me to a very nice tankless water heater, installation was begun yesterday (Saturday), but couldn't be completed because they failed to load enough vent piping (specifically elbows) onto the plumber's truck. We nixed any work for today, wanting a quiet day without workers tramping in and out of the house during the late afternoon and early evening. We are scheduled to begin Monday at 10am (that will be the sixth work day!). I'm not sure what happens with the furnace - we'll have to sit down next week (the company salesman and I) and decide. It would appear that the one installed will work fine (heating), the only question will be if it has sufficient airflow to prevent the AC coils from freezing in the summer. They are talking about giving me a 2 year full replacement guarantee.

Funny thing: On Wednesday, the main office called and indicated that I hadn't filled out the paperwork nor paid for the furnace installation. I told them that I would be doing paperwork and writing checks after the City Inspector passed the work specified in the permits (oh, yes! We do have permits!) - and they should be neither surprised nor ask again. They haven't. And if the inspector indicates anything is not up to code, they will have to fix that before any money changes hands. I'm holding that over them.

It's interesting. The company stands behind their 100% satisfaction guarantee, and they seem to be trying to live up to the promise. They haven't done anything unprofessional, other than make mistakes (and have some bad luck on the way to compound it!) The furnace install took at least an hour longer because the breaker failed - and when power didn't come on to the furnace initially, the installers assumed it was some of the wiring they had done, and started investigating there. It wasn't until last that they thought to check the breaker, which after 11 years on, had given up the ghost when switched off for the first time! Four of the five guys who've been out to the house I wouldn't mind having a beer with. And I understand work taking longer than estimated: It sometimes happens to me in my job; I'll think that it will only take a day or a week to fix some problem in the software, and then the time will be up and the software will not run due to some interactions that weren't visible initially. Again, the professionalism they exhibit: There have been no excuses, no complaining, no "you didn't specify that" from them. Just attempts to get it done. So, I have a rough time working up much anger (frustration and disappointment is closer to what I feel.) It has been a little strange living without hot water since Wednesday, kind of like camping (but in my own house!)

No, I'll not name the company at this time. Yesterday, they still were working to earn my satisfaction and referral to neighbors and friends. I see that as a leverage point during the negotiations for what I'll finally pay and what additional guarantees I'll get - no sense bad-mouthing them. I'm going to give them that I'm just one of the unlucky 5% who has to endure mix-ups and defective products during what should otherwise be just a big job.

Then again, perhaps I'm caught as the principle in an old Jerry Lewis' movie or a Lemony Snicket novel - help! Let me out of here! (Oh, and do you mind if I stop by for a shower?)

Senate Spending Bill Loaded with Earmarks?

2010-12-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

According to the Bloomberg report on the $1.2 Trillion Senate Omnibus Spending bill, it is a monstrosity loaded with spending earmarks. Senate Republicans are indicating that they will vote to kill the bill, a “porked-up monstrosity [who's supporters] would forfeit any claim to fiscal responsibility and economic conservatism”.

So, just what constitutes a 'loaded' or 'packed' spending bill? Well, reading a little deeper, it means that more than 88 of the 100 Senators have obtained earmarks for their projects. Which means that at least 29 of the Republicans now vowing to kill the bill worked to gain earmarks for their pet projects! (I'm not picking on Republicans per se here, I'm not so naive as to believe Democrats have never pulled this same tactic.) What a win-win for them: They can posture that they are fiscally conservative, denounce the earmarking practice, but just in the off-chance that the bill succeeds, their home state gets some dough, and they can go home, and in a political two-face, tell their constituents about how much money they brought home to them to create jobs!

And, how much money are we talking here? What does 'porked-up' mean? Well, it means that the bill contains....wait for it.....

....wait for it....

$8 billion dollars in earmarks!

Stop. The entire bill is $1200 billion dollars. That means that without the earmarks, it would still be roughly $1200 billion dollars. $8 billion comprises just 2/3rds of 1% of the total.

Wow. Definitions in DC just don't match how we define words in the rest of the country. Like porker. If you were 1% overweight, I wouldn't refer to you as a porker, I probably wouldn't even notice (you'd be, what, 1.5 lbs heavier than you should be? Maybe 2 lbs?)

Like monstrosity. As Utah Senator Bob Bennett points out, the earmarks (300 pages of the 1294 page document), by indicating where some money is to go, provide transparency and prevent the White House from diverting that money to its pet projects. Maybe not a best practice, but certainly far from anything monstrous.

Like Integrity. Out here, integrity means you do and say the same thing everywhere, to everyone - that you can be trusted. In DC, however, it appears that you stand up for your ideology when you can be heard and seen, all the while sneaking some extra money in for your folks back home under the pretense that...hell, we don't actually know what pretense those hacks would make! But, do you suppose that when they are congratulating themselves about the $91 million (on average) each brought home to their state, that they are admitting that they did it via the very process they claim to loathe?

Like Bias. Due to media bias towards conflict and sensationalism*, the real details of the bill, things that really matter (how much for Defense? how much for Medicaid/Medicare? How much for Federal government? How much for Education? How much for roads/bridges/infrastructure?) aren't even mentioned.

Like Honesty. Doesn't have a separate meaning to folks back home, because it is a word that has been stripped of all meaning within our governing chambers.

*Borrowed from my friend Cameron who, correctly, pointed out that the media doesn't really have a left/right bias, but is biased towards whoever is creating the most strife.

Bibliography (just in case you can't follow the link above)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-15/trillion-dollar-bill-packed-with-earmarks-in-u-s-senate.html

Bias and Randomness

2010-12-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

After discussing how bias can enter the hiring process, someone brought up this wrinkle:

Suppose, that after analyzing your success at hiring, you realize that all your interviewing and selecting doesn't actually improve your selection of new hires. In other words, you realize (as the HR manager) that statistically, you discern that in predicting who will do well, who will stay with the company, you are doing no better than if you had randomly selected the individuals for hire (and your process is certainly introducing bias).

So, you propose, that instead of an expensive personal interviewing process, you conduct a few random phone interviews (to weed out those who can pass your written test but lack the ability to actually speak with another person), and then you place all remaining candidates into a pool, and randomly select those who will receive offers from your company. You argue that, since you can't actually discern which candidates will go on to successful careers at your company, and you are certainly (although inadvertently) introducing bias against some groups, randomly selecting the candidates for hire will remove bias, and do no worse in selecting potential employees.

Is your idea feasible? Is it recommendable (i.e., there won't be negative fallout that you can't address)? Will it be acceptable to the candidates themselves? To Society?

Bias

2010-12-03T07:07:00.000-07:00

From a lively lunchtime discussion:

We know, from the experiences of the Standardized Aptitude Test (SAT), commonly used for college admissions, and from the folks that develop the various IQ tests, that aptitude tests can exhibit a bias against people who come from a different ethnic or cultural background (i.e., different life experiences and emphasis) than the test creators. For reference, let's refer to this type of bias as Test Bias.

We also have experience that education is not evenly distributed (at least in America). We have experience that where schools are poor, where often minority ethnic or cultural groups reside, that the education they receive is not as effective at imparting the skills and knowledge they need to pursue the more technical and often higher paying jobs. Let's refer to this type of bias as Education Bias.

Assume that you are the head of HR for a large, national corporation. You've observed that a significant minority, comprising 25% of the population, is represented at only 5% in you company. You've gone to the effort of developing a pre-screening test that you administer to all applicants to weed out those unlikely to succeed based upon their not having the required skills and knowledge. Since you are large (over 70,000 employees), you find yourself in the position of hiring nearly 3000 new college graduates each year. After the recent such hiring, you sit back and look at the numbers.

Nearly 20% of the applicants did identify with the minority group, so the percentage of applicants was not too much lower than their representation in the population. However, you observe that only 1/2, 10% of those applicants who passed the pre-screening skills test and qualified for a personal interview where of the minority.

The question you have: Is it true that a much lower percentage of the minority group have acquired the necessary skills and knowledge to work in your business (evidence of Education Bias), or is your aptitude test biased against this group? How would you go about discerning which?

(Extra credit: After the personal interviews, you observe that only 5% of the applicants who receive offers are of the minority group. Is that further evidence of Education Bias (the minority applicants do not have the necessary skills and knowledge), or is your company reducing its minority representation through a 'personal' bias exhibited by your interviewers?)

High Frequence Trading and A Book Recommendation

2010-11-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

This article on High-Frequency Trading over at Balkinization (a collection of legal scholars and lawyers) caught my eye. It is a subject that I think we need to think about a lot more as a nation - executing market trades is a fundamental aspect of capitalism as we have designed it, but is buying, holding, and then selling stocks in only 11 seconds (or less) beneficial? Does it smooth the market value function, or does it instead introduce noise and volatility, and create possibilities for sabotage? Read author Frank Pasquale's thoughts at: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/11/martial-finance-case-of-high-frequency.html

The whole thing made me recall a book I read two years ago: The Tenured Professor, by economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith buried insights into our markets and our behavior that it has taken me time to appreciate, but the one of the themes of the book, that we behave relative to investing more based on what others are doing and less on what we think of as value, is especially pertinent to the subject of computer based trading, and High Frequency Trading in particular.

oweno.com should be Oh, No! What a Load of Crap!

2010-11-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

Nothing bothers me more than dishonesty in pushing national policy. I saw a commercial for oweno.com last night and again tonight while watching the news, and from the content, my 'National Scare' radar jumped into high gear. So, I checked out the site, and it is awful! But, just to demonstrate to you how awful (and why you should treat anything this bunch advocates with more than a little prejudice), I'll take it apart for you...

Can you imagine 13 trillion? Neither can I. oweno starts out by telling us that the National Debt is 13.6 trillion dollars. But, they never tell us what it means. And, because we can't imagine 13 trillion, we assume that must be a 'Big Deal'. However, this is to commit the fallacy of large numbers: Just because a number used to describe something is unusually large doesn't correlate that its meaning is similarly big.

We need something to compare it to. I have an idea: Let's compare the National Debt to our country's National Yearly Income: The GDP. Pulling numbers from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (bea.gov), we can see that the US GDP for 2009 was 14.1 trillion dollars - so another way of expressing the US Debt would be to divide it by the US Income, and we get... 1 (One). Yep. The US Debt is 1. Consider this: Most US households, those that own their home, have a Debt of 2 or greater. So, is a US Debt of 1 a big deal?

If I told you that the US Debt over the last 100 years has ranged from .35 to 1.21, you would have a little more information. And If I told you that the debt of 1.21 occurred at the close of WWII (1945), and the most recent low of .5 occurred during the Carter Presidency, you would have a little more information. Yes, our debt has been growing since Reagan took office, after a long decline during the presidency's of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. It rose during Reagan and Bush, dropped during Clinton, and has risen again during Bush and Obama.

I could go on dragging up information about the US Debt, looking at other countries' debt, what economists would have to say, but you get the point: oweno.com starts out by telling its readers nothing, and instead attempts to scare them using very large numbers. Not a very auspices beginning for an organization 'dedicated to raising awareness about America’s fiscal challenges and accelerating action on them.' It takes information to raise awareness...

The second paragraph continues the fallacy of large numbers, as does the third. Hmmm, not doing very well in the information department yet...

Oh, the third then attempts to scare us again with the statement that 'half this money [$200 billion interest on the debt] goes overseas to foreign governments that own our debt.'

Yep, foreign governments do own our debt. They do so because we trade with them, and instead of importing and exporting in equal measure, we have been running a trade imbalance for the last decade: Foreign goods come into America, and American dollars go overseas to pay for them. The overseas nations then purchase US Treasury Bonds, since they can't purchase a like amount of American Manufactured goods. Economists from Krugman to Baker to Galbraith to Salmon to Thoma and on and on have been pointing this out for the last 10 years - you would think that a 'former Secretary of Commerce (Peter G. Peterson)' would also understand this: It's the overvalued US dollar that contributes to the 'fact' that foreign countries 'own' our debt, not our profligate ways.

The fourth paragraph is the most egregious of all, however. The foundation claims that the debt could 'double' by 2020, 'triple' by 2030, and 'quadruple' by 2040. Why the scare quotes? Because, they are being inherently dishonest with these statements (and one suspects they 'know' it, but are doing a little cya.)

Sure, the National Debt could 'quadruple' to $50 trillion by 2040, but where do you suppose the National Income could be in 2040? That's 30 years from now - Let's take a quick look at our historical change in National Income (GDP): Looking at numbers (again from bea.gov), we can see that the National GDP was $2.5 trillion in 1979, $5.4 trillion in 1989 (more than 'double'), $9.4 trillion in 1999 (more than 'triple'), and $14.1 trillion in 2009 (more than 'quadruple', in fact, almost 'sextuple'!!!!!) Oh, My, Gosh! Peter G. Peterson and oweno just gave away the game: If our debt were to continue at the current rate of 1 (One), and our GDP were to grow at historical rates, then our debt would become $50 trillion in 2040, which would be UNCHANGED from today!

That is how you lie with big numbers, folks. The fourth paragraph reveals the foundation for the dishonest charlatans that they are - they attempt to scare us using big numbers without grounding those numbers in anything meaningful to which they apply. An honest organization would look at the debt in a meaningful way, using meaningful language to describe it. They would honestly say that we don't know whether the debt will grow or shrink in the coming years, and not attempt to scare us by showing how big of a number could by used to describe it if it were to remain equal to our GDP. An honest organization would look at the factors that increase the debt, and what occurred during the period from 1945 to 1980 that coincided with a steady decline of the debt, and the factors that accompanied its rise since then (and I deliberately say 'coincided' and 'accompanied', because causation is very, very difficult to determine in the noisy system that is our economy.)

I suspect that the Peter G. Peterson Foundation has something in mind, and it's not something that will be universally, or even majorly, good for Americans. I'll keep looking at (and rebuking) oweno until we figure out just what they want, and why they aren't willing to be honest in their evaluations in their attempt to get it.

Dennis Cauchon of USAToday Should Be Fired

2010-11-11T06:46:00.001-07:00

As a journalist, he is either incompetent or, worse, he is a biased hack that wants to mislead us. Either way, he has no use holding a reporting position at a major US newspaper.

The dual articles that have caught my attention (and caused my ire) are this one and this one. You probably heard both on the national nightly news: In the first, he outlines that the number of workers being paid more than $150,000 has risen tenfold in the last five years, and doubled in the last two. In the second, he purports to tell us that federal workers earn double their private counterparts.

I don't have the time to dissect each and every claim he makes (although they appear to be universally incorrect!), but I'll start, and you can understand the underlying problems in his 'reporting'.

First: Mr Cauchon doesn't cite his sources. Although he does indicate that the information comes from the Office of Personnel Management, they have hundreds of documents available to the public. I was able to find a couple that surely he looked at, but not all. That's shoddy on his part (or deliberately obfuscating).

Second: The claim that the number of federal workers making more than $150,000 has ballooned.

If Mr Cauchon had the least bit of economic knowledge, he would realize two things that would have to be investigated underlying this. First, he would have to account for inflation: Using a nominal 3% figure for the last five years, we would find that any worker who was making $130,000 or more in 2005 we would expect to be making $150,000 or more today. I was able to find a figure for 2004: There were over 34,000 federal civilian employees making more than $130,000 at that time. So we would expect that if their salaries had just kept pace with inflation, there would be at least that many making more than $150,000 today. Now, Mr Cauchon does show that there are more than 82,000 making above $150,000 today. So, the news is not that we have 75000 more people earning at that rate, but that we have 40,000 more earning. Second, since Mr Cauchon is paid to do his reporting (as opposed to you and I who have to take time away from our personal lives to find this information), he should have dug a little deeper into where the extra high paying employees existed: Is there legislation passed during the last five years that created these jobs? Are they located in one area of the country? What is the underlying cause?

That would be useful information with which to inform our opinion.

Third: The Claim (from the second article) that Federal Pay is double its private counterparts.

That appears to be completely bogus and misleading. From the reports that I did find at the OPM site, they conduct extensive studies every year in an attempt to pay federal employees the same amount for the same job as their private counterparts: They compare the required education and experience to arrive at comparable salaries. They are open about their methodology, and in fact conclude that, on average, federal employees are paid slightly less than their private counterparts. In the second article, Mr Cauchon admits that they study he or his counterparts are using disregards eduction and experience - i.e., it is useless for doing any sort of pay comparison! What a load of crap!

Finally, the point that the numbers growing exponentially during the last two years: We would expect that also. If you think about the pay of all individuals as a pyramid, with ever larger numbers at lower pay, and the pyramid rising out of the water (the $150,000 pay line), you would expect that each year a greater number of individuals would rise above that line - reproducing the numbers in his article tells us nothing useful about the movement in pay: The same effect is occurring in the private sector...

The real reasons Mr Cauchon has gained my ire are these: First, we count on our reporters to inform our opinion, so that we can make considered decisions about various subjects. When a report does his or her job so shoddily that they provide mis-information at best, we are not capable of doing our jobs as citizens in a democracy. Since the implicit undertone of his dual articles is that Federal workers are being paid above their skill, education, and experience levels, I want to turn that back on Mr Cauchon and have shown how he is obviously being paid way above his level of expertise as well.

Second, as the aforementioned citizen in a democracy, I take affront to these wholesale attacks on our government. We form our government and use it to achieve collectively those objectives we cannot achieve alone. Sure we have the military to protect us from outside attackers, but we have also found the need to protect ourselves from the rapacious, wealthy elite, who would, in many cases, poison us with our food, their chemicals, drugs; take advantage of us through obfuscated contracts, unsafe working conditions, and more. We've used our government time and again to stipulate our interactions, and provide laws to regulate their behavior, and qualified individuals to oversee the enforcement of those regulations.

Like a cancer in an otherwise healthy body, there are pockets of graft, corruption, perhaps nepotism that form within our otherwise healthy and useful government. I want, nay, depend upon intrepid, intelligent, and well informed reporters who will ferret out those pockets and expose them, so that we can act to control, reform, or remove them.

Unfortunately, Mr Cauchon displays none of those qualities in his writings of Nov 10. Instead, he opens the door for wholesale assaults on our entire federal employee system (See, for example, Mr Beohner's comments on freezing all government pay). That would surely undermine our collective goals as a citizenry, since it is less than 4% of all federal civilian employees who make a great deal; most federal employees are paid down in a scale commensurate with their private counterparts, a scant 1.4% raise this year likely falls behind inflation, and they become poorer, too.

Mr. Cauchon has not informed us, has not uncovered corruption or a frightening trend, has not even told the truth in any meaningful way. Although, I am probably wrong in calling for his firing: He could be sent back to the copyroom, etc for more training. His editor is probably the individual who should be fired for dereliction of duties in allowing Mr Cauchon's piece to even appear!

Dr. John Ioannidis is Revealing our Lack of Knowledge

2010-10-27T06:52:00.000-06:00

Dr. John Ioannidis is a meta-researcher, and in this piece at The Atlantic, he explains how bias and a lack of true understanding of randomness renders many of our medical studies equivocal. Researchers go in to a study looking for a correlation, and viola! they find it. Sometimes, another team goes in looking for the opposite correlation, and viola! they find it. Frequently, however, the hallmark of science: That another team will attempt to duplicate your study and either add to the evidence or highlight an error - never occurs.

Naturally, drug studies are the worst. Naturally, because most of us intuitively grasp that where big money is involved, where a great deal is at stake, the research can easily be corrupted. It's corrupted in this sense because the researchers want to see the correlations between their new drug and the benefits - and that inherent bias leads them to set up a study that will naturally prove, rather than disprove the efficacy of their new product.

I've seen the type of bias Dr. Ionnidis is capturing first hand, amongst myself and my peers. It's much easier to set up a test or study that duplicates our beliefs about how something works; it is much, much harder to devise a test that could actually disprove (and hence validate if passed) our belief in how a system works.

Correlation and causation continue to be difficult to tease out of the world around us - we don't know much, and Dr. Ionnidis research has cast doubt on much of what we thought we knew. Read the article: It is fascinating!

I think my next project will be to download the study mentioned and read about the 45 pivotal studies Dr. Ionnidis concentrated on - what medical and nutrition advice that we take for granted is uncertain?

(If you can't follow the links, here is the complete url:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/
)

Jail Time

2010-10-13T06:31:00.004-06:00

I heard this story on the news yesterday: Hungary has jailed the executive of MAL Co., the company that appears to have disregarded safety and maintenance provisions that led to the collapse of a holding tank wall, releasing a million gallons of post aluminum processing sludge (which contains the toxic chemicals cyanide, cadmium, and chromium.) Eight people have died as a result of the spill, and hundreds evacuated.

It's an interesting action. We often give corporate cover to the individuals who manage and work at a company, allowing their malfeasance to go unpunished (we punish the shareholders instead, by fining the company and reducing it's profits.) I understand well the thinking behind this strategy: Sometimes, in the course of business, unforeseen events occur, property receives damage, people get hurt: We don't want to go on a hunt every time, else few (if any) people would be willing to run a business, and we all would suffer. Besides, if the actions and fines are large enough, presumably the shareholders would sack the management of the company, and install new leaders who will work to ensure that profits aren't endangered by carelessness or neglect.

But we must also be mindful of the fact that businesses and corporations have no intrinsic morals: Only people are moral agents capable of determining their course of action. As a society, we should certainly demand moral behavior -- and we can communicate our definition of moral behavior by the rules and regulations we levy upon the conduct of a business. When those rules or regulations are disregarded, willfully ignored or knowingly violated by employees, it is those same employees that should pay restitution to society, not others.

We don't yet know if there was criminal misconduct at MAL Co., and will have to wait for the outcome of the Hungarian Courts. However, since they justify their high salaries upon the idea that a CEO imbues his company with his philosophy, drive, and vision, if the individuals of a corporation have been found to be acting immorally, we should certainly start at the top in filing criminal charges, as Hungary has done.

I've often wondered how much corporate wrongdoing would be cured by the simple expedient of jailing the CEO. Neglect to follow established procedures for cleanliness, and your eggs become tainted with Salmonella, sickening consumers? Go to jail. Rush the process in violation of regulations and procedures, having your oil rig explode and spill millions of gallons of oil? Go to jail. Violate OSHA standards, causing workers to be injured or killed on the job? Go to jail.

It'd be interesting to try. I'll be very curious to see the outcome in Hungary.

Surf's Up!

2010-10-09T09:04:00.000-06:00

A storm whips the seas of the Pacific. For days, the winds feed energy into the ocean, whipping the waves higher. One collection of energy, for unknown reasons, usurps the power of its neighbors, growing substantially larger. Perhaps its alignment and the wind's alignment correlated longer. Perhaps the input energy achieved something akin to resonant frequency with the wave energy, and each little push caused it to grow. Whatever the cause, this wave and its energy grew to more than twice the average of the storm frenzied sea.

First on its path eastward is a low slung bulk container ship. Built in the 70's to manage 40 foot oceans, the ship has been taking on small amounts of water as the waves of the storm crash over its bow. The metal and ore below deck has started shifting from the constant rolling and pitching. The captain's best course would be to slow to a crawl and wait the storm out, but he's on a timetable: Payday doesn't occur until he docks, and his next paycheck depends upon unloading this load and getting another. So, he presses on.

A sister wave to the one we're tracking, not quite as big, but substantially larger than the 30 foot seas rears up and crashes over the ship's bow, straining hatches. The cargo moves some more. The ship plunges into the trough, and then the captain sees it: The biggest wave of his experience. A 90 foot monster rears ahead, crashes into his ship. Hatches are burst under the weight and the twisting, water floods the fore compartments. The 70000 ton vessel is suddenly much heavier, up front, and driven by its motors and momentum, literally drives itself into the ocean. A little over a minute later the ocean closes over its stern; the ship and its crew gone. No mayday was sounded, no transmission released to aid in finding the vessel.

The wave continues on, undeterred, heading for the California coast. Alerted to the presence of the storm, the big wave surfers are gathering, waiting. What size waves will arrive? Will they get a chance at the XXL prize for surfing a 100 foot wave? Jet skis are readied, surf boards are waxed, the ocean is scanned. As the storm surge starts rolling in, the surfers head out for a day testing themselves against the enormous energies of the ocean. The swells increase, first 40, and then 50 foot waves. Finally, the big ones arrive: 60, 65 feet, and then the one they'll talk about for years: Perhaps 70, maybe 75 feet tall. A ride is made, pictures are taken. The energy dissipates.

The wave scientists gather in Maui. They've gotten solid evidence from instrumented oil rigs in the North Sea, from scientific ships that didn't meet the fate of the freighter, from data relayed back from weather satellites: 100 foot waves, once only sailor's legends, routinely rise out of 30 and 40 foot seas. The problem: Their models don't predict them. The models used are accurate in predicting when a storm will whip up 30 foot waves, when it will whip up 40 foot waves – but they tend to predict uniform wave heights, not the regular monster that they now know occurs.

The information sheds light on another mystery: Lloyd's of London, a major insurer of shipping companies and ships, reveals that 2 major cargo ships disappear every month carrying their cargo. If the bulk of the ships built over the last 30 years were designed for a maximum wave of 60 feet, what happens when the crew meets a monster? Simulations back up the scenario with which I opened this essay: They drive themselves into the ocean after water breaches the hatches, after it floods the fore storage areas.

Susan Casey weaves these elements together, and more, in her book “The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean.” The majority of the book follows the big wave surfers as they hunt out the biggest waves to ride, and then underscores what they're doing with a search to understand how the waves gain their energy and what science is discovering. After reading the book I am in awe of guys like Laird Hamilton, Brett Lickle, and Dave Kamada, fascinated by the energies of the ocean, and have a reinforced understanding that the key to predicting the future climate of the earth rests on a deeper knowledge of the oceans – knowledge that scientists are just now beginning to gain.

I also won't be sailing or surfing anytime soon!

(Casey, Susan. “The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean.” Doubleday, New York. 2010)

A Better Example

2010-09-12T11:38:00.005-06:00

I have one gripe with Harry Potter. Although the series is fascinating, Harry the Hero leaves some to be desired. As the chosen one to defeat Voldemort, he doesn't have to work to achieve success. Sure, at times he believes he needs to, but he never puts forth the effort it would take to really become better or more powerful. His friend Hermione, in contrast, works diligently and long to improve her abilities as a wizard, but there is a sense throughout the story that she, although much, much better than any of her classmates (and one of the best students in decades), will never learn enough or develop enough skill to defeat Voldermort. Only Harry can do that, because only Harry possesses the innate talent necessary. Harry succeeds not because of what he does, but because J.K. Rowling decided that he would, and creates him with an innate quality imbued to him by his parents that will enable him to prevail.

What a self-defeating message! If you are chosen, you can succeed, but if not, no level of effort or work will enable you.

As studies have shown, repeatedly telling a child that he or she is smart or talented sets them up for failure. Why? Because, if their smartness is innate, and nothing which they can influence by practice or effort, then when the inevitable struggle comes, they quit, believing that they've reached the limit of their talent. “I just wasn't smart enough for physics” or “Calculus was okay, but differential equations was beyond me” or maybe “I could memorize anything until confronted with Gray's Anatomy.” Each represents a failure to believe in the power of practice, the power of effort, the power of self.

We need to get away from the hero who achieves success through innateness, and instead demonstrates those qualities that lead to success in the actual world in which we live: Effort, practice, mentoring, honesty, and more practice. Heroes that fill our children's minds with the ideas and ideals that we would pass on as parents, if only we had the gift of storytelling ourselves.

Fortunately, John Flanagan is such an author and parent. He started the “Rangers Apprentice” series for his son Michael, and infuses the story with exactly the sort of messages that I'm advocating. His characters have innate qualities that predispose them to certain activities (Horace has size and strength, Will has grace and control, Jenny an ebullient personality) – but it is the practice and effort each puts in after being selected (at age 15) for their respective training that reveals growing levels of competence. Horace is bullied, and the extra work he does hoping to appease his tormentors naturally leads to higher skill as a future knight (plus, the bullying situation is brought to a neat resolution, as an adult recognizes and steps in to help the students understand that accepting and perpetuating bullying is unequivocally wrong.)

Will is the main protagonist, and undergoes some initial frustrations (and defeats) as he finds that his small size limits him from Battle School, his heart's desire. However, selected by the ranger Halt to be his apprentice, and through Halt's mentoring and lots of practicing (“I know, practice!” grumbles Will at one point), Will's skills improve, and he receives accolades for his earned abilities, not his innate talents. Author Flanagan uses scenes with Will's former wardmates (he is an orphan) to show the satisfaction gained from earned recognition to drive home the point.

Flanagan even manages to weave in traits such as honesty into the story. Will learns that Halt watched him two years previously as he snuck into the kitchen to steal some cakes. Will was caught at that time, and when confronted by the cook, deliberates, and decides to tell the truth. He takes the punishment, and forgets the incident. However, Halt reveals to Will that the moment of honesty two years previously has had an enormous impact:

“I wondered if I shouldn't have lied,” [Will] admitted. Halt shook his head very slowly. “Oh, no, Will. If you'd lied, you never would have become my apprentice.”

The point may be lost on many of the young readers, but then again, maybe not. It never hurts to emphasize that honesty's rewards may not be readily apparent, or that a lack of honesty may take 1 or 3 or 5 years before it returns to haunt you.

The rest of the book delights, too. There are exciting battles, mythical creatures, and the growing back story of a power-hungry antagonist returning for another attempt to conquer the kingdom. Will and his friends are young, and we expect as the series continues, that they will play ever larger roles in defending, not because they are the innately Chosen Few, but because they will be the ones who have invested more effort into developing their skills, and so are the ones who will ultimately be able to rise to the challenge.

I'd much rather see a series like Flanagan's in the hands of our young readers, with heroes like Will and Horace imitated and idolized by our sons (and daughters) than stories with empty, predestined “heroes” like Harry. Through John Flanagan's storytelling, Will's story sets a much better example of how success over challenges can be obtained, and hopefully, a better message that developing one's skills is not an innate process, but one very much determined by effort and attention.

(Flanagan, John. "Ranger's Apprentice, Book One: The Ruins of Gorlan." Puffin Books, 2005.)

Randomness

2010-08-21T08:25:00.001-06:00

Last night, the weatherman told me that the next two days would be warmer than 'normal', with temperatures in the mid-nineties. By that, he meant that the temps would be above the average for this time of year. But, it does beg the question: If the temperature on any given day is above (or below) the average, is it therefore abnormal? If we were to get a string of above average days (say, 10 or so), would that also be abnormal, or is that something we should expect periodically?

Your favorite team has made it to the World Series (or Stanley Cup). You believe them to be the better team, although probably only slightly. Is 7 or 9 games enough to ensure that the better team wins the series? If one team sweeps the series 4-0, is that significant?

You family is uniformly tall. Your uncles are all above six feet, and even your aunts are close. Your grandparents are tall, as is your parents. However, you've topped out at 5'9”. Are you an aberration?

Each of these is an example of a distribution. In statistics, the standard distribution is an even curve around the mean, or average value. There are other distributions that are lopsided, with long tails to one side or the other. However, distributions are difficult to spot in our day to day lives: We have to keep records, and analyze those records to see the distributions, and they way they influence our lives.

Such analysis is the subject of Leonard Mlodinow's book: “The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.” In it, Mlodinow traces the development and understanding of probability and statistics from the early attempts to pinpoint the locations of the stars to recent studies of sports, finance, and medicine. Recognizing random distributions, and recognizing what they imply (and just as importantly, what they don't imply!) is a valuable skill.

The last example (height) demonstrates regression towards the mean – that given a sampling, even if there are outliers, most of the values will tend towards the mean (or average) value. It is actually important that tall people don't beget ever taller progeny: The human population would polarize to the very tall and the very short! However, the average height for a human male is in the 5'9”-5'10” range, and although the mean may be increasing slightly, there will be a greater concentration of people close to that height, and those very tall (or very short) are the outliers, and having them in your family tree is no guarantee of height.

The bad news on the World Series: If your team were 5% better than the other team (which might actually be unlikely in real life, the two best teams are likely even close in ability!); It would take something like 293 games to ensure that the better team won the majority. Is it possible for the lesser team to sweep the series 4-0? Not only possible, but likely, given to closely matched teams. (Think of flipping a penny: If you flip it enough times, you expect that half will be heads, and half tails, but if you flip it just 4 times, there is a reasonable chance that you will get all heads or all tails: 4 or 9 is just not enough flips to get the statistically expected outcome.)

And the weather? The weather, too, exhibits an even distribution about the daily means, both above and below. Where I live, the weather is regularly up to 10 degrees above or below the mean on any given day: Taken as a whole (365 days per year, 30 years worth of measurements, 10950 measurements total), the first standard deviation is 7 or 8 degrees of either side of the mean, indicating that 2/3's of the days are between -8 and +8 of the average. So, a day 5 or 6 degrees above average? Normal. 5 degrees below? Normal. 9 degrees below? Well...less common, but in something as variable as the weather, I'd say still normal.

In fact, the weather is one of those things that bedevils our senses. We have such short memories (and lives) that it is impossible from an experience standpoint to determine if the weather is warming, cooling, drying, or changing in a meaningful way. Given that the weather swings on a yearly basis over 50 degrees (and often over 30 degrees in a single day), has measured extremes 133 degrees apart, and yet exhibits a smooth yearly fluctuation of averages makes it the quintessential random distribution. As such, could any given year experience a (to our senses) long string of above or below average temps? Absolutely. In fact, as Mlodinow points out, it would be surprising if it didn't.

A Small Price

2010-08-10T07:56:00.001-06:00

I stood in the shower, washing away three days' worth of dirt and sweat. Three days' of sunscreen and insect repellent. I wished I could just as easily wash away the fatigue and the bruises from an overloaded pack. As I did so, I contemplated why I would treat my body thusly.

Perhaps it was to experience the world as it was before electricity and the automobiles. To experience the quiet that only happens deep in the wilderness, farther away than the day hikers can go. To hear a rushing waterfall as the loudest sound.

It was to enjoy the smell of trees rather than the smells of industry. To watch the weather unfold, first warming, then cooling. To awake to the sounds of light rain striking the tent, and to rise to see the sun reflected on thousands of water droplets clinging to the grasses and trees of the forest.

It was to go on an early morning hike, and be surprised by, and perhaps surprise, a moose going about her business of eating breakfast. To be still, and watch as she decides we're no threat and lies down. To marvel that so large an animal can become virtually invisible lying just beyond that tree, and wonder at how many others we've missed.

Maybe to hike above timberline, and wonder at the stunted plants that grow in the alpine tundra. To see the jagged peaks surrounding the pass, with their patches of sheltered snow and flowers. To go on a hunt for ptarmigan, camouflaged and hard to spot.

Perhaps it was to observe the tenacity of a young fisherman, as he moved back and forth along the banks of the mountain lake, certain that if only he cast from there, he might get more than the nibble he just had.

It was to lie in our sleeping bags on the ground as darkness descended on a clear night, and watch as the stars appeared, the Milky Way unobstructed by pollution, brightly visible here, a surprising band of light crossing the sky. To watch as the first streaks of the Perseid meteors lit up the sky, amazing in their brightness.

It was to spend three days relaxing, and experiencing the world again through the eyes of a 9-year-old. I've become jaded, and unobservant of various things, but every animal, every plant, flower, mold, every jagged rock and every stream crossing are amazing things. Every bird must be identified, or at least guessed at: “Dad, quick! Give me the bird book again! That was a brown bird with a white tail, it will be in the brown section...” To positively identify some “That was a Hairy Woodpecker”, to leave others for another trip.

To hear the songs of birds unfamiliar, and strain to catch a sight of them in the trees. Then, to hear the sounds known, “There's a robin!” To marvel out how a squirrel runs, or a marmot ambles. To glimpse another moose as she angles up a slope.

A chance to spread the imagination about how each fallen tree got that way. To listen as my son wondered that if only that tree, now caught on another two, had instead fallen with more force might it have caused the next to fall, and the next, spreading in a fan to encompass all the forest like dominoes. To talk with him, no distractions, and strengthen the bonds we have.

A tent that needs cleaning and drying, sleeping bags that need to be hung and aired out.

Clothes that need to be washed.

Fatigue and bruises, dirt and sweat, sunscreen and Deet.

They seem like a small price to pay.

A Good Day For A Ride

2010-07-30T21:33:00.004-06:00

The former bicycle racer looked outside and thought, "It's a good day for a ride." The early morning sunlight reflected off the mountains, and the air was clean and still, but warm enough.

He hadn't been faithful the last few years - faithful to riding that was, and when he did get out, every ride felt like a first ride, a get re-acquainted ride. Sometimes his bicycle felt like a strange machine, twitching first left, then right, as he tried to recall how to relax and make it work. His pedaling came in fits and bursts, out of sync with his breathing, the bicycle, and the road.

This year, however, had been a little different. Not lots of riding, but more, and more frequently, and the rider and machine were starting to recall the dance they once knew. Coming down a slight grade onto the flat, he allowed himself the big chainring, and started pushing. The power was flowing in a continuous circle, his breathing was deep, steady. He reveled in the old feelings and sounds as the velocity induced headwind began whistling in his ears. "Yeah," he thought, "I can still do this!"

Lost in his exultation, he was taken by surprise as current bike racer pedaled fluidly, inexorably past him. His back flat, his arms relaxed, and his shaven calves pumping like two extra hearts to propel him at speeds long forgotten by former racer.

Former racer wasn't accustomed to being passed, and for an instant, he started increasing his pace, recognizing the implicit challenge of the other rider. Just as quickly, his body reminded him of his infidelity: The mounting burn in his legs, the increasing tempo of his breathing that threatened to spiral out of control. Chastened, he dropped his tempo back to what it had been, allowing the challenge to go unanswered.

"Oh well," he recalled. "Its still a good day for a ride."

A Little Humor

2010-07-25T21:08:00.003-06:00

I'm usually serious, but once in a while, it's good to lighten up and laugh at yourself, your friends, and the world (best in that order: Your friends get less angry if you've already been laughing at yourself...)

Unfortunately, I'm not exactly long on comedic talent, however, there are those anonymous individuals who are and are willing to share with us! So, I share with you these funnies to chase away the summer doldrums...Laugh Away! (H/T Matt)

Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?
A: Your heart only good for so many beats, and that it...don't waste on exercise. Everything wear out eventually. Speeding up heart not make you live longer; it like saying you extend life of car by driving faster. Want to live longer? Take nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiency. What does cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So steak is nothing more than efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef also good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And pork chop can give you 100% of recommended daily allowance of vegetable product.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that mean they take water out of fruity bit so you get even more of goodness that way. Beer also made of grain. Bottom up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have body and you have fat, your ratio one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Can't think of single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No pain...good!

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU NOT LISTENING! Food are fried these day in vegetable oil. In fact, they permeated by it. How could getting more vegetable be bad for you?!?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise muscle, it get bigger. You should only be doing sit-up if you want bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: Are you crazy?!? HEL-LO-O!! Cocoa bean! Another vegetable! It best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming good for your figure, explain whale to me..

Q: Is getting in shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! 'Round' a shape!

And remember:
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO-HOO, what a ride!!"

AND......

For those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on nutrition and health It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat
and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat
and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine
and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine
and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats
and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

CONCLUSION:

Eat and drink what you like.
Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

-- Author Unknown

Light Bulbs, Part 2

2010-07-06T20:16:00.003-06:00

In January, I had to replace the halogen light bulbs on one of my vehicles. I opted for the whiter, higher Kelvin pair after reading the packaging and thinking that they would be noticeably brighter. Not that a 100K increase in whiteness would be all that great, but that packaging indicated that they would be 25-30% brighter. Turns out, they measure brightness against a worn out bulb, not a brand new one, so the increase in brightness is slight.

However, I just learned that the lifetime of the higher K bulbs in considerably shorter: Both bulbs are now burned out, after just 6 months!

Guess I'm going back to OEM - at least they last a few years!

What a racket.

Social Networking and Privacy

2010-06-17T22:06:00.006-06:00

Social Networking is a new medium, and as such, we are not always certain what to make of it, what potential it holds, for good or ill. My belief is that I should always have the ability to maintain my information in a manner that makes it available to the smallest subset of users, and gives me full control over that subset. Likely, over time, most of us will find that allowing broader access, linking, etc., will provide large benefits, and we will realize that in most (if not all) instances we will not be compromising ourselves in any way. Concurrently, laws to define the use that we can expect of the data that we publish will be written, and we will not find ourselves at a disadvantage to the corporations that want to benefit from the information we publish and the correlations they can draw (correlation to improve their marketing.)

That said, nothing, and I mean nothing, that you publish on the internet is private: If you have placed it on the network, it exists in multiple locations, and if it appears to be worth the effort, it can and will be found. If you don't want your mother , spouse, children, or future spouse to read it, do not publish it.

Which is a danger that we don't consider. Each piece of info that we publish may be innocuous by itself, but taken together, if it places you in the right subset, you can become a target. It is for this very reason that my employer is terrified of Facebook and its cousins - they see only dark alleys filled with intellectual property criminals waiting to pounce; To get the unwary employee to reveal company secrets.

I've seen some pretty powerful graphing tools that can draw correlations across wide swaths of data - so I'm not talking the hypothetical, here. I've also brainstormed with co-workers ways your data could be used to get you to pay more for the products you are purchasing, especially if you use internet coupons. We've also talked about how, taken out of context, what you write or photograph might prove deleterious when applying for a job or volunteer position (since, once again, the media behind the publishing can so easily be altered to make it appear that it hasn't been taken out of context, or make the context uncertain.)

So, I think the lesson here is to think before publishing, and always be a little wary, but on the balance, like everything we do: Get out and do it and enjoy, because paranoia will make you isolated, lonely, and probably bitter.

And, in no way, do those qualities make you a better citizen or member of society.

The Problem With Lycra

2010-06-16T08:05:00.002-06:00

No, I'm not thinking of the obvious: That it's expensive and only a select few members of humanity can look good wearing it. The problem revealed to me today, is that it is thinner than the proboscis of a mosquito. Wearing Lycra, there is no part of your body protected from these pests!

Normally, when I'm wearing Lycra I'm also moving at a pretty good clip on my bicycle. However, this morning, I was forced to stop at one our cities beautiful parks, with the baseball diamond and the irrigated foliage and the fountain and the lake; and, the mosquitoes.

The entire time I worked to replace my flatted tube, they swarmed about, dashing in for a quick drink, avoiding my irritated attempts to thwart them. I'm not certain just how many I granted the gift of reproduction to, but it was considerable. So, I reckon that when you're cursing the next generation of mosquitoes - Yeah, me (and my Lycra) are partly to blame!

Towards A Definition of Judicial Activism

2010-06-13T12:23:00.004-06:00

Frequently, people level charges of Judicial Activism towards judges. A corollary charge is 'legislating from the bench'.

Attempting to understand what constitutes Judicial Activism is much more difficult. I've probed those who've leveled the charge, and what it really comes down to is that the Judge (or Judges) interpreted the law and made a ruling to which the speaker disagrees. Unfortunately for the speaker, not being a member of the law profession, they can't mount a strong argument for why the body of law and previous rulings (precedent) should compel an alternate interpretation: They don't like the outcome, and rather than attempt to build a case, they label the judge 'Activist'.

While this may seem like a harmless shorthand, it's actually a logical fallacy: Begging the Question – Assuming the question under debate is settled, and leaping to conclusions. The question remains open as to the efficacy of the interpretation, and if an alternate interpretation, giving our laws and precedent, is actually possible or reasonable. Leveled repeatedly, with out basis, it becomes an ad hominem attack on an individual based upon political desires. As such, we would want to be wary and disregard such labeling, unless the speaker can actually point at behavior on the bench (separate from the rulings) that could reasonably be defined as 'Judicial Activism'.

Occasionally, I've read the opinions of the Supreme Court, and, although I may find either the ruling or the dissent more compelling, what I've really grown to appreciate is how, to a large degree, either side of the argument is reasonably sound, based upon the body of law. What differs between them is exactly which precedent, which aspects of Constitutional interpretation the particular judge wishes to emphasize. Often, as near is I can tell, either side of the issue is valid (for our law is not nearly so logically tight as mathematics, and contains within it logical contradictions and fallacies) – we may feel from an outcome standpoint that one interpretation will better enable our continuing realization of a just and fair society, or one interpretation will benefit us, based upon our position within society, but those are value judgments as to what is most important. Judges make those too, and although my values and their values disagree, that doesn't make them wrong or activist. (Certainly I would like their values to agree with my values, I hold my values because I do believe them best, but proving the matter is considerably more tricky, so I must also hold that there is a small possibility that I don't have the absolute best value set, and perhaps I can learn (and improve) from their differing viewpoints.)

However, I've been reading the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United vs FEC, and in Justice Steven's dissent, I've actually found what could be a strong basis or criteria for determining Judicial Activism. What separates this dissent from others I've read is not just that Steven's disagrees with the logic or the conclusion, he actually disagrees, from a very fundamental standpoint, on the approach that led to the ruling.

The first was scope. Justice Stevens points out that the case before them did not constitute a 'facial' challenge to the unconstitutionality of the law governing election expenditures (specifically, that the law amounted to a ban on corporate free speech, or that such speech is even protected under the First Amendment): Rather, the challenge was whether the 'As applied' ruling against Citizens United violated their right to speech protection, and why. By widening the scope of the case (and calling back the parties for a second set of oral arguments), the Court itself violated its own long standing precedent or only deciding the matter at hand. Justice Stevens words:

“‘It is only in exceptional cases coming here from the federal courts that questions not pressed or passed upon below are reviewed,’” Youakim v. Miller, 425 U. S. 231, 234 (1976) (per curiam) (quoting Duignan v. United States, 274 U. S. 195, 200 (1927)), and it is “only in the most exceptional cases” that we will consider issues outside the questions presented, Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 481, n. 15 (1976). The appellant in this case did not so much as assert an exceptional circumstance, and one searches the majority opinion in vain for the mention of any. That is unsurprising, for none exists.
Setting the case for re-argument was a constructive step,but it did not cure this fundamental problem. Essentially,five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.

The second widening of the scope was to declare the whole statute unconstitutional, rather than just the portion that reached too far. Justice Stevens again quotes previous rulings where the court restrains itself from overreaching:

The unnecessary resort to a facial inquiry“run[s] contrary to the fundamental principle of judicial restraint that courts should neither anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it nor formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied.” Washington State Grange, 552 U. S., at 450 (internal quotation marks omitted).

The bigger problem here, as Justice Stevens points out, is that the case before them was not one of many challenges. The court hadn't decided on previous cases that parts of the statute were unconstitutional, and with every ruling it was becoming more apparent that no application was constitutional, rather, there was absolutely no history of any portion being invalidated or proving to have a deleterious effect on free speech across broad swaths of the population. Nothing had been brought before the court as to the effects of BCRA §203 on any other entity: Corporate or Union or other.

As if it were not distressing enough that the Court committed these two transgressions, the case brought before them actually provided for alternative rulings on narrower grounds

“without toppling statutes and precedents. Which is to say, the majority has transgressed yet another “cardinal” principle of the judicial process: “[I]f it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide more,” PDK Labs., Inc. v. Drug Enforcement Admin., 362 F. 3d 786, 799 (CADC 2004) (Roberts, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).”

(Notice how this very pronouncement of the Court's principles was articulated by Justice Roberts, who decided to violate his own statement in this case!)

The final overreach of the Court was the broad overturning of precedent. Justice Stevens builds a strong argument as to why the precedents in this case do not require overturning, and shows that the majority doesn't build a counter argument as to why precedent needs to be disregarded. As Stevens points out, too, overturning precedent requires a rather strong argument. He counters the majority claim that, in particular, one of the precedents is 'destabilizing', by observing that what the majority appears to be arguing is that “the theory seems to be that the more we utilize a precedent, the more we call it into question.”

Of course, precedent is not sacrosanct – it can't be, otherwise previous rulings that really were wrong couldn't be overturned. Overturning precedent alone wouldn't be cause to label a judge activist.
However, the ability to disregard precedents in this case was a direct result of the proceeding three transgressions of the Court. Without the changes to the scope, the change from an 'as applied' challenge to a 'facial' challenge, and the willingness to explore rulings not even sought by the plaintiff, the ability to reconsider and overturn nearly 100 years of precedent wouldn't have been an option. But, by these structural changes, the court was then able to go in, and with a “sledgehammer, rather than a scalpel,” sweep away broad swaths of federal and state statutes, all in the name of equating a corporation to a natural person for the purposes of application of the First Amendment.

Most unfortunately, it was those precedents that had distinguished between the two, and attempted to build campaign finance laws that respected the different places people and corporations inhabit vis a vis our political process. Those precedents recognized that while you and I might give money to further a candidate or a cause, and through established transparency, know who joined with us and who gave to opposite causes, they also recognized that corporations, through their very lack of transparency, could not give money and profess to speak for all the individuals within the corporation. (Despite what was the intent, a corporation is run by an oligarchy – it is not a democratic institution as we recognize such, and the influence of its rulers can give them what amounts to multiple voices in our political process, something we clearly would want to curtail if not eliminate.)

A lot more could be said (and Justice Stevens says a lot more in his dissent), but for our purposes, we are finished. We now have a working definition of a Judicial Activist. It is a Judge who disregards judicial precedent: Not the precedent of previous rulings (Stare Decisis), but the precedent of How the Court Operates. It is a Judge who makes a ruling outside of the bounds of the case brought before them, who broadens the case to strike down large swaths of law rather than the law affecting the litigants, who decides more than needs to be decided (who shows a lack of deference to established rulings and established procedures and the wisdom of their antecedents.)

Slight changes to these, too, would not allow us to label a judge 'Activist'. For there are reasons where a judge may overturn precedents, may slightly expand the scope, special circumstances where more may need to be decided: It is the combination of more than one, and the decidedly large departures from the case brought before them that would allow us to label a judgment 'Activist'. Repeated departures would then require us to label a Judge guilty of Judicial Activism, and furthermore, we would know exactly what we meant when we so labeled them.

In deciding Citizens United vs FEC the way they did, I accuse Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Alito, and Thomas of Judicial Activism – of departing from the methods we expect and depend upon our Judiciary to decide the cases before them, and reaching not simply a conclusion to which I disagree, but a conclusion that is incorrect, precisely because it was incorrectly achieved.

And you now know exactly what I mean when I level that charge.

(Footnote: You can read the entire ruling here. If you do, and think I've overlooked something important, please let me know! It's 176 pages long – by far the longest ruling I've ever attempted. It seemed to me worth the effort, although somewhat depressing in the enshrining of corporate 'personhood' it appears to grant – something I feel is antithetical to both our concept and the needs of a working democracy. However, that should rightly be the subject of another essay.)

Strange Loops

2010-06-10T06:41:00.001-06:00

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead published Principea Mathematica – the most comprehensive outline of the axiomatic foundations of mathematics. Banished forever was to be mathematical falsehoods and ambiguity.

Just some 20-odd years later along came the Mathematician Kurt Gödel, who showed how the system could contain internal references to itself – dubbed Strange Loops. This strange property of a grammer to be self-referential has been used by numerous philosophers in attempts to understand that most complex and self-referential system: human consciousness.

Back in 1979 Douglas Hofstadter earned the Pulitzer Prize for his book 'Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid' where he explored these ideas in new and interesting ways. It has become a must read for every computer scientist and mathematician since.

So it was with anticipation that I picked up 'I Am A Strange Loop' – the current release of the mature Hofstadter. (GEB was published by a 31-year old just out of grad school). Dr. Hofstadter has spent his career researching artificial intelligence systems, and collaborated with the philosopher of the mind Daniel Dennet on numerous occasions as both men attempt to understand what makes us tick, and how that can be used to make better software.

Sadly, I was largely disappointed, as I Am A Strange Loop lacks the marvel and inventiveness of the earlier work. However, Hofstadter did broach one new idea that I find a little intriguing. Taken from the idea that a computer program can exist on multiple computers, Hofstadter theorizes that parts of our internal program, the bits and pieces of us, our memories and ideas, can (and do!) exist in more than one brain. As we interact and share ideas and stories, those ideas and stories come to exist in both of our minds, albeit at different fidelity. As I relate an experience to you, that experience becomes part of you, carried in your mind just as in mine, and vice verse. And, Hofstadter seems to be saying: Those cast off pieces extend our consciousness beyond our physical bodies.

Of course, my immediate opposition to Hofstadter's idea is that “Sure, others share parts of the same stories and ideas, but those parts cast off into their brains aren't important to me: They're not part of what is me, what make me conscious, what is that most important strange loop called 'I'! It is only the parts of the program running on my machinery that matter to me – those cast off parts are actually now parts of a system running elsewhere and contributing to a different 'I', which is no longer me.”

But, perhaps that isn't what Hofstadter is attempting to say after all. For he wrote this part of the book after the early and unexpected death of his wife, and appears to be searching for a means to convince himself that she isn't completely gone. That, more than mere memories, there is some of her remaining inside him, in a much more literal sense than is usually meant.

Intuitively, we've known that for a long time. There is another civilization that has the concepts of Sasha and Zumani – Sasha for those departed but for whom there remain people who knew them when they were alive: Literally, the living dead. One does not become zumani until all who have first-hand knowledge of you have also passed on. That we retain more than just memories, but some of another's ideas have become our own, some of their patterns have become our patterns, and that as long as we continue to use those patterns to define us, they aren't completely absent.

And so, in sort of a convoluted manner, Hofstadter has reminded us of what is possibly one of the greatest gifts of consciousness: The ability to remember.

The Lottery With The Highest Payout

2010-06-02T06:04:00.002-06:00

That's America.

We can't claim to have the best Health Care, the highest Happiness, nor the best Life Expectancy. The average worker toils longer hours with less vacation than his European counterpart, and brings home a smaller share of the GDP.

But if you win the economic lottery (i.e., you make it into upper management or the financial industry where you no longer produce) - you win bigger than anywhere else.

In Why is Washington Dithering with Unemployment High? Yves Smith gives a very even assessment - and the first step is to recognize the problem.

We absolutely have to break free of enacting policies that benefit the already financially elite, and attempt to restore a structure that more closely aligns with effort and merit. However, since the wealthy have consolidated their power, and are continually moving to lobby Washington for more, we have an uphill battle.

Especially since they've managed to get us to demonize our own power organizations, such as unions.

The Dangers of The Deficit?

2010-05-30T07:37:00.002-06:00

I've been reading a lot of economics during the past few years, attempting to gain a deeper understanding of how our economy works. One of the appreciations that I have gained is the role that money plays: That it's not just an exchange medium, but a commodity in its own right. Money has buyers and sellers, producers and consumers. The quantity of money in an economy plays a role in the current and future states of that economy, and changes in the money supply can have profound impacts.

An increase in the money supply will ultimately be consumed by an increase in the demand. That increase can take two forms: An increase in investment and production to create more goods, or an increase in the price of goods (inflation.) Too quick of an increase in the money supply will often be followed by inflation, but an increase timed well to a growing economy's need for more investment to foster an increase in production will generally result in just that.

Conversely, a decrease in the money supply will often spark a recession: The demand for produced goods is lowered, causing companies (producers) to lay off workers, decrease their capacity, sell off assets, etc. Once production drops to match the new (lowered) consumption demand, which correlates with the new lower money supply, the economy can begin growing again.

The main producer of our currency (North Korea's counterfeiting notwithstanding) is of course our government. They print all of our money, and move it into circulation via the Federal Reserve banks. The government keeps an accounting of all of that money, as they move new bills into circulation and retire old bills.

So, if the government is increasing the money supply to support a growing economy, shouldn't that increase show up as a permanent government deficit? This question has been nagging me for some time now. It's supported in the fact that the U.S. Government has run a net deficit since the 1930's, and we have had generally robust economic growth (some of the best in the world). If this is the case, too, as long as inflation is low or non-existent, should we even be concerned about the government's deficit?

True, part of the deficit is our current trade imbalance. There is no real imbalance: Manufactured goods move into America, and American money moves out. But if that money is not then used to purchase American made goods, but instead Government Treasury Bills, the accounting shows this as an increase in the Government deficit.

The really fascinating thing about this is that we always talk about it as a debt on government, a debt upon us, but it's really no such thing. I have to balance my household budget because I cannot print money. Our Federal Government is under no such constraint. So, if we are using a deficit to increase the money supply and hence grow our economy, there is no 'debt' that future generations must repay. The only 'debt' that may be incurred by future generations is if we increase the money supply too quickly, generating inflation and reducing our standard of living: Future generations will then have to grow their standard of living out of the hole into which we dug. But if our growth in money matches our growth in production and living standards, there is no repayment required.

True, China (our current largest 'debt' holder) could decide to sell its hoard of T-Bills. But all that would do would be to change the exchange of the yuan with the dollar, increasing the value of the yuan against the dollar, and making Chinese made goods more expensive in America. This would lower the standard of living for some of us as cheaply made Chinese goods would no longer be available, but it would make American production more competitive, and should trigger a growth in our manufacturing sector, and an increase in the standard of living for those employed in that sector.

And yet, even with all this, big name economists and business leaders – often bankers – continually warn us of the dangers of too great a Federal Deficit. Since these are quite often people who have dealt with economics and money all their lives, you have to wonder if maybe I've got it quite wrong. That maybe I've overlooked something – something important – that makes a large deficit not as benign as I make it out to be.

I worry about that too. So, I keep digging, keep reading, keep looking. And yesterday, I found this article by James K. Galbraith, that succinctly explains what I've been missing.

If you are particularly sharp-eyed, perhaps you caught it early in this essay. I moved easily from money creation to currency creation, conflating the two. The Federal Government is the only entity that can legally print our currency. But if you've lived long enough, you know that most transactions never require actual currency to take place. As such, money supply and currency supply are not exactly the same thing, and the Government is not the only entity that can produce money. The others are the banks, through lending.

Lending creates money just the same as government spending. Lending, especially for investment, provides the grease for increases in our economic output – just the same as government deficit spending can provide increases in consumption demand that also generates increases in economic output. And Professor Galbraith says it:

“Bankers don't like budget deficits because they compete with bank loans as a source of growth.”

Wait a minute! You mean to say that the Deficit Hawks aren't telling us something true or necessary about the economy, but are instead captives of a conflict of interest?

“And this, in the simplest terms, explains the deficit phobia of Wall Street, the corporate media and the right-wing economists. “

Ouch!

You really need to read the entire article, however. Professor Galbraith outlines the case for when we would prefer private lending to government spending, how the playoff between the two affects Government programs like Social Security and Medicaid, and hammers home some basic economics surrounding money creation and it's impacts.

Once again, too, we need to reaffirm that bankers and those employed in the Financial Industry are not altruists – they have no one's interests but their own when they tell 'us' what needs to be done. Basic Economics belies any claims they may make to the contrary.

Fatal System Error

2010-04-26T20:19:00.001-06:00

I saw this review last week, and was quite intrigued. For my book reading friends: Anyone else interested?

Fermi's (non-)Paradox

2010-04-20T23:14:00.004-06:00

Much has been given to Fermi's Paradox – the lack of evidence (radio signals, spaceships) of intelligent life from the assuredly millions of habitable planets in our universe. Given that intelligent life (humans) evolved on planet earth in just under 4 billion years, and would have millions and millions of opportunities to evolve on other planets during the universe's 13+ billion years, Enrico Fermi wondered just why we weren't seeing loads of evidence.

Geoffrey Miller has an hypothesis that they just get addicted to computer games. (You can read his piece at seedmagazine.)

However, I suspect the answer is much more mundane. We haven't seen any extraterrestrials because we've vastly overestimated the probability of intelligent life looking and acting like us.

We have a sample population of one: Earth. Because intelligent life did evolve here, we look at the progressions that led to it, and (incorrectly) assume that life evolves along similar paths on every habitable planet. However, that's a case of what statisticians call survivorship bias. Our view is biased because we have only looked at a sample that played out in the way that we expect it to. To really bring our knowledge up to par with reality, we would need to look at a large sampling of habitable planets, and see if and to what extent life evolved. Likely, that would change our ideas considerably about the probability of life, and the paths that lead to intelligent life.

If you look out earth's history, too, you can see ready evidence that life almost got wiped out several times – the most recent 65 million years ago when it appears that a fairly large meteor crashed into the Gulf Sea, and possibly alone or in conjunction with other geologic occurrences (volcanoes) wiped out more than 30% of the known (from fossil records) species. The Permian-Triassic was even worse, with 96% of marine and 70% of vertebrates going extinct. Think of how little more it might have taken to completely wipe all life from planet earth, forcing a restart. Given enough planets, total extinction events have surely occurred. Many unlucky planets may have to restart regularly, every 100 million to 1 billion years. That'd put a crimp on life evolution!

If you look at the diversity of life on our planet, too, you see many, many more species that are just as (and sometimes more) evolved than humans that exhibit no intelligent traits. I know that you are thinking that there is no species more evolved than humans, but that's not true. Viruses are far more evolved, if you look at number of generations and quantity of genetic mutations – the true measure of evolution. Evolution is a game that counts only survivorship – and there is nothing that predicates that intelligence makes a more survivable (or more evolved) species. As another example, take crocodiles: They have been around far longer than humans (84 million years), have developed a cerebral cortex, but are a long way from building rockets or sending radio signals into space.

Our major difficulty when it comes to dealing with questions of this nature is that we find ourselves at the heady top of the life pyramid on this planet, and arrogantly assume that all paths lead to us (for we are here, aren't we?). But that's not properly factoring the role of chance in the outcome. Chance led to those genetic mutations that evolved the primates. And a chance collision with a rather large asteroid wiped out those massive dinosaurs. Chance provided earth with just this temperature and just this quantity of water. And, by chance, each of those other 'habitable' planets that exists in our universe is likely a little different in heat and composition, exhibiting different rates of genetic mutations, different landforms that change migration, dispersion and extinction patterns of any life that does evolve.

Is it a paradox that we haven't encountered any evidence for other intelligent life? We don't have enough evidence, one way or the other, to predict and then label the lack a paradox. The likely answer is that the ways in which life can evolve, and the forms of intelligence that can occur, are far beyond our feeble imaginations.

For The Record

2010-04-14T23:24:00.002-06:00

I sent the previous to both Senator Udall and Senator McConnell. You can, too: Go to the US-Senate page, find the senator you'd most like to annoy, and send.

And, thanks. We need to keep reminding these clowns that we really want them to run the country. Not Goldman, Welfare Queen and Sachs. Not Magnetar. Not Ben Bernanke or Tim Giethner or Hank Paulson or Lloyd Blankfein or Jamie Dimon or ....

I Dare You!

2010-04-14T22:44:00.004-06:00

Rep McConnell yesterday slammed the emerging financial regulation legislation. His big gripe: It doesn't put an end to taxpayer funded bailouts.

You mean that same taxpayer bailout that you (Mr McConnell) voted for?

OK. I agree. I'd like to see the large financial institutions take a major downsizing, and next time, they need to fail. Along with Hedge funds.

So, Rep McConnell: I challenge you to propose an amendment that:

1) Brings back the major provisions of Glass-Steagall and separates banks from investment houses (and forces the newly consolidated megabanks: BofA, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs to split up into their disparate entities)
2) Regulates the issuance (or maybe just prohibits) CDO's
3) Makes criminal the behavior that took place here (Magnetar)
4) Prohibits the payout of 'Golden Parachutes' during failures / bankruptcies. These execs are paid the big bucks for the big risks - Risks that could at any time destroy their house of cards and leave them unemployed. Make 'em eat it when they fail.

You got the goods, Representative? Or are you just bluster hoping to stifle the legislation so your cronies can continue to live large? (Fourth place in Private Equity Firms contributions, Fifth Place in Hedge Fund Contributions, Fourth place in Securities Brokers contributions.)

(And I'm okay if Rahm Emmanual feels some discomfort, too!)

Vacuous Shorthand

2010-04-11T14:10:00.001-06:00

Justice John Paul Stevens is retiring.

Yesterday, the Denver Post ran a two page article about Stevens, and the candidates most likely to be nominated to succeed him. For each potential candidate, the Post attempted to summarize some information.

Yet just a quick glance over the little snippets about each showed them to be filled with vacuous shorthand, and little real information. Repeatedly, the Denver Post tells us that they are liberals, or moderates, or left. But, what exactly, in the instance of each of these individuals, does that mean? More to the point: What can we see from their work that would lead us to that conclusion, or is the Post just prejudicing us with an opinion?

Each would likely face the accusation of judicial activism (because that's the shorthand we use for attacking law specialists with whom we disagree). Real judicial activism is arguing against (as a lawyer) or breaking with (as a judge) precedent. Our body of laws is sufficiently ambiguous and occasionally contradictory that sometimes precedent should be stood on its head. So, the question of our likely candidates: In the past, have they argued for breaking with precedent? On what grounds? A contradictory law or ruling? A recent change to law that can be taken that we are no longer interested in previous interpretations? (And what if the precedent is not really a precedent?)

What about their interpretation of the US Constitution? Do they see it as a living, breathing, evolving document, or is it dead (to use Justice Antonin Scalia's words)? How important is context to interpreting the meanings of the authors? Should contemporary laws, actions, and writings be taken into account when attempting to decipher its intent (as Amar does in “America's Constitution: A Biography”)? Or can we glean all we need to know from the document itself? Does the candidate have any history in this area?

What else can we learn from their history, their writings? Do they see individual rights as paramount, or do they view that society comes first? How do they determine if the issue in question is clearly contradictory? Will they protect the individual from the mob (whether the mob be society, business, religion, a corporation, or the government), or do they interpret our laws as protecting society from the individual? Or, much more likely, when do they see our current laws as forcing a choice – and when are they clear about in which situations one is to be chosen over the other?

There is much that would be interesting to learn to make an partial evaluation of the candidates, to give us a real feeling for how they interpret law and view the job of a court justice. Views that, if well articulated, might give us more insight into the knowledge and resources they have for making law determinations, and help us understand that they could do an immeasurably better job than you or me. Much better than filling a page with vacuous shorthand about liberal, moderate, left, conservative, etc. Those terms have lost any real meaning in this context, because they are both too broad (and hence ambiguous), and have too varied interpretations by us.

Given the opportunity to fill us in on the possibilities, the Post gives us – Nothing.

(And they wonder why their readership is dropping. I'd like to propose...)

Who Coulda Known?

2010-04-10T21:03:00.002-06:00

That's been the most often repeated defense of those closest to the financial meltdown of 2008 - Who coulda known?
Ira Glass and 'This American Life' takes a closer look, and finds out about Magnetar - a giant Hedge fund that appears to have built risky CDO's and then bet (sorry, Hedged) against them. It's a fascinating story, and the goods come from the propublica website. So, for those of you who missed the story, here's a link.

US Government Cuts Wasteful Program

2010-04-01T21:57:00.003-06:00

Oh, if only this article were real! Read the whole thing: The last two paragraphs are priceless (in only the way The Onion can deliver).

Healthcare Hyperventilating

2010-03-26T00:26:00.002-06:00

Growing up, my parents and teachers stressed the importance of personal responsibility. Over and over I heard the mantra that my life would be what I would make of it – positive or negative outcomes depended upon my decisions, my preparation, my effort. The outcome was under my control.

Presumably, this holds true for everyone.

But as I've lived, I've seen individual outcomes that don't appear to flow from individual decisions. I've seen enormous effort go unrewarded, meticulous preparation end in naught. A vegetarian athlete succumb to an early heart attack – an unapologetic chain-smoker live into his 80's. I've seen cancer strike a very young friend – and a good family flirt with poverty when their spouse and father died, leaving behind no life insurance because of a heart defect uncovered when he was 17.

The Health Arbiter of the Universe metes out health and illness in only a broadly discernible pattern – but it would be rare for us to be able to say of a stricken individual: “She surely deserves her cancer with the way she's lived her life!” Yes, some things, like smoking, do have a stronger correlation, but even so, you have to remember that for our parents' generation and before, medical doctors actually recommended smoking! So, making a seemingly good decision based upon available evidence turned out bad...

As a result, I'm loathe to pass judgment on an individual about their deservedness, about their future potential. Receiving preventative and restorative medical care, regardless, gives people the ability to engage in society and provide the best they can. I certainly believe that a wealthy nation like ours (for we certainly, and by all standards, are an extremely wealthy nation) should ensure that health care is available and affordable by all members, without distinction. Perhaps all employers provide it, and we share the cost by paying slightly more for goods and services at the checkout. Perhaps the government provides it for the unemployed, and we all share the cost through a small tax. Perhaps....we could come up with many options, and there are many countries around the world that already do it: We could shop around for the best, and produce an amalgamation better than any other.

Sadly, from the information that I've heard and read, that's not what we've gotten. There are provisions in the new Health Care Law that my education and experience flag. I'm particularly distressed over the emphasis on Corporate Welfare, and the strict avoidance of any countervailing publicly administered provision. I am concerned that while expanding Health Care Affordability, we've also expanded the Health Care monopoly, and that monopoly will work to undermine what has been done.

Perhaps your experiences and education flag similar or different portions of this law. That you, too, were hoping that we could provide for all, but that there are portions that need some re-work.

Which historically, is almost a given with any legislation. There are portions that work as intended, portions that work better than intended, and portions that miss their mark, having unintended consequences, some good, and some decidedly bad. The causes of the bad consequences will have to be determined and revised. We have yet to make a 'final' law. I'm certain that we both foresee such an outcome for this specific piece of legislation also.

But there is nothing in this law that advocates or authorizes violence; nothing that reduces or restricts our ability to participate in government through democracy; nothing that eliminates our presumption of innocence before the law (the provisions prohibiting the use of pre-existing conditions and rescission perhaps strengthen this); nothing that decreases our freedom to make decisions about how to live our life: What to do, where to live, what to eat, how to play, etc.

So screams of 'tyranny' are just hyperbole, the fear-mongering of a 'descent into submission and slavery' just hyperventilating, and the name calling just meanness.

The act of providing health care to those members of society who formerly could not have it is not an act of fear, greed, or hate, but an act of compassion. And so far, countries have not fallen because they were too compassionate towards their own people – it is hatred, fear, and greed that do in empires.

Providing Health Care is one of those endeavors where compassion and greed collide and co-exist. It is the greed woven into this law that concerns me most, that makes me fearful that instead of just providing a little more equality in our society, a little more financial security, it will also be a net transfer of wealth to the already wealthy.

But it is the compassion inherent in this legislation that encourages me. It bolsters my desire to see Health Care provided to all, and stokes my enthusiasm that we are at least moving in that direction. Taking care of each other, even at some cost to ourselves, is one of those 'Good Things' that makes living in human society special and rewarding. Yes, when we show compassion towards another, we do open ourselves up to being taken advantage of. However, the majority of people reciprocate – and as I opened this essay by observing that most of those on the medical down and out aren't lazy or foolish, I think that we can expect for many lives, this act will make a difference, reducing fear and insecurity, and improving health. Their gain will be society's gain, our gain, and the hand-wringing will look small and selfish.

So take a deep breath. There's no need to damage your health with undue agitation over the passage of this law, no need to infect your mind with hatred, no need to lower your morals by considering others unworthy.

Who knows? You might live longer and happier as a result!

Too Big To Fail

2010-03-21T11:02:00.002-06:00

Remember Animal Farm?

In his dystopian allegory, George Orwell takes us on a journey to another land where the pigs rule, the other animals work, and gradually, through trickery and force, the pigs re-write history and take unearned rewards to cushion their lives. The remaining animals suffer, but somehow continue their allegiance to both the pigs and the ideology they spout. Even as they die, broken, they somehow believe that they inhabit the best of possible societies, and the changes that would improve their lot, so readily seen by an outside observer, go unrealized.

When we read the tale, we were certain that it referred to communist Russia. It was a cautionary tale, but we always took it as caution against communism, for the evils portrayed in Animal Farm were seen as a direct (and unavoidable) consequence.

Perhaps we were wrong, or too narrow minded.

For along has come Andrew Ross Sorkin, and he has retold the tale in his latest book. The setting has moved to a modern democratic capitalist nation, but the pigs still rule, still write history. Sorkin has spiced it up with the feel of a modern spy novel, with multiple parallel threads racing towards some convergence – as we read, we get swept up in the contributory actions of the characters, fearful of the outcome.

The story traces the trajectory of an impending financial collapse – the industry in which pigs are employed. As the pigs gather and take actions to stave off banking failures, we see the Animal Farm rubric of 'All animals are equal, but some are more equal' replaced with 'All corporations are equal under the law, but some are Too Big To Fail' – from which Sorkin titles his book.

Money is transferred from the workers (equines) to the bankers (pigs) under the guise that all will suffer if it isn't done. As they decry the horror that has potentially befallen them, the pigs line their pockets with bonuses and golden parachutes, and all across the country, the equines, instead of dropping dead from overwork, are sent home without jobs, to lose their homes, possessions, and dignity.

To illustrate how much control the pigs have, in one memorable sequence, a candidate for major public office (for this nation apparently has open, democratic elections), suspends his campaign to rush to the capital to do the pig's bidding, to insure that sufficient money is transferred from the workers to the bankers. Imagine!

Such is the pig's control that in the end of the book, the government itself is used as a major transfer mechanism to undermine the country's underpinnings of meritocracy and equality. As the book closes, the pigs are shaken, but unrepentant, and Sorkin has updated a major allegory to demonstrate how greed and unearned privilege are dangers that tear and subvert the well functioning of society.

What is most disquieting in Sorkin's retelling is that it leaves a reader with the sense that, like the original, the events are not the outcome of a fertile imagination, but rather they are a close approximation of real events in a real nation. This nation, too, not unlike our own, is decidedly uncommunist, and yet the outcome was the same as in Animal Farm. So, we must honestly confront the question:

Could It Happen Here?

Influential Books

2010-03-20T22:32:00.004-06:00

I was going to do a post on Orwell, but it will have to wait. As too frequently happens, I stumbled upon something tonight that ended up taking a fair amount of my time, and I have precious little left for serious writing.

It was this post by Matthew Yglesias on the 10 books that influenced him most. Not necessarily his 10 favorite, or the 10 best that he's read, but the 10 that influenced his future thinking the greatest amount.

Seeing Nietszche, Dennett, Dostoevsky, Rorty, and Kuhn in his list made me read on. And On, through the comments, where quite a lively (and uncommonly civilized) discussion of the relevance of various philosophers and writers is occurring.

There are interesting references in there, too: Julian Jaynes, Wittgenstein, Quine, Chomsky, Rawls. Foder, Davidson, and Nagel make the list, also, as the various commenters reveal different influences, and discuss why.

It was refreshing to see an actual exchange - and others putting up their lists. More books, more ideas to meet and digest! I'm often disappointed in what I run across on the web (or, more accurately, the blogosphere) - I imagine that with blogging, people putting up ideas, discussing, proposing, etc. that it could be a wonderful re-creation of the free-for-all discussions that took place in the common room during my college days as we grappled to understand the information pouring at us. Too frequently, however, it's a reasonable post by someone positing or proposing an idea (or attempting to back one up), and a lot of name calling and ad hominem attacks following.

There's an interesting question here, too: Will the next generation provide a list of their 10 most influential books, or will digital media change it to their 10 most influential sites? Or, in the hopeful words of Yglesias, "...I hope and think digital media will mostly crowd out relatively low-value book-reading experiences and still leave room for some of the big deal reads."

I still can find no substitute for the reward that comes from engaging for a serious time an author's ideas by grappling with a large-scale book of ideas, and so, I'm inclined to suspect that he is correct.

Hypothesis Testing

2010-03-13T15:40:00.001-07:00

I've often wondered if the changes in the size of government could really be attributable to the party in power. Said another way: Could an outside observer use data over our history to accurately discern which party was in power by looking at the changes in the size of government?

To test this, we need a hypothesis. I submit the null hypothesis:

There is no statistical difference between the growth in government dependent upon the party in power.

Mathematically, if we sum the changes in government size and compute the averages when the Republicans are in power, and the average when the Democrats are in power, we have:

Average Republican Growth – Average Democratic Growth = 0.

I gathered the following information: Yearly GDP, Yearly Federal Government Outlays, and who holds the office of the President, and the majority of each house of Congress, all for the past 40 years.

For purposes of government size, I divided Yearly Fed Gov Outlays by Yearly GDP. This normalizes the size and removes changes due to inflation (and presumable, population growth). Interestingly, The size of our Federal government has been relatively constant, moving between 18.84% in 1970, 22.86% in 1983, 19.78% in 2000, and back to 20.66% in 2008.

For Party in power, I decided that it would be two out of three: Whichever party held at least two of: Majority of Senate, Majority of House, and Presidency, would be tagged as the party in power.
Also, since budgets (hence Federal outlays) are done for the following year, I imposed a one year lag between when a party rises to power and when they effect the size of government. So, we have the following:
1970 – 1981: Democratic
1982 – 1987: Republican
1988 – 1995: Democratic
1996 – 2007: Republican
2008 – on: Democratic

What we are going to do then is compute the averages, the standard deviations, and run a standard double tailed hypothesis test, to see if we can reject the null hypothesis (i.e., that instead Average Republican Growth – Average Democratic Growth is NOT equal to zero.) We'll use a 95% confidence interval, which will answer the question: Can we say with 95% certainty that the difference is not zero?

Computed Data:
Republican: Average – 99.62%; Median – 99.32%, Standard Deviation: .0307
Democratic: Average – 101.86%; Median – 99.92%, Standard Deviation: .0557

(Interestingly, more than half the time, government decreases under either party, hence the medians below 100%. For the Republicans, 11 of 18, for the Democrats, 12 of 22)

To reject the null hypothesis at 95% confidence, the normal distribution table says we need a value of greater than 1.96 after we compute the answer to the equation:

Ave D – Ave R / SQRT((R stddev squared / 18) + (D stddev squared / 22))

And we get?

1.61.

Since 1.61 < 1.96, we cannot reject the null hypothesis at 95% confidence that the two are indeed different. So, my hypothesis withstands statistical analysis. An outside observer cannot discern the party in power by looking at changes in the size of the Federal government, because there is not enough evidence that the underlying distributions are different.

What about relaxing the statistical standards? For instance, could we reject the null hypothesis at 90%?

No. Although it is really close – we would need a value greater than 1.64.

So – What does this say? Basically, we cannot determine, with certainty, that the difference between the averages reveals an actual underlying difference between the two distributions. The two overlap almost entirely – and that there is a slight difference today between the averages may very well be an aberration. Or maybe not. We would need more data covering the time frame in question. However, there is no more data – we've got all 40 years. Data from previous to 40 years ago may help answer the question: In the past, was there a difference, that is gone today? But it doesn't directly help us today.

There is something interesting here, too. The computed value doesn't meet the requirements for a 90% confidence, but it is really close. You might be tempted to think that there is an actual difference – and that perhaps the inclusion of state government data would push it over. And that may be true. But what I find intriguing is that it was an outcome of a very similar nature that had everyone saying that the Global Warming hypothesis was null. If you recall, one of the scientists revealed that the near-term data (last 15 years), just missed the mark for the 95% confidence interval, and so he couldn't reject the null hypothesis on that data alone.

Perhaps you agree. Perhaps you'd like to declare Global Warming dead. But understand this: There is statistically more evidence for Global Warming than there is that Republicans and Democrats influence the overall size of government differently.

Footnote: I did not expect this outcome. Like almost everyone I know, I really expected that the data would damn the Democrats, and that our conventional wisdom would be upheld. I had started to suspect that it may not be fully true during the last decade, and especially recently. I will have to gather more data – I suspect now that the source of our conventional wisdom was planted during the 1930's – that government did grow, but its size appears to have stabilized.
I was tempted too to not include the past two years. 2009 was the only year during the 40 I looked at were GDP fell – which if used as a yardstick imposes an enormous growth on government even if it maintains the same dollar outlays – which it didn't, due to the stimulus bills. But that reveals even more that differences in size are more likely due to other causes than the party in power: 2009's 19% growth goes against the Democrats, and if the underlying distribution can absorb a value that far off the average without pushing it past the 90% confidence interval, then the null hypothesis is very, very solid.

Article V

2010-03-01T06:34:00.006-07:00

The other day we were discussing whether or not populist democracy was allowed in America. We all know that our government properly labeled is a representative democracy. Most of the time, that is what we want, too: Let our elected officials design and debate the laws that will govern. The majority of us lack the training, expertise, (and often the interest!) to really consider a law, its potential ramifications, and think outside our own self-interest to determine if it may be good for society.

However, Colorado's Constitution has been used in recent years to promulgate a kind of popular democracy. A friend had heard that someone was going to bring a lawsuit against that behavior under the grounds that we are not a populist democracy, and that such lawmaking by the people was unconstitutional.

As he pointed out, too, such lawmaking has the flavor of lawmaking by coin-toss: The resultant laws seem almost random, unconsidered. Might it be better to let our elected officials make the laws, and defer to a representational form of government?

As a side project, I'm working my way through Akhil Reed Amar's "America's Constitution: A Biography". In one of those wonderful coincidences, I was to the section that discusses Article V - Which outlines the manners in which the Constitution should be amended.

So, I read with great interest Amar's recounting of the facts of Article V's Text, the history the surrounded it, and even more, as he delved into exactly this topic!

Article V sets out that amending the National Constitution can be done by a two-thirds convention of Congress, which must then be approved by three-fourths of the states. And here's where a little ambiguity and interest sets in. Although it would indicate that the approval process would be done by the elected officials, it doesn't exclusively say that must be so. And, Amar points out: The Constitution itself was ratified by popular vote. Would it not be reasonable for the people to retain and return to popular democracy when the need arose?

Contemporary arguments at the Nation's founding by James Wilson would also back that up. Wilson argued that "The people may change the constitution whenever and however they please. This is a right of which no positive institution can ever deprive them." "A majority of society is sufficient for this purpose." Furthermore, Wilson's arguments where supported by the actions of many state legislatures as they re-wrote and subsequently amended their constitutions after the ratification of our new, National Constitution. Populist Democracy was in the air.

It would be unfortunate if a ruling was made that we couldn't alter our laws by popular vote: It would give a monopoly to lawmakers, who could then alter the underlying structures of government to give themselves new, greater powers - perhaps even to post-pone elections, change voting requirements, so that they could no longer be held accountable through regular elections and removed when we grew tired of them, or determined that we wanted society (and its laws) to proceed in a new direction.

So, although I agree that in general we (as in the general populace) shouldn't be making our laws, I fully believe that we need to retain the power and the possibility of full popular, or direct, democracy.

The matter is hardly settled, either. Amar indicates that James Madison's opinion is currently more popular: That Article V supplants our right to direct democracy (rather than supplements and implements it). But, as he says, there is still a lot of constitutional history to be written. And, Amar points out that interpreting the Constitution by looking at contemporary laws, both those that fed into its drafting and those that were not considered, shows us that our Founders had a different, and in many ways, much more populist idea of how democracy should be.

References: Amar, Akhil Reed. America's Constitution - A Biography. Random House, 2005. Pages 302-305. Quote page 303.

Curbing CEO Pay

2010-02-18T22:08:00.003-07:00

We want an America where hard-work, intelligence, and accepting responsibility get you ahead. I should add 'honest' before both the hard-work and the responsibility. But the Randian philosophy that CEO's, and especially banking CEO's, are earning their money because of those qualities, and that in so doing they are providing a useful service has been severely strained during the past year.

With apparently reckless abandon, the major banking institutions increased their risk exposure, and the system of CEO compensation not once put on the brakes as hoped. So, we all know the outcome: Men like Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfien, Dick Fuld earned $100 of millions before the companies they ran went insolvent (oh, wait: They didn't actually have to declare bankruptcy, we bailed them out!) With no money back for our effort.

How can CEO pay be restructured so that it provides the proper incentives to the individuals running the show? How can it require longer term exposure, so that risky bets that pay short term (but may fail spectacularly later) are fully carried as a liability to the CEO, so that they have to wait for maturity also to get paid?

I've had some ideas, but I really like it when those more familiar with the financial system get involved. So I was particularly interested to read this open letter from Yves Smith (of naked capitalism) to Sheila Bair (Chairwomen, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). She starts out with some good observations, specifically that we (the communities) end up paying the excessive CEO pay without a good return:

Dear Chairman Bair,

America can no longer afford to have a banking system that serves the ends of its executives rather than those of taxpayers and communities who have been saddled with cost of reckless profit-seeking. The FDIC proposal to tie deposit insurance premiums to the incentives in executive compensation programs would be an important step forward towards making sure that bank managers operate in a way that reflects the value of the extensive government support and safety nets they enjoy. Bank officers should not be encouraged, as they are now, to take “heads I win, tails you lose” bets with deposits.

There is no question that the annual accounting/bonus cycle is badly out of line with the time horizon of many of the wagers that financial institutions take. Unfortunately, the belief that using stock options or restricted shares as an important part of compensation would lead to responsible behavior has proven wildly false. Both Bear Stearns and Lehman had substantial equity ownership at both the executive level and among the rank and file. By contrast, when Wall Street was dominated by private partnerships, so the management group was jointly and severally liable for losses, the sort of profligate risk-taking that took place in the run-up to the global financial crisis was virtually unheard of.

Along the way, Ms. Smith observes that 'every academic study' that she has seen on bank size is inversely correlated: Bigger banks do not gain an efficiency that allows them to run cheaper, contrarily, they have higher cost to asset ratios. But, it balloons executive pay (and the outgoing execs as the result of a merger are given hefty golden parachutes.)

And so to the meat of her request:

I strongly encourage the FDIC to remove the incentive for executives to bulk up their banks solely to pay themselves more. One way might be to require that executive bonuses be set in relationship to the pre-acquisition peer group for a substantial initial period (at least three years, better yet five) and be benchmarked against the new peer group of bigger banks only if the merged entity had met certain operational performance targets.

There's substantially more, plus a link to the current FDIC proposal, along with enlightened remarks by many readers at naked capitalism.

Let's face it: Any institution that has grown 'Too Big Too Fail' is really just too big to exist under our current scheme, for the monopolistic power it then holds over the entire economy suppresses advancement, both for individuals and society. If the incentives for executive pay give them incentives to grow their companies without regard to long term survivability or potential damage to other entities and communities, then those incentive structures are wrong.

Because our goal is a wealthy society, as much as possible free from the scourges of poverty, and because the means to achieve that goal have been to allow individual monetary enhancement does not mean that we can't curb individual takings when those takings prove disastrous to our goal. I'm heartened that there is finally some work being done - although this is only a first step, unless we can remove the spectre of 'Too Big Too Fail', we will always have to live with the threats of Deep Recessions or future Depressions.

Good Work, Yves!

On Bias

2010-02-10T08:50:00.001-07:00

Tom Tancredo doesn't read my blog. Apparently, he should.

Although I've covered the subject of voting tests before, I think there's an additional point to be made – especially if someone in our government still thinks they are a good idea.

One of the difficulties that we face with our modern society is one of scale. There are so many people, with so much going on, that we realistically perceive only a slice of all that is occurring. If you are like me, you attempt to gather more information than just what's on the 5 o'clock news. But, if we're honest with ourselves, despite our sometimes voracious appetites for information, we're only gathering a subset. We don't know all the laws, all the interactions between the government and the population, all the intended and unintended consequences of those interactions.

And so, to a degree, we trust in the working of the institutions upon which our Constitutional Democracy is based. We trust that if the legislative branch passes a law that undermines our rights unduly, that would create inequality, or give too much power to groups rather than maintain it spread amongst all the people, that the executive branch would step in with its veto. If that doesn't happen, laws are challenged in court, and again, the judicial branch would rule against any law that doesn't comport with our ideals as set out in our Constitution.

One has to admit that it has worked fairly well. Despite the rather myopic understanding of personal freedom and democracy exhibited by our founding fathers, (John Adams ignoring his wife's pleas to “remember the ladies,” the 2/5ths clause concerning slavery, landowning requirements for voting), our institutions have endured, and in using them, participation in the process of democracy has been increased. Previously discriminated groups have had some of the most egregious discrimination lifted. Women no longer have to stay in poor, abusive, or violent marriages for financial reasons – they are recognized participants with rights to own and purchase property, work, and vote.

While it seems plausible that everyone should have some understanding of the workings and history of our government, since none of us can gather it all: Which subset is the important subset over which we should test? Does it really matter if someone can't name a single dead white guy who once held the office of president? If you've never had to go to court, and can't name the local judge, is your understanding of government deficient? If you can't recite the fifteenth amendment to the constitution in its entirety, trusting instead that those who study and practice law can, should you no longer able to participate in democracy?

Through my life's experiences, through the people I've met, the subjects I've studied, I find myself most interested in how we can build a society of equality. My empathy for those who don't start out with the gifts of money, my perception that groups too often wield unreasonable power, that a modern corporation resembles not our ideal of democracy but rather a feudal oligarchy lead me to study those aspects of government and its interactions that could redefine society and allow greater opportunities to all. Were I to design a voting test, through no intention, but due to the history and ideas that I find most compelling; if it were to impart a bias upon its takers, it would be a liberal bias that matches my own.

Tom Tancredo, by his own admission, recognizes that a test designed by him would naturally cover those subjects that he finds compelling, those subjects that would impart a conservative bias.

Only a very naive person would make the mistake of thinking that if only Mr. Tancredo and I could get together and jointly design a test that it would somehow be neutral. Although you could draw a line between my position and his, we are not just two points in a one-dimensional world. Rather, we are two points somewhere inside a three-dimensional box: There is no reason to believe that the midpoint of the line between us represents any meaningful position inside that box, that it's in any way close to the center, or that the center itself is meaningful.

All voting tests would represent the bias (or biases) of their author or authors. Since individual bias is built on impartial knowledge, and the only group that actually encompasses all knowledge is the complete group (all members of society), the only way to leverage all of society's knowledge is to allow all of its members to participate in the governing process. Any test, by its very nature, would eliminate those individuals who don't possess a specific subset, but there is no reason to suspect (or prove) that the knowledge they do have isn't valuable.

It's also one of the tenets of our democracy: No matter who you are, no matter where you came from, no matter the circumstances of your life, you have a right to participate in matters that concern you. Any exclusion of full participation creates an oligarchy – antithetic to our ideals.

So, let's put the ideas of voting tests behind us for good. Building an inclusive society is hard. But, in looking at the expansions in freedoms for individual members made over the last 200 years, surely it is rewarding and worthwhile.

Oh, The Irony!

2010-02-08T06:39:00.001-07:00

Xenophobia is the fear of others.

In our society, xenophobia is most often expressed through our discrimination and distrust of those in groups other than the group with which we identify. Different ethnic backgrounds, different sexes, different religions, different educations are all means used to identify, group, and distrust, if not out-right discriminate.

During the Civil Rights movement, realization dawned that combating discrimination was more than just passing laws: It was also completely removing from our minds discriminatory attitudes. Our speech often reveals our underlying attitude, and pointing out discriminatory speech as an aid to recognizing hidden attitudes became acceptable. Ethnic jokes and put-downs revealed our inner thinking, and we became intolerant. Sexism and Racism entered our vocabulary, as did PC, or Political Correctness.

PC bites us all sometimes. That old family joke about that other ethnicity? No longer repeatable. Poking fun at someone dressed differently? No.

The aim is tolerance. Acceptance of the others that make up our varied society. Ultimately, inclusion – allowing every individual the same rights, responsibilities and freedoms that we would give ourselves and those in 'our' group.

There have been those who chafe under the new rules. They want to maintain the status quo. We often see this in their standing in the way of laws that prohibit discrimination. “Women shouldn't have the right to vote”. “Business should be able to choose those who aren't tattooed, pierced, or require modes of dress, etc.”

This defense of the status quo, this backlash against what they see as overreach into our individual attitudes as become identified with the Conservative movement. “Those darn liberals,” they cry, “taking away our ability to force people to look and talk and behave like us!”

So it was with great surprise last week that one of the most un-PC of the conservatives, one who has reveled in her very lack of correctness, should call someone out for uttering a discriminatory put-down. When Sarah Palin called out Rahm Emmanual for his transgression, she gave tacit approval to the idea that what we say reveals what we think – and that we should attack our discriminatory attitudes where they live.

But do you think the concept of reciprocity will enter her thinking? Do you think that she will realize that by extension, that discriminating against any other group is unacceptable? Will she, and other like-minded conservatives, realize that we still have far to go to admit all other groups into society as equal members?

Gays may soon be able to openly serve in our military. When will we give them the right to marry? Come on, Sarah. You've said the words against discrimination: Can you live up to their promise, and start supporting equality for all?

Light Bulbs

2010-01-30T07:43:00.007-07:00

One of the light bulbs burned out on the car the other day. Not a big deal. After work, I stopped by the auto parts store to get a replacement. I was confronted by an assortment of bulbs, all the right size. The question was: How bright did I want to go?

For a mere $22, I could get a pair of OEM replacement bulbs. For just $3 more, I could get a pair that promised up to 30% brighter. $15 more than that, and I could have 45%. And for another $10 above that, I could give my vehicle up to 50% more light than it previously had.

Being frugal, and pretty happy with the lights on the vehicle, I opted to get the first step up set, and hurried home.

While I was replacing the bulbs, my curiosity kicked in. How do they make the bulbs brighter? I read the back of the carton, just to see if there were any clues.

Where they higher wattage? Nope. Same 55/60 watts as the original. Different style? Nope. Halogen. Different shape? Not that I could discern. Different emitted wavelength? Ah, yes. The new ones emit light equivalent to 3200K, compared to the originals at 3100K. A higher Kelvin rating on a bulb will indicate a whiter (but not necessarily brighter) light. Whiter light may allow us to see more clearly, but that is just perceived brightness, not actual brightness, as measured by the lumen output.

And then I read the very, very fine print. It indicated that halogen bulbs dim over time, that towards the end of its life, a bulb could emit as much as 20% less light than when new. Replacing your old, worn out bulbs with these new ones will give you 30% more brightness when compared with the old bulb!

Well, sure! And the direct replacement will give you 25% more light than an old one.

But that's not the comparison we expect (or at least, that I expected). I figured that a bulb that was 30% brighter was a comparison of new to new - if you multiply 30% by 80%, it turns out that the new, brighter bulb I purchased emits only 4% more light when new than the OEM bulb would emit when new.

Is the advertising false? Well, not directly; They do print the actual comparison, it is factually true. But is it deceptive? Absolutely. Would I have sprung the extra dollars for a bulb that was measured to be only 4% brighter? Probably not.

Am I angry? No, not really. I'm more amused than anything. Amused that I would fall for something so deceptive. Amused that this activity (purposefully deceptive advertising) is so widespread and accepted in our society. Amused that my desire for safety could be so easily manipulated into worthless spending.

And, quite honestly, surprised that we put up with it.

Caveat Emptor!

(That 50% brighter bulb? Turns out that it's only a 20% improvement over new...)

On Voting Tests

2010-01-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

An individual was expounded on the idea that there should be some test before being allowed to vote. Perhaps something as simple as the ability to read should be required, so that people who are making the decisions about who would lead us at least have indicated some base intelligence, and wouldn't be too likely to support a candidate just because the candidate was a proficient speaker.

As with many heinous ideas, it sounds plausible on the surface. We don't want the truly ignorant making decisions that effect all of us, do we?

But, the idea of imposing a test deeply bothers me, on at least three counts.

First, it is antithetical to the idea of democracy. True, in America, we are a representational democracy, and many hide behind this fact as cover for advancing elitist and exclusive ideas – ideas aimed more at keeping in power those with whom they agree rather than allowing for a pluralism of thought (and action.) It reveals the inability of those who expound such ideas to grasp that their experience and their decisions are not universally right or universally accepted: That other citizens, with other experiences, can, and do, reach rational but different conclusions.

Second, there is the difficulty in determining which test to impose. It is hardly a trivial problem to attempt to solve. Want people who are not likely to be hoodwinked? How, exactly, do you test for that? Early constraints, like requiring land ownership (and maleness) surely did nothing to indicate a lack of gullibility. Individual experience and specific situations certainly play a much larger role in avoiding gullibility, plus any test would be lengthy and still likely prone to error. (Just witness the inability for SAT scores to predict success in college to gain an understanding.)

Finally, and I think most importantly, the idea of excluding individuals from participating in society violates and undermines one of our most important goals: Building an equitable and just society. For far too much of human history, ruling classes have taken advantage of, and treated differently those ruled. Of course, when the tables turned, and the former slaves became the masters, they continued their master's ways, and the cycle continues.

However, the structure of a fully inclusive democratic society is different. It attempts to break with this cycle, and build durable, just institutions that can withstand changes in society's composition, changes in the ruling class, and absorb and advance changes in the understanding of justice. We don't want to build a society that just protects us when we are the ruling class: We want a society that will continue to protect us fairly if/when we become a minority. We want to embody John Rawl's ideas of Justice as Fairness (as set forth in his book 'A Theory of Justice'). We want to place ourselves behind a veil, and build a society and institutions whose very structure would be fair, and we would not protest no matter which position in society we find ourselves (majority, minority, ruling class, middle class, etc.)

Imposing a test would violate this principle. What if someday, we or our descendants no longer get to determine the test, and it is redesigned to exclude us or them? What a horrible legacy to leave. Far better to support full inclusion today, to support and strengthen a society built on justice for all citizens.
For only in doing so do we have a chance to break with human tradition, and forge a new path towards a fairer, and ultimately freer, tradition.

A Nation's Counterfeiters

2010-01-13T06:45:00.004-07:00

"These actions furthered blurred the lines between banking and counterfeiting.”

So iterates Stephen Mihm's “A Nation of Counterfeiters” - a book that traces the history of counterfeiting in America. But, although the book traces the lives and livelihoods of many of our nation's foremost counterfeiters, it is about much more than just counterfeiting. It is about money as a product.

Through its pages, we read about not only the problems of counterfeit notes, but counterfeit banks (dubbed wildcat banks.) For it was not uncommon in antebellum America for a group of men (and it was men, women were not yet allowed) to obtain a state charter for a bank, set up the vaults and the printers, take their deposits, print and circulate their currency, make loans, take profits (which they quickly exchanged for the currency of a well-known reputable bank), and then shutter their doors, insolvent. This left ostensibly 'real' tender in circulation that had often less value than a well-executed counterfeit note on a good bank.

Bankers have been earning our ire for 200 years.

We're caught in a double-bind. We need money, and for the money supply to correlate with the demand for goods and services and the productive capability we have to fulfill those goods and services. Although we now have a central printer of actual money, the printing presses of the Federal Reserve are not the only way 'money' as we know it comes into existence.

When a bank takes its deposits, say $10 million, it doesn't lend just $9 million back, but perhaps $90 million – thus creating $80 million dollars. That created money serves a purpose: It is the grease that enables a modern economy to run and expand.

But the unevenness of the money supply vis a vis demand and productive capability is a major factor in creating recessions and depressions – periods of adjustment to re-align production, consumption, and restore faith in the economy and the currency.

It would be fine, I suppose, if after a glut of money, it was bankers and other employees of finance who found themselves looking for new lines of work as their sector contracted. But, as we all know, it is predominantly non-finance people who lose their work as a result of too much money.

We need to acknowledge that losing one's job due to a severe contraction in the economy is not the same as losing one's job due to a lack of diligence or laziness. We should concentrate our ire on those most responsible – those who unreasonably profited while creating more money than the economy could absorb.

So, we have a right to be angry at these modern counterfeiters who devise new ways to create money for their own enrichment. And, just as the movement to a common, Federally executed currency and the creation of the Secret Service to ferret out counterfeiters after the Civil War brought early counterfeiting to heel, perhaps new regulations or stronger leadership at our current regulator (The Federal Reserve itself, Mr. Bernanke!) will even the economy.

Regulating or constraining the actions of some for the greater public good is not a descent into Socialism – it is precisely what good societies do. Antebellum counterfeiting died when the risks outweighed the potential profits. Modern day counterfeiting will, too, but only if we and our rule-makers are willing to restructure the laws governing the world of lending, investing, trading, and finance. Restructure the rules so that individual short term gains cannot be taken against long term risks. Regulate actions and products - just as it is illegal to print your own money, why can't it be illegal to create products (I'm thinking Credit Default Swaps) that mimic money?

We'd like to think that counterfeiting belongs to a time long ago. But, recent events prove otherwise. Until we address its modern forms, we remain A Nation of Counterfeiters.

Avatar

2009-12-27T09:55:00.001-07:00

I saw the movie 'Avatar' yesterday.

It really was like nothing I've seen before. The computer generated scenes blended with the real actors. As Greg Moody said, this movie is worth seeing for the visual effects alone. What's really cool is that the visual effects aren't limited to just pyrotechnics, but a vivid realization of an alien world, complete from fearsome carnivores to strange herbivores, surprising insects, and a flora as varied and sometimes startling as found in any rain forest on Earth.

The Science Fiction in the movie does leave a few questions unanswered, and a few inconsistencies. I awoke this morning to a couple of questions of “But what if?” and “If that worked there, why didn't it work later in the movie?”. Part of the movie is very Matrix-like, with humans making a mind-transferring link to another entity; But unlike the Matrix, when the humans leave their Avatar's body, it leaves the Avatar incapacitated, and very vulnerable. Surprisingly, nothing happens to them in that state.

But those are just nits in what is other-wise a fine movie. Although, as has been pointed out, the plot is fairly simple, that's not the point of this particular film. James Cameron has a message to convey, and everything in the movie, from the actions of the aliens and The People, from the portrayal of a rich, green, interconnected and spiritual world contrasted with greedy, destructive and isolated self-interest is used as metaphor to drive the point. It may be a little heavy-handed at times, but this particular message has been given many times with more subtlety, and unheard, so perhaps Mr. Cameron can be forgiven.

Sadly, one of my movie-going friends indicated that many of those that would benefit most by contemplating the message have already rejected it. If only there were a metaphor for a closed mind in the movie...

Ah, yes. In the words of the Na'vi, “You can't add to a vessel that's already full.”

Indeed.

But for those whose vessels are receptive, Avatar is the most richly imagined and vividly realized telling to date. I recommend it.

The Government Deficit vs Private Saving

2009-11-19T20:40:00.002-07:00

Ed Harrison of Credit Writedowns has an excellent post explaining some very pertinent facts about the government deficit as it relates to private saving (wealth) and investment. Well worth reading if you are concerned about the deficit.

The relation he talks about has been well explored by several economists - In 'Stabilizing an Unstable Economy', Minsky adds the financial sector to the sectors that Harrison mentions - and again, shows how additional government deficit equals increases in private and financial sector wealth. The interplay at these aggregate or macro levels often turns intuition on its head...

What I find so interesting about Obama's voicing of concern and a willingness to go down the path of Hoover is that Government Deficit has to be good for business - so why would financial (business) advisers to our politicians push so hard to Balance the Budget?

Disengeneous Anti-Library Screed

2009-10-29T10:50:00.005-06:00

I was doing my ballot research, and trying to decide which way I would go on our City Library initiative. Increase taxes to fund the libraries, and prevent closure and a diminishing of services?

I found the Denver Post's for and against articles on the subject, just to gain a small handle.

I visit the libraries regularly - I don't like the idea of purchasing every book I want to read, just those that I might want to read twice. And my children go through books like a worm through apples (okay, maybe not quite: They don't destroy the books!). Although having a large selection of books to read certainly saves me more than the projected $70 a year the tax hike will cost me, do I really want to pay for more library?

But what has really decided me to vote for the measure was the completely disingenuous screed against expanding the library: In the writer's words, technology is overcoming our need for a library. We don't need a library, we just need Amazon and Google, and all will be well.

Except: When I visit the library, the banks of computers that allow our residents to do research on the web are full, lines waiting. The modern library is about much more than just the books on its shelves: It provides research capabilities to those who don't have internet access at home. It provides inter-library loans of books and materials. It provides Google and much more to those who can't afford it. In short, it provides technology equitably to our residents.

And Mr. Golyansky misleads: It's $60 million over 5 years! Sure, while trivially true, It's actually just 12.5 million per year, which is just just under $35 per resident, and roughly $70-$90 per homeowner (based on our median home value). Those are the numbers that matter. Not $60 million. Another perspective: A city our size has an annual budget of $600 million - that's $3 billion over five years! Turns out $60 million is drop in the bucket (a 2% drop).

If the best the opposition can do is to mislead and act like all the library does is purchase books for its shelves (and ignore it's other services completely) - then they lose. At least for my vote. The city libraries are not caught in a technological time-warp - expanding those very technologies that Mr Golyansky wants is exactly why they must raise more revenue.

Jon Ronson and "Them:"

2009-10-29T07:29:00.009-06:00

I just finished reading "Them: Adventures with Extremists" by Jon Ronson, and I have to confess that I was initially not sure what to make of it.

Immediately upon finishing, I was a little concerned that I had been hoodwinked: That what I was taking to be a book documentary was really a work of fiction. The closing two chapters had a surreal, out of place feel that didn't seem to fit. I had to look up all the principle players (and they all exist, including footage from a video documentary that Ronson shot while investigating the material.) So, the credibility of Ronson and the events portrayed restored, I returned to my ruminations about the book.

As opposed to stating a thesis and building evidence to support it, "Them:" follows much more the documentary style: The journalist attempts to fade into the background, and not project any of his views onto the raw reporting of the people and events. Through many of the chapters of the book, Ronson achieves this: Omar Bakri, Randy Weaver, Thom Robb, Ian Paisley are allowed to speak without interference.

But, the closing chapters upset this. Ronson visits the Bilderburg Group and the Bohemian Grove, both objects of the conspiracy theories held by many in the earlier chapters. It almost appears that Ronson is now going to point out how silly their theories are, or outright debunk them.

However, he just doesn't do that. Instead of hard evidence, he simply interjects his views onto the events unfolding before him, coloring his reporting. He does reveal the counterpoint view held by two "extremists" who accompany him. Who's view is correct?

And that's the problem. Throughout the book, we are invited to live with the extremists, to see them as people who maybe hold a different viewpoint, to confront their views neutrally, and perhaps learn a little about them. It could provide a good springboard for thinking about us and them, about the origins of beliefs, and the chaotic nature of all belief.

Then he tears this down. Suddenly his viewpoint appears, as if to say: You knew they were wrong all along, go ahead, let's mock them together. No supporting evidence that "we" are correct, that the viewpoint held by "them" is wrong. He closes in exasperation, as though to say there's no hope, and that we should be equally exasperated.

I am. Not with "them", but with Ronson.

Verbs, Pinker, Foder, and Thought

2009-10-22T22:46:00.001-06:00

Thanks to the Harry Potter series, we know what thoughts look like: Silvery strands of goo that can be pulled out of your ears for storage and later retrieval and play-back. But what are thoughts, really?

Undaunted, Steven Pinker tackles that subject in his book 'The Stuff of Thought'. Pinker is a linguist, and he approaches the subject through his research into how we use language, and what it looks like on a universal scale. (Early in the book he states that there is enough universality to languages that we don't actually think differently based on the language we use. I'm not proficient in enough languages to either verify or refute that claim, so we'll have to accept it for now.)

Pinker bases his observations on the constructs that appear in language, and how we (or more appropriately, children) learn and use their language. As an example, he points at that some verbs are very flexible: They can fit into either construct:

Load hay into the wagon.
Load the wagon with hay.

But other seemingly similar verbs (action) refuse:

Pour water into the glass.
*Pour the glass with water.

You have probably never been tempted to use the second form (unless, perhaps, if you are a poet.) What is astonishing to linguists the world over is how quickly we learn which verbs fit into which constructs (and Steven Pinker gives several more classes as examples) – and often, after some initial flubs as very young children, we are not tempted to mess them up, even when we encounter a new verb that we haven't known before!

Enter Jerry Foder. Another linguist / philosopher, he is convinced that there is an enormous amount of language structure built in – our dividing verbs (and nouns) into classes that pre-determine how they get used is innate: We don't have to be taught, our brains are pre-wired for those constructs and those verb classes – and maybe even those verbs! Foder belongs to the class of linguists described as Extreme Nativists.

Pinker disagrees with Foder, and the exposition of the book is putting forth his argument that we do indeed learn all this stuff, and the quantity of innate structure in our minds is much, much less. However, in a gentlemanly moment, Pinker gives a compliment to Foder by quoting Daniel Dennett: “If we've learned much and pushed new ground, it's by jumping on Jerry” - a take on the old adage that 'if I've seen farther, it's by standing on the shoulders of giants.' Pinker indicates that without Foder as a foil (and a very, very intelligent one, at that), his and others' research would not have gone as far or perhaps produced the same quality of hypothesis. Disagreement, yes, but respect.

As I was contemplating the information contained in the book, it became very clear to me why both hypotheses would exist: It is extremely difficult to tease apart cause and effect at this level. Do the children of musicians become musicians because there is a music gene that they've inherited (plausible), or because their milieu from the time they were born was musical (equally plausible)? The same for athletes, actors, public servants, etc. We can see the genetic results in our external forms – do we have long arms, a slender or stocky build, what is the ratio of our tibia to our femur – all things that certainly may suit or unsuit us for particular activities.

But we can't see the genetic differences in the internal aspects of our brains. Is there a gene that controls the degree of folding? The connections between the hemispheres? The size ratios of the various constituent parts? We universally learn to speak by the time we are three – instinct? Or learned? (And that's an impossible test: We can't ethically remove children from speakers and isolate them to see if they ever learn to speak...) Does our brain innately understand cause and effect, movement to/from or past, or do we learn these constructs that are reflected in our language? How do we tell? If we observe the same constructs, and the same avoidance's, do we learn not to pour the glass with water, or does it innately not make sense?

Recent research into other areas of environment vs innate ability keep astonishing us, mostly with how what we thought was innate is instead learned – and so Pinker may currently have the upper hand in this argument, but certainly not the last word. The rest of us are lucky, that, again in Dennett's words: Pinker and Foder are like trampolines that push back when challenged, and in the process of springing off each other, they push our understanding of, well, understanding.

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Rewards

2009-10-12T22:12:00.003-06:00

So much of what we do is driven by extrinsic reward - do your homework to get good grades (and your parent's and teacher's praise), practice your skills (again, for praise and attentions), do your job (for the money). In a recent book club book, Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell, he pointed out that those who achieve the very highest levels of skill do so because they are able to replace extrinsic motivation for intrinsic (internal) motivation: They start doing the activity for the sheer pleasure that they derive. This internal motivation enables them to concentrate and practice for long periods - much longer than those who are just extrinsically motivated. And there is nothing like lots of extra practice to perfect a skill.

So, naturally, as parents, we want to provide motivations to our children that will ultimately lead to their developing intrinsic motivations. Unfortunately, most of what we know is to reward or bribe (Do this, and I'll give you something you want.)

I don't recall how I ran across her website, but Dr. Christine Carter has some good ideas driven by research on how that may be accomplished. And since a co-worker and I were speaking on this topic today, here is a link to her post on ways to motivate without extrinsic reward.

Peter Galbraith in the News

2009-10-01T22:20:00.003-06:00

One of the towering figures of the 20th century Economics profession was John Kenneth Galbraith. He wrote prolifically, and looked at economics from often a different viewpoint - a very humane view that questioned whether the economy was helping everyone. His writing is accessible and enjoyable - not something every economics professor can pull off!

Interestingly, his children have also entered very public roles: James K. Galbraith as an economics professor at University of Texas at Austin, who speaks out prominently against economic inequality and war. And, his older son Peter, has been a high profile U.S. ambassador, to Croatia, East Timor, and most recently, Afghanistan.

Peter Galbraith is in the news, as he has just been recalled (fired) from his post in Afghanistan, following a dispute he had with the senior U.N. official there about the large scale election fraud that took place during the recent election that retained Hamid Kharzi in power.

Enough of a preamble: You can read his letter to the NY Times, and listen to an interview on NPR's On-Point.

1421 by Gavin Menzies

2009-09-29T21:24:00.003-06:00

I think that I am finished reading Gavin Menzies' “1421 – The Year China Discovered America”. Not that I have completed the book, but I've reached the point where I am no longer interested in reading.

Mr. Menzies starts with an intriguing premise: The Chinese, with the large economy they had at the start of the 15th century, coupled with their ship-building know-how (they actually built sectioned boats that could have two compartments flooded and still stay afloat!) and their desire for trade led them to sail to the America's both across the Pacific and the Atlantic in advance of Columbus.

Mr. Menzies uses his knowledge of the sea and its ways (he was a Captain in the Royal Navy), along with an understanding of how a man standing on a ship deck would view the land and chart it; this has led him to believe that charts of the world that pre-date Columbus sailing were in fact copied from Chinese charts – and coupled with artifacts found around the world constitute proof that the Chinese were there first.

Claiming first arrival is difficult. Although we have the recorded history of Columbus' voyages, we now know that the Polynesians crossed large expanses of the Pacific ahead of Columbus (and Magellan) settling most of the larger Pacific islands. It actually is not unreasonable that they may have sailed from Hawaii and Easter on to North and South America, respectively. And, given what we are learning about the Chinese capabilities during the latter 14th and early 15th century, they may very well have, too.

And those charts: The Portuguese had charts in their possession that showed lands across the Atlantic. We know the apocryphal stories of Columbus to be untrue: It wasn't that the majority believed the world to be flat, they knew it to be round, and further, 15th century Europeans, from contact with the Greeks and the Arabs, knew approximately how big it was. It wasn't that Columbus would fall off – he would run out of provisions attempting to cross the large expanse of sea that must lie between Europe and India. So, if Columbus had a chart that indicated an intermediary land where he could re-provision...

Mr. Menzies gets kudos for his explanations of the charts, how a 15th century seaman would have charted the land he saw, for his explanations of ocean currents and prevailing winds, and the effects they would have had on a square-rigged Chinese junk. Kudos too for explaining how ocean currents would change a charter's perspective, and cause them to draw Africa the right height (north-south), but fore-shorten it's western bulge due to a current heading west along it's coast.

And kudos too for his explanation of how the Chinese built survey posts to record a lunar eclipse, and hence charted the east coast of Africa, all of India, and China accurately not only in latitude but longitude.

But, Gavin Menzies is no historian. He starts repeating himself, and he jumps to conclusions. He finds evidence of an ancient wreck in San Francisco Bay, and concludes “I'm convinced it was the Chinese”. He finds similarities between some Mayan ceremonies and Chinese ceremonies, and concludes “I'm convinced it was the Chinese.” He finds evidence of a shipwreck in Australia, and concludes “It could only have been the Chinese.”

When an author starts promoting his view, his conclusion, without exploring alternative explanations, my internal warning flags go off. And when his conclusion is based on the barest of evidence and minimal cross-support, I start to doubt. And then, when his conclusion appears to be a leap, with nothing more than “I'm certain it could only be...”, showing a lack of imagination, I'm forced to discard his conclusion as unproven.

I'm sympathetic to Mr. Menzies and his ideas. Given some of the things I've outlined, plus others, I wonder that our accepted view of history may still be a little off, a little Euro-centered. I wonder if someday in the future we may find evidence that the population of the Americas wasn't just a migration following the crossing of the Bering Foot-Bridge, but was accomplished by other means as well. That before the Europeans crossed the Atlantic and sailed the world that other peoples had sailed there before. That the people of Australia, New Zealand, and maybe even China were aware of the Antarctic and South America and the animals unique to those regions long before Shackleton.

But, these ideas remain only possibilities. Gavin Menzies has not proven them.

Bumper Sticker Watch

2009-09-19T12:35:00.001-06:00

"If only closed minds came with closed mouths"

A Cloak for Facebook

2009-09-09T22:22:00.003-06:00

I ran across this at slashdot this morning, and wanted to make the story available to those who don't seek out news in geekland...

Privacy Plug-In Fakes Out Facebook

The article is primarily about hiding sensitive information on Facebook, but they raise some really good points that people should consider before sharing (and sometimes virtually baring) all...Good info for all of us as we adapt to online technology.

The President Speaks...

2009-09-07T21:27:00.006-06:00

A friend of mine put it very succinctly:

"There are plenty of presidents I've disagreed with, but not one I wouldn't want my kids to have an opportunity to hear."

I agree fully. I think that our current and each of our past Presidents have been uncommon men - an uncommon mixture of talent, will, and vision. The opportunity to listen to such an individual doesn't happen every day.

Yet, due to unreasonable paranoia (and partisanship!), many children will likely be denied the opportunity Tuesday.

They'll miss more than just his words: They'll miss listening to a man who became their nation's President not through heredity, not through military coup or fiat, but by doing his studies when young, seeking and gaining acceptance to Harvard's Law School, building and honing his knowledge, leadership and oratory at every step of the way. They'll miss listening to a living example of what in America is possible.

(Thanks, Mike.)

Indoctrination

2009-09-04T06:08:00.004-06:00

My son is being indoctrinated. Five days a week I send him off to school, where he spends more time with his teacher than he does with me. 30 hours a week of learning from someone else.

I don't worry too much. We talk every day about what he learned. I figure that if his teacher is straying from the published curriculum, I'll eventually hear about it. My son and I then have the opportunity to talk - something we already do. Although I believe that his teachers have an advantage of training, and will introduce and help him gain proficiency in his subjects much more effectively than I, I still feel that I am part of the equation. So I help him with his homework, and we talk regularly about our ideals. About what it means to be a moral person.

And I see him growing into the sort of person I'd like him to be.

So it didn't fill me with dread when I heard that our President was going to speak to our school children. "What a neat thing to do!" I thought. It will likely make an impression on his young mind - probably much more that the President took the time to speak over anything that might be said.

And if it does make an impression, it is something we will likely talk about when I get home from work. If the President talks about education, about my son's role in accepting responsibility for his education, that he can't just depend on others to do it for him; that education is a good thing and if pursued diligently will enhance my son's life; that he must look to his parents and within himself to really grow, then it will be a very positive experience.

And, if for some reason the President does deviate into other topics about government, about government's role in our lives, then we have that as a springboard for discussion as well. I may disagree, and that could be a very powerful moment ("Wow, Dad, you disagree with the President?" "Yes, eventually I'm bound to disagree with everyone, including the President. And here's why...")

As much as I can stay involved, and hopefully teach him to evaluate, to search for supporting evidence, then I don't have to worry that he is being indoctrinated at all. He's being educated.

And he's going to grow up and move into the world where he will daily hear people speak and have to determine the truth or falsehood of what they are saying. Better he should start now.

With me by his side.

Aspire to Inspire

2009-09-01T08:30:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, it's just good to remember what we wish to do:

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." - William A. Ward

Torture Again

2009-08-31T07:04:00.003-06:00

I've had cause recently to recall a philosophy course I took in college. I remember one particular day, when, during our daily topic discussion / arguments, one courageous young woman took the unusual position that killing was wrong. I say courageous because, despite strong opposition from a majority of the class, she held to her view.

The opposition didn't really dispute her stance - nobody actually argued that killing was right. But, the argument against her was that she was unwilling to make exceptions, especially exceptions for the state. And, it seemed, many felt that killing wasn't wrong in the same way for the state.

I was mostly an observer that day. My strongest prior influence on the topic had been Justice Van Pelt's assertion that state execution should be reserved for professional assassins - it constituted an occupational hazard. In all other instances, the state should refrain.

But as I listened to the arguments in class that day, it occurred to me how strange it was that something we would abhor, something we would expressly forbid individuals from doing, we would grant authority to the impersonal body of the state to do.

I hear the same argument playing out again today. There are those who take the unusual position that violence, especially violence conducted expressly to advance one's goals or ends, is wrong. They argue that there shouldn't be exceptions - that the state shouldn't retain for itself the right to commit violence in our name without our prior, specific approval.

And then the opposition, yesterday articulated by former Vice President Dick Cheney, arguing that the state application of violence to obtain information is the best means we have, that it saves lives, and that our goal of saving lives justifies the state application of violence in secret. Today, I predict that the violence apologists will spring up across the news spectrum, taking up the call for society's approval of more state violence.

At least Justice Van Pelt's position had a certain logic: To be eligible for state execution, you had to be demonstrably employed in a specific profession, and you had to have been convicted of a very specific crime.

But the calls to allow state sponsored torture lack any of that - there is no requirement for specific actions, no requirement for conviction of a specific crime. Without very specific criteria - criteria that prevent abuse, that prevent it from becoming nothing more than some individuals using the state as cover to explore their personal desire to perpetrate violence, then it becomes just an acceptance of violence in society. It begins to take on overtones of racism and xenophobia - since we have no clear guidelines to its application, it will be applied to individuals based upon other individuals beliefs and fears and preconceptions. Surely a recipe for abuse.

Will we support Attorney General Holder's investigation into torture abuse? Will we pressure our representatives for stronger laws prohibiting and regulating torture?

Or will we be left with the sad conclusion that in America taking the position that violence is wrong is the unusual one?

Market Value

2009-08-28T07:19:00.002-06:00

One of our cherished ideas about the market is that it properly (and efficiently) sets the value of items. We even believe that it properly values people: Whether someone is making $10,000, $100,000, or $1,000,000, we often contend that the market has accurately determined their value to society, and they are being paid appropriately.

Leaving aside whether that is true or not, let’s poke a little at some of the ramifications. One observation that we can make is that it is the current value – the market does not attempt (with a couple of possible exceptions) to predict our future value. In other words, our current pay reflects our current value to our current employer – nothing more.

A co-worker made the assertion the other day that people who are poorly valued by the market have no business demanding Health Care. His idea was simply that if they hadn’t done what it takes to be highly valued by the market, and since the market reflects value to society, society is proper in denying them health care – we don’t get a good return on our investment by fixing them up.

But, that only reflects current value. We have no idea (and the market makes no predictions) about their possible future value. Most individuals, upon leaving High School, are relatively unemployable. Gradually, through time, they find a trade, complete college, and raise their wage.

Fortunately, most young people have good health. But, if they were to become sick, or injured: Can we take their current position in society, as determined by their wage, to fairly determine whether they deserve Health Care? Do we know that they will never amount to more, and our judgment that they should have only a bare minimum or face a lifetime attempting to pay their medical debts is fair?

Consider this, too: When CEO’s make mistakes, when those we’ve judged (by their salary only) to have high worth to society over extend their company: It is the rank and file worker who takes the brunt of the punishment, and loses their job, and frequently any Health Insurance / Care.

Did the worker’s value to society actually go to zero at the moment they lost their job?

I think we would say not – and the very act of denying the truth of this statement calls into question the earlier assertion that markets accurately value people.

And if markets don’t accurately value people, the idea that we can use a market valuation to determine eligibility for Health Care is also suspect.

More Means and Medians

2009-08-25T07:09:00.001-06:00

There are a couple of threads that I wanted to follow from my previous entry on Means and Medians. One, of course, relates to the weather. The other is this one, on income.

There are (roughly) 300 million people in America. If you take our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $14 trillion dollars, and divide by the population, you arrive at a per-capita income of approximately $45,000. We take that value and compare it with the per-capita income of other countries to get a sense of how well off we are – are we rich, or not?

And, by that measure, Americans are rich. A family of four's share of the output of America is $190,000. We're swimming in money, at least according to the mean.

Of course, that's just a measure of how we have to spread our output around. Unless they are extraordinary, most children don't work, and the majority of our seniors are retired. So a more interesting mean might be the amount of our GDP generated by each worker.

According to the census bureau, there are 138 million employed workers. (So, there are several million more potential workers...). That's a convenient number, because it makes the math easy: The average share of the output (the worker per-capita) is $100,000.

A normal distribution about the average would have 50% of American workers making more than $100,000 a year, and 50% making less. If it were fairly tightly bound to the mean, we would be able to say that American's are quite well off. But is that true?

Again, using the census bureau's numbers, the median household income (the mid-point) is $50,000. And since there are more income earners than households, the median worker income is lower still: $45,000 for men, $35,000 for women, and $41,000 overall.

In fact, the top quintile of all households starts at $91,000. So, less than 20% of American households make the per-worker average. And, since to get into the top quintile 77% of the households had two wage earners, that drops the number of workers who approach the national average income to just under 5%.

95% of all American workers make less than the per-capita value!

Therefore, for determining the actual wealth of the 'average' American, neither the per-capita value nor the per-worker share tells us much useful. Much better is the experience of the median family of 4, with an individual share of just $12,500. That's the experience of most of America. Not $45,000.

Now, economists are a pretty smart lot, and they understand that the difference between the mean and the median income in a country has meaning to the people of that country, and to what you can say about it. To help them, they use the Gini Coefficient (read wikipedia for a fuller account) – but it basically tells them the relative distance between the median and the mean.

Ours is a relatively high 45. Compare that with the bulk of Europe (34 for GB and Switzerland, low 30's for Canada, Ireland and Spain, 28 for France, Belgium, Hungary, Germany and Norway). We're only low compared to Argentina (49), Sri Lanka (50), El Salvador (52), Panama (56), Brazil (57) – and I'll leave it to the reader to consider what those nations have in common.

There's a lot more that could be said and investigated. For instance, what is the typical experience of a worker: Do they start low and progress across the median during their career, or do they remain on one side or the other? Where do our elderly lie? (I think we know: Most are below...)

But to maintain a semblance of brevity, I'll just leave you with this thought. Consider how this large income inequality is the gorilla in the room that silently influences every socio-economic discussion we have: From Education to Health Care, from Taxation to Retirement – the experience of the majority of Americans does not match the experience projected by the statistical mean, nor the experience of the planners and policy makers.

Once again, the mean and the median paint very different pictures. The mean says that we are universally rich.

The median exposes the lie.

The Market

2009-08-10T08:36:00.004-06:00

I am a software engineer. Recently, I've been able to work on the software for autonomous, collaborative, distributed systems.

When a problem grows too large for a single computer to solve because of its complexity, a distributed system often provides a means of gaining the solution: Several to hundreds of computers are pulled into the task. Each computer churns on a portion of the problem, adding its partial solution to the whole, and then the partials are aggregated into a final.

An autonomous system is one where we add rules and logic to the individual computers so that, rather than my choosing as a programmer which parts of the problem will be solved on a computer, the program running there is allowed to survey the problem space, and select where it will search for a solution. We call such systems collaborative when they are allowed to communicate, and base their decisions not just on the problem at hand, but which parts are seen to be worked on by other computers.

We code up the rules and logic, compile, and then place an identical program on several computers, and start them up to see if they can find a solution. Often they do, and often very quickly. However, compared to a single system with its single set of logic and rules, sometimes our distributed system is much, much faster, but has found a local solution, rather than an optimal solution. Whether that is acceptable depends on the nature of the problem we are attempting to solve.

Sometimes, these systems surprise us. We've coded the rules, we've devised the logic, we've predicted just how they'll work together, and how quickly and efficiently they'll search the solution space. They don't always behave that way. Interactions we didn't foresee lead to solutions we didn't anticipate.

And we've coined a term for this: Emergent Behavior.

Sometimes, the emergent behavior opens up new possibilities, new avenues to explore. We see that a system we started developing to solve one problem, with some adjustment, can be made to solve another. Maybe two problems can be combined, and solutions found for both.

And sometimes, the emergent behavior is just bad. Rather than solutions, unanticipated interactions create loops, the same section of the problem is revisited again and again, with no progress. We go back to our cubes, change the rules, re-code the logic, adjust our algorithms, and try again.

We devised these systems out of analogy. Some say that it was a programmer's fascination with ants that lead to the first, others claim bee behavior lead to the insight. It doesn't really matter. We pull from research on not only insects, but animal and even human behavior for our inspiration.

But, it turns out that the analogy works both ways. We are all embedded in an autonomous, distributed, collaborative system in real life. We each work and play, earn money, and consume based upon an individual rule set – need, peer, and culture driven. Collectively, we participate economically, and the emergent behavior of all of our economic decisions and actions has been given a word: The Market.

In a sense, 'The Market' does not exist. It is not an entity to which you can appeal, it doesn't appear in nature. 'The Market' is just a term for the end result of human economic activity.

Like my programs, where the emergent behavior depends upon the rules, algorithms, and logic that I have coded, so too, 'The Market' depends upon the conditions of society in which it emerges: The laws that constrain possibility, the culture that helps determine value, the beliefs that influence individual behavior. Change any one, and the emergent behavior, 'The Market', changes.

Additionally, there is no reason to believe that the market is efficient or optimum. My distributed programs are neither. They use much more resources and energy than a conceivable single system would – the caveat is that we cannot yet build a single computer anywhere near to powerful enough to eliminate the inefficiencies. We see these same economic inefficiencies every day. Does everyone get the precise shoe they want? No. Does everyone get a shoe? No. Are there shoes manufactured that are discarded without a user? Yes.

Am I condemning 'The Market'? No. I'm just pointing out that it is nothing which we should approach on bended knee, that it is nothing 'out there' about which we cannot change. Nothing grates on me more than when an inefficiency (or worse, an inequality) is discovered in our society, and in response to proposals to ameliorate the inefficiency or inequality, someone cries “No! Let the Market Decide.”

'The Market' decides nothing. 'The Market' gives us nothing. 'The Market' is the end result, not a functioning intermediary.

Does the insight that ‘The Market’ is an outcome provide us with anything useful?

I think it does.

First, it ascribes morality to the outcome. There are those who claim that markets are impersonal, unbiased, and amoral; that market outcomes should not be morally judged. But if we recognize that the market is the end result of laws, culture, and beliefs, each of which is infused with our morals, then we can understand that the outcome can be judged against our moral standards, and, if found wanting, should be modified. (Those who appeal to the amoral market are often seeking cover for the furthering of their own self-interest. But, the intersection and balance between self-interest and group interest is exactly what morality is!)

Second, it empowers us to attempt modification. By understanding that ‘The Market’ is an outcome of our making, not some inviolate entity, we realize that we can imagine and then seek a better outcome. We’ll no longer allow ourselves to be bullied into inaction by those who seek to retain the status quo under the guise of some fictional entity.

Thirdly, it removes some of the mythology from ‘The Markets’ entity. When one speaks of rational markets, or efficient markets, we can see from analogy that they are discussing something that exists only in freshman econ textbooks, and nowhere in the real world. For in the real world, markets are made up of inefficient, sometimes irrational agents with incomplete knowledge and conflicting desires. How either rationality or efficiency can be ascribed to such a mess is beyond me. It requires heroic assumptions that just aren’t true. (It’s just like the physics point mass – frictionless surface problem that never occurs: useful for gleaning some understanding, but completely trivial for modeling anything in the real world.)

And, just as my computer programs aren’t useful for attempting every problem, so economics and the emergent ‘Market’ isn’t appropriate for every human problem, either. Our biggest challenge is to determine which problems we can tackle economically, and then collectively determine what attributes the solution should have (justice, equality, fairness, reward), and in what balance, and then work the structure towards such a solution.

Means, Medians, and the Weather

2009-08-04T08:39:00.001-06:00

Today, a little math.

Take the sequence of numbers: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

The average of these numbers is 15. So is the mid-point, or median. If these numbers were in a bag, and you were to draw one out, there is equal probability that the number you drew would be above or below 15 (and a 1/9 chance that it would be 15 exactly).

If you had a very large bag, and there were equal number of duplicates of each, and you were to draw enough times (say, 400 or so), you would likely end up with a very even distribution, 44 occurrences of each. The average would be unchanged.

Now, in that same bag, let’s remove all of the 11’s, and replace them with 1’s. We’ll do the same 400 draws, but what happens to the average and mid-point?

The average drops to 13.9. However, the median remains unchanged at 15. (The sequence is now: 1, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19). 15 is equidistant from each end.

Which means that the probability of drawing a number greater than or less than 15 remains unchanged – for every number that you draw that turns out to be larger than 15, you will probably draw a counterpart that is less than 15.

But what if, instead of telling you the sequence of numbers in the bag and the median, I just told you that I have a bag of numbers in which the average, over all of the numbers in the bag, is 13.9. Then I invite you to draw 5.

The chance that you will draw numbers greater than 13.9 is very large – 6/9, or 2/3’s, to be exact. And by drawing only 5, there is a chance that you won’t actually draw any less than the average.

So, your perception of the range of numbers in the bag would be skewed. If you were to think about it, you would properly discern that there must be some numbers less than 13.9 in the bag, and if I were to continue to allow you to draw, you might even propose (or draw!) a very low number (the 1).

Now, to an application of exactly this phenomenon.

The average temperature (as published by the NWS) in Denver in late July / early August is 88 degrees.

So, what is the chance that any given day during this period is greater than 88 degrees? Is a 91 degree day ‘above normal’?

You get points if you realized that you can’t answer the question with the data given.

You get extra points if you realized that when our local weather people come on the TV and tell you that ‘it’s going to be a few degrees above normal today, with the expected high of 91 degrees’, they are being foolish, and possibly mis-informing you.

I got to wondering, especially last year, when it seemed that a 90+ degree day in the summer was more common than a 90- degree day. I contacted one of our local weathermen, and asked what the spread of the first standard deviation was on our weather, figuring that would actually tell us much more information about what constituted an abnormally hot (or cold) day. (The first standard deviation encompasses 2/3 of the data – if it were from, say 85 to 95 degrees, you could pretty accurately predict that most of the time, the summer day-time high would be in that range, and an abnormal, by this measure, day would be one above 95 degrees, which would constitute just 1/6 of all summer days.)

His reply astounded me: “We don’t get that information from the NWS – just the daily averages and extremes. BTW, the averages are computed every 10 years over the previous 30, so currently we are using the data collected from 1971 – 2000.”

Well. There is nothing left for an inquisitive person to do but to look at the data directly. Fortunately, the daily recorded highs and lows for the last 30 years can be had from the NWS site. So, I went to work.

And what I found was interesting. Our weather more closely represents the second sequence than it does the first. Rather than a smooth distribution about the average, it has regular, but infrequent, extremely low temps (in the 70’s!). The median temperature, as a result, is about 3.5 degrees above the average. It works out that just shy of 2/3’s of all summer daytime temps are above the published average!

Imagine how this alters your perception of the region’s weather. If you knew that the median temperature was 91.4 degrees, you would know to expect that, given enough days and years, half of the summer day-time highs would be 92 or above, and you wouldn’t be surprised at a string of 93-95 degree days. (Conversely, you also wouldn’t be surprised by an equal string of 87-89 degree days.) And if you knew the full variability of the weather, you also wouldn’t be surprised by a string of 80-82 degree days, or the occasional string of 97-99 degree days.

There is a more important point buried in all of this. The computation and use of means and medians is elementary, in the sense that we all encounter it prior to secondary (9-12) school. Our teachers take the time to create examples like this to illustrate how they differ, although the real meaning (and mismeaning) is not fully explored until statistics, usually in college. But, a rough understanding is vital to our accurate perception of the world around us, and the data presented.

And, we expect people who have a vested interest in molding our perceptions (think politicians and lobbyists) would leave one or the other out.
But, our weather people, and the NWS? What do they have to gain, other than laziness? They are all college educated, they certainly had college statistics as part of their degree program, and yet – they think nothing of going on TV each and every evening and misleading us about the ‘normalness’ of today’s weather.

Which really illustrates just how vigilant we must be whenever numbers and terms like average, median, and deviation are used. As has been said, the worst lies are statistical lies, which we can see are often lies of omission – omission of large parts of the relevant data.

Markets & Morals - Michael Sandel

2009-06-10T07:39:00.001-06:00

I found this to be particularly interesting. Do markets play a role in how we view morality, and in turn, is our morality influenced by how we view markets?

I won't write more - it's worth reading and reflecting on.

Markets & Morals - Michael Sandel

Late @ Night

2009-06-08T23:39:00.001-06:00

This is actually a test post to see if my feed is working. Nothing more to read here!

BBQs

2009-05-31T21:15:00.005-06:00

Barbecues are fun. Especially large group barbecues. Everyone pitching in to see that the food is cooked, the serving line manned, everything necessary is available. Kind words exchanged, small groups breaking off to have conversation - kids playing tug-of-war.

After the food is served, some participate as actors, some as honored members, some as spectators. The roles will change for the next. Since this particular BBQ was to celebrate the growth and development of some youngsters, there were proud parents and proud kids to go along with the ceremony.

And new faces. New members to the group, watching and participating for the first time. Feeling the welcome camaraderie of being part of something good, something significant, of belonging.

At times like these it is hard to believe there is strife, that there are disagreements. It is a welcome diversion from the awareness that not all agree with us. We can agree on so much, participate together in so much, have so much in common. Different though we may be, we look at our children, and together invest our time and energy to see to their development, and concur that it is a very important thing to do. We become like-minded, and briefly imagine the rest of the world may be, too.

I like barbecues.

Historical Perspective

2009-05-27T05:43:00.002-06:00

From Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections (Benjamin I. Page):

In 1956, Adlai Stevenson put forth the idea during his presidential campaign for National Health Insurance, using federal aid to make voluntary insurance available to everyone.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater included planks to make Social Security 'flexible' and 'voluntary'.

And I thought these were new ideas. In reading history, I see that we keep retreading old ground in our quadrennial elections. No wonder the issues seem so entrenched that we can no longer get at the roots and work towards meaningful resolutions. The real stops to our desires, however, must be congress: Their recalcitrance on passing legislation for which there is majority popular support continues today - read any report of how current Health Care legislation has stalled. (61% support full Health Coverage to all today, up from 51% in 1956.)

(In 1960, Goldwater also published a book titled: "Conscience of a Conservative". Now I know where Krugman got his title.)

Stories

2009-05-22T06:27:00.012-06:00

More than anything else, we tell stories. Stories about our life, our friends, our world, and our place in it. Especially important are our origin stories: Tales about how we came to be, from a grand perspective (think Biblical, Origin Myth, Evolution) to smaller, closer to home tales about our particular family.

Stories give us identity. We repeat the tales about the founding of our country to reinforce the ideals and struggles that led to its birth, and in the telling, we share a common history.

We elaborate and embellish. Rare indeed is the individual whose recounting of past events doesn't have themselves playing a more prominent role, doesn't have themselves portraying higher morals, forgetting errors, adding conquests. That's not all bad: By recounting how we want to be, how we wished we'd behaved, we create a powerful cognitive feedback loop that reinforces future behavior. We act out the roles we create for ourselves in the stories we tell.

Sometimes, though, the story we hear repeatedly starts to sound untrue. Evidence mounts that the original tale has been distorted, perhaps has reached the point of caricature, or has undergone so much wishful embellishment as to appear completely made up. Perhaps it no longer serves a universal purpose, but has been captured by a small group.

Stories that recount the innate superiority of Western Civilization have started to fall into this category. New evidence about commonality worldwide has surfaced. For instance, no matter who you are or where you are reading this, you stand an equal chance of sharing more common DNA with me than my immediate neighbor. Researchers have uncovered other clues about the vagaries of existence, clues about the role of language and culture in cognitive development, and exposed the fluidity of it all.

Into this maelstrom roars Jared Diamond with his book 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. Weaving together tales of biological availability, geography, cultural solutions to needs, he creates a new origin story about civilization. He creates an account of the development of immunity to germs through animal husbandry. He shows how some regions were ripe for agriculture through the availability of high protein grains, and how other areas, richer in other resources but lacking in cultivatable plants, had no compelling need to develop farming. He uses geography, and the ease or difficulty of traversing the landscape to explain why some migrations occurred, and others did not. The availability of domesticateable animals (for not all are!) explains population concentrations: With, a single farmer can supply many more; without, even transporting goods becomes difficult, forcing groups to live closer to their resources.

Diamond's story is a very good one. It parks at the door ideas about innate superiority, and instead replaces them with proximate causes, external factors. It provides a more equitable place in the world for all people, and forgoes judgment of civilizations that haven't expanded in the same way as ours.

However, it's always good to seek out criticism, to search for inadequacies in any story, to reveal options for improving the tale and our understanding of the world.

I've seen critics of Diamond in the past, but they always appeared to be angry that he had so successfully created a tale that didn't rely on innate differences to explain the world as we see it today. They were riled that they could no longer point to internal causes - one could easily see that in 500 pages Diamond had erased part of their identity. They were forced to recreate their own origin tales to fit in the new picture, or, they had to discount Diamond's account. Such criticisms are not substantive.

I ran across some more thoughtful, anthropological critiques yesterday by Timothy Burke (you can read them here and here.) The summary is that Diamond too easily ignores data that doesn't fit his grand story (his account is long, slow, and sweeping; what about short term, close in explanations that are sufficient?), that the stage is set in the 11,000 years leading up to 1500, and events since then have unfolded because of this long pre-history, ignoring "the importance of accident and serendipidity at the moment of contact between an expanding Europe and non-Western societies around 1500."

If you have enjoyed 'Guns, Germs, and Steel', I highly recommend that you read Burke's essays. They have certainly given me a larger appreciation for what anthropology is about, and a new way of viewing Diamond's works.

But, the crucial question: Does Burke invalidate Diamond? It would appear not. Like every map, which is just an approximation, capable of answering some questions about the terrain while leaving others out, so, too, any origin story is only an approximation, highlighting the salient points. Even accident and serendipidity don't require innate superiority to function. Diamond provides a useful account of human expansions and civilization that flies in the face of Western arrogance, and if we'd listen, perhaps provides us with a little humility.

It is useful, too, as we continue to create our particular story. That we strive for greatness of culture, of civilization is important. That we look for real ways to explain our relative success, that we can pass on our methods and share strengthens our tale. And, by not appealing to some innate quality, but instead searching and building on what we have, we open ourselves to more possibilities, to a greater society. Enabling broader participation in our story creation should lead to a more compelling story.

Is Twitter Our Id?

2009-05-21T11:31:00.001-06:00

Read Roger Ehrenberg (Twitter is our Id, Facebook our Ego) and let me know: Is he right? Especially from my friends who 'Tweet'...(and extra credit if you can do it in the size of a twitter msg!)

Chief Justice Roberts

2009-05-21T08:00:00.006-06:00

There is an article in this week's New Yorker about Chief Justice Roberts, his views expressed during his current tenure on the court, and a historical perspective on his life.

In reading it, I was struck by a couple of things. One was his focus on race (in the guise of removing our focus on race), and the second his deference to power.

In his desire to remove our nation's focus on race, Justice Roberts has sided against laws that uphold quotas or similar means to address racial inequalities. In a statement guaranteed to be widely quoted (out of context and likely turned into a cliche, but really amounts to a tautology), Roberts observed “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

But even while challenging the laws that attempt to address past and current racial inequities, Justice Roberts himself ignores context. While it is true that most attempts at rectifying the results of discrimination end up imposing discrimination, concentrating on those ignores the initial causes of inequality - namely, the often implicit discrimination that exists in our society. Are you poor? You are most likely black or minority. Is your father in jail? Again, you are most likely black. Is your local school overcrowded, with poor teacher retention and dismal graduation rates?

We might do well to do away with explicit racial quotas on hiring and college school attendance. In 'Outliers', Malcolm Gladwell cites a study that followed those who attended law school and looked at the outcome. Did those who got in under quota (perhaps with less preparation than some passed over peers) under perform after? The answer was 'No.' In many things, after a certain threshold has been crossed, all can equally receive the training and education with similar results, thus leading to ideas of a lottery. We can't with precision determine who will succeed and who won't, so perhaps we shouldn't try, and let the individuals themselves decide. Of course, there are those who put forward extreme preparation that might be passed over, but since we can't adequately measure and predict, we aren't really doing anyone a disservice. Plus, our college educated ranks should more closely resemble the ratios of race in the population.

Of more concern to me is Justice Roberts deference to power and existing power structures. Jeffrey Toobin writes:

In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.

As I've observed elsewhere, individuals can rarely do as much damage as groups, and perhaps our most egregious violators are our nation's corporations, often acting without regard to safety, social needs, or respect for the long term environment.

But I'm not a lawyer. So what concerns me most about Roberts' view is not that he may be wrong, but that he may actually be right - That his interpretation of our nation's laws is consistent with the intent of our nation's laws. For over 200 years the common individual of America has been fighting against entrenched power, has been fighting for the right to live and excel on their own merits, has been fighting to be free from exploitation by powerful controlling groups. And again and again, fearful that if the masses have the same opportunities, the same privileges, that they will undermine the powerful, laws have been passed and judgments made that keep power in the hands of the few. Although there are anecdotal stories about 'self-made men', vastly more common is the 'success' of those who started out with money, privilege, and advantage.

Between our laws and a sympathetic Chief Justice, it is likely to remain that way.