Salvation Holdout Central

End of an Era

2011-12-24T21:11:00.000+01:00

This was coming for a while. I don't really write in this thing anymore and blogger is old news covered in a yesterday sauce.

For future updates about what I'm doing, check out the [slightly] more professional chrismonaghan.org.

Dutch Professional Scope

2011-10-14T19:21:00.001+02:00

With the usual preface about generalizations not applying to everybody, Dutch professionals consistently surprise me with their narrow scope of support. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else, where one out of every two answers is essentially "that's not my job."

I'm organizing this event for the Province of Utrecht and its partners (university, science park, businesses, municipality, etc). I was in the library and saw these wooden tripod stands that can hold nice posters. "Hmm," I thought, "These could be perfect if some participants dont have their own stands."

"Hello," I said to the library staff. "Do you know who is responsible for these? Who manages stuff here? Who can I talk to."

Blank stares.

I gave clarification, and the guy just told me to come back next week.

"Does this person have an email address?" This guy looked at me as if I was being an asshole. Wide-eyes told me telepathically: Come back next week. I haven't the slightest clue, and there's no way I'm going to spend 5 seconds figuring it out.

But I don't give up so easily.

"We have 3. That's all we have," the guy said. I saw his younger female co-worker in the background smiling at me. She was my in to getting any kind of useful information! I knew it.

"Yes, I see that. But they had to come from somewhere, no? Who knows where they came from?"

Wide-eyes.

"Do you have any email address you can give me."

"Come back next week." This time verbalized explicitly.

The younger woman came to find me with a slip of paper with an email address. "Don't tell anyone I gave you this." As if in the Netherlands you can get in trouble for giving someone useful information.

Pass this Jobs Bill!

2011-09-10T01:24:00.000+02:00

Pass this jobs bill was mentioned 12 times. When he said it towards the beginning I thought it was because it simply had no chance of passing, and it was his rhetorical way of separating himself from its failure and subsequent inaction. But by towards the end it really seemed to me that he was some annoyed father (as he always seems to be in these cases), who is saying essentially "I'm giving what all of you want. Let's just do this. It's important, and you're on record for supporting most of it! what the fuck?"

The problem is, even you take the latter perspective of Obama, and even if this part of him were genuine, the real narrative about him (in my opinion, of course), doesn't have the same kind choice.

The way I figure this dude is that he's either been convinced of the wrong thing or set out to do the wrong thing from the beginning, with the second far more likely. He surrounded himself with corrupt advisers and legislated based on political, not policy, advice.

This jobs bill will be a blip on the screen, at best, even if they do pass it. A fundamental interest in the health of the economy by this president has been absent, and conspicuously so, to say the least. A nice speech (and I think it was a very good speech. you should watch it!), and an ok-start on legislation will not change that core fact.

Euro freakout

2011-08-29T02:08:00.000+02:00

Holy shit. This is getting really crazy.

Groupon

2011-08-29T00:30:00.002+02:00

Groupon is interesting on a few levels.

First is its business strategy, which has allowed it to grow from 3.4 million subscribers in 2010 to 83.1 million in 2011 by flooding the market and leveraging heavily.

Maybe this will work out, or maybe it will be a disaster. But it’s worth noting that absolutely nobody thinks it’s categorically absurd to think that what a firm needs to do to maximize long-term profits is boost spending over revenues. The idea here is that there are substantial network effects in the online coupon business, such that one dominant player will earn lots of money and the minnows won’t. Under the circumstances you want to spend what it takes to become that dominant player.

The thing is, they received 950 million venture capital in January. And they're hardly alone in the market, which isn't necessarily profitable yet ;x.

On the one hand it seems as far as I can tell a pretty good deal, (indeed, if you can handle a "full inbox", as the msnbc article puts it), and objectively this is the type of thing that helps bridge supply and demand in a way that benefits everyone. These days, especially in western countries, people dont have too much extra cash to spend on things, as privately held, publicly held, and especially household debt has soared. So you create a way people can spend money and stimulate the economy (keep the businesses running, in a sense, and circulate money, giving it a multiplier effect), and people benefit by (ideally), getting things they want.

But in practice, the obvious business model here, if there indeed is one (and of course it works on a certain percentage of subscribers), is to get people to consume more than they otherwise would have, and to want things that they would not otherwise buy. You could argue from a 'pragmatist' standpoint that stimulating more consumption because we exist in a consumer-capitalist economy and it's important to save jobs and get more money into the hands of the lower classes because a better economy is more tax revenue and more job opportunities and yada yada. But of course even a consumer boom wouldn't make up for the structural problems of the accumulation of capital wealth, where it becomes minimally productive except in rare occasions of charity such as the Gates foundation, which is still perfectly debatable. If that money had been immediately taxed and redistributed back to public services, perhaps Africa would have been less benefited in the long run, but aggregate public welfare could have increased much more efficiently.

Finally, I wonder, on a meta level, to what extent discussion about groupon's feasibility as a business and its huge debt-financed growth limits people signing up for groupon. It's similar to the psychology of the adoption of physical technological innovations, like VCRs. If you see it having a future, you buy video tapes. Becoming a member of groupon has, comparatively, a very small barrier of entry, meaning it's easy and free to sign up. But the feeling that a company like Groupon has a viable future still has a certain effect on a choice to use the service (as a consumer) or for companies (the deal offerers) to choose a dominant company (groupon) over other small ones.

Transit infrastructure costs what paint does

2011-08-28T19:46:00.002+02:00

This is obviously an overstatement; trains and traffic lights and employees and all the rest cost a significant amount of money. But it is to suggest that smart decisions of flow-management and easy fixes to an otherwise messy situation are cheap, and can be bought right around the corner.

I was biking to the train station today to see my brother off to college (Haha!), and given that the entire train station is being rebuilt and Utrecht acts as the transit hub for the rest of the country, there are construction projects going on all along the rail corridor.

Here's an area just southeast of the train station, just before an overhead rail bridge, where they used probably less than 100 euros to keep traffic moving.

People who want to Deepthroat Apple

2011-08-27T09:55:00.003+02:00

This article from the Huffington Post made me cringe. Granted the Huffington post kind of sucks, and this guy probably writes this salivating garbage for free, but this was especially bad news. It begins with this:

I was standing right next to Steve Jobs in 1989 and it was the closest thing I ever felt to being gay

Interesting revelation. Maybe that's because Jobs is an excellent designer with rigorous editorial taste? Nah, too simple.

Steve Jobs became the greatest artist that ever lived

Did you know Jobs denied the paternity of his first kid?

I have no judgment on this at all. Raising kids is hard.

Steve Jobs is a pescetarian. Did you know that? Well, the author didn't, and now he's in for a life change.

I think from now on I'm going to be a pescetarian, just because Steve Jobs is one.

Apparently Jobs refuses to give to charity. This is explained not because the inherent contradictions in charity or anything like that, but because Jobs makes up for it by running a company that makes cool stuff!

I actually think Jobs is probably the most charitable guy on the planet. Rather than focus on which mosquitoes to kill in Africa (Bill Gates is already focusing on that), Jobs has put his energy into massively improving quality of life with all of his inventions.

You know that Jobs screwed his business partner out of 85% of the agreed-upon revenue for making a computer game?

Again, no judgment. Young people do things.

I kept scrolling to find the part where Steve Jobs put dozens of children in a cellar to starve to death, to which the author would likely comment that sometimes kids need to be punished, and that young geniuses do silly things.

We had a lecturer about entrepreneurship who used apple to support nearly all of what he was talking about. Visibility is important for a product. See this back-lit apple on every apple computer? Visibility! He showed us Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech, talked about Steve Jobs as a young adult.

Look, Apple is a successful company, and the good thing about that is it challenges other companies and individuals to invent better ways to do things. It paved the way for tablet computers by creating demand, and it will likely remain successful for a while. It showed people that design and simplicity is enormously important and is traded for a lower price at the company's peril. But it's also a company that has become extremely adept at making money through dubious means. Want that computer fixed? Might as well buy a new one, since taking the keys off the keyboard will cost $800 (no exaggeration).

These men (and they're all men) who can't seem to stop talking about Apple should zip up their pants and land back on earth because they're just embarrassing themselves. When Jobs' liver consumes his soul in putrid, silent death, these people are going to have to find some other success story to fellate.

Women

2011-08-26T23:55:00.003+02:00

I'm going to start posting in this more often. Maybe. The problem is I hate facebook but I want to "express myself." While it's important to me that the blog is read by more than myself, it's not important that it's read by many people. I haven't posted in a long time since it feels like I'm just speaking to an empty hallway, but of course this doesn't matter really and it's more of a product of my own insecurity than any measurable reality.

Anyway, women. One of my favorite types are the attractive ones who weren't beautiful a few years ago. They usually are somewhat geekish, because that was their social group before, and they're not gunning for the hottest guys in the room, because they're not so high on themselves (at least not yet ;p). They sometimes use internet lingo like ^^ or xD, and even play video games (again, peer groups for the win).

I've met a few women who fit that classification while here in Sweden. It's refreshing. Interesting, attractive women who are 'on the level'.

Not that it matters, though. People talk about commitment issues. The vast majority of the time they're talking about the inability to be intimate with someone, to let themselves open up, to sleep with just one person, to give up some of their 'sovereignty'.

Personally, I have no problem with this latter stage of commitment. I dig intimacy, having sex with just one person is perfectly fine, and living with someone can be awesome (person dependent =o). My problem is more the initial commitment. I'm attracted to many women, in theory. I'm not too picky with looks, really. Certainly I need to be sexually attracted to someone, but in my experience that grows over time, and my mind is usually a few steps ahead of myself anyway, figuring a multitude of people have at least the hypothetical capacity to fulfill that growth. That doesn't mean I'm attracted to everyone, but I somehow see many women in the context of potential future attraction given certain personalities, instead of current attraction in a vacuum.

You might be thinking that since I'm a guy, my subconscious is looking to be attracted to as many people as possible so I have as many opportunities as possible. This might be true in some respect, but I basically disprove it by not trying to fuck anybody.

Of course I miss sex, but I imagine sex in a vacuum and I don't enjoy it. I see tits bouncing, big and small, some thrusting, some emotional gratification, some societal gratification, but nothing really. The more I think about sex in a vacuum (IE, sex with attractive_person_01) the more I prefer to go home and masturbate and get the inclination over with. After all, I'm only looking to orgasm, and, to a minority extent, obtain some kind of social satisfaction that affirms my self-worth.

But let's get back to this initial commitment. In my past experience, women have come to me. I said some provocative things, and boom, I had an intelligent, attractive girl make me her conquest. We ended up together for nearly 2 years. When I was backpacking through Europe, I met a very cool girl from the US who was also backpacking through Europe. I told her, drunkenly, that she had huge breasts. This is the kind of stuff that sinks any guy, but in this case we sent messages for the rest of the summer and she quickly told me she was interested in me. Boom, together for a year, living together for half of that. This type of thing has probably spoiled me in a sense, but what I see is an uncertain time commitment that I'm just not willing to make without at least some kind of signal that we're interested in the same thing.

Take a generic example. I meet a woman in some class or program. Let's say I find her physically attractive, whatever that means at the time. I'll make conversation with her but I'll simultaneously feel badly about not making conversation with the women I don't find so attractive (how put-off would I be in the reverse? You dont want to fuck me so you dont want to talk to me?). So I'm making conversation, but for me what I'm after, in terms of knowledge, is the personality; the personality is what does it for me. But a personality takes time to figure out. If a girl seems like a genuinely fucking cool human being who I really want to be friends with, one of the last things I want to do is fuck that up with flirting and unreciprocated sexual attraction. But at the same time, I don't want to pass up what is, indeed, a rare person. So I'm either left with 1) an attraction but an unknown personality, or 2) an attraction but a known personality.

In the latter case, I've gotten into the habit of "coming clean" instead of going for it. I'll look for some signs, but if they're not there, and the person is still cool as hell, well then it just builds and builds and the only way to keep it from making me go crazy is saying "ok, this is how I feel, how can we deal with this?" It usually turns out okay, but it's not a winning strategy (it's not meant to be). In case numero uno, we get back to the initial commitment. In my experience, 9/10 women I find attractive usually suck (in my opinion, of course). They're either too obsessed with their own appearance, boring in the sense that they're following some predetermined path, boring in the sense that they have nothing real to say, boring in the sense that they don't seek adventure, unintelligent, uncreative, or too interested in socializing and mainstream culture to offer anything of true value.

The point here is opportunity cost. Usually this 'knowledge pursuit' is done within the context of a party that includes other friends. Even when it isn't, there are plenty of other things I could be doing instead, like reading, creating, working, walking around a city, or doing whatever it is I do. If I'm not just interested in the sex, then there's simply no point investing the time on bullshit and fake interest if I could be engaging and building solid friendships, moving an awesome business forward, reading a novel like Dharma Bums, or trying out something new. And if it's a woman I immediately connect with, if there's no apparent attraction from the other side, I'm stuck in a tough situation that may get worse the more I remain in it.

Women +_+

American political realities

2011-08-16T01:10:00.000+02:00

I found this in an article about Obama's sinking poll numbers. This editorial by Professor Drew Western, entitled "What Happened to Obama?", nails it on the head I think.

The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his [Obama’s] deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc, and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation…

Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. [This was] a failure…as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it…

The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit.

I'm not sure when things in the United States are going to change. One of my closest friends expects a revolution any time. My brother figures things will just hang rightward forever, with some blips of liberal shifts, just like it always has been; hold on to slavery until the last minute, hold black people down until it just boils over. Don't really fix any real financial issues until you're completely screwed. Nobody knows, and real, palpable shifts are happening in the world. But right wings are also strengthening, so right now it's between the current state of centrist Reagan wannabe Barack Obama and some crazy Rick Perry or inadequate Mitt Romney. Or some other state, between some kind of fucked up revolution counter revolution scenario, and anything not so great in between.

Matt Taibbi on Charlie Sheen

2011-03-30T07:36:00.000+02:00

In response to a question asking why Charlie Sheen has come to be so disliked, Matti Taibbi responds:

I think that Sheen ultimately should be hated because, well, he repeatedly and violently abuses women. That story about threatening to cut off his wife’s head and then 'put it in a box and send it to your mom' was kind of a deal-breaker for me. On another level though, he’s definitely a symbol of something, can’t really put my finger on what – he’s like what America’s soul looks like with its clothes off or something. They could easily update E Pluribus Unun by replacing it with Duh…Winning and it would fit modern America just right, I think.

More weapons for Chinuh

2011-01-12T15:46:00.001+01:00

Instead, the expert, who asked for anonymity, described the driving forces for lifting the embargo as a “moribund European defense sector,” a market in China for European avionics, missiles, combat planes, transport aircraft and satellites, and expanded Chinese espionage operations that attempt to procure European defense technology one way or another.

Lonely People

2010-12-22T07:10:00.005+01:00

Lonely people aren't attractive. That's not to say I feel better than them or that I've never been lonely before, but I am surprised how lonely some people are and further reminded how hard it makes social situations that would otherwise feel fine. I visited a bar the other night with a friend and met two decent fellas, one of whom was socially awkward and was clearly desperate for some friends. I've also known recent women to either not have time at all or seem to be so alone that they can never spend enough time with you.

The problem with this goes both ways. If people don't feel a 'need' for other people, you're much less likely to meet them. That is, I feel quite content with the friends I have and if I go out to a bar with one or more of them, I'm not looking to meet other people to the point where it's rare for me to ever desire conversation outside my little circle of peeps (despite the claim of some that that's what a bar is for). That said, in my experience the people who are worthwhile to bond with are fairly comfortable with or without you. They're happy to see you, sure, but they're independent and have plenty of other things going on. This creates an odd 'sweet spot' in terms of making friends; too needy and it's a yuck situation, too content with who and what they have and you likely won't meet them in the first place.

Dec 29

2010-12-20T21:37:00.002+01:00

A show I could buy tickets for

2010-12-19T06:55:00.002+01:00

Mirror plz: analyzing bullshit vocabulary

2010-12-18T12:17:00.005+01:00

Less "good", less lazing about with language more generally, and more specifically less meaningless qualifiers. Fucking A.

!: I have god-like powers to edit that mess but I say it's awesome. You just more your way unto less-less. And then you add some upgrades. I should be paid for this.

Afghanistan Dump

2010-12-18T01:45:00.003+01:00

History repeats itself all the time.

NYTimes article about Bobsled pilot John Napier coming home from Afghanistan after a 6-mo tour. "Early that morning, he sent a text message to his United States team coach, saying he should probably stay off the track. He hadn’t slept much, he wrote. Nightmares had kept him awake."

Red Cross: Aid conditions in Afghanistan "At their worst". "By every measure that the Red Cross tracks, the situation has worsened throughout the country for civilian casualties, internal displacement and health care access and all of it is 'against the background of a proliferation of armed actors,' Mr. Stocker said."

A nice take-down of dishonestly optimistic assessment of the Afghan war by reporters close to Patreus. "In fact, if you read what locals tell an unembedded reporter, you see they’re annoyed and wary because this always happens—troops move in, clear it (The Arghandab has been cleared three times, with the military’s assurance that it has enough resources to do the job right… and the locals know success is only as good as the day it’s happening), and within months things are back as they were before, or worse. There’s no evidence, not even in the op-ed arguing this is case, that this year is breaking that cycle."

Intelligence assessments contradicting claims of progress, suggesting progress is rare and unstable. "Initial reports suggested the man had been paid large sums of money and given safe passage by NATO forces to Kabul for the talks and was even granted a meeting with President Hamid Karzai - which the presidential palace denied yesterday. The Taliban yesterday gloated over the ruse, with spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi telling reporters: "The Americans and their allies are very stupid and anyone could fool them."

People that populate this earth

2010-12-17T22:51:00.010+01:00

I came across this story today

An actor who appeared in the film "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was sentenced Thursday to life in prison with possible parole in 12 years for stabbing his ex-girlfriend more than 20 times when he stopped by her home and found her with another man.

...

Malil, 45, testified at trial that he visited Beebe at her San Marcos home in suburban San Diego in August 2008 to apologize for taking personal items from her house and to warn that he e-mailed sexually explicit photos of the couple to her co-workers. He stabbed her with a kitchen knife after finding her drinking wine with another man.

...

His attorney argued there was no doubt Malil went too far when he picked up a kitchen knife and began stabbing Beebe, but said Malil never intended to kill the woman. The defense also questioned Beebe's credibility as a witness and described her as a violent drama queen who tried to make men jealous.

There's so much to unpack. He stabbed this woman 20 times with a knife for having wine with another guy, and she lived. Stabbing her was going "too far", but he "never intended to kill" her. I don't even know what to say about this. It's fucking insane.

In opposite news, some woman just gave back $7.2 billion to Madoff victims. And as far as I know she did it by her own volition. Apparently it's the biggest forfeiture in American judicial history.

Also:

Worthwhile Yglesias

2010-12-01T22:38:00.000+01:00

Assange strategy.

Fun times with brilliant people

2010-11-26T17:29:00.003+01:00

4:54pm
Tyler: hi

Chris: sup dude

Tyler: Not good

Chris: what happened?

Tyler: I and my fam are stranded in Cardiff Uk

Chris: ahh, can I send you a lot of money to help you out?

Tyler: I'm sorry I didn't inform you about our trip, We had a trip to the United Kingdom(Cardiff) and a bizarre thing happened to us
we where mugged at gun point last night, it happened at the park of the Hotel were we lodged but thank God we are not hurt

Chris: Did you finish the finance report before you left?

Tyler: Yes

Chris: that's great. Bob is going to be really happy that it's in there
so what'd you do, just get a sitter for Jane?
and took off to europe huh
man
Im envy you
I envy you* rather
well, what do you need dude

Tyler: the muggers carted away with all our belongings excluded our passport. Cell,c-card,cash and some important documents are all gone
I was able to make contact with the Uk Police and i was directed to the Embassy, they are working on our return flight back home, our return flight back home leaves in few hours time

Chris: you need to make that flight!
they always say that; right after being mugged and being a part of a crime scene, you should always immediately leave the country.

Tyler: I need you to loan me some $$ to sort our hotel bills, i will def refund it back once i get back home

Chris: I know you will, you're a good guy

Tyler: all i need is 1850 dollars i promise to refund it back to you once i get back home
Tyler: all i need is 1850 dollars i promise to refund it back to you once i get back home

Chris: how do I get it to you

Tyler: You can have it wired to me via any western union close to you
Tyler: You have any one around you?
Tyler: .....
Tyler: You there?
Tyler is offline.
Tyler is online.

Tyler: ........

Chris: I have a question

Tyler: what?

Chris: how often, honestly, do you get people with this scam? I mean does it pay off for you? do you get like every 50th person?
how does it work, conceptually
You there? moron ;p

Breathe through your nose

2010-11-26T01:54:00.001+01:00

no text (irony)

Afghan female existence

2010-11-08T11:13:00.002+01:00

Heart warming.

HERAT, Afghanistan — Even the poorest families in Afghanistan have matches and cooking fuel. The combination usually sustains life. But it also can be the makings of a horrifying escape: from poverty, from forced marriages, from the abuse and despondency that can be the fate of Afghan women.
...
Returned runaways are often shot or stabbed in honor killings because the families fear they have spent time unchaperoned with a man. Women and girls are still stoned to death. Those who burn themselves but survive are often relegated to grinding Cinderella existences while their husbands marry other, untainted women.

Upcoming Tsunami of Bush Press

2010-11-08T10:21:00.006+01:00

It's so predictable. After a year of hiding out in Texas, little Bushy wants his legacy to be half-decent. It starts with a Matt Lauer interview Monday night, and then the floodgates open on what seems like dozens of other interviews, mostly revolving around Bush's new 'memoir', Decision Points.

I'm honestly excited, because this nearly made me fall off my chair laughing:

Early excerpts of the NBC interview have already made news, including Mr. Bush’s statement that he was a “dissenting voice” in the run-up to the Iraq war and that Kanye West calling him a “racist” was “one of the most disgusting moments in my presidency.”

The president says, "no honest guys, I really didn't want this. Honest. Don't worry about the fact that my title says Commander-in-Chief. It was something I was really lobbying against."

What a moron.

Edit: That racist thing was funny too, though for different reasons. "You mean to tell me that because I hired private mercenaries to shoot looting black people trying to feed their families in one of the worst natural disasters in American history, that I'm considered a racist by an outspoken black guy? Worst fucking thing to ever be said to me~" Yeah, right.

Dutch Johnny Appleseed of lost shit

2010-11-07T15:43:00.003+01:00

So after just over two months here I've managed to leave my jacket at my friend's place in Northern Utrecht, earbuds for my cell phone at my other friends place, a pullover sweatshirt at a girl's pad in Amsterdam, a hat somewhere else. I'm the Johnny Appleseed of misplaced material items. Tracking this shit down and retrieving it is a pain in the ass.

In better news, perhaps labeled the purchasing of other people's discarded shit, I'm buying a fold-up bike today, which will not only provide a visitor with a bike but allows me to go to Amsterdam and not be the only dipshit without some wheels.

Buseh

2010-11-02T08:40:00.005+01:00

I'm finally to the point where I have very little time to post about political musings or whatever it is I do here (it documents a life pretty well though). In 20 minutes I have a final to take, then 2 papers due the beginning of next week. In the middle, a lot of parties and tons of good dinners, and after things are finished I go to Munich to see a friend. When I come back Mr. Oskin will be here. There are proposals to write and events to organize. And then I come home for break.

Woosh woosh woosh man.

Houses for everyone!

2010-10-22T13:14:00.001+02:00

America's obsession with homeownership is an expensive subsidy.

In the most likely, as defined by the agency, which regulates the two companies, housing prices would decline slightly amid a modest economic recovery, and then inch upward. In this scenario, the total bailout of Fannie and Freddie would cost $19 billion more, or $154 billion.

A more optimistic projection has the housing market springing back to life sooner. In this case, the companies would need just $6 billion more, or $141 billion.

Finally, in a darker scenario, in which housing goes into another tailspin amid a second recession, they would cost $124 billion more, or $259 billion.

Public Policy and the Art of Numbers

2010-10-21T22:33:00.001+02:00

The dairy industry is taxed and with part of that tax the USDA creates initiatives that promote the use of milk:

-Partnering with Domino’s Pizza to develop pizzas using up 40% more cheese than usual. This worked so well that other pizza chains are doing the same thing.

— Partnering with McDonald’s to launch McCafe specialty coffees that use up to 80 percent milk, and three new burgers with two slices of cheese per sandwich. The result? An additional 6 million pounds of cheese sold.

— Creating reduced lactose milks in order to bring lapsed consumers back to milk. The potential result? An additional 2.5 to 5 billion pounds of milk each year.

— Partnering with General Mills’ Yoplait to develop yogurt chip technology that requires 8 ounces of milk.

— Maintaining momentum for single-serve milk by offering white and flavored milk in single-serve, plastic, resealable bottles.

My favorite part is McDonald's. That's called crazy economies of scale ;p

Consistent Grocery Buys

2010-10-18T11:26:00.006+02:00

It's great living alone again and stocking my shelves (my one shelf) with healthy stuff I like, as opposed to containers upon containers of cookies and chips and shit nobody should be buying, much less putting into their body. (Read: My dad's diet is pretty horrific).

Also, not having a freezer, though at times frustrating, really keeps the purchasing of processed foods to a minimum.

After a while, though, you get a sense of what you always have around. List!

Broccoli
Potatoes
Rice
Coconut Milk
Multiple curry pastes
carrots
Hummus
Peanut butter
Musilix/cheap cereal
Yogurt
Some kind of pasta
Fruit juices/smoothy
Tea
Almonds
Eggs

Not bad. Lots of carbs, though the reason there aren't more vegetables/fish is that history suggests that unless I buy them with a plan to cook them, they go bad. Maybe you intended to cook but weren't hungry, or went out with friends instead and snagged a falafel. The rest of the stuff lasts a while.

One thing I'd like to do is buy more lentils/beans and either make less rice or use them entirely as a substitution. Without much meat (which I eat about once/week) you have to get protein from elsewhere, and carbs obviously don't pack any protein punch.

A common meal that I've been really enjoying is potatoes boiled for a bit and then crisped up in a pan. You then add garlic, soysauce, and some hot sauce. Some pepper, maybe some chili paste. Then you just add some eggs right on top, sautee it a bit, and you have a pretty good meal that bridges the whole ethnic divide. Like Chinese immigrants to Ireland.

communicating electronically

2010-10-15T20:21:00.002+02:00

Just like consumption, there's nothing inherently wrong with communicating electronically. It's only when it gets out of whack with what's healthy and productive for the mind and body that people should be concerned. The way we communicate is changing, and it will continue to change, but face to face conversation, or phoning in the absence of that possibility, can't be replaced by twenty well edited emails. That's a lesson I'm continually learning~

Political branding, by Kevin Drum

2010-10-13T00:55:00.005+02:00

What's a liberal?:

I didn't have any good answer for this five years ago and I still don't today. But I think it's worth pushing back on one of the premises here. The problem isn't that conservatives branded themselves four decades ago, it's that conservatism, by its nature, has always had roughly the same branding. Conservatism is fundamentally about conserving the prevailing social and economic order, and that means strong support for family and country and a strong defense of the existing power structure. The details change a bit from era to era and country to country, but it inevitably produces something like a defense of traditional families, appeals to nationalism, and economic and political policies that benefit the current haves against the have-nots.

As with any strong brand, there are both benefits and drawbacks to this. The benefit is obvious: people know what you stand for. The drawback is obvious too: it's hard to change your message when you need to. You see this all the time when companies famous for low prices try to enter the luxury end of the market and vice versa. It's a tough transition, and conservatives suffer from it from time to time too.

Liberals have the opposite problem: liberalism just isn't, by its nature, an ideology that means the same thing all the time. In the 18th century liberals supported capitalism and free trade. By the 20th century liberals mostly wanted to regulate them both. A century ago plenty of progressives were dazzled by the potential of eugenics. By the 1980s liberals would dump a pitcher of water on your head for so much as suggesting that IQ had any biological component at all.

Privilege

2010-10-12T22:46:00.005+02:00

One of the more interesting concepts derived from the last few days of social mayhem is the idea of privilege. At what point are you privileged, and at what point are you handicapped. Obviously if we're going to call out these things we might as well measure them. You're handicapped if you're poor in that you need to focus so much more on daily sustenance, and you're out of the power circle because you have no money. But if you're rich, you're handicapped in terms of development. In who you become as a person. You're 'predisposed' to feeling entitled, and, in an objective sense (one that doesn't care what kind of car you drive), you truly are handicapped.

Back to being privileged. If your mom goes bankrupt when you're 17 years old, but the rest of your life you've had access to many ameninties, are you privileged? What if you've been sexually abused for 10 years but can go to any college you want? What if your dad has millions of dollars and you buy anything you desire on his credit card but he never wants to see you and your mom is dead? What if you're a poor child born into a beautiful commune in the forest and receives the best tutors?

What defines privilege? Is it negative, or is it neutral? Should a society handicapp FOR it (as in control for it, e.g. via the estate tax...sort of)? Should it be an object of scorn?

Chinuhh

2010-10-12T02:30:00.000+02:00

Fun is brewing! From the NYT:

“All militaries need a straw man, a perceived enemy, for solidarity,” said Huang Jing, a scholar of China’s military and leadership at the National University of Singapore. “And as a young officer or soldier, you always take the strongest of straw men to maximize the effect. Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were always taught that America would be their enemy.”

Wal Muurrrt.

2010-10-12T01:34:00.001+02:00

Instead, cutting prices depressed sales, as shoppers took the bargains and ran. For the quarter ending July 31, Walmart's U.S. same-store sales fell 1.8%. The company's same-store sales have now fallen for five straight quarters. Of the rollback strategy, Bill Simon, the president and CEO of Walmart U.S., told investors at a September conference, "It did not do what we had hoped it would do. It did, however, drive price perception. It did not drive sales or traffic." As a result, Walmart rolled back the deeper discounts, and prices started inching upward this summer. According to a new report from J.P. Morgan, the price of a 31-item basket from a Walmart store in Virginia rose 2.7% in September alone. Walmart prices have jumped 5% since the start of the year and have been at their highest levels in the 21 months J.P. Morgan has tracked pricing data.

New York Hate Crime

2010-10-09T18:44:00.004+02:00

Paper today:

He was told there was a party at a brick house on Osborne Place, a quiet block set on a steep hill in the Bronx. He showed up last Sunday night as instructed, with plenty of cans of malt liquor. What he walked into was not a party at all, but a night of torture — he was sodomized, burned and whipped.

There were nine attackers, ranging from 16 to 23 years old and calling themselves the Latin King Goonies, the police said. Before setting upon their 30-year-old victim, they had snatched up two teenage boys whom they beat, the police said — until the boys — one of whom was sodomized with a plunger — admitted to having had sex with the man.

The attackers forced the man to strip to his underwear and tied him to a chair, the police said. One of the teenage victims was still there, and the “Goonies” ordered him to attack the man. The teenager hit him in the face and burned him with a cigarette on his nipple and penis as the others jeered and shouted gay slurs, the police said. Then the attackers whipped the man with a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat.

I almost cried reading this.

Weighed down

2010-10-05T18:10:00.010+02:00

Imagine you're carrying this sack (and imagine Jason Reitman's last movie was, instead of being a hack piece of Hollywood flimflam, actually a quality film).

Now this is going to be a little difficult, so stay with me.
How much does your life weigh?
Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. Now I want you to pack it with all the stuff you have in your life. And start with the little things. The shelves and the drawers and the knickknacks. Then start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV. The backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. Your couch, your car, your home. I want you stuff it all into that backpack.

Now, I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office. And then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets: Your brothers, your sisters, you children, your parents. And finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend or girlfriend. Get them into that backpack. Feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets and compromises. The slower me move, the faster we die. Make no mistake: moving is living.

If the movie was anything like this amazing preview (and yes I wrote all that out)--if it had anything to do with this speech--it would have blown me away. The next Fight Club, substantively speaking. Instead it's a bunch of confused people running around with their head chopped off and a few really stupid scenes that buffer a story that centers around an outsourced lay-off business and a few unmet expectations.

But I don't want to talk about Up in the Air. Too much of a forgotten movie, a "what could have been." I rather talk about weighted bags. I think about my friend who killed herself almost daily (probably about 5 times/wk, on average, and when it comes it's not a fleeting smile). I think of my mom, who also probably killed herself, almost daily (same shit). If another close friend dies, even if it's due to an accident or whatever, I'll likely absorb that too. It feels partly inevitable, and partly my gift to them--to incorporate them in my thought process when I do certain things. For example, Kelly was a fierce advocate for community service and for helping the poor. This is pretty common in post-mortem (sometimes revisionist) statements but in this case it's absolutely true. She saw people for who they were, not what they looked like. Those are qualities I want to emphasize in my everyday life.

So I'm weighed down. I gain, yes, but I'm weighed down. And I dont see any other choice outside of absorbing death pretty much on a daily basis. Aging is fun!

Transportation solutions

2010-10-05T11:57:00.009+02:00

Duncan Black today:

Actually heard a bit of sense from a 'woman on the street' interview about possibly tolling 422, a highway in the Western burbs of the urban hellhole which at one end connects up with the Schuylkill Expressway, the only urban highway entering the city from that direction. And, as she said, even if they widen 422 (a possible use of toll money), it won't matter all that much because the Schuylkill is basically 2 lanes in each direction and there isn't a practical way to widen it even if billions were available.

As both population and the economy grows, congestion increases. More people use the highway more often. The obvious preference in American public policy is to expand the highway. Make it twice as big. Make more highways. Put highways on top of and inside of other highways. But this really only does so much, and almost all the research I've read conclude that capacity is eventually utilized. A scientist lecturer said yesterday something nonsensical like "nobody really knows why new roads get used." We'll pretend (and hope) that he meant nobody really knows why new roads are built and then fill to capacity (why would you build a road if it wouldn't be used?). Even then, the process is fairly intuitive.

Let's say you have 100 people in a closed system with two tunnels they can walk through. On the left there is the "highway/bus" tunnel, and on the right there's the "train/biking" tunnel. If you double the people to 200, and ONLY build a much larger "highway/bus" tunnel (or a second one, whatever), you're going to get many more people to automatically use that tunnel. Maybe if there's really a shortage of space a few more from that extra hundred might cram into the subway tunnel, but if you're not adding capacity and infrastructure to subsidize a form of mobility, you're also signaling, intentionally or not, not to use that mode of transportation. Practically speaking, if the city government made no investments in bike infrastructure, you'd be less likely to get a bike. If a highway seems like it's the only thing a government's going to maintain as a mode of getting around, you're more likely to buy a car.

Anyway, the point of all this is instead of adding extra capacity to existing systems that are not a benefit for land values, aesthetics, human health, noise pollution, and a string of a hundred other things, invest in substitutes like rail and better buys systems. It's so obvious people should be charged with a crime for at least not looking into the long term costs and benefits of that kind of choice. And then probably a crime anyway if they go with the highway solely because it's supposedly "cheaper".

Edit - In completely unrelated news:

Co-chaired by two former secretaries of transportation - Norman Y. Mineta and Samuel K. Skinner - the group estimated that an additional $134 billion to $262 billion must be spent per year through 2035 to rebuild and improve roads, rail systems and air transportation...The key to salvation is developing new long-term funding sources to replace the waning revenue from federal and state gas taxes that largely paid for the construction and expansion of the highway system in the 1950s and 1960s, the report said.

Our ruling elite

2010-10-04T09:57:00.003+02:00

Still really bad.

From the NYT today, right next to each other:
Cheap Debt for Corporations Fails to Spur Economy

As many households and small businesses are being turned away by bank loan officers, large corporations are borrowing vast sums of money for next to nothing — simply because they can.

Flawed Paperwork Aggravates a Foreclosure Crisis

“It reflects the hubris that as long as the money was going through the pipeline, these companies didn’t really have to make sure the documents were in order,” said Kathleen C. Engel, dean for intellectual life at Suffolk University Law School and an expert in mortgage law. “Suddenly they have a lot at stake, and playing fast and loose is going to be more costly than it was in the past.”

Attorneys general in at least six states, including Massachusetts, Iowa, Florida and Illinois, are investigating improper foreclosure practices. Last week, Jennifer Brunner, the secretary of state of Ohio, referred examples of what her office considers possible notary abuse by Chase Home Mortgage to federal prosecutors for investigation.

Month elapsed me right in the face

2010-10-03T22:16:00.007+02:00

This is the problem with abroad programs that are 3-6 months. A month goes by, you just begin to get used to the place and the lifestyle, you start making close friendships, some of which may grow closer and some of which may fall away. But here I am, one month into my time here, and it will probably account for 7% of my time in Utrecht and definitely accounts to only 4% of my time in this program. Imagine if my time here were 33% over? What kind of investments would I be inclined to make in this place and in these people?

That thought aside, so far so apeshitten good. The program is a little shoddy. I have my complaints. Though it's basically what I was worried about and prepared for: that this was just going to be a [slightly] tougher extension of undergrad, in which things are a bit more practical and a bit more difficult, but still pretty obnoxious and not by any stretch worth the time.

But I learned long ago to look outside the necessities of work (usually academic shit) for worthwhile inspiration and value. So far, this place doesn't disappoint. I've made some amazing friendships surprisingly quickly, even if the strongest among them dipped into a nebulous emotional jelly for a minute or two~. Outside those strong friendships, and indeed derived from some of them, has been a strong resurgence of creativity that had remained fairly inert and childishly stuck for the past year or so. That's mostly because there are so many more avenues here, but the human element of that shouldn't be ignored. The people here who are engaged and passionate make those avenues possible. Otherwise a University, in the abstract, or new foreign situation, in the abstract, amount to dark stone hallways overgrown with weeds. I've been impressed with the people here, and after a lot of timespace filled with cynicism, it's a great change to just relax about that whole component to a "place".

The city has the Goldilocks thing going on. Not too big, not too small. Just right. Not too expensive either. If you know what you're doing you can get a nice place for 300-350euro/month, though it's a bit hard to navigate the system because there really is a shortage of housing. If you want to call it a shortage, anyway. Economists would. I probably wouldn't. Utrecht is a very lively place; on weekends downtown is crazy, for instance, and markets fill the streets. But it's not "overcrowded", in the sense that Amsterdam, especially during the summer months, truly is. The red light district is tucked away, almost entirely on barges to the north of the city and not center stage like it is in Amsterdam. People are friendlier. You're less likely to get your shit stolen. Sometimes it's the little things.

And the bike culture...I could go on for ages about the bike culture. Let's just say it makes you go "Durrr" about a lot of public policy elsewhere. The way of life makes sense; commutes are both enjoyable and truly healthy, both physically and psychologically. Obviously in some areas biking as a way to "get around" isn't feasible. Maybe that should make us pause and figure out how to redesign communites with this in mind, or maybe we should just leave it alone for now. But it is true that plenty of places, such as cities all over the country, ARE good for biking and the more cities invest in simple things like bike lanes/infrastructure and cycling advocacy, the less they have to worry about traffic congestion, parking issues (space is paramount), pollution (noise and exhaust), and all kinds of business related issues. Not to mention, more people will want to live in a place where this infrastructure exists. It's common sense.

So the Dutch just get it right in a lot of ways, and it's a privilege to be here and enjoying the fruits of what they value. The food is absolutely wretched, but you can't win em all. The weather... =x But it's certainly worth it, and I'm having a blast.

Professional flirts

2010-10-02T11:33:00.003+02:00

The title of this post might imply I'm going to talk about prostitutes, which are, technically, more the "professional flirt". I would have used "practiced", but practice implies that there's an on/off switch--that when they want to flirt they're good at it. And I'm talking more about women who just never turn it off. Maybe perpetual would work best. PPP~~~

Most women don't have this problem, but once in a while I do run into one who must be thinking "I like a lot of guys right now, and I'm single. Im going to flirt with all of them and see what comes out of it." Which doesn't sound too bad. It's almost logical (!).

But it is bad.

Recreating the logic behind "going about making a difference"

2010-09-30T00:58:00.007+02:00

It's funny when you think of a the ways people strategize about making a difference. I don't think most people who want to change things actually do, strategize. Instead it's mostly a situation where someone feels first that they want to change things and second wonder how they can do it in a way that contours the most to their needs, both professionally and personally. There's nothing wrong with this insofar as we need more people thinking in this way in the first place than we have now, but it is limiting because there are so many people that have great intentions and spend their life championing some aspect of social justice but have no idea what to do or why to it over something else.

But take a weird example: I sometimes come across conservative blogs that attack the more extremist elements in their party. This comes in various forms. From the very absurd NYT columnist David Brooks to a lot of random conservative bloggers who believe in small government and less immigration less nation building abroad. So, ok, these people exist, and as far as I'm concerned, with what I know about political systems and policy, it's a good thing these people pull members of their party to the center. I think that's clear. When a portion of a political party is pulling people away from the periphery and bringing them back to reasoned debate, humanity is benefited. Now, question: Is it better if David Brooks and all the others, bigger and smaller, turned lefty Democrat, or even socialist? Disbarring the "David Brooks wouldnt have a job" argument, and disbarring the "well, that's always good" argument, I don't think so, if it means leaving a vacuum where those people used to exist. To put it another way, I'm claiming that these people bring American (e.g.) politics further to the left than many people on the far left.

So, further question. I, personally, consider the "far left" goal an obvious goal to strive for. Considering you feel the same way (and if not you shouldnt be reading these entries anyway), what if it were clear to you that posing as a right wing person your whole life but giving breath to rational movements of the republican party to the center (that is, to the left) would create a better world in the aggregate, than, say, if you worked towards socialist ends? Impossible to measure, yes, but just take it at face value.

Certainly, people should do things that conform the most to "who they are", and this runs contrary to that just by its premise. But it's worth thinking about the effects certain people have on a kind of "general discourse" concerning party drift which then affects (substantively) policy trends in various countries. The point is I think that people should really stop to think about what they're doing to help, if they are one of those awesome people who feel like they want to create a better world, and at least try to quantify their effect and understand the problem being solved within a larger context. A lot of people help because it reflects on them, and it conforms to their specific interests and values. So maybe they're an animal rights advocate because they love their animals and they have a huge heart. But as an animal rights advocate, that's an entire battle, within a likely cool human being, that's not being waged in other areas. Not to say that animals aren't important. What if, though, there was a decent study that showed meat consumption dropped 5% in the Netherlands given a well funded organization that promotes vegetarianism by giving out free vegetarian meals with information on meat consumption and production. This is fiction, but imagine if that 5% drop not only accounted for X amount of animals "not slaughtered", but created a trend. Wouldnt that be a better use of your time to help animals? Or, more abstractly and economically, isn't it clear that working as hard for socialist reforms would be one of those "rising tides life all boats" moments where helping people live more in harmony with each other and with the planet would yield massive increases in animal rights and all kinds of other rights. When you focus on such a narrow, self-identifying thing ("I'm an animal rights advocate!!"), you lose out on the bigger picture, and you lose sight of how things can actually get better.

My arrogant 19 cents.

Still shifting

2010-09-29T13:37:00.003+02:00

Our existing fuckups as a country, while egregious and prosecutable, are nothing as depression/rage inducements when compared to the continuous, seemingly unstoppable drift towards the roll back of all kinds of rights.

"Vote for us. We'll wage wars and tap all your phones!"
"No, vote for US! We'll prolong/stop wars and tap your phone and your computer, and assassinate a lot more bad people than those other guys."

"Is that it? That's all I got?"

"Fraid so."

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

So goes the European Union, So goes the World

2010-09-25T18:51:00.003+02:00

The Wall Street Journal has an article out about a secret task force that was charged with saving the Euro. More interesting, though, are the revelations about the character of the divide within that group and about Europe's political climate in general. There are also some interesting tidbits (if you like this kind of shit, anyway), like this:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, known in France as the "hyper-president" for his relentless flurry of new initiatives, faced declining approval ratings as his domestic economic overhaul stalled. The excitable 55-year-old leader saw that Greece's woes could rock the euro zone. Mr. Sarkozy seized on the issue as an opportunity to prove his leadership chops and thus shore up his popularity.

For German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 56, the crisis was the biggest test of her career. A trained physicist known for her cautious, deliberative style, she feared a backlash from German voters and lawmakers, and defeat in Germany's supreme court, if she risked taxpayer money on serial deficit-sinner Greece. Despite pressure from Mr. Sarkozy, she fiercely resisted a quick fix.

When Mr. Sarkozy barreled into one meeting with camera crews and photographers in tow, Ms. Merkel icily ordered the cameras out: "I won't let you do this to me," she said, warning she wouldn't play the part of "the stubborn old bag."

Something tells me this kind of new world regionalism needs to not only succeed but expand to different parts of the world. Put a different way, if we can't do it on a global scale, there at least needs to be a smaller but encompassing push to establish 5-8 regions around the globe where there is a sense of justice and cooperation. The EU doesn't always get it right, and I think it's clear that these austerity measures in Ireland and Greece are doing no one any favors...the people, their national governments, and the EU as a whole suffers from the disastrous pain those economies are feeling. Angela Merkel, though, is more popular than she otherwise would have been, and that's how things go.

The point, though, is always working towards some common solution that people can agree with. I mean, that's the goal throughout the world. Even if [rational] cynics rightly point out that none of that shit is happening on an effectual level right now, and things are looking pretty grim, that is nonetheless the ultimate goal here. And I think the only way to achieve that is on a regional level where countries maintain their culture and certain things but begin to realize that they're part of a greater whole and that there are sacrifices to be made for the greater good. In that vein of thinking, the EU is the only thing going right now. The US says fuck you to anything that doesn't benefit our trade strategies, and China and Japan are all about themselves. Countries operate this way in general; it doesn't make sense for them not to. But that's the point. Eroding those worldviews and creating something else in their stead.

If the EU currency implodes, nobody will try this for a long time unless it benefits the country with the largest economy, which is then unfair and perhaps undesirable anyway. This whole experiment, began years ago after WW2 by some visionary idealists, needs to work somehow.

Sex Weiners and Boobs

2010-09-25T14:19:00.009+02:00

3 Euros to see a highly sexually charged Macbeth that was surprisingly well-acted, true to the play, and very engaging. And the student theater, which is located in the center of town, has a bar. It's a good reminder how worthwhile it is to take a chance on some new things like cheap shows of all kinds. Some might flop, but on net I think it's really a benefit.

To hop subjects, one downside I've run into here is this consistent inability to get people involved and excited in developing projects. Maybe my expectations are wildly unfair, or maybe it's something that's almost so universal about people it doesn't make sense to dock anyone any points for the failing. It's even possible I approach it in the wrong way, or don't offer enough up front "innovative capital" or whatever you want to label it to really entice someone who might be wary about getting involved heavily into something new but once they do they're really into it. Some of these things may have truth to them, but there's something more at work here regardless.

Part of it I think are the boxes people use to compartmentalize their life. They're going to do their "studies" and afterwards they're going to get a "job and do something". And mixing the two never really seems to strike most people as plausible. Or maybe it just doesn't strike them at all. You also see a lot of negativity when you scratch under the surface, especially about one's own limits. I've met more than a few people that at first almost seem overly positive and have allergic reactions to negative, somewhat scary facts about human trends and resource use and the state of political affairs that seem to be emphasizing the saddest aspects of game theory. Be positive, damnit! But when it comes down to actually doing things, it's
I have no time.
We don't have the resources to put anything serious together.
I don't understand half the things I need for class, let alone devoting 20 hours/week to a big project.
I want to meet more people, and go out more, and I need a job.

All these things are important, but I'm struck by how quickly people don't even want to try.

That's not to say my efforts at getting people excited about doing some innovative, collaborative shit together have stalled or that my spirit is completely deflated. So far people are actually pretty excited about this stuff, and most friends that I've talked to about setting something up have been met with positive enthusiasm. But when it comes to commit, or follow through, or bring new energy into the equation, or even to get a paragraph of an email back, things really fall short. Seemingly with everyone. I guess the lesson is: either go it alone or have a reservoir of patience.

Edit: I think most of this boils down to impatience on my part. In truth I have met a lot of people here that are really excited about doing new things and every person I've met--really everyone--has been great. I think when one person, me, does not yet have a job, is lazy about the official reading, doesn't have a girlfriend, only a few close friends, etc., and who wants to do this type of shit A LOT AND RIGHT NOW, then comes up against people who do have jobs and do have lots of shit going on, there's this tension of expectations. But that's mostly for me to figure out. And it's so much better than the situation at home, where getting people involved with anything at any reasonable level was pretty much impossible.

Woodward's new Afghan book

2010-09-22T09:58:00.005+02:00

I think it makes Obama look fairly good.

Obama kept asking for "an exit plan" to go along with any further troop commitment, and is shown growing increasingly frustrated with the military hierarchy for not providing one. At one strategy session, the president waved a memo from the Office of Management and Budget, which put a price tag of $889 billion over 10 years on the military's open-ended approach.

Check out Captain [America] Patraeus though.

You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives

I wonder how many conservatives think this way. It's a scary thought, all the same, especially given that our top commander over there is the one with this opinion.

Better late then never

2010-09-19T23:17:00.001+02:00

For some hope on the electoral map front ;p

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose loss in her state's Republican primary to the Tea Party-backed Joe Miller rattled the political world, will run a general election campaign as a Republican write-in candidate, she declared today.

As supporters at a late-afternoon rally in Anchorage, Alaska, chanted, "Run, Lisa, Run," Murkowski told them, "I get the message. I hear it loud and clear, and I announce today that I will be a write-in candidate in November for the United States Senate seat that I now hold."

The incumbent senator's run sets the stage for a three-way race between her, Miller, and the Democratic candidate, Scott McAdams, mayor of Sitka, Alaska.

Iraq has been won!

2010-09-19T19:05:00.001+02:00

Still bad...

At least 29 people were killed and more than 100 others injured when a pair of bombs exploded almost simultaneously Sunday in Baghdad.

The post-graduate test

2010-09-19T18:45:00.002+02:00

I remember a few people from high school that always seemed to do whatever they needed to do to get ahead. Some of my friends liked some of these people, and I was close with one for a while. The arguments were always the same when it came to doing questionable shit. I was just going along with other people. I'm not really like that, honest. Deep down, I'm really a good guy and that stuff doesn't define me. And then there was the abyss of college, where you could basically do anything, study any subject, join any group, and you weren't really guilty of anything. Just exploring. Figuring out what you want. Etc.

But then college ends, and all of a sudden you need to find a job. Certain opportunities are open to you, depending on how much you've maintained your lead during your time at university.

Most of the people I knew in high school that engaged in dubious activity to maintain their edge are currently working for controversial banks and, in a few years, probably some big law firms. So it goes ;p

Photos of facebook people

2010-09-18T00:33:00.002+02:00

If they're public, the right arrow from the last one (???) and then the leftarrow from the first one (1) always creates quite the fun.

Utilizing existing infrastructure

2010-09-17T21:53:00.002+02:00

I'm on one of my local transit authority's regional rail (commuter) lines, and am struck as I always am when I take such a trip by how little transit oriented development there is around the transit. Now it's certainly possible that in many cases bad land use is actually market driven. But my guess is that in many cases, as it is generally, it's actually illegal to build any such development. So you have park and ride lots next to the stations.

I'm certainly for building new SUPERTRAINS, but it's also true that we could provide more access to alternative transit if we improved stupid zoning and land use laws.

Edit: More Duncan Black because he's awesome.

Yes cities should figure out how to soak commuters who do use many city services but who do not pay much in the ways of taxes. Some cities do have a commuter tax of one sort or another, but many more are prevented from doing so. Like any attempt to tax there is a risk that it discourages the kind of behavior you actually want to encourage (like coming downtown and spending money), but there's a lot of employment in downtown DC that isn't going to go anywhere pretty much no matter what.

In my view, you could create a commuter tax while discouraging automotive transportation in the same tax by just making it a toll during rush hour. Then after 3-5 years you reassess it, see who's actually paying the toll/(tax) and who's using other means and how and then you reassess your commuter tax and see if it's even necessary anymore. I figure there's a few birds to be hit with a some time-clever-bridge-tax.

So much change happening

2010-09-17T02:35:00.002+02:00

Bringin that change right on down the road.

A similar mystery to that which surrounds the flow rate estimates involves the administration's public release in early August of a report based on an internal "oil budget calculator" that had been put together in a hurry and solely to provide general guidance to the emergency response.

Instead, the report was released with great fanfare, media appearances and a White House press conference -- and top administration officials cited its conclusions as evidence that "the vast majority of the oil is gone".

But the report was sketchy at best. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has consistenly refused to disclose supporting documents. Officials falsely gave the impression that a group of eminent scientists had peer-reviewed the report, when they hadn't even seen it.

And to the extent that the report could be taken seriously, it didn't even support the administration's spin. The lead author, NOAA senior scientist Bill Lehr, later acknowledged under questioning from Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) that the report actually supported the conclusion that the overwhelming majority or the oil remained in the environment.

One reason the administration remains susceptible to charges of political interference with science is that, as I wrote in July, despite President Obama's promise to deliver a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to the federal government, federal agencies still have not received any new directives. And some government scientists say that conditions have not improved noticeably since Obama took power.

Twisted into knots

2010-09-17T01:02:00.003+02:00

Tense emotions can appear to be irrational bullshit, even in the throes. It's really a pain in the ass. And it's tough when the best way to respond to them is not to respond at all...there's no outlet. There's no combustion. Just a ton of energy stored up with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Even so, Utrecht continues to positively outstrip all expectations.

Our old world stuck in old ways

2010-09-14T21:22:00.003+02:00

With a new face though!

NEW YORK — The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten its image with a new name: corn sugar.

The Corn Refiners Association applied Tuesday to the federal government for permission to use the name on food labels. The group hopes a new name will ease confusion about the sweetener, which is used in soft drinks, bread, cereal and other products.

My favorite part is "Corn Refiners Association".

Proximity [inducing] friendships

2010-09-13T16:42:00.004+02:00

This is probably a well-documented social phenomenon, and it's also fairly logical. But I will say, looking back on my time here so far, that the friends I've made up to this point are basically people I happened to be standing on line next to. There's one situation in which two [momentarily] outgoing personalities bounced off one another until reaching a critical mass of "let's do something". Otherwise, I met one friend steph on the "get your apartment keys" line the very first few hours I was in the country, and another, Alex, while on line at orientation. Two other friends, a Romanian couple, were also right behind me at orientation.

There are organizations for seemingly every level of this program. There's the ESN--Erasmus Student Network--for all students coming from outside the Netherlands. Then there's the EGEA, a group for students within the faculty of Geosciences (never in my wildest dreams did I think I was going to be doing a masters within a faculty of geosciences ;p). Then there's STORM, which is the student organization specifically for sustainable development students. There are different tracks within Sustainable development (more policy or more science oriented), and I'm quite surprised the trend doesn't continue. Anyway, the point of laying all this out is that, by this time, given some friends I've already made, Eike in Amsterdam, and potential future friends from within the program, I'm probably done doing things with these student organizations unless a) it's cheap and fun and/or b) other friends are doing it too.

Which is all to say that, at least in large part, where you stand and with whom you make initial bullshit conversation determines many [initial] friendships. So far it's worked out well for me, but watch your step yo.

The "photographer's" dilemma

2010-09-12T14:36:00.006+02:00

I have no idea how photographers feel about this, but for "photographers" like myself (IE, people with cameras who like taking pictures), inclinations towards camera use comes in phases and more or less creates an upside down bell curve. You begin by actually being a tourist and wanting to take pictures. Fuck it! It's a new place. Then, once I'm living somewhere for a little while and anticipate living there for longer (it's been a week, I have an anticipation that I'll be here another 14 months, etc), I have a tendency to want to relax and appear as one amongst the city, thus suppressing my camera urge. Eventually though, just like I have with Princeton, I'm sure I'll be comfortable in my sense of belonging enough that camera use doesn't make me insecure*.

*Note I still use the camera plenty of times. It just feels weird, especially in Amsterdam where it immediately classifies you.

Our screwed up international economic system

2010-09-10T15:15:00.002+02:00

The Steelworkers union is fighting the Chinese government's attempts to expand clean energy.The only thing that should be sued here are American industrial policies, which are getting it wrong.

In a filing with the office of the U.S. trade representative, the union claims that China is steadily seizing world market share in the production of such things as solar panels and wind turbines through an array of subsidies, tax credits, cut-rate loans and other policies that favor local producers.

Those policies violate World Trade Organization rules, the union says, and it is asking the Obama administration to open talks with the Chinese and then pursue the matter with the WTO if those negotiations fail.

Over there

2010-09-10T02:46:00.003+02:00

I'm assuming I'll be posting fewer mindless ramblings in the future given major time sponges, but knowing my internet addiction I'm sure it'll be often enough. For what or for whom, who knows~

Meanwhile, winning hearts and minds.

Politics

2010-09-04T12:26:00.004+02:00

They're fucking hilarious.

He has lived in Fairbanks for just 8 years, and in Alaska for 16. For all the attention paid to the passion of his conservative supporters and to the endorsements of Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Tea Party activists, Mr. Miller needed only 53,000 votes to win the Senate primary. (The primary ballot also included a measure requiring parental consent for abortions for children under 18, which passed with 85,000 votes.) Only 32 percent of the state’s registered voters cast ballots in the primary, on Aug. 24.

Alaska's new likely Senator, and all for 53 thousand votes in a primary.

Lost in week-space

2010-09-04T11:25:00.003+02:00

I still have no fucking clue what's going on with the days of the week. I'd love to be able to blame it on jet lag, or a heavy work load, or even "culture shock," but the truth is that I'm just a befuddled idiot.

Yesterday, Friday, I went to Amsterdam to meet up with Eike. I thought Thursday was Tuesday, given that the orientation printout was, I suppose, from last year, so I felt lucky to have made it on the right day at the right time.

Anyway, Amsterdam was a blast, as usual, but now that I'm a "graduate student" I couldn't just blow off this orientation I had today. So we got up early, I made a 9am train, biked my ass off from Utrecht Central, took a shower, threw back some juice, and made it to the school just in time for the program information.

The first door I went to was locked. Ingang, 50 metres ==>. Ok, not so bad; just the wrong door. I walked to the next entrance, but that was locked too. I went around the whole building and every door I tried was locked up. At this point, I'm getting frustrated and somewhat angry. I busted my ass and rushed home from Amsterdam, and these bastards can't even leave a door open.

Then I start to notice that the whole building is pretty dark. That it's weird to not only have an orientation on a Saturday but to overlap it with the Erasmus organization's 'day of fun'. I took out the piece of paper that had the schedule, which was in my bag the entire time, and, low and behold, it's on a fucking Monday.

I know exactly what screwed me up too. I had met a nice kid on thursday who said he was going to have to skip the erasmus orientation on saturday because the sustainable development orientation was on the same day. So I mindlessly checked off that box. The second you abdicate your own investigation and organization, you're fucked. Or at least that's what happened to me ;p

Long story about a boring fuck up. I meant to post pictures but for whatever reason the "publish post" button won't work if there are pictures imbedded in the post. It lets me upload, but then it gets into a pissy mood if I then want to eat the cake. Or something.

Vegetarianism made difficult

2010-09-02T13:42:00.006+02:00

Greetings from Utrecht. The first day was practically olympic. No sleep on the plane, lots of errands, lots of walking, lots of information. It all left me crashing at around 8pm.

This place rules. I'm slowly getting familiar with the campus, but so far I really like how everything has been organized and how the campus is laid out (a couple miles SE of the city centre) and what I've seen of the town (more than I probably should have given my fail at bus riding) I love. Utrecht has much of what Amsterdam has without the tourism. Nothing will ever out-Amsterdam Amsterdam, but it's a good trade-off and it's nice to be away from the craziness, especially since this city seems to have plenty of a party atmosphere.

A few thoughts:

One immediate negative is that it's only September 2nd (still summer!) and it's already fairly cool. I put on a sweatshirt this morning and even with the added layer and the uptick in body temperature, my ears were still pained from the cold. I rather be cold than hot, I think, and it's nice that bugs are non-existent in comparison, but it's still fucking summer man.

Airline food! On the way over here, Delta served us a "breakfast kit" which consisted of a banana and an apple muffin. Compare this with British Airways, which served a giant sugary hot pocket with an ingredient list longer than the bible. Why any company would serve you something that's almost certainly going to come out of you sideways I have no idea. Anyway, points for Delta~

Still no bike or cell phone. Fuck those things are important. So many things in a new country operate on quest-like strings. You can't get a cell phone until you have a dutch bank account. You can't get a dutch bank account until you get something akin to a social security number from the city of Utrecht. Can't do that until the 24th of September. and on and on. Not much of an excuse for the bike, although you can apparently get a better deal on one with an erasmus card, which I can't get until Saturday. Yada yada yada.

And finally, the people I've met so far seem pretty solid. Mature, level headed people with interests they're passionate about. Nothing startlingly amazing, but compared to the shitpot of American students attending last years FU-Best semester in Berlin, it's a nice repreive from mediocrity.

Pictures to come. And, like the title of this post suggests, it's hard to maintain vegetarianism in a meat-based society in which you can't understand the language. Good thing I'm not too strict about it~.

Public Policy and Feedom, Dutch Edition

2010-08-25T22:28:00.002+02:00

It doesn't have to be complicated!

The reason you can [swim freely in public waters] in the Netherlands is that if anybody tried to sue the city of Amsterdam because they or their child had been injured while swimming in the river, the suit would almost certainly be dismissed....Essentially, you still have the freedom to swim in the river in Amsterdam because people assume you have the common sense to avoid stupid behaviour, like diving in when you don't know what's underneath, or not keeping to the sides of the river during barge traffic hours. And if you don't, it's nobody's fault but your own.

But there's another reason why I can let my daughter swim in the Amstel, and that is that I'm pretty sure that in a well-regulated country like the Netherlands, the water is reasonably free of heavy pollutants and raw sewage. (I would not, for example, let her swim in the Mekong.) This, I think, outlines a useful distinction between different kinds of regulation....To generalise: for risks I can assess myself, I don't want regulations that prevent me from doing as I please just because I might end up suing the government. For risks I can't assess myself, I do want regulations that give me the confidence to do as I please. One kind of regulation stops me from swimming in a pond in Massachusetts. The other kind lets me swim in a river in the Netherlands. One kind of regulation makes me less free. The other kind makes me freer.

Serial Text Messagers

2010-08-20T00:15:00.002+02:00

Could benefit from reading this. Most other people could too.

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

Local politics

2010-08-16T08:04:00.003+02:00

People get hung up on national politics because that's what's generally transfused. The American people are relatively indifferent to pragmatic issues and general strategy. Most of the people I know, and most of the people I've dated, won't touch public policy. At least not directly. "It's too big an issue," or "the whole thing's depressing" or "I just want a dog and a paintbrush." The system counts on this type of psychology. The "I'll get mine some other way" and the "fuck that whole system, lets rock organics" represent a lot of smart people who have self-actualized but have instead gone another way. They've been alienated.

In the process, governments "by the people" make deals with private interests that remain unchallenged. Politics is pretty simple at its core; pull the ladder up, and get along with peers. Consider the case of state and local governments post interest-rate swap deals.

In Pennsylvania, some school districts have unwound interest-rate deals, and the state’s auditor general, Jack Wagner, has urged other issuers to follow suit. “For the sake of Pennsylvania taxpayers, I call on the other school districts that have entered into similar swaps contracts to get out of these risky agreements as soon as they possibly can,” he said in a statement in February.

Financial stress from these deals could not come at a worse time for cities, towns and school districts already saddled with high costs and falling revenue. Although it is difficult to tally how many public entities entered into interest-reduction deals, a recent analysis by the Service Employees International Union estimated that over the last two years, state and local governments have paid banks that arranged these transactions $28 billion to get out of the deals, seeking to avoid further crushing payments.

Afghanistan

2010-08-14T17:29:00.001+02:00

We have to kill every last person who wants us to leave, and then maybe, just maybe, we can go.

Obama Endorses Mosque

2010-08-14T05:51:00.003+02:00

Maybe he can act like a boss after all.

Having steered clear of the controversy for weeks, Obama took on opposition to the mosque directly — a move that many other Democratic lawmakers had been hesitant to do in the face of highly emotional appeals against its construction. But polls indicate the issue could be a high-voltage third rail for politicians who support the project: a recent CNN poll found that 68 percent of those surveyed did not approve of building a mosque so close to where the World Trade Center towers fell, killing more than 2,000 people.

Freedom hating NYC mosque

2010-08-12T00:48:00.006+02:00

I've never seen such an absurd amount of rhetoric towards something so innocuous. It's not just innocuous, it's great propaganda. As my brother says, as we carelessly kill a bunch of Muslims in Afghanistan and elsewhere, what better way to let them know that the deaths of their family members are only a speed bump on the road to a More Free American Tomorrow than by 'allowing' a mosque to go up around Ground Zero?

Cynicism aside, the opposition to it has been fanatical, which suggests many people in this country equate Islam with terrorism. In reality, there are studies (and common sense) that suggest moderate muslim centers, such as mosques with worldly Imans, actually deter terrorism. They catch a young person's spirit as he/she grows and channels it into the more valuable and peaceful aspects of the faith.

On another level, Bloomberg's eloquent defense of the mosque has been undercut by Governor Paterson's horrible governing ability. In this case of epic fail, he's suggesting that the state of NY just give the mosque other state land in the vicinity. Nice work. Also, the Anti-Defamation league found themselves in an odd spot when they came out against the mosque. By odd spot I mean that, without a radical change in course, they're about to lose most of their legitimacy as an [jewish] organization.

To the greater point, the United States' military apparatus is a pretty horrible thing and we've committed some brutal acts in the name of "containment" or the "global war on terror", with little regard to human welfare. And we'll probably continue to disregard what killing a bunch of Muslims is going to leave us with. If someone killed my family in some fucked up bombing, or in a street raid gone awry in which they barged into my home and killed my brother in the name of global security, I'd strap some shit to myself too. If Muslims feel like their faith is under attack, they will not only feel more attached to the faith (and religion is really silly to begin with), but will react accordingly. Why this isn't obvious to people is beyond me, but most people are morons.

Calling it something else

2010-08-09T17:24:00.003+02:00

I've been reading for months about China's dangerous amount of oversupply. Consider this article, an example of many, from BBC in 2005:

Jia Yinsong, an official at the National Development Reform Commission, said steel was one area overproducing.

Excess steel production is expected to top 100 million tons this year.

Chinese steel demand is set to exceed 300 million tons in 2005 official figures show, with production above 400 million tons.

Demand is predicted to rise only marginally to 320 million tons by 2010, but output capacity is estimated to hit 530 million tons by 2008.

Another official report warns that Chinese car production could be double that of domestic demand by 2010

Today, the New York Times comes out with a headline "In Crackdown on Energy Use, China to Shut 2,000 Factories"

A spade's a spade, dudes.

Afghanistan Propaganda machine

2010-07-29T22:55:00.005+02:00

The next issue of Time comes out tomorrow. Here's the cover.

To echo Duncan Black, I don't find myself dreading the decline of these news organizations. To say the least. What do you do when every piece of objective information suggests the war is a) going poorly b) practically unwinnable c) doing us more harm than good and d) not worth the billions and billions of dollars? Throw shit like this against the wall and see what sticks with people.

Over there

2010-07-26T17:32:00.002+02:00

The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.

But hey, let's keep 'state-building' in dozens of fucked places around the world, places which we remain woefully unwelcome by the indigenous population, all for the sake of 'anti-terrorism'.

Department of not doing well

2010-07-21T19:08:00.002+02:00

The Obama administration is fucking up in a major way. I think this shows you that if you govern like you campaign, it isn't going to go smoothly.

What you wont find in a bushel basket

2010-07-21T10:02:00.002+02:00

This is why this guy is great. Why not do successive tracks.

Tripod to the finish

2010-07-21T09:52:00.002+02:00

Full disclosure, I like both the song and the video (It's the only gaga I like!), but I think the more interesting point here is what can be filmed with a tripod. And the answer to that inquiry is, basically: practically everything.

The Burqa and Religious Freedom

2010-07-19T06:06:00.007+02:00

The Spanish Parliament is considering banning the Burqa, so naturally there's another round of claims of religious oppression, religious fundamentalism, and female repression. State control, the whole bit. The French have already banned the Burqa from being used while accessing public services, but the French have a history of picking odd battles, so that's probably to be expected. But now the Netherlands and Spain want to similarly ban the garb, and so the issue is picking up steam.

First, a little about the French. In 2003 they banned the wearing of the Hijab in public schools. Unlike Germany, which banned public employees (like teachers) from wearing conspicuous religious signifiers, France did the messy thing of banning its use by students. This caused a rather expected situation where either muslim girls and their parents complied with the rule and no big deal, or, whether it was a case of the student's identity or strict religious implementation at home, the girl stopped attending school. It was a product of a racist tradition that has been present and powerful in many european countries, especially now that Islam, whose members often procreate fairly..robustly..is coming into conflict with a secularized Europe, in which many Europeans find bearing children inopportune and unnecessary.

In France's case, if I had to pick a side in a vacuum I'd probably say bravo for kicking religion out of the classroom and trying to put everything on a secularized playing field. But I'm partial; I think religion is silly bullshit. In reality they probably did more harm than good and provoked more divisions between ethnic french and a muslim minority that in many ways is already marginalized by the French government who don't see them as French.

The Burqa is a different issue, though, and one I'd probably frame in the simple argument of public safety. Say you're a police officer patrolling a subway, for instance. Or, better yet, say you're a guard to a local courthouse and someone with a Burqa needs to pass through security. Do they take the Burqa off? If not, you're risking whatever anyone might want to place under a Burqa (they need not be religious to wear the thing). If so, then there are similar risks that exist outside of extremely sensitive areas like courthouses or city hall.

Put in a different context, what line do we draw on "respecting religion"? Polygamy (I say whatever~)? Child labor? What if my religion (or some religion) says to be naked? That's perfectly plausible. Rastafarians institutionalize marijuana. Are drug laws in many places then discriminatory? Beating women, or maybe not giving them a voice in the process of the institution. Honor killings..

The line here seems to be to balance maintaining some kind of cohesive value system while accommodating people of other beliefs. But I think a Burqa crosses that line. There's no reason why people can't engage in the more important aspects of their religion in private or amongst themselves. Expression is good, freedoms are good. But if you're going to draw that line somewhere, an object of dress that completely shrouds a person might as well be on the restricted side of it. The fact that it may or may not be repressive to any particular woman is a poor argument that needs not be used (after all, there are likely plenty of women who feel, at least on some level, loyal to that religious belief and feel like it's part of their identity).

Put another way, many southern states now allow concealed firearms practically everywhere. If the NYPD stopped a guy in Central Park with a concealed weapon, the fact that he could carry it in Mississippi isn't a valid argument. NYC has decided on different laws to govern a different populace.

Fuck food stamps!

2010-07-17T17:36:00.002+02:00

If this is true, and I dont see why it wouldn't be, it's really disturbing.

My point is that I have been working for school reform long before I ever heard of the secretary of education, and long before I ever heard of Obama. And I’m happy to welcome them on the reform road, but I’ll be damned if I think the only road to reform lies in the head of the secretary of education.

We were told we have to offset every damn dime of [new teacher spending]. Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps. Now they were careful not to make an official budget request, because they didn’t want to take the political heat for it, but that was the first trial balloon they sent down here. … Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get. Well isn’t that nice. Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change.

Taibbi

2010-07-16T10:42:00.001+02:00

In no other country do people genuinely love their bosses the way Americans do. They'll go home after 12 hard hours of capricious superiors peeing in their faces, and the very first thing they'll do is call up some talk radio show and denounce the graduated income tax that gives them a break at their bosses' expense. In other countries bosses need to constantly fend off revolts and strikes; in America people tune in by the millions to cheer on an impetuous, bloated asshole like Donald Trump as he ritualistically fires a succession of sheepish sacrificial stand-ins who are clearly chosen for their resemblance to the target demographic.

Infrastructure, Alumni edition

2010-07-13T23:03:00.001+02:00

High speed rail comes to North Carolina

Also, here's one of the reasons government spending in a downturn is positive.

But that's just the beginning. North Carolina's $545 million total share of high-speed and intercity passenger rail funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will create or maintain as many as 4,800 private sector jobs in the state over the next four years, with 1,000 of those expected this year alone as ready-to-go projects get under way. Those jobs will come from more than 30 projects in 11 counties, all part of improving North Carolina's rail service.

Ego and Amnesty International

2010-07-13T08:42:00.006+02:00

I feel that I'm a bright guy who constantly thinks about things and is always reading. I'm also emotionally maturing over time, in some cases taking large leaps in the past few years, and that progress no doubt has a significant impact on my ability to excel in a job. Part of being successful is being self-confident, though the obvious catch, at least at an immature stage (and something I think a lot of people grapple with) is ego. And there are definite circumstances, easily way too many, where I prejudge others and feel uncomfortable around people who are too consumed by popular television culture, or spend a 10th of their annual salary on season tickets to the Knicks, or profess, however so ironically, that they watch the Jersey Shore "reality show" on a consistent basis. It's not as if I want to convince these people that they're wrong, or that they're better off reading a book or looking introspectively--that they're an embarrassment. I just don't want to be around them. I don't want my time diluted. A lot of that mentality is essentially elitist. It says, inherently, that My ways are better. So the challenge is just to maximize my time while also understanding and being at peace with everyone else.

Anyway, the point of all that was Ego. I have one. My brother definitely has one. Most of my friends have pretty fat ones too. It just manifests itself in different (outward) ways, and the goal is to channel it well.

Ego does, however, have a limit. I came across this Amnesty International Job today (not that I'm applying for jobs). Check this out.

Executive Assistant to Secretary General
Amnesty International needs an Executive Assistant to plan, coordinate and deliver executive administrative support to the Secretary General.

Working in a multicultural environment, you will be part of a small office team. You should have proven organizational, planning and administrative skills. Be experienced at minute taking and brilliant at managing high level meetings, conferences, diaries and budgets.

You will have strong interpersonal skills and ability to work effectively in a high pressured changing environment and to very tight deadlines.

You will also have project management skills required for the delivery of ad hoc projects in the Office of the Secretary General. Fluency in written and spoken English is essential and fluency in Spanish and/or French would be an advantage.

I don't have half those qualifications. Granted, this is for the "Secretary General", so it's a top aid job in this organization, and anyone who would even make the 100 person cut is going to have heavy duty experience. But the more important thing here are the skills (after all, you'd want to do the job well to a) be fulfilled and b) not get fired). I speak english semi-fluently. I'm not even close in French (I can hold a conversation, sort of), while more than a couple of ambitious people I know (who can't get jobs!) are fluent in English, French and Spanish. Strong interpersonal skills? It's getting there -x. I get along really well with people. Sometimes I also really don't. In some of the latter cases, it's hard to bridge the divide. Minute taking? If I had a laptop in front of me. Brilliant at managing high level meetings and the rest of it? Not even close. Barely sufficient maybe.

Ad-Hoc projects and coming up with new ways to approach things would probably be my specialty, but nobody can afford some kid to think these days. They need people to do do do. Which makes sense, but I'm still inside my own fucking head all the time. I wouldn't even bother applying for this job; I'm utterly under-qualified and I wouldn't even stand a chance. And yet some people my age (and even younger) really are.

I don't know where I was going with this.

Let's celebrate the effects of capitalism in the stead of any coherent or meaningful conclusion.

Teach for America's exclusivity

2010-07-12T15:52:00.005+02:00

A short article in today's NYT discusses primarily the competitiveness of Teach for America.

When Robert Rosen graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009, he did not apply, fearing he would be turned down. Instead, he volunteered in a friend’s classroom weekly for the next year, to see if he liked teaching, but also to build a credential that would impress Teach for America. Asked how hard getting in is, James Goldberg, Duke ’10 said, “I’d compare it with being accepted to an Ivy League grad school.”

Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Rosen, Ms. Carlson, Mr. Cullen and Ms. Biggers count themselves lucky to be among the 4,500 selected by the nonprofit to work at high-poverty public schools from a record 46,359 applicants (up 32 percent over 2009). There’s little doubt the numbers are fueled by a bad economy, which has limited job options even for graduates from top campuses. In 2007, during the economic boom, 18,172 people applied.

This seems wrong to me. On the one hand, it's great that TFA exists and that it's attracting so much "top talent." On the other, too many people who want to get involved in this program, they themselves often "top talent", get shut out. Here you have a massive crisis of education, especially in some of our worse cities, and an organization like TFA is tossing aside applications from extremely qualified people because of financial constraints, some of which are self-imposed. For example, if they want to maintain exclusivity for reasons of psychology and a large applicant pool, why not say "We regret to inform you......but we've already passed on your application to the lesser known Educate for the States, which should get back to you in the next 2-3 weeks."

I'd also be a hard sell on 45k (or the equivalent local salary, which is I think how TFA calculates what to pay people) being entirely necessary. Why not make it 35k and hire 1500 more teachers? Sure, some people will walk away from the job that isn't paying them what they might be able to obtain elsewhere, but as the article laid out, there are plenty of very qualified people applying to that organization.

The point is, organizations like Teach for America, and especially the Peace Corps, should be doing what they can to obtain more funds, and tinkering with what they can internally, so that they don't have to shun so many people who come out of college wanting to help and wanting to teach. The Peace Corps can be even more egregious. While there's a good argument to be made that TFA needs to pay its teachers a competitive salary to recruit the people it wants and therefore will naturally have money constraints, the Peace Corps pays its volunteers a pretty measly sum and is almost entirely funded by the government. If people want to spend their valuable time helping out other people, and they're well qualified to do so, find some constructive thing for them to do!

Few thoughts on Pittsburgh

2010-07-11T15:29:00.006+02:00

Being in Pittsburgh has been great. The trip began as a way to get Mark out here for some official biz, but, once Eric and I made the decision to go, it naturally evolved into something of our own. Our cousins incredible hosts, and it was the first time we were able to spend some quality time with them, despite seeing them here and there for family holidays.

They live about 20 minutes outside the city in a nice rich neighborhood and own what's easily the smallest house on the block, but it's still very large. It sits on five acres of land, has a finished basement that goes unused, and five bedrooms for three people (two of which, the kids, spend half the time with their mother who lives around the corner). Most of the five acres are filled with woods and trails. It's a nice refuge, especially given that it resides only 20 minutes from the city. There are no tolls or bridges to pay for. In fact, Pittsburgh has the most bridges of any city in the country, and I don't think even one of them is tolled.

One of the nice things about the city are the varying neighborhoods. Southside feels a lot like Austin, Texas. It has a bunch of bars, some higher end shops, wider streets, and lots of youth. Bloomfield is effectively little Italy. The Strip District, which used to be the industrial center of the town, is now lots of nice retail and good places to get food. Downtown is beautiful.

The cost of living is also extremely low. On the flip side, there's clearly a ton of money here, which allows arts, restaurants, and all kinds of things flourish.

On the negative side, the public transportation infrastructure needs a decent amount of work. They have a bus system upon which they rely, but there's no great way to get from neighborhood to neighborhood. The dead zones in between are often a bit sketchy if not simply very dangerous to walk through (no sidewalks, half-done construction, etc). Pittsburgh would clearly benefit from something like a streetcar system or even a monorail-like system if they had the money to toss at it. There's also the problem many cities have. Once you leave Pittsburgh there's nothing around. Chicago is 10 hours away, Cleveland is eh. If you're one of those people where having a large city at your disposal is all you need, you're in good shape. But if you get restless and don't want to drive 5 hours in any direction to find another dynamic urban experience, Pittsburgh might leave you a bit stranded.

Sports!

2010-07-10T10:19:00.011+02:00

I've been posting up a lot of other people's thoughts, which in almost all cases are more interesting than my own. So off they go. (Or, I guess, embedded they go. Or something). I'm also in the throes of creating a lot of new things on every level with my partner in crime. Most of it will probably either be shit or undergo no action, or both, and I'm also paranoid about stolen thoughts, especially when you're beaming your shit out there. Needless to say, there isn't much in that regard that I'd share. So let's talk about sports.

My college friend Corey, who I unfortunately rarely talk to, recopied a story in its entirety on his blog (curious because he's also a journalist) concerning a sports writer who is himself quite concerned with Lebron James. Some key grafs

I still remember seeing that Blue Jays cap squeezed on his fat stupid face for 45 solid minutes, waiting for him to throw Red Sox fans a bone, waiting for him to say anything that would make me think, "Regardless of how this turned out, the past 12 years meant something to me," or "Just know that this happened because of Boston's front office, not their great fans." He only threw us a couple of canned comments, the same way someone would throw table scraps to a dog. I remember how angry it made me. I remember wanting to whip my remote control through the television, then realizing that I couldn't afford a new one. I remember taking down my autographed photo of Clemens' 20th strikeout against Seattle and sticking it in a closet. I remember thinking that I would never like sports quite as much ever again.

[...]

I blame the people around [LeBron James]. I blame the lack of a father figure in his life. I blame us for feeding his narcissism to the point that he referred to himself in the third person five times in 45 minutes. I blame local and national writers (including myself) for apparently not doing a good enough job explaining to athletes like LeBron what sports mean to us, and how it IS a marriage, for better and worse, and that we're much more attached to these players and teams than they realize. I blame David Stern for not throwing his body in front of that show. I blame everyone.

Emphasis mine. Admittedly, Corey gets at some of the more important aspects of this story: the making of a star by a media who is supposed to be reporting, not marketing. Yet, he's still very much wrapped up in the whole scenario. How could the NBA do such a thing?!? (Psst, because they've market tested their theories and now desire profitz~).

I dont want to pick on Corey but I want to use this as an example. Caring about sports as much as the person writing the above article does is absolutely foolhardy. It boils down to opportunity cost. To invest yourself in sports this much is to divest yourself--realistically or potentially--in books, friends, creativity, etc. Spectator sports are as much drugs for the masses as mainstream religion, a phenomenon it probably preceded. Once you start wanting to break your video equipment over some guy acting in his own best interest in some overly dignified spectator sport, it might be time to let it go.

The author alludes to this mentality in the following, albeit detached, musings.

We are already fools for caring about athletes considerably more than they care about us.

5. Sports shouldn't mean this much.

Yeah, no shit. The only people who make people like Lebron James an institution are the fans and the media. He's a great basketball player, and people love their distractions. But aren't there so many more important things to involve oneself with than what amounts to glorified, societally-accepted passivity? The answer is clearly yes, despite how many people need their crack.

Worth many whiles

2010-07-10T09:17:00.001+02:00

Encore

2010-07-10T06:52:00.001+02:00

Application of the Week

2010-07-10T05:08:00.001+02:00

People are truly bizarre.

Dear Elderly Harvard Law Professor:

I do believe I would be a perfect match for your position posted to Craigslist as I fit all of the requirements but one. I have not earned either my undergraduate or my graduate degree within the last five years. Could this requirement have a purpose beyond assuring interviews with cute young girls? If not please consider this 40-something candidate. After all, you are only offering fifteen bucks an hour and I'm still not hard on the eyes. There is also a lot to be said for a sense of humor! I have attached my resume for your consideration. Although I am no longer maintaining it, you can learn more about me at (redacted.com) where I expressed many political opinions for your review. If you think we might be able to work together I would be very interested in meeting. I live in Yardley.

Sincerely,

(name redacted)

Universe by Gas

2010-07-05T08:55:00.001+02:00

Rethinking Suburbia

2010-07-04T22:29:00.001+02:00

Drugs

2010-07-04T14:40:00.002+02:00

Cocaine trafficking becoming fairly advanced.

Central Jersey, Summer 2010

2010-07-02T08:19:00.001+02:00

Quote of the Summer

2010-06-29T07:43:00.000+02:00

Seriously now.

“They couldn’t have been spies,” she said. “Look what she did with the hydrangeas.”

Tuna

2010-06-28T00:34:00.006+02:00

New York Times Magazine has a long piece about the BlueFin tuna, a massive (and warm blooded) creature driven to extinction by relentless fishing and poor regulation. The whole article is worth a read if you have some time (it's quite long) but it serves as a great piece that shows the absurdity in thinking various planetary resources are infinite and how short-term thinking can really fuck things up. This graf seemed to outline the overarching issue.

By the 1930s, tuna sushi was commonplace in Japan, but demand could be met by local supplies of tuna, including the Pacific bluefin species, which dwells in Japan’s coastal waters. It was World War II that took tuna fishing to the next level. “To recover from the devastation of the war,” Ziro Suzuki, formerly of the Japanese Far Seas Research Laboratory, wrote me, “Japanese fishermen needed more tunas to secure food for domestic demand and also to earn more money by exporting tunas for canning industries in Europe and the U.S. Those needs urged the expansion of fishing grounds outside of the historic grounds of the western Pacific.” But this next fishing expansion was technological as well as territorial. Throughout the postwar period, the Japanese perfected industrial long-lining, a practice that employs thousands of baited hooks. In the 1970s Japanese manufacturers developed lightweight, high-strength polymers that were in turn spun into extensive drift nets that could be many miles long. Though drift nets were banned in the high seas by the early ’90s, in the 1970s hundreds of miles of them were often deployed in a single night. When drift nets and long lines were coupled with at-sea freezing technology invented around the same time, Japanese fishermen were able to fish the farthest reaches of the oceans while keeping their frozen tuna sushi-ready for as long as a year.

In prehistoric times, the hunting of fish began close by, in freshwater rivers and lakes and coastal ocean waters. But as human populations grew, easily accessed grounds fell short of demand. By the late Middle Ages, European stocks of freshwater fish and near-shore ocean species proved insufficient. By then, Basque and Viking fisherman had already moved on to the continental shelves off Canada, ushering in the Age of Cod — an age that escalated until the late 20th century, when some of the largest fishing vessels ever built devastated the once-two-billion-strong stock of cod on the Canadian Grand Banks. But there were still new places to fish. In the 1980s and ’90s, virgin fishing grounds were found in the Southern Hemisphere, and supplies of replacement fish like New Zealand hoki and Chilean sea bass helped seafood supplies keep pace with demand.

But appetites continued to outstrip supply. Global seafood consumption has increased consistently to the point where we now remove more wild fish and shellfish from the oceans every year than the weight of the human population of China. This latest surge has taken us past the Age of Cod and landed us squarely in the Age of Tuna. Fishing has expanded over the continental shelves into the international no-man’s territory known as the high seas — the ocean territory that begins outside of national “exclusive economic zones,” or E.E.Z.’s, usually 200 nautical miles out from a country’s coast, and continues until it hits the E.E.Z. of another country. The high seas are owned by no one and governed by largely feeble multinational agreements. According to the Sea Around Us project of the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Center, catches from the high seas have risen by 700 percent in the last half-century, and much of that increase is tuna. Moreover, because tuna cross so many boundaries, even when tuna do leave the high seas and tarry in any one nation’s territorial waters (as Atlantic bluefin usually do), they remain under the foggy international jurisdiction of poorly enforced tuna treaties.

Afghan Fun

2010-06-27T17:50:00.001+02:00

What are we doing there again?

The deepening estrangement of Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun communities presents a paradox for the Americans and their NATO partners. American commanders have concluded that only a political settlement can end the war. But in helping Mr. Karzai to make a deal, they risk reigniting Afghanistan’s ethnic strife.

Talks between Mr. Karzai and the Pakistani leaders have been unfolding here and in Islamabad for several weeks, with some discussions involving bestowing legitimacy on Taliban insurgents.

The leaders of these minority communities say that President Karzai appears determined to hand Taliban leaders a share of power — and Pakistan a large degree of influence inside the country. The Americans, desperate to end their involvement here, are helping Mr. Karzai along and shunning the Afghan opposition, they say.

Musak gud

2010-06-18T21:16:00.004+02:00

It's been a wild few weeks. This time two weeks ago I was still in Dublin. Two days before that I was in Berlin. In a week my brother will be living back home. And everything in between. Ben's off to California by rush-delivery, Leah's baggin' it West in a week (not that it makes a difference ;p), I'm writing short films in between procrastinating writing convoluted LBJ chapters, and my friends are fucking awesome. Events clustered in time seem to have their ebs and flows. For a while, nothing seems to be happening. The media is harping on Tiger Woods' many sexploits around the globe, work is a day-to-day, week-by-week soul numbing experience. You feel the strain of stagnant monotony. Then all of a sudden the world starts to tear itself apart and there's all this kinetic energy to move through, and everything appears to happen at once.

Musak good, in any case.

Vote Republican

2010-06-17T16:39:00.001+02:00

Haha.

After almost 60 days of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, and dozens of hearings and a critical White House meeting Wednesday, Tony Hayward, the embattled chief executive of BP, headed to Capitol Hill Thursday for what many expected to be a public flogging.

But the first Republican to speak, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), instead turned the heat on the White House, calling the BP escrow fund for cleanup a “shake down” and a “$20 billion slush fund.”

Barton, who has had a close relationship with the oil company, accused the White House of putting undue pressure on BP by having Attorney General Eric Holder threatening a criminal prosecution.

The Power Mentality

2010-06-14T22:45:00.003+02:00

This has been making the rounds recently. It's a minute-long video of a Democratic Congressman from North Carolina flipping his shit like a nobleman walking back to his yacht.

New and sophisticated business raison d'etre

2010-06-13T09:54:00.003+02:00

With BP’s stock price dropping sharply this week before recovering somewhat, Frank warned of a potential economic fallout from the White House’s efforts to bully BP into paying claims for which it may not have legal liability.

“Every other business doing business in the U.S. has to say: What happens when the government decides to come after me? They expect with Chavez in Venezuela, they have to account for that risk, but if the U.S. does it, that just reduces the incentive to invest in the United States,” Frank said. “The damage the administration is doing to the U.S. economy by playing these kinds of games is just appalling.”

Oooo. Fun battle. Though likely nothing good will come of it. Yay political system.

Edit:

Encore

Obama has recently sharpened his criticism of BP PLC as the company struggles to stop millions of gallons of oil gushing from its ruptured deep-sea well. Cameron is under pressure to get Obama to tone down the rhetoric against of a major British company, fearing it will hurt millions of Britons – as well as many Americans – who hold BP stock in investments and pension plans.

Cameron's office said the prime minister "expressed his sadness at the ongoing human and environmental catastrophe," but stressed BP's economic importance to Britain, the U.S. and other countries.

Leaked for Karzai's Education

2010-06-13T09:20:00.002+02:00

It's funny when it's so obvious.

Impossibly Incoherent Limbs

2010-06-10T04:59:00.002+02:00

You know it's summer when you get a string of nightmares that include Six-Flags' bizarre mascot.

Ryan Air

2010-05-28T10:00:00.003+02:00

On our way to the Dublin airport for our short hop to Berlin, I advised my dad to ready himself for anything concerning the airline we were taking. I had never personally flew Ryan Air before, but friends had, and I heard plenty of horror stories. They ranged from the egregious (Eric paid 80 Euro to get a bag checked, which was more than the cost of the ticket itself) to the unbelievable (an Irish guy I studied with in France swears that, after learning that the door wasn't completely latched, the cabin crew took some passenger's hoodie and plugged the gap before taking off).

But what happened at the airport nobody could have prepared us for. We stood in line as if it were any other airline, and when we got to the counter, the woman asked for tickets. What tickets? We were confused. Isn't this where a traveler checked in and received their boarding passes? Actually, no. One is supposed to print them out at home before coming to the airport. The ability to do so begins 15 days before departure and ends 4 hours before the gate closes. To print it out, it'll be 4- euro each. What's that you said? Four euro? That's obnoxious. No, she said, that'll be 40 euro each pass.

If the revolution comes, these people will all burn.

London

2010-05-25T04:41:00.003+02:00

Internet connection is balls right now, but I'll post more when I get a chance.

Eat!

2010-05-25T03:06:00.000+02:00

Photo was taken in a "diner" in Dublin.

Sestak

2010-05-19T06:06:00.002+02:00

Mark this a step in the right direction.

This time last year, Governor Ed Rendell:

"I'm a great admirer of Joe Sestak and worked hard to get him elected and re-elected," Rendell said. "And I'm going to work hard to get him re-elected when he runs for Congress next year. Not for the Senate. Joe should not run for the Senate in the Democratic primary. He would get killed."

"[Sestak] doesn't want to be marginalized," Rendell reasoned. "He doesn't want to get 15 or 18 percent [of the vote]. Joe should run for Congress again; establish some seniority. His time will come... but it is not this year."

h/t atrios

Afghanistan Progress

2010-05-18T17:05:00.002+02:00

There's not much of it. Nobody could have predicted...

Things in that unhappy country are going badly—much worse, of course, than Team Obama had to pretend this week but quite a bit worse than even a sensible skeptic might think. And unless Karzai takes to heart the lectures he heard (someone must have given him a stern talking-to amid all the bonhomie), things are only going to get worse still.

The evidence for this comes from an unclassified, 150-page Defense Department document called "Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan." Released in late April, it's the fifth in a series of semi-annual reports mandated by Congress. A few disheartening lines from its executive summary were duly recited by the media. But the full report is a hair-raiser. The news is almost all bad; and the few bits of good news turn out, on close inspection, to be extremely misleading.

Not so keen on Israel

2010-05-15T06:19:00.005+02:00

When I was in college, I had a solid idea that the "Israeli-Palestine Issue" was extremely controversial, especially after studying in eastern France and meeting a lot of Moroccans, but only a vague notion of what the actual conflict was, the history of it, and how its actors were currently acting.

It turns out, despite the issue's complexities (what large issue can't be labeled complex), most parties want the issue resolved and have a vested interest in seeing it come to a positive conclusion. Israel's current government, a coalition between right-wing and right-right-wing, clearly does not. (Israeli people voted this coalition in, to be sure ;x)

On the one hand, there's an argument to be made, if one were to believe the premises of Israeli generals, that they have something to gain by being this bellicose. On the other hand, it also seems that those in power over there have a common strain of psychotic asshole. This is in response to a non-violent boycott against settlement-made goods.

Yet Israeli officials have reacted sharply. At a committee meeting convened in Israel's Parliament, lawmakers proposed harsh retaliatory measures, including making it harder for Palestinians to import goods from other countries. Our port is their oxygen tube and closing it will only hurt them, not us," said Shraga Brosh, head of the Manufacturers Association of Israel. "This way, we will show them that after their slap in the face, we will not turn the other cheek." Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister, said Israel would try to prevent the Palestinian Authority from joining the World Trade Organization (as an observer) and possibly block the transfer of some European donations to Palestinians.

Sounds to me worse than an apartheid state.