Tag-Archiv für » Politik «

NYTimes Budget Puzzle

Montag, 15. November 2010 18:22

The NYTimes has an interactive puzzle where you get to select from a range of suggested ways for the government to save money, increase revenue and thus reduce the deficit. It’s certainly good to see these measures in the context of other ways to spend or save money, and with the background of „something has to be done“. Surely makes you understand politics and politicians a little bit better. Even though I never thought reducing the deficit was that easy! Here are my results. I just raised taxes for completeness‘ sake, the budget was balanced before…

Thema: English | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor:

Cheesy Government — Special Interest vs Public Health

Sonntag, 7. November 2010 16:12

A NYTimes article with the fitting title „While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales“ delivers a great (in both senses of the word) example of what special interest money does to a democratic government. It talks about how, while at the same time trying to get people to eat more healthy food, the US government is sponsoring campaigns promoting one of the single most unhealthy foods in the American diet: Cheese. And on a whole different scale.

Let’s start with the nutritional facts, hopefully old news for most people:

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Thema: English | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor:

Divided Government is Good Government

Sonntag, 7. November 2010 15:34

Another post from Happy Sunday Newspaper Day. Like most people, I like having my views confirmed. This time it is NYTimes Op-Ed Contributor Jonathan Rauch arguing eloquently and concisely how divided government (i.e., a Democratic President and Republican House) comes about, and why it is a pretty good solution to the political landscape we face.

The only thing I would like to add is that the pretty short periods of one-party government time are not lapses of the system, but a very valuable ingredient in themselves. The salt in the bipartisan soup if you will, little bursts of innovation and reform that are later smoothed out by bipartisan compromises.

And I think it is fascinating to note that in a completely different political system, Germany spends a lot of time in a similar bipartisan state as well.

Thema: English | Kommentare (1) | Autor:

The Cost of a Vote — More Numbers on the Midterms

Sonntag, 7. November 2010 14:38

In a remarkably silent tone, a NYTimes Editorial provides some more numbers and historical context to the question of election advertisement. First to the numbers:

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Thema: English | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor:

Die „Mauer“ des 21. Jahrhunderts und Banksys Graffiti

Sonntag, 7. November 2010 14:12

Ich bin vor kurzem wieder auf Banksy gestoßen, einen meiner liebsten zeitgenössischen Künstler, und vor allem auf seine Werke auf der Mauer in Palästina (bzw. auf den „Israelischen Sperranlagen“, wie sie Wikipedia nennt). Einen schönen Überblick über die Bilder inklusive kleiner polit-philosophischer Diskussion („‚Cheap publicity from other peoples misery‘ or ‚Publicity for Palestinian misery‘?“) liefert das Brian Sewell Art Directory, und hier ist noch ein schönes Bild, das dort nicht zu finden ist:

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Thema: Deutsch | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor:

Capitalism’s Parasites — Trial Lawyers in Corporate America

Sonntag, 7. November 2010 13:23

An interesting NYTimes Magazine article (quite lengthy but entertaining) takes the judicial battles brought about by BP’s gulf oil spill as a prominent example and has a look at the US practice of „trial lawyers“. They can be seen as an alternative to extensive government regulation — while most European countries regulate in advance, US corporations are regulated by the prospect of huge compensations after accidents. In the complex judicial system, this has attracted a specialized brand of lawyers, the trial lawyers, whose business model is to monitor big corporations and look for opportunities to sue them.

Interestingly, the metaphor of parasites came to my mind even before that analogy was mentioned in the article. And while it is used there with the negative implication it has in everyday language, I immediately had an evolutionary perspective on it as well, where parasites are acknowledged for regulating the growth of their hosts and contributing to a dynamic balance.

Hardly surprising, the public opinion on them is mixed:

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Thema: English | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor:

How Heritable is Intelligence?

Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2010 15:38

The good old Sarrazin debate taking place in my room this morning made me search for some scientific publications on the issue myself. I found one highly cited paper that seems to lay out the situation quite clearly:

Studies of correlations among twins or adoptees and their biological and adoptive parents typically yield large genetic effects and relatively smaller effects of family environment, whereas studies that compare the mean IQs of children rescued from poverty with the IQs of their parents or impoverished siblings often find large differences that are attributed to the environment (Turkheimer, 1991).

So what Sarrazin quotes in terms of high heritability is only half of the truth. How can these disparate findings be unified? Here is the hypothesis that was confirmed in the study:

One possible resolution of this paradox is that the effect of family environment on cognitive ability could be nonlinear (Jensen, 1981; Scarr, 1981). If differences between impoverished environments and adequate ones have large consequences for cognitive ability, but differences between adequate and enriched environments do not, one would expect amelioration of impoverished status to show a substantial effect, whereas correlational findings based on middle-class family members in typical twin and adoption studies would not.

In a way (as has been rightfully pointed out for the debate as a whole) this is just elaborating on what has been said on differences in IQ between groups before: A certain degree of heritability within a group says close to nothing about the genetic differences between groups. The quoted article just shows how this applies to socioeconomic groups as well es ethnic groups, which had been a central issue in the similar debate in the US some 15 years ago.

Which makes Sarrazins point (Germany is threatened by an increase in proportion of genetically less intelligent individuals due to different rates of reproduction between socio-economic groups) scientifically implausible on top of what it has been from the beginning: politically and morally tasteless and neglecting of the historic dimension and practical implications of trying to change the genetic composition of society.

Apart from that, I think it is useful to point out an old misunderstanding with the theory of evolution: One naively tends to conclude that evolution must favor intelligence, and that the „natural“ way of things should be for intelligent people to procreate more. This would make the (assumed) opposite direction of „evolutionary shift“ due to the way our society is structured „unnatural“ and imply that it is wrong (which is itself a moral-philosophic misunderstanding called the Naturalistic Fallacy). However, the fact that there still are genetically more and less intelligent (one should say: predisposed to developing intelligence) people around proves that „evolution“ has nothing against them. If one wanted to speculate wildly and freely one could say that „evolution likes them“ precisely for the fact that they procreate more… A remotely similar point has recently been made about sheep with stronger and weaker immune systems and, some years ago, about learning ability in fruit flies.

I have strayed from the topic, but I’m glad I had an opportunity to link to that sheep article in a useful way after all ;)

Thema: English | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor:

Some Numbers on „Independent“ Spending in the Midterms

Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2010 10:44

A NYTimes Editorial provides an appealing argument that a number of recent court rulings deregulating political campaigning by outside groups is pushing the US deeper into „pay-to-play politics“. And provides some interesting numbers on the game:

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Thema: English | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor:

The Tea Party and the Republican Establishment

Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2010 10:30

In a NYTimes Opinion, Frank Rich argues that the Tea Party and G.O.P agendas are in reality miles apart. He depicts the former as honest, if maybe not too smart folks with good intentions, and the latter as basically representing big money and corporations. And they are using the Tea Party to advance their own goals:

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Thema: English | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor:

Nassehi über Inhalt und Form von Sarrazins Äußerungen

Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2010 0:21

Ich bin leider mittlerweile so weit vom Münchner Geschehen entfernt, dass es eines Artikels in der NYTimes bedarf, um mich darauf aufmerksam zu machen, dass sich schon vor einiger Zeit der von mir geschätzte Soziologe Armin Nassehi in der FAZ zu Sarrazin geäußert hat.

Allerdings liest sich dieses immer noch sehr gut als Nachwort und Legitimation von Sigmar Gabriels Stellungnahme, die ich schon vor einer Weile hier lobend erwähnt habe.

Der Tonfall ist insgesamt ruhiger als bei Gabriel, und er bezieht sich mehr auf die gesamte Breite von Sarrazins Thesen, auch diejenigen, die als legitimer Beitrag zu einer wichtigen Diskussion verstanden werden können. Sehr gut gefällt mir die Balance zwischen inhaltlicher und, wenn man so möchte, meta-textlicher Kritik, die Nassehi trifft. Sie wird schon im Eingangsabsatz deutlich:

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Thema: Deutsch | Kommentare (2) | Autor: