Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Smoking and Health Care Costs

We all know that tobacco kills people.  It destroys their heart health and ravages the body with cancer.  These are not debatable facts.  Yet tobacco remains fairly popular, with a median usage rate of 18.1% among adults (CDC data below). That's even more popular than Shards O' Glass!

According to a recent study in Ohio:
Each 1 percent decline in smoking rates would save the state $838 million in health care costs, including $148.5 million in state Medicaid costs
Let that really sink in for a minute -- we could save literally billions and billions of dollars in health care costs annually by reducing the number of smokers nationally by a few percentage points.  What's the most reliable way to reduce smoking rates?  Raise taxes on them.

The CDC released updated figures on state-by-state smoking rates and smokeless tobacco usage rates:


Unsurprisingly to me, Kentucky and West Virginia topped the list of smokers, at 25.6%.  From my own anecdotal experience, I have noticed how high the rates are in eastern KY and southern WV (as well as southwestern VA).  Over one in four adults smoke there.  In addition, 6.7% and 8.5% of adults there use smokeless tobacco, respectively.  That means that over 30% of Kentuckians and West Virginians are regular tobacco users.  How many billions of dollars in health care costs could those states save by raising taxes on tobacco products?

And it may be even worse than that:
The findings in this report are subject to at least three limitations. First, BRFSS does not include adults without telephone service (1.7%) or with wireless-only service (24.5%), and adults with wireless-only service are twice as likely to smoke cigarettes as the rest of the U.S. population (9). Because wireless-only service varies by state (9), these data likely underestimate the actual prevalence of cigarette smoking in some states and might underestimate smokeless tobacco use.
So basically it could be as high as 40% in those states...

I looked up the tax rates on tobacco there and the taxes there (KY and WV) are well below the national average, although still lower than in neighboring Virginia:


So at the end of the day, the states with the highest usage of tobacco have some of the lowest tax rates.  This despite the fact that it has been known for some time that the costs of smoking are largely borne by society (non-smokers) via higher health costs.  While states are scrambling to lay off teachers and police in order to balance their budgets, perhaps the first order of business would be to cut spending on health care, raise revenues and increase people's quality of life with one simple action:  raise tobacco taxes.

Monday, November 22, 2010

On the idea of law school --> patent law

This is an encouraging point:
The outlook is also pretty rosy for aspiring lawyers with technical backgrounds. Sure, the market is saturated with liberal arts graduates, but firms are so desperate for science graduates that they’re hiring them into technical-adviser programs and then paying for the folks to go to law school and hiring them after graduation. The Recorder reports the programs exist at Ropes & Gray, Morrison & Foerster, Wilson Sonsini, and other firms.
Indeed...full article below:
Silicon Valley Pushes to Turn Scientists Into Lawyers
Amy Miller
2010-09-08 12:00:00 AM

There are plenty of patent attorneys in Silicon Valley, but there aren't enough like Alexander Shvarts.

The Ropes & Gray associate possesses a combination of science and communication skills increasingly demanded from patent attorneys. He's not only a techie with a degree in computer science from Cornell University, which helps him understand complicated patents and work with their inventors; he also likes writing and schmoozing with clients. "This fits my personality perfectly," Shvarts said.

That's why Ropes & Gray accepted Shvarts into the firm's technical adviser program, which first trained him to be a patent agent and then paid his tuition at Fordham University School of Law. Now the 32-year-old is based in Ropes & Gray's Palo Alto, Calif., office, and travels to universities to persuade other future engineers and scientists to become patent lawyers in Silicon Valley, too.

Ropes & Gray may have a long list of big-name clients such as Apple Inc. and Pfizer Inc., but getting the right candidates to join the program isn't easy. "One of the biggest challenges we have is recruiting," Shvarts said. "These people can go wherever they want."

Ropes & Gray's technical adviser program isn't unique. For years, firms such as Morrison & Foerster; Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner; and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati have sent people with science degrees to law school and hired them as patent attorneys after graduation.

But the competition for patent attorneys like Shvarts is so keen in Silicon Valley that Ropes & Gray has pushed hard to expand its program there, with some success. In 2009, the Palo Alto office had only one person in the program. This year, two have transferred to Palo Alto from New York City and three more have been hired.

"That's the result of an active effort on our part," said Ropes & Gray IP partner Joseph Guiliano, who completed Fish & Neave's program in 1993, more than 10 years before the firm merged with Ropes & Gray. "We want that practice to expand."

This year, Wilson Sonsini has 17 people who are at various stages of the firm's technical adviser program, and they work exclusively in the firm's life sciences and clean tech practices. That, too, is an increase from past years, attorneys said.

"Law schools don't produce enough of the people we're looking for," said Wilson Sonsini IP partner Vern Norviel. "We are always actively recruiting, and going around to the top-notch Ph.D. programs. We're always trying to find these people."

'AN ART THAT MUST BE PRACTICED'

Ropes & Gray's program is fairly typical. Those selected work in the firm's patent office for one to two years before starting law school, and many become registered patent agents. While in law school, they work either full-time or part-time at the firm. If all goes as planned, they're offered an associate job -- with pay at the second- or third-year level -- right after graduation.

"By the time they set foot in law school, they can honestly say they have clients," Guiliano said.

Programs like Ropes & Gray's address a central problem in the legal profession, said IP recruiter Katharine Patterson of Patterson Davis Consulting in San Francisco. To even take the patent bar, you must have a technical degree. But passing the exam doesn't necessarily prepare someone to be a patent attorney. "This is an art that must be practiced," she said.

So why is it so hard to recruit scientists and engineers, given the attraction of earning a law degree for free, and graduating with on-the-job experience and an almost guaranteed roster of clients?

There's a host of reasons, lawyers said. People with advanced technical degrees have a lot of options. If they don't want to be researchers, they can become heads of cutting-edge companies, for example. A few who went through Wilson Sonsini's technical adviser program have left the firm, but they weren't lured away by other firms, Norviel said. They became CEOs of health care companies.

"These people are very on top of their game," he said. "They don't have to be lawyers. They could do any number of things."

Enticing patent lawyers from other firms can be challenging. Ropes & Gray IP attorney Mark Rowland said he suspects that after recent law school graduates develop a client base, they're reluctant to move to another firm. And the structure of patent prosecution programs differ from firm to firm.

"At some firms they are almost solo operators, and we have a different model," Rowland said. "They're working on their own, and they prefer it that way."

NO GUARANTEES

The program may be filling a need, but at Ropes & Gray, there are no guarantees, for the firm or the participants. People aren't obligated to join Ropes & Gray as patent attorneys after they graduate, and the firm doesn't have to offer them a job. But the vast majority are hired, even if they don't stay for long.

A few participants have left Ropes & Gray because they decided to work in house for a client that they developed a strong relationship with, Guiliano said. That's not always a bad thing, though, as they can end up hiring the firm as outside counsel.

"It's kind of a mixed bag," Guiliano said. "The opportunities get spread out a bit."

It's a chance both firms and future prospects are willing to take. Current and former participants who were interviewed agreed that they made a smart, and economical, career move by joining the Ropes & Gray program.

For Shvarts, patent law combines his love of writing and communicating with his obsession for high-tech gadgetry. He can stay up-to-date on the latest technologies while working for some cutting-edge companies. "I've done just about everything you can do in IP law," Shvarts said.

None said it was easy, though. Juggling law school and working at the firm requires careful time management, not to mention finding time to study for the bar.

"There are growing pains along the way," said Matthew Bertenthal, 26, a patent agent in the program at Ropes & Gray's Silicon Valley office. "But at the same time, I feel like this is the best thing I could have done."

Bertenthal graduated from Cornell University with a computer and electrical engineering degree, but he liked writing and interacting with people too much to spend his days in a computer lab. Now he's attending Fordham University School of Law, but has spent the last semester at Santa Clara University School of Law. "I wouldn't be going to law school any other way," he said.

Like many of the people chosen for the program, Yang Xu, 31, has more than one advanced science degree. She's earned both a master's and a Ph.D in organic chemistry.

She tried working as a chemist for a biotech company for a couple of years, but soon realized that it wasn't want she wanted to do for the next 10 years. "To me, it felt very repetitive," she said.

Xu hasn't lost her love of science. But now that she's a technical adviser for Ropes & Gray and is preparing to apply to law school, she gets to see the broader landscape of the IP world, something she'd wanted for a long time.

"I'm starting all over again," Xu says. "But it's really exciting."
I think so too.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

More light, less heat

That's sort of a theme around my workplace. We do light-emitting diodes and want more luminous power and lower resistivity (losing energy to heat). But it applies just as well to discussions of policy.

It's crossing my mind -- now that the midterm elections are over -- to wonder what will really happen given the Republicans larger role in governing, as well as the possibility that they may take the Senate and/or the presidency in 2012. How will they govern? Assuming continuing gains for the GOP in 2012, the composition of the House and Senate still will not likely be very different than 2004 (including the fact that many of the members of Congress will be the same exact people), ergo compromising will be a necessity, right?

How will we fix the crushing budget deficits, whose causes are well-established? If you don't already realize this, the major pieces of the federal budget are: (FY 2010)

1) medicare/medicaid (20.90%)
2) social security (19.63%)
3) dept of defense (18.74%)
= ~60%

The President's budget for 2010 has total spending of the gov't at $3.55 trillion. Our budget deficit for 2010 is $1.2 trillion, or almost 1/3 of that amount.

So basically 3/5 of our entire federal budget goes to these three things (not counting special appropriations for the wars). If politicians aren't serious about cutting these three programs in careful, smart, but serious ways, then we literally cannot balance our budget.

The the long-awaited deficit reduction commission's draft report will send recommendations to the President that include extending the age of retirement and means-testing to save Social Security, overhauling and simplifying the tax code while lowering rates for the wealthy, and some other interesting items. They couldn't get enough agreement on the proposals to make it a final report, because 14 out of 18 members couldn't agree on this. Paul Krugman thinks that lowering income taxes even further on billionaires is a ridiculous way to balance the budget. I'm not expert enough to analyze the merits of these recommendations on the economics. What I do know, however, is that Social Security has always been the "third rail" in politics -- touch it and you're dead.

Introducing the proposed changes into Social Security that will basically give the shaft to lower-income people, regardless of the fiscal merits, is simply not going to happen. It is a political non-starter. And, surprisingly to some of my conservative friends, this is *even more* true of Republicans than Democrats. Listen to SC Republican Senator Jim DeMint -- one of the most right-wing of all Republicans, if not *the* most right-wing -- commenting on Meet the Press about the concept of overhauling Social Security:
GREGORY: I want to be very specific, because going back to 2008 spending levels will not get anywhere close to balancing the budget. So, you're saying that everything has to be on the table. Cuts in defense. Cuts in Medicare. Cuts in Social Security. Is that right?

DEMINT: Well, no, we're not talking about cuts in Social Security. If we can just cut the administrative waste, we can cut hundreds of billions of dollars a year at the federal level. So, before we start cutting -- I mean, we need to keep our promises to seniors, David. And cutting benefits to seniors is not on the table.

GREGORY: But then, but where do you make the cuts? I mean, if you're protecting everything for the most potent political groups, like seniors, who go out and vote, where are you really gonna balance the budget?

DEMINT: Well, look at Paul Ryan's roadmap to the future. We see a clear path to moving back to a balanced budget over time. Again, the plans are on the table. We don't have to cut benefits for seniors. And we don't need to cut Medicare -- like the Democrats did in this big Obamacare bill. We can restore sanity in Washington without cutting any benefits to seniors or veterans.
Mark my words: while people may loathe Democrats and accuse them of having a "tax and spend" mentality, Republicans will be bigger spenders,just as they always have been, but without the honesty of even trying to balance the budget, just as they always have been. Compare the two parties' approaches to health care:

When Republicans passed the Medicare drug benefit (Part D) of 2003, they lied about its costs and just pretended it didn't have to be paid for. Pop quiz: which costs more -- the GOP's Part D or the Dems' health care reform?

Ans: Part D. Part D is estimated to cost $951 billion over the decade 2009-2018. (See Table III.C.19, page 120, shown below) In addition, the cost of that plan only grows with time as our aging population increases. Almost every penny of that is pure deficit spending.



Republicans wrote the bill so that big pharma companies get far more money from Medicare Part D for the exact same drugs than the Dept of Veterans Affairs pays for them. In the House, only 25 Republicans voted against the budget-busting bill while all but 16 Democrats voted no. The main player in writing the legislation in the House left his job and took a $2 million a year lobbying job with...a pharmaceutical company...(all facts that have been documented pretty easily by lots of principled people)

What about the other major political party and their health care reform bill (ACA)?

The Dems' plan requires $382 billion of spending total over the period 2010 - 2019 to expand insurance coverage and close the Part D "donut hole". (See Table 2, page 18 of the PDF, shown below)



These costs are financed in part by cutting wasteful spending to private insurers for Medicare "Advantage" plans and raising Medicare premiums on those making over $250,000 a year. Those revenues combine to give back the government $525 billion during that same period, thus *lowering* the deficit by $140 billion! On top of that, in the next decade, it is estimated to save far more!



When Dems passed the Affordable Care Act they used CBO scoring and raised some Medicare taxes on the rich to pay for the costs associated with expanding coverage. They pushed to allow drug prices to be negotiated. The bill lowers the deficit by over a hundred billion dollars in the first decade.

In short, if you believe that Democrats are the party who spends too much, or adds more to the deficit, you're simply living in a fantasy world. Facts are hard, cold and stubborn things.

Ed Brayton has an interesting view on this. He thinks that Republicans are able to get away with this bullshit for strategic reasons:
For all the Republican rhetoric about smaller government and "tax and spend liberals," the fact is that over the past 50 years the size of government has grown more under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones -- and so has the size of the debt because of their reluctance to raise taxes.

From 1962-2001, the average growth in total federal spending under Republican presidents has been 7.57%; under Democrats, 6.96%. Bush certainly did not help those averages any after 2001. During that same period, the average yearly deficit under Democrats was $36 billion; the average under Republicans was $190 billion. So under Republicans, spending grows more but revenues grow less because they always insist on tax cuts.

And that means taxes must go up at some point to pay the cost of the deficit spending plus the interest on that borrowing. I think part of the GOP strategy for the past 50 years (40 at least) has been to drive up the deficit intentionally by raising spending and cutting taxes, knowing that when the Democrats are in control they will have to raise taxes. Then they can say, "See, the Democrats are always raising your taxes!" -- but without acknowledging that it was made necessary by their own borrow and spend policies.

The fact is that neither party has any interest in actually reducing spending. The difference is that the Democrats are generally more willing to pay for it with taxes while the Republicans refuse to do so. And I think that is a deliberate strategy on their part.
Perhaps...

Tom Toles is spot on:

Monday, November 1, 2010

Capturing the moment

I found a hypothetical speech written by Theodore C. Sorensen for the as-yet-unknown 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, which seems perhaps even more apt today.  Try to imagine this coming from Sarah Palin:
My fellow Democrats: With high resolve and deep gratitude, I accept your nomination.

It has been a long campaign—too long, too expensive, with too much media attention on matters irrelevant to our nation’s future. I salute each of my worthy opponents for conducting a clean fifty-state campaign focusing on the real issues facing our nation, including health care, the public debt burden, energy independence, and national security, a campaign testing not merely which of us could raise and spend the most money but who among us could best lead our country; a campaign not ignoring controversial issues like taxation, immigration, fuel conservation, and the Middle East, but conducting, in essence, a great debate—because our party, unlike our opposition, believes that a free country is strengthened by debate. Subscribe Online & Save 33%

There will be more debates this fall. I hereby notify my Republican opponent that I have purchased ninety minutes of national network television time for each of the six Sunday evenings preceding the presidential election, and here and now invite and challenge him to share that time with me to debate the most serious issues facing the country, under rules to be agreed upon by our respective designees meeting this week with a neutral jointly selected statesman.

Let me assure all those who may disagree with my positions that I shall hear and respect their views, not denounce them as unpatriotic as has so often happened in recent years. I will wage a campaign that relies not on the usual fear, smear, and greed but on the hopes and pride of all our citizens in a nationwide effort to restore comity, common sense, and competence to the White House.

In this campaign, I will make no promises I cannot fulfill, pledge no spending we cannot afford, offer no posts to cronies you cannot trust, and propose no foreign commitment we should not keep. I will not shrink from opposing any party faction, any special interest group, or any major donor whose demands are contrary to the national interest. Nor will I shrink from calling myself a liberal, in the same sense that Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, John and Robert Kennedy, and Harry Truman were liberals—liberals who proved that government is not a necessary evil, but rather the best means of creating a healthier, more educated, and more prosperous America.

They are the giants on whose shoulders I now stand, giants who made this a better, fairer, safer, stronger, more united America.

By making me your nominee, you have placed your trust in the American people to put aside irrelevant considerations and judge me solely on my qualifications to lead the nation. You have opened the stairway to what Teddy Roosevelt called the “bully pulpit.” With the help of dedicated Americans from our party, every party, and no party at all, I intend to mount that stairway to preach peace for our nation and world.

My campaign will be based on my search for the perfect political consensus, not the perfect political consultant. My chief political consultant will be my conscience.

Thank you for your applause, but I need more than your applause and approval. I need your prayers, your votes, your help, your heart, and your hand. The challenge is enormous, the obstacles are many. Our nation is emerging from eight years of misrule, a dark and difficult period in which our national honor and pride have been bruised and battered. But we are neither beaten nor broken. We are not helpless or afraid; because in this country the people rule, and the people want change.

True, some of us have been sleeping for these eight long years, while our nation’s values have been traduced, our liberties reduced, and our moral authority around the world trampled and shattered by a nightmare of ideological incompetence. But now we are awakening and taking our country back. Now people all across America are starting to believe in America again. We are coming back, back to the heights of greatness, back to America’s proud role as a temple of justice and a champion of peace.

The American people are tired of politics as usual, and I intend to offer them, in this campaign, something unusual in recent American politics: the truth. Neither bureaucracies nor nations function well when their actions are hidden from public view and accountability. From now on, whatever mistakes I make, whatever dangers we face, the people shall know the truth—and the truth shall make them free. After eight years of secrecy and mendacity, here are some truths the people deserve to hear:

We remain essentially a nation under siege. The threat of another terrorist attack upon our homeland has not been reduced by all the new layers of porous bureaucracy that proved their ineptitude in New Orleans; nor by all the needless, mindless curbs on our personal liberties and privacy; nor by expensive new weaponry that is utterly useless in stopping a fanatic willing to blow himself up for his cause. Indeed, our vulnerability to another attack has only been worsened in the years since the attacks of September 11th—worsened by our government convincing more than 1 billion Muslims that we are prejudiced against their faith, dismissive of international law, and indifferent to the deaths of their innocent children; worsened by our failure to understand their culture or to provide a safe haven for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees displaced by a war we started; worsened by our failure to continue our indispensable role in the Middle East peace process.

We have adopted some of the most indefensible tactics of our enemies, including torture and indefinite detention.

We have degraded our military.

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner—by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.

At home, as health care costs have grown and coverage disappeared, we have done nothing but coddle the insurance, pharmaceutical, and health care industries that feed the problem.

As global warming worsens, we have done nothing but deny the obvious and give regulatory favors to polluters.

As growing economic inequality tarnishes our democracy, we have done nothing but carve out more tax breaks for the rich.

During these last several years, our nation has been bitterly divided and deceived by illicit actions in high places, by violations of federal, constitutional, and international law. I do not favor further widening the nation’s wounds, now or next year, through continuous investigations, indictments, and impeachments. I am confident that history will hold these malefactors accountable for their deeds, and the country will move on.

Instead, I shall seek a renewal of unity among all Americans, an unprecedented unity we will need for years to come in order to face unprecedented danger.

We will be safer from terrorist attack only when we have earned the respect of all other nations instead of their fear, respect for our values and not merely our weapons.

If I am elected president, my vow for this country can be summarized in one short, simple word: change. This November 2008 election—the first since 1952 in which neither the incumbent president’s nor the incumbent vice president’s name will appear on the national ballot, indeed the first since 1976 in which the name of neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush will appear on the national ballot—is destined to bring about the most profound change in the direction of this country since the election of 1932.

To meet the threats we face and restore our place of leadership in the free world, I pledge to do the following:

First, working with a representative Iraqi parliament, I shall set a timetable for an orderly, systematic redeployment and withdrawal of all our troops in Iraq, including the recall of all members of the National Guard to their primary responsibility of guarding our nation and its individual states.

Second, this redeployment shall be only the first step in a comprehensive regional economic and diplomatic stabilization plan for the entire Middle East, building a just and enduring peace between Israel and Palestine, halting the killing and maiming of innocent civilians on both sides, and establishing two independent sovereign states, each behind peacefully negotiated and mutually recognized borders.

Third, I shall as soon as possible transfer all inmates out of the Guantanamo Bay prison and close down that hideous symbol of injustice.

Fourth, I shall fly to New York City to pledge in person to the United Nations, in the September 2009 General Assembly, that the United States is returning to its role as a leader in international law, as a supporter of international tribunals, and as a full-fledged member of the United Nations which will pay its dues in full, on time, and without conditions, renouncing any American empire; that we shall work more intensively with other countries to eliminate global scourges, including AIDS, malaria, and other contagious diseases, massive refugee flows, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and that we will support the early dispatch of United Nations peacekeepers to halt the atrocities in Darfur. I shall make it clear that we do not covet the land of other countries for our military bases or the control of their natural resources for our factories. I shall make it clear that our country is not bound by any policies or pronouncements of my predecessor that violate international law or threaten international peace.

Fifth, I shall personally sign the Kyoto Protocol, and seek its ratification by the United States Senate, in order to stop global warming before it endangers all species on earth, including our own; and I shall call upon the Congress to take action dramatically reducing our nation’s reliance on the carbon fuels that are steadily contributing to the degradation of our environment.

Sixth, I shall demonstrate sufficient confidence in the strength of our values and the wisdom and skill of our diplomats to favor communications, negotiations, and full relations with every country on earth, including Cuba, North Korea, Palestine, and Iran.

Finally, I shall restore the constitutional right of habeas corpus, abolish the unconstitutional tapping of private phones, and once again show the world the traditional American values that distinguish us from those who attacked us on 9/11.

We need not renounce the use of conventional force. We will be ready to repel any clear and present danger that poses a genuine threat to our national security and survival. But it will be as a last resort, never a first; in cooperation with our allies, never alone; out of necessity, never by choice; proportionate, never heedless of civilian lives or international law; as the best alternative considered, never the only. We will always apply the same principles of collective security, prudent caution, and superior weaponry that enabled us to peacefully prevail in the long cold war against the Soviet Union. Above all, we shall wage no more unilateral, ill-planned, ill-considered, and ill-prepared invasions of foreign countries that pose no actual threat to our security. No more wars in which the American Congress is not told in advance and throughout their duration the true cost, consequences, and terms of commitment. No more wars waged by leaders blinded by ideology who have no legal basis to start them and no plan to end them. We shall oppose no peaceful religion or culture, insult or demonize no peace-minded foreign leader, and spare no effort in meeting those obligations of leadership and assistance that our comparative economic strength has thrust upon us. We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of restraint and empathy, not on military might.

In the final analysis, our nation cannot be secure around the world unless our citizens are secure at home—secure not only from external attack, but secure as well from the rising tide of national debt, secure from the financial and physical ravages of uninsured disease, secure from discrimination in our schools and neighborhoods, secure from the bitter unrest generated by a widening gap between our richest and poorest citizens. They are not secure in a country lacking reasonable limitations on the sale of handguns to criminals, the mentally disturbed, and prospective terrorists. And our citizens are not secure when some of their fellow citizens, loyal Islamic Americans, are made to feel they are the targets of hysteria or bigotry.

I believe in an America in which the fruits of productivity and prosperity are shared by all, by workers as well as owners, by those at the bottom as well as those at the top; an America in which the sacrifices required by national security are shared by all, by profiteers in the back offices as well as volunteers on the front lines.

In my administration, I shall restore balance and fairness to the national tax system. I shall level the playing field for organized labor. I shall end the unseemly favors to corporations that allow them to profit without competing, for it is through competition that we innovate, and it is through innovation that we raise the wages of our workers. It shames our nation that profits for corporations have soared even as wages for average Americans have fallen. It shames us still more that so many African American men must struggle to find jobs.

We will make sure that no American citizen, from the youngest child to the oldest retiree, and especially no returning serviceman or military veteran, will be denied fully funded medical care of the highest quality.

To pay for these domestic programs, my administration will make sure that subsidies and tax breaks go only to those who need them most, not those who need them least, and that we fund only those weapons systems we need to meet the threats of today and tomorrow, not those of yesterday.

The purpose of public office is to do good, not harm; to change lives, help lives, and save lives, not destroy them. I look upon the presidency not as an opportunity to rule, but as an opportunity to serve. I intend to serve all the people, regardless of party, race, region, or religion.

Let us all, here assembled in this hall, or watching at home, constitute ourselves, rededicate ourselves, as soldiers in a new army. Not an army of death and destruction, but a new army of voters and volunteers, in a new wave of workers for peace and justice at home and abroad, new missionaries for the moral rebirth of our country. I ask for every citizen’s help, not merely those who live in the red states or those who live in the blue states, but every citizen in every state. Although we may be called fools and dreamers, although we will find the going uphill, in the words of the poet: “Say not the struggle naught availeth.” We will change our country’s direction, and hand to the generation that follows a nation that is safer, cleaner, less divided, and less fearful than the nation we will inherit next January.

I’m told that John F. Kennedy was fond of quoting Archimedes, who explained the principle of the lever by declaring: “Give me a place to stand, and I can move the world.” My fellow Americans—here I stand. Come join me, and together we will move the world to a new era of a just and lasting peace.
Source

The majority of college professors believe in God

So basically it's time to quit whining about colleges "making" students into atheists, as I've pointed out before.  (Although college does make them more liberal, and conservatives have all but vilified the intellect.)
According to their study 51.5 percent of professors, responding to the question of whether they believe in God, chose the response, "While I have doubts, I feel that I do believe in God," or the statement, "I know God really exists and I have no doubts about it." While atheists and agnostics in the United States make up about 3 and 4.1 percent of the population, respectively, the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism was much higher among professors: 9.8 percent of professors chose the statement, "I don't believe in God," while another 13.1 percent chose, "I don't know whether there is a God." In other words, religious skepticism is much more common among professors than in the general American population. However, the majority are still believers.

How do these numbers break down by discipline? Gross and Simmons explore how belief in God is distributed among the 20 largest disciplinary fields. In terms of atheists, professors of psychology and mechanical engineering lead the pack with 50 percent and 44.1 percent respectively. Amongst biologists, 33.3 percent were agnostic and 27.5 percent were atheist. Interestingly, 21.6 percent of biologists say that they have no doubt that God exists. In contrast, 63 percent of accounting professors, 56.8 percent of elementary education professors, 48.6 percent of finance professors, 46.5 percent of marketing professors, 45 percent of art professors, and 44.4 percent of both nursing professors and criminal justice professors stated that they know God exists.

Gross and Simmons also attempted to discover the proportion of professors who think of themselves as religiously progressive, moderate, or traditional. They found that professors in the social sciences and humanities are more than twice as likely identify themselves as religiously progressive (32.5 percent and 35 percent, respectively), while a larger number of physical and biological scientists see themselves as moderate (32.2 percent) as opposed to progressive or traditionalist.

The research also describes the religious affiliation of professors in the United States: 37.9 percent can be classified as Protestant, 15.9 percent identify themselves as Roman Catholic, and 9 percent as "Other Christian." Jewish professors make up about 5.4 percent of the sample, and 2.6 percent are Muslim. Overall, 18.6 percent stated that they were "born-again Christians." Around 46 percent of professors who identified themselves as "traditionalist" were also born-again Christians. Although, as noted above, 51.5 percent of professors say they believe in God, 31.2 percent claim to have no religious affiliation. In other words, they don't belong to any particular religion, but still believe in a higher power.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

We're number one!

The National Academy released a new review of its 2005 recommendations (here) for how the US can maintain or increase its standing in an array of global measures of productivity and success (free PDF here).  As you might imagine, the title of this post is satirical.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Samsung Galaxy Tablet

In comparing the tablet options out there, I think the Galaxy is the winner.  Look at the chart:


It's inaccurate for PCWorld to say that it doesn't have phone functionality because of Skype.  The only drawback I see hardware-wise is lower memory, but since it's running Android 2.2 that isn't an issue.

Having Android OS is almost enough on its own to convince me.  But then it adds a smaller size and weight, cameras, 3G service and bluetooth tethering.  Basically I'll not be buying any tablet anytime soon, but once my G1 contract expires...here's hoping for Gingerbread!

Here are Samsung's specs on it:


But I'm still torn because I can only afford so many gadgets, and getting a Google TV box would be great, too...

Friday, October 15, 2010

Income inequality redux

Fantastic resource with lots of graphs and numbers showing just how much our country has been sent down a craphole with the heavily-biased policies of the past twenty years favoring the wealthiest Americans while leaving the other ninety-something percent of us languishing...

PDF version
slideshow version
Slate 10-part series

(redux here)

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

No more certain

The other day I put up a link on my facebook page about the UFO press conference at the National Press Club on Monday. It's only fair to follow up...here are two reports:  CNN, WaPo

I remain strongly skeptical.

"Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says"

Read this:  "Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says"

The last time I quoted Steve Prothero from a Newsweek piece, it was unflattering:
"The hard-core atheist," Prothero writes, "once a stock figure in American life, has gone the way of the freak show."
This time he sounds a little better:
Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University and author of "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't," served as an advisor on the survey. "I think in general the survey confirms what I argued in the book, which is that we know almost nothing about our own religions and even less about the religions of other people," he said.
But Alan Cooperman, of Pew Forum, nails it:
"[Atheists and agnostics] are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."
And that's why we don't buy it anymore.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

"Consent of the governed?"

One of the lines in the Republicans' new agenda document that made my eyes roll was when it breathlessly claimed:
In a self-governing society, the only bulwark against the power of the state is the consent of the governed, and regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent.
Now, ignoring for a moment the "War on Arithmetic" that the document engaged in, what exactly do the governed want when it comes to taxes? I mean, Teabagger Party Patriots talk a lot about reducing the deficit and so did this document, which means you have two options: cut spending or increase revenues. It turns out that a majority of Americans want the latter when it comes to taxing the rich. Here are six, count 'em, six, recent national polls:
  • A recent CBS poll also found a sizable majority, 56 percent, think the tax cuts for the wealthy should expire.
  • A CNN poll in late August found that a majority, 51 percent, favors ending the tax cuts for the rich, and another 18 percent favor ending them all.  It also found that among independents, 44 percent favor ending the tax cuts for the rich, while another 21 percent favor ending them all. Letting the tax cuts for the rich expire has majority support in all regions of the country except the south***.
  • A new National Journal poll finds that 56 percent support ending either all the Bush tax cuts or just the ones for the wealthy, while barely more than a third want to keep them all.
  • The new Gallup poll shows that 59 percent of Americans -- and a majority of independents -- supports either ending all the Bush tax cuts or just the ones for the wealthy.  Indeed, Gallup finds that Obama's proposal -- ending the tax cuts for the wealthy but not for everyone else -- has the support of 44 percent, more than any other solution.
  • DemocracyCorps found that: "Over half – 55 percent – support increasing taxes by letting some or all of the Bush-era tax cuts expire. Specifically, 42 percent say the cuts should remain in place for the middle class, but expire for those making more than $250,000. Just 38 percent say all the tax cuts should remain in place. This is not a purely base issue – by a 17-point margin, independents favor raising taxes on the wealthy."
  • National Journal Congressional Connection: "On tax cuts, respondents divided into roughly thirds on whether to extend all the tax cuts, repeal them, or repeal only cuts for the wealthy and extend the rest." (That means about 33% + 33% favor reapealing all or those on the wealthy, which means about 66% of Americans favor repealing at least those on the wealthy.)
So if our elected officials truly represent our interests, we should see Republicans' newfound concerns over the consent of the governed win out here and we should see the Bush tax cuts expire as scheduled. Right? ...

***I find that one of the unintentionally hilarious side item from this poll is that the poorest region in the country with the most problems wants to help millionaires and billionaires the most.

The policies that led to staggering income inequality in America

I've written before about a subject that is fascinating to me -- how the gap between 99-point-something percent of us and the titans of Wall Street and industry grew so wide over the past decades.  Now a new book lays out specific lines of evidence which point to this general conclusion:
"One of the singular victories of the rich has been convincing the rest of us that their disproportionate success has been due to abstract economic forces beyond anyone's control (technology, globalization, etc.), not old-fashioned power politics."
Or deceiving many of us into the myth of "trickle-down", supply-side economics...and keeping us distracted by dog-whistle politics over race and religion in the manner of Frank's "What's the matter with Kansas" lines of argument.

And don't forget that the people in Washington who are supposed to represent "our" interests are still arguing over this bullshit:
The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 raised the after-tax incomes of most Americans by a bit over 1 percent -- but raised the after-tax incomes of millionaires by 4.4 percent.
And the sad thing is that most Americans realize this is bullshit but don't have the influence -- or presence of mind to vote in such a way as to change influence -- to change anything.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Bauer is a dolt

The comparison of SC's poor to "stray animals" by SC Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer is old news.  It may be what earned him only 12% of the vote in the gubenatorial primary here despite his huge name recognition advantage.  But in looking back at something else he said at the same meeting as the now-infamous remarks, I genuinely wonder how people this dumb gain so much power and influence:
Bauer went on, and he claimed, "I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina," adding, "You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks. It's there, period."
Let's leave aside for the moment the politics of this statement.  Bauer is right:  the painfully obvious fact is that poverty is correlated to poorer educational outcomes.  But he's an idiot in the way he links them:  the correlation between poverty and low test scores is not caused by allowing poor children to receive free lunch.  It's one thing to not have an IQ of 140, and quite another to be so completely clueless about the logical fallacy being committed here (cum hoc ergo propter hoc).

How anyone could graduate from college -- just a USC business bachelor's degree, but still -- and display this stunning a lack of critical thinking skills is amazing.  How that same person could go on to be the second most powerful person in state government is criminal.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Religious Landscape in America

So this is a picture of what America's religious landscape looks like:


You'll notice the conspicuous absence of a person to represent "no religion" -- even though the percentage of these Americans far outweighs the combined total of Jews and Muslims -- while the other faith groups get their chair at the bar. Perhaps simply more evidence of the open bias against atheists...? Maybe not.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Open-source textbooks

The NYT has a good article on the push for more open-source textbooks. Here are some chemistry-related resources I put together a while back:

Open-source textbooks
  • CK12.org - physics, biology, calculus, engineering and more
Other open-source chemistry textbooks
Useful wikis
Resources for open-source textbooks

Monday, August 2, 2010

Losing our humanity, one status update at a time

I have a blog. And a twitter feed. Just in case you didn't know.

I've had experiences with posting things online and then later regretting it. I've had things end up documented online that I now worry -- a little -- could end up costing me a job one day, or the respect of peers and colleagues. In a very real sense I've grown up in the digital age and learned its pros and cons the hard way.

An article in last week's NYT Magazine explores this in depth. Entitled "The Web Means the End of Forgetting", it explores how people have lost jobs and been haunted by things posted online. If you think the article is too pessimistic, it still certainly reinforces the idea of blogging anonymously and being very careful in who you friend on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., and what you put there. If you think the article gets it just about right, you'll pull your real name off of these platforms (or close them entirely) and begin to try to clean up your digital history.

Here's a snippet from that article that sums it up:
We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.
Humans deserve the ability to have "supid moments" forgotten and forgiven. We don't deserve to be labeled and solely categorized on the basis of one or two things that make their way online. People used to get to choose the words on their tombstones. Now it seems that tools on the Web -- and the way we use it -- will ensure we're remembered for something we'd rather not be. And maybe even assigned value on that basis. Everybody knows that people are nicer in person, both in the way they treat each other and in the fullness of their character, than they are online. But we all forget that when we find sites like LOLFacebook Moments and laugh at others' misfortunes there.

In this week's version of the magazine, another article, "I Tweet, Therefore I Am" -- looks at the way these social media change our concept of the self and blur the line between who we are versus who we present to others. Here's a snippet from that article that really makes me pause:
“On Twitter or Facebook you’re trying to express something real about who you are,” she explained. “But because you’re also creating something for others’ consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to your audience more and more. So those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance. Your psychology becomes a performance.” Referring to “The Lonely Crowd,” the landmark description of the transformation of the American character from inner- to outer-directed, Turkle added, “Twitter is outer-directedness cubed.”

The fun of Twitter and, I suspect, its draw for millions of people, is its infinite potential for connection, as well as its opportunity for self-expression. I enjoy those things myself. But when every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight? When we reflexively post each feeling, what becomes of reflection? When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy? The risk of the performance culture, of the packaged self, is that it erodes the very relationships it purports to create, and alienates us from our own humanity.
We all enjoy feedback, and so are much more likely to put things on Facebook that people will click the "Like" button on. We want to be witty. We want to post photos that we look good in and "un-tag" the ones we don't. We want to have this online self that is the "real" us but at the same time it is exposed to so many people who don't know us that well we can't help but want to put (only) our best face forward. And that's nothing to be ashamed of. But it makes us forget that the most enjoyable part of connecting with others is in sharing the intimacy of bearing your true self. Warty, witless me.

We craft and contrive images and words for the consumption of others using social media that we would not use with a friend face-to-face. I have to wonder how much our actual self begins to adjust to this social bias, this sense of others' expectations. And so I think some of us who jumped on Facebook back in 2005 not only lost a sense of what real "friends" are by having 400 on Facebook, but also a sense of our humanity.

I'm really thinking about changing my online self now. I've done it before. Maybe in so doing I'll help save my actual self.

The difference in the parties distilled down

Lots of people have looked at how the two parties govern and concluded, even admitting all the faults with the Democratic Party, that Republicans do not govern well. They tend to spend about the same (sometimes more) as Democrats but tend to cut taxes and so run up large deficits. Ed Brayton has a great item on this today:
For all the Republican rhetoric about smaller government and "tax and spend liberals," the fact is that over the past 50 years the size of government has grown more under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones -- and so has the size of the debt because of their reluctance to raise taxes.

From 1962-2001, the average growth in total federal spending under Republican presidents has been 7.57%; under Democrats, 6.96%. Bush certainly did not help those averages any after 2001. During that same period, the average yearly deficit under Democrats was $36 billion; the average under Republicans was $190 billion. So under Republicans, spending grows more but revenues grow less because they always insist on tax cuts.

And that means taxes must go up at some point to pay the cost of the deficit spending plus the interest on that borrowing. I think part of the GOP strategy for the past 50 years (40 at least) has been to drive up the deficit intentionally by raising spending and cutting taxes, knowing that when the Democrats are in control they will have to raise taxes. Then they can say, "See, the Democrats are always raising your taxes!" -- but without acknowledging that it was made necessary by their own tax and borrow policies.

The fact is that neither party has any interest in actually reducing spending. The difference is that the Democrats are generally more willing to pay for it with taxes while the Republicans refuse to do so. And I think that is a deliberate strategy on their part.

True. It's the self-fulfilling prophecy of conservatism: if you suck at governing, you run on the platform that "government sucks"...and so it starts to.  Then people stop believing they can hope to elect politicians on the basis of getting things done using policy and instead elect people who promise to do very little in general -- besides cutting your taxes, of course. Not only do Republicans admit there is a "starve the beast" mentality out there which never actually works, they don't even pretend to have an answer to basic questions about how to finance the huge deficits they create with their tax cuts for the rich.

There was an op-ed in the NYT on Sunday that gives a lot more details and background to this topic (spending and taxing by the GOP).

Monday, June 14, 2010

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Oil stuff

The last time I wrote on peak oil, I felt a little more panicky than I do now. I realize now that -- in all likelihood -- there will be a paradigm shift in energy consumption that will pretty much prevent a catastrophe; culture evolves.

The NYT has an article today looking at a growing group of people feeding off the panic I used to feel: they sell courses and books on surviving the aftermath of peak oil. Meanwhile, over at The Oil Drum, an interesting piece points out that the blame for the spill is ultimately ours -- and by that I mean especially Americans in general -- and not BP's.

Friday, May 21, 2010

The failure of libertarianism

I've written before about how we can use the evidence of the self-fulfilling prophecy of failure in governance to reject the GOP.

Now, I have sympathy for libertarians...or at least more sympathy for them than this guy does. Most of the ones I've conversed with are pretty smart people. Probably smarter, on average, than a typical conservative.

But I think that things like race relations show clearly the failure of libertarianism in creating a just society. As Bruce Bartlett writes,
As we know from history, the free market did not lead to a breakdown of segregation. Indeed, it got much worse, not just because it was enforced by law but because it was mandated by self-reinforcing societal pressure. Any store owner in the South who chose to serve blacks would certainly have lost far more business among whites than he gained. There is no reason to believe that this system wouldn't have perpetuated itself absent outside pressure for change.

In short, the libertarian philosophy of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s gave us almost 100 years of segregation, white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs, the KKK, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color. The gains made by the former slaves in the years after the Civil War were completely reversed once the Supreme Court effectively prevented the federal government from protecting them. Thus we have a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy and an indisputable conclusion: it didn't work. Freedom did not lead to a decline in racism; it only got worse.
Bingo.

Monday, May 17, 2010

On crazy conservatives, again

There is a difference between being a thoughtful David Brooks-type conservative and a foaming-at-the-mouth, dismantle the entire federal government Tea Party Patriot teabagger. What I asked a while back is why so many Republicans these days seem to fall into the latter category.

It only seems to be getting worse.
Utah Republicans have denied Robert Bennett, a very conservative three-term senator, a place on the ballot, because he’s not conservative enough. In Maine, party activists have pushed through a platform calling for, among other things, abolishing both the Federal Reserve and the Department of Education. And it’s becoming ever more apparent that real power within the G.O.P. rests with the ranting talk-show hosts.
...
To be fair, however, it’s not all a matter of perception. Right-wing extremism may be the same as it ever was, but it clearly has more adherents now than it did a couple of years ago. Why? It may have a lot to do with a troubled economy.

True, that’s not how it was supposed to work. When the economy plunged into crisis, many observers — myself included — expected a political shift to the left. After all, the crisis made nonsense of the right’s markets-know-best, regulation-is-always-bad dogma. In retrospect, however, this was naïve: voters tend to react with their guts, not in response to analytical arguments — and in bad times, the gut reaction of many voters is to move right.

That’s the message of a recent paper by the economists Markus Brückner and Hans Peter Grüner, who find a striking correlation between economic performance and political extremism in advanced nations: in both America and Europe, periods of low economic growth tend to be associated with a rising vote for right-wing and nationalist political parties. The rise of the Tea Party, in other words, was exactly what we should have expected in the wake of the economic crisis.

So where does our political system go from here? Over the near term, a lot will depend on economic recovery. If the economy continues to add jobs, we can expect some of the air to go out of the Tea Party movement.

But don’t expect extremists to lose their grip on the G.O.P. anytime soon. What we’re seeing in places like Utah and Maine isn’t really a change in the party’s character: it has been dominated by extremists for a long time. The only thing that’s different now is that the rest of the country has finally noticed.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Teabaggers

The label "teabaggers" has been proudly endorsed by the...um, "Tea Party" people for some time. One old lady even said she was "Teabagging 4 Jesus".

Now it seems they're pissed about the President referring to them by that label.

Video from Rachel Maddow 4/09:

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Feeling confirmation

While both ends of the political spectrum suffer from selection bias, I've always felt that there is some intrinsic property to being a liberal that lends itself to intellectual honesty and curiosity. On the other hand, I see conservatism largely runs like religion: it's a set of beliefs about what should be true. Government is bad. Full stop. Ignore the reality of the FDIC and Social Security.

Krugman confirms this.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Psilocybin

I wrote about two years ago about the interesting research done on psilocybin. The NYT has a great in-depth article discussing the latest research efforts to measure the drug's effects on depression and anxiety. Fundamentally, it has the ability to melt away one's sense of self and this seems to have long-term effects elevating mood and perspective.
Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who meditate. These similarities have been identified in neural imaging studies conducted by Swiss researchers and in experiments led by Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins.

In one of Dr. Griffiths’s first studies, involving 36 people with no serious physical or emotional problems, he and colleagues found that psilocybin could induce what the experimental subjects described as a profound spiritual experience with lasting positive effects for most of them. None had had any previous experience with hallucinogens, and none were even sure what drug was being administered.

To make the experiment double-blind, neither the subjects nor the two experts monitoring them knew whether the subjects were receiving a placebo, psilocybin or another drug like Ritalin, nicotine, caffeine or an amphetamine. Although veterans of the ’60s psychedelic culture may have a hard time believing it, Dr. Griffiths said that even the monitors sometimes could not tell from the reactions whether the person had taken psilocybin or Ritalin.

The monitors sometimes had to console people through periods of anxiety, Dr. Griffiths said, but these were generally short-lived, and none of the people reported any serious negative effects. In a survey conducted two months later, the people who received psilocybin reported significantly more improvements in their general feelings and behavior than did the members of the control group.

The findings were repeated in another follow-up survey, taken 14 months after the experiment. At that point most of the psilocybin subjects once again expressed more satisfaction with their lives and rated the experience as one of the five most meaningful events of their lives.

Since that study, which was published in 2008, Dr. Griffiths and his colleagues have gone on to give psilocybin to people dealing with cancer and depression, like Dr. Martin, the retired psychologist from Vancouver. Dr. Martin’s experience is fairly typical, Dr. Griffiths said: an improved outlook on life after an experience in which the boundaries between the self and others disappear.

In interviews, Dr. Martin and other subjects described their egos and bodies vanishing as they felt part of some larger state of consciousness in which their personal worries and insecurities vanished. They found themselves reviewing past relationships with lovers and relatives with a new sense of empathy.

“It was a whole personality shift for me,” Dr. Martin said. “I wasn’t any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people.”

The subjects’ reports mirrored so closely the accounts of religious mystical experiences, Dr. Griffiths said, that it seems likely the human brain is wired to undergo these “unitive” experiences, perhaps because of some evolutionary advantage.

“This feeling that we’re all in it together may have benefited communities by encouraging reciprocal generosity,” Dr. Griffiths said. “On the other hand, universal love isn’t always adaptive, either.”
Interesting, and definitely deserving of more follow-up work. What I don't like is this sentiment:
“There’s this coming together of science and spirituality,” said Rick Doblin, the executive director of MAPS. “We’re hoping that the mainstream and the psychedelic community can meet in the middle and avoid another culture war. Thanks to changes over the last 40 years in the social acceptance of the hospice movement and yoga and meditation, our culture is much more receptive now, and we’re showing that these drugs can provide benefits that current treatments can’t.”
The problem with that way of thinking is that it treats spirituality as this thing that is separate from the natural operation of our brains. No one doubts that science can study the natural operation of our brains, and so when Doblin describes a "coming together" he implies that there is some supernatural phenomenon that is outside of the purview of science. Bull. Spirituality is simply the mind being what the brain does, and what the brain does is chemistry. The more we learn about brain functions the more we can replicate and induce "spiritual experiences," proving them to be just another natural phenomenon that can be reduced to material causes.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Some good news, for once

This hits close to home:
With only seven reporters on the Bristol Herald Courier's staff, two bottles of cheap champagne were plenty to toast the newspaper's Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting on Monday.

The Media General newspaper with a circulation of 33,000 received journalism's highest award for the reporting of Daniel Gilbert on the mismanagement of natural gas royalties owed to landowners in Virginia.

"It's a hell of an honor," Gilbert, 28, said moments after learning of the newspaper's award. "It underscores the importance of public service reporting, especially in rural areas."

Editor J. Todd Foster bought the champagne across the street at Food City before the announcement and stuck the bottles in the trunk of his car. He figured he could celebrate a Pulitzer or console himself later if the newspaper didn't win for the celebrated series.

"I'm doing great now," said Foster, who also delivered a cake to the newsroom for the celebration.

The newspaper in an area known primarily for Bristol Motor Speedway reports on an a vast area in far southwest Virginia on the Tennessee border.

"This is validation that a newspaper with limited resources can do world-class journalism," Foster said as he ordered out for more champagne.

Foster said Gilbert's reporting required "a lot of shoe leather" and a tenacious journalist.

"It's why newspapers will continue to survive in some form," Foster said of Gilbert's reporting. "Nobody else is going to do this sort of reporting."

Gilbert investigated a Virginia law that showed how a state board allowed the energy industry to funnel into an unaudited escrow fund tens of millions of dollars in royalties owed to people in one of the poorest regions of the state.

The series led to the first audit of the decades-old escrow account intended for those payments and reform legislation.

"Those people who had mineral rights weren't getting paid," Gilbert said.

The reporting had already garnered national recognition, including top prize for newspapers under 100,000 circulation in an Investigative Reporters and Editors contest.

Gilbert, a University of Chicago graduate who had a freelance career before joining the Bristol newspaper in 2007, said he began his reporting in late 2008 and it "took months to figure out what the story was."

He read books on mineral rights, spoke to a lot of attorneys and attended IRE training for computer-assisted reporting.

"I used whatever time I could get to read up on the law," Gilbert said.

Foster, a veteran investigative journalist, said there were only a couple reporters in the newsroom when he learned the newspaper had won a Pulitzer.

"We have seven news reporters covering an area the size of Connecticut," Foster said. "Nobody was really here."

For his part, Gilbert said the Pulitzer won't send him looking for a new job.

"I have no plans to leave," he said. "Journalism is a pretty uncertain place these days. There's still a lot to do."

More here.
The Bristol Herald Courier, a small paper in the coalfields of Appalachia, beat out journalism's powerhouses to win the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for uncovering a scandal in which Virginia landowners were deprived of millions in natural gas royalties.

The seven-reporter daily was honored for what many regard as an endangered form of journalism in this age of wrenching newspaper cutbacks — aggressive reporting on local issues.

...

"You could see they're really doing serious journalism," he said. "I think over time they're going to get stronger."

The 33,000-circulation Bristol Herald Courier won for reporter Daniel Gilbert's computer analysis that showed how a state board allowed the energy industry to funnel into an unaudited escrow fund tens of millions of dollars in royalties owed to people in one of the poorest regions of Virginia.

Gilbert, 28, called the award "a hell of an honor" and said it underscores the importance of public service reporting in rural areas.

With its small staff, two bottles of cheap champagne were all the newsroom needed to mark the occasion.

Editor J. Todd Foster said the story required "a lot of shoe leather" and a tenacious reporter. "It's why newspapers will continue to survive in some form," Foster said of Gilbert's reporting. "Nobody else is going to do this sort of reporting."

spanking

Time cites a new Tulane study showing that kids who are spanked are more likely to be
"...defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, become frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against other people or animals."
Well I guess that means you should never spank, right?

The scientist in me immediately reacted to the study by thinking: "What if the other kids are less defiant to begin with, requiring less spanking?" Is this study simply another informative look at the cum hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy?

In raising children myself, the thought is that spanking can be a tool that one uses, but should never be the first (or even second) one.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Interest rates to rise

Depressing:


Interest Rates Have Nowhere to Go but Up
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Published: April 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/economy/11rates.html

Even as prospects for the American economy brighten, consumers are about to face a new financial burden: a sustained period of rising interest rates.

That, economists say, is the inevitable outcome of the nation’s ballooning debt and the renewed prospect of inflation as the economy recovers from the depths of the recent recession.

The shift is sure to come as a shock to consumers whose spending habits were shaped by a historic 30-year decline in the cost of borrowing.

“Americans have assumed the roller coaster goes one way,” said Bill Gross, whose investment firm, Pimco, has taken part in a broad sell-off of government debt, which has pushed up interest rates. “It’s been a great thrill as rates descended, but now we face an extended climb.”

The impact of higher rates is likely to be felt first in the housing market, which has only recently begun to rebound from a deep slump. The rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has risen half a point since December, hitting 5.31 last week, the highest level since last summer.

Along with the sell-off in bonds, the Federal Reserve has halted its emergency $1.25 trillion program to buy mortgage debt, placing even more upward pressure on rates.

“Mortgage rates are unlikely to go lower than they are now, and if they go higher, we’re likely to see a reversal of the gains in the housing market,” said Christopher J. Mayer, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School. “It’s a really big risk.”

Each increase of 1 percentage point in rates adds as much as 19 percent to the total cost of a home, according to Mr. Mayer.

The Mortgage Bankers Association expects the rise to continue, with the 30-year mortgage rate going to 5.5 percent by late summer and as high as 6 percent by the end of the year.

Another area in which higher rates are likely to affect consumers is credit card use. And last week, the Federal Reserve reported that the average interest rate on credit cards reached 14.26 percent in February, the highest since 2001. That is up from 12.03 percent when rates bottomed in the fourth quarter of 2008 — a jump that amounts to about $200 a year in additional interest payments for the typical American household.

With losses from credit card defaults rising and with capital to back credit cards harder to come by, issuers are likely to increase rates to 16 or 17 percent by the fall, according to Dennis Moroney, a research director at the TowerGroup, a financial research company.

“The banks don’t have a lot of pricing options,” Mr. Moroney said. “They’re targeting people who carry a balance from month to month.”

Similarly, many car loans have already become significantly more expensive, with rates at auto finance companies rising to 4.72 percent in February from 3.26 percent in December, according to the Federal Reserve.

Washington, too, is expecting to have to pay more to borrow the money it needs for programs. The Office of Management and Budget expects the rate on the benchmark 10-year United States Treasury note to remain close to 3.9 percent for the rest of the year, but then rise to 4.5 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2012.

The run-up in rates is quickening as investors steer more of their money away from bonds and as Washington unplugs the economic life support programs that kept rates low through the financial crisis. Mortgage rates and car loans are linked to the yield on long-term bonds.

Besides the inflation fears set off by the strengthening economy, Mr. Gross said he was also wary of Treasury bonds because he feared the burgeoning supply of new debt issued to finance the government’s huge budget deficits would overwhelm demand, driving interest rates higher.

Nine months ago, United States government debt accounted for half of the assets in Mr. Gross’s flagship fund, Pimco Total Return. That has shrunk to 30 percent now — the lowest ever in the fund’s 23-year history — as Mr. Gross has sold American bonds in favor of debt from Europe, particularly Germany, as well as from developing countries like Brazil.

Last week, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note briefly crossed the psychologically important threshold of 4 percent, as the Treasury auctioned off $82 billion in new debt. That is nearly twice as much as the government paid in the fall of 2008, when investors sought out ultrasafe assets like Treasury securities after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the credit crisis.

Though still very low by historical standards, the rise of bond yields since then is reversing a decline that began in 1981, when 10-year note yields reached nearly 16 percent.

From that peak, steadily dropping interest rates have fed a three-decade lending boom, during which American consumers borrowed more and more but managed to hold down the portion of their income devoted to paying off loans.

Indeed, total household debt is now nine times what it was in 1981 — rising twice as fast as disposable income over the same period — yet the portion of disposable income that goes toward covering that debt has budged only slightly, increasing to 12.6 percent from 10.7 percent.

Household debt has been dropping for the last two years as recession-battered consumers cut back on borrowing, but at $13.5 trillion, it still exceeds disposable income by $2.5 trillion.

The long decline in rates also helped prop up the stock market; lower rates for investments like bonds make stocks more attractive.

That tailwind, which prevented even worse economic pain during the recession, has ceased, according to interviews with economists, analysts and money managers.

“We’ve had almost a 30-year rally,” said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor’s. “That’s come to an end.”

Just as significant as the bottom-line impact will be the psychological fallout from not being able to buy more while paying less — an unusual state of affairs that made consumer spending the most important measure of economic health.

“We’ve gotten spoiled by the idea that interest rates will stay in the low single-digits forever,” said Jim Caron, an interest rate strategist with Morgan Stanley. “We’ve also had a generation of consumers and investors get used to low rates.”

For young home buyers today considering 30-year mortgages with a rate of just over 5 percent, it might be hard to conceive of a time like October 1981, when mortgage rates peaked at 18.2 percent. That meant monthly payments of $1,523 then compared with $556 now for a $100,000 loan.

No one expects rates to return to anything resembling 1981 levels. Still, for much of Wall Street, the question is not whether rates will go up, but rather by how much.
The economy will probably slow down its growth next year, in part due to these factors.

See this related post.

Punishment and condemnation

I've heard people ask the same question that Robert Wright, author of Moral Animal, poses in this column:
In this view, if I had Tiger Woods’s genes, and was born into his environment, I’d become exactly what he’s become. And so too with all others who violate norms or laws, including the most heinous criminals: If any of us had been born with their genes, into their environment, presumably we’d have become them. So how can we possibly condemn or punish them? Yet, as a practical matter, we have to punish heinous criminals, right?
First, I'd like to respond to his major premise: that athletes like Tiger serve as de facto role models in our society, and so their personal behavior off the athletic field is very important. He may be right that children do hold up athletes as role models, but perhaps this is a failure in our parenting. Perhaps the focus ought to be on getting children to recognize altruistic and philanthropic behaviors as superior indicators of character, and thus emulation, to athletic prowess. Perhaps we should spend more time explaining that athletes are just really good at their sport, not superheroes worthy of all-around emulation.

Back to his moral dilemma: it's not so troubling to worry about justification if all we're doing is condemning bad behavior with rhetoric. But the more substantive thorny issue involves crime and punishment: "Well, if people just behave how their genes and environment cause them to, then how can we blame/condemn them for it?" The feeling is that we aren't justified in blaming someone if they "can't help themselves" on some level.

It's important to note that the issue of justice and punishment don't have to involve some sort of moral high ground. When we lock up a murderer or rapist, we are protecting society from a dangerous person. On purely utilitarian grounds, this person has forfeited their right to go freely in society by behaving in such a way as to pose a grave threat to the freedoms of others to do the same. And so we don't have to say we're "better" than that person. We just have to say that we don't pose the same threat as they do, and so punishment does not have to equal condemnation.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Stupid arguments

MediaMatters flagged a blog by one of the nutball religious right organizations, the American Family Association ("We love all families...so long as they're straight and Christian."). In it, the author argues, with apparent seriousness, that we ought to adopt a policy to stop Muslims from immigrating to America and ship off the ones who are already here.

After I read it, shaking my head, I read the next blog post by the same author, and I just literally can't believe how stupid it is. First, I don't know of any liberal "elitist" who thinks all cultures are "equal" in the way that he pretends. Rather, most postmoderns think that certain customs or traditions within culture are difficult to objectively evaluate. I don't think anyone would say that there aren't valuable things within all cultures, as well as some things that we should perhaps all be critical of (e.g., Western culture promotes materialism and Social Darwinism).

The last part of his post just has to be a spoof. I hope. Read this part:
My point all along has been that the more devout a Muslim becomes, the more of a threat he becomes to our national security. And we just can't know when a "moderate" Muslim, like Maj. Hasan, will suddenly decide to get serious about his faith and wind up going jihadi on Americans.

The question then, which regrettably I failed to ask Imran, is this: how can we tell the difference between the Muslims we don't have to worry about (such as Imran) and the ones we do (such as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan)? I've yet to receive a satisfactory answer to that question. Once Muslims help us to find a foolproof way to identify the troublesome Muslims, it might make sense to loosen immigration restrictions. Until that day comes, unrestricted Islamic immigration remains a threat to our national security.
Ok. So let me change a few words around there and give that back to this idiot:
My point all along has been that the more devout a Christian becomes, the more of a threat he becomes to our national security. And we just can't know when a "moderate" Christian may evolve into "Christian" militias or Tim McVeigh, and suddenly decide to get serious about his (or her) beliefs and wind up killing Americans.

The question then, which regrettably I failed to ask Bryan Fischer, is this: how can we tell the difference between the Christians we don't have to worry about (such as Bryan Fischer) and the ones we do (such as "Christian" militias or Tim McVeigh)? I've yet to receive a satisfactory answer to that question. Once Christians help us to find a foolproof way to identify the troublesome Christians, it might make sense to loosen immigration restrictions. Until that day comes, unrestricted Christian immigration remains a threat to our national security. We should send devout Christians back to their home countries.
I wonder how he would feel if someone said this to him? I mean, hey, our country is not (to Bryan Fischer's chagrin) a "Christian nation", but an explicitly secular state. We can't afford to have all these devout Christians running around trying to make everyone do what they want them to do.