Bluefin Tuna Fact of the Day

"The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, one of only two known Atlantic bluefin spawning grounds, has only intensified the crisis. By some estimates, there may be only 9,000 of the most ecologically vital megabreeders left in the fish’s North American stock, enough for the entire population of New York to have a final bite (or two) of high-grade otoro sushi. The Mediterranean stock of bluefin, historically a larger population than the North American one, has declined drastically as well. Indeed, most Mediterranean bluefin fishing consists of netting or “seining” young wild fish for “outgrowing” on tuna “ranches.” Which was why the Greenpeace craft had just deployed off Malta: a French fishing boat was about to legally catch an entire school of tuna, many of them undoubtedly juveniles."

-Tuna’s End

Costs and Benefits of Friends

A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.

-What Are Friends For? A Longer Life

Podcast of the Week

Bueno de Mesquita on Iran and Threats to U.S. Security

Deterrence. Fashionable at the moment for people to think the Israelis will take out the Iranians or that the Iranians are crazy and will attack Israel if they have a chance. Look at world history: very, very large number of international disputes since the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, many of which rose to the level of wars. Divide world into subgroups depending on possession of nuclear weapons or access to them via allies, etc. and plot probability of their becoming violent, see virtually nothing at the nuclear level; you only get war when there is no nuclear deterrence. Unlikely Iran would be different. Iranian leadership has been in power almost 30 years; little evidence of their irrationality. Shah. Muammar Gaddafi, depicted as irrational, rolled tanks to the border of Libya but didn't go over. Know how to stay in power but don't take undue risks. Much of U.S. foreign policy has been focused on making sure that no one else gets a nuclear weapon that doesn't already have one. Should we be so vigilant? 1982, article joint with William Riker, "Assessing the Merits of Selective Nuclear Proliferation", took positive rather than normative position--how does the world work as opposed to how should it work--to explain mutual deterrence. Why is the U.S. opposed to nuclear proliferation? Answer was that either you believe in deterrence or you believe you are willing to sacrifice deterrence to have the U.S. be in a dominant political position. If we have the bomb and they do not, that's an advantage. Usual argument to oppose it is window dressing.

Podcast of the Day

Robert Barro on Disasters

Can you deter a suicide terrorist?

Is 4Ds (Deterrence, Dissuasion, Defense and Defeat) the best way to deal with terrorism?



Related;
START

Economic Loss of Cyclone Nargis

The total economic losses amount to about 2.7% of the projected 2008 GDP, with the effects of the cyclone concentrated on a region important for agriculture and fishing in Myanmar.

Recovery needs, which are estimated at just over a total of US$1 billion over the next 3 years, include the most urgent priorities of significant food, agriculture, housing, basic services and support to communities for restoring their livelihoods and rebuilding assets

-First comprehensive picture and analysis of the impact of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar

Help me decide

Should I buy an iPod or Amazon Kindle

With power and status comes responsibility

Willem Buiter laments about inaction on Myanmar;

Where are the United Nations when we need it? Why does it not condemn utterly and declare the Burmise regime - this Pol Pottish collection of murderous incompetents - to be illegimate?

And where are the significant neighbours - China and India - when humanity needs them (I absolve Bangladesh, Laos and Thailand, because they are not in a position to intervene with force and effectiveness)? These countries talk a good game about the need for the old order to recognise that times have changed, and that a place at the top tables of global political and economic governance has to be reserved for both China and India (and possible for some of the other BRICs as well). I support that claim. But with power and status comes responsibility.

Neither China nor India have done more than tut-tut cautiously in response to the outrageous human rights violations of the Burmese military regime. This pathetic abdication of responsibility may not be surprising in the case of China, a country that engages routinely in the large-scale violation of human rights - in Tibet, in its suppression of independent religious worship and in its denial of freedom of speech and freedom of association to all its people. It is surprising in the case of India, a beacon of democracy on the Asian continent.

Why cannot the UN authorise a joint intervention by China and India in Burma, to neutralise/eliminate the collective of goblins that currently rule the country and to oversee the effective distribution of humanitarian relief? The legitimate political authority in Myanmar, in the person of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, is right there to establish a representative structure of government.

Surely, even if you believe that national sovereignty has a deep legitimacy of its own, rather than (as I believe) a purely instrumental, derived legitimacy, there has to be a point at which the cost of respecting and sustaining national sovereignty becomes grossly excessive? Of course, the effectiveness and costs of external intervention have to be evaluated carefully. But in Myanmar (and in Sudan (Darfur) and Zimbabwe) the point of no return for national sovereignty was reached long ago. If the international community sits on its hands despite the self-evident case for external intervention and for the overthrow of the ruling regime, it is a confirmation of moral cowardice or incompetence, or both.

Does Transparency Pay?

Does Transparency Pay?
Rachel Glennerster and Yongseok Shin

Abstract: This paper studies whether transparency (measured by accuracy and frequency of macroeconomic information released to the public) leads to lower borrowing costs in sovereign bond markets. We analyze the data generated during 1999–2002 when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) instituted new ways for countries to increase their transparency—by publishing the IMF’s assessment of their policies and committing to release more accurate data more frequently. The IMF’s preexisting internal timetable for country reports introduced exogenous variation when countries were faced with the option to become more transparent. We exploit this time variation and construct instruments to estimate the impact of transparency on bond yields in a way that is free from endogeneity bias. We find that countries experience a statistically significant decline in borrowing costs (11 percent reduction in credit spreads on average) when they choose to become more transparent. The magnitude of the decline is inversely related to the initial level of transparency and the size of the debt market.

Not Your Father's Election Financing

"The amount of money raised through the public financing system may be substantially lower than the amount of money that can be raised over the Internet, which presents candidates then with some pretty tough decisions in terms of how they want to move forward if they want to compete in as many states as possible," he told reporters while campaigning in Indiana.

-Public financing system is 'creaky,' Obama

Link for the Weekend

Rules of Thumb

An Economist who keeps a vacant Manhattan apartment?

Professor as Student of His Life and Others’;

A professor of economics at Connecticut College and a widower, Walter plods through an existence that looks comfortable and easy enough, but also profoundly tedious. He recycles old syllabuses and lecture notes for his classes, and suffers through piano lessons in a half-hearted effort to sustain some kind of connection to his wife, who was a classical concert pianist.

Early in “The Visitor,” Tom McCarthy’s second film as writer and director (the first was “The Station Agent”), it seems inevitable that something will come along to shake Walter out of his malaise. And sure enough, when he reluctantly travels to New York to deliver a paper at a conference, Walter finds that the Manhattan apartment he keeps but rarely visits has been surreptitiously rented to Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a drummer from Syria, and Zainab (Danai Gurira), his Senegalese girlfriend, who sells handmade jewelry at flea markets. Walter’s initial dismay and irritation gives way to an instinctive flicker of compassion, and he invites the couple to stay, at least for a short while.

The curious thing about “The Visitor” is that even as it goes more or less where you think it will, it still manages to surprise you along the way. Tarek and Walter quickly become friends, though Zainab is more reserved and also clearly more suspicious of her new housemate and benefactor. Walter takes up drumming, and begins to feel his zest for life and his appreciation of New York returning after a long period of dormancy...

To summarize Mr. McCarthy’s film as I have is to acknowledge some of the risks he has taken. It is possible to imagine a version of this story — the tale of a square, middle-aged white man liberated from his uptightness by an infusion of Third World soulfulness, attached to an exposé of the cruelty of post-9/11 immigration policies — that would be obvious and sentimental, an exercise in cultural condescension and liberal masochism. Indeed, it’s nearly impossible to imagine it any other way.

Chalabi's caused the War?

The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi
Aram Roston

Quote of the Day

Yesterday, for example, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told a Senate panel that conditions in Iraq were improving, except where they weren't. "Developments which are on the whole positive can still have unanticipated . . . consequences," Crocker said.

-Un-an-tici-pat-ed: adj. Lacking Foresight in Hindsight

Econ Talk of the Day- Kenneth Arrow

Kenneth Arrow at World Bank;

Arrow’s discussion focused predominantly on the question of futurity and the uncertainty associated with it. To highlight this, Arrow commented that the same issues and questions that were unknown and of which society was uncertain in 1979 remain so today. He cited the demand for nuclear energy, safety of containment, and even the possibilities of alternative technologies as examples. On the subject of nuclear waste disposal, Arrow underscored the very real possibility of poisoning and killing people due to the accumulation of nuclear waste. But in the practice of burying nuclear waste, today’s society can enjoy reduced energy costs. He questioned the trade off, this discounting of the future and whether it was worth the cost.

Another example Arrow gave regarding the current mode of thinking about the future centered on the emission controls. While it results in increased expenses in manufacturing costs, or what it costs to run one’s car, etc., the payoff is that in the future there will be lower emissions, lower CO2 content, etc. The final product then, said Arrow, is that future generations benefit. He emphasized that this should, be viewed as a permanent cost. The caveat is that if a mistake is made, it’s not correctible. Society’s actions are basically irreversible and the consequences are unknown. The question, he said, is like any other investment. One invests in something and expects something back in the future. That’s positive discounting in the economy, but the real question, Arrow said, is why the future is discounted at a positive rate. What’s the trade off? Citing the theories of various economists and philosophers, Arrow noted the most morally controversial issue is that which extends to future generations. It is the belief that anything in the future is worth less than it is today.

Schelling opened by disagreeing with Arrow’s premise that all future generations to come after us are not morally equal to us, and that nowhere in the world are future generations morally equal to us. Schelling proposed to take the argument a step further, adding that that nowhere in the world are other contemporary people equal to us. He stated that if today’s approach to foreign aid paralleled the way Arrow approaches climate change, the world would be looking at levels of income, marginal utilities of consumption in Bangladesh and Zambia and Nigeria and Ecuador. Yet, he offered, no one ever proposes we deal with Ecuadorians or Bangladeshi’s. Americans, Schelling said, deal with the people of these countries as morally equal to themselves in terms of the claims they make on their wealth. On the subject of climate change, Schelling stated that the dangers of climate change for Americans are exaggerated, arguing that it may be necessary simply to motivate action. Aside from possible catastrophes, Schelling stated that he does not believe the standards of living in the U.S. will be affected by climate change due to the country’s level of productivity, income, and infrastructure.

During the question and answer period questions were asked about policy change, consumption and the possibility of global consensus. Arrow ended the session by stating that the biggest question at hand and which remains unanswered is what caused the great depression. If we don’t know what caused the depression, Arrow said, we cannot be sure that we have control over the future.

Related;
Nobel Laureate Arrow Sees `Significant' Climate Change

Is counterinsurgency the solution?

Lt. Col. Gian Gentile, a history professor here who served two tours in Iraq, begs to differ. He argues that Gen. Petraeus's counterinsurgency tactics are getting too much credit for the improved situation in Iraq. Moreover, he argues, concentrating on such an approach is eroding the military's ability to wage large-scale conventional wars.

"We've come up with this false narrative, this incorrect explanation of what is going on in Iraq," he says. "We've come to see counterinsurgency as the solution to every problem and we're losing the ability to wage any other kind of war."

Col. Gentile is giving voice to an idea that previously few in the military dared mention: Perhaps the Petraeus doctrine isn't all it's cracked up to be. That's a big controversy within a military that has embraced counterinsurgency tactics as a path to victory in Iraq. The debate, sparked by a short essay written by Col. Gentile titled "Misreading the Surge," has been raging in military circles for months. One close aide to Gen. Petraeus recently took up a spirited defense of his boss.

It's hard to quantify how many people stand in Col. Gentile's corner; his view is certainly a minority one. But increasingly, the Pentagon's top brass are talking in similar terms. Two of the five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have warned recently that the military's ability to fight another kind of conflict -- say a war with North Korea -- has eroded....

The gist of Col. Gentile's argument is that recent security gains in Iraq were caused by the ceasefire declared last year by Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr as well as the U.S. decision to enlist former Sunni militants in the fight against Islamist extremists. Col. Gentile notes that violence spiked after Mr. Sadr's militia briefly resumed fighting last month.

More fundamentally, Col. Gentile, 50 years old, worries that the military's embrace of counterinsurgency -- limiting the use of heavy firepower and having soldiers focus on local governance -- means it isn't prepared to fight a traditional war against potential foes such as Iran or China. He says the more time soldiers spend learning counterinsurgency, the less time they spend practicing combat techniques like fighting alongside tanks and other armored vehicles.

-Officer Questions Petraeus's Strategy

Blogging or Your Health

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves — and are being well-compensated for it.

“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”

-In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop

Why scientists would love to create a black hole

When Science Goes Wrong
by Simon LeVay

Sheer bravura could account for the vulcanologists who were killed climbing into the crater of an about-to-erupt volcano. Imperfect information and a TV weatherman’s vanity led to misreporting on a hurricane that killed 18 Britons in 1987. Bad geological advice, combined with design changes made by an engineer with a God-like reputation, built a dam in the wrong place in 1920s California. That pounds-to-Newtons mistake that doomed the Mars Climate Orbiter? Faulty software that someone should have caught, but didn’t. The Houston Crime Lab’s errors in DNA testing wrongfully imprisoned a rape suspect for nearly five years, but lab reforms and the work of Innocence Network lawyers give this cautionary tale a moderately happy ending. Research on human subjects provides LeVay with some grim examples: brain surgery using fetal tissue to “cure” Parkinson’s disease; a gene-therapy experiment that killed a teenager with a genetic metabolic disorder; and a 1939 study that tried to determine whether people could be induced to stutter by telling normal children they had symptoms and should try to stop. There is little question that these cases flagrantly violated ethical considerations, primarily because the designers fervently believed their hypotheses and employed questionable methods in order to be “proved” right. In only a few instances does the author suspect coverup or deliberate intent: the horrible story of the release of anthrax spores in a Russian biological warfare factory; the alleged tampering with readouts to show production of a transuranium element; and the unresolved case of a runaway nuclear reaction that killed three scientists. LeVay’s epilogue notes that oversight and regulation have helped, but reminds us that research involves risk-taking

The Cost of War for Iraq

When will a Nobel laureate write a book about the cost of Iraq War for Iraq;

Man-made 'black hole' could end up eating the earth

Forget nuclear annihilation- there's a bigger danger;

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead.

Related;
Taking Particle Physics to Court