Current

§

18:38 GMT

Cut A Check Mr. President

From "The Ticket" comes this interesting tax tidbit:

President Barack Obama's secretary paid taxes at a higher rate than he did in 2011 despite having a "substantially lower income," the White House said Friday, casting the disparity as an argument for Congress to adopt the so-called "Buffett Rule."

"The president's secretary pays a slightly higher rate this year than the president on her substantially lower income, which is exactly why we need to reform our tax code and ask the wealthiest to pay their fair share," Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, told Yahoo News by email.

Obama on Friday released his 2011 tax filings, showing that he paid $162,074 in total taxes on adjusted gross income of $789,674, an effective rate of 20.5 percent. The first couple paid $31,941 in Illinois income tax. Obama's secretary, Anita Decker Breckenridge, made $95,000 in 2011, according to the White House's public report on pay in the West Wing.Source:Yahoo.com

Well now this is interesting. While it is certainly a stretch to call the secretary "rich", she is also at the least upper middle class if single and definitely so if married with a working husband.

Yet what we find most ...amusing?... is the comment that this exemplifies why the tax code must be changed and how the "Buffet" rule somehow rights these egregious wrongs.

So here is my challenge Mr. President: cut a check to the IRS and the State of Illinois for the exact amount of money you feel would rectify this error. Let us know, to the penny, what you and your wife think your fair share is.

And don't worry - the IRS has no qualms about taking extra money from citizens.
Comments?    13-Apr-2012

Prior

§

16:43 GMT

Is Starvation Genocide?

Is the attempted starvation of a large population to meet a political objective genocide? What if up to 60% of that ethnic group will be starved? Apparently this is what some in Israel are advocating in respect to Iran:
"Suffocating sanctions could lead to a grave economic situation in Iran and to a shortage of food," the source said. "This would force the regime to consider whether the nuclear adventure is worthwhile, while the Persian people have nothing to eat and may rise up as was the case in Syria, Tunisia and other Arab states." Source: Ynetnews.com
It is some what amazing that a people who history says were victims of genocide would propose what amounts to the same when not even under attack. How many Persians does Israel feel comfortable with the world starving to "prevent" Iran from building a nuclear weapon ? And would even the possession of such a weapon justify those actions? Would starving 10% of the population be acceptable (about 5 million of the 80 million Persians worldwide?) You decide.
Comments?    29-Feb-2012

Prior(2)

§

14:32 GMT

On Iran and Inspections

J. Lewis has a good post up on ArmsControlWonk about the Iranian inspection situation. It includes two embedded videos from a different source which should be viewed before reading his comments. If you are not a wonk you may not find the videos quite as funny as I did but they are informative none the less.

I think there are two issues which are paramount in the entire Iran fiasco to be. First, do we really believe they are currently working on a bomb or are we simply relitigating past NPT disgressions? I think all parties involved can say that without doubt there was a period of time during which Iran was, at the least, doing the necessary research to make a nuclear weapon. This is really no different than Sweden of S. Africa (and perhaps Brazil too.) The past is just that and what really matters is what is going on today. Is there firm evidence, independently reviewed (and hopefully not sourced by Israel) which points to plans for weaponization of their small stock of LEU?

Second, assuming that we are able to say firmly that they have the intention of producing a weapon in the near term, what of it? Is an Iran with a limited number of weapons of dubious delivery capability, such a serious threat to the United States that an attack is justified? And if an attack is made, will it forever erase nuclear weapons from Iran? After all, once they have the know how all it takes is the necessary quantity of HEU or PU to again make a weapon. The source of the material need not be Iran itself. Is the Iranian regime (not to be confused with MC Ahmadinejad) so irrational that they would risk certain anhiliation by detonating a smuggled weapon in the US (assuming they could even get a large HEU bomb into the US and in position to do serious damage?) The same arguments can be applied to Israel who have a large nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver such weapons timely and accurately. And assuming the Iranians did decide to attack Israel and were able to target a sufficient number of weapons to destroy the major population centers (before Iran is itself destroyed) what of Iran's allies in Lebanon and Syria? What of the "Palestinian homeland?"

The path we are on now appears to be an extremely costly conventional and asymmetric war which may also push Iran to weaponize, whether that was their original intent or not. And regime change is unlikely to change the Iranian view point as the general population is very much behind their nuclear program. Perhaps more thought should be given on how to create an environment where Iran does not feel the need to weaponize while also assuring others they they are not doing so clandestinely. Lewis is right when he says that the Agreed Framework bought a good amount of time between the Norks and the West but that ultimately it was wasted. Has every learned from those mistakes?
Comments?    25-Feb-2012

Prior(3)

§

13:13 GMT

The Myth Of A Good Jobs Number

Look at these headlines!
Job growth surges, jobless rate drops to 8.3 percent (reuters)
Unemployment rate falls to 8.3%; fifth straight monthly decline (LA Times)
Obama team trumpets good jobs numbers (USA Today)
US Jobless Rate Falls to 3-Year Low, Report Shows (NY Times)
Snap analysis: Job creation accelerates broadly (Reuters)
WOW! Things really must be getting better! 243,000 jobs, 8.3% rate.

Or are they? Hmm.. well that all sounded good right? But what about the data behind those numbers? Things like labor force, participation rate, employment/population ratio... Shh.. those are too complicated for the newspapers and TV news! Besides, you're a good American right? Can't be talking things down in an election year!




HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
[Numbers in thousands]
CategoryJan.
2011		 Nov.
2011		Dec.
2011		 Jan.
2012		Change from:
Dec.
2011-
Jan.
2012

Employment status

Civilian noninstitutional population

238,704240,441240,584242,269-

Civilian labor force

153,250 153,937153,887154,395-

Participation rate

64.2 64.064.063.7-

Employed

 139,330 140,614140,790141,637 -

Employment-population ratio

58.458.558.558.5-

Unemployed

13,91913,323 13,097 12,758 -

Unemployment rate

9.18.7 8.58.3-

Not in labor force

85,45486,50386,69787,874-
Source:BLS.gov

So what really has happened in the past year? Well the civilian noninstitutional population rose 3.6 million. The civilian labor force rose 1.1 million. The participation rate FELL 0.5 percentage points. The employment to population ratio rose 0.1 percentage point to an abysmal 58.5%. Finally, those "not in labor force" rose nearly 2.3 million, an astounding 1.1 million in the last month alone.

So for the math challenged, the trick here has been to reduce the size of the labor force at a rate greater than the increase in number of persons employed. Presto chango you get a declining unemployment rate which makes the lede on every news report.

Of course, the reality is far different. What would the top line unemployment rate had been for Jan. 2012 if the participation rate were the same 64.2% as Jan. 2011? Hmm... 8.9%. How about if the participation rate were what it was in Jan. 2009 (65.4%)? 10.6%. Jan 2002 (66.2%)? 11.7% !

And of course, there is the other game that is played - seasonal adjustments. The fudge factor. One can avoid this too by looking at year over year unadjusted figures. For instance, Dec 2010/Dec 2011 and Jan 2011/Jan 2012. Using that method we have Dec'10 9.1%, Jan'11 9.8%, Dec '11 8.3% and Jan'12 8.8%
Splitting the difference, a drop of 0.9%. Wait.. did you say a drop? But...

The partipation rates also dropped - 0.3 pts Dec/Dec and 0.5 pts Jan/Jan. In fact, Jan 2012 is the LOWEST labor force participation rate in the past decade at 63.4%. This is reflected by the 2.6 million increase in 'not in labor force' over that same time frame. In fact, you must go back to pre-1984 to find similar rates. However, the trend at that time was upward from the 57.5 to 58.0% of the late 1940s to late 1960s when women were a smaller part of the work force. the peak at 66.1% in July 1997. On an annual basis 67.1% was the peak rate and ocurred in 1997-2000. From 2004-2008 the rate was 66.0. The other ratio, employment to population peaked at 64.4% in 2000 after spending the late 40s through 1970 either side of 56%. January 2012 saw this figure drop to 57.8%, last seen in 1983 and not far off from those Nifty Fiftie's rates.

Sorry to rain on the parade, but yes, things still really do suck.
Comments?    03-Feb-2012

Etcétera

§

00:48 GMT

QDB

If you have ever spent some time on IRC then you will appreciate the Quote Database, qdb.us The site can at times be a bit slow and does toss out the odd php or database error but nothing can bring back your memories of IRC better. QDB is a repository of funny IRC conversation snippets submitted by users and gives viewers the option of rating each one as good or bad. Many of them are a bit off-color (too much so for here!) but here is one example:



(myst) so what about you? anything interesting?
(Joshua) i'm writting a book and i just left a naked lady in her bed seconds before her roommates came home.
(Joshua) it was like *pulls on pants* *roommates walk in*
(myst) what's your book about?
(Joshua) lol!
(Joshua) yup, you're a chick
(myst) lol
(myst) rofl
Comments?    28-Jul-2008

§

23:41 GMT

Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics

Just found quite the treasure trove of physics/astronomy related podcasts. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at U. California Santa Barbara has a very nice site up including podcasts of many of their conferences, public lectures and colloquia. If the handful of podcasts we have opened so far are any indication, there are a limited number of still photos of blackboards and the like embedded with the audio. Good stuff!
Comments?    21-Feb-2007

§

00:44 GMT

3D Ski Maps

Here is an interesting site for the snowboard and ski crowd: 3dskimaps.com It is surprising nobody has managed to do something like this before now (maybe they have and we just don't know). 3dskimaps shows the mountain map(s) not just with the trails but in 3d perspective with color coding to indicate trail steepness. This is a great thing to print out and bring with you on your trip and tuck in your jacket pocket to answer the inevitable 'how steep do you think that really is?' Only a limited number of mountains so far but hopefully more soon.
Comments?    18-Feb-2007

Reading List

§

13:21 GMT

Cold War Intrigue

Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games by Tennent H. Bagley ISBN 978-0300121988

This fascinating book proved great medicine while we were laid up with a cold over the recent holidays. The author was a counterintelligence officer at CIA in the 1950s and 60s, eventually rising to chief of counterintelligence for the Soviet Russia ("SR") Division and Division Deputy Director. While the book looks into many historical Tsarist and Soviet intel operations, the prime focus is on the case of a notorious KGB Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko which the author was directly involved. The author also spends considerable time on the efforts (cover up?) by the CIA and others to rehabilitate Nosenko's bona fides as a genuine and valuable defector.

The bottom line is this - if you take the author at his word concerning the interviews and documents he was involved in, as well as those of others, there is no way one can see Nosenko as anything but a false defector. However, the question in my mind is why they would willingly send someone so blatantly unprepared - certainly they thought better of CIA than that? I have to wonder if the actual decision to 'defect' was in fact Nosenko's - he was a drunk and womanizer and going no where fast at KGB. His 1962 Geneva trip was probably a real KGB operation, but the subsequent trip could have seen Nosenko go off reservation figuring he had a ticket to a better life (ultimately) in the US if he defected rather than work in place as a 'double' as per KGB orders. This would have put KGB in quite the difficult situation.

Anyone interested in intelligence operations, especially those of the cold war period should read this book. We can only hope now that Nosenko is dead that the CIA will release *all* the files, at least those that were not destroyed in the late 1960s.
Comments?    07-Jan-2009

§

00:34 GMT

On Nuclear Terrorism

On Nuclear Terrorism by M. Levi ISBN 9780674026490

If you are not a wonk, move on as this book is not for you. Thoroughly referenced, Levi's book goes into detail on the subject of nuclear terrorism and its defense. What might be surprising is that we now find ourselves somewhat more at ease than before reading it. The physics of nuclear weapons was not new to us yet much of the engineering aspects were and when viewed along side the various controls and defenses now in place, one begins to realize just how difficult a task building a very small rudimentary weapon would be to even the 'best' terrorist group. While not the fastest read due in part to the need to check the extensive footnotes, anybody who either needs to know or wants to know about this subject should read this book and not risk being lost in journalistic hyperbole or worse, government proaoganda.
Comments?    19-Feb-2008

§

00:12 GMT

Vacuum Diagrams

Vacuum Diagrams by S. Baxter ISBN 9780061059049

Being a fan of hard Sci Fi and not the touchy-feely rubbish publishers push on the genre these days, Baxter's books looked very interesting. Checking quickly on-line for sequencing of his novels (there appeared to be an underlying theme related to an alien race called the Xeelee), we came across this quote from the author:
I’m not a great fan of books that end with cliff-hangers. So you could go in anywhere. One way would be to start with ‘Vacuum Diagrams’, a collection that sets out the overall story of the universe. Then ‘Timelike Infinity’ and ‘Ring’ which tell the story of Michael Poole, then ‘Raft’ and ‘Flux’ which are really incidents against the wider background, and finally ‘Destiny’s Children.’"
Taking his advice, we are now about one-third into Vacuum Diagrams and we like it.
Comments?    19-Feb-2008

Earthquakes

M 3.7, Kodiak Island region, Alaska
May 20, 2012 08:55:49 GMT
M 5.3, off the east coast of Honshu, Japan
May 20, 2012 08:20:58 GMT
M 3.0, Dominican Republic region
May 20, 2012 07:49:38 GMT
M 6.0, off the east coast of Honshu, Japan
May 20, 2012 07:19:55 GMT
M 5.1, east of the Kuril Islands
May 20, 2012 06:54:44 GMT
M 4.4, Tarapaca, Chile
May 20, 2012 06:44:34 GMT
M 4.4, Antofagasta, Chile
May 20, 2012 06:38:35 GMT
M 4.3, off the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia
May 20, 2012 06:17:30 GMT
M 4.8, New Britain region, Papua New Guinea
May 20, 2012 05:29:45 GMT
M 4.8, South Island of New Zealand
May 20, 2012 05:06:56 GMT

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