I was disappointed by the speech. Your mileage may vary, of course. But it was basically standard Democratic Convention Boilerplate: nothing we haven't seen before from Obama, or for that matter, every Democratic presidential candidate in living memory.
Maybe the problem is that Obama has given too many good speeches. All Kerry or Bush had to do was show up on the podium and not vomit on their shoes, and we were impressed. Obama would have needed to channel Martin Luther King, Jr on a steroids to knock our socks off. This implies, that McCain will get a bigger bounce than Obama from his convention appearance; we'll see.
Barack Obama: please end our dependence on cheap platitudes about foreign oil
Question: How can you tell when a politician is lying?
Answer: His lips are moving.
Barack Obama just promised to end our dependance on oil from the Middle East. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, horse puckey.
It doesn't matter what we do: drill, research alternative energy, raise CAFE standards . . . in 2018, we'll still be using oil. Even if we discovered a magic source of clean renewable energy tomorrow, we'd still be using a lot of oil, because transitions of that magnitude take time. A lot of time. If a price competitive solar heating system came out tomorrow, would you run out and buy one? Or would you wait until the oil heater broke?
Moreover, cutting our consumption of oil will not do anything to reduce our dependance on oil from the Middle East. First, because other countries--countries we trade with--will still be using the stuff, so changes in oil prices will continue to whipsaw our economy. And second, because the price of oil is set on the world market. If we cut world consumption back to 20 million barrels a day, we would be totally dependent on Middle Eastern oil, because they're the low-cost producers--it takes, if I recall correctly, less than $5 a barrel to pull oil out of the ground in Saudi. The Middle East will be the last place to close the taps. The more we cut world consumption, the more dependent we'll be on crazy Middle Eastern governments. Those governments might not be as rich. But we'll still need them just as much, as long as oil remains critical.
And it will remain critical. Not just because our battery technology is not up to a thoroughgoing changeover in our transportation system. But also because we use oil for other things. Plastics--you may have noticed there's quite a lot of that stuff around, in a lot of important consumer goods. Avgas--we won't get battery powered planes any time soon. Fertilizer, upon which the green revolution depends; without petrochemicals and natural gas derivatives, Soylent Green would look prescient instead of silly.
Needless to say, since we do not, in fact, have any technology that looks likely to replace hydrocarbons in the immediate future, this statement is even more mendacious ludicrous.
Barack Obama certainly knows all this. He has excellent advisors. But the American public wants to hear that they can legislate the Middle East into irrelevance and Global Warming into Indian Summer. So Barack Obama is going to tell them they can have this In Thirty Days with Absolutely No Side Effects! Not least because you can be sure, John McCain will be making the same false statements exaggerated promises from his podium.
That's Obama's sound byte to cap the standard litany of Democratic hard-luck stories. I think Peggy Noonan nailed my dissatisfaction with the mythic, put-upon heroes of both sets of convention speeches:
Another problem with the Michelle speech. In order to
paint both her professional life and her husband's, and in order to
communicate what she feels is his singular compassion, she had to paint
an America that is darker, sadder, grimmer, than most Americans
experience their country to be. And this of course is an incomplete
picture, an incorrectly weighted picture. Sadness and struggle are part
of life, but so are guts and verve and achievement and success and
hardiness and...triumph. Democrats always get this wrong. Republicans get
it wrong too, but in a different way.
Democrats in the end speak most of, and seem to hold
the most sympathy for, the beset-upon single mother without medical
coverage for her children, and the soldier back from the war who needs
more help with post-traumatic stress disorder. They express the most
sympathy for the needy, the yearning, the marginalized and unwell. For
those, in short, who need more help from the government, meaning from
the government's treasury, meaning the money got from taxpayers.
Who happen, also, to be a generally beset-upon group.
Democrats show little expressed sympathy for those who
work to make the money the government taxes to help the beset-upon
mother and the soldier and the kids. They express little sympathy for
the middle-aged woman who owns a small dry cleaner and employs six
people and is, actually, day to day, stressed and depressed from the
burden of state, local and federal taxes, and regulations, and
lawsuits, and meetings with the accountant, and complaints as to
insufficient or incorrect efforts to meet guidelines regarding various
employee/employer rules and regulations. At Republican conventions they
express sympathy for this woman, as they do for those who are
entrepreneurial, who start businesses and create jobs and build things.
Republicans have, that is, sympathy for taxpayers. But they don't dwell
all that much, or show much expressed sympathy for, the sick mother
with the uninsured kids, and the soldier with the shot nerves.
Neither party ever gets it quite right, the balance
between the taxed and the needy, the suffering of one sort and the
suffering of another. You might say that in this both parties are
equally cold and equally warm, only to two different classes of
citizens.
So, all the stumping, the endless debates, the pointless primaries, the handshaking and baby kissing and donor stroking have come to this moment. Barack Obama stands before a crowd of nearly 100,000 and accepts his party's nomination with humility and pride. And you know what? I'm moved. I have a low opinion of politicians, and I do not expect Obama to change the world. But he's nonetheless inspiring. The least of it is that America has nominated a black man--the son of immigrants--to be the likely next president of the United States. Even forgetting that, Obama makes you want to believe in him. That's why the conservatives hate him really hate him--the way that many liberals still say the name "Reagan" the way my grandmother said "Satan". Obama will not change the world. But he makes his ideas appealing by sheer force of personality.
The very, very special tribute video is starting. If you wondered what Obama's biopic would look like . . . well, now you know. I'm really hoping that after the video ends, the entire stadium will break into the final number from the Muppet Movie. Indeed, it occurs to me that the Obama campaign to date bears a certain resemblance to the opening:
My companion, a friend from my past life as an IT professional who is so normal that he doesn't even have a blog, just asked "So what happens if Obama gets assassinated?"
Given the parallels between his campaign and Bobby Kennedy's, that's been the topic of some discussion around me in the past. The consensus is that Biden gets the top slot, but of course, by some logic it should be Hillary. Anyone actually know the answer?
The banality of cable news, part 84,908 in a continuing series
Wolf Blitzer tells me that we're only minutes away from something extremely exciting . . . a video tribute to Barack Obama! What a very thrilling life he must lead . . .
I'm in a bar on 3rd Avenue, which had to be persuaded to put CNN on. I'd forgotten that there were places out there that didn't consider political conventions The Greatest Show on Earth. Joe Biden has just delivered a cortated version of the standard convention speech:
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are here because of the American Dream. Barack Obama, that is--isn't he dreamy, folks? And he cares about hardworking American families, because that's the kind of guy he is: a hardworking American. With a family. An American family. That's why he's going to make all of your dreams come true. Vote for Barack Obama and you'll be taller, smarter, and possessed of a fuller, more luxuriant head of hair. That's right, your whites will be whiter and your brings brighter if you'll just pull the lever for Obama/Biden. Also, every one of you will get a free trip to Disneyland!
Briefly-- this post
reminded me of an important fact about the debate over crime.
Discussions of crime and crime prevention tend to be deeply political
and often quite harsh, with differing camps making various accusations
of each other. Liberals' concern for rights of the accused is often
represented by conservatives as a failure to be tough on crime.
Conservatives' tendency to push for harsh punishment and aggressive
enforcement is often represented by liberals as a slouch towards
totalitarianism.
But the actual small-scale policy prescriptions
that work best to reduce crime tend to be rather apolitical, or so it
seems to me. Much has been made of the aggression of the Giuliani-era
police force in New York city, and the enormous reduction in crime
during that period. (I find the NYPD's record on racial equity and the
number of violent acts against black men during that time very
disturbing.) But the people who know the best all seem to think that
the gains weren't from racial profiling or more aggressive police
actions, but from the increase in the number of police officers and the
large increase in information-sharing within the department. Boots on
the ground and intra-agency interoperability and communication seem to
be the most important facet of reducing crime in our nation's cities.
And those are both things that I find people of most political stripes
are amenable to.
Though I think this has a lot of merit, I don't think it's quite that simple. Certainly, there's broad agreement on some policies that everyone should be for: put more cops on the street, get them out of their cars and talking to the community, and hold precinct commanders responsible for reducing crime in their districts. (I was recently shocked to be told that DC still hasn't implemented the computer-based analyses, modeled on the Compstat system pioneered in New York by Bill Bratton, that are now standard in most major cities. No wonder crime is still so high).
But the fact is, the more cops you put on the street, the more interactions they will have with citizens. And in a big city, where many of those citizens will be strangers, this means more potential for things to go dramatically wrong.
Now, you can mitigate this by forcing beat cops to stay on their beat until they really know the place, so they spend less time hassling "good kids". And certainly, the quasi-military tactics that have become popular all over the country (with voters as well as police departments) are often counterproductive bits of political theater. But the fact remains that if you put more police on the street, you are probably going to end up with more complaints--not least because criminals don't enjoy being hassled any more than anyone else.
Mickey Kaus points to a hopeful break in the DNC's love affair with the teacher's unions:
Things We Thought We'd Never See: Democrats Rally Against the Teachers' Unions! I went to the Ed Challenge for Change event mainly
to schmooze. I almost didn't stay for the panels, being in no mood for
what I expected would, even among these reformers, be an hour of vague
EdBlob talk about "change" and "accountability" and "resources" that
would tactfully ignore the elephant in the room, namely the teachers'
unions. I was so wrong. One panelist--I think it was Peter Groff,
president of the Colorado State Senate, got the ball rolling by
complaining that when the children's agenda meets the adult agenda, the
"adult agenda wins too often." Then Cory Booker of Newark attacked
teachers unions specifically--and there was applause. In a room of 500 people at the Democratic convention! "The
politics are so vicious," Booker complained, remembering how he'd been
told his political career would be over if he kept pushing school
choice, how early on he'd gotten help from Republicans rather than from
Democrats. The party would "have to admit as Democrats we have been wrong on education." Loud applause! Mayor
Adrian Fenty of D.C. joined in, describing the AFT's attempt to block
the proposed pathbreaking D.C. teacher contract. Booker denounced
"insane work rules," and Groff talked about doing the bidding of "those
folks who are giving money [for campaigns], and you know who I'm
talking about." Yes, they did!
As Jon Alter, moderating the
next panel, noted, it was hard to imagine this event happening at the
previous Democratic conventions. (If it had there would have been maybe
15 people in the room, not 500.) Alter called it a "landmark" future
historians should note. Maybe he was right.
The problem with teacher's unions is inherent in the way that Democrats talk about unions: by banding together, they say, you create a powerful counterweight equal and opposite to the power of the companies in negotiations.
So the schools have a gigantic, powerful bargaining bloc. Who doesn't have a bargaining bloc? The kids.
Of course, the customers of corporations don't bargain with unions either--but they have the right of exit, which is what prevents the unions (or their corporate bosses) from turning them upside down and shaking them until the last nickel falls out of their pockets. Unsurprisingly, the schools in this country that function worst are the ones where the kids have no realistic ability to exit. So for whom are those schools run? The teacher's unions, the principal's unions, the janitor's unions, the friends and relations of people with seats on the school board. The children have the least powerful voice. Which is why, as far as I can tell, every single thing that is proposed by any of these groups "for the children" has the primary side effect of employing more teachers/janitors/principals, paying same more, or making their jobs more pleasant.
Moreover, if you talk to reformers in urban schools--ardent Democrats all!--every single one of them will say that they can't get anything done with the unions blocking them. Nor are they merely looking for an excuse. They always come armed with ample, and chilling, cases in point.
One example: extraordinary principals can make a big difference in urban schools. Joel Klein offered a proposal to give principals sizeable "hazard pay" bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars a year to transfer to the most severely underperforming schools in the district. The principal's union blocked it. Why? The principals wouldn't accrue pension benefits on the extra pay.
So what? any sane person would have asked (and indeed, my understanding is that Joel Klein did just that). The transfer was entirely voluntary. The principals would be sacrificing nothing, and indeed, getting extra money. But the principal's union shut it down.
On the face of it, this seems incomprehensible: a union turning down a deal that gave some of their members more money, and none of their members less money, and might well turn around some failing schools. Was this for the kids? No. Was it even for the principals involved? Again, no. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this was about protecting the underperforming principals--making sure no Johnny-come-lately transferred into their school and demonstrated that you could, so, improve the place. After all, a union's job is to act as if its membership is, save for objective (and usually almost useless) credentials like seniority and education degrees, entirely interchangeable. Musn't imply that some of the cogs are better than others.
This should not happen. And certainly, it should not be a policy priority to give these unions the power to make it happen, as it most certainly is for the Democratic party right now. Leave aside the question of whether unions are just and right in other fields. Education is too important, and in this country, too screwed up, to tolerate this kind of rent seeking.
Since Crunchy Cons was published in 2006, I've taken on a
lot of criticism from fellow conservatives about the supposedly
unrealistic ideals the book champions--especially when I call on
conservatives to make consumer and lifestyle choices that are more in
line with what we profess to believe.
Some of these
challenges have been valid. But I've found that many, perhaps most, of
the criticism says more about the challenger's unwillingness to try
something difficult and discomfiting than about the inherent value of
the ideas. How easy it is for mere expedience to masquerade as
principled realism.
And, truth to tell, that's where my
chicken agita came from. See, I'm the sort of person who loves to read
Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan, and to talk about Slow Food, and the
integrity of our farms, yada yada. I really do believe that not
everyone is called to light out for the organic prairies, and that city
people have an important role to play in the sustenance and growth of
small family farms, if only by choosing to purchase their meat, dairy,
fruits and vegetables from these producers.
But raise
chickens myself? Even just three? Well now, squire, let's not be hasty.
Why risk failure, and making fools of ourselves? I thought back to how
in my childhood, we country people used to laugh at the city lawyers
and politicians who used to come up to the hills during deer hunting
season and prance around like seasoned woodsmen. Wouldn't I, long
removed from my rural roots and thoroughly urbanized, risk being that
kind of poseur?
Crunchy cons--and everyone else--wouldn't be so afraid of this if the rest of us didn't get mad at people who have difficult ideals, and then put them into practice. As long as no one else is doing it, we can let our own behavior go, swept along unthinkingly in the comforting certainty of the herd. But once one of the sheep starts moving in a different direction, we have to start wondering if we're going the right way.
Luckily for me, I'm pretty sure my apartment is too small to do much in the way of farming.
The price of rat meat has tripled in Cambodia as inflation has pushed other kinds of meat out of reach of the poor. There's nothing inherently awful about eating rats, as long as they're cooked--I've eaten squirrel and possum, and they're quite tasty. But as Jared Diamond points out in Collapse, the minute societies have access to large-animal protein, they generally stop eating things like mice and bugs. This is probably because they are a lot of work for a little protein, but they acquire the disgust attached to the food of desperation. People who eat rats are people close enough to the verge of starvation to overcome that disgust.
Cambodia is suffering from two broad problems plaguing Asia. Almost all of the governments are deliberately inflating their currencies in order to keep them cheap against the dollar and thus stimulate exports. That rapid (double-digit) inflation is pushing many goods out of reach of the poor.
The other problem is that China is getting rich. Over the long run, this will be a great thing for everyone. In the short term, however, richer Chinese are competing for things like meat and rice in local markets. Several Asian nations have banned the export of rice in order to counteract that pressure, but this is stopgap at best--in the short run, you may may rice cheaper locally, but in the long run, you've hurt local farmers, and the rice will probably leak across the border anyway. Vietnam is basically built like a noodle--few farmers are too far from the border to bring their crop somewhere else.
The big news this week is that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are
in love. Everyone is cool with it, especially Bill Clinton. This may
prove to be a complicated relationship, however, because Obama is
actually Jesus Christ. His ascension is scheduled to take place before
a live audience tonight in Denver at approximately 8:30 Mountain
Daylight Time.
There was some question about whether Obama's heavenly citizenship
will prohibit him from serving as U.S. president, but legal experts
concur that since heaven is somewhere "way way up there," it is
technically in U.S. airspace. They note by way of precedent that Dick
Cheney did not stop being Vice-President for the 18 consecutive months
he spent flying across the country after the 9/11 attacks.
In related news, Obama has selected Joe Biden to be his
Vice-President. Biden is a wise statesman from the Senate, and not the
mean-spirited, plagiarizing, third-rate legal mind and lifetime
politician from Scranton who also goes by that name.
Obama's team is also expected to include Moses as National Security
Advisor, St. Paul as Secretary of State, and Elijah as campaign
spokesman.
The Republicans, meanwhile, plan to proceed with their convention
next week at an undisclosed IHOP in Canada, where John McCain will lie
in state.
Tyler Cowen notes that yes, eating less meat would help fight global warming much better than eating local:
In my view we do have duties to behave more responsibly at the dinner
table but the simple admonition "eat less meat" will do. Maybe you
don't like tofu but sardines are delicious, or use Goya small red beans
with shredded Mexican cheese (even the Kraft package is decent) and
ground chile on a corn tortilla. Don't forget the lime on top.
The problem is, almost no one likes tofu initially. It's an acquired taste, like caviar or asparagus, though for the opposite reason--it has barely any flavor, so you focus on the consistency. And most people don't care for the consistency.
There are good reasons to learn to love it, however. For one thing, it's cheap. For another, it's low fat and high protein. For a third, it keeps approximately forever. And most importantly, cooked right, it's delicious. Tofu is an incredibly versatile foodstuff. You never have to worry about whether it goes with another food--it does. It's the ultimate flavor vehicle.
The easiest way to learn to like tofu is to start with extra firm, which has the consistency of a moderately dry mozzarella. And it does excellent work anywhere you'd normally use cold mozarella--sliced thin with tomatoes, roasted red peppers and pesto on a sandwich, or tossed into your pasta primavera.
Tofu also makes an excellent substitute for scrambled eggs. No, I swear--even wholeheartedly carnivore friends have grudgingly admitted that, okay, my tofu scramble is pretty good. You just take your firm tofu, chop it moderately fine, and throw it on top of sauteed vegetables (I use olive oil, but you could use butter): I like spinach, mushroom, and frozen artichoke hearts, generously laced with crushed red pepper, sea salt, and crushed garlic. But you could use almost anything. Those flirting with veganism should throw in some nutritional yeast for its parmesan-cheesy flavor, and its B-12.
Tofu's also pretty good grilled, though you want to freeze it first, to make it shed its extra moisture. Pop a loaf of extra firm in the freezer for a few hours, slice about 1/2 inch thick (or an inch, if you're starting to like the stuff), and treat it the way you would chicken--spice rubs, barbecue sauce, whatever. A carnivore with whom I was recently out to dinner confessed that my grilled tofu was better than his entree. And his entree must have been pretty good, since he almost licked the plate.
Then there's the old stir-fry standby. Nasoya sells pre-cubed super firm tofu, which makes it super-easy to throw it into your stir fried vegetables for a few minutes at the end--just enough to absorb the sauce.
I know, I know--you won't try it. You don't LIKE tofu, and you won't be MADE to like it by some vegan nuthatch. But a girl's gotta try. If I can just convince one person to grill a few slabs of tofu along with their steaks, I'll feel its all been worthwhile.
I feel like there is an unarticulated doing/allowing issue floating
around in the background in this debate. Say the U.S. Congress cuts top
tax rates. Is this politics causing higher inequality? Or is
this evidence of relative indifference about allowing higher
inequality? The left has the tendency to characterize every policy that
might allow income inequality to rise as one intended specifically to
have this result. This is a lot like the right's characterizing, say,
workplace safety regulation as a specific attempt to stymie the growth
of small business. In each case, those opposed to a policy see its
side-effects as more salient than the primary effects intended by those
who favor it. Imputations of bad faith -- "you're really after
the side-effect and your stated intention is garnish for malice" -- are
never far behind. Having read most of the recent left-leaning
literature on the politics of rising inequality, it is disconcerting to
see the argument from malicious bad faith as far and away the dominant
narrative. It's hard to find anyone who even tries to fairly
understand the ideas behind the recent American right's preference for
policies that do in fact tend to allow greater income inequality. Am I
wrong to find this pathetic?
Having sat in right-wing/libertarian groups trying to convince the members that no, actually, the environmental movement isn't just faking an interest in the environment in order to further its true goal of halting/reversing economic progress, I can only say: a pox on both your houses.
The SEC is proposing to move firms towards using international accounting standards:
The Securities and Exchange Commission voted
unanimously to seek public comment for 60 days on a "road map" to move
from U.S. to international accounting. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox
predicted U.S. regulators likely would vote again "late this year" on
whether to endorse the plan.
The plan calls for early, voluntary use of
international accounting standards by large U.S. multinational firms in
2010, followed by an SEC vote in 2011 on whether to require all U.S.
companies to make the switch. The decision would rest on whether key
changes occur by then, including international accounting
standard-setters obtaining independent funding.
Under the timetable outlined by the SEC, the switch to
international accounting could be staggered, starting with large U.S.
companies in 2014, followed by mid-sized companies in 2015 and small
companies in 2016.
"The proposed roadmap is cautious and careful," Mr.
Cox said at a public meeting to consider the matter. SEC Commissioner
Elisse Walter called the plan a momentous one that shows the U.S. is
serious about considering a movement toward international accounting
standards.
However, Ms. Walter said the U.S. should vote in 2011
to approve the switch "if and only if" certain conditions are met by
then. The plan sets seven "milestones" to be met, including obtaining
an independent, stable source of funding for the London-based
International Accounting Standards Board.
The "road map" also calls for continued collaboration
between the IASB and the Connecticut-based U.S. Financial Accounting
Standards Board to narrow differences between U.S. and international
accounting rules; and changes to the ways in which U.S. accountants are
educated and trained.
The transition may well be messier for small firms than for large firms; large firms have more complicated finances, but they also have the means to hire top-notch accountants with loads of international experience on their staff. An even bigger issue is what happens when the SEC disagrees with the IASB. Currently, it has the power to overrule the nominally private FASB that sets accounting standards for the US. It will not have so much pull with the international board.
Overall, however, this makes sense. The difference between international and American accounting standards has cost US exchanges business in recent years, as companies decline to keep two sets of books. And it has made it somewhat harder to compare the performance of American firms with their foreign counterparts, which makes global capital markets marginally less efficient than they should be.
When the first accounting scandal hits, however, stand by for the wingnuts on both left and right wailing about the tyranny of global finance.
Microsoft has unveiled its Internet Explorer 8 browser equipped with
a privacy feature that could threaten the advertising model of web
search rivals such as Google.
Users
of the browser can opt to access websites in private, hiding their
personal details from search engines that use the information to target
advertising at individuals.
The
feature, called InPrivate, has been dubbed in some blog postings as
"porn mode", because it also hides the browsing history from other
people using the same computer.
However, Microsoft
points to examples of buying birthday presents or searching for medical
ailments as areas where InPrivate was also of benefit to customers.
John Curran, a director at Microsoft UK, said: "Some people will always want to be 'InPrivate', but there is a trade-off."
Google
has faced an outcry over the amount of information it collects from
users of its services. David Mitchell, an information technology
analyst at Ovum, said: "If the hype around privacy gains more
credibility, more people will hit the private button. There is a
potential threat here to click-through [display] advertising."
I think we may be sure that Microsoft was less concerned with the tender feelings of porn consumers (and/or their spouses) and more concerned with striking a blow at Google.
But this has broader applications than Google. Media companies are still trying to figure out how to make web advertising lucrative enough to support a full, print-style application--Politico is a rousing success, and yet makes 60% of its revenue from a cheat sheet it prints for a paltry few tens of thousands of readers. We don't need a new web browser making things even harder than they already are.
Some scientists in Germany say they've found an easier way to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen, possibly opening the way for solar-powered hydrogen production. Hydrogen probably remains our best hope for liberating the transportation network from oil, for reasons that Tom Lee recently explained to Ryan Avent:
I think this is a point that's worth making here and at some length:
"presum[ing that] battery technology improves" is setting yourself up
for failure.
In truth, there have only been a few noteworthy improvements in
battery tech during Ryan and my lifetimes: longer-lived NiCd and NiMH
batteries; some improvement in alkaline batteries; and the
popularization of lithium batteries. But look closer and you'll realize
that most of these aren't actually battery innovations, per se: they're
benefits of the microprocessor revolution. Cheap, smart charging
circuitry allowed us to avoid memory effects; to balance load across
cells; and to monitor lithium cells' temperature and voltage as they
charge so that they don't catch fire (well... usually),
thereby finally making lithium a viable option for consumer
electronics. Those are all important developments, but at this point
we've wrung about as much as we can out of charging our batteries more
cleverly.
None of this has done much to improve the fundamental energy storage
densities of the underlying chemistries. These have been known for a
long time now, and nothing is going to change them -- nor are there any more promising elements like lithium
waiting to be tamed (well, none that aren't radioactive, anyway). The
glacial pace of improvement in battery technology really can't be
overemphasized. The lead-acid battery was developed in 1859, for pete's
sake. It's really heavy relative to the energy it stores, can produce
explosive fumes if overcharged, and sometimes requires the addition of
distilled water. Yet it's still the best battery technology we have for
supplying the high current necessary to turn over an engine. A century
and a half and we haven't come up with anything better!
It may seem like batteries have improved dramatically --
consider the lifespan of an iPod Nano versus a portable cassette
player. But this is misleading. In fact it's a byproduct of more
energy-efficient technologies. Which isn't to dismiss energy effiency!
But electric motors are already extremely efficient. And when
it comes to vehicles, we're unfortunately dealing with hard physical
limits related to how much energy it takes to move a car. So long as
we're committed to EVs being able to perform like and drive safely near
gasoline-powered cars, we will find ourselves with less room for
improvement than people would like to think.
I don't mean to be a downer, but it's difficult to overstate what a
serious problem this is, or for how long it's been one. Hydrocarbons
are an unbelievably efficient way to store energy when compared to
electrochemical cells, and I seriously doubt anything will change that.
Hopefully I'll be proven wrong. But smart people have been working on
the battery problem for decades and decades, propelled by the lure of
the financial bonanza that a breakthrough would represent. And while
they've made impressive improvements, none come anywhere close to
competing with gasoline's energy density. We're still an order of magnitude away.
There's a lot of optimism on both the center-left and the right that all we really need to do to tackle the problem of global warming/peak oil is throw a hell of a lot of money at the problem, and presto! A new technology will arise that will obviate the need for any lifestyle change more obnoxious than keeping the house size to 3,000 square feet. But as I've said to liberals in re: other problems, the fact that there is a problem does not imply that there is a solution. Yes, we found petroleum to replace whale oil. This does not therefore mean, as night follows day, that we will find something to replace petroleum. We will find something to replace petroleum if there is something that can replace petroleum. There might not be. And if there is something, Tom's post implies that it probably isn't going to be hyper-efficient electric cars, which might at any rate merely shift the anxiety from petroleum supplies to lithium.
Hydrogen looks more promising in many ways. On the other hand, finding a way to make the stuff cheaply out of clean energy is necessary, but not sufficient, to solve our problems. You also have to build a distribution network, and make it so the highly pressurized hydrogen doesn't set your car on fire. This is a massive task. Think how long it took from the emergence of the internal combustion engine in the 1890s, to being reasonably certain of finding a gas station wherever you happened to be driving: decades, even as automobile use exploded.
The much-talked-about "Conservative version of Slate" launched today, with the slightly inscrutable name of Culture11. Full disclosure: I'm fairly close to its editorial staff. Fuller disclosure: it's still pretty awesome. Paricularly recommend this piece by Cheryl Miller on Nashville--where rock stars go to die, and an essay on an FBI agent turned ACLU lawyer. But as Instapundit would say, read the whole thing.
Public health researchers studied 20,000 Australians to determine that despite the stereotype that people with off-the-beaten-path sexual interests are somehow damaged, men who take part in BDSM score significantly lower on a scale of mental distress than other men.
The prurient mind immediately wonders if there is a difference between the anxiety levels of those who are beaten, and those who do the beating; being tied up and flogged does seem like the sort of thing that is supposed to make you anxious. But that's not really where I'm going with this.
My secondmost immediate thought was, of course, of evangelical Christians. Specifically, the fact that they report being happier than the rest of us. The article in Christianity Today argues that this is a function of the social support provided by an inclusive community. But I wonder if it isn't, in part, the decision to stand out from the community that leads to greater self-reported happiness. People who have decided to do anything so far outside of the mainstream are people who a) have a powerful preference and b) have satisfied that preference. The mainstream, on the other hand, contains all the people who have extreme preferences, but not the willpower to buck convention and satisfy them.
Against this, of course, are the people who have stayed in the evangelical Christian community since birth. But the churn rate is quite high, which is why we all know so many people who used to be religious, and also quite a few who have found religion in adulthood. In modern America, it's relatively easy to exit a religious community, either by a series of steps through progressively less demanding congregations, or by moving across country and letting your parents think you're still going to church. And I'd imagine that those who have the courage to leave a church that isn't satisfying them are also happier than the run of the mill.
I think Yglesias has made this same point before, but it's always
good to reiterate the many ways transit can be good for safety. As an
adult, I enjoy that I can get home from bars in this city, quickly and
easily, by walking or taking transit or hailing a cab. As an occasional
driver, I'm very happy to know that other people have those options, as
well. This goes for other stuff, too. Young drivers are dangerous to
themselves and others. I'd rather my sixteen year old (if I had one) be
able to get around via transit than be in a car all the time, and I'm
glad sixteen year olds in this city have a transit option. Ditto for
older drivers.
Driving is an inherently dangerous act-you're piloting an enormous
hunk of metal around at high speed-and should only be done by sober,
competent adults who are preferably not distracted by phones or dinner
or make-up or the newspaper. It would be nice if those who weren't
competent adults or sober could get around without a car, and it would
be nice if more people who wanted to read or talk on the phone during
their commute could do so without driving. Maybe then, we wouldn't be celebrating 41,000 annual traffic deaths as a good year for highway safety.
My former co-blogger reads about Hans Monderman, the madman/genius who took out the street signs and traffic restrictions in a Holland town, with surprising results:
As I watched the intricate social ballet that occurred as cars and
bikes slowed to enter the circle (pedestrians were meant to cross at
crosswalks placed a bit before the intersection), Monderman performed a
favorite trick. He walked, backward and with eyes closed, into the
Laweiplein. The traffic made its way around him. No one honked, he
wasn't struck. Instead of a binary, mechanistic process--stop, go--the
movement of traffic and pedestrians in the circle felt human and
organic.
A year after the change, the results of this "extreme
makeover" were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the
intersection-- buses spent less time waiting to get through, for
example-- but there were half as many accidents, even though total car
traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering college
who studied the intersection reported that both drivers and, unusually,
cyclists were using signals-- of the electronic or hand variety-- more
often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman's ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he "would have changed it immediately." Emphasis mine.
His thoughts:
When thinking about human behavior, it makes sense to understand what
people perceive, which may be different from how things are, and will
almost certainly be very different from how a removed third party
thinks them to be. Traffic accidents are predominantly caused by people
being inattentive. Increase the feeling of risk, and you increase the
attention. I know when I am in traffic on my bike, I'm hyper-vigilant,
and this has made me a better car driver.
This is an electoral problem. What are we trying to consume: actual safety, or the feeling of safety? This is a more important question than it looks like. Feeling safe is an actual good that improves people's lives; if you spend a lot of time worrying about terrorist attacks, your quality of life is lowered even if you're never actually killed by a terrorist.
The problem is that in this case, there's a direct tradeoff between actual safety and feeling safe. The safer people feel on the road, the more likely they are to get into accidents--which is why lots of innovations, like seatbelts, have underdelivered in mortality improvements. Load up someone's car with a seatbelt, anti-lock brakes, etc., and you get big gains in safety, which are then at least partially eroded because people who feel their cars are protecting them are more likely to drive like morons. Tragically, they are at least as likely to hurt someone else as they are to hurt themselves. There's nothing quite so infuriating as seeing some idiot with southern plates driving his jeep too fast in the snow because he doesn't realize that four wheel drive provides faster acceleration but does nothing for his stopping radius. Too often, he gets a rapid education in automotive physics when he skids into the back of a minivan being driven at sensible speed.
The other problem is that politicians do themselves no good by delivering actual safety if it is accompanied by a perceived increase in risk. So we get laws, from traffic stops to airport security, that enhance the perception of security while doing little-to-nothing to actually make us safer.
Don't. Feed. The. Trolls. Reasoning with a comment troll is like arguing politics with a pig. You don't get anywhere, and it annoys both you and the pig.
Ann Althouse and I did a Bloggingheads yesterday on politics, internet trolls, and my ongoing battle with whatever hideous disease has kept me coughing for the last month. As the folks at Bloggingheads said, I'm still clearly under the weather, but Ann's in top form, so check it out.
Bryan Caplan has some provocative questions for economists who are strong civil libertarians, but believe in considerable intervention in economic markets:
This isn't an easy pattern to understand. If you take market failure
theories seriously, it's child's play to apply them expression.
Negative externalities? Come on - many bloggers write for the sole purpose
of offending others! Asymmetric information? Hey, if information were
symmetric, what would be the point of sharing your thoughts with the
world?
I'm curious about why economists so uniformly embrace civil
liberties. But I'm especially curious about why so many non-libertarian
economists end up being civil libertarians. So I'll aim my questions at the latter group - but whatever your view, feel free to chime in.
Questions:
1. Are markets for ideas/culture less subject to market failure than other markets? Why or why not?
2. Is well-intended regulation of idea/culture markets more likely
to have unintended negative consequences than well-intended regulation
of other markets?
3. Is regulation of idea/culture markets less likely to be well-intended than regulation of other markets?
4. Is the average consumer a better judge of his own best interest in idea/culture markets than in other markets?
5. Is efficiency less normatively important in idea/culture markets
than in other markets? If so, what normative goal(s) do we satisfy by
sacrificing efficiency?
6. Should countries with weak civil liberties liberalize their
regulation of idea/culture markets? If so, would you advocate "shock
therapy"? Why or why not?
Just so you can't accuse me of having a hidden agenda, let me state
my agenda openly. I think that the typical social democratic
economist's arguments in favor of civil liberties are much weaker than
the typical free-market economist's arguments in favor of laissez-faire
for the broader economy. If a free-market economist opposed regulation
of the oil industry on the same grounds that the typical economist
opposes regulation of religion, the typical economist would dismiss him
as a "market fundamentalist."
If we think of academics as being dominant players in the marketplace of ideas, this doesn't seem to me to be all that different from the liberal professionals I know who can explain why every industry except the one they happen to work for needs heavier regulation. But then I'm a market fundamentalist in all markets, including those for ideas, so you'd expect me to say that.
According to Nielsen, none of you are watching the conventions. An even lower none than in 2004, which was itself a dramatic decline from the lackluster ratings of 2000. And why would you? You could replace all the speeches with the following template:
Blather, blather, blather, American dream, blather, blather, hard working American families, blather, blather, future, blather, blather, anecdote about how the candidate comes from a hardworking American family, blather, blather, national service, blather, American dream, blather, blather, blather, community, blather, God, blather, education, blather blather blather blather environment, blather, God again, blather blather blather blather blather blather sea to shining sea, the end. God Bless America!
I doubt anyone would notice, even if the candidates actually said the word "blather" ninety times. Not for nothing did PJ O'Rourke dub these things "an oleo high-colonic". The most interesting commentary I've heard so far has come via Twitter, and involves the relative quality of the hors d'oeuvres at the various media cocktail parties.
Perhaps the most annoying feature is that you can't escape it--even if you don't watch the Potemkin Pep-Rallies themselves, you can't turn on the morning news without seeing some minor democratic functionary ponderously repeating whatever canned line they've developed for their 11:30 am 10 minute convention speech, which will be delivered to a rapt audience of television grips and their mother. This morning it was someone I've never heard of rambling about Enron Energy Economics or some similarly sonorous nonsense syllables, which were repeated at least twenty times during a half-hour commentator spot. Next week it will undoubtedly be the Assistant Comptroller of Phoenix complaining about Obama Peddling Ponzi Prosperity.
Sadly, I can't avoid watching them; it's my job. But the rest of you--save yourselves! Don't worry about me--I've got a .45 and a bottle of whiskey right here by my side for when it gets to be too much. Meanwhile, my beloved Dr. Boli has a few suggestions for alternaprogramming:
Dumont Network: Takedown Notice (crime
drama). A fast-paced new drama focusing on the heroic self-appointed
enforcers of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Tonight: In the
pilot episode, Dirk and Moira go after a gang of church mothers whose
"entertainment" for their youth group consists of commercial DVDs not
licensed for public exhibition.
Northern Broadcasting System:Stones of the City
(crime drama). This latest entry in the vampire-building-inspector
genre follows the adventures of Sam Ionescu, inspector for the city of
Washington (Penna.). Tonight: New tenants complain that the walls of
their 18th-century farmhouse are oozing blood. Has Sam found his dream
house?
Metromedia:Al 'n' Me
(comedy). The wacky adventures of best buddies Alexander and
Hephaestion as they look for new worlds to conquer. Tonight: Stuck in
the two-bit burgh of Gordium, Al and Hephaestion really need an ox-cart
to impress the chicks - but the only one available is all tied up with
an impossible knot.
Golf Network: The Golf Show (golf). Tonight: Badminton.
Coolest thing I've seen all week. Anyone have an opinion about whether it, would, like, work? I don't want to be the hippest corpse at the pearly gates.
I'm not sure what I think about this. I will note that I have gotten non-abortion care at Planned Parenthood, and been disgusted by the fact that they need metal detectors and bag searches. Whatever your opinion on abortion--and mine is rather deeply conflicted--women getting medical care should not have to choose between invasive searches, and fearing for their lives. Nor did I care for the rosary-praying woman who told me I would regret "it" for the rest of my life, as if there were no reason to go to a women's health care center unless you were getting your womb vacuumed out. On the other hand, I was also struck by how pitifully, pitifully young were the girls there for pregnancy tests. Overall, everything about the visits made me think "there has to be a better way".
Allergens: Contains peanuts. Made in a plant that processes tree nuts.
We live in degenerate times, my friends. Our ancestors got into ships that would hardly do for a weekend sail on the lake, crossed stormy oceans, fought mountain cats and drought, sailed their prairie schooners into the wilderness, all without as much as a single "Warning: Contains wild animal ingredients" label slapped on the prairie. Ours is perhaps a more complicated time, and farther from the food chain, we may need more guidance. Indeed, as a vegan, I'm very glad of the labels informing me when something contains milk. But I hardly need to be told that all of the t-bones decaying wetly in the refrigerator case have meat in them.
If it is true that Americans have come to a state when they need to be informed that their peanut butter contains, yes, peanuts, then it is time to give the land back to the Indians. Forget the injustice of our initial seizure. A people who cannot determine, merely by glancing at the label, that something called "Peanut Butter" is likely to have quite a few groundnuts in it--that people does not deserve to be in charge of the sunglass concession at the mall, much less a once-great nation.
"It is a complex miasma of longstanding social and economic
gentrification; of people, regular and celebrity, of various races and
ethnicities choosing to remain sequestered from one another, except
during the hours between 9am and 5pm, or when they get their Chinese
food delivered; of hot dog carts parked next to falafel carts parked
next to storefront Wendys and Starbucks, creating a wonderfully
malodorous assault on one's senses, and possibly killing them; of the
media elite and the blogging underclass, and vice versa, of course; of
traffic and pigeons and sometime smells of caramel or fudge or swamp
gas wafting in from New Jersey; of layoffs at newspapers, TV anchors
under layers of makeup and radio reporters acting like the days of the
week are 'dress-down Fridays'; of sidewalk vendors selling goods you'd
rather not know, or acknowledge, weren't and will never be 'the real
thing'; of tall buildings that spit debris onto unwitting pedestrians
below, and pedestrians that spit; and, above all, of triumph in love,
of love in triumph, of all things ever thought romantic and tragic,
right and wrong in the affairs of the heart. That, my child, is
Manhattan, a floe of schist in humanity's complex sea, and never, my
child, shall we tramp there."
On the train up to New York, where I am working this week, I read Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life. Pete Hamill is, in many ways, a very unlikeable man, and the book breathes a certain belief that to state one's sins firmly is to be forgiven for them. But the book is nonetheless still very good in many ways, not least
