Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Ouch! That's gotta hurt.

"My posterior's been fact-checked and I won't be able to sit down for a week"

click picture

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Obesity suits march on: a dieter is suing Atkins for giving him arteriosclerosis.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Still on track

The economy grew at 4.4% last quarter, faster than originally estimated.

This is great news for us; the recovery is still going strong, and jobs, which have been slower to recover than even the 1990's "jobless recovery", seem finally to be coming back. Now if we don't get a nasty shock from a popped housing bubble, we'll be in very good shape.

Of course, it's not great news for all Americans. There has to be some consternation in Kerrystan right now . . .

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Failure to subsidize my speech

Heard on DeadAir America last night:

David L. Robb, the author of this book said, that the Pentagon's policy of assisting with movies (lending equipment, etc.) on the condition of substantial editorial control is 'clearly unconstitutional' - a violation of first amendment rights. Garofalo and Seder suggested it was grounds for a movie-viewer class action! Think of all the war movies we didn't get to see!*

While the Pentagon's editorial policies seem silly, I can't imagine forcing them to assist ALL films. This is transforming a negative right (freedom from interference with free speech) into a positive right. Do we have a right to assistance from the Pentagon with our film actively trashing the Pentagon?

I'm interested to know legal bloggers' (calling Professor Volokh?) opinion on Robb's claim. It seems relevant to the issue what (or how) the Pentagon charges for its assistance, but that was not clear from the discussion.

UPDATE: There are a few interesting objections in the comments. First of all, several commenters think "substantial editorial control" is not accurate. Perhaps. Taken at face value, what Robb describes constitutes editorial control in my book. For instance, changing the Top Gun love interest to a civilian, not allowing sailors to swear and re-writing scenes to avoid depiction of a war crime. Again, I think The Defense Department's position is defensible, but that is 'substantial editorial control' in my book. 'Silly'? Well, the first two examples above seem pretty silly to me. Silly isn't illegal or unconstitutional, it's just what bureaucracies do so well.

In other news, Garofalo and Seder compared various members of the administration to Nazis, etc. They remain interesting, like the Osbournes are interesting, but unfunny. I do keep listening, for reasons difficult to explain. I guess I get a kick out of hyper-partisan rhetoric. As anti-Howard Stern listeners famously told a pollster - 'to see what he'll do next'.

*What are the damages?

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

It's either demand or supply....

Omar has some very normal looking pictures from Baghdad and observes that the market for construction materials is tight.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Spooky Cicadas

I'm listening to this year's bumper crop of Magicada. They sound like B-Movie UFO's, enough to jar the addled brain.

The males’ love songs have been likened (to human ears) to buzz saws, small jet planes, and to a “high winding trill.” The quote is from a song, Day of the Locusts, that Bob Dylan wrote in 1970 after attending Princeton’s Commencement to receive an honorary degree and when he was serenaded by the song of the Magicicada. [Note: cicadas are not locusts!]

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Sigh. the anthropologist wears blinders

That's an interesting question: should a public intellectual have the right to be a right-winger? Actually, I don't even know how to respond to that. By definition, one thinks of public intellectuals as critics of power.

One more small knife in the back of open-mindedness in academia. I'm sure right-leaning faculty everywhere are waiting for his permission. Here's some context, which doesn't improve the discussion:

Part of Margaret Mead would be some kind of a model in terms of critiquing sexual repression or something like that, but the later Margaret Mead, where she's mucking around with stopping the AAA from opposing anthropologists from working with the CIA, that's a shame. That's a dark moment in terms of her stature failing as a public intellectual where she could have taken a public intellectual stance and said "No, anthropologists shouldn't work with the U.S. military," and do that unambiguously. That's an interesting question: should a public intellectual have the right to be a right-winger? Actually, I don't even know how to respond to that. By definition, one thinks of public intellectuals as critics of power.

UPDATE: Ok, this was bugging me, so I took a run. In the midst of doing so it came to me that this is the equivalent of bureaucratic ass-covering. This is similar to the company guy who opposes everything in the name of fiscal prudence but takes credit for every success and owns his predictions only with hindsight. Now I don't have to keep thinking this is just evil.

You see, if you have 'moral duty' to criticize power, it doesn't matter if you are proven wrong on the facts. Even if you're wrong, you're right! Neat. When you are 'public intellectual' you don't have to think at all, and you'll always be 'right'.

I'm right, you're wrong, go to Hell.

SECOND UPDATE: Look - a pubic intellectual.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Code ?

There is a huge police presence around the downtown trains and ferries today. I took this photograph at about 7:30 this morning in front of Ground Zero. The line of police cars on the left extended two blocks.

I asked several officers what was going on and they said it is a 'routine drill'. The security officers in my building (former police) say there are specific threats against the subways today.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Is the city a terrible place to raise kids?

Matthew Yglesias doesn't think so:

Erika at Apartment 401 says, among other things:

Although they like the city, I do sense from her blog that the kid-friendly culture of the suburbs has some appeal. Most of us grew up playing in muddy creeks and going to community barbecues and riding our bikes down empty streets and we want our kids to have some of that.

Having grown up in New York City, this kind of talk always pisses me off. What, exactly, is so "kid-friendly" about the suburbs? It seems to me that it often just comes down to this -- "most of us grew up playing in muddy creeks . . . and we want our kids to have some of that." I didn't grow up doing any of that stuff, and I think I turned out fine. Conversely, the people I knew who grew up in the suburbs wound up not doing things that I did all the time and they turned out fine, too.

Two things about the whole "kids = suburbs" thing make perfect sense. Primarily, if there's more people in your family, it's desirable to have more space, and space is cheaper in the suburbs. Secondarily, depending on circumstances, it may be cheaper to obtain access to a decent school. If the financial circumstances apply, those are great reasons to move to the suburbs. Similarly, if it so happens that you really want to own a big yard, or you realize that you've reached a point in your life where the sights and sounds of the big city are no longer all-that-appealing then, obviously, you should move to the suburbs.

But please, please, please don't "do it for the kids." If you'd rather live in the city and you can afford a place you like, do that. Kids grow up fine in the city.

I also grew up in the city, and also have some treasured memories that my suburban friends don't have . . . like being able to go more than two feet from my house without finding someone to drive me. And for all the claims of safety in the suburbs, my friends and I were immune from one of the main killers of teens, which is drunk or insane driving. Nor did we turn out noticeably more thievish, drug-addled, or unmotivated than nice suburban kids.

But while the city may not, depending on your definition, be less kid friendly, it's definitely less parent friendly. If you want to raise kids in New York City, you'd better be prepared either to put heroic efforts into getting your kid into one of the few decent public schools, or pay something on the order of $15K per kid, per year, for private school tuition. And unlike when Matt and I were in school, the process of even getting into one of those schools has gotten ludicrous: the parents I know are scrambling to get their kids into a few preschools that are roughly as competitive as the Ivy League, which in turn are feeders for good prep schools, which are good feeders for the Ivy League . . . a friend of a friend was asked at the interview for one such school, in re her two year old, "What are her aspirations?"

But beyond all that, there's simply very little space for a child. If you want your child to play outside instead of reading or watching television, you have to physically take them to the outdoors, sit there watching them while they play, and then take them home again. Or you have to pay someone else to do so, and whee! there go the bills again. Parenting in New York is a tradeoff between encourageing your child to be a vegetable, or spending every waking minute shepharding them from activity to activity.

When the children are older, this is reversed; once I was eleven or twelve, I, unlike my suburban compatriots, could hop on a subway or a bus and get myself to shopping, food, friends, school, and activities. This is very liberating for parents -- who usually need the liberation, as they're busy working sixteen hours a day to earn your school fees. If I had to pick, I think I'd probably want small children in the suburbs, and adolescent and older children in the city. And a trust fund, of course, to pay for it all.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Compromise? What compromise?

Larry Solum argues that, as far as appointing judges goes, nothing much happened yesterday.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Reader survey

I know that most of you have probably already seen this, but just in case you haven't, Henry Copeland, who provides the magnificent ads at the right (which you should all click through to help out Asymmetrical Information's very fine advertisers), is running a reader survey. Please, please, please take a moment, if you haven't already, to fill out the survey. And if you want to help me out, by giving me a glimpse at my reader demographics, write in "Asymmetrical Information" (watch the spelling!) for question number 22.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Says it all

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Expense this!

Just in time for the economic recovery, New York City restaurants are preparing even more fantastic menu items for rising young Wall Street tycoons to expense:

The omelet, which debuted May 5 and is billed as the "Zillion Dollar Frittata," has six eggs, a lobster and -- here's the kicker -- 10 ounces of sevruga caviar.

The restaurant pays $65 an ounce for the caviar, according to Norma's general manager, Steven Pipes.

"Since we knew it was going to be a very expensive dish, we decided to have some fun with it," Pipes told the News. "It's not just a gimmick, though. It tastes good."

Beside the omelet's entry in the menu is the following message: "Norma dares you to expense this."

No one has ordered it yet.

That's it, folks: I'm declaring the downturn officially over.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Is GDP growth a function of female labour force expansion?

Busy, busy, busy at work, but just barely time for this interesting snippet, from Stuart Buck:

I wonder what effect this trend has had on the GDP of the United States? After all, people who work outside the home draw salaries and spend money, all of which counts toward GDP. But people -- men or women -- who spend their time on homemaking and child-raising don't count at all. Their work is unpaid, and unpaid work doesn't count toward official statistics.

According to the Census chart found here, there were about 19.5 million children under 6 in 2002. I don't know how many of these were siblings of each other, but there were a lot of mothers involved. If a substantial number of them move out of the workforce and into household labor, that would have to affect GDP somehow.

How much? Studies show varied values for unpaid household work. An Australian study estimated the value of unpaid work at around 47% of GDP. A British study from 2000 stated that estimates range from 44% of GDP to 104%. This is obviously a wide range, and there must be quite a bit of uncertainty in the valuation mechanism, the time estimates, or both. Even so, the number is substantial.

How does this all play out? I don't know. If a genuine economic study exists, I'd love to hear of it. I'm just saying that it looks like more women have moved into precisely the sort of work whose value is huge but that is not counted toward GDP.

In that case, then, the amount of lost GDP would have to factor into one's assessment of the economic slowdown since early 2001. In other words, a slower economy may be in part due to the fact that more people are choosing to perform unpaid household work.

UPDATE: I found one study that examines the opposite effect: How much economic growth is really due to women moving from unpaid household labor into the marketplace? Here's the opening quote:

If one accounts for the shift of women’s work from the household to the market during the course of economic development, what does the trajectory of growth and structural change look like? Economists do not typically consider this aspect of economic development. But if a significant proportion of growth is propelled by such a shift, then analyses of growth will mistakenly attribute social and economic policies with production expansion when what is really happening is a sectoral shift.

And here's part of the conclusion:

Raising the market labor force participation of women, especially women with high levels of human capital (measured in terms of education and health) was a key feature of the Taiwanese miracle.

The opposite should logically be true as well.

So was some large proportion of our GDP growth in the 70's, 80's and 90's a function of political change, rather than actually having a more productive economy?

I'd argue no, because I think that the political change that propelled women into the workforce was actually in large part a function of economic change: household labour became vastly more productive.

Consider that when my grandmother got married, laundry took an entire day, and left her exhausted by the wrenching work of boiling water for washing, wringing the clothes out, and physically hefting wet clothing onto the clothesline. Three hefty meals a day had to be prepared for men doing hard physical labour without any of the modern aids, from food processors to frozen vegetables, that I enjoy, a mound of dishes done after every meal, a house had to be cleaned without the aid of vacuum cleaners, groceries had to be gotten on foot . . . everything was physically more demanding, and more time consuming.

My mother stayed home with us. By the time I was ten, she was going bonkers. There simply wasn't enough to do in the house . . . and my mother, mind you, had gone in for gourmet cooking in a rather large way, producing elaborate dinners that took hours to prepare. She was the mainstay of the PTA, the building's co-op board, and so forth. Nonetheless, there simply wasn't enough to keep an active woman occupied after the children were in school.

Women in the house, other than those with small children, became economically useless to their families once labour-saving devices and modern food processing made 90% of their labour obsolete. So they went to work.

Thus, I'd argue that the GDP growth we experienced when women went to work is measuring the same thing as other kinds of GDP growth: the movement of labour resources from less valued to more valued uses.

This has created a problem, of course: women's work used to be compatible with child care, and now it is not. And the business world is still largely designed for men: it is not structured to accomodate professional women who stay home with young children. On that, more later.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

We're all gonna diiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

Right now I'm reading Christopher Hitchens' Why Orwell Matters. So far, I like it very much. He has some of Orwell's talent for the painfully apt phrase, which arouses in me both envy and wonder.

I was struck, this morning, on the train, by this passage:

Indeed, Orwell himself had been extremely quick to see the implication, of a world run by unnaccountable experts and technicians, that was contained in the advent of nuclear weaponry.

Orwell did not mean to suggest that the choices--between democratising and perishing--were exclusive. He thought there was a third alternative, namely the mutual and absolute destruction of all systems (and all non-combatants) by atomic warfare. But though he often wrote about this in the morbidly fatalistic way that was to become commonplace a decade or so after his death, he also saw the threat of nuclearism to the present, as well as the future.

The reason this struck me is that phrase -- morbid fatalism -- which so perfectly describes books like On the Beach and political groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Anyone over the age of twenty is occasionally confronted with the ignorance of today's youth of some phenomenon that was utterly ordinary when we were their age. It is always disconcerting, perhaps because none of us ever really thinks of ourselves as having grown up, which makes it hard to confront the fact of sixteen-year olds who are palpably not of our generation. Pay telephones (rotary telephones!), cassette tapes, typewriters, black and white televisions, Captain Kangaroo . . . how can they not know about these things?

But perhaps the strangest thing of all is to realize that these children, unlike my generation, did not grow up with the ever-present fear that they might at any moment evaporate, suddenly and without warning, into a fine cloud of radioactive dust. I think that if you had asked the children of my high school class, we would have placed the eventual probability of a nuclear war at higher than 50%. Now, to be sure, they worry about a terrorist attack. But I doubt that any of them has the worry that was always at the backs of our minds: that America, western civilisation, or the earth itself, might at any moment be irrevocably destroyed.

So after fifty years of sullenly expecting it, the doom everyone was waiting for has not only failed to come to pass--even the worry about it has faded utterly. And we achieved this neither by defeating the Soviet Union in battle, nor by unilaterally disarming, the two solutions that were most widely proposed as the only thing that could save us from this disastrous fate (and the former only in the few brief years before Russia tested her first nuclear weapon).

Why do I bring this up? Well, because the failure of one impending doom to come to pass has not stopped other prophets from pushing theirs.

No, I'm not talking about the environmentalists. I mean, that Day After Tomorrow movie Al Gore is pushing looks about as scientifically sound as one of those ads for pills that make you lose weight while you sleep WITHOUT DIET OR EXCERCISE. But not being an astrophysicist, geologist, meteorologist, or other scientific type, I do not consider myself qualified to comment on whether we are, or are not, emitting our way to hothouse hell.

I'm thinking of the purveyors of political and social doom. A few weeks ago, I was talking to a libertarian who was arguing that the Patriot Act was a one-way ticket to totalitarianism. We were violating fundamental rights that had been enshrined in the constitution for 200 years, and once we'd given them up, it was going to be a short step on the slippery slope to a police state. I share her fear of government intrusiveness. But this a markedly ahistorical view of the constitution and the liberties it allows us to enjoy, which is no more accurate for its extreme prevalence in libertarian circles. There is no primal state of liberty, created by the Constitution, from which we have slowly but inexorably been moving away. Liberties have been granted, and taken away, and granted again throughout the history of our country. Just off the top of my head: Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, the Palmer raids, the detention of the west coast Japanese in camps during World War II, the committment of anyone FDR or one of his minion's thought was especially dangerous to the war effort to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital during same, the McCarthy hearings--see this wonderful Richard Posner piece for a more elegant exegisis of the history of American liberties. The shape of liberty has changed over the 200 years of our existence, expanding in some places and contracting in others. There is no libertarian eden, located somewhere in the American past, from which we are now fallen, or falling.

Now, this doesn't mean that the Patriot Act is a good thing. But the fact that we have the Patriot Act now does not mean, as many libertarians ardently argue, that we will always have the Patriot Act. If the Patriot Act is bad, we should vigorously fight it. But there is no need to construct doomsday scenarios in which the existance of the Patriot Act consigns us to a totalitarian future.

Not to dump on libertarians exclusively, because everyone seems to do it. Social conservatives think we're doomed because the institution of marriage has been dangerously undermined, and is therefore likely to disappear entirely, along with God, patriotism, and the super-sized big mac meal, if we don't do something, quick. A large number of wonkish types (including, on odd days, me) spend a lot of time worrying about the possibility that our old-age entitlements will drive us into disastrous bankruptcy; few of us stop to reflect on the many, many unsustainable economic trends that have worried policy wonks right up until the moment that the impending doom suddenly solved itself under the inexorable logic of Herb Stein's famous dictum: "If something can't go on forever, it won't." Many liberals, like Paul Krugman, think that we nearly got into socioeconomic eden sometime around 1966, give or take, and have been staging a fast retreat towards armageddon ever since; marginal tax rates and some forms of social spending here take the part of doom-bringer, even though on every measure except simple inequality, the lives of the poor and the middle class seem to be richer in material goods, leisure, and quality of work than they were in the Golden Era of America's Middle Class.

That's not to say that liberals shouldn't want more progressive taxes and social spending, policy wonks more sustainably structured entitlements, social conservatives more traditional cultural values, or libertarians more freedom. It's perfectly reasonable to look at the way things are and say "they could be so much better if . . . " What we shouldn't do is compare our present to some highly airbrushed past, or mindlessly extrapolate trends, and thereby hastily conclude that we're all going to hell in a handbasket.

Madeline Albright spoke at my sister's graduation last weekend, and during her speech she said something to the effect that the world situation now was scarier than it had been at any time since World War II. This is a common belief -- commoner among liberals, but not exclusive to them. But huh? Think of what the world looked like to George Orwell. Nazism defeated, but at terrible cost--and no one knew, then, that Fascism wouldn't re-emerge. Russia, with Stalin still at its helm, devouring Eastern Europe. The most terrible weapon ever imagined recently used for the first time, and every nation with two scientists to rub together working hard to develop their own, personal holocaust-maker. The Cold War incipient in the battles over Berlin. And, if you're Orwell, a nasty case of tuberculosis, and no nice antibiotics to cure it. Things were bleak.

Yet we made it through, with a modicum of liberty and a splash of human kindness, and now democracy is springing up like mushrooms everywhere you look, poverty is steadily decreasing, though perhaps not as fast as we'd like, and wars are killing fewer and fewer humans each decade. The world is a pretty good place to live, and getting steadily better for almost everyone. As flawed as the human race is, we seem to be a lot better than the doomsayers think at muddling through.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

What is normal

A little over a month ago, I attended a Liberty Fund conference run by the inimitable Tyler Cowen, of Marginal Revolution, on biological determinism. For those of you who have been wondering what Mr Cowen is like, the answer is that he's incredibly smart, as is his co-blogger, Alex Tabarrok. Their styles, however, are very different. Alex is hawk-eyed when it comes to spotting lazy reasoning or fallacious argument, and lightning-fast at exposing it where it occurs. Tyler is quieter; he sits and listens for a long time, and then just when you've forgotten to wonder what he's thinking, he unleashes, in his quiet way, some devastatingly obvious (in hindsight) demolition of your argument, or a new point so clever and elegant that you know you would never have thought of it in a million years. Both are very good, if somewhat unsettling, company.

But back to the reason for this post: one of the pieces that we read was on female circumcision, more perjoratively known in the west as female genital mutilation. The author of the piece argues that our attitude towards it is mostly irrational prejudice. And most of us reacted with--well, to be honest, a fair amount of irrational prejudice.

That's not to say that I think the author made his case. A lot of his argument relied on the fact that female circumcision is often practiced, and encouraged, by women, particularly the mothers of the girls. African women, he is at some pains to point out, love their daughters just as much as Americans do. Well, of course, that's true, but not really useful. Victorian mothers certainly loved their daughters, but that doesn't mean that their encouragement of chattel marriage and one-gender chastity taboos was good for women. Victorian mothers pushed their daughters into these things for the same reason that mothers in cultures that practice female circumcision push their child under the ceremonial knife: because it's necessary, in that society, in order to get a husband, material security, and children. That doesn't mean that the 19th century oppression of women was a good thing, and I doubt that the author would attempt to argue that it was simply because Victorian mothers, the primary enforcement agents, loved their daughters.

Nor do I think that arguing that infibulation (the most drastic and repulsive of the procedures, which I won't describe here) occurs in "only" 15% of the cases is reallly very compelling.

But he does make a good case that, far from being grounded only in patriarchal power politics, as most feminists opposed to the practice argue, there is a strong aesthetic component; women (and men) in societies that practice female circumcision think that uncircumcised women are repulsive-looking, and feel the same disgust towards them that we feel towards women who circumcise their daughters. The "Ick factor" makes it hard, on both sides, to have a rational discussion.

Oh, we think we're being rational; of course we have the better argument. After all, our way is pristine and natural; that's why alterations, particularly drastic ones, are "mutilation".

But consider this: intersexuals, people with abnormal quantities of X or Y chromosomes (XO, XXY, XYY) or hormonal conditions that alter fetal development, are often born with genitalia that are ambiguous, or abnormal. We commonly perform surgery on these people in order to define them as one gender or another. We do it for the same reason that African mothers have their daughters circumcised: so that they will fit into the tribe, meet our aesthetic standards for genital appearance, and have an easier time finding a mate. Yet most of the people who are repulsed by the actions of those African mothers, would, if they had a baby with one of these abnormalities, eagerly schedule it for surgery to normalise its gentalia. So are we really opposed to mutilating the pristine work of nature, or are we, like those African mothers, simply enforcing our own cultural norms?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Public service announcement

Last night I had something of a rite of passage in New York: first roach in my new apartment.

Lest you think I'm the sort of filthy creature that tolerates vermin in her kitchen rather than clean it properly, this roach was an interloper that followed us into the apartment as we came in. And technically, it was not a roach, but a waterbug, which is a New York City term of art for a really huge, disgusting cockroach. (See, Palmetto Bug).

The problem with apartments is that no matter how clean you are, somewhere in your building there is some verminous lout, blithely unconcerned with the wriggling things flitting about his abode, who is breeding a small army of roaches to spread out through the pipes as summer arrives. My apartment has been, for the first five months of occupation, vermin free, which is a good sign. If I want to keep it that way, however, it appears I must Take Steps.

Luckily, having grown up in New York City, I am well versed in the lore of roach combat. Unlike my mother, who arrived here from a small town in upstate New York, where the only people who have roaches are the sort of people who don't take out the garbage for weeks at a time, and litter their yard with broken appliances and other trash. The discovery that she had COCKROACHES was so emotionally devastating that she very nearly did not recover. And she, of course, had no idea what to do about the disgusting creatures.

There are still a flood of such people into our urban areas. And so, as a public service, I thought I would offer some tips for successful roach extermination.

1) Do not leave anything edible where roaches might find it Unfortunately, for roaches, "edible" is a very broad category, which apparently includes soap. You need not go so far as to lock the Camay way each evening, but you should do a thorough scour of your cupboards. Anything which is not in a sealed container -- bags of flour, open boxes of raisins, jars of jam with little bits of dried goo that have dribbled down the sides, etc. -- should be either put in tightly closed tupperware, or in the refrigerator. (Putting your flour and sugar in the refrigerator also keeps them from getting flour bugs or sugar ants, a common hazard in apartment buildings). Tupperware, canisters, etc. must be kept clean on the outside.

2) Take your garbage out every night, and twice a day in the summer This will seem impractical to many of you, as indeed it is. Put your organic garbage in a plastic shopping bag, tied with a twist tie, in the freezer, or the fridge if you don't have space in the freezer. If you live in New York, where there are conveniently located trashcans on every streetcorner, just grab your baggie on the way to work and deposit it in the nearest municipal garbage can. This seems extreme. But the best way to keep roaches out of your apartment is not to give them any reason at all to be there. Spending an extra $20 a year on garbage bags is well worth it.

3) Wash your dishes as soon as you're done with them Whoa, what a drag. But not as much of a drag as turning on your lights and hearing things skitter. Note to dishwasher owners: a dishwasher filled with unrinsed dishes and left for a few days is a roach's idea of Lutece.

4) Sluice down the counters and sweep the floors every night You'd be amazed at how little roaches can live on.

5) Put out roach traps Combat is the preferred brand of New Yorkers. People with waterbug or palmetto bug problems should use the extra large size. (Guess what I'll be stocking up on tonight?) These should go EVERYWHERE, but especially in areas that have either food, pipes (roaches travel along them), or sheltering darkness for your six-legged enemies: in cabinets, behind the fridge, behind the toilet, under the sink . . . don't forget to put one (tastefully hidden, of course) near your doors and any windows that border either a terrace, or the street. A roach's first step into your apartment should be its last.

6) Put down boric acid in every crevice I have no idea why it works, but it's great roach prevention. Keep it away from any areas that pets or children might come across it an consume it.

7) Get your landlord to call the exterminator And don't be put off by assertions that there's nothing to be done.

8) Bug bomb the apartment when you go away for vacation By the time you get back, the smell will have dissipated, and so, hopefully, will the roaches.

9) Buy a gekko This is somewhat extreme. Clearly, it won't work for those who don't like lizards, or have pets, such as cats, that will try to kill the gekko. But they are remarkably effective at getting rid of your roach problem, if you're willing to tolerate occasionally finding a lizard perched on your shower head. Myself, I'll take a nice clean lizard over a filthy old roach any day -- though I'm not really at lizard-buying point yet.

I myself have been lax on enforcement of some of these edicts, lulled into complacency by the previous absence of vermin. Now, however, I am preparing for Total War. And I thought I should offer my advice to newer city dwellers, who may have been told by fellow citizens that there's nothing to be done about roaches. You never really win the war against bugs in a city -- but contrary to the assertions of many city dwellers, you can fight them to a draw.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

How does fat kill?

By sheer volume, according to a new study. The authors argue that it's not the strain of carrying around that extra weight, but the fat cells themselves, which emit ever-more hormones and so forth as they grow.

So building muscle to help counteract the strain won't undo the damage (except, perhaps, to your joints, in a limited way.) Sigh. There's no substitute for losing weight except . . . losing weight.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Speaking of plagiarism . . .

Why buy a paper off the internet when you can buy a degree?

According to the General Accounting Office, 28 top federal workers have degrees from diploma mills. At least, 28 that they've found so far:

Three unaccredited schools — Pacific Western University, California Coast University and Kennedy-Western University — provided data showing that 463 of their students were federal employees. Most of those listed were in the Department of Defense. The report did not name employees.

I'm speechless. Libertarians, the comments are yours.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Are we a nation of cheaters?

This morning I read this excellent piece, via Matthew Yglesias, by a philosophy professor sharing his techniques for catching plagiarism. I've read discussions about plagiarism on academic blogs, and I was pondering this as I rode the subways this morning.

Shocking confession here, but I've never cheated in my life. (Or at least not since 6th grade, when I got in trouble for reporting that I'd done homework that I had not, in fact, done.) I've never copied someone else's test answers, or had someone else copy mine, never copied an essay, had another person do my homework,inserted uncited text from someone else's writing, paraphrased someone else's work or ideas without citation, or even forgotten a footnote. And I've written a lot of essays in my time, being an English major. I had something close to a 4.0 in my major, and I was certainly no apple-polisher; my priorities lay more in figuring out exactly how little one had to do to earn an A.

Of course, I was an English major, which some would argue means I wasn't exactly playing on the varsity, academically speaking. And English relies much more on primary texts than most other fields, which means students read a lot less secondary criticism than, say, philosophy students; those secondary critics make fertile ground for plagiarism. Perhaps it also makes plagiarism less necessary, because the papers are easier to write. But we can slander the English major some other time.

For nonetheless, it would seem that paper mills, files, google searches and so on would be no less useful in plagiarising English papers than other sorts of papers. Yet I never even thought of doing so; I would have been shocked had anyone suggested it. I feel certain that none of my friends were plagiarising their papers -- lying heroically about mythical family, medical or automotive crises that necessitated an extension, yes, but not cheating on the actual writing. Were we a more honest generation, or am I naive? And if we were more honest, is it because those were nobler days, or because the tools for plagiarism are now so much better, what with the internet and all?

Readers are invited to offer their opinions -- under strictest confidentiality, of course.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Iguanas. Hmph.

I agree, no more iguanas.
But breeding boas, that's commentworthy.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Has Jane Galt sold out to socialism?

It's not true, I swear it! In fact, I was getting ready to do a big post about feminism, but I'm still flying solo at work, and now I have to fly off to Duke to watch my sister graduate from Public Policy school.

(Speaking of which, if anyone out there in the policy biz is looking for an extremely bright new hire who's pleasant to be around, knows her way around both qualitative and quantitative research, writes well, and works like a demon for whoever is lucky enough to have her, please shoot me an email at janegalt-at-gmail.com.)

But really, I haven't sold out to the left. I'm right exactly where I've always been (at least since my Road-to-Damascus experience in college). I'm not trying to slip Kerry in under the wire so I can nationalise health care and raise taxes until everyone's gums bleed. I'm just trying to figure out what I think is best for the country. I could be wrong, of course, but I definitely don't have some hidden agenda. On which, sadly, more will have to wait until later, as I have to catch a plane.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Who's calling who unpatriotic

Democrats who are fond of attacking Republicans for attacking the patriotism of various Democrats, should be preparing to eat humble pie, since the first person to actually attack the patriotism of their opponents (as opposed to criticising their national security votes on substantive grounds, which is the same thing only to those who don't care about either patriotism, or national security), is John Kerry's wife.

She seemed like quite an interesting person in the Newsweek story. But I don't think she's doing her husband much good. She seems to have absolutely no idea what kind of thing plays in Paducah, and what doesn't.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Yup, folks, it's official

Michael Moore has apparently admitted that the whole "Disney's spiking my film on orders from Jeb Bush" brou-ha-ha was a publicity stunt.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Bush apologizes

Time will tell whether his critics accept it.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Whoa, Nellie!

Am I reading this right? Is it really possible that Joe Wilson just published a book saying that the Niger Yellowcake Story, much vaunted by opponents of the Administration, including Mr Wilson, as proof of its perfidity, is true?

Tarzan confused. Please, someone, 'splain me what's going on here.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Time to go

The Economist is calling on Rumsfeld to resign. I concur. The mission in Iraq is being compromised by the hideous revelations about Abu Ghraib; the only way to repair the damage is for responsibility to be taken at the highest levels. And not the fake "I'm accountable but I'm not going to, y'know, be called to account" responsibility of Janet Reno, but real, honest to God, "Somethine went wrong on my watch, and I will suffer the penalty" responsibility. For the good of his country, it is time for Don Rumsfeld to go.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

More on Canada

Americans don't understand Canada. Frankly, that's because 2/3 of us probably couldn't locate it on a map, much less pronounce the name of its premier, Paul Martin. But we also don't understand how the nation that gave the world Molson and Wayne Gretsky can get so, well, emotional about things like . . . er . . . softwood lumber. Americans don't even know the difference between softwood lumber and other sorts of lumber, and if such knowlege ever did penetrate their consciousness, they would get a hammer and knock it out again, quick. But not Canadians. They care.

This article on the topic, for example, starts off thusly:

And yet another defiant American Government. Can someone remind me why we're even in the NAFTA with these crooks?

Well, I'm not Canadian or anything, but I'm going to go ahead and try to answer that question anyway: you're in NAFTA with us crooks, because 1/3 of your economy consists of selling stuff to us. Without NAFTA, this would be much, much harder.

On the other hand, you'd probably get to drink all the surplus Molson.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Weird item of the day

Canada refuses asylum to a Mexican gay man because he's too macho.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Big day in business news

A jury has limited the payout of the biggest single insurer on the World Trade Center site, to $877m for one incident. Larry Silverstein, the owner, had been seeking a double payment, arguing that the two planes constituted two separate insurable events. This ruling will probably limit his potential payout to $4.5 billion, rather than the $9 billion he's been seeking. It's not only big news for the insurance business--it could have a big impact on the site reconstruction.

Both Mr. Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey vowed to move forward with the rebuilding process regardless of the outcome of the trial. Mr. Silverstein has already begun work on the first of five towers proposed for the site. There is also $2 billion in federal funds and insurance proceeds available for the reconstruction of the transit center at the site. Rebuilding officials expect to raise the money for the memorial and two cultural buildings from private donations and federal funds.

"Of course we are disappointed in the outcome," said Joseph J. Seymour, executive director of the Port Authority. "However, Silverstein Properties is moving forward with construction of the Freedom Tower. In addition, federal funding to build the World Trade Center transportation hub designed by Santiago Calatrava has already been set aside." A spokeswoman for Gov. George E. Pataki released this statement: "We will move forward with the rebuilding. Nothing will stop us from keeping our commitment to the heroes we lost on that day."

But with the estimated cost of rebuilding the trade center at $9 billion, there are doubts about how soon, or even if, the four other office buildings at the site will be built.

Meanwhile, Frank Quattrone, former head of Technology investment banking at CS First Boston, has been convicted of two counts of obstructing justice and one charge of witness-tampering.

Of course, that's not really what he was guilty of--that's just what they could prove he was guilty of:

In his heyday, Mr Quattrone was arguably the most powerful investment banker in the dotcom world, shepherding both Amazon.com and Netscape to market. However, the role of investment banks in flotations later came under scrutiny. If banks were being paid fat fees—of up to 7% of the funds raised—to bring their clients to market, then why were the share prices shooting up, sometimes by several hundred percent, on the first day, leaving “on the table” millions of dollars that might otherwise have gone to the issuing company’s coffers?

The answer, regulators believed, lay in a practice known as “spinning”. This involved investment banks reserving shares in popular IPOs for favoured clients, their friends and families in return for more business. CSFB was one of the banks investigated; two years ago, it paid $100m to settle charges without any admission of liability.

Prosecutors initially suspected the bank of having received kickbacks—in the form of high commissions from hedge-fund clients—in return for such allocations. However, such charges were never brought. In the end, Mr Quattrone was charged with an attempted cover-up rather than any underlying offence.

I will leave it as an excercise for the reader to determine whether convicting people of covering up a crime that they (so far as the law is concerend) didn't commit is a step forward or backward for American justice. I will only point out that these sorts of convictions are distressingly common among our more famous securities fraud trials--don't we have any evidence on any of 'em?

Speaking of CSFB, for those who don't know, they're the lead bank on Google's IPO. Google is planning to do its IPO via Dutch auction, rather than the traditional mechanism of letting their investment banker set a price. This has apparently produced some angry reactions from the bankers who thus cannot use their price-setting ability to enrich themselves, and their favourite clients, at the expense of the company and/or the new shareholders:

So there you had Google coming out rightfully declaring that any incremental value generated by investors belongs to Google, at the same time as the broker dealer mechanism was busy trying to steer basic equity trading business through its desk. I believe that Google's decision to set its offering price through a retail auction mechanism has the potential of destroying a traditional profit center of wall street. Most hedge funds and mutual funds of a certain size think nothing of paying each bulge bracket firm millions of dollars each year in commission fees. As we have reviewed previously, traditional equity research, access to management and trade execution have become commodities in the wake of Spitzer, Reg FD and Technology respectively. The last bastion of hope for wall street has remained capital commitment and access to hot issues. I will leave aside the former concern and focus on the relationship between institutional investors and hot issues.

Wall Street has cut back their coverage of equities in order to rationalize their cost structures (no more investment banking to pay for the analysts) at the same time that investors have begun to self-regulate their position vis a vis the safe harbor qualification for their trading commissions. Increasingly, commission dollars are becoming more accountable. This is similar to the recent evolution of online advertising from destination web sites and branded banners to pay for click pricing. If new technologies enable increased accountability, such markets will indeed become more accountable. This is what is happening in the brokerage industry, as the powerful meme of transparency has become a consistent menace to bundled commissions and opaque pricing.

Google's IPO is above all a capital performance. Its offering memo describes a set of rules that at once promise zero short term accountability on behalf of management while at the same time promise unparalleled tick-by-tick efficiency in terms of equity pricing.

On Friday, Tina and I got together with some friends for dinner. One of the husbands works for CSFB and I congratulated him on the coup of being named the lead on the Google IPO. Whereas I expected a little gloating, instead he bit his tongue and complained about the greed of Google and how little money CSFB was going to make (including its not insignificant banking fees). I think the point he was trying to make was that by going the way of the auction, that Google was trying to take every single penny off the table that they can. Seeing his genuine anger, I didn't have the heart to remind him that this was a good thin[g] overall, namely that companies were going to start to benefit fully from the intersection of buyers and sellers of their stock, not the marketmakers per se.

Instead what I saw was the end of a certain kind of investment banking innocence. No, the outsized commissions are not your divine right. No, you can't control the allocation of underpriced shares to your best clients. Yes, you will be paid, but it will be in fees like those paid to lawyers, consultants or accountants. Profiting from outsized bid-ask spreads will need to be replaced by a different type of value. I am not sure Wall Street has figured out what it will do if Google's auction model proves to become the rule rather than the exception.[More importantly, what are all my business school classmates, who have now spent tens of thousands of dollars on an MBA, and 3+ years of 100-hour weeks running comps in a well-upholstered rat cage, going to do if the gravy train is pulled out of service just as they have taken their seat? --ed.]

It is interesting to note that the lone vocal holdout of the Google offering has been Goldman Sachs, who was rumored to express concern about the company's auction format. This from a firm that perhaps more than any other benefits from proprietary trading desks. Perhaps this is the next stage of conflict, between the democratization of hot issues and the entrenched commitment of the bulge bracket to commit more and more capital behind their trades.

Long time readers of this blog know that I think that investment banking fees, which run 7% of every IPO, bear little resemblance to value added, and are a classic example of how regulatory capture and the principal-agent problem of corporate executives can collide to produce undeserved wealth for those lucky enough to be employed at their intersection. (Though please, don't tell my business school classmates I said that.) The moral indignation of investment bankers at those nasty old companies trying to maximise value for the buyers and sellers in the transaction, rather than the so richly deserving middleman who has lent his name to this enterprise, thus fills me with a sort of righteous hilarity.

And for a great piece about what the shareholders can expect from all this--namely, to be afflicted with the Winner's Curse--we look to longtime AI favourite James Miller.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

That'll Show Him

BBC NEWS:

Microsoft head Bill Gates has been fined $800,000 (£450,000) for failing to report a large shares investment, US officials say.

Given the sizes he invests in, you'd think he files on every trade.

But this is just a bullshit excuse:

By US law, certain individuals and firms have to notify regulators before they can complete acquisitions of stock or assets worth more than $50m.

Mr Gates reportedly thought he was exempt from the rule because the purchase was for investment purposes.

Since when does that make any difference? The exemption he is trying to claim is generally only available to investment advisers:

Exchange Act Rule 16a-1(a)(1) contains specific, individual exemptions from the beneficial ownership definition for certain holders if the securities are held (i) for the benefit of third parties or in customer or fiduciary accounts in the ordinary course of business and (ii) without the purpose or effect of changing or influencing control of the issuer. Holders include such money managers as broker-dealers, banks, and registered investment advisers and are listed in Rule 16a-1(a)(1)(i)-(ix). In addition, there is a further separate exemption for a group which is composed solely of holders who each carry a specific individual exemption under Rule 16a-1(a)(1).

(emphasis mine)

Good help is so hard to find.

P.S. Is everybody enjoying the detour into securities law? Good. Hang on, 'cause the fun is just beginning. Now let's talk about the new best execution rules...

Hello? Anyone?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

What I did on my summer vacation

I just got back from a Liberty Fund conference in Arizona. It was amazing (like Tyler Cowen, I highly recommend that you go to one if you're invited). I've never been to Arizona before, so it was a terrific opportunity to do some riding and hiking through terrain I've never seen before. Sadly, I didn't get to soak in the landscape well enough that my own landscape looked strange when I saw it, but I did get to take some fantastic pictures in the national park.

All photos taken with the Minolta DiMage G500, which I love with a passion seldom found in one so young. The pictures looked even better before I cut 'em down and compressed them for the web.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

boNObo

Well, Maureen may have thought so, but it turns out Bonoboization may not be a viable solution to the world's problems. At least as long as there are a few non-Bonobo around to spoil the fun.

Not that it doesn't have its attractions...

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Life Imitates Art. (via Instapundit)

Life Imitates Art. (via Instapundit)

If I were running this campaign, I'd question the 'sunburst' color theme.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Stern's New Politics

Links on howardstern.com:

"Woodward's book bisects(sic) Bushies!" [link connection unclear]

"Stock Dumping: Martha Stewart & George Bush" [links to a blank page after login (laexaminer)]

"Bush and Hitler" [oh my]

This is the guy who advocated nuking the entire Middle East. The golden rule of Stern is that his political (and factual) beliefs are shaped entirely by his extraordinary narcissism. Narcissism that constitutes the primary gimmick in his act.

Whichever endorsement he offers, it will come alongside a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of last night's masturbation material.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Stryker on Prisoner Abuse

I have little to add:

The first rule of a coward, when caught, is to play stupid. The second is to blame someone else. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I don't need a superior to tell me that attaching wires to someone's genitals or beating the living shit out of them is unacceptable. What are you, a fucking idiot? This guy's supposed to be a correctional officer at a Virginia prison, but apparently when it comes to performing his job outside the confines of the Commonwealth, he turns into Sergeant Stupid. "Duh, What do I do? What do I do? Wow, that translator's raping a prisoner and that soldier over there's taking pictures. I don't know what to do! Help, help, I need an officer!"

He says that he and the others received no formal Geneva Convention training, which would've instructed them that stacking a bunch of naked men in a pyramid and posing for a trophy picture are inappropriate. I mean, until I was trained in LOAC, I thought I could just walk around shooting people at random if the whim caught me. Without that invaluable training, I'd have no idea that there indeed exist basic standards of human decency. Who knew?

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Suddenly summer

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Dowdification on Frontline?

Despite my best intentions, I missed the Frontline special The Jesus Factor. I could not miss, however, the blizzard of advance publicity, including even a special advance preview for Robin Quivers of the The Howard Stern Show, our newest outlet for DNC agitprop. The killer line they have been quoting from the show is Bush (on the morning of the Inauguration) saying "I believe that God wants me to be President".

There were two interviews on Fresh Air prior to the special. One was 50 minutes with the creators of the special, the other, 5 minutes with Richard Land who was actually in the room when Bush said those words. Land provided the entire quotation, in which Bush went on to say roughly the following:

...but if that doesn't happen, that's O.K., I'm loved at home and that's more important. I've seen the presidency up close. I know it's a sacrifice, not a reward. I don't need it for personal validation.

Land goes on to argue againt Terry Gross that this does not mean 'God is on his side". He makes a reasonable case that this was a significantly more humble statement than this blizzard of Frontline publicity suggests. These points can be debated, but it does seem that this is yet another example of Dowdification to serve scare tactics. (To be fair, the producers of this special seem to be much more even-handed than the tone of the advance publicity suggested.)

Which raises the question of how scared we should be of religion in the Presidency (should I say 'odious religiosity'?). If anything, I have become less religious as I age, yet I have had to endure public religious gestures from a succession of presidents from Carter to Bush 43, with only Bush 41 as a short hiatus. It is unclear to me why we should be any less threatened by Carter's public religion than Bush 43 - unless, that is, such fear is cultivated in service of a partisan agenda.

I've always believed in separating scientific knowledge and faith. One of the 'Frontline' incidents, the primary debate where Bush chose Jesus Christ as an important influence on his life, did not bother me. Bush said Christ 'changed his heart, not his mind and declared that was a difficult event to explain for those who had not experienced it. Indeed, Bush being born again changed his behavior (drinking and other activities, we understand), not his knowledge. This is an important distinction. Knowledge is insufficient.

At the very least, it seems to me that anyone who professes fear at the President seeking divine guidance in choosing ' lesser evils' (I recommend Ignatieff's article, by the way) would also steer clear of "what would Jesus drive?" arguments as presented by religious liberals. Do they?

Discussing the faith of Presidents too often serves as shaky rhetorical scaffolding for dubious arguments about motivation.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

It's the Ratings, Stupid

Back when I could stay up that late I was Nightline fanatic. I've watched Koppel hand a generous length of rope to blowhards of all persuasions, including the famous Al Campanis and Jimmy the Greek interviews. I'm not, therefore, predisposed to view him as a Media Bias problem.

Truthfully, I can't make up my mind about the decision to make an upcoming Nightline special a memorial roll call. It's certainly odd, compared to the usual Nightline fare, but it doesn't strike me as partisan. I think Jeff Goldstein places the issue in the most accurate perspective in this section of his faux Koppel interview:

protein wisdom: "So you were actually hoping it would fail -- that barely anyone would be interested enough to sit through the whole thing -- but now you're pleasantly surprised at all the attention it's gotten?"

Ted Koppel: "That about sums it up, sure."

P.S. The sister of Dreck is a Chomsky fan, unfortunately. Or at least she enjoyed the show when it came through town. In the course of seeking sympathy from Jeff about this sorry state of familial affairs, he tells me by e-mail that a bunch of angry Chomsky acolytes wrote to him thinking the interview was real - how dare he interrupt! Clearly they have never seen their thin-skinned hero actually respond to criticism.

One might be tempted to observe that ratings, of a sort, play a part in that show as well.

UPDATE: "SamAm, one of Jeff's commenters, asks:

For those who don't agree with what Nightline is doing:

It's your broadcast tonight. How do you honor the sacrifices of US soldiers who've lost their lives? And how do you do so in a non-political manner?

Question the premise: Why should a news interview show "honor the sacrifices of US soldiers"? If the awkward premise is mandatory, bring on guests with differing views on how to do so.

2nd UPDATE: According to a commenter below, I couldn't remember a Jimmy the Greek interview. Well, it has been a long time.