Are Churches People Too?
Glenn Greenwald writes about the Citizens United case, where the Supremes removed some of the restrictions on corporate campaign spending. Greenwald considers himself a free speech absolutist and is generally supportive of the ruling.
Grennwald suggests that any one who believes corporations are not people should answer these questions.
Here’s my reply:
From: Jason Osgood
Date: January 25, 2010 21:48:46 PST
To: GGreenwald@salon.com
Subject: Are Churches People Too?
Hi Glenn-
“Do you believe the FBI has the right to enter and search the offices of the ACLU without probable cause or warrants, and seize whatever they want? …How about your local business on the corner which is incorporated?”
Churches can be incorporated. Are churches people too?
Organizations (groups of people) are different from individual persons. Maybe those differences need to be spelled out.
Cheers, Jason
Cobbler’s Son
My day job is electronic medical records. This allows hospitals and care providers to exchange records electronically.
I recently had sinus surgery. The situation became urgent. My surgeon needed records and images held by another specialist.
I had to call ahead, request the records, drive across town, fill out some paperwork, and then hand deliver my records to my surgeon. It slayed me. If only these people were using my software.
Our healthcare information systems have a lot of room for improvement.
FYI, Dr. Mary Starkebaum (GP), Dr. Karen Lin (ENT), and Dr. Leonard Altman (Allergy) are all awesome. Also, the people at Northwest Ambulatory Surgery Center are top notch; they took great care of me.
Simplified Unemployment Rate Calculation
The official unemployment rate confuses me. Every one claims it’s fudged. How do you manage it if you don’t measure it correctly?
Seems like a pretty straight forward problem.
The current official unemployment rate is based on people. That’s wrong. Doesn’t account for overworked, unemployed, multiple jobs, shared work, etc.
The correct way is to measure how much work could be done if everyone worked full time (40 hours per week) vs how much actual work is done.
What would that look like? Hmmm…
How many people are capable of working? What I’d call the working age population.
How many hours could they potentially work? Maybe assume 2040 per year.
How many jobs are there? Should be easy to determine from tax receipts.
How many hours are worked? A bit harder. Assume salaried employees are overworked.
Adjust the numbers for students, the disabled, vacations, sick leave, etc.
Plug in the numbers, turn the crank, and voila: a ratio showing actual vs potential hours worked.
Nice and simple.
All the types of unemployment economists (and policy makers) use just muddy the waters.
We definitely have the computing power to figure this stuff out in near real-time.
Harpoon The Whalers
Sea Shepherd’s fancy new boat got sunk. Bad strategy yielding bad results.
The idea is to prevent whaling. How would you do that? Easy: neutralize the whaling boats.
You’ll see from the video that Sea Shepherd tries to block the whaling vessel. Direct physical confrontation. Dumb idea. The little boat is no match for the big whaling vessel. The Japanese also have fast harpoon boats and security vessels, outnumbering Sea Shepherd. (Plus use satellite tracking to find the protesters. Those Japanese are serious about killing them whales.)
To be effective, Sea Shepherd needs to adopt guerrilla tactics. They also need to stop the whaling without damaging property or hurting people. Easy. Here’s my idea:
Attach water-filled balloons to the boats. Then the boats can’t move (easily).
Attach the balloons as far below the water line as possible. Once attached, the balloons inflate, acting as drags on the boat. The balloons need to be water filled, so they’re not buoyant, preventing easy removal. The goal is to force the boat to return to dock.
Deploy the balloons with a mix of strategies. Torpedoes for hit and run attacks. (Don’t just stand there and let them use their water cannons on you. Duh.) Mine fields if you can predict where the whalers are going. Robot submarines if you want to attach the balloons while the whaler is still in dock. (Trigger the balloons once the boat is at sea.)
Balloons could be developed and manufactured for far less than those stupid trimarans. Make it a design competition and get free help from bored engineering students.
Recyclable Prescription Bottles
Why aren’t prescription bottles recyclable?
I have lots of meds. It physically pains me to toss the empties in the trash.
Even better question:
Why even have bottles? I’d be fine with zip lock baggies or something. The script details could be printed directly on the bag.
I’d support any innovation to reduce the amount of packaging material. Ditto making that packaging recyclable.
There should be a design competition.
China Wrecks Copenhagen Deal
According to this first hand account, China wrecked the climate change negotiations at the Copenhagen conference. China’s economic growth requires coal. They are understandably reluctant to change.
Fine. The correct response is to place a 100% tariff on Chinese imports.
China needs us more than we need them. We can make our own stuff. Whereas China has no one else to buy all their stuff.
China owns ~$800b of our debt. As we learned from Donald Trump, borrow enough and you own the bank. Let the dollar crash. China’s advantage will disappear. A lower dollar leads to more American exports.
China will cry uncle when the economic pain causes more social unrest than they can manage. Perhaps 400m unemployed, angry Chinese citizens will suffice.<p>
Then we say: Oops, big misunderstanding. Tell you what. You agree to meet these new improved aggressive emission reduction targets, we’ll drop the tariffs. Everyone will be happy again. Deal?
Cross posted to WashBlog here.
USPS To Lose 98,000 Jobs
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the US Postal Service will lose 13% of its workforce between 2008-2018. That’s 98,000 jobs.
Another good reason to move to all mail balloting for our elections.
Stopping the NYSE Arms Race with Discrete Auctions
Way back in August, I threatened to propose an alternative stock brokering system for the New York Stock Exchange (et al).
Background
The service an exchange provides to the market is liquidity. More than matching buyers and sellers, more than clearing transactions, an exchange’s “specialists” have their own cache of stocks so that there’s always some available for potential buyers.
Current exchanges operate as continuous double auctions. Meaning buy and sell orders are processed as they come in, as fast as possible.
The Problem
Because transactions are continuous, in near real-time, there’s huge incentive to have the fastest, closest computers submitting buy and sell orders. It’s an information technology “arms race”. The result is unfair advantage for the traders that invest more in their communications infrastructure.
The Solution
Replace the continuous system with repeating discrete double auctions. Create a series of auctions for each listed stock.
Auctions could last 5 seconds or 1 hour, adapting the frequency (and duration) of the auctions in response to trading volume.
By predetermining the auction deadline, no trader could have a communications infrastructure advantage (e.g. bigger, faster, closer pipes).
Commentary
Exchanges have opening and closing auction. The mismatch between these auctions and the continuous trading causes heartache. Having repeating discrete double auctions would simplify matters.
Transaction processing for auctions would be more simple and robust, compared to continuous trading.
Setting a minimum auction duration, e.g. no shorter than 5 seconds, might prevent or forestall a computing arms race.
The proposal of repeating discrete double auctions is only meant to address the uneven playing field resulting from the communications and computing arms race. I don’t know if it helps or hurts other identified issues, such as high volume trading, automatic trading algorithms (heuristics), specialists “leading” the market, etc.
This is just a blue-sky idea. I know almost nothing about stocks, finance, trading, etc. I started to read about it. Alas, it’s really not my thing, so I stopped. But I wanted to post this idea, just in case it’s original or helpful.
I couldn’t come up with a better phrase. “Recurring auctions” was on the list.
MMORPGs and other event based simulations have a virtual clock. So would an auction system, I imagine. It’d please me tremendously if game technology found its way into the world of finance.
Voter Registration Modernization
During my campaign for Secretary of State, I proposed Automatic Voter Registration for Washington State.
Everyone would be registered to vote and your registration would follow you as you move. All done automatically.
Automatic registration is cheaper, more accurate, and more fair than our current opt-in system. It’d also simplify election administration by eliminating the need for provisional ballots.
I’m absolutely thrilled to note this issue is gaining support. A small sampling…
Each of these efforts is being done independently. People have acknowledged the problem, determined the correct solution, and are starting to organize.
Automatic voter registration is an idea who’s time has come.
Singularity Inevitability
Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci takes David Chalmers to task for having an illogical argument about the inevitability of the singularity. Pigluicci even accuses Chalmers of reading too much science fiction. (The horrors!)
The singularity is when computers are smarter than humans and take over. For better or worse. It’s a favorite topic for technophiles. Fruity utopians like Ray Kurweil and downer dystopians like Bill Joy.
I try not to think about the “singularity”. When I do, I’m more in Bill Joy’s camp. And I try to maintain a positive mental attitude.
But I know two things. The “singularity” is inevitable. We won’t recognize it when it happens.
My “logic” is different from Chalmers. Computing power, algorithms, and technology are irrelevant. The singularity is inevitable because people won’t stop trying to make a non-human intelligence until it happens.
It’s likely that we can only describe human intelligence in contrast to another form of intelligence. Alas, an “artificial” intelligence will likely be too weird, large, and complicated for us to understand. So we won’t see it for what it is.
Pigluicci can take his fancy logic and statistics and blow them out his, ah, ear. Just because we geeks don’t always have the words to accurately describe things doesn’t invalidate our intuitions and contributions.
