Dita von Teese: I of all people told someone not to “romance the past” the other night. But not everthing was better back then, that’s a fact!
October 5, 2009
Tension in the Himalayas?
Strategy Page has a short primer on the potentially volatile issue of where the borders are in the Himalayas:
China is causing considerable consternation in India by reviving old claims to border areas. In northeast India, the state of Arunachal Pradesh has long been claimed as part of Tibet (although when Tibet was an independent nation a century ago, it agreed that Arunachal Pradesh was part of India.) Arunachal Pradesh has a population of about a million people, spread among 84,000 square kilometers of mountains and valleys. The Himalayan mountains, the tallest in the world, are the northern border of Arunachal Pradesh, and serve as the border, even if currently disputed, with China. This is a really remote part of the world, and neither China nor India want to go to war over the place. But the two countries did fight a short war, up in these mountains, in 1962. The Indians lost, and are determined not to lose if there is a rematch.
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October 4, 2009
Totally unbiased study says “Guns=bad”
In no way should you try to read the data from this study as being anything other than unbiased and objective:
Medical researchers in Philadelphia have conducted out a study which indicates — according to their interpretation — that carrying a gun causes people to get shot more often. “People should rethink their possession of guns,” say the medics.
“This study helps resolve the long-standing debate about whether guns are protective or perilous,” says University of Pennsylvania epidemiology prof Charles Branas. The Penn announcement is headlined “Gun Possession [is] of questionable value in an Assault”, so it’s pretty clear which way he’s leaning.
The Penn researchers carried out their study by randomly selecting 677 people in Philadelphia who had been shot in “assaults”. Apparently five people sustain gunshot wounds every day in the City of Brotherly Love, so there were plenty to choose from.
According to the profs, six per cent of the shooting victims were packing heat when they got plugged. They compared that to a control sample of Philadelphians who had not been shot, and concluded that “people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun”.
Of course, there’s no problem with basing your statistically valid sample on people who have already been shot: given the chance of being shot in Philadelphia, they could just have gone round to a few local bars and found the same numbers, right?
You know that the study has a certain, um, preference, when even the folks at The Register are pointing out that the data may not be randomly selected:
There didn’t seem to be any account taken of the fact that people with good reason to fear being shot — for instance drug dealers, secret agents etc — would be more likely to tool up than those with no such concerns.
The profs’ reasoning, however, would seem to be that if someone sticks you up in the street and you haven’t got a gun, you’ll just hand over your valuables and so escape with a whole skin. If you’ve got a gat, however, you might try to draw it and so get shot. Tactically, of course, it might be wiser to first hand over your wallet and then craftily backshoot the robber as he departed, but no matter.
Nearly half of American households face no income tax burden this year
Jeanne Sahadi writes that the direct income tax burden is far from evenly spread this year:
Most people think they pay too much to Uncle Sam, but for some people it simply is not true.
In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
Some in that group will even get additional money from the government because they qualify for refundable tax breaks.
The ranks of those whose major federal tax burdens net out at zero — or less — is on the rise. The center’s original 2009 estimate was 38%. That was before enactment in February of the $787 billion economic recovery package, which included a host of new or expanded tax breaks.
I guess that “soak the rich” plan really is working, then?
For those of a more “progressive” orientation, this is all to the good: those filthy rich paying disproportionally high rates is good, in their view. What it doesn’t take into account is human nature . . . just because they’ll pay that much this year doesn’t mean they’ll do nothing to change that picture next year or the year after that. The big risk being run here is that it will encourage “the rich” to reduce their taxable income (which often means switching from economically more productive uses to less productive ones) or even to remove themselves from the picture altogether (tax havens exist for a lot of reasons).
If only 1% of taxpayers are paying over 40% of the total tax collected, it only takes a few of them to move to a lower-tax jurisdiction to seriously impact the total taxes collected.
Doug Mataconis hopes that this will have a positive outcome:
Once the American people realize that “soak the rich” isn’t going to pay for all the things they claim they want from government, it’s entirely possible that they’ll decide that maybe the state doesn’t need to be as intrusive as it’s become over the years.
I’m not as confident that this is the lesson that most people would draw: once they’re comfortable with the idea of the government providing everything, they’ll be unwilling to go back to the “less civilized” model of having to provide for themselves.
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Are the Democrats rediscovering a taste for civil liberties?
There’s been very little I could find to praise in the performance of the current US majority party in both houses of Congress, until very recently. Democrats, including newly minted Senator Al Franken, are appearing to seriously threaten the renewal of several portions of the Patriot Act, due to expire this year:
Some Democratic lawmakers have long wanted to weaken the act, and now, with big majorities in the House and Senate, they have their chance. But the renewal debate just happens to come at a time when recently uncovered domestic terror plots — most notably the Denver shuttle bus driver and his colleagues caught with bomb-making materials and a list of specific targets in New York City — are highlighting the very threats the act was designed to counter. Republicans are fighting to keep the law in its current form.
“These three provisions have been very important for the investigative agencies who are working every day to protect us from terrorist attack,” says Sen. Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the committee. “Before the Patriot Act, terrorist investigators had far less authority to get records and documents than a DEA or an IRS agent.”
Democrats have proposed a number of changes, all of which would weaken the law. Sen. Russell Feingold wants to do away with the “lone wolf” provision entirely. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, would make it more difficult for investigators to obtain business records. In addition, Leahy wants to return to legal standards that existed before September 11 regarding “national security letters,” which are essentially subpoenas issued by the FBI and other security agencies. “They are going back to a September 10th mentality — literally,” says one GOP committee aide.
The original Patriot Act was “the most abominable, unconstitutional congressional assaults on personal freedom since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 made it a crime to libel the government” (Andrew P. Napolitano). It was a blank cheque for the one of the most far-reaching extension of law enforcement into the private lives of Americans in over 200 years (ranking with both Prohibition and the War on Drugs as liberty-reduction methods).
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October 3, 2009
Why Chicago didn’t get the 2016 Olympics
Robert Bentley gives the top ten reasons why Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Games was rejected:
10. Dead people can’t vote at IOC meetings.
9. Obama distracted by 25 min meeting with Gen. McChrystal.
8. Who cares if Obama couldn’t talk the IOC into Chicago? He’ll be able to talk Iran out of nukes.
7. The impediment is Israel still building settlements.
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October 2, 2009
The destruction of Saturn
Tim Cavanaugh looks at the GM division that once looked like the solution to so many of GM’s problems:
I would not recognize a Saturn if it ran me over, but the brand showed every sign of becoming competitive, with the above-mentioned loyal customers and policies on haggling and customer service that have (so I’m told, though I have seen first-hand evidence to the contrary) since become industry standards. Saturn was hamstrung by something not mentioned here: It was for girls.
Those “officials in charge of GM’s other brands” (and at the UAW, which never liked Saturn Corp.’s more flexible contract) were status-stunted males so disgusted by the idea of innovation that they consciously chose to starve something every normal retailer would give a limb for. Saturn customers didn’t just like the product but felt real fondness and familiarity toward the brand. And this wasn’t treated as an opportunity to exploit but a problem to be solved.
General Motors isn’t the only American company that can screw up a wet dream. It’s probably not even the screwup company that is getting the most taxpayer dollars to keep screwing up. But it’s the most toxic. What’s good for America is the total liquidation of General Motors and the firing of every person, labor and management, who works for the company.
The few folks I knew who bought early Saturn models seemed very happy with their vehicles, and remained that way . . . until Saturn became just another branch of General Motors. Then, for the most part, they appear to have moved on, but not to other GM vehicles.
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Don’t tax the soft drinks: remove the subsidies instead
Katherine Mangu-Ward thinks the US government has an easier fix to the problem than taxing soda pop:
Subsidy packages to corn growers have been sweet in recent years, with an average of about $5 billion annually since 1995, and a bumper crop of cash in 2005 clocking in at about $9.4 billion. Many of the acres of corn grown in the United States wouldn’t be profitable if it weren’t for federal subsidies (as chronicled in the excellent documentary King Corn), yet those billions keep the cheap corn piling up around our waists.
But on the other hand, debt-ridden congressmen are now terrified for their livelihoods. They’re desperate for a way to fund healthcare reform — and taking credit for solving the obesity problem would be nice, too. So the Senate Finance Committee held hearings this spring to brainstorm some ways to gin up some cash. One of the proposals they entertained was a 3 cent tax per 12 ounces of soda, which would generate $24 billion over four years, according to a December report from the Congressional Budget Office.
The application of a little basic math reveals an interesting coincidence: The expected revenue from a soda tax and the expected subsidy payments to corn farmers come to almost the same amount — somewhere between $5 billion and $6 billion a year.
Draft dodgers, yes. Deserters, no.
There’s an article at the National Post which argues against a proposed amendment to Canadian law which would automatically grant asylum to military deserters:
Gerard Kennedy is a man of good intentions but a new law he has proposed should be judged on its potential for unintended consequences, rather than its intent.
The former Liberal leadership candidate has introduced a private members’ bill that seeks to amend the Immigration and Refugee Act, in order that people who want to avoid compulsory military service can stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds.
I’m adamantly opposed to conscription in any form (military or “civilian”), and I’m quite willing to see Canada offer a refuge for those who choose not to serve (the “draft dodgers”, for instance). I’m equally opposed to allowing military deserters to use Canada as a safe haven once they change their minds about volunteering for military service.
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You’d really want to get in out of the rain on COROT-7b
According to scientists, the recently discovered exoplanet known as COROT-7b is so close to its primary that it rains molten rock:
To find out what COROT-7b’s atmosphere might be like, Fegley and his colleagues modeled it. They found that COROT-7b’s atmosphere is made up of the ingredients of rocks and when “a front moves in,” pebbles condense out of the air and rain into lakes of molten lava below.
“Sodium, potassium, silicon monoxide and then oxygen — either atomic or molecular oxygen — make up most of the atmosphere,” Fegley said. But there are also smaller amounts of the other elements found in silicate rock, such as magnesium, aluminum, calcium and iron.
The rock rains form similarly to Earth’s watery weather: “As you go higher the atmosphere gets cooler and eventually you get saturated with different types of ‘rock’ the way you get saturated with water in the atmosphere of Earth,” Fegley explained. “But instead of a water cloud forming and then raining water droplets, you get a ‘rock cloud’ forming and it starts raining out little pebbles of different types of rock.”
It’d make hell seem like a holiday cottage in the Poconos.
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October 1, 2009
Twitter lists
I’ve been using Twitter for the last few months, and I’ve actually found it rather useful. Useful, in the sense of providing me with a wider range of information, which often leads to something blog-worthy. But the down-side is that for every new Twitter account I follow, I increase the ‘noise’ in my Twitter feed, making those gems sometimes harder to spot.
John C Abell looks at a new feature under trial for Twitter to allow grouping feeds together into lists which can be shared with other users:
Twitter is trialing a method to sub-categorize the people you follow into “lists,” making it possible for the first time to systematically organize — and recommend — feeds you follow.
Once rolled out to everyone Twitter lists will make allow you to create dynamically-updated timelines of your favorite news sites or opinion makers, celebrity administrative assistants, congressional Republicans and all those guilty-pleasure spoof accounts. If you’re already a somebody, you may be able to bestow upon some unknown a bit of Oprah-like fame.
The lists will be public by default — the better to increase viral discovery of an account you might like because your friend likes it — and can be made private. This is the nearly best of both worlds, but we always think that services which convey one’s thoughts and leanings and predilections and intentions ought to be opt-in, since failure to drop the curtain can cause inadvertent embarrassment or eliminate what would have been a competitive advantage.
I like the idea of lists, but I’ll have to wait to see how they’ve implemented this (it’s not available to my account yet).
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Back to the ’70s . . . it’s the return of the Population Bomb!
Ronald Bailey addresses the most recent outbreak of Globally Terminal Malthusianism from the Wall Street Journal‘s Paul B. Farrell:
Every so often, the overpopulation meme erupts into public discourse and imminent doom is declared again. A particularly overwrought example of the overpopulation meme and its alleged problems appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch in a piece by regular financial columnist Paul B. Farrell.
Farrell asserts that overpopulation is “the biggest time-bomb for Obama, America, capitalism, the world.” Bigger than global warming, poverty, or peak oil. Overpopulation will end capitalism and maybe even destroy modern civilization. As evidence, Farrell cites what he calls neo-Malthusian biologist Jared Diamond’s 12-factor equation of population doom.
It turns out that Farrell is wrong or misleading about the environmental and human effects of all 12 factors he cites. Let’s take them one by one.
But, in the same way that bad news always crowds out good news for headline space or television minutes, looming disaster stories will always attract attention . . . especially when they’re wrong.
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