Thinking Out of the Box

Op-Ed Columnist - A Republican Surprise - NYTimes.com

2010-03-01T19:24:00.000-05:00

Op-Ed Columnist - A Republican Surprise - NYTimes.com

To Court Blacks, Foes of Abortion Make Racial Case - NYTimes.com

2010-02-27T09:59:00.000-05:00

To Court Blacks, Foes of Abortion Make Racial Case - NYTimes.com

Vermont Scuttles Plans for Reactor - WSJ.com

2010-02-25T10:42:00.000-05:00

Vermont Scuttles Plans for Reactor - WSJ.com

Interesting challenge... don't know much of the details regarding the leak, but generally nuclear seems like a cleaner option than the coal that the state will be forced to draw from.

I guess the benefit is, VT as a whole probably uses less energy than Memphis...

How Occidental Scored Citi Unit Cheaply - WSJ.com

2010-02-25T10:39:00.000-05:00

How Occidental Scored Citi Unit Cheaply - WSJ.com

Listened to the US Pay Czar today speak about his role. Very interesting, but the case of PhiBro (above) definitely was a concern among my classmates. I'd heard of the story last year, but didn't follow much of the details... interesting to see how these (and other talented bankers) are getting pushed out of the companies who arguably need their profits the most.

Random news of the day

2009-10-22T07:40:00.002-04:00

States boost energy efficiency investment (WSJ)

Bad poll news for Obama - for the first time, a majority of Americans disagree with him on issues they rate as important (AOL)

CDC allows HPV vaccination in boys, but CDC economists question its societal cost effectiveness and stop short of encouraging everyone to be vaccinated (WSJ)

Conquering nuclear physics, management consulting, investment banking, and life...

2009-10-07T15:41:00.001-04:00

its like the beginning of a "you know you're brilliant" when joke... but its also Hamid Biglari's life.

Today's News

2009-10-07T07:29:00.002-04:00

Two books on the US involvement in Vietnam - with decidedly different messages - are seen as key influences on today's policy-makers (WSJ)

Interesting article about Sen Carper's new proposal for public plans at the state level. It says such plans would be constrained to compete under exactly the same rules as the local marketplace (which, perhaps incorrectly, I read as saying it would have the same local reimbursement rate). I wonder if they would have the same private sector commitment to fighting fraud and reimbursing new technologies.... the proposal may be something to watch... (WSJ)

David Brooks' tongue-in-cheek description of our current political system is very interesting, although his archetypes may be a bit too simple to describe the complexity of political diversity everywhere... (NYT)

Wind rights?

2009-10-06T22:33:00.004-04:00

Its customary in most, if not every, state to consider a parcel of land in two pieces: the surface land and the subterranean mineral rights. Wyoming is now considering whether "wind rights" also apply (from the Billings Gazette)

BW Cover Story: "America's High Tech Sweatshops"

2009-10-04T21:42:00.004-04:00

Troubling article in BusinessWeek about people trapped in an immigration scam coming into the US. Nearly sounds like indentured servitude, and when they get caught, they (not their "employers") go to jail. You know that this sort of thing happens every day, but it is just so gutwrenching to hear of someone who really tried to play by the rules get taken advantage of so badly.

An exerpt:
Vimal Patel was studying for a master's in business administration in London when he saw an advertisement for work in the U.S. The ad offered a job in the tech industry, as well as sponsorship for the kind of work visa that allows foreign nationals to take professional-level jobs in the country. So Patel applied and paid his prospective employer, Cygate Software
& Consulting, in Edison, N.J., thousands of dollars in up-front fees. But when Patel arrived, Cygate had no tech job for him. He ended up working at a gas station, and Cygate nevertheless took a chunk of his wages for years, according to documents in a criminal case against Cygate.
After a federal investigation into Cygate, Patel and five other natives of India recruited by
the company pled guilty to visa violations in June. They were sentenced to 12 to 18 months of probation, assessed fines of $2,000 each, and now face deportation. But at Patel's sentencing in the federal courthouse in Newark, N.J., his lawyer said the slim 36-year-old, with a mop of brown hair spilling over his forehead, was more victim than villain. Like many ambitious workers from abroad, he came to the country seeking his fortune, and he suffered for the effort. "It's a sad day," said Anthony Thomas, the public defender assigned to represent Patel. "He
always dreamed of coming to the U.S."

An earlier ancestor...

2009-10-01T12:35:00.004-04:00

Time magazine article about Ardi, a primate from 4.4m years ago that predates Lucy by more than 1.2m years. The big deal: scientists have always argued that we diverged from the line that ultimately created chimps... Ardi may suggest that we diverged less and chimps diverged far more from that common ancestor (who may have actually been an upright walker, not a knuckle-dragger...):

Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, a co-leader of the Middle Awash research team that discovered and studied the new fossils, says, "To understand the biology, the parts you really want are the skull and teeth, the pelvis, the limbs and the hands and the feet. And we have all of them."

That is the beauty of Ardi — good bones. The completeness of Ardi's remains, as well as the more than 150,000 plant and animal fossils collected from surrounding sediments of the same time period, has generated an unprecedented amount of intelligence about one of our earliest potential forebears. The skeleton allows scientists to compare Ardipithecus directly with Lucy's genus, Australopithecus, its probable descendant. Perhaps most important, Ardi provides clues to what the last common ancestor shared by humans and chimps might have looked like before
their lineages diverged about 7 million years ago.

Move over, LA

2009-10-01T07:55:00.003-04:00

According to a panel of experts in this morning's WSJ, the new youth-magnet cities are:

T1) DC
T1) Seattle
2) New York
3) Portland
4) Austin
5) San Jose
6) Denver
7) Durham
8) Dallas
9) Chicago
10) Boston

Ever thought of a smoking vaccine?

2009-10-01T07:44:00.002-04:00

I didn't even know this was a part of front-line research in smoking cessation, but apparently its a hot area for investment (From FierceVaccine):

The National Institute on Drug Abuse has given Nabi Biopharmaceuticals a $10 million loan to help fund the company's first pivotal clinical trial of NicVAX, a smoking cessation vaccine. It's the largest grant the NIDA has ever handed out, and the third Nabi has received. The company was granted funding during NicVAX's preclinical development and and additional $4.1 million for Phase II testing. And the FDA has given the vaccine fast-track status.

"We are very pleased to be awarded this generous grant from NIDA which enables us to proceed with the first pivotal Phase III trial for NicVAX," said Dr. Raafat Fahim, Nabi Biopharmaceuticals' CEO. "...This grant will defray a significant portion of the expense of the first phase III study." Nabi will continue to pursue partnering discussions for the future development and commercialization of the vaccine."

Costco-Manhattan Arbitrage

2009-09-30T07:35:00.003-04:00

A new business: a man with a truck buying goods at Costco, bringing them to Manhattan residents, and splitting the savings. Pretty smart - but he's going to have to get some serious volumes to make it a good business. (From The Consumerist, HT Marginal Revolution)

The world, the language, and the NYT lose a legend in Safire

2009-09-27T21:02:00.003-04:00

Photo from Greater Talent Network Inc.

The NYT reports that William Safire, a giant of a social commentary and language critic, has succumbed to pancreatic cancer. It's been rough with some of the legends that have passed away recently; the world is the worse for it.

There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: There was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”
He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal, which drove the president from office.
Then, from 1973 to 2005, Mr. Safire wrote his twice-weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed page of The Times, a forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus. Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.

"The Most Important Man in Golf"

2009-09-27T13:51:00.003-04:00

Long before Tiger or Sergio, Rick Reilly wrote about Joe Sixpack and his important role in golf. A great piece from Sports Illustrated (from 1988)

The most important man in golf has a ball retriever in his bag, a score counter on his belt and a loop in his backswing. He buys three balls for a dollar and shows up at the course in jeans. Reeboks and a golf shirt that's so old it has no emblem. He's the foot soldier of the game, the guy who's up at four in the morning to pay $12 to wait three hours to play a six-hour round to lose $6 in bets.

No company wants him to wear its name on his visor, and nobody shines his cleats. Yet he's the guy who keeps the sport alive. He's the guy who lines up three deep to hit a bucket of almost-round balls off AstroTurf mats, which stain his irons an unnatural green. That's him in the back
of the clubhouse, lying about his round and playing gin rummy on a white Formica table that hasn't seen a busboy's rag since Easter.

But golf can't change neighborhoods on us. Truth is, underneath all that, the heart of the game is still the shot-and-a-beer hacker, the golf guerrilla, the guy playing courses that move about as fast as a Moscow meat line, and smiling about it. Fuzzy Zoeller may shoot 66 at Augusta and then gripe about the greens, but the essence of golf is still the 14 handicapper who doesn't mind if the tees are rough, the fairways look like the aftermath of a tractor-pull and the greens aren't. He loves the game for the game. It's Saturday. He's playing golf. He's gonna gripe?

The Chicken Tax

2009-09-23T07:42:00.006-04:00

If you ever questioned the idea that taxes distort markets, here is the perfect example: the chicken tax, from Monday's WSJ front page.

The gist: because of a European tax on US chickens (from the 1960s), the US retaliated with a tariff on European cargo trucks. Today, this means that Ford imports cargo vans it builds in Europe into the US with several passenger features, only to rip them out once here to dodge the tariff. Think about how much wasted productive effort comes from (1) installing the consumer features and then (2) dismantling them.

Its the automobile equivalent of hiring one person to dig a giant hole during the day and then hiring someone else to fill the hole with more dirt each night. As an economy, what have we gained?

On an additional note, its an interesting statement that Ford can build trucks in Eastern Europe (here, Turkey) and ship them over here for less than they can to build trucks here in America; when thinking of outsourcing, I often forget about Eastern Europe...

BALTIMORE -- Several times a month, Transit Connect vans from a Ford Motor Co. factory in Turkey roll off a ship here shiny and new, rear side windows gleaming, back seats firmly bolted to the floor.

Their first stop in America is a low-slung, brick warehouse where those same windows, never squeegeed at a gas station, and seats, never touched by human backsides, are promptly ripped out.
The fabric is shredded, the steel parts are broken down, and everything is sent off along with the glass to be recycled.

Why all the fuss and feathers? Blame the "chicken tax."

The seats and windows are but dressing to help Ford navigate the wreckage of a 46-year-old trade spat. In the early 1960s, Europe put high tariffs on imported chicken, taking aim at rising U.S. sales to West Germany. President Johnson retaliated in 1963, in part by targeting German-made Volkswagens with a tax on imports of foreign-made trucks and commercial vans.

The 1960s went the way of love beads and sitar records, but the chicken tax never died. Europe still has a tariff on imports of U.S. chicken, and the U.S. still hits delivery vans imported from overseas with a 25% tariff. American companies have to pay, too, which puts Ford in the weird position of circumventing U.S. trade rules that for years have protected U.S. auto makers' market for trucks.

The company's wiggle room comes from the process of defining a delivery van. Customs officials check a bunch of features to determine whether a vehicle's primary purpose might be to move people instead. Since cargo doesn't need seats with seat belts or to look out the window, those items are on the list. So Ford ships all its Transit Connects with both, calls them "wagons" instead of "commercial vans." Installing and removing unneeded seats and windows costs the company hundreds of dollars per van, but the import tax falls dramatically, to 2.5 percent, saving thousands.

Right Handers...

2009-09-22T23:41:00.002-04:00

are also "right-chewers" according to tonights episode of Unwrapped.

And you have to trust Marc Summers - as the host of Double Dare, he was like a surrogate parent to our generation.

How will the future look?

2009-09-22T14:33:00.004-04:00

Shell Oil knows... or, at least, they have guessed. Shell is one of the most famous firms to use "scenario analysis" to wargame out the future. Shell's view: the world will be a disordered SCRAMBLE, including a flight to coal, or it will become BLUEPRINT ordered and develop a strong global emissions standard. In truth, as I'm sure Shell would admit, it will be between these extremes -- but they prove very see played out.

My most interesting fact: by 2030, the world's coal-moving infrastructure will be maxed out, limiting our ability to continue increasing our coal usage. However, even under the "green" scenario, we'll only use 25% renewable / biomass by 2030 (and still use about 66% gas /oil / coal - down from a projected 80% in 2010). According to Shell, the world won't be going nuclear!

PACMAN!

2009-09-22T14:28:00.003-04:00

Pawlenty joins the rest, establishing a PAC with a serious-sounding name, The Freedom First PAC (cnn.com).

Jenny Sanford's Book Deal

2009-09-22T14:20:00.002-04:00

Which oddly corresponded with the withdrawal of a deal for Mark. Hmm. (from cnn.com)

Mankiw and Healthcare Equality

2009-09-22T07:12:00.006-04:00

Interesting NYT op-ed on the inevitability of healthcare inequality. While this inequality is regrettable, Mankiw's piece smartly asks "just how far do we take this logic?"

Imagine that someone invented a pill even better than the one I take. Let’s call it the Dorian Gray pill, after the Oscar Wilde character. Every day that you take the Dorian Gray, you will not die, get sick, or even age. Absolutely guaranteed. The catch? A year’s supply costs $150,000. Anyone who is able to afford this new treatment can live forever. Certainly, Bill Gates can afford it. Most likely, thousands of upper-income Americans would gladly shell out $150,000 a year for immortality. Most Americans, however, would not be so lucky. Because the price of these new pills well exceeds average income, it would be impossible to provide them for everyone, even if all the economy’s resources were devoted to producing Dorian Gray tablets.
So here is the hard question: How should we, as a society, decide who gets the benefits of this medical breakthrough? Are we going to be health care egalitarians and try to prohibit Bill Gates from using his wealth to outlive Joe Sixpack? Or are we going to learn to live (and die) with vast differences in health outcomes? Is there a middle way?
These questions may seem the stuff of science fiction, but they are not so distant from those lurking in the background of today’s health care debate. Despite all the talk about waste and abuse in our health system (which no doubt exists to some degree), the main driver of increasing health care costs is advances in medical technology. The medical profession is always figuring out new ways to prolong and enhance life, and that is a good thing, but those new technologies do not come cheap. For each new treatment, we have to figure out if it is worth the price, and who is going to get it.
The push for universal coverage is based on the appealing premise that everyone should have access to the best health care possible whenever they need it. That soft-hearted aspiration, however, runs into the hardheaded reality that state-of-the-art health care is increasingly expensive. At some point, someone in the system has to say there are some things we will not pay for. The big question is, who? The government? Insurance companies? Or consumers themselves? And should the answer necessarily be the same for everyone?
Inequality in economic resources is a natural but not altogether attractive feature of a free society. As health care becomes an ever larger share of the economy, we will have no choice but to struggle with the questions of how far we should allow such inequality to extend and what restrictions on our liberty we should endure in the name of fairness.

Knowing When to Hold 'Em, Knowing When to Fold 'Em...

2009-09-21T20:38:00.005-04:00

And knowing when to quit whining. As the WSJ reports...

Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.

Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.

The Texas Republican on Wednesday released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion.
“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.

Oh how much do I ridicule thee, let me count the ways...
1) Hypocrisy. Tea party ralliers oppose government spending... hence, fewer trains.

2) Economic stupidity. Your tax dollars do pay for the DC metro... but the majority of the funding comes from (1) DC residents' taxes and (2) the fares!

3) Flawed morality claim. Your opponents' tax dollars also paid for the DC metro, and they're probably not too worried about it. They're are fewer Tea Partiers than non-Tea Parties. Trust me.

4) Availability of substitutes, aka laziness. Take a cab. Or the bus. Or rent a car.

5) Irony. If you really want to protest for better health, walk. It's better for you (and for our collective health spending). Nowhere in DC (that you'd be protesting) is more than a 30 min walk from the Capitol.

6) Poor prioritization. Damn, those DC government officials, they were probably off doing things like ensuring the protesters had running drinking water, reacting to potential spreads of disease (in times of epidemics, mass protests = not good health strategy. additional irony), or solving those pesky homicides that plague the district. One of these days, they'll get the memo that protester convenience trumps public safety...

7) Poor prioritization, part two. When the Bobs ask you "what would you say you do here?" - and trust me, Congressman, they will - what exactly will you say? Amidst two wars, major legislation on healthcare and energy policy, and a brewing trade war with China (to name a few things), you complain about Metro? You are going to make hard working people stop what they are actually doing to listen to your complaint, file your memos, and maybe even hold hearings? Wow. Sorry state of affairs, indeed.

I guess 7's good for right off the top of my head.... if I think of more, I'll have to post again. (Thanks, Susan, for the pointer!)

Interesting WSJ articles from today...

2009-09-21T20:27:00.002-04:00

Florida football has recovered a bit (its sorta like a knife twisting in my chest...). Not only is Florida good, but FSU and Miami may be back to their former glory... (WSJ)

Velaquez's Las Meninas is one of the coolest paintings I've ever seen (it's in the Prado). The work has influenced countless artists throughout history, including Picasso - who did 50+ interpretations of it.

James Wilson, a sociologist and political theorist, writes a moving tribute to Irving Kristol

1,000 Member House of Representatives?? It could happen...

2009-09-17T14:41:00.003-04:00

Should the US House be bigger? Interesting article in the NYT arguing that Courts may use the size of the House as a way to create more equitable representation. Personally, I am not sure if the current situation is unconstitutional (as I think the author implies here), but having smaller average districts would more accurately reflect the population and prevent disproportionate representation in the House.

That what the Senate is for!

Peter Baker of the NYT writes:

WASHINGTON — In America, democracy follows the simple principle of one person, one vote, right?
Unless, that is, you live in Montana, where your vote carries a little more than half as much weight in the House of Representatives as that of someone living in Rhode Island. Or if you live in Utah, where your vote counts about two-thirds as much as it would in Iowa....
The most populous district in America right now, according to the latest Census data, is Nevada’s 3rd District, where 960,000 people are represented in the House by just one member. All of Montana’s 958,000 people likewise have just one vote in the House. By contrast, 523,000 in Wyoming get the same voting power, as do the 527,000 in one of Rhode Island’s two districts and the 531,000 in the other.
That 400,000-person disparity between top and bottom has generated a federal court challenge that is set to be filed Thursday in Mississippi, charging that the system effectively disenfranchises people in certain states. The lawsuit asks the courts to order the House to fix the problem by increasing its size from 435 seats to at least 932, or perhaps as many as 1,761. That way, the plaintiffs argue, every state can have districts that are close to parity.

CVS-Caremark deal - 2 years later.

2009-09-17T10:48:00.003-04:00

2 years ago, CVS acquired Caremark, a pharmacy benefits manager, to essentially cut out the middleman on its business. Most pharmacies, insurers, and large companies work with PBMs to get their supply of drugs; in turn, PBMs help down costs associated with those drugs/patients through adherence efforts, education programs, automatic refills, drug interaction/safety monitoring, and generics utilization.

Now, 8+ congressmen (4 GOP, 4 Dem) are accusing CVS of engaging in unfair business practices and encouraging a review of the Caremark deal. This could be a real setback for retail pharma and for PBMs, two sectors who've (currently) escaped many of the challenges from health reform. We'll see how it plays out.

Bloomberg story:

"Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Eight U.S. congressmen joined a push for the Federal Trade Commission to re-examine CVS Corp.’s acquisition of Caremark Rx Inc. in 2007.
“We strongly believe that CVS Caremark is engaging in unfair and deceptive business practices that are causing harm to consumers, patients and local community pharmacies,” the eight lawmakers said in a letter dated Sept. 14.

Norman Borlaug Passes Away

2009-09-17T07:24:00.002-04:00

An early episode of the West Wing taught me about Norman Borlaug, the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner who developed dwarf wheat strains and helped India feed itself. Borlaug died this week at 95.

The NYT referred to him as the father of the green revolution, the Atlantic has described him as saving billions of lives, and others question his legacy. Nonetheless, a fascinating story. Borlaug turned down a promising job with DuPont (the Google of his time) to work in the wheat fields alongside Mexican farmers to improve their crop yields. How many of us would have made that difficult choice, would have been able to put up or shut up?

Gregg Easterbrook, in 1997, wrote this in the Atlantic in a peace he called "The Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity":

America has three living winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, two universally renowned and the other so little celebrated that not one person in a hundred would be likely to pick his face out of a police lineup, or even recognize his name. The universally known recipients are Elie Wiesel, who for leading an exemplary life has been justly rewarded with honor and acclaim, and Henry Kissinger, who in the aftermath of his Nobel has realized wealth and prestige. America's third peace-prize winner, in contrast, has been the subject of little public notice, and has passed up every opportunity to parley his award into riches or personal distinction. And the third winner's accomplishments, unlike Kissinger's, are morally unambiguous. Though barely known in the country of his birth, elsewhere in the world Norman Borlaug is widely considered to be among the leading Americans of our age.

"Too Big to Fail" Redux

2009-09-15T06:55:00.006-04:00

Photo from http://gormano.blogspot.com/2006/04/wall-street-bull.html

The phrase "too big to fail" was ubiquitous during the discussions last year about government bailouts to the financial services sector... many firms, deemed "too big" or "almost too big," were encouraged to merge and solidify their economic foundations.

The result: a greater concentration of the deposits in fewer banks than probably ever before. Probably obvious, but I admittedly never thought about how concentrated our sector really is now and how much leverage (different kind) that firms now have.

From Nomi Prins in The Daily Beast:

All these subsidies were supposed to prop up the biggest financial firms in order to keep them from unleashing further devastation on the general economy during last fall’s crisis period. We were told this would stabilize the banks and loosen credit for small businesses and individuals.
The exact opposite happened. Banks continued to go belly up and credit became tighter, “systemically important” banks were consolidated courtesy of the Fed and Treasury Department, and bank fees increased.

Back from Tanzania - Photos!

2009-09-15T06:46:00.002-04:00

After 3 weeks, I am now back in the country (with precious broadband access once again) and will try to keep posting, albeit at a slower pace than before...

Links to my Tanzania Photos:

Africa 1-500

Africa 501 - end

temporary break

2009-08-18T13:07:00.000-04:00

With the chaos of my last week of work, followed by my trip to tanzania, I will take a temporary break from updating this blog until September.

Thanks!

Entrepreneurship: NYC Kitchen Incubator

2009-08-13T07:38:00.005-04:00

Photo: NYT

A concept I've never quite heard of but think is quite interesting: NYC is setting up a kitchen incubator in La Marqueta. For those aspiring chefs with big dreams and no cash, you'd be able to rent out commercial kitchen space to achieve your proof of concept and start getting pilot customers. According to the articles, the NYC food industry is currently a $5B industry employing 19,000.

Personally, it sounds like a brilliant idea. And, according to the times, it is one of several attempts "the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to foster entrepreneurism by providing low-cost space for start-up businesses." I wonder what else they have cooking! (ok, bad pun...)

NYT article here, Craine's article here

US Patents #2: CA leads, but is how does it shake out per capita?

2009-08-07T08:41:00.001-04:00

Again, from the USP&T data set. Examining the raw totals and the percentages, one can observe (for 2008):

1. California represents 1/4 of US-generated US patents, 1/8 of total US patents. If California were a country, it would generate more US patents than any nation other than the rest of the US and Japan.

2. Texas as #2. I am actually a little surprised by that. I know its got a growing knowledge economy, but I wouldn't have suspected it being higher than NY or others. I wonder how much it owes to Dell and co-located suppliers.

3. Washington as #3. Admittedly, it barely edged out Massachusetts, but... Washington? Am guessing this is all due to Microsoft and nearby spinoffs.

4. Massachusetts as #4. I expected Mass to be much higher as the home to two of the greatest science universities in the country AND the former cradle of biotech.

Its pretty interesting to see where our innovation comes from. However, as California represents 1/6 of our population, its not all that surprising that they posted a big ranking. I wonder what these numbers would look like per capita?

LifeHacker: Guide to Going Paperless

2009-08-06T09:25:00.004-04:00

Great Lifehacker link to going paperless, including (1) how to get off mailing lists and (2) scanning to .pdf. Very helpful.

Assorted Links

2009-08-05T22:39:00.003-04:00

1) NYT reports that male-on-male rape is a growing epidemic in the Congo

2) NYT explains why the spleen is important (hat tip: Marginal Revolution)

3) WSJ's Environmental Capital Blog raises some questions about how DOE chose its winners for battery technologies... and why they are disproportionately in Indiana and Michigan (the blog implies some politics, while I suspect higher unemployment rates in those states (Indiana is #40 and Michigan is #51). Whatever the reason, I am guessing it was not a rigorous scientific evaluation of what technologies held the best promise... which is troublesome.

4) Tom Friedman writes of Tom Watson's run at the British Open as he notes golf's individualism: "That’s the point. Baseball, basketball and football are played on flat surfaces designed to give true bounces. Golf is played on an uneven terrain designed to surprise. Good and bad bounces are built into the essence of the game. And the reason golf is so much like life is that the game — like life — is all about how you react to those good and bad bounces."

5) William Bratton, one of the front-men of implementing the "Broken Windows" crime theory in NYC, is retiring from his most recent gig as head of the LAPD. Governing.com has some KSG charts reflecting a pretty impressive job well done. (N.B. - The authors of Freakonomics may give Giuliani and Bratton less credit...)

US Patents #1: Domestic vs International Origination

2009-08-05T18:45:00.000-04:00

Found an interesting dataset about US-granted patents. As I sift through, I'll pull out what I think are interesting findings.

Finding #1: 2008 was the first year more US patents were granted to international applicants than US applicants. One interesting note is that the gap actually appeared to increase in the late tech-boom years, only to rapidly converge in 2001.

The US outpacing the world in the late 1990s makes sense: we led the global tech rally, and (arguably) USP&T was allowing everything and the kitchen sink to be patented. After the market burst, we lost this large advantage, while the rest of the world probably used the web and other technological advantages to drive their own innovation.

You also see the rise of India (~+35%), Hong Kong (~+35%), and the PRC (~+50%) beginning in those years, but these countries are peanuts in raw numbers to the largest players Japan and Germany.

Travel: Do we actually enjoy the museums abroad?

2009-08-05T08:15:00.002-04:00

Photo courtesy of www.visitingdc.com

From the NYT travel section, an interesting observation about how our "use" of museums has changed over the years, from contemplative reflection to more of a game of capture the flag:

Visiting museums has always been about self-improvement. Partly we seem to go to them to find something we already recognize, something that gives us our bearings: think of the scrum of tourists invariably gathered around the Mona Lisa. At one time a highly educated Westerner read perhaps 100 books, all of them closely. Today we read hundreds of books, or maybe none, but rarely any with the same intensity. Travelers who took the Grand Tour across Europe during the 18th century spent months and years learning languages, meeting politicians, philosophers and artists and bore sketchbooks in which to draw and paint — to record their memories and help them see better.
Cameras replaced sketching by the last century; convenience trumped engagement, the viewfinder afforded emotional distance and many people no longer felt the same urgency to look. It became possible to imagine that because a reproduction of an image was safely squirreled away in a camera or cell phone, or because it was eternally available on the Web, dawdling before an original was a waste of time, especially with so much ground to cover.

I myself am often guilty of a point-and-click type of vacation. But, I disagree with the author that this in itself is a problem. Using my camera to see the entire work, then zoom to particular interesting parts, is my own form of scrutiny. To boot, with an image to take home (be that a sketch or a photo), the evaluation and critique of a work of art does not stop on the parquet floors of the Louvre. It happens over years, as the viewer continually reestablishes his own unique context in which to view the work.

That being said, many people (myself included) go to particular places and take particular photographs not because we ourselves want to, but because we are supposed to want to... and in this way, the author hits the nail on the head.

How We Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Carbon-Free Nuclear (by a nuclear company exec)

2009-08-04T22:50:00.008-04:00

Echoing a common argument over the past few years, Jim Rogers (head of Duke Energy) argues for more nuclear power as a source of carbon-free energy. The unconventional twist: he positions it as a comparative advantage we have vis-a-vis wind:

However, while the U.S. may be trailing on renewable energy and storage technology, we are still the world’s largest operator of commercial nuclear power.

We have 104 licensed commercial nuclear reactors—generating about 20% of our electricity and more than 70% of all carbon-free electricity. My company, the North Carolina-based Duke Energy, has seven reactors and we are planning three more. France operates 58 reactors and China has 11, but it is currently building 24 more.

Additionally, the U.S. remains a leader in researching and developing nuclear technologies. Our national labs and private sector know-how provide the resources and the scientific foundation for the U.S. to compete as a global leader in commercial nuclear power.
Our private-sector expertise and interest in new nuclear plants is causing regional energy hubs to sprout up, creating thousands of well-paying jobs.

The catch, however, is that we are not really a leader in nuclear technology... quality - rather than quantity - matters. At the core of Rogers' argument, he essentially says "we have more reactors than anyone else, therefore we are the leader." What he means to say is, we currently operate the most last-gen nuclear technology, so we are the leader of operating last-gen nuclear plants.

Operating one type of plant is a scale business - yes, the more experience you have the better. Innovating (or even implementing) next gen technologies is not necessarily a scale business. Innovations, in all industries, give rise to new challengers; that's when companies (or, here, countries) leapfrog one another. France, Japan, and China have all built several more sophisticated reactors since Three Mile Island, when the US nuclear industry was placed in deep freeze. By most technology-based metrics, then, they are probably the next-gen nuclear leaders, not the US.

I've said for a while that I think nuclear is a part of our growth package. But I don't buy the logic that we should give up on wind or solar. Forms of these will be the domestic and commercial electricity of the future. But we need to get it right. Simply throwing money at the problem won't necessarily fix it. The right money in the right places with the right backing would be a better start.

Perhaps the US should double or triple DARPA's budget? Or create an open-source type of Manhattan Project, funded by a prize? Or create a national venture investment fund (like the Texas Growth Fund or the Maryland Venture Capital Trust)?

(N.B. - Rogers was reacting to this op-ed by seasoned venture capitalist John Doerr and Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, from the WaPo)

Education: 1 year bootcamp to prepare for college

2009-08-04T18:12:00.000-04:00

Just read about the James Baldwin Scholars program at Hampshire College (photo courtesy of James Baldwin Scholars). The gist is, students who may not be ready for the rigors of college can apply for this 1 year program to get used to the up-tempo academic requirements. I know many prep schools in the Northeast offer effectively similar "second senior" years.

This is something more and more colleges are going to need to start doing. So many kids simply get "left behind" because college (1) seems to daunting to try or (2) is too daunting / is a culture shock. As our country continues to transition to a "knowledge" economy, we are going to have to start seeing nearly everyone get a college degree...

Behavioral Economics and the defining differences between Obamanauts and Clintonites

2009-08-04T18:01:00.006-04:00

The New Republic's Noam Scheiber discusses the influence of behavioral economists in the Obama inner circle and constrasts their beliefs to those of the Clintonites in his essay "The Audacity of Data" (photo courtesy of The Times Online):

Bill Clinton favored what you might call a "deductive" approach--an all- encompassing, almost revolutionary idea, out of which fell lots of smaller proposals. In a series of speeches in 1991, he unveiled the product of all his late-night bull-sessions with people like Reich and Galston, which he called "The New Covenant." The old model held that government had certain unconditional obligations to its citizens. Under Clinton's reimagining, many of these obligations would disappear. The government would help only those who fulfilled their responsibilities as parents, workers, and taxpayers. For instance, the government would no longer provide unlimited welfare benefits. It would instead require recipients to work after two years of assistance. For their part, the Obama wonks tend to be inductive--working piecemeal from a series of real-world observations. One typical Goolsbee brainchild is something called an automatic tax return. The idea is that, if you had no tax deductions or freelance income the previous year, the IRS would send you a tax return that was already filled out. As long as you accepted the government's accounting, you could just sign it and mail it back. Goolsbee estimates this small innovation could save hundreds of millions of man-hours spent filling out tax forms, and billions of dollars in tax-preparation fees. Think of the contrast here as the difference between science-fiction writers and engineers. Reich and Galston are the kinds of people who'd sketch out the idea for time travel in a moment of inspiration. Goolsbee et al. could rig up the DeLorean that would actually get you back to 1955.
Like their intellectual godfather Thaler, the Obama wonks aren't particularly interested in tearing down existing paradigms, just adjusting and extending them when they become outdated. (Thaler urges his students to master the same traditional, mathematical models their colleagues do if they want to be taken seriously.) For example, a central tenet of the economic thinking favored by Bill Clinton and his Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, was that cutting the deficit lowers long-term interest rates, which in turn stimulates the economy. The Obamanauts are perfectly willing to accept the relationship between long-term rates and economic growth. But recent evidence suggests that low rates weren't quite as central to the success of the Clinton years as they appeared, and that investments in infrastructure and R&D might be as important as deficit reduction. Not surprisingly, Obama plans to focus less on the deficit than Clinton did.
The Clintonites were moderates, but they were also ideological. They explicitly rejected the liberalism of the 1970s and '80s. The Obamanauts are decidedly non-ideological. They occasionally reach out to progressive think tanks like the Economic Policy Institute, but they also come from a world-- academic economics--whose inhabitants generally lean right. (And economists at the University of Chicago lean righter than most.) As a result, they tend to be just as comfortable with ideological diversity as the
candidate they advise. Just before the Iowa caucus, I saw Goolsbee approach New York Times columnist David Brooks in Des Moines and gush when the quirky conservative agreed to pose for a picture.
And yet, just because the Obamanauts are intellectually modest and relatively free of ideology, that doesn't mean their policy goals lack ambition. In many cases, the opposite is true. Obama's plan to reduce global warming involves an ambitious cap-and-trade arrangement that would lower carbon emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. But cap-and-trade--in which the government limits the overall level of emissions and allows companies to buy and sell pollution permits--is itself a market-oriented approach. The companies most efficient at cutting emissions will sell permits to less efficient companies, achieving the desired reductions with minimal drag on the economy.

Unfortunately, this only matters when Obama and his team - and not the Congress - are writing policy...

Public Health: Paperweight Diagnostics

2009-08-03T22:34:00.005-04:00

Interesting reading from TED's TEDxBoston conference. In speaking about "Diagnostics for All," Harvard's George Whitesides discussed, among other things, using the idea of litmus paper for diagnostics. The paper turns different colors for different diseases, is extraordinarily portable, and would greatly reduce (diagnostic) medical waste:

What about in the developing world? How does one supply healthcare in a world where cost is everything? He suggests a world where we know what you're treating first, and then treat it. He wants to make diagnostics free -- diagnostics for all.

He's inspired by military medicine, which is similar to developing-world medicine: based around low resources, using field medicine and lightweight kits.

What would the equivalent diagnosis for his pain have been if he were in the developing world? There's a public lab option: limited in resources. And there's a private entrepreneur option: sketchy.

How do you lower cost of a medical tool for use in the developing world? Typically, we look at our own, expensive method as a starting point, and try to reduce cost from that point. Instead, we ought to say, "What is the cheapest stuff we can use to make a diagnostic system?" Paper is perfect for the task. Whitesides designed a small pad the size of a fingernail. You dip it in urine and it turns colors, which are used to diagnose illness.

How do you make this device? A simple manufacturing processes using printers.
His system also eliminates "sharps" such as needles from diagnostics. "Sharps" are a disposal hazard. With paper, you just burn it to dispose of it. "The healthcare worker of the future is not a PhD. He's an 18-year-old with a backpack full of these sheets."

N.B. - Another Whitesides video, which I haven't (yet) been able to embed, is here

Public Health: Chinese Plague Outbreak

2009-08-03T21:04:00.006-04:00

Since I was a kid, hearing about viral outbreaks has always made me a little edgy. I remember reading the book Outbreak, being transfixed by the movies Outbreak and And the Band Played On, and even telling my parents (much to their shock) that I wanted to be a "virus hunter"...

One of the most interesting aspects of the movie Outbreak is the quarantine scene. In the movie, the US Army surrounds a small town in which a virulent outbreak has occurred, keeping the media at bay and cutting off the town from the surrounding areas. Many of the uninfected townspeople try to escape or otherwise protest "being held hostage," despite the clear public health concerns at play.

I understand that a quarantine is probably necessary, but I also know it is scary. So when I read this description of the recent response to the Chinese plague outbreak, I was simultaneously comforted that such measures were taken and alarmed at the parallels with the movie (from MSNBC):

The town of 10,000 people has been sealed off and a team of experts was sent to the area, the local health bureau said Sunday, warning that anyone with a cough or fever who visited the town since mid-July should seek treatment at a hospital. A food seller surnamed Han at the Crystal Alley Market in Ziketan said authorities have said homes and shops should be disinfected and residents should wear masks when they go out. He said 80 percent of shops in the town were closed and prices of disinfectants and some vegetables have tripled.

"People are so scared. There are few people on the streets," Han said by telephone. "There are police guarding the quarantine center at the township hospital but not on the streets." The situation in Ziketan was stable, said an official surnamed Wang at the local disease control center, who added the measures taken were "scientific, orderly, effective and in accordance with the law." A woman who lives in Ziketan, who refused to give her name, said county officials distributed flyers and made TV and radio announcements on how to prevent infection. The woman contacted by phone said police checkpoints were set up in a 17-mile radius around Ziketan and residents were not allowed to leave.

Hearing of situations like this really makes me wonder how the US would deal with such an awful crisis, were it to occur here. Would we be able to respond quickly enough? Would the Posse Comitatus Act prevent the use of US troops, arguably the only "national" force capable of maintaining martial law? What power do intergovernmental organizations like the WHO have vis-a-vis national sovereignty?

All about kidneys - update #2 - what does it mean for public policy?

2009-08-02T17:51:00.005-04:00

The natural next question, behind all this thinking on organ donation is, "so what?" While I believe that the social and health implications of increased donation are glaringly obvious, there is indeed a hole here: what policy responses should government adopt?

In thinking about the world from a pure economics perspective, I believe that a rational answer would be to increase market rewards (i.e., tax incentives, state-covered funeral costs), akin to the policies that Gore et al. initially espoused in the early 1980s. That is certainly one approach, and by having government - and not the private market - set the "cost," you would hopefully avoid a true "market" for kidneys. The closest parallel I can think of here is Las Vegas' legalization and strict regulation of prostitution. Government has created a legal channel to prevent the black market from spilling over, yet government also maintains economic (monospony) power and sets "the rules of the game." This strict economic approach assumes that people have insufficient reason to donate organs, and therefore establishing the correct incentive structure (largely) solves the problem.

A corollary to this approach would be a more "Keynesian economics" view (N.B. I use this term loosely, as I doubt the good Mr. Keynes debated the market for organs). This approach would argue that, yes, things could happen as the classicists argue - but they don't in reality. People may not be informed of organ donation, may not have the opportunity to enroll, or even may have their wished overruled by their next of kin (in many states, your kin must explicitly approve before your organs are donated, despite whatever you signed on your driver's license). This Keynesian perspective would recommend increased awareness and more public campaigns. The "motor-voter" program is a good analog, as the program allows voter registration at the DMV and lowers the "burden" on individuals. For organ donation, states could more officially codify donors on official donor rolls, instead of asking them to sign their licenses that smear or could be damaged over time (and some states already do this). Similarly, DMVs could be required to hand out organ donation literature to every new driver, preventing misinformation (from uninformed friends, family, etc) from stopping would-be donors.

Finally, following the logic of behavioral economists (like Thaler and Sunstein), one could argue that organ donation campaigns had fallen short because of "status quo" bias and improper "choice architecture." While behavioralist logic could be taken quite far, I believe baby-steps could make quite a difference. First, given that many states make you re-enroll to be an organ donor each time you renew your license, the system really makes you work to become a donor. Making people "opt-out" of donating (after initially signing up for the program) rather than making them repeatedly "opt-in" could prevent significant attrition over the years related to simple laziness (rather than a change in underlying beliefs - "status quo bias"). Second, states could strengthen laws about "overruling" the wishes of donors. If an individual repeatedly requests to become a donor, it seems to make little sense to grant that control to a next of kin. Procedurally, it also creates a large roadblock to donation: the donor, who is arguably more educated and/or more passionate about the process of donation having opted in in the first place, would be overruled by someone less informed on the issues. Having less informed parties make significant decisions is seldom a good recipe for enlightened public policy.

All in all, there are several different paths states could take to encourage donation and prevent patients from languishing on dialysis for years and ultimately dying. (The same goes for patients waiting for hearts, lungs, livers, and so forth.) Regardless of which policy states choose - and, in all likelihood, the answer will be "D: all of the above" - they need to get moving, and fast. We all share the same goals - more donors, fewer tragedies.

All about kidneys - update

2009-08-02T13:27:00.008-04:00

Since my initial post about organ donation a few weeks ago, the topic has continued to get a lot of airtime among several of the blogs I read. Also, as the New Jersey government corruption case centered around organ sale / trafficking, it's become a bigger public policy concern. (image courtesy of the kidney foundation of central pa)

In the WSJ, AEI economist Sally Satel makes the interesting case that we shouldn't be surprised that crimes like the NJ one occur. Dr. Satel should know - she's a transplant survivor herself:

When I needed a kidney several years ago and had no donor in sight, I would have considered doing business with someone like Mr. Rosenbaum. The current law—the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984—gave me little choice. I would be a felon if I compensated a donor who was willing to spare me years of life-draining dialysis and premature death.
The early responses to the New Jersey scandal leave me dismayed, though not surprised. “We really have to crack down,” the co-director of the Joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on Trafficking in Organs and Body Parts told MSNBC. That strategy is doomed, of course. It ignores the time-tested fact that efforts to stamp out underground markets either drive corruption further underground or causes it to flourish elsewhere.

At present, individuals are not allowed to receive any benefits of material value for donating their organs. As Satel notes, this wasn't always supposed to be the case. When Al Gore initial proposed the National Organ Transplant Act, he spoke of creating government-based incentives (like a break on the estate tax) to encourage donation. To date, none of these mechanisms has come to fruition.

Following the same logic as Dr. Satel, Jodi Beggs of EDIWM argues very interestingly that markets in general are very difficult to suppress:

I usually use the following example of how hard it is to suppress markets: A lot of schools won’t sell candy to students, presumably since they worry that kids will spend their lunch money on candy rather than on real food. This creates an opportunity for an entrepreneurially-minded student (or students) to profit by buying candy elsewhere (or conning his parents into doing so) and then surreptitiously selling it at a higher price to his classmates. The classmates probably even have a higher willingness-to-pay than if the candy were readily available, since there is some cachet associated with having something that is hard to get. As such, it is a bit foolish for the school to think that their rule will bring candy consumption to zero, though it probably will decrease consumption somewhat. The downside is that the school has lost control over the candy market, whereas otherwise it could have at least tried to choose items that are less bad for students, such as chocolate-covered raisins as opposed to Laffy Taffy. (Confession: I am eating strawberry Laffy Taffy as I write this. It’s a big weakness for me.) It’s also shifting profit away from itself and toward the students that are willing to break the rules, which is unfortunate since, last time I checked, schools could use the cash.

The "inability to suppress" bad markets argument is one of those real challenges with public policy meeting economics. The same argument could be made for prostitution, drugs, etc. Beggs makes this argument really effectively through basic supply and demand charts, answering that "it depends" on the type of good kidneys are:

Save Energy: Paint the roof white?

2009-07-30T17:34:00.006-04:00

Just like Santorini. (courtesy of carspyshots.net)

I heard this piece on NPR a few weeks ago, and thought it was fascinating. According to the guest, having a lighter colored roof would not only save your own heating bills but would also reduce the "heat island" effect of urban areas and improve air quality. And since white material costs no more than dark material, the incremental cost is zero.

His numbers: every 100 square feet of white roofing saves 1 ton of carbon emissions per year. The average house, with 2,000 sq ft of roofing, would save 20 tons per year.

He also goes on to say, confusingly, that a global "white roof" program has the potential to offset 24 gigatons of carbon over the next 20 years, compared with a worldwide demand last year of 25 gigatons of emissions.

Then, when the NYT picked up this piece this week, I figured that there was a story there. According to the Times, "white roofs" could save 20% of energy costs. More than 75% of the country's 4,000 Wal-Marts now have "cool roofs," and several states (CA, FL, GA) now encourage "cool roofs" through their building codes.

The NYT state-by-state analysis is very interesting (image courtesy of NYT):

Logically, the carbon impact of "cool roofs" would vary state-by-state. While each state would benefit from reduced "heat islands," reduced energy consumption in areas that have disproportionately nuclear or natural gas generated electricity wouldn't move the needle as much as areas like Kansas or the coal-belt, which are high CO2 emitting states.

Federal research has also derivitized the "white roof" findings, coming up with a sun-friendly palette to suit most takers.

Even CNBC anchors qualify for government refinancing

2009-07-29T09:47:00.005-04:00

CNBC: Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, one of the network's (presumably well-paid) on-air talents, qualifies for a government mortgage refinance and wonders how the emergency package could have strayed so far afield.

Could Federalism Stop ObamaCare?

2009-07-29T07:45:00.003-04:00

I must admit, I had never really thought about this angle until I read it this morning in a blog from the Nashville Scene. The gist is, using the 10th amendment, some states will try to assert their rights to reject federal healthcare reform:

Texas and Nebraska's state governments are resisting the ObamaOverhaul. Nebraska has at least three state senators working on resolutions asserting Nebraska's sovereignty under the 10th Amendment. Texas Governor Rick Perry has stated that he will invoke states' rights to resist the president's healthcare plan, believing other states will follow.

My gut feeling is that these arguments will likely fall short under some sort of interstate commerce grounds, but I really don't know. The underlying constitutional logic also reminds me of my earlier post on federalism vs state gun laws.

Of note, while this particular gun law (regarding carry) may have been contentious on constitutional grounds, the federal government has used the interstate commerce clause to put most federal gun legislation into action...

Eddie Izzard Poses the Immortal Question:

2009-07-28T14:15:00.001-04:00

"Do you have a Flag?"

Maybe its an interesting sign of the times, but I couldn't get this out of my mind this morning...

An important, and hilarious, life lesson on mass murders, conquering countries through the clever use of flags, and Church of England's "Cake or Death" policy...

Eddie Izzard is one of the funniest stand-up performers I've ever heard. He wasn't nearly as good in the Ocean's 12 and Ocean's 13, unfortunately...

Healthcare: This isn't Europe. Danny, is this Europe? This isn't Europe.

2009-07-28T13:13:00.006-04:00

In the Becker/Posner blog, Becker calls out an interesting paper from two demographers at Penn. The skinny: while many policy makers currently malign the US health system's cost to deliver health services (particularly in comparison to Europe), it has historically been very hard for people to tell what they are getting for their money. Additionally, we are more obese and more sedentary,than our European friends, making an apples-to-apples baseline pretty challenging. The lack of this type of "value-based" analysis has really hamstrung much of the political debate on healthcare.

But, our Penn friends have come to the rescue. Using breast and prostate cancer, two cancers that are (1) severe yet (2) largely unaffected by diet and lifestyle choices, Preston and Ho found that US patients more often are leveraging diagnostic and treatment technologies to have longer lives...

The paper's abstract:

Life expectancy in the United States fares poorly in international
comparisons. Its low ranking is often blamed on a poor performance by the
health care system rather than on behavioral factors. This paper compares
mortality trends from prostate cancer in the United States to those in other
developed countries. Prostate cancer is chosen because it can be detected at
an early stage, because effective treatments are available, and because it is
less heavily influenced by behavioral factors than most other chronic
diseases. We find that, after the introduction of the PSA screening test for
prostate cancer, mortality from the disease declined significantly faster in
the United States than in the set of comparison countries. Trends in
incidence and survival rates support the interpretation that the US health
care system has worked very effectively to reduce mortality from this
important disease. A brief consideration of breast cancer suggests that
similar processes may have been at work among women.

Unfortunately, again, this paper does not (wholly) adjust for quality. Simply living longer is one success of the healthcare system, but it is not THE success; living the same quality of life for longer is the ultimate "brass ring." And the authors, probably due to limited data, don't comment on that aspect of the analysis.

Still, for those who preach the glories of the European systems, the article provides a good lesson: be careful what you wish for.

Irish Sushi? Or, Notre Dame Finally Finds Some True Competition

2009-07-28T09:14:00.006-04:00

Who knew that the Japanese liked (American) football this much? (from the WSJ):

For Notre Dame, it was like a Saturday from a bygone era. As Lou Holtz scowled from the sideline, the Fighting Irish’s big offensive line created gaping holes for a power running game.

But this time, the opposition wasn’t Navy, Michigan or USC. The goal of this team, which was composed of former Notre Dame players and coaches, was to win a friendly exhibition against a team composed of the best football players from Japan.

Though it’s not widely known, and though it hasn’t gained nearly as much traction here as other imports like baseball, soccer and golf, American football has been played in Japan for 75 years. The country has the semipro X-League, and about 5,000 students play at the high-school level. Overall, the audience is large enough to support an American football magazine called “Touchdown.” Japan has hosted more than a dozen preseason NFL games since 1989.

Notre Dame carried the game against their smaller, younger opponents 19-3 - largely by loading up the line and running. Of course, with Lou Holtz coaching, I'm pretty sure that's all they're capable of...

At least, after searching the world over, we found someone that a group of Notre Dame players can beat!

Tragedy of the Commons, Lightbulb Edition

2009-07-27T22:06:00.006-04:00

My girlfriend's apartment building has a garbage chute and recycling closet on each floor, tucked away in small closet-like room catty-corner from the elevator. A 60-w bulb hangs loosely from the ceiling.

For whatever reason, whenever I get on or off the elevator, I see the light shining from under the door. Out of some odd impulse, I've started opening the door and switching off the light whenever I get the chance.

Today, amidst my usual neuroses, I wondered to myself "how much energy could this floor-wide tendency to leave the light on be costing the building and be costing the planet?" I was most interested in the latter, particularly because the building is rent controlled, but I figured the former could encourage management to put up a sign or something.

The answer: if we assume each light is on an unnecessary 12 hrs per day, each floor's recycling closet generates 262.8 kilowatt-hours of unnecessary electricity. That costs roughly $28.30 per year and generates 223.9 lbs of carbon dioxide per year. For the 10 story building, it means $283 and 2,239 lbs per year. (these calcs use the averages of $0.1077 per kw-h and 852 lbs CO2 per mw-h from the Sciences Education Foundation here)

Of course, if this apartment building is representative of all of DC's apartments, imagine how much that would be.

Why calculate this? As Yeats says, a "lonely impulse of delight..."

My calcs:

Genius Visas

2009-07-27T19:09:00.002-04:00

Ever heard of the "genius visa?" Well, I hadn't until this article from BusinessWeek. But apparently the "O-1" visa is what the US offers to Nobel-caliber immigrants.

I've never heard of this type of visa, and I'm glad we have it. But its (limited) existence does not make up for our shortage of H-1B visas ...

Far away from these debates lies one quiet corner of U.S. immigration policy: the program for what are known as "genius" visas. These visas are awarded to immigrants with extraordinary abilities in the arts, sciences, education, business, or athletics. The program, for what are officially called O-1 visas, began in 1990 as lawmakers sought to separate these applicants from the pool of those seeking H-1B visas, the visa program for skilled immigrants used by many technology companies. While H-1B applicants must hold at least a bachelor's degree and possess some specialized skill, O-1 visas are allotted to a more elite crowd: those who can prove to U.S. immigration officials that they are the very top in their fields. Peter F. Asaad, an immigration attorney and adjunct professor of law at American University, calls the recipients "Nobel prize quality or equivalent."

The awards aren't that rare, but they do go to a small group. According to the U.S. State Dept.—which makes the grants to successful applicants—9,014 O-1s were awarded in 2008, up 40% from 2004. Among current O-1 visa holders are Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki, Canadian author Jennifer Gould Keil, Israeli concert pianist Inon Barnatan, and members of the New York dance companies Merce Cunningham and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane.

There's no annual limit on the number of O-1 visas, as there is with the H-1B program, and no minimum education level. Still, labor groups in the U.S. often have to weigh in on whether they consider an applicant exceptional. From 2004 to 2008, approvals averaged 94%, according to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services.

The State of Jones - Looks like a must read

2009-07-26T19:08:00.005-04:00

Found this in Kramer Books the other night, and it really looks fascinating. The quick version: poor Southerner rebels against the Confederacy in a guerrilla-type struggle during the latter years of the Civil War, even allegedly establishing his own "state."

This looks like something I'm definitely going to try to get my hands on. A lot has been published in the last decade or so telling the story of pro-Union Southerners during the war, and I think its a pretty fascinating story of a forgotten group.

In Tennessee, for example, the eastern part of the state (very mountainous, no plantations) was strongly Unionist, and Andrew Johnson, the "War Democrat" senator representing the east, was the only southern senator never to resign. Tennessee (with Virginia, North Carolina, and Arkansas) didn't secede until after Fort Sumter; was the first southern state to ratify the 14th amendment, sparing it (and only it) military reconstruction; and was the first state readmitted to the Union in July of 1866.

In addition to advance praise from Tom Brokaw and David Maraniss, both of whose work I admire, the foreword looks very interesting:

Newton Knight is the most famous Civil War hero you’ve never heard of, because according to Mississippi legend he betrayed not only the Confederacy but his race as well. In 1863 Knight, a poor farmer from Jones County Mississippi, deserted the Confederate Army—and began fighting for the Union—after the battle of Vicksburg. It was rumored he even started a separate Unionist government, The Free State of Jones, and for two years he battled the Confederacy with a vengeance that solidified his legend. During his life Knight was hardly regarded as a proper soldier by either side, and after his death his Mississippi backwoods grave went unstrewn with flowers. Many southerners would have preferred to spit on it, and most northerners never recognized that such loyalty to the United States could exist in Dixie. But in truth, this lost patriot was a vital actor in helping to preserve the Union.
The recovery of the life of a Mississippi farmer who fought for his country is an important story. The fact that southern Unionists existed, and in very large numbers, is largely unknown to many Americans, who grew up with textbooks that perpetuated the myth of the Confederacy as a heroic Lost Cause, with its romanticized vision of the antebellum South. Some historians have even palpably sympathized with Confederate cavaliers while minimizing—and robbing of credit—the actions of southerners who remained loyal to the Union at desperate cost.

One would never know that the majority of white Southerners had opposed secession, and that many Southern whites fought for the Union. In Tennessee, for example, somewhere around 31,000 white men joined the Union army. In Arkansas more than 8,000 men eventually served in Union regiments. And in Mississippi, Newton Knight and his band of guerillas launched a virtual insurrection against the Confederacy in Jefferson Davis’ own home state.

“There’s lots of ways I’d rather die than being scared to death,” Knight said, and it was a defining statement. At almost every stage of his life this yeoman from the hill country of Jones County, Miss., took courageous stands. The grandson of a slave owner who never owned slaves, he voted against secession, deserted from the Confederate Army into which he was unwillingly impressed, and formed a band called the Jones County Scouts devoted to undermining the Rebel cause locally. Working with runaway slaves and fellow Unionists and Federal soldiers caught behind enemy lines, Knight conducted such an effective running gun battle that at the height of the war he and his allies controlled the entire lower third of the state. This "southern Yankee,” as one Rebel general termed him, remained unconquered until the end of the war. His resistance hampered the Confederate Army’s ability to operate, forced it to conduct a third-front war at home, and eroded its morale and will to fight.

Knight also burst free of racial barriers and forged bonds of alliance with blacks that were unmatched even by Northern abolitionists. He fought as ardently as any man for racial equality during the War, and after, during the terrifying days of Reconstruction, when his life was, if anything, even more in danger. He lived with an ex-slave named Rachel, fathering several children with her (but he never divorced his Caucasian wife, Serena), and worked on behalf of U.S. Grant’s Republican administration and against the nascent Ku Klux Klan, and envisioned a world that would only begin to be implemented a century later. Moreover, he operated in an inverted moral landscape in which fealty to country was labeled traitorous, and kinship with blacks was considered morally repugnant. He survived only because he could reload a shotgun before the smoke cleared.

As an Alabama Unionist told a Congressional committee in 1866 in testifying about the little appreciated service of southern loyalists, “You have no idea of the strength of principle and devotion these people exhibited towards the national government.” —Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer

Sally Jenkins is a former sportswriter for the WaPo, and John Stauffer is a Harvard history professor.

All I Ever Needed To Know, I Learned From Dr. Seuss

2009-07-26T18:07:00.002-04:00

A Purdue student-prof combo have written the definitive "economic lessons of Dr. Seuss" paper. It's a bit much for me, but it looks to be a quick read and is found here. (Courtesy of Economists Do It With Models)

Futurist Stewart Brand and the 4 Environmental Heresies

2009-07-24T16:32:00.005-04:00

With a strongly environmental background (Stanford degree in ecology, worked for first Jerry Brown administration), Brand outlines during TED@State why:

1)Squatter cities are building the world - and we shouldn't necessarily see it as a bad thing. "These are not people crushed by poverty. These are people getting out of poverty - as fast as they possibly can."

2)we should be encouraging, rather than discouraging, nuclear power... "Between coal and nuclear, compare their waste products. If all of the electricity you used in your life time was nuclear, the amount of waste that would be added up would fit into a coke can." 1GW-year of nuclear power produces 20 tons of nuclear waste (and zero carbon). 1GW-year of coal power produces 8,000,000 tons of C02.

3) the genetically modified food debate is silly - as it will be necessary to grow food that way to increase yields and end hunger / malnutrition

4) geoengineering is a new thing - the idea of intentionally releasing particular pollutants (like SO2?) that could actually reverse global warming. He cites the eruption of a Phillipine volcano as responsible for cooling the earth 1/2 a degree and leading to a surge in polar bear cub births, and suggests that this become something we seriously consider as we move forward... (he also says DARPA recently held a meeting on it, so it IS being considered...)

Interesting Global Health Blog

2009-07-24T14:36:00.005-04:00

Global Health ideas, an interesting global health blog I just found, has listed "42 extremely affordable global health innovations:

Super interesting, given the work that my friends and I recently did in Chennai. Of particular note, diagnostics get mentioned in #6, #9, and #41; others include SMS technologies, another area I'm very interested in...

1. Mobile Solutions for Nutrition Monitoring, Sean Blaschke, Columbia University View Abstract
2. A Chlorhexidine Product for Umbilical Cord Care, Mutsumi Metzle, PATH View Abstract
3. LifeSpring Hospitals, Tricia Morente, LifeSpring Hospitals View Abstract
4. “Car Part” Incubator: An Innovative Solution, Aya Caldwell, CIMIT Global Health Initiative View Abstract
5. Cost-Effective Asphyxia Intervention in Aceh, Aya Caldwell, CIMIT Global Health Initiative View Abstract
6. MIDA (Medical In-Field Diagnostic Assistant), Alexander Albertine, MIDA International View Abstract
7. Women-Owned Franchises: Diagnostics in Rural India, Ann Rogan, Drishtee View Abstract
8. Resdida: Affordable Bi-Directional Communications, Karen Vincent, Resdida View Abstract
9. Hot Diagnostic Technologies: Low cost, point of care, Paul LaBarre, PATH View Abstract
10. Ultra Rice: Expanding markets for fortified rice, Rae Galloway, PATH View Abstract
11. InSTEDD’s Global Early Warning and Response System, Taha Kass-Hout, InSTEDD View Abstract
12. Rapid Healthcare Diagnostics Network – D.Scope, Daniel Niclas, D-Rev View Abstract
13. Social Marketing and Franchising for a Better Life, Preeti Anand, Janani View Abstract
14. Embrace: A $25 Infant Incubator, Jane Chen, Embrace View Abstract
15. Affordable, Sustainable Mobile Health Delivery, Don Yansen, ClickHealth, View Abstract
16. The CFWclinics Franchise Network, Greg Starbird, HealthStore Foundation, View Abstract
17. Mobile Games for Healthcare, Hilmi Quraishi, ZMQ Software Systems View Abstract
18. Water-Based Health Care Delivery in Bangladesh, Rupa Patel, Friendship Health Care View Abstract
19. Arsenic Water Filter, Jamil Husain, Telophase Corporation View Abstract
20. Remote Health Monitoring Device, Jamil Husain, Telophase Corporation View Abstract
21. Integration of Hygiene Kits into Health Service Delivery, Cecilia Kwak, Population Services International View Abstract
22. Electrochemical Arsenic Remediation for Rural Asia, Susan Addy, University of California, Berkeley View Abstract
23. WaterHealth International: Clean Water Solutions, Susan Addy, WaterHealth International View Abstract
24. Integrated, automated system for CD4, hem analysis on-site HIV/AIDS patient monitoring & management, Kim Beer, Pointcare Technologies View Abstract
25. Low-cost Ventilator, Arsath Ahammed, BITS Dubai View Abstract
26. Low-cost SPRD, Greg Shane, AktivPak View Abstract
27. Low-cost Infusion Pump, Amir Genosar, Fluonic View Abstract
28. Affordable Needle-Free Measles Immunization, Amir Genosar, Aespironics View Abstract
29. Developing a large scale consumption of fonio, Sanoussi Diakite, DKP View Abstract
30. BASF Grameen Ltd, Egon Weinmueller, BASF SE View Abstract
31. IMI: Providing Access to Mobility, Rudy Roy, Intelligent Mobility International View Abstract
32. Rural Micro-enterprise for Improved Nutrition, Hart Jansson, Malnutrition Matters View Abstract
33. Safe Drinking Water: A Reality for All, Rohini Mukherjee, Naandi Foundation View Abstract
34. FrontlineSMS:Medic – Towards Healthcare in a Box, Lucky Gunasekara, FrontlineSMS:Medic View Abstract
35. Question Box – Village Health Hotline, Rose Shuman, Open Mind – Question Box View Abstract
36. Health Children – Renascer, Laura Cordeiro, Renascer – Child Heath View Abstract
37. Micro-health Insurance Scheme of Grameen Kalyan, Imamus Sultan, Grameen Kalyan View Abstract
38. Low-Cost USB-based Ultrasound Probes, David Zar, Washington University View Abstract
39. Envirofit Clean Cookstoves – Sustainability & Scale, Ron Bills, Envirofit International View Abstract
40. A social business for drinking water in Bangladesh, Erice Lesueur, Veolia Water, View Abstract
41. A Home-based Urine Test for Clinical Malaria, Eddy Agbo, Fyodor Biotechnologies, Inc. View Abstract
42. Aravind Eye Hospital, View Abstract

Park(ing) day

2009-07-24T12:49:00.004-04:00

A legally questionable but incredibly creative statement on the need for more public parks. The gist: paying the meter for public parking spaces, and then establishing your own "park" - reading on a bench, putting in a kiddie pool, and even having a picnic - in your metered parking space.

Park(ing) day's self-description:

PARK(ing) Day is a one-day, global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. The Project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in an area of San Francisco that is underserved by public open space.

It looks like the next Park(ing) day is Sept 19, 2009 - and there is a Philly group... I may have to find these guys to see this first-hand.

Rap and International Relations: Hard power, soft power, and Jay-Z as Hegemon

2009-07-23T16:00:00.006-04:00

An amazing comparison by GW Professor Marc Lynch between international relations and the world of rap. I first heard about this article from NPR, then the NYT (Title: The Geopolitics of Jay-Z). Finally, I found Lynch's own words, and they're even better!

I highly recommend you check out Lynch's story (and then follow it up with his "aw, shucks" reaction to all the attention this piece has gotten). If you've ever studied international relations or have an interest in how the US relates to the rest of the world, this is a total MUST READ:

See, Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) is the closest thing to a hegemon which the rap world has known for a long time. He's #1 on the Forbes list of the top earning rappers. He has an unimpeachable reputation, both artistic and commercial, and has produced some of the all-time best (and best-selling) hip hop albums including standouts Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint and the Black Album. He spent several successful years as the CEO of Def Jam Records before buying out his contract a few months ago to release his new album on his own label. And he's got Beyonce. Nobody, but nobody, in the hip hop world has his combination of hard power and soft power. If there be hegemony, then this is it. Heck, when he tried to retire after the Black Album, he found himself dragged back into the game (shades of America's inward turn during the Clinton years?).
But the limits on his ability to use this power recalls the debates about U.S. primacy. Should he use this power to its fullest extent, as neo-conservatives would advise, imposing his will to reshape the world, forcing others to adapt to his values and leadership? Or should he fear a backlash against the unilateral use of power, as realists such as my colleague Steve Walt or liberals such as John Ikenberry would warn, and instead exercise self-restraint?
The changes in Jay-Z's approach over the years suggest that he recognizes the realist and liberal logic... but is sorely tempted by the neo-conservative impulse. Back when he was younger, Jay-Z was a merciless, ruthless killer in the "beefs" which define hip hop politics. He never would have gotten to the top without that. But since then he's changed his style and has instead largely chosen to stand above the fray. As Jay-Z got older and more powerful, the marginal benefits of such battles declined and the costs increased even as the number of would-be rivals escalated. Just as the U.S. attracts resentment and rhetorical anti-Americanism simply by virtue of being on top, so did Jay-Z attract a disproportionate number of attackers. "I got beefs with like a hundred children" he bragged/complained on one track.
His ability to respond actually declined as his power and enemies list grew, though. As a young 50 Cent spat at him (twisting one of Jay's own famous lines), "if I shoot you I'm famous, if you shoot me you're brainless." He's generally avoided getting embroiled in beefs since reaching the top, only occasionally and briefly hitting back at provocations from rising contenders like 50 Cent, Lil Wayne, and others. Responding to every challenge does not become a hegemon. Indeed, it would be counter-productive and exhausting, and would likely trigger even greater resentment among other rising rappers. Better as hegemon to rise above the fray and accept the sniping of the less powerful while reaping the rewards of a status quo which he dominates and profits from excessively. And that's what happened: his wealth, status, and structural power rose inexorably despite the potshots and abuse and unmet challenges -- indeed, the only real hit he's taken was self-inflicted, the critical shrug given to the middling "Kingdom Come" album.

Payday Lenders

2009-07-23T13:00:00.002-04:00

Slate's Fisman has published an interesting article on payday lenders, who often charge 400% APR, and a University of Chicago study of those who partake. Even a nice reference to behavioral economics in there:

Compared with a control group of participants who simply filled out the survey (but never got any extra payday loan info), Bertrand and Morse found that presenting borrowers with a comparison of a payday APR with the APRs on mortgages or credit cards had no effect on borrowing in the months that followed, possibly because these other forms of financing are generally unavailable to payday borrowers anyway and thus not relevant to their decisions. But the borrowers who were given a chart explaining the three-month cost of carrying a payday loan were 10 percent less likely to take a loan during subsequent months. Among those who did take additional loans, the total amount borrowed averaged around $195, as compared with $235 for the control group. The chart showing average borrower refinancing rates had little impact on the fraction of customers taking additional loans but did reduce the amount of future loans among those who continued to borrow. (Unsurprisingly, the effect of better information was greatest for those that rated themselves as cautious planners rather than impulsive spendthrifts.)

So presenting borrowers with a clearer explanation of how costly it will be to carry the loan might save some folks from falling into the payday debt trap. But what about the other 90 percent of borrowers, who even when presented with evidence of the long-term costs still took the loan? For many of these borrowers, no amount of information will deter them. These may be candidates for what Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein call a "nudge" out of payday borrowing. Economists Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman have proposed just such a nudge: mandating a cooling-off period before a payday loan clears to discourage impulsive borrowers (though this runs somewhat counter to the purpose of a payday loan, which is for people who need money now).

Great Dad tribute

2009-07-23T09:46:00.002-04:00

Even if you're not a regular reader, you will appreciate The Sports Guy's tribute to his father's retirement.

One of the biggest differences between sports and real life is that when athletes retire, they still have half a lifetime ahead of them. They feel sad because their careers are over, but also because they have no idea what to do next. This is why they come back -- in Favre's case, over and over.
When real people retire, ideally, they have accomplished everything they wanted to. My father was lucky in this respect. Like Billy Beane, he put up Moneyball numbers in a middle-class town, essentially winning 95 games a year with a small-market club. He lasted 16 years in a job in which people rarely last five.
Of course, we never read tributes about someone like my father for obvious reasons. We pay homage to athletes, entertainers and politicians. Real people don't get victory laps. So here's one for Dr. Bill Simmons. Congratulations, Pops. You made it.

Do you know where your trash is

2009-07-23T09:12:00.006-04:00

The Freakonomics Blog reports that MIT's Sensible City Lab has begun a "trash-stalking" project with volunteers in NYC and Seattle. The goal is to discover where your trash - particularly your used electronics - ends up, with the hopes of (1) better understanding human behavior and (2) illustrating inefficiencies in the system.

Here's an example of their route map for one of their first subjects, a Starbucks coffee cup.

Update on Morgenthau and the Thune Amendment

2009-07-23T08:52:00.003-04:00

An update to the recent post: yesterday's version of the Thune amendment, a rider to the defense appropriations bill, fell 2 votes shy of the 60 it needed to pass. (from the NYT):

A group comprising mostly Republicans, along with some influential Democrats, had tried to attach the gun amendment to the annual military authorization bill, a must-pass piece of legislation. But the provision got only 58 votes, two short of the 60 needed under Senate rules.
Two Republicans, Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and George V. Voinovich of Ohio, joined with 35 Democrats and 2 independents to reject the amendment, which was bitterly opposed by a number of big-city mayors, including Michael R. Bloomberg of New York.
The debate forced senators to wrestle with issues of states rights, sometimes in ways that seemed to clash with the general philosophies of their parties. Many Republicans, who typically favor limiting the ability of the federal government to dictate to states on social issues, voted in this case to limit the ability of states to insist on their own rules for concealed weapons carried by people from other states.

Another interesting point of government: why should something like this be attached to the defense appropriations bill? I get the tactical reason: everyone who voted against yesterday's amendment will be open, to some degree, of the charge of voting against national security in the next election. But this strategy - tucking in significant riders with wholly unrelated legislation - seems to have really taken off in the last five years.

In an era in which Senators commonly rail on the complexity of legislation (see, DeMint's rant this morning on Morning Joe as one example), shouldn't we be trying to simplify things as much as possible? Since 1783, we really haven't had to pay too many stamp taxes, so we could probably afford to just pass things in more manageable chunks.

I know that combining legislation allows for more horse-trading, so grab-bag amendments may actually represent some limited form of compromise. One bill may simulate an "iterative game" more than the rest of governing, so legislators *should* feel more comfortable with one another because their legislative reputations are at stake; across a broader set of issues, it may be tougher to get such bargaining. But I can't help but feel that its unnecessary and, more importantly, a little disingenuous.

Morgenthau on Guns

2009-07-22T09:41:00.007-04:00

With a tough-on-crime reputation, Robert Morgenthau has been New York County's DA for 35 years. You may recognize the name, as it was in Morgenthau's office that Judge Sotomayor started off her law career.

In response to the new Thune gun law coming before Congress, Morgenthau pens a pretty passionate op-ed in this morning's WSJ. Despite the vein of smugness running through the writing, he seems to make some very interesting points on federalism:

In New York, the state imposes careful restrictions on who may carry concealed firearms. With the Thune amendment, New York and other states would be obliged to recognize licenses from jurisdictions which choose to issue them practically for the asking.

For example, in Ohio and Missouri, virtually any resident without a criminal record or prior hospitalizations for mental illness can carry a gun. Under the Thune amendment, that Midwesterner could legally carry the gun straight into New York, despite New York’s more stringent rules.

It gets worse. States like Florida and Texas are willing to issue carry permits to nonresidents under policies just as lax as those of Ohio and Missouri. The Thune amendment would provide a legal backdoor to a New Yorker who does not qualify for a carry permit under New York’s state law. The undeserving local applicant could obtain a permit down South, and then be entitled by federal law to carry his concealed gun around New York.

This affront to states’ rights could not be more flagrant, particularly as it would come in a regulatory area that has always been the province of state and local governments. What happened to the Tenth Amendment?

Morgenthau's key point is pretty interesting: Where does the principle of federalism lie in allowing people back-doors to circumvent the laws of particular jurisdictions? When I think of this, I can't help but think of fireworks as a commonsense example: in many districts, fireworks are illegal to buy, discharge, and even possess. Does the Thune amendment's logic imply that one jurisdiction's sanctioning of fireworks overrules all others who prohibit it? Where does that logic stop...

An interesting counterargument to Morgenthau would be the current effort to extend all marriage recognition (i.e., a state-sanctioned "licenses") across state lines. Under this logic, one state's recognition of same-sex unions would be tantamount to every state's recognition, via the full faith-and-credit clause...

When the "full faith-and-credit clause" and Tenth Amendment clash, who wins?

2009-07-22T07:45:00.001-04:00

The WSJ reported a few days ago that several Michigan credit unions are relying on a raffle-type prize for contributing to your savings account. Its a much more targeted version of your local bank's "get $25 for opening a checking account," in that it often appeals to individuals who would not otherwise participate. From a social perspective, too, this is more of an "enlarge the entire pie" solution, while my local bank's promo is a "steal share from a competitor" solution (which only serves to redistribute my savings to another party, rather than grow aggregate savings across a population)...

This seems to be another great way to use modern economics principles to push people towards better behavior. In Thaler and Sunstein's book "Nudge," which I just started reading, they refer to the phenomenon as "libertarian paternalism." Programs to auto-enroll employees in company 401(k)s or in certain government welfare programs with similar requirements also perform a similar "paternalistic role."

About the savings program (WSJ, pointer from Marginal Revolution and techdirt):

But psychologists have long known that people tend to overestimate the odds of rare events. Applying that behavioral insight, finance professor Peter Tufano of Harvard Business School has devised a clever program called "Save to Win." Launched earlier this year for members of eight credit unions in Michigan, it is a cross between a certificate of deposit and a raffle ticket. Members who put $25 or more into a Save to Win one-year CD are entered into a monthly "savings raffle" for prizes up to $400, plus one annual drawing for a $100,000 jackpot. Only Michigan residents are eligible to participate.

This unusual CD is federally guaranteed by the National Credit Union Administration and pays between 1% and 1.5% annual interest, a bit lower than conventional rates. In 25 weeks, the program has attracted about $3.1 million in new deposits, often from people who have never been able to set money aside.

NYT: Somali militant incursions are becoming more frequent for Kenya

2009-07-22T07:07:00.004-04:00

Interesting piece this AM in the Times on the increasing frequency of Shabab militants crossing the largely unmarked Somalia-Kenya border. Worse, what was once the matter of bandits and irregulars seems to have given way to armed, uniformed squads:

HULUGHO, Kenya — A thin, dusty line is about the only thing separating Kenya, one of the Western world’s closest allies in Africa, from the Shabab, a radical Islamist militia that has taken over much of southern Somalia, beheading detractors, stoning adulterers and threatening to kill any Americans or Europeans who get in their way...
The Shabab has already penetrated refugee camps inside Kenya, according to camp elders, luring away dozens of young men with promises of paradise — and $300 each. It has carried out cross-border attacks, kidnapping an outspoken cleric in May from a refugee camp 50 miles inside Kenya. Last Wednesday, in one of its boldest cross-border moves yet, a squad of uniformed, heavily armed Shabab fighters stormed into a Kenyan school in a remote town, rounding up all the children and telling them to quit their classes and join the jihad.
“If these guys can come in with their guns and uniforms in broad daylight,” said one of the teachers at the school, “they must be among us.”

Gordon Brown at TED-Oxford

2009-07-21T23:13:00.005-04:00

Probably one of Brown's best speeches. Seeing the rise of technology "democratizing" many aspects of policy, Brown argues that we now have a "global society" that must leverage new technologies to forge collaboration en mass to better the world.

Minutes 1-3, 12-16 are the most memorable. Particularly poignant stories about (1) an HIV/AIDS orphan in Tanzania and (2) a boy, tortured to death, from Rwanda.

If you're not familiar with TED, the short description is "smart people saying smart things (in under 20 minutes)".

UPDATE: After I wrote the initial link, the BBC has written a piece on Brown's talk, entitled "Tech 'has changed foreign policy.'" interesting.

NYT Puppy Blog

2009-07-21T17:22:00.003-04:00

A NYT reporter raises Scout (a Golden) and blogs on it, for the next year

She was coming home.
Scout, soon to be our puppy, was 9 weeks old and ready for pickup from the breeder in Massachusetts.
What has possessed us to do this again?

Gorgeous dog. I have serious puppy envy, and I would totally name a dog Scout - had one of my best friends not already taken the name...

101 Simple Salads

2009-07-21T17:18:00.004-04:00

The NYT's Minimalist section details a few easy summer dinners... I'm intrigued by #7 (carrots, blueberries, and sunflower seeds)

6. Sichuan slaw: Toss bean sprouts, shredded carrots and celery, minced fresh chili, soy sauce, sesame oil and a bit of sugar. Top with chopped peanuts and chopped basil, mint and/or cilantro. (The full trio is best.)
7. Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft.
8. Chop or slice radishes (or jicama, or the ever-surprising kohlrabi) and combine with chopped or sliced unripe (i.e., still crunchy) mango, lime juice and mint or cilantro.
9. Chop or slice jicama (or radishes or kohlrabi) and mango and mix with coconut milk, lime juice, curry powder and cilantro or mint.
10. Cook whole grape tomatoes in olive oil over high heat until they brown lightly, sprinkling with curry powder. Cool a bit, then toss with chopped arugula, loads of chopped mint and lime juice.

Demographics and the 2008 Election

2009-07-21T10:40:00.003-04:00

Brookings demographer William Frey has found that (1) nearly all of the additional 5m voters for president in 2008 (vs '04) were minorities and (2) young voters also increased turnout (to 49%) by statistically significant margins. (From today's WSJ)

Very interesting:

Strong minority support helped Mr. Obama's campaign win swing states such as Ohio and pick off Republican redoubts including Virginia, Nevada and Indiana, according to an analysis of poll and Census data by William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who blended the Census data on voter turnout with poll data from Voter News Service....

To be sure, Mr. Obama's victory also relied on white voters: In 19 states including California, New York and Massachusetts, a majority of white voters cast ballots for Mr. Obama....

Mr. Frey cautioned that while the long-term demographic changes favor any candidate that can best harness minority voters, Mr. Obama's success in 2008 doesn't mean an easy road to victory awaits him in 2012. Whites accounted for 76% of voters in 2008, down three percentage points from 2004 but still a substantial majority. His rival, Sen. John McCain, won white voters by 12 percentage points, versus the 17 percentage-point margin enjoyed by George W. Bush in 2004. A Republican candidate who could capture a larger share of whites could neutralize the minority edge that went to Mr. Obama....

Mr. Frey found minority voters made the difference in several key states: North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana, Maryland and New Jersey. Mr. Obama's ability to win over minorities there overcame white voters who favored John McCain.

Friedman and Afghanistan

2009-07-20T13:28:00.003-04:00

Friedman reports on Chris Mortenson, the protagonist of Three Cups of Tea, and a new Afghanistan school for girls.

While the admiral passed out notebooks, Mortenson told me why he has devoted his life to building 131 secular schools for girls in Pakistan and another 48 in Afghanistan: “The money is money well spent. These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world. We focus on areas where there is no education. Religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict.
“When a girl gets educated here and then becomes a mother, she will be much less likely to let her son become a militant or insurgent,” he added. “And she will have fewer children. When a girl learns how to read and write, one of the first things she does is teach her own mother. The girls will bring home meat and veggies, wrapped in newspapers, and the mother will ask the girl to read the newspaper to her and the mothers will learn about politics and about women who are exploited.”

Obama-Romney a tie ballgame

2009-07-20T13:15:00.004-04:00

New Rasmussen poll has the matchup at 45-45

Even if this is just a fluke, this doesn't seem good for the sitting POTUS

Scottish sadness

2009-07-20T11:58:00.003-04:00

If you watched the British Open this weekend, you nearly saw a miracle. 59-year old Tom Watson almost did the impossible. But, on his last hole in regulation, he melted. He caught a bit of bad luck, he made a few bad shots, and he just got tired.

He lost in the playoff to Stewart Cink, in a tragedy.

Fox Sports' Robert Lusetich captures the bittersweet feelings of The Open, saying "Cink won, but the rest of us lost with Watson."

Finance: Jamie Dimon and the Rise of JPMorgan

2009-07-20T11:25:00.006-04:00

The NYT reports that Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan, has begun running a more robust government relations program for the banking giant. Of course, his years of exile to Chicago - where he met candidate Obama before his election to the senate - certainly didn't hurt his current prominence as the White House's favorite banker, either.

Are the years of Goldman Sachs' government dominance over, or is this a temporary blip? (my guess: Goldman will be back in the cabinet some time during this administration)

(Thanks to Susan for the pointer)

Mumbai Attacker Confesses

2009-07-20T10:31:00.003-04:00

Interesting story about the spontaneous confession of one of the participants in last year's Mumbai terror attacks:

Speaking softly in a mix of Hindi and Urdu to a stunned and spellbound courtroom, he gave a detailed recounting of the planning and execution of the operation, beginning with his introduction to a Pakistan-based Islamic extremist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and ending with the rampage that hit two luxury hotels, a railway station, popular cafe and a Jewish center.
“I don’t think I am innocent,” Mr. Kasab, 21, declared toward the end of his daylong confession. “My request is that we end the trial and I be sentenced.”

Interesting points
1) like many terrorists, Kasab seems to have gotten his start by a lack of economic opportunity, which drove him towards militancy and a desire to become an armed robber
2) the Pakistani government has begun working more closely with India in their investigation of these crimes
3) still, Pakistan has not arrested the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group
4) the day-long confession may be considered inadmissable on procedural grounds
5) trials like this in India can last for years (in comparison, this one is moving very quickly)

Where are the Jobs?

2009-07-18T13:18:00.004-04:00

Indeed.com rates cities by job postings per capita... the winners: DC and Baltimore. Stimulus money, perhaps? (pointer: matt yglesias)

As a note, though, there is an inherent bias in this type of analysis: the rise of the suburbs. Cities like DC or Atlanta have fewer than 1/5 of all metropolitan area residents living inside the city (and, thus, would be boosted up this type of ranking). In contrast, cities like NYC, where 1/2 or more live in the core city, would be pushed down the rankings.

Great Southern Drives

2009-07-17T12:56:00.002-04:00

A great magazine, Garden and Gun, has captured "six great Southern drives" including BBQ in Eastern Carolina, enjoying the Florida panhandle where my family used to go on vacation, and seeing Avery Island, LA - a family namesake.

I must say, this magazine is amazing... My friends at Wharton didn't believe such a thing existed earlier this year. Naturally, I had to bring a copy to class.

Photo: British Open Weekend

2009-07-17T10:00:00.007-04:00

The most storied golf tournament in the world, the British Open, is being held this weekend at Turnberry, near Glasgow, Scotland. Look at how amazing the view (see above).

More interestingly is how the British continually immerse their golf courses in daily life, rather than the US tradition of building them separate from any potential interference. Royal Troon is famous for being near a working railroad, while Turnberry (above) was built on top of an RAF landing strip used during both world wars.

Additional info on the Open

Additional info on Turnberry (the Open is being played at the Alisa course) (where the above photo is from)

Bipartisanship in word and deed

2009-07-17T09:35:00.005-04:00

Is the Obama administration changing the definition of "bipartisanship?" John Dickerson at Slate argues that they are:

You may remember the old Folgers coffee commercial in which they replaced restaurant coffee with Folgers and diners didn't notice the switch. A similar taste test may be happening in Washington. Administration aides are replacing the traditional definition of bipartisanship with their version in the hopes that people don't notice but still like the result.
For the last few weeks, Obama's aides have argued that the traditional measure of bipartisanship—counting the number of Republicans voting on a bill sponsored by a Democrat or vice versa—is too limiting. Another way to measure bipartisanship is how many ideas from the opposition party are included in a bill. So even if no actual Republicans vote for a bill, that doesn't mean it's a partisan product: It could still contain some amount of Republican flavoring. Another measure of bipartisanship, argues Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, is whether the president or Democrats have participated in good-faith negotiations.

Dickerson notes that in his own book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama makes pretty strong comments on the "1-by-1" form of "bipartisanship" that we've seen happening:

In The Audacity of Hope, then-Sen. Obama wrote: "The majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100 percent of what it wants, go on to concede 10 percent, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support the 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.' For the minority party in such circumstances, 'bipartisanship' comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being 'moderate' or 'centrist.' "

Of course, Dickerson lays this all at Obama's feet. In truth, Obama may be pushing for more true bipartisanship, and he may be getting thwarted by the House and Senate... several articles have been written detailing how the Obama administration has been relatively "hands-off" on the actual business of lawmaking, instead relying on outlining principles and letting Congress work out the details.

That may be fine in theory, but today that's like allowing the foxes (the hungry Congress-folk) to police the proverbial henhouse.

Gaza's Food Traditions

2009-07-16T21:31:00.005-04:00

Although this article from the Atlantic does have some pretty strong political sentiments (unfortunately), it also makes a very interesting read on the food traditions of Gaza. (pointer from Megan McArdle)

Palestinian cuisine is as varied as the land, which ranges from the lush green valleys of the north to the desert dunes of the south. As 80 percent of Gaza's population are refugees displaced in 1948, within Gaza one finds food traditions from every part of Palestine. A lot of the foods, especially those found in restaurants (hummus, ful, mutabbal, mejaddra) are common throughout the Levant. Nonetheless, a specifically Gazan cuisine does persist, distinct from other Palestinian or Levantine cuisines in its generous use of hot peppers, cumin, and dill, and sour fruits like pomegranite, tamarind and plums.

It relies heavily on fish and on poor-man's ingredients like mustard greens and garbanzos. Many of the most classic dishes are stews cooked slowly in clay pots, unique in the region. Because of Gaza's isolation, many of these recipes are completely unknown outside of the Strip.

Fish Old photos show the fish market of Gaza overflowing with fresh fish: Sultan Ibrahim, or red mullet; arous, similar to sea bream; samak Moussa, a large flounder; tuna, sea bass, sardines, turbot, and all manner of squids, shrimps, and crabs.

UPS + Teamsters vs FedEx

2009-07-16T21:24:00.002-04:00

Long story short, UPS and the Teamsters look to be advocating changes in labor law which would enable FedEx's truck drivers to unionize. Currently, as most FedEx packages travel by air, they've been able to avoid most union drives (while still paying higher wages).

Here's George Will's take:

Good Eats! Contest

2009-07-16T17:41:00.002-04:00

For anyone who likes the Food Network show Good Eats, Alton Brown is holding a contest to be a part of its 10th anniversary special

(seriously, if you're interested, I think the contest ends soon... the taping is on my birthday, Aug 29).

Business: Open Book Management

2009-07-16T17:24:00.004-04:00

Interesting article that I saw today from BusinessWeek.

The skinny: companies will be more efficient (here, that means, better able to pull together through the downturn) with more transparent management.

According to the article, "open book management" means reading your employees into your company's finances and how their actions impact the bottom line. My former employer used to do something similar quarterly, and I really found it to be helpful.

Commercial aircraft supplier Tracer was in trouble last November. The 27-employee Milwaukee company, founded in 1993, saw sales fall 20% below already lowered projections. With inventory stuck in the warehouse, Tracer's entire staff knew exactly how much they needed to drive sales to hit their monthly target. Founder and CEO Bill Morales, 52, was on the road, but in his absence his team negotiated a deal that would move some 747 parts out of inventory at a deep discount. Morales approved the price, and his staff did the rest. It was the kind of ground-up effort that has helped Tracer avoid any layoffs, even though 2009 sales are still down 30% from last year.

Most entrepreneurs keep the inner workings of company finances hidden from employees, especially when their businesses are struggling. But executives like Morales have embraced open book management, an approach based on transparency and accountability. They train their employees to understand key financial measurements and show workers how their actions affect profits. More than 10,000 companies practice some form of this philosophy, estimates Jack Stack, CEO of Springfield ReManufacturing, who pioneered the technique in the 1980s. Many executives fear that competitors will learn sensitive information if they open their books to employees, and some think their workers have little to offer. But proponents say open book management makes healthy companies more efficient—and can save a company in distress.

Religion and Science, Gerson edition

2009-07-16T11:38:00.005-04:00

In an interesting complement to yesterday's post about the reform of history curricula in Texas, Michael Gerson, the former Bush speechwriter, writes an interesting op-ed this morning about Francis Collins, President Obama's nominee to lead NIH.

The crux of his argument is the possibility of the peaceful coexistence of science and religion:

Francis Collins presents a perfect test case. His qualifications are beyond dispute. As a pioneering "gene hunter," he helped identify the genetic markers for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease and adult-onset diabetes. He was in charge of the NIH program that mapped the human genome, the biological equivalent of the Apollo space program. He is a leading advocate of personalized medicine (the use of genetic knowledge to tailor individual disease prevention and treatment) and of legislation to protect genetic privacy, so that sensitive information can't be used by employers and insurers to discriminate.

Collins is also a theist. And more than that, an evangelical Christian. And more than that, he sings hymns while playing the guitar.

Gerson mentions Collins as a "test case" because of larger findings about scientists and faith. According to a 1998 study published in Nature (an unscientific study, ironically):

7% of "great" scientists believe in a personal God
72% disbelieve
21% agnostic / don't know

When asked about a belief in human immortality:

8% believe
77% disbelieve
23% agnostic / don't know

Bill Gates and the Feynman Lectures

2009-07-15T20:58:00.003-04:00

I have to say, I really admire a lot about Bill Gates, and I think this is another great example. Twenty years after seeing physics lectures that really moved him, Gates has acquired the rights to post them for everyone to see for free. Watching Gates' intro is actually pretty telling: while I find 97% of those types of introductions really boring and saccharine, Gates' eyes literally sparkle when he talks about these videos and his "Project Tuva." (From Marginal Revolution, From NYT's TierneyLab)

The NYT describes Gates' affinity for the lectures:

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates believes that if he had been able to watch physicist Richard Feynman lecture on physics in 1964 his life might have played out differently.
Mr. Gates, of course, is legendary as a Harvard University dropout who went on to create the world’s most successful software firm. He has told associates that if had watched the lectures earlier in his life he might have become a physicist instead of a software entrepreneur.

Sports: Ted Williams on HBO

2009-07-15T09:58:00.004-04:00

Tonight, HBO will begin airing “Ted Williams—There Goes the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived." Looks like an amazing story, as written up in this morning's WSJ.

I'll admit that I don't know much about Ted Williams, but I found several things particularly interesting...

1) In serving 2 tours with the Marine Corps (WWII and Korea), Williams lost ~700 games of his career, yet he still stands as a titan in the game. (Had he played those games, his career trajectory suggests he would also be #1 in 'runs scored')

2) As the last player to hit .400, Williams was told (with a .3995) that he could sit out the last day, a double-header. Williams played, got 6 hits, and finished the season with a .406.

3) Williams' induction speech at Cooperstown was an "impassioned plea for the Hall of Fame to start inducting great players from the Negro League Greats."

4) Robert Redford's Roy Hobbs, wearing number 9, was an homage to Williams.

On a different note, the history of baseball's Negro Leagues is both fascinating and tragic. While I'm sure it only scratches the surface, I highly recommend the HBO original movie "Soul of the Game" chronicling the integration of baseball and the careers of Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, and Josh Gibson.

Soul of the Game can be found on Amazon, among other places, here. Netflix also has it.

Not just for science class any more...

2009-07-15T09:22:00.005-04:00

For the last decade or so, the Darwin vs Creationism struggle has been fought for several states' science curricula. According to the WSJ, American history classes are the new frontier:

Social studies teachers from Texas are meeting this summer to write new standards. They can accept, reject or modify the six reviewers' suggestions, all of which were made individually. The teachers' recommendations are sent to the 15-member board of education, a conservative-dominated body that has authority to revise standards.

The three reviewers appointed by the moderate and liberal board members are all professors of history or education at Texas universities, including Mr. de la Teja, a former state historian. The reviewers appointed by conservatives include two who run conservative Christian organizations: David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a group that promotes America's Christian heritage; and Rev. Marshall, who preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God's judgments on the nation's sexual immorality. The third is Daniel Dreisbach, a professor of public affairs at American University.
The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America's founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man's fall and inherent sinfulness, or "radical depravity," which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.

The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good -- and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart....
Some outside observers argue that curriculum analysts should be trained academics. "It's important to have trained historians establishing the framework," said David Vigilante, associate director of the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The conservative Christian reviewers, in turn, are skeptical of the professional historians' emphasis on multiculturalism, views stated most forcefully by Mr. de la Teja but echoed by Ms. Hodges. Reaching for examples of achievement by different racial and ethnic groups is divisive, Mr. Barton said, and distorts history.

My personal favorite proposed change to the curriculum: excising Anne Hutchinson from a list of colonial leaders. I must admit, I remember learning about her in fifth grade myself, but all I could remember was that she helped found a colony / settlement. According to Wikipedia, she defied authorities of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and helped co-found the Portsmouth Colony (Rhode Island) with Roger Williams.

Considering I remember her 15 years after Mrs. Hamilton's 5th grade American History class, I guess it couldn't have hurt me too much to learn about her... of course, I did manage to grasp the concept of checks and balances without reflecting on a Biblical sense of man's depravity, so maybe I'm just the odd man out....

I'm a particle physicist. want to chat?

2009-07-15T09:10:00.001-04:00

From the NYT, a particle physicist at CERN notes that no one wants to talk to him - in a pretty funny way.

New Ken Burns - The National Parks: America's Best Idea

2009-07-14T13:41:00.002-04:00

Series is coming on PBS Sept 27

Check it out here

Celebrity, politics, the Apprentice, and The Donald

2009-07-14T11:41:00.006-04:00

Hotline is reporting that the embattled governor of NJ has decided to name the former Apprentice Winner Randal Pinkett as his running mate. Pinkett's got a legit resume (including a Rhodes Scholarship), but I think its still incredibly funny...

Now, will Trump - who has been called a "conservative" and at one point talked of running for president on Perot's "Reform Party" ticket - stump for the dynamic duo?

This announcement will likely come at an Obama rally this / next week, and coincides with the GOP candidate Christie's widening poll lead. Currently, he's polling ahead of Corzine 53-41, up from 50-40 last month.

Dysfunctional States

2009-07-14T11:33:00.004-04:00

The National Journal has an interesting ranking of "dysfunctional state governments" on the basis of (1) leadership problems, (2) criminality, (3) statewide challenges, and (4) media circus. The gated version is here

The winners:

6) California: 6.25
5) South Carolina: 7
4) Alaska: 7.25
3) Illinois: 7.5
2) Nevada: 7.75
1) New York: 9.25

While these probably aren't exactly right metrics to look at (or, more likely, to weight equally in evaluating state governance), certainly quite amusing.

Auto industry: Andy Grove Sees Parallels With Computers, Circa 1980s

2009-07-14T11:16:00.004-04:00

Intel's former chief writes about the current auto industry in flux, and how industry upheaval (from rising fuel prices, global warming concerns, labor costs, global trade flows) threaten the current auto industry status quo (a starting place which we're not too happy about to begin with, anyway). Overall, he notes, the auto industry will shift from "vertical" (DEC, "old" IBM) where computer manufacturers were one-stop-shops to "horizontal" (Compaq, Dell) where component manufacture is spread out and sales are managed at a different level (often by the Best Buys and Walmarts of the world - even Dell is moving this way now)

Most telling, however, is Grove's observation in the differences between the American and Chinese approaches to the coming auto revolution:

f such a shift occurs, the success of a producer will depend on how well it takes advantage of the new structure -- whether it can use the mass-producibility and falling cost of batteries and other components better than its competitors.
The U.S. government is investing in the automobile industry with the intention of preventing jobs from being lost. This may improve GM's ability to operate within today's structure. But there is no comparably large investment being made to develop the capabilities that could serve the company in a new era of electric cars.

China appears to be making a different bet. It's not clear precisely how the Chinese government influences industrial strategy. But China is putting a great deal of effort into developing and manufacturing batteries. Essentially, it is betting that it can take the lead in creating the foundation technology of what will likely be the new structure of the auto industry.

Which is the better investment strategy? It is too early to say. In the short term, the U.S. strategy will likely save jobs. The long term is much more problematic. We do not yet know when and if the automobile industry will shift into a horizontal structure. The stakes, however, are very high. The strategic bets being placed by each country may determine which one will end up as the world's leader in automotive technology and manufacturing.

2012: Noonan, Palin, and the illusion of "Working-Class Sarah"

2009-07-14T10:16:00.005-04:00

Peggy Noonan (rightly) rails on Sarah Palin in a new WSJ op-ed entitled "A Farewell to Harms." The core of her message: she calls upon the GOP to grow up, to rebuild itself on a stronger foundation, and not to congratulate itself on how enlightened it believed it was to elevate a "working-class" woman to the national stage.

Recently, a liberal friend of mine told me that, as a woman, she was embarrassed by the attention Palin received and the way in which she handled herself. I think a lot of people probably feel this way: many women feel that Palin does not look like the first female president, and many people in general feel that she's just not "presidential."

While many in the GOP would attribute these feelings to "classism," I believe that reaction to be too simplistic. Yes, she represented a gun-toting, outdoorsy culture that many people didn't like. But, more importantly, that was nearly all she was. She was a political (and intellectual) lightweight, and she did not adequately represent the working class. She grew up in a middle class household and attended a reputable university. As Noonan acridly notes, she represents "what they teach in 'Ways of the Working Class' at Yale and Dartmouth."

You don't have to be an "intellectual" or "working class" or a "veteran" or any other "thing" or "ist" to be a successful leader or a successful public servant. But you do have to know what you are, why you are the way you are, and why people might disagree with you. You have to understand that (1) you're not always correct, (2) that other people - even those you dislike - can come up with good ideas you've never thought of and could/should support, and (3) that the people who disagree with you aren't always wrong and, even worse, aren't always out to do something evil / destroy the country.

Sarah Palin's resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain—to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take. They mean to rebuild a great party. They need to do it on solid ground....

...She went on the trail a sensation but demonstrated in the ensuing months that she was not ready to go national and in fact never would be. She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful. She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and in other circumstances, it could have been a form of liberalism) and swallowing it whole: She never learned how the other sides think, or why....

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm....
The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do....
We are going to need the best.

Cell phones and Sex Ed

2009-07-13T12:04:00.003-04:00

An NYT article from May about teens, texting, and sex ed. It seems like a helpful service to have someone answer these tough questions, but its amazing that the NC help-line answers them one-to-one. It allows them to customize things, but it seems like a more standardized script (approved by a clinician?) for the top 100 questions would make the process a little neater.

Still, it is a little frightening at some of the questions these kids ask... like kids asking about HIV transmission (and seeming quite unaware...)

Healthcare: the WSJ has a pretty damning view of Massachusetts' health reform package

2009-07-12T15:30:00.001-04:00

In an article in Saturday's WSJ, the editors blast the 2005-06 Massachusetts health reforms. Critical to the reform were the notions of (1) an individual mandate, "requiring" everyone to be covered like automotive liability insurance; (2) a fine for noncompliance with the mandate (currently $900 per person); and (3) "community rating," a system preventing the evaluation of candidates / pricing of policies based on pre-exisiting conditions.

While its no real surprise that the WSJ editorial board disagrees with the reform, this time they come bearing data. One health plan, Harvard-Pilgrim, claims that 40% of its new enrollees (1) stayed enrolled for less that 5 months AND (2) had a medical expense run-rate of $2,000+ per member per month. That's 24,000+ per year! Nationally, the annual rate [should be] somewhere on the order of $5k per year.

The WSJ says that this is a good illustration of people following their incentives: you enroll for your big procedure, then you pay your prorated $900 fine for the rest of the year when you don't need coverage. I think that's probably exactly right - even in healthcare, people tend to follow their pocketbook.

Of course, what I will fault the WSJ for is full disclosure. Charles Baker, the current head of Harvard-Pilgrim who commissioned the study, just announced he is running for governor of Massachusetts next year...

Random links

2009-07-12T12:22:00.004-04:00

Several good articles in the past few days:

NYT: Discussing the glories of Maryland's Eastern Shore crab houses (deliciousness)

NYT: On the correlation between the use of strong sonar and whale beachings (according to the article, the whales rush to the surface to avoid the sonar and get something akin to "the bends")

NYT: On Jenny Sanford, other cheated-on wives, and "stand by your man" (from a sociology / evolutionary perspective)

Gossip is how we establish cultural norms. Talking about others is our way to test the social boundaries — to learn what raises eyebrows, what is met by shrugs — without directly talking about ourselves. We tell one another, and sometimes we believe it, that we really don’t care if the guy had an affair; what we care about is that he disappeared for five days. Or abused his power as a boss over an intern. Or was callous enough to cheat on a wife who’d had cancer, and foolish enough to believe a presidential candidate could get away with being that callous. And yes, we care about all those things, and more. But we also care about — are fascinated by — the fact that the guy had an affair....
In general, researchers tell us, men are more threatened by a woman having sex with another man, and women are more threatened by a man falling emotionally for another woman. Since most straying from marriage vows includes sex but does not always include love, men find it more threatening when women cheat than vice versa (which may well explain why they’ve invented a word for when it happens to men). All this, some scientists suggest, is part of evolution. A woman straying sexually is a threat to what a man is hard-wired to value — that is, the knowledge that a child is his own. A man straying emotionally, by contrast, threatens a woman where she is traditionally most vulnerable; it increases the likelihood that a man will take his support and protection elsewhere.

In the something-I'd-love-to-see department, Aaron Sorkin has signed on help the project to turn Michael Lewis's "Moneyball" into a movie (with Brad Pitt)

Healthcare: Kidney Donor Chains

2009-07-11T14:49:00.005-04:00

Very interesting article on kidney donation from the Atlantic. The key takeaway: the rise of kidney swaps and kidney donor chains.

At their most basic level, kidney swaps involve matching pairs of incompatible yet willing donors and recipients with other incompatible pairs:

Over the past decade, however, a more promising trade has become possible. In its simplest form, known as “paired exchange,” incompatible pairs are matched. For example, a husband with type A blood wants to give a kidney to his wife, who has type B blood. Meanwhile, a mother with type B wants to donate to her son with type A. So the mother gives to the wife, and the husband gives to the son. As originally developed at Johns Hopkins, paired exchanges involved not only swaps but simultaneous surgeries, so that no one could back out. Since the first paired exchange in 2000, the number has grown from two that year to 240 in 2008 and 591 in total.

A donor chain extends this logic one step further:

Donor chains are more promising. A donor chain starts with one of those rare (but increasingly common nondirected donors, who gives to someone who has a willing but incompatible donor. That donor then gives to someone else with an incompatible donor, who gives to a third person with an incompatible donor, and so on. In theory, a chain can go on indefinitely. The surgeries don’t have to be simultaneous, or even in the same place.

More about semi-vegetarianism?

2009-07-10T16:54:00.005-04:00

Another NYT article that includes a pledge for reduced (but not absolute rejection of) meat consumption. (thanks, Susan, for the pointer!)

Meanwhile, city workers in Ghent, a Flemish town northwest of Brussels, have opted to make Thursdays a “meatless day” and to eat vegetarian meals to improve health and reduce the impact of raising livestock on the environment, according to Ethical Vegetarian Alternative, a Belgian campaign group.

The initiative, announced in May, was backed by Tom Balthazar, a councilman for the city’s health and environmental committee, according to the E.V.A. From September, city-funded schools will offer a vegetarian menu on Thursdays by default, the group said.
“All 5,000 city personnel will receive a free veggie city street map and a free vegetarian cooking brochure for professionals will be sent to all 1,500 restaurants,” the group said. “There will be cooking classes for both professionals and individuals,” it
said.

I'm trying to avoid meat for 1-2 dinners and 1-2 lunches per week, and Ali and I have loosely adopted "meat-free Mondays."

Happy Birthday, Tesla?

2009-07-10T16:29:00.003-04:00

I guess I must be google's target audience, because I am always intrigued with how they re-decorate their logo to reflect particular days. Today is apparently Tesla's birthday, spawning the following:
Among other things, Tesla's alternating current beat out Edison's direct current, and he is the creepy scientist known for wiring Colorado Springs and portrayed in The Illusionist.

Blue Dog Dems: are they democrats, or something different altogether?

2009-07-10T12:31:00.003-04:00

CNN reports that the Blue Dogs have blocked the current health reform package moving through the house, specifically citing issues with (1) the specifics of the public option and (2) a need for a "value-based" approach.

I get that they are Democrats, and that Susan Collins / Olympia Snowe are Republicans, but sometimes the Blue Dogs just seem (1) a bit more different and (2) a bit more powerful. In many ways, they actually resemble the "lesser" coalition partners of other parliamentary democracies...

Humor: Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy

2009-07-10T10:08:00.005-04:00

Absolutely hysterical clip of Conan interviewing Lewis CK, whoever that is... Regardless, hilarity ensues. Thanks to my friend Barry for the pointer.

Louis: “Yeah, because everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy. Like in my lifetime, the changes in the world have been incredible. When I was a kid we had a rotary phone. We had a phone you had to stand next to, and you need to dial it. Do you realize how primitive… You’re making sparks, in a phone! And you actually would hate people with zeroes in their numbers because it was more work. You’re like ‘That guy has two zeroes, screw that guy’. And then if someone called and you weren’t home it would just ring, lonely, by itself. And then if you wanted money you had to go in the bank, which was open for like three hours. You had to stay in-line and write yourself a check like an idiot. And then when you ran out of money you’d just go ‘Oh, I guess I just can’t do anymore things now’. That’s it now. And even if you had a credit card, the guy would go ‘Augh…’ and he’d bring out this whole *makes manual credit card machine sounds* and he’d write everything down, and he’d have to call the President to see if you have any money.”

Conan: “It’s all true kids. You had to call the President. Yeah. It was ridiculous. Do you feel that we now, in the 21st century, we take technology for granted?”

Louis: “Well yeah. Because now we live in an amazing, amazing world and it’s wasted on the crappiest, crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don’t care, because this is what people are like now. They got their phone and are like ‘Ehh… it won’t… it won’t…”. GIVE IT A SECOND! It’s going to space! Can you give it a second to get back from space? Is the speed of light too slow for you?”

Conan: “Yeah…”

Louis: “I was on an airplane and there was high speed internet on it. It’s the newest thing that I know exists. And I’m sitting on the plane and they go ‘Open up your laptop; you can get on the internet’. And it’s fast, and I’m watching Youtube clips, and it’s amazing. I’m on an airplane. And then it breaks down, and they apologize the internet’s not working, and the guy next to me goes ‘Psshh, this is bullshit.’. Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only ten seconds ago!”

Full transcript here, from Afterfour.

Wessels: The Coming Incentive Revolution

2009-07-10T09:43:00.002-04:00

Will incentives be coming soon to a theater near you? David Wessels writes in yesterday's WSJ:

So Mr. Obama wants to pay professionals more only if they deliver more of what he thinks America needs, a bold bet on the economic principle that incentives do matter. If he succeeds, the changes to business, health care and education could last far beyond his presidency. But this is hard to do well. The risks of unintended consequences are large, and there's a chance we'll get more of what can be measured -- not what we truly want or need.

In business, Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are trying to redirect calls for imposing salary caps to mandating "pay for performance." This isn't foreign to companies: They have long said they intend to peg compensation to numerical results and aren't insulted by the notion that professionals are motivated by money.

In health care, Mr. Obama and his budget director, Peter Orszag, insist that the only way the nation can afford to cover the uninsured and keep health costs from devouring the federal budget is to find better ways to define and measure quality in medical care -- and then pay doctors and hospitals for providing it. "We need to move toward a system in which doctors face stronger incentives for providing high-quality care rather than simply more care," Mr. Orszag says.

With similar logic, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insists that improving American schools requires evaluating and paying teachers, at least in part, on how much their students learn -- as measured by gains in standardized-test scores. "Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions," he told a skeptical National Education Association convention last week. "That would never make sense. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible." He rails against "firewall" laws in California that prohibit use of test scores in paying, promoting or evaluating teachers, as well as similar statutes in New York and Indiana.

I am ironclad believer in these types of mechanisms... while I understand that some tests or situations will fall outside of the mainstream, there are plenty of ways to benchmark this data and provide at least a quartile-type ranking. And, remember, its how this patient / student does "longitudinally" -- we need to understand the normal progression of patients with certain conditions or students with particular abilities, account for the available resources, and score the service provider's delivery.

Only when we take these cost metrics, combined with performance results, can we begin to approach a true "value-based" system in education, health care, etc.

Ebola in phillipine pigs

2009-07-10T09:32:00.001-04:00

From the Guardian:

WASHINGTON (AP) â A form of ebola virus has been detected in pigs for the first time, raising concerns it could mutate and threaten humans, scientists report.
Reston ebolavirus has only been seen in monkeys and humans previously and, unlike other types of ebola, it is not known to cause illness in people.
The discovery of REBOV in pigs in the Philippines is reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Researchers say it is theoretically possible for the virus to mutate in pigs into a form that might sicken people.
However, they noted that while some of the farm workers tending the pigs also had become infected, they showed no signs of illness.