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Amitai Etzioni's Blog
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A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
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May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
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Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
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Lunar Eclipse Last Night
It was better than I expected. The combination of thin high clouds and a bright sky meant that I couldn't even see the Moon at first. It was not a spectacular copper color, but it was definitely reddish. I was goofing around with my HP digital camera (definitely not the best choice for this sort of thing), and I got one okay shot after totality was over.
Oddly enough, having the flash on produced the best pictures. (Seriously: how many megatons would you need to properly illuminate the Moon?) With the flash off, the camera tried to do a very long exposure, and the Moon moves enough during that period of time to be a problem. I could have dragged out my telescope, and piggbybacked the camera, but it was cold and late. Maybe next time.
Concealed Weapon Permit Issuance Statistics
This question gets asked occasionally: how many Americans have concealed handgun permits? I don't really know, but at least some states have this information available on the web. Michigan State Police; Florida; Texas . I suspect that many of the other states also have these statistics online. If you feel adventuresome, and have more time than I have, why don't you find all the links? A useful place to start is www.packing.org; visit each state page, and click on the link to the official state government web site. Many have statistics up on current number issued.
This could also be an entertaining assignment for a Java class: write an applet that interrogates all these pages, sucks up the numbers, and produces a spreadsheet totaling them. It doesn't have to be real dynamic; these spreadsheets are probably updated only annually. But it would still be entertaining to build a data mining applet like that. (If I wasn't writing Java applets at work, it might be entertaining enough for me to do.)
Only Amusing To Those Who Have To Confront Today's Fashion Trends in Academia
Jonah Goldberg published an email that purports to be a University of Chicago political science grad student's approved master's thesis statement. After an incredible mass of deconstructionist jargon, it goes on to say, Note that I will not actually do this. Rather, I will only write my thesis statement clearly; the rest of the essay will be an incoherent jumble of words that will surely make William Strunk rise from his grave to commit mass carnage ala Night of the Living Dead. You, being the non-philosophical type, will be intimidated by both my vocabulary and sentence structures, instantly assuming that it is your inadequate reading skills that explain your confusion, and will therefore assume that I have proven my point. This, of course, will be irrelevant once the Strunkian zombie -- with his horde of brain-gobbling legions -- devours all humanity in a raid notable for both its clarity and efficiency.
Jacob Levy, demonstrating his well developed sense of humor, screeches that Goldberg better admit that it's a joke. Why? It's obviously a joke. The deconstructionist orthodoxy is so full of itself that there is simply no way that they would approve such a thesis statement. Not only does that supposed thesis statement satirize a destructive fashion trend that substitutes for learning, but the section quoted above is comprehensible.
Jargon in some academic circles is increasingly a method for hiding the fact that there's not much actual content present once you actually tease the author's original meaning out of it. Maybe I shouldn't use a verb like "tease": but I'm not sure what single verb fully captures what you really need to do. "Draw, quarter, and emasculate with a dull teaspoon" is just too wordy.
Jargon is unavoidable in any specialized field. I use jargon like TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, IDSL, router, mux, hub, DSLAM, DLC in my line of work. I don't use them to keep the unwashed masses out, but because there is a certain base of knowledge required in my line of work. If you think IDSL is a funny spelling of Edsel, or "router" is a woodworking tool, you aren't likely to be able to engage in a useful conversation with me about last-mile data communications technology. These abbreviations also serve a useful abstracting function: I don't have to think about the details of a router (and they are awash in details once you get inside the box) if I am thinking about setting up network services. I can think about the router as a series of inputs and outputs.
Some of the jargon that passes for wisdom in academic circles today exists to hide that the writer is often saying something terribly pedestrian, but wants to make it sound important and intelligent. When I see a writer use a word like "delegitimize" or "contextualize" or "marginalize," I have to ask myself: was there really no other way to express this concept? Or are you using these words because you are a parrot who has to sound just like your heroes?
Adjunct Faculty: Finally
This fall I will be teaching a survey American history course at one of the local universities (yes, we have more than one university here in Boise, and there is no major in cow-tipping) covering 1756 to the present. (At least no student is going to go home and whine to Mom and Dad about the flaming leftist misteaching them American history--although they might whine about covering so much history in such a hurry!) I am at the stage of figuring out which texts to assign--but I think I am going to have the students doing a bit of work with primary documents of the period, both because this is becoming fashionable in the teaching of American history, and because (at least I would like to believe this), that it tends to be a lot more engaging to see the raw materials that go into the writing of history books.
I may also be teaching Constitutional History at another university as well in the fall. (That's still a bit up in the air--but boy, that will be fun!)
How to Become Wealthy (Part 8)
There's another component to bond prices--and that's risk. Bonds are rated by either Moody's or S&P for risk. At the very top are U.S. Government securities (broken into Treasury Bills, Treasury Notes, and Treasury Bonds--we'll get into the details if I have enough energy in a later segment). These are backed, to use the common lingo, "by the full faith and credit of the United States Government." If the U.S. government ceases operation, a rifle and a few thousand rounds of ammunition are more likely to matter than your portfolio. Interesting quirk: Treasury bond dividends are exempt from state income taxes--but not federal income taxes. This means that, along with being very, very safe, they give you a slightly better yield after taxes than the equivalent corporate bond.
Down from this are U.S. Government agencies, such as the Government National Mortgage Association, Federal National Mortgage Association, Student Loan Marketing Association, and a bunch of others that I can't even begin to keep track of. These are commonly referred to by "cute" abbreviations: Ginniemae, Fanniemae, Salliemae. (Hurricanes used to all be female; now that seems to be reserved for government credit agencies.) These don't have "full faith and credit" behind them, but I get the impression that very, very few bond professionals believe that the U. S. Government would let any of these agencies go down the tubes. Just to make this confusing: the minimum denomination on these bonds is $10,000.
There are also what are commonly called municipal bonds. These are, as the name implies, usually issued by cities, but also counties, states, school districts, and all the uncountable government agencies that you don’t even realize exist until you start reading through these lists of bonds. Most of these “municipal” bonds are backed by some government agency. Some are incredibly tiny operations that startle you to discover even exist; others are used by states like California and New York to finance airports and other major projects.
Municipal bonds aren’t like U.S. government bonds in a couple of very interesting ways:
1. They can default—meaning that you don’t get your money out. We’ll discuss defaults, insurance, and ratings below.
2. The income from these bonds is (usually) exempt from federal income taxation, and from state income taxation for that state. This means that if you live in California, and you buy San Francisco Airport bonds, the interest is exempt from federal and California state income taxes. If you buy Oregon bonds, and you live in California, you are only exempt from federal income taxes on the interest. That’s still a pretty good deal—but as a consequence, the interest rates are much lower than a U.S. government bond, or a corporate bond. If you are making $100,000 a year, the lower interest rate is probably a reasonable trade-off for the tax exemption; if you are making $40,000 a year, you are better off buying U.S. government or corporate bonds, and paying the income taxes.
Let’s talk about that matter of bond defaults. Corporations and government agencies issue gobs of bonds. If corporations and local governments, like the U.S. government, never went bankrupt…well, there would be a lot of winged pigs overhead as well. When a corporation or local government goes under, bondholders get paid (usually) before stockholders, but after IRS, and employees asking for their back wages.
Fortunately, it’s not a crap shoot—well, not entirely. It turns out that there are two private firms that examine the creditworthiness of both local governments and corporations: Standard & Poor’s, and Moody’s. They have different ways of rating bonds, and of course, incompatible ways to describing those credit ratings. I don't know enough to give you a clear picture of why you should trust one over the other, but essentially, consider these pretty good ways to know whether your bonds are likely to be repaid, and remember that neither firm employs mind readers.
Defaulting Bonds
So what happens if a corporation or government defaults on its bond? It doesn't always mean that you are sunk without a trace. From what I have read, it is quite common for a defaulted bond to eventually pay most of its face value--though it might take a few years for all the lawyers to finish their feeding frenzy. You may not be so lucky on the interest payments, and if you decide to sell a bond after it has defaulted, you may do even worse than just holding on for a while. (There's a sad story of corruption in the First Congress, with some insiders buying up Revolutionary War bonds for 10% of their face value, shortly before passing a bill that made the new government responsible for paying off those bonds.)
As a general rule: highly rated (S&P A and above) corporations do not default, and even those corporations that start out A don't work their way down to the lower ratings very quickly. It can take years for an S&P A-rated corporation to sink to the point where you have to worry about it. (Here's a very detailed discussion of this.)
Another rule: S&P Baa rating is considered the bottom of "investment grade" bonds. Everything below that rating is considered a "junk bond." That means that you are earning a lot higher interest rate in exchange for a lot more risk. Junk bonds have some of the same risk potential of playing the stock market, but seldom the opportunity to get rich.
So, what happens when you buy bonds? Keep your eyes wide open. If you buy corporate bonds that have a long maturity, there is the real possibility that the corporation could get to the point, five years hence, where you might find your bonds are keeping you up at a night, whispering, "Default risk." The smartest thing to do, however, is to buy a diversified portfolio of bonds: not all in the same industry, and certainly not all in the same corporation. This means that if one of your bonds is defaulted, you aren't completely wiped out.
I haven't done the best possible diversification. (Learn from my mistakes.) When I first started buying corporate bonds last year, I was so taken by the yield (exceeding 7% annualized yield to maturity) on some Ford bonds due in 2007, that I bought $150K worth of them. Subsequent purchases of corporate bonds have been in smaller chunks--$30K or $50K per bond. But because I have so much tied up in an automobile industry bond, I am reluctant to buy any GM bonds (which are usually somewhat lower yields). Ford and GM aren't likely to both go belly up, but let's say that someone perfects the teleportation disks in Larry Niven's novels....
Municipal Bonds
There are some peculiarities that you have to watch for. Municipal bonds often (but not always) carry insurance. This is to say, the agency has paid for insurance that guarantees that if they default, an insurance company will guarantee payment of principal and interest. Not surprisingly, such bonds have lower yields than equvalent uninsured bonds. Just to make you really paranoid, imagine what would happen if a meteor about 60 meters across hit the East Coast, and thousands of local and state governments defaulted (several milliseconds after vaporizing). Insurance companies are supposed to be reinsured so that the whole industry doesn't collapse, but still....
Another problem is that some municipal bonds are actually financing private ventures that some government agency has talked themselves into believing are good for the public. These private venture municipal bonds have some quirks concerning the tax-free nature of the interest that I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about to discuss--but I know that they can surprise you at tax time, especially if the dreaded phrase "Alternative Minimum Tax" is part of your tax return. (Been there, almost done that, avoided it by careful exercising of stock options partly in one year, and partly in the next.)
I think we are going to get to mutual funds next segment. Whew!
Learning from Iraq
It appears that Syria's government is loosening up:DAMASCUS, Syria -- For more than 20 years, Syrian boys and girls have worn military-style school uniforms, olive green with stripes on their epaulets to signify their grade and caps to match.
This may seem like a small matter, but the military pretenses of school uniforms are really important to totalitarian thugs everywhere: the Hitler Youth; Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union; the stupid Mao suits in China. The article also discusses some less symbolic and therefore more immediately useful reforms, such as allowing private media and banks, but you can go read the article yourself.
So parents were surprised by a pair of brief articles in the state-run press two weeks ago reporting that these required outfits would be eliminated come fall. Instead, elementary school students will wear blue uniforms similar to those in some U.S. parochial schools, including vests over light-blue shirts for boys and rose blouses for girls. High school students will don gray uniforms over light-blue shirts and rose blouses.
The article points out that some of this a dramatic turnaround, much of it since the end of the Iraq liberation, and suggests that Iraq's leadership has learned the lesson well. This reminds me of the joke about the foul-mouthed parrot. After several days of trying to figure out how to get this parrot to stop using obscene language, the new owner shoves the parrot into the freezer for a few seconds. When he pulls the parrot back out, it is appropriately humble. "What," the parrot asks, "did that chicken in there say?"
There's another explanation as well. As the article points out, Assad the Younger had come to office upon the death of his father with promises of reform, openness, and the end of corruption. It appears that the power structure left over from Assad the Older and More Ruthless quashed the son's grand ambitions. I wonder: is Assad telling these thugs, "We don't have anywhere near the military that Iraq had. Do we want to end up like that chicken in the freezer? Maybe we better loosen up a bit."
Thanks to Daniel Drezner for the link.
The Oreo Cookie Ban Lawsuit
A lawyer has filed suit in Marin County, California, requesting an injunction ordering Kraft Foods to stop selling Oreo cookies to children.
Before you start guffawing madly, read the article. It's still an absurd lawsuit, but not quite as absurd as it first sounds. The argument is that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil ("trans fat," as the article calls it) is extremely dangerous, and that unlike the tobacco suits and the suit against McDonald's, most parents--and presumably all children--don't know that it is dangerous.
My first reaction to the headline was: "You must be kidding." However, I will tell you that I see a lot of signs that some significant number of parents aren't saying "NO" enough to their spoiled and increasingly fat little kids. When I was young, my parents tended to limit my consumption of junk food (including soft drinks) not because they had any specific reason to be concerned about any of these foods, but because they believed in moderation in all things--and if there is one thing that children aren't good at doing, it is being moderate about junk food consumption.
In California, there were way too many adults who were way too focused on their shape (which is not the same as focused on their health). Where I live now in Boise, I see way too many adults who are way too focused on junk food consumption. A stroll through Wal-Mart here on a Saturday afternoon, and examination of the shopping cart contents, will leave you no question as where a generation of obese children are coming from--from obese parents who stuff themselves and their kids with cookies and candy. (Ice cream is almost a health food compared to a lot of junk food.)
I've seen the claim recently that the use of corn-based sweeteners may be a factor in myopia (nearsightedness)--although most recently published work seems to blame genetics and reading for its dramatic increase in recent years. A number of sources blame urbanization and increased reading for why myopia is increasing so rapidly in Asia--but of course, both of those are associated with increased wealth, and a diet likely to have more junk food. I don't know if I believe the corn syrup claim or not--but corn syrup is a fundamental part of a lot of junk foods. Moderation in all things.
A New and Improved 404 Page
For those of you who are regular users of the World Wide Web, you know that at "404" page is one indicating the page you requested isn't there. Here is a dramatically improved 404 page--far better than whatever you were really looking for, anyway.
It Really Isn't Funny
A number of people have pointed out this news story: PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon.
And why are these people wandering the streets, instead of hospitalized?
The language created for the "Star Trek" TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County.
"We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 mental health clients.
Although created for works of fiction, Klingon was designed to have a consistent grammar, syntax and vocabulary.
And now Multnomah County research has found that many people -- and not just fans -- consider it a complete language.
"There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak," said the county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway.
UPDATE: It shows what I get for trusting the Associated Press. They apparently misrepresented--significantly--the sequence of events. It still sounds like there is something interesting to this story, but the Portland Oregonian's version of events sounds more like someone was being playful, and there may not be the need for Klingon interpreters that the AP story suggests. See this description of how the AP blew this story into something it wasn't.
