Dispatches from District 48
See brave but under-armed woman around the 0:50 second mark. And we should all be embarrassed by the shoddy state of handgun skills in this country if this guy is is representative. The average housewife in turn of the century Arizona could have shot better than this guy.
Folks who read this site know I have been critical of Phoenix light rail since well before it was opened. So often, folks just willfully misinterpret my criticisms. The actual rail line and its service is pretty nice, and the facilities are quite attractive (lets see what they look like in 10 years though). If Santa Claus had just delivered the Phoenix light rail system for free to Phoenix, I would be thrilled with it. But Santa unfortunately was not involved, and instead the rail line was paid for by area residents, and it cost them over $75,000 per daily roundtrip rider to build, plus annual operating deficits infinitely into the future. I would be thrilled if an Aston Martin Vanquish showed up in my garage tomorrow, but I am not going to fork over a quarter of a million bucks for one. Ditto the light rail system.
Anyway, the 2009 FTA transit database is out, and Randal O'Toole has helpfully summarized it in spreadsheet form, which you can download here. You can peruse your own local system. Probably the hardest thing to figure out are the mode codes, which are deciphered here. Since 2009 was the first full year of operation for Phoenix light rail, we can finally look at data for Phoenix on an apples to oranges apples basis with other transit systems (it is really, really hard to squeeze useful information out of the data Valley Metro posts on their site).
I am just going to highlight two numbers for Phoenix light rail (TRS_ID 9209 in the data).
Years before the light rail system was completed, I made my light rail bet: That with the capital cost, I could easily buy a Prius for every daily rider, and still save money. And for less than the annual operating subsidy, I could give all the new Prius owners free gas each year. Already my bet has proved more than correct. But now we know that under my Prius plan, we also would have saved energy, since the Prius uses less than 1700 BTU/pm, less than a third of what Phoenix light rail consumes.
This was a real time warp for me: (NY Times via Cato@Liberty)
As President Obama prepares to release a review of American strategy in Afghanistan that will claim progress in the nine-year-old war there, two new classified intelligence reports offer a more negative assessment and say there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border.
The reports, one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan, say that although there have been gains for the United States and NATO in the war, the unwillingness of Pakistan to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle. American military commanders say insurgents freely cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan to plant bombs and fight American troops and then return to Pakistan for rest and resupply.
The findings in the reports, called National Intelligence Estimates, represent the consensus view of the United States' 16 intelligence agencies, as opposed to the military, and were provided last week to some members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. The findings were described by a number of American officials who read the reports' executive summaries.
Perhaps someone who knows better can accuse me of making a shallow comparison, but doesn't this sound exactly like the situation that plagued the US Army in Vietnam, where enemy fighters would hide out across the border in Cambodia? From Wikipedia:
The People's Army of Vietnam had been utilizing large sections of relatively unpopulated eastern Cambodia as sanctuaries into which they could withdraw from the struggle in South Vietnam to rest and reorganize without being attacked. These base areas were also utilized by the communists to store weapons and other material that had been transported on a large scale into the region on the Sihanouk Trail. PAVN forces had begun moving through Cambodian territory as early as 1963
I don't know why I have so much fun fact checking the "science" at green blog "the Thin Green Line," but I do. Today's exercise:
There are, right now, at least half a million pieces of junk in orbit around our cosmic Pig Pen of a planet. Space junk isn't just an aesthetic problem, either: Even tiny pieces of junk orbit at speeds above 15,000 miles per hour, so even the tiniest bit of debris can cause serious damage to anything it comes into contact with. Space junk threatens satellites, manned space missions and even the International Space Station.
While certainly space junk can be a problem in certain instances, I am constantly left helpless with laughter at the absolute urgency this type of blog approaches every problem. Here are a couple of things that might help you sleep better at night:
Certainly avoiding these objects is a navigation concern for powered spacecraft, which is why all these pieces of junk are watched in the first place. But the idea of a space superfund to clean this stuff up is so hilariously expensive (given current tech) and such a staggering waste of resources compared to other uses of those funds that one would only expect to find it on, well, an environmental blog.
I was absolutely astounded several years ago when the city of Glendale (a suburb NW of Phoenix) agreed to shell out $180 million to build an arena to try to keep a pro hockey team (the Coyotes) in town. Now, they are considering doubling their investment:
Will the Glendale City Council vote to shell out nearly $200 million in a deal aimed at keeping the Coyotes in town for at least 30 years?
But there is nothing simple about the decision facing elected officials in the West Valley city that has yearned to build its reputation as a sports and entertainment hot spot.
The deal involves Glendale taxpayers giving $100 million to Matthew Hulsizer, a Chicago businessman poised to buy the Phoenix Coyotes from the National Hockey League.
And, the Arizona Republic's Rebekah Sanders reports that "Glendale would pay Hulsizer $97 million over the next 5 1/2 years to manage the arena, schedule concerts and other non-hockey events."
Unbelievable. The value destruction here is amazing. A few years ago, the Coyotes were only valued at $117 million. So the government will have subsidized an entity worth just north of $100 million with $400 million in taxpayer dollars? Nice investment. Of course they have a BS study about net economic impact of the Coyotes, with a sure-to-be exaggerated figure of $24.5 million a year. But even accepting this figure, they are spending $400 million for at most $24.5 million in economic impact, which at best maybe translates into $2-3 million a year in extra taxes. That works, how?
Losing more than 40 major events, that is hockey games, per year at the arena would be a punch-in-the-gut to bars, restaurants and retail shops that also call Westgate home.
Here is a hint: I pretty much guarantee the buyout value or moving cost of these businesses is less than $200 million. But here are the most amazing "economics"
that would only further jam up Glendale, which counts on sales tax revenues those businesses generate to pay off the debt it has amassed in trying to build its sports empire.
So we are going to spend $200 million to make sure we can keep up the debt service on the previous $180 million? So where does the $200 million come from. I am increasingly buying into Radley Balko's theory that the media is not liberal or conservative, just consistently statist. Here is the comment on the Goldwater Institute's legal challenge
City officials also may face a legal challenge from the Goldwater Institute over the conservative think-tank's belief that the deal Glendale has cooked up violates state laws that prohibit government subsidies to private entities.
That, of course, means that the city will rack up untold legal fees to defend their deal.
Waaaaa! More legal fees. Is that really their biggest concern? How about the strong possibility that Goldwater is correct, or a mention that they have won in court recently in similar cases. But we will end with this happy thought:
Now, if they say yes to the $200-million giveaway, they may keep the team in town but are only piling on to that massive debt.
And as their initial deal with the team and previous team owners has proven, there are no guarantees that the $200 million will be enough.
Postscript: Local papers have never seen a sports team subsidy or new stadium they did not love. Given the quality of their news departments, local sports teams sell newspapers.
PS#2: Long ago I wrote a post on subsidies for business relocations and the prisoners dilemma.
Apparently Google is getting accused of skewing its search results to favor its own products. To which I say, so freaking what? When did Google suddenly become a common carrier? The implication is that by their very success (evidenced by a high market share) they have imposed on themselves more onerous rules than others operate under. When I stay in the Marriott, and I ask the concierge about local dining options, don't I expect him or her to list the hotel's restaurant options first?
I suppose consumers might have a mild beef if Google is misrepresenting its service, but for gods sakes its free -- if you are suspicious of the results, there are like a zillion competitors.
This complaint is basically coming from businesses. I know from past experience that seeing one's page rank drop with one of the regular Google algorithm tweaks is frustrating, but companies that through good SEO have climbed to the top of the search rankings are not owed anything, and in particular they are not owed that search ranking that they got for free. In fact, these are businesses that are basically free riders on Google whining about Google's actions. If they want to complain Google is not abiding by its terms of service on its paid listings, fine. That is potentially a legitimate complaint. But can't we agree that, as a foundation principle, government consumer protection action is never required for a free service somehow falling short of expectations?
I usually check out the TeeFury shirt of the day, but must have forgotten when the Serenity Sake ("with just a touch of saffron") shirt was for sale. Dang.
I was so excited about my web site progress that I overlooked somehow to hit "save" when I made changes to my MX records on the DNS. So all our corporate email went awry for 2 days. Fortunately I can access it in a box where it all collected, but now I have to sort through it and re-forward it all. If I was a cool haxor d00d, I could probably write a script to do it, but I will just sort through the 300 emails by hand. Halfway there already.
For years I have warned that government-funded health care will be used as a Trojan horse for a nearly infinite body of legislation under the pretext that X [where X = nearly every activity or individual choice] has implications for health care costs. Here is the latest chapter of this ongoing saga:
New stand-alone fast food restaurants have been banned from setting up shop in South Los Angeles, due to rising health concerns by the city council.
This story also mixes in a good portion of corporate statism as well, as it represents pretty transparent protectionism of current competitors against new entrants:
Perry's new plan bans new so-called "stand alone" fast food restaurants opening within half a mile of existing restaurants.
So McDonald's, who is likely firmly entrenched in the area, is unaffected, but potential new entrants challenging McDonald's are out.
For even further points, one can see another powerful constituency at work. I suppose commercial real estate developers complained about potential loss of tenants, so this was added:
Such stand-alone establishments are on their own property, but those same restaurants are OK if they're a part of a strip mall, according to the new rules.
Obviously the same food is much more nutritious if served in a leased building rather than on a piece of land the restaurant owns itself.
Read the whole thing, its a great example with a lot of fact-free pronouncements by politicians about market failures. via Matt Welch
This is a pretty interesting observation, from Walter Russell Mead via Arnold Kling
Most intellectuals today still live in a guild economy. The learned professions - lawyers, doctors, university professors, the clergy of most mainline denominations, and (aspirationally anyway) school teachers and journalists - are organized in modern day versions of the medieval guilds. Membership in the guilds is restricted, and the self-regulated guilds do their best to uphold an ideal of service and fairness and also to defend the economic interests of the members. The culture and structure of the learned professions shape the world view of most American intellectuals today, but high on the list of necessary changes our society must make is the restructuring and in many cases the destruction of the guilds...
In most of our learned professions and knowledge guilds today, promotion is linked to the needs and aspirations of the guild rather than to society at large. Promotion in the academy is almost universally linked to the production of ever more specialized, theory-rich (and, outside the natural sciences, too often application-poor) texts, pulling the discourse in one discipline after another into increasingly self-referential black holes. We suffer from 'runaway guilds': costs skyrocket in medicine, the civil service, education and the law in part because the imperatives of the guilds and the interests of their members too often triumph over the needs and interests of the wider society.
As typical type-A parents, we were pushing our son to seek out some sort of internship this summer - we have friends in the medical field that were offering some type of job.
To his credit, my son pushed back. He said he was not interested in medicine, and was not really interested in math and science, though he does well in them. He wanted to pursue something involving writing and perhaps history and literature, which are definitely his strongest activities.
So we talked things through. One interest he has had since 5th or 6th grade has been dystopic fiction. In 6th grade he found a list of top dystopic novels and started hammering down the reading list (1984, Brave New World, etc). In his writing assignments he typically writes some sort of dystopic or alternate history fiction. And in current events, he has a particular interest in some of the worst states, particularly North Korea.
So with some discussion from his teachers, he is going to try to pursue a writing project this summer, though I specified that he had to have some goal / forcing device, such as a submission for a student or youth fiction contest.
To help start to to gather background and refine his thoughts for the project, he has created a new blog -- Doublethink: Totalitarianism in Literature, History, and Current Events. He is pretty early in finding his voice (and on hold for a few days as he finishes finals) but I encourage you to check it out sometimes. In particular, if you see something interesting along those lines, hit his email in the header of that site.
This should be inscribed over the entrance to the Capitol building:
Salutatory goals and creative drafting have never been sufficient to offset an absence of enumerated powers
Unfortunately, they often have. From the Virginia ruling on the health care bill.
At some point soon I want to write a review of my experience with the new SageTV version 7.0 software, which is an ENORMOUS improvement over their old versions. The Sage system is still for advanced users, but the process for managing plugins and extensions (the whole point of Sage is its customizability) is greatly improved. The new HD300 set top box is also improved, though with a flaw or two. You are welcome to email me if you are considering Sage (or if you want something more capable than most media streaming boxes) and I can give you the pros and cons.
Now all I need is a few Christmas present ideas for my wife.
This is some really nice footage of the now-defunct space shuttle.
Via Engadget
and this is funny
OK, I am geeky enough to think this is funny too (sorry, my daughter keeps emailing these to me)
My Forbes post this week is on progressives and capitalism:
Progressives are often as overwhelmed by the world economy as primitive man was by his natural environment. Just as the primitive man was confused by and fearful of storms and earthquakes and drought and disease, progressives are befuddled by the rise and fall of industries, booms and recessions, wealth and poverty. And just as primitive men invented gods and myths to help bring order and a sense of controllability to events they didn't understand, progressives create governments in the hopes of imposing top-down order on a chaotic economy....
The children of the 1960's had a number of catch phrases, among them "power to the people." The irony is that no system in history has ever empowered individuals as much as has capitalism. Capitalism is the only way to organize economic activity without the use of force, the only approach that does not require that a few human beings be given power over us to guide our activity from above. This results in an order that is emergent and bottom-up, as beautiful in its complexity as anything in nature. And, and order that is as terrifying to progressives as nature was to primitive man. As a result, progressives would trade it all away, would accept a master, would accept impoverishment and stagnation, in order to attain predictability.
I am sure, if asked, most progressives would profess to desire iPod's and cures for cancer. But they want these without the incentives that drive men to invent them, and the disruption to current markets and competitors and employees that their introduction entails. They want to end poverty without wealth creation, they want jobs without employers, they want cars without unemployment for buggy whip makers. When it comes to actual, real-world legislation, progressives will nearly always embrace predictability and egalitarianism over innovation and growth.
I have a horrible, awful, embarrassing confession. All my sites, including this blog, are run off of super-cheap shared hosting accounts at Godaddy (yes, the guys with the juvenile commercials). For years I think they did a decent job and my sites were not that busy, so it was no problem. But as with most large, cheap hosting companies, they seem to be cramming more and more domains on each shared server. Someone on this server is chewing up a lot of CPU cycles and it's time to move on.
I have switched to a virtual private server account at a new hosting company, as a sort of stepping stone potentially to a dedicated server (my business and I have over 30 web sites so it probably can be justified). The VPS account is cheaper and lets me start learning some new things about managing hosting (e.g. I have access to the root for the first time) but still shields me from some of the server management (e.g. OS updates). And it's cheaper than a dedicated server, so we will see how it goes.
At some point, not quite yet, the site will have some down time when I do the migration. Not sure yet when that will be -- the wordpress database for this site is over 50mb which exceeds the import file size allowed in my data base tools (phpmyadmin for mysql). I have read there is another way to do it, I just have to do some research and tests first. I probably will have to learn to work the data base from the command line.
I got this in an email from something called the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC. They seem to be worried about the passage of the Dream Act, which I have not paid much attention to.
If we lose in the Senate tomorrow, most future battles will be fought as we retreat step by step, while millions of illegal aliens become legal workers, students, and voters who are used to replace Americans and put in positions of authority over us.
May God Save The United States.
Rally your kith and kin and join us shortly after dawn on the East Coast for our next battle tomorrow.
We must hold the line in the Senate! WE STILL HAVE A CHANCE TO STOP THIS NATION KILLING LEGISLATION BUT WE WILL NEED ALL OF YOUR HELP IN THE MORNING.
May God favor our efforts.
Holy Cr*p, you would think Hitler's panzers were rolling into Washington. Seriously, this is all because millions of immigrants might become legal workers and voters like, uh, nearly every one of our ancestors who came from somewhere else? Their apocalyptic vision is legal workers and students?
This email just gives the lie to the PAC's name -- obviously they are not for legal immigration or they would be thrilled that formerly illegal immigrants suddenly become legal.
On many occasions I have had people tell me that I was stupid -- explaining to me that this issue is not about immigration per se but the rule of law, and that their objection was to the illegal behavior not being punished, not immigration itself. Fine, here is the fix -- make them all legal. The formerly illegal immigrants will be, as you say, legal students, workers, and voters. Problem solved, right?
I get told all the time by immigration opponents that they are open to legal immigration, but we have to deal with illegal immigration first. Really? When thousands of Arizonans were breaking the law and getting photo-radar tickets, did we say that we would only do something about photo-radar when the problem of illegal speeding went away? No, we got rid of the hated cameras, and most folks holding photo-radar tickets got amnesty (in the form of the state choosing not to pursue the high percentage of people who threw away their tickets rather than paying them).
Postscript: I am not religious, but I wonder if folks who are find the use of God in this context offensive. Doesn't this imply God hates the Mexicans? Does God love your family, who happened to enter this country when immigration laws were loose, but hate Xavier who wants to come here just like your family but does so in a time when immigration laws are restrictive?
It reminds me of winning football players who say, to begin interviews, "I want to thank God..." as if their victory were the result of particular favor payed to them by God. I have always wanted to see a losing player follow such an interview with, "well, you heard it: God was against us. What chance did we have? I think we kept it pretty close given that an omnipotent deity was working for the other team."
Thank goodness for the drug war so we can have crappy asset forfeiture laws that allow this:
You're free to go -- but we'll keep your money.
That's the position of Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard on the failed case of Mario de la Fuente Manriquez, a Mexican media millionaire accused of organized crime.
Manriquez was arrested and charged earlier this year with 19 counts of money laundering, assisting a criminal syndicate, conspiracy and fraud. Seven other suspects, including Manriquez's son, were arrested in the alleged scheme to fraudulently own and operate several Valley nightclubs and exotic car dealerships.
Charges against Manriquez's son, Mario de la Fuente Mix, were dropped in August. And on Monday, as we reported, the state moved to drop the case against Manriquez.
But the state still wants to keep $12 million of Manriquez's money that was seized in the case, a spokesman for the AG's office tells New Times today.
The folks involved don't strike me as particularly savory characters, but due process is due process and if you drop charges against the guys, the money should be considered legally clean, especially when the authorities confess
Prosecutors acknowledged the money funneled to the United States from Mexico was earned legitimately by Manriquez. In the end, they couldn't prove he knew what was happening with his dough.
What happened to the money, by the way, is that is was invested in a series of businesses that appear to be entirely legal, their only apparent crime being that the incorporation paperwork omitted the name of Manriquez as a major source of funds. Wow, money legally earned invested in legal businesses, with the only possible crime a desire for confidentiality (at worst) or a paperwork mistake (at best). Sure glad our state AG is putting his personal time in on this one.
I do not know Arizona's forfeiture laws, but if they are like most other states', they probably allow state authorities to keep the seized money to use as they please, an awfully large incentive for prosecutorial abuse.
For those who remember the Penn & Teller show where they had people at an environmental rally sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide (water), you may enjoy seeing some CFACT interns doing the same among delegates to the COP16 climate change conference in Cancun, with predictable results. Its all about the science! Its pretty funny that the interns seemed to go out of their way to always have a cup of water in their hand when they discussed the petition.
From an email from Amazon.com:
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I was willing to pay the $24.99 but I will certainly take the extra $7.
Wow, suddenly skepticism, and even outright harsh criticism, of peer-reviewed work is OK, as long as it is not in climate I suppose.
On Thursday, Dec. 2, Rosie Redfield sat down to read a new paper called "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus." Despite its innocuous title, the paper had great ambitions. Every living thing that scientists have ever studied uses phosphorus to build the backbone of its DNA. In the new paper, NASA-funded scientists described a microbe that could use arsenic instead. If the authors of the paper were right, we would have to expand our....
As soon Redfield started to read the paper, she was shocked. "I was outraged at how bad the science was," she told me.
Redfield blogged a scathing attack on Saturday. Over the weekend, a few other scientists took to the Internet as well. Was this merely a case of a few isolated cranks? To find out, I reached out to a dozen experts on Monday. Almost unanimously, they think the NASA scientists have failed to make their case. "It would be really cool if such a bug existed," said San Diego State University's Forest Rohwer, a microbiologist who looks for new species of bacteria and viruses in coral reefs. But, he added, "none of the arguments are very convincing on their own." That was about as positive as the critics could get. "This paper should not have been published," said Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado.
The article goes on to describe many potential failures in the methodology. None of this should be surprising -- I have written for years that peer-review is by no means proof against bad science or incorrect findings. It is more of an extended editorial process. The real test of published science comes later, when the broader community attempts to replicate results.
The problem in climate science has been that its proponents want to claim that having research performed by a small group of scientists that is peer-reviewed by the same small group is sufficient to making the results "settled science." Once published, they argue, no one (certainly not laymen on blogs) has the right to criticize it, and the researchers don't (as revealed in the Climategate emails) have any obligations to release their data or code to allow replication. This is just fresh proof that this position is nuts.
The broken climate science process is especially troubling given the budgetary and reputational incentives to come out with the most dramatic possible results, something NASA's James Hansen has been accused of doing by many climate skeptics. To this end, consider this from the bacteria brouhaha. First, we see the same resistance to criticism, trying to deflect any critiques outside of peer-reviewed journals
"Any discourse will have to be peer-reviewed in the same manner as our paper was, and go through a vetting process so that all discussion is properly moderated," wrote Felisa Wolfe-Simon of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "The items you are presenting do not represent the proper way to engage in a scientific discourse and we will not respond in this manner."
WTF? How, then, did we ever have scientific process before peer-reviewed journals appeared on the scene?
But Jonathan Eisen of UC-Davis doesn't let the scientists off so easily. "If they say they will not address the responses except in journals, that is absurd," he said. "They carried out science by press release and press conference. Whether they were right or not in their claims, they are now hypocritical if they say that the only response should be in the scientific literature."
Wow, that could be verbatim from a climate skeptic in the climate debate.
And finally, this on incentives and scientific process:
Some scientists are left wondering why NASA made such a big deal over a paper with so many flaws. "I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people," says John Rothof UC-Davis.
Why is it that taxpayers seem to be the one group that never has standing? No one wants the milch cow mouthing off, I suppose. How about we change the law to say that any taxpayer has standing in court on any issue that affects government spending. Too broad? Well, I'll narrow that when they narrow their interpretation of the commerce clause.
I am still trying to figure out how traditional film photographers got great outdoor photos. I struggle with haze and a loss of vibrancy in distant photos, as if the images were photographed through dirty glass. Maybe filters? More vibrancy in the film (I know that drove a lot of Kodak users to Fuji)?
Anyway, I don't have to rely on film, and can fiddle around with Photoshop until I get things right. I used it in this image to lighten some dark areas and then eliminated the haze effects by painting the whole image with a low-opacity color burn (I used to use a neutral gray for this but I have had better luck using a color with much of the blue taken out (using the RGB sliders in the color selection)). I gave a second helping of the color burn to the buildings only, to make them pop a bit. I try to stay far away from the contrast controls - every photo I have ever ruined started downhill with the contrast control. Instead, I went into each of the R-G-B channels in the "levels" section and fiddled with the distributions a bit, in effect widening the distributions (only a little) to get a tad more contrast.
I think it came out pretty well -- I was at an art show with a guy selling almost this exact same photo from the exact same spot and I think mine compared favorably with his art shot. The only thing I think might have improved it was to get morning light, but I was not going to camp out for 18 hours to do so.
Anyway, this is Vernazza, one of the five towns of Cinqueterre on the Italian Riviera, taken from the fabulous walking trail the connects the five towns. As usual click for enlargement.
On the monitor screen, the colors are perhaps a bit over-saturated but by trial and error it looks great on paper (at least with my printer -- the color variation among printers and papers is really astonishing once you start paying attention to it).
Below, by the way, is the original digital image. If someone can tell me what I am doing wrong (filters, camera selection, etc) to get such crappy original images, I would be appreciative. It looks like I haven't cleaned the lens or something. All I am using is a pretty good quality UV filter (mostly just to protect the lens) on a Nikon D50 with the stock Nikon lens.
This is a clever subtitle mashup criticizing public pensions in California which, incredibly, does not actually use the Hitler clip from Downfall.