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Showing posts from February, 2012

Plinkett reviews

Pardon me, I'm just recovering from pounding every review  on this section of Red Letter Media, and trying to figure out just why they were so compelling. (I'd recommend watching at least the Phantom Menace  review, just to get a taste. Trust me, it's worth it.) They're the first reviews I've ever seen that are in some cases almost as long as the films themselves—but they're so enjoyable I watched the ones even for movies I hadn't even seen before. Anyway, here's my bullet-point list: 1. They're really funny. That's the most obvious good part. The timing, delivery, and visuals are really good, and show some obvious hard work. The dude's wheedling drone was also great. I'm hearing it in my head now reading other people. The joke about how Lucas changed the title of Return of the Jedi  (in the Sith  review) had me cackling hours later. (The rape jokes, on the other hand, for me went too far in places.) 2. They go through the plot with a

Sunday chemistry blogging

Got a cold, and can't be bothered to jump through the increasingly obnoxious hoops to get some cold medicine? Witness this awesome paper from, apparently, the Journal of Apocryphal Chemistry: A novel and straightforward synthesis of pseudoephidrine from readily available N-methylamphetamine is presented. This practical synthesis is expected to be a disruptive technology replacing the need to find an open pharmacy. Nice to know that good old American spirit of innovation is still alive and well.

How Nelson Mandela helped create South Africa's unemployment crisis

In case you didn't know, unemployment in South Africa is spectacularly high: about 24 percent at last measure. This is no fluke, either; it's been at least that high pretty much since the end of apartheid: Obviously I'm no economist, but I've been trying to come up with a lay story about why this is. Here are my picks for proximate explanations: 1.  The education system is atrocious in many places . And I mean atrocious , as in teachers don't set foot in the classroom and Grade 12 kids can neither read nor write nor multiply simple numbers in their heads. Though there are many top-notch schools in South Africa, mostly in the cities, in rural areas there are a lot more awful ones. This is surely behind the persistent demand for high-skilled people in government and business while millions sit idle—the unemployment rate is highly correlated with educational attainment. This raises the question, though, of why nobody sets up China-style sweatshops to take advanta

In case of low blood pressure emergency

Via Atrios , witness the abject, soulless NIMBYism from the well-fed aristocrats on the Upper East Side: They are fears normally associated with the less-charming realities of urban life, like a homeless shelter or a late-night dive bar. But in this case, they are focused on something quite different: new entrances to a subway station. Some New Yorkers can only dream of having a subway train ferry them straight to their front door, but residents of East 69th Street say the entrances have no place on what they believe to be one of the prettiest streets around. That kind of entitlement has to create its own weather.

I'm with Rand Paul on this one

This law looks to be totally bogus. Even if we grant that enforcing laws is all well and good, those who may have committed a crime deserve a speedy trial. You know, I think I read that somewhere .

Collected links

1. A strain of MRSA has been definitely tied to pig farming . The question of "which gift from God have we squandered most outrageously?" has some stiff competition, but tossing away antibiotics, surely one of the greatest discoveries in history,  so we can eat slightly cheaper meat for a few decades at most  takes the crown for me. Tossing pearls before swine, you might say. 2. The new Romer & Romer paper on marginal tax rate incentive effects . 3. Ferociously critical look at Steve Jobs . The shine is definitely coming off the old Jobs mystique. 4. The fall of Scott Ritter . 5. John Sullivan on DFW and his last book, The Pale King .

Good writing

I really enjoyed this Men's Journal  piece on the rise of bodybuilding I linked earlier. It's written in a kind of goofy, exaggerated, hyper-manly style that fits the subject perfectly: "Robby Robinson, a wedge of black marble, arrived in Venice Beach in 1975 with one oversize suitcase and seven dollars." "Wherever Arnold went, his Rat Pack followed; he rolled eight-deep, even to breakfast." "No one had to hunt and peck for a source, either: Mexico’s farmacias were two hours south, every shelf stocked with prime gear." Well done.

Economics and climate

Noah Smith has a great post laying out a kind of bird's eye view of macroeconomic models. Here are two pulls; first, a look at the simplifying assumptions behind the first iteration of the most common macroeconomic model: 1. The assumption that the economy can be modeled with a representative agent ; in other words, that the macroeconomy behaves as if there's only one person in it. 2. The assumption that government doesn't exist, or exists only to transfer income from one person to another. 3. The assumption that prices are fully flexible. 4. The assumption that firms are simple profit-maximizers and make zero profits in equilibrium. 5. The assumption that individuals have rational expectations . 6. The assumption that risk preferences can be entirely modeled using people's utility of consumption, and that this utility can be modeled using a small number of parameters that do not change over time. 7. The assumption that labor markets clear. 8. The assump

Xhosa is hard to say

Over at The The Crux, Julie Sedivy has an interesting breakdown of how clicks are used in both African languages and English: If clicks do sound like exotic noises to you, it might surprise you to know that there’s nothing especially difficult about making click sounds in speech—they’re easily mastered by toddlers who still struggle making truly difficult sounds like s and z. And it might really surprise you to learn, as found in a recent study by Melissa Wright at Birmingham City University, that as an English speaker, you likely riddle your own speech with click sounds, using them much more frequently and systematically than just the occasional “tsk” of disapproval. If that’s so, why on earth do the African clicks sound so strange to English speakers, to the point of being un-language-like? It's a good post, and that might be an easy thing for toddlers to learn, but as a grown adult, it is devilishly tricky to master even the three basic click sounds in Zulu and Xhosa. Especia

Collected links

1. Big NYT  piece on Iran and war . Much better than the last go-round. 2. The rise of muscle culture . 3. Mark Kleiman has a basically reasonable piece on Mexico and the drug war . 4. Matt Yglesias' new book is coming out March 6th . Reserve your automatically delivered e-copy now, only $4! 5. Conor Friedersdorf has a magnificent piece on beer in his life . Utterly wonderful.

Everyone hates Utah

Kevin Drum has a crazy chart looking at the favorability ratings of each state: Coincidentally, Colorado (where I lived from age nine) is the fifth-most popular state, while Utah (where I was born and lived until age nine) is the   fifth-least popular state. This is nuts, in my view. Sure, Utah has more than its fair share of crazies, but that's more than balanced out by its superior scenery and generally high-quality governance.

Parfit on the morality of abortion

Karl Smith complains that the discourse around the morality of abortion lacks philosophical rigor: Abortion seems to me to be a particularly poor example of a lack of moral resolution. From listening to the discourse from almost every corner its clear that bordering on no one takes the issue seriously and is primarily just posturing. I have heard no mention of whether or not fetuses or infants for that matter are p-zombies and if so would that matter. I have heard no serious treatment of the difference between the duty to prevent miscarriages and the duty to prevent abortion. I have heard no mention of whether or not all potential existing persons have moral relevance. I have heard no mention of wrongful life. These are trivially basic issues underpinning all this, yet the conversation does not even try to address them. Not fail. Not wave away. They simply don’t try. Now, it seems here Smith is talking about the mainstream conversation, not academic philosophy, but since I've be

Pointless accumulation

Steve Randy Waldman brings us an equation , with a graph and some comments: UNIT_LABOR_COSTS = PRICE_LEVEL × LABOR_SHARE_OF_OUTPUT  An increase in unit labor costs can mean one of two things. It can reflect an increase in the price level — inflation — or it can reflect an increase in labor’s share of output. The Federal Reserve is properly in the business of restraining the price level. It has no business whatsoever tilting the scales in the division of income between labor and capital. Yet throughout the Great Moderation, increases in unit labor costs were the standard alarm bell cited by Fed policy makers as an event that would call for more restrictive policy. And all through the Great Moderation, except for a brief surge during the tech boom, labor’s share of output was in secular decline. (More recently, the Great Recession has been accompanied by a stunning collapse in labor share. Record corporate profits!) In case it's not clear, the graph is showing labor's share

Big-time bloggers have fathers too

Yglesias pulls one of my old tricks : outsourcing a post to the old man! I swore I was going to hang up. What I had done so far was foolish, but romantic. This was merely stupid. I barely recognized the voice that gave them my credit card number for three seats $230 each. I expected my sons to have me committed in order to save what was left of their inheritance. Good stuff. It even kind of sounds like my dad. Rafael Yglesias, I should note, is actually a very successful novelist in his own right.

Collected links

1. Science has spoken: the rich really are more morally depraved . 2. Chunks of virus DNA has been found in critical human genes . 3. Physics have built a "single atom transistor." Not quite as miraculous as that headline sounds, but still cool. 4. Christina Romer's favorite books . 5. Obama's idiotic, and inexplicable, hard turn against medical marijuana . WTF, man?

Speaking of God

Here's Daniel Larison making a fairly obvious riposte against Rick Santorum's vicious swaggering: Santorum has defended his statement in terms of affirming a Biblical understanding of man’s role as a steward of creation, but if we took this later remark at face value we would have to say that Santorum doesn’t understand the concept of stewardship very well. After all, the purpose of Christian stewardship isn’t simply to serve human needs (much less desires), but to preside over the natural world as God’s viceregents and to rule it in a manner pleasing to God, all of which is directed towards giving God glory and thanksgiving for the blessings He has bestowed upon us. We are to see creation as something entrusted to us by God, and as something that we are responsible for preserving and keeping as part of our obedience to Him. That necessarily involves limiting and restraining our desires so as not to exhaust or waste what has been entrusted to us. Viewed that way, we are here

Listening to the King James

So far I'm nearly done with Exodus, and it is by turns tedious and astonishingly beautiful. (Well performed by Alexander Scourby, I should add.) The verse that has thus far stuck in my mind the most is from Genesis 41: 47 . It's when Joseph is in Egypt and running the Pharaoh's business. Pharaoh has a dream which Joseph interprets as seven years of good harvests followed by seven years of famine. Here's how the KJV describes the good years: And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls. Isn't that something? Compare that to the New Living Translation: As predicted, for seven years the land produced bumper crops. It's as written by an accountant. Blah.

The morality of content

Kevin Drum has a provocative thought : I am, as always, speaking only for myself, but I think this is too cramped. The Constitution says that the purpose of patents and copyright is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," but the fact that the Constitution says this doesn't mean it's the only reason to grant patents and copyrights. There's another reason too: because creators have a moral right to profit from their works . In real life, pretty much everyone acts as if they believe this, and I suspect that for most of us it's the real underpinning of our support for IP law. I don't think this works, though as a broke-ass writer I would much like it to be true. The act of writing, or making music, or whatever, is not an intrinsically worthy undertaking. Suppose I write some book and put it in a cabinet in my basement. Do I deserve to profit from that, simply from the act of creating it? If Hitler yet lived would he have a moral claim to monop

Ta-Nehisi Coates and the unbearable whiteness of journalism

Here's the great man riffing off the latest racism directed at Jeremy Lin (people claiming he only gets attention because he's of Asian descent): I would bet that part of the attention that Neil Degresse Tyson gets has to do with people geeking out on a black astrophysicist who can make science interesting. If were not black he probably would be somewhat less interesting. But if he weren't a good communicator, he would not be interesting at all . I consider myself a writer of some merit and talent, who says some interesting things from time to time. That's all very nice. But I understand that if I were in my exact same job, and happened to be just another white dude from an Ivy, I'd attract less interest. Race, as lived by individuals, is biography and people are always interested in biography when it differs from the norm in any field. I have no idea why it should be any different with Lin. Coates is right on this score, and his forthrightness is as always impres

Today in appalling moralizing

Witness Vanessa Rossi , at a New York Times roundup: Portugal has failed to cut its external deficit for a different reason: it has had virtually no internal devaluation. Nominal G.D.P. remains at its 2008 peak. The nation has export capability (over 30 percent of G.D.P.), but it must do more to boost net trade. Portugal may actually be a country that would find adjustment a whole lot easier if it could have a little more wiggle room on its exchange rate. The failure of internal devaluation can only reflect on the moral weakness of the Portuguese, never on the policy itself. By comparison, Ireland may be struggling with the sudden appearance of bank bailout debt, but early fiscal austerity coupled with internal devaluation were effective in stimulating net exports and eliminating its boom-time current account deficit. And export-led growth will at least help to stabilize the Irish economy and improve a budget position now saddled with debt servicing costs. Ah yes, the great Irish suc

Longform depreciation

Matt Yglesias on the immortal digital back catalog : The existence of this deep back catalog is great for readers, but not necessarily as rewarding for the forward-looking production of longform pieces. Each day—each hour, even—all previous "newsy" items become obsolete and the demand for new newsy items is robust. But the existing stock of well-hewn blocks of substantial prose is already very large and it no longer depreciates the way it did in print. His point is well-taken, but it seems to me it would be a rare piece indeed that would last more than a couple years. Novels have a much longer shelf life, and that never stopped the frantic production of new ones, even back in the pre-digital days of yore. Now, I grant that large collections of great longform stuff might have a substantial draw in the aggregate, but I still suspect the large majority of that kind of content will be topical and quickly forgotten, and the back catalogs will be of most interest to the curious fe

Biggish news

So, I've finally got a job, sort of! Last week was the end of work for the old business manager at the Washington Monthly , so I've been asked to step in and pinch hit until they hire someone permanently. The big question now is if I should apply for the real thing. On the one hand, it is a lot of administrative busywork—don't get me wrong, I don't mind that kind of work, I just wonder a bit if I would be sidetracking my career. On the other hand, I really need money. On the third hand, I do think it's important, particularly as the media landscape is shifting beneath our feet, for up-and-comers to be familiar with the nuts-and-bolts of how journalistic outfits make their money. Plus I feel like the Monthly is due for a big overhaul in their business model; I would be very interested in doing something like that. On the fourth hand, I know and like everyone here, and even if I were just doing admin stuff, I'd still be in journalism and in a perfect place to pi

How the cops can jack your property, sell it, and keep the money without any criminal proceedings

Via Balko .

Contraception? Really, GOP?

This never ends . The GOP has managed to whip their base into a frenzy over contraception: But more than the other rallying points, the battle over contraceptive coverage at religiously affiliated institutions has bound together Republicans of all stripes because it hits core GOP themes: religious liberty, government intrusion and reproduction politics. Perhaps more important politically, it has given Republicans something to talk about other than the economy, just when Obama’s gotten a lift from modest gains. The power of the issue with conservatives was on display on the first day of CPAC, where the contraception regulation was the dominant topic — virtually every speaker tried to fire up the audience talking about it. Kevin Drum is righteously pissed : My position on this is plain: the church hierarchy's objection to birth control is medieval and barbaric. All those Catholic pundits raising hell over the new contraception regs should spend their time instead raising hell wit

New York City books bleg

Some time ago I finished The Power Broker , on the recommendation of Kevin Drum , and I think I agree that it's the best nonfiction book I've ever read. So good that I'm still mulling over the lessons therein, and trying to think up a good post on it. But it left me wondering. At the end of the book New York is nearly a smoking ruin. Yet I lived there for a time in 2008-2009 and it was actually quite pleasant. Well governed, at least by US standards. So does anyone know of a good book that could bring me up to present day, and tell me how on Earth they manage to salvage the place? I would be most grateful.

Washington passes marriage equality

Huzzah ! And, for once, a Republican is on the right side of this one:

Collected links

1. Part 2 of Balko's series on the galloping moral panic around prescription painkillers . 2. In defense of blood doping . 3. Please God, no more wars in the Middle East . 4. Some preliminary science on how massage helps heal sore muscles . It has nothing to do with lactic acid. 5. The last WWI veteran has died . RIP Ms. Florence Green. 6. Watch President Obama help shoot a marshmallow cannon . In the name of Science! Gotta say, for as much as I bitch about the guy, sometimes I just can't help but like him.

A table for the ages

Pops says this is maybe his greatest creation yet. I'm inclined to believe him, and that's saying a lot. I won't tell you exactly how it started, but in brief, about 25 years ago my dad bought a slab of sandstone about the size of a sheet of plywood. He put it up on a wood frame, and there it sat, including a move from Utah to Colorado, until a couple months ago when my mom threatened to finally buy a new table or else . The story of how he got it polished is itself quite the yarn—I'll see if I can get him to write it up for you sometime. (In case you don't know, cutting and polishing sandstone is incredibly hard, more difficult than granite.) But here's how it looked after the polisher got through with it: While I was home for Christmas, I helped him move it around with the tractor so we could get the bottom set up to attach the legs and frame, which my dad welded up himself: Unfortunately the bottom of the rock wasn't terribly flat, so we had to gr

Eurodoom update

I've said this before, but things look to be coming to a head in Greece. Felix Salmon explains : This isn’t good; the Greece talks have now moved past their clear deadline and have reached the finger-pointing stage. The broad outline of the dynamics here is now very clear: you need three different parties to agree on a deal for the whole thing to have a chance of success. Private-sector bondholders need to agree to a very deep cut in the value of their bonds; the Greek government needs to agree to enormous spending cuts over and above the 1.5% of GDP that they’ve already offered; and the Troika of the EU, ECB, and IMF needs to agree to pony up extra bailout money to cover the larger-than-expected deficits that Greece is running. His conclusion: If the Troika fails to save Greece, the past 66 years of ever-increasing European unity will come to a sudden and drastic halt, and all eyes will turn to Portugal, asking if it will be next. (The Europeans will say no, and indeed already

Collected links

1. Welcome to Cancerland . The Komen idiocy has a lot of people looking hard at what they actually do, and some of it isn't great. 2. Really good article on the rise of Pitchfork . 3. Potheads in DC . 4. A theory of consulting . This sounds very convincing to me. 5. Seven lessons from the fall of communism in Eastern Europe .

One damn thing after another

On the heels of Koman's shamefaced backpedaling from its decision to defund Planned Parenthood: ...here comes the latest culture war awfulness, from some chowderheaded bigots in Louisiana: Three Girl Scout troops in Louisiana won't be hawking Thin Mints this year. They've disbanded in protest after the Girl Scouts of Colorado accepted seven-year-old transgender child Bobby Montoya as a member. Montoya was born a boy but has considered herself a girl since she was two years old, says her mom Felisha Archuleta. In October, Archuleta took her daughter to speak with a Denver troop leader about signing up, and took her daughter away crying after the Scout leader referred to the child as "it" and said "Everyone will know he's a boy." Three weeks later, the statewide Girl Scouts body issued a statement saying, "If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.

The week in review

The best Onion stuff is usually just the headlines. Embarrassed Steven Chu Accidentally Calls Barack Obama ‘Dad’ In Cabinet Meeting The Huffington Post bit is the best from this one: Poll: GOP Nomination Now Two-Way Race Between Mitt Romney, Total Voter Apathy

Susan G. Komen For the Cure sucks

Jeff Goldberg has the goods : But three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut-off Planned Parenthood. (Komen gives out grants to roughly 2,000 organizations, and the new "no-investigations" rule applies to only one so far.) The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization's new senior vice-president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is "pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood." ...The decision, made in December, caused an uproar inside Komen. Three sources told me that the organization's top public health official, Mollie Williams, resigned in protest immediately following the Komen board's decision to cut off Planned Parenthood. Williams, who

Easy green stimulus

Sorry to keep banging on this particular patch of dirt, but this previous post is a textbook example of what Yglesias is talking about here : The photo above is of a building under construction at 2400 14th Street NW here in the District. It's a pretty big multifamily dwelling and the energy cost of heating the units will, due to the efficiencies inherent in multi-family construction, be substantially less than one a single family detached structure would run you. It's also near a Metro line, near the city's most frequent bus service, and walkable to a wide variety of amenities on the 14th Street and U Street corridors. But like basically all DC real estate projects, it won't be built out to the profit-maximizing height because regulations prohibit the construction of tall buildings. This is precisely the same kind of "jobs" scenario as is at issue with Keystone XL—the private sector wants to finance more building trades employment, but government rules won&

Intern jams

Caught this joint on Pandora. For some reason electronic is my favorite style for writing and research.