I Don't Know Who Steven Greenhut Is...

But I know that he is not an honest columnist. Writing about a story in the Sacramento Bee about rising crime in California state parks, Greenhut says:

It refers to "grave-robbing" – or, more accurately, people who remove Indian artifacts, such as arrowheads, from a park.

From the article:

Grave-robbing at Tolowa Dunes State Park on the far North Coast, which left American Indian remains unearthed.

[snip] 

An extreme case occurred in April at the remote Tolowa Dunes park in Del Norte County. Grave robbers entered the Yontocket Indian Memorial Cemetery to dig up treasures such as pottery and arrowheads. A $2,000 reward has been offered.

"Or, more accurately, people who remove Indian artifacts, such as arrowheads, from a park."
Reading Greenhut, it is rather apparent that he has never spent much time outdoors. Only someone who has avoided nature could ridicule people who "want more 'boots on the ground' to catch average folks who might have a bonfire". Similarly Greenhut is outraged that "park rangers extinguish 'illegal campfires'" [scare quotes in original].
After all, it's not like, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, humans caused 85% of  wildland fires in California between 2001 and 2009, accounting for 70% of acres burned.

Afghanistan Advice from Rambo III

Rambo III, dedicated to "the gallant people of Vietnam", includes this great scene where Col. Samuel Trautman tells the Russian why he is doomed to defeat:

Steve Janke's Awful Arguments Against the Long Census

This post by Steve Janke appears to be a troll imitating a knee-jerk conservative. He includes this stunning piece of insight:

Are they earning based on their learning? Well, the answer to that question is yes, always, because the market decides what the right price is.

It is almost as if Janke has never heard of the problem immigrant professionals have obtaining credentials to practice their profession in Canada. For example, there are 4,000 foreign-trained doctors in Ontario who cannot practice due to lack of Canadian credentials. There are also many foreign-trained engineers with this problem:

Michael Wu, a geotechnical engineer from China, is a classic example of what's happening. Accepted as a landed immigrant last spring, he came here with his wife and child, leaving behind a relatively prosperous life in Beijing, and now works for $7 an hour in a Vancouver chocolate factory.

Does Janke seriously believe that Canada is better off having Wu, who has a PhD, work at $7 per hour making chocolate?
In a previous post, Janke argues against the long form census:

Why does the Federation of Canadian Municipalities need national census data? It shouldn't.

 If you look at the open letter from the FCM (pdf), however, you will see that they do in fact need national census data:

In fact, over 25 pieces of federal legislation alone require Census data in order to allocate funds and target and evaluate services, with many more examples at the provincial, territorial and municipal levels.

 Janke:

 If a municipality needs demographic data for the municipality, then it should run its own survey.

However, if all municipalities need this data, having each municipality run its own survey is an extremely inefficient use of taxpayers' money.

Iran's Evil Ambitions

Over at Small Dead Animals, there's some juxtaposing going on:

Expiration of Bush Tax Cuts Would Cost Families Thousands in 2011, Study Shows

[snip]

Iran's Leader Introduces Plan to Encourage Population Growth by Paying Families

As you can see here, Iran has a long-term plan to pass the US in population. Iran has a 2008 population of 71,956,322 and a growth rate of 1.30831%. America has a 2009 population of 307,006,550 and a 2008 growth rate of 0.91518%. Assuming these patterns continue forever (and why would they not?), in 2379, Iran will surpass the U.S. in population. They will each have 8.9 billion people.
And this is when Iran will attack!

McArdle's Addled Thoughts on Tenure

This post by Megan McArdle is a bit old, but I think it is important to expose the utter intellectual bankruptcy of her arguments. This will be a long post.

The arguments for academic tenure have always struck me as pretty weak, and more to the point, transparently self-serving.

The debate over tenure is, like most debates about academia, almost entirely between academics. As such, any academic arguing for tenure will be "transparently self-serving", whereas any academic arguing against tenure will be a brave soul fighting against their best interests. This, however, says nothing about the quality of the arguments either for or against tenure. 

The best you can say of the system is that it preserves a sort of continuity in schools that is desireable for the purposes of cultivating alumni donations.

Really? This is the best you can say of the system? You can't say anything about it allowing professors to do controversial research, or that it helps to shift the balance of power away from university administrators (who often have no long-term allegiance or loyalty to the university) towards professors (who have a powerful interest in having a well-run university).

But the cost of such a system is simply staggering.

Consider what the academic job market now looks like. You have a small elite on top who have lifetime employment regardless of how little work they do.

This is simply not true. While a professor can surely slack off after gaining tenure, they still have to teach courses.

This lifetime employment commences somewhere between 35 and 40. For the ten-to-fifteen years before that, they spend their lives in pursuit of the brass ring. They live in poverty suck up to professors, and publish, for one must publish to be tenured.

The only people in a university who could be said to "live in poverty" are graduate students. Abolishing tenure would do nothing to alleviate the chronic money problems of graduate students. Before getting tenure, a professor works as an assistant professor, where salaries range from a median of $44,731 for a new assistant professor in "Theology and Religious Vocations", to $81,005 for an assistant professor in "Legal Professions and Studies".

It's very unfortunate if you don't have anything much worth saying; you need to publish anyway, in order to improve your chances. Fortunately, for the needy tenure seeker, a bevy of journals have sprung up that will print your trivial contributions. If nothing else, they provide a nice simple model which helps introductory economics professors explain Say's Law.

Professors and graduate students who "don't have anything much worth saying" tend not to get published. When they do get published, they get published in lesser journals. Although it is a flawed metric in many ways, the impact factor attempts to provide tenure committees with a basis for determining the impact of the candidate's work. Simply put, tenure-track professors who publish rarely, and in second-rate journals, tend not to get tenure.

More importantly, though, abolishing tenure would do nothing to alleviate this problem. Even if there were no tenure-track positions, universities would need a way to rate their professors. This rating system would undoubtedly look almost exactly like the system currently used for establishing tenure.

At the end of the process, most of the aspirants do not have tenure; they have dropped out, or been dropped, at some point along the way. Meanwhile, the system has ripped up their lives in other ways. They've invested their whole youth, and are back on the job market near entry level at an age when most of their peers have spent ten years building up marketable skills.

Academia as a profession is best looked at as a tournament model, similar to professional sports. The problems McArdle cites above are caused by too many applicants seeking too few academic jobs. As a result, many applicants must be weeded out before a winner is finally selected. The only way that abolishing tenure could solve this problem would be if it somehow increase the number of jobs available (highly unlikely), or if it reduced the number of candidates for each job. However, with fewer candidates for each job, the quality of the selected candidate would also decrease. Such a trade-off (or any trade-off, in fact) is never mentioned by McArdle.

Many of them will have seen relationships ripped apart by the difficulties of finding not one, but two tenure-track jobs in the same area.

This is a real problem, but it cannot be fixed by getting rid of tenure. In Canada, a number of universities have started spousal hiring programs. If a newly hired professor has a spouse who is also seeking a job as a professor, the university makes an effort to hire the spouse as well. Of course, granting preferential treatment to the spouse of a faculty member "can compromise the bigger principles of open hiring". Among people who actually care about the problem of finding jobs for academic couples, this is the debate that is being argued. Tenure has very little to do with the debate.

Others will have invested their early thirties in a college town with no other industry, forcing them to move elsewhere to restart both their careers and their social lives.

Of course, if there weren't any tenure, a professor in her mid-40s who is fired would face the exact same problem. Except, of course, that she would have put in an extra 10 years in the college town. How exactly is this preferable?

Or perhaps they string along adjuncting at near-poverty wages, unable to quite leave the academy that has abused them for so long.

It's funny that McArdle, who is such an advocate of personal freedom when it comes to payday loans for the poor, suddenly has her heart-strings tugged by the thought of PhD's working at "near-poverty wages" in the hope of getting a job as a professor.

Is this producing better education? Doubtful; there's no particular relationship between scholarship and the ability to teach.

Here, McArdle is arguing that, if our goal is to produce better education, we should judge professors more on their ability to teach. I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I think there should be a greater push towards hiring great teachers for most introductory-level courses, and have great researchers teach the more advanced courses. However, this issue, like most of the issues McArdle raises, has very little to do with tenure.

How about valuable scholarship? Well, define valuable--in many liberal arts fields, the only possible consumer of the research in question is a handful of scholars in the same field. That sort of research is valuable in the same way that children's craft projects are priceless--to their mothers. Basically, these people are supporting an expensive hobby with a sideline business certifying the ability of certain twenty-year olds to write in complete sentences.

Assuming her premise to be true, what does this have to do with tenure? McArdle is arguing that in many liberal arts fields, the research being performed is useless, and the teaching performed by the professors is the only socially valuable part of their job. It is unclear why eliminating tenure would change this in any way.

And what about the people who do get tenure, and are producing scholarship in areas that other people care about? Doesn't tenure protect free intellectual inquiry? Diversity of thought? Doesn't it allow teachers to be more demanding of students?

Finally, halfway through her post, McArdle decides to join the actual debate that is occurring regarding tenure. Her argument:

Perhaps--but the question is, at what point? Most scholars in their sixties are not producing path-breaking new research, but they are precisely the people that tenure protects.

The implication of what McArdle is arguing is rather scary. She is effectively arguing that most older academics would be fired if tenure were abolished. This is a few paragraphs after she argues against academia because it causes people to waste their youth, and enter the job market at entry level after their peers have spent years "building up marketable skills".

Scholars in their twenties and thirties, on the other hand, have no academic freedom at all.

No academic freedom at all? Really?

Indeed, because tenure raises the stakes so high, the vetting of future employees is much more careful--and the candidates, who know this, are almost certainly more careful than they would be if they were on more ordinary employment contracts.

This is almost definitely true. However, there is clearly a trade-off involved here. After obtaining tenure, academics have significantly more freedom then they would ever have under "more ordinary employment contracts". McArdle does not try to argue that the trade-off she proposes is superior. In fact, she argues that "the people that tenure protects" are "scholars in their sixties" who "are not producing path-breaking new research". This is simply wrong.

As a result, the process of getting a degree, getting a job, and getting tenure has stretched out to cover one's whole youth. So tenure makes young scholars--the kind most likely to attack a dominant paradigm--probably more careful than they would be under more normal employment process.

This may be true, but it also hides a larger truth. The best way to gain the attention of a tenure committee is to produce ground-breaking research that replaces the current paradigm. Universities love to have professors who can be called "path-breaking".

The same is true of diversity. Academics within the tenure system are probably more careful about weeding out heresy, because they'll be stuck with it if it manages to sneak in.

So, within the tenure system, academics will weed out heresy because they will be stuck with it forever. By implication, without a tenure system, these same academics would allow the heresy to flourish because they know they can weed it out whenever they want. This is exactly what tenure is designed to prevent.

Tenure can easily be used to entrench the ideological or scholarly commitments of a department's powerful members, reducing diversity rather than enhancing it.

So can any other hiring system. This has nothing to do with tenure, but rather with the method for rating professors.

The current tenure system only protects revolutionary, dangerous ideas to the extent that they spring full blown from an academic's head after he has secured tenure, startling the hell out of everyone who hired him. Or perhaps after he's secured his full professorship. Or after he's managed to move to a better class of research institution with a nicer salary.  

Since I don't know of many cases where this has happened, I find it hard to believe that tenure is crucial to preserving the spirit of free inquiry at our nation's colleges.

Well, if McArdle does not know of many cases where this has happened, that settles it for me.

I'm sure it's protected more than one scholar from getting fired after making stupid remarks to a class. And we would all of us--not just academics--like to be immune from getting fired for making stupid remarks. But what's not clear to me is that this has, in any instance, protected Very Important Scholarship from being censored for the benefit of Mrs. Grundy. 

Even if it were, I'd want to know if all that Very Important Scholarship were worth the enormous cost of this outmoded system. And advocates would have a steep uphill battle to convince me that it is.

McArdle speaks of the "enormous cost" of the tenure system, but most of the costs she describes (wasted youth, publishing useless articles, academic couples) exist independent of the tenure system. For an economics blogger, it is also surprising that she fails to mention the significant increase in salaries that would be required as compensation for no longer having tenure.

What Does the ADL Do?

There has been a lot of commentary about the Anti-Defamation League's decision to oppose the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. One thing that I found weird was, in the ADL's statement about the proposed mosque, the tagline:

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

So, by preventing Muslims (not al Qaeda terrorists, but American Muslims) from building a mosque, they are counteracting "hatred, prejudice and bigotry", all in pursuit of the goal of "fighting anti-Semitism". The only way this makes any sense is if you assume that the mosque itself will teach hatred, prejudice and bigotry. I have not seen any convincing evidence that this would be the case.

Do They Actually Believe That

Canada Control Works has adapted regenerative braking to pumpjacks, thereby reducing their energy consumption. According to the company, during an 11-month trial, "165,763 kilowatt hours were consumed to run the pumpjack, but 92,340 kilowatt hours were also generated". The regenerative braking technology reduces the energy consumption of pumpjacks by 55.7%, saving $1,000 per month in electricity. Obviously, this is an example of the sort of innovation that is needed (across all sectors of the economy) to help solve our energy problems.
Small Dead Animals sees it differently:

Who needs windmills when you've got pumpjacks?

SDA is apparently unaware that these improved pumpjacks still consume significant amounts of electricity. In fact, they require about 6,674 kWh of electricity per month to operate ((165,763 kWh used - 92,340 kWh generated) / 11 months).

Your Logic Is Beyond Me

As someone who is ambiguously ambidextrous, I am rather envious of Unambiguously Ambidextrous. Apparently, mullah Omar has put out a five-point directive for Taliban fighters:

1. Fight coalition forces to the death without withdrawing or surrendering; attempt to capture coalition forces whenever possible.

Unambiguously Ambidextrous:

Regarding the first directive, it would appear that the so-called “torture-war crimes” conundrum has been put to rest. Not that this will likely dissuade people from believing that Afghans are still being tortured “in our name.”

The Taliban are now ordered to fight to the death, while trying to capture coalition forces. This, of course, means that we are no longer turning Afghans over to our local allies for torture. QED.
Bonus logic: The linked post includes the Time cover picture of the girl whose nose and ears were cut off by the Taliban. The title of the post is "But To Some People, We’re The Bad Guys In Afghanistan". Taliban bad, coalition good.

Simple Answers to Simple Questions

Ezra Levant at the Ottawa Sun has a list of questions in today's article:

So, should the burka be banned?

Luckily, he answers this one for us.

It’s anathema for a free country like Canada to tell citizens how to dress.

The same liberty that allows the rest of us to dress as we like is the liberty that allows a woman to hide her face.

But what about in a bank? Should masked women, Muslim or not, be allowed into a bank?

I would say yes. However, as private businesses, I would allow banks to make that decision themselves.

If that’s okay, how about a man in a ski mask?

Again, I would say yes. Does Levant seriously think that a policy against ski masks in banks would cause an increase in bank robberies?

How about testifying in court?

Yes.

Who else can hide their eyes and facial expressions while condemning an accused or swearing to their own innocence?

Apparently, in New Hampshire this is allowed.

And why stop at witnesses — what about judges or police officers in a burka?

I don't mind judges in burkas. However, a burka would clearly impede a police officer from performing her duty, so I would not allow it.

What about ID cards like a driver’s licence?

Obviously not. This seems like a massive red herring to me. It doesn't surprise me that some random Muslim thinks she should be allowed to wear a burqa for her driver's license photo. However, considering the rules for passport photos, I don't think that any Canadian government is going to allow burqas in photo identification.

What point is an ID card if it doesn’t actually ID you?

There is none. That is why ID cards have to show your face.

Can you vote with a mask on?

Yes, provided you slip it off for a moment to allow the poll worker to verify your identity.

Board a plane?

Yes, provided you slip the mask off for a moment to allow the security official to verify your identity.

If a burka is okay, how about a Ku Klux Klan mask?

Yup. However, I would advise against it, as wearing a Ku Klux Klan mask tends to reflect poorly on the wearer.

But more than all that, is wearing a burka truly an act of individual liberty?

It depends. And this is what Levant then admits:

For some it is. But for others, it is a manifestation of tyranny — a brutal husband demanding submission; a radical imam threatening frightened immigrant women. 

This is a far cry from the Ezra Levant who rallies for liberty and freedom from kangaroo human rights commissions (incidentally, this is a position on which Levant and I agree). Speaking of Section 13, Levant writes, "Ignatieff’s comment from 2006 is more heartening – it shows a respect for freedom of speech, even offensive speech, even offensive speech targeting him." In the case of burqas, Levant's lack of respect for freedom of religion is concerning. In the matter of freedom of speech, he believes that offensive speech must be protected. When it comes to freedom of religion, however, he believes in a hard boundary.

We know from the case of Aqsa Parvez — killed by her father and brother for dressing in western fashion rather than in traditional Islamic clothing — that defying these orders can lead to murder.

I agree that this is a problem. However, it is laughable to believe that banning the burqa would solve this problem. Imagine that you are a man who would be willing to kill his sister or daughter for not wearing a burqa. Now, imagine that the government prevents her from wearing a burqa. Would you allow her to leave the house without a burqa, or would you force her to stay in the house so no one can see her?

In Afghanistan, uncovered women have acid thrown in their faces.

I do not feel that Canadian law should be pro-actively limiting freedoms because of stuff that happens in Afghanistan.

Only 54% of us want a ban? 

I hope that the wording of the question (Canada should follow France. Nobody should be able to cover their faces. It is a matter of public safety and business transparency.) is what caused this number to be so high. I hope.

Chinese Spies

Calgary Tory MP Rob Anders is accusing the Chinese of trying to gain influence in Canada. Anders says that Chinese agents are offering lucrative business deals and sexual favours to Canadian MPs. In return, the politicians "can provide access to resources or rubber stamp business deals". This sounds like a fairly serious allegation. Unfortunately, he goes off the rails a little bit later:

Anders said he has personally witnessed the sons of two different MPs being seduced by women far too attractive to be interested in these “average looking” guys, including a 14-year-old, in Taiwan.

“There is no way that any of those people could have been anything other than influence peddling agents,” Anders told QMI Agency. “That person is up to something when they knock on your door, minutes after your arrival in a foreign hotel offering themselves to you.”

It seems much more likely that this was a Taiwanese girl who likes white guys. If you are into foreigners, a foreign hotel is a great place to meet them (before they have a chance to meet any other ladies). Assuming that the woman is in fact a Chinese agent. I am having difficulty seeing the sequence of steps required for this to produce any sort of useful information.

1. Sleep with "average looking" son of Canadian MP.
2. ???
3. Profit!

The (Two Blocks Away From) Ground Zero Mosque

This is really ugly. I guess I just thought that freedom meant the freedom to build houses of worship wherever you want. I was obviously wrong. Right wingers everywhere are upsets about the plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York. It really reminds me of the "First they came for the..." posts that are so common on the right.
Michelle Malkin: First, They Came For The Cartoonists. First, They Came For The Cheerios.
Instapundit: First, They Came For The Pilots. First, They Came For The Bloggers.
Of course, you are not going to see Malkin or Instapundit making the argument, "First, they came for the mosques, and I said nothing, for I was not a mosque."
Note: I think that slippery slope arguments are generally stupid. Usually, they are invoked to argue against a minuscule shift in the status quo, based on the argument that it will inevitably lead to either fascism or communism, depending on the direction of the shift.

The Dastardly New Black Panther Party

The Washington Post is finally getting around to exposing the threat the NBPP poses to America. After a brief summary of the story, they add the inevitable he said/she said:

Abigail Thernstrom, a commission member and a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, called it "small potatoes" and said conservatives should pursue more important issues against the Obama administration.

[snip]

Thernstrom said that she did not find Adams's testimony convincing and that the facts of the case raised doubts in her mind, noting that the Black Panthers were standing in front of a majority-black precinct that had voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in previous elections -- not a prime
spot for intimidating white voters. 

Todd Gaziano, director of the center for legal and judicial studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation who also serves on the commission, disagreed. 

"Anyone who has seen the video and who reads [Adams's] testimony knows this is something that needs to be investigated," he said.

Thernstrom offers a fact to support her position. Gaziano essentially says that he believes this needs to be investigated. A pox on both their houses, I say.

Fun with Numbers

Tom Nelson seems to have figured out that global warming is all a fraud. He has found a bunch of headlines showing areas where the warming is higher than average, and asks, "Can everyplace really be warming much faster than everyplace else?" He provides links to articles claiming that Africa, the North Pole, Australia, Kuwait's waters, Antarctic air, Tibet, Sundarbans' water, China, the U.S. West, the Arctic, Lake Superior, the Himalayas, and the Korean Peninsula. Nelson obviously believes that this is really strong evidence that it's all quackery.
Of course, if you look at a map, you will realize that over 70% of the Earth's surface is water. It would in fact be possible for the entire landmass of Earth to be heating faster than the global average.

Some People Really Hate Muslims

Apparently, the Science Museum in London is running an exhibition entitled 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World. This exhibition "traces the forgotten story of a thousand years of science from the Muslim world, from the 7th century onwards". According to Toby E. Huff:

Our concern is with the fact that from the eighth century to the end of the fourteenth, Arabic science was probably the most advanced science in the world, greatly surpassing the West and China. In virtually every field of endeavor - in astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, medicine, optics, and so forth - Arab scientists (that is, Middle Eastern individuals primarily using the Arabic language but including Arabs, Iranians, Christians, Jews, and others) were in the forefront of scientific advance. The facts, theories, and scientific speculations contained in their treatises were the most advanced to be had anywhere in the world, including China.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it? It is exactly the sort of thing I would expect to see in a science museum. Of course, if you think that, you are being duped by a vast conspiracy. Alexander Levkovsky:

The main mission of the exhibition is to obscure the hard fact that for the last several centuries the vast Islamic world has contributed almost nothing at all to the great treasury of human civilization!

You see, the exhibition should be focusing on the lack of inventions by Muslims in the last several centuries. This is what a science museum should do. However, it is unclear if this alternative exhibit should also focus on the lack of inventions by Christians during the golden age of Islam. Otherwise, it could rightfully be accused of obscuring the hard fact that from the 8th to the 14th century, the vast Christian world contributed almost nothing at all to the great treasury of human civilization!

Death Panels Exposed

Over at Big Government, Capitol Confidential has exposed the "government's rationing toolbox". At issue is a cancer drug, Avastin, which the FDA is seeking to de-label for breast cancer treatment. From Big Government:

No one disputes that the drug helps extends life for terminal patients.

The National Cancer Institute on E2100, the initial trial to test Avastin:

The results of E2100 had not shown an increase in overall survival

It turns out the actual issue is a new metric being considered for oncology trials, progression-free survival (PFS). The standard metric is overall survival (OS).

The difference between PFS and OS is that PFS measures the time from a patient's random assignment to one treatment arm or another until the patient's cancer begins to grow again or the patient dies from their cancer; whereas OS measures the time from randomization until death from any cause.

 If you follow the link, it is actually a fascinating look at the complexities of the metrics used for oncology research. Near the end of the article, there is a good quote from Dr. Richard Pazdur, the director of the FDA Office of Oncology Drug Products:

I have no problem accepting that, in a lethal disease such as metastatic cancer, delaying progression is a clinical benefit in itself, provided that the magnitude of the benefit is sufficient and the side-effect profile acceptable.

In other words, there is a risk-benefit analysis that must be performed. No one wants an extra month before the cancer begins to grow if it means that they have to endure a horrible side effect during that month. Note that this is a risk-benefit analysis, not a cost-benefit analysis. On Avastin, Dr. Pazdur notes:

Because treatment with Avastin is associated with considerable toxicity, the magnitude of PFS improvement—especially if not supported by an improvement in overall survival—should be substantial, clinically meaningful, and be able to be replicated in additional trials.

By a vote of 12-1, a review by a panel of 13 medical professionals found Avastin to fail this risk-benefit analysis. Or, as Capitol Confidential puts it:

The Avantis case is setting the precedent for the government to arbitrarily deny coverage to millions of American’s based on cost alone.

If Capitol Confidential believes that the decision to de-label Avastin was based "on cost alone", he (she?) must be outraged at the composition of the panel that made the decision. There is not a single economist (PDF) on the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee! The members all have irrelevant degrees, like M.D., Pharm.D., Ph.D., RN, M.S., F.A.C.P., and D.O. This is the true outrage!

Back in the DPRK

Apprently, North Korea has a website where you can apply to visit the country. For a mere 2050 Euros (1850 Euros for Korea Friendship Association members), you can visit the Dear Leader. However, you will have to pay an extra 440 Euros for the round trip flight from Beijing to Pyongyang. There are only 20 spots, and the tour leaves August 12th, so make your booking today! You must prepay 350 Euros by credit card to reserve your spot, with the remainder due in cash Euros at the beginning of the trip.
Unfortunately, the following items are banned:

Video-Camera, Plants, animals, drugs, explosives, weapons, any kind of pornography, mass printed propaganda, radio, wireless or satellite communicator (GPS), mobile phone (can be left at airport locker).

Luckily, the following are allowed in the DPRK:

Photo-camera (analog or digital), laptop (without wireless/radio communication devices), PDA, CD Player, MP3

 Of course, you may have difficulty finding a laptop that does not have a built-in wireless.

Bill O'Reilly More Pro-Gay Than Obama

Andrew Sullivan has a post up entitled: "Bill O'Reilly: More Pro-Gay Than Barack Obama". He links to an interview on Leno in which O'Reilly says:

"President Obama has the power to stop this 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' business. Just sign an executive order. I don't know why it's taking so long—it's not fair. We should stop this nonsense."

Sullivan then adds, "Or maybe just not paralyzed by Clintonian fear." Of course, O'Reilly never says that he supports ending DADT. He just says that Obama could stop it with an executive order. As for "Clintonian fear", on Fox News, this is what O'Reilly had to say about DADT:

It's not about anti-gay. It's about being comfortable in the barracks. It's not about anti-gay.

 Such bold and fearless advocacy for gay rights! No "Clintonian fear" for Papa Bear O'Reilly!

A New Kind of Crazy

Occasionally, while clicking one link after another, you end up stumbling upon something you've never seen before. And so I stumbled upon Pejman Yousefzadeh's blog post entitled Bring Back Dueling:

Of course, I wouldn’t take this position were it not for the fact that codes associated with dueling seek to bring about peaceful resolutions to conflicts before any blood is shed, but even if this were not the case, innocent lives would be saved by ensuring, through the presence and organization of duels regulated by a code of conduct, that noncombatants would be nowhere near the line of fire if antagonists decided to use violence to settle their disputes.

How many gun-related murders do you suppose occur in which the victim had a long-standing grudge against the perpetrator? Remember, you can only have a duel if both people agree. I would guess that most gun murder victims are innocent of any crime. The obvious exception, of course, is gang violence. The article to which Yousefzadeh links, written by Jamie Brooke, offers dueling as a way of avoiding the deaths of innocent bystanders in gang wars:

Much violence is based on a desire for respect and in reaction to perceived slurs in gang dominated sections of society. Outside these gangs the same problems are dealt with entirely differently, however this was not always the case. Medieval knights, noblemen and royals would do anything to be seen as courageous and to preserve their honour, and as is the case with modern city gangs were prepared to die defending that image. The system that was established is that of duelling.

"Much violence is based on a desire for respect and in reaction to perceived slurs in gang dominated sections of society." Assuming for argument's sake that this is true (and I doubt it is), does Brooke seriously believe that he can change the gang culture to one of chivalry? That gang members can be convinced that, rather than shoot the offending speaker on the spot, they ought to challenge them to a duel? Why would you agree to a fair fight if you can shoot them in cold blood on the spot?

Lynching

This article by Jeffrey Lord has been making the rounds, and I have to comment. Shirley Sherrod, the fired USDA official, has said that her uncle was lynched. Lord describes what happened to the uncle:

The arrest was made late at night at Hall's home on a warrant charging Hall with theft of a tire. Hall, a young negro about thirty years of age, was handcuffed and taken by car to the courthouse. As Hall alighted from the car at the courthouse square, the three petitioners began beating him with their fists and with a solid-bar blackjack about eight inches long and weighing two pounds. They claimed Hall had reached for a gun and had used insulting language as he alighted from the car. But after Hall, still handcuffed, had been knocked to the ground, they continued to beat him from fifteen to thirty minutes until he was unconscious. Hall was then dragged feet first through the courthouse yard into the jail and thrown upon the floor, dying. An ambulance was called, and Hall was removed to a hospital, where he died within the hour and without regaining consciousness. There was evidence that Screws held a grudge against Hall, and had threatened to "get" him.

The Supreme Court then ruled:

Upon review of a judgment affirming the conviction, for violation of § 20 of the Criminal Code and conspiracy thereunto, of local law enforcement officers who arrested a negro citizen for a state offense and wrongfully beat him to death, the judgment is reversed with directions for a new trial.

And Lord's following paragraph is:

It's also possible that she knew the truth and chose to embellish it, changing a brutal and fatal beating to a lynching. Anyone who has lived in the American South (as my family once did) and is familiar with American history knows well the dread behind stories of lynch mobs and the Klan. What difference is there between a savage murder by fist and blackjack -- and by dangling rope? Obviously, in the practical sense, none. But in the heyday -- a very long time -- of the Klan, there were frequent (and failed) attempts to pass federal anti-lynching laws. None to pass federal "anti-black jack" or "anti-fisticuffs" laws. Lynching had a peculiar, one is tempted to say grotesque, solitary status as part of the romantic image of the Klan, of the crazed racist. The image stirred by the image of the noosed rope in the hands of a racist lynch mob was, to say the least, frighteningly chilling.

Lord seems to be under the impression that the only way to lynch someone is by "dangling rope". And so, to Lord, Eli Cooper must not have been lynched:

The case of Eli Cooper is illustrative. One night in late summer 1919, a gang of fifteen or twenty white men abducted Cooper, a black man, from his home in Cadwell in Laurens County and transported him to Petway's Gift Church in Dodge County, a few miles away. The gang shot Cooper, set the church on fire, and pitched his body into the flames.

To paraphrase Lord:

What difference is there between a savage murder by [burning] -- and by dangling rope? Obviously, in the practical sense, none. But in the heyday -- a very long time -- of the Klan, there were frequent (and failed) attempts to pass federal anti-lynching laws. None to pass federal "[anti-burning]" laws.

As a side note, where the hell were the editors on this one?

Whoops!

In my previous post about Greg Mankiw's recent article, I forgot to mention my original point. Mankiw has an extended critique of Obama's stimulus in which he seems to accept the Keynesian framework that stimulus, whether through tax cuts or government spending, will increase GDP growth. However, he argues that tax cuts are significantly more effective than government spending. Upon seeing the unemployment rate rise much higher than expected, Obama's economic team scrambled for an explanation. Mankiw writes:

To the question of why their patient — the U.S. economy — did not respond as expected, the Obama team's answer is that the patient was sicker at the beginning of 2009 than they had originally thought, not that they administered the wrong medicine. The spending-heavy fiscal stimulus, they argue, was the right approach and did some good; if the stimulus bill had not been enacted, unemployment today would be even higher. The reason the stimulus failed to cure the economy's woes is not that it was the wrong course of treatment: It simply wasn't a big enough dose. (Hence the repeated calls for a "second stimulus.")

[snip]

The trouble is, we have no way of knowing for sure if the model was in fact correct. To react to a model's failure to predict events accurately by insisting that the model was nonetheless right — as Obama's economic advisors have done — is hardly the most obvious course. Careful economists should instead respond with humility. When their predictions fail — as they often do — they should not dig in their heels, but should instead be willing to go back to their starting assumptions and question their validity.

Mankiw believes that there are two problems with the starting assumptions. "Chief among these considerations is whether government can spend money both quickly and wisely." He goes on to argue that the government cannot. However, looking at the actual stimulus spending, it is clear that the government can in fact "spend money both quickly and wisely". On the spending side, the largest items are "Help states with Medicare costs" ($87.1 billion), "Help states prevent cuts to essential services like education" ($53.6 billion), "Provide money for highways and bridges" ($27.5 billion), "Health coverage under Cobra" ($25.1 billion), and "Increase food assistance" ($20.9 billion). It is difficult to argue that any of these are unwise, and only the highways and bridges money could be considered slow.

The administration's second assumption, meanwhile, is a matter of academic theories about the sizes of the relevant economic multipliers.

Obama's stimulus plan assumed that the multiplier for direct spending would be 1.57, while the tax-cut multiplier should be 0.99. Mankiw does not argue with the direct spending multiplier, but claims (based on the work of Romer & Romer) that the tax-cut multiplier should be 3. Unfortunately for Mankiw, this destroys his own argument.

Throughout the article, Mankiw implies that the Obama team leaned too heavily on spending in the stimulus. Never does he inform the reader that, as of April 20, the Obama stimulus was 43% tax cut and 57% direct spending. Using the Obama administration's numbers, the overall multiplier is 1.32 (1.57 * 0.57 + 0.99 * 0.43). Using Mankiw's numbers, the overall multiplier is 2.18 (1.57 * 0.57 + 3 * 0.43). In fact, using Mankiw's preferred multiplier of 3 for the tax-cut portion of the stimulus, the direct spending multiplier could be zero and the overall multiplier would still be 1.29.

As a professor of economics at Harvard, Mankiw must know this. However, he is clearly not seeking to inform his readers about a matter of economics. He is trying to win a political argument about Obama.