Octavo Dia

Why I Support (Most) Political Advertising

2012-01-24T22:32:00.004-05:00

Political candidates have to pay for their advertising. In so doing, they subsidize stuff I like to do--YouTube, Facebook, various news outlets, radio stations, etc. I am directly benefiting from their appeals, so they can do that all they want.

However, direct mail is a wasteful, inconvenient pile of pure awfulness. I should e-mail any candidate that mails me something and tell them that I don't support tree murderers who use direct mail.

An Evolutionary Thought Experiment.

2012-01-21T22:57:00.003-05:00

Step 1: Assume that the history of the universe described in the Bible is true.

Step 2: Using only the scientific method, prove that that history is true.

Step 3: ????

Step 4: Profit! (Realize the limitations of the scientific method.)

Why Christians will Always be Hypocrites

2012-01-21T22:32:00.003-05:00

The Christian's conscience--the law written on the heart--will always plague the Christian, because the law will always condemn. Christians will always be hypocrites, because they will always preach a law that cannot be achieved. Every moral stride is met with the realization that perfection is still farther away. It is only through the Gospel that the conscience can find rest.

If you are told that Christians are hypocrites, it is true. We preach that which we cannot attain, because we cannot soothe our souls with the self-righteous assurance that we a "good enough" for God. The law is a heartless taskmaster, but it drives us to the cross.

The Unconquerable Zero Lower Bound

2012-01-20T22:11:00.004-05:00

I've read a number of techniques that would allow the Federal Reserve to breach the zero lower bound and create a negative, real interest rate. That, they theorize, would encourage people to start spending, since saving money would cause real losses for the savers.

That theory is false. I posit that, in any non-extreme economic circumstance, people's saving preference forms a serpentine curve with interest rates.

At the lower end of the interest rate spectrum, where we are now, people save for purposes which are relatively immune to the interest rate--typically to "self-insure" in uncertain economic times. Indeed, a negative real interest rate would work at cross-purposes, since, to meet this need, savers would have to save MORE to make up for the real losses they're taking. Thus, the savings curve flattens (and may even rise) at the lower bound. That must make Keynes spin in his grave.

On the other end of the curve, when interest rates are extremely high, a further increase in interest rates would generate little additional saving, since those resources that could easily be devoted to savings had already been saved. In fact, such a high interest rate could cause the savings rate to decrease, since assets would be pulled out of productive investments and devoted to savings. Thus, the savings curve flattens again as all available resources are devoted to savings.

So any attempt by the Federal Reserve to breach the zero lower bound is doomed to failure. At some point, we have to admit that there are some things that monetary policy cannot do.

13 Looney Ideas from Reputable Sources

2012-01-17T22:15:00.002-05:00

Okay, not all of the ideas on Foreign Policy Magazine's list are looney, but a goodly number are, and these are particularly looney:

1. Write Off the World's Debt.

This one is the easiest of the bunch to pull off, because you can simply default and do the same thing. And we know how well that works. A much better idea would be for the government to have paid taxpayer's liabilities directly, rather than bailing out the banks, because that would both stem panic and help deleverage the consumer.

2. Hire Everybody.

You know what? This didn't even work that well in the Depression! Roosevelt had to mandate that they use inefficient construction methods because even the technology at the time wouldn't employ enough people.

7. Raise the Minimum Wage A Lot.

This one is entirely out of touch with reality. Besides unemploying those whose labor isn't worth $12 an hour, hiking the minimum wage would have exactly the opposite effect on illegal immigration. If hiring an American cost $12 an hour, but you could still hire an illegal immigrant for $5 an hour, the cost of labor is tilted even more heavily in favor of the illegal immigrant. And the fact that this would impact non-tradeable sectors most heavily is even worse. Non-tradeable sectors are the only sectors of the economy in which we've seen appreciable job growth in decades.

Commentary on "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus"

2012-01-13T22:10:00.002-05:00

First, let me say I'm glad he made this video. My personal belief is that God actively manages His word, and will bring people to the word that will reach them. I may quibble with it, but it's gotten a lot more views than any blog post of mine has ever done.

I've had this conversation with numerous people over the years, and I usually begin with, "Do you understand Biblical Hebrew?" When they respond, I say, "Well aren't you glad that there was organized religion to fund the years of training, research, and archaeology necessary to put a Bible you could understand in your hands?"

His interpretation throughout also ignores the sections of Scripture devoted to "religion" such as calling people to be ministers, evangelists, teachers, lay workers, etc. Too entirely personalize religion and ignore the organized aspects of it is to ignore large chunks of Scripture.

I also have a few small quibbles:

What if I told you, voting Republican, really wasn't his mission?

In the United States, Christians used to be spread across the political spectrum. When the godless Communists threatened the world, Christians reacted against their ideology, rejecting both their godlessness, and their leftist political ideals. Start persecuting people and suddenly they don't trust you anymore!

I mean, if religion is so great, why has it started so many wars?

He's not up on his political science research. Religion does not start wars, it prolongs wars. A group which is about to lose a war will recast it as a religious struggle to shore up the home front.

Why does it build huge churches, but fail to feed the poor?

See my previous post, God is Imaginary: #20 Notice Your Church.

Religion might preach grace, but another thing they practice.

I'm working on another blog post on this.

See the problem with religion is it never gets to the core, it's just behavior modification like a long list of chores.

Psychology has demonstrated that behavior modification is a powerful means of changing people's attitudes. If you act loving toward someone, in all likelihood you will becoming loving toward that person. The change in attitudes towards racism in the years since Brown v. Board of Education are far greater than simple persuasion could accomplish.

Monetizing Women: Why Economic Growth Doesn't Feel Like Progress

2012-01-12T22:00:00.002-05:00

As women entered the workforce, much of the unpaid labor which they had previously performed was transformed into new, service-sector jobs. The same real economic value was being created, but now it was being counted in economic figures as jobs created and GDP. As a result, we had several decades of job growth and economic growth, but it was a bookkeepers profit. The same things were being done, just by different people in different places. It was nominal growth disguised as real growth.

If this is the case, our real economic growth was much lower than even the pessimists estimated. Our monetary policy, in turn, would be far, far too tight for the actual productivity gains we were making.

How to Accumulate Foreign Exchange Reserves

2012-01-03T21:58:00.002-05:00

Many states have accumulated foreign exchange reserves and hold them in sovereign wealth funds. Most of these funds are denominated in dollars, because that's the "safe," albeit under-performing, asset. However, by mixing in a bit of currency risk, foreign exchange reserves could be much more profitable and moderate the impact of mercantilism via currency manipulation.

What a nation would do is base their foreign currency holdings on the foreign-currency denominated value of their imports. So you would add up your foreign reserves and allot them proportionately to the countries from whom you imported the most. For example, if, in the last three years, 40% of imports came from country A, 30% from country B, and 10% from country C, 40% of the foreign reserves would be in A's currency, 30% in B's, and 10% in C's. As trade flows shifted and proportions changed, these numbers would shift as well.

This arrangement would provide several benefits:

First, your reserves would be in the appropriate currency to pay for your imports, should your own currency fall into question (which is, after all, the reason for having reserves).

Second, imports from a country rise as that country's currency's value falls. Contrariwise, if another currency's value is rising, imports from that country will fall. If you reallocate the foreign exchange reserve portfolio based on imports, you will be buying currency when it is cheap, and selling it when it is expensive. In other words, profit.*

Third, if a country is manipulating its currency to make it artificially cheap to support an import policy, this policy would actively counter it.

* If you're wondering why funds don't do this, it's just like trading oil futures. Eventually, someone has to take a delivery. The investors usually don't want the actual oil, they're profiting by smoothing out the variation in demand. You can still profit from long-term trends, if you can take your profits in the form of oil. The foreign exchange reserve would be in a similar position, as accumulating reserves is the goal.

On Not Bothering to Do Any Research

2011-12-22T21:48:00.003-05:00

I don't have any major beef with the first four paragraphs of this Telegraph article. However, the last paragraph really annoys me, because it demonstrates and entire disregard for doing any sort of research:

"I've moaned about this before, but it is completely baffling to me why evolutionary biology, and not cosmology or plate tectonics or radio-carbon dating, has become the whipping boy for science-denying creationists. Those other three are just as solid in their refutation of a literal reading of religious works. Maybe it's a visceral dislike of the idea of sharing a common ancestor with apes. But whatever it is, the education of millions of children, in Turkey, in Britain and around the world, is being harmed by people – parents, teachers, government officials – with a simple-minded interpretation of their religion. Evolution is a fact, like gravity (and a theory, like gravity). Some parts of some holy books might seem to disagree, but then a part of the Bible seems to imply that π=3. It's a real shame to see the Turkish government, and British students, go down the route of believing a book of metaphors over the evidence of the world."

Okay, it took me a grand total of 2:46 to address five of the issues in his rant. Apparently that was too much work.

Sacred Cows and the Super-committee

2011-11-30T22:11:00.002-05:00

If nothing else, the failure of the super-committee has taught us a valuable lesson about deficit reduction--how to slaughter sacred cows. What the super-committee did, in effect, was line up all the sacred cows together and slaughter them en mass. (Presuming, of course, that Congress won't find some way around it. People do fight for their sacred cows, after all, or they wouldn't be sacred cows.) Cutting any one of those items individually would have required a large and bruising battle on Capitol Hill. Cutting them together happened with a whimper.

How to Fix the Student Loan Problem

2011-11-28T22:38:00.002-05:00

Even if you declare bankruptcy, you can't be rid of your student loans. The rationale is that, unlike a car, your education isn't an asset that can be seized to pay your creditors. And, unlike other unsecured loans, appropriate interest rates (think credit card interest rates) would be politically untenable.

There is, however, a better analogy we could use. When a bank goes bankrupt, it also has few assets to seize. We could try the bailout approach or the good bank/bad bank approach, but neither of them are terribly effective or applicable to people. What you can do, however, is forcibly convert bonds to stocks. When this happens to a bank, those who loaned the bank money can either sell their bank shares for what they can get for them, or they can hold on to them in hopes of a recovery.

If you apply this to people, you'd convert the bond (the student loan) into a stock (a percentage claim on future income). For example, every $1,000 of student loans would be converted into a 0.2% claim on future earnings. If the student is holding down a full-time, minimum wage job, that $1,000 would earn $29 annual in "dividends," which is well below the interest they would have paid on the student loan--and that's assuming their employed full time. However, if the student gets a good job, earning $80,000, the $160 in "dividends" would be well above the interest rate available, so the creditor shares in the upside as well as the downside. And the student could take part in this as well, buying back shares of "stock" (though when prosperity struck the value would go up).

In order to have a worthwhile market for these, however, you'd have to have reporting requirements. Those who went through bankruptcy would have to disclose financial information so that they could be valued accordingly (though most of what they'd need is available on a tax form).

However, the real impact is on the front end. The banks who write the student loans would take a much closer look at what the student is studying and how they're doing--it would introduce market discipline into education. Students who were coasting along through college drinking and studying underwater basket weaving would quickly discover that loans were in short supply, and they'd better start cracking the books as well as the beer.

How I Vote

2011-11-08T21:53:00.002-05:00

In the last election, every single candidate I voted for lost. The preliminary results from Virginia's state elections today show me running about 50/50. I suppose that's what happens when you move to a swing state. My poor showing in the last round, however, could have been a result of my voting technique--how I deal with imperfect information about candidates and issues.

So here's my voting algorithm:

If I know the candidates, I'll vote for my preferred candidate.

If I know the party, I'll vote for my preferred party.

If I don't know the candidate or the party, I'll vote against the incumbent (Wisconsin was very helpful in this regard. They listed "Incumbent" next to the name on the ballot.)

If I don't know the candidate or the party or who is the incumbent, I'll leave it blank. Better not to vote than to pick a random name and cancel the vote of someone who actually cares about the issue and the candidate.

If someone is running unopposed, I'll leave it blank for two reasons. First, if someone is running a write-in campaign that I don't know about, checking a box just because I'm ill-informed doesn't help anyone. Second, I dislike "mandates." The politician in question will take the result in the poll as validation of their policies. I don't want to validate a program I haven't bothered to learn about.

Of course, the voting machines I was using today were terribly angry at me for leaving slots on the ballot blank. "You have not voted in every race. Are you sure you want to submit your ballot?" "Are you really sure?" "Are you really, really sure?" "Are you really, truly, positutely sure?"

And that's how I justify my own apathy and ignorance.

Proportionality in War and Signalling

2011-11-02T21:46:00.003-04:00

First, let me be clear that I am not talking about the proportionality as defined in international law. I'm speaking of the mass media or man-on-the-street understanding--roughly defined as "Let the punishment fit the crime." While there's a place for that understanding--it makes starting a war on a pretext untenable--it is also profoundly harmful to the conduct of war as a whole.

Only a very few wars in history were won by a pure military victory. The rest was determined by posturing, by signaling. By convincing the enemy that your strength and willingness to fight are greater than theirs, you can seek a negotiated settlement. However, when one side limits its military action in mis-guided proportionality, the signaling effect is lost. What one side considers the judicious use of force, the other side may interpret as weakness or timidity. If one side displays weakness and timidity, real or not, the other side would be tempted to continue the conflict, if for no other reason than the eventual negotiated settlement may be more advantageous. Thus judicious force can extend wars and cause all of the associated harms.

On the other hand, the much-derided "Shock and Awe" of the Iraq War shows the limits of signalling for signaling's sake. Since they understood the campaign's function, it had much less impact than it would have otherwise.

How to Make a Modern Mortgage

2011-10-31T22:29:00.004-04:00

A couple of days ago I heard on the radio that people very rarely pay off mortgage anymore--the WWII generation was the last generation to pay off their mortgages in significant numbers. At first I thought it was just another indicator of how lax we are, but then I thought that it actually made sense.

First of all, people rarely spend 30 years in the same place. The people who are paying off mortgages today purchased their homes when I was born. In those 30 years I've lived in six states and one foreign country. Since people are more mobile, paying the same mortgage for 30 years isn't really an option.

Second, people who would be paying off mortgages today took out those mortgages when interest rates were much higher. It would be foolish of them not to have refinanced to much lower rates. And when they refinanced, they probably did so to another 30-year term. Which leads me to my third point...

Third, refinancing, or buying a new house with a new 30-year mortgage, better meets people's time preferences of money. If you pay of a mortgage the old-fashioned way, 30 years from now you'll have a LOT of extra money. If you refinance to a new mortgage, by spreading the principle over so many extra payments, you reduce the amount your paying now. So instead of a lot of money later, you have a little more money now. I've heard this concept described as stealing from yourself when you're poor to give to yourself when you're rich. Better to use the money when you need it (when you have a mortgage) than to wait until your need for money is vastly reduced.

The problem with all of this is that houses are still too expensive proportionate to our current income to be purchased in the time frames our lifestyles provide. I've seen numbers ranging from five to ten years as the average length of time between moves, all of which are only available in ARM mortgages, which isn't the same.

I know many people would prefer that real estate ownership be left to professional landlords, as the small-business aspect of homeownership unduly reduces people's mobility. However, barring that, here's what I think a modern mortgage should look like:

You have a single mortgage that you take out to purchase a residence. This mortgage can follow you from property to property throughout your life--it's tied to you, not to a particular piece of real estate.
Your mortgage is adjustable in BOTH interest rate AND principle. If you want to purchase a more expensive residence than your mortgage and equity can cover, they can loan you more. If you purchase a less expensive property, you can put the extra into equity. The interest rate can fluctuate (you can set rules, like it can only vary so much year-to-year, for example).
Your mortgage is interest-only forever. Rather than having a set term, you pay only the interest, taxes, and fees every month. If you decide to pay off some of the principle, your next payment will be reduced, as you'll have less interest to pay.

As a result, you'd have a mortgage that fits modern lifestyles and people's time preferences for money. You could build equity as you saw fit, moving from apartment to condo to house and back again.

Know Your Audience

2011-10-20T21:23:00.003-04:00

Two economists were walking down the street. One sees a dollar bill on the sidewalk and stops to pick it up. "That bill's counterfeit!" says the other economist, "If it were real, someone would have picked it up already!"

In unrelated news, a £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize was announced yesterday.

Comparative passport ownership

2011-10-14T22:16:00.005-04:00

Many are the articles, such as this one, that decry low levels of passport ownership among Americans as symptomatic of an insular mindset. I think a more likely cause is the sheer size of the United States--you can't really compare the U.S. to other countries in terms of passport ownership. The other largest countries geographically all have their numbers skewed in some way. They have repressive governments, are very sparsely populated, or or just too poor to support much international travel.

As a result, the United States is compared to far, far smaller political entities which do not share our geographic breadth. If the states were separate countries (and most of them are comparable in size to European countries), the United States would have almost universal passport ownership--I don't believe I know anyone who has not traveled to a different state.

So take that Europe. We're not insular; we're just huge and free. I predict that in the Schengen Area levels of passport ownership per capita will begin to fall, but you know that there will be nary an article decrying the insular nature of non-passport bearing Europeans.

Eugenics

2011-10-09T21:20:00.002-04:00

Whenever I read an article like this: Knocked Up and Knocked Down: America's Widening Fertility Class Divide is a Problem, it always makes me think of 1 Corinthians 1:27-9:

"God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are."

I know I've said and argued many things similar to that article, e.g., "Stupid people shouldn't breed." I should have been ashamed to say it. Who am I judge that which God has chosen?

Why the United States Needs an Out-Sized Military

2011-10-08T21:32:00.002-04:00

As a means of negotiation, a war conducted by rational actors continues until both sides come to a mutual understanding of the other's military strength and willingness to continue fighting. Once this mutual understanding is reached, negotiations will be pursued by both sides and may be satisfactorily concluded.

Military strength and political willingness, though both necessary, may to a certain extent be substituted for the other in a given war. In the Vietnam War, for instance, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese made up for their lack of equipment by a willingness to continue the war for as long as it took. The current U.S. military posture is an example of the other side. We have overwhelming military strength, because we do have sufficient political willingness.

In short, the U.S. needs an out-sized military so it can win a war with a minimum of political commitment. If we face an opponent who can withstand our initial onslaught, we lose.

How to Fix DC Traffic

2011-10-04T22:03:00.002-04:00

In my eight months in DC, I've commuted to work by bus, metro, car, private shuttle, and by carpooling with strangers (a.k.a. slugging). The only major transit option I've not used is the train, mainly because it's a good 20 minutes slower than slugging. With my vast experience in commuting, I can make one definitive conclusion: they're all full. The roads are full, the buses are full, the slug lots are full, the metro is full, the shuttles are full, and I've heard the trains are full too.

The long-term solution would be to lift DC's height restrictions. In the short term, since alternative work schedules are already popular, there's not much that can be done to reduce the rush hour flow. Therefore, building more capacity is paramount. The trouble is that, while you're building this capacity, there's no where for the diverted traffic to go. For example, you can't move everyone onto buses while you widen a metro tunnel because the roads are full! You have to be able to build capacity without disrupting traffic flow so that you can undertake projects that do disrupt traffic flow.

So here's my plan:

First, build another few slugs lots. Since many lots are full half-way through rush hour, this would encourage more people to slug, especially since these lots will be more convenient for some. It would also encourage more alternative work schedules. However, the HOV lanes are often full once near the city, which leads to the next step:

Second, lengthen the restricted times on the HOV, and provide a variable minimum capacity depending on the time. During the peak rush hour commuting time, instead of the standard 3+ occupancy, you change it to 4+. This should put a lot of cars into the extra slug lots. This would make the HOV a much more viable option, but the roads would still be clogged, which leads to the next step:

Third, establish a rush-hour toll on the non-HOV lanes. Besides encouraging more people to slug and take buses (whose capacity could be upgraded rapidly), this would then fund the upgrades to other things, such as:

Fourth, add express trains/tracks in the metro. The outer metro stations are under-utilized because it takes so long to get there with all the stops in between. Instead, send an express train straight to the farthest station on the line (or the city center). People a couple of stops short of that could then board a regular metro train to get to their station. This would also use the under-utilized reverse direction trains, e.g., the p.m. inbound.

Fifth, once they have money and spare capacity, I'm sure they can think of other things that need upgrading.

So in short, you maximize the use of the cars that are already going in, charge the people who drive by themselves during rush hour, and use the proceeds to fund the expansion of other mass-transit options. That's my plan, anyway. Incidentally, expanding slugging opportunities plays right into my preferred mode of commuting.

How to Deport Illegal Immigrants without Harming the Economy

2011-10-03T22:10:00.002-04:00

Every time the issue of illegal immigration comes up, some op ed columnist says something like, "We can't deport that many people without destroying our economy!" For that argument to make sense you have to be either stupid or extremely unimaginative.

Large deportations of illegal immigrants would only harm our economy if you did not replace them. If, for every illegal you deported, you admitted one additional legal immigrant, you would find that not only would the economy not be harmed, it would positively benefit as an immigrant with legal protections who can fully participate in society will produce far more than could ever be recovered by the exploitation of an illegal.

All immigrants are not created equal. Deport the illegals, replace them with legals, and everyone will be better off.

Republicans Should Support Third Parties...

2011-09-30T21:59:00.003-04:00

...but not vote for them.

The political structure in the United States necessitates a two-party system. With current structures, a third party will either fail or become one of the two parties. However, should the political structure be changed to allow for a third party, the Republican Party would be the primary beneficiary.

The Democrats are a coalition masquerading as a party. Should multiple parties be viable, the uneasy bedfellows in the Democratic Party would split into separate parties, e.g., Greens, Labor, Socialist, a few ethnically-based parties, etc. They would be natural allies, but they would lose the economies of scale as each separate party would have to develop its own structures.

The Republican Party, by contrast, is far more homogeneous. It would probably lose a rump to a revitalized Libertarian Party, and perhaps a new hard right Conservative party would form, but it would easily swallow up the middle of the political spectrum. It could then wheel and deal with the splintered parties around it and dominate American politics for decades to come.

Divide and Conquer.

IT and Libertarians

2011-09-24T21:27:00.003-04:00

I've noticed that most of the libertarians I meet work in IT. Based on no evidence whatsoever, I hypothesize that their work environment directly influences their politics. In an IT environment, scarcity of resources isn't really a problem. Most people have computing capacity to spare, and if your current system can't handle, just wait till the next hardware/software upgrade. In their world, the market constantly delivers improvements of all sorts. It's hard for them to imagine a world with problems that the market can't solve, with growth rates in the low single digits.

Much as the Baby Boomers' views were skewed by the world they grew up in, the techies views are skewed by the work they do. The bricks and mortar world just doesn't work like that.

The Trouble with Time-Traveling Assassinations

2011-09-23T21:36:00.004-04:00

My views on time travel were largely shaped by an episode of the Twilight Zone in which he discovered that you can't change the past via time travel because the time travel that will happen has already happened in the past.

Anyway, the stereotypical use for a time machine, other than delivering a witty comeback, is to kill Hitler. (Why does no one ever travel back in time to kill Stalin or Mao? Why is it always Hitler?) Here's how I see that working out:

You take the time machine back to kill Hitler.

Some neo-Nazis take the time machine back to protect Hitler.

You bring big weapons.

They bring big weapons.

You bring some help.

They bring some help.

You bring advanced technology to the Allies.

They bring advanced technology to the Axis.

Suddenly, the plot to kill Hitler makes WWII several times worse.

Nightwish

2011-09-07T21:40:00.002-04:00

When Tarja Turunen joined the band Nightwish, they changed their sound because her powerful singing overpowered the band. When she has left and they replaced her with Anette Olzon, who doesn't have nearly as powerful a voice. Anette, who is probably a perfectly lovely singer otherwise, is overpowered by Nightwish, and they didn't change their sound again to adapt to their lead singer. Meanwhile, Tarja is out recording on her own, and the back-up band she's found does not do her justice, so she overpowers them. Neither Tarja nor Nightwish are really worth listening to anymore.

This concludes my whining as a disgruntled fan.

A Reverse Tax Repatriation Holiday

2011-09-07T21:33:00.002-04:00

Now and again, people (particularly large companies with vast foreign holdings) press Congress for a Tax Repatriation Holiday. The concept is, you bump the domestic money supply and generate some much needed inflation by encouraging companies to bring their earnings home. What better way to encourage them than by providing a tax break as an incentive?

Since companies are currently sitting on huge wads of cash, encouraging them to bring it home now might generate only larger wads of cash, with no attendant economic benefits and lower tax revenues to boot. So how about a reverse tax repatriation holiday? Instead of promising lower tax rates if they bring profits home now, promise higher tax rates for any profits brought home after a future date. Add a bit of stick in with the carrots. As a side benefit, a reverse tax reparation holiday would also provide more scope for future tax reparation holidays.

Competitive Healthcare

2011-08-23T11:54:00.003-04:00

#Notintendedtobeaseriousargument.

When you introduce a species into a wide-open niche, its population and diversity expands wildly. Once the niche is full, natural selection begins to take its toll, the population stabilizes into a cycle with its resources and much of the diversity is trimmed off.

In America's healthcare system today, we have a wide open niche. Our system is designed to keep pumping more and more money into it, so the inhabitants of that niche expand vociferously and diversify greatly. There is no population pressure. Other than introducing predators to the healthcare system (which would be a fun experiment), we can generate greater healthcare efficiency simply by closing the niche. The inefficiency providers will go out of business and things will be standardized. In effect, to pay less for healthcare, we need to pay less for healthcare. Make them fight for the money rather than dumping it on them.

Focused Stimulus

2011-08-23T11:26:00.002-04:00

Much like the adherents of Communism, the adherents of Keynesianism insist that their policies would work if only this or that would happen, e.g., if only we had had a $1.5 trillion stimulus! Well I don't care what your theory predicts should happen "if only..." Looking at the waves of austerity rolling around the world, I'd say that opinion is pretty much shared by the world's electorates. People balk at a price sufficient to pull an entire economy out of the doldrums.

What the Keynesians should do instead is a focused stimulus. Instead of trying to pull an entire economy of the mire, pick a region and stimulate the heck out of that. Once that region is on solid ground, switch to the next region. The economic growth in the first region will help pull the second region up. Then on to the third and so on.

One caveat I would add to this is that you should stimulate the healthiest regions first. Since every victory makes the next one easier, you should focus on racking up easy victories. People won't like this at all. It doesn't make sense, for example, to stimulate Texas when there's so much more suffering in Michigan. It would take a good bit of explanation to get people to go along with this, but compared to the eye-watering figures for the nation as a whole, I think it's more likely to pass.

Did the Media Create the Tea Party?

2011-08-21T17:42:00.004-04:00

If you come across an argument that is contrary to your beliefs, but it is not persuasive enough to make you change your mind, that argument actually strengthens your beliefs. It's analogous to a weakened virus vaccine--since it's not enough to kill you, it makes you more resistant to the real deal.

From the media I read, I'm strongly exposed to the left wing perspective, but remain right wing. The "arguments" presented in the media are insufficiently persuasive, so they are instead reinforcing my beliefs. Moving from the specific to the general, if this is happening to me, it's happening to the population at large. The "liberal bias" of the media is reinforcing, dare I say radicalizing, the right wing.

Therefore, the media's liberal bias created the Tea Party.

How to raise taxes the easy way

2011-07-27T20:59:00.002-04:00

Fix deductions at a constant nominal amount and let inflation reduce their value.

That is all.

If you want to eliminate the distortions that our tax code introduces into the economy, let the standard deduction increase with inflation and fix all other deductions.

Why we don't need unions.

2011-07-24T22:34:00.004-04:00

If a representative government is so unable to protect workers' rights that a union needs to form, it is a failure of governance, not a success of unions. Advocating for unions is like the 19th century doctors being encouraged by laudable pus. When you see a unionized workforce, recognize it for what it is--a symptom of a diseased democracy.

Book Review: Schola Pietatis

2011-07-13T22:07:00.004-04:00

Gerhard, Johann. Schola Pietatis. Vol. 1. Rev. Dr. Elmer Hohle, Em. trans. Malone, TX; Repristination Press, 2006.

This book was given to me and I read it even though I don't care for medieval theology. I do not like it here or there! I do not like it anywhere! Medieval theologians have two great failings: (1) they belabor the point and (2) they'd do far better to have done some actual research rather than applying the power of their minds to the subject. Despite that, there were a few choice bits that were worth remembering.

I did think it was interesting that, even though he was using a translation with which I am not familiar, I could easily tell when Dr. Gerhard was citing the Apocrypha. It could be that I'm just that familiar with Scripture that I can tell you when something is off, or it could just be that the Apocrypha IS off. "My sheep know my voice..."

Page 17: "Yet we as poor beggars have to petition and beg before God's door for daily bread, Matt 6:11. How dare we ever more deeply fall into this line of thinking that we might be able to earn heaven and eternal life from God the Lord by our good works?"

It reminds me of a quotation from Carl Sagan, "If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

Page 53: "If a servant in a home would see the father flog his only and most beloved son on account of some stranger's transgression, would he not most certainly diligently take heed that he would not enrage the father with a single sin."

This one puts God in a bad light, but it's another blow against works righteousness. He has no reason to accept our righteousness.

Page 68: "Who could have accused Him of a single wrong if He had already shoved away the entire human race because of sin? ... as He did the angels who sinned, rejecting them and giving them over to hell with the chains of darkness."

Page 71: "Obviously, our election is certain enough and is immovable from God's side."

The doctrine of election always bothers me. I had always explained it to myself as though this were a war. A general may wish for the mass surrender of the enemy, but if they refuse the entreaty, some will die regardless.

Page 285: "Because of sin, the most beautiful angel, Lucifer, was thrown out of heaven... and we think we can come in through sin?"

It seems the passages on works righteousness were the most appealing to me this time around. Odd.

Book Review: Russian Folk-Tales

2011-07-13T18:56:00.003-04:00

Riordan, James. Russian Folk-Tales. New York; Oxford University Press, 2000.

This was in the kids section at my library. Someone needs to tell librarians that classic folk tales are not really appropriate for children. The skulls with the glowing eyes that char people to cinders? Yeah, that's gonna give nightmares.

Anyway, it shows just how far we've come. Sibling rivalry used to be a deadly game. Children weren't friends, they were competitors.

It was also interesting the role the Tsar played in these. He was a hidden instigator of many of the changes and quests that started the stories. I suppose that's how the typical Russian experienced the Tsar. A power from afar that on a whim could turn their world upside down.

A Short Rant About Illegal Immigration

2011-07-02T21:02:00.002-04:00

Almost invariably, when the subject of illegal immigration comes up, some internet troll will make a comment along the lines of "I don't see you wearing no Indian blanket!" I am experienced enough at internets not to feed the trolls, but I've always been tempted to reply, "And how'd that work out for them?"

That is all. I'm better now.

Should you pay down your mortgage?

2011-06-17T21:53:00.002-04:00

This post was inspired by the question posed on the Get Rich Slowly blog. Rather than responding to the original question, as being able to pay off your mortgage in cash doesn't apply to a lot of people, here's my take on paying down the mortgage in general.

I'm assuming that an emergency fund and an appropriate cushion of savings is built up. If it isn't, you need to work on that first before considering whether to pay down your house.

First, if the market crashed (again), and you lost your job, could you afford to sell the house and move to where the jobs are? Basically, if you put less than 20% down, particularly if you have private mortgage insurance, paying down the mortgage is a good idea. It frees you to move when you need to, so if the local economy tanks, you don't have to go down with the ship. Also, extra payments early in the life of the loan save a lot more interest than investments later on.

Second, what does your investment portfolio look like? A house is a highly-leveraged, sector-specific, non-diversified investment. If you sank half your net worth into tech stocks, people would think you were crazy. If you borrowed several times that amount and invested it as well, they'd say you were crazy. If you bought all that stock in a single tech company, they'd know you were crazy. Yet if you do the same thing with a house, no one would bat an eyelash. If you're well and thoroughly invested in the rest of the market and you want to increase your exposure to real estate, paying down your mortgage is a reasonable decision.

Third, I've deliberately ignored comparisons of rate of return, investment risk, inflation risk, and other such considerations. Don't worry about the details until you've got the big picture. One thing that I would add, however, is that even when you take all of those into account, remember that the money you've locked up in equity is in there until you sell the house or pay off the loan, which could be a VERY long time. And if you sell during a downturn, you may not recoup the money at all. Which leads to my next point:

Fourth, the return on investment is heavily back-loaded. You don't see any improvement in cash flow until you sell the house (assuming you make a profit) or pay off the mortgage. The time value of money is a definite consideration. A $1,200 mortgage payment is worth a lot more now than it will be 20 years from now. So if you're at the point where you could be free of your mortgage in short order, and create a large cash flow, it may be worth it, but then you're not really saving all that much in interest if you're in the last few years of the mortgage.

With that being said, if you want to increase your investment in real estate, I would recommend investing in energy efficient home improvements. Increased energy efficiency has an immediate, after-tax, inflation-adjusted cash flow, shields you from fluctuations in the energy market, and increases the value of your home which provides additional equity to get you above the 20% line.

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.

2011-06-12T16:50:00.003-04:00

Boom and bust cycles are a natural feature of free markets, since producers do not have exact information about the market-clearing price. Thus they will tend to overshoot, leaving inventory unsold or forcing the price down until the market clears. While the market is clearing, unprofitable producers go out of business, reducing supply, which raises the market-clearing price.

What stands out is that, the more perfect the information available to the producers, the less pronounced the boom and bust will be. They will overshoot by less, and prices will have to decline less to clear the market. Price swings will be moderated solely by increasing information.

What does that say about the Great Moderation? The world's central banks figured they had them problem well in hand, when it could be that digital inventories and just-in-time production had done the job of moderating the economy for them. The luck of Greenspan, not the wisdom, is what set the course.

God is Imaginary #23: Listen to the Doxology

2011-06-11T16:57:00.002-04:00

Listen to the Doxology.

"Praise God from Whom all blessings flow."

This one is quite easy to answer, as it is specifically addressed in the Bible. The Parable of the Vineyard ends with the verse "Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?" It is only when you consider yourself entitled to something that the principle of fairness comes into play. Without entitlement, there is no fairness.

People believe they are entitled to the blessings of God. What they are entitled to is eternal damnation. People forget that the first blessing of God is that they have not already been damned. Everything beyond that is an additional blessing--even earthly suffering is a blessing compared to eternal suffering.

The greatest irony is that, as life becomes more and more comfortable, people feel less and less need for salvation. From our perspective on earth, it seems horrendously unfair. But how will it seem when the "starving kids" who die in the faith rejoice in the presence of God, while the pampered nabob who couldn't be bothered with religion discovers just what "from Whom all blessings flow" really means.

Perhaps the best verse to keep in mind when considering this is Job 1:21 "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Back to the 50 Reasons.

God is Imaginary: Intro

2011-06-11T16:55:00.000-04:00

I just received a comment on my Answers to the Ten Questions post asking me if I would continue my review of www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com by considering their list of the Fifty Reasons God is Imaginary. I must add one warning before I begin: there is a new little baby in my house, so blogging will most likely be even fewer and farther between than you have come to expect. I pray I may be helpful despite my newly acquired sleep deprivation.

1. Part 1: Try Praying.
1. Part 2: Try Praying.
2. Statistically Analyze Prayer.
3. Look at Historical Gods.
4. Think about Science.
5. Read the Bible.
6. Consider God's Plan.
7. Understand Religious Delusion.
8. Think about Near Death Experiences.
8. Think about Near Death Experiences - Revisited.
9. Understand Ambiguity.
10. Watch the Offering Plate.
11. Notice that there is no Scientific Evidence.
12. See the Magic.
13. Take a Look at Slavery.
13. Take a Look at Slavery: Rebuttal.
14. Examine Jesus' Miracles.
15. Examine Jesus' Resurrection.
16. Contemplate the Contradictions.
17. Think about Leprechauns.
18. Imagine Heaven.
19. Notice You Ignore Jesus.
20. Notice Your Church.
21. Understand Jesus' Core Message.
22. Count all the people God wants to murder.
22. Rebuttal.
23. Listen to the Doxology.

Legislating from the Bench

2011-05-26T23:00:00.003-04:00

Here's my theory: by the time a case reaches the Supreme Court, you can be sure that there is no easy answer and reasonable people will disagree.

Since the court cannot end in a tie, (and presuming the Justices are reasonable), you would expect a very close ruling. I consider a 5 to 4 ruling the gold standard of the justice system. It means that the lower courts have acquitted themselves properly.

When you find a very one-sided ruling, such as the Fourth Amendment Kentucky v. King case, with an 8 to 1 majority, you can be sure that something is broken. If it was that easy to decide, it should not have been resolved at the level of the Supreme Court.

Just like amending a constitution to allow for an extra term is an early symptom of dictatorship, a very one-sided decision is a symptom of legislating from the bench.

Preventing Praetorianism

2011-05-16T22:22:00.003-04:00

Despite my academic background in political science, I tend to blog heavily on the economics side of things. I blame this on the much more highly developed economics blogosphere and a bloggers' tendency to feed off other blogs. With that being said, this post is pure political science.

In the later Roman Empire, emperor after emperor was enthroned and dethroned by the power of the Praetorian Guard. In poli sci, we've derived the term "praetorianism" from their behavior. The Praetorian Guard was the sole armed force in the city of Rome, which was the seat of the government. One of the fundamental definitions of a state is that it have a monopoly on the use of coercion in its territory. The Praetorian Guard discovered that, within the city which dominated the empire, they had a local monopoly of force, which was often sufficient to establish a new emperor.

Turning to the present day, when you look at the countries undergoing the Arab Spring, you see that the role of the men with guns is pivotal. If the power of coercion is centralized, the regime lives or dies by that power. Even by inaction, by not supporting the regime, the military can oust the incumbent. Libya, however, had a slightly different arrangement. The coercive power was not unified in a single organization. Though the military was predominately pro-Qaddafi, the police forces tended towards the rebels. The situation could have been reversed, with pro-Qaddafi police forces and an anti-Qaddafi military, but the result, a civil war, would have been the same. The revolution would be contested.

Therefore, though the cure may be worse than the disease, a Praetorian-style revolution can be prevented by dividing the powers of coercion so that no single force has a local monopoly of power at the seat of government.

Old Man River

2011-05-13T21:22:00.003-04:00

So I've been half-following the story of the Mississippi flooding, and it reminded me of an article in the latest National Geographic (dead tree, no link) about Bangladesh. They breached a dike to reduce the level of the river, and the silt it deposited raised the level of the flooded area by five to six feet. I can imagine that the silt the Mississippi deposits will have an effect of the same sort. What this means for the cities, however, is that next time a flood happens, they will be, by comparison, on even lower ground. In addition to breaching the dikes, they should begin making plans for saving the city from the next flood now--before the river crests again. We won't do it, of course. Once the crisis is past it is forgotten.

Gene Transfer and Rapid Post-Flood Speciation

2011-04-28T21:55:00.002-04:00

It is well-established in Creationist research that the immediate post-Flood period was one of rapid speciation among terrestrial vertebrates. Landing in the mountains of Ararat, the base population was rapidly subdivided by the mountainous terrain, and adaptations to the varying climatic bands on the mountain slopes provided more grist for natural selection's mill. Unexploited environmental niches, of which there was no lack in a world newly devoid of terrestrial vertebrates, also contributes to rapid speciation.

However, an overlooked facet is that, along with all the "land-dwelling, air-breathing" animals, came their entire internal biota. In the close quarters of the ark, there would be a non-stop exchange of bacteria. Among the bacteria, the exchange genes would be non-stop as well--with each other and with their hosts.

In the post-Flood world, these bacteria would again be divided, and influence which genes their hosts would express, and how their hosts would adapt to new environments. Ladling out portions of this bacterial stew to rapidly dispersing populations in a wide open world would create an unimaginably rapid level of speciation.

Spending More and Getting Less the Free Market Way

2011-04-27T21:25:00.003-04:00

Noumenon linked me to this Washington Post column about Switzerland's health care costs.

I think the author's analysis misses the boat because he's comparing two different measures. Healthcare costs are incurred on an individual basis, but the "outcomes" are measured entirely in the aggregate. I theorize that people tend to purchase as much lifespan as they can afford and, like everything, this investment in lifespan is subject to diminishing returns.

Thus in a pure free market system, rich people would spend vast sums on healthcare to provide a minimal increase in lifespan--it is, after all, easier to increase lifespan from 60 to 62 than it is to increase it from 90 to 92. If you move to a more socialized system, the rich would receive only a fraction of the lifespan they would have otherwise purchased, but this is more than offset in the aggregate by the increased lifespan of those who would otherwise be unable to afford it.

Thus the high cost, low outcome healthcare market can be explained as a result of people pursuing their self-interest. Though market failures, information disparities, and incentive structures do play a role, so long as you give people the freedom to purchase healthcare, the law of diminishing returns will lower your bang for the buck.

Book Review: Rework

2011-04-22T22:01:00.003-04:00

Fried, Jason and David Heinemeier Hansson. Rework. New York; Crown Business, 2009.

This is an odd book. It was at once insightful and pie in the sky. Inspirational yet meaningless. It's most distinguishing feature was its rampant tree murdering by taking up every third page with a little doodle.

Book Review: Cheap

2011-04-19T22:54:00.002-04:00

Shell, Ellen Ruppel. Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. New York; Penguin Press, 2009.

This book is replete with half-baked economics, unwarranted conclusions, and self-righteous snobbery.

In the half-baked economics, her thesis is a prime example. She argues, rightly, that the wage-price cycle can work in reverse, with lower prices necessitating lower wages, which supports the pricing position of the discounters, who proceed to cut wages further. However, and this is where the half-baked part comes in: just because it happens does not mean that it is bad or unnecessary. Reducing real wages is part of dealing with an overvalued dollar. Achieving that without taking a huge hit to the standard of living is better than taking that hit without it.

For the unwarranted conclusions, she assumes that, just because worker protections in the United States happened during a time when socialist/Progressive policies were popular, that they are both a necessary and sufficient condition. She uses China as an example of how free markets cannot produce workers rights, arguing that, when the workers demand higher compensation in the form of better working conditions, the factory owners "just move the factories further inland." Of course, that begs the question of (a) why the people further inland would be willing to work in those same conditions and (b) what happens when there is no more "inland" to move to? It is not free markets that produces poor working conditions, it is poverty. Fix poverty through the free market, and working conditions will follow.

The self-righteous snobbery can be illustrated by her analysis of the food industry. She complains that factory farm pork is flaccid and flavorless compared to the rich, natural flavor and texture of free range pork. I, personally, would rather enjoy my heavily seasoned bacon a couple of times a month than have the "real thing" every couple of years, if I could get it at all. In a world where those in truly dire poverty are achieving a real standard of living, there will be fewer resources available for everyone.

As an aside, her offhand comment that in the last decade Americans have eaten more shrimp than tuna illustrates a bigger market failure than any she addresses. The tuna is a large, predatory fish nearly as high on the foodchain as sharks. It should be no more surprising to say that Americans eat more shrimp than tuna than to say they eat more rabbit than bear, or more chicken than eagle. We developed a taste unsustainable high on the foodchain. Shrimp, farmer or no, are a much better substitute.

As Michael Moncur said, "Every journalist has a book in him, which is an excellent place for it."

Speaking the Truth to Idiots

2011-04-17T21:20:00.003-04:00

I pity Obama. He made a point that needed to be made, but there was no way he could win. His phraseology, "reduce spending in the tax code," has been roundly mocked, not least of which was Jon Stewart's awesome line, "Can we afford that AND the royalty checks to George Orwell?"

If only Obama had read Explaining Things to Dummies for Dummies.

The manipulations we make to our economy through the tax code are NOT FREE. We subsidize all sorts of stuff, not least of which are mortgages, through the tax code. Instead of spending the money directly, we hide the expenditures in the tax code. This has a profound effect on our economy--it is directly implicated in the mortgage bubble that left us in the hole we're in. We would be far better served by eliminating all of those variations in the tax code, and bringing all those subsidies on budget. Then we could at least see what we were spending money on, and decide whether it deserves that level of support.

As it is, we're spending money we don't even know about. At least Obama recognizes off-the-book spending. Most people think it's free.

Book Review: Ender's Game

2011-04-06T21:42:00.003-04:00

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. New York; Tom Doherty Associates, 1985.

I liked this book. It has the same description-driven story that Larry Niven, my favorite author, uses. The one bit that I didn't like, I don't think there's a solution for. My experience, as a member of the merely intelligent, is that I do not have to consciously think about most things--I intuitively grasp them. In the book, the parts that Ender intuitively grasped seemed a cop out, but the parts he consciously thought through seemed forced. As I said, I don't think there's a solution to what I wanted, but I liked it anyway.

Don't Blame the Machines

2011-04-05T20:59:00.004-04:00

I ran across the following quotation in this article:

Mr Ryan notes that with the government now paying roughly half of all health care costs, more disciplined federal funding could force efficiency into the system. However, that still leaves rising costs due to technological progress, an aging population, and the shrinking coverage offered by private sector employers. [Emphasis mine.]

Why would technology create rising costs? Yes, technology is expensive, but so are the alternatives, which is why we invent technology. Technology either makes us more efficient, which reduces costs, or it allows us to do something which we hadn't been able to do before. Whether we utilize our new capabilities is not a technological problem.

Rising medical costs are not due to technological progress. They are due to the assumption that, because we can do something which we previously could not, we should do it. Medical costs rise with technological progress only because we decide to treat that which was previously left untreated.

Whatever you think about rising medical costs, don't blame the machines. We're the ones jacking up the price.

What a Reasonable Energy Policy would Look Like

2011-04-02T22:01:00.002-04:00

Let's start off by defining what a reasonable energy policy is not. Anyone who has an "energy policy" that doesn't involve increasing the price of gas is either on something or selling something. With gas prices in the United States only capturing a fraction of the true cost, demand for gas will always be too high. The only alternatives to raising the price of gas would be to lower the cost of alternatives, which would produce massive waste and misallocation. (Or, I should say, even more massive waste than is caused by a severely under-priced good.)

The key to a reasonable energy policy is the understanding that everything we do has consequences. Many of the consequences we only realize decades after the fact. Therefore, in order to mitigate that risk, you do not do one thing. Diversification is a reasonable energy policy. We're not going to be able to meet all our energy needs through oil (imported and domestic), or nuclear, or wind power, or solar, or conservation, or burning garbage, or, or, or...

The only way we will be able to meet our needs without hanging ourselves in the long run is to do everything. Everything I listed above will meet part of our needs. Diversify, because a 50 mpg car will run out of gas too.

Book Review: The Collapse of Complex Societies

2011-03-19T21:49:00.005-04:00

Tainter, Joseph A. The Collapse of Complex Societies. New York; Cambridge University Press, 1989.

This book had a rather ironic impact on me. I agreed with his thesis before I read the book, and, having read it, I no longer agree. He unpersuaded me.

Through the book, I was perpetually confused, because he himself did not clearly differentiate between complexity as a cause and complexity as a consequence. It was that logical leap, which he didn't seem to know he was making, that doomed the theory for me.

In the final chapter, he dismissed the "failure to adapt" theory as easily subsumable under his complexity theory, but he actually detailed one, albeit incomplete, failure to adapt.

He argues throughout that societies grow more complex, more specialized, as they place greater demands on the available resources. Eventually, further specialization cannot produce sufficient returns, and society crumbles. The problem with this line of reasoning is that complexity is not the cause. The cause is insufficient resources to meet the demands placed on a society.

The real explanation of collapse, therefore, is why societies cannot, as it were, live within their means. Why, after a crisis passes, can a society not revert, or at least hold its growth below the growth of its resources? Why do you build a Pentagon to manage a World War, and find it insufficient to your needs a few years later? What is the cause of this inertia? If he could explain that, he would have gotten to the heart of the matter.

And, to go off on a few tangents, here are some interesting tidbits:

He gives a description of the Ik people of Uganda early in the book. His description of it read like 1960's sociology, in which a lone scientist studies a culture, makes all of these grandiose claims, and then someone else comes around a few years later and quietly debunks them. When you look them up on Wikipedia, it makes reference to Tainter's own work. Hasn't anyone done anything worthwhile since the 70's?

In the literature review, which is always tedious, I discovered that Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is by no means an idea original to him. The tedium may have a purpose.

Also in the literature review, he refutes two climatic theories with each other: one that challenging climates create capable people that have the ability to foster civilization, and the other that moderate climates grant people the extra time to create civilization. I would argue that a middle ground is more appropriate. Civilization prospers best in climates that are neither too harsh nor too easy.

I liked his refutation of C. Northcote Parkinson: that the growth in personnel happens in all organizations, not just bureaucracies, so there has to be some cause beyond the nature of bureaucracy that makes it so.

He had a very interesting point about the impact of climate on culture. Cultures for within climatic bands--they face similar problems, after all, and it's easier to copy your neighbor's solution than to invent your own alternative. Thus culture bands are formed by people facing similar problems in similar ways. That part is well established.

His unique observation is that alliances form across climatic bands. When you're having a bad time, the people in the neighboring climate probably aren't. Since you're weakest in the bad times, competing with those who are in their good times isn't a viable strategy, so you tend to form reciprocal bonds with them. With your cultural peers, however, you hit bad times together, so direct competition is a viable strategy. Thus a great irony: you're more likely to go to war with your peers.

His analysis of the decline of the Roman empire confused me a great deal, because he was arguing against the received wisdom. He argued that a persistent labor shortage in the late empire was why the Romans couldn't achieve levels of innovation sufficient to break themselves out of their stagnating economy. This is exactly opposite of the theory concerning the Industrial Revolution. In that telling, the labor shortage in Europe was a necessary factor, since capital investment was comparatively cheap.

I realized that his argument was correct, but he failed to differentiate between an actual and artificial labor shortage. In Europe, just prior to the Industrial Revolution, there was an actual labor shortage as a result of the Black death. In the late Roman empire, there was an artificial labor shortage caused by tax policy. Since Roman taxes were only placed on productive activities, any increase in taxes made marginal activities unprofitable. Those marginal activities then ceased, which caused a still greater burden to be placed on the remaining production, leading to a spiral of reduced productivity and increased taxation. There was a labor shortage, but since the remaining productivity was siphoned off to support the empire, an accumulation of capital was impossible.

Book Review: Law and the Long War

2011-03-09T20:27:00.003-05:00

Wittes, Benjamin. Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice i the Age of Terror. New York; The Penguin Press, 2008.

This book started out slow. Really slow. So slow he really needs a disclaimer: "If you've been paying any attention at all to the news for the last six years, you can skip the first six chapters." It gets better after that, but I cannot, in good faith, recommend a book that is basically a blow-by-blow retelling of the Bush era. The best part of the first six chapters is this quotation from Al Gore: "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action! The guy is a terrorist! Go grab his a**!"

In last two chapters, he finally gets around to his thesis, that judicial overreaching in response to executive overreach is really no improvement, and that Congress is the only branch with the authority to create an environment in which the war on terror can be successfully prosecuted. I'm a fan of the idea of Congress as well, but haven't had a real Congress that inspires my confidence in, oh, my lifetime.

In chapter seven, "An honest interrogation policy," he doesn't provide any exact policy guidance, but rather gives an outline of what a policy might look like. It's helpful, in its way, but it seems to be dodging the question. The closest thing he offered to guidance was the "Las Vegas" policy--that which happens in counter-terrorism, stays in counter-terrorism. Rather than focusing on the specific techniques used, you have to clearly define who might be subject to it, so that these techniques don't migrate to the criminal justice system. I would add, as part of that, that those who are employed in counter-terrorism, if that is the case, should never be employed thereafter in civilian law enforcement. That's how techniques move, and that is what we want to avoid.

He did, however, argue that whether our national idealists like it or not, the United States is going to have a policy on detentions and torture. If we do not have official standards, they're going to be conducted unofficially in black sites and renditions. Those are a cause of high-mindedness, not a cause of government overreach. They would much more willingly conduct these activities with oversight and shielding than conduct them without authority.

In chapter eight, the big idea for me was his definition of privacy. He argues that privacy law has focused on the data itself, the who, what, when, where, why, and how of data, and not on the use that it is put to. He argues that the invasion of privacy happens not when a computer system detects a transmission somewhere in the world and scans it. The true invasion of privacy happens when the computer's algorithm determines that it has acquired significant data, and that data is referred to a human for analysis and possible action. Our privacy law should require a warrant at that point. It would make the job of the intelligence court a bit harder, I would think, to evaluate the evidence that a computer returns, but it makes sense. Ones and zeros are not privacy, when it becomes flesh and blood it is privacy.

Extreme Couponing

2011-03-07T21:43:00.002-05:00

I've read a good half-dozen articles about Extreme Couponing--where people use a combination of coupons, promotions, and sales to acquire merchandise free or mostly free. In every one of those articles, mention is made of the "surly" clerks at the stores they patronize. Most of the articles also include a remark to the effect, "It's not THEIR money."

In a way, however, it is. The clerks at these stores are rated on how many items they scan per hour. When someone comes in with six coupons per item, requests that they ring it up as a separate transaction after every three items, or any of the other techniques used to beat the system, it slows the clerks way down. For an already marginal employee, it may mean the difference between a job and unemployment.

I would bet that the "surly" clerks are the ones on the verge of losing their jobs.

My Two Cents

2011-03-02T20:48:00.002-05:00

I left a couple of comments on A Heathen Reads the Bible's post on the story of the golden calf:

Comment 1:

"Jehovah repented of the evil which he said he would do unto his people."

If not using the original languages, you should check several translations to gather the nuances of the words used. The word translated here as "evil" can also be translated as "disaster" in the NIV (both 2011 and 1984) and the English Standard, "harm" in the NASV, "terrible disaster" in the New Living Translation.

Also, the word "evil" can mean several things in English, e.g., hardship or dangerous, as in "evil times."

Comment II:

I call this the problem of perfection, though I'm sure there's some theological term for it that I'm not familiar with. Anyway, when you posit a perfect being, at some point their attributes will come into conflict. In this case, God's perfect justice and his perfect mercy come into conflict.

The only way the paradox can be resolved is if both perfect attributes are maintained at the same time. I know I'm jumping way ahead in the book, but the paradox is resolved in the suffering Savior. God's perfect justice is satisfied by a perfect substitute taking the full penalty, whereas his mercy is shown to the people whose lives he spared. Even though God "changed his mind," he maintained both his justice and his mercy by transferring the penalty for their sins to Christ. In this case, Moses pleaded with God and at his request God administered mercy.

Jumping ahead once again, in the Psalms you'll run into some imprecatory psalms, in which the author prays to God administer justice to his enemies. It works both ways.

An Eye for an Eye

2011-02-27T19:23:00.002-05:00

Today's sermon was on part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said, "You have heard it said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you...'" It seems such a straight-forward reading, and I've known it all my life, but I had no idea how much my cultural understanding has skewed my interpretation of this verse.

I no longer live in a period or culture, such as that of the Kanun, where blood feuds could be triggered over dinner arrangements. An eye for an eye--which is today a model of cruel and draconian punishment--was at the time a revolutionary idea of justice. That one should not, as Lamech said, "Kill a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me." but rather fit the punishment to the crime was a startling idea.

I have completely misunderstood that verse my entire life.

Why I Don't have a Bumper Sticker

2011-02-26T16:22:00.003-05:00

There are two kinds of drivers in the world: jerks and idiots. If you cannot categorize yourself as one of the two, either you are the world's sole exception, or you need to deal with your self-deception. I myself lean heavily towards the idiot side.

That being said, do you really want to have a cause you care about be associated with either jerks or idiots? If anything, you should put a flashy bumper sticker for some group you dislike on your bumper. That way, when you cut someone off, try to merge across five lanes of traffic, or take up two spaces in the parking lot, people will associate them with jerks and idiots instead.

Managing Globalization

2011-02-22T22:19:00.000-05:00

I was talking with a coworker a while back who is a die-hard capitalist. He argued that we shouldn't be bothering to do anything about immigration, off-shoring, currency manipulation, etc., because the free market would ultimately triumph and correct all of these problems.

Yes, of course the market will ultimately take care of things; but time and weather will eventually clean up Superfund Sites too. In the meantime, you've created a lot of loss and waste. Just because it will be corrected doesn't mean you shouldn't help it along.

One of the biggest examples in that regard is income disparity in the United States. I read countless columns, from many reputable, and otherwise competent, sources, who blame growing income disparity on some new-found greed among the upper classes. In my mind, that can be easily classed as bologna. The upper classes today are no more greedy than they were in generations past. The difference is the comparative value of labor.

In the last thirty years, China and India joined the global economy. They were virtually undeveloped countries with massive supplies of labor. With that huge infusion of labor, to make the supply and demand curves match, either the cost of labor had to drop, or the cost of capital had to rise. What we've witnessed is a huge increase in the value of capital, and those who own it have become tremendously wealthy. That wages have stagnated is no surprise--they should have fallen.

Managing globalization, in this case, should include efforts to increase the supply of capital. The more capital to be used, the more labor will be needed to use it, the more wages will rise. Investing in infrastructure, which is badly needed in the United States, would probably be one of the best things we could do at the moment, despite the "inevitability" of globalization.

When is a Civilian Not a Civilian?

2011-02-21T21:32:00.004-05:00

In a typical military, the ratio between combat and support troops is between 1:5 and 1:15. I believe the United States army is currently about 1:11. In WWII, the U.S. military was 1:12. In The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence stated that for every guerilla he fielded, there were fifty supporters carrying supplies, messages, providing intelligence, or shielding their activities. If that is a typical number, the ratio in an insurgency is 1:50.

In an insurgent war, however, those 50 are counted as civilians, though analogous functions within a military would clearly be uniformed personnel. A general's driver would be a soldier and a legitimate military target. The guy driving a forklift on the base would be a soldier and a legitimate military target. The mess cook would be a soldier and a legitimate military target. In an insurgency, the driver is a civilian, the porter is a civilian, and the cook is a civilian. Clearly, the uniformed services are playing against a stacked deck.

Now, I hesitate to move entirely toward a role-based definition of military personnel, as that was the rubric under which total war was constructed (contributing to the economy helps the war effort, after all), but I think that, in terms of insurgency, we define "civilian" too broadly. I think that we should define insurgent civilians as military personnel based on whether the role they perform in relation to the insurgents is analogous to a role performed by uniformed support troops in regular militaries. If most militaries have that function performed by a soldier, the "civilian" performing that role could rightly be counted as an insurgent, and thus legitimately targeted.

Of course, short of finding an extensive org chart, all of this is extensively impractical, but I bet, where in rigorously applied, the number of "civilian" casualties in insurgent wars would be astoundingly reduced.

Arm Chair Sociology of New Yorkers

2011-02-19T21:24:00.002-05:00

Having lived among them for three years and interviewed literally thousands of them, I am going to engage in some arm chair sociology of New Yorkers.

By New Yorkers, I mean the people who were born and raised in New York--who have never left the metropolitan area for more than a vacation. And yes, I am engaging in rampant stereotyping and generalization. I'm fine with that.

Native New Yorkers are the least imaginative, least intellectually curious, and the least able to entertain themselves people I've ever met. This is ironic because the transplants to New York City are among the most imaginative, most curious, and most entertaining people I've ever met.

I theorize that the very energy of New York City is what saps the energy of the native New Yorkers.

They have no need to be creative, because down the block, around the corner, up the street, pretty well everywhere, there is creativity already made, packaged, and delivered.

They don't need intellectual curiosity because the diversity of New York comes to them. The true difficulty in New York is not finding something new, it is NOT finding something new. If you don't have to work for something, you will never become skilled in it.

But the part that was most annoying to me was their inability to be content within themselves. No matter where they were, if it wasn't NYC, they would whine, "There's nothing to DO here!" They couldn't make their own fun. They couldn't entertain themselves. They couldn't enjoy themselves unless they were ceaselessly overwhelmed with new experiences and activities. I think you could torture New Yorkers by forcing them to play a board game.

But I love New York. If it weren't for New York, they would all be out in the real world with the rest of us.

Egypt: Cynicism and Long-Term Cynicism

2011-02-18T21:33:00.002-05:00

I'm making a two-for-one prediction on the future of Egypt.

My first cynical prediction, shortly after the revolution in Egypt went down, was "Remember the Orange Revolution? No? Well that's what's going to happen." They'll throw the old regime out, start fighting among themselves, and the old regime, if not its elderly leader, will wend their way back into power.

I have updated by cynicism to include a second, more cynical, but longer-term prediction. The Muslim Brotherhood will dominate Egyptian politics. They'll turn puritanical. A new theocracy will be established, much of Egypt's heritage will be destroyed, ala the Buddhas of Bamyan. Two generations from now another revolution will overthrow the theocratic Egyptian state and a secular regime will be established.

That's the long road to democracy.

Losing its saltiness

2011-02-17T21:25:00.002-05:00

Last Sunday's sermon was on the text of Matthew 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men."

I've heard quite a few sermons on this text, and they all have a combination of the same points:

1. Salt is used to preserve things. Christians preserve the good in the world.
2. The English word salary comes from the Latin for salt. It was so important in Jesus time that people were paid in it. Christians are that important in the world.
3. Salt improves the taste of things. Christians improve the tastes of society.
4. In Jesus time, salt was not purified, so it was filled with other minerals and could lose its saltiness by the way they cooked with it. Christians are similarly not pure, so we need to guard against losing our saltiness.

Now all of those are good points, but I think they do a disservice to both salt and the text. If you not only had a low-salt diet, but a no-salt diet, what would happen? What if you leached the salt out of all your foods and drinks before you consumed them? You would be dead in a matter of days. Once it had depleted its stores, your body could no longer control the water content in its cells and they would burst or shrivel and die.

That's how important Christianity is for the world. Without it, once the remnants of Christianity were gone, the world would die. I don't care what the Latin for salt was. Tell me the true importance of being the salt of the world.

For Whom the HOV Tolls

2011-02-16T22:34:00.001-05:00

Every day, as I wait for the shuttle to the Metro, I see lines of cars stretching off into the distance. Ninety plus percent of them have a single occupant, heading to work.

Of course DC does have reversible HOV lanes, and is known for the practice called "slugging," in which people in the outer areas park their cars in designated lots, and people stop by to pick up random fellow commuters so they can use the HOV lanes to head to work. Still, the limitless stream of bumper-to-bumper cars with single occupants demonstrate that people don't value their time as much as they do their independence.

What we need to do, therefore, is raise the cost of independence through a means other than time. Since the HOV lanes are already separated from the rest of the traffic flow, I propose putting tolls on the non-HOV lanes. Single occupant vehicles would be taxed via the tolls, whereas high occupant vehicles could cruise straight through onto the toll-free HOV lanes. If nothing else convinces people to take the bus, metro, train, or slug, watching their fellow commuters zip by while they wait to pay a toll might do it.

Balancing the Budget by Cuts Alone

2011-02-15T18:57:00.003-05:00

The Dilbert Blog has been conducting mock interviews concerning how to balance the budget by cuts alone.

In the short term, it can't be done. Period. The scope of the cuts needed would torpedo the economy. The revenue gained by cutting would be more than offset by the damage to the economy.

In the long term, we can only prevent balancing the budget by being stupid, a.k.a., doing what we have been doing.

In the medium term, however, balancing budget is very much up for grabs by cuts alone. The key is that we do so many stupid, counter-productive, and unsustainable things. Ceasing or replacing those policies with better policies would generate sufficient economic growth to balance the budget in the medium term.

Without getting too deep in the weeds, here's my plan:

Social Security

Social Security is actually the political issue that makes me more cynical. It makes me cynical because it is childishly simple to fix, yet we can't do it. Social Security did not anticipate reduced population growth nor extending lifespans. Fortunately, those are probably one-off changes. Therefore, they require a one-off solution. My plan is simple. In 2012, the retirement age will be 65.25 years. In 2013, 65.5. In 2014, 65.75. In 2015, 66. You increase the retirement age by a quarter every year until it becomes feasible to peg the retirement age to life-expectancy.

Medicare

It is much better to give money than goods, mainly because it can be delivered more efficiently. For those aspects of Medicare and Medicaid that are pretty well universal, such as doctor visits, we should remove that funding from Medicare and add it to Social Security. Rather than devoting money to a notoriously inefficient sector, we could delivery the same benefits more cheaply.

Taxes

The basic principle of effective taxation is that you tax things you don't want to fund things you do. In the U.S., we've turned that principle on its head. We tax things we do want--income, capital gains, sales, property--and don't tax things that we don't--pollution, congestion, sprawl. If we replaced the taxes on things we do want and replace them with things we do, it will generate more of the goods, and less of the harms. This is where the long-hanging policy fruit that will generate out-sized economic growth lies.

Also on the subject of taxes, just because we don't collect revenue doesn't mean they're free. The main culprit in this regard is the mortgage interest deduction. It skews our economy tremendously towards real estate, particularly single-family homes, rather than more productive uses. It also generates more pollution, congestion, and sprawl. Removing this deduction would be political suicide, though we may be able to avoid it by ceasing to tax income. If we don't, the best solution would be to freeze the maximum amount and let inflation reduce the value of the deduction. That's basically my solution for all of the deductions. Freeze the amount and reduce them through inflation.

The Military

I'm quite confident that there's systematic waste in the military, just based on our total spending as compared to other nations. Enough people have pontificated on military waste, that I don't need to add to the cacophony.

Lutheran Revolutions

2011-02-14T21:40:00.001-05:00

In Luther: The Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career, James M. Kittelson spent a great deal of time on Luther's theory of revolution, particularly his emphasis on submitting oneself to the governing authorities. Luther argued that, since all government is established by God, all revolts are, for that reason, sinful.

Lutherans have traditionally followed Luther's interpretation, even going so far as to condemn the American Revolution. It may be, as an heir of both Luther and the American Revolution, that I am biased in this regard, but I think Luther was correct, but that the American Revolution was also valid.

The seat of doctrine in Luther's theory of revolution was St. Paul's statement, "submit yourself to the governing authorities..." The key word is "governing." In the American revolution, one of the complaints made in the Declaration of Independence was that the Crown was not governing--it was unduly delaying the passage of needed legislation. The body that was handling the day-to-day operations of the colonies were the colonial governments. Thus, a revolt by the government of the colonies (the Continental Congress was comprised of the chief men of the colonies) was not a revolt of the people against the government, but a war of the governing authority against an alien power. Thus, it was a legitimate revolution.

A Modest Proposal: The Non-Sanguinary Version

2011-02-13T17:15:00.000-05:00

Prior to the industrial revolution, productivity growth was always exceeded by population growth in the long term. It doesn't matter if your economy gets two percent more productive this year if your population grows by four percent. Even the brief spurts of innovation were quickly overwhelmed by the perpetually high birth rate.

Consequently, it is argued that the black death was key to the industrial revolution, as productivity gains finally exceeded population growth, due to a reduced population to capital ratio.

In the last fifty years, we've discovered that this "demographic dividend" doesn't require massive depopulation. If birth rates fall and remain suppressed, the population will age so that there are more productive workers for every dependent (either old or young). Of course, as the aging process continues, the demographic dividend will be reversed, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Anyway, this was just a long way of getting around to my point. The Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were even less productive then we imagined. During the Cold War, Eastern Europe made the transition to low birthrates, yet they have nothing to show for it. Communism ate the demographic dividend.

Book Review: Luther the Reformer

2011-02-12T15:42:00.004-05:00

Kittelson, James M. Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986.

It's really quite amazing that, being a well-read Lutheran and all, that I have never read a biography of Luther. The only reason I read this one was a coworker of mine wanted to read a good biography of Luther, so I asked my pastor for a recommendation, and he loaned me this one. My coworker gave me the book back right before I moved, so I was unable to return it directly to pastor. With the rest of my books packed in boxes, I read this one during the move and my first few day's commute.

My familiarity with Luther's life comes almost entirely from the classic move. It was truly astonishing how much detail was left out of the movie. They chopped off the second half of his life!

The part that most intrigued me, however, was the outsized role played by Elector Frederick the Wise. I knew he was deeply involved in defending Luther, but I had no idea just how far he stuck his neck out. I don’t think anyone could argue that Christians should not be involved in politics after reading a biography of Luther. The entire Reformation could have been snuffed out so easily had not one politically powerful man stood in the way.

Also, as someone who has been raised in the church, it's hard to understand what conversion really means. My faith is so central to who I am, how do you strike out the foundation of your person like that, or is it always as it was with Luther--a gradual weakening followed by a death-blow?

It's really sad what happened to Katie Luther. After Martin died, she spent the rest of her life fleeing from her home. Twice as a refugee from invading armies, and her last trip fleeing the plague--and on that trip her carriage flipped and dumped her into a canal, where she drowned. Not what one might call a happy ending.

Commentary on the Commentary II

2011-02-07T22:38:00.001-05:00

Continuing to wade through my archeological study Bible, I ran across two, contradictory references on opposite pages. Their comment on Genesis 7:1-19 repeated the old canard that it was assuredly a local flood, yet on the facing page, their comment on Genesis 9:1-7 shows that God would never send a flood to destroy all life again. I can't believe people can still argue that it was a local flood. Just two chapters later you have irrefutable evidence that either it was a global flood or God brazenly lied. I still have trouble understanding how such flagrantly contradictory theses can still be proposed!

Book Review: Legends of Valor

2011-01-20T22:06:00.003-05:00

Lehane, Brendan. Legends of Valor. The Enchanted World. Alexandria, VA; Time-Life, Inc., 1984.

When I was growing up, we had a book with a gray cover. On its front was, I believe, a picture of St. George and the Dragon. Inside it was full of stories of the Knights of the Round Table and beautiful color painting of the various knights. I loved it and have half-heartedly searched for it at used bookstores every since.

My wife found this one for me, and though it is not the one I was looking for, it was also filled with beautiful paintings.

I liked this book. It straddles the gap between fiction and non-fiction. The author weaves in and out of the stories to explain why the knights did certain things, what their weapons were like, and how the societies in which they lived changed. This book made we want to read the rest of the series.

As for the missing book of my youth, I don't know if I really want to find it. Will it be as awesome as I remember? Or, as Neil Diamond said in Brooklyn Roads:

Thought of going back
But all I'd see are stranger's faces
And all the scars that love erases
But as my mind walks through those places
I'm wonderin'
What's come of them?

The High Income Bidding War

2011-01-18T21:51:00.002-05:00

Having seen chart after chart underscoring income disparity in the United States, it started me thinking about how all dollars are not created equal.

Three years ago at a different job, I was earning half what I make now. I should be rolling in the dough, correct? Unfortunately for me, the increase in salary has come at the cost of successively higher priced real estate markets. Where my current salary has increased 223%, my rent has increased 279%, and I am in roughly the same position I was three years ago.

The key is that, as my salary has increased, the salaries of those against whom I am competing for resources has increased as well. In terms of goods and services, I'm consuming approximately what I did three years ago, but at double the cost, because those I am bidding against in these markets have the same relative position. Therefore, within an economy, a currency can have differing real values, even though it is nominally the same.

If my supposition is correct, the rich consume far less than their income would imply. Their $3,000,000 Manhattan apartment may constitute the same resources as a $500,000 Minneapolis apartment, but there are fewer, deep-pocketed bidders in Minneapolis. They may be rich, but it isn't doing them as much good as you would think.

Now, at the rarefied level of the outrageously rich, I suppose this ceases to have meaning, but for the merely rich, they are only nominally so.

Book Review: Stories in Stone

2011-01-15T15:48:00.002-05:00

Keister, Douglas. Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetary Symbolism and Iconography. New York: MJF Books, 2004.

As a field guide, this is a book you take with you when out in the field, but I didn't do that, and proceeded to read it straight through anyway.

My primary takeaway from this is how silly so much symbolism is. It doesn't really have to mean anything, or have any particular meaning to you, it just has to mean what you want it to mean at the time.

Commentary on the Commentary

2011-01-02T22:00:00.002-05:00

I received the Archaeological Study Bible for Christmas. I'm not going to dedicate myself to commenting on it, partly because I'm lazy, and partly because I have very little time. But, as I am so inclined, I'll comment on it.

I appreciated their comparative analysis of creation myths. The creation myths of other Ancient Near East (ANE) cultures served to glorify one god over the others, glorify one place over others (as the origin of the primordial lump), or to deify an object, such as the sun or the moon. The Biblical creation account in its construction rejects all of those. There are no other gods. Nothing exists that God did not create. Nothing is deified or comparable.

I was rather disappointed in their first reference, concerning the meaning of the Hebrew word yom, because, although they are correct that it can be used to mean an indefinite period of time (as it does in English, ala "Back in the day"), when it is used in Scripture with the phrase "evening and morning" it always refers to a rotation of the earth. Unless you want to postulate a Garden of Eden at the North pole, you're pretty well stuck with a literal day.

Their explanation of the purpose of the bride price made it seem reasonable. The bride's family was to hold the bride price should she find herself divorced or abandoned. It was like paying child support and alimony in advance. In a period without social services, it makes sense. That's why Rachel and Leah considered it an crime by their brother Laban that he had used up their bride price. It wasn't his money, it was their money, held in trust for them.

Their comment that the rivers of Eden named the Tigris and Euphrates are "doubtless the same" as the rivers currently known by those names is bogus. Between the Garden of Eden and today there was a global Flood, which would have rearranged landmasses and watersheds entirely. And it is also tremendously unlikely that the ark landed in precisely the same area it departed from. Far more likely is that Noah et al departed the ark, and reused river names they were familiar with. Much as New England is littered with names of towns, cities, lakes, counties, etc., from England.

The last comment on chapter two, that the Bible contains the only description in ANE literature of the creation of woman, is telling.

Book Review: The Theology of the Cross

2010-12-29T09:57:00.003-05:00

Deutschlander, Daniel M. The Theology of the Cross: Reflections on His Cross and Ours. Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Publishing House, 2009.

If you're ever struck by a desire to read this book, read the first couple of pages in each chapter. If you're fool enough to read the whole thing, you will receive an excellent tutorial in what it means to "belabor a point." His points are good, but there are only enough of them for a pamphlet. As a book, it suffers dreadfully.

However, there were two points of his that were particularly profound:

Page 15: "At the very heart of even the most noble unbelieving humanitarian is the yearning to carry out his own will for his own reasons. He does what he does because he wants to."
When I teach about good works, I put it in context of a college course. I explain, "If you turn in a paper for a class which you are not taking, will you still get credit?" This is a good explanation of why that works--they are doing it on their own account, under the Law, rather than on Christ's account, under the Gospel.

Page 25: "We certainly would not say of something merely human, which to our eyes appears perfect, that it was therefore easy because it seemed perfect.... How foolish then to assert that Christ's submission and his cross were easy because they were carried out perfectly and without sin."

I myself have questioned that, and I am glad that there is an answer. It is so easy to say, "Well of course Jesus lived a perfect life! He was, after all, God!" Like achieving the speed of light, perfection is infinitely difficult, so it does require all the strength of God.

Kin selection, or natural selection?

2010-12-28T22:14:00.005-05:00

I've written about the "gay gene" before, and its possible implications. However, this snippet of the blog Bering in Mind started the wheels turning again:

Modern technological methods helping gays to be parents aside, there are many ways that childless individuals can still be genetically successful, in some cases more so than simply being a biological parent, such as investing heavily in biological kin who share their genes. (In scientific parlance, this is known as kin selection or inclusive genetic fitness.)

I've heard of kin selection before. I wonder what other "many ways" he refers to (though not enough to bother looking them up.) Anyway, modern technology, while opening direct biological success, simultaneously closes kin selection as a means of genetic success.

The rise of the single-child family is the key trend. With a single child, two adults (perhaps six, if both parents were singletons themselves), are already focused on the success of a single individual. The law of diminishing returns should apply here. The ratio of adults to children is already so high--6:1 isn't much different from 7:1--that the impact should be marginal. In addition, if the number of children is stable at one, an increase in resources will not increase genetic success. One child is one child, no matter the resources.

If kin selection is no longer effective, natural selection will become the dominant force in determining genetic success.

Why texting works

2010-12-15T19:11:00.002-05:00

The theory posited in the above doesn't make sense to me. It may be a shortcut our brains take now that the printed word is readily available, but it shouldn't be universally true. Prior to the advent of printing, word spacing was irregularly used, if at all. There would be no indication in such a text which letter was the first or last letter of a word, yet people were still able to read.

Devaluing Your Paycheck

2010-12-03T21:52:00.005-05:00

After reading some argumentation about the possibility of devaluing while in a currency union, I wondered just how far you can go. How small a political entity can realistically pursue an internal devaluation with a shared currency? Rather that start theorizing my way down, I started by theorizing my way up, with the smallest political entity--the individual.

When I started to consider how an individual could conduct an internal devaluation, I realized that credit cards have produced exactly the scenario I was contemplating. An individual with credit card debt has vastly reduced purchasing power--it may take $1.20 worth of income to purchase $1.00 worth of goods. Their "imports" are vastly more expensive than their "exports" (typically labor).

Ironically, though, because of the nature of credit, we are, on a micro-level, in exactly the same position that the United States is with China. Their labor is overvalued, but that position is maintained by providing credit, which maintains the trade environment at its current levels.

Therefore, the current deleveraging will flatten the real (not nominal) income distribution in the United States. As debts are paid down, the purchasing power of the lower class will rise, and the income (via interest) and goods available (due to increased competition) to the upper class will decrease without changing who received how much income. It's an odd way of doing things, but it'll do.

Charts: Worth a thousand words of dissembling

2010-12-02T19:53:00.003-05:00

I have my nomination for misleading chart of the month. It was in the article "Staying Power: The U.S. Mission in Afghanistan Beyond 2011" by Michael O'Hanlon in the September/October issue of the Foreign Affairs Journal. (Vol. 89 No. 5) on page 74.

The gist of the article was that the NATO mission in Afghanistan would require elevated troop levels far beyond Obama's proposed draw down date. And the chart seems to support it:

See anything wrong with that chart? Something like, oh, the first half of the chart covers four years, but the second half covers only one year? That really supports the thesis of gradual progress, doesn't it? What if I adjusted the scale so the slope of the lines was accurate?

HOLY CRAP!!! THE OBAMA SURGE IS WORKING!!!

I really expect better of them. I know it's not an academic journal, but this is something I'd expect of USA Today.

Book Review: All for Pie, Pie for All

2010-11-30T22:07:00.002-05:00

Martin, David. All for Pie: Pie for All. Somerville, MA; Candlewick Press, 2006.

This book discusses two topics that are very dear to my heart. Pie and napping. It moves me to tears.

Book Review: Moon-o-theism, Backmatter

2010-11-24T21:54:00.004-05:00

Well, this is it. I have officially finished both volumes. I didn't think I'd have much to say about the backmatter, but it turns out I do.

First, I don't think we need the abbreviated war verses. That's how he refers to them throughout the text, so it seems repetitious.

Second, I really, really, really liked the war verses with context. All through these volumes I had a nagging suspicion that they were taken out of context. With the full text available, I can see that the edits were appropriate. At the very least, (and if he did and I missed it, I apologize), the author should have recommended that these verses be read prior to diving into the text. I would even make the case that, rather than being buried in the backmatter, they should be moved to the front of the first volume, so everyone would review them prior to reading the text.

I would also recommend that a different translation be used. I know that translation isn't an exact science, and that the form of the original makes it clear what is being referred to, but the extensive use of brackets for clarification is distracting and makes it seem that the author may be skewing the translation. It would be better to use a less literal, more complete translation and reduce the number of brackets.

Third, in a glossary, as a general rule, the definitions should not go on for pages and include footnotes. Much of what is contained in the glossary should be moved to the body of the text (particularly in a two-volume series, in which the glossary is not readily available for those reading the first volume).

As a whole, using the crudest measure of success, the author succeeded in persuading me of his thesis. Though I quibbled, sometimes extensively, over the details, the main argument remains intact. When making such a controversial argument, you cannot ask for more than that.

Book Review: Moon-o-theism, Chapter 16

2010-11-20T15:15:00.003-05:00

I must admit, I began the section on the Arabic alphabet with a great deal of skepticism. It seemed surreal that a people would reshape their alphabet to give it an astrological appearance. However, a single argument, about two-thirds of the way in, changed my opinion. The author argued that the alphabet was no different from any other symbolic representation, and just a religion influences other symbols, it will influence the alphabet as well. That lone argument made the whole section plausible, and really should have been introduced first. I would counter, however, that the more important something is, the less variation is introduced, e.g., mitochondrial DNA is much more stable, being much more vital to the survival of the organism. On the other hand, at the time of the Koran's writing, most people were illiterate, so the written word was not nearly as an important a symbol. On the third hand, the multiplicity of fonts available in modern times, shows how easily variation can be introduced to an alphabet without adversely effecting it usefulness. Anyway, this was an interesting section.

The rest of the chapter didn't really pique my interest enough to comment on, except at the end. I'm suddenly at the end of the text, with only the backmatter to plow through. There was no conclusion or summation--it just stopped. I know I suffer from this fault as well (I tend to think that if I have argued my case convincingly, my conclusion should be self-evident) so it was enlightening to me just how jarring the lack of a conclusion can be. This book covers so much that it definitely needs a conclusion.

On to the appendices.

Book Review: Moon-o-theism, Chapter 15

2010-11-15T21:43:00.002-05:00

Chapter fifteen concerns Mohammad. In it, the author claims that many of Mohammad's revelations, particularly the early ones, were drug induced. Given the role that many narcotics have played through history, this sounds very reasonable. I appreciated how he wove together many seemingly unrelated anecdotes to show a pattern of behavior consistent with drug abuse. Until someone comes up with a better explanation, I'll argue that Mohammad was an apparent drug user.

The second main theme is that Mohammad suffered from gonorrhea. Once again, I appreciated the author's weaving together of many seemingly unrelated anecdotes to arrive at his conclusion. Particularly, I can see how the gonorrheal discharges could be interpreted as an abundance of sexual potency. This section does seem a bit late, however, as many of these same evidences were discussed in different contexts elsewhere in the book.

All in all, though, this chapter was well worth the read.

Book Review: Moon-o-theism, Chapter 14

2010-11-09T21:17:00.002-05:00

I thought the section about a night-time mirage causing the "splitting the moon" was, in retrospect, obvious. However, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I'm an outsider looking in on this. Just like random people come up with naturalistic phenomena to explain various biblical miracles, the explanations Yoel Natan offers seem like they would have been considered, and rejected, by true believers for reasons with which I am unfamiliar. I think this chapter would have been strengthened by citing some Islamic scholars, and why they reject these hypotheses.

Book Review: Moon-o-theism, Chapter 13

2010-11-08T22:15:00.003-05:00

This chapter was great. I hadn't realized how the viewers perspective of the Hatim Wall at the Kaaba mimicked the phases of the moon during the Hajj circumambulation, or how the same effect is achieved by running back and forth between the mountains during the Hajj.

This seems like a powerful proof of his thesis to me. It's not something that happens by accident; it is quite evidently designed (a single instance perhaps, but two ceremonies that achieve the same result?) And both ceremonies are strongly, visually linked with the moon.

Yoel Natan also mentioned how many religious practices are mandated to be performed at night, which one would expect of moon worshipers. He didn't mention the Feast of Ramadan in this chapter, but I think that's a prime example. For a whole month, most pious Muslims sleep much of the day and have an all-night feast. If anything forces you to be up at night, being unable to eat or drink during the day would do it.

Destroying the village in order to save it

2010-11-01T20:37:00.002-04:00

Christianity is like freedom. The more you tell people they can't have it, the more people want it. The church is most vigorous where it is most repressed. By contrast, the most stagnant of faiths exists where the church is official supported and sanctioned. Consider Western Europe, with its state-supported churches full of vacant pews.

What should a Christian do? Freeing the faith leads to its demise? Repressing it leads to its growth? Can a Christian even contemplate that persecution may be necessary for the sake of the church?

How much persecution is necessary? Probably short of throwing them to the lions, but more than benign indifference. I think that, at the very least, we should scrap faith-based-initiatives and tax-exempt status. I'm sure that many churches would be faced with closure. I'm sure that would be a wake up call for their members. People who assumed that their physical church was forever, whether they were involved or not, would wake up to the reality that it isn't.

I can, in good conscience, support the steps above. I'm not sure what the next steps would be: what other sacrifices would be required to turn the church around. This would just cut the old dead wood and allow new, healthy growth to emerge. I don't know if I could support truly repressive steps for the good of the church, but I hope that the blood of the martyrs is not necessary.

Book Review: The Nation Reunited

2010-10-30T08:35:00.002-04:00

Murphy, Richard W. The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA; Time-Life, Inc., 1987.

Well, this is it. There are just a couple of photo essays in the last volume.

This book covers Reconstruction, quite possibly my least favorite chapter of American history. The one thing I learned from this book was just how much power the Klan and various associates groups had. From page 143, "In the resultant bloody showdown, White Leaguers routed a force of 3,500 black militiamen and city police led by former Confederate General James Longstreet." It's difficult to imagine any non-governmental organization having that sort of power today.

What happened to the unicorns

2010-10-27T21:50:00.002-04:00

In the August 2010 issue of National Geographic, they discuss an archeological discovery on page 29:

"Now a recently translated Babylonian tablet, related to the Epic of Gilgamesh, floats an intriguing alternative in which the archetypal ark was round and made of pitch-covered reeds, much like a coracle, a craft still used today on the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. 'The ark wasn't going anywhere,' explains Irving Finkel, assistant keeper of cuneiform at the British Museum, who did the translation. 'It simply had to bob along the surface until the waters went down.'"

I'll leave aside the question of the structural integrity of a reed boat when scaled up to ark size. However, though you can't really fault him for being a landlubber, a quick thought experiment demonstrates that this ark is entirely unworkable:

You are in a round ark during a global flood. There are no landmasses to dissipate the force of a storm. The only thing which would stop a hurricane from growing and growing is veering towards the colder waters of the poles. So you pretty much have massive hurricanes all the time in southerly climes. Massive, spinning, hurricanes. You are in a round ark which cannot maintain its orientation. In short order, you are an ark-sized tilt-a-whirl.

So yes, it is an intriguing alternative, in that you get to imagine what a few months in a tilt-a-whirl would do. I theorize that the unicorns died of seasickness.

Book Review: The Assassination

2010-10-27T15:10:00.003-04:00

Clark, Champ. The Assassination: Death of the President. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life, Inc., 1987.

My lack of knowledge of late Civil War continues to astound me. I didn't remember that anyone was targeted other than Lincoln, nor that there was more than one conspirator. I guess my image of an assassination is the JFK style lone-gunman.

That truly that was a different era. I'm so used to the activities of the President being shrouded in secrecy and security. (My closest glimpse of a president, the elder Bush, was from several hundred yards away. For all I could tell, they had Cookie Monster on the stage.) They published that Lincoln was going to attend Ford's theater in the newspaper, for Pete's sake. He had a single bodyguard with him, who, by various accounts, either found a seat to watch the play himself, or went next door to the saloon for a drink. It's astounding how little attention they paid to security in the middle of a war with tens of thousands of dead.

On pages 80-1, they have an image of what Lincoln was carrying in his pockets when he was assassinated. The one thing that really endeared him to me was the pair of glasses that he had repaired with thread. That's something my parents would do.

And he blew the house down

2010-10-25T19:28:00.002-04:00

Answers in Genesis has a column about cavemen.

I think they miss a major reason for dwelling in caves: would you live in a timber-frame house with dinosaurs tromping around?

Book Review: Moon-o-theism, Chapter 12

2010-10-18T16:56:00.003-04:00

Unfortunately, this chapter reminds me of Lost. Everything is interconnected. Everything means something. There are no coincidences, no simple aesthetics. I think Yoel Natan belabors his case to the point I began to question it again. It would have been better had he cherry picked the strongest arguments and presented those alone.

And I'll end with a lyric from The Diver's song "Aquaman" (the hidden track on Walkies in the Park):

Dude, man, it's all there!
The passing of the realm to the infinite shadows toward the infinity of the vortex!
It's all so perfectly obvious! Man!

Book Review: Pursuit ot Appomattox

2010-10-18T16:04:00.004-04:00

Korn, Jerry. Pursuit to Appomattox: The Last Battles. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA; Time-Life Inc., 1987.

Prior to college, it seemed to me that the crowning achievement of world history was the cotton gin. Every year we'd start history talking about the Native Americans, move on to a wide variety of mostly indistinguishable Conquistadors, hit the colonial period and the American revolution, and the year would end in the period just prior to the Civil War with the invention of the cotton gin. Why bother recording anything else, because the next year, rather than picking up with the Civil War, we'd start a new textbook and talk about the Native Americans again.

I can only imagine something similar happened to me when I was taking Civil War history in college. We must have hit Grant's transfer east and the end game just as the semester was winding up, so we rushed through the last year of the war in a class or so.

I don't remember ANY of this. Had I stopped to think about it, I would have realized that somehow Lee had to have gotten out of Richmond and Petersburg in order to surrender at Appomattox. Maybe the author just writes it well, but surely I would have remembered the dramatic chase with Sheridan blocking Lee at every turn, the supplies Lee desperately needed always being just out of reach, and an all-black unit closing the trap after a three-day, 96-mile march.

The two best parts of the book were Lincoln's boat getting stuck on a sandbar in part of Richmond that hadn't been occupied yet, and Longstreet's upbraiding Custer for his flagrant breach of military etiquette. I'm ashamed to admit it, but the most fitting description of General Custer is a strong vulgarity. My printable vocabulary has failed me.

Statistics, Sensationalism, and Legal Liability

2010-10-13T21:52:00.002-04:00

Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, and not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? - Abraham Lincoln

Humans are by nature horrible statisticians, which is why this article is tremendously damaging. The only redeeming factor about that article is that it has a relatively narrow audience. People will not remember that this is entirely conjectural. People will not think that 12,000 people died in 2009 from a preventable disease. People will not know that a critical distribution of vaccinated people kept even more from becoming infected an dying. All they will remember is the blurb: flu vaccines cause paralysis! There is no context, and even if there was, the natural tendency to remember a dramatic event, rather than a dry statistic, would cause them to forget it.

What will happen as a result of this article? More people will remember it and refuse the vaccine. More people will get sick and die. Will those be reported? No, that's just another hash mark in the CDC statistics. Will the flu season be particularly bad this year because we didn't have the critical mass of vaccinated people? It depends on the article's reach, but it can happen. Vaccines are very much victims of their own success. People don't see the cases of polio, mumps, scarlet fever, etc., that didn't happen, but they do see the rare adverse reaction, and that's what sticks in their minds. They then refuse vaccination, and their freeloading works for a time, because a disease can't travel in a vaccinated population. It isn't until we have an outbreak of a preventable disease that people understand why we vaccinate people.

I think the author of that article should be sued for endangering the public health.

Book Review: The Shenandoah in Flames

2010-10-12T21:54:00.002-04:00

Lewis, Thomas A. The Shenandoah in Flames: The Valley Campaign of 1864. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA; Time-Life, Inc., 1987.

It seems my knowledge of the Civil War is sorely lacking towards the end. The late war march on Washington by Jubal Early? I had no idea that happened. I had a relatively good grasp of what went on early in the war, but my grasp of end was limited to: Grant goes east. Big bloody battle. The end. I knew that the Shenadoah fared badly in the Civil War, though that's probably just the impression I got from the Jimmy Stewart movie.

As a student of counter-insurgency, what most grabbed my attention in this book was the effect on the irregulars in the valley. The scorched earth policy did nothing. If there's enough for a civilian to survive, there's enough for irregulars to survive. Unless you want to reduce the civilians to starvation (and even that may not be enough), no amount of sacking and burning will do the job. What the scorched earth did do, however, was make the valley impassible for bodies of regular troops, which served the purpose and allowed Sheridan to march to join Grant anyway.

Book Review: War on the Frontier

2010-10-09T15:25:00.002-04:00

Josephy Jr., Alvin M. War on the Frontier: The Trans-Mississippi West. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life, Inc., 1986.

This book was simultaneously boring, puzzling, and educational.

It was boring because so little of it seemed to matter. They'd win a victory, and the end result would be about the same as if they'd lost.

It was puzzling because of how few men were involved and how little attention was paid to it. When I play strategy games, I pick off the weak outlying provinces first, and work my way in. Everything in the Civil War was devoted to the eastern front. A single brigade of cavalry could have swept away everything on the frontier, but that much was a rounding error in the east.

It was educational because I knew so little about it, despite having lived in Minnesota where the Dakota Conflict (formerly known as the Sioux Uprising) took place. You had to feel sorry for the Native Americans, however. It did make sense--make war on the Americans while they were busy killing each other--but it was too little too late.

Book Review: Death in the Trenches

2010-09-30T21:41:00.002-04:00

Davis, William C. Death in the Trenches: Grant at Petersburg. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA; Time-Life Inc., 1986.

I knew that there was trench warfare in the Civil War. I did not know, however, the scale of the entrenchments. The excavations were seemingly as elaborate as those of World War I. Speaking of which, why the heck did the generals of World War I become obsessed with the bayonet? If generals are always experts in the last war, surely they should have realized that attacking trench lines en masse was a fool's game. What is wrong with people?

The engineering challenge of pumping air into the tunnel for the ill-fated battle of the crater was brilliant. They made the tunnel air tight with a ventilation hole and pipe that allowed inflow only at the working end of the tunnel, and then lit a fire under the exhaust shaft to draw the air out. Simple and classic.

It also amused me that, after the 1864 election, Grant embarked on a purge of political generals--"Thanks for your support, but we won't need it by the next election, and we don't need you now."

Book Review: Sherman's March

2010-09-28T21:51:00.004-04:00

Nevin, David. Sherman's March: Atlanta to the Sea. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA; Time-Life, Inc., 1986.

So I discovered that my Civil War history was severely lacking. I had no idea that Hood led the Confederate Army of Tennessee north while Sherman made his march. I had no idea that Sherman hand-picked the men who went on the march, and sent them north under the Union's best defensive general, George Thomas. I had no idea that when the met outside of Nashville, Thomas routed the Confederates so that the Army of Tennessee effectively ceased to exist. All the history I've read has focused exclusively on Sherman.

I also hadn't realized that when Sherman cut away from his supply lines, no one knew what had happened to him for weeks on end. For all they knew, his army had been swallowed up in the strongholds of the Confederacy. It wasn't until he broke through to Savannah that they knew what became of him.

Also, for all of our deliberate misspellings of names, we're not nearly as creative as people were back then. I mean, who names their child "States Rights Gist"? (Sure, the baseball commissioner was "Kennesaw Mountain Landis", but he was a child of the Civil War.)

And a question for counter-factual historians: what would have happened if they put General Forrest in charge of infantry? In the east, General Stuart demonstrated that he was an able infantry commander in a pinch, so why not give Forrest a try as well?

The Right to be Unhealthy

2010-09-25T17:22:00.001-04:00

Everything you do effects your health. What you eat. What you drink. Where you work. How you spend your leisure. It all effects your health.

With healthcare, if "we" are paying the bills, "we" will also be involved in the healthcare decisions--which extend to all of life. Much of Europe's reduced healthcare bill is that Europe has had generations of collective decision making, and has eliminated many unhealthy options from people's lives.

I hope you are comfortable with collective control of your health.

Book Review: The Killing Ground

2010-09-25T08:20:00.003-04:00

Jaynes, Gregory. The Killing Ground: Wilderness to Cold Harbor. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA; Time-Life, Inc., 1986.

So in a month and a half, Grant took as many casualties as McClellan took in his entire career. You can imagine why the troops were less than pleased with him. Of course, all of those soldiers were lost retaking ground that McClellan had taken, and then retreated from.

What I don't understand, however, is why no one thought that issuing machetes and axes would be a reasonable objective. After having fought in the Wilderness before, and discovering just how hard it is to fight when you can't cut a clear path to bring up reinforcements or remove the wounded, someone had to have thought of this. In Spotsylvania, they did issue axes to the first wave, that they could cut their way through the abatis, and it worked, but that lesson was lost on subsequent assaults. It seems nothing is more short-lived than a military innovation.

Book Review: Battles for Atlanta

2010-09-25T08:03:00.002-04:00

Bailey, Ronald H. Battles for Atlanta: Sherman Moves East. The Civil War. Alexandria, VA; Time-Life, Inc., 1989.

I've read the history of Sherman's march on Atlanta before, and I always considered how his double-flanking was strategic brilliance. (He would always attempt to flank his opponent in the battle, but he sent a reserve force in a long flanking march around--he'd flank both within the battle and around the battle--which force Johnston to retreat.)

This book, however, was focused on the individual side of the war, and just how much the constant marching and fighting sucked. I'm sure the soldiers caught in the thick of things wished that they had that extra corps that went marching off.

A Heathen Reads the Bible

2010-09-24T22:00:00.004-04:00

Noumenon linked me to the blog A Heathen Reads the Bible, which I am enjoying greatly. I'm not going to criticize it seriously, because it's not serious criticism, but I do have a few random comments:

why 'we can't just train all the animals to be vegetarian'

We can, sometimes. A lot of them have just lost the ability, or the particular plant species, to pursue that diet.

I always wondered why people didn't infer from this story that learning second languages is against God's will; mostly this thought came to me as a fond fantasy in the middle of Spanish class.

Now consider that God reversed the Tower of Babel at Pentacost.

but I have NO idea where Jacob got this silly branch idea..."Am I missing something huge or is this story just completely pointless?"

It seems that God launched the first "come as you are" party, and accepted all varieties of paganism in his converts (though that was rapidly purged out of them).

These random details do add realism to the story, though. The writer's adage, reality doesn't have to make sense, appears to apply. The striped sticks? Never referred to again. Why put it in there? Because it happened. Wouldn't you be much more suspicious of a Murder on the Orient Express style drama were the tiniest detail was crucial to the plot? A lot of butterflies flap their wings without causing hurricanes.

An Open Letter to the Atheist Trolls

2010-09-23T21:51:00.003-04:00

Dear Atheist Trolls,

While I recognize that your stunning intellect has allowed you to detect the seemingly glaring flaws in the Scriptures, after nearly two thousand years with the New Testament, and up to fourteen hundred more for the Old Testament, we have addressed these issues ad nauseum. Any criticism that you can discover in a translation, (and that without devoting years of study to it), has already been rebutted. Please consider that the skeptics before you, while not approaching your intellectual development (nor your wit or good manners), may have brought these to our attention.

Please find something new to talk about.

Sincerely,

Me.

P.S. If I read one more person saying, "There are two contradictory creation stories..." I'm going to TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

The Enemy of My Enemy...

2010-09-22T21:51:00.004-04:00

Is both my friend, my enemy, and my enemy's friend. If there's one thing I've learned from Facebook, it's that if you look at people's actual positions, and not their claimed affiliations, they're all over the map. On any particular issue you may be deeply opposed too many of your friends, even though you both vote for the same candidates.

I think that you should ignore political parties entirely, and create your own "platform" by supporting multiple, single-issue groups that support your views, even if you'll be working against some of your friends in those organizations.

The Irony of Keynesianism

2010-09-20T19:52:00.002-04:00

It's ironic, isn't it, that of the developed world the Germans have come through the Great Recession the best? The Germans laid plans for the next downturn well in advance. The policies and procedures were created well in advance of the crisis, so when it came to implementation, it was a relative cakewalk--there was no need for a slapdash TARP, or a bailout, our any of the many things America has tried. And there is also not the loss of faith in a government which appears to be out of control as it practices Keynesianism.

So here is the irony of Keynesiasm: those who plan for it, don't need it; those who need it, can't do it.

20/20 Hindsight

2010-09-19T19:14:00.002-04:00

In retrospect, it's obvious that the saying, "Invest in real estate--they're not making more land!" is foolish. It's not immediately obvious why that would be the case, however.

People were thinking of land as a purely physical thing, and not as an economic input. Land as an economic input, however, is what creates most of its value (desert land, for instance, isn't worth all that much, so it doesn't cost that much). Like most economic inputs, we use land more efficiently over time. For example, over the last two hundred years, the wheat yield from an acre of land has risen nine-fold. To produce the same harvest, we need only 11% as much land. How is that any different from creating new land? All of that land we no longer need to devote to wheat can be allotted to other purposes.

Iceland isn't the only place that can create new land.