This is Your War on Drugs

Friday, May 7th, 2010

The incongruity of a para-military SWAT team invading a middle-class, middle-America home is shocking:

This is your war on drugs, Megan McArdle says:

Have you ever had one of those arguments in a bar that start around eleven and wind up when the bartender kicks you out? It starts off on some perfectly reasonable topic, but as the hours and the drinks mount up, the participants are forced to stake out some clear logical positions, and in doing so, crawl farther and farther out along the limb they are defending… until suddenly you reach a point at which one of the debaters can either abandon their initial commitment, or endorse the slaughter of 30,000 Guatamalan orphans. And there’s this long pause, and then he says, “Look, it’s not like I want to kill those orphans… ”

This is our nation’s drug enforcement in a nutshell. We started out by banning the things. And people kept taking them. So we made the punishments more draconian. But people kept selling them. So we pushed the markets deep into black market territory, and got the predictable violence… and then we upped our game, turning drug squads into quasi-paramilitary raiders. Somewhere along the way, we got so focused on enforcing the law that we lost sight of the purpose of the law, which is to make life in America better.

I don’t know how anyone can watch that video, and think to themselves, “Yes, this is definitely worth it to rid the world of the scourge of excess pizza consumption and dopey, giggly conversations about cartoons.” Short of multiple homicide, I’m having trouble coming up with anything that justifies that kind of police action. And you know, I doubt the police could either. But they weren’t busy trying to figure out if they were maximizing the welfare of their larger society. They were, in that most terrifying of phrases, just doing their jobs.

And in the end, that is our shame, not theirs.

Posted in Policy | 3 Comments »

Health care law’s hidden tax change will unleash a 1099 avalanche

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Health care law’s hidden tax change will unleash a 1099 avalanche:

Section 9006 of the health care bill — just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document — mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.
[...]
But under the new rules, if a freelance designer buys a new iMac from the Apple Store, they’ll have to send Apple a 1099. A laundromat that buys soap each week from a local distributor will have to send the supplier a 1099 at the end of the year tallying up their purchases.

The bill makes two key changes to how 1099s are used. First, it expands their scope by using them to track payments not only for services but also for tangible goods. Plus, it requires that 1099s be issued not just to individuals, but also to corporations.

Taken together, the two seemingly small changes will require millions of additional forms to be sent out.

(Hat tip à mon père.)

Posted in Business, Policy | No Comments »

Journalist’s Guide to Firearms Identification

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Peter Hodge shares this Journalist’s Guide to Firearms Identification:

(Hat tip to Joseph Fouché.)

Posted in War | No Comments »

Dilute till safe

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Matt Ridley notes that the recent shutdown of air travel near Iceland was a huge buearucratic over-reaction to a theoretical model and based on a zero-tolerance approach to ash that makes no sense:

No coincidence that the models were built for radioactivity. Ash, chemicals, fallout and heat are things which are not linear in their risk. That is to say, a very low dose is not slightly more dangerous than no dose. It’s no more dangerous. This is not true of burglars and smallpox viruses.

He continues at John Brockman’s Edge site:

The ash cloud reminds us of the risks of risk aversion. Shutting down Europe’s airspace removed the risk of an ash-caused crash, but it also increased all sorts of other risks: the risk of death to a patient because an urgent medical operation might have to be postponed for lack of supplies, the risk of poverty to a Kenyan farm worker because roses could not be flown to European markets, the risk of a collision between ferries on extra night-time sailings in the English Channel. And so on. Risk decisions cannot be taken in isolation. The precautionary principle makes too little allowance for the risks that are run by avoiding risks — the innovations not made, the existing suffering not alleviated. The ash cloud, by reminding us of the risks of not being able to fly planes, is a timely reminder that the risks of global warming must be weighed against the risks of high energy costs — the risks of poverty (cheap energy creates jobs), of hunger (fertiliser costs depend on energy costs), of rainforest destruction and indoor air pollution (expensive electricity makes firewood seem cheaper), of orangutan extinction in subsidised biofuel palm oil plantations.

Oh, and remember the lessons of public choice theory: if you set up a body called the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre, don’t be surprised if it over-reacts the first time it gets a chance [to] demonstrate that it considers itself — as all public bodies always do — underfunded.

Posted in Economics, Science | No Comments »

The Moral Life of Babies

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Paul Bloom explains his team’s work exploring the moral life of babies:

Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.

Read the whole thing — if you like babies or morality.

Posted in Science | No Comments »

Rationalizing Mediocrity

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Years ago, lean consultant Bill Waddell learned that when management is committed to the idea that they are different, and that the principles that apply in other manufacturing sectors don’t apply to their unique situation, it is best to pack up and move on:

“Do you have experience with a dairy products manufacturer that is 50% employee owned selling to both retailers and restaurant supply distributors with factories in both Alabama and Nebraska?” is code for “We ain’t gonna change.”

Some of the worst offenders are in pharmaceutical manufacturing, where they blame regulations, labeling requirements, and their “unique” no stock-out philosophy for their problems:

This particular issue stuck in my craw after I read that the Johnson & Johnson’s plant making children’s products has been closed down after four recalls in seven months. The FDA met with Johnson & Johnson’s senior management in February and they still can’t figure out how to make children’s Tylenol and other products without “foreign materials and black or dark specks” in them. This is no primitive outsourced operation — the solution of choice for many of the big pharmas to address their unique challenges. This plant is in a suburb of Philadelphia.

The FDA inspectors found “thick dust and grime covering certain equipment, a hole in the ceiling and duct tape-covered pipes.” I guess the challenges of dealing with all those labels are moot. The FDA is urging J&J’s customers to use private labeled alternatives — generics — anything but Johnson & Johnson. How’s the ‘No Stock-Out Philosophy” working for you now, J&J? Seems as though the government has concluded that a stock-out of Johnson & Johnson products is about the best thing that can happen to their customers.

The rationalization that you are different — your problems are so difficult and unique that no one else can understand them — is a formula for disaster. It makes management sound like so many teenagers — or alcoholics — whining ‘no one understands me’. In fact, just about everyone understands you quite well. The only one who doesn’t get it is you.

Posted in Business | No Comments »

Parkour Generations Training Day

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Parkour Generations led a Training Day in New York City a few years ago. Those of us in the hinterlands can watch the video:

Posted in Fitness | No Comments »

The Quest for the Ultimate Flying Machine

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Richard Whittle’s The Dream Machine is about the quest for the ultimate flying machine — a quest that took 25 years and $22 billion to bring us the V-22 Osprey:

The Osprey was originally supposed to fly ten types of missions for four armed services, carry its own missiles and guns, fly 2,400 miles without refueling, have a cabin pressurized against nuclear, biological and chemical agents — the list went on and on. It also had to use what at the time were cutting edge technologies, like composite materials instead of metal in the fuselage and “fly-by-wire” electronic flight controls. The Pentagon asked Bell Helicopter and Boeing for a real dream machine, and they said they could build one. But one of the stories I tell in the book is how, when he saw what the military wanted, Bell’s chief tiltrotor engineer threatened to resign rather than design it. He was afraid it was going to discredit the tiltrotor concept.

The Osprey may still redeem itself, Whittle says. He explains why the Marines love such outlandish technology:

The Marines are risk-takers by nature, but as I explain in the book, they’ve been in love with vertical-lift aircraft since the helicopter and the atomic bomb emerged during World War II. They saw very quickly that in the atomic age, it might be impossible to do amphibious assaults — their trademark mission — from ships anchored close to a hostile shore, the way they did them in World War II. They fell in love with the tiltrotor because it offered a faster and better way to take Marines to a fight from ships at sea. Their passion for it, though, stems from their unique culture. Unlike the other armed services, the Marines are also a tribe or even a cult, and one of their tribal beliefs is that they have to be different to continue as a separate branch of the military. It’s hard to remember these days, but at various times in their history, the other services and even presidents have tried to abolish the Marines or fold them into the Army or shrink the Corps beyond recognition. Harry Truman once famously said — and later regretted it — that “the Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force.” So for the Marines, the Osprey has been an existential question. That’s why they were willing to pay such a high price in time and money and lives to get it.

Whittle has ridden in an Osprey in Iraq:

Once it gets airborne like a helicopter, the pilot or copilot tells the crew, “Ready to go fast,” and turns a little thumbwheel on the control stick to tilt the rotors forward to fly like an airplane. It can convert to airplane mode in about 12 seconds, but even before the rotors get all the way forward, the Osprey takes off like a floored Corvette. Riding in it in Iraq wasn’t much different from flying in it elsewhere, except that a crew chief fired some rounds from the machine gun on the back ramp to test it after we took off. In theory, there was a chance somebody would shoot at us, but peace had broken out in Al Anbar province at the time – this was December 2007. Besides, while helicopters usually fly low in combat zones, the Marines cruise their Ospreys at 8,000 feet or more, well above the range of AK-47s and RPGs. The Osprey gets to that altitude quickly enough that getting shot at wasn’t a great worry when I flew in Iraq. It also gets you where you’re going a lot faster than a helicopter can, and it doesn’t shake and rattle you the way many military helicopters do.

Posted in Technology, War | No Comments »

Power without Responsibility

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

While discussing the cancer of bureaucracy — in a piece I’ve already recommended — Bruce Charlton addresses the odd rise of the committee:

Committees now dominate almost all the major decision-making in modernizing societies — whether in the mass committee of eligible voters in elections, or such smaller committees as exist in corporations, government or in the US Supreme Court: it seems that modern societies always deploy a majority vote to decide or ratify all questions of importance. Indeed, it is all-but-inconceivable that any important decision be made by an individual person — it seems both natural and inevitable that such judgments be made by group vote.

Yet although nearly universal among Western ruling elites, this fetishizing of committees is a truly bizarre attitude; since there is essentially zero evidence that group voting leads to good, or even adequate, decisions — and much evidence that group voting leads to unpredictable, irrational and bad decisions.

The nonsense of majority voting was formally described by Nobel economics laureate Kenneth Arrow (1921-) in the 1960s, but it is surely obvious to anyone who has had dealings with committees and maintains independent judgement. It can be demonstrated using simple mathematical formulations that a majority vote may lead to unstable cycles of decisions, or a decision which not one single member of the committee would regard as optimal. For example, in a job appointments panel, it sometimes happens that there are two strong candidates who split the panel, so the winner is a third choice candidate whom no panel member would regard as the best candidate. In other words any individual panel member would make a better choice than derives from majority voting.

Furthermore, because of this type of phenomenon, and the way that majority decisions do not necessarily reflect any individual’s opinion, committee decisions carry no responsibility. After all, how could anyone be held responsible for outcomes which nobody intended and to which nobody agrees? So that committees exert de facto power without responsibility. Indeed most modern committees are typically composed of a variable selection from a number of eligible personnel, so that it is possible that the same committee may never contain the same personnel twice. The charade is kept going by the necessary but meaningless fiction of ‘committee responsibility’, maintained by the enforcement of a weird rule that committee members must undertake, in advance of decisions, to abide by whatever outcome (however irrational, unpredictable, unjustified and indefensible) the actual contingent committee deliberations happen to lead to. This near-universal rule and practice simply takes ‘irresponsibility’ and re-names it ‘responsibility’…

If that sounds like anyone, Charlton’s postscript confirms it:

Although I do not mention it specifically above, the stimulus to writing this essay came from Mark A Notturno’s Science and the open society: the future of Karl Popper’s philosophy (Central European University Press: Budapest, 2000) — in particular the account of Popper’s views on induction. It struck me that committee decision-making by majority vote is a form of inductive reasoning, hence non-valid; and that inductive reasoning is in practice no more than a form of ‘authoritarianism’ (as Notturno terms it). In the event, I decided to exclude this line of argument from the essay because I found it too hard to make the point interesting and accessible. Nonetheless, I am very grateful to have had it explained to me.

I should also mention that various analyses of the pseudonymous blogger Mencius Moldbug, who writes at Unqualified Reservations, likely had a significant role in developing the above ideas.

Again, I recommend the whole thing.

Posted in Bruce Charlton, Mencius Moldbug, Policy, Science | No Comments »

Wooden Half Adder

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

It took me a moment to correctly parse this reference to a wooden half adder. Did somebody whittle half of a venomous snake?

Gratuitous Bosom Buddies reference, from memory:

Int. Rustic Cabin

Henry Desmond (Peter Scolari)
What’re you whittling?

Kip Wilson (Tom Hanks)
(holding up a branch stripped of bark)
Albino snake. You?

Henry
(holding up an immaculately carved sports car)
Maserati.

Kip
Big deal. No tape deck.

Anyway, the wooden half adder in question is a mechanical computer that takes in two binary digits (bits), A and B, and outputs two binary digits, C (the carry bit) and S (the sum bit).

The craftsman, Takashi, was inspired by A.K. Dewdney’s The Tinkertoy Computer and Other Machinations.

Addendum: Takashi has added a video demonstration of his wooden half adder:

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Forbidden Planet

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Once we learned what Venus was really like, it became a sort of forbidden planet for science-fiction writers — but human colonies aren’t totally out of the question:

To my surprise there has even been some credible discussion of colonization — not of the hellish surface but the upper atmosphere, with aerostats AKA balloons. At 50 km above the surface the atmospheric pressure is equal to Earth’s, and temperatures are near the human comfort zone, 0–50° C. Human breathing mix is a lifting gas on Venus (with roughly half the lifting power per cubic meter of helium on Earth), so the entire gas envelope can contain breathing air. Venus gravity, about 0.9 g, is suitable for human health, while Mars’ third of a g is probably not enough.

Humans could even go outside, in principle with nothing more than a breathing mask, though protective clothing against those sulphuric acid droplets in the atmosphere would be a good idea. And don’t lean over that rail too far. It’s a looong fall, and nasty down below.

Reaching an aerostat base from orbit is (relatively) simple. Getting back up is challenging but not impossible, Venus orbit lift being a shade easier than Earth orbit lift.

If you really want to walk on the surface, consult the psychological or religious advisor of your choice. Returning to aerostat level is straightforward, a skyhook balloon, but that and your cooling system should be very reliable.

Posted in Science | 2 Comments »

The New 19th-Century Americans

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

The Chinese are the new 19th-century Americans:

The Chinese of 2010 call to mind 19th century Americans who shoved aside Mexicans, Indians and Spanish to populate a continent, build a mighty nation, challenge the British Empire — superpower of the day — and swiftly move past her in manufacturing to become first nation on earth. Men were as awed by America then as they are by China today.

America seems a declining superpower. She cannot defend her borders, balance her budgets or win her wars. [...] While we are finally extricating ourselves after seven years from an unnecessary war in Iraq, we are heading deeper into an Afghan war that has lasted a decade, the end of which it is impossible to see.

During the Cold War, China was in the grip of a millenarian ideology that blinded her to her true interests. Today, it is we who are captive to a utopian ideology that is becoming perilous to the republic.

Posted in Policy | No Comments »

Business Dynamics of Backyard Farms

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

John Robb continues to sing the praises of backyard farms, citing some business numbers from a recent LA Times article:

On average, the companies charge between $900 and $2,000 to have a section of land dug up — or to build a raised bed — that’s big enough to grow enough edible plants to feed a family of four.

The companies also offer personalized planting and harvesting services. For an additional weekly fee of $20 or more, a staff member will put in the plants, pluck the weeds, amend the soil, quash the bugs and fill a basket with ripened produce.
[...]
The two-person staff at Your Backyard Farmer is so overwhelmed with maintaining their 67 mini-fields, they’re turning people away. Co-founder Donna Smith started a waiting list earlier this month for those willing to spend at least $1,675 a year to turn 400 square feet into rows of butternut squash, bok choy or kale.

The economics are questionable:

Along with fresh produce, those rewards can include the bragging rights that come with having the latest eco-conscious status symbol: a farmer to call your own.

“The reality is, in most cases, you can go to Safeway or Whole Foods and buy organic produce for less,” said Jeremy Oldfield, 27, co-founder of Freelance Farmers. “So we focus on the intangibles of this: the joy of picking a tomato in the afternoon that’s still warm from the sun, or having a dinner party and being able to point out to your guests that most of the meal came out of your backyard.”

If you enjoy gardening, or your labor is suddenly undervalued by the market — as in a recession — then raising your own produce makes more sense:

Home Depot saw its vegetable seed sales jump 30% last year and continued to have double-digit growth in January. George Ball, chief executive of W. Atlee Burpee & Co., North America’s largest home garden company, said that for the last few years the company has been selling more vegetable seeds and plants than flowers — for the first time in its 130-year history.

Again, the economics are questionable, even from the hired-farmer’s point of view:

Today the company has offices in Claremont, Pasadena and Los Angeles’ Westside, and has expanded its staff to eight. Revenue is small but growing: Farmscape pulled in about $54,000 for the first four months of this year — $22,000 more than last year.

Most of the money is being plowed back into Farmscape, Dubois said, to expand the network of 60 mini-farms they’ve built in Southern California.

A staff of eight is splitting revenue — not profit, but revenue — of $54,000? (Presumably the bulk of their annual revenue comes during the spring planting season.)

That doesn’t seem… sustainable.

Posted in Business | No Comments »

The Limits of Policy

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

David Brooks discusses the limits of policy:

Roughly a century ago, many Swedes immigrated to America. They’ve done very well here. Only about 6.7 percent of Swedish-Americans live in poverty. Also a century ago, many Swedes decided to remain in Sweden. They’ve done well there, too. When two economists calculated Swedish poverty rates according to the American standard, they found that 6.7 percent of the Swedes in Sweden were living in poverty.

In other words, you had two groups with similar historical backgrounds living in entirely different political systems, and the poverty outcomes were the same.

A similar pattern applies to health care. In 1950, Swedes lived an average of 2.6 years longer than Americans. Over the next half-century, Sweden and the U.S. diverged politically. Sweden built a large welfare state with a national health service, while the U.S. did not. The result? There was basically no change in the life expectancy gap. Swedes now live 2.7 years longer.

Again, huge policy differences. Not huge outcome differences.

This is not to say that policy choices are meaningless. But we should be realistic about them. The influence of politics and policy is usually swamped by the influence of culture, ethnicity, psychology and a dozen other factors.

Steve Sailer describes Brooks’ piece as picking up on his [Sailer's] ideas, but expressing them gingerly enough to keep his job. Sailer adds his not-so-ginger point:

Which is precisely why one kind of policy — immigration policy — is so important. Minnesota is rather like Sweden. In contrast, New Mexico (state motto: “Thank God for Mississippi!”) is still somewhat like Old Mexico, even after generations within the U.S. with relatively little additional immigration since the 1600s.

Posted in Economics, Policy | 2 Comments »

Werner Herzog on the Obscenity of the Jungle

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Please watch the first minute or so of Werner Herzog on the obscenity of the jungle to familiarize yourself with the art-house film-maker’s world view and way of speaking:

Now, fully familiarized, enjoy this reading of a classic:

Posted in Media | No Comments »

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