When adjunct faculty compete for that one tenure-track spot

A pretty good episode from Juniper College:

At least the stamp doesn't have the nude Lady Liberty from India!

So, the world is having a good laugh at the US Postal Service using a stock photo of the Statue of Liberty, which apparently is of a replica at a Las Vegas casino.

Hey, be thankful they didn't use the images I have here; I took these photos while on a smoke-spewing motorboat on the Kerala backwaters, back in 2002.

And a closer look at her, ahem, backside :)

The rich are different from you and me. But, wait, I am rich, too

My air travel to India last year was via Frankfurt, where I had to get a new boarding pass for my onward flight to Chennai.  It was more than two hours to boarding time and the gate was rather empty.  I approached the counter, which was staffed by two young women.  I kidded with them that perhaps it was my lucky day and that they would give me a free upgrade from coach to the first class. 

One of them replied, "from where I am, even a regular economy ticket feels like first class."

Her reply was a powerful reminder that being materially rich is, well, relative.  I felt rather stupid for joking with her about the first class upgrade.  In any case, she directed me to return to the counter after a few minutes because they had just about gotten there to the gate.

I wandered around, and about a half an hour later returned to the gate to find quite a few passengers already lined up at the counter. 

I waited my turn, and presented my passport ... and no jokes this time.

With the stereotypical German efficiency, she handed me my boarding pass and in a formal tone said "welcome to the business class."

How much ever I think that I am a lowly paid university professor, the reality is that even within the United States, and definitely among the nearly seven billion on the planet, I am not one of the hoi polloi.  I belong to a privileged group. I ought to be humbly thankful about it, and the Lufthansa employee reminded me that I have a lot to thank for.

Yesterday, too, was another learning opportunity on this very subject.  On my drive back from Seattle, I stopped to fill gas.  It was also a break for me from the couple of hours of driving in the rain.  (Here in Oregon, only the gas station attendant can legally pump gas.) 

I handed my credit card over to the young woman and when she returned it after starting the pump, I engaged in the casual chit-chat that we often do. 

"How you doin' with the rain and the wind?" I asked her. 

"I have one more hour to go, and I can't wait because even my socks are all wet already" she replied. 

These are not warm rains--it was just about 47 degrees. To be outside in the rain in wet socks at that temperature, versus me in the warmth and comfort of my car ... I reached into my bag, took out a chocolate bar, and gave her that while adding "hey, I hope this will warm you up."

"Thanks so much" she said.  Her facial response itself made it a worthwhile gas station stop.

The larger picture on unemployment and income inequality in the US is not looking good at all.   

Read this without cracking a smile. Come on, try :)

Going Brazilian might take on a whole new meaning after this one:

Brazilian fingers wife in venomous vagina murder plot

A Brazilian man has claimed his wife attempted to kill him by putting poison into her vagina and inviting him to drink from the furry cup.
The unnamed husband, from São José do Rio Preto, in the state of São Paulo, told cops he and his missus had an argument. She then allegedly doused her privates with a "toxic substance" before suggesting her other half eat at the Y.
Luckily for the intended victim, he smelt something fishy before diving in, and thwarted the cunning cunnilingual plan.
Given the "unusual" nature of the case, officer Walter Colacino Júnior, of Rio Preto's 4th Police District, has decided to probe deeper into the matter before taking any action.

Source

Academic bloggers. I wish all faculty did this

The NY Times lists a few academic bloggers ... a strange listing though ... Dan Drezner is a conspicuous omission here--I wish the paper had profiled his blog instead of Mankiw's ... Mankiw rarely does any serious analysis in his blogs, but Drezner does.  And, of course, who can forget that it was his blogging that supposedly made Drezner a lesser scholar, and then all those controversies over his tenure, or being denied one ...

I started blogging back in 2001, when I was in Bakersfield.  Lacking the big time credentials, I thought perhaps a few of us fellow academics could blog together, at least about issues of relevance to the Central Valley.  I figured that this collective output might draw web traffic.  But, the few faculty I chatted about this couldn't care.  An active local resident, a fellow planner, Graham Kaye Eddie, suggested that I team up with him and we recruit a few more people from the city and that we blog about local political issues.  But, I didn't want to be restricted to the really local topics alone.

After I got here to Oregon in fall 2002, again, lacking the gravitas to go solo, I tried to interest a few fellow faculty who engaged me in discussions.  This was before I was excommunicated.  But, they too didn't care for blogging, and as far as I know are yet to blog.  Perhaps a fear to face public scrutiny?

Anyway, here I am tilting at windmills :)

Thomas Friedman defends Iraq, again. And wants more too?

Maybe I will seriously consider the NY Times' paywall only when the paper seriously rethinks having Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd as columnists.  Most of their columns are just fluff, or worse.

I am only now catching up with Friedman's column, thanks to conference stuff. (editor: when will you catch up with your classes? Awshutupalready!)  I had a metaphorical falling off the chair moment when I read this in his ranting:

The Arab world desperately needs its versions of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk — giants from opposing communities who rise above tribal or Sunni-Shiite hatreds to forge a new social compact. The Arab publics have surprised us in a heroic way. Now we need some Arab leaders to surprise us with bravery and vision. That has been so lacking for so long.
Another option is that an outside power comes in, as America did in Iraq, and as the European Union did in Eastern Europe, to referee or coach a democratic transition between the distrustful communities in these fractured states. But I don’t see anyone signing up for that job.

WTF! What a horrible "liberal" warmonger Friedman has been and continues to be!  Hey, here is an idea--even if those countries slip into civil war, which is their problem to begin with, why not employ your own Friedman Unit to advocate for patience?  You know, tell the American public that in six months those civil wars will turn a corner and, therefore, the US should simply stay out?  And then say the same thing again when the six months end. And again. And again. 

We need pundits to tell us the complex stories in language simple enough for all of us to understand.  Carl Sagan was a master at that. Paul Krugman does it well. Friedman, however, increasingly is being merely simplistic. Awful.

Presidents steal all the time. But, even pens?

The only consolation is that he didn't try to pocket the silverware at the banquet later :) (ht)

President of Czech Republic Václav Klaus "steals" pen during his official visit in Chile. President's spokesman Radim Ochvata said it was a gift.

From Wikileaks to YouTube, we are finding out a lot more about how governments and politicians really work. Well, hey, the best entertainment money can buy--though, of course, it is not that we are willingly paying for all of it. Often, as in this video, it is being stolen :)

Marking the Tamil New Year with tributes to the language itself

A classic from quite a few years ago.  The lyrics are by the poet Bharatidasan,



I wish somebody has translated this wonderful poem into English.  This poem is a sincere and touching homage to the language, Tamil.  And, of course, set to delightful music by the old masterful team of Viswanathan-Ramamurthy.

Tamil is one of the oldest living languages of the world, with a vast body of literature.  The older I get, the more I appreciate the immense richness in which I grew up, but failed to learn.  But, of course, the old Tamil is even more difficult to understand than even Shakespeare's English can be to a teenager of today.  We needed experts to interpret that old Tamil to us, but the teachers we had in school fell far short of conveying the beauty and lush gold in the historical past.  Come to think of it, those teachers murdered the language.

So, I learnt a completely dead language of Sanskrit instead!

I suppose the lack of an in-depth understanding of the languages was the only serious flaw in my otherwise exciting K-12 education.And I wonder if that is why even now I don't have an aptitude for languages?

The song in the video below is also a poem by Bharatidasan Manonmaniam Sundaranaar Pillai (thanks to my high school classmate, "S," for the correction here.)  It later became the official state song of Tamil Nadu.  As always, once a state adopts something, then, well, it dies.  The quickest way to kill anything cultural and traditional is to have the government interfere with it.  America's founders were brilliant in working this insight into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and making sure to restrict the role of the government; boy, were they smart, and aren't we being super dumb now when we vastly expand the government!  But then, I am digressing, as always ...

I am willing to bet that most kids in Tamil Nadu now will not be able to recite the poem in full.  Let alone explaining what the poem means!  But then, neither can I; how sad!!!

Photo of the day: Nude painting

From this collection of goofballs for April Fools ... so what if I spotted this a few days after the event; it is hilarious anytime of the year :)

Chart of the day: America's military spending. O M G!!!

Ezra Klein has this chart

The outsized military spending on steroids compared to the rest of the world is simply astounding by itself ... but then when you think about this against the backdrop of all the discussions on budgets and deficits, isn't it ridiculous that under the pretext of 30 billion dollars the GOP is ready to shut the government down, and Paul Ryan is eager to go after Medicaid, and the military budget goes, well, untouched?

Klein adds:

Our military spending is absurd in comparison to the rest of the world’s, not particularly popular here at home and widely acknowledged to be full of waste. And yet it has emerged pretty much unscathed from the 2011 spending cuts and the 2012 budgets of both the House GOP and the White House. It’s really quite odd. Real deficit hawks would be spending some serious time with the report (pdf) of the Sustainable Defense Task Force. Guess we’ll see Wednesday whether President Obama is willing to take this fight on.

 Dream on, if you think that Obama will take on the defense budget.  Yes, I am thinking of Paul Krugman here on "Obama is missing."

I don't know if I should worry about defense spending or the fact that the politicos are willing to even restrict  the First Amendment rights in order to keep the military happy.  The following are what Senator, yes, US Senator, Lindsey Graham said:

Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.

Can you imagine ever going after the defense budget when such politicians govern? ever, ever , ever?  As Reason pointed out in that context:

You know what? We're always going to be in a war, thanks in no small part to the Lindsey Grahams of the world. Which means if we truly value our free speech, we're gonna have to bounce out every politician who subjects American expression to a wartime litmus test. Better yet, maybe start electing some who at least occasionally refrain from supporting new wars against majority-Muslim countries that have yet to make it through a Reformation.

Yes, war forever.  If not with Eurasia, then with East Asia.  There is no place for Winston Smith, unless he truly believes that 2 + 2 = 5.

At the end of it all, as Andrew Sullivan noted:

the liberties taken away by wartime are permanently taken away.

Going after the massive defense budget is, therefore, not merely about deficits, it is also to regain the liberties that the government has taken away from us.  But, ain't gonna happen :(

Cheap, risk-free, natural, abundant energy source found!

Damn, I wish I had seen this cartoon when I posted the lengthy piece on electricity, coal, and poor countries! :)

Oh, but burning wood will contribute CO2!!!  muahahaha!
And, if you are like me, well, you know very well that gas prices are on the rise, again

Creationism. Only in America. But, not being proud here :(

I told my class the other day that I have pretty much stopped watching television anymore because there is rarely anything interesting.  What I didn't tell them, because of my antiquated notions of keeping politics out of the classroom, was this: American politics is the best sitcom that money can buy, and I am one serious fan of this sitcom.  And, BTW, dammit we spend a lot of money on this hilarious show.

The theatrical production that caught my interest today (ht) was this: Creationism gains ground in Tennessee. 

Tennessee House Bill 368, the creationist friendly legislation that we have previously covered on FrumForum, has passed through of the Tennessee House on a vote of 70-23. The Senate is expected to take up the bill for a vote on April 20th.

I suppose the vote will be in time for Earth Day celebrations in Tennessee, when the politicians will describe how god created the earth that is the center of this universe.

Oh, with one person who didn't vote with his Republican colleagues:

One Republican did vote against the bill however, Representative Bob Ramsey. According to his website, Ramsey also holds a B.S. in Biology.

Anyway, that is not the end of the sitcom--read the following quotes from the honorable members of Tennessee's legislature:

Williamson County Representative Glen Casada says science proponents are intolerant of dissent.

“But there’s now the new religion of evolution. And they in turn are now trying to suppress questioning and free thought.”

Representative Richard Floyd, R-Chattanooga, called the bill a return to common sense.

“And ever since the late ’50s and early ’60s, when we let the intellectual bullies hijack our education system, we’ve been on a slippery slope.”

Dr. Joey Hensley, a Republican from Hohenwald, says a scientific theory is…well, more theory than science.

“Every theory is… just that, it’s a theory. And many scientific theories that we’ve heard from, that people claim, every scientist believes a certain theory, that’s certainly not true.”

Representative Tony Shipley, R-Kingsport, says that as a teacher he worried that he would be criticized for some of the things he taught.

“One of the things that really bothered me, I was told I couldn’t pray with my football players. So I did it anyway. Not only did I do it, I did it in the middle of the football field, on the 50 yard line. So sometimes, it’s important to just do it.”

Representative Sheila Butt, Republican from Columbia, says things she was taught in high school turned out to be untrue.

“I remember so many of us, when we were seniors in high school, we gave up Aquanet hairspray. Do you remember why we did that? Because it was causing global warming. That that aerosol in those cans was causing global warming.
Since then scientists have said that maybe we shouldn’t have given up that aerosol can, because that aerosol was actually absorbing the earth’s rays, and was keeping us from global warming.”

Who knew it would all come down to deeply-buried teenage angst over banning aerosol in hairspray!

Yes, we have our share of nutcases in these United States of America!

And, yes, Tennessee also gave us the famous "Scopes Trial"

At least, it got music :)

Self-interest “properly understood”: the growing inequality in America

Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office.

 Says a lot about American politics now, doesn't it!

That was from this piece by the Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz on how "1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."  Stiglitz writes:

Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important.

The unemployment and the depressing economic situation that the youth face worries me a lot, perhaps because I see them everyday in the ready to graduate students.  I can't imagine them remotely thinking it is fair play when they are screwed ...

Stiglitz concludes:

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

An IMF study (ht) emphasizes that

It is a big mistake to separate analyses of growth and income distribution. A rising tide is still critical to lifting all boats. The implication of our analysis is that helping to raise the lowest boats may actually help to keep the tide rising!

The immediate role for policy, however, is less clear. More inequality may shorten growth duration, but poorly designed efforts to reduce inequality could be counterproductive. If these distort incentives and thereby undermine growth, they can do more harm than good to the poor.

Still, there may be some “win-win” policies, such as better-targeted subsidies, better access to education for the poor that improves equality of economic opportunity, and active labor market measures that promote employment.

When there are short-run trade-offs between the effects of policies on growth and income distribution, the evidence in our paper doesn’t in itself say what to do. But our analysis should tilt the balance towards the long-run benefits—including for growth—of reducing inequality. Over longer horizons, reduced inequality and sustained growth may be two sides of the same coin.

Would you be poor without electricity, or not poor in a polluted world?

Yesterday, one of the graduating students I had invited over dinner asked me what my favorite was of all the places I have visited.  I said I liked them all.  Perhaps Venice in Italy stands out in my mind because I can still recall that surreal experience of stepping outside the train station and being presented with the visual spectacle of water-taxis!

But then, the most depressing place I have visited was Tanzania.  Despite all the intellectual readings I had done, it shocked me that there places without electricity.  A simple act that we take for granted--to reach out for that light switch as the Sun goes down--had no meaning there.

Of course, there are plenty of places on the planet where electricity is still a novelty.  And in tremendous short supply.  India is one of those.  Are we surprised then that this country of more than 1.2 billion people with huge economic aspirations wants to produce a lot more electricity than it currently does?  And, given that coal is the most inexpensive way to get those electrons flowing, it ought not to surprise us that India, like China, is rapidly expanding on coal-fired power plants.

From the comforts of climate-controlled rooms here in the West, we are ready to point fingers at India and China for accelerating carbon emissions, which have immense implications for all the nearly seven billion that we are now, and the other flora and fauna as well.  It is simply bizarre that the advanced countries don't seem to appreciate the tremendous shortage in electricity, which is vital for modern economic activities.

The World Bank has essentially shorted its fuse in this context (ht).

The World Bank is planning to restrict the money it gives to coal-fired power stations, bowing to pressure from green campaigners to radically revise its funding rules.

WTF, right?

As Spiked notes, such a decision is the equivalent of keeping the poor in the dark, and contradictory to the Bank's mission to eradicate poverty!

where does this new policy leave China and India? Based on International Monetary Fund GDP figures, adjusted to allow for the lower costs of many items in poorer countries, China is the second-largest economy in the world and India is the fourth-largest. Yet both countries have massive, and overwhelmingly poor, populations. China is only in 90th place in terms of GDP per head, and India is 137th. So are these amongst the ‘poorest’ countries that will still get World Bank aid or not? Even these rising economic powerhouses are in desperate need of development.
But far from fretting about this shocking poverty, Western greens don’t seem very keen on the developed world having reliable electricity at all.

All those greenies who talk a boatload of crap about the simpler and "fuller" lives that the poor lead, well, I think they ought to relocate to places like the Tanzanian village I visited and live there for the rest of their lives.  Yes, I am bloody pissed!

India's minister for the environment, Jairam Ramesh, whose decisions I have blogged about a few times in the past, continues to defy the West and the greenies on this, even while recognizing the importance of protecting the environment.  I say, good for him, and the country too.  The latest:

Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh on Saturday asserted that India would not succumb to international pressure on any legally binding commitments to reduce carbon emission.
Speaking at the National Conference and Annual Session of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, Mr. Ramesh said the government would act only in the national interest on the issue.
“I can assure you we are not taking on any legally binding commitments under international duress."

Not only that:

Yielding to intense pressure from the coal ministry and end user ministries of power and steel, the environment ministry has agreed to consider approval of all proposed mining projects that obtained stage I forest clearance before 2010, and also offered to free up more forest land from no go areas for mining.

I am sure those whose blood runs green will be outraged.  But then they are aghast that even the screwed up World Bank plan doesn't go far enough because it spends too much on these conventional energy sources.  Hey, the Bank spends that because of the severe shortfall"

The World Bank's record on funding fossil fuels has long been a target of green campaigners. Last year, for instance, the World Bank was attacked for its controversial decision to grant nearly $4bn (£2.5bn) to the South African company Eskom to build what would be one of the world's largest coal-fired power stations.
The bank spent £3.4bn – one-quarter of all its spending on energy projects – on coal-fired power in developing countries in the year to June 2010. That was 40 times more than the sum spent five years previously.

The Bank knows all too well the reality on the ground:

In 2009, a World Bank blog post by Justin Lin, the organisation’s chief economist, explained why support for coal was essential. ‘The answer is that there is an urgent need for energy in the poor countries that we serve and indeed in my home country, China… Because coal is often cheap and abundant, and the need for electricity is so great, coal plants are going to be built with or without our support. Without our support, it is the cheaper, dirtier type of coal plants that will proliferate.’

But, when it comes to poor people, it is awful that the directly or indirectly their ideological opposition translates to the same Republican Party bottom-line of "screw the poor!"  And they oppose it even if the electricity generation will not be from fossil fuels:

when the Ethiopian government announced plans for a major new hydro-electric scheme - in a country where 70 per cent of people have no access to electricity - greens have demanded that international organisations like the World Bank and the European Investment Bank should refuse to support it (see They don’t give a dam about development, by Nathalie Rothschild).

I can forever keep punctuating my comments here with WTF!

Visualize in your mind the following "famous NASA image that is often called a "satellite photo of earth at night" when you listen to the greenies harshly critique the energy consumption in India and China as the most urgent climate change problem, and point out to them that the problem originates in the rich countries.

Ideally, the advanced countries, and the US in particular, would adopt energy policies that can then speed up the transition to feasible and inexpensive alternatives to coal. Because, climate change is for real, and carbon is one heck of an accelerator of this process. But then here in the US we area lot more concerned about Jersey Shore and Charlie Sheen and Obama's birth certificate and ....  Yes, WTF! yet again :(

Chart of the day: update on Iraq, Afghanista, and Pakistan

Source: the NY Times