Month: February 2011

Room For Debate examines rising food prices. Kay McDonald partially blames corn ethanol:

Right now, there is no shortage of rice. Rice is the most important food for nearly half of the world's population, and especially the poorer populations. Global ending rice stocks for 2009-10 were the highest in seven years. Wheat stocks are near their average level from this past decade and well above the low they reached in 2008. However, corn is in dangerously short supply — the lowest that it has been in 37 years.

The corn ethanol policy is a driver of high food prices worldwide. More than 15 percent of global corn production and a total of 35 million acres are devoted to U.S. ethanol. The U.S. is the largest exporter of corn, but we use twice as much corn to produce ethanol as we use it for food export.

Wheat and soy prices increase when corn prices are high, since their acreage allotment is replaced by corn. In addition, wheat and soy get substituted for corn as animal feed.

Ezra Klein clings to his optimism: 

I wouldn't be surprised if Obama has his name on a broader deficit-reduction bill at this time next year. If he takes the deficit away from Republicans before 2012, his reelection campaign becomes considerably easier. And on a less cynical level, his administration is stocked with deficit hawks — the same folks who actually balanced the budget under Bill Clinton. And similarly, Republicans want to deliver on the deficit-reduction promises they've made to their base. In theory, everyone's incentives and ideologies are pointing in the same direction. That's a good sign for progress.

Don Taylor sums up the competing narratives.

Silver defends his evaluation of GOP presidential hopefuls against Nyhan's criticisms:

The way that I would recommend thinking about Mr. Obama’s re-election chances, at this early stage, is to start with the baseline re-election rate for incumbent presidents (which is about 70 percent), and then make a list of other factors that might lead one to believe that this figure overestimates or underestimates them. Under the list of favorable factors for Mr. Obama, I would include a bullet-point for “Public has tepid view of Republican candidates; Republican nominee might be weaker than average.”

Something for Republican strategists to worry about? Sure, if they enjoy worrying. But probably not something for them to lose any sleep over until and unless they are on the verge of nominating one of their more unpopular alternatives.

Nyhan goes another round. 

Argentinian photographer Irina Werning has an entrancing collection of photo reenactments from her subjects' childhood:

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

John Seabrook wonders whether Watson, IBM's Jeopardy playing machine, will truly have commercial applications. Steven Pinker isn't sure:

I don’t rule out the possibility that some components of Watson could both provide insight into human cognition and lay the groundwork for more sophisticated artificial intelligence applications, such as natural language processing (the fancy term for understanding human languages like English, as opposed to computer languages). On the other hand, when a system is designed to meet a highly specific challenge like playing Jeopardy, and one where the reputations of the designers are on the line, there will be enormous pressure to tailor the system to succeeding at that challenge by any means whatsoever, including kludges that are specific to the rather peculiar requirements of the game of Jeopardy.

A tumblr with "informative articles about every topic, written by people with a passing knowledge." All free!

Once again, Adam Serwer is calling out Rich Lowry for criticizing Glenn Beck's loony ideas even as he publishes similar stuff:

Either these guys don't read their own magazines, or they're perfectly comfortable printing paranoid nonsense about American liberals and Islam if it fits with their political agenda. The only real difference between Beck, Kristol, and Lowry is that the latter two let the mask slip more often.

That goes a bit too far, but it's true that Lowry has published lots of indefensible work by Andy McCarthy. And every so often you'll see something at NRO that makes you wonder what exactly they're about:

That's telling, isn't it? An ideological adversary has a strange but substantively irrelevant habit – putting ice in beer – and the NRO reaction is an assertion that he hates the United States. In this iteration of conservatism, being a real American isn't about fealty to the Founding principles. It's all about cultural cues. Just like when the right trashed Barack Obama for putting mustard on his hamburger. (Yes, seriously.)

There's no excuse for a magazine with contributors as smart as Reihan, Ramesh, Jim Manzi, Kevin Williamson, Dan Foster, Yuval Levin, and others to engage in this sort of nonsense. It could be so much better.

Another image from the home page:

Never mind his disastrous policies – conservatives love it when someone snubs those coastal elite celebrities… except when celebrity might be coopted to serve ideologically friendly ends:

This is what's become of The House That Buckley Built.

Just figuring out how HuffPo pulls in the readers with their SEO magic. I'll let you know how much traffic this post brings, compared to, say, posts on the deficit. Of course, the headline is utterly invented. Not true.