FYI

This is great: steakhouses going green. Oh yeah, glass containers, low-watt bulbs… Never mind that by definition a steakhouse is worst than driving a fleet of SUVs, since according to the UN, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport.

On the other hand, Paul McCartney (who is vegetarian) is apparently furious that his green hybrid limousine was flown from Japan instead of shipped by sea. After all, flying is a big no-no. Wouldn’t it be easier to spend a few thousand and buy a regular hybrid instead of complaining about a gift? Beggars can’t be choosers Paul.

Now this is the best one: PETA has launched a web site called Offset Al Gore’s Eco-Unfriendly Diet!

I wonder what the peace maker thinks about that one.

There are some interesting quirks about Tom Hanks’ endorsement of Obama.

He basically says that electing a black man would be a historic improvement for the US, comparable to Washington’s handing off power to Adams. It’s hard to disagree that having a black man being president of the most powerful country of the world is a good thing. Especially because this is a white majority country that has a nasty past of discrimination.

However, this is looking at facts without really understanding the context. Ironically, Tom Hanks gives us a great example of how easy it is to fall in this trap. He mentions that this is a country where “people of his skin color were only worth three fifths of a human being”. Well, Tom should know that the famous 3/5 compromise was made to decrease the power of slave owners in the south. Initially, southern states wanted to count slaves’ votes entirely, something that would give them much more power since slaves would obviously be forced to vote for their masters. By counting only 3 votes for every 5 slaves the Northern states hoped to tame that vicious cycle and elect more representatives that could outlaw slavery.

That is: even though the 3/5 compromise sounds horrible, it was clearly the better of two very imperfect options.

I see our country in a similar situation now. Electing a black man sounds like a great thing to do. It would show people how great the American democracy is, and maybe work as a message that could help other minorities around the world.

But for the most part the world doesn’t work based on imagery and pure ideology. What really matters is what the US actually does. Things like whether we will continue to be a force for free trade and democracy. What would be the message to places like Mexico and China if we start to say that we can only trade if they follow exactly our labor code? Will democracy be weaker or stronger if we just leave Iraq behind and say “sorry, we changed our minds folks!”

Are we willing to risk everything just to improve our image?

Tom is right in one thing: History with capital H will be made this November no matter who the elected candidate is. The question is whether people will understand what their choice is really about.

Arthur C. Brooks, for the Freakonomics blog:

“For three decades, the General Social Survey has asked a nationwide sample of adults, “Taken all together, how happy would you say you are these days? Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” Here is a representative sample of the results:

• In 2004, 44 percent of respondents who said they were “conservative” or “very conservative” said they were “very happy,” versus just 25 percent of people who called themselves “liberal” or “very liberal.” (Note that this comparison uses unweighted data — when the data are weighted, the gap is 46 percent to 28 percent.)
• Adults on the political right are only half as likely as those on the left to say, “At times, I think I am no good at all.” They are also less likely to say they are dissatisfied with themselves, that they are inclined to feel like a failure, or to be pessimistic about their futures.
• It doesn’t matter who holds political power. The happiness gap between conservatives and liberals has persisted for at least 30 years. Indeed, the difference was greater some years under Bill Clinton than it was under George W. Bush. Democrats may very well win the presidency in 2008, and no doubt many liberals will enjoy seeing conservatives grieving out about that — but the data say that conservatives will still be happier people than liberals.”

Here is the second part, which answers to some of the common criticism of the data above:

“Lots of readers weighed in, offering explanations for these data patterns. Here were their most frequent explanations:
1. Conservatives and liberals have different lifestyles, particularly regarding religion and marriage, which explains why conservatives are happier.
2. Conservatives have a world-view that — right or wrong — lends itself to greater happiness.
3. Brooks is an untrustworthy fool.
While #3 might be meritorious, let’s leave it aside and just focus on explanation #1 here and #2 in the next post.

No surprise, then: religious practice explains a good portion of the left-right happiness gap. In fact, when we combine religion and politics, happiness differences explode”

Baseball star Canseco loses home to foreclosure

“Canseco, 43, one of the most flamboyant U.S. baseball players until his retirement from the major leagues in 2001, told the celebrity TV show “Inside Edition” that it did not make financial sense to keep his 7,300 square-foot (678.2 sq-metro) home in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino.

“Inside Edition” said it had foreclosure documents showing Canseco owed a bank more than $2.5 million on the house.”

Another one for the statistics. That should tell you something about the existing foreclosure laws in the US…

On Intrade.com, the probability of a formal recession in 2008 has fallen from the 70 percent range to the 30 percent range (via MR).

Even worse, the national unemployment rate last month fell to 5% again. Do I need to remind everyone again that this was considered full employment until some time ago?

I wonder what will be the next looming catastrophe that the Chicken Little Club will pick.

Eating less red meat may help fight climate change

I don’t want to sound like one of the crazies from PETA but it is obvious – I mean insanely obvious – that if we had less people eating meat (any kind of meat) overall carbon emissions would decrease. The cost of food would decrease too, since raising livestock requires land, huge amounts of grain for feeding, water to drink, produces tons of waste, etc, etc.

While I would never suggest that eating meat should be outlawed, it would be nice to see some of our most concerned green citizens start to walk the walk and going vegetarian. Writing nice little blog posts that say you are concerned about mother earth might make you feel good but it really doesn’t do much in the real world.

And if you are interested in some anecdotal data from me, going vegetarian has improved my health big time.

MSNBC, this stronghold of objectivity, comes with what perhaps is the most idiotic headline of all times:

The world’s highest-paid supermodels
Don’t hate them because they’re beautiful, hate them because they’re rich

Now, I wish I would let these things go by more easily but I can’t help but wonder what is the rationale behind this inspired piece of journalism. Is the point that we should just hate all rich? Or should we hate more people who earned their money based on some physical attribute? Are we supposed to include poor black kids who became NBA players in this basket too?

Argh.

I thought it was interesting that one of the people who ended up reading my previous post is the owner of this blog. In it, he says that:

“The official definition of recession has become delinked from peoples’ actual experience. Right now, we’re in an economy with deteriorating employment and incomes, collapsing home prices, and business retrenchment. Is it also an economy in recession? Who cares?”

He also links to a Krugman post that makes the same point. Who cares is this is really a classic recession, right?

Well, I care. I care because this government (and all the previous ones too) will use the term recession to justify spending my money.

Besides that, if we are talking about looking at other indicators besides GDP, it is worth mentioning that:
- National unemployment is currently at 5.1%. In the past we used to call 5% “full employment”
- The stock market actually went up in April. The DOW is back at 13000, same as we were back in January

How about this: We can only say we are in a recession/crisis/whatever when our unemployment rate is at the same level as Europe (who had a record low unemployment rate of 7.1 percent in March!) and our stock market falls for, let’s say, a full year?

Oh, I would also expect that if we were really in such dire straits we would not have Bush and congress willing to ‘donate’ $770 million in food aid to the rest of the world without public riots on the streets.

But maybe this is just old conservative me not being sophisticated enough. Again.

Of course I am not saying that we are in a great economy but six months have passed and I am still waiting for the so feared worst crisis of the last 60 years.

It is so funny to see how desperate the press got with the news that we are not in a recession…

From Business Week:
“Is the U.S. in a recession? Probably so, although you wouldn’t know it from two key announcements on Apr. 30 by the Commerce Dept. and the Federal Reserve.

In a split decision, the Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate again. It said that “economic activity remains weak,” but added that its measures “should help to promote moderate growth over time.” The action came hours after the Commerce Dept. reported that gross domestic product grew in the first quarter. The increase was a meager 0.6%, the same as in the fourth quarter of 2007, but it was still above zero.”

Who cares if the definition of recession is a decline in a country’s real gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year and we actually got increases for the last two? Bah, this is all propaganda. The Wise Press knows better.

In that regard, by the way, all the three candidates are idiots. All of them follow the populist line and also say that we are in a recession even though it is simply factual truth that we are not!

But who cares about the facts, right?

Transcript: Obama’s Remarks on Wright

“Yesterday, we saw a very different vision of America. I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday.

They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought, either.”

Well, well. Whatever happened to the old uncle theory? What happened to The Speech? To the man who inspired one of his books?

Clearly, Obama had only two options in this whole debacle:
- Ride out the storm and continue on the side of his buddy
- Do what he did: Distance himself from the loon

It actually surprises me that he chose option 2 since he was on option 1 big time until the last few weeks. It is a big bet, and I think it might not work because we are so late in the game. Not only people won’t believe that he doesn’t agree with the racist remarks of Wright, black voters might consider him a traitor.

I think the Golden Man is in big trouble.