Krugman's intellectual dishonesty

In "The Joyless Economy", Paul Krugman argued that "Over the last few years GDP growth has been reasonably good", but "that growth has failed to trickle down to most Americans." And yet as Jon Henke points out, benefits now account

for 32.2 percent of compensation costs. This is sometimes known as the total compensation package.

Focusing on real wages -- which accounts for changes in inflation, but doesn’t account for compensation that helps to cover those increased costs -- obscures the fact that total compensation has increased faster than inflation. In fact, total compensation has been growing faster than it did during much of the latter half of the 1990s, while inflation, though more volatile, has remained about the same.

and

Real Disposable Personal Income -- the inflation-adjusted portion of compensation that we the proletariat get to pocket (i.e., spend or save) -- has risen by 3.1 percent, 2.4 percent and 3.4 percent over the past three years.

Chinese lawyer hits out at regime

Gao Zhisheng 高智晟, a firebrand lawyer who has defended hundreds of victims of torture and persecution, said the Communist party was responsible for more deaths than the Nazis, but Western governments turned a blind eye because they were desperate to trade with the world's fastest growing economy.

'When the Nazis slaughtered Jews, the outside world condemned them,' he said. 'But the Communist party has taken the lives of 80 million people, 13 times more than the death toll among the Jews, yet the world says nothing.'

80 million?!

By Adler's logic, no criticism of Bush is permissible, either.

Alexandre Adler, author of "Rendez-vous With Islam," criticized the newspapers. "We're at war," he said, citing the Iraq insurgency and the electoral victories of the radical Palestinian group Hamas and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "And sometimes war demands censorship. In this context, anything that might strengthen the hate of the West is irresponsible."

By Adler's logic, no criticism of Bush is permissible, either.

This morning, Linda Wertheimer interviewed Ramez Maluf, professor of journalism at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, asks him if Islam is compatible with secular Western societies that are accustomed to joking about everything including religion. He replies that there is a problem, that the Muslim world is very religious, probably as religious as the United States (but not Europe). He declares that a caricature of Jesus in a midwestern publication--showing him as the devil--would probably draw a lot of ire on the part of the local citizens.

Maybe so, although there's plenty of anti-religious stuff around the US, and not many riots about it. In any case, this suggests that Americans have fundies, so it's OK for the Muslims to have theirs.

Then he cites a web poll, showing just how ignorant he is. Web polls mean nothing!

God Loves Abortion

John Opitz, a professor of pediatrics, human genetics, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah, testified before the President's Council on Bioethics that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in women's normal menstrual flows unnoticed. This is not miscarriage we're talking about. The women and their husbands or partners never even know that conception has taken place; the embryos disappear from their wombs in their menstrual flows. In fact, according to Opitz, embryologists estimate that the rate of natural loss for embryos that have developed for seven days or more is 60 percent. The total rate of natural loss of human embryos increases to at least 80 percent if one counts from the moment of conception. About half of the embryos lost are abnormal, but half are not, and had they implanted they would probably have developed into healthy babies.

Microsoft stinks

Like that's news to anyone. Instructed to use "Add Network Place" to enable me to upload things to WebCT, I get the message "The folder you entered does not appear to be valid. Please choose another." Of course, there is no other. So I do a search on the web, and learn that I should find webfldrs.msi on my computer, but it's not there. Another search on the internet led me to Software Update for Web Folders, but that was no help, either. Fortunately another search led me to netdrive , which works a charm.

Isn't this old news?

Like I said before, How can a religion be so frail that it can't take a little joking?

Cartoons in Danish and Norwegian newspapers depicting the prophet Muhammad in unflattering poses, including one in which he is portrayed as an apparent terrorist with a bomb in his turban, have triggered outrage among Muslims across the Middle East, sparking protests, economic boycotts and warnings of possible retaliation against the people, companies and countries involved.

...The cartoons included one of the prophet as a crazed, knife-wielding Bedouin and another of him at the gates of heaven telling suicide bombers: "Stop. Stop. We have run out of virgins!" -- a reference to the belief of some Muslim extremists that male suicide bombers are rewarded in heaven with 72 virgins.

Islamic critics charged that the cartoons were a deliberate provocation and insult to their religion designed to incite hatred and polarize people of different faiths....

In a statement, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference has condemned "the printing of blasphemous and insulting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed," saying it "falls into the trap set up by fundamentalists and fosters acts of revenge." Protesters across the Muslim world have burned Norwegian and Danish flags and issued sharp denunciations...

"The question here is how far do you show sensitivity and self-control over issues without falling into self-censorship," said Medhi Mozaffari, a professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, who defended his government's stance not to apologize.

"It's unthinkable that the prime minister would make an apology," he said. "This is Islamists putting democracies on trial to see how far they can be pressured."

I don't think the Muslims are entitled to get so upset, given the kind of stuff they say about "infidels" and Jews.

I used to believe a lot of this stuff, too

Theory Today

If language creates reality, then we need only change our language to bring about political change. But, obviously, the proponents of postcolonialist, feminist, and queer theorizing do not endorse such a view in practice. The contradiction should be plain to all.

...What theorists of all these persuasions have in common, whatever their individual differences, is a decisive turning away from literature as literature and an eagerness to transmogrify it into a cultural artifact (or "signifying practice") to be used in waging an always anti-establishment political struggle.

...At the same time an unmistakable grandiosity entered the discourse of literary theory. Professors trained primarily in literature began to claim for themselves a commanding position from which to comment importantly on any and all aspects of cultural and political life (and even on scientific research, which stood as the last bastion untouched by Theory), and thereby rise to stardom in the academic firmament. The eminence of these celebrities helps explain why little scrutiny is given to propositions articulated by fashionable theorists whose terminology has been embraced and reiterated by their many followers. Claims to postmodernist relativism notwithstanding, the Theory world is intolerant of challenges and disagreement, which is perhaps why its rhetoric has been so widely parroted in the academy.

...intellectual claims that at one time seemed new and exciting became ossified – reduced to the now-predictable categories of race, class, gender and, later, sexuality – [and] criticism and theory turned endlessly repetitive and hence otiose. A style of reading emerged that, when not denying meaning altogether or seeing literary texts as inevitably about themselves, condensed complex works to an ideological bottom line drawn on their authors' perceived "subject position" and on the political leanings that could be teased out of, or imported into, their texts. By now this has become a pervasive mindset, producing interpretations that invariably end at the same point: a denunciation of authors for their limitations vis-à-vis the orthodoxies of our historical moment and its preferred "voices," or, alternatively, a celebration of authors or texts for expressing the favored politics or for merely embodying the requisite identity.

One Man's Blasphemy

The Jyllands Posten Cartoons are insulting to Moslems, and certain parties have been dismissive. I'm guessing they'd feel differently about so-called "Catholic Bashing" (e.g. "a crucifix dipped in urine" or "a Madonna splattered with elephant dung""). But what about freedom of speech? Then there's the Daoist interpretation:

Master Tung‑kuo asked Chuang Tzu, "This thing called the Way ‑ where does it exist?"

Chuang Tzu said, "There's no place it doesn't exist."

"Come," said Master Tung‑kuo, "you must be more specific!"

"It is in the ant."

"As low a thing as that?"

"It is in the panic grass."

"But that's lower still!"

"It is in the tiles and shards."

"How can it be so low?"

"It is in the piss and shit!"

Master Tung‑kuo made no reply.

Chuang Tzu said, "Sir, your questions simply don't get at the substance of the matter. When Inspector Huo asked the superintendent of the market how to test the fatness of a pig by pressing it with the foot, he was told that the lower down on the pig you press, the nearer you come to the truth. But you must not expect to find the Way in any particular place ‑ there is no thing that escapes its presence! Such is the Perfect Way, and so too are the truly great words. 'Complete,' 'universal,' 'all‑inclusive' ‑ these three are different words with the same meaning. All point to a single reality.

From Burton Watson's translation of The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu.

And the similar Buddhist take:

Once, when a Chan Master was reciting sutras publicly in the Buddha Hall, he suddenly coughed very roughly and spat phlegm onto a Buddha statue. The disciplinary monastic, seeing this behavior, scolded that Chan Master, saying, "How absurd! How could you spit on the Buddha's body?"

Once again, the Chan Master coughed up phlegm and said, "Now I need to spit again. Please tell me where I can find a place that has no Buddha."

How can a religion be so frail that it can't take a little joking?

Wen did not refer to the role of corruption

So it probaby won't work very well:

Faced with steadily increasing peasant unrest, the Communist Party has decreed extensive changes to improve the lot of farmers and stop rapid economic development from encroaching on their land.

The party declared rural reform a major goal of its new five-year economic program, which began this month. The government has also announced the abolition of an agricultural tax that is thousands of years old, free public school education for peasant children and new rural insurance to subsidize medical care for those among the country's 800 million farmers who cannot afford to see doctors.

...The Public Security Ministry estimated the number of riots and demonstrations at 87,000 during 2005, up more than 6 percent from 2004 and quadruple what it was a decade ago.

...the senior leadership, while not repudiating use of force, has emphasized solving farmers' underlying problems as the long-term solution.

...In the new era, the Communist Party's main ideology has become growth, creating a natural and often corrupt alliance between officials and businessmen that leaves farmers with no advocate.

As a result, some Chinese analysts have pointed out, a genuine determination to protect farmers and their fields would require unflinching prosecution of city, county and village officials involved in illegal land confiscations and sales. There has been no sign that Wen and Hu have that in mind. In his speech, which was hailed as an unusually frank discussion of China's rural problems, Wen did not refer to the role of corruption in land confiscations, although farmers routinely cite it as a reason for their violent protests.

Wang Yukai, deputy director of the prestigious National School of Administration and an expert on rural problems, said Hu's decision to focus now on improving farmers' lives represents a shift in the party's thinking. Previously, he recalled, the policy was to forge ahead with economic development with the hope that, as growth spread, farmers eventually would share more in the benefits along with their urban cousins.

"This is a big goal," he said. "It is not just a slogan for one day. It's a long process."

...But Wang cautioned that such decisions announced in Beijing frequently do not fully apply in the towns, counties and villages where more than two-thirds of China's 1.3 billion people live.

For instance, a quarter of last year's government revenues in China went for the upkeep of the country's 6 million officials at all levels, he noted, including banquets, chauffeured cars and trips abroad as well as salaries.

I think this stuff should be for sale

Now if I can find someone to make an advance payment.

What the Chinese government uses as an excuse

...to shut down a newspaper:

The authorities cited the publication of a lengthy study of Chinese middle-school textbooks as a reason for the order, Mr. Li said. The Jan. 11 article discussed what the author, Yuan Weishi, a Zhongshan University professor, referred to as official distortions of history to emphasize the humiliations China suffered at the hands of imperial powers.

He criticized the textbooks' treatment of events like the Boxer Rebellion and the burning of the Summer Palace by British and French troops in 1860, which he said were partly the result of mistakes by then-flailing Qing Dynasty leaders.

"We are at a critical moment in our modernization and the key to the success of our development is understanding our system and mental model," he wrote. "I was shocked to see that few things had changed since the Cultural Revolution."

Yeah, the Communists love being the victim.

Too bad!

Even though the WaPo claims "Eight U.S. companies, including giant DuPont Co., agreed yesterday to virtually eliminate a harmful chemical used to make Teflon from all consumer products coated with the ubiquitous nonstick material." Even though Trevor Butterworth at Stats was hoping "that evidence is starting to count in the ongoing campaign against PFOA and Teflon" and as he points out

...virtually all of the PFOA/C8 in human blood is bound to albumin in blood plasma, which means it is not biologically available to do any damage. In fact, PFOA, being so stable, is less reactive than many naturally-occurring fatty acids. This is why studies of human exposure to PFOA – even those workers at DuPont who work with the chemical and have higher than average levels in their blood – have not, as yet, found any evidence linking the chemical to ill-health.

The claim that PFOA is "cancer-causing" is based on lab experiments where 10 percent of rats fed PFOA at levels 25,000 times the average human exposure (which is five parts per billion) developed liver tumors. The preliminary risk assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that the mode of action by which PFOA caused these tumors was unlikely to apply to humans.

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

I particularly like Nvu

Its easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor will delight HTML newbies while HTML honchos can simply click a tab to switch to code view.

Lowest Local Gas Prices

Or GasBuddy.com. But why do I care? I hardly ever drive.

Missing something?

In a lawsuit alleging that a Paris office of Adecco (one of the world's largest hiring agencies for temporaries) violated the rights of at least 1,500 applicants by denying them jobs based on the color of their skin, Gerald Roffat, an intern in Adecco,

testified that in 2000 they were using race-based classification systems for applicants. After candidates completed applications, the forms were marked with the notation "BBR" or "NBBR," according to Roffat, SOS Racism, documents and witnesses interviewed by police and labor investigators during the five-year probe.

BBR, shorthand for " bleu , blanc , rouge ," or "blue, white, red" -- the colors of the French flag -- identified white candidates, said Samuel Thomas, vice president of SOS Racism. NBBR meant "no blue, white, red," and denoted black and other nonwhite candidates, Thomas said.

The article makes only this one mention of "nonwhite", but in my experience, a lot of French racism is also directed at what the French often call "Arabs", but are in fact people whose ancestry is Northwest African and who sometimes collectively call themselves Maghrebians.

Torture in the Philadelphia Airport

In my experience, it's unusual for an airport to play classical music, but that's what I heard earlier this week in the Philadelphia airport. And it was music from the Classical (as opposed to Romantic) period, and may well have been Haydn or Mozart, which the British use to deter vandals and loiterers. Although I certainly appreciated it, for the majority of my fellow passengers, most of whom don't listen to classical music as far as I can tell, was it not akin to torture?

Economic Illiteracy

Last December, the office of state Attorney General Lisa Madigan notifyied several gas stations that they could donate $1,000 to the American Red Cross or risk being sued for price gouging in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now they've agreed to donate $1,000 apiece to the American Red Cross. The problem of price gouging indeed. It is indeed extortion.

A fatalist optimist tinged with cynicism

Marin Alsop, the music director of the Baltimore Symphony, characterizes herself as "forever a New Yorker, a fatalist optimist tinged with cynicism."

Earth is just where I eat and sleep

On "massively multiplayer online role-playing games" (MMORPGs):

...real-world trade of in-game items—swords, gold, potions, or even whole characters—is flourishing in online marketplaces such as eBay. This means in-game items and currency have real value. In 2002, [Edward Castronova] famously calculated the GNP per capita of the fictional game-world of "EverQuest" as $2,000, comparable to that of Bulgaria, and far higher than that of India or China. Furthermore, by "working" in the game to generate virtual wealth and then selling the results for real money, it is possible to generate about $3.50 per hour. Companies in China pay thousands of people, known as "farmers", to play MMORPGs all day, and then profit from selling the in-game goods they generate to other players for real money....It is already possible to make a living by working in a virtual world, as the "farmers" demonstrate. In one survey, 20% of MMORPG players said they regarded the game world as their "real" place of residence; Earth is just where they eat and sleep.