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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Friday, August 01, 2003 :::
Badness near Chechnya
A car-bomb blast destroyed a Russian military hospital near Chechnya, killing at least 20 people, according to emergency officials and Russian news agencies.
::: posted by Steven at 1:39 PM
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The president of the World Bank has implied that the governing council of Iraq isn't a recognizable government because it's unelected and it doesn't yet have a constitution -- you know, as opposed to the last regime. An op-ed in the New York Post says:This is a double standard of such a disgraceful magnitude that the only appropriate adjective is "European."
::: posted by Steven at 1:33 PM
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Incidentally, a bullish signal for tech that I heard about last night: apparently commute times between San Francisco and San Jose are back up what they were in '99.
::: posted by dWj at 12:53 PM
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Dean, regarding June unemployment figures -- with a relatively small change in people employed and a big jump in the size of the labor force -- the Secretary of Labor attributed that to college kids looking for summer jobs. That explains a little. Still, though, the numbers are a bit wacky.
Incidentally, I kept hearing that GDP growth was an annualized 2.4%, and I assumed -- though didn't see this explicitly stated -- that this was a nominal growth rate. Do you know whether that's right, and if so, what the real rate was?
::: posted by Steven at 11:58 AM
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The unemployment rate came out at 6.2% this morning, after coming out at 6.4% the previous month, and 6.1% before that. This number is released with estimates of the size of the labor market and the number of such people employed, and if you don't think last month's figure is an anomaly just from looking at it, look at those data separately. Here is what I have heard:- The size of the labor market from the May report to the June one increased by about 900,000; and
- the number of people employed went down 44,000 from the June report to the July report.
The way I work that out, the number of people working is virtually unchanged in the past two months, while the number who consider themselves part of the job market has increased about 150,000, after increasing by 45,000 and 900,000 respectively in the first of those two months.I don't think I believe that June report. (There's enough imprecision here that the numbers are best used compared to each other, but that's what I'm doing here; I don't even believe the June numbers relative to the ones around them.) Maybe I don't believe any of the numbers coming out. New unemployment claims are down; GDP is up; consumer confidence is way down; unemployment is bouncing around. Take two grains of salt and call me in the morning.
::: posted by dWj at 11:25 AM
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Was I the only person who heard reports of a liberal counterweight to the Federalist Society and asked the radio, "You mean the ABA?"
::: posted by dWj at 10:36 AM
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This from Oxblog. I just went ahead and quoted the whole thing.
THE BBC - NICE TO TYRANTS, NASTY TO DEMOCRATS: So, here's what Tony Blair said (as he responded to a question asking whether he would continue to serve as prime minister in a third Labour term in government): "There is a big job of work to do - my appetite for doing it is undiminished."
And here's what the BBC reported in its lede: "Mr Blair, who said his appetite for power remained 'undiminished'...."
And not to let a good distortion go, the website then links to the story thusly: "Tony Blair sidesteps questions on the David Kelly affair - but says his appetite for power is "undiminished"."
The Beeb: the (kind of) grown-up version of telephone.
Sounds like a parody, doesn't it?
::: posted by Steven at 12:53 AM
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Thursday, July 31, 2003 :::
Ouch
::: posted by Steven at 11:21 PM
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Afghanistan has been admitted to the International Cricket Conference.
::: posted by Steven at 7:01 PM
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Wednesday, July 30, 2003 :::
Yahoo! News - Bush Rejects Calls to Legalize Gay Marriage:
President Bush on Wednesday rejected same sex marriage but declined to pass moral judgment on homosexuality, saying he was 'mindful that we're all sinners.'
Paraphrasing the Bible at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden, Bush told reporters, "I caution those who may try to take the speck out of the neighbor's eye when they've got a log in their own."
This seems typical of reports in the press. I heard most of the press conference on the radio, and this struck me as an especially tricky question for the President to field, but if I had to guess what question from the press conference Reuters would focus on, I wouldn't have picked this. My first guess would have been the question about Condi Rice, whom I thought he defended very weakly (he said that she's wonderful, and that we're lucky to have her service, but didn't address the specific question about her). And if I read the transcript, I could probably find a few other points from that would strike me as more significant.
In other words, I wouldn't necessarily describe this as "liberal bias", but it certainly doesn't work as cliff notes for the 55-minute press conference, which is what the main article about a press conference ought to do.
::: posted by Steven at 11:05 PM
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Clayton Shareholders OK Berkshire Offer
I know nobody except Dean and I cares; I'm just linking to it because it surprises me. I hadn't looked all that closely at who owns what -- I just assumed the deal would fail because Clayton was trading above Berkshire's offer price.
::: posted by Steven at 10:55 PM
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Today has been the third birthday of Natalie Lileks.
Tomorrow is the 23rd of Harry Potter. (There's actually some dispute on the year of Harry's birth, but most Potterologists go with 1980. Lest you forget that I'm a dork.)
::: posted by Steven at 9:04 PM
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This probably isn't a first, but it's unusual:
A woman gave birth to a boy Wednesday morning on a subway train in Boston, transit police said.
Passengers said the mother quietly declined their assistance while she was in labor on the full rush-hour train, said Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority Lt. Gary Fredericks. He met the train at the JFK stop on the Red Line after train commuters used cell phones to call for help.
::: posted by Steven at 5:20 PM
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A baseball first for the Red Sox last night:
Mueller became the first player in major-league history to hit grand slams from both sides of the plate in a game, connecting for three homers to lead the Red Sox over the Texas Rangers 14-7.
::: posted by Steven at 5:19 PM
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A blog I never heard of before today points out that "it's already possible to bet on terrorism: all you have to do is buy a large quantity of stock-index puts", as they apparently did in 9/11, but that in this other market, at least we would get better information. The opportunity for profit from evil has expanded much less than the information we would acquire on it.
::: posted by dWj at 4:18 PM
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Colby Cosh puts these things better than I do:Speaking of poor decision-making, the outcry against DARPA's geopolitical-event futures market will give Americans a useful chance to identify dangerously stupid politicians who believe emotional grandstanding is more important than the national security. (Surprise! It turns out to be pretty much all of them.)
::: posted by dWj at 3:30 PM
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I don't know of any precise way to measure the popularity of Seabiscuit vs. that of Joe Louis, but I'm fairly certain that, late in 1938, millions of American boys weren't fantasizing about growing up to be racehorses. So summarizes Allan Barra at OpinionJournal. Somewhat more interesting to me is the piece on OPEC by Claudia Rosett, which points out The Saudis are, of course, entitled to offer oil at any price they want, including the OPEC target price of $22 to $28 a barrel for oil that costs them $1 to $2 a barrel to produce. But the Saudi-led collusion that goes into keeping world oil prices high enough to command prices that OPEC deems "fair and reasonable" is the kind of stuff that would get private capitalists in the U.S. fried on prime-time TV and thrown in prison. Neither is earth-shattering, but if you want to read them, there they are.
::: posted by dWj at 1:36 PM
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The piece on "prediction markets" links to a New York Times article about the one that DARPA was proposing for terrorism events.But it became abundantly clear this morning, at the hearing of Senator Warner's committee, that whatever the logic of the Pentagon's position it had no chance of surviving politically. Reason and political viability have little to do with each other when Byron Dorgan's on the case.I suggested (perhaps not here) something like this a few months ago, though it might not have seemed like this to Senator Dorgan. I was thinking in terms of terrorism insurance, and a market for catastrophe derivatives similar to the cat bonds that have had some limited, over-the-counter use in recent years; this would let insurance companies off-load large, correlated risks onto a broad base of speculators. The stated goal in the DARPA plan is not hedging of risks so much as allowing various players with different kinds of expertise to combine their knowledge in one of the most effective ways possible, viz. through a market; either market could serve both purposes. The problem with the idea that I couldn't get rid of was also noted in the Times article: The senators also suggested that terrorists could participate because the traders' identities will be unknown."This appears to encourage terrorists to participate, either to profit from their terrorist activities or to bet against them in order to mislead U.S. intelligence authorities," they said in a letter to Admiral Poindexter, the director of the Terrorism Information Awareness Office, which the opponents said had developed the idea. Indeed, there's some evidence that terrorists used more conventional markets to profit from the collapse of airline stocks in the aftermath of 9/11. I don't think this is why Dorgan and others were apoplectic, though; their problem with it is that they've absorbed our cultural aversion to money.(There's a moral distinction to be made between benefiting from the misfortune of others and acting to bring it about. The practical distinction between them melts away when it's hard to police people causing the misfortune; this is the problem we've run into here.)
::: posted by dWj at 9:31 AM
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003 :::
Futures on everything. One of the sites mentioned, ideosphere, has an interesting one: a bet that will automatically be true in 2015, to measure discount rates. Also, Bush is 2-1 to be reelected.
::: posted by dWj at 7:40 PM
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On teacher certification:Getting teachers who know the subject matter isn't a bad idea. But perhaps we'd be better off scrapping certification altogether. Private schools have long done well with teachers who are not "qualified" to teach in the public schools. And 27 schools across the country now have programs that prove teacher enthusiasm trumps age, experience and, yes, certification. In schools in Austin, Texas; Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York and other cities (there's even a program in Hong Kong) seventh- and eighth-graders are going to school in the summer to be taught by high school and college students.
::: posted by dWj at 5:13 PM
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My parents were visiting my in early September, 2001. They were scheduled to fly out of Boston's Logan airport the afternoon of the 11th.
Dad hasn't been on an airplane since then, but will travel (with Mom) to the San Francisco area this coming week, to visit their daughter. I talked to Mom on the phone last night, and she was joking that if something big happens, the FBI will want to know about their future travels.
So I found this story particularly interesting:
The Department of Homeland Security has told airlines and law enforcement agencies that al-Qaeda may attempt new suicide hijackings sometime during the next few months.
::: posted by Steven at 3:21 PM
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Florida has a new state-wide smoking ban. One truck-stop isn't complying.
::: posted by Steven at 2:50 PM
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The byline on the New York Times obituary for Bob Hope is of a writer who died three years ago.
::: posted by Steven at 2:49 PM
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While I was writing what we'll call my "where did that come from?" post (named after my brother's email response to it), one of the things I had in mind was this sort of argument: 1) Energy is an important part of the economy, therefore 2) the economy must be spared the costs of that energy. If the economy wants energy so badly, won't it be willing to pay an extra penny per kWh?Perhaps the most seductive compromise on the table is Senator Jeff Bingaman's (D., N.M.) amendment to establish a nationwide "renewable-portfolio standard" (RPS). An RPS is a regulatory scheme that requires utilities to generate a specified percentage of electricity from wind, solar, and other politically correct technologies.Bingaman's amendment is a "soft Kyoto" strategy. It would not establish an outright cap on carbon emissions, as would McCain-Lieberman. However, an RPS functions much like a cap — it restricts utilities' access to the most economical fuels, inflating consumer electricity costs. The main difference is that a cap is more flexible — it lets utilities choose how to reduce emissions. An RPS is the most prescriptive and thus potentially the most expensive emission-reduction program. He is correct that this RPS is not the way to do it; a cap is better, not only because of the flexibility, but because it's clearer; it doesn't put the government in the position of deciding what the favored modes of energy production are, later for someone to claim that someone following those rules has found a "loophole" because an overly baroque and intellectually incoherent system meant something different from what it's proponents had thought. "Renewable", certainly, is not what we need to be encouraging; the market does that perfectly well. "Clean" is where the market might need some nudging. (Again, note why; it is in the interests of individuals to produce dirty energy because they reap the benefits while imposing the costs on everyone. There is no market failure related to scarcity, except insofar as OPEC has artificially raised the price, which means we're conserving more than is optimal. The people who argue that we're spending down our oil reserves too quickly have to rely on the assumption that all the people who make their lives out of selling oil have misjudged its long-term value and haven't exported enough reserves to the future; it's possible, but it's not the way to bet unless it can be made clear why all the experts are wrong.)
::: posted by dWj at 2:03 PM
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The Conference Board said its July consumer confidence index fell to a reading of 76.6 from 83.5 in June. Economists surveyed by Reuters were expecting it to rise to 85.0. Are economists well-paid?
::: posted by dWj at 11:20 AM
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Monday, July 28, 2003 :::
My brother pointed out the Lowry piece criticizing our dealings with the Saudis, but if we're going to criticize the Bush administration, let's start with the fact that it's spending money like a drunk, sailing late nineties tech start-up.
::: posted by dWj at 6:08 PM
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You can read what Paul Wolfowitz thinks after a tour of Iraq, but I think what Paul Gigot learned touring with him, while very similar, is somewhat more interesting.
::: posted by dWj at 6:08 PM
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When I complain about websites that put a great deal of effort into being actively obnoxious, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
::: posted by dWj at 4:10 PM
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Our thoughts and prayers are with our good buddies who will be passing the bar exam this week.
::: posted by dWj at 12:29 PM
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We lost Bob Hope. If you heard here first, I'm sure your second favorite (after us) news source will have any details.
::: posted by dWj at 9:54 AM
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I've got a whole passel of stuff for you, whatever a "passel" is. I hope it's like a "bunch", since that's roughly what I've got.
If you haven't heard about the latest U.S. cover-up of Saudi activities, you're relying on the wrong news sources. Me, for example.
The president of the Detroit (football) Lions has been fined for not having interviewed any "minority" candidates before hiring their newest coach. A hundred years from now, people will be stunned by today's racism.
Actually, I'm stunned by the racism of fifty years ago, so, go figure.
California's S&P bond rating is two above junk status, down three notches from a week ago. I'm surprised it's that high.
There's an other article suggesting that global warming is naturally-caused. The conclusion:
[F]ar from being a manmade disaster, the warming we have experienced to date is entirely natural. It is, therefore, unlikely to continue to the point at which it will destroy us. After all, it has been ebbing and flowing every 135 million years for the past 500+ million years. There is also nothing we could do to stop it, even if we tried.
I'm not convinced that sentence two follows from sentence one, or four from three, and I don't find either of the last pair comforting.
Finally, there's a new poll from New Hampshire, indicating a lead for John Kerry (hereinafter "Heinz") over Howard Dean (hereinafter, to avoid confusion with my brother, "Francesca").
[Heinz] had 25 percent support to [Francesca]'s 19 percent while the third New Englander in the race, Lieberman, was at 6 percent, a drop from 11 percent in June for the Connecticut senator.
Representative Richard Gephardt of Missouri was third at 10 percent, according to the poll by American Research Group of Manchester, N.H.
Last month, [Heinz], the Massachusetts senator, held a 10-point lead over [Francesca], the former Vermont governor.
Undecideds are up at 30%, meaning that most of this is meaningless anyway.
::: posted by Steven at 1:25 AM
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