It's okay to call Oedipus a...

As I suspect everyone has noticed by now, mainstream media journalists love pox-on-both-their-houses stories, stories where they can point to both parties committing the same offense, thus allowing the journalists to appear both impartial and morally superior.

Journalists love pox stories so much that they often equate very different offenses. Here Jonathan Chait finds an excellent example at the Washington Post:

After a recapitulation of some basic facts, the editorial arrives at the only other portion that can be called an actual argument:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a House panel that seniors would “die sooner.” The Democratic National Committee proclaimed in an ad: “Their leaders have called for cutting Medicare, and now for killing it.”

This is false, inflammatory and, as we said, useful — for winning elections, that is. When it comes to solving the government’s most pressing problem, it threatens to set things back.

Are these claims false? No, they aren't. Let's take the democratic claims in reverse order. The current Medicare system is a commitment to cover health acre expenses for the elderly. The Republican plan would end that commitment and replace it with a limited and rapidly shrinking subsidy toward that end. It's somewhat tantamount to replacing public education with a system of limited vouchers for well below the average cost of public school tuition. Would you describe that as "killing" public education? I would -- the design of the program would be so altered as to no longer constitute the same thing.

It is true that both sides of the debates have accused the other of attacking Medicare, but only on one side were those accusations accurate.

"This is an egregious example of a public university being willing to sell itself for next to nothing."

Yeah, 'egregious' is what I'd go for (from the St. Petersburg Times via Chait):

A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."

Traditionally, university donors have little official input into choosing the person who fills a chair they've funded. The power of university faculty and officials to choose professors without outside interference is considered a hallmark of academic freedom.

Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it's not happy with the faculty's choice or if the hires don't meet "objectives" set by Koch during annual evaluations.

David W. Rasmussen, dean of the College of Social Sciences, defended the deal, initiated by an FSU graduate working for Koch. During the first round of hiring in 2009, Koch rejected nearly 60 percent of the faculty's suggestions but ultimately agreed on two candidates. Although the deal was signed in 2008 with little public controversy, the issue revived last week when two FSU professors — one retired, one active — criticized the contract in the Tallahassee Democrat as an affront to academic freedom.

Rasmussen said hiring the two new assistant professors allows him to offer eight additional courses a year. "I'm sure some faculty will say this is not exactly consistent with their view of academic freedom,'' he said. "But it seems to me it would have been irresponsible not to do it."

The Koch foundation, based in Arlington, Va., did not return a call seeking comment.

Most universities, including the University of Florida, have policies that strictly limit donors' influence over the use of their gifts. Yale University once returned $20 million when the donor demanded veto power over appointments, saying such control was "unheard of."

Jennifer Washburn, who has reviewed dozens of contracts between universities and donors, called the Koch agreement with FSU "truly shocking."

Said Washburn, author of University Inc., a book on industry's ties to academia: "This is an egregious example of a public university being willing to sell itself for next to nothing."

Over the past few years we have seen the undermining (often deliberate) of the independence and credibility of a number of important institutions -- universities, research labs, government agencies, think tanks. It has been done through funding with increasingly less subtle strings attached, through attacks on academic freedom and independence (anyone for tenure reform?), and through a full court press on a media that has been all too willing to play the toady and the fool.

It's easy to see the short-term benefits of this erosion for people who, say, are trying to ignore evidence of climate change or the relationship between tax rates and budgets over the past twenty years, but in the long-term, when we lose our sources for reliable information and analysis, there are no winners.

p.s. I'm opening the floor for nominations. Can anyone suggest a more weaselly phrase than "I'm sure some faculty will say this is not exactly consistent with their view of academic freedom''?

Pop culture resources -- you may never leave the couch

Another advantage of studying old pop culture is that it has never been so accessible. When you think about how difficult it was to find some of these works just ten or twenty years ago, the abundance is truly amazing.


Project Gutenberg

National Jukebox

Internet Archive

Digital Comic Museum

While on the subject of old pop culture

This is a big deal:

The Library of Congress is one of the most splendid resources in the country--which is terrific, if you're in DC. For those who aren't (and even who are!), the Library's putting a massive audio archive online, for free.

The "National Jukebox," available on a streaming-only basis, unfortunately, is a massive trove of audio recordings. Music, speeches, humor readings--spanning decades of American history. The original words of Teddy Roosevelt. "Rhapsody in Blue" with George Gershwin on piano. Serious national gems. And, due to some cuddling with Sony, the label's entire pre-1925 catalog will be accessible, encompassing a significant (and widely forgotten) musical past.

In terms of popular art, the first quarter of the Twentieth Century may be the most important and creative twenty-five years... period. New genres. New media. Gershwin. Keaton. McCay. Wodehouse. To study this period is to realize just how much of what we still read, watch and listen to is built on a framework that's almost a century old.

One of the advantages of studying old pop culture...

...is that it provides a useful reality check against the conventional wisdom around an era. If you spend some time leafing through old comics and pulp magazines, watching old movies and listening to old radio shows, you will inevitably run across ideas and opinions that seem anachronistic.

Take attitudes towards smoking and health. It's easy to think that people in the Fifties thought of cigarettes as healthy. After all, didn't all those doctors in the ads insist that smoking was good for you, that it soothed your T-zone?

But of course, the tobacco industry didn't run those ads because people thought cigarettes were healthy; they ran them because by 1950 it had become clear that cigarettes were anything but. The purpose of those ads was to throw some dust in the air to help people ignore the obvious and, failing that, to at least convince customers (who were, remember, already addicted to nicotine) that the brand being advertised was a bit less unhealthy than its competitors.

This ad from the inside cover of a 1953 comic book (courtesy of Mippyville) tells the other side of the story.

Great quote on the value of brand

APM's Marketplace has a good take on Millward Brown's annual brand survey, including this memorable soundbite:

Andrew Zolli: Someone famously said of Coca-Cola that if you burnt down every one of their factories, they'd be back in business in a quarter. If you knocked everybody on earth over the head and gave them amnesia, they'd be out of business in a quarter. And the reason for that is that their brand really exists in all of our minds.

p.s. While you're there, check out this account of how certain Silicon Valley companies help repressive regimes keep tabs on their citizens.

Why do libertarians not hate geoengineering?

It would seem to be a check list of everything that offends libertarians -- a large, expensive, centralized program that makes no use of market forces, instead working under the assumption that only the government can solve your problems.

By comparison, carbon taxes (under which I'm including cap and trade approaches) would seem to be the ideal libertarian solution to an acknowledged externality -- you let prices reflect the true costs and benefits then let market forces do the rest. Even regulation would seem more acceptable -- banning certain products and practices certainly wouldn't be a libertarian's first choice but there is at least some room left for choice and innovation in the search for substitutes.

With geoengineering, the government dictates an exact and inflexible solution and asks us to have faith that secondary effects will be anticipated and accounted for. I am not what you would generally call a libertarian, but I do have a healthy respect for market forces and worry about the unintended consequences of large government initiatives so, in this case, I support the libertarian position.

What I don't understand* is why so many libertarians (like John Tierney) and advocates of market forces (like Steven Levitt) wax rhapsodic over an idea that violates pretty much all of their stated core beliefs.

Anyone out there have any thoughts on the matter?



* 'Don't understand' might have been a bit of an overstatement. I do have a theory on this (I pretty much always have a theory), but it's the subject for another post.

Clarity Has A Well-Known Liberal Bias

Paul Krugman:

Because it is, you know, a plan to dismantle Medicare. When you transform a program that pays seniors’ medical bills into a program that gives them a voucher that almost certainly isn’t enough to buy adequate insurance, you can call the new scheme Medicare, but it isn’t the same program.

I think it is possible to have a discussion about the future of Medicare, as it is pretty clear that the current program involves some compromises. But I also think that it is really important that it be an honest discussion about what we are planning to do.

Altered Oceans

I'm working on a post about the larger context of global warming. One of my sources is this Pulitzer Prize winning series from the LA Times on the frightening changes taking place in the world's oceans. It's a few years old but it's still an extraordinary and highly relevant piece of journalism. Take a look and we'll talk later.

The Culture that is Britian

A quote from the last David Tennant Doctor Who episode:

The Doctor: You had that gun in the mansion. You could have shot The master there and then.
Wilfred: Too scared, I suppose.
The Doctor: I'd be proud. If you were my dad.
Wilfred: Don't start. You said you were told, he will knock four times and then you die. Well that's it then. The Master. That noise, in his head. The Master is going to kill you.
The Doctor: Yeah.
Wilfred: Kill him first.
The Doctor: That's how The Master started. It's not like I'm an innocent. I've taken lives. I got worse—I got clever. Manipulated people into taking their own. Sometimes I think the Time Lord lives too long. I can't. I just can't.

In the previous episode, the character Wilfred (a former soldier) is told he has never killed anyone. He takes it as a point of pride and not shame.

I think that this really is something that we (as a species) could use more of. A ideal that the use of violence is a last resort rather than the opening gambit. This moral code (admittedly from a TV show) doesn't rule out the use of violence, but it sure makes it seem sad and tragic.

I was similarly impressed with the morality in Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat (which i think competes with any science fiction series for best ever). Consider:

Cold-blooded killing is just not my thing. I've killed in self-defence, I'll not deny that, but I still maintain an exaggerated respect for life in all forms. Now that we know that the only thing on the other side of the sky is more sky, the idea of an afterlife has finally been slid into the history books alongside the rest of the quaint and forgotten religions. With heaven and hell gone we are faced with the necessity of making a heaven or hell right here. What with societies and metatechnology and allied disciplines we have come a long way and life on the civilised worlds is better than it was during the black days of superstition. But with the improving of here and now comes the stark realisation that here and now is all we have. Each of us has only this one brief experience with the bright light of consciousness in that endless dark night of eternity and must make the most of it. Doing this means we must respect the existence of everyone else and the most criminal act imaginable is the terminating of one of these conscious existences.

Once again, violence is never ruled out but always deeply tragic.

I was thinking about the way organizations find to avoid acknowledging the obvious

...and this well-traveled but still amusing piece of fax-machine satire came to mind.

Enjoy.

Indian Wisdom

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:

* Buying a stronger whip.

* Changing riders.

* Threatening the horse with termination.

* Appointing a committee to study the horse.

* Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

* Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

* Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.

* Creating a training session to increase the riders load share.

* Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

* Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."

* Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

* Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.

* Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.

* Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.

* Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would improve productivity.

* Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.

* Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.

* Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.

* Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.

* Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Noahpinion on Public Goods

One explanation of why the narrative on taxation has become toxic in the United States:

Well, I think conservatives (and not a few liberals!) have really fallen into the rut of thinking that all government spending = redistribution. Part of this may be a simple failure to recognize that America's gravy days are over, and that arresting the rapid shrinkage of our national pie is more important than squabbling over who gets which slice.

I think that this insight is entirely correct. Without public goods, a country inherently weakens (imagine no roads, rule of law or sewage). That being said, I do think that redistribution is also an important function of taxation. High income individuals gain a lot from a fully functional society and it is not unreasonable to share the benefits with other members of the society.

California's Choice

Steve Lopez writing for the LA Times:

In 1990, Linscheid said, the Cal State budget and the state prison budget were roughly the same. Today, the state prison budget is only about 10% less than the Cal State, UC and community college budgets combined. Meanwhile, the number of inmates has shot up from 25,000 to 175,000 over the last 20 years, thanks largely to law-and-order initiatives backed by the prison guards union. The union bankrolls politicians like Gov. Jerry Brown, too, and reaps huge benefits, but they come at the expense of school funding.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block recently wrote in The Times that of the 42 Republicans in our state Legislature, 29 are products of California's public system of higher education. They got a great bargain, but not a single one of them has supported a Brown proposal — balance the budget half with cuts and half with a temporary extension of existing tax increases — that would maintain a barely acceptable level of quality in the Cal State system and help students avoid crippling tuition hikes.

I can vouch for the bargain part. A couple of years ago I took a grad course at a UC school to get caught up on the latest developments in Bayesian networks. The course was excellent, the paperwork was reasonable, the cost was still remarkably cheap for what you got.

Of course, my isolated experience doesn't mean much but it is consistent with pretty much any system of college rankings you can find. By almost any measure, California has arguably the world's best university system (according to the ARWU rankings, four of the world's top twenty universities are in the UC system).

But California also has a sentencing system that can give you 25 to life for cheating on a driving test and a legislative system that makes it easier to amend the constitution than to pass a budget. We can certainly keep one of these three systems, we might even manage two but at least one will have to go.

If you made this an explicit choice, few Californians would choose to sacrifice our universities, but in the implicit choice we've been given, that's exactly what we've decided to do.

p.s. If you're not depressed enough, check this story from NPR.

Charlie Stross summarizes the latest report on the Fukushima Daiichi accident

From Charlie's Diary (via DeLong):

The main highlights seem to be:

* The accident wasn't the result of a single disaster, but of two, and arguably three: earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent hydrogen explosions.

* The plant survived the earthquake (which exceeded its design requirements) quite well, and the reactors scrammed correctly. However, scrammed reactors continue to need power to run their cooling systems. The earthquake tore down the cables connecting the plant to the rest of the grid, forcing them onto backup power.

* The tsunami struck 15 minutes later, and was roughly five times higher than the plant had been designed for. A review of disaster preparedness in 2002 recommended raising "the average wave height they needed to be designed to cope with to about double the height of the biggest waves in the historical record" — 5.7 metres, for the FD plant. In the event, the tsunami that struck had 15 metre waves. It washed right over the plant and wrecked the seawater intakes, electrical switchgear, backup generators, and on-site diesel storage.

* The 2002 severe accident review that increased the tsunami wave height estimates recommended installing hardened hydrogen release vents, to prevent a build-up of hydrogen in event of a similar accident. These are standard on American and other reactors, but had not been retrofitted to the FD BWRs. Were such vents fitted, the explosions would not have occurred. (The explosions compounded the difficulty of bringing the plant under control.)

* Despite all this there appears to have been no public health impact due to radiation (stress and fear are another matter), and no plant workers were exposed to more than 250 millisieverts — the raised limit for emergency nuclear responders, equal to five years' regular working exposure, but insufficient to cause a serious health risk.

So: serious accident, yes — but it's no Chernobyl. ...The main take-away seems to be that, like a plane crash, it takes more than one thing going wrong to cause an accident — in this case, two major natural disasters, each of which exceeded the plant's design spec, occurring within the space of an hour, compounded by failure to implement a safety system that is standard elsewhere. Despite which, they managed to dodge the bullet (for the most part: it's still going to take billions of dollars and several years to clean up the plant).

A lot depends on how you frame the question but if it comes down to a choice between coal and nuclear, I don't have a hard time deciding.

Why companies do the things that they do -- sports sponsorship edition

Do the people running companies act to optimize profits? Or are they trying to push up stock price? Or could they just be trying to advance their own careers, reputations and social standings? Usually these things are pretty well correlated, making it difficult to separate out the drivers -- a company introduces a successful new product, the stock price goes up and the CEO gets his or her picture on the cover of Fortune.

Sometimes, though, these interests diverge and in these cases, it's always interesting to see how things break.

Take Yum! Brands' sponsorship of the Kentucky Derby.


Sometimes it's fairly easy to justify a sponsorship in terms of a business's bottom line. You can, for example, see why Frito-Lay would want viewers to associate Tostitos with the Fiesta Bowl. Other times the case is more difficult to make, as with AT&T and the Cotton Bowl. And then for some sponsorships, there is simply no case at all.

Yum owns KFC, Taco Bell and (for the moment) a number of smaller chains. There could certainly be a case for Yum sponsoring the "KFC Kentucky Derby" or even the "KFC/Taco Bell Kentucky Derby," but not the "Yum Kentucky Derby." Yum is not the relevant brand here. No one has ever said "Honey, you've had a hard day. Instead of cooking, let's load up the kids and head out to one of the many fine restaurants in the Yum! family."

You might possibly argue that sponsoring the Derby raises the profile of the company and therefore helps the stock, but there's a simpler and more logical explanation. Yum is based in Louisville, a town where much of the social season is based around the Derby. I suspect that the sponsorship has less to do with the company's stock price and more to do with its executives' social standing.

William Goldman once observed that one reason studio executives prefer to greenlight big-budget movies over smaller projects is that major films with big name casts give the executives something to talk about at parties.

You may not hear much about this in business and econ courses, but you certainly encounter it in real life.