Found new blog

I just found a blog that is publishing Marcus Bachmann's leaked diary.

What the Middle East Keeps Yelling

Libya got way too complicated for me to talk about with any expertise. I forgot that Libya was not a signatory to the ICC treaty, which complicates how the NTC may deal with Gaddafis. It is in their best interest to turn Muammar over, as they can force Gaddafi to pay restitution and likely have a much clearer grasp on his assets. In part because the US and Europe have quite a bit of them. The possible movement of Gaddafi’s weapon stockpile may become a major player in threats from non-state actors.

But I can talk about oil, economics, and how we are totally fucked. Middle East turmoil once again showed us that our dependency on oil is a terrible idea. Oil is a perfect example of the fundamental economic problem, scarcity. Most consumable goods are finite and the health of an economy is based on how efficiently we utilize and distribute those goods. Sometimes the incentives to do this are pretty low. Wasting massive amounts of food has a relatively small impact on a wealthy nation’s economy. Food is relatively cheap and easy to come by in developed nations. This is one example of free-market’s inefficiency.

About 15% of the world lives in developed countries. Yet, both developing and developed nations lose or waste pretty close to the same total amount of food, about 650m metric tons. This does not take into account the large amounts of available calories lost when using resources to produce meat rather than non-sentient foods.

 Food loss in developed countries comes largely from consumers and has little to do with poor infrastructure. In developing countries the opposite is true. Things such as poor food preservation and unreliable transportation severely affect the total food available to consumers. And when you live on a dollar a day, you cannot afford to throw away food. As a result each consumer in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and south-east Asia waste only about 8 kg of food a year. This is compared to around 100 kg in Europe and North America. Food prices are directly affected by the price of oil. Increased petroleum prices raise not only the transportation costs but fertilizer and pesticides as well. Oil is used an ingredient in both of these chemicals and of course oil is often used as an energy source for their production.

***A Brief Explanation of Elasticity***

Elasticity is important in looking at the change of consumption of pretty much everything. It’s a way to quantify supply and demand. Prices go up, demand goes down. How much that demand goes down is elasticity. Here’s a great chart and description from Wikipedia:

Value	Descriptive Terms
Ed = 0	Perfectly inelastic demand
- 1 < Ed < 0	Inelastic or relatively inelastic demand
Ed = - 1	Unit elastic, unit elasticity, unitary elasticity, or unitarily elastic demand
- ∞ < Ed < - 1	Elastic or relatively elastic demand
Ed = - ∞	Perfectly elastic demand

· relatively inelastic when the percentage change in quantity demanded is less than the percentage change in price (so that E_d > - 1)

· unit elastic, unit elasticity, unitary elasticity, or unitarily elastic demand when the percentage change in quantity demanded is equal to the percentage change in price (so that E_d = - 1)

· relatively elastic when the percentage change in quantity demanded is greater than the percentage change in price (so that E_d < - 1).

E_d = 0 and E_d = - ∞ don’t happen in real life. Any increase in price will not cause the demand of a good to drop to zero, nor will the demand stay the same at any price.

Medicine, especially for children is highly inelastic. If the government taxed these services it would be a great source of revenue. Of course, it would be incredibly unethical to discourage something with such a high positive externality, so it is avoided. This also shows why goods with negative externalities are highly taxed. Highly addictive substances such as tobacco are relatively inelastic, but the demand still decreases as prices go up. Tobacco companies know that their revenue will increase at even extremely high prices, which is why they have increased prices at a much faster rate than taxes have increased. Just another example of how tobacco executives are complete pieces of shit who invent terms like smokers rights and blame the government on all the problems smokers face. Fuck them.

***Back to oil***

Oil has is pretty inelastic, especially in the short term. In other words consumption of oil does not decrease much relative to price increases. However prices are extremely vulnerable to changes in supply, or eve possible changes in supply.

Finite energy sources suck. Greenhouse-gas producing resources are terrible for our environment and they contribute to volatile markets. Rebels took over Tripoli, futures dropped. Seems we were overly optimistic about the possible stability, prices go up. Before the war Libya produced 2% of the world’s oil. Two percent, that’s it. Saudi Arabia even picked up the slack. But markets sometimes look at the long game. Saudi Arabia won’t increase its production forever therefore supply will drop, of course prices will increase. While people are attempting to throw off a brutal dictator who has oppressed his people for 40 years, the markets are cheering for a return to stability. How fucked up is this? If the goods keep coming, who gives a shit how they get there?

Crude oil is also the only stock price the public wants to drop. Of course other raw goods, such as gold, aluminum, and copper, will also drive up prices, but these are more difficult to understand. We want to have as little incentive to not destroy ourselves as possible. If oil prices stay low or even just rise slowly, we can put off developing clean fuels and say fuck it to fusion and never become a Type I Civilization.

A Success In the Middle East

       Holy shit. After six months of fighting and 20,000 deaths (fortunately, very few of them caused by NATO) Gaddafi is about to leave. Muhammad, and Saif al-Islam have surrendered. Muhammad is his first-born and Saif al Gaddafi is probably the most powerful. But Muammar Gaddafi is still defiant. But he knows his time is actually up. There was little resistance as the rebels entered the city. Around 150 people were killed in the fighting. While unfortunate, it is quite low for such an important battle. 
          Tomorrow I’ll talk about what I think this means for Obama, the US, Libya, the rest of the Middle East, as well as our long-term relationship with the area.

Marky Marc and the Dudes He Fucks

Hello Sexy

    Marcus Bachmann is probably gay. At the very least he's an extremely effeminate man. And that's okay. But the fact that he and Michelle are homophobic pieces of shit and he has associated gays with barbarians automatically opens him up for ridicule. Republicans don't seem to understand why this is different than mocking your run of the mill barbarian. This is in large part because conservatives aren't funny. The fine line between using irony to knock on bigotry and actual bigotry is lost on them (see Jeff Dunham.) Then again, many conservatives don't care and actually prefer bigoted jokes. The fact is, hypocrisy is entertaining. Even Republicans know this and thus many of them immediately claim there's a double standard. It's okay to mock gay people if you're liberal, but not if you're conservative. Actually they're right. Conservatives are far more likely to hate gay people than Liberals. I measure this  by support of the right to marry. In May 78% of liberals believed that gays should have the right to marry, while only 28% of conservatives agreed. Even moderates support was at 65%. Self-identified Republicans, Independents, and Democrats pretty much matched up with the ideological counterparts. 
      People will argue that just because they don't support gay marriage doesn't mean they don't like gay people. Fuck them; it does. People can't say they support some rights for a group of people but not all rights and not be bigoted.
     Support for registered relationships with otherwise equal rights is a big step in the right direction and I honestly think most of those people will come around. Also just because you support gay marriage doesn't necessarily mean you aren't a homophobe.  And the right to marry is not the most important issue for gays. Homelessness, suicide, and sexual abuse are all far more important than the right to marry. But, I still believe support for equal contracts is essential to equal rights.

***Comedy Is Fun***

      Comedy is probably the only arena where nothing is off limits. You can talk about fags, niggers, dikes, spics, honkies, polacks, and wops. That doesn't necessarily mean people will think you're funny and you have to be very careful when involving yourself in this type of humor, lest you fall into the Michael Richards trap. It's perfectly acceptable to point out the differences between rhetoric and action. That's why jokes about Gingrich's affairs are a lot funnier than Clinton's. Clinton jokes have alway been more popular, but still far less satisfying. Clinton never ran on a morality platform, he didn't put forth any contract with America. His affairs didn't make him a hypocrite, only a bit sleazy.

     Just making fun of someones mannerisms is pretty hack. Jokes about your ethnicity are pretty fucking boring, tend to make people uncomfortable, and are often unrelatable. Wow, you're Vietnamese grandmother was so crazy. Who gives a shit? But if you can make intelligent remarks about why people's ideas are invalid and irrational, you've got something. But these jokes can quickly become stale, and it's time to move onto the next person. With so much hypocrisy and cruelty in the GOP, it doesn't take long.

I Screwed Up

             One commenter noted that, relative to other qualities, intelligence was not a good predictor. He's right. I've gone through many of the other qualities and most seem to be better predictors. I ignored several of the qualities because they can only be judged once he or she has actually been in office. These include cabinet appointments, foreign and domestic policy accomplishments, as well as the handling of the economy. Integrity, background and the ability to compromise seem to be the only categories that are significantly worse predictors. And most others are better, some significantly so.
      There's another major problem with my analysis; I merely used rankings. This only quantifies relative values, not absolute values. In theory, the difference between number one and number two on a category could be very large and the gap between two and forty three is very small. This isn't going to happen, but neither is an equal difference between each rank.
        In the interest of intellectual dishonesty, I withdraw much of my analysis. I stil believe that intelligence can partially predict a president's overall greatness and that on the whole the Republican candidate do not possess it. But it must be combined with other qualities to get an accurate prediction. And there are several qualities that you can look at on that will give you a better forecast a president's historical ranking.
     I haven't taken a course on stats in about seven years. Hopefully I will improve as time goes on and avoid this type (or any other types) of errors.

Why We Need Smart Presidents

***See my next posting (chronologically) for a correction***

        I had a strong feeling that all of our great presidents were incredibly smart. And that most of our poorer ones were not. I knew there were exceptions to the rule. Nixon was quite smart but a failure, as was Hoover and Carter. LBJ, Jackson (who I believe to be overrated), Truman, and Eisenhower go the other way. None of them are near the bottom, but they are definitely not remembered for their brilliance, with the exception of Eisenhower battlefield abilities. No president has been dumb, in fact with the possible exception of Harding, all have had above average intelligence. Even W. was a relatively smart guy, at least in some areas.

     I was able to find a survey nearly perfect for my hypothesis. I used data from a 2010 Siena Poll of presidential scholars to calculate the correlation between intelligence and rankings. Sienna surveyed 238 presidential scholars, asking them to rate presidents in each of 20 categories. They averaged these out to come up with an overall ranking. As usual the Roosevelts, Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson stood at the top. Andrew Johnson, Buchanan, Harding, Pierce, and W. Bush were the bottom of the barrel. Reagan continues to be an overrated president at 18.


    The results were better than I expected.  The regression line equation is   y= 0.8046x+4.299  where "y" is overall ranking and "x" is intelligence ranking. The r^2 value was .64737. Of course, in reality 'y' can never be greater than the total number of ranked presidents. So I also set the intersection at 0 and got y=.9528x with an r^2 value of .6184. Most would consider both of these r^2 to pretty high, but that's not for me to decide. 
        For those with not statistical background. A regression line is one where the sum of all the squares of the distances is minimized. The distance formula is simply the pythagorean theorem. r^2 is alway between 0 and 1 inclusive. The higher the better. In this case, the closer the regression equation is to y=x the stronger the evidence for my hypothesis.

Click on image for full (and readable) size.

***The Republican Risk***    

    Very few if any of the Republican candidates have IQs much more than one standard deviation above normal. Rick Perry's grades were recently leaked, which I think is unfair and unethical, not to mention illegal. And his terrible grades are not necessarily an indication of intelligence. The most telling indication of these Republicans is their denial of science. 


     I had trouble finding too much information on each candidates view on evolution, but I know that Santorum, Palin, and Bachmann (who doesn't even realize here husband is gay), Perry, and Romney all want creationism taught in schools along side the correct theory, evolution. They believe that children are smart enough to pick which one is the correct view. Obviously evolution is a scientific theory, also known as a fact, while creationism (or intelligent design, they are just different names for the same bullshit) is pure conjecture, a belief with no evidence. Of course children should be taught how to think not what to think, but schools have no business teaching religion and should avoid the possibility, no matter how remote, that one more child will turn away from critical thinking.
     I was raised a Unitarian Universalist by parents who have no interest in god.  I've been an avowed atheist since about eight and and had at least some understanding of the beauty of evolution since a little earlier than that. So I have no concept of what it's like to be taught creationism at an impressionable age. But it seems that creationism is the easier path. Evolution can be difficult to understand. Random genetic mutations can improve a species chances of survival and are more likely to pass these onto offspring. There is not universal quality that makes an individual more likely to survive. "Faster, higher, stronger" has no place in evolution. Creationism on the other hand is pretty easy as long as you don't ask any questions. Just say god did it and call it a day. 


     Of course outside of Romney, the four major candidates (also Bachmann, Perry, and the undecided Pailn) have always denied global warming. Perry has claimed that scientists manipulate data; Bachmann believes that, since CO2 is part of the regular life cycle and life can't exist without it, more is better. Interestingly Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur are also required for life on Earth; outside of Oxygen and Nitrogen I'd like to keep my consumption to a minimum.  Palin calls it snake oil. Because the Republican party is so bat-shit crazy Romney has backpedaled on his stance on global warming. He stands almost alone among high-level Republicans in accepting the frightening facts. Sort of. He seems to be turning into a denier, at least publicly. He now frames cleaner energy as an economic boon, which seems pretty similar to Obama's way of thinking. However unlike Obama, that he claims this is the only reason to not destroy our planet.


       There is John Hutsman; in a single tweet he reassured me that someone who will be standing on the Republican primary debate stage 25 more times has brains. He wrote "To be clear I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." He simultaneously shot his already slim chances to hell.


Correction: I previously stated there were only 19 categories; there are 20.

Ron Paul Ain't Winning

Why Ron Paul isn't Relevant

       There are complaints from the Ron Paul camp that the media is ignoring their candidate. They're right. While he probably deserves to get more attention than people who would be creamed in the general election, such as Bachman, he still doesn't bring much to the table against Obama, he would probably have lost to Mondale in '72. Half of his views stand in one camp and half in the other. This does not make you universally liked, this makes you a lost cause. Anti-abortion rights, homophobia, lower taxes, withdrawal from the UN, and a tiny federal government play well with conservatives. An end to the cruel war on drugs and a reduction in military plays well with liberals. But absolute isolationism tends not play well with a large segment of liberals (including me) Intervening in war crimes and the like would be off the table. There are also accusations of racism, which makes nearly everyone uncomfortable, but I don't think there's much validity to these claims, though they could easily be played up by 527s.
       While economy is predicted to be the biggest player in 2012, it's still hard to tell if people will feel the same way in a year. If Obama will say why rather than just doing what's right, he can bring up his approval ratings significantly. He has turned out to be the opposite of his detractors accused him of; instead, he's all action without rhetoric.
       The Ames straw poll is a poor indicator of actually popularity. Romney might have done well to actually try in Ames, he would have placed much higher than, but he's probably playing the long game. The threshold for GOP enthusiasm is pretty high. You have to pay $25 and travel to about as close as you can get to the middle of Iowa. These voters are even more conservative than the run of the mill Republicans.
       Unless there's a radical shift back to the woefully politically illiterate (tea party), Romney is the only one with any chance in the general election. Though still woefully high, the tea party is losing support. As per Gallup, TP stands at 25% approval, of which 14% is strong support. Oddly 42% don't care either way. Disapproval is at 28%; 20% strongly disapprove. Even conservatives aren't strong supporters 47% support, 8% oppose, and 41% do neither. I think some of those "neithers" are afraid to drag down someone they dislike less than Democrats, though this is almost pure conjecture.

***Congress***

       Congress has long had very low approval ratings. Excluding the wake of 9/11, since the 70's congress almost always has more disapprovers than approvers. When they don't it's a small margin (again excluding 9/11.) But its current approval stands at 13%. Tied for an all time low. Also for the first time in CNN polling history (and almost surely US history), the majority of Americans don't want their own representative re-elected. There has long been a major discrepancy between people's view of congress and their own house member. Now, only one in four want most members re-elected.
       What does this have to do with Ron Paul? It's pretty simple; he's a congressman. Fair or not, he can easily be lumped in with all of congress. Yes, he often votes against the party. He votes against his party 31% of the time; among Republicans, only Walter Jones, of NC is higher on the list 33%.
Bachman is also a representative, but she has her own problems. For one, she can't seem to tell the truth, even more than most of the GOP. When she says anything about her opponents, the smart money is on lying. Plus she's fucking insane. She hates gay people to their very core. Which, fortunately, no longer matches up with most Americans.



       I’ll put up a chart of GOP enthusiasm and recognition of contenders using data from Gallup later today or tomorrow when I feel like doing a bunch of pretty simple line charts and maybe a scatter plot or two.

Insurance and liberalism

Rick Perry just joined the presidential race. The man to beat is Mitt Romney. Coincidentally Perry is the governor of the state with the highest percentage of uninsured and Romney is the former governor of the lowest percentage of uninsured. In 2009, 28.5% of Texans under the age of 65 were uninsured. In Massachusetts that number was 5.2. In 2010 this number fell significantly but these numbers are not available from the Census Bureau. The overall number of uninsured was about 2%.
Unsurprisingly there's a pretty good relation between politics and uninsured. I used the margin of Obama's win margin (a negative number if he lost) in 2008. He won MA by 25.81% and lost Texas by 15.06%. His biggest wins were DC and Hawaii, 85.92% and 45.26%. I threw out DC because it's uninsured numbers are complicated by the federal government and it's margin is incredibly high (the uninsured under 65 is below the US average of 18.8% at 13.7%.) His biggest loss was in Wyoming at -32.34%, were 18.1% are uninsured.
The trendline's formula is -28.05ln(x)+80.899. The r^2 value is .19086. This isn't particularly high but the downward slope is high enough to make this significant