From bad to worse in Pakistan

A huge truck bomb exploded at the gateway of the five-star Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday evening, just a few hundred yards from the prime minister’s house, where all the leaders of government were dining after the president’s address to Parliament.
At least 40 people were killed and 100 were wounded, according to The Associated Press. The toll was expected to grow because of reports that many people were still trapped inside the six-story hotel, which was engulfed in flames. Thus reports the NY Times.

If even a guy like me could have predicted such chaos and instability in Pakistan, I just cannot understand how "statesmen" and "leaders" in powerful countries, including the US, could have made sure such events will unfold. Awful. We are witnessing the beginnings of a total collapse--it is a failing state, but with nukes!!!

I feel terrible for the people who live in the country, and die for no fault of their own. What a tragedy!

A few days ago I sent the following as a potential op-ed to the Register Guard. It already feels old.

On August 12th a year ago, I wrote in these pages that an unstable Pakistan has the potential to cause geopolitical crises beyond our wildest imagination. Therefore, I wondered whether it would be better if Pervez Musharraf continued on as the president, even though he had come to power through a military coup.

Ding dong the witch is dead—Musharraf stepped down when the parliamentary majority initiated impeachment proceedings against him.

Having followed Pakistani politics from a distance ever since I could read a newspaper, I suspected that this would trigger more instability and chaos. While recent developments indicate that I might be correct, being right in this case is, unfortunately, no cause for celebration.

Almost immediately after Musharraf’s exit, the ruling coalition government came unglued. The opposition was held together by a focused, singular, objective of getting rid of Musharraf. There is no longer that unifying force and, as a result, it became a bitter struggle for power.

Leading one faction is Nawaz Sharif whose elected government was the one that was ousted by Musharraf in a military coup in 1999. The other faction is led by Asif Ali Zardari, who inherited the leadership mantle after his wife, the late Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated.

These two leaders and their parties formed the majority in the parliament. But, when Zardari became his party’s nominee for the presidency, Sharif pulled his party out of the coalition.

Zardari won the elections and is the president now. But, he may not be well—Britain’s Financial Times reported that he apparently "was diagnosed with a range of serious illnesses including dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder in a series of medical reports spanning more than two years." Would
anybody want this person to be in-charge of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal?

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda sympathizers and other militant fundamentalists have seized this political confusion as an opportunity to remind everybody of the havoc they can unleash. Suicide attacks and other forms of violence have increased, according to published reports. A week ago, one suicide bombing in the northwest killed 33. To complicate matters, neighboring Afghanistan and Kashmir are experiencing a new round of violence and death.

To make matters worse, the New York Times reported that American forces stationed in Afghanistan had our president’s approval to go after the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan—without prior permission from Pakistan’s government. The government, military, and the media in Pakistan are furious at America’s unilateral move that seems to undermine the sovereignty of that country.

In such a sequence of events, it was, therefore, not a real surprise when it was reported that Pakistani military fired shots to repel American helicopter and ground forces. The only good news here is that shots were fired in the air as warning, and not directly at American troops.

But, Pakistan is very clear about what will happen the next time they detect American incursion into their territory. The army spokesman said, “in case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire.”

The world has not gained anything from Musharraf’s exit. In addition to the geopolitical complications his exit has triggered, Musharraf is now completely off the hook and is not bound to answer THE question that has dogged us for seven years:
“where’s Osama bin Laden?” Musharraf is the one person who the world suspects has an idea of the whereabouts of bin Laden and his deputies.

Further, with his exit, Musharraf does not have to clarify to anybody how much he was involved in nuclear proliferation. Recently, in the German publication Spiegel, the wife of the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb claimed that Musharraf and his military minions orchestrated the spreading of nuclear know-how to countries, including Libya and North Korea. Alas, we will never find out what Musharraf knew, and when he knew it.

The irony of it all, and perhaps an insult to us Americans, is a report from Pakistan’s Daily Times that one of the two places that Musharraf may go into exile is New Mexico!

“It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world.”

Roubini says it is "socialism for the rich"

[The] transformation of the US into a country where there is socialism for the rich, the well-connected and Wall Street (ie, where profits are privatised and losses are socialised) continues today with the nationalisation of AIG.
This latest action on AIG follows a variety of many other policy actions that imply a massive – and often flawed – government intervention in the financial markets and the economy: the bail-out of the Bear Stearns creditors; the bail-out of Fannie and Freddie; the use of the Fed balance sheet (hundreds of billions of safe US Treasuries swapped for junk, toxic, illiquid private securities); the use of the other GSEs (the Federal Home Loan Bank system) to provide hundreds of billions of dollars of "liquidity" to distressed, illiquid and insolvent mortgage lenders; the use of the SEC to manipulate the stock market (through restrictions on short sales).
Then there's the use of the US Treasury to manipulate the mortgage market, the creation of a whole host of new bail-out facilities to prop and rescue banks and, for the first time since the Great Depression, to bail out non-bank financial institutions.
This is the biggest and most socialist government intervention in economic affairs since the formation of the Soviet Union and Communist China. ...
Like scores of evangelists and hypocrites and moralists who spew and praise family values and pretend to be holier than thou and are then regularly caught cheating or found to be perverts, these Bush hypocrites who spewed for years the glory of unfettered Wild West laissez-faire jungle capitalism allowed the biggest debt bubble ever to fester without any control, and have caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
They are are now forced to perform the biggest government intervention and nationalisations in the recent history of humanity, all for the benefit of the rich and the well connected. So Comrades Bush and Paulson and Bernanke will rightly pass to the history books as a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the USSRA.
Zealots of any religion are always pests that cause havoc with their inflexible fanaticism – but they usually don't run the biggest economy in the world. These laissez faire voodoo-economics zealots in charge of the USA have now caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and the nastiest economic crisis in decades.

Ouch! As one who often blogged appreciating Roubini's warnings, it will not surprise anybody (is anyone reading this? ha!) that I absolutely love this frank criticism.
(I excerpted it from the Guardian)

And a similar opinion from William Greider at The Nation:

historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.
Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, a brave conservative critic, put it plainly: "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist lovefest
between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks."

The Large Hadron collider, and SEC college football?

Last week I attended the physics event at the University of Oregon--of course, about the Hadron collider in Europe. One of the questions was, "what is the worst thing that could happen at the LHC?". Jim Brau's response was to the point: if the collider doesn't work, that will be the worst thing.

I wonder if we got a taste of it. Apparently a "30-ton transformer used to power cooling stations for portions of the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) gigantic superconducting magnets failed last Thursday, just one day after the LHC went online."

So, why the college football piece in the title of the post? Bizarre as it sounds, a headline that I read was "Auburn vs. LSU: SEC's early version of the Hadron Collider". It gets even stranger--the analysis employs more physics stuff:

The “Big Bang” you will hear rumble through the night air around 7:45 EST this Saturday will resonate from the epicenter of Jordan-Hare Stadium, not from Switzerland and France.
I’m not a physicist and I know very little about protons, particles, and kinetic energy but if they’re anything like these Tigers, collision is a very appropriate term to describe these two teams when they meet.

BTW, what is a hadron? Here is the explanation.

And, here is a rappin' explanation of the LHC :-)

What for a college education?

At first glance, the earnings uplift looks worthwhile. ... But cracks are appearing in the “graduate premium”. For one thing, it varies immensely by field of study ... men with arts degrees can expect to earn less than if they had skipped university entirely.
Robin Naylor, at Warwick University, has found that the average return to a degree has held up well over the past 20 years, but it has become more variable: the university now matters greatly, as does the degree class. “The penalty for not having a degree is high, but the penalty for getting the wrong one can be even higher,” he says. And Francis Green, of Kent University, has discovered that in 2006 a third of graduates were working in jobs that did not require a degree, up from a quarter in 2001; they earned a third less than those who were using their degrees.

That was from the Economist. I wrote about this in the Register Guard just over a year ago(August 27, 2007), and attracted some nasty attention for writing the following :

Does U.S. oversell college?
A new school year begins soon. I look forward excitedly to meeting new students and re-establishing connections with those who return. But once again, I start the year with the nagging question: Are we overselling higher education?

Growing up in India, it was quite common to run into people with advanced degrees working in unrelated jobs essentially because, well, there were very few positions to match their educational qualifications. Most of the bank clerks I have met in India have degrees in literature or the sciences. During our trip last December, the telephone salesman my father was talking to was happy that he was able to get that job soon after graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Selling phones or working as a bank teller do not require four years of college. So, why the degree?

Two reasons stand out.

First, there's the faith that college is the path toward prosperity, and that therefore everyone needs to go to college. Thus, parents do all they can to ensure that their children attend college. Second, college education serves as a filter for employers who are faced with the daunting task of selecting from among the many, many applicants for jobs. This further reinforces the notion that college degree is important.

Against such a background, I can't help but wonder whether our drive to get more high school students to college is a variation of the Indian blind faith that college degree will lead to economic prosperity. Déjà vu all over again!

Ironically, while we "elders" are focused on getting more high school graduates to college, it appears that practically every student I meet in my university is familiar with the joke about college degrees and jobs - you know, with the punch line, "Would you like fries with that?"

Students are aware that a college degree might not get them a job after all. This reality that students see is a total contrast to, and disconnected from, our focus on college.

Perhaps employers here in the United States use the college degree as a sorting tool just as employers in India do. By demonstrating that they successfully negotiated hazards like me, students implicitly tell prospective employers that they have the requisite skills to do the job. But then all we have done is unnecessarily raise the entry-level educational requirement, when in reality a degree is not really required and a high school diploma would have sufficed.

Studies show that the average life-time earnings of college graduates are significantly higher than those of high school graduates. But the studies do not seem to account for the possibility of inflated requirements of educational qualifications.

Further, if the recent preoccupation with outsourcing is what is driving us to focus on college, that is all the more the reason why we ought to focus on jobs that cannot be outsourced, many of which do not require a degree. Plumbing, auto repair and caring for the elderly cannot be outsourced to India. Here again, we are all too familiar with the complaints about how expensive plumbers are, or how difficult it is to find people who can help with the rapidly growing elderly population. Yet we choose not to steer more youngsters into such lucrative careers because we are fixated on college degrees that don't always guarantee jobs.

In India, too, there are boundless opportunities for people interested in plumbing, caring for the elderly and other occupations that don't require college diplomas. Urban India is increasingly short of such help. Samad, the plumber on whose services my parents rely, has become so successful that he has made a career change and is now a real estate agent. Samad did not even complete the eighth grade, a total contrast to the newly graduated mechanical engineer selling telephones.

Of course, university education is not merely about economic productivity. It is also to develop a culture of learning and an appreciation of various aspects of life. Personally, I am immensely thankful for the opportunity that I have to pursue learning as my vocation. But at a huge cost to the youth, are we incorrectly advocating that college education is the only avenue for individuals to be economically productive?

Footloose economy, version 2.0

[A] new phase in the evolution of the multinational corporation ... At first companies set up overseas sales offices, to watch over the export of goods made at home. Then they built small foreign replicas of the mother ship, to cater to local demand. Today the goal is to create what Sam Palmisano, the boss of IBM, calls the “globally integrated enterprise”—a single firm in which work is sourced wherever it is most efficient.

The Economist leads off with the article, from which I have excerpted the above, and leads us on to the special survey on globalization. All the more that we need to understand that the footloose economy is here to stay. The magazine adds:

It is true that multinationals tend to shop around for taxes, but in other ways they are usually sticklers for good behaviour. ...
A globally integrated firm cannot allow corrupt practices by employees in some countries and not others, so it must outlaw them everywhere. On the other hand, it cannot enforce religious practices and holidays, or different ways of life, so it must preach tolerance. One investment bank, for example, is extending its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender network to its Indian operations over the opposition of its local boss.

Interesting how multinationals in the 21st century can be messengers for liberal ideas that the left values--the same left that doesn't quite like multinationals.

But, here is the deal: the new version of multinational corporation promotes the idea of global citizenship--people see themselves not as part of a "nation", and citizen of a country, but as multinational individuals. I can relate to that idea. But, we also know how toxic this idea became in the campaign for the presidency. I hope we will slowly walk away from the narrow views that promote the us-versus-them attitudes. On that note, this post will end with another excerpt from that same Economist piece:

Chairman Yang Yuanqing of Lenovo, who has moved his family to North Carolina to deepen his appreciation of American culture, so as to help him integrate his Chinese and American workers. Or Lakshmi Mittal, the London-based Indian boss of Arcelor Mittal, who says his multinational team of executives get on so well that he forgets there are different nationalities in the room, and who believes his firm has no nationality, instead being “truly global”.
Lenovo and Arcelor Mittal are at the leading edge of a new phase in the evolution of the multinational corporation

US will need a trillion dollar bail-out

It is true that the US government has very deep pockets. Privately held US government debt was under $4,400bn at the end of 2007, representing less than 32 per cent of gross domestic product. This is roughly half the debt burden carried by most European countries, and an even smaller fraction of Japan’s debt levels. It is also true that despite the increasingly tough stance of US regulators, the financial crisis has probably already added at most $200bn-$300bn to net debt, taking into account the likely losses on nationalising the mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the costs of the $29bn March bail-out of investment bank Bear Stearns, the potential fallout from the various junk collateral the Federal Reserve has taken on to its balance sheet in the last few months, and finally, Wednesday’s $85bn bail-out of the insurance giant AIG.
Were the financial crisis to end today, the costs would be painful but manageable, roughly equivalent to the cost of another year in Iraq. Unfortunately, however, the financial crisis is far from over, and it is hard to imagine how the US government is going to succeed in creating a firewall against further contagion without spending five to 10 times more than it has already, that is, an amount closer to $1,000bn to 2,000bn.

When Ken Rogoff writes thus, I can only exclaim OMG!

Our "cartoon" economy

Will governments in the 21st century be only nightmares?

The Web doesn't bridge divisions; it multiplies and sharpens them. It doesn't build consensus or national coalitions; it grows factions. Truth be told, the Web doesn't network people at all--it lets them network themselves, which is quite different. The Web is the place where people can roll their own, and given that freedom, people tend to coalesce in relatively small, insular groups.
The real genius of the Web, in short, is that it lets people disconnect.

I agree with the author here. There is a good chance that people from the left and right of the political spectrum will agree with the author--even though the observation comes from Peter Huber with the Manhattan Institute. So, here is the irony: Most people left of the political center would not even know about this observation because they don't bother to listen to anything from the Manhattan Institute. If The Nation were to make a valid observation, there is a good chance that the people from the right would not have heard it at all. (All these are restatements of the old philosophical question, if a tree falls in a forest ....)

If Huber is on the right track, and I think he is, then we will not see any "uniter" anymore. Bush couldn't do it. Obama says he will, but I doubt it.

I suppose the political system in the US is not compatible with the multiplication of factions we see, more so thanks to the internet. On the other hand, such divisions will work well with parliamentary systems that have a gazillion political parties, and with proportional representation.

In any case, we are then looking at governments that won't be able to push any big agenda items. Which also means that we might never be able to undo any of the irresponsible policies from the past--we will be stuck with them forever.

21st century government seems to be more of a nightmare.
Thanks to Peter Gordon for the link to Huber's commentary.

Anti-intellectualism in American politics

Q: How does the anti-intellectual presidency undermine democracy?
A: At the heart of democracy is the idea that citizens make civic decisions based on information. When presidents do not offer information, but instead offer only sound bites, platitudes, and vacuous slogans, citizens are ill-equipped to make those decisions. Even worse, they are persuaded to make decisions according to nonrelevant, tangential cues such as personality and partisan punch lines.

Q. Why do presidents generally prefer to appear less intellectual than they are?
A: Presidential communication these days is more about the insinuation of meta-messages, not what is actually being said. And the meta-message is authenticity. When presidents or candidates dumb down or oversimplify, they are essentially employing a rather insidious method of argumentation that goes something like this: "Never mind what I am saying, but know that you can trust me because I am like you. And because I mimic you, I must therefore be for you."

Q: Why do you date the birth of the anti-intellectual presidency to 1969?
A: In 1969, Richard Nixon created a White House speechwriting office, which in effect severed the functions of policy advising and speechwriting.

Read the rest of the answers from Professor Elvin Lim at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Anti-science attitudes keeping Africa poor

Speaking before a keynote lecture tonight to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he is president, Sir David said that the slow pace of African development was linked directly to Western influence. “I'm going to suggest, and I believe this very strongly, that a big part has been played in the impoverishment of that continent by the focus on nontechnological agricultural techniques, on techniques of farming that pertain to the history of that continent rather than techniques that pertain to modern technological capability. Why has that continent not joined Asia in the big green revolutions that have taken place over the past few decades? The suffering within that continent, I believe, is largely driven by attitudes developed in the West which are somewhat anti-science, anti-technology - attitudes that lead towards organic farming, for example, attitudes that lead against the use of genetic technology for crops that could deal with increased salinity in the water, that can deal with flooding for rice crops, that can deal with drought resistance.”

That is from Professor Sir David King, as reported in the Times. Sir David was the British government's Chief Scientific Adviser until last December. (Via aldaily) He then adds:

The problem is that the Western-world move toward organic farming - a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food - and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences.

I wrote about some of these issues in an op-ed in the Register Guard (April 27, 2008). In that, I wrote: Let us not forget that food is a vital component of world peace. Here's hoping that we will soon launch Green Revolution, version 2.0.

An economic martial law in the US?

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have not, as far as anyone can tell, been steering the ship. According to The Wall Street Journal, Bush was briefed on the rescue after it was in play. And even then, he was only "briefed." There's been no effort on the part of the White House to even advance the idea that Bush is an engaged participant who's actively signing off on these actions, possibly because suggesting his involvement in a crisis of this complexity would cause the stock market to run and hide in a corner.
Congress, too, has been cut totally out of the loop. The AIG bailout -- in fact, all of the bailouts -- have been conceived entirely without their involvement. Indeed, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have been acting, over the course of this crisis, as if they are the sum total of the government. And that may be the correct approach: Neither the president nor the legislative branch possess the expertise or speed to be involved in the real-time crisis management that Bernanke and Paulson are trying to manage. They could, presumably, reverse decisions after the fact or change the contours of the law, but for now, the ship is being steered by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary, and an informal working group of Wall Street CEOs and banking powerhouses. And the government, as we normally think of it, has basically accepted their temporary authority. You've heard of martial law? We're currently in a state of market law.

That was EzraKlein Archive The American Prospect via Brad DeLong.

I am not at all ok with the idea that we are under some kind of an economic martial law. Paulson and Bernanke are the economic martial law administrators? There is something in this analysis that bothers me, but I can't quite figure out what exactly that is. Anyway, DeLong responds to that with the following comment:

This is how things have been since 1979--when Carter appointed Volcker to head the Fed, Volcker decided he was going to stop inflation no matter what the cost and would dare anyone else to try to block him, and congress and the president decided that challenging the Fed meant taking responsibility for inflation and thus blame if anything went wrong. Congress and the president occasionally show up to pass tax cuts--and twice, in 1990 and 1993, to take action to try to balance the budget. But otherwise the technocrats at the Fed and the Treasury run things.
This is the Age of Central Bankers.

Certainly not the Age of Aquarius!
But, aren't we granting too much of "war powers", so to say, to Paulson and Bernanke? Of course, they will not misuse it unlike the president who misused the war powers that Congress gave. But, are we putting too much of faith in Paulson, Bernanke, et al? Very troubling. Somehow this does not resonate well with how democractic societies are supposed to respond.
BTW, if we think that Paulson and Bernanke can steer the ship, how come the same people then distrust any form of "management" of the economy? The bottom line seems to be that government should let businesses rake in all the profits--legal and illegal--and not do anything about it. But, the same government ought to steer the economic ship when those same businesses run into icebergs. Aaaaaah!!!

Lies, damned lies, and 'eat locally'?

It's hard to open a magazine without finding an article about a photogenic farmer making handcrafted cheese or a happy family that has reduced its carbon footprint by planting a victory garden. ....
There are consequences, too, for oversimplifying. If we all think in food miles, the answer is obvious: Buy local. But new studies show that in some cases it can actually be more environmentally responsible to produce food far from home.

That is an excerpt from Jane Black's essay on how the press got the idea that food travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate. Worth reading the entire essay.

Students in my summer online class will be all too familiar with this topic because that is the task I gave them for the final 2000-word paper, and I have copied/pasted it here:

The Oxford University Press declared that the new word of the year for 2007 was "locavore", which perhaps you are already familiar with. A true commitment to being a locavore has implications for international trade and transportation.
In order to help you explore the issues, I had put together a few articles--on food miles--as readings for Week#6, which I am sure all of you have already read a gazillion times!

Your task:
* Carefully, and critically, read the five articles on food-miles.
* Think about related issues from Levinson and the mini-questions/responses.
* Articulate a thesis statement that relates to international trade and transportation. Provide this as the "abstract" in about 50-100 words.
* Develop your abstract with logical arguments, with supporting evidence from any number of materials used in this course. Make sure that you do not write a paper exploring a theme that is not quite central to this course. E.g., do not end up writing a paper on the farmers' market in Corvallis.
* You need to carve out your own thesis idea that relates to "locavore" and international trade and transportation.

More on the United States of Gordon Gekkos

Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus—$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day—that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China. Like so many imbalances in economics, this one can’t go on indefinitely, and therefore won’t. But the way it ends—suddenly versus gradually, for predictable reasons versus during a panic—will make an enormous difference to the U.S. and Chinese economies over the next few years, to say nothing of bystanders in Europe and elsewhere.

James Fallows wrote this in the Atlantic's January 2008 issue. Why is this relevant in the contemporary economic context? Fallows wrote there that

For China, it has helped the regime guide development in the way it would like—and keep the domestic economy’s growth rate from crossing the thin line that separates “unbelievably fast” from “uncontrollably inflationary.” For America, it has meant cheaper iPods, lower interest rates, reduced mortgage payments, a lighter tax burden.

Still unclear? More from Fallows:

The billions of dollars China pumps into the United States each week strangely seem to make it harder rather than easier for Americans to face their own structural problems. One day, something snaps. Suppose the CIC makes another bad bet—not another Blackstone but another WorldCom, with billions of dollars of Chinese people’s assets irretrievably wiped out. They will need someone to blame, and Americans, for their part, are already primed to blame China back.
So, the shock comes. Does it inevitably cause a cataclysm? No one can know until it’s too late.

Well, does this set up the context well for Daniel Gross' and Tyler Cowen's comments that I earlier blogged about?
Further, the Chinese money is not only one source. There are other foreign investors too. So, when Paulson worries about restoring confidence in the American financial sector, I bet he is equally concerned about making sure that foreigners will continue to pump money into our system. More so when the current account deficit is at 5.1% of the GDP! To quite an extent, our financial health is beginning to resemble that of a stereotypical Third World country!!!

Which is why I am all the more convinced that the subprime mortgage issue was only a symptom of the much bigger problems. Even the problems with all the regular mortgages are symptoms of these larger problems. So, it bugs the crap out of me when pundits who are even less qualified than me on this topic proclaim that we need to address the housing industry issues first. Hello?

Ok, back to working on the syllabi ....

Islamic (Sharia) law in the UK?

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. ...
... Politicians and church leaders expressed concerns that this could mark the beginnings of a “parallel legal system” based on sharia for some British Muslims.
Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so.” Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “I think it’s appalling. I don’t think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state.”

That is an excerpt from a Times report. These issues will not go away anytime soon. In fact, we can expect such issues to pop up more and more in continental Europe too. India and many other countries have had a tough time figuring out how Sharia might coexist along with a uniform legal system for all citizens. Before you jump into conclusions, this is neither the clash of civilizations, nor the trigger for THE clash.

Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

We can't blame the politicians. The lobbyists have to stand up for themselves, and they need to find a different politician who will do what they want. Or, should lobbyists cut out the middleman, and start giving the money directly to voters? Or, go the extra step and put corporations directly in office?
Yes, it is an old, but absolutely relevant, satire from none other than The Onion :-)


In The Know: Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

Drinking coffee is an environmental sin?

My office recently switched from Styrofoam coffee cups to a "bring your own mug"
policy. Sounds like the right idea, but with all the water and paper towels we
now waste on washing mugs, I'm not sure this is a huge net gain for the
environment. What is the "greenest" way to drink coffee around the office?

That question in Slate, and the detailed response from Jacob Leibenluft show how complicated the relationship is between economic activities and impacts on the environment. Being "green" is not as easy as one might think. There are tradeoffs to be made every step along the way.

Of course, one big tradeoff in being "green" is about payraise itself. Why? Hey, a payraise that is above and beyond the inflation rate is nothing but asking for extra money to pay for additional consumption. And, consumption is the trigger for all kinds of environmental impacts--different impacts for different kinds of consumption, of course. Which is why ethicists try to figure out how much we should appreciate soccer moms for their rushing around in their vehicles in order to make lives better for their families, when pretty much everything related to that can be simultaneously identified as contributors for climate change!

If only answers to big questions were simple and beautiful equations like E=MC² :-)

I love coffee. There are few things that can beat the wonderful feeling when I drink that freshly brewed coffee. Particularly after a good meal. More so with warm brownies topped by vanilla ice cream. Hmmmm ....

Every Madras and Salem has a rich history

When I accepted the job at Western Oregon University, triggering our relocation from California, I told my parents that I would be moving to a place close to Madras and Salem. We chuckled at the inside joke — there is a town called Salem in India not too far from Madras (now called Chennai), in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Almost six years after moving to Oregon, I visited Madras. Finally. Coincidentally, it was almost on the very day — Aug. 22 — that marks the anniversary of the founding of Madras in India. Lacking a melodramatic background music for the special event, the best I could do was to hum — in the privacy of my car in which I was the sole occupant — Mel Tormé’s “Coming Home Baby.”

Hey, I couldn’t think of any other song.

The first time I heard about a town called Madras in a state called Oregon was, however, way before the interest in my current job at WOU. It was when the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers started gathering in large numbers in nearby Antelope.

For those who may have forgotten the stories, Rajneesh and his assistant purchased a large ranch, which in a matter of weeks became the gathering place for thousands of his followers. The commune swiftly disbanded within a couple of years after it became known that the leaders had engaged in illegal activities of many kinds, including the notorious salmonella poisoning in The Dalles. Rajneesh returned to India after a plea bargain, changed his name to Osho, and died in 1990.

I was tempted to swing by Antelope and look for any remnants of the Rajneesh years. But I suppose I gave in to apprehensions of how this bearded guy with Indian origins would be viewed after all the confusion caused by the presence of a bearded Indian only a couple of decades ago!

I find it fascinating that Oregon’s Madras got its name from the textile color patterns. I wonder if the town’s founders would have thought twice about the name had they known that we never actually called them “Madras shirts,” even though these colorfully patterned shirts are popular not only in Tamil Nadu but all over India. They were simply referred to as “check shirts,” as opposed to the “plain shirts.” I should note here that the cloth itself is rarely manufactured in Madras, but in towns scattered all over Tamil Nadu.

India’s Madras is, of course, a much bigger city than the Madras here. With a population of more than 4 million — more than the population of all of Oregon — Madras is a huge metropolitan area that is gaining power, prestige and prosperity thanks to the rapid growth in the information technology industry.

Meanwhile, Madras has had a name change. The city officially became Chennai in 1996, at a time of political and populist interest all over India to revert the names from the Anglicized spellings and sounds to those in the local languages. However, there is still international recognition of the old name of Madras. In fact, I think it is primarily because of the need for recognition that the University of Madras, which was established in 1857, continues to operate without having changed its name to University of Chennai.

Thanks to the international recognition for Madras, I don’t imagine the world will start referring to the colorful shirts as “Chennai shirts” any time soon. Which means there will be no pressure on Oregon’s Madras to change its name to Chennai, either.

The origin of the name Salem in India is from the local vernacular, unlike the story of the Salem here. Of course, both Salem and Madras here in Oregon have been home to the American Indians for centuries. As much as names in India were Anglicized, many native names here in Oregon also got erased. Otherwise, our capital city would be Chemeketa, as it was once called.

If you feel giddy with excitement or from information overload after reading this, well, now you know how geographers feel every single day!

Published in the Register Guard on Sep 16, 2008

Funny campaign ad :-)

Bakersfield, too, contributed to Lehman Bros' demise

In light of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, am reposting an earlier one:
We lived in Bakersfield, CA, before moving to Oregon. We sold our home just before the real estate mania set in. Bigger and bigger homes were being built, and speculators (flippers) were buying from all over. McAlister Ranch was one such mega project, which is one of the reasons that Lehman Brothers is now in a mess (watch the following YouTube clip)



I tell you, we are the United States of Gordon Gekkos :-(
Update: the Bakersfield Californian lists the investments in Bakersfield and Kern County with the Lehman connection.

Pakistan "fires" at US troops. OMG!!!

Pakistani troops have fired shots into the air to stop US troops crossing into the South Waziristan region of Pakistan, local officials say.
Reports say nine US helicopters landed on the Afghan side of the border and US troops then tried to cross the border. ...
They say seven US helicopter gunships and two troop-carrying Chinook helicopters landed in the Afghan province of Paktika near the Zohba mountain range.
US troops from the Chinooks then tried to cross the border. As they did so, Pakistani paramilitary soldiers at a checkpoint opened fire into the air and the US troops decided not to continue forward, local Pakistani officials say.
Reports say the firing lasted for several hours. Local people evacuated their homes and tribesmen took up defensive positions in the mountains.

That was from the BBC. Holy &*%$!

Chris Hitchens reminds readers about the origin of the country's name, which itself is a reminder of all the related geopolitical problems:

The very name Pakistan inscribes the nature of the problem. It is not a real country or nation but an acronym devised in the 1930s by a Muslim propagandist for partition named Chaudhary Rahmat Ali. It stands for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir,
and Indus-Sind. The stan suffix merely means "land." In the Urdu language, the resulting acronym means "land of the pure." It can be easily seen that this very name expresses expansionist tendencies and also conceals discriminatory ones. Kashmir, for example, is part of India. The Afghans are Muslim but not part of Pakistan. Most of Punjab is also in India. Interestingly, too, there is no B in this cobbled-together name, despite the fact that the country originally included the eastern part of Bengal (now Bangladesh, after fighting a war of independence against genocidal Pakistani repression) and still includes Baluchistan, a restive and neglected province that has been fighting a low-level secessionist struggle for decades. The P comes first only because Pakistan is essentially the property of the Punjabi military caste (which hated Benazir Bhutto, for example, because she came from Sind). As I once wrote, the country's name "might as easily be rendered as 'Akpistan' or Kapistan,' depending on whether the battle to take over Afghanistan or Kashmir is to the fore."

Barack Obama in Brazil--all six of them!

Welcome to Obama-mania, Brazil-style. Few countries have embraced the idea of the US's first black president as enthusiastically as Brazil, a country with one of the largest Afro-descendant populations on Earth yet where black faces remain a minority in politics. Obama T-shirts are everywhere while chat shows and newspaper columns are filled with talk of the 47-year-old Illinois senator.

Now even Brazil's politicians are lining up for their piece of the pie. Due to a quirk of Brazilian law, candidates are allowed to run under the name of their choice. As a result, at least six Brazilian politicians have officially renamed themselves "Barack Obama" in a bid to get an edge over their rivals in October's municipal elections.

"In truth it was an accident," says Belford Roxo's Obama, an IT consultant who is bidding to become the city's first black mayor. "I'd been on the television wearing a suit and people thought I looked a bit like him so they started calling me Barack Obama. They'd see me in the street and shout: 'Hey! Barack!" So I decided to register it."

Read the full news report in The Guardian.

ps: Makes you think more and more about "Latin America", doesn't it?

Fannie, Freddie, and the taxpayer

Can students and faculty discuss politics?

"Here are some tricky situations that might arise when the classroom conversation turns political, and what to keep in mind," writes Robert O'Neil. He notes:

• A student asks about your political views. Take care in responding to such a query. Be conscious that students of a persuasion different from your own might be offended by an offhand reply ... Moreover, the risks of apparent proselytizing — given the implicit lack of parity between professorial and student opinions in a classroom setting — inhere in any such revelations.
• A student asks you to comment on a colleague's opinions or behavior. [Disparaging] a colleague's scholarship ranks not far below plagiarism on the list of faculty transgressions. ... [Declining] to comment at all in class might often be the wisest course.
• A student wants to know how you feel about a current political crisis. The professor can, and sometimes should, invite students to express such political views in class, although seeking to maintain balance and distancing them from the podium. She should especially avoid demeaning or disparaging a student's view in class — even one that may seem to her to be disingenuous or reprehensible.
• A student asks you to comment about a pending issue that isn't a crisis. [Suggest] a private discussion outside class, noting the risks of displacing the assigned subject matter and escalating existing differences.
• A student wants to know what you "really think" at the end of the semester. If the maxim that "one can never get into trouble speaking in the past tense" is as useful a guide for college professors as for politicians, it may be equally true that one gets into substantially less trouble by speaking one's mind on the final day of class.
• When professors' speech crosses the line. [While] students do not enjoy academic freedom comparable to that of faculty members, they are entitled to a learning environment in which they may freely question and challenge their professors' views on politics or other matters. ... Yet it is the professor's responsibility to ensure that students are free to form and express their own views, however intense and deeply held those of the professor may be.

Pakistan is Cambodia, if Afghanistan is the new Vietnam

Ever since the US upped the ante by sending in ground and air forces into Pakistan's territory--without getting Pakistan's permission--we knew that it was only a matter of days before we morphed into Pakistan's enemy. It certainly looks comparable to the beginnings of the incursions into Cambodia.

A sampling of news reports:

• Daily Times: US incursions into Pakistan, violation of airspace: Zardari, Gilani vow to defend country’s territorial integrity
• The Hindu: "[The] sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country should be respected at all costs," the statement said. Zardari is expected to discuss the cross-border strikes and the situation along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown later this week.
• The Guardian: A controversial new US tactic to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistan has met with fresh hostility, it emerged yesterday, as Pakistani tribesmen representing half a million people vowed to switch sides and join the Taliban if Washington does not stop cross-border attacks by its forces from Afghanistan.
• The Star: The increasing frequency of missile attacks on villages in Pakistan and the continuing high civilian casualties of attacks in Afghan villages call into question the lack of accountability of American forces in the two countries
• NDTV: Is US losing the war on Al-Qaida, Taliban?

Soccer moms and climate change

Peter Singer, who is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, came to Bakersfield a year or so before we left (fled?) for Oregon. It was the only philosophy lecture, I think, that was held in the university's basketball court because there was no other indoor venue on campus at that time that could accommodate many hundreds.

I know what you are thinking: hundreds of people in Bakersfield interested in a philosopher talk about bioethics? Well, a great number came there because of Singer's controversial positions on human and animal life, and, most importantly, on euthanasia. In fact, it was quite a tense situation, with many, many, police officers on duty and ready to arrest people if they needed to.

Singer reviews Dale Jameison's book, Ethics and the Environment, and writes quite appreciatively of the book. Singer notes that

[Jamieson] sees himself as bringing together two complex bodies of thought, each liable to their own confusions, and each, in the end, benefiting from being considered together. Environmental problems should not be seen as purely technological, nor purely economic. They are also ethical, and we understand them better by appreciating all their dimensions. Equally, however, Jamieson contends that our moral and political conceptions are challenged by the environmental problems we face. They need to adapt to a wider range of values, and a scale, both geographical and temporal, that extends far beyond that of most ethical and political issues. ....
.... The material covered in the chapters on ethics is essential to a proper understanding of ethics and the environment, and the chapter on animals is a clear and concise account of that very relevant topic. Add those elements to the illuminating discussion of the value of nature, and the result is a book that can be recommended with confidence to anyone interested in learning about ethics, the environment and the interaction between them.

Smackdown: Brother Barack and Sistah Sarah

Willie Brown was quite a character in California politics. We may never again see such influential and colorful personalities in that Golden State because of term limits that have since severely constrained the ability of legislators to vastly increase their power by holding on to their seats.

While I was (and am) all in favor of getting rid of that old corrupt format, I surely miss the likes Brown who always provided plenty and more for political junkies like me and for comedians. Want evidence? Read this excerpt from his Willie's World at the SF Chronicle:

Thanks to Sarah Palin, this is no longer a contest between Barack Obama and John McCain - it's between Brother Barack and Sistah Sarah.
Rock star vs. rock star.
Inexperienced vs. inexperienced.
Newcomer vs. newcomer.
Change vs. change.
His "change" is East Coast intellectual. Her "change" is NASCAR.
His change is wine and cheese. Her change is mayonnaise by the gallon.
And notice how everyone is calling her Sarah Palin - not Gov. Palin. That's not good for the Democrats. It shows a certain familiarity that goes beyond just issues or her knowledge of the "Bush Doctrine."
Heck, even I didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was when Charlie Gibson asked her about it the other night on her first national TV interview.

Sexism in the campaigns

Get rid of "Latin America"

It has been nearly twenty years since former Vice President J. Danforth Quayle was quoted – perhaps maliciously – as saying that the realm is named Latin America because everyone there speaks Latin, but in fact the origin of this appellation is not as obvious as it may appear. The ultimate Latin roots of both Spanish and Portuguese may constitute common ground, but neither Spanish nor Portuguese settlers arrived in the Americas calling themselves Latinos. The suggestion has been made that the concept of Latin America was externally imposed by Western influences as an exercise in “coloniality” (Mignolo, 2005). The French emperor Napoleon III is often cited as the first to use Amerique Latine as a goal among his expansionist policies, but that goal proved elusive and the phrase inconsequential. In the United States, the regional reference appears to have come into use during the early twentieth century; until then, “Spanish America” was routine.

That is an excerpt from an op-ed, in the AAG newsletter, by Harm de Blij, who is a distinguished professor of geography at Michigan State. He further writes that in this so-called "Latin America":

The indigenous presence is far stronger. African influences are pervasive and locally dominant. From the Japanese in Brazil to the South Asians in Guyana, from the Dutch in the Antilles to the Lebanese in Chile, this is a culturally plural realm. From the rugby fields in Argentina to the cricket grounds in Barbados, this truly is a New World undeserving of a geographic designation that reflects bygone cultural power and historic dominance, not current and future reality.

I agree with his call for action--to get rid of "Latin America" as a phrase to describe a geographic realm; he concludes thus:

“Latin America” is entrenched as selfimage in South and Middle America and indeed as external emblem elsewhere. ... geographers are seen as the arbiters of nomenclature. Let us begin a discussion ... Our Hemisphere has three geographic realms: South, Middle, and North. If we need an allusive umbrella to substitute for “Latin” in two of these three realms, and increasingly in the third, might “PanAmerica” be a prospect?

It is high time we ditched "Latin America"

More, better, faster: the growth of computer chips

Notebooks, smartphones, Blu-ray players -- name a gadget, and it probably wouldn't exist today without the integrated circuit.
Not only did the IC give rise to the modern consumer electronics industry, but it has also kept that industry moving at breakneck speed, allowing for cheaper, smaller and more-powerful chips to be produced year after year with dazzling consistency.
So, it's easy to forget that it's only been five decades since Texas Instruments' Jack
Kilby demonstrated the first working IC, a discovery that earned him a Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000. While that device started out as nothing more than a single transistor with a smattering of other components on a thin slice of germanium, its silicon progeny now contain hundreds of transistors in a space the size of a single red blood cell.

That was from Wired, which also has a neat slideshow

Fundamental principles of economics don't work for oil

George Soros, who walked away with a cool billion dollars after his famous (notorious?) bet against the British Pound, has a few observations on the price of oil, and the future. Given his track record in the investment business, and his sharp intellect, I suspect that he knows what he is talking about, unlike me here :-)
Excerpt:

First, the cost of discovering and developing new reserves is increasing, and the depletion rate of aging oil fields is accelerating. This goes under the rather misleading name of "peak oil"—namely that we have approached or reached the maximum rate of world output. It is a misleading concept because higher prices make it economically feasible to develop more expensive sources of energy. But it contains an important element of truth: some of the most accessible and most prolific sources of oil in places like Saudi Arabia and Mexico were discovered forty or more years ago and their yield is now rapidly falling.
Second, there is a "reflexive" tendency for the supply of oil to fall as the price rises, reversing the normal shape of the supply curve. Typically, as the price of a product rises, producers will supply more. For oil producers who expect the oil price to rise further, however, there is less incentive to convert oil reserves underground into dollar reserves aboveground. Oil producers may calculate that they will be better off if they exploit their reserves more slowly. This has led to what may be described as a backward-sloping supply curve. In addition, the high price of oil has enabled political regimes that are both inefficient and hostile to the West to maintain themselves in power, notably Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. Oil production in these countries is declining.
Third, the countries with the fastest-growing demand—notably the major oil producers, together with China and other Asian exporters—keep domestic energy prices artificially low by providing subsidies. Therefore, rises in prices do not reduce demand as they would under normal conditions. This may be considered one of the fundamentals, although, under budgetary pressures, government policies are gradually changing.
Finally, demand is reinforced by speculation that tends to reinforce market trends.[*] This is a quintessentially reflexive phenomenon. In addition to hedge funds and
individual speculators, institutional investors like pension funds and endowment funds have become heavily involved in commodity indexes, which include not only
oil but also gold and other raw materials. Indeed, such institutional investors have become the "elephant in the room" in the futures market. Commodities have become an asset class for institutional investors and they are increasing their allocations to that asset class by following a strategy of investing in commodity indexes. In the spring and early summer of 2008, spot prices of oil and other commodities rose far above the marginal cost of production and far-out, forward contracts rose much faster than spot prices. Price charts have taken on the shape of a parabolic curve, which is characteristic of bubbles in the making.

Soros said these on June 3rd. Where is the price of oil now? Bloomberg reports that "Crude oil for October delivery fell $2.10, or 2.1 percent, to $99.08 a barrel at 1:22 p.m. on the Nymex. Futures touched $98.55, the lowest since Feb. 26."