Metadoxy

The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

2011-11-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Money allows us to move value, especially the value of our labor and perishable products, across space and time. Banking allows us to move money across space and time. Bonds and stocks go beyond banks and allow us to finance longer term investments, an essential component of economic progress and wealth creation; of course, they also allow us to gamble with both our own and other people's money. Betting on the future is risky, which is why we have insurance markets; and few bets are as important for both financial health and living standards as betting on houses. All these components come into play in the global financial history Niall Ferguson weaves together in The Ascent of Money.

The book was written as the financial panic, housing bust, and global recession of 2008 were still snowballing. Ferguson offers a historical perspective on what he considers the key markets influencing the unfolding crisis. From the clay tablets of Mesopotamia to the silver mines of Cerro Rico to the international exchange machinations of George Soros, the book walks a sweeping path through thousands of years to the first few months of that fateful year.

The style of the book is, unsurprisingly, a bit rushed, but generally enjoyable. Ferguson freely bounces between the ludicrously anecdotal and the abstractly mathematical. Consider this passage, introducing the founders of the Scottish Minsters' Widows' Fund (now the insurance & pension fund Scottish Widows):

We tend to think of Scottish clergymen as the epitome of prudence and thrift, weighed down with an anticipation of impending divine retribution for every tiny transgression. In reality, Robert Wallace was a hard drinker as well as a mathematical prodigy, who loved to knock back claret with his bibulous buddies at the Rankenian Club, which met in what used to be Ranken's Inn. Alexander Webster's nickname was Bonum Magnum; it was said to be 'hardly in the power of liquor to affect Dr. Webster's understanding or his limbs'. Yet no one was more sober when it came to calculations of life expectancy.

With my Presbyterian background, I had to chuckle; I'm like to think that Ferguson, himself a Scot, must have done so when he wrote it.

On the whole, I was quite pleased with the book. I actually assigned it as required reading for my money and banking students before I had finished it, and am looking forward to in-class discussion on it in a few weeks. On the other hand, I also learned that there is a 6-hour BBC miniseries version, so a number of students might not read it at all. I'm still undecided if that's a bad thing or not.

I recommend the book to anyone who wants a broad historical background to understanding either the recent recession or modern finance. There are other sources with more detail and more focus, and as I mentioned earlier, the flow suffers a bit from trying to release the book in medias res. But I get the sense that this is Ferguson doing what he does best, and he's quite good at it.

Theories of International Politics and Zombies by Daniel Drezner

2011-11-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

When I heard about this book, I was convinced it was something I needed to read, but had no idea when I'd have the time or funding to do so. Fortunately for me, my friend (and now soon-to-be military chaplain) Matt Moynihan decided to buy the book and give it to me. Thanks, Moyni!

The book basically provides a (very) brief summary of various political theories, illustrating how each school of thought operates by applying its thinking to the possibility of a zombie outbreak. It's a pretty interesting conceit, and gets at one of the main reasons I find contemplating the zombie apocalypse so intellectually satisfying. From the second chapter:

Scholars, commentators, and policy analysts rely on deductive theories as a cognitive guide in a complex world. The more observational implications that flow from these theories, the greater their explanatory leverage over known unknowns and unknown unknowns. One measure of their explanatory leverage is their ability to offer useful and counterintuitive predictions in the wake of exogenous shocks to the system. Surely an army of the ravenous living dead would qualify as such a shock.

Zombie denialists might argue that since there is minimal chance of the dead rising from the grave and feasting upon the living this exercise will yield little in the way of enlightenment. This ignores the ways in which world politics is changing, and the need for international relations scholarship to change with it. [...] Zombies are the perfect twenty-first-century threat: they are not well understood by serious analysts, they possess protean capabilities, and the challenge they pose to states is very, very grave. (pp. 17-18)

Drezner captures my sentiment quite well here. The fiction of a zombie apocalypse is a way to understand the reality of less extreme (and therefore harder to parse) circumstances.

After clarifying some definitions, the book goes on to describe policy reactions to zombies as dictated by realist, liberal, neoconservative, and constructivist perspectives. It also deals with concerns of local policy, bureaucratic implementation, and psychological biases and reactions. On the whole, the book covers a lot of ground, which means it doesn't go very deeply into any of these topics.

I found this last point a bit disappointing, as I was prepared to wade through a bit more technical discussion. I can handle using a vocabulary outside my own field if it means getting a fuller picture of the political issues behind zombie preparedness and response. What I got was a few terms and a snapshot of how they might work their way out in catastrophic circumstances, but not much else. I think if the book sparks an interest in the underlying theories I'm supposed to take a proper class, but... yeah, no thanks.

In the end, I can actually see this finding its way into one of those really fun interdisciplinary classes people complain about from time to time, something with a title like "Social Theory of Armageddon." It definitely belongs on my shelf. But it felt a bit too rushed and introductory for an unqualified endorsement. In the end, it's pretty good beach reading... if you like reading about the zombie apocalypse and political theory while hanging out on the beach.

While we're on the subject, there's this from The Onion News Network:

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

Doctor Who, the Popular Musical

2011-10-24T05:00:00.002-07:00

Below the fold (jumpbreak? I never know what to call it...) are some videos featuring one of my current favorite shows and a couple of my current favorite bands.

Read more »

Reading Scripture and the Conservative/Liberal Divide

2011-10-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

My wife provided a link to this article at Christianity Today, which discusses some new research on the relationship between regular Bible reading on whether the reader leans conservative or liberal on various topics. Some of the key findings (find more at the link):

Frequent Bible reading has some predictable effects on the reader. It increases opposition to abortion as well as homosexual marriage and unions. [...] But [...] For each increased level of Bible-reading frequency, support for the Patriot Act decreased by about 13 percent. [...] As might be expected, respondents who were more politically liberal were prone to disagree with the statement, "The government should punish criminals more harshly." Unexpectedly (at least given the conservative stereotype), the more frequently people read the Bible, the more they too are prone to disagree with the statement. [...] the more someone reads the Bible, the more likely he or she is to believe science and religion are compatible.[...] contrary to liberal media stereotypes, those who are most engaged in their faith (by directly and frequently reading its source material) are those who are most supportive of social and economic justice.

The article interprets this as causal: more frequent Bible reading makes otherwise conservative Christians more liberal. I think there is some sense to this interpretation. It's hard to read large segments of the Bible and think of it as more about rules and instructions than stories and people. And it's very hard to read those stories and still think of people as either good guys who follow the rules or bad guys who bring God's wrath upon them. The Bible doesn't really have many black hats, and even fewer white hats.

But it sounds like the study doesn't actually pin down the direction of causation in this way, I can think of good reasons it could go differently. In particular, if you're a slightly more liberal person in a conservative church environment, you will more frequently leave a sermon wondering "but does it really say that?" This provides motivation to read the Bible for yourself rather than just taking a pastor or teacher's word for it.

So my instinct is that sorting out the degree of cause in each direction is far from simple. Nevertheless, it's an important correlation, and one that holds even after controlling for a number of other important relationships. What do you think? Does reading the Bible regularly moderate your views? What about other people you know?

Matt Yglesias Is Right and Wrong

2011-10-17T05:00:00.001-07:00

As Matt Yglesias discussed a few days ago, he has a problem with public choice economics:

While of course I agree with many of the specific observations made under the banner of public choice (public officials often do corrupt and self-interested things), I don’t really “get” public choice and think I never will. The basic theory [...] seems to go like this:
1) Spread cynicism about public officials.
2) …
3) Libertarianism!
The psychological and sociological links here seem clear enough. Both libertarian political ideology and spreading cynicism about public officials serve to raise the status of businessmen and lower the status of politicians and bureaucrats. But as a political agenda it doesn’t work at all.

He goes on to provide plenty of good reasons why cynicism is problematic as a guiding principle for political decisions. He's right.

But he's completely wrong in thinking that what he's talking about is public choice economics. Perhaps a trip to Wikipedia could have cleared this up. Public choice is not a political agenda. It's descriptive, applying the analytical tools of economics to the decision-making process of political bodies. It's core premise is that politicians are no less (and no more!) oriented toward their own best interests than any other human being.

It's true that public choice is often used as a part of the case for libertarianism, but only because advocates all too often assume that politics has the uncanny ability to attract only the most altruistic idealists into its ranks. Public choice makes the case, rather, that political institutions can just as easily attract those seeking economic rents... or at the very least those whose motives look very like the motives of any other consumer or firm manager.

So Yglesias is right that if we are trying to tell political figures how they can look out for the well-being of society we shouldn't expect public choice economics to give us the answers. But then we wouldn't offer advice on generating bigger externalities to polluters, either. If we want to be able to predict how the political system will deal with something, though, we might want to model the actual decision-makers, and public choice provides an under-utilized means of doing that. For that matter, if we want to construct institutions that limit the ability of politicians to indulge their self-interest, public choice can help us there, too, although it will also tell us why such institutional changes are difficult to achieve.

In the end, it seems like what Matt Yglesias doesn't really get is the difference between prescriptive policy and descriptives science.

And by 'Life As Usual' I Meant...

2011-10-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

... that I'll be on hiatus for the next four months. Apparently.

Not to go all Randy Quaid in Independence Day on you, but:

Yep. The plan is to post on a semi-regular basis, probably only about once a week.

So what's been keeping me busy this whole time? Well, let's see:

My family and I have moved to California
I am now a full time faculty member teaching three different courses
So my time has been pretty full with teaching, evaluation, and settling into life on the west coast
Also, I have a two-year-old daughter and an amazing and creative wife, so why wouldn't I be keeping busy?

I'm hoping to continue living up to the blog's tag line of "exercises in self-awareness," but I will probably be keeping it simpler overall. I'll be commenting on items from the Internet that get me thinking, posting links and videos, and with any luck I'll be putting some book reviews up as well!

Thanks for continuing to hang around even though nothing's been happening. Feel free to post requests or ideas in the comments. You can also look me up on Twitter or the Google+.

News in Brief

2011-06-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

I just got my Ph.D. in Economics. Pretty pleased about it, to be honest. Life as usual to return presently. That is all.

Linkdump: Immigration

2011-05-23T07:00:00.024-07:00

The Wall Street Journal recommends some fiction for your library, which I have not read, but sounds interesting. (Cannot be excerpted, check out the article for very brief reviews)

The Economist says more legal immigration is low-hanging fruit.

At a time when America is concerned about excess housing supply and anxious to boost its innovative capacity it is madness that so many willing immigrants, including high-skilled workers, including those educated in America, find it difficult to impossible to gain permission to work in the country on a stable, long-term basis.

Annie Lowry agrees.

The pro-super-immigrant data abounds. According to the Hamilton Project, immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start a business than U.S.-born citizens. Immigrants with college degrees are three times as likely to file patents as the domestically born. And all that entrepreneurial gusto really adds up. Economist Jennifer Hunt of McGill estimates that the contributions of immigrants with college degrees increased the U.S.'s GDP per capita by between 1.4 and 2.4 percent in the 1990s.

Despite these success stories, the United States still discourages foreign-born entrepreneurs. The H1-B visa program allows employers to bring in highly skilled workers but grants only 85,000 new temporary visas per year. Many recipients need to leave the country when their contracts end, giving them no incentive to put down roots and start businesses. The student visa program also allows in tens of thousands of the most talented, driven students from overseas, only to push most of them out again once their education is finished.

Bryan Caplan directs us to Tino Sanandaji on the negative political effects of allowing more immigration.

Though ignored by proponents of the ethnic-diversity-and-redistribution, minorities also get to vote, and they vote overwhelmingly for the left. This effect is dominant when we are discussing free migration, because with open borders in a world where 700 million people have told Gallup they would like to migrate right now, sooner or later the immigrants will become the majority of voters and make the political preferences of the natives irrelevant.

And now, some cartoons from the Internet:*

*Yes, this is overkill on the pithy graphics. Yes, political cartoons oversimplify issues. I still think they're worth including.

Cultural and Economic Development

2011-05-19T07:00:00.003-07:00

I have no words.

What happens when a culturally and economically 'backwards' territory is suddenly made a part of a great economic powerhouse? If you're a follower of Aid Watch (and, really, you all should be), you know that the answer is 'mostly bad things.' Part of the problem, of course, is the fact that who gets to decide what constitutes 'backwards' is a pretty important question, and one with almost no good answers. But supposing we can identify a truly inferior culture-economy, that still doesn't mean the economically powerful can make things better by swooping in like a hero in red and blue.

This post by Vivek Nemana illustrates the point nicely. The antebellum American South was both entrenched in a social system that was morally deficient and locked into an industrial system that was economically counterproductive. (I realize not all my readers will agree. I stand by the strength of this statement.)

The South was heavily invested in racial subjugation – slavery directly accounted for over a quarter of the GDP. The region spent an enormous amount of resources to justify slavery, hiring silver-tongued apologists like John C. Calhoun to spin slavery as humane. In this light, slavery was an economic institution that was designed for racially hegemonic society.

Presumably, then, the North was doing the South a favor by overthrowing its destitute system and replacing it with a system based on sound property rights and the promise of true freedom for everyone, not just the landed gentry... right?

While the Civil War radically restructured Southern laws to promote racial equality and property rights, the hegemonic bonds were resistant to change. [...] As the legacy of slavery wound its way into postbellum Southern society and politics, it hindered the way freedom and property rights should have boosted the economy, denying the South the full bounty of American development.

In other words, "the very insertion of these new freedoms and property rights into a society designed for slavery [...] led to the divergent development of North and South." Improving economic and political conditions aren't enough to produce lasting prosperity, and fixing one part of a system can actually make the people under the system worse off.

(As an aside, this post really got me thinking about the economic destructiveness of even a little bit of racism, especially this sentence: "Gary Becker once wrote that people lose out on the potential gains from trade if one group is able to indulge in 'tastes for discrimination' against another." It ties in closely with a post at another blog from Jonathan Wight on the nature of property rights: "Property rights do not bestow limitless abilities on owners, and property rights come with responsibilities.")

All this brings me to an article at the Financial Times. Essentially, the article discusses how we should compare cites like Vancouver to cities like NYC, and what sort of values we express by preferring one over the other. I just don't know how to react to it. The author wants to argue for the organic, unplanned outcomes of a place like NYC over the zoned and top-down oriented nature of Vancouver. But I'm left not sure what to do with some of the elements of the argument.

In fact, it can often be exactly the juxtaposition of wealth and relative poverty that makes a city vibrant, the collision between the two worlds. Where parts of big cities have declined, through the collapse of industries or the fears about immigration that led to what urbanists have termed the “donut effect” (in which white populations flee to the suburbs, leaving minorities in the centres), there is space to be filled by artists and architects, by poorer immigrants arriving with a drive to make money and by the proliferation of food outlets, studios and galleries. These, in turn, attract the wealthy back to the centre, at first to consume, and then to gentrify.

Is he saying diversity is a good thing? That wealthy elites should not isolate themselves? I think that's a great point. But is he also saying that the wealthy should keep a few poor folk around because they run tasty food trucks? Because they offer a culture worth fixing (my wife hates the word 'gentrify,' btw)? That's something else entirely.

In a strange way the everyday conflict with the (unliveable) city can also become part of the attraction.

Again, whether I can get on board with this depends crucially on whether we're talking about opening ourselves to learn from those different from us, or whether the goal is to bring our (clearly superior) ways to influence the 'backwards' folks of the inner city.

Mumbai is probably the greenest big city there is – slums like the million-strong Dharavi use minimal land, energy and water.

Once again, does this mean that we should be willing to have some poor people around because it is good for the environment, or that economic growth for the poorest around us is worth being less green, or that striking the balance between economic and environmental stewardship is hard?

At the end of the day, how we relate to the people and city around us depends an awful lot on if we are developing full and complex relationships with them, with plenty of give-and-take and holistic engagement, or if instead we are setting out to gentrify the backwards natives. And for those of us who educate others vocationally, I think it's a call to special reflection and introspection.

Death of a Sinner

2011-05-02T18:10:00.012-07:00

[...] a middle-eastern religious fundamentalist extremist [...]

Thoughts on the news about Osama bin Laden from Pastor Ed Eubanks of Hickory Withe Presbyterian Church:

I understand the need and importance of the operation against Osama bin Laden, and recognize and even appreciate the significance of his removal from terrorist activity. [...] Surely everyone knew that this-- death by firearm, or bomb, or missile, in the face of military aggression-- was the reasonable and eventual end of this man, whose entire life seemed to be singularly-focused on wreaking fear, grief, and death upon as many of those with whom he disagreed as possible.

But Ed also sees something seriously wrong with how we've responded, including the following:

The United States is not the Promised Land. The Old Testament promises for the nation of God's people do not apply to America. The American military forces are not the army of the Lord. And Christians, our citizenship in the U.S., however important, is secondary to our citizenship in the true Kingdom of God (and no they are not the same!). Consequently, Christians ought not feel free to cry out that the killing of Osama bin Laden is a victory for Christ!

Rejoicing at a degree of justice being fulfilled is one thing. Rejoicing at the death of a man who deserved God's wrath and curse no more than we did is something else entirely. the same David, the man after God's own heart who actually did live in the Promised Land, the man who prayed for deliverance from his enemies and justice on God's enemies, wept for the deaths of Saul and Absalom.

The real kick in the gut, for me, was his last bullet, which included the following:

How many of the Christians who are celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden ever prayed for his conversion and repentance? If we know ourselves and what we have been redeemed from, we long for the redemption of others. If all we feel for others is contempt and condemnation, perhaps we don't know and recognize the depth and degree of our own redemption.

There have been some strongly held opinions on all sides expressed online about the death of Osama bin Laden. I've seen what nearly looked like battle lines drawn on the Facebook, of all places, over how good Christians should be rejoicing at the death of this wretched man. But as my friend Neal F. put it,

Bin Laden's death (should this prove true) is a somber reminder that we all deserve hell for our sins. "But for the grace of God, there go I." Neither you nor I did anything more than OBL to deserve God's love. Let us not rejoice in a fellow human being experiencing the punishment of hell, but rather let us appreciate the reconciling work of Christ to take away the sin of the world.

I say rejoice at a small taste of God's justice, yes. But rejoice for the death of an image bearer of God? Rejoice at part of the fate I have earned for myself falling on someone who has not received the same grace as I? Rejoice at the power of the gun to change the shape of this broken, poisoned world? Rejoice that the sword has not departed from our house?

No. Osama bin Laden was an evil man, and the world is probably safer without him. But will I revel in another death? No. No I will not. God does not rejoice in the death of the wicked, and neither should we.

Truth Claim of the Day

2011-05-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

[...] even the American experience suggests that the anti-monarchical temper Oppenheimer invokes is ultimately artificial and unnatural, a triumph of theory over instinct and idealism over human nature. In their hearts, most people want a king and queen.

Please, discuss. The context can be found here (NYT blog, so keep track of your twenty).

Linkdump: The Schooling Bubble?

2011-04-25T07:00:00.001-07:00

There go my prospects!

Arnold Kling thinks schooling is mostly about signaling respect for hierarchy.

There is no cheap alternative to educational credentials if you want to signal respect for hierarchy. Looking for an alternative signal is fundamentally self-defeating. Any attempt to evade the educational credential system inherently signals a lack of respect for hierarchy!

Steven Levitt thinks schooling pays off.

Of all the topics that economists have studied, I would say one we are most certain about are the returns to education. [...] someone who graduated from college will earn about 30 percent more on average than someone who only graduated from high school. And if anything, the returns to education have gotten larger over time. They’re as big as they have ever been.

Peter Thiel thinks people are borrowing too much to pay for schooling, in any case.

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels. Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they were being frugal and saving for retirement. Similarly, the idea that attending Harvard is all about learning? Yeah. No one pays a quarter of a million dollars just to read Chaucer. The implicit promise is that you work hard to get there, and then you are set for life. It can lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. “It’s what you’ve been told all your life, and it’s how schools rationalize a quarter of a million dollars in debt,” Thiel says.

Schumpeter at the Economist thinks the schooling bubble is worth writing about twice.

Paul Krugman has pointed out that, contrary to popular wisdom, expounded relentlessly by the OECD among other august bodies, technological progress may reduce the demand for high-end jobs, not just low-end jobs. Computer software is now employed to perform tasks that used to require armies of lawyers, engineers or highly educated workers.

[...] My third article is also from Slate. This suggests that applications for law school have dropped by more than 11% since last year, in part because students are beginning to realise that it makes no sense to pile up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in order to join the legion of unemployed lawyers.

And the gist of the second:

THIS year American student-loan debt surpassed credit-card debt for the first time.

Scott James at Forbes thinks there are ways to make schooling worth while.

This new set of schools is increasing the value of their delivered content via a Professor + Practitioner teaching model. This P+P teaching team combines a full academic PhD (required for accreditation) with an expert practitioner (who does that type of work as a day job). Think back to the Operations class you took; how much more valuable would it have been to hear both the viewpoints of an academic plus a manager with 30 years of experience in the trenches at General Electric?

[...] Not everyone is meant to – or aspires to – attend a four-year degree program. In fact, some of the brighter high school students are wise enough to see the amount of debt they would be saddled with after a four-year program, and take a pass on it. As more motivated and smart students opt out of the four-year college program altogether, the idea of a re-skilling college seems more viable.

Medicine, Food, and Health

2011-04-18T07:00:00.015-07:00

Since health care has been in the public eye recently, I thought I'd post some links and a few thoughts on the nature and possible solutions to rising costs of medical insurance and medical care.

First we have James Hamilton outlining some key issues in the public health care problem:

And there are three ways to determine which medical services don't get provided.
(a) The government can limit the procedures it will pay for and the people who are eligible to receive them.
(b) The insurance company or other third party can limit the procedures they will pay for and the people who are eligible to receive them.
(c) If (a) and (b) both say no and you don't have the money yourself to pay for it, then you do not receive the treatment.
Each of those options is morally troubling to many of us. But reality forces us to choose some mix of the three. Pretending that there are no tough choices just digs us deeper into a debt that can't be repaid.

When facing the intersection of difficult moral and economic decisions, I know what you're all wondering: What would Robin Hanson do? Unsurprisingly, the supreme advocate of "health care isn't about health" would cut medical spending... in half:

King Solomon famously threatened to cut a disputed baby in half, to expose the fake mother who would permit such a thing. The debate over medicine today is like that baby, but with disputants who won’t fall for Solomon’s trick. The left says markets won’t ensure everyone gets enough of the precious medical baby. The right says governments produce a much inferior baby. I say: cut the baby in half, dollar-wise, and throw half away! Our “precious” medical baby is in fact a vast monster filling our great temple, whose feeding starves our people and future. Half a monster is plenty.

Am I being too allegorical? Then let me speak plainly: our main problem in health policy is a huge overemphasis on medicine. The U.S. spends one sixth of national income on medicine, more than on all manufacturing. But health policy experts know that we see at best only weak aggregate relations between health and medicine, in contrast to apparently strong aggregate relations between health and many other factors, such as exercise, diet, sleep, smoking, pollution, climate, and social status. Cutting half of medical spending would seem to cost little in health, and yet would free up vast resources for other health and utility gains. To their shame, health experts have not said this loudly and clearly enough.

What's that? Medicine costs a lot, but doesn't improve health? How can this be??? As Mark Bittman points out, it's because a huge portion of what we're spending money on is 'lifestyle diseases':

A sane diet, along with exercise, meditation and intangibles like love prevent and even reverse disease. A sane diet alone would save us hundreds of billions of dollars and maybe more.

This isn’t just me talking. In a recent issue of the magazine Circulation, the American Heart Association editorial board stated flatly that costs in the U.S. from cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death here and in much of the rest of the world — will triple by 2030, to more than $800 billion annually. Throw in about $276 billion of what they call “real indirect costs,” like productivity, and you have over a trillion.

So what does this have to do with food, as my title suggests? Well, much of the problem of 'lifestyle diseases' comes from diets steeped in fast food and sixty-four ounce soft drinks, shelf-stable ready-to-eat meals, and feed lot meats, among other things. Things that even the providers of these services will say should not be consumed 'in excess,' yet the average American diet includes far more of them than anyone (with the possible exception of the sellers of these services) considers advisable. And, as Jill Richardson reminds us, there are reasons to think government food policy is part of the problem:

As for the direct payments, since those are based on historic production, there is still an incentive for max yield and max production, it's just a less immediate one because you'll receive the benefits from it later. It depends on which years the USDA bases your direct payments on, and if they allow you to change which years they use to tabulate your payments. [...]

The WTO says that we can't have market-distorting subsidies so our government is trying to get away from our traditional subsidy system. So they essentially outsourced - privatized - their subsidies. The government now subsidizes crop insurance, which farmers can choose to buy (or not) but it seems like a good many - if not most - buy it. If you don't buy crop insurance, you're ineligible for any disaster relief from the government, should you need it.

Rather than trying to defend everything in the above links (and I disagree strongly with some points), here are some general thoughts of mine on the subject.

Large agricultural firms like Monsanto, along with cooperatives of smaller players and anyone else in the business who manages to accumulate enough funding, spend enormous amounts of money on lobbying the right people at the local, state, and national levels. Some of that lobbying influence buys them subsidies, some of it buys them insurance, some of it buys them protectionist legislation restricting international competition, some of it buys them the ability to obscure information about food products, etc. Ultimately what it buys them is small advantages of one commodity over another (what matters here is not whether ag prices in general are up or down, but whether corn and soy are cheaper than they would have been compared to other beans, sweeteners, and sources of calories) on the one hand, and freedom to market food products they develop without revealing more information about the products than they would like on the other.

Farm subsidies, to the extent they exist, are a problem, whether they are the biggest problem or not. Eliminating them actually saves taxpayers money, although it would hurt those receiving the transfer and their favorite politicians. Sales taxes on food (and by this I mean ingredients, not prepackaged food products) bring in revenue, but can also provide advantages to food producers willing to cut corners (and able to obscure it). The same is true for tariffs on foreign agriculture. Government is a non-trivial part of the problem here, and when we factor in the effect of 'lifestyle diseases' on programs like Medicare, these programs are almost certainly a net loss for taxpayers.

But ultimately the problem isn't government. Ultimately the problem isn't even 'Big Agriculture' (despite the personification of the corporate system via the use of capital letters clearly demonstrating that it's just evil). The problem is consumers. 'Big Ag' is like any other business--it's selling what the people want to buy (granted, it's also trying to keep people wanting the same kinds of things). Part of this is an information problem. We don't put much work into buying high quality meats because it's almost impossible to determine the exact conditions under which the animals were raised. We buy prepackaged foods because buying fresh costs more, and no easy mechanism exists for comparing the quality of the foods. Counting calories, checking food pyramids, watching for 'organic' labels, and any other simple metrics can be manipulated, and can lead us astray as easily as point us in the right direction. If there's no way to insure quality, nobody will ever pay what it takes for the highest quality, which means nobody sells the highest quality and a lower quality becomes the new highest quality (and the cycle begins again).

But most of the problem is a matter of priorities. We don't believe the quality differences out there are worth paying for (and because we think this way, we are often correct). We want our food to last in our refrigerators and cupboards, and we don't think about (or necessarily even believe in) a tradeoff between shelf life and nutritional content. We have no interest in learning how gut flora work until we already have Seliac disease. We consider it inconvenient to worry about feeding children things their digestive systems are unprepared to process. We don't want to have to sort out whether what we're eating was fried in trans fats / hydrogenated corn-soybean-canola oils, or if we can find a version cooked with unprocessed animal fats or tropical oils. Like James Bond taking care of his liver, we have other things on our minds.

And until our preferences change--preferences over the kind of lifestyle we want to lead, and the kinds of foods that go with it--McDonald's and Walmart will continue to sell us the products we want at the lowest cost they can manage; 'Big Ag' will continue to lobby for withholding information that would mostly worry, bewilder, and frustrate us out of our grocery aisles; government will continue to provide small bonuses to a few domestic producers in a few industries over others, and especially over world competition; and the costs associated with chronic, lifestyle-related health problems will continue to rise. It's just basic economics.

We have met the true burger king, and he is us.

Four on Education

2011-04-14T21:31:00.001-07:00

Brad DeLong offers his thoughts on economics education:

Rethinking, I conclude that there is something subtle wrong with the undergraduate curriculum after all. What is taught in the classroom seems, largely, not bad. But what is retained after college seems to me, at least, to be horrible. What fraction of college-educated Americans have taken Econ 1? And what do they remember from it well enough to use? Tracking little--much less than I would hope or expect.

DeLong also offers Grant Gilmore's thoughts on the strange duty of academics:

We do something called teaching. But we all know from bitter personal experience that nothing is, or can be, taught once we get beyond the communication to small children of the basic mysteries on which civilization depends - how to read, how to write, how to count. [...] It may be that we can stimulate, or irritate, an occasional student into undertaking this arduous task - but, if we do so, it will be much more by accident than by our own design.

Scott Adams recommends hands on entrepreneurial training for most of us:

One day the managers of The Coffee House [a student-run, college-subsidized bar where Adams worked] had a meeting to discuss two topics. First, our Minister of Employment was recommending that we fire a bartender, who happened to be one of my best friends. Second, we needed to choose a leader for our group. On the first question, there was a general consensus that my friend lacked both the will and the potential to master the bartending arts. I reluctantly voted with the majority to fire him.

But when it came to discussing who should be our new leader, I pointed out that my friend—the soon-to-be-fired bartender—was tall, good-looking and so gifted at b.s. that he'd be the perfect leader. By the end of the meeting I had persuaded the group to fire the worst bartender that any of us had ever seen…and ask him if he would consider being our leader. My friend nailed the interview and became our Commissioner. He went on to do a terrific job. That was the year I learned everything I know about management.

Finally, Edge.org offers a massive list of possible answers to the question 'What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?' A few examples:

Thanks to Karl Popper, we have a simple and powerful tool: the phrase "How Would You Disprove Your Viewpoint?!"- Howard Gardner

There is a widely used notion that does plenty of damage: the notion of "scientifically proven". Nearly an oxymoron. The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt. Precisely because we keep questioning everything, especially our own premises, we are always ready to improve our knowledge. Therefore a good scientist is never 'certain'. Lack of certainty is precisely what makes conclusions more reliable than the conclusions of those who are certain: because the good scientist will be ready to shift to a different point of view if better elements of evidence, or novel arguments emerge. Therefore certainty is not only something of no use, but is in fact damaging, if we value reliability. - Carlo Rovelli

It is not hard to identify the discipline in which to look for the scientific concept that would most improve everybody's cognitive toolkit; it has to be economics. No other field of study contains so many ideas ignored by so many people at such great cost to themselves and the world. The hard task is picking just one of the many such ideas that economists have developed. - Dylan Evans, whose check is in the mail

The media cast about for the proximate causes of life's windfalls and disasters. The public demands blocks against the bad and pipelines to the good. Legislators propose new regulations, fruitlessly dousing last year's fires, forever betting on yesterday's winning horses. A little-known truth: Every aspect of the world is fundamentally unpredictable. - Rudy Rucker

The phrase "correlation is not a cause" (CINAC) may be familiar to every scientist but has not found its way into everyday language, even though critical thinking and scientific understanding would improve if more people had this simple reminder in their mental toolkit. - Sue Blackmore

(I could go on, but just take a look at the links)

UPDATE: Fourth link did not post. It should be working now.

Money, Money, Money

2011-04-11T07:00:00.048-07:00

Here's a bit from macroeconomics: In 2008, per person income in the United States was nearly four times that in our neighbor Mexico, more than ten times that in India, and one-hundred twenty-five times that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the United States we have an adult literacy rate of ninety-nine percent, compared to twenty-six percent in Mali.

And here's one from micro: Two products that start out selling for the same price could come to differ for any combination of four reasons: If more people value and want to buy good A or fewer people want to produce and sell good A, its price will go up; but if fewer people want to buy good A or more people want to produce and sell good A, its price will go down. If people care about doing work they enjoy, then the fact that one job gets paid more than another could either mean people want to buy the product of the higher-paid job more (maybe some people value the product more), or it could mean they enjoy doing the higher-paid job less (maybe it takes a lot more to get people to deal with the drudgery / risk involved).

When I think of personal finance and income, these are the things that come to my mind. The vast majority of the wealth I have is mine simply because of where I was born. Any extra wealth I have that comes from my job has more to do with choosing a field most others would find mind-numbingly dull than it does with how much use I am to the corporations of the world, and neither of these has anything useful to say about any sort of inherent personal value. All the things that put me in the position I am in were given by God, anyway, and the more I have to covet the more God requires I give up for others.

In my mind, to hear that someone else makes more money than me sounds a lot like hearing they have a larger shoe size than me. If it matters at all, the ones with more money have a moral obligation to use it in the interests of those around them with less, in the same sense that someone with a bigger bit of floating debris after a shipwreck ought to share it with other survivors.

All this is background to the fact that I tend to be rather nonchalant, and even flippant, about matters of money. It never occurs to me that talking about how much money I make isn't polite, or that mentioning where my expected payscale ranks compared to those around me is the uncouth work of a braggart. How can one brag about the size of one's shoes, or the buoyancy of one's debris? I ask myself. But the fact that it doesn't bother me doesn't make it OK for me to treat others as if they're silly to let it bother them. I am not the arbiter of truth or seriousness, and the world isn't wrong just because it doesn't see things the way I do. On the contrary, ignoring other people's thoughts and feelings, especially when I don't think or feel the same way, is no way to live in community; it is, however, a perfect way to fail at loving my neighbor.

So if I have bragged about money to any of you before, I am sorry. I was wrong, although I hope you'll believe me when I say there was neither malice nor pride behind it. I was "merely" thoughtlessness, which of course isn't really less wrong. I'm trying to be better. I hope you'll bear with me.

"I repent
...of the way I believe that I'm living right
By trading sins for others that are easier to hide
Oh I am wrong and of these things
I repent"
-- Derek Webb (and, all too rarely, me)

Social Insurance and the Church

2011-04-04T07:00:00.006-07:00

Nicer than your average insurance office.

I'm a bit late on this, but here is a fascinating post by Frances Woolley:

The Catholic church is one of the world's oldest insurance companies. [...] Religion as social insurance, Christian style, works as follows: individuals tithe, or give 10 percent of their income, to the church. In exchange, the church provides alms for the poor, that is, a minimal guarantee against destitution.

[...] being independent of the established church meant cutting oneself off from the (sometimes expensive and inefficient) social insurance services it provided. Hence these religions preached responsibility, both for oneself and for others in need. Some of the most iconic British brands, such as Clarks and Cadburys, as well as international companies such as Bethleham Steel, were founded by non-conforming Quakers. To generalize from the savings behaviour of these groups to society in general would be dangerous.[...]

In Europe, Canada, and to a lesser extent the US, government-provided social insurance has replaced that provided by religion.

It's a great post, well worth reading the whole thing. It got me thinking, anyway. Taking it as given that the Church should be caring for the poor, but hasn't been for some time now, is it wrong for the state to try to fill this gap? Does one God ordained institution have the right to fulfill the duties of another when that other is unable or unwilling to do so? I'm thinking specifically about care of widows and orphans, in which the Church is specifically called to perform the duties normally left to the head of the family. Anyway, interesting thoughts.

Breakup Songs

2011-03-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

Because a few recent songs focusing on the end of a relationship are just quality products. The music videos are below the fold/jump/whateveritscalled. (warning: language. For real. In the second song, mostly, but the song's just no good without them.)

Read more »

Mechanics and Mystics, Less Seriously

2011-03-28T07:00:00.008-07:00

Everything I Know I Learned From Sesame Street (apparently). Check out this video of a Mechanic and a Mystic interpreting a large blue circle. I'll let you guess which one is which.

For the Mechanic who loves working in the kitchen, here's a cutting board specially tuned to the mechanic's mindset.

Our New Computer Overlords

2011-03-24T07:00:00.037-07:00

Three links on how computers will replace our white-collar labor force long before robots steal our blue-collar jobs.

The first comes from Paul Krugman:

Anyway, I decided to write the piece around a conceit: that information technology would end up reducing, not increasing, the demand for highly educated workers, because a lot of what highly educated workers do could actually be replaced by sophisticated information processing — indeed, replaced more easily than a lot of manual labor.

[...] In my mind this raises several questions. One is whether emphasizing education — even aside from the fact that the big rise in inequality has taken place among the highly educated — is, in effect, fighting the last war. Another is how we have a decent society if and when even highly educated workers can’t command a middle-class income.

The second also comes from Paul Krugman, and I particularly like it for this table:

"This is real, and it calls some of our favorite platitudes into question," Krugman says.

Brad DeLong, on the other hand, has an excellent post in which economics and history triumph over cynicism (and yes, it's a lot like intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism):

We have already gone through the great transformation by which the general business of life--growing and processing our food, building our shelter, weaving our clothes, and telling ourselves stories for information and entertainment--has been extroardinarily [sic], comprehensively automated. And yet we have found things to do.

Either way, I'd say this is the best argument yet for the long term viability of a career in the humanities!

Life-Saving Immorality?

2011-03-21T07:00:00.052-07:00

Your taxpayer dollars at work.

Brad DeLong thinks that taxing people in order to prevent an asteroid from destroying the human race is entirely appropriate and moral. He quotes Bob Murphy, on the other hand, as disagreeing:

[T]here is a general moral prohibition against violating another person's rights.... Volokh's... point should be obvious: Just because an asteroid threatens to destroy all human life, that alone is not sufficient to justify violating people's rights. [...] The reason DeLong finds Volokh's views "insane" is that Volokh has elevated his precious political principles to such a height that they trump the survival of the human race. What an ideologue!

DeLong summarily rejects this sort of thinking, summarizing his view as follows:

[...] the sabbath was made for humanity; humanity was not made for the sabbath.

Commentor Daniel Kuehn has a lot to say in response to this position, and particularly to the logic of the position:

If you start where they do - axiomatically defining what a "right" is and defining "immorality" as being the violation of that right - then both the Volokh and Murphy version of the argument follows naturally.

The problem is not the logic itself - that logic is simple enough. The problem is their decision to apply that logic to this circumstance. Deductive logic is a tool - we have long since passed the point where we can claim that it deserves any deeper epistemological priority. [...] Logic is not a tool for them, as most careful thinkers know it should be. For them it is a path, not to truth contingent on assumptions [I would prefer to refer to this as consistent reasoning or logical validity - N], but to some deeper absolute truth. [...] So to expand on your concluding thought, deductive logic is a tool for humanity, and not the other way around.

Tad Brennan points out that, far from being a primarily political debate, the conflict here is between purely deontological ethics and purely consequentialist ethics, and that the latter lends itself to some problems, as well:

If you eschew lexically-ordered side-constraints, then you have a very pure form of consequentialism. And that's not a bad thing! Some of my best friends espouse pure consequentialism!

But pure consequentialism can generate some pretty repellent hypotheticals of its own (catalogued by Bernard Williams and others: false conviction of the innocent; harvesting organs from the unwilling; torture of children; etc. etc.).

When people recoil from the consequences of pure consequentialism and consider adopting categorical prohibitions on, e.g., the torture of children, this does not seem to me ipso facto insane.

Finding the right balance of ethical views for the Christian is never as simple and easy as it seems, which is why Christian maturity is a big deal. But this is a circumstance when, again, I don't think Christianity came come down on the side of moral libertarianism.

PS - For those looking for a quick summary of deontology vs. consequentialism in terms we can all understand, may I suggest Mark White, aka The Comics Professor, on the morality of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spiderman!

Japanese Earthquake-Tsunami Links

2011-03-18T07:00:00.004-07:00

One week after the fact, I don't have a lot to say about the disaster, other than it is terrible. Please be praying for the people in Sendai and areas even closer to the epicenter.

I do, however, have some summary information I have been following.

Here is an amazing visual before and after comparison.

Ilan Noy provides a way to think about the economic impact of a disaster.

James Hamilton expands on this discussion of the economic impact, including some links of his own.

Will Wilkinson offers his summary of the economic disaster literature.

Christopher Beam on the lack of looting.

Bill McBride has several links on the nuclear concerns.

Robin Hanson argues for a counter-intuitive response to the nuclear dangers.

Laura Freschi wants you to think carefully about your aid donations.

Finally, here's a brief video showing some of the impact of the Tsunami:

Talking about Sex

2011-03-17T07:00:00.003-07:00

(The title alone should really boost my pageviews, right?)

Actually, I don't have much to say, but Ross Douthat and Matthew Schmitz do.

Here's Douthat:

Did the social trends of the last 50 years bring about “unprecedented gender equality”? Absolutely. Did they bring about “unprecedented personal fulfillment”? Well … for some people they did. But it’s very easy to find indicators that paint a more complicated picture. [...]

The crucial question, to my mind, is whether all of the social changes that swept America in the 1960s and the 1970s are a package deal. [...] Many progressives and feminists have committed themselves to an absolute defense of everything that changed during the sexual revolution, out of a fear that one concession will cost women every gain.

And here's Schmitz:

the failure of American men to compete academically with their female peers has created a gender imbalance that leaves women at a disadvantage in the sexual marketplace. It is a particularly bitter irony that the societal neglect of the young American male has now become a significant threat to the happiness and well-being of the young American female. If we are to “take back the night,” we may have to first recapture a compelling vision of masculinity that makes education and achievement attractive to a lost generation of young men.

[...]Indeed, our current preoccupation with keeping sex sanitary, salutary, and unencumbered by anything resembling a moral judgment has led to a narrow focus on preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and an effective denial of the regret and depression that follow many sexual encounters. Facing up to the psychological problems associated with casual sex (which are far more common among women) will require the medical profession to decide whether it is possible to withhold judgment without denying necessary care.

Both articles are well worth reading.

Hell or Bell?

2011-03-14T07:00:00.013-07:00

I am referring, of course, to the forthcoming book Love Wins by pastor Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church. As something of a follow up to a previous post which generated a lively discussion, I thought I'd link to a couple of articles on the Christian doctrine of hell and the people who believe it.

The first article, written by Eric Reitan, is on the controversy surrounding Rob Bell:

Justin Taylor, vice president of editorial at Crossway, quickly posted a fierce condemnation—based solely on advance material. “It is unspeakably sad,” writes Taylor, “when those called to be ministers of the Word distort the gospel and deceive the people of God with false doctrine.”

The main point of the article isn't so much whether Bell is right or wrong, as we don't even know his actual argument yet. Rather, it is about how we react to those who disagree with us about admittedly Very Important Things.

One of the more conservative people in the audience (we’ll call him Jim) said rather forcefully that Jesus only saves those who explicitly ask Him to be their Lord and Savior. When I said I disagreed with that view, Jim replied, “Then you disagree with God.”[...]

This disposition of humility does not become fanaticism, however, until it is paired with arrogance: the refusal to recognize that their beliefs about God’s word could be wrong. The fanatic treats a challenge to their own beliefs as if it were a challenge to the word of God.

Of course, the article does deal with some of the substance of the rejection of universalism, making a point I tried to in my previous post:

Can you really preach biblical inerrancy and dismiss universalism? What, then, do you do with John 12:32 where Jesus says, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself”? What do you do with Romans 5:18 (“Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men”)? What about Romans 11:32 (“For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all”)? Or I Corinthians 15:22 (“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive”)? Or I Corinthians 15: 28? Or Colossians 1:19-20? Or Lamentations 3:31-32?

Presumably, Piper and Taylor have to say that when the Bible says “all,” it doesn’t really mean “all.” The plain meaning of these passages has to be rejected, some strained interpretation offered, in order to reconcile them with the hell-centric passages they favor (and yes, there is a litany of such passages as well).

Which is to say, taking the Bible as Truth is a much more complex process than we care to admit. Either we accept that some passages apparently contradict each other, and our finite minds don't know how to fully reconcile them, or we have to pick and choose which words to take at closer to face value than others. There are better and worse ways to do the latter, but if we are to build a systematic theology out of Scripture, it has to be done.

The second article is by Tim Keller of Redeemer Pres (PCA) in New York City. Keller offers his defense of the centrality of the doctrine of hell to Christianity:

The doctrine of hell is crucial-without it we can't understand our complete dependence on God, the character and danger of even the smallest sins, and the true scope of the costly love of Jesus.[...]

We must come to grips with the fact that Jesus said more about hell than Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, John, Peter put together. Before we dismiss this, we have to realize we are saying to Jesus, the pre-eminent teacher of love and grace in history, "I am less barbaric than you, Jesus--I am more compassionate and wiser than you." Surely that should give us pause! Indeed, upon reflection, it is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so astounding.

Now, as I pointed out with reference to universalism of Carlton Pearson, the real argument isn't whether Hell in the sense of a place of divine punishment for sins exists. The meaningful argument is whether or not the duration of a persons existence there is perpetual. To this, Keller says

Hell is therefore a prison in which the doors are first locked from the inside by us and therefore are locked from the outside by God (Luke 16:26.) Every indication is that those doors continue to stay forever barred from the inside.

I suppose Keller doesn't see the word "all" in the passages cited in the other article as indications the doors do not stay barred forever. Carlton Pearson disagrees.

I find myself agreeing with both articles. I believe hell is real, and while I think there is significant merit to thinking of the unregenerate life on earth as a foretaste of hell (just as life with the Holy Spirit is a foretaste of heaven), I believe the main thrust of Scripture is that hell is real, terrible, and permanent. However, I'm not convince failure to assert the last adjective of that sentence disqualifies you from God's Kingdom (Did the thief on the cross understand the permanence of hell?). I think it is a virtue to be willing to listen to those who name the name of Christ, assert the trustworthiness of His Word, and disagree on this point.

The folly of what Eric Reitan calls fanaticism (and most of the world refers to these days as fundamentalism) comes from treating everything we think is true as a fundamental. Scripture is amazingly brief in the specific things it tells us to believe that we might be saved. Yes, I believe there are direct implications of those core beliefs. Most of you know I have no shortage of opinions on spiritual matters. But the point is, what I think is a direct implication is not the same thing as "God said so." "Confess that Jesus is Lord, and believe that God raised him from the dead" is not negotiable. But the more areas where I am willing and able to be wrong without losing faith in that, the more teachable I will be. Doesn't mean I have to be blown about; as I said, I'm not convinced by Pearson or what little I've read of Bell. But it means I listen. To do otherwise is, in my view, a failure to put the true fundamentals in their rightful place. It's to believe in what my campus minister used to call "Jesus Plus" something.

There are many idols out there for us to follow. One of them says that divine punishment doesn't exist, or doesn't ultimately matter. It ignores the long history of God's people, and the teachings of wise leaders of the Church. Another says my view of divine punishment is the only one that could ever be true, and everyone else is trying to trick you out of God's arms. It adheres to the words of wise humans as tightly as it adheres to the words of the Creator of the Universe.

I hope we can all do our best to avoid "Jesus Plus."

Keep those comments coming, everyone, I'm totally listening!

A Summary of Mystic Thinking?

2011-03-10T07:00:00.003-08:00

Story-telling encourages context-dependent thinking, although not necessarily in [a precise] manner.

Slightly modified from Marginal Revolution; I think saying story-telling tends to be more inaccurate than argument is, itself, inaccurate (or at least imprecise!).

This brings up all sorts of thoughts for me. Is the political left more accepting of Mystics than the political right? Is there a connection between left-wing politics, mystical thinking, and the stronghold of liberal intellectualism that is the humanities (at least, that's what we're always told about the humanities)?

And for the record, no, context-dependent / narrative thinking is not the same as sloppy thinking. As Joel has argued before, it's probably better suited to different kinds of questions than precise / mathematical thinking is. Mystics are those who are better at context-dependent, narrative thinking and tend to think the questions it is suited for are the most important ones. Mechanics are much better at pure logical and mathematical thinking, and tend to downplay the importance of questions where mechanical thinking doesn't cut it.

And I'll re-emphasize, once again, that most of how God chooses to communicate with us is through narrative, metaphor, and other context-dependent modes of thinking rather than through logical constructs and syllogistic arguments. I find it hard not to believe that the imprecision is intentional. I am also convinced that most people (and by extension most students these days) lean more toward mystic than mechanic, but the opposite is true for professors. This matters a lot for how we teach our students, a fact I continually have to remind myself of, and hopefully won't forget during my teaching presentation tomorrow.

Obituary

2011-03-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

For those who don't know, my grandmother passed away last Tuesday evening of pancreatic cancer. The funeral was this past Thursday. I had the chance to say goodbye over the phone about half an hour before she died. She was surrounded by family members, and true to form, she waited until everyone was with her and safe to pass on; five minutes after the last person arrived she took her last breath. For those interested, here is the obituary.

Martha Patricia Hutcheson was born on October 16, 1919 in Dormont, PA to parents James Parks Hutcheson and Lucy Leota (Denning) Hutcheson. Martha attended schools and was a graduate of Bethel High School in 1937 in Bethel, Pa. She then enrolled in business school and worked in her father's office for five years. As she worked along side her father over these years, she saved up enough money to pursue her passion for flying, and became a true pioneer in women's aviation. In 1943 Martha helped to train pilots for the Army Air Corps for World War II. Following the war, Martha continued to instruct pilots who were training under the G.I.Bill. One of these pupils was Aaron Wise, whom she married in January of 1947. To this union, four children were born. Martha was the quintessential home maker, making each and every holiday, birthday, and occasion into a very special event for all the family to enjoy and remember. The family recalls her Thanksgiving dinners, the stockings at Christmas, and the joy her grandchildren brought her. Also, the many dresses, costumes, and last minute sewing projects that she so skillfully made. Martha enjoyed a strong faith and loved hosting a ladies bible study. After 52 years of marriage, her loving husband Aaron passed away in 1999. Martha is survived by her children, [...] Nine grandchildren, Three Great Grandchildren, and a sister [...].

Free Trade

2011-02-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

Does free trade always benefit everyone, or are there winners and losers? Is protectionism really such a bad thing? Here are a few links on free trade.

In response to a NYT column by Harvard Economics Professor Greg Mankiw, some thoughts by KPC's Angus, and a follow up by Mungowitz. Tyler Cowen linked to the original post, and thus some of the discussion takes place in the comments here.

Mark Thoma worries about trade creating inequality, even if it does make society wealthier on average.

Craig Newmark discusses teaching students about free trade.

On these, in particular, pretty much every link contains additional links well worth looking into. Does that make these meta-links?

And a few for Economists

2011-02-24T10:00:00.001-08:00

Paul Krugman prefers intuition over mathematics. Since I'm somewhat familiar with his work, I'm sure mathematics doesn't generally hurt, of course.

Turns out Krugman uses intuition to double check whether the math is silly. At OU we call this the "laugh test": if the conclusion makes you laugh, it doesn't matter how many proofs are in the paper.

Instrumental variables can, over time, be proven worthless. To me this suggests (1) instruments that seem appropriate only for a very specific context are probably the best, and (2) demonstrating causality from observations remains really hard, and will likely remain so.

Finally, one from an economist, but of more general interest: David Henderson's philosophy of teaching is love (which makes his sound a lot better than mine, huh?).

It's a Hard Life for the Humanities

2011-02-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

A few links for those pursuing (or having previously pursued) the difficult road of a terminal degree in any field of the humanities, and I know a few of you read this blog.

Stanley Fish discusses the future of "humanist educators." The punchline:

It looks like the only way humanist educators and their students are going to get to the top is by hanging on to the coattails of their scientist and engineering friends as they go racing by.

Reasons to avoid grad school, mostly oriented toward humanities degrees. I like that "your office is gonna suck" is on the list.

If you do go, though, here are some blogs you might want to check out.

Speculative Fiction?

2011-02-17T07:00:00.004-08:00

WANTED: Interdisciplinary Starship Pilot

Robin Hanson wonders about what kids are learning. In particular, are students focusing too much on their own disciplines, consequently losing the ability to think in an interdisciplinary fashion? Are students losing their ability to deal with deeper, meta- questions? And, as Hanson brings up, if they are is this necessarily a bad thing?

I’d like to believe that we are in fact doing our students and the nation a disservice by marginalizing such skills. Unfortunately, I simply have little evidence with which to support such a judgment. [...] Just how many people should be thinking about what problems are important and why?

Bryan Caplan wonders where new jobs are really going to come from (he originally mused on this topic back in July). This time he considers Scott Sumner's answers:

Here's what I think most people still want:
1. A bigger and nicer house, with granite counter-tops.
2. More restaurant meals.
3. More fun vacations.
That means we need more construction workers, and granite miners (quarriers?) We need more cooks and waiters. We need more hotel receptionists and maids. More people to work on Carnival cruise ships. I think our workforce is skilled enough to fill those jobs.

I'd love to hear some reader thoughts and predictions on these topics. What will the jobs of the future be? And what sort of schooling will students need to do them? Should we be devoting more of our wealth to interdisciplinary schooling and liberal arts, and if so is the reason for business or pleasure?

News Bulletin: C.S. Lewis Not an Evangelical, Therefore Dangerous

2011-02-14T07:00:00.001-08:00

Use caution when reading this man's works.

My friend Gabe pointed me (via a tweet by John Piper: "Kevin DeYoung is more reliable than C.S. Lewis. Yes he is. Not an overstatement.") to this this article by Pastor Kevin DeYoung. DeYoung argues that Lewis' Mere Christianity is a bit *too* mere:

Later Lewis says that “Christ was killed for us” and “His death has washed out our sins” but “any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary” (59). This impatience of careful thinking about the atonement is bad enough, but then Lewis goes on to make clear that he rejects the understanding of the atonement evangelicals (and the Bible I would say) find most central and most glorious. [...]

He does believe in a substitutionary theory of the atonement, but he rejects penal substitution. He admits that penal substitution is not quite as silly as it once sounded, but he still does not accept it. Instead, he argues that Christ pays a debt (which is true), but not as a punishment for our sakes.

DeYoung's extra-biblical terminology strongly influences his worldview (a pretty good sign that he is a mechanic, and thus thinks rather differently than a mystic like Lewis), so much that it gives him tunnel vision as to what Lewis could actually be saying. A careful reading of Lewis' statements about penal substitution makes clear that he is not at all familiar with the idea of a covenantal representative, and without covenant headship penal substitution *is* is silly idea.

DeYoung's second complaint is about Lewis' inclusivism:

Lewis, by contrast, believed in what we might roughly call “anonymous Christians.” That is, people may be saved through Christ without putting explicit faith in Christ.
There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. (178)
No matter how much we may like Lewis, this is simply a profound misunderstanding of the Spirit’s mission (and a rejection of John 14:6).

DeYoung could use as prooftexts references like "no man comes to the Father except through me," and then logically argue that it must have certain implications for those who have never heard of Jesus. Lewis, on the other hand, might cite as prooftexts statements like "just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people," and then make his case from there.

The point is that they are both prooftexting, a use of Scripture that looks like something Christ and the apostles did but is actually quite wrong, and they are both extrapolating from Scripture, meaning neither position is unambiguously supported. They're treating their personal conclusions as if they were premises, which any logic teacher should cringe at. And Lewis would argue, I think rightly, that the salvation of a person does not depend on which logical thread a believer finds more convincing. (And just in case you are wondering, I tend to disagree with Lewis on this point. But what DeYoung presents is a poor argument against it.)

So I'd say they're on equally reliable intellectual footing, but where Lewis interprets those he considers wrong with charity, DeYoung sees errors (and is harsh with the one making it) both when they are present and when they aren't. I'll stick with Lewis.

Heaven and Hell, Not So Much?

2011-02-07T07:00:00.014-08:00

Turns out it's paved with crappy asphalt like every other road.

Slacktivist is not convinced that Hell works the way we think it does (if it exists at all?).

These three passages aren't the only basis for the belief in Hell as eternal fiery torment, but they provide the strongest evidence to support the idea. And as you can see, this evidence is not really that strong. These passages certainly don't provide any sort of basis for the idea that Hell ought to be a central or essential core belief that shapes our faith, or our concept of God, or our concept of one another or of the meaning of our lives. That's not what these stories are about.

On the other hand, heaven doesn't sound all that heavenly:

Take away every sinful attitude, every capacity for contempt, disdain and disregard and everything that might mute or muzzle conscience. Then take away every physiological or psychological impediment to memory and empathy. Do you see what I mean by terrifying? [...]

And this is Heaven we're talking about -- not Hell, not purgatory. This is our common notion of reward, not of judgement, and yet it seems as though it might be judgement enough -- an almost unbearable judgement, survivable only if accompanied by an overwhelming and overflowing mercy.

Speculation, only speculation. A guess and a wild guess at that.

If you're looking for more anti-fundamentalist thinking (and not just Christian, for that matter), you might consider watching The Man from Earth.

Looks Like

2011-02-03T18:24:00.000-08:00

Just a quick bit that I'd never really noticed before. For those of you of a Reformed and Presbyterian background, hopefully this will make you laugh.

Have you ever noticed that Tedd and Paul Tripp (pictured below)

Look an awful lot like Mario and Luigi?

Spooky.

Monologue

2011-02-03T07:00:00.006-08:00

Here are a few links on communicating from the podium.

First, a speech without a slide show. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., did not need a PowerPoint presentation to make his audience see what he wanted them to see.

We all know MLK, Jr., was an expert at using words as a paintbrush. Seeing it in graphic form, though, shows just how frequently he resorted to visual language to hammer home his point. So next time you have to give a PowerPoint presentation or an address on the state of the country, remember: Think pink. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

When it comes to using PowerPoint, then, do it right or not at all.

The organisation makes . . . again, shall we just say the sort of consumer goods you and I use every day. We had already LEARNT, as evidenced by an eye-straining array of coloured graphics, that the MARGINS in the grommets division had been LEVERAGED by a FULL THREE PERCENTAGE POINTS, while TURNOVER in bent widgets . . .

Enough. The whole bloody thing took up 55 minutes of my life, as I can testify, because my watch was easily the most fascinating object in the room.

Interested in examples of good speeches? Here you go.

Libertarian Catechesis?

2011-01-31T07:00:00.008-08:00

Ron Paul? Is that you?

Bryan Caplan offers, in the question-answer format of a catechism, one of the most succinct summaries of true libertarian thinking (I'm not talking about the Tea Party here). He summarizes the thinking simply:

These common-sense ethics regarding strangers, ethics that almost everyone admits, are unequivocally libertarian. Yes, you have an obligation to leave strangers alone, but charity is optional.

The whole post is very much worth reading, as are the first ten or so comments (and probably more).

Now, I am highly sympathetic to libertarian thinking in most dimensions. If you forced me to categorize my political views, I'd label myself 'pragmatic libertarian,' a term I stole from economist Scott Sumner. But my political views take a back seat to my Christianity, and it's important to acknowledge that Christianity is *not* a libertarian religion. Think about the One who said these words:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighborand hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

And consider that in the story of the good Samaritan, Jesus emphasizes that we are obligated to love even those who hate us (and who we equally hate) if we are to live. Would this Jesus have agreed with the following?

What are you morally forbidden to do to a stranger? You may not murder him. You may not attack him. You may not enslave him. Neither may you rob him.

What are you morally required to do for a stranger? Not much. Even if he seems hungry and asks you for food, you're probably within your rights to refuse.

Now, part of the problem is that Caplan equates your obligations with another's rights. It is entirely possible for you to be morally obligated to give generously, and yet if you fail in your obligation the beggar has no right to extract from you what your obligations says he is due. I'll also readily admit that there is an important distinction between being obligated to give generously and being obligated to give to a particular person. Similarly, just because you are morally obligated to give generously doesn't mean it's the duty of the state to extract such giving from you. There is a lot of room for compatibility between libertarianism and Christianity.
But if we truly take Christ seriously, we *have* to part ways from the libertarians when they say "charity is optional." Charity--uncomfortable, sacrificial charity--is essential to what Christ referenced when he said "Do this and you will live."

Libertarianism doesn't show us our need of the gospel. Real Christianity does.

This Could Have Been Three Posts...

2011-01-27T07:00:00.046-08:00

... if I had time to provide decent comments on each item, that is. Instead of delving into my thoughts about the following links, though, I'll just put them up Marginal Revolution style.

Psychohistory, the sci-fi version of what I do for a living. For those with some knowledge of the history of macroeconomics, you'll notice that as early as 1942, Asimov saw the importance of the Lucas Critique, something economists didn't latch on to until 1976.

while one cannot foresee the actions of a particular individual, the laws of statistics as applied to large groups of people could predict the general flow of future events. [...] The character responsible for the science's creation, Hari Seldon, established two axioms:
that the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently large
that the population should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses

That last bullet point is the one macroeconomists took nearly 35 years to figure out.

A mind-boggling "How to Deceive with Statistics" entry. The nature of averages suggests that your friends are cooler than you. The money quote:

Let’s imagine a small department offering three courses for the semester. One is a survey course with 80 students, one an upper-level course with 15 students, and one a seminar with five students. Now what is the average class size? Clearly, it is (80 + 15 + 5)/3, or 33.3 students. This is the number the department is likely to publicize.

But once again, let’s adopt the perspective of the average person and reexamine these numbers. Eighty of the 100 students find themselves in a class with 80 students, 15 find themselves in a class of 15 students, and five in a class of five students. Thus, the average student’s class size is (80 × 80 + 15 × 15 + 5 × 5)/100, or 66.5 students. This number is less likely to be publicized by the department.

Did that just blow your mind? It did mine.

Theories of International Relations and Zombies. How is this *not* something I need to read? A nice discussion by the author is available here. Max Fisher at the Atlantic Wire, capturing a lot of why I find zombies so fascinating, has this to say:

[...]the beauty of zombie theory is that it applies too [sic] all sorts of emerging trans-national security threats, including those we have yet to anticipate or imagine.

Yes. Zombies are really just a proxy for disasters and crises of a scale and nature we can't quite foresee. Namely, the zombie apocalypse. If someone wants to buy this book for me, I will put a detailed review up on this blog with a shout out / link to the website of your choice.

The Dark Knight Rises

2011-01-20T07:00:00.007-08:00

On Wednesday Warner Bros. announced the villains and casting for Christopher Nolan's sequel to 'The Dark Knight.' Since a lot of the tone and even plot of the movie depend on these roles, I feel compelled to comment. [Warning: if you haven't seen 'Batman Begins' and 'The Dark Knight,' what are you doing reading blogs?!? Go watch them. For the rest of you, spoilers below.]

First, the obvious:

CATWOMAN

We all knew Catwoman was going to be one of the major villains. The previous film ended with Batman heartbroken, without a love interest, on the run from the law. It also featured low-budget Bat-imitators. The stage was perfectly set for this character. In Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, Selina Kyle is a street prostitute who decides that if someone can dress up like a bat and fight crime, she can put on a costume and make a living off of the mob royalty of Gotham. I'd love to see Selina use her new found wealth to position herself as a high class call girl, thus bringing her in contact with Bruce Wayne. Maybe she'll see through the billionaire-playboy act, or maybe she'll just take him for an easy mark. In any case, it's hard to argue that being without a love interest and on the outs with the law won't leave Batman tempted to join a woman with the grit, intelligence, and skill to match him. It's a moral dilemma Bale's Batman needs to face before we're done, in my view.

And who did they cast for this iconic role?

ANNE HATHAWAY

I'll admit, this is not the casting I expected. Selina Kyle is basically a classic noir femme fatale in a costume, and Anne Hathaway has never struck me as a femme fatale. She has the physique for the role, and I'm pretty sure she has some background in films requiring some stuntwork. But I'm not convinced she can sell a Tim Sale version of the character.

So I'm not convince here, yet. But you know who else I was skeptical of? Heath Ledger.

That's Best Supporting Actor Heath Ledger to the rest of us.

So we'll wait and see on Selina Kyle. I am willing to be convinced.

Now, Catwoman is a great villain, but certainly couldn't carry a blockbuster movie on her own. So who is going to be the big-bad villain?

BANE

That... was unexpected. The stage seemed perfectly set for someone much like the Batman--but without his unwillingness to kill criminals--to enter the scene. Someone like the Reaper, for example, who was rumored to be one of the villains considered for Batman Begins. Personally, I really wanted Nolan to steal a bit from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. I have in mind the first half of the last chapter, in which the city is plunged into chaos, and a large gang of teens called the Sons of Batman are getting ready to meet out their own version of justice when Batman shows up and decides to claim them as his own army. He brings order to the city, even though he is being hunted by the police. When the new commissioner (Gordon has retired by this point) is asked "Shouldn't we bring him in?" She replies "No... he's too big..." He truly does become a legend larger than just one man, which would nicely bookend some of the key ideas from Batman Begins.

With a villain like Bane, though, I really don't know what direction they'll go with it. He's a great villain, despite his appearance. When he was introduced, he masterminded wave after wave of Batman's toughest enemies facing him, wearing the Bat down until Bane could face him at his weakest. As the picture above shows, Bane actually won, leaving Batman bound to a wheelchair for a time. He also was one of only a few enemies Batman has had who figured out that he and Bruce Wayne were the same man. The character is a pretty long way from the last version to make it on screen. I really don't know what direction Nolan is going with this one.

It turns out Christopher Nolan picked someone he's worked with before to fill out Bane's wrestling mask:

TOM HARDY

OK, I have no idea how he's going to pull off Bane, but casting Tom Hardy as the villain opposite Christian Bale's Batman is going to be awesome. The pic is from Hardy's role in Inception, which he handled quite well. He has a physical presence that should work well in a Batman movie, and I thought his performance was one of the better ones in the movie. If we can get a scene between Hardy and Bale as electric as the interrogation scene between Bale and Ledger from The Dark Knight, the movie will be worth the price of admission right there.

So I don't really know what to make of the casting and villain choices at this point, at least beyond the non-committal, Spock-like response "fascinating." I'll definitely be seeing this one in theaters... but you probably knew that already.

B+?!? No Soup for You!

2011-01-10T22:04:00.000-08:00

The most effective parent ever?

I thought I'd offer some brief comments on Amy Chua's WSJ article on parenting, which has been making the rounds:

Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized.

Ostracized for ridiculing your daughter and then bragging about it to other mothers? Why on earth would they see that as a bad thing?

If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid," "worthless" or "a disgrace." [...] If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.

First of all, the idea that the Chinese parenting style creates high achievers is overplayed. If anything it creates good test-takers--unsurprising since Chinese society has thousands of years of history in which one's ranking in the government, and thus their standing in society, depends on taking an exam. It does not in any sense encourage problem solving, understanding, or *actual* hard work.

Chinese college students are renowned for failing to attend class and instead cramming for final and placement exams. The exams I write require you to understand why things work a certain way, rather than just memorizing formulae or finding the answer to a multiple choice question. Chinese exchange students have no better a track record in my course than either first generation college students from small town Oklahoma or the narcissistic children of alumni.

Others have commented on this as well. We have Bryan Caplan, Part 1:

My initial reaction is exasperation. Yet another essay on parenting that doesn't even contain the words "genes" or "heredity"?

And Part 2:

The most bizarre thing about Amy Chua's essay is that she combines contempt for drama with fanatical devotion to music.

I originally got the pointer from Angus at KPC, who is not known for mincing words:

Huge article in today's WSJ by Yale Law professor Amy Chua (of World on Fire "fame") called, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior". Should have been titled "I am a raging, abusive, racist, a-hole".

It's terrific to read the whole thing. You think it can't get any worse and then it does.

I will add at the end here that the parenting she criticizes is also, admittedly, horrible. Christians are not commanded to raise their children "in the entitlement and self-pity of the Lord"; but neither are we to raise them "in the mercilessness and Stockholm syndrome of the Lord." Those two words "nurture and admonition" (or paideia kai nouqesia for you Greek scholars out there) are pretty important.

"If only someone had called me garbage!"

A Benediction for a New Year

2011-01-06T07:00:00.010-08:00

From Neil Gaiman, no less:

I'm thinking we don't place enough value on spoken blessings. These things matter.

(Thanks to Jessie and Katie for drawing this to my attention.)

Wasting Time

2011-01-03T07:00:00.003-08:00

I'll be doing first round job interviews this week, which consists of not too many interviews squeezed into several days. If you, like me, find yourself with time to kill, here are a few websites to wile away the hours:

TV Tropes

If you've ever watched a television program or movie (or played a video game for that matter) and thought "didn't they do something like this on that other program?" the answer is yes. TV tropes will give the trope a name, tell you everywhere else it's been used, explain why it works the way it does, and what other tropes are similar but not quite identical. This site is the ultimate encyclopedia of media and fiction clichés.

Difference Between

For those curious about the finer distinctions of modern linguistic usage, this site will clear it all up.

The Motivator

Do you enjoy those fake motivational posters that combine a photo with an unfortunately apt caption, like the one with Captain Kirk smirking that says "I'm Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am"? Well with the motivator, you can make your own.

Youtube

The standard, tried-and-true source. Bouncing from one music video / comedy sketch / zombie preparedness video to another will cost you several hours, easily.

Madeleine L'Engle

2010-12-24T15:01:00.002-08:00

Madeleine L'Engle offers a mystic's perspective on the incarnation of Christ:

What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn.

(source, via my mystic wife) The idea that making Christianity "tidy" misses the point is in many ways the essence of being a mystic.

Merry Christmas to all of you from this mechanic!

Truth Claim of the Day

2010-12-20T07:00:00.001-08:00

When I was young I thought I was experiencing a series of events. Now I understand that I was experiencing the feeling of being young. Sure you can go back and revisited a bunch of European countries, but it won’t seen the same as when you first tramped around Europe with a backpack, and the world seemed charged with mystery and meaning.

Please, discuss. The context is here.

What Zombies Are For

2010-12-16T07:00:00.001-08:00

People think that zombie stories are about humans doing what it takes to survive. They’re not. Zombie stories are, it turns out, about humans doing what they mistakenly think they need to do to survive. As it turns out, they’re wrong.

This is the gist of a post at OverThinkingIt.com, one of my favorite group blogs, on what really drives zombie fiction.

Every zombie war is a war of attrition. It’s always a numbers game. And it’s more repetitive than complex. In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning or filling out paperwork that only generates more paperwork, or following Twitter gossip out of obligation, or performing tedious tasks in which the only true risk is being consumed by the avalanche.

That's Chuck Klosterman at the New York Times offering his take on the attractiveness of the zombie apocalypse.

I think both these articles make good points, but I would add a dimension they don't quite address. I think one aspect that really captures people's interest is the deep seated paranoia of it all. Zombies are just ordinary folk who turned on you, and anyone can, at any time, cease being your best friend and come after your flesh. On top of that, we have to consider that in any good zombie story, the zombies are not the real enemy. Zombies are hardly ever evil, after all; they're more a force of nature, a disease or a storm to be endured. No, to have true evil in a zombie apocalypse you have to have other people:

Beware of your fellow survivors. Sometimes, they may be the biggest threat to your survival. Other humans who want your supplies or who have lost their minds in the disaster could try to kill you. Never let everyone know about all of your supplies, and never let your guard down completely.

What do you do when you can't rely on your community?* I think this is a fear a lot of people feel deeply, but don't quite know how to express. And like all unexpressed fears, it expands and fills us up unless we have an outlet for it, like zombie stories. For me, I see the zombie apocalypse as the Great Disaster: our civilization cannot possibly survive it; at best the human race might survive to build a new one. If we do survive, we have a chance to repeat the same mistakes or learn from them and try to create a utopia. Most likely, we will try to create heaven in our own image and end up with a hellish dystopia for a troubles, but that's another strain of fiction for another time.

So how do we deal with a disaster from which there is no bouncing back? If we really think those around us could betray us at any time, can we ever come together to build something with the resources we have left? How bad do things have to get before our greed and fear and need to come out on top keeps everyone on the bottom?

Oddly enough, those are some of the main questions of my research as a development economist. Maybe we should take zombies a bit more seriously after all!

*Add to this OTI's observation that our defensive paranoia is always wrong--we need community to survive, we need to let someone else save us--and you're dangerously close to every Apocalypse bearing a gospel message. One with shotguns.

Are Recessions Possible?

2010-12-13T07:00:00.014-08:00

The obvious answer seems to be 'yes.' The more difficult question is 'how?' WARNING: what follows is a more technical musing than I usually post here. I'll try to keep it as close to the principles level of accessibility as possible, but I won't be offended if those of you who are less economically interested skip this one.

The problem is that, at the macroeconomic level, there is an accounting identity that says INCOME=EXPENDITURE. All of the income in an economy in a given period has to be spent on something. All your income, after all, is just somebody else's spending, and all your spending is somebody else's income. Every seller in one market is a buyer in another, and every buyer in one market is a seller in another (and yes, this even holds when some people live off other people's money, although it gets more complicated to sort out how).

This leads to something called Say's law, which basically says that if there are more sellers than buyers in one market (such as in the labor market when we have unemployment), there has to be some other market where there are more buyers than sellers, a shortage. It's the only way for the accounting identity to be true, and it's true by definition.

So how can we have a recession, where it seems there are more sellers than buyers everywhere? I've been thinking about this recently because of some recent discussion at EconLog (here, here, and here, for examples) about that very question. Scott Sumner and Nick Rowe argue that the excess demand has to be for money. People want to hang on to (not to spend, but to have in their pockets) more of the good we use in exchange than they can get their hands on. Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman, on the other hand, think there is excess demand for "safe assets," essentially places investors can store their value without any real risk that they'll walk away with less than when they started. Money is OK at this, but not great; a better option is typically government bonds, particularly when our faith in the quality of supposedly safe private firms is shaken.

Arnold Kling of EconLog, on the other hand, thinks we are in the middle of what he calls a recalculation, in which people find themselves working on things no longer in demand (more sellers than buyers) and don't yet know where the demand has gone. To my understanding, his story is basically that the recession, as we usually talk about it, is a myth. We don't have more sellers than buyers everywhere; it's just easy to see where we have more sellers than buyers, but it takes more time to figure out which markets have more buyers than sellers.

Well, the thing about markets is that when there's a shortage, it's a chance for some business to raise its prices and still sell more, thus making a ton of money. Sellers who want to make money (and don't they all?) in order to consume things they like (and don't we all?) will leave the market where there are too many sellers and enter the market where there aren't enough. Shortages and surpluses should always be rather brief. Sumner and Rowe have an answer for this: the money market isn't normal, there's a single supplier of money, the Fed (and there are good reasons to have a single supplier as I've discussed in this series). DeLong and Krugman have a similar defense: the best safe assets are supplied by the government, and are thus influenced more by political pressure than market pressure.

What I haven't seen from the Recalculation Story (or, to use Kling's latest phrase, Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade) is an explanation for why market adjustments are so slow. He has talked before about why economic busts happen much more quickly than booms, but that's not really what I'm after. What I want to know is why is the information that we have excess supply in many, many markets so easily obtained by everyone (this is what creates the unemployment in his story, after all), but information about where supply isn't keeping up with demand is so very hard for entrepreneurs to obtain.

Is it that entrepreneurs have to borrow money to chase demand quickly, but it's hard to borrow during recessions? Is it that information transmits most quickly out of markets with many established firms (and if so, why)? Is it government intervention, particularly temporary attempts to undo the shift in demand? I just really don't get what in Kling's view is holding entrepreneurs back, and make no mistake, if we don't have something holding entrepreneurs back, then recessions are just not possible.

Bad #6! Let that entrepreneur go!

Some Insights from Practice Job Interviews

2010-12-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

1.   Keep the summary of your job paper brief
1a. Don't summarize your job paper too briefly

2.   The fact that you can do Bayesian statistics is a selling point
2a. Don't sell the Bayesian stuff too hard; be as un-technical as possible

3.   Relax and be yourself, you're trying to find a good match
3a. Relax and be whatever it is they want, you're trying to find a job

4.   Ask questions about the interviewer to show interest
4a. Already know everything about the interviewer to show interest

5. Similarly, asking about the town shows interest
5a. Similarly, asking about the town shows lack of interest

6.   If you're unclear, the interviewer might misunderstand you
6a. If you're clear, the interviewer might misunderstand you

7.   Be energetic and animated
7a. But not too energetic and animated

8.   Be careful about revealing personal information
8a. Reveal some personal information

9.   Have a long list of courses you can teach and research ideas you might explore

10. More specifics are always better (as long as they aren't technical)

If I promise not to unionize, do you think they'll hire me at the Wendy's?

Truth Claim of the Day

2010-12-06T07:00:00.001-08:00

People who favor monetary and fiscal expansion worry about a 1930's scenario. People who favor restraint worry about a 1970's scenario.

Please, discuss. The context is here.

(Yes, I know this is a cheap excuse for a blog post. I'll try to do better for Thursday.)

Skepticism about Scepticism

2010-12-02T07:00:00.003-08:00

Would that be Meta-Scepticism? Sckepticism? Bueller?

In any case, this post is a response to a piece by the Venerable Gentleman in which he describes his attitude toward modern science, and nutritional science in particular. Aside from a link to a story in the Atlantic, the post essentially consists of a rationale and a rejection. The rejection indicates that the Venerable Gentleman (VG hereafter) is unconvinced of the unhealthfulness of drinking, smoking, highly processed food products, or saturated fats of any sort; it also includes a passing stab at Pasteur's germ theory.

The rationale is a bit more forceful:

The physical sciences are indeed brilliant and beautiful in harness, yoked to goals above themselves. But when these are abandoned in the name of Progress, we arrive at the same result as that of the coachman who to speed his horses onward cut their traces: the situation is certainly a vast improvement from their perspective, but the passengers had rather hoped to arrive at Brighton before tea-time.

The argument is that the sciences must be reigned by the Queen of Sciences, Theology. Unless it is thus bound, it's conclusions are of little value or interest to VG.

But frankly, I'm not convinced. I don't for a moment believe VG consumes Velveeta because the science that tells him it's unsafe has galloped in unbridled fashion from its theological roots. Why not? Because the only reason we've come to believe Velveeta is food at all is that science told us so.

It was modern physical science, which VG argues has little value in its modernist form, which invented highly processed foods and trans-fats. It was modern physical science which convinced our parents and grandparents' generations that these new inventions were healthy and good, contributions to human advancement thanks to the scientific age. And it is modern physical science which continues to argue that the sources of culinary and olfactory satisfaction for hundreds of generations prior to this scientific era are now dirty, dangerous, and outdated; we should turn to the modern Prometheus's of dietary engineering to provide us new, more potent, more sterile, and more safe forms of food and drink.

No, if I may offer a not-too-seriously-suggested narrative of my own, VG distrusts claims against processed food because his mother gave it to him when he was a wee lad, and his mother wouldn't give him something unsafe. He distrusts claims against the vittles which he loves because he loves them, not because he believes them more moral in character. But these claims are largely made by those outside the mainstream of physical science, those who see science as serving Mammon (meaning corporate profits) as master, a critique far more in line with what VG offers than with his opponents.

Perhaps he has reason to distrust mainstream science, too. After all, his cigar-chomping lush of a grandfather (whose character and very existence I have totally fabricated here) lived to the age of 95 before dying in a sword fight with a pirate, so the causal effect cannot be all that strong, can it? (unless we consider drinking and smoking as contributing factors to encounters with pirates, which come to think of it...) In any case, though, while VG is free to follow or ignore such advice as he pleases, I must insist that he not try to hide his preference behind the curtain of Theology. I'm on to you, wizard.

Truth Claim of the Day

2010-11-29T07:00:00.006-08:00

We are not good when we are happy and bad when we are down. We are simply experiencing the natural spectrum of emotions as part of our human experience. When we take the time to appreciate all of our experiences, they will have far less power over us, thus increasing our capacity for true joy and contentment.

Please, discuss. The context is here.

Social Science, Mad Science?

2010-11-25T07:00:00.011-08:00

I love this recent news story. A respected psychologist at Brown University has shown that simple stimulus-response experiments with known results still produce the expected response (although with a weaker correlation) even if the stimulus happens after the fact. That's right, folks, precognition!

In one experiment, students were shown a list of words and then asked to recall words from it, after which they were told to type words that were randomly selected from the same list. Spookily, the students were better at recalling words that they would later type.

In another study, Bem adapted research on "priming" – the effect of a subliminally presented word on a person's response to an image. For instance, if someone is momentarily flashed the word "ugly", it will take them longer to decide that a picture of a kitten is pleasant than if "beautiful" had been flashed. Running the experiment back-to-front, Bem found that the priming effect seemed to work backwards in time as well as forwards.

The article says the effect was "small but statistically significant," meaning it's pretty unlikely that the relationship is due to happenstance. That's not scientific proof of precognition, by any stretch, but it does mean the results are worth taking a look at, and others are.

A skeptical approach to the paper that I found pretty interesting can be found here. I think the take-home point is great:

The real lesson? This is the level of methodological scrutiny every paper should receive, and not just the ones you think are crazy:[...]

But beyond that, I think this article also sums up one of the main reactions to the paper:

I don't believe a word of it because a) let's face it, it's about precognition [...]

Some would say that it is appropriate for scientists to be particularly skeptical about anything supporting stuff we "know is wrong" like paranormal activity. If we think of science as a Bayesian process (which I think we should, but that's a post for another time), then we are essentially updating our beliefs about different explanations of the world as new data arrives. Our beliefs don't, and shouldn't, shift to whatever the latest results say, because we have a lot of prior knowledge that matters for how we form our beliefs.

That said, though, a Bayesian view of science also implies that total certainty doesn't exist, and that no matter how wacky or far-fetched a theory may seem, we never rule it out completely. We might want to prioritize and spend as little time as possible exploring things that contradicts our prior expectations, but the Dana ~~Skully~~ Scully refrain "It's scientifically impossible!" isn't an acceptable argument in a scientific setting. The sciences don't get to be so dogmatic.

PS - Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

Taking Offense

2010-11-22T07:00:00.013-08:00

After what was essentially a six-week hiatus, I thought I'd hit the ground running with something substantial:

If you met this fellow on the street, would you be offended? If he told you he didn't know what the symbol in his arm meant, he just thought it looked cool, would that make it OK?

Unless he's an actor in a movie or some sort of reenactment, I think we would all generally agree that wearing a swastika armband necessarily associates you with something decent folk don't want to be associated with. In this sense, what you wear communicates something, whether the wearer intends to communicate it or not.

What about this?

Nobody really thinks that wearing a bomber jacket tells others that you have a pilot's license, or that you have destroyed enemy bunkers using military incendiary devices. It's entirely plausible for someone to be a complete pacifist but still wear a jacket like this just because you think it looks cool.

So there seems to be a spectrum of association and message when it comes to things like clothing. Somewhere in the vast space between swastikas and bomber jackets, there is a line that, if crossed, moves you from wearing something "because you like it" to wearing something to "send a message." And it's really not a matter of intent: the swastika sends a particular message, period.

I bring this up because I have been thinking about the issue of offending others with something you see as harmless. This article, in particular, got me wondering. As an example, I know a lot of people who find this...

...to be a simple expression of support for their home state, states rights, or simply a rejection of an overly intrusive central government. On the other hand, basically every African-American I know looks at that shirt and sees this:

These white hooded figures are Boogey Man, a fear passed from parent to child over generations until it becomes ingrained in the society as the thing we must fear, not unlike the Nazis to Jewish communities. (As an aside, I have a friend of Jewish ethnic heritage who was once called a Nazi by a political science teacher. Bad form, political science teacher; very bad form indeed.) When you fly your confederate flag, you are linking yourself to the KKK in the minds of most onlooking African-Americans as surely as if you were burning a cross in your front yard. It doesn't matter whether you intend it that way, just as it wouldn't matter if you wore a swastika armband to a bar mitzvah. You are doing something with a distinct meaning to another people group, and that meaning doesn't go away just because you don't see it.

Should the offense done to this people group be reason enough for you to eschew the confederate t-shirt? My instinct is to say yes; there are ways to express your group identity with other Southerners without hurting African-Americans, so the loving thing, the Christlike thing, to do is probably to avoid giving unnecessary offense.

But of course there must be a limit to the application of this logic, since every attire and activity risks offending someone. Is the offense to animal rights activists sufficient reason to avoid something like this?

Aesthetic arguments are a separate matter.

I'm not sure, but again my intuition is to say the offense is not enough. We aren't required to avoid all offense at all cost, and I'm not sure it is even possible to do so. So if someone wants to wear a Victorian explorer outfit to a convention, are you aligning yourself with European imperialism? If someone informs you that, as descendants of a subjugated people, they find your outfit offensive, do you owe an apology?

Is this man just having fun, or basking in retro-futuristic irony?

How should the second greatest commandment guide our willingness to invoke terrifying images or hurtful history upon those around us? Where is the line beyond which our aesthetic choices begin to speak without our consent? Or is this an instance where the mechanic is simply asking the wrong sort of question, where the mystic's way of thinking yields greater light?

I wish I had the answer to these questions. I tend to think academics in the humanities over-play the idea of "the other," but on balance how we relate to "the other" is something most people should probably be more intentional about.

The Labor Market

2010-11-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've been putting a lot of work into it, and thus have been unable to post for a while. This could continue for another week or two. I apologize for the inconvenience, as I know you are all desperate to hear my ponderings on all matters. The truth is all the topics I planned to comment on before my recent job market blitz are now so stale that I will probably have to find new ones.

In the meantime, though, I thought some of you might find this piece at VoxEU interesting. It offers a plausible explanation and some additional evidence that increased immigration (legal or otherwise) does not hurt wages in the host country. On the contrary, if anything they seem to increase wages for native workers:

Several studies find that immigrants do not harm the wages and job prospects of native workers. This column seeks to explain these somewhat counterintuitive findings by emphasizing the scope for complementarities between foreign-born and native workers. Examining 14 European countries from 1996 to 2007, it finds that immigrants often supply manual skills, leaving native workers to take up jobs that require more complex skills – even boosting demand for them. Immigrants replace “tasks”, not workers.

Non-economists may find the material a bit dry, but I did want to offer their explanation:

In a recent working paper (D’Amuri and Peri 2010), we provide a potential explanation for this phenomenon, analysing European labour markets and immigration over the period 1996-2007. Our paper follows a similar analysis one of us did for the US (Peri and Sparber 2009). Rather than considering the labour market as made up of homogeneous and identical workers with potentially different skill levels, we consider that production is divided into a series of tasks that can be organised in a continuum spanning from simple-routine and prevalently manual tasks to complex-interactive and prevalently cognitive tasks.

Companies have to perform a range of these tasks in order to produce goods or services; hence the increased supply of some of them may increase the demand for others. For instance, for a construction company the supply of more construction workers performing manual tasks (such as installing dry-walls and raising foundations) generates the need for more construction supervisors, technicians, engineers, clerks, and sale representatives (as the company grows) who typically perform more interactive and complex tasks. As these tasks are all needed to produce final goods (they are “complementary” with each other), if immigrants and native workers specialise in different segments of the task-specialisation spectrum, then more immigrants can generate higher demand for natives.

This work is hardly the final word on the matter, but the simple fact that differences between workers matter means simple supply-demand logic isn't good enough to sort out the effect of more immigrant workers on native workers. The empirical evidence in the literature is pretty strong, so the burden of proof is really on those who want to say immigration hurts natives, rather than the other way around.

Accountability Moral and Economic

2010-10-14T07:00:00.007-07:00

The real guilty party.

Reader kenestral passed along this article, which highlights the occasional tension between moral and economic obligations. It seems in Obion County, Tennessee, if you don't want the local fire department to be on call, you don't have to pay for it. This seemed all well and good to resident Gene Cranick until his house caught fire:

I thought they’d come out and put it out, even if you hadn’t paid your $75, but I was wrong.

They did respond to calls from a paying neighbor.

This was a really thought provoking article for me. If I were calling the shots at the fire department, I probably would have put the fire out anyway, thus validating Cranick's attempt to be a free-rider supported by the payments of his neighbors. It's not OK to let people's homes burn. But if I were in charge of investigating the fire department, as you know had to happen, I'd probably not accuse them of any wrongdoing. They fulfilled their contracted duty.

The author of the article, Daniel Foster, sees this as a pretty good argument for providing fire-fighting services to anyone in the jurisdiction, and just charging them through a tax (that is, nobody gets to opt out). In one sense I tend to agree, but that left me wondering how this was different from the Obama Health Care plan, which I don't like. After talking it over with my wife (who has better economics instincts than I do, despite never having taken a class on the subject), we concluded that the main difference is that there is nobody else offering to put out fires; if you wanted to use another service to put out fires, too bad, there's nobody. No amount of money is going to be enough to get someone else to provide fire-fighting services. That's not true when it comes to doctor's office visits, checkups, and prescription drug provision. Now, if Obama had proposed a plan for universal catastrophic health insurance (with correspondingly high deductible), then it would be a lot more like public provision of fire departments. I might be OK with that health insurance system, too.

But what this really got me wondering about was Cranick's homeowner's insurance. Do they have to pay out despite the fact that he could have gotten fire-fighting protection, but didn't? How can you even get homeowner's insurance on a house that isn't covered by the local fire department? If I'm the insurance company, I probably wouldn't sell to a guy who won't join the local fire department club, no matter how much he tries to reassure me "oh, they'll come anyway, trust me." They don't make premiums high enough for that kind of nonsense.

On the other hand, might Cranick be able to argue that he offered to pay them the cost of fighting the fire ex post, and they refused? Could he say it's really their fault everything he had burned to cinders? I suspect this wouldn't fly, but I really don't know.

The gist is, I guess, that I don't agree with the fire department's call, but I'm having trouble drumming up sympathy for someone victimized by his own poor choices. Not too much of a surprise, I guess, since we've learned years ago from Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom (via Freakanomics coauthor Stephen Dubner) that economists are evil.

David Henderson offers a libertarian response here. Tyler Cowen is not moved.

Truth Claim of the Day

2010-10-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

Japanese politics is less competitive and Japanese rent-seeking is less competitive than in the United States. Sustained near-zero growth in the United States would mean that interest groups tear apart the social fabric and grab too lustily at the social surplus. Whether we like it or not, we are "built to grow" and we use the fruits of that growth to buy off interest groups as we go along. Japan in contrast has greater capacity to stifle these grabs for new redistributions because their politics is more of an insider's game.

In other words, American society is arranged such that we must "grow or die"; other countries might not be. Please, discuss. The context can be found here.

Hail Democracy?

2010-10-07T21:43:00.061-07:00

Authoritarian regimes [...] cannot aspire to continued economic innovation or to global economic leadership.

That's the take home message from an article by Harvard economist Dani Rodrik. If that were all he said, I'd say he was playing fast and loose with the facts, since all of the top growing countries over the last fifty years or so have had very little democratic influence in their governments:

Of course, Rodrik knows this better than I do. So, being a good economist, he hedges his claims:

When we look at systematic historical evidence, instead of individual cases, we find that authoritarianism buys little in terms of economic growth. For every authoritarian country that has managed to grow rapidly, there are several that have floundered. For every Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, there are many like Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo. [emphasis added]

As a friend working in the sciences once said, "data is not the plural form of anecdote." If what we're interested in is whether or not having a dictator or one-party government helps the country grow, we need to look at all countries, not just the top performers. That data looks something like this:

Low levels of democracy do give us the highest growth rates, but they also give us the lowest. If I were to plot a line on that graph, it would be sloping up, showing that on average, more democracy leads to more growth.

Now, we know that correlation isn't causation, so let's not get too carried away with this relationship. In fact, there's a lot of work suggesting that when you try to get at the real, causal relationship, more or less democracy doesn't seem to make much of a difference for how well a country grows. And further, we have some good reasons to believe dictators should generally hurt economic growth, so the fact that there are any really high growth authoritarian systems means something strange is going on. So when looking for the economic superpowers of the future, I don't think we should be too quick to, as Rodrik says, "turn instead to countries like Brazil, India, and South Africa, which have already accomplished their democratic transitions and are unlikely to regress."

But Rodrik is right to consider the simple "democracy is related to better growth" position the correct default. As William Easterly (the source of the nice table and graph) notes, we can't just say the graph shows we need to have good dictators (who will lead to better growth) and fewer bad ones (who will lead to stagnation). If we label countries with the best growth "good dictatorships" and those with the worst "bad dictatorships" we're just begging the question. Unless we know in advance what made the top growers grow and what made the bottom ones fail, we can't very well pick out which dictators now will help their people and which will hurt. On average, they're gonna do more harm than good.

Scholarly Critique Fail

2010-10-04T07:00:00.013-07:00

To their minds, little of what takes place on college campuses today can be considered either "higher" or "education." They blame a system that favors research over teaching and vocational training over liberal arts.

This is the main thrust of an interview at the Atlantic with the authors of the book Higher Education? (and yes, the question mark is part of the title). The authors do not like faculty who care about research to the point of avoiding teaching, an attitude I can sympathize with. Here is an excerpt on the perils of the Publish of Perish mentality:

The problem is that there are just too many publications and too many people publishing. This is true even in the hard sciences. If there's a research project on genetics in a lab, they will take certain findings and break them into eight different articles just so each researcher can get more stuff on his or her resume.

And many of the publications are too long. A book on Virginia Woolf could be a 30-page article. Somebody did a count of how many publications had been written on Virginia Woolf in the past 15 years. The answer is several thousand. Really? Who needs this? But it's awfully difficult to say, "Here's knowledge we don't need!" It sounds like book burning, doesn't it? What we'd say is that on the scale of priorities, we find undergraduate teaching to be more important than all the research being done.

So far, so good. But they also have some very particular ideas about what constitutes good vs. bad ways to pick a college to attend. The bad way, in their view, is to go to college for signaling purposes:

[...] go to a prestigious college, and when you graduate the world will know you went to Princeton or Stanford. It doesn't matter what happened in the classroom as long as you have that brand behind you. Claudia and I were up at Harvard talking to students, and they said they get nothing from their classes, but that doesn't matter. They're smart already—they can breeze through college. The point is that they're going to be Harvard people when they come out.

So what do the authors advocate instead?

The second reason to go to college is get a good liberal arts education.

Wait, really? Liberal Arts? I thought having people write volume upon volume about Virginia Woolf was a bad thing. So why would we train students to do the same thing by having them read those very volumes? Or is this not what the authors mean by a liberal arts education?

There are two ways to look at it. First of all, freshmen come in at age 18. Let's suppose they've decided to major in sports management. What's an 18-year-old going to do in a freshman course in sports management? I've attended some undergraduate business courses. The students are young; they don't have business experience. Really very little is imparted.

To me this sounds more like an argument for skipping college and going into the workforce than anything else. Is that what they mean?

In our economy, they're not really ready for you until you're 28 or so. They want you to have a number of years behind you. [...] Besides, young people today are going to live to be 90. There's no rush.

The economy wasn't ready.

Oh. Nope, apparently the modern economy can't handle young people. Their labors aren't going to get them anywhere when they're young no matter what they do. So what should young people be doing with their time?

The second way to look at it is that liberal arts, properly conceived, means wrestling with issues and ideas, putting the mind to work in a way these young people will only be able to do for these four years. And we'd like this for everyone. They can always learn vocational things later, on the job. They can even get an engineering degree later—by the way, in two years rather than four.

This sounds like a good plan... for high school. But I don't quite see how it's an effective plan for college unless we are planning to greatly multiply the volumes of Virginia Woolf for these students to wrestle with, assuming they have any interest in doing so. Even if college were much cheaper than it is now (they do have a nice comment on massive borrowing for college, which at least for non-vocational, non-investment schooling is a pretty poor idea), many students would rather work at low wages than hang out wrestling with books they don't care about. Are they wrong to feel this way?

Good teaching is not just imparting knowledge, like pouring milk into a jug. It's the job of the teacher to get students interested and turned on no matter what the subject is. Every student can be turned on if teachers really engage in this way. [...] Some people say to me, "Your students at Queens, are they any good?" I say, "I make them good." Every student is capable of college.

No. I have to stop you there. Not every student is capable of college. I went to the local Vo-Tech in high school, and met some people who would not have been able to keep up with college level coursework at the local state college. Period. And they knew it. They knew they'd be frustrated and tired and hate every minute of it no matter how enthusiastic or capable the teachers. And you know what? It was OK.

They were studying something they found somewhat appealing, like computer repair or auto mechanic work or graphic design or what-have-you. They were learning something they could understand and appreciate and be good at that would also pay the bills, and possibly even leave them some free time to explore their side interests. And that's fabulous. I've had a fair number of students who I think would live happier, healthier, and possibly even wealthier lives if they stopped trying to finish college because everybody-who's-anybody-has-a-college-degree, and instead learned a trade. Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame made a similar point here (second video), and there are some interesting links on the subject here.

Do I think liberal arts education can serve the consumption and productivity goals of students? Absolutely, given the right students (and there are a lot of them). I think we could do even better to have capable, demanding, well-trained, and enthusiastic teachers of these topics starting in high school and continuing into liberal arts schools for those so inclined. But I think we would do a lot better at promoting real higher education if we stopped pretending that "higher" means "top of the line but somehow still accessible to everybody." That's a waste of the students' time, creativity, and enthusiasm in too many cases. Those are resources we should take more care in managing.

(Craig Newmark comments briefly and to the point on the same article)

PS- Here's hoping the economy is finally ready for this:

Your Opinion

2010-10-03T10:39:00.002-07:00

I'm leading a discussion for a graduate student discussion group next Sunday, and I need to decide what topic to present. Since my own research is not particularly general interest, I thought I'd get some thoughts on what my blog readers think would spark an interesting discussion. Therefore, I present Metadoxy's first ever Reader Poll:

For a look at possible reading material for mechanics and mystics, click here; for the purposes of education, click here. The How to Deceive with Statistics would focus on statistics education, such as in the video here (third video) from Arthur Benjamin. I've actually presented on The End of Civilization before, talking about William Burrows and the Alliance to Rescue Civilization; I'd probably take a more general "how should Christians think about and react to risks of global economic meltdowns / meteor strikes / climate disasters / (genetically engineered?) plagues / nuclear war" approach this time. Economic Growth vs. Human Progress would be a new topic, but would give us a chance to talk about the pros and cons of the modern age, as well as what our social and political goals should be in areas like foreign aid / immigration policy / national economic policy.

Please vote, the more feedback I get here the better decision I can make. Is there anything not in the poll that should be? Why did you vote the way you did? Please let me know in the comments!

Don't Be Too Certain

2010-09-27T07:00:00.001-07:00

There's a fascinating graphic from Catherine Rampell that's been making the rounds on the economics blogs:
So what's the biggest problem facing business right now? Paul Krugman points out that it's insufficient demand, and

[...] the best thing government could do to help business would be to spend more, increasing demand. The fact that it's not going to happen doesn't change the fact that it's the simple truth.

Unsurprisingly, Brad DeLong agrees with Krugman, and adds that anyone who disagrees is clearly incompetent.

Tyler Cowen, however, doesn't see it as that clear-cut:

I didn't read this graph the same way. I saw poor sales as a "biggest problem" for fifteen percent (or so) of small businesses in periods of full or near-full employment. I also see "poor sales" as a "biggest problem" for about thirty percent of small businesses today. That change -- about fifteen percent of the total -- struck me as relatively small and indeed puzzlingly small, if indeed we are in a liquidity trap and weak AD is the overwhelmingly dominant problem. [...] I do think weak AD is an important problem to be addressed, I just don't think the absolute levels here imply "end of story."

Russ Roberts adds (like the good Austrian economist that he is) that if taxes plus regulation were a single category, it would take over the top spot from poor sales. Finally, the award for best additional information goes, as it often does, to James Hamilton:

The statement that businesses aren't hiring is simply false. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, the U.S. private sector hired 3.9 million new workers every month, on average, over the first 7 months of 2010.

But if that's true, then why isn't total employment booming? The answer is that, according to the same JOLTS data, some 3.8 million workers quit or lost their jobs each month on average during Jan-July. [...] the fact that small changes in net employment figures mask a dynamic economy in which there are huge gross changes in employment status for individuals and firms is quite indisputable.

Firms are firing a lot of people, probably because of poor sales. Firms are also hiring a lot of people, just not enough to mask the firings.

So what's the take-away point of all this?

I have to go back to Chris's fascinating post on the rhetoric of the "third way." Although I hate to contend with someone who quotes Lewis, this sort of thing is precisely why we should be reluctant to pick one side to fight for: reality involves a lot more dimensions than partisans can allow themselves to consider. In particular, once we've identified the "most important problem" that needs fixing, we tend to act far more certain in our own conclusions than the evidence allows. We should this pitfall whenever we find it in ourselves.

I know I'll get some flak for this, but I would contend avoiding certainty (in this sense) even extends to spiritual matters, if only because we need to avoid placing our confidence in a favorite interpretation of Scripture rather than in Christ himself. Humility requires that we be willing to let go of a firmly held position and accept "middle things" if we learn we're wrong. If that's true even in matter's of God's Word, how much more true is it for empirical matters like economic and political arguments.

Holding a view like this basically insures I'll never get a job with the CEA or NEC, but then who wants to be Larry Summers, anyway?

This man is always right. Right?

A Little Undead

2010-09-20T07:00:00.001-07:00

Just a short post today providing a link to last week's Zombie Week at Tor.com. A lot of the posts are linked to the original, but look through Sunday's posts to see a few more. The available points of interest include samples of fiction, roundtable discussions of all sorts, essays on the mechanics of writing zombies, essays on the mechanics of zombies themselves, and a lot more. Take a look.

Also, I may have linked to this before, but I like the animation so I thought I'd throw it in for good measure:

Teachers Good and Evil

2010-09-16T07:00:00.008-07:00

In my recent post on education, I stirred up considerable debate by saying that the goals of education are consumption, productivity, and signaling, and essentially rejecting any idea of character building or promoting virtue. I stand by my view, even though I know there are many teachers out there who care primarily about character and virtue, because from the perspective of the student becoming a better person is still only a desired goal if it allows you to communicate something (signaling), to do something (productivity), or if you simply value your own character and want to enjoy something (consumption). It's not the only way to break down these motivations, but I believe it is the most intellectually helpful way.

But I don't want this view to suggest that I think teaching is a mechanical process, in which relationships don't matter and values aren't influenced. Far from it. Within this framework it is still possible for teachers to promote good or evil toward their students. An example of the latter came up in a post by Albert Mohler, in which an English professor at Northwestern indicates his goal of indoctrinating students:

“The children of red states will seek a higher education,” he explains, “and that education will very often happen in blue states or blue islands in red states. For the foreseeable future, loyal dittoheads will continue to drop off their children at the dorms. After a teary-eyed hug, Mom and Dad will drive their SUV off toward the nearest gas station, leaving their beloved progeny behind.”

Then what? He proudly claims: “And then they are all mine.”

That is creepy. Not the fact that the worldview of the professor will affect the students; as Mohler points out:

All teaching involves ideology and intellectual commitments. There is no position of authentic objectivity. Every teacher, as well as every student, comes into the classroom with certain intellectual commitments.

It's not the fact that the teacher is sharing his own ideology---or even that he is trying to influence the ideology of his students---that makes this approach to teaching bad. It's the fact that "winning" the ideological war is the only objective expressed here. This professor doesn't care about the objectives of the students, and he doesn't even seem to care about the students' virtuous character. All he cares about is shifting the student's worldview to be more in line with his own. That's not education. That's brainwashing.

In subtle contrast to this terrifying approach to teaching, Chris links to someone's personal account of having his worldview dismantled by a professor. But this wasn't the work of someone lying in wait to pounce on an unsuspecting eighteen-year-old (or at least, it doesn't seem so). This was the patient, relationship building of someone who genuinely wants a student to understand the world better:

It was John who—in the course of one extended conversation on the political thought of John Locke—broke through my well-armored adolescent Marxism and first introduced me to the challenges of intellectual history. He managed this by the simple device of listening very intently to everything I said, taking it with extraordinary seriousness on its own terms, and then picking it gently and firmly apart in a way that I could both accept and respect.

That is teaching. It is also a certain sort of liberalism: the kind that engages in good faith with dissenting (or simply mistaken) opinions across a broad political spectrum.

Was this second teacher also brainwashing his student? Possibly. But it is at least as possible that he was trying to help build the student's character, or make him a more productive thinker with the capacity to enjoy the subtleties of philosophical thought.

So we have here two cases of teachers who seem to be ignoring the student-perspective goals of consumption, productivity, and signaling. While I believe thinking about teaching in the way I do precludes the brainwashing of the first teacher, I hope I can say it doesn't prevent the care and relational efforts of the latter.

The Nature of Conflict

2010-09-13T07:00:00.002-07:00

Economist Robin Hanson has an interesting way of framing how we look at conflict between groups:

Our fight, of [A] against [B] over [C], is but one battle in the ancient war over [F], along the great divide between [D] and [E]. Many do not realize how many of our apparently mundane conflicts are, in reality, battles in this ancient war. Today is a crucial day in this war, so we must not give up, and we must not lose hope, or someday [D] may lose [F] forever. Fight, fight!

(there are further comments at EconLog, if you're interested) Hanson notes several group membership divides that can be used for [D] and [E], including "tyrants vs. freedom-lovers, rich vs. poor, faithful vs. heathen, urban vs. rural folk, men vs. women,[...]" and many others. Although it's never spoken of in these terms, I would say a lot of unnecessary conflict occurs along the Mechanics vs. Mystics divide, although most of the time we either like to frame it differently (Hanson's "intellectuals vs. ignoramuses" is a favorite of mechanics, while his "artists vs. undiscerning" seems preferred by mystics). This is an aspect Hanson doesn't explore, although I'm sure he would find it interesting: we often talk about the divide between [D] and [E], not because it is the real dividing line we care about, but because it sounds more important than the divide between [M] and [N]. When we notice and accept that a conflict is along mechanic vs. mystic lines, it becomes a lot easier to communicate and a lot harder to cling to being the "winner" of the conflict.

Aside from that admittedly minor contribution, I find it slightly terrifying to admit this is how many, many Christians I know think about their relationships with the non-Christian world. There is a divide between [D] Christendom and [E] Everybody else (Babylon?), and the war is over [F] civil society / American culture / our Christian nation / etc. Now, I'm not denying that this divide exists, nor that it is important. But I vehemently deny any version of the Christian worldview that says " Today is a crucial day in this war, so we must not give up, and we must not lose hope, or someday Christendom may lose civil society / American culture / our Christian nation / etc forever." If we believe Christianity, then we believe that Christ is God, and that no enemy can even vaguely approximate Him. He cannot lose anything He prefers to win! Fear of losing something, anything, to the secular world simply doesn't compute with Christianity, and thus Hanson's 'ancient war' framing cannot rightly reflect a Christian view of the 'great divide.'

Again, this doesn't mean I think Christians shouldn't stand up for what they believe is right in public forums. Far from it. But we need to remember that we're not fighting a battle against an entrenched foe who may yet win the day if our courage fails. We are spreading the world---with the gentle bedside manner of an oncologist (or the compassionate friend of an addict)---that sunrise is almost here, and will soon be here whether we want to keep our drunken nighttime revelry going or not. The change of seasons is not a war we need to win; it is a part of the nature of the world that we do well to keep in mind. And so it is with the victory of Christ.

Reich's Real Lesson

2010-09-09T07:00:00.002-07:00

My friend Chris, never short of good questions and interesting articles, asked my opinion of Robert Reich's recent piece on the recession. I should perhaps start by admitting a certain presumption in critiquing the work of an academic much more accomplished than myself. He certainly knows more about the ins and outs of the American labor market than I do. But in the post, he ventures into the realm of macroeconomics and economic growth; here I think I still have the home-field advantage.

I'm hoping to make this into an educational opportunity. Like most educational opportunities, though, and especially those where the educator is unpaid, this is going to take some time. I'm going to try not to spend too much of my own time on this, which means I won't be economizing on words like I should. Sorry in advance. I'll try to compensate by including just enough snark to keep you awake; it's not wrong if it's for a good cause, right? My running commentary is below the jump break.

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How to Deceive with Statistics

2010-09-06T07:00:00.002-07:00

For this Labor Day post, I'm letting Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University handle this one for me:

Notice that nearly 30% of the smallest decile (10%) of schools were in the top 25 at some point during 1997-2000 but only 1.2% of the schools in the largest decile ever made the top 25.

Sounds like small schools are proven to be awesome! Oh wait, we've got a problem:

If for random reasons a few geniuses happen to enroll one year in a small school scores jump up and if a few extra dullards enroll the next year scores fall.

Thus, for purely random reasons we would expect small schools to be among the best performing schools in any givenyear. Of course we would also expect small schools to be among the worst performing schools in any given year! And in fact, once we look at all the data this is exactly what we see.

Tabarrok provides this really nice graph:

which shows that smaller schools tend to vary more, but on average they're not really any better than big ones in terms of test scores. We could argue that test scores are a bad metric of education quality, and that small schools are better for other reasons. But then we'd better not be pointing to test scores as the reason for supporting small schools.

This just goes to show that looking at extreme cases on one end of the spectrum only will almost always be misleading. This is one of the big reasons for the maxim "'Data' is not the plural of 'anecdote.'" Just remember that it's possible to reduce statistics to the level of important-sounding anecdotes if you do it wrong. Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the reminder.

What After the Three Rs?

2010-09-02T07:00:00.002-07:00

What should students learn after they are literate and numerate at a functional level? Here's one argument for why mathematical proofs matter. Matt Rognlie offers some pros and cons of studying 'classics' (although he is less charitable towards some than others).

This question is tricky because it's really a matter of the purpose of education, but in a very specific sense. If we want to satisfy the consumption goal, should students read To Kill a Mockingbird? I mean, I loved it, but a lot of people don't. What about The Old Man and the Sea? That one I couldn't stand. From a consumption perspective, shouldn't we be telling everyone to read more Tolkien? Or letting students choose from an array of comic books? How do we know what readings now will give students more satisfaction in ten and twenty years time?

If, on the other hand, we are after productivity, then all education tends to become vocational, doesn't it? We could argue back and forth a bit about how best to develop "critical thinking skills" and other abstract tools many workers will need, but in general the idea becomes clear: let students try many things, and as they demonstrate interest or aptitude in one, narrow down their training to the specific skills they'll use in that profession. This makes moving between different kinds of jobs more difficult, but these days it usually doesn't pay to be a generalist.

If it's signaling we want to promote, of course, then we have a bit more leeway. The goal is to show a willingness and ability to endure the kinds of pain that you would only do if you really had the traits and talents employers are looking for. Of course, there are lots of ways to endure pain; Hemingway is just one option. Knowledge bowl with canings for the loser would work just as well.

Different cultures have relied on different mixes of these goals throughout history, and some are easier to figure out than others. China has had, since ancient times, a major emphasis on exams determining vocation; it seems to me that this is primarily a signaling education. In aristocratic societies, it seems to largely be a matter of consumption. Western societies have for at least a couple centuries now focused on creating workers with identical skill sets---particularly the "don't question the boss" skill---well suited for factory work, call centers, or middle management.

What should the mix of educational goals look like? What would education that served this mix well look like? What mix(es) would be acceptable from a Christian worldview, and are there any that must be categorically rejected?

(PS - I know some readers may want to say that none of these goals is in line with a Christian worldview, since the goal of education should be "raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and ultimately God's glory comes above all other goals. Well, OK, sure. I contend that you're still going to promote God's glory by nurturing and admonishing in a way that combines consumption, productivity, and signaling. The question is what types of consumption, productivity, and signaling best promote God's glory, and what combinations implicitly refuse to nurture and admonish. So I'm not looking for a Mardel's answer, nor even the Reformed equivalent. Dig deep here, people.)

Business vs. Creativity

2010-08-30T07:00:00.009-07:00

I've got yer business model right here!

[W]hen I wrote comics, I lived in the moment, letting my stories tell me what to write about, riffing off the zeitgeist month by month.

This is the main thrust of a short post by Steve Englehart regarding the creative freedom that comic book writers had back before all the blockbuster movies were based on comic book superheroes. Englehart remembers the good ol' days fondly, as we all tend to do when waxing nostalgic: "Once we creators were Marvel or DC." He is less impressed with the modern comics industry:

Today, the comics companies are top-heavy with editorial interference.[...] They expect writers to give them synopses for the next twelve issues in their series, so that when the writer finally gets to that twelfth issue, the material is so old and stale that he might as well just blow his brains out, for all the satisfaction he can derive from it.

I find it pretty common that creative-types bristle when their activity is governed by business-types. Is this because they have different ideas about what customers really want? Or is it because they want their products to satisfy different people with fundamentally different tastes? Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok have a paper on the topic (which I've mentioned before) that takes this latter view. This "different targets" view seems to imply that, as we develop technology that lets us mass produce goods that used to be produced by artisans, we should see see the influence of creative-types fall and the influence of business-types rise.

On the other hand, I know of many who would support the idea that the goal may be the same, but there are multiple ways of trying to satisfy a given target audience, and creative-types will have very different ideas on this than business-types. Sir Ken Robinson would say that we live in a world where we neglect and ignore creativity to our detriment. This "different techniques" view leaves open why one group would gain more influence than the other, but it also suggests that it's possible to reverse the trend if enough people are willing to try. No such reversal seems possible in the "different targets" view.

So which is it? Was Steve Englehart driven out of comics by the inexorable market forces acting on a good that is easy to mass produce? Or is his lament a rally cry to take the power from the suits and give it back to the creators? Or is there a consistent view in between with its own set of important implications?

Friday Video Extravaganza

2010-08-27T07:00:00.018-07:00

I know I've done fake trailers before, but I couldn't help bringing it out again. Below the jump break, trailers for movies that don't exist.

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What Schooling Is For

2010-08-23T07:00:00.003-07:00

Today is the start of another semester, and that means the ever popular Opening Lecture. I sorted out several semesters back that I'm not the only one bored to tears when the first thing a professor does in a class is pass around a syllabus and then read it. Instead of doing that, now I open by explaining to students why they're in my class; not why they're taking microeconomics, but why they are in college in the first place. It allows me to bring up a lot of topics we'll cover over the semester, and I think it's pretty eye-opening to those who are likely to pay attention to the course.

Now, I don't really go into the historical sources of the university system, although that certainly would be suggestive. Matt Yglesias puts it this way:

[...]as Brad DeLong likes to point out the “get a bunch of people in a room to listen to some guy talk” model of education was an organizational response to the high price of books. In principle, it would seem to have been made obsolete by the printing press and the public library. Yet obviously that didn’t happen. Colleges and universities managed to make themselves indispensable sources of credentials and social prestige. And though they’ve of course incorporated information technology innovations into their work, they still engage in an incredible quantity of pre-Gutenberg educating.

So advancing our knowledge was once the primary purpose of schooling, but it hasn't been for a long, long time. This is why when I see questions like Arnold Kling's ("Yes, our kids do graduate, but could they have learned just as much on their own on the Web?"), I can't help but feel he's missing the main point.

As a teacher, I want how I teach to be shaped by the goals the students have when they sign up. As an economist, I know that these goals really fall into three broad categories: consumption, productivity, and signaling.

'Consumption' means some students go to school because they like it. Maybe the enjoy the social environment, or maybe they think the subjects are interesting. Perhaps, as one keen observer of the human condition has said, people go to college to become better conversationalists. In any case, all these reasons are just different ways of saying they derive satisfaction from the experience of school itself, and in economics, when people derive satisfaction from the thing itself, we call it consumption.

The problem with this is that formal schooling is usually only fun for those who are naturally good at formal schooling (i.e., people like me). For many others, it's a torturous, life-sucking experience that drains the creativity right out of them. Sure, college parties are fun, but why borrow money so your four years of partying can be interrupted by memorizing facts about price controls? Why don't we send everyone to Europe for two years, then send 'em to the workforce?

'Productivity' is what most traditional views of education focus on, and what all political posturing focuses on. Productivity means students go to school to make them better at whatever they are going to do when they stop going to school; sometimes schooling is viewed as a requirement to gain necessary skills, without which many people simply could never figure out how to do some jobs. Within this class is the idea that workers with higher productivity are more valuable to employers, and generally this will be reflected in higher wages / salaries and better benefits offered.

Productivity is what everyone worries about when it comes to education, but in reality it's probably the least important reason to go to school. Part of the reason is precisely Arnold Kling's point: intelligent individuals can learn most of the same things on their own. Formal education doesn't make kids smart, and it doesn't make them dedicated or hard-working. In some cases it can help by imposing a degree of discipline on students who aren't very good at self-discipline, but it's probably as likely to have the opposite effect. So what is formal education really good at?

'Signaling' is the primary purpose of education. It's all about credentials. The thing is, employers need to be able to distinguish people who are talented in the areas that matter to them most from those who are not very good in those areas. One of the best ways to do this (for technical reasons that I won't go into here) is to see who is willing and able to endure the most hardship in the name of the areas that matter to the employer. Hence, college majors. Of course, colleges need to be able to sort students into those most likely to succeed in a given area, too, so they look to those who dealt with the most (semi-relevant) pain in high school. High schools do the same, and so on.

In the end, most of what formal education is about is enduring hardship as proof that you have passion and talent for something. It sounds ridiculous, but it's actually quite important for employers to be able to make good decisions. Of course, this presents a problem the earlier you get in someone's life, because children usually don't know their talents yet, and if they are locked into a course early they never get the chance to explore and find what their real passions are. That doesn't mean formal education is bad. But it does mean we should use education for what it can do, and avoid using it for what it can't.

Friday Video Extravaganza

2010-08-20T07:00:00.019-07:00

We're auto-tuning after the break (language warning on all videos, btw).

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Truth Claim of the Day

2010-08-19T07:00:00.001-07:00

We are at the beginning of the Death of Credentials. The ROI [Return On Investment] for 95% of college educations will be negative.

Please, discuss. The context is here. I'm particularly interested in the thoughts of those who are currently or plan to eventually be teaching at the post-secondary level.

High Tax, Low Tax

2010-08-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of talk among economics bloggers about Ezra Klein's informal poll regarding the Laffer Curve. The key is that how high we set our highest income tax rates (called "top marginal rates" by those who like using economic-y words like "marginal") matters a lot for how much money the government actually brings in, especially from the wealthiest citizens. Klein summarizes this favorite tool of conservative political discourse:

The idea, popularized by economist Arthur Laffer and writer Jude Wanninski in the 1970s and '80s, is simple. Tax rates of zero percent produce no revenue, for obvious reasons. Rates of 100 percent should produce no revenue either, as no one would bother making the money that falls into that bracket knowing it would all be taken away. Thus, presumably, there is some rate in between the two that maximizes revenue. Go above it and revenue would fall because people would avoid taxes or stop working; go below it and revenue would fall because less money would be taxed.

That is, as we raise taxes we increase government revenue, but at some point this has to stop being the case. The reasons put forward for this are many, among them the following:
(A) if taxes are too high people have a very strong incentive to lie about their income levels;
(B) if taxes are too high people have very little incentive to work more / harder (they won't see most of the benefits anyway);
(C) if taxes are too high the highest income earners have a strong incentive to take their business somewhere else more wealth-friendly, like Singapore or Hong Kong;
(D) if taxes are too high government will be too big a part of the economy, and since government is not as good at promoting long run growth as the private market, long run growth and overall income will suffer, and tax revenues will suffer along with them.

Some of these are much stronger arguments than others. (A) is a big one on a practical, year-in-year-out level. (C) probably plays an important role in the long run, on the order of several decades, and becomes more of an issue the more globalized the world becomes and the more high income earners get paid for their skill with information (which means its easy to do what they do from anywhere). (B) and (D) are tempting philosophically, but there's just not much empirical evidence to support them.

Still, one thing is certain: we definitely don't want to be on the wrong side of that peak, so knowing where it is could be very important. Thus, Klein decided to ask some experts where the peak is.

There were a lot of bad answers to his question. To be sure, figuring out where precisely government revenues can't go up anymore is hard, but a lot of the people Klein asked gave numbers based almost purely on ideology---as opposed to, I don't know, data, or even theory---but acted like it was based on research. Others gave a single number as if they'd seen the number written on stone tablets somewhere. But there were some pretty good answers among the bizarre ones.

Probably the best numerical answers were given by Emmanuel Saez and Bruce Bartlett, both of whom offer a way of getting a range, and both of whom put the number somewhere around 60% to 80%; in other words, the US was probably close to the edge at the beginning of Reagan's presidency (top rates were around 70%), but we're nowhere close right now.

Greg Mankiw pointed out that in a longer term situation people will probably respond more to the tax rates they face, although he does seem to put a lot of stock in the economic growth argument that, as I mentioned, isn't great empirically. Bruce Bartlett adds a pretty important insight:

I think 50 percent is an important threshold and I would be very reluctant to go higher even if it raised net revenue.

This is key, in my view. Yes, we might be able to raise revenue up to a certain point without crossing the threshold, but there are good reasons to not just stay on the left side, but stay significantly on the left side. If we reach the peak, we've already gone too far. For this reason, my favorite response is Marty Feldstein:

Why look for the rate that maximizes revenue? As the tax rate rises, the "deadweight loss" (real loss to the economy) rises so as the rate gets close to maximizing revenue the loss to the economy exceeds the gain in revenue.

If only my micro principles students could think like this. Yes, it might bring in revenue. It might not even be hurting long term growth. There are still important economic reasons---distortions to the economy---not to go that far.

There's a moral dimension here, too, but that is, I suppose, a post for another time.

Friday Video Extravaganza

2010-08-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Final Frontier edition below the jump.

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How to Deceive with Statistics

2010-08-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

Someone Else Does My Job Edition

I realize I haven't talked about statistical errors in a while, but nothing readily accessible to the layman has really come up. That is, until this thorough article discussed a recent article on the topic of children and cow's milk:

Mothers who feed their babies cow’s milk in the first 15 days of life may be protecting their children from dangerous allergies later on, says a new study.

"O RLY?" the author of the above article said upon reading the above sentence. After all:

[...] given they claim the exact amount is unknown, making a suggestion to "give a single bottle daily" is highly unusual; not least because it contradicts worldwide recommendations which are based on extensive evidence.

Not given to trusting Prof. Yitzhak Katz of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Pediatrics, Sackler Faculty of Medicine---at least not as a default position---she (I think the author is a she) decided to look up both Professor Katz and the original study.

On Dr. Katz, she found he has received funding from the Israel Dairy Board, which presumably could benefit from adding the 0-6 months demographic to their target audience. In other words, everything he says is probably a lie, right? Well, I don't recommend going as far as the author on this. Partially this is because while the Dairy Board might benefit from an increase in sales to newborns, inducing health concerns and possible allergies later on means they'd lose a lot of revenue to the soy folk, so I'm skeptical that they are really pushing junk science. Follow the Money is good advice, but it not only tells you when someone has an incentive to lie, it also says when they have an incentive to be careful about which lies they tell.

But I also think we should be careful about dismissing Dr. Katz for his Dairy Board connection because this is what the debate kids call an ad hominem attack: namely, we're complaining about Katz's credentials, but not dealing with his argument. In a very real sense, if the science works, the science works, regardless of who paid for it. Follow the Money lets us know when we should be extra perceptive to things like wording, but it doesn't give us license to just dismiss evidence. Fortunately, although the article's author takes a hard line in her rhetoric, her practice is solid in this area. I do so love the magic words "So I decided to dig out the study."

The article is a great example of giving a close reading to the original sources cited in a piece of potentially biased news. It also highlights how a close reading and attention to the wording of claims is important when dealing with statistics. Really, there's not much I can add to this case study. Do read the whole article, please.

The bottom line, given what the study actually says, is I think accurate:

To suggest infants be given a bottle of cow's milk on the basis of this one study, is not only irresponsible, but really quite scary!

In other words, don't do this. The bottom line from the "don't be deceived" angle is this: Be wary of any news item that tries to convince you with the phrase "says a new study." The study might not say that at all; even if it does, it might not lay claim to the level of confidence the article suggests; and even if it does that, the study might not be very well done in the first place!

Astro-physics

2010-08-09T07:00:00.002-07:00

Seriously, modern physics and astronomical sciences hurt my brain. Here are four reasons why.

Time travel could be real, involve portals

Excerpt:

Einstein’s theory’s of relativity only precludes travel at the speed of light, he never said anything about travel faster than light. Of course it will still take an incredible amount of energy, but crucially not an infinite amount.

Now it turns out that a little technique called quantum tunneling is used by electrons orbiting around atoms to instantly move from point A to point B without passing through the space in between.

If we could utilize a similar process and "quantum tunnel" through the barrier of the speed of light, we might just be able to travel faster than light, but never actually have to travel at the speed of light to get there.

It only looks like gravity smashed your face into that sidewalk

Excerpt:

“For me gravity doesn’t exist,” said Dr. Verlinde, who was recently in the United States to explain himself. Not that he can’t fall down, but Dr. Verlinde is among a number of physicists who say that science has been looking at gravity the wrong way and that there is something more basic, from which gravity “emerges,” the way stock markets emerge from the collective behavior of individual investors or that elasticity emerges from the mechanics of atoms.

Afraid of an asteroid strike? That's small potatoes

Excerpt:

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have detected a blue star called HE 0437-5439 they say was unceremoniously expelled from the Milky Way and is now hurtling through space at 1.6 million miles an hour. Scientists say his rates as one of the fastest of the 16 so-called hypervelocity stars they've discovered since 2005.

Aliens probably use text message acronyms, too

Excerpt:

''Whatever the life form, evolution selects for economy of resources,'' said Gregory Benford. ''Broadcasting is expensive, and transmitting signals across light years would require considerable resources.''

Writing in the journal Astrobiology, the Benfords claim that an alien civilisation would strive to reduce costs, limit waste and make its signalling technology efficient.

Truth Claim of the Day

2010-07-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.

Please, discuss. The context is here.

The Man of Steel: A Fanboy Wishlist

2010-07-26T12:51:00.001-07:00

In case you didn't know this about me, I like comic books. Not all comic books, of course, but I do like superheroes and the interesting questions they allow me to explore. I like the greats from the 1980s, work by Frank Miller and Alan Moore. I really liked Batman Begins, and I really liked The Dark Knight. Superman Returns, not so much. (yes, I'm more of a DC guy)

So I've been thinking recently about what kind of Superman movie I'd like to see now that Christopher Nolan is supervising the project (although he won't be directing). I wrote a partial script for a Superman movie while I was taking a sci-fi film class as an undergrad. Yes, it was my final project; yes, I got an A; and yes, I know how cool it is too game the system by getting upper-division honors credit to watch and write about Blade Runner. The script focused on the alienness and humanity of Superman in the context of a Nazi death camp; if I had to sum it up in a sentence, I'd say "the last son of Krypton finds his humanity fighting for what's right, as a brilliant German scientist (reminiscent of Mengele) loses his humanity fighting for what he thinks is right."

But that's not the movie we're going to get, and no doubt all the better for the box office hopes of The Man of Steel. No, Superman generally needs to live in a modern context for the big screen. So given that restriction, I thought I'd waste my time and yours (not much of it, don't worry) talking about what I'd like to see in the upcoming movie, even it's never going to happen.

First let me say what I don't want to see:

I was a huge fan of the first year of Smallville, although it lost a lot of its appeal for me after that. I like Tom Welling as a young Clark Kent, and I've got nothing against Erica Durance as Lois. But no. Please, please no.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I think I can best communicate what I'd be looking for with some cast and crew ideas before presenting the premise of the movies (yes, as per the modern standard, there must be three in the series). Due to length, I'll put it below the jump.

Friday Video Extravaganza

2010-07-23T07:00:00.001-07:00

Today we're mashing it up, so check out the musical mash-ups below the break.

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Is Economist Robin Hanson a Supervillain?

2010-07-19T04:00:00.007-07:00

Robin Hanson of GMU has a recent post arguing that survivalists play an extremely valuable role in society, despite the conventional view that they are crackpots. He seems to be doing so because he sees them as kindred spirits to those who, like Hanson himself, wish to be preserved via cryonics. Their brilliance remains unappreciated by a society that values signals and expressions of loyalty to particular groups above actually doing things to save lives both now and in the distant future. (Of course, one could view Hanson's posts as merely attempts to signal that these views belong in the "intellectually respected" club, but if we all spend all our time accusing each other of signaling, what kind of signal would that send?)

I go back and forth in my view of survivalists themselves. I think it's pretty clear that they overestimate the risks they are reacting to, and their political and social beliefs are often difficult to comprehend. On the other hand, talking about the end of the world can make for fascinating reading, and I sometimes I think society in general underestimates the chances that things could go terribly, horribly wrong.

But the debate over survivalists isn't what struck me about this post. What struck me is Hanson's argument for why the survivalists might not be as nutty as they seem:

The world faces existential risk, i.e., a risk that the world will die. Such a death is bad not only for those who live here now, but also for vast future generations who might descend from us now. Cultures and ethnicities face related risks. By preparing to save themselves under various disaster scenarios, survivalists also tend to make their culture, ethnicity, and world a bit less likely to die. An effort for which future generations should be quite grateful. [emphasis added]

Hanson's argument is that survivalists might not be much benefit to society right now--in fact, they probably hold current society in disdain and avoid outsiders where possible. But the true beneficiaries of their peculiar brand of risk aversion are the untold future generations who might not exist without the efforts of lunatics and maniacs.

I've heard this argument before, of course. The stakes are described in the graphic novel Watchmen:

Each step had to be taken carefully, constantly striving to keep in mind the enormous scale of what was at stake! The Earth. Humanity. All we've ever known... "end of the world" does the concept no justice. The world's present would end. Its future, immeasurably vaster, would also vanish. Even our past would be cancelled. Our struggle from the primal ooze, every childbirth, every personal sacrifice rendered meaningless, leading only to dust, tossed in the void-winds.

Save for Richard Nixon, whose name adorns a plaque upon the moon, no human vestige would remain. Ruins become sand, sand blows away... all our richness and color and beauty would be lost... as if it had never been.

That's right, Robin Hanson is channeling the World's Smartest Man, Adrian Veidt, also called Ozymandias.

But the parallels don't stop there. Hanson prides himself on seeing the world differently from most people, realizing that most of our beliefs about the world are wrong when we get a more external perspective. Homo Hypocritus, he calls the human race. Man the hypocrite. Ozymandias agrees: "Hitler said people swallow lies easily, provided they're big enough."

Which of the two, Hanson or Veidt, said this?

An intractable problem can only be resolved by stepping beyond conventional solutions.

Or this?

I have a passion, a sacred quest, to understand everything, and to save the world.

They could have come from the same mind, if not the same voice.

But what does Adrian Veidt do in Watchmen? Oh yes. Saves the world. Through mass murder. Not that anyone who could do anything about it found out until after the fact:

"Do it?" Dan, I'm not a Republic Serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

Robin Hanson wants to save the world, but how? By educating people? Maybe. Maybe something else. "Canaan is devastated, Ashkelon is fallen, Gezer is ruined, Yendam is reduced to nothing, Israel is desolate and her seed is no more, and Palestine has become a widow for Egypt... All the countries are unified and pacified," says mighty Ozymandias.

Now, I have no reason to believe Robin Hanson is planning to clone human psychics or wipe out whole cities. But then no one had reason to believe Ozymandias was really the world's greatest supervillain, either. Just because I might over-estimate the probability doesn't mean the risk isn't there.

I guess that makes me a survivalist after all.

Well, at Least I Got a Friday Post Up

2010-07-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

I've been immersed in teaching economic growth and trying to pull my research together, so my posting has been sporadic lately. And I'm in a wedding this weekend, which means I need to get weekend stuff done during the week. So I don't have a Video Extravaganza for you. All I've really got for you is a cartoon about how much fun I am to have around:

(courtesy of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal via behavioral economist Jodi Beggs)

I can link to a few videos I've been watching lately (they won't let me embed):

Old Spice Guy Sent Roses to Alyssa Milano

Old Spice Guy Offers Political Advice

(for those who don't know Old Spice Guy, aka actor Isaiah Mustafa, check out this commercial, and its sequel)

I Do the Maths

2010-07-12T07:00:00.004-07:00

This semester I'm teaching Intermediate Macroeconomics for the first time. It's a tough course to teach, since I'm trying to present some of the key ideas in my field of research without (a) overwhelming the students with details they won't understand, or (b) lying to them about what real economists think and do.

I devoted a bit over half an hour of class time last week to explaining why we use so much algebra (and a little calculus, although we don't call it that) in the course. Rather than rhapsodize over the beauty and power of systems of non-linear difference equations, I decided to have them read a couple blog posts by one of the most famous development economists to grace the blogosphere, Dani Rodrik. In his first post, Rodrik uses a simple anecdote to illustrate the central reason economists translate the real world into the toy world of mathematics:

The moral of the story is that if you are smart enough to be a Nobel-prize winning economist maybe you can do without the math, but the rest of us mere mortals cannot. We need the math to make sure that we think straight--to ensure that our conclusions follow from our premises and that we haven't left loose ends hanging in our argument.

Of course, there are still points in our reasoning when economists are still vulnerable to bad logic. In particular, economists can make major blunders when identifying the most relevant parts of the real world--the parts that need to be included in the model--and when translating the implications of the models back into real world terms. But this system is still much better than simply describing arguments in way that leaves room for sloppiness throughout the process. While we're in the mathematics of the model, we know that every result must certainly follow from the premises.

A key question I wanted my students to think about was this: Philosophers, Literary Analysts, and Journalists all make their living by presenting arguments. So why aren't they concerned about bad logic and loose ends? One student suggested the key was one of Rodrik's statements:

In explaining our extensive and demanding curriculum, I emphasize that development is too important to be left to mushy thinking.

Essentially, the student said, economics matters more than those others. While I would disagree with this to a certain extent--journalism certainly matters because it influences public opinion, and philosophy matters because it influences future economists*--I do think there is a sense in which the consequences of bad economic policy, the inevitable result of sloppy thinking, are more costly and immediate than the consequences of bad thinking in many other disciplines.

*I don't mention literary analysts here because I don't know enough about them to know who they influence and how bad thinking in literary criticism matters. I assume it's got to matter to someone at least... right?

The second of Rodrik's posts essentially answers some criticisms of the first. Being an empirical macroeconomist, I was pleased to see Rodrik mention how much cooler we are than pure theorists; that's how I chose to read that particular comment, anyway. I also think he sums up pretty well the technical demands that are really at play when we do mathematical economics:

What matters most is a certain habit of mind--of being able and willing to break a complicated problem into its constituent parts and then put it back together.

These are the skills I'm really trying to teach my students. Finally, I have to mention the commenter Rodrik quotes who wants to see some more humility in mathematical economic theory:

I am not supportive of economists who then forget that they have a "model", an abstraction of the world, and begin to believe that their model is the world. I find very few economists that are humble enough to admit that about their analysis.

Like Rodrik, I hope I am always humble enough to distinguish what models are helpful for and what they are not. If our interest is to help the people of less developed countries, formal economic analysis is only one component in the complex process of promoting growth. It's an important one, at least I think it is. But a sense of professional perspective is indispensable.

(Since this is an important topic to understanding how I do this, I'm going to cross post it at that other blog I contribute to. They probably won't mind.)

What's There to Say?

2010-07-01T07:00:00.006-07:00

Due to trying to get one paper ready for a coauthor and another ready for journal submission, I don't have a lot to say today. However, you might want to check out my new post on the financial crisis and inequality at the Institute.

If you're not in the mood for light economic analysis, here's something simpler and more amusing, at least to my household right now:

Oh, and my wife pointed out that my scheduled posting times (10AM EDT) might be a tad late in the day for some readers. Is that true? Would you prefer my posts be up as soon as you are?

Materialism?

2010-06-28T07:00:00.002-07:00

In anticipation of going on the job market late this fall, I'm planning to make a few upgrades. In particular, I need to get a computer that will allow me to work while traveling, an expansion of my professional wardrobe, and new shoes. I'm thinking of going a bit crazy on all counts.

Computer

I've been doing some looking around, and the main computers I'm considering right now are as follows:

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3

Toshiba Mini NB305-N410

ASUS Eee PC 1001P

HP Mini 5102

Any tips or comments on these or other models with similar specs & price range would be appreciated.

Wardrobe

I need to get a couple suits for my job market interviews at the AEA meetings in January. I want to really convey my competence, but let people know I'm still fun. Maybe I should get something like these:

This is The Doctor.

Doctor? Doctor who?

My wife favors the three-piece suit, though. We'll see where I end up on this. (As an aside, I'd take that overcoat if it comes in my length, too. I'm a fan of outerwear.)

Shoes

My current pair (yes, I usually own one pair of every-day shoes at a time) have gotten pretty worn in the sole. For as long as I can remember I've either worn all-white shoes or all-black shoes (except for one pair of brown shoes my wife talked me into), and always with a (partially) leather upper.

I'm thinking of really changing it up and getting something like these:

I will probably not wear them to the job interviews. Probably.

Creating Families

2010-06-25T07:00:00.001-07:00

I've read about the hormone Oxytocin before in If you haven't read it, I heartily recommend the fantastic book Unprotected, by Anonymous, MD. The tag line is "A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student," and it was a real eye opener for me, and provided a lot of things to think about in terms of how the human mind and body work and how we're told they work. One of the most interesting things I learned about is the hormone Oxytocin.

The book talks about how when you have sex (or breastfeed), your body releases chemicals that make you form an emotional bond with the other person present. There is a new study out involving oxytocin that got more specific about what sort of reactions the hormone produces. From the abstract:

Humans [...] self-sacrifice to contribute to in-group welfare and to aggress against competing out-groups. [...] Here, we have linked oxytocin, a neuropeptide produced in the hypothalamus, to the regulation of intergroup conflict. In three experiments using double-blind placebo-controlled designs, male participants self-administered oxytocin or placebo and made decisions with financial consequences to themselves, their in-group, and a competing out-group. Results showed that oxytocin drives a "tend and defend" response in that it promoted in-group trust and cooperation, and defensive, but not offensive, aggression toward competing out-groups.

I have not read the full study, but this really got me thinking about how our bodies are an indispensable part of who we are. They have so much power over our identities that they can make other people into family. Our bodies can do that. Sex is not just an enjoyable activity, it literally changes who the other person is to us at the neuro-psychological level. More than that, it changes who we are at the physical level by making us people who want to take care of those we have these bonds with, and to keep out those we don't. It doesn't make us attack outsiders, but it does make us shun.

To me, this makes the issue of sex and marriage much more serious. Every time you have sex with someone, you are making them into family. When you leave that person (whether because you got divorced, broke up, etc.), your family is destroyed. Every. Time. And to think the average youth starts doing this in their early teens. Over and over again, familial bonds are built and broken. Is it any wonder our culture is filled with people who don't know how to love anymore? That every affection is interpreted as sexual, and sexual affection is interpreted as casual?

My classroom isn't just filled with kids from broken homes. It's filled with kids from dozens of broken homes each. How does someone cope with that kind of trauma, a trauma they might not even be aware of? Students might even seek solace in more pain, making the wound deeper and harder to heal, like drinking vodka in the desert. What hope do we have when the thing that can comfort us, the thing we most want--love and affection--is the thing that is killing us?

He who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!¹

A Proper Welcome

2010-06-21T07:00:00.022-07:00

I've been thinking about immigration issues lately. In particular, the recent suggested challenge to Arizona's new immigration status enforcement law has me wondering why our attitude toward illegal immigrants is what it is. Certainly, they are breaking the law, and breaking the law should have consequences. But I find it incredible to suggest that the primary motive is due to a "law and order" position, because the same attitude is not applied symmetrically throughout the legal system.

There is no similar outrage that speeders or runners of red lights go un-ticketed. It's not a matter of the relative seriousness of the crimes, either, since traffic violations are much more likely to lead to third-party injuries or death than immigration violations. There is substantial overlap between the most vocal hard-liners on immigration and those willing to disrupt business activities at abortion clinics, despite the fact that abortions are quite legal. And let's not forget that tax evasion is only a big deal when the person doing it is famous and belongs to a political party one dislikes. So although I won't speculate on what the true motives behind the deeply emotional reactions really are, I don't think it's primarily about upholding the current legal code.

A couple of the more specific statements in this regard that I often hear are (1) "They should wait in line like all the hard-working citizens who played by the rules!" and (2) "They'll bring violence, drugs, and prostitution, destroying the American dream!" (Both actually came up in a Ray Stevens music video recently emailed to me. As the video contains a blend of bad jokes, misinformation, and borderline racist visual gags, I will not link.)

There are a couple of recent articles from Reason magazine that should put these claims to rest. The first points out that those "hard-working citizens who played by the rules" either started out privileged or just plain got lucky:

What's the best-case immigration scenario? Five or six years: If you are the spouse or a minor child of a U.S. citizen, you should be able to enter the country and get a green card. Then, after three to five years, you can apply to become a citizen.

Unskilled workers just have to hope they get lucky. That's because only 10,000 green cards are given to these workers each year and "the wait time approaches infinity." Skilled workers may have better chances, but still face strict caps, thousands of dollars in fees, and an 11 to 16 year wait to obtain a green card and gain U.S. citizenship.

The costs and restrictions, combined with the fact that there is no "line" for people to really wait in year after year, are designed so that except for a remarkably small number of lucky ducks, the only people who can find a better life in America are those who already have things really good somewhere else. David Beckham didn't have any trouble immigrating, since the system makes it easy for people to bring their millions of dollars with them. (Take a look at the chart discussed in the article for a more complete picture of the process)

The second article points out that in cities with very high illegal immigration populations, crime is actually lower than in those without them:

Here's the surprise: There were just 18 murders in El Paso last year, in a city of 736,000 people. To compare, Baltimore, with 637,000 residents, had 234 killings. In fact, since the beginning of 2008, there were nearly as many El Pasoans murdered while visiting Juarez (20) than there were murdered in their home town (23).

[...] Numerous studies by independent researchers and government commissions over the past 100 years repeatedly and consistently have found that, in fact, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or to be behind bars than are the native-born. This is true for the nation as a whole, as well as for cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami, and cities along the U.S.-Mexico border such as San Diego and El Paso.

And just in case you don't see the connection between large immigrant populations and large illegal immigrant populations, sociologist Rubén Rumbaut makes the case explicit: "The evidence points overwhelmingly to the same conclusion: Rates of crime and conviction for undocumented immigrants are far below those for the native born, and that is especially the case for violent crimes, including murder." Economists, criminologists, and sociologists who study immigration, documented and otherwise, all point out the same thing: people willing to leave their families and risk their personal well-being in order to make enough money to provide a better life for their children--which characterizes those coming here illegally as much as those coming legally--are very unlikely to be prone to criminality.

So hopefully this clears up some stereotypes about the people at the center of the immigration debate. Of course there will always be anecdotes to the contrary, and I don't mean to make light of those. But if we're going to pre-judge people we don't know and have no intention of understanding at an individual level, lets at least make the right assumptions on average.

Why is understanding why we think the way we do on this issue so important to me? For one thing, for Christians at least, how we treat foreigners and outsiders--people who obviously don't deserve the perks this country provides--says a lot about how we view ourselves.

Is this "love your neighbor" or "love your enemy"?

For another, the article points out that the attitude we take towards illegal immigrants may actually cause them to be either beneficial or harmful to country:

You don't see "Latinos Need Not Apply" or "No Mexicans" signs posted on public buildings the way you did with the Italians and the Irish, two groups who actually were disproportionately likely to turn to crime. The implication makes sense: An immigrant group's propensity for criminality may be partly determined by how they're received in their new country.

[...] "Most people in Washington really don't understand life on the border," El Paso Mayor John Cook told the Post. "They don't understand our philosophy here that the border joins us together, it doesn't separate us."

Food for thought.

Friday Video Extravaganza

2010-06-18T07:00:00.009-07:00

Hit the jump for a couple of life lessons.

Read more »

They Don't Want Pity

2010-06-17T07:00:00.001-07:00

I have several friends, and one in particular, who are pursuing careers in the humanities, so this article caught my attention. Apparently, academics of the humanitarian bent don't enjoy being told their job prospects are not good:

Apparently, though my program is excellent, I will be among the snookered, vagabond English adjunct scholars milling around the countryside, doomed to a life of the vicissitudes of enrollment and discretionary spending. Or, more likely, I will pursue my second career choice: swamp hermit. I will scream my Lacanian analyses at unsuspecting families hiking through my territory. There will be some dignity in my bog.

Did you notice the academic/humanities vocabulary? To thine own self be true, unemployed scholar.

The main thrust of the article is that graduate students need to broaden their horizons beyond professorships at research universities (and that departments and advisors should be more encouraging of those who pursue these paths). The author very much wants PhDs to be applying to jobs in public schools and nonprofit organizations. Even more than that, though, the author wants those offering guidance to warmly say:

Yeah, you're all screwed in terms of work for a research institution, but there are these other things out there that are great options. Your degree is not useless, and you are doing valuable work.

The problem with this, of course, is that there is little reason for getting a PhD in a humanities field to do a nonacademic job. Public schools and nonprofits would be equally well served by those with a masters degree (or less), so the extra investment in the dissertation is essentially wasted effort. Despite the desires of the author, for the positions she is describing her degree is precisely useless. Not that she wants pity:

We, the humanities graduate students of the United States of America, do not want your pity, or your smug, self-congratulatory admonishments of our choices. What we want is your help formulating a path that will lead us into careers where we can be useful, not exploited.

I think she fails to realize that most commentators aren't admonishing or offering pity. They are trying their hardest to do exactly as she asks. The path to a useful career for most in the humanities is to stop sinking more time into a dissertation that will not avail them; "avoid the sunk cost fallacy" might be the best advice they can get.

Now, I don't want to be too down on graduate work in the humanities. I think there will always be a demand for teachers in these areas for consumption and signaling reasons (as an aside, I find that I've only blogged about these functions of university in passing commentary before. Perhaps I should discuss them in more detail?). For foreign language studies, there may even be some productivity gains due to learning Spanish or Chinese or even Italian that result. As such, I think there is certainly a place for academic pursuit of these disciplines, especially at the best departments. But in general I find it's not a good idea to try for the terminal degree unless you are willing to make some major sacrifices for your love of the discipline. If you've spent a couple of years working on a degree and you don't absolutely love it, poverty and all, do yourself a favor and drop out. You can prove your worth to society in some better way, and without spending years of your life hating it.

Modern Day Patrons?

2010-06-14T07:00:00.077-07:00

First off, sorry for not posting much for a few weeks. Illness and travel got in the way. I am planning to be back on a regular schedule at this point, though, which means full posts on Mondays and Thursdays, with video collections on Fridays. My inconsistency would no doubt be remedied if I had enough followers to make some money on this blogging gig, but as the following will point out, it's easier theorized than actualized.

We live in a tough world for professional content creators: authors, photographers, filmmakers, and the like. We've been hearing for years that journalists are an endangered species, and in a world where novels are self-publishable and available on e-book readers for under $10, it's not hard to imagine a world where everyone is an amateur story-teller but nobody can make a living doing it. And while there are some safe havens for those with a truly creative flair, even in those cases very few can do so for a living.

It's as if we live in a world where the superstars make more money than they know what to do with, and everyone else works for the Man, transforming these creative minds into mere evening hobbyists.

In response to this mainstream narrative, there are those out there favoring a different approach to professional creativity. They say you don't have to be a megastar to support yourself and your family, you just need 1,000 True Fans. What exactly is a "True Fan," you may ask?

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

This is an appealing idea to an artist, since it gives you an audience that genuinely appreciates what you like to create, and the marketing level is manageable at an individual level.

True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.

The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. [...] The technologies of connection and small-time manufacturing make this circle possible.

How is this an effective way to make a decent income? The idea is that, on average, your True Fans will spend "one day's wages per year" on what you create. The article suggests this is about $100 per year, leaving you with $100,000 per year to cover your living and production expenses. It's a chance to turn the demise of many professional content-producing institutions into an opportunity.

Of course, there's the practical question of whether the theoretical structure works in practice. According to the follow-up post, The Case Against, it can, but usually doesn't:

What my research tells me: there are very few artists making their entire living selling directly to True Fans. The few that are, are selling high-priced goods, like paintings, rather than low-priced goods like CDs. But there are many that partially fund their livelihood with direct True Fans. However, most of these artists make it very clear in their notes to me: It takes a lot of time to find, nurture, manage, and service True Fans yourself. And, many artists don't have the skills or inclination to do so. The fact that very few creators wholly sustain themselves with direct True Fans may be because it is a job few want to do for very long.

The results reminded me of this piece by Cowen and Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution. The paper focuses on the complex trade-offs between pleasing customers and pleasing yourself in how you do your job. It also points out that artists are most inclined to pursue their own tastes when their final product is hard to market to the masses--paintings are usually avante-garde, but movies are usually popular.

All things considered, it's a pretty interesting way to use the technology of tomorrow to simulate the patronage system of yesterday. I think I'll stick with working for the Man, though.

Evil is Alive

2010-06-03T07:00:00.001-07:00

They ran. Down the dimly lit but well beaten path they ran. We can't risk the rough terrain off the road, Simon thought. Debbie seemed to understand, and they continued running. Behind them, distantly, they heard the shriek of their pursuer, Rod. Nimrod the hunter-priest, Phineas had called him.

♬It doesn't always have a shape

Almost never does it have a name

Why is he chasing us, Simon thought. What kind of insane little town have we fallen in to? He looked over at Debbie, who was breathing heavily but doing better than he was.

It maybe has a pitchfork maybe has a tail

But evil is alive and well

They ran for what felt like days to Simon, although it was still the dead of night. His head throbbed and he felt a stabbing pain in his lungs as he continued to run with all his might.

♬It might walk upright from out of the inferno

May be coming horseback through deep snow

It's ragged and fat hungry as hell

Evil is alive and well

♬Evil is alive, evil is well

Evil is alive, evil is well

On your feet to the tower and yell

Evil is alive and well

Simon felt his fingertips start to tingle and his chest began to tighten. He slowed down, listening as he did for signs of Rod or his followers.

"Hurry up!" Debbie said in a harsh whisper. Simon barely heard her as he leaned up against a tree beside the path. Debbie turned and grabbed Simon's arm. "We have to keep going!"

"Have to... catch breath..." Simon said, panting. "I'm gonna... give my... self... heart attack."

"Well," Debbie said, "let's get off the road." She began leading him into the brush.

"You should... go on," Simon said.

"No," Debbie said. "That's not what I'm going to do at all."

They sat on the cold ground, leaning against trees. Simon realized he'd left his guitar leaning against the side of the chapel. He feared he would never see it--or any of his companions from the mission--again. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to regain the strength to keep running.

He heard a rustling. Simon glanced at the nearby brush. With a horrifying shriek, Rod lept from grass--naked, covered in blood, and wielding a hatchet.

"AHH!" Simon exclaimed as he sat bolt upright. He continued looking at the brush. Nothing.

Debbie was on him in an instant, covering his mouth with her hand. "Shh! Be quiet!" she said. Simon didn't remember nodding off, but he felt he must have. And Rod used a tomahawk, not a utility hatchet. "We need to keep moving; can you just jog?" Debbie asked.

Still shaken, Simon nodded. They got up, worked their way back to the road, and continued at a more measured pace.

♬May be too humble to want to speak

May have a blood soaked bird in it's teeth

Smoked filled skies and bees in the well

Evil is alive and well

♬May be in a palace it may be in the streets

May be here among us on a crowded beach

May be asleep in a roadside motel

But evil is alive and well

♬Evil is alive, evil is well

Evil is alive, evil is well

On your feet to the tower and yell

Evil is alive and well

They kept on, sometimes jogging, sometimes walking, but always on. As dawn light was just filling the air they saw structures ahead, just off the road.

"Is it the town?" Debbie asked.

"No," Simon said. "It's the mine. The one where John worked." Simon stared at the buildings. It was relatively modern, with a mine elevator structure and office buildings for keeping records. There was still an older footpath entrance to the mine that seemed in good repair, being blocked by two large aluminum doors that had been left ajar.

"We need a breather," Debbie said.

"And water," Simon said.

"Yes, exactly," Debbie said. "Why don't I look for that while you see what you can find out about your brother?"

"Alright," Simon said. They approached the abandoned mine and entered separate buildings.

♬It's well

Down in every ditch, up on every hill

It's well

I've got my radio on, drowning the bells

♬When midnight's done and the day won't start

And all I ever gave you was a broken heart

It's hard to admit but it's easy to tell

That evil is alive and well♬

Simon began sifting through the foreman's office. He first foraged through the file cabinet looking for personnel files. He found his brother's name--STONE, JOHN--but the file was empty beyond HR paperwork. Not even a reprimand. John always kept on the straight and narrow, Simon thought.

Simon then began rifling through the desk drawers. In the top right drawer he found a silver revolver with a black handle. The six chambers were full, but two of the rounds had been fired. Simon slipped the gun into his pocket. He also came across a hard hat with a light on it. Simon slipped it on his head and flipped the light on. The light rivaled the glare from the rising sun coming through the window. "These batteries must be worth a fortune," Simon said as he turned off the light.

He continued searching, eventually coming across a tray on the desk marked OUT. It contained a number of bills and trash, and tucked away to the side, an envelope addressed to Simon at his old Manhattan apartment. Simon ripped the envelope open. It contained a letter from his brother.

♬I wished I was smarter

I wished I was stronger

I wished I loved Jesus

The way the my wife does

I wished it'd been easier

Instead of any longer

Simon's hands shook as he held the letter. He nearly fell into the office chair as he tried to sit. He had hoped to find some indication of what had happened to John, and here he was about to find out from John himself. It was dated ten days before the first ghouls started showing up in New York over a year ago; it likely wouldn't tell Simon anything about where John was now. Still, he was afraid to read it.

"When you wrote this, she was still alive," Simon said aloud. "Alright, here goes..."

"My dear Simon,
"With all the strange stories we've been hearing, I probably shouldn't assume either of you are still alive.

I wished I could've stood

Where you would've been proud

That won't happen now

I can't think that way, of course, I'm not built for it. I've always lived in a world where God is real and hope is important. And I hope when you get this letter you won't be saddened or depressed about how we may never meet again. So before you read on, I want you to look in my little girl's face and say 'It's a letter from your daddy. We'll see him again, though we may have to wait a while.'

♬There's a whole lot of singing

That's never gonna be heard

Disappearing every day

Without so much as a word

somehow

"It's been a strange couple of days, and I'll only just mention some of the things I've seen. Although I don't know for sure, I think it has to do with when we found--

Simon felt the office building shake as the winged creature grabbed hold of the side of it. The creature let loose its whale-like moan / ghoulish shriek as it leaped from the building and glided toward the supply building Debbie was in.

"Debbie!" Simon shouted. As he bolted for the door he slipped the letter in his pocket and removed the gun. As he opened the door and raced toward the supply building, he found himself shouting again. "Debbie!"

"He's here?!?" Debbie said as she emerged from the building. She began to walk down the wooden steps as Simon reached her, pulling her down to the ground and hiding underneath the steps. "Why are you yelling?"

Simon looked up. Nothing. No winged creature, no noise, not even a cloud in the sky. "It was here..."

"Are you trying to get us killed?!?" Debbie said. "Rod could still be out there."

"I'm... I'm sorry," Simon said. "I thought I saw..."

"Well you didn't," Debbie said. "Don't always trust what you think you see." She handed him a thermos. "Drink some water, you're dehydrated." Simon did.

Simon heard it again. The shriek, coming from the edge of the woods. He glanced at Debbie, who had gone pale and was looking in the same direction. "You heard that one, didn't you?" He said.

"What do we do?" Debbie asked. As they looked on, Rod emerged slowly from the woods. He was utterly naked, his wild hair and mane rustling as he moved. He held his tomahawk firmly in hand.

"I have one idea," Simon said. "It's not very good, but it could work. While I was in the office I found this." Simon held up the gun in his hand. "It only has four shots, but that could do it."

"Oh no, Simon," Debbie said. "It's too risky."

"It would be," Simon said. "I'm not a good enough shot and he's too agile, unless I can get him in a confined space. Those doors over there," he said, gesturing to the aluminum doors across the mine entrance, "they're an older entrance to the mine. Probably long and straight, with a low ceiling. If I can get him to chase me in there, he won't be able to maneuver and he probably won't be able to throw the tomahawk. He'll have to run in close to get me, and I'll be able to shoot him before he can reach me."

"This is a terrible idea and I don't like it," Debbie said.

"Neither do I, but then I'm not a big fan of being chased by an insane backwoods hunter-priest, either," Simon said. "I'll have to make a run for it. When he comes for me, you slip behind him quietly and get back on the road. Keep going until you reach the town, I'll catch up when it's done."

"You'll catch up? Really?" Debbie said.

"Hey, no fat jokes when I'm about to be a hero," Simon said.

"What if the mine shaft is closed, or unstable? You don't know what's in there," Debbie said. "Simon, don't do--"

Simon ran out from under the stairs and into the morning light. He slipped the gun back into his pocket and turned toward Rod. "You want me, you bastard?!? Just try and catch me!" With that, Simon ran as he'd never run before. He didn't look back. He just ran for the mine entrance. For an instant he had the image of his niece's face in his mind. She looked worried.

We'll see him again, Simon thought.

Think I broke the wings

Off that little songbird

She's never gonna fly

To the top of the world

Right now

As Simon reached the doors, he flung one side open as far as he could and kept running. Gotta get far enough in that he can't use that damned axe, Simon thought. The light from the doorway illuminated a long tunnel with a low clearance, just as he'd hoped. He ran and ran until he started to catch up with the shadows from the entryway, then spun around and pulled out the gun.

Rod slowed as he approached the entrance, pulling the doors open even wider and taking a few steps into the tunnel before stopping. He stood there, silhouetted against the entryway with his head cocked to the side questioningly. He hesitated to come in further.

"Come on, you bastard, come kill me!" Simon shouted. Rod stood there.

What seemed like a long time had passed when Rod suddenly stepped back from the entrance. He grabbed the two aluminum doors and slammed them shut, one at a time. Simon found that the tunnel was surprisingly dark. He started walking toward the entrance, concerned about would happen next. He then heard the scraping of rock against rock, and a heavy bang from the doors as something was leaned up against them. More scraping and another bang.

"No, no, no, no!" Simon charged the doors and started pushing on them, but to no avail. He was being sealed in.

♬Top of the world

After the banging had stopped, Simon heard the faint sound of dripping water from further in the mine shaft. With nowhere else to go, Simon flipped the lamplight on his helmet on and descended into the mine.

♬I don't have to answer

Any of these questions

Don't have no god to

Teach me no lessons

I come home in the evening

Sit in my chair

One night they called me for supper

But I never got up

I stayed right there

In my chair

♬There's a whole lot of singing

That's never gonna be heard

Disappearing every day

Without so much as a word

somehow

I think I broke the wings

Off a little songbird

She's never gonna fly

To the top of the world

Right now

The walls of the mine were machined and regular, as one might expect. Before long the ceiling lowered so much that Simon couldn't walk upright anymore. Pipes and power lines stretched across the ceiling, coming from blackness on one side and headed toward nowhere on the other. As he continued the air felt thicker. Coal dust, Simon thought. Since the mine didn't seem to have power, he wondered if the stillness of the air risked an explosion, but then decided it was too late to worry about that. He kept walking.

Simon walked, hunched over, with only the light of his helmet lamp for what felt like hours. He found himself vaguely following a group of power lines, hoping to find an electric car or something that could lead him to the main elevator, the only other exit he was aware of. Although he was nervous that Rod would be waiting for him there, Simon was willing to take that chance if it meant being back out in the fresh mountain air. He had missed it while in New York, although he didn't realize it until it was taken from him again.

With the range of his lamp far shorter than the open distance ahead of him, Simon's mind began to play tricks on him. He would think he saw motion, someone walking just outside his lamp's range. As he approached, though, there would be nothing there. He might hear a sound like footsteps behind him and turn, only to find a few rocks had settled more firmly into the mine floor. He became disoriented and couldn't quite tell if he was going higher or descending deeper underground, whether he was moving toward the city or back under the village or looping under the mining camp over and over.

Eventually Simon came across a small, wheeled electric cart at a fork in the mine shaft. On his left, the tunnel he had been following continued on, while on his right a rough and uneven opening lead to another machined tunnel. This new tunnel was more square than the previous, and no power lines ran that direction, but the cart was pointed toward it.

Simon was about to turn the cart around and follow the shaft he had been on when he noticed the air in the offshoot shaft was moving slightly. Either there's an exit not too far from here, or some sort of fan still has power this way, Simon thought. I'm less likely to be accidentally blown to bits either way. Simon climbed into the cart, started it running, and took it down the squared tunnel.

♬I wished I'd have known you

Wished I had shown you

All of the things I

Was on the inside

I'd pretend to be sleeping

When you'd come in, in the morning

To whisper goodbye

Go to work in the rain

I don't know why

Don't know why

As Simon drove, he grew tense. He couldn't see far enough ahead to know what was going to happen next, but he was sure there was some sort of opening in the mine ahead. He couldn't explain why, but the further he went the more anxious he felt. He drove on and on, each moment wondering if he shouldn't turn back. Only stubbornness and a fear that the cart's power could give out kept him going forward. He had to reach the source of the airflow.

"Don't."

He only heard the voice for a moment, but immediately he knew who the owner was--a little blonde girl, not yet ten years old, wearing a blue dress. Simon dismissed the hallucination and kept on.

As Simon looked ahead, squinting, he noticed a faint bead of light. As he got closer, the light became brighter and its origin further over his head. He had failed to notice that the tunnel he had been in had widened, with the ceiling receding further and further. As he got close to the area with the light, he could see it was high overhead now, with a column of light falling from it to the ground below. The light bounced off of something at the bottom of it, but before he could get close enough to see what it was he had to slam on the breaks.

The tunnel had opened into what seemed to be a huge cavern. This had clearly not been cut by the miners, although the ground and walls were worn smooth. Simon had to stop because he had come up on some sort of underwater pond near the entrance to the cavern. It could have been a part of an entire underground lake as far as Simon could tell in the dim light from above. He drove around cautiously, trying to see if there was a way to get around the water and closer to the light. He finally found a narrow crossing, but not wanting to risk his cart, he decided to wade across.

It turned out that the pool was less than two inches deep, and he crossed easily, despite the fact that the pool was not water after all. It was some sort of tar, possibly even the edge of some untapped oil reserve. Simon walked through the sticky substance without much difficulty and approached the brightly lit circle directly under the light. He could hear the wind faintly overhead, and as he knelt down to look he felt sick to his stomach.

♬Cause everyone's singing

We just wanna be heard

Disappearing every day

Without so much as a word

somehow

Wanna grab a hold

Of that little songbird

Take her for a ride

To the top of the world

Right now

(instrumental interlude)

Bones. Human bones. Tattered shreds of clothing lay strewn about, but the bones themselves were clean and dry. With a sinking feeling, Simon looked closer at one of the articles of clothing.

He recognized it as the shirt Old Zeke had been wearing the night before.

The well, Simon thought. But if that was last night, what cleaned these bones? Was that strange light...? Simon glanced around him at the tar, then down at his boot. It, too, was clean.

All around him, the lake started to quiver and move as if something were approaching. The cavern began to fill with a peculiar light. Simon couldn't describe the color that filled the space, but he could see that the tar wasn't moving because something in it was approaching. It was just moving. He inched back towards his cart, but stumbled. The glowing tar was right beside him as he scrambled back. The fluid pulled back as if by a tide, but then kept pooling and building up right beside him. It build up several feet above him before starting to take a shape. An orb formed on top of the tower of tar, and on the orb Simon began to make out spaces for eyes, a nose, a mouth... the fluid was forming into a man, and a man Simon recognized all too well.

"John?"

The man-thing let out a blood-curdling shriek. It took a step toward him, and Simon screamed. He stood and ran, ran right past the man-thing, right over the tar, and dove into his electric cart. With tears filling his eyes, he drove as fast as he could as the shrieks of the monster faded behind him.

♬Ohhh, ohhh

To the top of the world

To the top of the wo-o-o-o-r-r-r-r-ld ♬

Simon drove and drove. He kept the car at full speed even when it started to slow down. When he saw the small opening in the cave wall, he just drove straight toward it. And when the cart spilled out the opening, tumbled, and tossed him into the brush as twilight approached, Simon recovered his sense of direction and began crawling away from the cave.

"Simon? Simon!"

Debbie ran up to him and embraced him. "God! I thought he'd gotten you! Where did you just come from?"

"What?" Simon said. "I didn't come from anywhere."

"I thought Rod had killed you and thrown you down that well or something," Debbie said.

"I think maybe he did," Simon said. "Wait, is he still after you?"

"He was," Debbie said. "I haven't seen him, though. Drink this." She offered him some water.

"I thought I'd lost you," Debbie said, "I'm not sure what I'd do with myself if I had."

"Just do what the best of us do," Simon said. "Go mad. Just let your brain make up any kind of insane thing for you to see and go on with life." Simon looked around. "Before that happens, though, I think we should keep moving."

"Where did you come from, anyway?" Debbie asked. "You just popped out of the side of a mountain."

"It was the mine," Simon said. "At least, I got there through the mine."

"What happened in there?" Debbie asked.

There was a hiss as the tomahawk flew through the air and found its mark in Debbie's back. Simon caught her as she stumbled.

"Debbie? Debbie?!? No, no, no," Simon said, kneeling as he held her. This was no hallucination. Without a sound, Rod walked up to them and stood over them.

♬Playground school bell rings again

Rain clouds come to play again

Has no one told you she's not breathing?

Hello

I'm your mind giving you someone to talk to

Hello

As blood streamed onto his hands, Simon held Debbie and looked up at Rod. He looked down, emotionless, his eyes black and inky.

"You bastard," Simon whispered. "Debbie? Deborah? We'll get you help, we'll find help somehow. You'll be okay. Debbie?"

Simon looked back up at the hunter-priest. Rod continued to stare, but the inky substance pulled away from his eyes. He seemed to come out of a trance.

"She's died, Simon," Rod said. "It's over. It has been satisfied."

"She's not dead!" Simon shouted. "God damn you to hell!"

♬ If I smile and don't believe

Soon I know I'll wake from this dream

Don't try to fix me, I'm not broken

Hello

I'm the lie living for you so you can hide

Don't cry

Simon fumbled in his pocket and produced the gun. He raised it and pointed it at Rod.

"If God has any power, I'm sure he's already done just that. But for you, this is over," Rod said. "Give me my weapon, I'll leave you to give her a proper burial."

"Your weapon?" Simon said. "You've murdered her and you want to keep the hatchet??! Is this what you want!" Simon pulled the tomahawk from her back and threw it at Rod's feet. Simon then laid Debbie gently on the ground and closed her eyes.

Rod bent low to pick up his tomahawk, but just as his fingers reached it Simon's shoe stepped on the handle. Rod stood up, towering over Simon.

"I want my weapon," Rod said.

"Take this," Simon said. He thrust the gun into the mass of Rod's beard and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed through the woods and left Simon's ears ringing as Rod reeled back. Simon felt, but did not hear, himself screaming as he pointed the gun at Rod's body and fired three more times. Every shot landed, driving Rod back against a tree.

Simon continued pulling the trigger, his ears finally registering the click, click, click as he did so. He stared at Rod's body. The wounds began to slowly trickle blood. And yet it wasn't blood at all; it was as black as that mine had been. Rod turned his head toward Simon again, and took a step forward.

"You cannot kill me, stranger," Rod said. "My task is done. Bury her with dignity and be happy worse did not come to her. Then leave my mountain."

Rod turned and walked back into the woods. Simon dropped the gun and dropped to his knees, weeping.

♬Suddenly I know I'm not sleeping

Hello

I'm still here

All that's left of yesterday♬

Don't miss next month's episode, Silent Screams.

Check out this episode's songs:

Evil is Alive and Well by Jakob Dylan

Top of the World by the Dixie Chicks

Hello by Evanescence

Losing LOST

2010-05-23T07:00:00.014-07:00

Word is that tonight is the series finale of LOST. Now, I haven't been watching since season four, but I loved the first couple seasons so much that this still seems like a sad time. Therefore, in honor of the show, I have a few videos reminding all of us why the show was so great. Hit the jump for a tribute.

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The Mighty Warrior

2010-05-20T07:00:00.116-07:00

As I was reading this post at OverthinkingIt.com, it occurred to me that I was woefully unaware of the classic samurai pictures of Akira Kurosawa. I'd seen Seven Samurai once before, and knew it well enough to recognize that Perich was on to something magical by rewriting Star Wars Episode I, but that was it. I had always wanted to see Rashomon since it was one of the first movies to tell the same story from many different perspectives (a devise I rather enjoy), so I decided to see if the Netflix Watch Instantly menu included any of these movies.

I was pleased to discover they had not one or two, but five on hand. So while I still haven't seen Kurosawa's Shakespearean adaptations Throne of Blood or Ran, I can now say that I've seen a good share of the movies that inspired generations of American nerds to take Japanese in college.

One of the things I picked up on is how well made the movies are. Kurosawa had a knack for making his characters' personalities clear without making them one-dimensional or boring. He took time to reveal the identities of all seven samurai as they defend the villagers, and he built up the romantic B plot in a way that felt true. The use of swipes could have been choppy and annoying, but it never was (I hardly noticed it, actually).

I was also quite surprised at how good these actors are. Kurosawa uses four or five of the same actors in every one of his Samurai movies, it seems, but every time they come across as clear and distinct characters. I was particularly impressed by Tatsuya Nakadai, who played two different principle soldier enemies against Toshirô Mifune's character Sanjuro, and yet managed to keep the characters distinct; Unosuke is downright creepy in Yojimbo, while Muroto is scary but maintains a strange sense of dignity.

But what I really noticed was how Kurosawa portrays samurai. The samurai in Rashomon is not an admirable character, being upstaged by the common bandit Tajomaru (the samurai gets killed over and over in the retelling of the story, and I don't even remember his name). However, his pride and poise in adversity are starkly contrasted with many of the samurai in Seven Samurai. Heihachi joins the band because he is broke, Gorobei joins because he finds the leader (Kambei) an interesting character, and Kyuzo joins simply as an opportunity to hone his swordsmanship. Samurai seem to be a rag-tag lot in Kurosawa's mind.

The first truly noble samurai who demonstrates the power one would expect of the great heroes of Japanese legend is General Rokurota Makabe in The Hidden Fortress. Makabe is devoted to saving Princess Yuki, willing to give up his life or the lives of his loved ones to protect her. Although he manipulates the two peasants into helping them, Makabe is always honorable, even in how he treats the enemy General. Here, perhaps, is the ultimate picture of what a samurai should be... except Makabe begins the story as a failure. He has to rescue the princess precisely because he failed to defeat the invading army. And in the post-World War II age, perhaps that is how many Japanese saw the samurai and their culture: honorable, but defeated from the beginning.

Yet the most powerful expression of the samurai comes in the unnamed hero of Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Well, perhaps I shouldn't say unnamed. He gives his family name as Kuwabatake in the first film and Tsubaki in the second, in both cases simply picking the name of something he's looking at. In both he says his given name is Sanjuro, but this actually just means Thirty-something. He even says in the dialogue in both films "but I'm nearly forty." So he has a label for the sake of the movie, but it's quite clear that he's making it up.

Anyway, Sanjuro is a classic mercenary who follows a moral code. In the first movie, he destroys the gambling clans that are destroying the town purely by accident. During the opening credits he is a wandering ronin, and he chooses which path to follow by throwing a stick in the air and seeing which way it points when it lands. He makes just enough money to stay fed, and everything else he does seems to be for sport. He fights for the good guys when he can identify them (as in Sanjuro), but has no trouble stirring up trouble when it suits him. As the Chamberlain's wife says, he is like a naked sword: he cuts well, but often cuts when he should have stayed sheathed. "Killing people is a bad habit," she says to him, and he seems to agree. It doesn't stop him from continuing, though, as it wouldn't stop most people.

Maybe that's Kurosawa's message about samurai after all. Samurai can make a fascinating subject because of the drama and spectacle, but in the end they're just human beings like the rest of us.

(As a special bonus, I'm putting a video of Sanjuro's bad-assery below the jump.)

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Is the Island Mystical?

2010-05-18T07:00:00.002-07:00

I don't mean to beat a dead horse on the mechanics vs. mystics topic, but this recent post at OverthinkingIt.com about the latest episode of LOST struck me as a great illustration of the issue.

I should say at the outset that I haven't seen the episode. I haven't watched LOST since the beginning of season 4, so I don't understand everything that's going on now. I understand that it involves our favorite characters having fallen into the middle of an ongoing war between a guy named Jacob and a scarier guy who doesn't seem to have a name. If you haven't seen the episode, but plan to, what I am going to say (and the post above) may contain spoilers. With LOST, I can't actually tell for sure.

The author of the post, mlawski, proposes that we think of the genre LOST belongs to as a Romance, which he argues is distinguished by occupying a space along a spectrum between Myth and Naturalism (or Realism). He says the fact that LOST contains elements of supernatural, allegorical mythology is much of the draw for one group of fans, while the rational, systematic sci-fi elements appeal to a very different group of fans. Suffice it to say, these fans had very different reactions to the latest episode.

Mlawski argues that this is because these camps disagree on where exactly along the Myth<--->Realism spectrum LOST is meant to be. Apparently this episode was very, very mythological, which has deeply frustrated the Realist team. I bring this up because the post offers an exchange between Myth-Lovers and Realism-Lovers; to me, though, it sounded exactly like a mystic debating a mechanic:

Honestly, I don’t think the two sides will ever come to an agreement on “Across the Sea.” One side will always have a response to the other:
REALISM-LOVERS: Everything about “Across the Sea” was bad. Everything. Everything.
MYTH-LOVERS: I dunno. I kinda liked it.
REALISM-LOVERS: What? How could you like that crap? We ask for answers and they give us a badly-animated sparkly cave? What the shit?
MYTH-LOVERS: I don’t mind the low-budget CG. I got the point. It’s just a symbol. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
REALISM-LOVERS: It looked like Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase.
MYTH-LOVERS: Maybe it was supposed to. They’re both MacGuffins. They represent whatever we want them to represent. I’m cool with that.
REALISM-LOVERS: Oh, and I suppose you thought the acting this week was top-notch, too?
MYTH-LOVERS: I thought it worked in context, yes.
REALISM-LOVERS: Are you kidding? “What’s death?” NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT.
MYTH-LOVERS: Who says characters in a myth need to talk like real people? This isn’t a documentary.
REALISM-LOVERS: Uh-huh. Even Shakespearean actors wouldn’t have been able to save this script, the dialogue was so bad.
MYTH-LOVERS: Could you define “bad”?
REALISM-LOVERS: It was stilted. A twelve-year-old could write that shit.
MYTH-LOVERS: Well, of course it was stilted. This episode was a creation myth. That’s how myths are written.
REALISM-LOVERS: When did we ever say that Lost was supposed to be a myth? Where is my sci-fi? Who put gods in my sci-fi?
MYTH-LOVERS: Actually, the science-fiction elements weren’t put into the forefront of the show until season five, and even then they weren’t explained in a hard science-fiction way. And the god stuff was always here. Watch the first season. All fantasy-allegory, no sci-fi.
REALISM-LOVERS: Regardless! There are two episodes left! I spent six years watching this dumb show. Where are my answers?! Why did this episode only bring up more questions?! I invested time. The writers owe me satisfaction.
MYTH-LOVERS: Ah, but when did the show ever say that it was going to reveal any answers? This season’s episodes (and “Across the Sea” in particular) seem to be ABOUT the fact that the characters in the show and the writers outside the show aren’t offering answers. Maybe this show ultimately is a meta-literary allegory about how people react when no answers are given. Do you react with a leap of faith or a leap into science? Etcetera.
REALISM-LOVERS: That. Is. Bullshit. WHAT IS THE ISLAND?!
MYTH-LOVERS: It’s Magic. It’s a Magic Island. It was always there. It’s always had a protector. If it’s not protected, the world will be destroyed. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
REALISM-LOVERS: But why?
MYTH-LOVERS: Because that’s how the story goes.
REALISM-LOVERS: But… but… but that’s not an answer!
MYTH-LOVERS: I think it is.
REALISM-LOVERS (breaking down into sobs): But what’s the Man in Black’s name?
MYTH-LOVERS: He doesn’t have a name. It’s part of the myth.
REALISM-LOVERS (curling into a fetal position): No…. No… I hate you, Lost. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…

Seriously, some of these lines are tailor-made to illustrate the difference between a mechanic and a mystic. Who but a mystic could answer the question "why" by saying "Because that’s how the story goes" with a straight face? And who but a mechanic could get hung up by the fact that they haven't given the character a name?

To be sure, the post isn't a perfect illustration of mechanic vs. mystic. Just by saying that the show is located at one particular point on the Myth<--->Realism spectrum presumes mechanical thinking. The truth is that the show is sometimes on one side, sometimes another, and in the same episode or even the same scene there will be some elements that are highly mythical and others that are realistic. I suppose you could come up with an average point for the show, but that hardly conveys much information, does it? The volume of narrative makes trying to encapsulate it all in a single point on a graph a futile enterprise, although that doesn't stop mechanics like mlawski or me from trying.

I also think this illustrates a point Joel brought up. The dialogue presented above makes it clear that when matters tend more mythical, mechanics won't have the best insights; similarly, you probably don't want a mystic to try explaining most episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So there is a sense in which it is the objects in question favor mysticism or mechanism. I still maintain, though, that just because this episode of LOST is best understood by a mystic doesn't mean a mechanic won't have valuable insights (and ones the mystic won't get). In that sense mechanics and mystics are still the people who bring their preferences and worldviews to bear on the objects.

Speaking of Making Distinctions

2010-05-17T07:00:00.003-07:00

We could try to divide the world into Mechanics and Mystics. Alternatively, we could divide the world into Askers and Guessers:

This terminology comes from a brilliant web posting by Andrea Donderi that's achieved minor cult status online. We are raised, the theory runs, in one of two cultures. In Ask culture, people grow up believing they can ask for anything – a favour, a pay rise– fully realising the answer may be no. In Guess culture, by contrast, you avoid "putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes… A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept."

As Joel pointed out, the mechanic/mystic trait is closely associated with the kinds of objects or insights that they are good at dealing with. Similarly, the author suggests the asker/guesser trait is closely associated with the culture you come from. The real question for me, though, is how do I get a prominent blogger like Tyler Cowen to talk about mechanics and mystics?

Blogging Finals Week: Friday

2010-05-14T18:54:00.001-07:00

Friday was holy-crap-I'm-so-busy day. This was our last day of dumpster diving the college student apartments, and it was raining. Not a drizzle, a proper rain like they had nearly every summer afternoon while I was in Oxford. We didn't manage to go everywhere we wanted, but we did manage to find a pair of flowery sorority-girl galoshes (why would you throw these away on the one day it was raining?), a third of a pack of CDRs, and some soggy hangers. Not that great a haul, but add to it the toaster oven, coffee table, baby booster chair (with tray!), and wooden bookshelf, and it was pretty good overall.

We made it home for lunch, and then went to the Graduate College reception at the new National Weather Center south of campus. I was happy to go, because I was one of two recipients for this year's Provost's Graduate Assistant Teaching Award. Aside from the fact that they gave me money for having done my job, I suspect I'll be very glad to have it on my CV when I apply for teaching positions next fall. They were really welcoming to my family, including a nursing 1 year old. I'm not a big fan of events that exist solely to congratulate people, but this one was pretty good (not to mention short).

After that, we came home for a bit before going to help a friend--and another friend--move out of their apartment. My wife is an organizer and go-getter from way back, so while I held the baby (who was teething and running a temperature all day), Jessie helped them organize, clean out, package up, and dispose of their remaining gear. We took some of their unwanted stuff home for the garage sale, including a bunch of napkins and a blender pitcher (without lid or blender). Which would have been fine, except when I was getting the baby out of the car when we got home I cut my finger on the blade of one of those items. And it wasn't the napkins.

Anyway, once the bleeding stopped and I was bandaged up, we settled in to the evening. I put the baby to sleep around 7:30 or so, then came out to help some other friends unload stuff for the garage sale (it's seriously gonna be big, folks). In a little less than an hour, I'm going to go hang for a bit with yet one more friend who just graduated with his PhD in Social Psychology. That is, if Lucy sleeps well (teething babies have hard lives).

Tomorrow I plan to finish my grading, make some progress on a paper I am trying to get published, and help more people fill my garage with their unwanted leavings (which will be totally rad and you should come next week and buy them all!!!).

So, all told, finals week still manages to be a very busy time.

Blogging Finals Week: Thursday

2010-05-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Thursday was a work day. I got about half my exam graded, which with the work done previously means I've only got a couple questions left. Grading can be an enjoyable process when you see how much some students have learned, but it's pretty frustrating to see how little work others do. I did most of this while sitting in the Mazzio's. I occasionally work there while eating lunch, which is fine except when they charge me for a salad bar I don't want (like Thursday).

Aside from that, we collected donations for the church garage sale and went dumpster diving. Since I usually work on Saturdays, Thursday is the real hump day, and this one felt like it. Friday should be more interesting.

Blogging Finals Week: Wednesday

2010-05-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

Wednesday I started grading the hard questions on my final exam. I didn't get that far, but I have room to make up for it. The more important event for the day was end of semester dumpster diving! I know it sounds odd, but I am a firm believer in the value of driving around on finals week to the main student-populated apartments around town and searching through what students who have to move quickly are throwing away. This is mostly due to the fact that at the end of my first year of grad school we did this and I found a Matlab programming guide. That book was essential in making me competent in what is now my primary work tool. This year, we're looking for stuff not only for ourselves, but for the church fundraiser garage sale that we are hosting.

Other than that, Wednesday was pretty quiet. Finals week just isn't the same when you don't have classes anymore.

Blogging Finals Week: Tuesday

2010-05-11T20:28:00.001-07:00

Tuesday was food day. The economics PhD students from my year had been talking about doing a potluck lunch to celebrate once we all passed our general exams, and a couple weeks ago the last one turned ABD! Since the house Jessie and I are renting is bigger than the apartments the others are staying in, it fell to me to plan and host the event. It wasn't that much work, honestly. The main problem was that I was planning to make a good contribution to the lunch, and I didn't get up in a timely manner this morning (despite the best efforts of my loving wife.)

Everyone started to show up at noon exactly; the Chinese tend to be punctual people, at least in my experience. My dishes, however, weren't quite done until 12:15, which meant Jessie had to entertain and watch Lucy for a bit as people showed up. I finished just as the last attendee arrived, and we settled in to a minor feast. The contributions were as follows:

Chintamani: Indian rice with lentils (flavorful but not too spicy)
Lord: Domino's Pizza- pepperoni, sausage, and veggie
Xueqi (and Kesong): Eggplant in a slightly sweet sauce and stuffed pastries for dessert
Yifei (and Huimin): Beef soup and vanilla jello/custard for dessert
Me: Pseudo-Thai vegetable stir fry and ginger chicken & rice

I tried to get at least a taste of everything, and it was all very good. The stir fry turned out to be one of the best I've made, and I can put the recipe up here if you are interested. We tried to make plenty of things vegetarian-friendly since Chintamani doesn't eat meat or fish. We all had a good time, and I think everyone enjoyed watching Lucy run around. Everyone left around two.

Then for dinner, we got to join about 40 folks from our church and RUF at the cafeteria. Man, the OU cafeteria has gotten a lot classier than it was in my day! Don't get me wrong, it was decent when I lived in the dorms. But now it has a grillhouse section, a pizza bar, a burrito bar, a stir fry bar, a dessert bar, one of the best salad bars I've ever seen anywhere, a breakfast station, a Chick-Fil-A, a frozen yogurt stand, and a Starbucks. Classy.

I got myself a bowl of Golden Grahams as an appetizer while I waited for my burger. Now, in my day, a burger from the cafe consisted of getting in line, putting a white bread bun on a plate, getting a burger out of a steam tray of burgers, and then adding toppings. Today, though, I got a grilled-to-order burger with Swiss and cheddar cheese, topped with grilled onions and bell peppers, lettuce, and tomato, all on a ciabatta bun. Classy.

And it all tasted better because--now get this--it was free. And by free I mean I payed no money to get in, as a freshman by the name of Phil had left-over meals he was sharing with all comers. Thanks, Phil!

Tuesday is a fitting day for all this mealtime fun, because this was the first semester since I started grad school that Jessie and I didn't spend our lunchtime on Tuesdays at the 2:8 House, the home of the OU Nazarene campus minster. The 2:8 House offered free lunch to all comers every week as a way to encourage community, and it was hugely successful. So successful that it started to overwhelm Dave's attempts to actually get to know the people coming, I think, so they decided to change things up. I don't hold it against them, but I have missed Tuesday lunch. So today was a nice reminder that food and community go together.

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