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News Roundup

Populist Anger

Is this the early 1900s again? If so, who would be this era’s William Jennings Bryan? Regardless, class relations have worsened since Reagan took the throne. The financial crisis just showed that the rich get bailed out by their connections in the government while the “common man” can barely afford to buy food. All that rage (partially their own fault for overconsumption and leverage) has to be channeled somewhere. We’ve seen it directed at AIG executives, congressional Republicans, and now Democrats. The only surprise is the resiliency of the American Myth (formerly American Dream) of upward mobility. People still cling to that antiquated romantic notion and steadfastly avoid uprisings and revolutions. Right now, soak the rich is as far as they’re willing to go, perhaps because most people still entertain absurd notions that they’ll ever be rich.

On a similar note, the same disenchantment can be found in the former Soviet bloc, where the market has failed to deliver on improvements in standard of living. Already there are yearnings for the “good old days”. How long there before blood spills?

The Future of Polisci

Perhaps some of the distrust of politicians has spilled over into political science as a field, even though most politicians are lawyers by trade, not political theorists or professors. As a result, people (Tom Coburn et al) are asking whether political science is even relevant as a field of study. They have the academics scrambling to justify their department’s existence. Having taken a single class in the field during my undergraduate years, I have fond memories of abstract discussions on power, systems, and gatekeeper institutions as well as more applicable overviews of industrialization, the Soviet Union, and South Africa.

My personal take on the future of political science is that it is best served by delving into modern affairs and proposing policy. Leave the models and theorizing about resource distribution to economics, a more suitable field for the arcane and theoretical.

The TFA Controversy

When I was in Berkeley, Teach For America was quite a big recruiter on campus, and I got to know (and almost signed up for) the program. Ostensibly, it is a social work group targeting low-income kids in need of a quality education. In practice, it is a resume building experience for privileged kids, most of whom will step into the corporate life at some point. I have no doubts that the teachers are motivated, bright, and effective in teaching. The only issue I have is that the participants are not career teachers, so most of them will only teach for 2 years.

As for the unions’ argument that TFA teachers are underpaid scab workers, I have to disagree. Obviously there are people willing to do the work for less pay than what unions currently pay. Many of them achieve good results in standardized tests. I pose the question to unions: why are your teachers not meeting the same standards as a bunch of scabs?

Failing Our Youth

I’m not usually a big fan of Paul Krugman when he mouths off about political economics (too much Greg Mankiw influence), but he’s usually sound when highlighting social failings and doing technical work on macroeconomics. He is mostly spot on by sounding the alarms on education, as many education secretaries have done so before. Having spent many years in academia, I have witnessed firsthand that most of the US’s top tier talent is imported. That source, while welcomed, can be volatile. If the US falls behind in research output, new discoveries, availability of funds, or quality of life, students will go elsewhere. A particular concern is that the underclass does not seem interested in advancing through education. I’ve got no ideas of what incentive program can be devised to help them realize that education is their best shot at social mobility.

How Business Supplanted the Humanities

Most undergraduates today in public schools choose some form of business/economics as a major for good reason. The expected return in terms of income is much greater than if the student had chosen a more academic discipline such as English or history. One can make the argument that engineering offers on average higher returns than business, but when you weigh the expended effort, the potential for professional degrees, the higher social status, and a vastly higher earning ceiling, business still wins out.

Where do I see the English and history departments headed? Obscurity. It’s up to them to reinvent themselves as applicable to attract more students. Until then, they can at least take comfort in the fact that they’re being subsidized by larger departments within a college. I don’t mind that subsidy since any well-rounded individual will take at least one course in those disciplines, and that requires faculty and an accompanying department.

Who Are the Most Racist People?

In my experience, it is East and South Asians (not South-East Asians, mind you) in a tie for the title of most racist. Those groups have large populations, relatively homogeneous populations but with a significant ethnic presence that discrimination becomes habitual. Though whites in the US get the most press for hating on blacks and Hispanics, they’re actually pretty tame in their outward interactions (discrimination tends to be subtle and based on avoidance rather than confrontation). In Asia, racism manifests itself as verbal slurs, hate crimes, and sometimes enforced policy. In the article linked, there is a NYT piece on race relations in South Korea. Notice the amount of flak received by the woman for consorting with a foreign man.

Oh My, What a Big Beard You Have

In a twist, operatives in Afghanistan who grew long beards to blend in and to be socially accepted are now stigmatized b/c of their aggressive behaviour. Their characteristic beards are now ways for the local population to identify and avoid these rough sorts. I think most people knew from Iraq that using independent contractors as security detail did not turn out well. Using them in Afghanistan as infiltrators is not going to work any better. There may be more culturally sensitive ways to carry out investigations, but some of what these special ops do is unavoidable.

China’s “Little Emperors”

It’s a good position in China to be an only son. Parents spoil the child and cater to his every whim. It’s much better, however, to be born to a rich family as well. The divide between rich and poor has been steadily accelerating since market reforms began, but unlike the West, poor Chinese families do not have the social safety net to care adequately for their children. Corrupt officials and the high-rolling lifestyles of the rich has led to nationwide resentment and social unrest, not a good situation for the ruling party.

The Need For a Human Rights Watch

According to Nickelback, Amnesty International was founded by a British lawyer who was shocked to read that two Portuguese students had been imprisoned for toasting freedom. It turns out that societies like AI are as needed today as ever. One criticism though is that they don’t focus enough attention on western countries, such as the US, when they commit human rights violations. Guantanamo is a sore thumb in that as long as it exists, people will wonder what sort of violations take place there because of its reputation. The only reasonable course of action is to return to Geneva Convention accords with respect to treatment of prisoners of war. Otherwise, I would happily endorse sanctions against the US in violation of human rights.

Research Summary – Telomeres

Not much to comment about here other than to say: “click through to the article”. Kathy Collins is an outstanding professor and researcher at Berkeley, and her work on telomeres will be critical to controlling the aging process down the road.

Lobbing Mortars from Hell

Was reading Phoronix today when I encountered this great quote about S3 graphics:

Personally, S3’s biggest recognition in my life was playing Heavy Gear 2 at a LAN. Some putz was putting mortars on us from way the Hell at the far end of the map with impunity. After allegations of cheating and threats of beating, we all found out his Savage4 didn’t support pretty much any way of rendering distance fog. He had an infinite viewline.

After further allegations of cheating and rigging, we found out that not only did he not intentionally arrange a corner case to get this screwup, there were no drivers from S3 that could fix it, and S3 had stopped making drivers for his card.

Maybe that’s why no one uses S3 video cards.

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.

News Roundup

The best of the last week:

Sci-fi tearjerkers

My personal #1 would be Buffy’s “The Gift”, which makes the list at #5. Many of the other choices should be recognizable by avid sci-fi fans, and if not, should serve notice for you to start watching those. Revisiting this list at times brings back tragic memories of tears shed.

Reality district

On the same vein, District 9 is not just a successful indie sci-fi flick; it’s an allegory for the violence against immigrants in South Africa. It’s somewhat tragic as South Africa has had opportunities to reinvent itself as the Costa Rica of Africa, becoming a beacon of hope and example of successful governance in a continent of poverty and suffering. Corruption and tribal politics have ended Thabo Mbeki’s vision of an African Renaissance.

Dollhouse becomes reality

Sometimes, I don’t what is more strange, sci-fi or Japan. This post sheds light on what has been happening in Japan for some time, and it is not unexpected for what Wayne has termed a “repressed society”. Still, paying for companionship may soon become more popular throughout the world, starting with the US.

Karlovic outdoes himself

Moving on to sports now, Ivo Karlovic serves 78 aces in a 5 set match against Radek Stepanek in the Davis Cup, and loses. He served 55 against Lleyton Hewitt (my fav. tennis player) and lost. Sometimes, you just don’t get into a rhythm when you aren’t involved in sustained rallies. Regardless, serving 78 aces is an incredible accomplishment, almost ensuring that you never lose serve.

What’s in Intel’s closet?

I feel conflicted about this. On one hand, Intel is a leader in technology and is on the forefront of innovation in many areas (compilers, CPUs, GPUs, chipset, IEEE standards, and many others). The company is a heavy contributor to open-source initiatives and has one of the finest Linux graphics drivers excluding Poulsbo. However, I’ve always had this nagging suspicion in the back of my calvarium that they’ve been artificially excluding competition with AMD by paying off OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.) to not build AMD-based computers. Check out what the EU dug up on Intel and the phrases executives used when discussing their payoff.

RMS vs MDI

In the open-source world, Miguel de Icaza has often been castigated, but none more harshly than this remark by Richard Stallman, calling him a traitor to the movement. Most reactions have been critical of Stallman for his harsh language and attempts to purify the community with an absurd witch-hunt. I’ve met de Icaza in person in 2006 at Microsoft’s .NET conference when I worked as an intern there (the same summer that I met Bill Gates, Anders Heljsberg, and Jim Hugunin). He was amazingly focused, energetic, and passionate about certain technologies, not all of which I found to be technically sound. His actions and words were certainly colourful, and often talked trash about competing technologies (XGL vs AIGLX: “How do you pronounce AIGLX?”, .NET vs Java: “No one uses Java anymore.”). Some of that is certainly due to his involvement in a commercial company (Novell) that is carving out a niche marketplace by collaborating with and being friendly to proprietary companies. Despite those issues, I saw nothing disingenuous about his dedication to the open-source community. His brainchild, Mono, is an amazing technical piece of work that should be embraced by the community as bringing more languages and software to our existing pool.

Deficit doomsday prophet

Previously, I’ve expressed disappointment at Obama’s deficit-happy policies. I’m not alone in that worry. This article describes the activities of David Walker in educating the public about the dangers of high and sustained deficits. He wages a lonely crusade against politicians who kick problems down to future generations and against naive voters who demand more benefits and less taxes at the same time.

Banana republic watch

It’s quite the season for doom-and-gloom prophets to emerge from the woodworks. In terms of wealth, Europe has just surpassed North America in terms of assets under wealth management. Sure, it’s not a precise measurement, but it’s worrisome for some seeing that Europe already leads in other categories, such as leisure time, happiness, and HDI.

Speaking of measurements of development, Joseph Stiglitz takes issue with GDP as the preferred measurement of progress. This comes in the wake of (or maybe inspired) Sarkozy’s determined effort to find a new indicator of growth.

Health care addendum (and here)

Here are some articles following up on my earlier post on health care in the US. Greg Mankiw shares the economic basis behind rationing care with a realistic example of what might happen. He lays out rather clearly why we can’t have equal health care for everyone. The other article is by John Tierney and dispels myths of US health care being behind that of other nations in terms of outcomes.

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.

The Truth About Facebook

Someone finally has the courage to say it:

Facebook isn’t for your friends. Your real friends know what you’re doing already, they can contact you when they want to. Your “fake” friends are the ones on facebook, the ones you never want to call you directly.

Facebook is just an online advertisement of yourself. Look at all the cool things I’m doing. Look at how busy I am. Look at how cool I am. Don’t you wish you could be my real friend?

Your real friends know how fake that is. The “concert” you just went to was just a couple of guys playing in a coffeeshop and you left after 15 minutes so that you could get back to playing World of Warcraft. That “party” you went to was actually a LAN party, or worse, a console party where everyone takes turns playing Halo 3 against each other. You have a very ordinary, boring life.

If your Facebook page was a real ad, you’d be sued for false advertising. Ad was deceiptive, implied he/she was doing a lot of stuff but all this person does is play computer games! I want my time back!

Incredible how many people are doing so many cool things in their lives, I wonder how they even have time to eat or sleep when I see their facebook page. How are they able to keep up with their hundreds of friends. Uh, they can’t. Those are just Facebook friends, they could pass each other in the street without recognizing one another.

Where are the Facebook pages with real people with only a few friends? And entries like, “I played World of Warcraft yesterday. Went to sleep, then played computer games when I woke up. Repeat for week”? Come on let’s get real here.

I feel that these online sites pressure teens to act popular all the time. Now not only is it important to dress the right way, do the right things (and people), but this act doesn’t end away from school. One is also required to pretend to do cool things online to show off.

Are Netbooks Worth It?

Since my European backpacking adventures is almost upon me, I’ve been thinking of taking along a netbook as my primary computer. That got me thinking about the popularity of netbooks in general and whether they are sufficient as one’s only computer. In my last post, I speculated that the performance is good enough to perform office tasks and web surfing. Streaming video and games are not there yet. This time around, I was sorely tempted by the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which offers 9.5 hours of battery life, 3lb lightweight design, and 92% full-size keyboard. Sadly though, I could not justify spending more on extraneous luxury products given the economy (a paradox, since my spending would help drive growth).

During my research, I found that Intel is trying to downplay the desirability of netbooks as a mass market device by casting them as toys for kids and cheap gimmicks. Still, consumers aren’t buying that argument. There is clearly pent-up market demand for small, mobile, cheap, and light computers that can all of what most people expect and desire. If Intel avoids leading the market, VIA and AMD need to pick up the slack in offering alternatives to the Atom. VIA’s Nano is a good start, but the company lacks the ability to get OEM penetration (a marketing skill), so sadly there are very few models available using that CPU.

Update (09/19/09): Funny comments from Nvidia’s CEO shamelessly promoting the Ion platform

The Best Linux Games

A careful selection of the best games, given my 4 years using Linux.

OSS:
pingus
wormus
nexuiz
wesnoth
supertux
lincity
frozen bubbles
freeciv
freecol

Proprietary:
UT 2004
Neverwinter Nights
ETQW
sid meier alpha centauri
heroes of might and magic III

Windows Native on Wine
warcraft 3 (including all blizzard games)
aoe 2
medieval 2 total war
morrowind
spiderweb software games
baldur’s gate

Argh, Pirates!

In the wake of The Pirate Bay’s defeat in court and subsequent retaliation, I thought it would be appropriate to link to a tribute honouring pirates in history.