Baby, you’ve got a brew goin’

Thanks to the wonderful Barnes and Noble gift card that my grandpa gave to me for Christmas, I was able to pick up this gem:

Perhaps with a lot of practice and harkening back to my German and English roots I can one day crank out a decent Landgrafbrau IPA.

Taking Religion out of the Birth-Control Mandate Controversy

First appearing in the Wall Street Journal, then reposted on Greg Mankiw’s blog, this op-ed by John Cochrane of the Univ. of Chicago  smartly deconstructs the reasoning behind the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate for employer health insurance, and it does so without resorting to religious appeals, which I believe are relatively irrelevant.

Summed in one line:

“If the government wants to subsidize birth control, OK, pass an explicit tax, and sensibly subsidize all birth control. And face the voters on it.”

It’s a great example of using economics to describe “what is” (is this a good way for the government to….?) without prescribing “what should be” (should the government…?).

Assuming that government should subsidize birth control at all (if it is a good that provides net benefits to society beyond the individual), in the interest of democratic transparency and economic incentives this mandate is not the right way to go about it.

EDIT (4:14 CST): I just came across this Economist blog post that provides a wealth of information on the benefits of birth control, but it misses the point entirely on the real question here. Consumption of food has also been shown to promote energy, longevity, and overall health; that doesn’t mean insurers should be compelled to cover it.

Trying something new… A Poll!

On track to 7.4% unemployment by December 2012

First, some background on the paths the unemployment recovery could take, previously posted.

Second, in March 2011, I posted an update, when the unemployment rate fell to 8.9%. At that time, the rate was following a path similar to that of past recent recessions and not the worse, slower recovery seen during combination recessions/financial crises. The rate hovered around 9% for most of the rest of 2011 but ended up at 8.5% in December, leaving us with an average of 8.95% for all of 2011.

The most recent path of unemployment is the red line

This recovery in employment still  puts us right on track compared with recessions in the recent past, and if we continue to follow this line (solid black), average unemployment in 2012 will be about 7.9% (eyeballin’ it here). Making the simplifying assumption that the rate will decline steadily month-over-month in a straight line like in the projection graph, we should see unemployment of 7.4% in December 2012.

EDIT (1/9): the graph above is from the Kansas City Fed research cited in the background post

Iranian Nuclear Weapons and Martyrdom in Islam

Last Thursday, Republican candidates running for their party’s nomination displayed clear divisions during the Sioux City debate on how the U.S. should approach a nuclear-capable Iran. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas fiercely defended a noninterventionist stance, citing the false allegations in 2002-2003 about WMDs in Iraq, the pitfalls of using war as a means of regime change, and Federal budget constraints.

Paul received a strong rebuke from former-Senator Rick Santorum, who argued that Iran has no qualms with sacrificing itself in the name of destroying its enemies by saying:

The principle virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran according to President Ahmadinejad is not freedom or opportunity, it’s martyrdom.

Michelle Bachmann jumped on the wagon, instilling the idea that Iran will without a doubt create a nuke and use it agressively, because such an option is supported by its constitution:

And the reason I say that is because we know without a shadow of a doubt Iran will take a nuclear weapon, they will use it to wipe our ally Israel off the face of the map. And they’ve stated that they will use it against the United States of America. Look no further than the Iranian constitution, which states unequivocally that their mission is to extend jihad across the world and eventually to set up a worldwide caliphate. We would be fools and knaves to ignore their purpose and their plan.

There is some truth to that statement. The Iranian Constitution does indeed advocate for the spread of Islam far beyond the country’s borders:

Accordingly, the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are to be organized in conformity with this goal, and they will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world…  

(source)

I see here two contradictory statements about the aims of Iran. Any attack by Iran, conventional or nuclear, on its neighbors or the U.S. would ensure an asymmetric, heavy-handed repsonse by those targeted.  Santorum seems to imply that Iran is willing to create enough of a “calamity” that they are willing to sacrifice much or all of their country to suffer the consequences. Bachmann implies that a primary goal of Iran’s military is to spread Islam worldwide. How does a state intend to effectively install a global caliphate while also acting to assure its own destruction?

Perhaps, then, talk of mass-martyrdom is mostly empty rhetoric, meant to appeal to Iranian’s Islamic roots. Shiite Islam — the majority religious sect in Iran but the minority (about 10%) among all Muslims – has a strong tradition of martyrdom leading back to the killing of Husayn Ibn-Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammed, in the Battle of Karbala in 680AD at the hands of people associated with what would become the rival majority Sunni sect. This event is commemorated every year during the Day of Ashura, a Shiite holiday whose themes of martyrdom, injustice, and oppression have taken on increasingly political tones during the past century. These themes extend beyond the holiday in everyday life as evidenced by the popular expression “Every day is Ashura and every land is Karbala!” meant to remind adherents that sacrifice is always needed because injustice is everywhere.

But the notion that Iranian leaders would actually take martyrdom to the extreme and risk their entire society in order to launch an attack is, frankly, absurd. There are examples in every culture in human history where an individual or small group is asked or commanded to give up their lives for the good of the “tribe,” but all tribes exist for the purpose of self-preservation. Iran knows that even one half of an American military along with our Western allies and Israel have the capability to turn everything within its borders into an overused bombing range. Backers Russia and China would hesitate to supply them after an agressive nuclear strike. Iran is a dependent country that doesn’t even have the infrastructure to to refine a large majority of its own oil. Their strongest weapons are words, and the U.S. is sadly falling prey to them in the same way we did eight years ago.

Regarding Bachmann’s comments, readers should also keep in mind that governments tend not to follow their Constitutions to the exact letter or intent. Americans need only to look to Japanese-American internment during WWII, the Patriot Act, and slavery to see where our leaders have strayed from ensuring ”life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all. Politicians in the U.S. often puff up their empty rhetoric by appealing to popular national ideals. Why are we to assume Iranian leaders are any different?

The Worldwide rise of the 1%; US is still #1 though

In a recent blog post, Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw notes another post by Princeton economist Paul Krugman that shows that the share of income earned by the top 1% in the UK has also risen sharply over the past few decades, coinciding with the rise occurring in the US. Mankiw states that this phenomenon is occurring in other countries as well and makes the claim that these data suggest that the cause(s) of growing inequality may not be US-specific.

For the interested reader, I’ve plotted the data below for other developed countries using data from the same database. Note that it appears that inequality is rising across the board, even in so-called egalitarian Europe. Most, if not all, data deals with pre-tax income, and most countries exclude capital gains (gains from the sale of investments at a higher value from that when bought).

Click to expand

However, the share of income earned by the top 1% is much higher in the US than other countries, and it began to deviate from the pack in the early 1980s. The next closest countries appear to be our Anglo-speaking friends Canada and the UK.  While an underlying trend(s) may be affecting income inequality worldwide as Mankiw suggests, clearly there is something else unique to the situation in the US.

Data Source

Facebook Timeline is Pretty Dumb

I just want to use Facebook for sharing ironic early-90s hip-hop videos, putting cat image macros on my sister’s wall, and inappropriately injecting my political beliefs on other peoples’ statuses. It’s not where I want to put my entire life story up for public view. Setting up Timeline on Facebook would render yet another one of my precious few social skills obsolete. What mystery is left, what else do I have to offer to my friends and acquaintances if my history is mapped out in a navigable form such that I don’t even need to be present (or alive) for them to discover who I am?* Who has the time to manage all that data anyway? Even then, mine would be embarrassing for the same reason I don’t tape-record everything I say throughout the day (Oh Tobias, you blowhard!).

You know what I really enjoyed about my grandfather sitting me down and going through his old photo albums and yearbooks with me? The stories and conversations that would pop up that I couldn’t have got from just reading a book. You know what would have been pretty stupid? If he handed me a laptop, said “have at it,” and then watched the Yankee’s game.

 

 

 

Post about natural gas hydrofracking in a world of trade-offs forthcoming…

*Mine only goes back to 2006, but let’s be honest: I didn’t do anything worthwhile until after I got out of high school

New Toy

I had been way overdue for purchasing a new computer. Mine, three years old, was performing well enough, but it was painfully slow at times, especially while multitasking (I’m terribly guilty of running 20+ tabs at times in Firefox, not to mention simultaneously working on something in Excel or Word). I did want to wait until my new job started before I replaced it, but in the middle of July I became the unfortunate victim of theft 45 minutes before I was to defend my thesis (still passed, though).

People, people: back. up. your. data. I have a 500gb backup drive that I sync once in a while, and I’m certainly glad that I went to the trouble. Not only tha,t but I had the latest copies of my thesis drafts and data stored on a thumb drive. I found it to be quite peculiar that I never really felt the loss of the laptop in monetary terms; I was more annoyed about having to set up another computer again.

Anyway, I opted for ultra portability and versatility this time and bought a Lenovo s10-3t netbook. It’s not just a 3-pound netbook, it also has a touchscreen and can fold into a tablet, making it incredibly handy for using it on trips and when I’m not sitting at a desk. I find it easier most of the time to use the touchscreen instead of the touchpad mouse, especially when I’m lounging with it on the couch.

Granted, compared with other netbooks, it’s not real fast (2GB RAM after upgrade and 1.66ghz single core Intel Atom), but it’ll suit me well for what I usually do (internet, music, videos, word processing). The battery only lasts 4 hours, which is fairly low given that netbooks now can get 7-10, but for me this is a huge upgrade compared with my old laptop that degraded over the years to, oh, 25 minutes on a full charge. Given that it’s a model that’s been out for over a year, the price wasn’t too bad on it either. My only real gripe is that almost all Lenovo machines switch the position of the “Fn” and “Ctrl” keys. I don’t know why they think that that has any advantages over other layouts.

In tablet mode

I certainly can’t stare at a ten-inch screen all the time, so I have plans to hook it up to a large external display along with an external DVD drive (it has no optical drive) and a bluetooth mouse and keyboard. This’ll give me the benefits of a larger machine when I’m using it at home at my desk (where I would use it about 90% of the time) while still retaining ultra-portability when I want to take it on trips or if I just want to use on the couch (like I am right now). Come to think of it, the title of this post is inaccurate as it’s really serving as my main computer. OK, the touchscreen, that might be the “toy” part.

Two things I’ll also do differently with this one that I didn’t do with my old computer:

1. Write down the serial number. In fact, I’ll do that with all of my electronics from now on.
2. Download Prey, a really neat free program recommended to me by a friend. It allows you to remotely track and control your computer in case it gets stolen and the perpetrator connects to the internet with it.

Lesson learned.