News Roundup

More on the 70% marginal tax rate

The question is if the penalties for higher income are much reduced benefits, is it even worth it to work harder/longer/more productively? It used to be that this only applied to really high income earners, but due to a component of the health care plan, this becomes the case for people around the average income level.

Prostitution in all but name

The phenomenon started in Japan as enjo kosai. It has since spread to Hong Kong where young girls sell their bodies to earn clothes money. To me, this is a sign of two things. First, the market for sex is quite a profitable transition for both parties, so why do government need to regulate it? Put up an age limit and make it legal and safe, a la Amsterdam. Second, Hong Kong society puts a high value on material goods, more so than in many other capitalist countries. My Hong Kong friends tell me that a teenage girl wouldn’t think to leave the house without a designer purse. Then, they bug their boyfriends to buy expensive clothes, cars, and gifts for them. No wonder the men are under such pressure to become big earners. I guess the single girls resort to prostitution to keep up with everyone else.

Futurama is now reality

Want to be Fry and see what life is like in the year 3000? We’re now one step closer to that goal with this potential breakthrough in using poison gas (of all things) to freeze tissue. I’m just waiting for someone to write a historical fiction on Hitler being frozen with the same gas the Nazis used in the camps only to emerge in the next millennium.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize, before doing anything

Imagine my surprise when I wake up one morning and read that Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. I thought it was some kind of sick joke at first. Really now, even the presenters noted that Obama won for his “potential” rather than for any accomplishments. Ostensibly, he has led the world on climate change, Israel/Palestine, and… what else? Even those two issues are noted more for hot air than anything of substance.

Why marriage is a raw deal for men

As I’ve told Willa, marriage in its current form is just not a logical decision for men. Given current divorce rates, disparity in partners’ earnings, and the proclivity of divorce judgments to favour the woman, the cost-benefit analysis concludes that marriage is just too much of a raw deal for rational men. Still, people are irrational about most things, including love, and I don’t expect this to ever change. Golddiggers have been around since forever, and prenups don’t seem to have slowed them down at all.

An answer for marriage: PACS

Why am I not more despondent about the state of the institution of marriage? I look at France and the excellent alternative to marriage that they have created. There, the system is a civil union called the pacte civil de solidarité. The ideal replacement for marriage would be to transition the term to purely a religious ceremony devoid of any societal benefits or meaning. The state would then only recognize civil unions for all individuals. The rules would be similar. Only one civil union may be in place at a time for any individual. Leaving a union can be done by either partner. Spousal benefits would apply. Finally, the most crucial component is a plan for property division drawn up at the time of formation of the union.

Unbalancing the dollar

The dollar’s fall in recent years has been precipitous. I’ve no doubt that it’s a deliberate unannounced policy of treasury to weaken the dollar, boosting exports and increasing consumption of domestic rather than foreign goods. This is a good policy because the US is a debtor country and inflation is currently low. However, for those of us who travel overseas frequently and who are profligate savers, this policy is just another example of the kind of punishment savers endure. There are consequences, however. Trade partners will not look kindly at this beggar-thy-neighbour policy. China has already started retaliating. Worst of all, foreigners may stop buying US debt. That day of reckoning may not be too far away.

Bill Gates exits health care

The Gates Foundation has historically given money to fund health care and education causes, especially when they intersect with poverty. Now it appears that it is shifting gears and transitioning to addressing a more basic problem – global hunger. I applaud the shift, as food is one of the most basic necessities that has been ignored for far too long. I pose the question of how to create a sustainable system of elevating poor countries out of the hunger crisis without making them dependents on rich countries or foundations.

Applying Math to Romance

I’m taking a break from studying anatomy to present you with a trifecta of math papers to brighten up your day!

The first deals with “The Carol Syndrome”, a common experience to many single women. You’re smart, attractive, and available (or at least you think you are). So, why are so few men willing to approach you? José-Manuel Rey believes that it’s actually the rational thing for men to do. I’ll summarize here without going into the mathy details, but feel free to click through to the paper. Imagine the payoff as 1 if the woman accepts the man’s overtures and 0 if she rejects him. If the man chooses not to approach, he can do something else with his time and receive payoff somewhere between 0 and 1. The only reason he would have to approach is if he feels the probability of acceptance is greater than his payoff if he doesn’t accept (based on expected utility). Now, how would you calculate that probability? The article goes into depth, but in short, if you as a man are blind to how many competitors there are, it’s most likely that an attractive woman is not available. Even if she is, the number of competitors ensures that there her choosing your candidacy is slim. The only rational thing to do is to ignore her.

The second is about information overload, the Nash Equilibrium, and flirtatious men. This time, men are not behaving rationally by approaching multiple women in the course of an evening, as common sense would dictate. The ideal would be to have a strategy in place with optimal success given the available information. Then, over the course of the evening, only change strategies (hitting on someone else) if there is a shift in information (people pairing up, getting rejected). Even then, it is only wise to do so when the expected rewards are greater than the upheaval cost of changing strategies (women notice that you’re changing your target). Because of imperfect information, men in real life are quite skittish and, fearing the worst, are quite liable to change strategies more than they should.

The third article describes how to decide on an optimal strategy of mate selection with one’s given standards. This seems to be an extension of the stable marriage problem but takes into account reality (you can’t meet everyone) and incomplete information (how can you rank someone instantly?). The models of players in this game interact and again, the plight of imperfect information strikes. Given the situation, the article describes some of the expected outcomes and how each strategy will pan out given a healthy dose of reality. Sorry for giving a vague description, but you really have to click through to sample the delicious content and witty presentation.

News Roundup

Here is a list of interesting articles or blog posts I’ve aggregated over the past weeks. I’ll do more of this (a la Naked Capitalism) rather than feature extensive comments on individual posts so I can share the increasing number of links without waiting for time to write detailed comments on each.

Gavin Newsom plans to tax soft drinks in San Francisco

As I wrote in the comments section: “This is actually good policy. To discourage unhealthy or harmful behaviour, it is sound economics to put a monetary penalty on it. Most European countries already have “sin taxes” and the US has been behind the curve for some time. It would be better for the tax to be imposed nationwide accompanied by an *offsetting* reduction in less efficient taxes such as income taxes.” Mankiw would call this Pigovian taxes. I’d like to seem them implemented on a wide scale on a variety of “sins” that impose externalities on society or the environment.

Women and risk-taking

To summarize, women seem to take a back seat to men when it comes to taking risks, but this social pressure doesn’t happen when they’re competing against women. What is the decision parents should make based on this information? Is it to insulate their daughters from social pressures or to send them to all-girls’ schools?

Report on education

No, this isn’t another complaint about how the US has fallen behind other nations when it comes to achievement, though that is well-known. I’ve always thought that the US has a unique environment that makes averages not as useful in comparison. The US is characterized by a high spread in terms of ability and achievement that parallels the sharp divisions between rich and poor. The overall conclusions from the research is for students to aim high and work hard. Classes are better indicators of scholastic achievement than tests, but only if classes are standardized, like APs. Going to a highly-ranked school and being surrounded by motivated peers is better than going to a community college.

The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)

When following up on an old acquaintance, I found that she was involved with the SCA. Apparently, a group of people have been reenacting medieval jousts in my backyard (Berkeley). To be honest, it’s such a quintessentially Berkeley thing to do that I’m hardly surprised that I missed it in the noise of other equally nontraditional activities.

Steven Harms’s Blog

Here is an interesting blog I encountered. Steven’s interests are similar to mine, though we differ in our views on some of the issues. Anyways, a good read for anyone interested in Linux or politics.

Lindsey Evans on Mormon boys

Mao recommended this blog to me. This post is hilarious, and if she is serious about some of the conditions, she might have a problem finding someone who lives up to those expectations. The problem is not the list, it’s that there is such a detailed list in the first place. Men in the US are stymied because they don’t know each woman’s individual’s set of expectations. In the olden days (1950s), for all the faults in that time, at least the “rules” for men and women were more or less set. Expectations were more shared or consistent. I’m not passing a value judgement on that or on Lindsey, just pointing it out.

Love and the Recession

Okay, it looks like the subject is quickly becoming a fad. Half the articles on the recession that I’ve found have dealt with how it’s ruining people’s love lives. Starting with the US and Europe, Reuters India (wth?) reports what everyone already knows: relationships are under strain and couples expect to work longer to pay off debts and to retire properly. The survey being reported also showed that Europeans are more savvy about saving. Certain cultural differences are also elucidated – Americans see cars as status symbols while Mediterraneans view eating fine cuisine as one of life’s essentials.

Moving on to Japan. Remember my last few posts about Japan’s social issues? It’s apparently gone beyond corporate suicides, female cross-dressing hosts serenading other women, hikikomori, and male bras. A new phenomenon called “herbivore men” is rising. Perhaps this is actually in parallel to the trend of laddism in the UK and male delinquency in the US. In this state, men abandon traditional expectations of high achievement, ambition, and wealth in favour of slacking off and giving up on competing.

All this adds significantly more stress on a relationship, which is already on life support if the latest findings from Australia are to be believed. The misery also knows no class boundaries. Even trophy wives are learning to cut back.

If the BBC and NYT Both Say It, It Must Be True

BBC:

In China, there are far more boys born each year than girls because cheaper ultrasound scans available in private clinics have made it easier to choose the sex of your baby.

That sex imbalance means the odds are stacked against someone like Colin when it comes to finding a wife.

His family, like many others, needs to save as much as it can so he can compete with others when looking for a partner.

NYT:

In other words, parents want their sons to marry, and they figure that girls are more likely to want to marry rich boys.

Thoughts on Asian Outmarriage

This is well-known in the AA community as a hot-button issue. AA sites such as Goldsea and AsianFinest have had countless threads on this topic. It’s not surprising that, being a huge fan of social trends, I’ve been doing much reading on the matter and have interviewed individuals to hear anecdotal  experiences. 4 years of this amateur research has culminated in a fundamental realization: While wandering around Prague in the rain, the idea suddenly hit me that the discrepancy between marriage/dating between AM/WF and WM/AF is just due to economics.

It sounds deceptively simple (and really is nothing new from an economics point of view), but my reasoning is as follows: There is data out there that shows that Asian women are exceptional in that they are not biased towards their own race as all other women are. Instead, they are equally accepting of Asians and whites (but not of blacks, hispanics, etc.).

Disregard the males for now. They (like in most aspects of life) are irrelevant. You may assume for simplicity that there are the same percentages of a majority population (whites) that are open to dating a minority (asians). The exact numbers may be different, but that’s irrelevant to this argument.

Because of the asymmetricity in female preference versus male preference, you get the following:

Any Asian woman wandering the streets would act as a magnet and draw the attention of the white men who are open to dating Asians. They know that their odds of success are pretty good (even with an Asian male). For Asian males, even before we consider any cultural influences that may have made them gun-shy about approaching women, the numbers simply do not favour them. One cannot distinguish between white women who are open to Asian males and those who aren’t. Therefore, it is simply not worthwhile approaching a generic white woman because of the low expected return. Assume that the utility of acquiring an interracial mate is the same for white males and Asian males. To enjoy this utility, the Asian male has to expend more effort and approach many more women. There is a corresponding effort (time, money) involved in the pursuit of women. These contribute negative utils. For an Asian male, the net util from pursuing white women is probably negative. This is where opportunity costs come into play; the rational Asian male will most likely pursue other activities that have a higher net util (pursuing Asian women, working overtime, going on vacation).

If we disregard female initiation and pursuit, we get a model in which the gender/race imbalance is due to the high net utility of an Asian woman for a white male. If we want to rectify the imbalance, the only socially realistic method is to increase the proportion of white women who are open to dating Asians. As long as this key number stays low, one cannot expect rational Asian males to approach white women.

Applying microeconomic arguments to this issue is not novel either. I tip my hat to Awkward Utopia.

Why The Smartest People Have The Toughest Time Dating

What a gem! This article is an attempt at self-help disguised as satire while still hilariously grounded in reality.

Japanese Men Discover Feminine Side

Japan has always been a place with certain traditions, some of which were adopted from elsewhere. Certainly, the concept of manhood is something that has changed over the years, but the latest rebellion against the salaryman ideal installed after WWII will certainly be unfamiliar and awkward for most western readers. The lowdown from the Washington Post is that gender roles are shifting as men take on more of a nurturing role. This is counterbalanced by women becoming more aggressive in daily life and driven to succeed in the workplace.

The cultural transformation is also captured in some other events: the growing popularity of men’s bras and the anorexic as an ideal image.

A quote from the latter link offers some insight into the extent that traditional gender roles have changed:

Both Shirakawa and his girlfriend like the fact that she weighs more than he does, and is the leader of the couple. “She’s a lot stronger than I am, can lift heavy things and go drinking until dawn. I admire that about her, and feel protected when I’m around her,” he said. Older than he by five years, it was Shirakawa’s girlfriend who made the approach, started the dating process and decided what course their relationship would take.

Asian romantic dramas are also notablely different from western ones in that instead of focusing on issues around consummation and the aftermath (adultery, one night stands), the theme is fantastical idealizations (couples that want to be together but are prevented from doing so by factors beyond their control – e.g. class differences, physical distance, another love, or parental intervention). Romantic comedies usually end with the girl “confessing” her feelings and the couple kissing for the first time, after a season of awkward fumbling.

When viewed in the context of global norms, this has been the result.

Done with Finals!

For most of us at Berkeley, Saturday concluded the last finals of a brutal fall semester noticeably affected by budget cuts.

I was “completed” on Monday (thankfully), but the realization that normalcy had returned didn’t hit me until Friday, when Julia came down to Berkeley and hung out with me for two days. We wandered the streets and bookstores of Berkeley doing some window shopping, ate at Gelato Milano, Pizza My Heart, and Little Hunan,  and watched The Tale of Despereaux at a late-night theatre in Emeryville. It was all very low-key and surreal.

My actual final exams went terribly. Due to flying all over the country for interviews, I missed the entire last 1/3 of MCB 110 and IB 131 lectures, which were my earliest finals (both on Friday Dec 12). MCB 110L also decided to throw in a professional lab report and final exam earlier that week. So, I ended up pulling an all-nighter using online tips to keep myself awake. I’d say that the cram session was helpful in that I definitely knew all the material for MCB 110, but I was just so tired during the exam that eating a chocolate bar (not recommended!) to energize myself ended up making me crash midway through the exam. I had to resort to Wendy’s techniques of chewing and biting my tongue just to keep my neurons firing.

IB 131 went a little better considering that I was deep into the B range (the class has no +/-) after the first exam. A perfect paper on the second exam helped things, but that left me with needing to score 46/50 or better on the final to be at 90.5% and right on the brink of the abyss (shades of French AP in high school). So, right after MCB 110, I had 3 hours or so to rest and compose myself by surfing Phoronix and Electoral Vote on the EECS computers. Then, I headed over to a crowded Wheeler Auditorium for the IB 131 final. I was reasonably confident on 43 questions of the final, but the 7 problems that Prof. Diamond didn’t review caused me some heartache, considering that I was clueless about the last 1/3 of the course and didn’t have time to webcast them. Some very educated guessing and reasoning using other problems gave me 3 out of the 7, landing me right above the cutoff. Needless to say, I was quite ecstatic (in my subdued way) upon receiving the results, but that paled in comparison to Julia’s excitement after I told her. If memory serves, her face lit up and she gave me a pseudo-hug.

As for medical school applications, the tidings on that front is not good. Out of the 20 schools that I applied to, all have given me secondary applications, but only 5 have interviewed me so far (chronologically: UCLA, Michigan, Washington University in St. Louis, UCSD, and Minnesota), even though my stats are way above the average scores at every single school. Though none of those 5 have rejected me so far, the extended hold (likely meaning deferment until January) is not a good sign. *sigh* The first acceptance is always the hardest; getting it would mean a big load off my back. Also, comparing myself to other applicants on SDN made me regret being an overrepresented ethnic group.

Now that I have recuperated and recovered from the devastating all-nighter by sleeping for 10+ hours every single day since, I am set to resume my regular life over winter break by catching up on reading, blogging, replying to emails, AnimeONE, and coding. I’ll also look into studying for next semester’s courses ahead of time, even though the actual courses are in flux.

Truth and Beauty

A few days ago, I looked over my bookshelf again, and “Dragons of Autumn Twilight” caught my eyes again. I flipped over to the back cover, and the nostalgic words brought tears to my eyes. They were:

“Lifelong friends, they went their separate ways. Now they are together again, though each holds secrets from the others in his heart. They speak of a world shadowed with rumors of war. They speak of tales of strange monsters, creatures of myth, creatures of legend. They do not speak of their secrets. Not then. Not until a chance encounter with a beautiful, sorrowful woman, who bears a magical crystal staff, draws the companions deeper into the shadows, forever changing their lives and shaping the fate of the world.”

It made me think. If I could distill the goal of my life down to a simple few things, it would be a pursuit of truth and beauty.

Truth
I want to know…

• what lies beyond the furthest stars
• what happens after death
• what allows a baby to draw his first breath
• what allows one person to be a leader, a scientist, a healer, or an inspiration and another to commit the worst atrocities
• what motivates each individual
• the secret of happiness

Beauty
I want to capture in art, words, or memory…

• old friends reuniting after half a lifetime apart
• two people understanding each other at the deepest level
• someone with an undeniable will and a pure spirit
• the peak of triumph and depth of despair
• a child grasping the highest apple in the tree
• a child playing by the seashore
• the most beautiful sunrise

See you this NaNoWriMo.