Jersey is more awesome than your state plus yo mamma

Everyone likes to bash Jersey, but you know what, we're cooler than you. No scratch that much cooler than you. Jon Stewart knows what I'm talking about.

We got cranberries!
And cranberries taste good. Plus we got a lot of blueberries (second in the nation, but first when it comes to fresh ones)

And don't get me started on Jersey Tomatoes... I mean come on!

It wasn't till I traveled outside Jersey that I realized how awesome it is. We got diners, lots of random road stuff, cool diversity of pop density going from farm to city in various variations (though overall top pop-density in the country - whooo people!)

Plus we got mad diversity + mad Indians! Woo Indians!

We got easy distance to NYC and Philly when we care to get a little variety, plus easy access to airports and seaports and trains (NJ Transit rules!).

Dude, Jersey rocks. It just does.

To Africa, I think

There was once a great book I read, that I think may have been called The Well of Worlds. I checked it out from the Princeton Public Library once a long time ago, but it doesn't seem to be on amazon or heard of anywhere. Nor can I locate it on the PPL catalog. One afternoon I will have to make a dedicated search for it, but the book was quite impressive in several regards. Most obviously it had a complex and fascinating alternate history scenario which posited a continuing Aztec Empire, and rising powers in Africa in the 19th century. (that summary does ill-service to the ideas, however, describing them more precisely would require the book itself or at least a good deal more time to search my memory)

But the book was also outstanding on a character level, and the main character was a bit of a rake, who fell in love, pursued his love, but his rakish-ness got in the way again and then... and then his love, as filled with ambition as he was, decided to head to Africa to see the new kingdoms modernizing and advancing, and he decides to head that way as well, the book ending on a chapter called "To Africa, I think" or something of the like.

I mention that because today was completed SEACOM, the beginning of cheap high-speed internet access in Africa. Given that cell-phone technology has already been utilized successfully, to an extend beyond many areas of the Western World, in Africa to enhance communications, this is an immense potential boon to the continent and opens all sorts of opportunities for productive innovation that could help millions in the long run and...

Maybe a little bit of a hyperbole, but this forces me to ask myself... why am I here?

Of course, I have answers, family, friends, danger enhanced by mental illness, danger posed by mental illness, the financial cost of mental illness, etc., and when I'm rational about it, I know that if I wanted to plop myself down in the middle of nowhere and start improving things, well, it would require immense sacrifice, immense risk, immense distress to my loved ones, and carry a very low chance of success.

So I'm not going to run out to Africa anytime soon. But I do believe we'll see some rising innovations there and some amazing progress in the next few decades, if God wills it (please Lord help the people of Africa, and help us all, your weak and sinful servants). And so I still look wistfully at times to the East, and there are times when I wonder if when my circumstances are different (for they have been and continue to be dynamic, though in ways sometimes hard to tell), will I pick up a suitcase and say...

"To Africa, I think."

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

An Era of Extra-Ordinary Prosperity

So what to make of the current economic situation? What sense to take of it? Or what sense to take of it from looking at the times through a historical lens, since I imagine most readers will prefer my analysis, at least in part, because of my historical perspective rather than simply my sunny personality (although it is quite sunny).

First, let me recommend you to an excellent article that prompted me to write on this topic (and therefore certainly has some influence over the contents of this post), which has some fine points that I'll probably re-iterate to some extent. The Economist has a nice rundown of the situation in the article called "Working Man's Blues"

Now for my overview:

Well, as a historian who has studied a decent deal, although not a great deal, of material about the Great Depression, I can tell you this isn't the Great Depression. We don't have the majority of the country poor or going toward poverty, we have most of the country middle class, and some perhaps tilting toward lower middle class, with a rather small number in extreme poverty and an uncomfortably high, but not that high, a number in relative poverty. Most importantly we have not had any negative growth, thus technically we are not even in a recession (by the traditional definition, used in, for example Investor Words, a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP change).

No this is not a recession, and it is not as Paul Krugman claimed a return to the Guilded Age.

(even ignoring his arguments, he gets the periodization wrong, or at least without providing arguments sets up a different periodization than almost all major historians. The Guilded Age was roughly between the end or the faltering of the Reconstruction (around 1877 when federal troops left the South) and probably at most the assassination of McKinley (ie, the beginning of Teddy Roosevelt's term in 1901), it does not last into the 1920's as Krugman claims, and the Progressive Era is usually dated between around 1901 and around 1920, not starting in the late 1920's or early 1930's as Krugman implies.)

This is an economic downturn. We had something of a boom between say 2003-2007, not as much as say in the 1990's, where we had an extraordinary boom (one of the few eras where real median household income grew, although that measure, like most is questionable, especially given the number of poor immigrants that come to the US), and now there's a downturn. The size of this downturn is rather massive, compounded by problems in economies around the world, high oil and food prices, and the economy-distorting measures taken to reduce the last downturn in 2000 (such as Greenspan's massive intrest rate cutting.))

But that's just looking at it from a historical perspective, looking backwards many years, we can see that, you know what, even in a downturn, we are still at a level of wealth rarely seen in the life of mankind. That can be said for the world especially, but in the US we have the majority of the population with a degree of financial security, although they need to work and worry to keep it, which nowadays means the necessities are satisfied, health is alright, + (and this is actually very historically rare) we have machines and tools to make daily life easier + we have machines and tools to keep us entertained. Taking the long view from the past, that's pretty good, average man-wise.

(That's the tricky thing, because we have to remember, historically the middle class was not the average man. The average man used to be what was then called the working class, which would nowadays be considered the working poor (the current working class is more the middle class). I suppose the definition of the middle class for previous eras was financial security, having the necessities, and being able to aspire to more, or maybe it's just a semi-Marxist vision, those who are not dependent on the means of production of someone else, but who do not themselves own the means of production, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps)

Taking the view of the future though... things are a bit odd right now. Despite all the nations of the world being in essentially one global economy, each country seems to exist in a different world economically, in a way that has little to do with the economic realities of the country. But these oddities always have a bit of sense, and are generally rooted in a very specific past.

For example, why is the US so prosperous now relative to the world? Explaining fully its situation in the 19th century relative to Latin America might be a bit tough, but to a great deal it helped that the ethnic groups which did the discriminating, though the mix shifted, tended to always been a vast majority in the US, which has not been the case in much of Latin American history (the situation of the South as economically backward during this period partially backs this theory). But let's not go back that far, let's just look at the beginning of the 20th century it was on the higher end of the income scales, but similar to Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Argentina and perhaps a few other exceptional Latin American economies. However, it was not devastated by WWII, nor did it suffer from radical economic deviations, and moreover it didn't have to deal with imperialism, or major revolutions. That alone would give the US quite an edge over the rest of the world, whether it explains everything is question, but it explains a lot of the particular oddity of the massive US share of the global GDP.

Similar stories of exceptional luck history wise can be found scattered around the world. Yes, this luck was built on hard work, the US' low-revolution count was built on a strong belief in democracy in the political class and especially among some of the better of our leaders. But we got lucky with WWII, had Latin America gotten involved, as some Latin American countries wanted to, we might have been as devastated as Europe.

Yet historical luck is not a way to build a lasting prosperity. And despite whatever good qualities of the American people might have, we are not so exceptional as to have the economic fundamentals to maintain our privileged position in the world, and thus relative to the world we are sinking. I had hoped that it might be the case that the world might be catching up fast enough that in absolute terms we would still maintain our lifestyle for the immediate future, but that may be a bit uncertain. I suppose that's not surprising, after all, when the working class caught up to and merged with the middle class, the middle class did lose a lot of their old perks, such as even the lower middle class having servants.

But let me not be too gloomy. We might be destined to sink somewhat relative to the rest of the world until we reach a point reflecting our size, resources, skills and attributes, but that place is still pretty high in the world. Moreover, even if things might even be sinking in absolute terms, the future still holds the potential to raise us up with the rest of the world, even if perhaps at a slower speed. And then once a bit of the adjusting is done for the past, perhaps then we can grow naturally, with our long-term growth being reflective of the long-term economic trends of our nation. Until then...
twentit
But as I said things aren't so bad now, and while the future might have some roughness, it is unlikely to hold a new Great Depression any time soon (although I'd advise against any predictions going to infinity). The true reality that we are going to face though, is that economic moments, like all moments, pass, and the situations change, and control of the course of events will always allude us.

But that just means that history will always be surprising.

A bit of a look: CNN and BBC

It is often said that American news sources are biased and lack depth. The latter I dispute to a degree, there's often a lot more depth of coverage that people simply ignore, and when you go to some of the more respected newspapers (say The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or go to some of our essayish magazines like Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker, you can find a lot of depth in those sources. But overall I must admit most American news stories, especially on TV are more oriented toward a quick rundown of events along with a debate on popular issues (this is true of even CNN, my perhaps main go-to news source). I actually don't mind that often, since it is really nice to have a wide-ranging skimming of world news, so you can have general idea of what's going on without needing to search and run around. I also believe that even more deeper sources are mainly there to point you into the direction of some news subjects you want to investigate more.

But sometimes a brief summaries of events just leaves you without a full understanding of what the events actually mean, or an understanding of how trustworthy the reports are or the moral standing of the players or the impact of incidents and such (moreover, with a limited number of "breaking" news events or popular issues to debate, things get repetitive fast). Take for example, CNN's coverage of the recent shooting of Uygurs in Xinjiang, which concentrated on the Chinese police reports and attributed the whole thing to an anti-Han holy war as per that report. Thus unlike BBC News, they did not take the rather obvious step of connecting the shooting to the long low-level separatist campaign in Chinese Turkestan, which BBC News on the other hand did so easily. Moreover, while BBC just said the Uygurs were shot dead, CNN said Chinese police killed them in a shootout (which is a questionable way of phrasing things since even the Chinese police say that the Uygurs were armed with knives though they were shot by police, which is justifiable if the case, but not exactly a shootout).

Yet the second usual claim that American news is extra biased is something that I'm going to object to a little more. I'm not saying there aren't biases in American news, or that perfect objectivity is possible (I don't think perfect objectivity is possible and I think that news readers should be aware of that, but I think that reporters should aim toward objectivity), but barring FOX News and personality-centric news shows (like Nancy Grace, Keith Oberman, etc.), I'd say overall American news is a lot less biased than a lot of other countries, especially my old friend CNN. Take again for example BBC, whose coverage of Uygur-shooting was more in depth (hence giving more room and potential for opinion and shaped depiction), had a stronger bias to its article (not that its opinion on the matter was necessarily wrong), and it more pushed an idea of the Chinese gov. being the real bad guy in the picture. CNN's brief coverage was perhaps a little more biased against the Uygur militants, but its lack of depth gave no claim to making an assessment of the whole of the matter, while BBC in its attempt for analysis does.

But if I was to recommend things, well, if it's an update on a news topic I already know about, I'd rather have the more objective, briefer story, but if it's a matter I've heard less about, well the less objective, more-in-depth might be good.

Still, when it comes to news, I always take the point that news sites and shows and papers are just the starting point. The world can't be summarized even in a whole magazine, even if people tried, but the resources are out there, and so I go out investigating and trying to learn and grasp things. After all, I at least have a vote to tilt things around, I can still send letters and complaints, I can still write, and maybe someday I'll be able to have a greater power of things.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

It's time to come down

So it seems fears of a Venezuelan-Columbian-Ecuadoran War have come to naught.

This article from the AP summarizes the rather vague details of a deal made between the countries leaders. The core of the dispute, the ideological and possibly material support to FARC by left-wing governments, and the US-backed war against FARC rebels by Colombia, has not been settled, but prospects of war are for right now little.

That's damn good in my book.

But after the talk of war, it is difficult for me to make a post about anything else really. What can compare in terms of gravitas? What can make a good transition to a post of less gravitas?

So instead of transitioning from this talk of war to a logically and atmospherically connected subject, I am going to share with you one of the worst puns EVER!!!

Now at some point in middle school I heard this from a friend, so I can say for certain I didn't think about it myself, but here it goes...

What did Tonya Harding bring to the 1994 Olympics in Norway?

A little hammer.

You get it? Because the 1994 Olympics were in Lillehammer, Norway and because Tonya Harding was involved in a conspiracy to attack a competitor with a blunt object.

Get it?

Not only is pun lame, it is also excessively topical and in generally poor taste.

It is in fact THE WORST PUN EVER!!!

Let's pray for peace

First let me get you up to speed with the particular could be war situation I'm talking about:

Colombia bombed a FARC camp a few miles within the territory of Ecuador. Initially, Ecuador's response was calm, but Venezuela saw this as an affront to Ecuador's territory and part of a US-backed plan to dominate the region. Ecuador then agreed and now both countries have moved their armies to Colombia's borders. Colombia has held its army back but has said that documents it recovered from the FARC camp (which also indicates there was a brief ground mission into Ecuador) show links between Ecuador's government and FARC and more substantial links between Chavez and FARC.

In short, it's a tense situation.

Here's some articles:

Here's the basic situation
Here's an AP News Analyst saying war is unlikely
Time.com puts the raid into the context of the US-backed war against FARC
The Colombian raid killed an important FARC leader, which Colombia is saying is the #2 rebel in FARC.
Ecuador is claiming that the Colombian raid blocked a hostage release.

There's a lot more out there, but be cautious. There are definite biases when dealing with Colombia and FARC. More right-leaning people tend to be pro-Colombian government, anti-FARC. More left-leaning people tend to be anti-Colombian government, but anti-FARC as well. Strongly left-leaning people (mostly Communist sympathizers) tend to be anti-Colombian government, pro-FARC. I personally tend to be pro-Colombian government, with some reservations, and anti-FARC, with a few reservations.

Now for me.

I'm by no means a fan of war. I'm by no means a pacifist either. During the run-up to the Iraq War I did a lot of thinking about when war was justified, overall I vacillated back and forth over whether the Iraq War was justified in particular, but I'm the kind of man who takes a particular circumstance and uses it for some general thinking.

After all, at the time there was very little I could do about the war if it happened. I suppose if I was solidly against it or for it, I could protest. But even if I was that solid in my opinions about the war at the time, which I wasn't, events were moving too fast. For real wars, events always tend to move to fast. I suppose that's why I doubt we'll go to war with Iran, even in tense moments like several tense naval encounters last year, things have moved slowly. With the current Latin American situation however, things are moving fast.

My ultimate conclusion was thus: Governments can be justified in going to war for self-defense or defense of an ally. Pre-emptive war is unjustified. Humanitarian war... is an iffy concept.

But to get back to this particular situation.

I think Colombia made a mistake. Its war with FARC is perfectly legitimate in my mind since FARC is a rebel army that regularly employs terroristic tactics (like massive kidnapping), on the other hand previous Colombian gov. paramilitary backing was massively bad, since those paramilitaries tended to commit many atrocities (while many of the current gov. have alleged links to paramilitaries, I think that these links are not a fatal infection, and this current gov. is one of the first to take concrete action against the paramilitaries). Now FARC has been crossing borders, and Venezuela and Ecuador, who have ideological sympathies with FARC are likely providing the group at least protection (but I'm unsure if the reports of active and significant monetary and military support are true), so Colombia striking within Ecuador's borders (especially since the original reports said Colombia informed Ecuador about the strike, although Ecuador said it was misinformed) is not I think completely outside Colombia's rights. But it's a bad move. If it does not violate international law, it violates international rules of decorum. Colombia was inviting raised tensions with a strike like this.

However raised tensions are one thing. Moving troops to the border and cutting off trade is another. And that's what Ecuador and Venezuela are doing. And that really is unacceptably pushing near war. Again, this isn't beyond international law, but it's beyond international common sense. This is a bad situation.

So let's pray for peace.

News and lews (whatever that is)

The news is biased. I understand that. It's inevitable, people are inherently biased, we all see the world through our own perspective. But that doesn't mean the news isn't useful. Especially when it tries to be objective and tries to provide both sides of the story, because then there's probably at least some useful information you can use after you filter out what you regard as "unfair" bias (there's always some degree of what people judge as "fair" or "honest" bias which is pretty much where the reader's biases and the reporter's biases overlap (I'm using bias in a very broad sense, you can be perfectly correct in your opinions but that'll still affect how you report the issue, maybe it'll lead you to tilt your article towards the correct analysis of the issue, that's fine but it's still bias), and if you can get some information you can think about the issues yourself.

Still it's also useful to get other points of view on things and also to read people who share your point of view but take a deeper analysis than you do or perhaps than you are capable of doing so you can expand your opinions. Still that doesn't stop me from getting riled up by stuff I read in the news. Unfortunately, I can rarely remember who exactly I read the information from which leads me to aggregate the opinions into a general positions, more unfortunately, sometimes I aggregate a lot of more sophisticated opinions opposed to me with some rather ridiculous opinions opposed to me (usually cultivated from Wikipedia, wander through the criticism section of various intellectual sections), but occasionally I remember legitimate opposition opinions, or if not legitimate, opposition opinions that were actually popular.

Take for example the idea that because we have no right to dictate to people in the Middle East how to run their governments we should support the current governments there. That makes no sense, because if we can't dictate how they should run their governments than what right do we have to tell them they should have their current governments which are for most part really quite awful. (But I have to say overall I would agree that we cannot invade countries to for our ideals, not because an ideal like democracy for everyone is wrong, but because it would lead to international chaos. (However, if we do invade a country for self-defense, or for defense of an ally, or perhaps to prevent genocide, we have no right to set up any government but democracy.)

Least that's what I think, and that's all that really matters. So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Targets will re-appear; lost goodwill is harder to win back.

I don't have a history of simply putting up links to articles, although perhaps I should build one seeing as how often I run across interesting articles. But this article expresses very well what I have been thinking about some of our problems in winning the "hearts and minds." Well, maybe I'm not necessarily in favor of adding more troops, it depends on the overall effect in would have and I think in Iraq especially it would have an overall negative effect, but I definitely agree with the article that we are putting too much emphasis on bombing and not enough on protecting civilians. Even if less bombing puts our soldiers in more risk in the short-term it exposes them to less risk in the long term by building good will. And it saves innocent lives.

The blues of the younger years

I read an article in the Star-Ledger today about some controversy over early diagnosis of bipolar disorder. It was not a great article, lacking the depth I would have liked but it was decently interesting. It brought up a case of this little girl who was killed by an overdose of bipolar medication, and raised the question of whether the psychiatrist who first brought up the idea of little kids having bipolar disorder was morally responsible for this. On the face of it, I would have to say no, since the parents gave their little girl an overdose, ignoring the recommended guidelines. If the psychiatrist made vague statements that could have been interpreted as encouraging above-recommended medication, maybe he's responsible, otherwise, no. But the broader question is whether bipolar disorder starts with adults or with kids. I'm not sure if my problems are exactly bipolar disorder, they do involve deep depressive phases and some manic phases, although the depressive phases tend to be longer. But if my mental illness is bipolar disorder, then I could say in my case at least, my problems started early. Well, maybe. It's hard to say exactly, I definitely know I can trace back my anxiety problems to when I was very young, with my depressive and manic phases, I probably can say they also go back to when I was young, although in both cases, the problems only got really, really bad when I hit puberty. But even before then I had problems with social interaction, not necessarily obvious problems, but I found it extremely nerve racking to call people over the phone, so I ended up with much fewer outside school play-dates than other kids my age. With depression, it's hard to remember exactly because it's harder to remember mood, especially given the tendancy to romanticize youth. But I think overall, yeah there were depressive periods, and probably some manic periods back then. Did these problems go back to younger than 6 as the pyschiatrist in the article speculates? That I really, really, really don't know, because remembering all my feelings that long ago is very difficult and very speculative. But my problems didn't just start with puberty, they just got worse then. However, I should qualify myself by pointing out that my case is just one story and should not be regarded as the case for all people with bipolar disorders, and my problems might not even be bipolar. But at least I can say mental problems sometimes start early in a kid's life.

Virginia Tech

I've been thinking I should write something about the shooting at Virginia Tech (I'm uncertain of what terminology is appropriate here, should I say massacre, should I say incident, should I say simply what happened at Virginia Tech, I don't really know). I haven't written anything earlier since I've been busy and because I tend to be somewhat self-centered (I care about others deeply, but I tend to loose myself within my own thoughts and issues and forget sometimes about the outside world, it something I'm working on, because among other reasons just dwelling on your problems all the time is monsterously depressing), but here I am now. I don't really know what to say.

But this being my webpost (the word that I am advancing to replace the horribly lame blog), I suppose I can just ramble. That is the nature of this medium.

First thing (first significant thing at least) that I should say is my condolences go out ot the families and friends of those killed. Not that that probably matters much given that I'm just some random guy but it's out there at least.

I'm not exactly sure where to go from there. I could ruminate on death, the gun control debate, suicide, murder, or whatever, but I could do that for any other session even if what happened at Virginia Tech had never occured. That's the thing with such sudden tragedic events, singular events don't change the nature of the world. They certainly have an impact through the lives lost and the news does fill other people with sadness and fear, but the world is still the same. For example the gun control debate doesn't change because of this, certainly the idea of school shootings change matter, but there have been other school shootings, this is not something extraordinary in the grander scheme of things. But it still is awful, it still is sad, it still is terrible.

The dead are in God's hands now, which is probably a better place for them than just in this world, but their chance to do good in this world and any chance to repair if their soul has been broken is gone. But those who lost their loved ones, they lost something very important to them, and they deserve our unreserved sympathy. And even the killer's parents. I just reread Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card and there's a part of it where the father says he would rather his children die having been good rather than turn out to be monsters. The killer's parents will have to live with their son, at least seeming like a monster even if we can't look deep enough into his soul to judge even him, and now he is also dead without a chance to repent. But if he is a monster, then he deserve's our pity even more. Nothing is sadder than a soul lost. And for the dead, those who were victims and their killer, I suppose all we can do for them is pray.

Do I feel unsafe on campus? No. Like I said the nature of the world has changed relatively little. Perhaps due to the mental impact of the tragedy the chance of a tragedy occuring where I live has gone up, on the other hand it is just as likely that the chance of a tragedy occuring around me has gone down since people are more cautious in the wake of this event. But chances are the chance of a shooting breaking out at Rutgers or in Princeton is as low as it was a week ago before the shooting. I remember when Columbine occured someone asked whether we would remember it a year from now. Of course we did because there were reminders about the anniversery, but otherwise we wouldn't have. And it makes sense, as sad as Columbine was, as sad as Virginia Tech is, my world and the world of most of the people in the world hasn't changed significantly. But for some it has changed immensely. And so we mourn, and so we pray, and so we do what we can, and then get on with our lives, because even though what happened was tragic, we continue to live, our lives continue. Ultimately, I don't know what to say about all of this. I can ramble and get my thoughts out but I don't have a conclusion. I can simply offer my condolensces and my sympathy and I can mourn and I can pray. There are lessons we can learn from this, and yes we can comfort those who are suffering, but, is that what we are to reduce the lives of the dead to, a call for action. Their lives, their deaths, I don't know what to say about them, and that's that really.