Journalism Lives at SCU Magazine

Sam Scott has written an excellent article in SCU Magazine (Fall 2010) about how one man saved the internet. More HERE.

[W]hat he finds is a gaping hole in the very pipes connecting computers across the Web—a weakness so fundamental that the security of practically everything online seems suddenly at risk. “At first I thought I must be missing something,” Kaminsky says, looking back. “I thought, ‘This can’t work—because if it worked, the Internet would be in so much trouble.’ Then it worked.”

Great story.

On the History of American Religious Tolerance

I found this interesting article on Instapaper.com:

From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America’s shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the “heretic” and the “unbeliever”—including the “heathen” natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched battles between various Protestant sects and, more explosively, between Protestants and Catholics, present an unavoidable contradiction to the widely held notion that America is a “Christian nation.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Americas-True-History-of-Religious-Tolerance.html

Bonus: interesting article about Roald Dahl.

George Soros: an Amazing Lecture

I recently discovered one of the best lectures ever. It's by George Soros and titled "Capitalism vs. Open Society." You can read the transcript HERE.

On Free Markets and Morals: "The distinguishing feature of the market mechanism is that it is amoral: one person’s dollar is worth exactly the same as another person’s, irrespective of how she came to possess it. That is what makes markets so efficient: participants need not worry about moral considerations. In an efficient market, individual decisions affect market prices only marginally: if one person abstained from participating as either buyer or seller, someone else would take her place with only a marginal difference in the price. Therefore individual market participants bear little responsibility for the outcome. But markets are suitable only for individual choices, not for social decisions..."

On Government Interference: "[T]he main policy implication of market fundamentalism, that government interference in the economy should be kept to a minimum, is not as unsound as the arguments employed to justify it. The market mechanism may be flawed but the political process is even more so. Participants in the political process are even more fallible than market participants because politics revolve around social values whereas markets take the participants’ values as given. As we have seen, social values are highly susceptible to manipulation. Moreover, politics are poisoned by the agency problem [Agents are supposed to represent the interests of their principals, but in fact, they tend to put their own interests ahead of the interests of those whom they are supposed to represent]. To guard against the agency problem, all kinds of safeguards have to be introduced and this makes the behavior of governmental authorities in the economic sphere much more rigid and bureaucratic than the behavior of private participants. On all these grounds, it makes sense to argue that governmental interference in the economy should be kept to a minimum. So market fundamentalism has merely substituted an invalid argument for what could have been a much stronger one. It could have argued that all human constructs are imperfect and social choices involve choosing the lesser evil, and on those grounds government intervention in the economy should be kept to a minimum. That would have been a reasonable position. Instead, it claimed that the failures of government intervention proved that free markets are perfect. That is simply bad logic."

Thank you, Mr. Soros. This lecture was amazing.

Update on 6/3/12: from Sebastian Mallaby's 2010 book, More Money than God:

"By now Soros had melded Karl Popper's ideas with his own knowledge of finance, arriving at a synthesis that he called 'reflexivity.'  As Popper's writings suggested, the details of a listed company were too complex for the human mind to understand, so investors relied on guesses and shortcuts that approximated reality.  But Soros was also conscious that those shortcuts had the power to change reality as well, since bullish guesses would drive a stock price up, allowing the company  to raise capital cheaply and boosting its performance.  Because of this feedback loop, certainty was doubly elusive: To begin with, people are incapable of perceiving reality clearly; but on top of that, reality itself is affected by these unclear perceptions, which themselves shift constantly.  Soros had arrived at a conclusion that was at odds with the efficient-market view...To a disciple of Popper, this [EFM] premise ignored the most elementary limits to cognition." (pp. 85, hardcover edition)

Update on November 9, 2019: I learned Soros supported dissident groups Charta 77 in Czechoslovakia and Solidarity in Poland. Vaclav Havel was one of Charta 77's founders. 

American Teachers: World's Best PR Operation?

The following status update caused quite a discussion:

If you can't understand basic economics, can't compete against international students in math and science, and think that bigger government can solve our problems, thank a California K-14 teacher.

P.S. students in India, Israel, China, Iran, and Eastern Europe can't wait to compete with you.

EzD: That's a pretty wide brush. I used to be a teacher (not in CA, admittedly) and know that there are plenty of great, bright motivated teachers that find themselves fighting against the District offices and our awful myopic focus on standardized tests. It's not always (or even most of the time) the teacher's failure that causes our educational issues.

SlW: I've been put through the system in Poland (K-5), Germany (6-7) and Canada (9-12). The math I was taught in grade 9 in Canada I already knew in grade 5 from Poland. really sad...

JA: And that's why I attended private school most of my life.

TrB: I agree with SlW--after I returned from 3 years in Germany I got to "coast" for a couple years while the rest of the kids caught up to where I was at. Sad.

MaR: @EzD: no one said that teachers don't work hard or that there aren't any bright teachers. At the same time, it's easy to see that our public school system is failing students when it comes to basic knowledge, especially in math, economics, and science.

(By the way, I was doing a riff on the more common quote, "If you can read this sentence, thank a teacher.")

EzD: My first year of teaching, on my first day I had 36 students, 34 sets of books and 33 desks. We don't set our teachers up to succeed any more than we do our students.

DaC: Why blame everybody and the system when the fault lies with the students themselves. What with the WII and PS3 and modern day toys, does anybody really focus on school. Kids can't wait to get home and play. Parents need to enforce stricter ground rules for the kids also.

RoW: the teachers can only work with what they are given. My dear friend is a third grade teacher and often finds herself spending her own money on school supplies when she is short. She also has to buy snacks/meal substitutes because so many kids get sent to school hungry. If they can't focus because the are starving, they aren't learning.

MaR: I'm not surprised kids don't have sufficient resources. 80 to 85% of the education budget goes into the pockets of teachers and administrators. More here.

ScL: Well, you just hit the nail. It's the same thing killing the university system as well. Bureaucrats and Administrators are a metastasizing cancer that starve the rest of the system of resources but the same can be said of government and large banks. Add in a general unwillingness for an objective rating system for teachers and the whole thing's hosed.

NiP: This was a complaint about PS when I was growing up in Chicago. My parents made sure we were challenged by giving us extra homework. "Not all parents are equipped to do that," you counter. True, but there are all sorts of after school help parents can get for their children, some of it free. Some effort needs to be made to help the teachers teach the students, including imposing some home discipline and a good night's rest.

EzD: Heh, I think you have this image of teachers as being overpaid. Strangely, I (and I think a lot of other folks) have a different experience. I make more working at a small non-profit than I ever did teaching. It may very well be that administrators & union folks are rolling in dough, but I don't see anyone getting rich from teaching. Hardest job I ever had, and second isn't even close.

NiC: Teachers should be paid more, the school year should be longer, and there should be less administration.

MaR: @EzD: you mentioned you did not work in California. In California, teachers are adequately compensated. "According to the CTA's parent union, the National Education Association, California teachers were the nation's top-paid, with $64,424 average annual salary in 2007-08." See here.

Teachers also receive special benefits including pensions, lifetime medical benefits, and job security. If teachers agreed to switch to a private sector retirement plan (i.e., a 403b plan), we could pay them even more. However, as long as teachers receive millions of dollars on the back end (i.e., when they retire), we cannot afford to increase the salaries of newer teachers. I guess we care so much about children we don't mind paying newer teachers less money so we can pay millions of dollars to retired, non-working teachers.

EzD: True, I taught in New Orleans and was not so well paid. Does that job security you list in the benefits include the mass pink slips that districts up & down the State are sending out?

The real reason our system is hosed? Prop 13. If we got rid of Prop 13, our schools would almost instantly improve.

NiC: Really, more taxation is the answer??? Houses can't sell as it stands now. Higher taxes is not the answer. How about not wasting the money we already send to the schools. I agree with MaR.

MaR: @EzD: again, the reason newer teachers are receiving pink slips--which were canceled after states received $26 billion in emergency federal aid--is because we are spending millions of dollars paying retired teachers who no longer work. Until the day money grows on trees, we have to decide between paying millions of dollars to retired teachers or paying millions of dollars to newer teachers. California, much to my chagrin, has decide to focus on retired teachers at the expense of newer teachers.

Also, Prop 13 has been a boon to California's middle class (not just the rich). People who support the repeal of Prop 13 support taking money from the private sector middle class and giving it to government employees and unions. It's hard to sympathize with such an approach when the private sector middle class is experiencing major unemployment and financial difficulties.

AnL: You're tough!

MaR: you think I'm tough? Listen to Chuck Thompson:

"And, yes, poor unappreciated teachers. I did say sweet deal. American public school teachers have the world's best PR operation going. Whining every chance they get about how demanding their jobs are, how many 'extra hours' they put in, how little they make, how much of their own money they have to spend just to do their jobs, how noble they are working this job that nobody ever asked them to do--welcome to the f*cking world...

You think you got it tough? You don't got it tough. American teachers would crumble if they ever had to work the real hours of a cabbie, doctor, bartender, fisherman, truck driver, small-business owner, hotel clerk, mechanic, architect, janitor, musician, surveyor, accountant, or the million other jobs that don't observe weekends, much less every city, county, state, and federal holiday on the docket, almost three months' paid vacation a year, and pension programs funded out of the public trough. How is it we go through school painfully aware that half our teachers are lazy or incompetent or pathological control freaks, then turn around and let them convince us what a bunch of saints they are as soon as we become taxpayers?" (p. 100, Smile When You're Lying)

ZiL: I did K-6 (and some college) back in the old country [Poland]. And yes, the curriculum there was more demanding, esp. in mathematics. But their system sucked (and continues to suck) in many other respects, such as lack of individualized attention and a complete disregard for psychosocial development.

MaR: I agree that psychosocial development and academic aptitude are not contradictory goals, but thus far, our schools have been artificially boosting children's self-esteem with their low standards. From my perspective, families should provide self-esteem, and schools should focus on teaching viable skills so students aren't required to work for the government to enter the middle class.

One could almost describe our current education system as a scam. If schools teach most kids no marketable skills for 18 years, it forces them to rely on the government for jobs. As a result, most kids become adults who are forced to vote to expand government, which means teachers and government unions get even more money...for teaching kids no viable or useful skills.

Gerrymandering Killed the Political Process

Dan Walters, SJ Merc, 9/18/10: "Just one of California's 53 congressional districts has changed partisan hands since they were redrawn in a bipartisan gerrymander by the Legislature after the 2000 census."

I guess it's not how you vote or who you vote for, but where you live...

I'm Just Sayin'

D.C. Democrats tend to do okay, because the federal government can print money. States, unlike the federal government, cannot print money and must balance their budgets each year. Right now, the only reason many states are able to survive without massive cuts in services and layoffs is because the federal government has loaned them billions of dollars.

If your economic strategy is tax-and-spend, i.e., using tax dollars to create government jobs and to increase services, you have to make sure the private sector can generate enough revenue/taxes to support government employees and their salaries and benefits. In other words, if you want a bigger government, you have to make sure you can pay for it, which means you should also support a larger, more successful private sector. However, most people who favor bigger government want more regulation and more restrictions on corporations and businesses, which usually lower the government's revenue and therefore its growth.

Apparently the Swedes have found an economically-viable balance: high taxes and a strong private sector. They're like libertarians that don't mind high taxes because they see their taxes being used effectively. (Indeed, Sweden has one of the best education systems in the entire world.) California Democrats, on the other hand, don't seem to understand basic economics: they continue to restrict the private sector--i.e., the people paying their bills--even as they demand more government. It's like a child telling his parents not to work and instead demanding that they stay at home and take care of him. It might work for a while, but after some time, the child will be homeless and destitute, perhaps regretting the decision to restrict his parents' time and efforts. Right now, though, California seems happy to have major industries leaving the state and choosing to hire elsewhere. It remains unclear how the state is going to pay for the bigger government it wants.

Bottom line: if you vote for a pro-union, pro-regulation Democrat without having a financial printing press ready to go, it's like having sex without a condom--stupid and unsafe.

Michael Lewis Goes Greek

Michael Lewis always delivers. He's easily my favorite magazine writer. Below is a link to his article on Greece:

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010?printable=true

My favorite sentence from the article: "In Greece the banks didn’t sink the country. The country sank the banks." Mr. Lewis also quotes the ancient orator Isocrates: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”

Bonus: if you haven't read Mr. Lewis's article on article on Iceland, you are missing out.