Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?

I just finished Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas? Mr. Frank's enthusiasm for his state comes through loud and clear. I also enjoyed reading about how the Republican Party created a false, too-simple divide between "salt of the earth" red-state residents and "latte-drinking liberals." Still, I can't recommend the book, because I did not pick up any major insights. Also, some of the book comes across as elitist pablum. (More here.)

The entire gist of Mr. Frank's book can be summarized in one sentence: using moral polemics, especially abortion, the Republicans have extracted common sense from the people and caused them to vote against their own interests. Of course, Mr. Frank expands on his thesis, but I've just given you 99% of his literary enchilada.

Another point Mr. Frank makes is that political parties have succeeded in pulling the wool over voters' eyes by getting them to view preferences as most relevant to a person's true intentions:

They call them the liberal elite and they talk about their tastes and their preferences all the time. They run these TV commercials that say liberals are supposed to sip Chardonnay and eat fancy cheese and drink lattés—lattés are especially identified with liberals. And Volvos.

See this interview for more of Mr. Frank's ideas. After you read the interview, if you want to read more about the same ideas, check out Mr. Frank's book.

Bonus round: I didn't read all of it yet, but I already feel comfortable recommending Lowenstein's While America Aged. Below are two links relating to Mr. Lowenstein's book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/Madrick-t.html

http://fora.tv/2008/05/06/Roger_Lowenstein-While_America_Aged#chapter_01

National Geographic on Genetics

I always like learning about how our bodies work. I am particularly surprised at how similar our genetic makeup is compared to other species. From February 2009's National Geographic (page. 70):

The notion of genetic switches explains the humiliating surprise that human beings appear to have no special human genes. Over the past decade, as scientists compared the human genome with that of other creatures, it has emerged that we inherit not just the same number of genes as a mouse--fewer than 21,000--but in most cases the very same genes. Just as you don't need different words to write different books, so you don't need different genes to make new species: You can just change the order and pattern of their use.

Perhaps more scientists should have realized this sooner than they did. After all, bodies are not assembled, like machines in factories. They grow and develop, so evolution was always going to be about changing the process of growth rather than specifying the end product of that growth. In other words, a giraffe doesn't have special genes for a long neck. Its neck-growing genes are the same as a mouse's; they may just be switched on for a longer time, so the giraffe ends up with a longer neck.

Isn't that incredible? The analogy comparing "words and books" to "genes and species" made the concept much easier to understand.

Economic Protectionism

Another blogger has an interesting post on protectionism:

http://theendisalwaysnear.blogspot.com/2009/02/p-is-for.html

An excerpt:

P is also for patriotism, a bullet proof cloak that protectionists love to drape around themselves, especially in times of crisis. [Yet,] the free flow of goods and services around the globe can benefit the world.

CA Bonds Downgraded Again

S&P downgraded California's debt again:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123306751662819585.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget4-2009feb04,0,2705277.story

California's debt is now the lowest rated in the entire United States. What does this mean for investors? If you don't think California is going to default, you may be able to get good prices on California bonds. As a California resident, however, I am disgusted--and I even predicted this bond downgrade here (on December 19, 2007):

California’s bond ratings have gone from AAA to single A and are approaching status that is slightly above junk.

I apparently live in a state where legislators can't agree that cutting spending is essential to achieving a balanced budget. My representatives must believe they don't have to exercise fiscal discipline. This stance is troubling when the recession guarantees that state tax receipts will be lower than previous years. Where's Mr. Smith when you need him?

Law Firms Not Immune to Recession

The WSJ had a great article on recessions and law firms:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123292954232713979.html

What really interests me is the assumptions these now-defunct law firms made. For example, why were they so confident that complex cases, like the Microsoft anti-trust matter, would continue indefinitely? Didn't they realize at some point, all those associates had to work on other cases to bill a sufficient number of hours?

It looks like the recession bankrupted law firms that were inefficient and that failed to diversify. What's the lesson? Whoever ignores the rule of "not putting all your eggs in one basket" does so at his own peril. In law and in stocks, it pays to diversify.

A Fun Re-Post about Money

I posted this article a long time ago, but it didn't get too many hits. That made me sad, because it's one of my favorite posts. Here's one part I thought was hilarious:

James Boswell: "In civilized society, personal merit will not serve you so much as money will. Sir, you may make the experiment. Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which one will respect you the most."

Like Chris Rock's stand-up comedy, it's funny because there's some truth to it. (And to those who haven't seen Chris Rock in action, I highly recommend Never Scared.)

Anyway, the post with the money quotes is here.

Military Intelligence

The Winter 2009 Wilson Quarterly reminds us that even in peacetime, military intelligence is an oxymoron:

The most dramatic instance of a failure to override occurred in the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, during a patrol mission of the U.S.S. Vincennes. The ship had been nicknamed ­“Robo-­cruiser,” both because of the new Aegis radar system it was carrying and because its captain had a reputation for being overly aggressive. That day, the Vincennes’s radars spotted Iran Air Flight 655, an Airbus passenger jet. The jet was on a consistent course and speed and was broadcasting a radar and radio signal that showed it to be civilian. The automated Aegis system, though, had been designed for managing battles against attacking Soviet bombers in the open North Atlantic, not for dealing with skies crowded with civilian aircraft like those over the gulf. The computer system registered the plane with an icon on the screen that made it appear to be an Iranian F-14 fighter (a plane half the size), and hence an “assumed enemy.”

Though the hard data were telling the human crew that the plane wasn’t a fighter jet, they trusted the computer more. Aegis was in semi-­automatic mode, giving it the least amount of autonomy, but not one of the 18 sailors and officers in the command crew challenged the computer’s wisdom. They authorized it to fire. (That they even had the authority to do so without seeking permission from more senior officers in the fleet, as their counterparts on any other ship would have had to do, was itself a product of the fact that the Navy had greater confidence in Aegis than in a ­human-­crewed ship without it.) Only after the fact did the crew members realize that they had accidentally shot down an airliner, killing all 290 passengers and crew, including 66 ­children.

The tragedy of Flight 655 was no isolated incident. Indeed, much the same scenario was repeated a few years ago, when U.S. Patriot missile batteries accidentally shot down two allied planes during the Iraq invasion of 2003. The Patriot systems classified the craft as Iraqi rockets. There were only a few seconds to make a decision. So machine judgment trumped any human decisions. In both of these cases, the human power “in the loop” was actually only veto power, and even that was a power that military personnel were unwilling to use against the quicker (and what they viewed as superior) judgment of a ­computer.

Oh, the lack of common sense.

Update: another blogger discusses this issue here.