Month: December 2008

John Parker examines our modern cultural contradictions:

…what does all this say about the widespread view that societies are dumbing down, educational standards are crumbling and people’s ability to concentrate is collapsing? The reply must be that it cannot be true across the board and that for a significant number, the opposite is the case: people want more intellectually demanding things to see and hear, not fewer. Surely both things are happening at once: part of the population is dumbing down, part is wising up. But something has changed. H.L. Mencken, the so-called sage of Baltimore, said: “No one in this world…has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” A growing number of people are proving him wrong.

This is very strange:

Ever asked an academic about their research only to be subjected to 20 minutes of nonsensical droning? Thanks to YouTube, it just got a whole lot easier to explain a complicated thesis at a cocktail party. In early October, Ph.D. students worldwide were challenged by Gonzo Labs/AAAS to re-create their dissertations through interpretive dance and post the videos on YouTube. Dozens of performances were submitted, ranging from tangos to Lindy Hops to night-vision hula-hooping. The choreography was scored on its ability to bridge the gap between art and science, though you should feel free to judge based on levels of jubilation and pure absurdity.

(Hat tip: Drezner)

Virginia Postrel pokes fun at journalists trying to make a buck off talk of a 21st-century Depression. She concludes:

It’s not a Depression, folks, and it wouldn’t be nearly as fun to think about if it were.

Junah Grunstein:

My own first reaction, in discussing the attacks with a friend, was that if they resulted in a nuclear exchange in South Asia, ten guys would have essentially changed the course of human history …

Through a convergence of terrorists’ savvy with the structural changes in the mediasphere, an enormously disproportionate impact can be brought to bear by applying what really amounts to minute pressure to geopolitical faultlines. To give an idea, based on these World Bank automobile statistics, more people died of car accidents in India on the day of the attacks than in the attacks themselves. But we are now seriously and soberly considering the possibility of a worst-case scenario that involves nuclear war. […]

I, for one, am tired of how much power is being handed over to so few people with so little imagination.

Dave Munger addresses the rarest of all synesthesia.

Asheville, North Carolina, 3.53 pm.

Jennifer Vanasco disapproves of the prop 8 boycotts:

A boycott is good when a company is bad. When it harasses its LGBT employees; fires them for being gay; will not promote them; sells anti-gay products or services (say an anti-gay t-shirt).

A boycott is bad when a company is being targeted because of the personal donations of someone in the company — especially when the company itself is pro-gay or gay neutral, as Cinemark is (it has high ranking, open gays in its leadership, it supports LGBT film festivals, it’s running Milk). Or, for example, Marriott — which, yes, is owned by a Mormon family, but which also scored 100 in the 2009 HRC Corporate Equality Index.

Daniel Gross judges the state of the big three:

The sad fact is that the U.S. auto industry has essentially failed. Even if car sales come roaring back from their current anemic pace next year, there’s no guarantee the Big Three will return to health, that they’ll be able to stay current on debt payments and raise capital from tough-minded investors. The executives and union leaders speak as if the bailout money is simply needed to tide them over until the sun comes back out. Exuding and instilling such confidence is a big part of their jobs. But increasingly, it seems that the federal funding they’re requesting is necessary to help manage failure, not to stave it off.

The final fund-raising numbers come in.

Jacob Sullum studies a new report from the National Center for Policy Analysis:

If [Social Security and Medicare benefits] were funded by investments, they say, the government would have to set aside $102 trillion ("about 7 times the size of the U.S. economy") to keep the programs solvent. Assuming the government continues to use current tax revenue to pay for Social Security and Medicare, the two programs will consume one-tenth of the federal budget by 2012, almost half by 2030, and 80 percent by 2070.

Rettenmaier and Saving concede that their preferred solution—reforming Social Security and Medicare "so that each worker saves and invests funds for his own post-retirement pension and health care benefits"—would impose a "substantial" burden on current workers, who would have to  "sav[e] for their own benefits while at the same time paying taxes to fund the benefits of current retirees." But the alternatives—a crushing tax burden and/or dramatic benefit cuts—are even less appealing.