Ravings of an Ivory Tower Lunatic

The Arizona shooting: A depressing lack of surprise

2011-01-10T23:42:00.000-08:00

I know that Saturday, there was a politically motivated shooting that made the news. A congresswoman, a sitting district court judge, and many other people were shot. Part of the "news" running through the mainstream media outlets is that this is shocking. Which means unexpected.

To me, it was not a surprise, and I don't think that reporters who make news their business have any right to claim surprise. Could I have predicted this specific time and target? No. Does it fit right in to the political environment? Yes.

There has been lately, and particularly in the last two election cycles, with Obama taking center stage, a dramatic upswing in indicators of political violence and domestic terrorism from the political fringe. The rhetoric of a number of talking heads has been a constant drumbeat of fear and terror.

There have been a number of incidents of attempted or successful acts of political violence just during this past election season; probably the most publicized being the videotaped stomping of a young woman at a rally in Kentucky days before the election (a fortunately non-lethal happening; but one which I found alarming nonetheless).

The only thing particularly special about this attack is how successful it appears to have been. I imagine there will be many public debates over the precise ideology of the gunman. There will be backlash against the way some media figures have been inciting violence. And if we're especially lucky, maybe we'll see lasting change in the infotainment arenas.

The shooter himself has every reason to lie through his teeth about his ideology for maximum impact at this point, if he is even capable of presenting his views in a coherent and understandable fashion. I can't afford to trust what he says about his own purposes. He's on the political fringe and almost certainly mentally ill, and his views won't line up perfectly with any mainstream figure anyway, however much the pundits try to fit him neatly into the box of their favored ideological opponents.

The problem is how neatly this fits in a pattern of rising violence, a tide whose leading edge can retroactively be seen starting in when he was still in high school and Giffords wasn't a US congresswoman, and a tide which reached full froth when Obama was elected president.

That's a fact. We've been watching a rising tide of political violence targeted very specifically at the left and the Democratic party. So. That's a plain statement of fact. Could I add anything - anything at all - from my own personal experience?

One thing, maybe.

I see a steady movement of white nationalists into the mainstream right wing. I suppose this could be both a symptom and a cause of the rise of violence. I can't claim to be an expert on the sociology of violence.

A long time ago, back in January of 2003 - almost exactly 8 years ago - I was a college freshman out to see the online world who joined NationStates. I fell in love with the community immediately. Just the year before I had been an ideologically extreme high school student fond of describing myself as "left of Lenin;" and NationStates had a large and diverse community from all ends of the political spectrum.

There were Democrats. There were Republicans. There were anarcho-capitalists. There were communists - authoritarian and anarchist varieties both. There were Islamic socialists. And perhaps most visibly of all, there were neo-Nazis - a host of white nationalists had come to NationStates from Stormfront.

The political debates were fierce and multi-faceted. I came to be familiar with the types of rhetoric frequently employed by white nationalists. The dangerous ones could make themselves sound more or less reasonable.

In the past few years, it's been remarkable to me to see just how much more widely distributed, how much more mainstream that rhetoric is. One of the most famous of the Republican primary candidates of 2008, Ron Paul, was remarkably skilled at speaking in ways that sounded perfectly reasonable, and to white nationalists, sounded like he was agreeing with them.

The things the more reasonable sounding white nationalists would say in 2003, I might hear today on talk radio or Fox News. And back on NationStates, I'm wondering where all the neo-Nazis went. I'm wondering why we mysteriously have so many more Republicans now, and why so many of them sound so familiar.

I'd rather just blame Beck or Palin or Fox News in general. Domestic terrorism, though, isn't new. Timothy McVeigh didn't need Beck or Palin to make his decisions. People on the fringes of politics and society don't necessarily listen too closely to mainstream media figures (though sometimes they do).

And I wonder: Is the important thing that ties McVeigh and Loughner together the former's KKK connection and the latter's love of Mein Kampf? Or is it media-fueled anti-government paranoia, running off the fires of a hostile Republican reaction to a Democratic president?

The more connections I try to explore, the more know that I don't know about the cause and effect. But I am pretty sure that something's rotten in Denmark. There just isn't enough room in the world of statistics for me to be able to pretend to be surprised by Saturday's attack.

Economics and economists

2010-11-23T01:15:00.001-08:00

For a very long time, I've held a dim view of economics as a "science" and economists in general. It's funny, because I had never taken an economics course. Not in five years as an undergraduate at Appalachian; nor the two extra years I stayed in Boone picking up my MA in math. This, in spite of the fact that I had become quite interested in voting theory¹.

Not only had I never taken any econ courses, I knew precious few economics majors and almost never talked to them about economics. Off the top of my head, I can remember only one - a fellow who shared a first name, a fencing hobby, and for the first half of his freshman year, an intended physics major with me. He was doing badly in physics and so dropped down into economics because it was easier.

What I did know is what I read about economics and economists. I was familiar that the justification for right-wing economic policies - including a number that seemed to fly in the face of countervailing empirical evidence, such as the old Reaganomic rattle about tax cuts stimulating growth².

I read biting critiques of economists by philosophers and Richard Feynman. I even read articles by economists trying to demand more respect for their field, but remained totally unimpressed. I did not study economics, and from what I saw, economics was not even a science.

I also thought that economics education seemed to be all about learning how to agree with standard doctrines³. The handful of different approaches to economics, Wikipedia and other sources informed me, were hostile to each other as schools of thought and mainly differentiated by choosing the appropriate sorts of assumptions to back up a particular political faction⁴.

I knew there was actually some pretty cool stuff in economics - some neat results here and there - but I dismissed economics. I've been frequently heard to declare that economists aren't scientists, but bad mathematicians attempting to do philosophy.

And now?

So instead of trying for a doctorate in physics at Ohio State or pure mathematics at Florida State, I decided to go to UC-Irvine and study "mathematical behavioral sciences." I'm still a math man at heart, but my funding comes through the school of social sciences, and in the last year and a half, I've had more interaction with economics, economists, and econ majors than in the rest of my life put together.

I TAed an econ course my first quarter at UCI. I'm taking my first econ course this quarter. At least half the students in my research group come from an econ background.

So here's what I know now. There are economists who are scientists, good ones who believe in the scientific method every bit as much as Feynman did. They seem not to be a majority of the field, but they're actually testing theories of economics. The good ones are studying and applying psychology to understand why people act as they do and then explaining the collective irrationalities we seem to engage in.

Many economists are critical of economics and other economists. Econ graduate students and economists themselves are usually fairly bright. There are a lot of smart economists out there doing a lot of good work trying to figure things out.

While some econ majors are surely the immediate predecessors of the bright, smart, and motivated grad students I meet with on a weekly basis, most of them aren't. If anything, econ majors seem to be wholly different creatures on an entirely different plane of competence. They're terrified of the math that is necessary to get anywhere interesting, and seem to have relatively little understanding of the scientific method.

I'm not sure that my oft-repeated claim about bad mathematicians trying to do philosophy isn't true of the bulk of economists, or economics viewed as an academic field in practical terms. But now that I know some people with economics degrees sitting beside their names who don't fit neatly in that pigeonhole, the fun's gone out of saying it. It just seems like a cheap shot now.

1. It started when I as an undergraduate got to participate in a seminar field-testing this book. It's a field that's been largely populated with economists for the last half-century.
2. That one is a very hard sell for someone who started following the news in the early 90s, watched economic growth follow the Clinton tax hikes, and then watched the economy flatline during the Bush years after being "stimulated" by tax cuts.
3. I actually didn't get that notion from reading articles like that one. I got it from reading between the lines in articles written by economists trying to defend their field, and also from students who'd found economics courses disagreeable.
4. To this day, I believe this is how people who don't make a living in economics decide what school of economic thought is best - take the conclusions that they like and work backwards to justify the assumptions that school swears by. I suppose this may also be true of some economists.

Chess variations: The life of the party

2010-07-31T16:56:00.001-07:00

For those of you who know me personally, you know that I like chess.

You also know I'm not actually that good at chess (granted, I did go undefeated in Martian chess in high school, for the handful of matches that we played) - but I like to have some fun with it. And I also like to spice it up so that all those people who usually don't have much fun with chess will be having a blast.

There are several major variations and hybridizations of chess. One that's good for all ages is Bughouse - partner the best player with the worst player and see how the middle team does. For the athletic crowd, there's chess boxing, which we could use as a template for any martial sport hybridized with chess, but I'm not a big fan of that one.

For the 18+ crowd, there's also strip chess, and for the 21+ crowd, shot glass chess. House rules on how to play these two games vary and are, on the whole, poorly documented, so I'll explain how to do them correctly. And by correctly, I mean this is going to be a fun game that can get played several times in a night without people complaining it's unfair.

Shot Glass Chess

To the right, you can see a shot glass chess game in progress. The author (cream, right-hand side) has just finished capturing a rook (empty 2.5 oz tumbler on the side of the board) from his opponent (green, left-hand side) with his queen (miniature hurricane glass, 4.5 fl. oz). The result of this move is that the author was obliged to drain a 2.5 oz tumbler of Midori sour.

That's the simple rule of shot glass chess: All the pieces are drinks, and when you take a piece, you take the drink. At the end of the match, the loser drinks his or her own king, as the penalty for losing. In the event of a draw, both players face the ignominious result of draining their own kings.

The only tricky part of shot glass chess is setting up the match. There are two types of shot glass chess sets. The type that's easy to find has glasses all of the same size with pictures of the pieces stamped on them. The other type has different sizes and types of glasses for the different pieces, like the one above. Although they're harder to find, you can put one together yourself.

If you want to play great games of shot glass chess, and you don't have a good set, the important thing to know are the piece point values. If you're using the same size glasses, you can either fill the lesser pieces partway up (this works very well with tall, narrow glasses, but not so well with wider glasses), or use drinks of varying strength. Here are the recommended point values.

Pawns are 1 point each
0.5 oz, 4.5% ABV, 1 part liquor to 8 parts mixer, or just a little splash in the bottom of the glass
The "minors," knights and bishops, are worth 3 points
1.5 oz, 13% ABV, 1 part liquor to 2 parts mixer, or fill to one third
The "majors," the rooks, are worth 5 points
2.5 oz, 22% ABV, 1 part liquor to 1 part mixer, or fill to a half
The queen is worth 9 points
4.5 oz, 40% ABV, straight liquor, or filled to full)
The king does not have a point value, but should match the queen in size and contents.

If a player manages to graduate a pawn, don't add more liquor - just pour the pawn into the replacement piece. If you're using the listed volumes, the whole chess set is 48 ounces of liquid. 1 oz shot glasses with the mixtures listed above will give about 5 ounces of liquor on each side of the board. Fortunately, the entire board is rarely cleared in a chess game, but it often gets close. Consider using weaker mixtures for smaller opponents, or when playing repeated games.

Strip Chess

Strip chess, unlike shot glass chess, doesn't have a very good set of existing rules. To be fair, it has been marginalized in favor of strip poker, a more psychological and less intellectual game. There are numerous existing variations of strip chess, some of which have actually been played. They generally involve setting up a correspondence between capturing the pieces on the board and removing clothing. One such codification can be found here. Oddly, few of them take the obvious step of simply setting a ratio of points per article of clothing (I would say 5 is about right).

I think, however, this misses how we can add additional depth to the game. In shot glass chess, this depth is provided by automatic handicapping. I propose, instead of assigning point values to clothing, these three rules, which add to ordinary chess the dimension of embarrassment:

If a player loses the match, he or she must remove one article of clothing - chosen by his or her opponent.
At any time, a player may remove an article of clothing - of his or her own choice - in order to return the board to where it was before his or her previous move.
If a player is offered bad advice by one or more bystanders, which results in removal of clothing under rules #1 or #2, the bystanders must each also remove a corresponding article of clothing.

I think it is subtle enough and simple enough to be played as a party game - and amenable to the addition of drinking and the atmosphere of poor decisions at parties. Play chess at a party and you'll be distracted, often wishing you could take back a move.

Rule #3 is optional, but allows for an intermediate level of group participation between team matches (where moves are resolved by committee) and individual matches (where spectators have little to do, but will probably be offering advice - some good, and some bad). One final footnote: You may want to treat "paired" items, such as shoes, as a single item - both in this, and in other strip games.

Strip Shot Glass Chess

It's possible to combine the above games. Why not? Capturing pieces leads to inebriation. Inebriation leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead, in turn, to removing clothing. Chess then becomes your guide to the complete classic party experience. The game you play then has the following additional rules from ordinary chess:

Capturing pieces: If you take a piece, you drink the piece.
Penalty for losing: If a player loses the match, he or she must drain his or her king and then remove one article of clothing - chosen by his or her opponent.
Taking back moves: At any time, a player may remove an article of clothing of his or her choice in order to return the board to where it was before his or her previous move.
Bad advice: If a player is offered bad advice by one or more bystanders, which results in removal of clothing under rules #1 or #2, the bystanders must each also remove a corresponding article of clothing.

There arises a natural question on rule #3: Should taken pieces be refilled with the same alcoholic beverage when the move of their capture is undone? I recommend refilling them with water or juice of the appropriate color to remind players of their mistakes without putting them over their originally intended alcohol consumption. However, if you are using a weak set, you might be able to get away with playing it the other way.

2009: A good year for movies

2009-12-31T20:50:00.001-08:00

I've seen several movies this year in first-run theaters. I know, unusual, right? I've even been positively impressed. I saw Star Trek, Up!, District 9, The Hurt Locker, and Avatar.

And I'm definitely thinking that District 9 and Avatar are good science fiction movies, of the sort we haven't seen too many of lately. They were good, they were serious, and they were original. It's not really a combination we see too often, but the similarity doesn't stop there. Both films were exploring alienation, race, and loyalty, edgy topics that simply were not fashionable when Bush was president.

Both have a human plunged into the society of the aliens, experience the oppression humans place upon them first hand, turn against the human military apparatus, and become physically transformed into aliens themselves. Both films make exceptional use of aesthetics - the Prawn are revoltingly ugly, and the gritty documentary style makes the ugliness of the slum life very real. The Na'vi, on the other hand, are strikingly beautiful, and the film is visually gorgeous.

Both make intense use of historical metaphor to talk about the times in which some humans - and yes, ladies and gentlemen, white Western European industrial English-speaking humans, if we're to be specific - have decided to treat other humans as subhuman. District 9 uses apartheid. Avatar uses the american indian wars. I even noticed Colonel Quaritch, the military leader in Avatar, making what seemed like a deliberate reference to the Ghost Dance.

Now that Obama is in office, those who found it fashionable to be not only patriotic, but nationalistic and jingoistic are becoming rabidly anti-American, cheering when Chicago lost its bid for the Olympics, jeering when a sitting president is handed a Nobel prize. The Democrats haven't picked up the slack; nationalistic fervor has tapered. If The Hurt Locker had the temerity to suggest that some soldiers get hooked on the rush of putting it all on the line in Iraq back in 2004, would it have been labelled anti-American and bad for soldiers' morale?

And heaven forbid that a film show ex-US Marines as ruthless mercenaries engaging in massacring civilians. But that nationalistic fervor has faded, enough that it's no longer fashionable. Suddenly, it's fashionable to talk about race, to examine the question of social identity.

I suppose the bombing of the Home Tree plays a little more like My Lai than any of the battles of the Indian Wars we're familiar with, complete with the soldier who says they didn't sign up for this and decides they've had enough, but I don't think the Vietnam War is a much more comfortable piece of history than the systematic destruction of the american indian nations.

I've heard a few people complain that Avatar has no plot. I count several - a conflict between science and short-term ignorant greed, a romance, a unification story, a sequence of alienation, initiation, and adoption. It's not even badly written, and I didn't spot so many of the egregious hard-to-ignore physics errors so common in flashy big-budget SFX movies. Spiderman 2, I'm looking right at you. That was painful. Anyway, back on topic:

Good science fiction tries to push a little bit beyond our comfort zone. When I see some people reacting in a very visceral way to the "race traitors" of District 9 and Avatar, I see it as a sign those movies are doing something right. Aside from making half their critics look like white supremacist nutjobs, they're prodding hard enough to make some very meaningful statements and ask people questions they might not ask themselves enough.

The moral I see in both films is this. It doesn't matter if they're ten foot tall blue beauties in a neolithic tribal structure or technologically advanced tentacled bugs who get high on cat food, everybody deserves to be treated with a full measure of "human" dignity. If we don't, we are already traitors to our ideals. And that's a radical statement, because we have a devil of a time managing that with other humans.

The length of an elven lifespan

2009-11-26T16:56:00.001-08:00

One thing that gets me in fantasy literature: Elves, and how long elves live. Usually, we see elves living incredibly long lifespans "off-screen." Since they don't age, we see elves living thousands and thousands of years. Naturally, in the course of events that happen on-stage, they die off in fairly large numbers due to unnatural causes.

Elves aren't invincible. Some kinds of elves, such as Tolkien's elves, are immune to disease. These elves only die due to violence, lethal accidents, or suicide. Our first order estimate is therefore based on the most recent statistics for that - the WHO 2002 report on mortality. We see that 83 out of every 100,000 people die traumatically violent untimely deaths, and an additional 8 out of 100,000 starve to death.

With humans, this varies with age, but since elves are unaging and unchanging beings, we'll assume the average rate holds for all elves of any age. Thus, each year, 0.091% of all elves die. This means that the elven time of death is drawn from a simple exponential distribution with parameter λ = 0.00091.

The mean of an exponential distribution is simply 1/λ, so the average elven lifespan is 1100 years. The median elven lifespan is shorter - 760 years - and about 40% of elves live past their first millenium.

But 2002 was not that violent of a year. War, genocide, and famines tend to happen in short sharp "spikes." Only 2.8 people per 100,000 died as a result of war in 2002; over the course of the 20th century, about 10 billion people drew breath. 6 billion of those lived to see the end of it, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 million died in excessive spikes of "mass death" - famines and wars. That's 2,000 per 100,000 per 100 years; taking the appropriate 1/100th root, we get an average of 40 per 100,000.

If we take out today's war deaths and famine deaths and substitute an averaged value of 40 for "mass death" events, we get about 120 per 100,000. At λ = 0.0012, the average elven lifespan is 830 years, and the typical elf lives a mere 580 years. Only 30% of elves live to see out the end of their first millenium. One out of every 160,000 would live to see their tenth millenium.

Not all fantasy mythos leave elves immune to disease - and infectious disease represented 175 per 100,000 deaths in 2002. Historically, diseases have killed far more than violence and starvation, even among the healthy "young adult" population (smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, scarlet fever, malaria, outbreaks of various plagues - these can kill at any age) - so if elves aren't immune to disease, we would probably want to see λ to become substantially larger and the elven lifespan much shorter.

In the limiting case, where we consider lethal accidents, violence, and disease terms more typical to the dark ages? Well, let's just say that two or three centuries doesn't seem like such a short time for an elf to live, after all.

Context and quality

2009-11-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

The other night, I was talking with a lovely poli sci student and wound up bringing up Jumper, which would appear to be three related things:

A 1992 book I greatly enjoyed reading several times 10-15 years ago and classed as an exemplar of the writing craft (though not necessarily the writing art).
A 2008 movie widely reputed to be bad.
A 2007 book written to tie into the screenplay.

I have yet to experience items number 2 and 3, but I wonder: Would, today, I still enjoy item number 1? Would I enjoy it if I encountered it for the first time now? The terrorist-obsessed vigilante might seem much more heavily worn after living through 8 years of terrorism-obsessed politics; the damaged young man struggling to connect with a normal life and normal relationships might not be nearly as sympathetic a character.

And perhaps my standards for the writing craft have changed. I was impressed not with the plots or characterizations of Jumper, but by what I saw as a remarkably smooth flow of words, a mechanically well-put-together piece of fiction. I read 1-2 other books by the same author not long after, and was unimpressed with them. But today, would I apply the same standard? Do I care more or less about the craftsmanship that went into a book - and do I consider the same things good?

I suppose I should re-read it and see what I think of the book now, but re-reading a book is never the same as encountering it for the very first time.

The socialized medicine we already have

2009-09-03T04:23:00.000-07:00

The public dialog surrounding health care has become fairly frustrating to me. There's a generation gap, an information gap, a comprehension gap, and not only that, but plenty of hypocrisy and misinformation going around.

First: No, the US health care system is not the best in the world. We may have the best experts on some diseases, and very good health care, but the overall quality of care, system-wide, is no better than tenth in the world. Even Forbes magazine - hardly a bastion of socialism - puts the US at 11th healthiest. In 2000, the WHO put the US health care system as 15th best - 37th accounting for how much we spend.

No matter what anecdotes Fox News, the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages, or anybody else spout about the horrors of socialized medicine, the fact of the matter is that nearly every serious look at the data tell us that Canada, the UK, Sweden, etc have far better health care systems.

Second: The US already has government-provided health care. For 2005, the WHO calculates total government spending on health care in the US at $2,862 per capita (out of a total of $6,350 - yes, both figures have risen substantially in the last 4 years). In other words, between Medicare, Medicaid, the Veteran's Administration, and other government provided insurance and health care systems, Uncle Sam pays directly for about 45% of all health care.

I don't believe that counts the employer tax break, which as an indirect subsidy amounts to about $500 per person, and Medicare spending has grown sharply in the last four years. Government insurance programs cover directly more than a quarter of the population directly, and the subsidies affect half the population.

The result of selectively covering the poor, elderly, and disabled is one of the most expensive (and least efficient) government health care systems in the developed world. The US government, in 2005, spent more money per capita on health care than the Canadian government, the German government, the UK government, the Swedish government, and most of the other European governments you hear about when people start talking about socialized medicine and universal health care.

Iceland, Switzerland, and Denmark's governments all spent more than Uncle Sam in 2005 - in nominal terms, but in terms of purchasing power parity (everything is more expensive there), they spent less than our government. Austria pretty much matches us in PPP terms; so far as I can tell, the French and Norwegian governments alone spent more money on health care than our government did.

In fact, US government spending on health care is about the same as total health care expenditures - public and private - in the countries I usually use as examples, Japan and Sweden. (Anyone think that Japan has a recent history as a bastion of socialism?)

So if "government provided health care" is a form of socialism ... ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the United States: The world's third or fourth most socialized medicine on the planet - and the only one in the top 20 that can't manage to cover all its citizens.

Third: The generation gap. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that employer health benefits are on the downslide. And that matters a lot more for us young folk, who are part-timers, new hires whose contracts don't have grandfathered care, entrepreneurs, subcontractors, self-employed, and generally get the short end of the stick when it comes to government subsidies and government-provided coverage.

I'm 25. Mortality and disease and high health care bills are pretty uncommon in our age bracket - but there aren't many of us who don't realize that skimping on preventative care now will cost use when we're older, or that one accident, one unusual disease will completely wipe out our pocketbooks and put us in the hole. Not only that, but we probably won't even be able to get care until later in the course of a disease or long-term condition if we aren't covered, and that means it'll get a lot worse.

And so most of us are strongly in favor of health care reform. It's not surprising; we're right there. We can see our self-interest, and we can see our taxes fueling a system that spends enormously and inefficiently on everybody else. And when I hear about all the older folks hollering and protesting at "town hall" meetings about "socialized medicine," I can't help but think: There is someone who probably benefitted from government-subsidized health care for several decades of their life, and is probably covered directly by Medicare now.

And I think to myself that they are probably more than a little bit of a hypocrite. They have socialized medicine. They're probably afraid it'll get cut if the government stretches out to pay for everybody - something I think about a lot when I look at how older folk respond to intimations of Medicare cuts. Those young people, they don't need insurance, most of them are really healthy - so many of the older generation seems to think.

And who is going to be paying for this, paying for the growing national debt, paying for any health care reform? Most of today's retirees aren't going to be paying many taxes twenty or thirty years down the road. Most of today's young people will. So when I see members of the older generation fighting health care reform tooth and nail, I look at the demographics and the statistics and I think to myself that it looks like most of the protesters are engaging in an exercise in hypocrisy.

But back to the issure of young people needing coverage. Here we come to the comprehension gap. Because when it comes to having health care, it's do or die. And so when it comes to insurance, you need coverage that will handle a major emergency, which in a market where the government is paying for most of everybody else's ticket, in a market where you can't shop around between more than a handful of providers, in a market where bloated middlemen work hard to make their share larger, in a market with an enormous information gap, means that you're completely fucked if you're a little fish on your own shopping for coverage.

I happen to have gotten lucky in that UC-Irvine actually provides health coverage, and it might even be adequate coverage in the event of a major medical emergency. I don't know yet. There's always a lot of fine print, and I haven't spent several weeks reviewing it - not that I could afford to buy adequate coverage on my graduate stipend. I don't exactly have a choice there.

So. That turned out to be a longer rant than I expected, and there's so much more I could talk about, but I'll leave you with the summary and the recap. First, other countries do actually have better health care systems. Second, the US government is already spending enough to provide universal coverage and better coverage. Third, your experience and understanding of this country's health care is going to vary radically based on age and socioeconomic background.

At the risk of sounding like a teenager, many of you making loud objections really just don't understand. The holes in the system are a lot more visible to those of us living in them, and to those who trip over and fall in one.

A secession scenario, part III

2009-08-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

The past two installments of this series have been discussing a hypothetical Republican-led anti-Obama secession movement and what things would look like if about one third of the states seceded. Today, I'd like to spend just one moment turning the map inside-out.

When I constructed the ASA, I started off by taking every state that has a Republican legislature, a Republican governor, and voted against Obama. I.e., we didn't include Florida, because Florida voted for Obama. I then added the two states Obama did worst in (Wyoming and Oklahoma) despite their Democratic governors, and threw in Montana because they have been surrounded. Now let's do the opposite, for fairness' sake - what's the Democrat-ruled Obama Nation look like?

OK, so let's take the states that voted for Obama and have wholly Democratic state governments - so not including Arkansas and West Virginia, Democrat-run states which voted against Obama. Now add Hawaii and Vermont because Obama did best in those two states (in spite of their Republican governors). Connecticut and Rhode Island we now add for geographic reasons.

Unlike the ASA, we can't connect all the Democratic states of America using only four states - but there is one state that Obama polled over 60% in that we haven't included, and it's a big enough state to make an entire "disputed region" all by itself: California. So here's our map, for completeness.

The highlighted states (blue) have a population of 98 million and a GDP of $4.9 trillion ($50,200 per capita). You can see how much less geographically contiguous this group is - scattered across the country in five different pieces. And I think that highlights the point perfectly.

Now, if the ASA's GDP per capita was barely below the US average, and these Democratic states average well above the US average, that tells us something really odd that I don't think I've heard before. The most bipartisan states in the union, as a group, number in their group most of the poorest states. Maybe it's a historical anomaly that the states whose local governments and presidential preferences are split are poorer than those who are entirely red or blue in 2008; maybe it actually means something.

Cuba: A look into the perils of communist health care

2009-07-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

Whenever I hear people discussing the perils of socialized medicine, I think of three countries immediately. Japan, Sweden, and Cuba. Japan and Sweden I immediately think of because these are two of the indisputably healthiest countries.

Sweden has universal almost-free health coverage, where the state pays for about 98% of all costs; in Japan, health coverage is mandatory and either supplied through an employer, with the government providing coverage for students, elderly, farmers, and the self-employed. We could consider Japan the exemplar for the private model and Sweden the exemplar for the public model; in either case, the far less healthy United States is getting far less bang for its health care bucks than either.

However, I think of Cuba because Cuba is actually identified as communist. Nobody is going to dispute that Cuba is communist - nor will anybody mistake Cuba for a rich country. The CIA World Factbook estimates that Cuba's GDP per capita, by purchasing power parity, is only $9500, barely more in total than what we spend per capita on health care.

Cuba spends even less - the WHO estimates 7.6% of its GDP - and due to Cuba's particular economic and trade relations situations, Cuba is short on many modern medical supplies, and this is reflected in the number of Cubans dying from causes we consider easily preventable.

Here's where the Cuban system falls short. Maternal mortality - perhaps noncoincidentally, this ratio is matched by the rise in the number of c-sections performed. Tuberculosis - detection, treatment, and prevention. Child deaths due to diarhorreal disease or pneumonia - which would be especially easily solved with a little more money for drugs and sanitation infrastructure.

Cuba also has noticably - albeit not as dramatically - higher deaths due to cardiovascular problems, something that may be linked to Cuba's substantially higher tobacco use rather than a specific deficiency in care, but that pretty much covers all of it.

Life expectancy in Cuba is quite similar to the US. Infant, child, and adult mortality are overall lower. And what does it say about us that we spend twenty times as much on health care (ref) and yet get so little, as a population, out of our health care system? How much would it cost us to match Cuba's infant and child mortality rates?

I am sure there are many specific procedures that are simply not available in a poor country like Cuba - but how can a rich country like the United States fail so badly with basic care that all the advanced procedures in the world barely let us catch up to our poorer neighbor on the demographic level?

The oddity of the informed middleman

2009-07-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

On a certain level, salespeople tend to bother me a little. Not so much personally - although one of the people at Appalachian I found the most reasons to personally dislike ended up working as a car salesman for a little while - as in terms of the general concept of the role. The line between salesperson and scam artist can be very slim, and it's difficult to see, sometimes, just what they add.

There are two elements that combine to make salespeople hazardous. One is working on commission; the other is informational imbalance. If you work in sales, you probably are paid on commission, even if you work as a middleman between two parties (as, say, real estate agents do) rather than working directly for some manufacturer.

I can think of several scams that involve trying to hook lots of amateur sales-interested folk by requiring them to buy expensive samples or the merchandise they will sell, and then doling out a narrow commission. I say "scam" because some of these operations make their real money selling sample kits to would-be salespersons rather than moving merchandise through those salespersons. The commission is a powerful motivating tool.

Now, when combined with the information gap, a salesperson on the ground has every reason to outright lie to uninformed customers if it will get them to purchase something marginally more expensive, to incrementally stretch bit by bit their intended budget, and since little of it is written down, there's often little recourse for a consumer who has been deceived with a personal sales pitch.

I've been lied to by sales folk more than once myself. And by and large, the consumer is in something of a bind: They need an expert on computers, cell phones, etc that they can talk to, who will explain all the features they don't quite understand - but while the salesperson is such an expert, and a remarkably easy to find one, there's every reason not to trust them.

Oddly, my experience is that when there's no commission in play and a generous returns policy, employees working for a wage are perfectly willing to dish out honestly about which products do what and what you probably need for what you want to do. Remember all the jokes about used car dealers? The grain of truth in them is why I so tend to distrust salespeople. It's nothing personal, salesfolk; it's simply that I'm pretty sure your interests and my interests are as close to orthogonal as they could be given that we're talking about the same kind of product.

A secession scenario, part II

2009-07-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

Continuing from where we left off last time, we divided the USA up based on a hypothetical Republican-led, anti-Obama secession movement, and then looked at the composition of the ASA (the "anti-socialist" seceded states) and RSA (remaining states). Today, in the second part of the series, I'd like for us to explore what the major obstacles to a secession movement would be in a number of these states and regions.

The Old South

There are a few common problems in this region that present an obstacle to secession attempts, one being that a Republican-led secession movement would probably struggle in Democratic state legislatures in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. A powerful reason across the entire region is that 29% of the population of this region is black. Percentages range from 37% in Mississippi to 26% in Alabama, and while you can find a number of Southern whites who will say that states' rights and secession are things that have nothing to do with race, you would be hard-pressed to find Southern blacks willing to agree. And that's with secession in general; an anti-Obama secession movement would inflame racial tensions to heights not seen since the 1970s even if it failed. In the event any of these states were to secede from the rest of the US, I would expect to see things get very ugly in a hurry for the reasons of race and history.

Georgia

Georgia is the largest and most prosperous state in this region. However, while Georgia's state government is firmly in Republican hands, Georgia is also the state in this region that gave Obama the highest percentage of the vote - a full 47%, his third-smallest percentage loss in the country behind Montana and Missouri. This would present a major obstacle to any secession movement in Georgia; Obama simply doesn't have the net negatives in Georgia that he does in the rest of the South. Georgia has also spent the most effort reinventing itself as part of a new South; Atlanta, as the center of the "New South," would represent a powerful center of opposition to secession.

South Carolina

South Carolina is one of the two states in this region whose state governments are controlled by Republicans. South Carolina also is the state with the longest history of secession threats, and did so in December 1860, before any other state in the Confederacy. It was also the site of what is widely regarded as the first battle of the Civil War (Fort Sumter) and for these powerful historical reasons, a secession movement starting in South Carolina cannot avoid being compared to the Civil War. Also, two practical points to consider: If Georgia does not secede, South Carolina would be surrounded; and South Carolina's economy relies heavily on the tourism industry, something that is likely to take a sharp nosedive even in a peaceful secession.

Mormon Triad

Three of the most heavily Republican states, with three of the four lowest Obama vote percentages, are also the three with the highest percentages of Mormons in their population, which helps me come up with a handy name that doesn't sound like it should include Colorado and Montana. Utah is much more Mormon than Idaho, which is much more Mormon than Wyoming; the three of them combined are close to half Mormon, with around 2.3 million LDC members out of a combined population of 4.8 million. However, the name is much more than that; it's a reminder of how influential the CLDS is within the Republican party, especially in Idaho and Utah. If there are any three states in which the opinion of Church elders will matter, it will be these three states.

An interesting historical fact: During the civil war, an assembly of the Mormon church sent a petition to Congress to join the United States. I know very little about the inner workings of the current CLDS, but I expect secession to be controversial enough that it will matter what is being said within the CLDS, and I do not expect these three states to secede on their own account - if and only if Republicans across the nation are clamoring for secession. However, in these states, and in the Plains states (the column running down from North Dakota to Oklahoma), we don't expect white-black racial tensions and the history of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Act to be as important.

Montana

Montana, I should note, is something of a special case that I tossed in on the secession side without a very detailed explanation. Montana is increasingly Democratic, and McCain edged out Obama in Montana by barely more than 2% of the vote. I included Montana for two reasons, and two reasons only. The first is that increasingly Democratic or not, Montana has a powerful libertarian tradition and a lot of very independent-minded folk, and the justification of this scenario was that the country would split over health care. The second is that if the Mormon Triad and the Northern Plains states (Nebraska and the Dakotas) all secede, then Montana will be completely surrounded by seceded states, at which point secession would start to sound a lot more reasonable.

We can expect, however, that Montana would be likely to secede only in the event those six other states all seceding - and it is not guaranteed even then.

Texas

Texas is an interesting state, even more so within this collection, because we actually have seen polls run gauging the popularity of secession in Texas. We've seen polls run for two reasons: One, the governor was talking about. Two, Texas probably is the most likely state to secede. It's a large state with a significant population, a large economy, lots of natural resources, and an unusually strong identity. Texans identify as Texan. The forum post inspiring this exploration assumed Texas would lead any secession movement - and even so, polls have suggested that secession struggles to reach majority support among Texas Republicans, and is unpopular within the general population.

So when we talk about Texas... we cannot help but see how unlikely any secession scenario is in the near future. It makes for some fun stories to talk about, and perhaps by closely watching the continuing saga of Governor Perry, we might see what it would take to have another period of secession from the Union.

Nonlinear history

2009-07-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, I got into writing online quizzes. My masterpiece was a monster on the topic of how history gets revised for popular consumption. It's been a long time since I updated it, or checked to see if it was still working, but one of the key themes I noted in putting it together is this:

History is very nonlinear. It's not only nonlinear - different things change at different rates - but in every dimension it is non-monotone. Technology does not always move forward. New farming techniques are not always better. Sexuality has not steadily become more relaxed over time, but instead, has cycled through different eras of prudishness, puritanism, and permissiveness.

The Victorian era is a prime example. It was probably the height of sexual repression (as we commonly consider the term) in England - but while the stiff standards of "proper" female behavior marched forward, that does not mean the pre-Victorian era was even more prudish. In fact, the 17th century was a very earthy century in England, as we know from Shakespeare.

Another prime example that is especially worth noting is the Antikythera device - a mechanical computer dating back to around 150 BCE, which in sophistication, rivals the mechanical computing machines of the early 19th century. It would take almost 2000 years until western Europe recovered the sophistication of the Greek clockwork devices.

And then the mind just boggles. On some level, when I was young, I absorbed the lesson that history was a kind of progress. You always moved forward. And then, slowly, I absorbed a different lesson: History is nonlinear. Dramatically so, not just in the eyes of wild-eyed fans of ancient alien visits, or apocalyptic doom-bringers, but in the cold eyes of rational respectable historians.

Forces for progress exist, but as is normal in nonlinear dynamics, they are very difficult to model, and there are areas where they behave oddly, local anomalies, and oscillatory behavior.

Snap judgment

2009-07-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

One of the most difficult things in the world to do, for me, is withholding judgment. It's something I have to constantly work at, to train myself in, and for a scientist or a mathematician looking to discover the untested truth of propositions, one of the most important.

The moment I look at a proposed theorem, or a math problem, or read the description of a court case, I want to be able to say "Well, obviously, it's this." I want to know that man is definitely guilty, I want to know that the proposition holds for all x>3, I want to be able to tell immediately if a fuel is a thermodynamically viable carbon-neutral energy vessel. I'm impatient like that, and growing up with the ability to answer nearly any of the "math" problems posed to me within seconds probably didn't help.

I mean, I sped my way through the SAT, taking less than half the time allotted on each section, just because I wanted to say I knew answers immediately, to make snap judgments. It didn't matter that it was important for college admissions, and it probably didn't help that the one time I actually went back and made myself check my answers, telling myself the test score was important, I got a 1480 that was almost exactly the same 1480 I'd gotten the previous year (740/740 vs 760/720).

But the thing is, I also hate being wrong . I just have to be right, and being wrong would be even worse than having to wait for the answer. So I learned - slowly and painfully - to withhold judgment. The study of philosophy has been very helpful for me in developing that patience, and I've withheld judgment about many things that few people hesitate to fix in their mind. I'm comfortable with being an agnostic; I push myself to try foods that I was sure I disliked; I understand how to take a hypothetical position and work up a whole tree of contingent conclusions while keeping my assumptions in clear sight.

It's not what I really wanted - to know the answer now - but if I can only either be sure I'm right, or have my answer now, I'd rather be sure.

A secession scenario, part I

2009-07-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

Today, a poster on NationStates posed the following hypothetical: Suppose Texas and a majority of "red states" threaten to secede from the Union in response to Obama and the Democrats nationalizing health care. What would you do? Well, I thought it was an interesting question.

My first thought, naturally, is to explore the scenario a little more carefully to determine what states are involved. An anti-Obama secession movement will be almost strictly Republican; thus, we should start with those states whose state governments are entirely Republican controlled. There are eleven of these. I'll subtract Florida - since Obama won Florida's electoral votes - and add the overwhelmingly Republican Oklahoma and Wyoming, which have Democratic governors but posted the lowest percentages for Obama. Finally, I'll throw Montana in, since they just got surrounded, to make 13.

In red, we have the Anti-Socialist States of America (henceforth the ASA) and the Remaining States of America (henceforth RSA) are in blue.

After looking at the map and thinking about it, I'll introduce a group of "border states." Kansas: It's been a long time since "bleeding Kansas," but it's in something of a strategic spot. Politically, it's similar to Wyoming and Oklahoma in having a strongly Republican state legislature and a Democratic governor; it's also a state in which Obama enjoys surprisingly high approval ratings, considering he lost it in the fall.

Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi in the Deep South are also strategically positioned, and an area in which Obama polls low numbers. However, they are also states with significant black populations that their Democratic state legislatures rely on heavily. These four states are possible candidates for a second wave of harder-fought secessions in this scenario, but also states in which secession would be more politically difficult. These are battleground states in this sort of scenario, and are keys to either the RSA or ASA having a more contiguous territory.

And that's the first thing we really notice about this map, as opposed to a map of the Union-Confederate divide in the Civil War: The CSA (grey) and the Union (blue) were both contiguous territories, and the disputed states/territories whose membership is less clear are all on the border. Our hypothetical ASA and RSA divide the continental US into five separated chunks - three ASA chunks and two RSA chunks on my first map, or one contiguous continental ASA dividing the RSA into four pieces with the "second wave" states.

I think that's a very important lesson to draw: Our political interests, as a nation, are not as sharply divided regionally as they used to be. We've seen some electoral maps that seem to show sharp regional divisions, but the interior of this country is not exactly politically uniform. The situations from state to state, right at this moment, defy an easy division of the country into a Republican region and a Democratic region.

Let's look for a minute at the characteristics of the two freshly-divided nations. We're assuming that this is somehow an amicable parting of ways.

First, the RSA is staggeringly Democratic, and the ASA staggeringly Republican. The Senate keeps at least 52 Democrats and loses at least 19 Republicans, for example. On the federal level, both have a clear supermajority in one party - which means that we should expect major political shifts, possibly the rise of new (or newly prominent) political parties.

Second, the two hold about the same land area (between Australia and India. with one 6th and one 7th place in the world, depending on who gets the border states), but the RSA has most of the people:

RSA: 235 million, 4.1M km^2 land
ASA: 58 million people, 4.5M km^2 land
Border states: 15 million people, 600K km^2 land

Neither one is exceptionally richer than the other; the "border" states are a bit poorer than the rest of the country, on average. The RSA remains the world's largest economy, while the ASA goes somewhere in the area of 5th-7th place, depending on the details of how we measure things and whether or not it gets the border states:

RSA: 2008 GDP $10.8 trillion, $45,000 per capita
ASA: 2008 GDP $2.6 trillion, $44,000 per capita
Border states: 2008 GDP $590 billion, $39,000 per capita

So the ASA would be about the population and wealth of one of the major European countries - somewhere in the range between Italy and Germany. We wouldn't expect anything much larger than the ASA plus border states to secede even in a political atmosphere favorable to secession.

The wealth of nations

2009-07-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

As of 2008, three of the major GDP estimations agree on the list of the ten richest nations on Earth. First is the US, then, with close to the US GDP between the three of them, Japan, China, and Germany; the lists then all proceed with France, Italy, and the UK (in that order). The final three, which the different lists rank differently, are Brazil, Spain, and Russia.

In a moment of curiosity, I decided to plot these with respect to population... land area... there's not really anything in common with the list. It gets worse when we go a few more places down, which pulls in India and Mexico.

The only thing that's really clear on these lists is that the wealth of nations is still fairly concentrated. The 800 million people in the EU and US control half the world's economy; the 2.5 billion people in China and India control a tenth of it. Mostly that's China speaking, there, India is part of the 2.8 billion population unit that only accounts for 5% of global GDP.

India. The Tiger. The rapidly developing, technologically savvy country. Rapidly growing economy or not, a rising reputation for churning out talented engineers and programmers or not, they're still quite poor in terms of cash dollars.

When I think of all the things I bought, there's very little in terms of durable goods that came from the US or EU; some fencing equipment, some odds and ends, some books - and when I read the 538 post near the end of June (see link above) talking about how to take out about 40% of the world's population for the small price of 5% of the world's GDP, I have to wonder if we aren't undervaluing the contribution these countries make to the global economy when we choose to rely on GDP as a measure of it.

I also have to wonder if it's a question of the value of their labor being truly different, or if it's really more of a product of how money moves. Or doesn't move, as the case may be. Some evidence suggests that the supply and demand for money - and therefore, currency exchange rates - are a large piece of the picture, for when we look at GDP(PPP) figures - measuring local purchasing power - the EU misplaces about three trillion dollars and China picks up a similar amount, rocketing past Japan.

India shoots up from 12th (1.2$T) to 4th (3.2$T). The local goods and services available in India would be worth about three times as much on the European market as Indians actually buy/sell them for. It's amazing, and more than a little bit disturbing, to think that the difference in the value of money is so terribly significant.

More than science; less than science; against the science

2009-07-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

One of the phrases I've heard used in praise of Barack Obama is evidence based policy. Nestled in that tiny phrase are so many different ideas that it's difficult to get a handle on what it means. I think the reason I hear it so much now is that Bush's policies were sometimes in outright denial of the evidence.

The core idea is that science tells us many things about how things work. Macroeconomics, as a field, seems to be a core attempt to measure the effect of policy. The lack of respect economists enjoy among other scientists should be a warning sign: The point of basing policy on evidence is to let scientists dictate to politicians about what they should be trying to do, but of how they should be trying to do it.

My perception of economists is that they too often confuse the matter. More often than not, it seems to me (as in the case of the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, who seems a parody of everything irritating about economists) that economists focus on the accumulation of aggregate wealth, which leads them to endorse policies that are unpopular for reasons that have nothing to do with the wealth of nations.

The role of climate science with respect to the issue of global warming isn't, therefore, to say "Stop! No! Bad!" as much as "If you don't cut carbon emissions sharply, the following things will happen." Having a rational evidence-based debate on policy means weighing the very clear alternatives: Short term higher economic growth against serious ecological impacts and major long-term economic problems, especially for coastal and tropical areas.

When the alternatives are that dramatic, it suddenly behooves the opposition to deny the facts. Abstinence-only "education" leads to higher pregnancy rates; that's a fact. Is it one that supporters of abstinence-only education believe? I doubt it. President Bush seemed to think that reducing teen pregnancy rates and STD infection rates was a desirable social goal, and I have little doubt that the vast majority of voters and politicians agree.

And so, while it is not the job of the economist to say whether full employment is a more valuable goal than 8% annual GDP growth, or whether execution is more or less morally justifiable than the death penalty, neither is it the job of the politician to determine if execution is an effective deterrant, or if girls perform better in mathematics in gender-segregated environments.

One of the things I terribly dislike about this nation is that there are certain facts we are simply not supposed to speak of, certain facts that are too sensitive for politicians to speak aloud in public. There is no such thing as clean coal, not in the here and now, for every kilo of coal burned adds a kilo of carbon to the atmosphere, and the ability to bury that carbon dioxide is well beyond practical.

It's even worse than burning oil, for every kilo of long-chain hydrocarbon burned adds only 0.86 kilos of carbon to the air, every kilo of methane a mere 0.75 kilos. For reference, methane puts out half again as much energy per kilogram, slightly more than doubling the ratio of energy output to carbon output.

For the purpose of the carbon load on the atmosphere, or indeed for the purpose of limiting pollution output, coal is the worst possible fuel in the world to burn. Barack Obama wouldn't say it; Hillary Clinton wouldn't say it; John McCain wouldn't say it. But that's a fact; it's a fact that is as hard and cold as the fact that the polar ice cap will disappear if we keep burning all that coal.

The next time I see a television playing or blog rolling or columnist writing that they don't want to reduce emissions, I want to see them say "because I don't give a **** about the polar bears or Micronesia or the oceans turning to acid, I want to have prosperity in the now while I'm still alive and consuming." I don't want to see them say "because global warming isn't proven," because by golly, that's something that climate scientists are pretty sure about. And they know a lot more than you do, op-ed guy...

Fascism

2009-07-18T22:16:00.000-07:00

It might surprise some of you that I run into both supporters of fascism and people who terribly misunderstand fascism historically on a very regular basis. I see at least one or the other almost weekly; certainly almost every month for the past half decade.

You might say that it's simply because of Godwin's Law: Any vociferous argument over the internet will inevitably wind up with comparing people to Nazis. I don't really believe in Godwin's Law, but for a common touchstone, fascism certainly is poorly understood, and since fascists are almost shorthand for evil, well, it's easy to see the motives for the poorly stretched analogis to Godwin's Law.

And it's not limited to casual discussion on the internet. The political right has been working hard to cast Hitler as part and parcel of the political left, an exercise that reached new heights with Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism, and something truly remarkable to historians who recall that the architects of fascism explicitly identified liberals as a problem. The conflation of "socialist" with "national socialist" is one I have seen all too many times.

It's with good reason that historians put fascism on the right side of the political spectrum, but it would also be naive to confuse the modern political right with fascism. Modern fascists and - if you are one of those few who draws a distincition - neonazis almost always align themselves within the political right wing (e.g., David Duke), although the mainstream of the political right generally disowns their support. Historically, fascists drew their support from business elites, corporate interests, and traditionalists, core groups for conservative movements now.

There are common elements, such as the invocation of nationalist sentiment, militarism, leaning heavily on traditional family values, and getting "outsider" ethnic groups to conform to an identified traditional norm or leave; there are also critical differences, such as theoretical economic policy.

Right wing ideologues will at least claim to support the free market - fascism, however, was nearly as opposed to lassez faire economics as it was to socialism. Proponents described it as a "third way," neither communist nor free-market. To understand fascism - and I only suspect that I do - it is necessary to understand that fascism is all about the good of the nation. In the Nazi model, we insert the good of the race as a template over the good of the nation, but in both cases, it is about competition and strength. Social Darwinism is probably the most compelling ideological inspiration for fascism; and at its core, fascism is not particularly peaceful.

When conflict can serve to strengthen a nation, weeding out weaker elements within the nation and weaker nations within the world, conflict becomes desirable.

But everybody already knows what fascists are. Fascists are people who do and believe something different from you politically, who you think are forcing the wrong thing upon you... right? Leave alone this nonsense about "historical reality," you know what you want to believe!

In a perfect world, there is no war

2009-07-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

When I picture a perfect world, I see a world at peace. I see a world in which there is no need for guns or tanks, in which the only rockets fired are toys, fireworks, or part of a space program. And my perfect world is one that many agree on.

Perhaps a few disagree; Vikings that looked forward to Ragnarok at the end of Valhalla (and any other religious groups looking forward to some final battle), would-be Klingons, feudalistic or retroactive types looking to the glory of martial combat, and the occasional fascist. I'm not being hyperbolic in mentioning fascists, by the way; we do still have people who lean towards that ideology, and fascism drew inspiration from social Darwinism, concluding that the conflict between nations is a good thing. I suppose I'll want to talk about fascism in detail later.

However, with those few exceptions - and I think they are small exceptions - I think most of us can agree that world peace would be a nice thing.

There remains, however, no small amount of ideological division on why a perfect world is a peaceful one. A Quaker might say that war itself is immoral; a more hawkish individual might say that there is no war because in a perfect world, nobody would do something that would provoke a war.

It is extraordinarily difficult to see war as anything other than an act that creates and unleashes evil. It is also extraordinarily difficult to see an immediately effective alternative to greater evils, such as mass exterminations. Some speak of the usefulness of war, and I will complain about their moral corruption, but it is one of the tests I have seen applied: Would this war serve our interests?

I am sympathetic to the view of genuine pacifists, but it is not a stand I am strong enough to embrace. The test I prefer is this: Is the wrong done by waging war greater or less than the wrong it would prevent? And from that point of view, many wars are difficult to justify. I feel that many wars are not necessary wars, the cost in blood too high for too little prevention; however, I would rather damn myself through action to benefit others and prevent them from being done much greater wrong.

But oh, what a wonderful world it could be in which we could all get along.

Bows and guns

2009-07-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

A little military history and a little lesson about technology.

Guns and cannons replaced bows and catapults in Europe and Asia beginning in the 13th century, and ending in the 16th century; that is to say, by the time the 16th century ended, the bow as a military instrument was considered largely obsolete.

Why? It's easy to see how artillery was replaced; it was much easier to throw massive objects with chemical, rather than mechanical, energy; cannon were far superior for reducing fortifications and smashing through human bodies, from the very start.

The mission of a musket is different. It's to kill some particular person. Military guns of the 16th century are smoothbore weapons, muskets and arquebuses; they're terribly inaccurate compared to bows. With much lower rates of fire, and in this era much less reliability, the gun was a more dangerous weapon to use. Backfires and accidents with slowmatches were quite common. The Mongolian horse archer of the 13th century would probably have been able to handily trounce a pistolier from the 16th century - probably, individually, deadlier than any of the types of soldiers fielded across Europe in the 16th or 17th centuries.

The typical Mongolian bow, with close to a 160 pound pull, fired an arrow with around 160 joules of kinetic energy (ref); for reference, tests playing a ~80 joule arrow at point blank against 15th century armor show it to be capable of just barely piercing period armor. There exists a raging debate over how effective the less powerful (100 pound typical pull) English longbow was against the very best plate armor, developed after the famous Battle of Agincourt.

Expert opinions range from "only at point-blank on a good direct hit" to "any shot within the effective range of the longbow that lands squarely," but the Mongolian bow is more powerful; accurate to about 80 meters in the field, the range at which large, round, and comparatively soft musket balls with a higher muzzle energy (but poorer ballistics and a larger surface area) could threaten plate, it can be expected to pierce plate armor with nearly every square hit at that range.

The fact that it could deliver 3-6 hits in the time that it took a musketeer to reload just about makes up for the fact that only a square hit would pierce; the gross inaccuracy of the musketeer means the Mongolian bow is almost certainly deadlier than the musket even against targets with good armor.

And good armor was not that common. I sometimes go as far as to suspect that a tumen of Chinggis's finest could quite possibly defeat a like number of 17th century German mercenaries in the field. So why, if the archer was better at killing more people in a hurry than the musketeer and the best bow of the 13th century was in many ways better than the best guns of the 16th, did the musket replace the bow so quickly?

The answer is complex. One factor is that when two armies face each other, accuracy is no longer as important; a poorly aimed musket ball or arrow is deadly no matter who it hits, and it will hit someone. Another factor is logistics: Musket balls and powder are easier to carry, and are easier to manufacture in large quantity. A third is training: A 16th century musketeer required no more than a few weeks to familiarize himself with his weapon to use it as accurately as anyone else could, while the deadly longbowmen of England's 15th century armies, and the deadlier horse archers of Mongolia's 13th century armies, required years of specialized athletic training.

And because of that, the bow was prohibitively expensive to use in armies, compared to the gun. Some would still use it to great effect once in a while, but it never regained ground as a battlefield weapon. In time, the greater kinetic energy of the gun was coupled with better ballistics, armor-piercing ammunition, rates of fire, and great advances in accuracy, outclassing the bow on all fronts; but to replace the bow as a weapon of war, it needed only more convenient ammunition and greater ease of use. Even allowing that a 15th century English longbowman, firing ten arrows a minute, was deadlier than the musketeer replacing him against all but the most heavily armored men, he was many times more expensive, and harder to replace.

And so the bow was replaced by the gun, in the far east and in the west. Here's where I generalize today's lesson on technology: The better technology is not always superior in all regards. It's even possible to go backwards in some respects - and yet still render the old technology "obsolete" quite authoritatively.

The striking partisanship of scientists

2009-07-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

Something that is sometimes difficult to grasp from outside the academic world is how strikingly political - and partisan - scientists have become in the last decade. The shift is, I think, something that was brewing for some time, and we can argue the causes endlessly, but the fact is, scientists are liberal and sharply Democratic rather than Republican. It is difficult to think of any identifiable professional, ethnic, or social group that is quite as partisan.

Yes, that's a recent Pew survey that has scientists identifying as D over R by +49 points as oppose to the general public's mere D+12 lean. I personally think the most striking cause was the Bush administrations' "War on Science," a phrase that has gained currency not only with Democratic activists but working scientists frustrated with what they see as one political party's attempt to bury inconvenient scientific facts and obstruct unwanted research.

However, the religious tone of the Republican party from Reagan onward has probably been pushing scientists slowly away from the Republican party for longer. Scientists have in recent generations counted in their number a higher proportion of agnostics and atheists than the general population, and a smaller number of religious fundamentalists.

Another key point to consider is what you consider valuable. Getting a doctorate is generally not an economically sound proposition; the time it takes to finish and get into a tenure-track position has been steadily sliding upward. The increased cost in time and money spent getting the Ph. D. put you behind the curve on pay raises and deeper in debt. Fiscal conservatism has focused intently on the bottom line, lauding the businessman and executive; social conservatism has focused on family life, and the prospect of spending ten years in university is a daunting one if you want to start a family in a timely fashion.

There's another very specific one. Perhaps the largest and most vivid scientific policy question is that of global warming, and for whatever reason, the Republican party managed to align itself wholly in the position of denying what rapidly became established scientific fact.

And perhaps the D+49 (55 to 6) percent party ID gap in scientists has just a little to do with the fact that Obama himself can be described as an academic, but I think the persistent anti-intellectual rhetoric of the Republican party throughout the Bush administration had more to do with it.

What else did I learn about chemistry?

2009-07-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I talked about all the various ways in which baking soda has endeared itself to me.

Today, I'd like to ramble on a little more about a related topic, the things I've learned in chemistry class, which are not entirely the same thing. I didn't take any chemistry courses in college; I did, however, two years of chemistry in high school, and got a 5 on my AP Chem test, so perhaps I learned about basic chemistry in class.

The AP chem test turned out to be the most valuable AP test I took (out of four), since it gave me a whole eight credit hours, a sequence that was actually on the checksheet for my physics major at some point. AP Physics wouldn't have done as much for me, ironically.

Dr. Mullis, who taught both of my high school chem classes, was just an incredible teacher - maybe not the most organized-seeming person, and he would ramble and get side-tracked once in a while, but his stories would drive home valuable lessons. Not only did Dr. Mullis's lessons send me through the AP test, but years later, I took the physics GRE and knocked out a 770.

I hadn't taken any formal coursework in thermodynamics when I took the test, which made it tricky, as that was one of the topics it covered; however, I was surprised at how many thermodynamics questions I could answer based on things Dr. Mullis had taught me back in high school. I still remember many of the lessons I learned in class; one of the odder ones is to always taste test, and that a little bit of lime flavor goes a long way. He had us making ice cream for a lab once.

Another lesson that was reinforced in my first chemistry class - perhaps not the best lesson to take to heart in high school - was that the less work you seem to do to get a given test grade, the more it impresses people with your intelligence when it's a high grade. I shared my 10th grade chemistry class with a much more studious girl named Jennie, and she expressed amazement that I kept acing quiz after quiz in that class. I sat in the back corner, where the distracted talkative kids were.

The guy in front of me was facing a failing grade long before he got the crap kicked out of him by some rough characters in the parking lot across from the school one lunchtime and wound up in the hospital; I probably had three of the four lowest grades in that class sitting nearest to me. But even if I seemed terribly distracted, had a habit of not doing homework and turning lab reports in late if ever - things that Jennie had apparently noticed - I tended to pay attention to what Dr. Mullis was actually saying, because it was so interesting.

Later, I looked back on Jennie telling me that she was amazed that I could keep doing so well in the class without doing work, and I see one of the moments where I was closest to consciously realizing that more than anything else, I was making a conspicuous display out of laziness throughout high school in order to score some kind of points with my peers. Now that I've seen that sort of attitude from the other side of the classroom, I strongly suspect some of my teachers in high school felt frustrated with me.

Baking soda: The duct tape of household chemicals

2009-07-13T21:27:00.000-07:00

I've been using that description for baking soda for longer than I should admit. Perhaps I'm being irrationally biased; clearly, I can live without baking soda, and often do. Gone at the days when I have a roll of duct tape always on hand, and equally gone are the days that I always had a box of baking soda on hand.

But it is useful stuff. In chemistry class, Dr. Mullis taught us that if there was a spill of something, it probably wouldn't hurt to throw baking soda on it. Water to dilute, baking soda to neutralize - because baking soda is a natural buffer. Mix with an acid, and the bicarbonate ion fizzes, neutralizing mole for mole; mix with a base, and the bicarbonate will react to produce carbonate, which will tend to bind to positive ions and precipitate out of solution.

So it's a nice "safe" chemical. Nontoxic and neutralizes a wide range of acids and bases. Its pH buffering effect is appreciated by pool operators the world over - and it also helps keep swimming pools crystal clear. See a container of "pool clarifier" on the shelf? Check the label. Odds are it's sodium bicarbonate - baking soda - even if it's priced much higher.

But there's more! What with reacting to lots of things and dissolving well, it's actually the sort of chemical that you can use to scrub things clean, from bathroom floors to your teeth. Of course, there are better things to use for each of those, more specialized chemicals; when we're talking about keeping everything neat and clean, baking soda's deoderizing effect is where it really shines. Trash cans, refridgerators, teenagers - everything smells less when you apply baking soda to it.

Speaking of applying baking soda to people, you can use it topically in a paste to alleviate itchy irritated spots. This is one use you may actually see on the side of a box sometime; working at camp, I would use it to help sooth away mosquito bites. And since I've gotten to the topic of biting and eating, there's something more pleasant than mosquitos eating people: People eating baked goods. Let us not forget why it's called baking soda; it's useful for that, too, making things that much more edible.

Such a useful chemical; such a simple chemical, too, and like duct tape, you can just keep going on about all the uses.

Fanon and Iran

2009-07-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

The fact that protests are continuing in Iran leads me to several conclusions.

One, my initial guess as to what would happen has proved fairly correct, and my hopes disappointed. Those in power have clamped down, rather than reaching out, conducting a runoff election, and settling the matter with Mousavi, who is no radical; instead, it looks just a little more like revolution. With Mousavi and other approved candidates trying to distance themselves from the protests, there's no clear outlet left within the system, and so pressure has built.

And even though Iran is not by any means a colonized state, I always think of Franz Fanon when it comes to the question of revolution. Fanon very boldly asserted that it was better that the colonial powers were violently overthrown, rather than giving up power in a peaceful and bloodless transition; better to make a clean break with the past.

I sometimes wonder if he was right in that judgment. Violent revolution is a terrifying thing - but as dearly as it is sold, one wishes that something be gotten for the monstrous cost in blood. I suppose soon, when we start reaching forty day marks, we will see whether the pace of the 1979 Iranian revolution and this one are one and the same; I do not suppose that we will know soon, however, what to expect.

I will go as far as to predict this, though: The longer and harder the fight, the more radicalized it will become, and the sharper the changes that Iran will face. Whether or not the existing establishment falls, whether or not Mousavi or any other moderate tries to ride the tiger to tameness.

The economist's volcano

2009-07-10T21:35:00.001-07:00

I went and read another bit of a book written by an economist, and after another chapter of him displaying what I wish were a bad parody of economist behavior, this illustrative scenario occurred to me.

Suppose you have a magic volcano. Not just any volcano; a special magic volcano. When you throw someone into the magic volcano and make a gainful wish, it calls up two immortal beings: An actuary and an economist.

The actuary tells the volcano how many years that person would probably have lived; the economist looks up the current estimated GDP per capita and current market prices of every commodity and manufactured good. Since this is a magic volcano, it can do multiplication, so it takes the GDP per capita and multiplies it by the years of remaining life that person was expected to have.

The next morning, on the slope of the volcano, you'll find whatever you wished for, in whatever quantity, to the market value of that much money - a whole productive lifetime of money right up front, and maybe that particular person wasn't that productive. The volcano doesn't care if they're a hard worker or chronically unemployed.

So, is throwing people into the volcano an act of public good sometimes, most of the time, always, or never? It's certainly a positive economic benefit more often than not, defined in terms of financial value or productivity. Would you want to throw someone in the volcano? What do you expect should - or would - be done regarding this volcano if the news of its abilities spread far and wide?

There's a point to prosperity. I just don't think it's especially important once you've figured out how to keep people alive and well.

From the UNC to the UC system

2009-07-09T17:34:00.000-07:00

When I started telling people I was going off to UCI next fall to work on my doctorate, no small number of them mentioned the UC system as a coherent entity.

And I've been thinking for a while about the two systems. I'm starting to wonder if the largest difference is size.

The California university system is a three-tiered system, with the University of California (10 schools) on top with core doctoral/research oriented programs, California State University (23 schools) for the bulk of four-year programs, and the 110-campus community college system.

North Carolina's university system is divided into two groups - two-year and four-year institutions. The UNC system has 16 campuses, while there are 58 community colleges. Of course, the standards and descriptions are all different, so I'll toss out the specialized schools and the not-quite arbitrary UC/CSU divide and go with the Carnigie classifications.

As best as I can tell:

CA public schools include 10 doctoral/research universities, 19 master's universities, 1 baccalaureate college, and 110 associate's colleges.

NC public schools include 5 doctoral/research universities, 7 master's universities, 3 baccalaureate colleges, and 58 associate's colleges.

So some fiddly bits aside (namely, the balance between master's/baccalaureate schools), the NC university system has almost exactly half the campuses as the California system within each of the CA system's three "tiers." The NC schools are on average two thirds the size; the UC+CSU schools enroll 600,000, while the UNC schools enroll 200,000; the community colleges are balanced 2,500,000 to 800,000.

California itself has four times the population of NC, interestingly enough, making the NC system twice as dense per capita in public campuses and a third again as dense in per capita public enrollment; I suspect California probably has more private school enrollment, but I would consider the fact that NC's schools are more finely seeded across the state a point in NC's favor.

Special effort has been made to render the system accessible to residents, in particular transfer from the community colleges to four-year institutions, and tuition is very affordable for in-state students within both systems. In-state tuition within other states' public universities often rivals out-of-state tuition at UNC system schools, for example, something frequently pointed out to me by Georgians attending ASU.

In North Carolina, in-state students are ensured an "in" by capping out-of-state enrollments (the precise level of the cap is a hot political subject of debate); in California, the top eigthth and third of graduating high school seniors are supposed to be able to get into the UC and CSU schools, respectively. A bigger system? Yes. Better? Perhaps so; certainly, its schools have on average a better reputation.

But is "part of the UC system" going to turn out to be all that different a feeling than "part of the UNC system"? I'm not so sure, and I strongly suspect that with the common pressures, interests, and the demographic shifts in play, the differences between California and North Carolina public higher education are going to become smaller, rather than larger, over time.

Corporation as individual

2009-07-08T17:04:00.000-07:00

One of the odder corners of legal philosophy and business is the invention and treatment of the limited liability corporation. The idea is that rather than an individual acting directly, they can bundle their money together with other investors while at the same time limiting their responsibility to a simple dollar sign.

A corporation can't be liable for more than what it actually holds on hand, and nobody in particular is responsible for it - not the executive officer, not the board, it's something of a blank empty void that can't be put in jail and whose maximum financial penalties are sharply limited.

It's either very good or profoundly problematic. Good, in that it allows small investors to take a share in large ventures without being worried about negligence on the part of those with more share over running said ventures; problematic, in that action that would lead to severe penalties for an individual can go unpunished or underpunished with nobody in particular clearly responsible.

The most bizarre turn is that under law, corporations are treated in many cases like individuals. While I can be convinced that the benefits to the efficient allocation of capital are great enough to warrant the construction of such an entity, it remains very difficult for me to buy that this non-jailable entity, so difficult to hold accountable, deserves the same legal protections and fundamental rights as a human being.

Moreover, the sheer scale of a corporation and its anonymity makes it highly difficult to keep damage in perspective. If I were to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater and caused a dozen people to be trampled to death and others injured, I could be put away for the rest of my natural life on multiple counts of manslaughter; for a large corporation, a dozen incidental deaths resulting from poorly-considered actions (such as failing to place a warning label "DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL," or knowingly selling batteries with a tendency to burst into flame) barely even qualifies as a speed bump.

We're already not equal. I am far more accountable than the corporation is; I can incur penalties and responsibilities well beyond the current value of my bank account, I can be imprisoned... and the corporation simply exists to help people turn a buck. If it has a "motive" for exercising political influence, it is for the crass motive of its own bottom line; a corporation, not being an actual person, has no morality, no soul, no religious or political dispositions, no reason for any personal "rights" at all beyond that of being created and dissolved in a manner according to its legal liabilities and its charter - in that order.

A right to privacy? Kid me not. A strong motive to keep trade secrets, yes; a reason for wanting to obstruct investigation, sometimes; but a corporation has no personal affairs, not being a person. It cannot have a sex life or write poetry about how depressing its life is; it is simply a framework for handling responsibility for financial adventures that no single investor wishes to hold personally.

Long term; short-term

2009-07-07T17:18:00.000-07:00

Some days, I wonder how many of the people I meet are putting their long term interests or their short term interests first.

Being aware of both is another thing that many people don't do well, whether planning for a party or running a major corporation. Unfortunately, we put many people in positions where they are unlikely to look for long term interests - traders looking to make the new smarter quicker buck, a CEO hired to make immediate changes in the short term profit numbers, politicians looking to win this year's race.

And while it's foolish to neglect your short-term interests completely, it's possible to focus a little too much on the long view, but it's much easier to go for the immediate reward. And I can't help but think that when people looking only at the short term results get that immediate reward, they're being trained to keep doing that. Something about psychology and positive reinforcement.

Nixon's southern strategy won the Republican party the South for a generation - and alienated the non-white voter for at least as long. George III found the colonies a quick and easy source of additional revenue. It is usually a perfectly rational strategy that is the worst mistake of all. Just dump it in the river, and watch it catch on fire after decades of dumping; save a few million now by privatizing prisons, and watch prison populations climb at a faster rate; throw out the rules of war, and wonder why your opponents do likewise.

This is the real reason I don't trust in the invisible hand - and the reason, too, why I try to be so careful in my decisions these days. Everything has consequences stretching into the long term.

Unintended benefits

2009-07-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, I was reading an AP opinion piece in the newspaper, titled Disease prevention often costs more than it saves. I was skeptical about its premise, but then I read the article, and the details bothered me more. The example used is that of relying on a personal trainer/lifestyle coach to prevent diabetes.

It's a terribly poor example, and whoever Carla Johnson is, I am sad to report that she appears to be neither a mathematician nor a health expert. True, the annual cost of diabetes is about $4100 initially (ref - note, however, that it rises over time) and we are, hypothetically, spending $5400 or $6300 a year to prevent it (note: The article says "$5400" but also says that for every person that this sort of treatment works for, it fails six others, and seven times $900 is $6300, not $5400). So on diabetes, we're saving $600-700 or so per person per year with this program, hypothetically, if each year of the program leads eventually to 1/7 of one year free from diabetes for one person.

However, the health benefits of having someone sort out your diet and exercise problems are not limited to not getting diabetes! Diabetes is the big-ticket item, sure. But is it the only thing? Obesity is linked to many other health problems. What the article author should instead be comparing is the cost of the program - which we expect would be discontinued after the first year or so if it were not making a difference - to the average increased cost of being overweight and not exercising, not just diabetes.

And then there's the other side of the question of cost effectiveness: We have not only a significant portion of the costs being repaid in saved diabetes bills, and much (quite possibly all) of the remainder being repaid in other medical bills; we have additional years of healthy productive life, fewer sick days, etc. Direct medical costs are only about half the total price tag of obesity (ref) and so, even hypothetically paying $900 a year indefinitely for personal lifestyle coaching is, on the scale of a national system, a good idea. After all, we're looking at an expected average positive payout at that point.

So the example is quite poorly considered. Is there a valid point to the op-ed piece? Well, yes. An ounce of prevention is not always worth a pound of cure, and it's worth actually checking to see if it is. But a valuable moral of the story is that you have better be very thorough in weighing the costs of everything being prevented. Narrow focus on particular kinds of costs while ignoring others is how we wound up with this system in the first place.

Palin's retirement

2009-07-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

Political analysts, by and large, seem to be a little puzzled about Palin's resignation. One of my favorite statistician authors of political blogs, Nate Silver, summarizes the spectrum of opinion as (1) she really wants out, (2) there's something else coming up in the news soon that will make it make sense, or (3) she's nuts enough to think this will help her in 2012/2016. He thinks it could be a combination of all three.

I'm not entirely sure that resigning won't help her political ambitions in the long term. I doubt she will be elected president in 2012/2016, but I would not be surprised to see her make a play for a nomination at some point.

As I said earlier on NationStates, I can think of four direct reasons this could help her:

1.) She stops being such a juicy target for other Alaskan politicians - who may be in a good position to make dirt stick to her name.

2.) She's not going to have the duties of governor - which, last I checked, is a full time job - occupying her time. She can focus full-time on handling growing her national base of support, building her image, etc.

3.) As long as she's in Alaska, she's less able to respond fluidly to the news cycle of the lower 48 - the time zone difference, and the long flights, make it more difficult to work closely with national media.

4.) She doesn't have to deal with disbursing stimulus money, or holding to the potentially unpopular stand of trying to refuse federal money being sent to her state. This will let her oppose Obama much more distinctly and directly than many other governors.

I can see her actually deciding she wants out of the limelight. But in this, I can also see the start of a potential future narrative that heavily invokes traditional family structures. Step by step:

Mother retires from politics to concentrate on her traditional role of homemaker, raising her new young child (and quite possibly her slightly-newer young grandchild). After several years, however, her loyal supporters and/or fiendish opponents (and, of course, the dire necessity of current events) push her reluctantly back onto the national stage.

The reluctant-nominee story is one that has resonance. It's a rich literary/historical tradition that those who do not wish political power are the best to exercise it. It is a major theme of the book Goblin Hero, which I was re-reading recently; it and its converse, the corrupt and evil nature of the ambitious power-seeker, are both very common themes. Moreover, her reasons for retiring from public view are the sort of reasons that work very well with the "traditional family values" theme commonly exercised within the social right-wing - and with the endless escapades of many male Republican politicians, she is better positioned than many prospective future candidates.

And I'm not sure that the aim would necessarily be 2012 or 2016 for her national ambitions. The long view is one worth considering, as popular as it is for political analysts and media pundits to consider the short-term question of who will run in 2012 or 2016. And that would be enough said. Really, spending so much time talking about Palin's resignation is quite counterproductive; if she is truly retiring from public life for good, then well done; if she is not, then all the speculation plays into her hands by giving her more national attention.

Recalling the honors chorus experience.

2009-07-04T23:41:00.000-07:00

I still have a t-shirt from N.C.'s year 2000 high school honors chorus. It was one of the more memorable episodes of my high school career. I remember working on throatsinging techniques before and after my audition; I think we got out of school to travel up to Greensboro for the auditions,

I learned that I had made the cut when Nooree pulled over and picked me up as I walked back from school one day. The results were posted up on the chorus room door around the end of that day, but I hadn't bothered to check before leaving, something Nooree was shocked by. I had made the main list - along with Liz and Elana, and three others had made the alternate list, including Nooree. (Alternates usually went to honors chorus anyway.)

In retrospect, this was one of a series of episodes involving Nooree becoming frustrated with the fact that I could seem (or perhaps be) remarkably lazy and enjoy the sort of success he had to work obsessively hard to achieve. I will probably never know if he was jealous on some level, or simply considered it a criminal waste of rare talents. By the end of our time in high school, we had developed a strong and mutual dislike of each other.

Six of us going to honors chorus was quite unusual for Ms. Davis, and she was quite excited and pleasantly surprised - and it was an amazing experience. Never before had I sung with such a large group; never before had I rehearsed with a group that was so uniformly good at singing - so technically proficient, so responsive to direction. It was beautiful.

And yet, when I recall honors chorus, I don't always first remember the powerful use of dynamics the conductor put into play, or the fact that rehearsals were practically note-perfect; I remember the warmups, and having to sit down before all the other second basses had hit the audible bottom of their range. I had known there were lower basses than I; I rarely, however, experienced them in person. Here were several extraordinarily powerful basses with quite noticeably lower limits.

I was used to being a big frog in a small pond, so to speak; I was always one of the best, if not the best, low-rumbling basses in the choruses I sang in, and so, when I think of big frogs in little ponds, I think of honors chorus, when auditions filtered out any but the largest of big frogs, and being a more medium-sized frog for a change.

I suppose I'm still used to being a big frog in many other ways; changing to the larger pond of Appalachian State didn't shrink me down much - or even at all - in some dimensions.

It has to feel rough to be Norm Coleman...

2009-07-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

So you're a serious politician with a bit of a political career behind you, and you very narrowly lose an election to a political commentator - a radio show host - in a statewide election that attracts national attention. That has to be stunning; it has to be disappointing, to know that you could quite possibly have defeated the victor of the election.

But Norm Coleman didn't let that halt his political career in its tracks. He picked himself up and kept going while Minnesota got used to its new image as the home of its new governor, Jesse "The Body" Ventura - who, according to exit polls, would have lost to Norm Coleman, and barely came out ahead of him in the actual plurality count. It was a tragic demonstration of the weakness of a plurality vote.

Now, ten years later, the 2008 election stands beside the 1998 election as being another case of Norm Coleman losing narrowly to a political commentator and radio show host. One with a background as a comedian, rather than a professional wrestler; and by the narrowest margin of counting ballots, rather than a structural flaw in the procedures for elections.

For all that I know, Minnesota has attracted such attention on the national political stage three times since the day I was born: The only state voting for Walter Mondale over Reagan in 1984, and Norm Coleman's two narrowest electoral losses. I wonder if he will take a chance on statewide office ever again - or if the Republican primary crowd thinks his losses have been too dramatic and too public to ever again take a chance on a man who has now lost to two radio show hosts.

The point of summer camp

2009-07-01T21:45:00.000-07:00

I went to several different summer camps as an adolescent - one of them for six summers in a row - and worked at two more. I also spent all five of my years as an undergraduate living in the dorms.

There's an interesting connection there. The summer camps I went to and worked at were mostly populated by socioeconomically similar crowds; and almost all summer camps, whether or not they bill themselves as a pre-college experience, expose youth to many of the things that are likely to trip them up in a freshman year at a university.

There are, as I see it, three reasons why freshmen wash out. In most cases, two or more apply. The least common - by far - is that they simply cannot handle the coursework they've taken on; it is too difficult for them. College admissions are generally competitive, and introductory college coursework is generally not that difficult. The two more common reasons are a little more subtle.

The first common reason - quite obvious to anybody who has seen new students spiral into alcoholism, skip classes, or take up drugs - is inability to handle being responsible for themselves. We could break this reason into many smaller reasons if we like, but many freshmen are not prepared - in some cases, not able - to handle their day-to-day lives independently. More on this reason another day.

The second common reason is failing to adapt to their new environment socially. It is the freshmen who go home every weekend who, one weekend, stay home. They are homesick, they have difficulty making new friends, they miss their dog, their siblings, their boyfriend or girlfriend back home, and their parents. They can't handle dorm life - the roommate, the communal hall, perhaps a shared bathroom and kitchen.

And this seems a most practical reason for packing your kid off to summer camp, where they can learn to cope with homesickness, with making new friends in an environment where they already know few, if any, of the others, and learn to cope with a communal lifestyle similar to the one common in the "college experience." I can't help but think that kids that went off to camp just might turn out to handle that experience a little bit better. I wonder if there have been any good studies done - it's very difficult to control for the socioeconomic factors here...

Why does the calf trick work?

2009-06-30T21:22:00.000-07:00

There's a little trick I use to guess someone's fitness at a glance. It doesn't work with everyone at all, but I have learned you can't just go by size or visible flab. What seems to work is glancing down at the calves. You look at how big the calves are relative to the rest of the body - and in my experience, that does a remarkably good job with skinny people, fat people, and everybody in between.

Yes, skinny people can be out of shape. I know, I know - it's the appearance that matters, so often, but there's so much more to fitness than size.

Fact of the matter is that most forms of aerobic exercise - and the most intense forms of exercise, period - involve moving the whole body, and that comes down to actually using your leg muscles. Some guys work out their upper body heavily without getting into shape - but very few people, aside from dancers, work heavily on their calves specifically. If they do calf-specific exercises regularly, odds are they're doing exercises for most parts of their bodies.

And that's why it works so often. Doesn't work for someone paralyzed from the waist down, or with muscular atrophy in their legs, but for most people, overall level of physical activity is tied to calf muscle use. Most people who sit down all day and don't walk much are desk-bound and out of shape.

Continuing to watch Iran

2009-06-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

The latest news I've caught regarding Iran is that the Guardian Council performed a partial (closed-doors) recount and announced that the election results hold, that while there were irregularities, they weren't significant enough to warrant a full recount or a runoff election.

Based on what I said earlier, I would take the position that the magnitude of irregularities the Guardian Council has already admitted to are significant enough that recounting merely shifts the possibilities a little, especially doing a small partial recount. Moreover, a recount only fixes counting errors; it does not cover the margin of outright fraudulent votes.

If a significant fraction of ballots are fraudulently cast, recounting the same partly-fraudulent ballots will not test whether or not the fraud altered the election. I am somewhat discouraged to see that the Guardian Council is trying to close off the idea of holding a runoff. I do even take it as a sign that they are worried Ahmadinejad would lose such a runoff. If he enjoyed the level of popular support they claim, he would easily win a runoff election, and I should think that holding a runoff election - normally warranted in Iranian presidential elections - would shut the mouths of many complainers.

I'm still hoping that this all works out nicely in the end, but I am growing quite pessimistic.

I like long games

2009-06-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit of a gamer. There are a few computer games I play a great deal of, and I enjoy board games and tabletop roleplaying. There are two common features in most of the games I play: Long and complex.

I like Battletech. It's a tactical game you play on maps or terrain and either one of hundreds of "official" units, or, just as often, ones that you''ve designed yourself. Simulating five minutes of combat with twelve-meter tall futuristic war machines can take five hours - and I've very cheerfully enjoyed playing Battletech for five hours.

Lately, Twilight Imperium has become one of my favorite games. It's like a more complex and less violent version of Risk, and similar to a nice long Battletech game, it lasts long enough that you can schedule a pizza break in the middle.

I've run and played tabletop RPGs - roleplaying games, mostly different kinds of Dungeons and Dragons - and a good session length is about four hours. The "whole" game ideally lasts for semesters, possibly years, of sessions every week or two, and the fellow running the game gets to decide which optional rulebooks to use. Talk about complexity - there's literally over a thousand pages of "core" material for many RPGs, and the optional rules can fill bookshelves.

Defense of the Ancients is probably my favorite computer game. It's a particular custom map on Warcraft III - and where a normal WCIII game involves several types of units and a choice between a dozen or so heroes with a few items, DotA is a ten-player romp with somewhere around a hundred different heroes with similar numbers of items. Some of which work together, some of which don't, and others of which transform into new items when combined with others. A full game will usually last an hour.

The drawback is that when you play long games, you pretty much have to schedule them, and you don't always have the time to get in a game. The drawback of complex games is that it can get difficult to find people to play them with.

Occupation and representation

2009-06-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

Every so often I am reminded of Puerto Rico. It comes up in political discussions, and I've known a few people from there, or who have family from there. And every time it comes up, I wind up feeling like there's something wrong.

A dozen generations ago, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and company were grumbling about being subject to a sovereign who they had little influence on. Parliament representation was not for mere territories.

Now, here we are, continuing to return the favor. I know - Puerto Rico gets a lot out of its relationship with the US. But it's a real affront to democracy for us to be sitting here on the mainland and handing down decrees. It's not a pressing security issue or some kind of wartime emergency; we just own it and rule the 4 million or so people there in a state of legal limbo - neither an independent country nor one of the states making up the United States proper.

There's also Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Marinaras, which are a good bit smaller - between the four of them, they have a little less of a population than Wyoming. Each is individually large enough to be admitted as states under the Constitution, of course. And while many people on both sides of the affair find the status quo a reasonable compromise, I don't.

If we're ruling over you, you deserve representation in our government. "Territory" should always be a temporary status, and it should be one that's revisited regularly. Puerto Rico was taken over by the US about the same time as Hawaii and the Phillipines. Hawaii has been a state for fifty years; the Phillipines were granted independence sixty three years ago. Puerto Rico deserves to get its hands on either full statehood or independence; so, too, do the four smaller territories I mentioned.

As small as they are, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Marinaras, and the US Virgin Islands still deserve to participate in every level of government they are subject to.

Sin taxes vs impact taxes

2009-06-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

Sin taxes have bothered me for a long time. Taxing a product or behavior because it is of questionable morality or unpopular has always struck me as a heavy-handed form of social engineering and an act of political cowardice - and highly regressive. Sin taxes usually come out more heavily on the poor, who spend a greater fraction of their income on alcohol, on cigarettes, etc.

But then, there's also a compelling reason for taxing many of these things that has nothing to do with holier-than-thou punish-the-poor reasoning. The fact of the matter is that the consumption of some things has a defined impact. Take driving. There's a "social" cost several times the cost of gasoline with average automobile mileage - dimes per mile.

Same with cigarettes and alcohol. There's a measurable cost associated with the health problems that come out of cigarette smoke, there's a social cost to alcohol, and in states/countries where prostitution is legal, that, too, has a social cost. And this sort of heavy-handed social engineering not only works to cut the vices they target, these specific and targeted taxes can fund the sort of programs that would compensate for the negative social impacts.

And not only that, but many of these taxes fall far short of the actual impact. Such as gasoline taxes, which in the best of times barely cover road maintenance.

Markets want to be conservative?

2009-06-25T23:59:00.000-07:00

The other day I said something that should strike a reader as odd: Markets want to be conservative. And in that, I did not mean "conservative" as a collection of political positions that some pundit might want to assign to the term; I mean the much older and more literal meaning of the term. The sort of market economy we have today resists some types of change.

It's not an inherent property of the market itself. It's a product of social influence. With the creation of each market, each service, each industry, a special-interest group is created. The invention of the personal automobile lead to the automotive industry - and all those involved in the manufacture, sale, and maintenance of the automobile have a vested interest in consumers using cars, and will try to influence policy to fit.

The only change that the market embraces is one that makes someone more money; privatizing prisons, for example, has backfired by creating a lobby - one with, in many cases, pre-existing ties to state legislators that landed them the contracts in the first place - with a vested interest in increasing the prison population. Insurance companies have a vested interest in preventing health care reform - because successful reforms would obliterate their bottom line.

In a land where everything is for sale - including legislative access and the publicity needed to get into office - the market provides incentives for parties to fight against change. We've seen it with the tobacco industry; we've seen it with state-run lotteries; we're seeing it now, once again, with health care. In each case, the profit motive of the private sector puts the brakes on changes in public policy.

When I look at the privatization of prisons, I am not surprised that some states may achieve short-term savings in higher efficiency operations; I am also not surprised that in the long term, it comes back to bite them in the tail, as suddenly there's a group that benefits if recidivism rises, if indeed crime rates rise, and fundamentally if prison populations rise - a motive that does not exist in a publicly run prison.

Watching health care

2009-06-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

By now, I think the news that the US government spends more per capita on health care than some countries that do have universal coverage should be new to nobody. It's been true for quite some time.

The odd public-private loosely regulated but subsidized system we have, it almost seems designed for maximum inefficiency. There is a certain level of fixed demand that the government pays for through Medicare and Medicaid, creating a nice disconnect from competition; there is a serious informational gap between consumers and the facilitators (insurance companies), where the facilitators are considered essential. There's also the systematic denial of benefits to "risky" consumers in order to have a better margin.

Every insurer has an incentive to generate paperwork - as much as possible in order to delay payouts as long as possible or prevent them; providers want additional paperwork to help protect themselves from lawsuits - around which another insurance industry has sprung up; malpractice insurance is a major part of the cost of a practice.

And then consumers themselves are often ill-informed on actual costs and benefits of services. The cost of not getting a regular checkup gets to be quite high in the long run; saying when it exceeds the cost of getting one is a difficult calculation if you aren't trained as an actuary. So when I look at health care, I see a large collection of opaque boxes that all eat money. Even the experts can only figure out how to look at some of them.

It can be fixed many different ways - whether leaning heavily on the private sector (regulated tightly between employers and insurers with a government insurance program covering those not required to have private insurance) as in Japan, or whether working wholly through the public sector, as in Sweden, but it's going to take a dramatic change; and because markets want to be conservative, that change is going to be difficult. And it's going to kill some corporations.

But I'd rather have dead corporations and bankrupt insurers than dead people. And that's what we're getting out of it now.

Werewolves and vampires and getting laid

2009-06-23T18:58:00.000-07:00

One of the most persistent themes of modern fantasy literature set in the modern world is the theme of sex with the supernatural. The asexual nature of vampires has been one of the refreshing differences in Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels books (Magic Bites et cetera) - of course, lycanthropes and shapeshifters are oh-so-sexy.

There are, of course, patterns within the details. I'm having trouble thinking of many leading pairs in which a female vampire and a male human connect together; much more often, it's the other way. The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice comes to mind, but primary romantic arcs usually feature a female human and a male vampire, as in the much more widely watched contemporary film Twilight. And when I move to novels... the only cases I can think of where male human and female vampire pairings are exhibited are in secondary characters.

If anything, I think I've seen more male human/male vampire pairings in that type of literature. But when we shift over to werewolves... the same pattern isn't so clear. Werewolves in popular "modern" literature persistently feature both female and male werewolves, and it isn't unusual to pair a male human lead with a female werewolf (An American Werewolf in Paris) or suspected werewolf, as in the brief (and quickly canceled) show Wolf Lake.

Maybe it's because lycanthropy is often described as a family curse, passed on through the generations, and wolves are so well known to be social animals; perhaps it is a consequence of the originating literature. In the case of modern vampire novels, everything returns to Bram Stoker and Dracula, often taken as a commentary on female sexuality in the Victorian era; the brief flirtations of Dracula's brides with Harker is a single scene, while Dracula's designs on Lucy and Mina occupy the central plot of the movie.

From tae kwon do to fencing

2009-06-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

I suppose I've spent around five years taking lessons in tae kwon do, and a similar length of time fencing, when we account for my lengthy lapses in both, and it's always been interesting to me the similarities and differences.

Some correspondences are very close.

The parrying edge used in TKD is the leading edge of the forearm, about the same length as the forte of the fencing blade used for parrying. With that in mind, it's pretty clear that the mechanics are the same for a parry five and a high block. Parry four is an inside block; the outside block lines up neatly with parry three. Those three are the normal saber parries. There's another direct correspondence; the fourth basic TKD block, the low block, is parry is a parry eight; parry two would be a high low block, something a little too awkward to use comfortably. Parries one, six, and seven would correspond to blocking with the inside of the forearm; in TKD, you would use the other hand instead, something you do not do in fencing.

The lunge and the front stance are similar, but there's a key difference. In TKD, the back foot and hips are squared to bring both arms to bear, while in fencing, they are twisted sideways to minimize target area. In both cases the back should be completely vertical in practice - no martial artist is advised to lean into their attack and overcommit to it as a matter of habit, though at a crucial moment, overcommitting may be occasionally worthwhile.

The classic fencing en garde stance falls between TKD stances. The feet are in an L - as in a back stance - but the weight is further forward. TKD uses asymmetric weight distributions to make light-leg kicks easy and quick, and heavy-leg kicks powerful due to whole-body momentum shifts; fencing uses even distributions to let you change directions from forwards to backwards more quickly.

When it comes to stretching, fencers are advised to use many of the same leg stretches. The reason in TKD is that being able to split one's legs apart gives you easier higher kicks; in fencing, it is to maximize lunge range. Fencers, however, use their wrists a great deal more; I have found the stretches TKD students do not use, but aikido students do, to be quite useful as well.

The latest developments out of Iran

2009-06-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

In what Nate Silver is calling the worst damage control effort ever, the Guardian Council admitted that the votes collected in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters in those cities, "only" affecting 3 million odd votes.

Even given that the reported turnout was a historic high - over 80% - that's an indication of fairly massive fraud in those cities. While local turnouts, counted by the number of ballots, of more than 100% necessarily imply fraud, it is not necessary for the number of votes to exceed the number of voters in order for fraud to happen - and to do so is a strong indication of the strength of fraud in those cities. If turnout was about average in those cities (and actually a historic high of ~80-85%), then fraud accounted for more than 15-20% of all votes cast in those cities.

And if that figure held in many areas - with or without red flag overturnouts - turnout may not have been at record highs, and we're seeing the sort of degree of massive falsification that could swing an election so dramatically. And if the Guardian Council is admitting that massive fraud happened, I think the case is now quite materially convincing that the sitting president cheated. Not only that, but that the cheating was extensive enough to make a difference.

If I am convinced that fraud was indeed definitely present, and of an order of magnitude large enough to potentially swing nearly any contested election, I doubt that supporters of the opposition are anything but convinced that it did swing the election, and I hope that a peaceful runoff election, rather than violent revolt, is the outcome of this.

219 hours: How long was this supposed to take?

2009-06-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

A reflection: How quickly could I have done this? My bachelor's degrees came out with a total of 174 credit hours listed on them; my master's degree involved 45 credit hours of graduate study. I spent five years on my undergraduate work, and two on my master's degree; fourteen semesters, with the summers off. I did earn some money over my summers for my troubles, though not all that much.

On paper, the maximum credit hour enrollment at Appalachian State is 18 credit hours. So, beginning with no credit, it would take ten semesters of sequential full-time work at a full load, with six hours of slack - which would be needed, since a few classes were 2, 4, or 5 credit hours instead of the usual 3. The maximum credit hour enrollment for graduate students is lower - 12 - and so I would need to take the full four semesters.

So fourteen semesters is quite reasonable. But it's not the theoretical top speed. I started with 24 hours of AP and placement credit, and it's possible to exceed 18 credit hours with special permission - easily given to a student in the honors program, as I was. So my undergraduate work could have been crammed into 8 semesters (by averaging a little over 18 hours per semester); perhaps I would not have had the time to sing in Higher Ground, or fence, but possible.

Had I been more proactive in high school, and better at convincing administrative types, I would have covered more math and science credit in high school. Spending a single year on geometry, going Calc BC instead of AB, and taking a math class each semester at UNC as an independent study would have meant covering 14 additional credit hours of mathematics early - and had I been particularly convincing, I might have been able to finagle my way out of introductory physics, which was only interesting during the honors lab section, another 10 hours.

So now, I'm down to 126 hours that I "had" to take at college - which could be done in seven semesters. But I'm not done. If you were in my shoes, and were trying to accelerate as quickly as possible, you'd take summer courses. By taking two summers of core courses in each of the two summer sessions, the undergraduate study could be cut to three years for the triple major course of study. Assuming scheduling worked out perfectly, of course; and then, by overloading four extra graduate level math courses into 20-21 credit hour semesters, I could have theoretically completed my master's program in a year and a half with all the same coursework.

So yes. I'm a very lazy fellow, since if I were as diligent and directed as possible, I could have completed the same coursework before I turned 23 instead of after turning 25. But I don't think I would have quite the same education, as I have had so many other learning experiences outside my coursework that would not have fit in such a schedule. Some wasted time as well, yes, but I will not greatly regret taking the same length of time we would normally expect such a course of study to take.

Indeed, by taking minimal full-time loads, another person, perhaps one more like Van Wilder and less like myself, could have easily spent nine years as a full time student on the same course of study without failing or repeating a single class. Throw in failed and repeated courses, and we might be able to stretch that another year to a full decade. And I am at least not that lazy.

Dancing and the martial arts

2009-06-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

It may come as a surprise to those of you who know me for more cerebral reasons, but I am actually a very physical person.

And one of the things I've had cause to reflect on is the curious relationship between martial arts and dancing. It's a connection with history; classical dance and fencing, for example, have stolen footwork from each other for a long time. You've probably heard of football players taking ballet to improve their performance in that violent sport; you may even have heard of capoeira, which blurs the line between dance and martial arts.

I've taken modern dance classes and danced recreationally - international folk, contra, and swing at one time or another, and it seemed I was always following choreography in high school chorus. Being a male who could carry on loudly and on pitch while moving around meant I was indispensable in many numbers. I took tae kwon do into my teenage years, and then fenced in college.

Dancers and martial artists share many of the same warmups and stretches, more than typical for two different kinds of athletes; flexibility, balance, and coordination are are crucial in both pursuits. The key difference is not in the types of movement used; every basic building block that is used in one can be used in the other. (Well, almost. En pointe in ballet is, I suspect, an exception, but I can think of few others.)

The most basic difference lies in the treatment of rhythm. When you dance, you dance with the rhythm. When you spar, you fight against the rhythm. The skilled martial artist constructs rhythms in order to break them; the point is to become the unexpected, to surprise your opponent with carefully controlled timing. When you dance with a partner, the point is to communicate and telegraph your timing as much as possible; in dance, you must master gluing yourself to a rhythm so intimately that even should you slip, you will move with the rhythm.

To be masterful in either, one must master rhythm - but in two completely different opposed ways.

The case for throwing money at higher education

2009-06-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking long and hard about my home state's funding priorities as it moves into a budget crunch. The annual earnings of an individual tend to increase by about $5,000 for every additonal year of higher education; North Carolina spends somewhere in the range of $5,000 to $15,000 in educational subsidies for that year of higher education, depending on where the student goes.

And I ask myself: What sort of investment will take a series of $15,000 up-front payments and pay out $5,000 a year for each payment you make into it - for several decades? Sure, the state of NC takes a longer time to recoup tax revenues, but that is an enormous public benefit for the amount of money being spent. Where can we get more of this?

When I look at North Carolina on the long term scale, the biggest difference I see between North Carolina and its neighbors is the UNC system. North Carolina supports a large number of public universities and community colleges, and subsidizes the tuition of in-state students very heavily. There's a very bright future in continuing to throw money at higher education at every level - as much as the state can afford to do.

Slavery

2009-06-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

Today was Juneteenth, and so the historical ending point of slavery in the US has passed through more minds than it usually does this week. And yet, archaic institution or not, slavery captures a lot of creative thought.

There are several modern arguments hidden in the corners of the moral and ethical spectrum of opinions that favor slavery. All - well, almost all - are unwilling to say that the institution of slavery as practiced in the US was a-OK. Hereditary racially-based lifelong slavery in which the owners have unlimited rights to dispose of their property as they see fit? Certainly not!

But while I think that the wrong was in the humans-owning-other-humans part, others would suggest it is in the other details. Why, if it is entered into with agreement by the party being enslaved, appropriate rights left to the slave, has nothing to do with racial oppression, what of it? Shouldn't people be free to enter into such a contract?

It is a perfectly libertarian turn of phrase. If slavery is a transferable contract, shouldn't it be legal? Leaving aside the sticky issue of people being pressed into slavery under duress, false pretenses, et cetera. There is a subtle point in the works. While undoubtedly there are those foolish enough to sign themselves onto an open-ended transferable contract - and some of the more clever transferable labor contracts look something like that - there remains the freedom to walk away from a contract at any time - throw up your hands and walk off the job. You may be out money; you may even be liable for financial penalties; but you retain that liberty.

Perhaps most importantly, it retains a sharp distinction between people and property, which is a dangerous line to blur. And perhaps we should carefully look at the things that look like slavery - prison labor to fill pockets, transferable contracts, and the penalty clauses allowed to labor contracts - and ask ourselves "What is the difference between this, and some nicely cleaned-up version of slavery?"

And those of you in the BDSM crowd who are into the master-slave relationships and roleplay on a purely consensual basis, who can end it at any time? You can ignore all that.

Herbal remedies

2009-06-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

I recently read a piece in the newspaper - a little AP notice saying that a decade after the government embarked on a massive effort to study herbal remedies, there has been little positive news. The "lone exception" cited in the article is the suggestion that ginger may alleviate nausea caused by chemotherapy.

But that doesn't really tell the whole scientific story of herbal remedies. Sure, the popular (and lucrative) herbal remedies have generally not lived up to their reputation in clinical studies. The placebo effect is strong with us, but seems to be the main benefit of such.

However, the herbal remedies the AP article is referring to are hardly the whole story of herbal medicine. Many herbs have potent medicinal effects affirmed by studies. Cilantro does interesting things with heavy metals; cinnamon affects blood's cholesterol and glucose balances; turmeric (the orange spice that gives curry powder and many curries their distinctive yellowness) plays a role in suppressing histamines. Garlic really does have an impact on the immune system's behavior.

Willow bark does indeed alleviate pain, and also has potentially beneficial cardiac effects - you've probably taken a concentrated form of the same chemical, marketed under the name of aspirin. Camellia sinensis and coffea arabica share a remarkable effective stimulant chemical released when parts of the plants are steeped in hot water - caffeine.

So when I read that article, I thought to myself that it overstated the case. There certainly are herbal remedies that work. There may be many, such as echinacea, which fail to live up to the hype of their fans under scientific scrutiny, but even if the government-funded studies in question picked out only one significant effect, the things you put in your food will affect the systems of your body.

Retroactive reason

2009-06-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

We are very fond of speaking of ourselves as rational creatures, but I cannot be sure that even I am more rational than rationalized. As methodically and carefully as I approach life, and making the decisions that I make, it is very difficult to be sure that I have arrived at a decision through the rational process, or whether I simply use the rational process to justify the decision I want to make.

Every once in a while I catch myself at it - usually a little late. You rationalize a little bit, then you rationalize a little bit more, and then the data come around and slap you in the face and say Yo, you're wrong! This is why I'm very leery about claiming to know things - careful critical examination of the justification is required to be sure it's not just a pleasant rationalization with a giant hole in the middle.

About that Iranian election...

2009-06-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine made the following comment: "Obama wins 52.9% of popular vote, CNN calls it a resounding victory. Ahmadinejad wins 62.6% of popular vote, CNN portrays scattered opposition protests as a revolution."

There is a point to be made in that the US media are sometimes reluctant to question those in power in the US, and that has lead to an imbalance in scrutiny. A better example would be the elections of 2004; the famous differences between exit polls and official ballot counts cast a shadow over both the US and Ukrainian presidential elections. The difference?

US media by and large buried the story of irregularities within the US election; the very same indicators, however, were taken as proof positive of fraud in the Ukraine. What we saw happen in the Ukraine was a national re-vote under intense scrutiny from international and domestic observers - and that's what we should see happen every time we see significant irregularities whose magnitude is large enough to potentially change the election.

In the case of the Iranian election just past, I think the allegations of massive fraud in reporting the results deserve investigation; the Huffington Post has been assembling everything they can. What I find particularly striking is that all the international media, from Al-Arabiya to ZDF - not just, in other words, US media - are finding their ability to report in Iran sharply curtailed. I do not expect the current Iranian government to conduct a revote; Iran, like the United States in 2004, is a nation with a proud incumbent government willing to hold itself aloof from the wishes of the rest of the world, with little interest in transparency and accountability.

I'm pretty sure elections are stolen on a regular basis, all around the world. There's certainly fraud and voter suppression in every US presidential election, and it has probably changed the result of our presidential elections a half dozen times or more; I hate to think of how many state and local elections are decided fraudulently. And for that reason, whenever there's probable cause to question the results of an election, a full investigation - followed by a recount and a revote - is the right thing to do.

Woodswise

2009-06-13T15:49:00.001-07:00

Lessons I have learned about hiking:

Forests regulate their own temperature, and therefore are nice and cool in the summer heat. The patchy areas between forests aren't, not even the shady spots.
Bugbites and sun exposure are things your body adapts to over time.
Surefootedness and stealth both come from leading with the toes.
Wild animals are mostly scared of noisy humans.
Avoid bear cubs.
If you look closely at the ground, you will eventually notice tracks.
Pack extra water if you're with a group. Someone else will be short.
Machetes are handy, whether or not you brought a knife.
Knives are handy, whether or not you brought a machete.
Lightning does actually strike. It can also hit more than one person at once.
Humans have better peripheral vision, hearing, and sense of smell than commonly realized. They just have an annoying habit of ignoring them.
Trail blazes are really useful.
Have a first aid kit; whether you're hiking alone, with a buddy, or with a group, not having one around is an invitation for disaster.
If you don't feel spiderwebs, someone else was already through here today.
Walking sticks are very much optional, but somehow always seem handy when you have one.
The deadliest mushroom in North America looks really innocuous.

In a perfect world, there are no divorces

2009-06-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

On the 12th of last month, I said that in a perfect world, there are no abortions. This month, I continue the theme of perfect worlds: In a perfect world, there are no divorces. I suspect the reasons for this diverge substantially, so you'll have to take your pick, but I think I can convince you that a perfect world is divorce-free.

This is easy if you think that divorce is immoral. Marriage is a bond for life in the eyes of God, and should not be dissolved by anything short of death. So then, divorce is wrong, and a perfect world must therefore include no divorce.

It is also easy if you think that marriage is an unnatural institution that works against human nature - because then, in a perfect world, nobody gets married. If nobody gets married, nobody gets divorced. QED.

Where this becomes more difficult is when you are a moderate who understands the necessity of divorce in the real world. People do get married, and it is something that they wish to take seriously; at the same time, marriages turn out to be abusive. People change and grow apart, or have conflicting beliefs from the start.

And here, our perfect world must be more complex - one free of spousal abuse, one in which people only bind themselves in marriage wisely with rare, nearly precognitive foresight, one in which "for tax purposes" or "for social pressure" has no meaning. People whose relationships are destined to end instead select some other form of partnership than a permanent marriage; perhaps something with term limits, or something less formal, but accorded similar status and respect by others.

In fact, while we can see the perfect abortion-free world in the horizons of science and social engineering - even, in fact, can see it in some dystopian futures - this perfect divorce-free world of ours seems terribly unreal. But while the limiting case may seem impossible, we can see the virtues of incremental steps towards it. Thinking carefully before tying the knot, stamping out abusive behaviors - these are good things. But our real world is complex, and needs escape valves for when mistakes are made.

Physics, dating, and the elusive house-husband

2009-06-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

To continue the vein of yesterday, where we explored the social dynamics of academia and the nearly unique social role of physicists outside of academia (a role they don't exactly seek, usually), today I'd like to write a little about another side of the "science ladder."

Dating. One of my female physics professors once told our class that the quickest way to get rid of a guy in a bar was to mention that she was a physics student. That wouldn't work on other physics people, of course, and I don't think it works on women, either. I didn't notice the same phenomenon as a man; while many male physics majors are socially awkward, the fact that they are interested in physics doesn't cast aspersions on their manliness, or make them less appealing.

I really don't think this strange aversion applies to anything other than the traditional heterosexual dating field in that one particular direction: When a woman is highly educated, and especially in a mathematically intensive field, men find it intimidating. A couple decades of sitcoms and movies starring dumb-as-rocks male lead roles paired with more educated female lead roles may have eroded this a little, which make me wonder just how strong a phenonemon this used to be.

The growing educational gender gap between men and women (women are becoming more educated than men) may bury it completely, eventually; it's only a few fields, and mainly the doctoral level, that we still see a gender imbalance favoring males, but in the mean time, I can't help but wonder if this is one of the factors that helps drive women away from physics and mathematics.

Physics envy

2009-06-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

Choosing where to go to graduate school was a long and difficult process, and of the many considerations that passed my mind, none seems more petty than status. There's something of a heirarchy of academic fields when it comes to the respect its practitioners and experts get, and "social scientist" ranks near the bottom of the sciences pile, to the point where many people will point at one or more of its disciplines and say "Well, that's not even a science."

Indeed, I've accused economists of being nonscientific before myself.

I was introduced to this concept in my introductory psychology class as "physics envy" - because physics tends to be on the top of the respect pile for the sciences, unless you count mathematics - and talked about it in my philosophy of science class. In fact, physicists get so much respect from "lay" people that they're almost treated as a priesthood of the modern age; listen to the questions physicists get asked in media interviews.

There's also a ladder of respect based on your school's reputation. So when I passed up going to Ohio State University for theoretical physics, and decided to go to the Mathematical Behavioral Sciences program in the Social Sciences department of UC-Irvine, I felt a twinge of regret on that account. It felt like I was gambling the respect I could expect to get for my research against bad house odds.

A doctorate in physics from Ohio State - nobody but the most Ivy League of snobs would dare to badmouth that. Working on an applied mathematical field traditionally occupied by economists at a school I hadn't heard of three years ago? Perhaps it's because that evaluation felt like such a petty reason that I made the decision I did. I've been known to be contrarian before.

No winning: Incentives

2009-06-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

Lately in my home state of North Carolina, there's been a lot of talk about corporate incentives. The way it works is straightforward: A company makes noises about considering locating in such-and-such places, and then turns around and asks state and local governments what it's worth to them to locate there. A special tax cut, an outright rebate, land arrangements, utility support, etc.

The result is that state and local governments are competing with each other to bid for a share of tax dollars and economic development. It's like the prisoner's dilemma: If one town/state offers incentives, and the other doesn't, they win with a low bid and take home a large benefit, reduced slightly by the cost of the incentive. If none offer incentives, one location gets the maximum possible benefit - a crapshoot, but a fair one. If a bidding war springs up, it turns into a crapshoot with a low payout.

The best strategy for all of us on the tax-paying end would be for nobody to offer any targeted incentives at all; the best strategy for each individual location is to bid up to the anticipated value of the prize. In which case the corporation comes out ahead, and the rest of us experience a slim net benefit. Throw in the griping about unfair taxation, threats to relocate from existing industries unless they get a similar break, and some bad math by legislators and town councils, I think the rest of us are outright losing the incentive game.

What working at a weight loss camp did to me

2009-06-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I noted that I once (twice, actually) worked at a weight loss camp. It amazes me how often that experience turns out to be relevant to the topic and hand; it also had a truly remarkable impact on my life.

Before I worked at camp, I was absolutely terrified of the idea of working with children. It wasn't going to be pleasant, or something I would be too competent with. Children were something you tried to avoid getting stuck with. My surprise was that I actually had fun, and my second summer there, Ira told all the other counselors that I was a fantastic counselor. Before working at camp, I was ambivalent about the idea of having children in the future; after working at camp, I decided it would be nice to have kids of my own at some point.

Before I worked at camp, I didn't think about my weight. Nothing like working at a weight loss camp to suddenly make you conscious of your weight and give you a touch of paranoia about weight management. Most of us counselors also picked up very funny food issues during the summer, since we could eat freely so long as the campers surrounding us for most of the day didn't see it. I ate about three times what the campers did.

Before I worked at camp, I had no idea how sleazy people could be. Ira himself meant well, but had some old bad habits and a couple of associates widely criticized by the counseling staff; the people running the Patterson school, however, were the real eye-openers. Ira's buddy (partner, the first year, I think; later, Tommy became his business partner, and Tommy was a much more upright guy) may have been an eBay-flipping online poker addict with an eye for quick-get-rich schemes, but the people running the Patterson school? Complete sleazeballs, made every one of us involved look like saints even on our worst days.

And the school was just falling apart around us. Talk about a badly managed property. I learned a lot of practical lessons in maintenance and repair. Not to mention the second year, I had some nice hands-on experience in pool chemistry and how to operate a pool.

I think one of the more subtle things I got from working at camp was a self-image boost. Even the most athletic of the other counselors wouldn't be able to jump as high or run as quick a mile; it's hard to get too down on yourself when the kids look up to you, your boss thinks you can do anything, and you're rapidly finding out that you can teach things you've never taught before.

How you can gain weight while burning calories

2009-06-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, in addition to being a student of physics, I worked for two summers at a weight loss camp. And so it was that I thought to apply thermodynamics to what was happening to my campers.

Some campers would lose weight steadily; others would have slow and fact points; in the long term, they all improved dramatically. And yet, when you use weight to try to measure your fitness, things tend to fall flat a little more often, and you see quirks.

As BMI measures it, I hit the "overweight" marker at 184 pounds - at which point my body fat percentage is still quite healthy. If I drop to 170 pounds (BMI 23, still in the upper half of "normal") my body fat percentage is dangerously low. I would probably drop dead before hitting the "underweight" BMI (136 pounds).

The quirk here is lean body mass. I have a relatively high lean body mass; my campers, universally, were increasing their lean body mass as well, strengthening muscles they didn't know existed, drinking plenty of water, etc. And at the most extreme end of it - you can be burning through calories and still adding just a little bit of mass as you reshape your body. I've seen it; I've also seen, on weighing day, how terribly discouraged campers get when they discovered they lost little to no weight that week.

Hidden in that news is the amazing improvements they made in their fitness. They can now hike further, lift more, swim more quickly, and they may even have lost an inch on their waistline. And when we're worried about our appearance, it's that - not the proxy of total weight - that makes the difference when people look at you.

So if you're working out hard and watching your diet, and yet you just don't seem to be losing weight, cheer up. You're still probably improving your health and appearance.

The key of falsifiability

2009-06-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

When I hear people talking about teaching intelligent design, "proofs" of economics, and touting home remedies, I think about what makes something a scientific theory.

It needs to make some kind of predictions that can be tested. A scientific theory has to be falsifiable; it simply has to be the case that measurements could be made that would make it false. When they fail to do so, we proclaim the theory good.

An object falling does not prove gravity. I could just as easily say that things want to be close together, that celestial bodies naturally move in circles while terrestrial bodies want to be stationary on a low-lying surface, and explain everything that way. Data always underdetermines theory, points underdetermine functions, facts never tell the whole story of a case.

So why? The best theory is the one that walks the knife-edge between falsifiable and false. The slightest changes in the data could invalidate it - but somehow, they haven't. Arguments about government policy illustrate the point perfectly; is the problem too much protectionism, or too much free trade? Too much subsidy, or not enough? We can stretch and contrive a complex explanation justifying ourselves, and in fact, pundits seem to do so all the time.

What would it take for you to disbelieve this idea? If you can answer that question, you know whether you're relying on science or faith to justify your belief.

Housing strategies

2009-06-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

And so, my graduate housing saga continues. After being assigned the more expensive option, and accepting that option, I've received a lease. Within that lease, of course, are a number of restrictions...

... namely, there's to be no smoking anywhere near the building, and no pets whatsoever. At the start of the UC-I graduate housing application, there are questions about cats and smoking. You can apparently come with up to 2 cats.

Hypothesis: My optimal strategy, as someone with a limited budget and allergic to cats, would have been to claim to have 2 cats. This would have guaranteed that I was assigned to the cheaper housing; since they surely don't want too many cats per apartment, that probably would have minimized my chances of being assigned to another cat while saving several hundred dollars per month - on average, enough to keep me rolling in antihistamines in the event I turned out to have to deal with one.

Now, why this information wasn't presented at the start of the process, I can guess, but I have to say I don't like that system so far. And I still have a bone to pick about the affordability of their housing. I foresee an interest in committee-work in my future.

I'm studying the shapes of voting systems

2009-06-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

Writing this out loud makes it a little more real. Yes, this is what I'm doing. Methods of putting together larger numbers of ballots and coming out with a winner have a shape, and this, somehow, is useful. I'm working on finding shapes. Right now, one of them is looking somewhat hexagonal for some numbers, although it can compress into a line or, when we allow more deviant behavior, morph into a triangle. Then, it also can be unfolded into a solid.

When I put it like that, it sounds like I've gone off the deep end. What will I do next, find the scent of an ethical code? The sound of ideological distributions? Maybe I should turn my problem around - design shapes, and find voting systems that produce them. I wonder what degree of complexity I would need to make a voting d20.

Median voter theorem

2009-06-03T18:11:00.000-07:00

Why politicians talk in code

The median voter theorem is an interesting result in the study of elections. Suppose you have some political spectrum, and two candidates. Doesn't matter how many dimensions there are to that spectrum, even, with two candidates; the politician who is closer to the center (median) of voter positions will be closer to more voters. Voters - if acting rationally - will vote for the closest candidate to them.

Voila, so suddenly we have centrist candidates - or do we? There's another problem: Turnout. The further away a voter is from a candidate, the less likely a voter is to turn out. In fact, if they feel far away on the fringe, they may feel the difference between the two centrist candidates is negligible. Perhaps a third party candidate will look attractive - it's time to make a statement!

But what if you can occupy more than one position at once? Suddenly, you can secure much more of the political spectrum. This is why politicians talk in code, and try to position their opponents as extremists; why we see different messages sent through different media. Coded language is understood differently by different segments of the political spectrum, and by segmenting your audience into different groups, it allows you to try to position yourself near the median of each group rather than the whole population.

And this is how a politician masters the median voter theorem; not by moving carefully to the center of the population, but by seeming to be in different places when looked at from different perspectives.

Beauty tips from the furball

2009-06-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

Many of you may not have realized I have any interest in cosmetology. Truth of the matter is, I'm interested in everything, and so, here it is - what I know about cosmetic care.

Keep those pores clean and that body free of toxins!

For flushing out the skin regularly, and purging your body of toxins, what works better than a nice long workout followed by thorough rehydration? Sweat pores are tiny and everywhere, and when you're adding and removing a few liters of water, anything water-soluble is likely to go with it - along with some dead skin, dirt, and body oils.

In fact, I now believe that particularly harsh and sour body odor is the result of not having sweated enough recently. I've noticed it with myself - if I haven't done a solid workout lately, I'm going to smell pretty sour the first time I break a sweat. Go on, prove me wrong - take up a regular exercise regimen and tell me you don't feel better about yourself. Or stop, and tell me you think you smell nicer.

What, me smell?

Personally, I'm not fond of scents. Unscented deoderant for me, please - and if I can't find that, a palmful of baking soda works quite well to mute the natural smell. If you must, please be subtle... some of us have sensitive noses, others are allergic, and I, at least, remember some terribly irritating people in high school who wore much too much scent, so I have poor associations with that.

The idea is to smell nice - something that will blend into your deoderant, your surviving natural scent (yes, you still have one), and in all probability your shampoo, conditioner, body wash, soap, lotion, and any other products you use, rather than overwhelm everything. In my humble opinion, one should not to smell like perfume. Your scent will tend to improve with exercise and regular showers, of course.

Yes, showers!

Nothing beats regular doses of epidermal water. Nothing! I go in for at least one shower a day. I recommend it - it's nice, pleasant, helps wash gunk and dirt off your skin, and usually makes you smell better, even if you don't use anything scented. I also have the vague feeling that making your skin soaking wet might moisturize it, too.

Myself, I have very curly hair. I've found it actually looks best with a combination of chlorine and sun bleaching plus regular combing in the shower using copious amounts of conditioner. Following the advice posted in this livejournal group, I've found that using large amounts of cheap conditioner with no sodium laurel sulfate really works. For me, anyway; for those of you with other hair types, I recommend reading around in there. Amazing stuff.

And then... fashion?

No, let's not go there. There are many things I detest about men's fashion, and this entry is positive! If, perhaps, a little sarcastic here and there.

Measuring a libertarian

2009-06-01T18:42:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about this one for a while. There are social libertarians; there are economic libertarians; the idea is less government. And at the end of the day, I think that this might be the best way of all to measure whether or not someone really is a libertarian:

What is out there, that you think is wrong, but nevertheless believe should be legal?

For example, as I mentioned the other day, I think prostitution should be legal - carefully regulated in the public interest, but legal; however, I do think there's something terribly wrong with selling sex services. I'm even bothered by the overly mercantile nature of much dating, by mothers who tell their daughters they should judge a man by the price on the ring he brings them, by the high class escort services that carefully step around prostitution laws, by gold diggers, and by "Who wants to marry a millionaire?"

I am at least a little bit of a libertarian in that way. I want the government to step in because there is a compelling public interest - not because my personal sense of right and wrong is affronted.

Gripes about the housing process so far...

2009-05-31T15:50:00.000-07:00

The most talked-about part of the offer UC-Irvine sent me was the graduate housing guarantee. Having read it, and gone on to read the most recent internal committee report on the housing guarantee, and then read the rates quoted on the UCI website, I thought that this meant that I would have some variety of affordable housing. Barely affordable, but affordable.

What I didn't read was the noise-filled, flash-intensive website of Vista del Campo, who run the graduate housing units that the university doesn't actually own. The rent is much higher in these privately-run "luxury apartments."

Seriously? You're going to use the word "luxury" in describing graduate student housing? Someone's priorities are messed up. If I had gone on to read those rates, and realized that UCI was going to put me in one of the expensive apartments, and that they would be asking for two rent payements prior to even moving in... well, the UCI offer would have looked a lot less attractive.

The margin for housing to be considered "affordable" is 30-35% of income. By that standard, in order for the cheapest Vista del Campo graduate rent to be considered even marginally affordable by Federal terms (35% of income spent on rent), you need an income of $26,000. Which is more than they pay graduate students. And to afford a single? Over $40K. This is enormously different from the units the university actually runs themselves.

And may I go back to the front-loading, and the silly fees? Application fee of $20. Security deposit of $150. $12.95 extra for them to process a credit card payment through a fourth party (how many middlemen are taking a cut?) and the first two months' rent due August 1st and September 1st when the move-in date is September 19th. Graduate student orientation? Guess. It's the 17th, and if you want to move in early, you get charged extra.

If I had known all of this earlier, I might have decided that UC-Irvine's financial support was simply unworkable. As is, now, I will find a way to manage to make ends meet, but you can bet I'm not happy about it. The fees are the most ridiculous part. I'm paying an 8.6% fee to reduce your paperwork? Even Paypal does not charge so much - and taking it out on the payee?

Perhaps in California, students are accustomed to going neck-deep in debt to afford housing, and it's considered essential to have a "resort-style" swimming pool at your apartment complex, etc. But where I come from, graduate students aren't interested in paying an extra $300-$500 per month to live in more luxurious digs. They're interested in having enough left over for groceries and just maybe putting something aside to work on those student loans they accumulated as an undergrad.

I know, I know, this is how the VdC people make a mint and get their boat payments. But you'd think if the university was aware that problems affording housing both drive away prospective graduate students and prevent existing graduate students from making it through the program in a timely fashion (or at all, in some cases), they'd try to make sure the housing they were offering was affordable. And they are aware. I read the survey results cited in that report.

Legal, regulated, taxed?

2009-05-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

Today, for a change of pace, I've decided I'm going to try to think of a list of things that I think can be questioned on moral grounds, or on the grounds of their social cost, but should be legal - since making them illegal causes more problems - but carefully regulated, and that are worth taxing to recover the full social cost of the enterprise.

Tobacco
Meat
Alcohol
Driving
Firearms
Cosmetic surgery
Hunting
Sharp pointy things
Marijuana
Prostitution

This list is sorted by approximate increase in mortality caused by allowing them in the US, so far as I could tell. Prostitution is at the bottom, because as best as I could tell from the comparative statistics and studies, legalizing prostitution seems to actually reduce prostitution-related mortality. Curiously, it's the least lethal two at the bottom that are most often illegal in this country.

Fat and sexuality and society

2009-05-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

Consider this an idle rumination, if you would.

Not terribly long ago, a study came to my attention. It noted that among women, lesbians tended to be heavier than bisexuals who in turn tended to be heavier than straight women. This was curious to me, as also, I have seen many studies over the years that seemed to indicate that straight women seem to care more about a partner's body fat percentage than straight men did, and anecdotally, it seems to me that gay men appear to care the very most about it.

Lo and behold, Google provides a study suggesting that yes, gay men worry more about weight than straight men. And I am tempted to say there are two factors - being male, and being interested in males - that both somehow become a driving force, and if straight women care more about body fat than straight men, then being interested in men would be the stronger fashion.

Nevertheless, it strikes me as very odd, and it would bother me very much more if I thought this phenomenon was more biological than social.

The Ecolitan Lesson

2009-05-28T20:40:00.000-07:00

Some books teach you things. At times, I wonder if I am drawing the right lessons from the novels I peruse; in L.E. Modesitt's Ecolitan books, the lesson seems a fairly pointed one, so I feel nearly sure that the point is what I think it is:

Know what your priorities are. In the Ecolitan books, the protagonist always has some goal in mind - preserving a way of life, breaking an Empire, something monumental. The protagonist stops at nearly nothing to achieve this - and because they know exactly what their priorities are, it is the thought of a single moment to determine which priorities an action works for or against.

Most of the protagonists are highly pragmatic, and the results are bloody - but in the end, the trade-offs they have made, they are satisfied with. I think there's at least a grain of truth to that, and a grain of danger. People who put a single goal above all else risk becoming monsters in pursuit of that goal - whether the goal is destroying a nation, overturning a law, or accumulating wealth. The truth, though, is that most of the regrets I've had, and the mistakes I've made - or watched others make - are related to not knowing exactly what priorities fall where.

It's a simple lesson, but a difficult creed, and I'm still not sure if the danger in taking an ordering of priorities to heart is more or less than its utility.

The curious problem of insoluble union

2009-05-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

My mixed feelings on secession

When I look back on the civil war we had here in the US, I am of two minds. The first thing that comes to my mind is thank goodness they ended slavery. Sure, without the Civil War, perhaps slavery would have died out on its own eventually. Apartheid in South Africa ended eventually, without a bloody civil war... but it seemed to take forever.

A million people dying in a bloody civil war? Worth it to see the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments passed and enforced right then and there. But declaring the Union insoluble? A little fuzzier. It's been something of a help in protecting civil rights, as the US Supreme Court was what led the way to ending segregation and legalized racial discrimination.

But in theory? I don't think our union should be insoluble, and I think it was a grave oversight not to establish appropriate terms and procedures for states to leave the US. You don't want it to be something too quick and easy, something that can be decided upon rashly by a thin plurality of the population in a single referendum when emotions are running high, and it would probably take a year or more just to sort out state and federal properties and debts and carry out the actual separation once you were absolutely sure you wanted to do it.

In this day and age, I don't see it being a good idea, for Texas or any other state, but the idea that the United States can only add, and never even theoretically remove, states strikes me as non-viable. Eternal union may sound nice, but eternity is a very long time - and that's what bothers me about the Civil War. For all the good it did in removing slavery, it's made it very difficult to talk critically about perpetual union.

We've seen time and time again in other countries that there comes a time when it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that tie them to another, and why can't it be peaceful more often? The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, for example, was carried out quite peacefully.

Metrics by which we might define the closeness of an election

2009-05-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

There's always a great deal of talk about how close an election is. To myself, this can mean several different things, as I touched upon in my earlier discussion of the 2000 US presidential election.

An election can be considered close in several senses. First, that the final tallies are close. Second, that a small number of voters could have changed the result. Third, that alternative methods of tallying the election would have altered the election result.

The 2000 example is a good one because the final tally was close (271 to 266), the number of voters needed to change the election result was small (a few hundred out of a hundred million), and a change in election procedure would have likely resulted in a change in the result, e.g., going by popular margin instead of electoral votes, counting one or more states via a non-plurality method, et cetera.

Even very small alterations in the electoral vote mechanics, such as proportional allocation in some states that do not currently split electors, or the number of electors allocated, i.e., the size of the US House, could have altered the 2000 election.

The 2004 election was also a close election - but only in the sense that had a little over 50,000 votes been changed from Bush to Kerry in that state. Given that Bush enjoyed majority support, his position in 2004 was much more secure against alterations in the electoral mechanics, such as shifting to a national popular vote.

While some have charged the 2004 election was stolen, the amount of alteration that such charges must allege in order to secure Kerry's victory against, say, a national plurality vote - is truly staggering. It would take a total of around 1.5 million ballots altered or 3 million added (or subtracted) ballots to account for such a change.

And it is in discussing such metrics that the weakness of the electoral college comes out. The electoral college has most of the pros and cons of the plurality system it is based on - except that it is much more strongly vulnerable to local shifts, whether how easy it is for a third party candidate to make it onto the ballot, voter suppression or fraud, or - in the case of the 2000 election - simple counting error to shift the overall result. Electoral votes are necessarily going to be closer than national popular votes by the metric of how many voters need to change their mind to change the election.

For example, the 2008 election was not considered a particularly close one. Barack Obama's total plurality vote margin was 7.2%, and the electoral vote margin 365-173. Yet to change the result of the total election, it suffices to barely flip North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Iowa - which he won by a total of 987,000 votes, 0.75%. The 2004 election could have been changed with 0.097% of the votes, in spite of a 1.5% popular margin.

I'm of the opinion a comprehensive listing (e.g., Bush/Dukakis would have required 1.23% of votes to be added/subtracted, or 0.62% changed) would give a good idea as to the typical quantitative relationship between how sensitive a national plurality vote is, as opposed to an electoral college ballot.

The curious case of male sexuality and religion

2009-05-25T13:38:00.000-07:00

Before I talk about any empirical evidence, indulge me in an anecdote, would you?

For about four years of my college career, I belonged to an all-male pop a capella group by the name of Higher Ground. Beyond any doubt, what held the group together was music, but I was always a bit of an odd duck. When I first joined the group, the core of it was from nearby Hickory, and most of the guys were fans of country music. Mainly country boys, but by the time I left, the founding old guard had all gone, and it had shifted from that to the more generic brand, the kind of fella who thinks about joining a fraternity.

Pigeonhole and stereotype away if you like. There were some interesting characters, some of which I liked and some of which I didn't, but the end result is that Higher Ground was the most "conservative" group I belonged to on campus, and also one of the more religious, at least nominally, and I learned a few interesting things.

One was that Campus Crusade for Christ meetings were apparently one of the best places to score. That was a surprise to me; less surprising was the constant locker-room talk. A very few were genuinely intensely religious, more interested in theology, and those few were willing to put sex aside until marriage. The rest? Conservative or not, religious or not, college was all about getting laid. Expressly and explicitly.

And it's from that experience, and the experience of liberal students who were very cautious about sex, that I started to wonder what exactly is going on here. There's no question in my mind that being told not to have sex until marriage over and over again should reduce sexual activity, but why is it that only some men (far fewer than women, it seems, and now I've gone and introduced empirical evidence) respond to this message, while others come out of the Southern Baptist church thinking that sex before marriage is sinful yet pursuing promiscuity as if it were the path into heaven?

Some of it surely is the traditional myth of hyperactive male sexuality, propagated in some abstinence-only programs and passed on unthinkingly by those who do not critically examine sexuality; but I cannot help but think that something else is involved. And what stands out is that in this day and age, more than ever, conservative young males fear being labeled as homosexual - and nothing is as effective at silencing locker-room backstabbers' quiet implications of homosexuality than having sex with a woman.

So now, whenever people jabber about men being unable to control their desires, I think about homophobia, and how it helps keep alive the idea that sex is some commodity that men demand and women supply.

One kilogram does not equal 2.2 pounds

2009-05-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

How you react to this statement tells me something, I think. If you've taken physics, you know that pounds are a unit of force, while kilograms are a unit of mass, and therefore, 2.2 pounds does not equal 1 kilogram. 1 kilogram of matter, on Earth, weighs 2.2 pounds (give or take a few small fractions; Earth's gravity field isn't quite uniform); on the moon, the same object will still mass one kilogram, while it will weigh only a few ounces.

So it's quite technically correct to say 1 kilogram doesn't equal 2.2 pounds. On the other hand, for all practical intents and purposes, that's the useful conversion to make, since the newton (metric unit of force) and the slug (standard imperial unit of mass) are more rarely used units.

Some people react with a nod. They're aware of the difference, and consider it an important one. Others react with a groan - they know that technically it's correct, but as far as they're concerned, the difference is a technical distinction that doesn't really matter. And a few become quite confused, because they don't know what the distinction is between weight and mass.

Patterns from nothing

2009-05-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

Today is the day several people I know have a birthday. Five, according to Facebook, which informs me that I knew four of those in high school, no less - what a remarkable coincidence! - and two of them were reasonably good friends with each other, enough to share a five-way birthday party with several other nearby May-birthday friends.

Yet while it's quite unusual to have to have a couple of close friends from the same circle with a May 23rd birthday, it's hardly unusual to have two friends share the same birthday. By the time you know 23 birthdays, the odds are better than even that you know two people with shared birthdays. A remarkable coincidence - but of course, you're special, and you probably had to go through around 250 friends to find one who shared YOUR birthday.

We are inclined to recognize patterns in life. It's a useful skill, one that serves us well every day of our lives, but we're not always good judges of statistical significance, so sometimes we recognize patterns that are in fact simply random noise. This is where superstitions come from, and those little errant beliefs that aren't quite rational. Rationally, I know that having an ice-cold draft from the bar won't improve my motor control, but I swear, it seems to improve my bowling from atrocious to merely terrible!

Once we've picked out a pattern, and consciously identified it, we start to become emotionally attached to them. We've invested time and effort in it; every time you wear your lucky underpants and make out with a cute boy, you've reinforced the idea that they're lucky in your mind. When you wear them out and go home frustrated, you focus on another cause - a black cat, maybe a friend causing drama, there was something out there that interfered with your lucky underwear.

Psychologists have found intermittent reinforcement works very well, which might explain not only gambling addictions, but how doggedly we hang onto our curious patterns; medical doctors have found that delusion is remarkably effective at influencing how our bodies work. And there, we've come full circle. Most of the false patterns we see in life don't cause us much harm, and some even help us cope with the varied vagaries of life.

And who knows? Maybe a beer does relax me enough to let my cerebellum handle everything; maybe I treat my friend Terry like a little sister because I share a birthday with her big brother; and maybe, just maybe, your lucky sock makes you run just a little bit faster. But if you look hard enough for a pattern, one will emerge; whether it means anything or not is another matter entirely.

Still grumbling about the 2000 election

2009-05-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

It's been eight years, and still, the 2000 election bothers me. It displayed most of the things wrong with our electoral system here in the US, and several measures of gross injustice to boot.

First, it shows the problems with the electoral college: That voters matter more or less, nationally, depending on which state they live in; a small margin of voters in a single state can decide the entire election. Also, that with certain states "in play," and a winner-takes-all rule, there's a much larger payoff for fraud. The incentive to cheat in states that poll closely is entirely too high for comfort.

Second, it showcases one of the major problems with a simple plurality vote. Even retaining the anachronistic Electoral College, which makes large states disproportionately important to win, had the election in Florida - or New Hampshire - been carried out using nearly any of the other voting systems, whether Borda count, approval ballot, or instant runoff, Gore would've been accorded a decisive, if narrow, victory.

Third, the close investigation into Florida demonstrated the impact of poor ballot design and voter suppression, both of which, in this particular case, favored Bush over Gore, and either of which accounted for more votes than the final official margin. The final study showed that had the state of Florida counted all its votes correctly and consistently with the law, Gore won by a razor-thin margin in spite of both factors. If you don't remember reading about that in the news, it was buried deeply in the back, since the study wasn't completed until shortly after 9/11, when Bush was enjoying record popularity. It was also very heavily spun in the news media, which emphasized instead the fact that Gore's initial few-counties recount strategy was a bad one.

Fourth, it showed politics at its worst, with each politician acting tactically and hypocritically. Bush swore up and down that this was an issue for the state of Florida to decide - right up until the Florida Supreme Court decided against him, at which point he went running to the US Supreme Court. Gore tried to get a recount in only the most heavily Democratic counties. The election officials in Florida, working underneath Jeb Bush, embarked in a foot-dragging display of either ridiculous incompetence or partisan mockery of the democratic process.

Fifth, I think Bush v. Gore will go down in history as one of those cases where the court decided badly for the sake of expedience. Telling a state they can go ahead, certify their election results, and seat one slate of electors while the actual full count of votes is unknown, halting the recount in its tracks?

It's a remarkably clear case of an election where everything that could go wrong with our presidential election system did go wrong - and where, frustratingly, if any single one of those problems hadn't been present, the world would be a different place today. Call it a perfect storm of systematic structural problems, hypocritical behavior, fraud, error, and (last but not least) incompetence.

And that bothers me.

To run like a girl

2009-05-21T16:05:00.000-07:00

The other day, this phrase popped into my head. She's running like a girl. Then I shook my head. What was wrong with me?

But there wasn't anything else for me to say. "To run like a girl" was the phrase that directly captured what I was seeing, never mind that girls who run regularly usually don't run that way. Somehow, to run inefficiently, in that peculiar style with the forearms flailing out to the sides, the upper and lower body rotating sideways in opposition to each other, is to run like a girl.

If I just say her running form was bad, it could mean any number of things, but "to run like a girl" somehow captures that specific bad form. Which I, of course, last remember seeing done by a boy. Oh, to live in a language where the idioms are not gendered. What can I say that captures what I saw more specifically than She had poor form without reinforcing sexist beliefs?

And have we yet reached the point where little girls and little boys both participate equally in sports that require them to learn how to run?

Your meat problem

2009-05-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

Why cheese is my guilty pleasure

The average American eats about two hundred pounds of meat every year, and this is a problem for everybody. I've personally been a vegetarian for almost two decades now, but as a rule, I don't tell people they need to become vegetarian themselves. However, what most of us can and should do is cut back on animal-based consumption.

I'm still not saying that you need to become a vegetarian like myself, or go all the way to vegan. It's not a lifestyle that everybody is willing, or able, to embrace. I'm just saying that if you're used to centering every meal around what meat is in it, you should probably take it a little easier. Shy away from large cuts; concentrate on quality, rather than quantity.

My meat-loving friends tell me that with meat, quality makes oh so much of a difference in the pleasure of eating it. A lot of them are fans of pricier grass-fed beef over the cheaper grain-fed beef they find in the market; I wouldn't know myself, but I can say that it makes more economic sense in the long haul. Brings us to our first concrete reason of the day.

Traditionally, cattle-using people have come from areas with soil and climate ill-suited to plants that humans can eat, and while grass grows just fine on land that won't grow wheat, land that can grow feed corn can also grow crops that humans can eat directly. Depending on who you ask, it takes four to six pounds of grain to manufacture a pound of pork, two to two and a half for a pound of chicken, and a whopping seven to thirteen pounds of grain go into each pound of beef (1,2 - plus some hay and other fodder) - naturally, on beef, vegetarian activist groups say sixteen pounds, while industry sales groups claim two pounds, but I trust academic references more than advocacy groups.

A pound of cheese, my personal favorite animal product (since I actually eat it), tends to take about three and a half pounds of grain (plus six pounds of other fodder) to make - not as much as beef, but still plenty. It's simply less efficient, and with food prices spiking, that in and of itself is a problem. (So is fuel ethanol, which is just ill-advised, period, but also competes with food in the arable land market).

This year, I've been following my own advice on cheese - reduce the quantity, focus on quality - and I have to say, life is better that way. And speaking of life being better, excess consumption of meat (especially processed meat) is strongly linked to a wide range of health problems. Most of the people in this country would become healthier by cutting their meat consumption to no more than half of what it is now.

I suppose if fewer agricultural subsidies went to feed grain, the increase in the price of meat might just spur a shift in the American diet, but I have my personal doubts on that account. Consumption patterns are highly social, and it takes a great deal to push consumption patterns around. Then, of course, there's a carbon impact intrinsic to meat that's greater than the carbon impact of vegetables, but you already knew that, right?

So, quality over quantity. Think about it.

Anecdote and Argument

2009-05-19T03:34:00.002-07:00

We are sociable creatures who enjoy telling stories. We learn and teach through parables and fables; it should come as no surprise, therefore, that we turn to anecdotes in laying out arguments for and against something.

The problem is, though, all too often we generalize inappropriately. We fail to see the larger picture, because we're interested in the compelling details in front of us that we can grasp directly. When we have a cold winter in Boone, it does not mean that global warming has stopped. The scope of the data needed to talk meaningfully about global warming is much larger than a season in the life of a single town in the mountains.

The same with education, with market policy, with vitamin supplements, and so on. The more grand the topic, the more important it is that we focus on the larger picture. For example, take health care. In the larger view of things, it does not matter if one patient experiences a three hour wait "because of socialized medicine" or another patient faces a jaw-droppingly unexpected million dollar bill "because the private insurers are greedy." What matters is how well the system works and at what cost.

Whether or not abstinence-only education works is a question that cannot be answered by pointing at Bristol Palin; it can only be answered by studies examining the changes in pregnancy rates and STD frequency in its wake (studies do find abstinence-only education lacking, as it so happens). Enjoy your stories, but before you draw your conclusions, how about holding out for science?

The bachelor's what?

2009-05-18T05:20:00.000-07:00

More than anything else, the bachelor's degree seems to be a pass to a social class. Want a white collar job? Get a four year degree. Any four-year degree will do for most of them, as it will mark you as part of the educated middle class.

I can't count how many times I've heard it repeated that what major you had in college matters very little in the corporate world - or how many times I've heard someone say that what they majored in had nothing to do with what they do now. There's even a certain measure of truth to claims that the bachelor's degree is diluted, because there are very few specific things you need to know on graduation. Pick the right school, the right major, the right classes, and the right teachers, and you may coast through having learned very little curriculum material.

It does mark a measure of persistence, and work, or at least financial support of some kind, but while having a degree with (say) a major in chemistry means something specific, the bachelor's degree in general seems to be more a social marking than an educational one. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why demand for a college education is and will remain sky-high - because here in America, it's a pass into the white collar class. Those with a four year degree seem to bear some kind of warrant to look down upon those without one.

Mere curriculum material, I wager, would not warrant such demand. But social standing? Social standing is priceless, and I suspect that, more than anything else, accounts for the disparity in pay grade between those with and those without the sheepskin.

Crossdisciplinary or interdisciplinary?

2009-05-17T18:16:00.000-07:00

I went through my undergraduate studies with a triple major - at least one humanity (philosophy) and at least one science (physics). I'd call mathematics a very fine art myself, but describing myself as a fine arts major would lead to no small amount of confusion.

I've been describing myself mainly as cross-disciplinary; the reason is that if I said "interdisciplinary," I might be confused with an IDS major, which we had at Appalachian. The field of interdisciplinary studies seems to be a very specific one now, and while I've had a good measure of respect for Appalachian's IDS program, I clearly wasn't part of it.

The very notion of disciplines does mean that problems that cross over the boundaries of traditional disciplines are in an odd spot - perhaps under-studied when they require the tools of both disciplines, perhaps simply subject to poor communication and turf wars when the traditional tools of both disciplines work well on them.

But oh, though the lines are blurry, how useful it is to have separate departments, and so clearly communicate where most of the specialties go!

The case for liberal arts education

2009-05-16T06:39:00.000-07:00

In general, I'm a fan of the idea of breadth in education. That's not to say there are no drawbacks to liberal arts educations; if you concentrate on breadth, you lose a little bit of technical depth within your specialty.

The largest drawback of a liberal arts education is that you mainly get out of it what you put into it; it can be easy, at many universities, to skim a wide variety of topics without taking the effort to understand, and if combined with a carefully selected major, it's possible to go through with a minimum of effort.

In benefit, though, you can gain a great deal of understanding of other fields, a great deal more confidence that what you are specializing in (if anything) is one of the things you are best suited for, or most want to do, and more flexibility than offered by technical specialization.

As I looked through Ph. D. programs, I found that - surprising as it may be to you - mathematics doctoral programs often required, for completion, proficiency - at the level of technical translation - with one of a list of specific languages. I have long since ceased being surprised when I find that something I learned in a philosophy class is useful for mathematics or physics, or vice versa.

Or in or for any other subject. The traffic modeling discussed in an introduction to urban planning is covered in applied mathematics; literary analysis techniques are of interest to philosophers; the epistemology studied by philosophers is the foundation of experimental science. If you take it seriously, a liberal arts education is a wonderful thing.

I, Agnostic

2009-05-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, I tell people that I am an agnostic. This seems to provoke some discussion, now and then, as the devout Christian or equally devout atheist would like to know just how I could be indecisive.

I'm not being indecisive, I reply, and so begins my long story. I'm not an agnostic because I haven't seen the arguments presented by either side, and can't make up my mind; I'm an agnostic because I refuse to believe something I can't know. I can't know there is a God; I can't know there isn't a God. Or Goddess. Or some number or combination of divine, semi-divine, near-omnipotent, or other supernatural beings.

That doesn't mean I don't make contingent judgments, or moral judgments, or ethical judgments, or that I don't have my own peculiar fanatical beliefs. I don't need to believe in a God, or know punishments or rewards await me in the afterlife, to decide what I should and should not do; to be the best person that I can be, to do good as best as I can, is its own reward. Nor do I need to deny others their own leap of faith in declaring there is - or is not - some God out there. For practical terms, one good leap of faith is worth quite a bit of philosophizing.

For myself, I am content to muddle along on judgments, logic, and philosophy, knowing there are things out there that I cannot know.

Seven problems in US elections

2009-05-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

Primaries. They're fixed in such a way that different states matter different amounts for different parties' candidates, and in some cases, the primaries either don't matter or, in areas with by-party primaries and landslide support for one or the other party, decide all too much.
The electoral college. Contrary to popular opinion, the electoral college amplifies the effect of large states and makes small states matter less. In practice, since politics is regional, this means a few states have disproportionate leverage and gain special treatment from presidential candidates.
Plurality voting. There are tons of better alternatives, from instant runoffs to the Borda count to approval voting.
"Third party" candidates. See #3 - there are better ways to do elections that aren't nearly as vulnerable to the spoiler effect, but while you have a plurality election, third party candidates have at best the effect of trying to make sure that the two major parties don't completely ignore their radical wings.
Campaign finance. There are good things about the system in place, but that doesn't mean it can't still be fixed.
The public polling horserace. I like to follow the polls just as much as the next person, but I think sometimes we spent too much effort trying to figure out what groups are "key" to an election and who will win by how much.
The median voter theorem applies to public perceptions, not reality. We really could use better honesty, accountability, and more clearly differentiated options that don't simply talk past each other in code designed to reach the base and bypass the moderates.

What's wrong with "sorostitute?"

2009-05-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

I feel like I probably should have spoken up more often when this came up in conversation - now that I'm done at Appalachian, it'll probably come up quite rarely, but over the years, it's come to bother me more and more often when I hear people bashing sorority girls. It's not that I think social fraternal organizations have much - if any - of a net positive effect on campus life on the whole, or that I've ever considered joining one. It's not that I cringe similarly hearing people grumble about frat boys.

The problem I have is with the kind of criticism I hear about sorority girls. I enjoy reasoned critiques of any social institution, whether or not I agree with the criticism or not. "Reasoned" and "insightful" has nothing to do with what I keep hearing.

More often than not, the criticism I hear in person about sorority girls reduces to the accusation of slut. Such a loaded term. While having sex often may not always be advisable - for whatever reasons you might believe, and we could spend hours debating why or why not - it's not something we should be vilifying, and I'm especially tired of hearing women called "sluts."

There's a clear gendered double standard in how promiscuity gets talked about, and I'm just plain tired of it. "Fratmattress" and "sorostitute" may have sounded amusing the first time I heard them, but that was close to seven years ago. Now, they just sound derogatory, demeaning, and just plain mean. Think about it for a minute.

In a perfect world, there are no abortions

2009-05-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

There are few debates that make me as uncomfortable as the one over abortion. Perhaps it is because I saw Citizen Ruth when I was thirteen; perhaps it was because I grew up in the UU church, and was told to question everything and make up my own mind, rather than being told what I must believe.

Perhaps it's simply because I am willing to discuss any topic with anybody, and so I've come to learn that abortion lies in a very grey area: In a perfect world, there are no abortions. Why? Because there are no unwanted pregnancies, no medical complications, and so no demand for abortions. Depending on which camp you belong to, either people aren't having sex that isn't intended for reproduction, or they're using contraception that works all the time when they don't want to reproduce.

But contraception does fail. Accidents happen. Worse, rape happens. All sorts of conditions in the real world create pregnancies that aren't desired, and it's here in the real world that the abortion debate lives. And it's conditions in the real world that can render the debate a moot point; invest in medical technology and reproductive infrastructure enough, and abortion could become obsolete or nearly so.

Until you do, we have a very real conflict between rights and values, with a philosophical open question thrown into the mix for good measure, to keep everybody at loggerheads.

One right is the right to control what happens to your body. When this right is violated, it's terrifying; fundamentally, we see our bodies as ourselves, and our very identity is threatened when that control is taken away. The other right is the right of every human to live. And here's the fundamental question: When do we stop being the potential to become human and actually become human? Because at that moment, the two rights can conflict.

How you answer the question of when life starts usually fixes you on the pro-life/pro-choice map. Myself, I don't know; I suspect I can't know. Conception - at which point there exists only a glob of undifferentiated cells? At quickening? At birth? One's naming day? Eighteen months later? I think birth is a convenient marking-post, but it's a fairly arbitrary one. Viable outside the womb? That's a moving one, depending on medical technology and financial investment.

Personally, I see the pro-choice position as practical. I don't know if I'm right, but if abortion is murder, miscarriage is manslaughter - and that is a terrifying idea to me, having watched a couple I lived with go through a miscarriage. I can only imagine what effect a criminal investigation would have had on them.

I know, firstly, that abortions will happen whether they are legal or not, and if they are not legal, they will be likely frightful and dangerous;l that most people are not inclined towards looking at this issue coldly or rationally, and that most people don't see the technological route to circumventing the entire problem that I see with such clarity.

I know, secondly, with certainty, that if we do not allow a woman to choose to stop being pregnant, that we will violate her right to control what happens to her own body. I am not so certain if exercising her right to sovereignity over her own body conflicts with another imperative, but that question I am in no position to judge. And that is why I will leave it to each and every woman to grapple with the choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.

I know, thirdly, that if someone wants to stop abortion, it is their logical duty to fight for improvements in contraception, for comprehensive sexual education, and to fight against rape culture, all of which will help reduce the number of abortions performed. If you do not so fight, do not tell me that eliminating abortion is your number one priority, because you aren't doing all that you could do.

Thoughts on the graduate admissions process

2009-05-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

Now that I've had a month after making my final decision to let the emotions settle, I think I have a few things to say about the graduate admissions process. A few of the things I have to say probably apply to the college admissions process as well.

The first thing that strikes me is that the graduate admission process was expensive. GRE subject test fees ($130 per), GRE general test fees ($140), an extra $20 per score report, $12 to get your scores by phone. Then you have fees to send official transcripts, and then actual application fees - usually about $50 for your application. For us poor applicants, getting into a graduate school is worth well over the one to three thousand dollars we can expect to spend on the process, but it still feels like we're getting gouged.

To say nothing of the time invested in essays, forms, letters of recommendation, et cetera, that we would rather be spending on research or coursework. I have a short list of pet peeves coming out of this that many graduate program directors - or graduate school administrators, in some cases - might be well advised to read.

Ask for one official score report and one official transcript. Photocopies are much cheaper than official reports (pennies vs dollars, even accounting for labor). What is the application fee supposed to cover, anyway?
Exorbitant applications fees will shrink the size of your applications pool, but won't improve its quality. Or socioeconomic diversity, come to that.
Have one application form that can be filled out completely online. Embark and Applyweb are good, although they could be improved. Having your own online application isn't bad. Having multiple independent online forms, or requiring some materials online and some via snail-mail? Please.

I think it would be wonderful if a third-party, like ApplyWeb or Embark, cut the paperwork (and ETS's additional score report cash flow) off at the knees by accepting and scanning in official transcripts and score reports, and graduate schools only required final official hardcopies for their own records upon admitting a student. If transcript-reading was automated, the various department-specific lists of "What courses in our department and what grade did you get in that course?" could be automated online, too. The applications process could be made a lot less painful for students.

The second thing that comes to my mind is the game-theoretic disaster that the admissions process is. Look at - say - physics. Many top-half programs' rejection rates closing in on 90% (or, in a few cases, higher) rejection rates for many reputable doctoral programs, you have to apply to multiple schools if you want to go on with your career.

So let me just say that in physics, the subject GRE is required by almost all top-half schools - which are, naturally, more popular places to apply than bottom-half schools. Yet less than 2500 people take the physics GRE per year (ref), while around 3000 students start graduate work every year in physics (ref).

Those of you doing math on your napkins may have noticed something: If the top-half programs reject an overwhelming majority of all applicants (around 90% in many cases), and the overwhelming majority of applicants get in somewhere, then most applicants are sending out a great number of applications (somewhere around ... ten, you might guess).

Students have an incentive to apply to more schools in order to increase their odds of getting in somewhere. With individual rejection rates like those, your application is a crapshoot even if you have impresive qualifications. End result? Hundreds of millions of dollars and millions of pages of forms wasted simply in the process of trying to allocate graduate students to schools, in a giant orgy of statistical noise. There has got to be a better way to do this.

Gay marriage

2009-05-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

How the Republican Party lost the youth of America

It's surprising to me how quickly the public dialogue over gay marriage has shifted since the Iowa supreme court decision a little over a month ago. What wasn't surprising to me was Nate Silver coming up with a regression for gay marriage amendment votes, and that regression showed a 2% per year decrease in voters willing to vote for a gay marriage ban.

Polls have shown a marked generation gap in the support for gay marriage. Slowly but steadily, older voters against gay marriage have died off, while younger citizens in support of gay marriage have been reaching voting age. It's not the sort of issue people have been changing their minds about very quickly.

In 2004, a slight majority of the voting age public was against gay marriage. The Republican party made a large issue out of gay marriage in many states, tying state and national campaigning to efforts that put eleven measures against gay marriage on state ballots. Eight of these measures banned civil unions. This drove Republican base turnout up and helped Bush defeat Kerry.

In the long run, however, this was a poor strategic move, one of several decisions that would drive the younger voters of America away from the Republican party in droves in 2006 and 2008. From CNN's exit polls: The age gap seen in the support for Obama and McCain? 66-32 among 18-29 year olds... right in the range of exit polling on Proposition 8 in California the same year. Coincidence? I think not.

Argumentum ad Trebuchet

2009-05-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

The logical rejoinder to anybody invoking the phrase "when pigs fly."