tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58080750059661125152024-03-08T02:14:13.253-08:00Triple HelixLinus Pauling is my scientific grandfather. He incorrectly solved the structure of DNA as a triple helix. Despite winning 2 Nobel Prizes, he was wrong on this one. The triple helix is my reminder, that science, and all thinking endeavors, are a dynamic process. Past performance does not guarantee future success. Being wrong is all part of the game.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-21262948987740311692012-09-09T12:23:00.002-07:002012-09-09T12:26:11.854-07:00<b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">A little discussion about the ribosomal RNA genes</span></span></b><br />
<a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcST2WCr9zzpYugy-bwGZz9QB2InR66EHZUE9kvh3ITHr28qZ2a3bU8c6OQyEg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" id="il_fi" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcST2WCr9zzpYugy-bwGZz9QB2InR66EHZUE9kvh3ITHr28qZ2a3bU8c6OQyEg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 30px; padding-top: 8px;" width="224" /></a>I mentioned in the last post about the rRNA genes (also called rDNA loci). The reason why these are important starts with what is called the central dogma of molecular biology, which is that DNA -> RNA -> Protein. That means that the information for everything in your cell is contained within your DNA. That information is transcribed into RNA, which is chemically very similar to DNA. It is also mobile. It moves from the nucleus of your cells out into the cytoplasm where its information is translated into protein. The picture below, found at http://bytesizebio.net, illustrates this graphically. The way that the RNA is translated into protein is by something called the ribosome, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome</a> . This ribosome is actually an RNA based machine, that is 3 RNA molecules do the actually synthesizing of the protein. These are called ribosomal RNAs, or rRNAs. Because every protein in the cell needs the ribosome and these rRNAs to be made, they are obviously found in very high abundance. The way this is possible is because they are in a very high copy number. Typically you have 2 copies of each gene, one from mom and one from dad. But you have 200 copies of these genes (100 from mom and 100 from dad). They are found in what we call head to tail repeats. This means they come right in a row with the end of one going right up against the start of the next, sorta like floats in a parade. The interesting thing about these genes is that in actively dividing cells, all 200 are turned "on". But as cells develop into more mature types, some are turned "off". Most commonly, half are turned off but I've also seen many cases where most are turned off.<br />
Essentially, one can think of these as the engine that allows a cell to grow and divide. This has made the regulation of these genes very important to the study of severe metastatic tumors and cancer treatment. Because it seems that when a cell becomes cancerous, its less likely to become a life threatening and severely aggressive tumor unless its able to turn all these genes "on".<br />
Its an interesting field of study to those of us, like myself, that are interested in basic molecular biological questions because of the problem that differentially regulated repeats pose to the study of the cell. Sequence is very important to biology. The sequence of DNA is what differentiates one gene from another. And from these sequences, we can understand how a gene is turned on and off. Most commonly, whenever you have identical DNA sequences, they behave identically. However, this is occasionally not true. In this instance, it is the crux of biologists like myself to determine how the cell can tell the difference between two identical sequences. This is a common theme in a study that has recently gained notoriety, called epigenetics. <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-56672683295418940412012-09-09T11:34:00.002-07:002012-09-09T11:47:14.826-07:00A chance to play catch-up<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A little summary of the Giles Lab, and how it came to be.</b> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">(also, a summary of some science sprinkled throughout and again at the bottom) </span><br />
Its been a long time since the last entry into this blog. So I’ll start with happened since the last time. I was a postdoc at the NIH/NIDDK in Gary Felsenfeld’s lab for six years. It seemed like forever. I started there to work on RNAi and its effect on chromatin structure, and that was what I worked on. For anyone whoever reads this I'd like to not sacrifice the science, but I'd love for non-scientists to also have a chance to know what I'm talking about. So, I'll give a sentence or two whenever possible to help clarify things. I can also throw in a link to sites like wikipedia that can explain things too. So that end, RNAi is a process that earned its discover's the nobel prize in 2005(?) or near there. They showed that very small RNAs, things that were previously believed to be nothing more than degraded and useless, had a huge role in things as varied as prevent viral infection to regulating cancer. They had been implicated in effecting genome structure and function in a yeast, but nothing yet in humans. This is what I wanted to work on.<br />
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_interference
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<i><b>The path to having my own lab</b>
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We managed to get one manuscript out on the subject, in Nature Cell Biology. It wasn’t accepted until the fourth try. Its acceptance was greatly helped by a talk that I gave at a Keystone Symposia on epigenetics and chromatin. An editor from the journal was there and approached Gary to say that they would be interested in the work. Its no guarantee, of course, when they approach you like this. But its just a slight wink/nod in the right direction towards publication. We submitted it twice and finally got it in.
I needed to follow that work up and I tried to do so by pursuing the genome-wide localization pattern of human Argonaute 2. This technique required the new process known as ChIP-seq, which required the ability to work with linux –based systems. Many of the bench molecular biologists at that time were “doing” chip-seq, but this occurred by virtue of a tight working relationship with a full-time, dedicated biostats colleague. An example of this was the lab next to ours, Dan Camerini’s group. His lab had 3 bioinformatics experts as postdocs. The rest of the lab merely had to do the ChIP and then hand it off to the bioinformatics folks and then the got their beautiful genome-wide binding data back. I had no such luxury and if I was going to stay in this game I knew I had to figure out a way to do these anlyses myself.
With the great help of some of Dan Camerini’s postdocs, mainly Kevin Brick and Ivan Gregoritti, I was able to do many of the computational analysis needed from genome-wide, high-throughput sequencing analysis. I was able to put together a manuscript that consisted of the Argonaute 2 genome wide binding and a series of hypothesis driven analysis and comparisons with other publicly available databases. I was able to conclude that the Ago2 binding sites were enriched for repeat regions, and regions enriched for short RNA production and H3K9me3 levels. We sent this manuscript to Molecular Cell and it was reviewed but rejected. They wanted more experimental evidence and clearly thought a bioinformatics journal was more appropriate. This was annoying because less than a year previous, many labs were publishing entire manuscripts that were nothing more than an analysis of the genome wide distributions of a single histone modification. The main lab to do this was Keji Zhao, also at the NIH. But in science, the burden of proof and the bar for what is a good manuscript changes constantly. And although these types of papers were great in 2008, by mid 2009, they were no longer acceptable.
I kept up working on this manuscript by re-doing the Ago2 ChIP-seq, including some immunoflourescne done in a collaboration by Gaelle Lefevre and myself, and also doing some small RNA-IP seq. We resubmitted but the reviewers always wanted more controls, and more information. However, this was data was good enough to impress two universities into giving me a job interview, University of Alabama in Huntsville, and University of Alabama at Birmingham. I was given an offer by both places and had no choice but to accept the job at UAB. I was also given a offer to visit the University of North Dakota, but I didn’t actually go visit b/c I accepted the offer at UAB first.
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<b>The First Year of the Giles Lab</b><br />
The job offer at UAB came around April of 2011 and I moved there around August. I did a couple extra experiments before anyone was in the lab and we resubmitted the manuscript with Gaelle and Gary but it was reviewed and rejected. I think brought in a graduate student, Blake Atwood, who developed a QPCR assay system to use for RT-QPCR and ChIP-QPCR analysis of the rDNA locus. I have gotten a little bit ahead of myself here. Our analysis had always suggested that Argonaute 2 was specifically localized to the repetitive regions of the human genome. However, these analyses leave out the ribosomal RNA genes, of which there are ~200 per human cell. This highly repetitive nature of these genes makes it difficult to analyze them. However, we were able to use a single consensus repeat unit of the locus and observe that the tags from the ChIP-seq experiment were highly enriched for the coding region of this gene.
So, Blake enabled us to do ChIP-QPCR and RT-QPCR throughout the rDNA locus and we analyzed the effect of knocking down Ago2 on RNA levels throughout the locus. I also brought on a postdoc , named Mariana Saint Just Ribeiro. She was previously in Suming Huang’s lab at Florida. Suming was a postdoc along with me in Gary’s lab so I knew I could trust his recommendation. He made it clear that Mariana was perfectly capable of doing the work but that he didn’t have sufficient time to mentor her. So I took the leap and brought her into the lab. She quickly made an impact by demonstrating a strong effect on histone modifications when Ago2 is reduced. She joined the lab around the start of January 2012. Blake joined a couple months before that.
With these new additions in personnel and data, we resubmitted the manuscript to Nature Genetics, and it was triaged. We immediately resubmitted it to Nature Cell Biology, which also triaged it. We immediately resubmitted it to Genes and Development and they sent it out. However, the reviews were mostly negative. Although the reviewers like the area of research and would like to see more work, they weren’t convinced.
So now its September of 2012 and I have a new manuscript on this project. We have mostly just rearranged how the data is to be presented. We added some ChIP-QPCR of both endogenous and tagged Ago2 to the rDNA locus to confirm that it is actually bound there as suggested by CHIP-seq. We have also added a new analysis of the sRIP-seq, which demonstrates some information of the biogenesis of the small RNAs to which Ago2 are bound. We utilized a metabolic labeling technique to demonstrated the a loss of Ago2 actually does have an effect on the synthesis rate of the rRNA genes. It also illustrates a change in the processing rate when Ago2 is knocked down. We have added some very interesting data demonstrating that Ago2 binds to SETDB1, a histone lysine methyltransferases. We can show that this is found at the rDNA locus and that its localization depends on Ago2.
So now the manuscript is in the hands of Gary and we hope to resubmit it soon, for the umpteenth time. Luckily, this isn’t the only thing that lab has going on. I have also been lucky to be in a collaboration with Hengbin Wang, also at UAB in the Dept. of Biochemistry &Molecular Genetics. His lab initiated a very large scale protein purification project to screen HeLa nuclear extract for its histone deubiquitination activity. Histone ubiquitiination is modification that we don’t know much about, so being able to find the enzymes that regulate it is a huge step. He ended the project with ChIP-seq and RNA-seq data that was done by his Chinese collaborators. However, their analysis didn’t make much sense, so he needed me to take a look at it. I did, and it was quickly apparent that it was going to be a ton of work. Hengbin quickly offered me the chance to be a coauthor. I jumped at the chance.
My analysis showed that the loss of this new protein Usp49, caused ~10,000 introns to be retained in the mature mRNA. Furthermore, these introns have a uH2B containing nucleosome positioned at the 5’ splice site. These introns are also highly enriched for uH2B. We submitted this manuscript to cell, where it was triaged. Then we sent it to Science, where it was reviewed but rejected. The reviewers loved the biochemistry but thought that we hadn’t proved the splicing connection. We addressed their concerns to prove that a direct effect on splicing was occurring and then resubmitted it to Nature. They rejected it with the reviews being of the exact opposite nature. They seemed to love the splicing connection but hated the biochemistry. This only goes to show how broken our system of peer-review is! I’ll say that again, its broken! How could their be any truth to a process that could be so varied between 2-5 experts ranging between 2 of the premier journals in science? We are currently hoping to resubmit this to science.
My lab currently has 3 people in it, after another very bright graduate student named Jessica Makofske joined the group. Her project is to purify specific chromatin fragments from the rDNA gene. This is no easy feat and is something that would revolutionize chromatin biology. To date, if you want to know which proteins are bound at a given site at a given time you have to have a-priori knowledge of the proteins existence and then check for it. This would most likely be done by ChIP-QPCR or a gel shift analysis. However, if one were able to biochemically purify certain chromatin fragments, mass-spec could be done on the entire locus and we would be able to know all the proteins that are present, as well as all the histone modifications. Our approach is the utlize a combination of nuclease accessibility, velocity sedimentation rates and differential restriction digestion to purify these fragments. This project has already yielded some interesting data.<br />
<i><b><span style="color: red;">A summary of some science: </span></b></i><br />
ChIP. Chromatin immunoprecipitation. First of all, what is chromatin. Well, most people know what DNA is. But DNA doesn't look like that inside your cells. Its actually wrapped up like a string wrapped around beads. The beads are proteins called histones. And when you have a group of histones combined with the DNA thats wrapped around it, its called a nucleosome. When you string together a bunch of nucleosomes together and add in all the other non-histone proteins that bind to your DNA, you have chromatin. <br />
immunoprecipitation is a fancy way for doing the following, taking an antibody that recognizes a protein and attaching it to a bead. The bead is the size of very very small pebble. The antibodies are the same kind of antibodies that your cell makes to fend off infections. When this antibody is attached to the very small pebble, you can incubate the antibody:bead complex with your cells and then give it a spin. The proteins recognized by the antibody:bead will pellet (or precipitate) to the bottom of the tube. This technique is called immunoprecipitation If the antibody is desinged to pull down chromatin, its called chromatin immunoprecipitation. <br />
ChIP-QPCR. Is doing ChIP and then measuring how much of a given DNA sequence is in the tube using quantitative PCR.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_polymerase_chain_reaction. ChIP-seq is a ChIP experiment where instead of doing the PCR step to quantify how much of a given DNA sequence is associated with a given protein, you sequence all the DNA that comes down in the tube. This will typically yield between 10 and 150 million small sequences and requires quite a large computer to analyze. <br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-84973156337410501092011-10-07T11:05:00.000-07:002011-10-07T11:20:44.336-07:00Cosequences of Wealth Disparities part 3 ... i told ya soI have posted numerous times before about wealth disparity in this nation (and the globe too). I don't mean to blow things out of proportion but it seems that western civilization can be leading to a collapse. The youth have revolted in much of the Arab world, Greece, Spain, Paris, London, New York and many other large cities in the USA. Is this just a blip or a sign of things to come? Well, the old saying is that "its all about the economy stupid" is important here. But its not the only thing. The scariest and most realistic reason why this unrest and these protests are only going to get worse is that the youth have lost their faith in the democratic process to effect change. Good times come and go. If a democracy (or a republic) is functioning as it should, peoples angst will take them to the ballot box and they will create change through voting. But as long as the Gen Xers have been alive they have seen donkeys and elephants parade in and out of the white house and congress; and things have gotten steadily worse for them. And, there is not a "we're in this together" mentality, which could buffer the problem during genuine economic tough times, because people suffer while the wealthiest 1% of the country continue to prosper. <br /><br />I have no political point to make here. There are people who subscribe to a libertarian perspective and think that if you're poor, its your fault (this position could become increasingly difficult to justify because there simply are not enough jobs to go around). And there are more liberal-minded types who believe government has a role to play in helping the poor. The problem with the first perspective is that if you create a society that leaves too many people behind, those people are not going to just go quietly. They exist. They are real. And they are going be angry. The notion of letting capitalism run wild and not caring about the poor can work, so long as the poor a) aren't really too poor and b) the masses of poor people are content with their lots. Neither of these things are the case. I have news for anyone who thinks this is just a nuisance; the only constant in world history is change, the rise and fall of nations and great empires. <br />This situation must be dealt with. <br /><br />I told ya so. (obviously so did many others...:))Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-15186814476791627032011-06-07T11:01:00.000-07:002011-06-07T11:20:39.556-07:00What they should've said..I'd like to reinvigorate this blog. But I don't think my invective-laden tirades do anybody any good. I believe this to be the case in the main because the topics are too general and vague. Everyone has their "pie-in-the-sky" ideas about how to make the world better, or more commonly, what is wrong with the world. Thus, I'm launching a new feature that I call "what they should've said". <br />And for this weeks installment I'm going to give my responses to two people who have been in the news lately.<br />The first is Anthony Weiner. At his press conference what he should've said is this: <br /><br /><br />"Yes. I took a lewd picture of myself and sent it to some women. I have cheated on my wife. So what. It has nothing to do with my abilities as a legislator, or my ability to improve the lives of my constituents in my district in New York. I realize that what I have done will hurt my family and my wife, but that is my business and I will have to deal with it. I won't say another word about it. As for my future in politics, that is up to the people of (insert name of his district). They put me here, they know what I have done, and they alone will decide my future, as is the mechanism by which this republic functions. I won't waste anyone's time with false tears and manufactured contrition, written by an overly paid publicist, as have so many of my fellow colleagues. I'm not perfect. I've never claimed to be. And I'm no hypocrite. I have not campaigned for, or championed anything that could resemble social conservatism or religious hegemony that so many on the right of the aisle routinely do. I don't want your vote because you think you can have a beer with me. I don't want your vote because you think I have the same morals and ethics as you. I don't want your vote because we worship the same God. I want your vote because you think I'm good at my job, and that I make the lives of the people I'm sent to Washington to represent, better. <br />I am sorry if I have disappointed anyone. But my personal life is my own business. I have broken no laws; and i will not step down. I'm a good legislator; and I will continue to be. That is all".<br /><br />If he would've said that..he'd be talked about forever. He'd look strong as an ox! And he might actually help us escape this awful pattern of getting distracted by the personal lives or our elected officials and pay more attention to the routine shredding of the constitution of which they try with all their might to prevent us from noticing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-75545738337082124082011-01-19T11:47:00.000-08:002011-01-19T12:07:26.316-08:00A commentary on friendshipI've always been fascinated with friendships. I have been blessed with many throughout my life. I can't remember a time when I didn't always have a dozen or so people that I could call to do anything at any given time. I don't think that is anything odd when I was in high school or college. But as I got into my mid-20's I think that the number of people that most people routinely spend time with that are not family or colleagues (the definition of "friends" from here on it)plummets. But my friendship levels did not. They are probably as high as they ever were, or perhaps even higher. I can honestly say that four or five of my closest high school friends, guys who were always hanging out in large groups, have now lost anything resembling that. Their time is spent with family and work first, and maybe with one or two close friends in the little bit of free time that they can round up. <br />I am inclined to say that I find this sad, but i don't. They are both happy men, with wives and families that they adore. I suppose that it is the natural order of things. Although I don't think that this is particularly sad in general, I think losing all my friendships would suck. I just can't imagine a life without dozens of close friends. And so I prioritize friends as high as I can.<br />But that leads me to my next question. How high should you prioritize friends? The benefits are obvious; you have fun with your friends. However, when you have a child there can only be so many hours in the day and time spent doing one thing typically takes away from time spent doing something else. It also makes matters more difficult when you have a large group of equal friends. If you had a single friend; you could stay equally close with that person because all your "friend" time could go that direction. But when you have multiple groups; something has got to give. <br />There is also an emotional cost to trying maintain friends. One thing I've learned being part of a large network of friends is that no matter how one tries to be inclusive, people always get left out. And when this happens, either feelings get hurt or people re-evaluate their friendships. If you only have a small amount of time to hang out with some friends you aren't likely to invest that time with someone who routinely leaves you out. The reasons are not just petty, time spent with friends leads to stories and memories, and these memories compound over time. If you miss out on too many events, you are out of the loop, and hanging out just isn't the same anymore. Everyone has been there before, like say, if a friend of yours from high school has a group of college friends coming over. They will just talk and talk about the good ole times and you are just a fly on the wall. This never works out. <br />Although this inevitable fall is somewhat petty as well. Your time may not mean jack shit to anyone else, but its infinitely precious to you. And its hard to justify spending it with someone who doesn't seem to want to spend time equally with you. These things happen all the time as friends "fall off". What exactly is that? It doesn't mean that there is a big fight or a change in one's life, but they start making plans less frequently, that frequency hits a tipping point, and then viola! you reach a point of "I used to hang out with them" from "my good friend who I see all the time". These events happen all the time and they fell like real losses. And I suppose the last thing I can say about it is that perhaps this is why most families fall out with their large networks; they seem to be less and less involved in things and then one day , presto, chango, 10 years goes by and nobody has thought to call. when you put it that way , it is definitely sad.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-50571401405828686862010-11-07T11:36:00.000-08:002010-11-07T12:01:15.893-08:00Consequences of Wealth Dispariites part 2I've been spouting off about wealth disparity on, and off now for years. You can go back in this blog and see that I've touched on it numerous times. It seems to be coming more and more to the forefront. Nicholas Kristoff has written an excellent piece on the matter in his latest NY Times column: "Our Banana Republic"<br />http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?partner=rss&emc=rss .<br />He mentions how our wealth disparity is much worse than some of the countries we loved to call Banana Republics. He then goes on to claim that the real divide in this country is the split between corporate interests and average citizens. The Supreme Court has ruled this year that a corporation is extended the same first amendment rights as actual people when it comes to donating money. This is the prime example illustrating how if there is a war of capital vs. labor in this country (to borrow an old concept that should be brought back), the capital is crushing the labor. <br />You almost can not get ahead on your own merit, if you live in a major metropolitan area and are a salaried worker. The jobs that used to support that possibility have all been off-shored. And whats worse, is that the liberals in this country continue to support a democratic party that they believe supports their ideals for a more balanced economy, but it was the Clinton Administration that actually got the ball rolling in the free trade arena. For some reason Americans love stuff that has the word "free" in it (free trade, free market, free-dom), but in this case, free trade doesn't really mean trade in the way you think. For some reason stupid middle americans love how this sounds because it appeals to their sense of fairness. But it will not only never benefit anyone who doesn't own a large company that sells or busy things from China, it will most definitely hurt you. It will most likey involve the loss of a job, or the necesarry reduction in wages to keep your job here. Not enough people seem to get this. I didn't. Free trade actually appealed to my sense of fairness. But I realize now that it doesn't work for us. It may work great for a C-level executive of a fortune 500 company; or for anyone who works fairly high up the food chain in such a place. But it will only make everyone elses life worse. Its great that shit at walmart costs 10% less than it would w/o globalization, but that doesn't do you any good if you don't have a job. So the first problem is that not enough people "get it". The second problem is that even if they do, they don't realize that neither party is putting forth ideas that help.<br />There are millions of unemployed/underemployed people, many living in the upper midwest "rust belt". They have lost all their manufacturing jobs, which are not coming back. What do you propose that these people do? Where are the jobs that are going to allow them to make enough money to buy a house, save money for a nice retirement and be able to put their kids through college. Because without the opportunity to do that, nobody is going to be happy. That is really all the american dream boils down to. It used to be that if the majority of the people had a chance at the very modest aforementioned life, we were happy. But it seems now that we'd rather craft a society where 1 in 1000 people are going to "make it" (however possible) and have millions and millions; and everyone else will struggle. Nobody on capital hill wants to help you if your poor. They don't care about you. The wealth disparity will keep growing, and this is definitely not sustainable.<br /><br />Obviously, politicians only want to get elected. So they push issues that are easy to understand and get people riled up: immigration, abortion, government spending (without actually outlining percentages of GDP, and putting the spending in perspective), and gun rights, just to name a few. When there are so many more important issues that just don't get discussed. This is mainly because they are complicated issues that are impossible to be on one side or the other. They are not two sided. There is no for or against when the question is "how should government spend its money?", or "how do we get more well paying jobs for people with bachelors degrees or less?", "how do we balance off our trade deficit?", and even, "how far is too far when police put GPS units on peoples cars?". A discussion about any of those issues will not increase ratings at msnbc or fox. Thus, politicians waste little time talking them up. "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got", may be a stupid corporate slogan to make you work harder, but it carries an important message. Dems and Repubs are just pepsi and coke. You may prefer one flavor slightly to the other, but so long as you are drinking either you are still rotting your teeth.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-7511802055193783522010-10-01T07:33:00.000-07:002010-10-01T07:56:40.893-07:00I hate the Tea Party. I welcome the Tea PartyThere is no way for a self-respecting scientist to consider any of the Tea Party candidates for even a second. Since I'm not self-respecting, I'll give it a second. They are the most ignorant, awful, loathsome group of closet racists and sheep that I've ever seen. And they might just do some good. <br />The problem isn't with liberal or progressive ideals. The problem isn't even with conservative ideals. All of these political ideologies have their proper times and places, and I believe the best governments can use bits and pieces of each to govern most effectively. The problem is corruption and systemic failure. Let me ask any Barrack Obama supporters in what ways is he really that different than any of his predecessors. He may be winding down the war in Iraq, but he is amping it up in Afghanistan. So the peace-niks shouldn't be happy with him. He took on healthcare, but did any liberals really get what they wanted? The only real thing to be happy about is that insurance companies can't drop children. Thats pretty good; but nowhere near what he set out to do. For all the political capital he spent on that fight, we now have a system that is going to require you to pay for insurance. Wow! Do you really think people weren't getting health insurance because they didn't want it? Maybe I'm missing some wonkish details of the policy, but it seems that the only big winners are the insurance companies. The Tea Party wants to undo this on the grounds of it being unconstitutional; and I think they may have a point. This is crap. Believe me, if a republican president passed this bill; the democratic bloggers, main stream media, and just about every American that lives inside a major city or suburb, would be screaming their heads off. He would be called a fascist pig and blah blah blah. But a Dem can get away with it. People should be outraged at this legislation. <br />What else is there? Well, Obama is OK with the federal government increasing their abilities to invade privacy on the internet http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Obama-Administration-Internet-Wiretapping-Wiretapping-Law-privacy,news-8163.html . Obama has not closed gitmo http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j6jTooRHtlhvNqlz4NB-jWaaddeAD9I55K882 . So on four really big issues :<br />1) WAR. no significant difference in terms of financial or human output.<br />2) Health Care. A whole bunch of fuss over a bill that requires you to pay for it, or else suffer a fine.<br />3) Privacy. He is basically extending things started with Bush's PATRIOT Act. <br />4) Human Rights. Gitmo is still open. The talk about torture has just stopped. Its been swept under the rug. <br /><br />This article sums up what I'm trying to say:<br />http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/obamas-failure-making-it-easy-for-republicans-20101001-160zo.html .<br /><br />So, back to the Tea Party. What the Obama administration proves is that the only real difference between an elephant and a donkey is the sounds they make. The policies keep promoting a large military; they keep the divide between the wealthiest and most poor growing, they keep decreasing our privacy, and reducing our rights. (how about this one for horrific..http://www.asuherald.com/opinion/court-gps-detours-fourth-amendment-1.2344402). Where is Obama on illegal search and seizure. Apparently its ok for the cops to come into your house and put a GPS device on your car, so long as its not in a garage. Basically, if you can afford a garage, the bill of rights applies to you. If not, well, don't expect any privacy.<br />The tea party wants to tear everything down. If I didn't depend on a healthy government funded dedication to scientific research for my livliehood, I'd be in favor of this too. There isn't much in Washington that isn't tainted with a corrupt big-budget military industrial complex; hypocritical financial industry or greedy corporate lobbyists. This sounds trite, but they don't give a crap about you. Don't believe me, how about this memo from citibank that states just that. Their consultants did an analysis to show that all but the top ~3% of Americans are heading for ruin, but thats OK, because the wealthiest will have enough money to support their industry..(http://www.scribd.com/doc/34641013/Plutonomy) This came from the Michael Moore movie, "Capitalism. A Love Story" <br />So the Tea Baggers may be dumb as a box of rocks, but they aren't corrupt yet. If they could stay more libertarian and not so much evangelicals; they might be electable. And who knows, could they be much worse than what we got? Maybe highly educated, super-motivated, Rovian-types in the office is the problem. Some slow moving, big dumb animals might just be what we need.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-1755853051071701872010-08-16T12:43:00.000-07:002010-08-16T12:50:06.892-07:00consequences of wealth dispariteshttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704407804575425983109795768.html<br /><br />I read this article from Peggy Noonan, which was in reference to the Scott (?) Slater, chute exit from the Jet Blue flight, meme. Apparently this event has touched off some skirmishes in the class war that is always going on in the background in this country. <br />I actually agree with Ms. Noonan's comments. Manners are no longer a matter of any consequence for most Americans. Similarly, and possibly related, is the fact that we are completely informal in our dress. Wealthy Conservatives like Ms. Noonan don't like this. They would love to see all the servants dressed up nice and acting accordingly. And they might, except for one thing, the Nations' wealth disparity. I think that it explains many of our society's ills, that the difference between the wealthy and the not-so has grown so wide, most of us can't plan on retirement, are upside down on our mortgages (or barely treading water), are trapped in our current jobs and current homes because we can't afford health care, and have not been able to sock anything away for a rainy day. <br />People are bitter and angry because if capitalism is a game, they are losing...badly. And this why the Ayn Randian philosophy of zero goverment intervention into the economy is nice for a novel, but absurd for policy, the people that lose in the game of Capitalism, still exist. They don't just get erased. If they did, and new people were allowed to jump in the game, the model might work. But with millions of "losers" still breathing and trying to make a living, simply ignoring them will ultimately result in a social revolution. Perhaps we are seeing the beginnings.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-44915927963580394782009-10-21T07:59:00.000-07:002009-10-21T08:57:29.454-07:00signs that our nation is rotting from the inside. part 1I think the USA is rotting from the inside. The main reason is that we hate each other. We are cynical, greedy, lazy and have no cohesive glue binding us together. The USA may be a country and a sovereign state, but we are not a nation. The only commonality that Americans share is our laws. But our laws have run a muck. We are way over litigious and so ready to drop a dime and press charges for the littlest thing that we are all prisoners. And the cops can't help. They are trapped within a system that forces them to follow orders, even when it doesn't make a drop of sense. <br />Example. <br />http://www.wtkr.com/news/wtkr-naked-kitchen,0,7977988.story<br /><br />this guy was arrested for being naked in his own home. The greatest country on the planet overreacts again!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-65499614684403797722009-04-28T08:17:00.000-07:002009-04-28T08:27:01.408-07:00Identity Politics Alive and Well.http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/28/first.lady/index.html<br /><br />most people would read that article and think how great it is. But not me. I'm happy that Indian Women are inspired, I guess. And happy that they no longer think they're ugly because of Michelle Obama. But the problem with that is it shows us that this world is still engaged in Identity Politics. People, the globe over, rarely judge people by what say or do or how they think. They judge you by who you are perceived to be. Michelle Obama allows these young women a world away to feel beautiful not because she is smart, funny or accomplished, but because she is the first lady and she has two daughters. Both of those things are out of her control. The message this article sends to me is that women are trying to make their way through the world passively, in terms of what other people judge them to be based on their looks. "Its OK to have dark skin", or its "OK to have two daughters" or "Its good if an ambitious harvard educated lawyer is interested in you". Women should be outraged by this idea. <br />But its not just women in India. Take a look at the most recent presidential campaign. The democratic party is traditionally one of highly educated lawyers. And the democratic party is also the one known for being friendly to minorities. Who were the two candidates from that party, a women and a black man, both minorities and both Ivy League educated lawyers. The republican party base has recently been: the military, big business and religion. Who were the three candidates for their nomination: John McCain (military family), Mitt Romney (2nd generation multi-millionaire) and Mike Huckabee (ordained minister). The point is not whether I found these candidates worthy, but the point is that it wouldn't really have mattered. We still view people for what they represent and/or look like and not who they are and what they say. When the young Indian Woman feel encouraged by Michelle Obama because of her stance on some important issue and not for how she looks, I'll start to be encouraged.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-86202634768715775032009-04-24T07:46:00.000-07:002009-04-24T07:55:43.977-07:00-"studies" and blameI listened to an interview recently of a right learning historian named Victor Davis Hanson. He is a professor of classics at Stanford University I believe. He was asked what he thought it meant to study the Classics, why people don't study them as much and what are he consequences. His answer fascinated me in a non-pc way that only a conservative military historian could. He said that the Classics aren't about learning facts, but they are about learning how to think. When you study Ancient Greek and Roman texts, there are no preconceived notions about right or wrong. That is probably because it is so long ago that we have no moral bias as we might if we were studying Nazi Germany (my point, not his). So modern education has become more fact based. But thats not the interesting point. The thing he said that struck me cold in my tracks was that the Classics died as soon as Universities started offering departments and majors that end in the word "studies". For example, environmental studies, women's studies, asian studies, african-american studies, etc. The problem with these types of programs, he claims, is that the start off with a prejudiced blame, inherent in the teachings. The entire basis of environmental studies is that Man has done something to the globe to ruin it. At the base of all women's stuidies as well as any other "culture-studies" is that white, european men did something wrong or evil, which created their current situation. <br />I'm not nearly as interested in whether or not white man did ruin the globe or ruin other cultures, that is a complicated question. But what is interesting is how accurate his statement of those new age departments really is. Those types of classes do have, at their core, the belief that somebody did something wrong and created a screwed up situation in the world. Is it a good idea to send off college graduates with the idea that someone is to blame? If you look at American Society, we love to lay blame. It is at the heart of everything we do. Our society is as over-litigious as ever. Every car accident has to have someone to blame, even thought its very name, "accident", implies that there is no blame. I think we would be doing ourselves a favor if we stopped trying to post blame every time something in our world is wrong and started to try to understand things better, purely for understanding's sake.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-92167200334315865312009-04-16T11:11:00.000-07:002009-04-16T11:37:13.443-07:00You are what you care about (aka..why our economy is crashing)I read a very interesting article from wired magazine today. <br />http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfectmemory?currentPage=3.<br /><br />The article is about a woman who has been interviewed all over the main stream media because of an apparent perfect memory. Every time the main stream media interviews her, they make her out to be a walking hard drive, that can never get anything wrong. And of course, this makes her out to be somewhat of a sensation. It seems, she should be someone that is idolized. I mean, there is a whole industry of people selling you products that are going to increase your memory so you can be better at work. And this story, is a clear example of why scientists don't get to be featured in the main stream media very often, because they have very keen bull shit sensors. And thats not to say that this woman doesn't have an incredible memory (google "jill price and you can see her recollection abilities), she can recall exact dates of things that happened 20-30 years ago. She can recall exact dates of airplane crashes, TV shows, or where she was when something happened or even what the weather was when it happened. <br />But that is why the psychologist that does this piece is great. There's a line in his story where he talks about how everyone seems to know someone with a "photographic memory" but there is never any indication. Its kind of like telepathic powers, its bullshit, undocumented, urban legend. His point could've been made much clearer than he did (because he was being nice), there is no such thing as photographic memory!!!<br />Wait a second, you might say if you read up on Jill Price. She really can remember those dates, this in not a hoax! No, but you have to dig a deeper. The question is not what CAN she remember, but what can't she. So this psychologist gives her a series of tests, "what year was the magna carta signed, read back to me a list of these words, etc." When given these types of things, Jill Price's memory is no different than anyone else. She is unable to remember the list of 7 and even adds some words that weren't on the list (this is apparently very common). She has no idea when the magna carta was signed (neither do I). <br />To explain why, one needs to digress and talk a bit about memory. You do not store things in your brain the same way a computer does. There is no one place for a specific memory as there is on a computer hard drive. Furthermore, there is no difference in the human (or animal for that matter) brain between learning something and remembering something. To remember something is to learn it all over again. You remember things by repeated learning. That is to say, your brain, molecularly speaking, has to continually go through the process of relearning something to make it stick. The more times you recall it, the more times its likely to stick. This is why you can remember your pin, passwords, addresses, etc. And you can't remember something by taking one good look at it and just really really wanting to remember it. You have to say it aloud a few times, either in your head or aloud. <br />So why does this woman have such a remarkable memory, well, basically because a) she does not seem to get out much and b) all she does is ruminate about her own past. She is pretty self-absorbed it seems. And when they look at brain scans of her, it appears that the only thing even remotely different about her brain is that it is similar to people afflicted with OCD. She obsesses about her own past and thus she can remember anything that happened during her life with computer-like precision. Its really no big deal. This woman should be pitied, not held on a pedestal. <br />Now, how in the world can I compare this to troubled US economy. The answer has to do with the difference between truly understanding what is going on by asking a couple extra questions or just looking at something with a quick glance and concluding that it contains some crazy secret to success or almost other-worldly grace. Companies treated the real estate market and investment models as if it would go up forever. People thought that they could live off of refinancing their homes because their value would go up forever. People who were smart enough to make millions of dollars and then hand it over to someone else to watch while they retired at 40 or 50, were stupid enough to think that it was normal or sustainable to be receiving the EXACT same sum of money each month from investors like Bernie Madoff. The connection with Jill Price is that people will watch her on 20/20 or the like and conclude that there is some genetic component to learning or memory and use that as an excuse for their lot in life. And further down the road, someone might use Jill Price to separate some fool from his money in a scheme to enhance your memory that you may remember things like Jill Price. The person who should be getting interviews from 20/20, and be going on non-stop press junkets isn't Jill Price(she needs a hobby)its the psychologist/journalist who wrote the story; so he can teach Americans a thing or two about thinking and analysis that might prevent some simpleton from thinking he/she/it just found out about the next big thing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-10412320875737401102009-04-13T08:54:00.000-07:002009-04-13T09:10:17.198-07:00why I'm not a liberalI definitely lean to the left. But when I see a column like the one below from the Huffington Post,<br />http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/will-obama-prosecute-the_b_186135.html<br />I am reminded why I would never call myself a liberal. <br />I see how the Right can label the left as pacifists and use that against them. There absolutely is a time to use military force, and those annoying pirates are a great example. Thomas Jefferson used military force on pirates in almost the exact same region 200 years ago and then fought a war against them.<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates#19th_century.2C_United_States-Barbary_wars<br /><br />This journalist is trying to make a story here, and he is clearly trying to connect it to the prisoners at Gitmo. That is not a story. The legal scholars he quotes in his own piece clearly say that everything the US did is perfectly legal. Furthermore, Obama has already laid out his plans to close Gitmo. So why is this guy grinding that axe? I have no idea. <br />The tone is clearly not celebrating Obama's decision to use force and free the captain. He continually uses quotes when referring to the pirates, obviously suggesting that they aren't really pirates. They may not sail massive ships, have names like Red Beard, carry a parrot on their shoulder, search for buried treasure or any other stereotypical pirate references, but they do capture peaceful boats and hold them for ransom. They also kill people at sea. And that is definitely a pirate. Why does this guy have such a problem with our Navy killing those guys? I'm very proud today. The journalist even goes as far as to rationalize why they are pirates in the first place. As if its O.K. to hold people for ransom so long as you have a good reason. That is just wimpy, crappy, non-sense. So you are allowed to hold up a bank if you were unfairly fired from your job? Any apologies for these Pirates is just moral relevancy bull crap. <br />Mess around with US merchant ship and get three snipers aiming rifles at you and putting bullets in your brain. That sounds like a fair deal to me. And by the way, how amazing is it that our snipers could hit those guys? I'm not a sniper or a marksman, I have only shot high powered rifles a handful of times, but that seems incredible. They were on a battleship that was obviously swaying within the water and shot another boat, also swaying. It seems unreal. <br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Will Obama Prosecute the Captured Somali 'Pirate' in a US Court?</span><span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span><span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span><br />Habeas rights have been trashed, prisoners have been tortured and held without trial for years at Gitmo and Bagram. Obama should finally show respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the US.<br /><br />The airwaves, newspapers and websites have been saturated with coverage of the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, the US citizen who was being held by four Somali "pirates" on a small lifeboat in the Indian Ocean, following the unsuccessful attempt by the Somalis to take control of the US-flagged vessel, the Maersk Alabama, a ship owned by a Pentagon contractor.<br /><br />While details are still emerging, there are definitely some serious questions looming about how the decision to use lethal military force was put into play--in particular three key questions: 1. The legality of the killing of the three Somali men; 2. The political decision to kill them in light of long term potential consequences; and, 3: The legal status of the fourth Somali "pirate" allegedly in US custody.<br /><br />First the background: We are told that on Friday, President Obama gave the military the green light to use lethal force to rescue Phillips. We also know that a group of "Somali elders" believed they were negotiating with the US to try to bring about a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Reports indicate that the Somali elders asked that the four Somalis be allowed to return freely to Somalia without being prosecuted in exchange for releasing Phillips. That was reportedly rejected by the US. On Sunday, the Somalis were told the negotiations were over and that the Americans "had another action." Shortly after that, lethal force was used--with Navy SEAL snipers on board the USS Bainbridge shooting dead three of the Somali men. The Navy says the snipers took the action because they believed Phillips's life was in "imminent danger"--this allegedly came when a Somali was pointing an AK-47 at Phillips's back. A fourth Somali citizen is in custody, though it is unclear when exactly he was taken by the US. Reports indicate that he had been stabbed in the hand in the initial "pirate" raid on the Maersk Alabama and, before the Sunday raid, had voluntarily left the lifeboat holding Phillips to seek medical attention from the US warships and/or to negotiate with the US side.<br /><br />I have been in touch with two well-respected legal scholars, Francis Boyle from the University of Illinois College of Law and Scott Horton, a military and constitutional law expert. Both agree that the US had legal justification to use lethal force against the "pirates." Boyle said, "Technically, piracy is a felony under US law. And deadly force can be used against someone involved in the commission of an ongoing felony."<br /><br />For his part, Horton said: "The legal rule historically is that pirates on the high seas are fair game for any country's military. In this case they kidnapped a captain and threatened to kill him, so the use of lethal force against them was fine from a legal perspective. (The bigger question was whether it was a wise thing to do, of course, but that requires an assessment of the entire tactical situation, about which I don't know enough)."<br /><br />On that question, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, head of the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, seemed to realize that there may be significant consequences for the decision to kill the Somali men. "This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it," Gortney said. As Reuters reported, "Somali pirates have generally not harmed their hostages and officials fear they could now act more violently."<br /><br />As one "pirate" said, "The French and the Americans will regret starting this killing. We do not kill, but take only ransom. We shall do something to anyone we see as French or American from now." Another added, "As long as there is no just government in Somalia, we will still be the coast guard... If we get an American, we will take revenge."<br /><br />On the issue of jurisdiction to prosecute the fourth Somali "pirate," Horton said, "Pirates can be tried anywhere that exercises jurisdiction. Here they attacked a US-flag vessel, which means that the United States would have criminal law jurisdiction if it chose to exercise it."<br /><br />There are certain to be calls from blood-thirsty lunatics to send this Somali man to Guantanamo or Bagram with right-wingers like Newt Gingrich and Cal Thomas wrapping this into their tired "Obama is weak on terror" narrative. As Thomas wrote last week on the Fox News website:<br /><br /> What will the Obama administration do if the pirates are captured alive? He won't sent them to Gitmo, which he is closing down. Will they get ACLU lawyers? Will there be testimony from a "pirates rights" group? Will they be released on a technicality after a trial in U.S. courts? If there is not as forceful a response as there was during the Jefferson administration, it will invite more of these incidents. The world's tyrants are watching to see how President Obama reacts. The message they get will determine how they respond to America and whether we will be in greater peril.<br /><br />Indeed, The Wall Street Journal on Sunday called for the Somali man in custody to be "transferred to Guantanamo and held as an 'enemy combatant,' or whatever the Obama Administration prefers to call terrorists." On this point, Horton points out an interesting distinction between the Obama and Bush administration positions on "pirates," particularly as it relates to the "terrorist" label.<br /><br /> The big legal issue is surrounding calling them "terrorists," which the Bushies did with regularity and Obama resisted. I think that Obama and his people are correct. These people were motivated by the desire to make money, pure and simple, which makes them conventional pirates. If they were labeled "terrorists," the insurance company and the ship charter company wouldn't be able to negotiate with them or make a payment. Pirates they can still pay off, which will often be the most sensible and least costly solution.<br /><br />If the US decides to pursue prosecution of the Somali "pirate" in custody in a US court, he would obviously hopefully have a right to a defense (which would clearly enrage the crazies) and the nature of that defense could well depend on what type of legal counsel he ends up with and how his lawyers present the motives of his actions, as described to them, in attempting to seize the Maersk Alabama. This could be a major test of Obama's legal interpretation of the rights of prisoners taken by the US in unusual circumstances (to put it mildly). In an era when due process has been trashed in the US and prisoners have been tortured at CIA "black sites" and held without trial for years at Guantanamo and elsewhere, Obama should allow exactly what Thomas and his ilk fear so much--respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the US.<br /><br />So what would a "pirate" defense actually look like? Remember, some Somalis--and other international observers-- do not exactly see the "pirates" as being 100% unjustified in their actions. This form of "piracy" really escalated after the 1991 collapse of the Somali government and Western ships allegedly dumping waste off the Somali coast and devastating the Somali fishing industry, a primary source of income in the Somali coastal areas where many of the "pirates" are based.<br /><br />If Obama elects not to take the terrible option of sending the man to Guantanamo, it will be interesting to see if Obama elects to bring him to the US or, as has been suggested by some, prosecute him in Kenya.<br /><br />As Professor Boyle pointed out, "certainly if he were tried in a United States federal district court, he could try to make the points [about dumping, etc], which is why they might send him to Kenya to avoid all of that... If i remember correctly, under the Geneva Convention definition of piracy (which is not precisely the same thing as the federal statute), the crime of piracy must be for a private purpose, not a public purpose. So he might be able to raise these issues on the question of intent--that he acted for a public purpose, not a private purpose."<br /><br />Boyle later emailed me the following quote from St. Augustine:<br /><br /> Kingdoms without justice are similar to robber barons. And so if justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands? For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by a social compact, and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon. If by repeatedly adding desperate men this plague grows to the point where it holds territory and establishes a fixed seat, seizes cities and subdues peoples, then it more conspicuously assumes the name of kingdom, and this name is now openly granted to it, not for any subtraction of cupidity, but by addition of impunity. For it was an elegant and true reply that was made to Alexander the Great by a certain pirate whom he had captured. When the king asked him what he was thinking of, that he should molest the sea, he said with defiant independence: "The same as you when you molest the world! Since I do this with a little ship I am called a pirate. You do it with a great fleet and are called an emperor."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-2271220107303252342009-04-11T07:05:00.000-07:002009-04-11T07:20:00.217-07:00A few questionsFirstly, I want to make a plug for a commentator that I really enjoy. His name is Dan Carlin, and his two podcasts and other aspects of his website can be found at www.dancarlin.com . He does a current events podcast called "common sense" and a history podcast called, "hardcore history". In a couple of his recent podcasts he made some points that intrigued me, but i have been unable to track down references. If anyone has any suggestions on where to find information on any of the following ideas/concepts, or any comments directly, I anxiously await.<br />1) Bailouts/Goverment Spending.<br /> He claims that we are currently in the whole roughly 10 trillion dollars. He then goes on to make an effort to explain just how much money that is. He takes a handful of expensive, very big endeavors in American history, adjusts them for inflation and then adds them up. The following events all add up to about 3 trillion dollars after being adjusted for inflation: Louisiana Purchase, Marshall Plan, The New Deal, All of NASAs udget, The Savings and Loan crisis, The Iraq war (part 2) and I may be missing some. Also, all of ww2, adjusted for inflation equals about 3 trillion. So adding up all of those major events in american history add up to about 60% what we are currently in debt for. But here's the thing rthat gets me. Those other things did an awful lot, what exactly is this current debt going to accomplish? Because so far, it has done precisely nothing.<br /><br />2) war coverage.<br /> Dan carlin had some sorta mean things to say about Woodrow Wilson. Apparently you could have been tossed in jail for publicly denoucning the effort in ww1. Also, wilson apparently started the trend of making illegal the journalistic covering of the war. By the time ww2 came around, FDR thought that perhaps the lack of war coverage was distancing the american public from the war effort and so he reversed it. And, that decision had the opposite effect of what wilson thought would happen, it energized the population. Showing american troops being killed got people fired up and garnered support for the war effort. Why? Because the population thought that ww2 was a just-war and they wanted to win. Cycle ahead to Vietnam when i believe the Nixon administration took away the right to cover the war, b/c he felt like it was curtailing support. <br />The point of the rant was that whether or not the sight of photos/video of a war effort has a positive effect on people's views of the war has to do with the context of the war. If they feel it a just war, they will support it in spite of or perhaps increase support b/c of photos. However, if they don't like the war, the photos will have the opposite. So to me, it seems that if you wanted to be a democratic president and actually allow the people to govern, as they say we are supposed to, you would want as much coverage of the war as is realistically possible, w/o endangering troops.<br />My search for references on this idea is really the history of presidents and war censorship.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-47065747639745836022009-03-27T07:34:00.001-07:002009-03-27T07:34:56.677-07:00I promiseI just realized that the Economist article is dated March 19, 2009, which is the same day I made my post. But I didn't read that article until this morning, I promise.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-30945026910716640872009-03-27T07:27:00.000-07:002009-04-11T07:04:55.461-07:00Sometimes I get it rightIf you pay attention to dates it is clear that "The Economist" is reading this blog and using it for ideas. My most recent post criticizes the American People for their reluctance to move. Well, apparently thats not just hot air. This article from March 19, 2009 not only reiterates the points that I made, a) Americans do not move as much as they used to and b) that mobility is an important aspect to a free labor market, but they go farther and explain why those things are happening. Apparently home-ownership has a negative side you may never have thought about, it lessens your mobility. <br /><br />http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13331109<br /><br />Labour mobility<br />The road not taken<br /><br />Mar 19th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC<br />From The Economist print edition<br />Americans used to move to where the jobs were. But now home-ownership and health insurance freeze many of them to the spot<br /><br />NEELY WHITES bought a former crack house in New Orleans and fixed it up. It was looking really nice when Hurricane Katrina struck. In the storm’s aftermath the neighbourhood where she lived turned even rougher than before. Weary of drive-by shootings, Ms Whites moved to Long Beach, Mississippi, and bought a house there in September 2006.<br /><br />It was not the best timing. The property market promptly crashed. After fleeing a city that was literally under water, Ms Whites is now stuck in a home that is figuratively so. She would like to move closer to her new job as a financial consultant, cutting the daily commute from an hour each way to something less onerous. But she cannot sell her home. A nearly identical one on her street has been on the market for ages at $125,000 and found no takers. Ms Whites’s mortgage is over $160,000. To make matters worse, she is in the middle of a divorce. Not being able to sell the house prolongs that painful process. <br /><br />Mobility is part of the American dream. In “The Grapes of Wrath”, when Tom Joad’s farm in Oklahoma was repossessed he packed up his family in a sputtering truck and set off for California. Things didn’t work out so well for John Steinbeck’s hero. But throughout history, Americans have dealt with economic shocks by picking themselves up and moving on. Their mobility underpins America’s flexible, dynamic labour market. Now it faces two threats.<br /><br />One is the housing bust. House prices have collapsed by 27% since their peak in 2006. By December last year a fifth of homeowners with mortgages owed more than their homes were worth. Such people are only half as likely to move as those whose homes are above water, estimate Joseph Gyourko and Fernando Ferreira of the Wharton School of business.<br /><br />Some cannot sell their homes at all. Others could, but don’t want to take a big loss on an investment they thought was safe as houses. Either way, they are stuck. If a good job comes up in another town, they cannot take it. This effect is partly offset by the impact of foreclosures. Last month alone 291,000 homes received a foreclosure notice. The newly evicted are not merely free but obliged to move. This is unfortunate, but although jobs are in short supply nearly everywhere, being mobile at least increases the odds of finding one.<br /><br />A decade ago Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in Britain argued that excessive home-ownership kills jobs. He observed that, in Europe, nations with high rates of home-ownership, such as Spain, had much higher unemployment rates than those where more people rented, such as Switzerland. He found this effect was stronger than tax rates or employment law.<br /><br />If there are few homes to rent, he argued, jobless youngsters living with their parents find it harder to move out and get work. Immobile workers become stuck in jobs for which they are ill-suited, which is inefficient: it raises prices, reduces incomes and makes some jobs uneconomic. Areas with high home-ownership often have a strong “not-in-my-backyard” ethos, with residents objecting to new development. Homeowners commute farther than renters, which causes congestion and makes getting to work more time-consuming and costly for everyone. Mr Oswald urged governments to stop subsidising home-ownership. Few listened.<br /><br />America subsidises more than most. Owner-occupiers typically pay no tax on capital gains and can deduct mortgage interest from their income-tax bills. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-backed mortgage firms, have squandered a fortune promoting home-ownership among the uncreditworthy.<br /><br />The other threat to mobility is health insurance. A company can buy health insurance for its employees with pre-tax dollars; an individual can buy it only with after-tax dollars. So although soaring premiums are prompting many firms to drop or restrict coverage, most Americans still get their health insurance from their jobs.<br /><br />This makes it hard for anyone with a sick child to quit and start a new firm. It also makes it harder to switch jobs, despite a law helping employees to stay in company plans for 18 months after they leave. Scott Adams of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that married men with no alternative source of insurance were 22% less likely to switch jobs than those who, for example, could get covered by their wife’s employer.<br /><br />Tying health care to a job can tie people to jobs they hate. Gerry Stover, who now runs a doctors’ group in West Virginia, recalls a time when his wife was pregnant and he couldn’t get health insurance at a private firm. He became a prison guard. As a public employee, his family was covered. But the job was neither pleasant nor a good use of his talents. “You have a radio and you’re put in a room with 70 criminals and told: ‘If they get you round the neck, press the [panic] button’,” he says. Some people even get stuck in bad marriages because they need their spouse’s health insurance. As Alain Enthoven of Stanford University puts it, this gives new meaning to the word “wedlock”.<br /><br />The recession seems to have slowed internal migration. Only 11.9% of Americans moved house between 2007 and 2008—the most sluggish pace since records began in the 1940s. But not everyone has been immobilised. The postal service helps employees move by buying their homes and selling them at a loss. A postmaster in South Carolina recently sold his pad to his employer for $1.2m. “No wonder stamps cost so much,” grumbles a blogger.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-54575691355454285572009-03-19T07:10:00.000-07:002009-03-19T07:25:57.205-07:00Go West Old Man! Or east, south or north.A theme through all my complaints and rants about the economic crisis has very little to do with Wall Street or the government. Most news outlets have enough of that to go around. I like to focus on something that nobody else does, the American People. They are getting off without any criticisms, and its frustrating the shit out of me. The American People that are losing their jobs and maybe even their entire industries are hypocrites. I doubt that you would find many communist (or even socialist) sympathizers in the UAW. But as soon as things start getting bad for them they want the government to help. If you asked them, in an abstract sense, do they think its good when the government intervenes to help out business, or do they think that its good to have a big government, I'm sure the majority would say, "hell no!". But as soon as that argument becomes concrete and no longer abstract they change their tune. I suppose there is nothing all too bad about this, we are all hardwired for self-interest, and that's what this boils down to. But there is a fatal flaw for many blue-collar workers. They want capitalism. They love it. They love America more than anyone else, and they'd be damned if we had to live like those Ruskies, or even those French. But they don't really mean it. They want the government to intervene, they demand it. Try moving or closing a military base that's in a small town. Even if it means shrinking government. Even if it means growing the economy as a whole. The people of that town will freak out and protest. Try shutting down a factory because its more beneficial to make some product overseas, and watch the people wave the American Flag and claim that the big company is a traitor for moving their operations overseas. The company is being as American as Apple Pie. They are participating in capitalism, the thing that all the blue collar-types supposedly love. Its a hypocrisy that has its roots in the fact that people of this country want everything. And as soon as they get it, they want more or they complain about why they didn't get it sooner. <br />The mobile, mostly Y.U.PPy types get it. They realized from high school that they weren't going to have one career their entire life, they were probably looking 3 or 4 different ones. They certainly knew that they were going to have to move around, all over the country and possibly to another country. This is capitalism. It is fast, dynamic and unpredictable. Most of the world agrees that capitalism is a good thing, but few stop to think what it really means. It means that you have to be ready to move and be mobile, both literally and in your thinking. And the days of getting a job at the plant after high school and staying in one town for your whole life making a great living are gone. does that mean that things are worse off? Not by a long shot, for those who embrace the world as it is, as people claim it ought to be things are much better. The good old days weren't always so good. <br />The next time you wave a flag and bad mouth those lazy Europeans, think for a minute what it really means to have a free market.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-77739868743261292642008-12-19T11:17:00.000-08:002008-12-19T12:09:50.943-08:00If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?That was a common phrase form a Kurt Vonnegut book, I think it was "Cats Cradle". Vonnegut is probably my favorite writer, nobody captures irony and the death of the American Dream better (maybe Hunter S. Thompson, but in a very different way). Beyond the American Dream, however, Vonnegut is probably better than anyone else ever has been at seeing huge faults in humanity, that, in his gloomy view of said species end up wreaking massive pain and suffering. <br /> I love that expression, not because I agree with it, but because I think it summarizes everything I hate about this world. Many people, of all social standards, actually believe that you should be extremely wealthy if you're smart and that if you're not extremely wealthy you're not smart and, the worst of all possible corollaries, that if you're extremely wealthy you must be quite smart. But whatever happened to the good old fashioned American notion that all the wealthiest people are likely absolute crooks in some way or another? <br /> This, more or less, was the subject of a recent column by recent Nobel Prize in Economics winner Paul Krugman http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink.<br />This column basically laments how the financial industry has screwed us over by taking peoples money, investing it in high yield, high risk stocks, taking the bonuses and high salaries when things are good and than walking away when the investments all turn sour. --<br /><p>--from Krugman:</p><p style="font-family: courier new; font-weight: bold;">Meanwhile, how much has our nation’s future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?</p><p style="font-family: courier new; font-weight: bold;">Most of all, the vast riches being earned — or maybe that should be “earned” — in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment. </p><span style="font-family: courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that “the financial system as a whole has become more resilient” — thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there’s an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they’re doing</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">I especially like that part about the lure of money pulling people away form jobs that actually do things, like science. Which brings me to the solution for a "world gone madoff": changing peoples minds and values. Policy will not help us on this one. This is the thing that not many people are free to say, because in essence it amounts to saying that its the peoples fault. The populists won't tell you that because it undermines their entire ideology. The elected officials won't tell you that because they're afraid of losing votes and the elite won't say that because it will call attention to how elitist they are. But I have nothing to lose so I'll say it. Any Rand says never trust the person that asks you to sacrifice. So I won't use that exact word. But instead I'll stick with another expression, "you reap what you sow". If Americans live by the adage, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" they are always going to value money over intelligence, substance or stability. And I'd like to think that those are the elements of a strong economy that can maintain its strength over decades. People made bad decisions that didn't look past the next fiscal quarter and other people made them CEOs. People went into financial services and took jobs knowing that they had no clue what they were doing and took salaries that were knowingly way too high to be reasonable (see the book "Liars Poker" for more on that). And still other People gave the former people the money to do that. <br /><br />The country's economy is in tatters and nobody knows exactly how bad its going to get before it gets better. But everyone has an opinion on why we are here. Maybe, so far as the recovery is concerned it doesn't matter who's fault it is. But it certainly does matter who's fault it is to prevent it from happening again. And the answer is, every time you did something foolish with your money or made life decisions based on getting rich as quickly as possible and not on actually doing or creating something, its your fault. </span></span><span style="font-family: courier new;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808075005966112515.post-30709291652463635422008-12-16T18:32:00.000-08:002008-12-16T18:45:11.658-08:00Adam Walsh and repercussions good and bad.Every now and again things happen that change the world. And often they can be relatively minor. This thought occurred to me when I saw that Adam Walsh's case was solved. I lived in South Florida 2 years after his abduction became national news. In fact, I lived in Miramar, Fl, which borders or is at least very close to Hollywood, Fl, the place where the abduction happened. Whats more, I have been in that mall and the Sears where it happened. Of course, I was only about 8 years old at the time. <br />I didn't realize it at the time, but this abduction had a huge impact on our (my generations) parents, specifically moms. Our generations parents could be considered the safety first generation. Our parents created safety belt and helmet laws (bicycle and motorcycle), M.A.D.D. and our parents were probably the first ones to teach their children to be afraid of strangers. My mom freaked out about that abduction and literally drilled into my head what to do if someone tried to abduct me. I can remember her telling me to kick and scream and yell and bite and any number of the nastiest things an 8 year old boy can do to hurt and adult and/or attract attention. The attention drawn to abductions and child safety by John Walsh (Adam's father) has been an amazing help. His TV show, America's Most Wanted, has been shown to save over 1000 children from abduction alone. And I read that his association and the work they've done may have saved 100,000 children since the early 80s. <br />I could never question the benefits of such organizations and awareness. But lets remember that nothing comes without a price. What are the consequences of a generation that is taught as young as they can remember to never trust a stranger? It has to sow the seeds of cynicism, bitterness, and contempt for our neighbors. I wish I could have known my fathers world where a 10 year old boy could cruise around Niagara Falls, NY with a bus pass and his parents were never concerned. I'd love to live in a world where a parent could see some other adult spanking their child and assume that the child deserved it and actually apologize instead of launching right into litigation and possibly criminal actions.<br />What happened in the last 20 years that such horrible things can happen to children like Adam Walsh, which seem to be a minor occurrence before? But more importantly, even though most of your neighbors share your values and are generally good people why would you not trust them to discipline your children? And why don't we think that spanking is a good idea anymore?<br />This all may seem disjointed but there's a connection between all these things to what is happening to our economy and possibly our entire society and way of life these days. I think that one can look at all symptoms and draw many conclusions. One may be in favor of increased policy or no policy or smarter policy. However, at some level you can't legislate human behavior, but it can change. Is it possible that the economic meltdown isn't a financial issue at its heart but instead the chickens coming home to roost from years of f-d up values?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6