October 2007 Archives

David Brooks says that Americans are generally happy with their private lives but dissatisfied with the country at-large.

Researchers from Pew found that 65 percent of Americans are satisfied over all with their own lives — one of the highest rates of personal satisfaction in the world today.

On the other hand, Americans are overwhelmingly pessimistic about their public institutions. That same Pew survey found that only 25 percent of Americans are satisfied with the state of their nation. That 40-point gap between private and public happiness is the fourth-largest gap in the world — behind only Israel, Mexico and Brazil. ...

This happiness gap between the private and the public creates a treacherous political vortex. On the one hand, it means voters are desperate for change. On the other hand, they don’t want a change that will upset the lives they have built for themselves.

On the one hand, they want the country’s political leaders to take bold action. On the other hand, they are extremely cynical about those leaders and are unwilling to trust them with anything that seems risky. ...

These voters don’t believe government can lift their standard of living or lead a moral revival. They want a federal government that will focus on a few macro threats — terrorism, health care costs, energy, entitlement debt and immigration — and stay out of the intimate realms of life. They want a night watchman government that patrols the neighborhood without entering their homes.

Sounds about right to me. Amazing that this is also the federal government envisioned by our founding fathers.

Clinical trials will begin soon to test the hypothesis that tiny vibrations can stimulate stronger bones and reduced fat.

Dr. Rubin, director of the Center for Biotechnology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is reporting that in mice, a simple treatment that does not involve drugs appears to be directing cells to turn into bone instead of fat.

All he does is put mice on a platform that buzzes at such a low frequency that some people cannot even feel it. The mice stand there for 15 minutes a day, five days a week. Afterward, they have 27 percent less fat than mice that did not stand on the platform — and correspondingly more bone.

It can't be hard to build a vibrating platform and test this myself....

(HT: Nick.)

I don't think oil prices affect the stock market nearly as much as many people seem to think. Even still, oil is rather expensive right now and some energy experts expect prices to drop soon.

Here's how Littell sees it. Last year Saudi petrocrats thought demand would slacken at the same time that oil production rose from sources outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Nations. They cut back Saudi production from 9.5 million barrels a day in March 2006 to 8.5 million a year later in order to keep supply and demand balanced and crude prices hovering around $60 per barrel. ...

The Saudis hold the key to long-term oil prices since they are one of the few exporters--Kuwait and Abu Dhabi are the others--with the ability to increase production significantly. Littell says the Saudis realized their mistake and began pumping more oil in May. At the most recent opec meeting on Sept. 11 members agreed to boost production by another 500,000 barrels a day starting Nov. 1. That increase included a bump in the Saudi quota to 8.9 million barrels a day. ...

How long before we get some relief? It takes at least a week for the Saudis to complete the paperwork necessary to ship oil to new customers, including arranging letters of credit and other financial details. Then the oil rides in a ship across the Atlantic for 30 days. Add them together and Littell expects the impact of all that additional oil to hit U.S. markets in a couple of months or so. The Saudis "didn't plan on $80 oil," he says. "They wanted to keep it around $60 and did the wrong thing."

Other "experts" disagree, so your mileage may vary. The great thing about a free market is that it's a self-correcting system and doesn't require meddling by "experts" to reach a good solution.

Am I the only one who thinks burnt Wheat Thins are the best crackers ever? I wish I could buy a whole box of them browned around the edges. Reduced Fat Cheez-Its are also good (better than the regular ones), but nothing can compare with burnt Wheat Thins. I like to dip them in cottage cheese.

This story about Congressional gridlock warms my heart.

This us-against-them mentality has been an ongoing storyline of the new Democratic­-controlled Congress. On the big items — Iraq, health care and spending — party leaders have shunned compromise.

Democrats are under tremendous pressure from liberal activists to take a hard-line approach against everything Bush. Republicans face similar pressure from their own base to stick with the president and prove they are serious about curtailing spending, even if it means less cash for a popular state-run health care program for children not covered by Medicaid. ...

The partisan deadlock is also creating more problems for the new majority. Rank-and-file Democrats have turned on their leaders this fall in a series of minor upheavals, forcing them to suspend consideration of bills to update warrantless wiretapping laws, reclassify the killing of ethnic Armenians almost a century ago, expand workplace protections for gays and lesbians and require all electronic voting machines to produce paper records.

Republicans, meanwhile, have done everything in their power to slow the legislative apparatus with the few procedural tools available to them.

It is possible, though unlikely, that the survival instinct will eventually force a behavioral change in the new Congress. Neither side wants a government shutdown, so it is likely they’ll cut a budget deal — even though conservatives are bracing for a showdown.

And to think that most people use "do-nothing Congress" as a pejorative!

Imagine a stadium, and the floor is covered in $100 bills. Your job is to pick up the money, and you can grab one bill per second. You work full-time, eight hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks per year. Bill Gates still makes more than twice as much money than you.

What's the present value of your job? For a person who earns $50,000 per year after taxes, it would take approximately $1,000,000 invested in tax-free municipal bonds to replace their salary. However, (a) a job that earns $50,000 after-tax income is certainly worth less than (b) $1,000,000 for various obvious reasons:

- Compared to (a), (b) leaves you with at least 40 more hours of free time per week.

- (a) is somewhat fungible; if you leave one job , you can get hired to another similar job with varying degrees of ease. If you lose (b), it can take a lot of (a) to replace it.

- (a) generally ties you to a certain place. You can change jobs, but that will often necessitate many other changes in your life as well.

So how large of a lump sum would you require to quit your job tomorrow? I'd guess it would be less than twenty times your annual after-tax income, but how much less? If there are a lot of opportunities in your field and/or you don't like your job, you might quit for free... lots of people do, every day. So what about you? How much would it take to make you walk out the door?

John Baden explains why periodic downturns are important for a healthy economy. It would be nice if market participants always made smart decisions, but they don't, and downturns are part of how resources are reallocated to those who can manage them well.

Every successful society has devised ways of separating incompetent or systematically unlucky people from the control of valuable resources. (That's why civilized nations provide children and legally incompetent individuals with guardians and trustees.) This is an essential process for all but the most wealthy of nations, e.g., those cursed by great oil wealth. (This windfall wealth situation is the national analogue of individuals winning the lottery; a harbinger of bad things that follow the lack of a need to husband resources.)

A society's economic success is increased if it has sure and quick ways to accomplish this separation, however painful to those who suffer losses. While there will be political pressures to buffer folks from the consequences of economic folly or bad luck, it is socially dangerous to do so. Reality checks should have force, so that those who fail to prudently manage resources will not keep control over them.

We all benefit -- directly or indirectly -- when our civilization's resources are managed by the most competent among us.

As I've written before, the baby boomer generation often disgusts me with its lack of personal responsibility, and the generation's selfishness is nowhere more audacious than when it comes to Social Security. I can't explain it nearly as well as the Heritage Foundation, so go read about "How The Social Security Trust Fund Really Works". The key idea is this:

First, the Treasury estimates how much of the aggregate tax receipts are Social Security taxes and "credits" the Social Security trust fund with that amount. Then the Treasury "subtracts" the total amount paid in monthly Social Security benefits from the trust fund balance. No money actually changes hands; these are strictly accounting entries.

Any "money" remaining in the trust fund is converted into special-issue Treasury bonds, which are really nothing more than IOUs. In addition, the Treasury pays interest on the trust fund's balance by crediting the trust fund with additional IOUs. These are also strictly accounting entries, and again no money changes hands. After crediting the trust fund with the proper amount in IOUs, the government spends the extra Social Security tax collections just like any other tax revenue--to finance anything from aircraft carriers to education research.

There is no money in the "trust fund". Zero. Zilch. Nada. The only thing in the "trust fund" is a stack of IOUs, promising to repay the money that the baby boomer-controlled Congress has already spent on other crap.

What's the implication? Look at it this way: the baby boomers, via Congress, have already spent the money they contributed to Social Security. They've spent it on "anything from aircraft carriers to education research"... whatever they want. Guess who's going to have to repay those IOUs? They're going to start coming due around 2018 when Social Security is projected to start running a deficit; the people who will be forced to repay those IOUs are the taxpayers of 2018 and beyond... my generation!

So not only have the baby boomers saddled their children and grandchildren with the burden of supporting them during retirement, they've also spent all the surplus and replaced it with IOUs that their children and grandchildren will have to pay back. Starting in 2018, my generation will begin paying for all the crap our parents have been buying for decades.

Frankly, if I think about it too hard I just get angry. The dysfunction of the baby boomers knows no bounds, and as a generation they disgust, frighten, and enrage me. The baby boomers have consciously, purposefully, and systematically schemed to live far beyond their means and to leave their children and grandchildren mired in debt.

It's not exactly a high hurdle, but it's nice to see at least one major Democrat condemn the 9/11 conspiracy lunatics.

Now the Dems just need to get the stones to return the truthers' money....

It's pretty common for restaurant servers to make mistakes -- sometimes intentional -- when ringing up a bill. Since you typically write int the tip when you sign and you never see the bill again, it's easy for dishonest servers to bump up their tip, and most customers will never notice! Unless you go through your credit card statement and keep your receipts you'll have a hard time catching these thieves... but now there's a simpler way! Checksum your tips..

Adjust the amount of the tip so that the numbers in the final total to the left of the decimal point add up to the right-most digit. In this case, the total has a “51″ to the left of the decimal point (A). 5 + 1 = 6, so the final digit should be six. Adjust the total to $51.86 or $51.96 (B) by adding nine or subtracting one from the tip (C).

This way you don't need your receipts at-hand to glance through your credit card statement and catch most tip fraud. If you see a checksum that doesn't match, dig out the receipt (you keep all your receipts, right?) and call your credit card company to report the fraud. Then call the police.

(HT: GeekPress.)

I know woefully little about how cloth is made, so I enjoyed this history of textiles. Looms and spinning wheels are also interesting reads.

It's great that illegal immigrants who were stealing emergency supplies were arrested at Qualcomm Stadium, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement seems to be taking a rather passive approach to their job.

San Diego police responded to a call about alleged theft from the evacuation center and encountered six people in a van who didn't speak English and didn't have California driver's licenses, Foreman said. The police officers called the Border Patrol, who arrived at the stadium and made the arrests, he said. Foreman said the immigrants admitted they were Mexican citizens and that they were stealing.

Border Patrol agents are not looking for illegal immigrants at the center but will continue responding to police calls for assistance.

"We are not in any means at Qualcomm for enforcement capacity," he said. "We are not there to take advantage of a situation."

Perhaps the Border Patrol isn't the right organization to be rounding up illegal immigrants at Qualcomm Stadium, but that job should fit within the purview of some division of ICE. Why not take advantage of a situation that makes rounding up illegal immigrants easier? Are we playing a game? Did the fires create some sort of "time out"?

George R. R. Martin is releasing a new book at the end of the month, but it's not a continuation of his awesome A Song of Ice and Fire series... it's a short story anthology! I've actually read some of his short stories, and they were fun, but I'm not going to buy the books for one simple reason: I never finish short story anthologies. In fact, I'm convinced that no one ever does. You read one or two stories, then lose interest and move on to something else. Am I wrong?

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Global War on Terror (at least the parts in Iraq and Afghanistan) will only cost each American $8,000 through 2017. I'm amazed that it's going to be so cheap, and the number demonstrates that complaints about the war's cost are completely baseless.

The money includes $604 billion already spent on the conflicts, CBO Director Peter Orszag told the House Budget Committee. It also includes over $400 for interest payments, as the operations have relied heavily on borrowed funds.

The figure would keep 75,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2013 to 2017, just over a third of current deployment. The CBO estimates that reducing troop levels to 30,000 by 2010 would save $485 billion.

The figures include military operations, diplomatic operations, veterans' medical care and survivor benefits, among other costs. They do not include the Pentagon's normal spending, estimated at $450 billion for 2007.

Considering the yearly major terrorist attacks on American interests throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Global War on Terror is an incredible bargain! Correct me if I'm wrong, but we haven't had a major terror attack against America since 9/11, which is the longest streak since Jimmy Carter gave Iran to the Islamofascists.

Of course, the heaviest price we're paying is measured in lives. The troops on the ground are risking and sacrificing a lot more than $533 per year, and we should all be grateful to them for it.

Commenters who poo-pooed my suggestion that the Southern California fires might be terror-related should remember than al Qaeda has expressed interest in using fires as weapons of terror.

PHOENIX (AP) — The FBI alerted law enforcement agencies last month that an al-Qaeda terrorist now in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.

Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn't see a need to act further on it. ...

The Republic reported that the detainee, who was not identified, said the plan involved three or four people setting wildfires using timed devices in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming that would detonate in forests and grasslands after the operatives had left the country.

If the SoCal fires turn out to have a terror connection (for which there is no evidence now that I'm aware of) perhaps the leftists in that region of the country will be more motivated to support the Global War on Terror.

Update:

At least one fire was caused by arson. Who are the most likely suspects?

ExtremePumpkins.com is a hit every Halloween. Enjoy!

It's ridiculous to prescribe birth control products to middle-schoolers against their parents' wishes, but what's particularly absurd is the proposed standard that's being used to justify the policy:

Committee members Rebecca Minnick and Susan Hopkins said they probably wouldn't vote to reduce the scope of reproductive health services provided at King. Other committee members couldn't be reached for comment Monday.

"If it saves one girl from getting pregnant too soon, it's worth it," Minnick said.

If that's the standard, then why not just put all the girls in chastity belts? Why not teach the kids about morality and what the Bible has to say about sex outside of marriage? If it saves just one girl.... you can justify almost anything!

Here's a nifty little invention for facilitating illegal border crossings: the solar-powered immigrant shelter with internet access.

Robert Ransick has completed a 6 month Residency at Eyebeam developing Casa Segura (Safe House).

The artwork combines a sheltered room on private land in the Sonoran desert in Southern Arizona with a bilingual web space that facilitates creative exchange and understanding.

Casa Segura proposes private property owners on the border to create a life-saving beacon in the desert, a platform for engaging with the anonymous individuals crossing their land in search of a better life, and a non-aggressive means of protecting their homes.

No one wants people dying in the desert for lack of shelter, but providing that shelter just encourages more illegal immigrants to break into our country. This sort of structure would act like a welcome mat for illegal immigrants, which is certainly what the designer intends despite his humanitarian rhetoric.