Car Alarms

One downside of living in Ecuador is the @#$% car alarms.

I probably had not heard as many car alarms in the preceding ten years or so as I've heard in the month I've been here. I have come to the conclusion that either I live in the most crime-ridden neighborhood on the planet, with a car stolen every three minutes or so, or the local car alarm installers are incredibly inept -- they must set the alarms to be so sensitive that the alarms go off if someone sneezes within twenty yards.

There were two alarms in the time it took me to type the preceding paragraphs (admittedly, I'm a slow typist).

Kids and Great Music

Here's a video of a flash mob performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy (or Himno a la Alegria) in a public square in Spain.

What I especially liked about it was the pleasure little kids were taking in the music (I loved the boy, at about the 3:40 mark, who had climbed up on a light pole to see better and is holding on by one hand and conducting the orchestra with the other – though I imagine his mother didn't approve).

Little kids can appreciate great music if they are exposed to it. If all they ever hear is crap, then that's what they will live their lives with.

The Speaker May Finally Be Listening

I was wondering if the Republicans might kick John Boehner to the curb over the immigration issue. I wrote a few days ago about how stupid I thought it was to even deal with the subject this year.

Throwing out the Speaker doesn't happen often, and it was certainly the longest of long shots, but it was interesting to speculate about. In any case, it looks like Boehner has gotten the message.

Given the negative political implications of dealing with immigration right now, as I wrote before, as well as the president's open unwillingness to enforce laws he doesn't like, Boehner really had no choice but to back down.

Hopefully, a new congress will deal with the issue next year, in a more sensible manner than the current Senate did. I'd like to see a strong effort to enforce existing laws, including stiff sanctions against employers of illegals; followed by an easing of restrictions and streamlining of processes to allow many more skilled immigrants, and then finally some sort of amnesty for most illegals who have been in the US for long periods without breaking other laws.

Resolving Historical Issues in Court

Bolivia is suing Chile at the International Court of Justice, seeking to overturn the results of the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), and regain access to the Pacific Ocean (most of northern Chile belonged to Bolivia before the war).

Most commentary I have read says, not surprisingly, that Bolivia doesn't have much chance of winning. I suspect that there's even less chance that Chile would pay any attention to such a ruling.

But, on the off-chance that the ICJ rules for Bolivia, I wonder what the next such case might be: Perhaps the Romans could be ordered to pay reparations to Carthage?

PS: I wrote almost a year ago about the practice of countries (Bolivia was one example) using old grudges and other nationalistic tricks to distract their populace.

Immigration -- Why Now?

From The Fix by Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post:

If the 2014 election is a referendum on President Obama, Democrats are in deep trouble. 

That’s according to a new state-by-state study of Obama’s job-approval ratings released by Gallup that puts his disapproval rating at over 50 percent in 10 of the 21 states where Democrats are defending Senate seats this fall. In many of those states,Republicans have recruited strong candidates and are preparing to spend big bucks to win the six seats they need to regain the majority.

When even the Washington Post is admitting that President Obama's unpopularity could well bring down the entire Democratic Party this fall, why in hell would the Republican Establishment want to change the focus of the public to immigration (or anything else)?

It makes perfect sense for Democrats to try to change the subject from Obama and Obamacare to ... well, to whatever – marijuana,  the Republican War on Women, income inequality, anything, anything other than Obama and Obamacare.

But why should Republicans try to help them out of the mess they've created? But that's what the Republican Establishment seems to be trying to do.

Regardless of how one feels about immigration reform (and I am in favor of reforming our laws to make legal immigration easier – though I differ with the Establishment in my skepticism about whether new laws will be enforced any better than the old ones were) – again, regardless of that – from a political standpoint, bringing up immigration now is totally insane.

Micromorts

I learned something new today: There is a unit of measure of the risk involved in activities – a micromort is equal to a one in a million chance of death.

This Wikipedia article notes that each of us faces about 39 micromorts on any given day of our life, though this is based simply on an assumption of a seventy year (25,000+ days) lifespan. Such a measure includes natural death, of course, so the greater value is on measuring the increased risk of various activities.

The linked article lists the degree to which we would have to engage in certain activities to achieve one micromort of risk. For example, drinking half a liter of wine is said to carry with it one micromort of risk of death from cirrhosis of the liver (I've read that drinking wine in moderation has certain health benefits, so I wonder if those benefits might counter this increased risk). Smoking 1.4 cigarettes also has one micromort of risk, which would mean each pack is worth about 14.3 micromorts (with no known offset). So back when I was smoking two packs a day, I was racking up over ten thousand micromorts a year.

In terms of accidental death connected with various means of travel, we learn that the following equal one micromort:

• 6 miles by motorbike
• 17 miles by walking
• 10-20 miles by bicycle (sources differ)
• 230-250 miles by car (sources differ)

It's interesting that travel by car is far safer (in terms of distances) than walking or biking – though, as with wine, those activities have health benefits that I suspect more than offset their dangers.

Two activities that I have sometimes engaged in are also mentioned. Scuba diving has a risk factor of 4.7 micromorts per dive, while skydiving is worth seven micromorts per jump.

The next time one of my smoker friends gets on me about jumping from planes (which I have done, alas, only a few times, due to the cost), I need to remind them that five of the cigarettes they smoke equal one jump.

A New Definition of 'Worldwide'

I was looking at tablets on eBay -- I'm not at all certain I'll buy one, but I was browsing out of curiosity (somewhere in Phoenix or Chicago, someone has a charger they don't recognize -- it's mine; and I have a tablet with no charger).

Anyway, I saw this one, which looked like it might meet my needs, and which, the seller says, can be shipped worldwide. With a few exceptions:

Shipping to: Worldwide 

Excludes: Africa, Asia, Central America and Caribbean, Middle East, Southeast Asia, American Samoa, Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, Western Samoa, Bermuda, Greenland, Mexico, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Switzerland, Ukraine, Vatican City State, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela

That's quite a list of exceptions, isn't it?

If you look at the dropdown menu that lists the few places to which they do ship, it appears that they define 'worldwide' as the US and Canada, parts of western Europe, Brazil, and New Zealand.

Ebay ought to police their sellers a bit and impose some standards of honesty. Lies of this sort will damage the credibility of the whole marketplace.

How Many States Could There Be?

This is an interesting map exercise. The idea is that there could be as many as 124 states if all secession proposals ever advanced had been completed (also, if we had added Cuba and several pieces of Mexico, and all outlying areas had been given statehood).

Most of these, of course, were probably only semi-serious proposals. I recall the idea of Baja Arizona being floated a few years ago, but other than a few lefties at UofA I don't think anyone even paid any attention to the idea, much less supported it.

On the other hand, while I don't know how the locals feel about it, I've always thought a State of Delmarva makes a lot of sense, geographically at least. Dividing a relatively tiny peninsula into three pieces strikes me as pointless.

One Hundred Years Ago Today ...

... my father was born in Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, a little suburb of Pittsburgh.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Obama's Secret Courts

Today we have seen the 'leader of the free world', speak forcefully in favor of having a secret court decide which rights Americans are permitted to have (no need for an outdated document, such as a two hundred year-old constitution).

It is a good day to remember the words of Freidrich Hayek:

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

Life in the Andes -- Running

Because of the rotten weather in Chicago, I couldn't run the last week I was there. I've been here two weeks and hadn't found a place, but finally I found a park nearby. 

I don't know if it was due to the three week layoff or because it was my first time running at 9300 feet (probably both, but mostly the latter), but I was really hurting. I barely made it 1km before I had to quit. 

It's going to take me quite a while to get even close to the distances I used to run.

I Am Much Comforted

I am sure that all right-thinking Americans feel much better now that The Beloved Leader has told us that the secret police are just our 'friends and neighbors'. 

Those who continue to complain after such a reassurance are undoubtedly Enemies of the State and must be watched closely.

Menestras del Negro

I ate lunch today at Menestras del Negro in Plaza Grande (the main square in Quito – it contains the presidential palace and the cathedral).

Menestras del Negro is a popular local fastfood chain (they have a dozen or so outlets in Quito, and more in other cities around Ecuador). If they should decide that they have ambitions to enter the US market, though, I think they will have to do a bit of work on their marketing. Here is their signage:

I looked up menestras in Wikipedia, by the way, and they define it as a sort of vegetable stew (apparently the word may be related to minestrone) -- that appears to be the Spanish version. What this place offers, though is a plate of beans and white rice with a choice of meat. It's pretty good, about what one would expect from a cheap ($3.99) fastfood place.

Worst Book Cover of the Year?

It's still early, but this one is definitely in the running.

What I especially like about it is that the opening words of Amazon's product description are: ""This carefully crafted ebook ..."

Not exactly the words I'd choose to describe a book that not only has a superfluous apostrophe in the title, but also has the apostrophe turned backwards.

Fearless Prediction

Sometime in the middle of next summer, President Obama will announce a new series of delays of portions of Obamacare.

The reason?:

When millions of health-insurance plans were canceled last fall, the Obama administration tried to be reassuring, saying the terminations affected only the small minority of Americans who bought individual policies. 

But according to industry analysts, insurers and state regulators, the disruption will be far greater, potentially affecting millions of people who receive insurance through small employers by the end of 2014. 

While some cancellation notices already have gone out, insurers say the bulk of the letters will be sent in October, shortly before the next open-enrollment period begins. The timing - right before the midterm elections - could be difficult for Democrats who are already fending off Republican attacks about the Affordable Care Act and its troubled rollout. 

The basis for my prediction is is the last quoted paragraph – Democratic candidates up and down the ticket (but especially senate and house candidates) will be in a panic, and Obama will delay implementation until sometime in 2015, safely after the elections.

Further fearless prediction: The announcement of the changes will be made late on a Friday afternoon, probably on a holiday weekend. Fourth of July would be ideal, because Labor Day would be too late – Republicans would already be scoring points with it and even Obama's most loyal media supporters would be forced to admit that the timing was a bit obvious.

Steven Seagall for Governor?

He is qualified because he recently completed a TV show called Steven Seagal – Lawman: Maricopa County.

I guess in a world where a show like that is called 'reality' programming, then it's not too big a step to consider it a qualification for political office.

New Ranking Service for Colleges

Mitch Daniels, who should have been the Republican nominee for president in 2012, is now the president of Purdue University, where he has already started introducing the same sort of innovations he was noted for as governor of Indiana (most notably, a freeze on tuition rates).

This one is really interesting to me. He has formed a partnership between Purdue and Gallup to create a new system for ranking colleges, to replace U. S. News & World Report. It will be based in large part on how well the schools' graduates do in their careers.

Purdue University is working with polling company Gallup to develop a new college rating system. 

Right now US News and World Report publishes the most closely-watched list of top schools. But Purdue President Mitch Daniels has criticized that system. He says what students really need is a measure of how a college’s graduates do in the workforce.  

Daniels says Gallup’s decades of public-opinion research give the company the ability to quantify subjective questions such as whether graduates feel productive on the job or whether their work is important. He says research shows a correlation between workers who feel engaged on the job and the profits they generate for their employers. 

The Gallup-Purdue Index will combine those measurements with data on how many of a school‘s graduates are employed and how much they earn. The new rankings will debut in the spring.

Soccer Has as Much Scoring as Baseball and Football

A common complaint among American non-soccer fans is that soccer doesn't have enough scoring. This is nonsense.

The average score of a game in the English Premier League is 2-1 (there are roughly three goals scored per game). The average score of a game in the National Football League is 4-3 (there are roughly 47 points per game, which divided by seven equals seven). Since an American football game is about twice as long as a soccer game, the rate of scoring is similar.

Yeah, I know some of those are field goals, but field goals are boring anyway. The point is that American football tricks you into thinking it has more scoring than it does by assigning multiple points to each score.

Baseball in the past season had 8.3 runs per game, but since up to four runs can be scored on a single play, there are probably only about five scoring plays per game. That's comparable to American football and soccer when considering the length of the games.

Only basketball, a game for people with ADHD, actually has more scoring.

More to the point, I don't understand why people think a lot of scoring is ipso facto good. A high-scoring game, in whatever sport, might be a good game. Or it might not. Same with a lack of scoring.

If you are a baseball fan, consider this scenario: The lead-off batter in the first doubles to the gap in left field and advances to third on a passed ball. The next batter pops up to short; then there's a strikeout after the batter hits a couple long fouls. With two outs, the clean-up man hits one into the right field stands just foul. On the next pitch he hits one almost as far to almost the same spot, but just inside the line; it looks like it will drop in for extra bases until the right fielder makes a diving catch on the warning track to end the inning.

At which point you would no doubt turn to your friends and say, "Looks like this game is gonna suck -- no scoring."

Of course you wouldn't. You would have been on the edge of your seat with excitement throughout the inning. Scoring is fun to watch, but so is good defense.

Told Ya So!

Yeah, I know it's tacky, but that's the kind of guy I am.

Even reliably liberal media like Politico now recognize Obama's complete inability to manage (not surprising since he had never done it before taking on the biggest management job in the world). Some of us were pointing to his extremely thin resume years ago.

To listen to Obama discuss the rollout through the fall, he was still figuring out some of the finer points, too. If he had known healthcare.gov wasn’t going to work by its launch date, he said in mid-November, “I wouldn’t be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great.” 

“In management circles, that’s an indictment,” said the longtime consultant. “How could you not know? And if no one told you, you’re still culpable for that too.”

America, that's what you get for electing a guy (and then re-electing him) because he's cool, without giving a damn whether he's competent. And it's not like you weren't warned – a hell of a lot of people (including me) were warning you that he had absolutely no experience in management of anything. What has happened with Obamacare was totally predictable.

If any further proof of his managerial incompetence were needed, the fact that Kathleen Sibelius still has a job should suffice. Even George Bush could recognize incompetence well enough to fire the head of FEMA within two weeks of Katrina's landfall.

The Vaccination/Autism Fraud

I can't figure how anybody could be so irresponsible as to not vaccinate their children. The study that started the autism link has been exposed as a fraud:

A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an "elaborate fraud" that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday. 

An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study -- and that there was "no doubt" Wakefield was responsible. 

"It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors," Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor-in-chief, told CNN. "But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data."

And yet the BS continues.

Here's a great explanation of why, even if there was a link to autism (which there isn't) -- it would still be irresponsible to not vaccinate your children.