From Bobby Fischer vs. the Rest of the World, pg 232:
(Bobby) took a notion that he might be the next target of the Palestinian terrorists who had attacked the Olympic Village (in Munich). Davis demanded protection. There were twenty-three Arabs in Iceland at the time, and the Icelandic police put a tail on every one of them.
From Spectacle and Sacrifice: The Ritual Foundations of Village Life in North China, by David Johnson:
…My point is that the foundations of Christianity are complex structures of carefully formulated definitions and tightly argued conclusions created by medieval theologians using tools providedd by Greek logic and metaphysics. The Christian church was virtually created out of centuries-long theological disputes about highly complex an abstract concepts such as Original Sin, the Trinity, the Real Presence, and so on, and the same presumably can be said of Islam and Judaism.
Chinese philosophers, to say nothing of ordinary people, were simply not interested in that sort of thing. But tremendous debates concerning what we call ‘ritual’ took place in every dynasty. How imperial rituals were to be performed, whether certain actions were ritually correct or not–issues such as these were as close to the heart of Chinese religion as theological disputes were to Christianity. The leaders of the Christian churches were intensely concerned with heresy–improper beliefs–and punished heretics mercilessly. By contrast, Chinese thinkers, following Xunzi, usually assumed that if people’s actions conformed to the proper patterns, the beliefs could be left to take care of themselves. And ritual supplied the proper patterns. This was an idea that was shared by virtually all Chinese, of all classes and stations, from chief minister to farmer.
From University of Missouri-Columbia economics professor Cory Koedel:
This paper formally documents a startling difference in the grading standards between education departments and other academic departments at universities – undergraduate students in education classes receive significantly higher grades than students in all other classes. This phenomenon cannot be explained by differences in student quality or structural differences across departments (i.e., differences in class sizes). Drawing on evidence from the economics literature, the differences in grading standards between education and non-education departments imply that undergraduate education majors, the majority of whom become teachers, supply substantially less effort in college than non-education majors. If the grading standards in education departments were brought in line with those found in other major academic departments, student effort would be expected to increase by at least 10-16 percent.
The graphs at the end of the paper are worth looking at even if you don’t read another line.
Hat Tip: Abhi Sivasailam.
From the local Columbia Tribune:
The city bought 10 kilowatts of energy produced by the solar panels, divided it into 140 blocks of purchasable power and, for an annual cost of $48 per 100 kilowatt-hour block, offered electric utility customers the chance to buy a piece of pure green power.
“It’s a creative way to provide solar power to the people who want it without making the rest of the city pay for it,” interim Water and Light Director Mike Schmitz said.
Ninety customers bought all the available blocks by early 2009, Schmitz said. With the success of the program, the city will soon more than double its available solar power. Quaker Oats and retailer Bright City Lights have entered a contract that will result in an additional 15 kilowatts of solar power available to customers by summer.
Schmitz said improvements in solar technology have resulted in lower costs, a savings that will be passed on to customers. The city now buys solar output for 42 cents/kwh. Quaker Oats will be able to sell the next batch of solar power at 25 cents/kwh and Bright City Lights at 37 cents/kwh.
The new blended cost will be $40 for a 100 kwh block per year. By comparison, the regular rate for electricity through the city is about $9 per 100 kwh block, Schmitz said. Solar One costs are added to a user’s regular utility bill.
From the NYT:
Yes and no can accrue symbolic heft through what linguists call “zero nominalization,” whereby a noun is created from some other part of speech without adding a typical suffix like –ness or –ation. Nouny versions of yes and no have enjoyed quite a ride from the political class, but they also get plenty of play in pop culture. On the positive side of the ledger, Wendy Macleod’s play and subsequent movie adaptation “The House of Yes” tells the story of an entitled rich girl who will not be denied. Maria Dahvana Headley’s 2006 memoir of a year spent accepting dates from any man who asked her out is titled, naturally enough, “The Year of Yes.”
Brian Goldstein writes in the comments:
1. Do you have any estimates available about the processing cost of a revenue neutral sales tax regime? i.e. Would the IRS spend only 40 cents? or 30? or 50? I know you’ve guessed that the smaller N-size of businesses means that they would realize some savings, I’m just curious to know how much.
2. Do you really think that revenue collection inefficiency is a dead-weight loss of such priority it’s worth busting up a nearly 100 year-old established system? I imagine the transaction costs alone would in the medium term be daunting, and rather than shrink the market for tax professionals, just shift the market from individuals to corporations. Corporations don’t just pay on what they sell, they pay on what they own – or not pay on what they could justify not owning. We’d still need an elaborate system of record keeping, checking, statutory provisions, and enforcement to account for those revenues.
Dennis Blair, the Director for National Intelligence, in testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Feb. 2, 2010:
Finally, I note that Muslim support for violent extremism did not change significantly in 2009 and remains a minority view, according to polls of large Muslim populations conducted on behalf of Gallup and Pew. On average, two-thirds of Muslims in such populations say that attacks in which civilians are targeted “cannot be justified at all.” Support for violent groups is likely diminishing among the Pakistani and Saudi populations, with the percent of Pakistanis who view the Taliban negatively roughly doubling over the past year. In Saudi Arabia, violence and terrorism-related indicators monitored by Gallup decreased since May 2008. I refer you to my classified statement for more information regarding polling and our analysis.
The rest of Blair’s testimony is a compelling read, as it covers most if not all of the major security threats facing the nation. Most notable to me is the section where Blair discusses the impact and probability of ‘mass killings’ aka genocide over the next five years, particularly in the Southern Sudan:
Looking ahead over the next five years, a number of countries in Africa and Asia are at significant risk for a new outbreak of mass killing. All of the countries at significant risk have or are at high risk for experiencing internal conflicts or regime crises and exhibit one or more of the additional risk factors for mass killing. Among these countries, a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan.
I originally posted this as a comment on Show-Me Institute blogger Sarah Brodsky’s post today on Parents as Teachers, but for some reason the comment hasn’t been approved yet, and I thought there might be some value to posting an independent response. If you haven’t read it, Brodsky takes the parenting education program Parents as Teachers to task for *gasp* teaching parents how to assist their unborn child’s cognitive development through reading aloud to their baby in the womb. I find Brodsky’s arguments on this point to be aggravatingly bad, as it is clear that she is completely unfamiliar with the entirety of the scientific research on pre-natal cognitive development.
Wolfson, Puri, and Martinelli write in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1992:
We propose a dynamic model of the interaction between two rival powers. It is not an easy model, because it involves nonlinear difference equations; yet it is simple in the sense that it involves only a few variables. Parsimony shows that complexity and apparent paradox need not arise from the multiplicity of factors but from their nonlinear connections. Complications certainly may be introduced such as considering more than two states and alliances among them (Wolfson 1973) as well as further specification of expectation formation. They might improve some future statistical investigations, but the theory has no need for those hypotheses to explain the complexity of the historical record. Occam’s razor suggests that small is beautiful.
John Payne at the Show-Me Institute has this to say about state legislative opposition to the reach of the federal government’s power:
Setting aside for the moment the specific content of the amendment, it is great to see Missouri and other states attempting to use the nearly forgotten tools of interposition and nullification to stop the federal government from abusing its powers. Of course, these are just tools that can be used for good (such as when Wisconsin nullified the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850s) or ill (such as George Wallace attempting to preserve segregation). However, all else being equal, the more a political system is localized, the less dysfunctional it is likely to be, because the politicians are not as removed from the people. Consequently, anything that takes power away from the federal government and gives it to the states, or from the states to the counties and municipalities, or from the municipalities to the neighborhoods and individuals, should, as a general rule, be applauded.
While I understand very pertinently the reasons John makes these claims, I come to a different conclusion. Or, at least, I offer a different interpretation. I don’t think it’s right to say that the more a political system is localized, the less dysfunctional it will be. If anything, some of the worst abuses of government happen at the local level, where specific people or organizations can gain control of the executive powers of government, including and particularly police power.
In this sense the analysis misses the point. Devolution of power is not strictly a good thing. The desired aim should be to maintain an balance of power between governments. In some fashion we can think of this balance of power as competition in the sense that governments compete for citizens. Federal, state, and local governments all offer different goods and services to the public; some goods and services are unique to the level of government (like diplomacy to federal governments and trash services to municipalities) and not open to competition, while some goods and services are open to competition between governments. Another way to say it is that that governments compete for the right to regulate different things to citizens. Perhaps the most important service governments offer citizens is protection from other governments: the federal government, for instance, serves a very useful recourse against systemic racism in state and local governments. From the other direction, state and local sovereignty provide a hedge against excesses of federal power.
In some sense this interpretation of federalism says that a balance of power between competing governments best serves individual interests. I stress the “competing” here; looking at America in that light it is clear that there has been a big shift in consumer preferences away from federal provision of goods and services and towards other lower-level government entities.
Note that when governments compete, they offer justifications for elevating their power and reach relative to other governments. While governments might question the justification for other governments they never as a rule question the justification for government itself. In this sense the statist game is a rigged game and I suggest it points us in the directions of thinking of governments as networks for politicians and bureaucrats. The game of questioning the legitimacy of another government or its power is a way for politicians to elide the complex interactions between local, state, and federal governments.
Interested readers will find much to ponder in the collected work of Laurence Tribe and Steven Calabresi. Particularly, I might point you towards Tribe’s 1977 article in the Harvard Law Review and Calabresi’s 1995 article in the Michigan Law Review.
In the short term, however, Martin’s concern is surviving the Republican convention. Beyond courting delegates, he said he is counting on traditionally low turnout in the primaries.
“I think people will come around once they get to know my ideas,” Martin said. “People are tired of boring politicians who are married to the system. I have real ideas.”
The article is here. Martin is running for governor of Utah. His policy stances are:
Gold reserves and statewide food storage are the keys to Utah’s future, said businessman Richard Martin, who joined the race for governor Monday.
Standing outside the Salt Lake City Library, Martin announced he is challenging Gov. Gary Herbert for the Republican nomination.
Economic stability will depend on innovative ideas, something current state leaders lack, Martin said.
My only comment is to note that while Martin’s stances are, *ahem*, a little out of the mainstream, I wouldn’t qualify gold hoarding as innovative (China does it). Neither would I qualify emergency food storage as particularly innovative; the United States Federal Government administers an emergency good reserve called the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.
Wikipedia reports:
The L3C is a low-profit limited liability company (LLC), that functions via a business modality that is a hybrid legal structure combining the financial advantages of the limited liability company, an LLC, with the social advantages of a non-profit entity. An L3C runs like a regular business and is profitable. However, unlike a for-profit business, the primary focus of the L3C is not to make money, but to achieve socially beneficial aims, with profit making as a secondary goal. The L3C thus occupies a niche between the for-profit and charitable sectors. As of September, 2009, an L3C can only be formed in the states of Michigan[1], Vermont, Wyoming, Utah, the Crow Indian Nation and the Oglala Sioux Tribe. On August 4, 2009, Gov. Pat Quinn signed Illinois‘ L3C Bill SBO239 and the law will take effect on January 1, 2010. [2]
HT: Sam Burnett.
Ducks and Economics 