Kerk's Ramblings

Taking a Trip to Italy

2011-12-06T20:35:00.001-07:00

I'm off to Italy on Friday. It's my first trip to Europe, so I'm a bit excited. I'm coauthor on a paper being presented as part of a conference at Bocconi University in Milan next Monday and Tuesday. Yeongmi is coming with me and we'll be spend two days in Florence and three days in Rome after the conference is over.

The whole thing happened rather suddenly. I was intending on skipping the conference, but funding appeared at the last minute. Should be an interesting ten days. Leaving on the 9th, returning on the 19th.

Not Just Another Rainy Day in Seoul

2011-07-26T22:19:00.029-06:00

We've had some wild weather here in Seoul in the past 24 hours (Tuesday & Wednesday). Thursday update - Looks like it will continue today, already raining heavily this morning here in Anam, near Korea University.

I got soaked to the skin on my 10-minute walk up the hill to my apartment Tuesday afternoon, but at least I am alive. Things were much worse in my neighborhood Wednesday morning. I wore my rain gear and my waterproof hiking boots on my walk down the hill this morning, but the boots didn't do much good. The waterproofing just kept the water inside.

Shots from the morning and the afternoon

Links - Many of the links below have photos or videos of the storms and aftermath
Landslide hits South Korea mountain resort, at least 10 dead
Thunderstorms Wreak Havoc in Seoul Metropolitan Region
Nine dead, two buried, as rains batter S. Korea
How it Looks in Downtown Seoul
Heavy Rainstorms Pound South Korea
UPDATE: Storms, Landslides Kill 18
A Long Rainy Season — By the Numbers

Lots of businesses in Seoul grind to a halt in the rain
Torrential rain wreaks havoc in Seoul and beyond
Thunderstorms Wreak Havoc in Seoul Metropolitan Region
Unstable atmosphere blamed for torrents
'Water Bomb' Brings Floods and Landslides to South Korea, Kills 36

Video
Deadly landslide hits South Korean resort
Flooding - Bongcheon - Seoul - 27.07.2011
Landslide at EBS Studios in Seoul
Dramatic video of heavy floods, deadly landslides in South Korea

Publish Post

2011.7.27.오전 관악구도림천의 모습
Flood due to Rain in Seoul. 2011.July.27
Seoul, Korea - Daechi-dong Rain "Flood" self-cam
Han River Flooding - Seoul, Korea
AMAZING!!! South Korea - FVA Train VS Flood (original version) 27-7-2011

Compare to floods back home that happened around the same time:
Spanish Fork flash flood

Updated July 28, 2011 7:40 a.m. Seoul time.

Comparing Yeongdo in 1980 with 2011

2011-07-23T21:11:00.001-06:00

I served in the island of Yeongdo as an LDS missionary from May through November of 1980. I served with Glenn Leewright, Peter Stewart & Jed Hill as companions. Other missionaries that lived in the same house at the same time were: Chris Morin, Jim Falconer, Dan Mitchell, Charles Cook & 김학수.

I went back this week with copies of some of the photos I took then on my iPhone. I went back to many of the same places and took photos of what they look like today, after 31 years. Here a some of the comparisons.

The Busan Bridge

1980

2011

The Yeongdo Bridge

1980

2011 (Under Reconstruction)

Shops Near the Yeongdo Bridge

1980

2011

Downtown Busan from the Yeongdo Bridge

1980

2011

Namhang Market

1980

2011

Road in Yeongseon-dong near my House

1980 (looking downhill)

2011 (Looking uphill from the other end)

Outside of the House I lived in

1980

2011

Alley next to the House

1980

2011

Yeongseon Rotary

1981

2011

Upper Yeongseon Rotary

1980

2011

Martime College

1980

2011

Taejongdae viewed from Dongsam-dong harbor

1980

2011

Train from Provo to Denver, January 2011

2011-07-21T20:08:00.004-06:00

Back in 2005, when I first came to Seoul to teach, I met Eddy Berry, a professor at Utah State University. She told me about taking Amtrak from Salt Lake City to Denver and I decided if I ever got the chance I was going to take the trip too.

Since the annual American Economics Association Meeting were in Denver this last January, I decided that Yeongmi and I would get there by train. The trip was a lot longer than driving, but the scenery was fantastic.

View from the Train Trip to Denver

We left Provo very early in the morning on Thursday - around 4:00 a.m., if I remember correctly. Since it was mid-Winter we didn't see the sun come up for quite a while and we were already over the mountains and near Price before we could see anything through the windows. We missed all of Spanish Fork Canyon and Price Canyon, but the canyons later in the day in Colorado made up for that.

The trip took 14 or 15 hours, but we went through country that was so scenic it was worth the trip. Much of this was through places where it would be impossible to get to in a car. Even in the parts that could be seen by car, sitting in the train and not driving made it so much easier to enjoy the scenery.

Take a look at the video below to see some of what we saw.

LINKS

Google Earth viewable .kmz file of tracks and places on the trip.

Korean Baseball Game

2011-07-20T17:48:00.009-06:00

On Tuesday I got to attend a baseball game here in Seoul. The Korea University ISC staff arranged for the professors to attend the evening game between the Dusan Bears (the home team) and the Lotte Giants who are from Yeongmi's hometown of Busan. Our seats were on the 10th row or so, in the 3rd-base section with all the Giants fans. We were in the lower section, right below the stage set up for the Giants cheerleaders. Yes, they have baseball cheerleaders. And yes, they need a stage.

Panorama Taken Early in the Game

Cheering at the game is a highly organized activity in Korea. When the team is batting the fans all sing and chant various ditties that are customized for each player. Many of these are recognizable pop songs. For example one player's was the melody from "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Quiet Riot. And as Tom noted, since almost every player has a name with three syllables, it is quite easy to rotate a new player's name into the song when he rotates into the batting order.

The Giants Cheerleader

The cheerleaders were behind us, so I didn't see them very much, but I certainly heard them. There was a male cheerleader who led the singing and chanting and bounced around very energetically on the stage, but there was also a back up band of sorts, with lots of drums and noise-making equipment. This included a loud PA system with preprogrammed melodies for the chants. There was also a team of four women who danced around between innings and who looked like they got lots of exercise.

Cheering was always quite positive. The chanting was always some variant of "Player X ... Our Team... Home Run!" There was never anything derogatory about the opposing team, like you might expect in the US. Everyone seemed very good-natured, if passionate in some cases, even the more inebriated. Everyone participated in the singing, chanting and other activities, at least in our section. And there were clearly rules for when this was allowed. We never sang when the other team was up to bat; that time was reserved for their cheerleading squad over in the 1st-base section .

The extra activities included distributing bright orange Lotte Department Store shopping bags during the 5th inning which we all inflated, tied off, and then wore on our heads with the handles attached to our ears so they wouldn't fall off. Diehard fans wore these until the end of the game. Apparently, this is a Lotte Giants thing that only their fans do. We also sang some more extended songs toward the end of the game. The only one I recognized was "Come Back to Pusan Harbor," which I sang along with.

A whole section of bag-heads

A True Lotte Giants Fan

Another Diehard Fan

The game was fun to watch. The Giants won in the 10th inning. They were up 3-1 in the bottom of the 9th and the relief pitcher gave up a two-run homer to send the game into the 10th. The Giants managed 2 runs at the top of the 10th and won the game when the Bears got no hits in their final at bat. The crowd loved it, at least on our side of the field. Things did get very quite in the bottom of the 9th in our half of the stadium, but the noise in the 10th made up for that.

Stadium after the Lights Came Up

Video Footage of the Game

Trip to Ulleungdo, July 2011

2011-07-20T06:39:00.007-06:00

Ulleungdo is a small island 75 miles off the east coast of Korea. It is a fairly popular tourist destination in Korea, though the island only holds about 2000 tourists at any one time. The native population is about 8000. The name Ulleungdo is based on Chinese characters and it means “Island of Tree-Covered Hills”.

Ulleungdo Mascots (Squid & Pumpkin)

I went to Ulleungdo this past weekend with a few of my fellow professors. We chose to depart from the city of Pohang, which is quite a ways south of Ulleungdo, rather than from the port of Mukho, which is much closer. This was because we did not make arrangements through a travel agency and public transportation to Pohang is much easier. We took the high speed KTX train to East Daegu station (under two hours) and then a Saemaeul train from there to Pohang (another 2 hours).

In Pohang we went straight to the ferry terminal and discovered that there was no one there selling tickets for the next day. There was, however, an office of the Azure Travel Agency (푸른여행사) open in the building. We spoke with a very nice woman in that office and asked if we could get tickets to Uleundo. The conversation went something like this:

“Is it possible to get tickets to Ulleungdo?”

“Of course. What day do you want to go there?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Oh my! What day will you be returning?”

“The day after that.”

“Sunday? Oh dear! How many tickets do you need?”

“Five.”

“Five? Heavens! Well, let me see what I can do.”

It turns out she had just got off the phone selling the last of her tickets for those days, but she managed to buy some from another travel agency after making a quick phone call. She was great; very helpful and concerned and she came through with the tickets in the end. She also set us up with a standard tour package that included a four-hour bus tour of the island, a two-hour sightseeing boat ride, and tickets to the tram in Dodong Village. Tom had already arranged a hotel on the island before we left.

I would highly recommend getting tickets in advance for this trip. We got really lucky. The Azure Travel Agency is a good place to do this. Their number in Pohang is (054) 282-5114. I note that we dealt with them entirely in Korean, so I don’t know how good their English is.

We arrived too late to take the ferry on Friday so we spent the night in Pohang. We had an interesting incident with the taxi driver taking us to the wrong hotel, presumably because it was further away and he got a larger fare. It wasn’t a mistake; he told us the name had changed. That evening we visited a nearby temple, Bogyeongsa, which I had visited once before about the same time of year in 1980.

Panorama of Bogyeongsa

We took the Sunflower ferry from Pohang on Saturday morning. It left at 9:30 in the morning and arrived around 1:00 in the afternoon. It’s hard to say how many people fit on the boat because we could only see the coach cabins, but it was somewhere between 500 and 1000 people. Most of the travelers were parts of tour groups. Lots of people abandoned their seats and sat around on the floor playing cards, eating, and drinking rice wine (soju).

Inside the Ferry

The arrival on the island was spectacular. The ferry arrives at Dodong harbor on the eastern side of the island. The harbor is an inlet with towering volcanic cliffs on either side and they are covered with lush green vegetation.

Ferry at the pier in Dodong Harbor

We took a four-hour tour by minibus on Friday afternoon. There were 15 or 20 people on the bus including our party, several older Korean ladies, and a bunch of guys who were all part of the same work crew at a company. As Tom so aptly noted, it was a “soju-lubricated” tour; lots of drinking, which led to singing, and clapping, and bawdy jokes. The driver was a real entertainer, but also gave lots of interesting information. We stopped at 1) Turtle Rock which looks like a turtle from the right angle, 2) Taeha on the northwest point of the island, which has a path over the cliffs to a fishing spot and pavilions overlooking the sea, 3) a pier on the north shore to take photos of Songgot Peak, 4) a cave with natural air conditioning, 5) a small museum in Hyangpo where I had to wait for the old ladies to finish using the men’s restroom before I could use it, 6) the Nari basin inland which is actually inside the crater of the old volcano, where we had a snack of Korean pancakes, 7) an herb shop on the north shore, and 8) a shop selling pumpkin taffy, a local export.

Turtle Rock

Our Tour Bus

Songgot Peak was very impressive. It’s a 1500-foot volcanic cone that rises from the seashore almost strait up.

Songgot Peak in the Distance

Dodong at Night

The next morning we took a very crowded sightseeing boat around the island. It took a little under two hours and we saw many of the same places as Saturday, only from the sea. We got a very good view of Elephant Rock. When we got around the northeast point of the island we went into a fog bank and didn’t see much for the last 20 – 30 minutes.

Our Sightseeing Boat

Elephant Rock

After that we took the tram from Dodong Village up to a viewing platform near the top of Manghyang Peak. The view of the village and harbor below was quite stunning.

Stitched Panorama of Dodong from Manghyang Peak

After lunch, but before leaving on the ferry we walked along the path that is carved into the cliffs northeast of Dodong along the seashore. The water was very clear and inviting and eventually Abe could constrain himself no longer, so he jumped in and went swimming. He reported the water to be just as pleasant as it looked with a temperature of around 70 degrees.

Abe Goes Swimming

Afterward it was a 3-hour ride on the ferry to Pohang, an hour wait at the train station, a 2-hour ride to Daegu, another wait, two more hours to Seoul, and a half-hour taxi ride from Seoul Station to the apartment. We got back a little before midnight.

If I were to go to Ulleungdo again (and I would love to), I would rent a car and stay for a longer time. The island does not have a serious traffic problem except in Dodong when the ferry is unloading. I would definitely like to do some hiking and maybe take a ferry to the Korean island of Dokdo, which is less than 60 miles to the southeast of Ulleungdo.

LINKS
My Picasa photo album from the trip
.kmz file with Google Earth viewable locations and tracks
Wikipedia entry on Ulleungdo
Wikitravel entry on Ulleungdo
Ulleungdo Tourism Website

UPDATE

All My Videos from Ulleungdo, Shot with my iPhone

Crack Canyon 2011

2011-06-29T06:10:00.007-06:00

I'm in Korea now teaching and in my spare time I'm trying to catch up on my blogging.

This last April and May I made two trips to Crack Canyon in the San Rafael Reef. The first was on April 14th with my family: Yeongmi, Alan, Joan and Joan's friend, Sophie. The second trip was with the ventures in our ward on May 6th and 7th.

Both times we went down from the Behind-the-Reef road. You can drive a four wheel drive a mile or so down the canyon from the turnoff until it starts to narrow and you need to park. From that point on it's short walk past a easily bypassed pouroff to the short subway section of the canyon. When I went with the ventures we spent the morning rappelling off of the rocks on the righthand side of the canyon just before the first pouroff.

The subway section is located at 38°37'22.7"N 110°44'10.6"W

The subway part is very picturesque, but also quite short. Aftter that its a half mile or so to the next pair of pouroffs. These are pretty easy to get down and also not too bad to get back up, even for a heavy guy like myself. Below those two pouroffs another quarter mile or less you run into a series of two or three pouroffs that can be a bit tricky. On the first trip with the family, we turned around after the 2nd one because the 3rd pouroff looked too far down. You can bypass this section by looking carefully for some cairns on the left-hand side of the canyon where it makes a turn at 38° 37' 26" N 110° 44' 09" W. You need to climb up though a fairly wide crack over some boulders, but after that it’s an easy trail on ledges around the difficult spots. The ventures came back through the canyon bottom just fine, but older out-of-shape people should take the detour both ways.

The 2nd of 3 tricky spots that can be avoided by a detour
This downclimb is at roughly 38°37'22.4"N 110°44'10.1"W

Finally, about a quarter mile below the bypass or last rough pouroff, you enter the narrows of Crack Canyon. This section is about a tenth of a mile long, but it’s the best part of the hike. The walls are straight and very high and it’s well-worth the hike. You can continue on after this, but the canyon opens up and you end up hiking across terrain that is not nearly impressive as the part you’ve already been through. Most people turn around and head back at the end of the narrows.

The narrows start at 38°37'10.7"N 110°43'59.7"W

(photo taken by Kyle Wheelhouse)

All-in-all it’s a really fun hike that should take only a couple of hours even if you go rather slowly, as I do. When you're done you can say, "I had fun doing Crack!"

A Nifty Way to View Rock Art

2011-02-06T10:48:00.002-07:00

I just discovered Photosynth, a photography software package and online gallery from Microsoft. It turns out to be a really good way to display rock art. It stitches all the photos together for you, and allows you to zoom in on details. The whole panel or gallery of rock art can potentially be linked together and it gives you a good context for seeing how the whole is laid out, while still allowing you to look at the details if you wish.

I put up several "synths", but a good example is the one from the Grand Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon.

This link will let you see all the synths I have put up so far.

Camping and Hiking at Muddy Creek, April 2010

2011-02-02T08:20:00.013-07:00

Last April during Spring Break I took a group of friends and family down to Muddy Creek in the San Rafael Swell. We drove down on Thursday, April 8th after my classes were over at BYU. The group was myself, Evan, Lynn, Jarom, Alan, Joan, Sophie White, her brother Zack, and my colleague, Mark Showalter. We took my truck and Yeongmi's CRV. We met Sophie's dad, Johnny, in Salina on the way down.

The route took us south through Scipio, Salina, and we exited I-70 in the middle of the swell at exit 131. From there it was graded roads south to the Hidden Splendor Mine Airfield. We were getting close to dusk by the time we turned off the interstate and we missed the turn to head to the airfield. We didn't realize we were off course until we arrived at Temple Mountain. So we turned around and headed back the right way.

Route from Orem to the Hidden Splendor Mine Airfield

By the time we headed down the right road toward the airfield it was dark. We passed to men walking the other way in the dark and didn't realize for a few moments that we hadn't seen a car coming in. A few more miles later we found a group of hikers at the trailhead for Quandry Canyon and found out that they were waiting for their husbands/fathers to return with their trucks. They had been waiting for some time and were getting worried. So we drove down to our campsite and unloaded one of the vehicles quickly and Alan and I headed back to see if we could find the two men and help them locate their trucks. We stopped and picked up two of the hikers and then headed back up the road where we found the two men now hiking back to the trailhead. It turns out in the morning they had pulled their trucks off the road a couple hundred yards down a short dirt road and hiked cross country to the Quandry Canyon trail. When they arrived near sundown at the trailhead, they set off up the road to the trucks (about a mile) and had missed the turnoff in the dark.

The next day we were set to hike the Chute of Muddy Creek, but the weather was cold and we were worried that some of the younger ones in the party might find it too difficult. So instead we drove back around to Temple Mountain and down past Goblin Valley and hiked the Bell Canyon/Little Wild Horse loop. The trail was busy with all the families from northern Utah there on spring break, just like us, but it was a very satisfying hike nonetheless.

Upper Narrows in Little Wild Horse Canyon

Evan doing his best Bear Grylls, Man vs Wild, imitation

Rick Evans and his son, Wills, showed up at the campsite that afternoon. They had driven down that morning and spent the day at Little Wild Horse as well.

The next day we watched a small aircraft land and takeoff at the airfield next to our campsite.. Then we hiked downstream from our campsite through the Muddy Creek Gorge. This required crossing the river several times, but the water was not nearly as cold as we had feared the day before. it turned out to be a very beautiful and pleasant hike. It was warm and sunny, but early enough in the season that there were no mosquitoes or flies. We stopped at an old mining bunkhouse and tailings from the the old Hidden Splendor Mine. Apparently, the mine is still active, because we also saw another entrance downstream with a note to that effect posted on the outside. The Gorge is not a slot canyon, but it does narrow nicely with some wonderful towering sandstone cliffs. It was a great hike.

Old Car in the river bottom between the airfield and the Hidden Splendor Mine

Muddy Creek Gorge just downstream from the Hidden Splendor Mine

Looking upstream into the gooseneck in Muddy Creek Gorge

Afterward, it was hike back to the campsite and drive home. We decided to go back the way we had come and two of the vehicles were running on fumes by the time we pulled into Salina. Luckily the last 20 miles or so were all downhill and we coasted most of the way.

Backpacking to Neon Canyon, May 2010

2011-02-01T10:09:00.019-07:00

View Larger Map

The mouth of Neon Canyon is in the center of the map above. Ringtail Slot is the thin line draining into the Escalante in the lower right from the East. Fence Canyon is the two canyons on the left of the map. The main trail in and out is along the lower one.

Last May, my brother Kendall, my son Evan, and I backpacked into Neon Canyon for three days and two nights.

Neon Canyon is a box canyon tributary to the Escalante River and is accessed from the Egypt trailhead off of the Hole in the Rock Road, south of Escalante, Utah.

We left Orem on the morning of Thursday, May 6th and drove down to the town of Escalante where we got a backcountry permit. From there we drove to the Egypt trailhead and set out. The people at the interagency office in Escalante suggested we head cross country to the mouth of Neon Canyon and hike down to the river via some sand dunes, so that is what we did. We misjudged the exact entrance, however, and had to hike along the dunes upstream along a fifty to hundred foot cliff until we found a break that we could scuttle down through to get to the floor of the canyon.

We camped for one night in a grove of trees near the mouth of Neon Canyon. The campsite was great and the weather in May was beautiful. The Escalante River was running a bit high, due to spring runoff, I suppose. And at the crossings we used it was waist deep or higher. We had bratwurst and rice for dinner. We froze the sausages the night before we left and they were perfectly thawed by dinnertime.

Campsite

Don't worry, I didn't actually touch the rock

The next day, I hiked upstream a bit and found a huge petroglyph panel on the lower cliff faces on the east side of the river. Kendall and I hiked downstream that morning to Ringtail Slot and wandered up the slot canyon a couple hundred yards. It was very deep and very dark. If you go, take a headlamp or flashlight. From there we hiked back and found the second petroglyph panel downstream from the mouth of Neon Canyon.

Inside Ringtail Slot

In the afternoon the three of us wandered up Neon Canyon to the Golden Cathedral, a pool and pouroff that effectively ends the hike. It was very impressive. We lingered there for an hour or so and watched a group of canyoneers rappell down the pouroff from the slot canyon above. It was lots of fun to watch.

Rappelling into the Golden Cathedral (not me)

After that we hiked out via Fence Canyon because the thought of trudging uphill through the sanddunes with a full pack did not seem at all appealing to any of us. It was a long slog, especially the climb up the slickrock back to the trailhead and Evan, in particular, was feeling sick struggled a bit, but in the end we made it before sundown.

We car camped that night a half mile or so off of the Hole in the Rock Road and headed to the slot canyons in upper Coyote Gulch in the morning. Evan stayed in the truck at the trailhead as he was still feeling under the weather, but Kendall and I hiked down into the canyon and explored the Dry Fork slot and went a little ways up Spooky Gulch. Peek-a-boo was too hard for fat ol' me to feel comfortable trying the scramble in (next time I'll bring some webbing or a short rope and let somebody fit go first). And we never made it to Brimestone Gulch. Girth was also an issue getting more than a couple hundred yards up Spooky. I understand we could enter from the upstream side if we did a bit of cross-country route finding, so maybe that's what we'll do this May when we go back.

Me stuck in Spooky Gulch

Trip to Horseshoe Canyon, October 2010

2011-01-31T09:58:00.007-07:00

Photo from the Grand Gallery

I have fallen far behind on this blog, so here is an attempt to report on a trip from last fall.

I went with all four of my children and my son-in-law to Horseshoe Canyon during the Fall break for the local (Alpine) school district. Lynn, Joan and I did this hike back in September of 2006 on one of our Daddy-Daughter Campouts, but my camera was in the shop and we only got mediocre photos. This time, I took the digital SLR and a tripod. We left home on the morning of Friday, the 15th, and arrived at the trailhead around 1:00 p.m. We hiked down into the canyon and visited all four pictograph sites: The High Gallery, the Horseshoe Gallery, the Alcove Gallery, and the most impressive one, the Grand Gallery.

These panels are primarily Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) pictographs (Indeed the style is named after these panels, since Barrier Canyon is now called Horseshoe Canyon). are are likely several thousand years old.

I tried shooting some of the Horseshoe Gallery figures with an infrared filter, but didn't get anything interesting. I did get some very nice photos from the Grand Gallery, however, which was fully in shade by the time we got there.

We hiked back up out of the canyon and made it back to the trailhead as the sun was going down. We decide to camp there a bit west of the trailhead proper. Several groups showed up in the middle of the night and the area was relatively crowded in the morning.

We drove to Black Dragon Canyon and looked at the BCS pictographs there before heading home.

At the trailhead (Evan, Joan, Alan, Lynn & Jarom)

Petroglyphs in Provo Canyon

2011-01-31T09:41:00.006-07:00

I went hiking near Johnson's Hole in Provo Canyon with my son, Alan, on Saturday and we finally found the petroglphys there. Back in Fall of 2005, my neighbor, Don Roberts, and I hiked through the same area looking for them, but couldn't find any. I've been through the area again several times, but never stopped to look seriously.

They're carved into several boulder on the hillside to the southeast of Johnson's hole. They look very old, but that could be simply because they are carved into limestone boulders lying out in the open and they have weathered very rapidly.

There are several thousand boulders of various sizes in the area and we found at most 12 with petroglyphs. One is of those was really questionable (#12) , and another was not clear enough to be sure it wasn't natural, but I'm pretty sure the patterns are manmade (#1). The rest were clearly hand-pecked. Generally, the petroglyphs we found were on rust-colored boulders, and not on any of the white limestone boulders. We only checked a small fraction of the boulders there, so we probably missed some others.

Here is a full set of photos on Flickr from Saturday

What are the Odds?

2010-07-27T16:49:00.004-06:00

What are the odds of having your house hit by a meteorite? Obviously it depends on the size of your house and the elevation and probably a whole bunch of other factors, including the length of time we're talking about. Suppose the odds are 1 in a 1000 over your lifetime. Personally I think this is probably too high, but maybe not.

What, then, are the odds that you would be hit six times? that would be 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in a quintillion. What are the odds of having one person in the world so afflicted by meteorites? With a total world population of 7 billion this turns out to still be approximately 7 in 1,000,000,000. Having something like this happen at random seems very, very unlikely to put things mildly.

Radivoje Lajic, who lives in Bosnia, has just had a sixth meteorite strike on his house. He claims that these are not random occurrences, but rather the work of aliens who are targeting him. Given the odds above, perhaps he is correct. At least it seems unlikely this is random. The aliens bit does not necessarily follow logically, but it is consistent with non-random meteor bombardment.

Lajic has put his money where his mouth is. He "has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house to protect it from the alien bombardment - which he funded by selling one of the meteorites to a university in the Netherlands."

For the sake of science, I think Lajic should move into a new house and see what happens. If the new house gets hit, then the aliens are after him. If the old one gets hit, then maybe they are showing displeasure with its architecture or something. If neither gets hit...? Seems unlikely, doesn't it?

What I'm Reading

2010-07-26T04:54:00.005-06:00

Recently Finished
Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon ***** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Course of Empire by Eric Flint & K. D. Wentworth **** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Poker Bride by Christopher Corbett *** - History
Escape from Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle *** - SciFi/Fantasy
Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle ***** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Egyptians by Cyril Aldred *** - History
more detailed reviews later if I have the time

Reading Now
Dracula by Bram Stoker - Fantasy/Horror
Ancient Peoples of the Great Basin & Colorado Plateau by Steven R. Simms - History/Anthropology

In the Queue
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly - Horror/Fantasy
Bunch of stuff by H. P. Lovecraft - Horror/Fantasy
Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations by Paul Blustein- Current Events

A Classic of Rock Video

2010-07-24T23:10:00.002-06:00

From the German version of the Disney Channel

Compare it to the original version here.

Political Culture is ....

2010-07-24T23:01:00.002-06:00

The best description I have heard of partisan politics (broadly defined) today -

"This whole “debate,” if we can charitably call it that, is a mess of straw men, hypocrisy, stupidity, and reflexive defenses of one’s own tribe. It has nothing to do with fairness, journalistic ethics, or the immorality of dragging the reputations of innocents through the mud in an attempt at scoring political points."

From Michael C. Moynihan's article in Reason.

Peggy Noonan had a great op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Shirley Sherrod mess that is well worth reading.

The whole episode was ugly and tragic, but if people will listen to Sherrod's message, maybe it wasn't a total loss.

The Marshmallow Test

2010-07-23T20:48:00.003-06:00

Sit a child in a room with a marshmallow. Tell the child they can either eat it or wait and get another one. Leave and film them. This is what you get. Very entertaining, in large part because we can all relate to the torment the child is going through.

The New Yorker has an article on these tests discussing how success at delaying gratification as a child is a good predictor of success later in life.

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution via Arbesman.net.

What's Wrong with This Screen Capture?

2010-07-21T17:32:00.002-06:00

This page links to an article about a Vietnamese mail order bride who was killed by her Korean husband a week after she arrived in the country.

What is wrong with the page? It's the ads, stupid!

A Weekend Trip to Nanjing

2010-07-11T00:44:00.005-06:00

I just got back (to Seoul where I am now) after spending a weekend (Thursday evening through Sunday morning) in Nanjing. I taught and the whole family lived there during the 2000-01 academic year. We arrived there at the end of August 2000, so it's been almost 10 years.

I traveled there with Ed Monsour, one of the two people I went to Mongolia with last summer. Tom Doherty, the other traveler was planning on coming, but his visa didn't work out (More on that below).

Some quick thoughts on Nanjing now versus Nanjing when I was there. First, the city is much more modern and feels a lot bigger. There is an 89-story building on the north side of the Gulou traffic circle, for example (information here). The city has a lot more car traffic and a lot less bicycle traffic; and much of the bike traffic is now motor scooters, which were rare when we were there. The city is also brighter. More storefronts with neon or lighted signs. And a lot more small storefronts than I remember from before. Though, this could be because we were staying in a different part of town.

We arrived on Thursday evening around 6:00 p.m. or so and took a taxi in from the airport to the Holiday Inn at Aqua City, a new shopping mall. We walked over to the Confucius Temple (Fuzimiao) and looked around. We rode a boat up and down the Qin Huai River, or at least the canals inside the city that are fed from the Qin Huai. Fuzimiao is a much more upscale shopping area than it used to be. Though the area immediately to the side and behind the temple is still full of cheap touristy souvenir shops like I remember from before.

On Friday we visited the Ming Tomb, which now has a museum at the southernmost end near the old entrance. We walked up the "spirit way" to the tomb and there is now a path that you can take up to the top of the tomb hill itself, though there is nothing up there but trees. We then went to visit the Nanjing Massacre Memorial on the other side of town. The museum there was rebuilt in 2008 and is very nice and very memorable. In the evening we went to dinner at the Gold and Silver Restaurant near the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. We had the Shanghai-syle eggplant, Kungpao chicken and fried rice. Then we did a lot of walking. From there past the center, which is having some cosmetic renovation right now while school is out, up to the drum tower and then over to Hunan Road and the walking street there. Back when we were living in Nanjing they had a big night market there on the weekends, but now the road is full of traffic and the night market must've been shut down or moved. Next we walked to Xuanwu Lake and strolled along the shore. We watched people dancing in the park and practicing their traditional instruments and singing.

On Saturday we started out with a walk down Zhonghua Road from the hotel to the city's south gate, Zhonghuamen. We walked around on top of the gate and took some photos before heading over to the Yangtze River Bridge. We got dropped off a the traffic circle right before the ramp up to the bridge and we walked from there all the way to the other side of the river. The walk was nice because of the breeze up on the bridge, but it was still a good two and quarter miles of walking in some pretty humid weather. We caught a taxi on the bridge going back the way we came and went to the Nanjing Arts and Crafts Building. This is one of the first places we visited in Nanjing after we moved into the center and they used to have very low prices on really nice arts and crafts. The goods are still nice, but the prices are not nearly so low. We had a great lunch at a nearby restaurant: stuffed eggplant and Chairman Mao's favorite braised Hunan-style pork. Our next two stops were a bit of a bust. Chaotiangong, an old palace, is under renovation and the flea market wasn't there. The old Taiping History Museum is also gone and has been replaced by a memorial and library for Zhou Enlai. We went back to Fuzimiao and did some shopping instead. By this time it was raining. So we tried walking back to the hotel, but I got us turned around and headed the wrong way. We got a taxi though after Ed got sick of following me while I wandered about in the rain. That evening we went out for dinner at a nice restaurant in the mall next to the hotel. We had twice cooked pork (good), some hot braised green beans (very good), and Mongolian style beef with little fried buns to stuff (excellent!). I'd forgotten how much I miss authentic Chinese food.

The trip home today was quick and easy. All-in-all a very good trip.

Tom failed to get his visa because of really bad karma. The three of us went to the Chinese embassy the Monday (June 28) before classes in the afternoon. The embassy was closed for repairs and in any case no longer deals with individuals when issuing tourist visas. We went to the USO instead and both Ed and I applied for tourist visas. Tom did not have any empty pages in his passport, so he had to go over to the US embassy and get some new ones put in. He got it back on Thursday and took it in to the USO and they asked him for his "photo residence card," which Ed and I did not have do supply and which none of the three of us have. When Tom pointed this out they told him is was a new policy that went in to effect on July 1st. Moral of the story, if you are coming to both Korea and China, get your Chinese visa before you leave.

Neon Canyon in May

2010-03-26T19:27:00.002-06:00

BYU lets out in April and I am done teaching for the academic year. My son, Evan, and I are off to the canyons of the Escalante again. The Alpine School District is still in session until the end of May, so this outing will not involve my younger kids.

Rather than head back to lower Coyote Gulch (for the 4th time since last April), we are planning on visiting Neon Canyon and the slot canyons in the upper part of Coyote Gulch.

We will be heading out on a Thursday early in the morning and the plan is to make it to the trailhead at Egypt and hike the 3 to 4 miles down to the Escalante River to camp near Neon Canyon. We'll explore it the next day, along with Ringtail Slot and then hike back to the truck. The hike is detailed nicely here. Details of some possible technical canyoneering (which we will not be doing) are available here and here.

We'll car camp somewhere along the Hole-in-the-Rock road on Friday night and head to the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch to visit the slot canyons there. There are four to visit, Dry Fork, Peek-a-boo, Spooky Gulch, and Brimstone Gulch. Further downstream from Brimstone there is also some rock art, which we may visit if we have time.

Off to Muddy Creek!

2010-03-26T17:21:00.003-06:00

Spring is here, sort of. So I am off hiking and camping for the first time this season (not counting my cold, cold escapade with the scouts last weekend which lasted much less than 24 hours).

The week after Easter is spring break for the Alpine School District, so I am taking my kids (all 4 I believe) to Muddy Creek down in the southern part of the San Rafael Swell. Since BYU does not have a spring break, the plan is to leave on Thursday afternoon once my teaching is done for the week. We'll drive down to the airfield near the Hidden Splendor Mine and camp there on Thursday night. On Friday we will all drive to Tomsich Butte and hike down Muddy Creek through "the Chute" 15 miles or so back to our campsite. There is a nice description of this hike here.

Saturday will entail a hike downstream from the campsite through the San Rafael Reef via Muddy Creek Gorge and then back upstream. This hike is detailed here and here.

So far I have my four children, a colleague from work and his son, one BYU student, a neice, my older daughter's boyfriend, my younger daughter's school friend, and four young men from the ward who have said they're coming along. It should be a fun outing.

Living Standards, Labor, and Productivity

2010-03-13T09:38:00.002-07:00

This blog post by Donnald Marron is an interesting read for anyone interested in differences in standards of living.

"The productivity comparisons are striking: China, Indonesia, and India are 90% less productive than the 15 richest OECD countries. That’s an enormous gap."

Living Standards, Labor, and Productivity

Bank worker finds face of Jesus in his frying pan

2010-03-12T16:11:00.003-07:00

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. I'm not sure why this is the first thing I post after such a long break.

"Toby, 22, is adamant this image genuinely appeared after he burnt a pancake. He was making dinner on Shrove Tuesday with his flatmate at their Salford apartment, and accidentally left the pan on the hob at bedtime."

"Toby woke in the middle of the night to find the leftovers smoking, and threw the pan into a sink full of cold water."

"When it came to doing the washing up a day later, he said the face of Jesus had been burned on."

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1193271_bank_worker_finds_face_of_jesus_in_his_frying_pan

Calendars

2009-12-17T16:53:00.003-07:00

I made two calendars this year. I used Qoop.com. The calendars are located at the following two links.

I made one with photos from my trips to Coyote Gulch this year

The other is a collection of photos from 2008 & 2009

You can buy them at cost if you really want one, no royalites for poor 'ol Kerk.

Merry Christmas 2009

2009-12-17T16:48:00.001-07:00

Merry Christmas from our family to you. I am afraid I may not get the cards sent out on time. And some of you may not be on the list for various reasons. (Like I don't have your address).

BTW, this is Chimney Rock near Coyote Gulch in Southern Utah.

Two Videos from Mongolia

2009-07-24T04:42:00.008-06:00

Collection of short clips taken with my camera.
The music is from the Tumen Ekh performance highlighted below.

Tumen Ekh, the Mongolian National Song and Dance Ensemble, performs their nightly show at the National Recreation Center. July 18, 2009.

Buddhist Rock Art in Mongolia

2009-07-22T23:15:00.018-06:00

The predominant religion in Mongolia up until the communists takeover in the 1920's was Buddhism; more specifically, the Tibetan style of Tantric Buddhism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's Buddhism has reemerged as the dominant religion once again.

The Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism began to take hold in Mongolia during the late 1500's under the patronage of Altan Khan and his successors. He is the one who granted the Dailai Lama his title. Prior to Buddhism most Mongolians were followers of native shamanism and there are a great number of shamanistic influences in Mongolian Buddhism and Mongolian culture in general.

The communist government shut down most monasteries and exiled or killed the Buddhist monks during its rule from 1921 through 1992. We visited two of these monasteries during our visit. The first is a small temple in Gorkhi Terelj National Park up the valley from Turtle Rock. The second is the huge temple complex of Manzushir Monastery (which I am fairly certain is named after the Boddhisattva Manjusri) that was completely destroyed during the communist era and which has had only one building rebuilt. The ruins of several of the old building remain.

At both places we saw examples of Buddhist rock art that had survived from earlier eras.

Inscription in the old Mongolian alphabet, in Gorkhi Terelj National Park

Large Painted Rock Panel above the Ruins of Manzushir Monastery

Detail of the Bottom Image

Detail of the two left side images

Detail of the top image

Detail of the top right image

Detail of the far right image

Second shrine above the ruins of Manzushir

Derail of the image's face

Third shrine above Manzushir

Image of a wise old man inside the shrine

Detail of the image's face

Book Review - Persian Fire

2009-07-22T19:37:00.009-06:00

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, by Tom Holland

This book came very highly recommended and it did not disappoint. It is the story of the Persian Empire's attempt to conquer Greece in the 5th century B.C. Holland is a very good writer and the story unfolds almost like a novel.

He starts off with a history of the fall of the Assyrian Empire to the Medes from the highlands of Iran, and then of their conquest by the Persians further to the east. He explains how Cyrus ruled his new empire and was succeeded ultimately by Darius, who ordered the first invasion of Greece.

He also explains the history of both Sparta and Athens and their different paths toward a government system that would provide stability for their citizens. Only halfway through the book do the Persians and the Greeks meet on the field of battle.

The first invasion in 490 B.C. is foiled by a surprise victory by the Athenians over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. Holland explains how the Spartans refused to fight because of a conflict with their religious festivals.

Ten years later Darius' son, Xerxes, returns in person with a larger army and fleet to reattempt the invasion. The famous Battle of Thermopylae sees the death of the Greek contingent, lead by King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, guarding the pass between Thermopylae and Athens. Athens is sacked and Sparta and the Peloponnesian states blockade the Isthmus of Corinth and prepare for a Persian attack. However, in the end, the Athenians, who had in ten years time built up a substantial navy from scratch, lead an naval battle at Salamis, just south of Athens, and cripples the Persian navy forcing Xerxes to withdraw.

Holland points out repeatedly the importance of these Greek victories. Democracy as a legitimate form of government was begun by the Athenians only a few years before the Persian invasions. Had the Persians successfully conquered Greece the history of the world would have been quite different indeed.

He also points out more subtly, the parallels between this bit of history and the modern conflict between the West and the Middle East. Holland implies a great deal of similarity between Darius' professed devotion to Ahura Mazda, the god of Zoroastrian monothesism, and the professed devotion of the rulers of modern Muslim nations to Allah. There is also a parallel in the contrast between the autocratic rule of the Persian Empire versus the relative freedom enjoyed by the citizens of the Greek city-states.

I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone with even a remote interest in history.

Partial Solar Eclipse

2009-07-21T23:16:00.008-06:00

My Best Photo

There was a solar eclipse today in India & China. Apparently it was a total eclipse in Mumbai and Shanghai, but it was cloudy and rainy in both places. I heard the weather was perfect in Iwo Jima which also had totality. Here in Seoul, it was a 74% occlusion at the maximum around 10:48 a.m. Class was scheduled to start at 10:50, but I delayed the beginning of class until 11:10, well after the maximum.

I heard about the eclipse when I turned on the TV this morning, which I normally do not do. On the way to work I stopped by an office supply store and bought some blank CDs because they are pretty good light filters for an eclipse. However, the ones I got had some sort of grainy finish and everything looked blurry. I went back and got several sheets of red filter paper that the shop owners was selling for looking at the eclipse and they worked wonderfully. It was almost impossible to get decent photos with my camera because of the high contrast between direct sun and the background of the sky. The filter sheets were too wrinkly to allow for good focus. However, I did get one or two good shots when the clouds partially obscured the sun and you could see the eclipse through them with the naked eye.

Pinhole image of the eclipse from Frank McDonald's equipment

Frank McDonald who is teaching organic chemistry had a pinhole in a piece of cardboard and you could see the eclipse in the image shining through the hole on a piece of white paper. Classes let out at 10:40 and many of the ISC students gathered in front of Woodang Hall where we hold most of the classes. Iit was a rather festive atmosphere. A few minutes before the peak occlusion the clouds went in front of the sun for 10 minutes and we missed the maximum, but it was still very impressive nonetheless.

Students Watching the Eclipse in front of Woodang Hall

My next shot at a full eclipse is August 21, 2017 when the shadow will travel across southern Idaho and Wyoming. I am planning on camping out the night before in a very dry place with little chance of clouds.

Update:

Jen Youngstrom, who teaches psychology here this summer, forwarded some excellent photos from the fellow in the apartment next to her family in the CJ International House.

Trip to Mongolia

2009-07-20T22:21:00.026-06:00

Ger just outside Gorkhi-Terelj National Park

I suppose I ought to give a more coherent account of my trip to Mongolia with Tom & Ed, so here goes.

We left on Thursday afternoon after our last classes ended at 4:10. Tom had everything planned out in terms of the logistics. We took the bus to Incheon International Airport and then a Korean Airlines flight to Ulaanbaatar, arriving at 11:30 or so local time. It was a three hour flight from Korea. After clearing immigration and customs we hired an official taxi, one of the only ones in the parking lot with a real, true taxi sign on the top, to take us to the Ulaanbaatar Hotel for $10. We had reservations for "superior"rooms, but apparently they were all taken so we were bumped up to "junior suites". The hotel was quite nice. A bit old, but it had free high speed internet which Ed needed for the online class he taught on Friday morning.

Remains of the Revolutional Party Headquarters outside my hotel window,
burnt out in July 2008 during anti-govenment demonstrations and riots

Tom and I went walking about town in the morning, though we did so independently. I walked over to the main square in front of the government palace. It is called Sükhbaatar Square and is named for Damdin Sükhbaatar, leader of Mongolia's 1921 revolution. There is a statue of him in the center of the square and there are huge statues on Genghis Khan and two of his generals on the front steps of the government palace at the north side of the square. It has the look and feel of a smaller version of Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Statue of Lenin in front of the Ulaanbaatar Hotel
Apparently, hookers congregate here in the evening

Government House on the north side of Sükhbaatar Square

We met our guide, Tselmeg Erdenekhuu, who goes by Meg in English, at the hotel at 9:30 and headed off for Gorkhi-Terelj National Park which is just northeast of Ulaanbaatar. It took us about an hour or so to get there in her uncle's two-door Toyota. We stopped at an ovoo, a shamanist rock cairn, just outside the park. We did some shopping at a couple of ger (traditional felt tents) and then drove into the park to a formation called Turtle Rock, which really does look like a turtle from the right angle. We ate lunch there at restaurant near a tourist camp, right next to the rock. We had fried noodles, steamed buns, and fried stuffed flat pot-sticker thingys. The food was excellent, much better than Tom's fried mutton chest later that evening!

Ovoo just outside Gorkhi-Terelj National Park

Afterward, we rode horses up to a local monastery and back. We got caught in the rain coming back, but I don't think any of us really minded. We then visited a nomad ger home in another part of the park. The family had a couple of extra ger and Meg had placed two of her other clients there to sleep for the night. We shared some salted-milk tea and then headed back to UB (Ulaanbaatar). By this time the rain was quite heavy and we learned later that the flooding in and around UB killed 23 people. There were a couple of places on the highway coming back where the runoff washed some pretty big rocks and a lot of mud and muck onto the road. In UB itself we drove down a major road for several hundred yards through 5-6 inches of water. We arrived safely back at the hotel nonetheless.

Two members of the nomad family we visited
The guy in the middle spent two years working in Incheon, Korea

For a first day's outing it was perfect. I fell in love with the country that day and the next day sort of reaffirmed it.

To get a feel for what Mongolia is like, imagine taking the states of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, North & South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa. That's just about the right mix of terrain and roughly the right lattitude, though Mongolia is a bit further north on average. Now, settle this area with a population of just under three million. The capital city would have a population of about a million and would have about the same land area and in about the same geographic setting as Laramie, Wyoming. Farming would be a very small industry, most people living in the countryside would raise sheep, cattle & goats on unfenced grassland. There would be a few paved highways around the capital and also a pair of paved two-lane roads one running north-south and the other running east-west. One major railway would run north-south. Most other roads would be unpaved dirt or gravel. There would be more horses than people.

We walked around UB that evening and ate dinner at a Mongolian "fast food" restaurant. Well, Ed and I ate anyway. Tom was too traumatized.

The next day we hired a car and drove to Bogdkhan Uul Strictly Protected Area to hike and visit the ruins of Manzushir Monastery. Meg was supposed to arrange for a driver to take us, but no one showed up. Tom did an excellent job of negotiating us a ride at the last minute and off we headed. We passed through some truely stunning rolling green hills on our way to the town of Zuunmod which is just south of the temple and hiking trailhead. Somehow we ended up on the wrong road and we had to cross a meadow to the other side of the valley to get onto the right one. In a couple of spots it was easier to get out and walk. That lightened the load on the car and it made it across without any damage.

According to Wikipedia:

The monastery was established in 1733 CE. Over time it grew to a complex that was 20 temples large with more than 300 resident monks. During the stalinist era of the 1920's and 30's, the monastery was completely destroyed and all the monks either killed or exiled. One temple has been rebuilt.

Ruins of Manzushir Monastery

We visited the temple ruins and hiked up the mountainside behind them. There were several shrines and Ed saw a large ovoo on top of the peak/hill we were climbing, so that sort of became our objective. Unfortunately, we couldn't find anything that looked like a safe approach to the summit. The south side was a cliff, so we tried the east side first, but couldn't find any place that didn't require significant exposure. So we walked around and tried the west side, but as we approached it became clear that it also had some sheer cliffs. We could've climbed over a boulder field below the cliff and taken a look at the north approach, but we all felt it wasn't worth the effort. The view from our highest point was just spectacular. Looking south you could see rolling green hills that seemed to go on forever.

Looking south from the hill above the ruins of Manzushir Monastery

After climbing back down to the temple we tried to find a place to eat, but the only restaurant at the tourist camp near the trailhead was filled up with a group or unavailable for some other reason. We tried driving back to Zuunmod for lunch, but the driver didn't trust any of the "fast food" places. They probably served mutton chest anyway. The one upscale place in town was closed. So we decided to drive back to UB for a late lunch/early dinner. On the way we stopped at a couple of factory outlets that sell cashmere fabric and clothing. The prices were reasonable given that we're taking cashmere.

For dinner we went to a Mongolian Barbeque. I don't think Mongolians would have recognized it as a domestic establishment. The name was "bd's Mongolian Barbeque," and it was definitely more upscale than the place from the night before. It's actually an American chain located mostly in the Midwest. Our driver, Agi, invited the guy who had set up the trip. The deal had been $80 for the day, plus we agreed to buy the driver dinner. We ended up buying them both an all-you-can-eat dinner at one of the better places in town, much to Tom's annoyance. He hates been ripped off too much. I am much more fatalistic.

That evening we went to the National Recreation Center to see a troup called, Tumen Ekh, the Mongolian National Song and Dance Ensemble. The program lasted an hourand was a nice mix of traditional singing, dancing & instrumental music. I was particularly impressed by the throat singing. I shot some video with Yeongmi's compact camera and I got some sound recordings as well that I will post later.

Tumen Ekh performing

Sunday was our last day and we spent the morning walking around UB. We found an art gallery called the Red Ger and found some bargains there. Then we continued hiking west and ended up at Gandan Monastery. This is large set of temples dating back to 1835 that were almost completely shut down during the communist era. The large Buddha in the main hall is 87 feet tall and is a 1996 gold-leaf-covered replacement of the original copper statue that was destroyed by the communists in 1938.

Gandan Monastery in Ulaanbaatar

We did some final shopping at the State Department Store and then headed back to the hotel to check out. After some trouble rekeying our rooms so we could actually get into them, we loaded up our bags, checked them into the luggage room and headed off for the best dinner of our whole stay at the Silk Road Restaurant. I had a most excellent lamb steak.

The State Department Store

The ride to the airport cost us $15 or so and we made it back to Incheon without incident. We came back on Mongolian Airlines and landed at a satellite gate somewhere way well away from the main terminal. It was somewhere in North Korea, I think. There was a lot of walking and then a train ride and them some more walking before we finally made it to immigration, baggage claims and customs. Ed got stopped by customs because he had 4 bottles of Mongolian vodka and the limit duty-free is 3. It turns out the tariff is 150%. Ed was a bit peeved, but he did pay the tariff.

We took a taxi from the airport so that we wouldn't have to climb the hill up to our apartments. It was a great trip!

I have posted some photos here if you would like to see more. Also some of the more artsy ones are at this webpage.

Fried Mutton Chest

2009-07-20T17:31:00.004-06:00

Dinner last Friday night was interesting, to say the least. We (meaning Tom) were searching for a restaurant that came highly recommended by both the Lonely Planet book on Mongolia and by Phil Nichols, one of the professors here at KU for summer campus. When we couldn't find it because it appeared to have disappeared without even leaving a building behind, we went looking for alternative eats.

We tried a street with lots of restaurants, but were having a hard time deciding which one to patronize. Tom really wanted Mongolian food, and Ed was just hungry and wanted to eat. Finally, Ed picked one that had a reasonable number of customers figuring the food must be at least OK and the wait wouldn't be too long. Ed and I ordered the fried mutton ribs, which were pretty good, if a bit fatty. Tom, however, made the mistake of asking our waitress what she recommended. I think his exact words were "number one." Now, in all fairness, she may have misunderstood and thought he was asking which dish had the most food, not which was best. Or perhaps she saw no distinction between the two. In any case he ended up ordering the "fried mutton chest."

As it turns out this was quite literally, the whole chest of a sheep. Not a lamb, mind you, but a fully grown sheep. When this generous bounty was delivered to the table and the shock wore off enough for Tom to speak, he said simply, "I can't eat this." Both Ed and I initially thought he meant there was too much food and he was offering to share. Looking more carefully at the meal on the plate and his grey face, however, we realized he was being quite literal.

He did pay for the meal, but quickly left without touching his food. Somebody feasted on free mutton chest that night. Tom ended up eating at the Indian restaurant in the hotel. Ironically, he had the lamb curry.

"Fried Mutton Chest" is now a running joke with us. If you see Tom ask him how it was. Be careful, however, as I think he is still experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Riding Mongolian Ponies

2009-07-20T06:41:00.007-06:00

photo by Ed Monsour

I took a trip this last weekend to Mongolia with a couple of good friends from Korea University's International Summer Campus, Tom Doherty and Ed Monsour. Tom set everything up as our designated tour leader and Ed and I went along for the ride. On Friday we went to Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, which is just northeast of the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Our guide, Tselmeg Erdenekhuu, who goes by "Meg" talked me into going horseback riding with Tom and Ed while we were there.

Her regular 4WD was in the shop getting fixed up for a 15-day tour, so she took us out on the dirt roads in the park in her uncle's Toyota Celica. We were planning on visiting a monastery after lunch, but the roads were wet and muddy, and Ed really, really wanted to ride a horse, so I was talked into going with them on horseback, rather than just walking. Being a bit on the portly side I was concerned that I might be too heavy for the poor ponies, but I think our hosts took this as a bit of a challenge and were intent on proving how tough Mongol ponies really are. They got one of the larger ones, a male, and he did just fine. They were a bit worried that he was, perhaps, too spirited for an obvious greenhorn like myself and kept him on a lead most of the time. However, every once in a while Ed's pony would stop still and refuse to move. When our teenage guide went back to jump-start the pony I got to do some riding "off the leash".

An interesting incident occured as we were getting ready to set out. The children in the family that owned the horses had been riding around the area while we were eating lunch and afterward their father called them over to turn over their ponies to Ed and Tom. The girl whose pony Tom got took one look at the three of us and turned to her father and begged him to let Tom (the least heavy of the three of us) be the one to ride HER pony. It was one of those moments where the meaning came through crystal clear even though we couldn't understand the language. No translation necessary!

Photo by Tom Doherty
The young man in the hat was our wrangler

Photo by Tom Doherty

Photo by Ed Monsour

Yeongmi Becomes a US Citizen

2009-06-18T08:31:00.002-06:00

Yeongmi was sworn in yesterday as a US citizen at a ceremony in Salt Lake City along with 194 other new citizens.

Here is a video of her taking the oath and talking about how she feels.

Lizard Eats Lizard

2009-06-16T10:04:00.007-06:00

Photo by Mike Conrad

Hiking out of Coyote Gulch this past Friday morning, we ran across a pair of lizards right in the middle of the trail in Hurricane Wash. One was a big Long-Nosed Leopard Lizard, about 8 inches from snout to hind legs. She was obviously a female because she had bright orange stripes that only appear on females during the mating season. The one being eaten, or at least attacked, was a Tiger Whiptail and while almost as long from nose to tail, was substantially smaller.

This was one of the most unique things I have ever seen in the outdoors. Both this lizards are normally quite shy, but here they were in the middle of the trail wrestling, one for dear life.

Mike & Braden Conrad got some photos and Scott Preston got photos and some video. In the middle of all the commotion, a third lizard showed up for some unexplained reason. As near as I can figure it was an Orange-Headed Spiny Lizard. We only got video of it, however, and it's hard to tell for sure.

I posted a video of the whole episode on You Tube at the following URL - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1HbgHBrQu0.

A Swell Weekend

2009-05-17T09:45:00.011-06:00

The lower of two large rock art panels in Short Canyon

I went on a campout this weekend with the scouts. We had the 12-13 year-old group (the scouts) and the 14-15 year-old group (the varsity scouts) with a total of 16 people.

We drove down Friday night to the Moore cutoff road and stopped at Dry Wash to see the petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks.

From there we drove around the edge of the Molen Reef to the mouth of Short Canyon. We had two 4WD pickups and a minivan. There were a few spots that were a bit iffy for the minivan, but we made it with no damage. The campsite was dry so we relied on the water we brought. After setting up camp four of us, Ryan Allen, Scott Preston, Brian Wheelhouse and I headed up the canyon to a spot where some pictographs had been geotagged on Flickr. By the time we got there it was getting dark and we wandered around looking for signs of rock art. Eventually, Scott and Brian found a small panel with two figures. One had wavy arms, so I am calling it the Wavy Arms panel.

An incredibly handsome guy next to the Wavy Arms panel.

We moved further up canyon along the ledge where we found these figures and then ran into a huge double panel. By the time we got there it was too dark to get good photos even with the flash, so we decided to revisit the site the next morning with the whole group.

I slept in the bed of my truck on Friday night. It was less lumpy than the ground and there was a bit of a canyon wind, so it was better than sleeping on a tarp as I had planned. I got up early enough to see the sunrise and enjoy it. After that we roused everyone up and headed back up the canyon.

I got some good photos of the double panel and we also found another small panel further upstream with a pair of figure, which I am calling the Bug-Eye panel because the larger of the two has big bug-eyes.

Scott shows monumental disrespect for the figures at the Bug-Eye panel

We explored further downstream along the same ledge and found some very faint petroglyphs that we would never have seen from the bottom of the canyon.

Scott also pointed out several other figures on the walls futher downstream that we had missed while hiking in. I got some telephoto shots of those, but there is not much detail.

I've posted all the photos from Short Canyon at the following URL - http://kerk.pomosa.com/myphotos/Rock%20Art/shortcanyon.htm

After Short Canyon we drove over to the entrance to Eagle Canyon just west of Forgotten Canyon. Our intent was to hike down into the canyon from here and then up Forgotten Canyon. However, a certain scout leader who shall remain unnamed, marked an incorrect waypoint and we ended up trying to enter through the wrong side canyon. In all fairness to the aforementioned scout leader, the descriptions of the entry were rather vague and there are at least three side canyons in the area. We tried the middle one first, right on the waypoint as marked and discovered that there was a cliff and pouroff that made it impossible to pass. We tried climbing out of the gully to the left and found a larger side canyon with somewhat manageable slopes in the upper reaches, but it has several cliffs and pouroffs further down that made it impassable too. The correct entry was to the right of our first obstacle, not the left, but I did not discover this until after we got back and I went over the terrain carefully using Google Earth. I'm still not sure how gradual the descent is. The first route looks easier, but you can't see vertical dropoffs very easily from satellite photos.

The second wrong way into Eagle Canyon

We decided to head home at this point because we were running out of time even if we had found the right entrance. We stopped at the Rocheseter Creek petroglyphs on the way back and made it home by 5:00 p.m.

Head of Sinbad Pictograph Panel

2009-05-12T19:27:00.010-06:00

One of the other sites we hit on Saturday was a Barrier Canyon Style panel near the Head of Sinbad right in the middle of the Swell. The interstate passes within a mile or so of the panel, but historically this part of the Swell has not had a lot of traffic. It differs in this regard from the panels in Buckhorn Draw and Black Dragon Canyon which are both located along rather obvious travel routes. As a result, unlike these panels, the small one at the Head of Sinbad is in close to pristine condition. You can even see the brushstrokcs on some of the figures.

The panel was all in shadow while we were there which made for pretty good photos. Again you can see them at my rock art page. The ones below are some of my favorites.

Detail of a spirit figure? Or a shaman?

Birds or Antelope?

I am convinced beyond all doubt that this figure is supposed to be ET.

Black Dragon Canyon Pictographs

2009-05-11T12:13:00.008-06:00

The Black Dragon?

I took a tour with my two youngest children this past Saturday. The Prehistory Museum at the College of Eastern Utah in Price does a regular series of expeditions through the San Rafael Swell, which they call "Saturday on the Swell". This last Saturday's was headed by Dr. Renee Barlow and focused on Native American rock art in the Swell. We visited 4 sites with the group and one of the most fascinating was the one in Black Dragon Canyon.

Black Dragon Canyon is, in fact, named for the pictographs there. There are two panels: one is a Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) panel like those found in Horseshoe Canyon. The other is roughly contemporaneous, meaning it is also three to five thousand years old. It is a completely different style, however. Being in a better overhang these pictographs are in better condition than the BCS panel which is more exposed to the elements and has faded a bit. Dr. Barlow informed us that the closest match to these pictographs comes from Southern Mexico.

Black Dragon Wash is easy enough to access. You need to exit the westbound lane of I-70 about 3/4 a mile after it crosses the San Rafael River. There is gate in the fence. Follow the dirt road north for just over a mile and you will come to a sign pointing up the wash to your left. If you don't have a four-wheel drive, park here and walk up the wash. You can drive (slowly) up the wash if you have four-wheel drive. From the sign to the panel is .65 miles. The canyon narrows and turns to the right and the panels are on the northeast side of the canyon as it loops back to the left again. The BCS panel is located on the cliffs above the rubble pile. The second panel is located to the left of this, lower down, under a slight overhang.

I have posted all the photos I took here, as ususal, on my rock art page. These are reduced resolution shots. Anyone interested can email me and I'll send you the full-resolution originals. The light was not ideal for the BCS panel, but shots of the second panel, which was in shade, turned out quite well.

One interesting thing I noticed after I got back is that someo of the figures in both panels have been outlined in what looks like white chalk. This seems to indicate that the outlining was done sometime after both sets of figures were drawn. How long, I can't begin to guess. Black Canyon Wash was a well-used route through the San Rafael Swell for many, many years. The chalk outlines could be modern or very old.

8-12 foot figures in the Barrier Canyon Style

Example of non-BCS figures

Coyote Gulch Pictograph Panel

2009-04-30T14:09:00.022-06:00

The Central Figures

The pictograph panel in lower Coyote Gulch is located about half a mile downstream from Coyote Natural Bridge. It is located on the north wall of the canyon at the top of a sandy hill. There is a very clear path running up the hill to the panel.

I have posted all the photos I took here on my rock art webpage.

Most of the images are pictographs painted on the rock, but there is a faint hourglass shapped figure scratched into the rock. Also something that looks like a pair of horns that have been pecked into the rock deeper than the scratching.

The art shows a Fremont influence. At least the light grey-yellow painted figures which are similar to the horned figures found in Fremont rock art. The other figures are more difficult to place, especially for an amatuer like myself. In some cases, like the object we labelled the tennis racquet, the red pigment looks older than the grey. But in the case of what Dave called, "The Chief", the red looks just as recent as the grey.

When we looked around we noticed that someone had piled up some of the stones in the area to look like a low wall. I am skeptical that this is authentic, but the stones may have well been builiding block of earlier structures. We also found two circles that had numerous bits of corn cob, squash rind, bone, and hard flints. One was inside the low wall. The other was in what looked like a fire ring, but some of the rocks in the ring were actually adobe, not stone. Again, I suspect these have not been lying here like this for hundreds of years. Most likely they are objects that hikers have run across and deposited here since they saw earlier hikers had done so. Dave raised an interesting question though, why hasn't somebody just walked off with all this stuff? Perhaps they have, just not all of it. Or do Coyote Gulch hikers have enough civic virtue to only look and not steal? At least two do.

Looking around the shelf where these two circles were (located under a slight overhang to the west of the panel) we noticed little bits of black charcoal mixed in with the sand. Even a casual observer can see that this site was occupied in some form in the past.

In order to find out more about the site I checked out two published articles. One is a paper by Phil R. Geib, entitled "New Evidence for the Antiquity of Fremont Occupation in Glen Canyon, South-central Utah." The other is an anthropological paper from the University Of Utah written in 1959 by James H. Gunnerson, entitled "1957 Excavations, Glen Canyon Area."

Gunnerson reports on excavations at three sites in Coyote Gulch, but the sites are all several miles upstream from the pictograph panel. Geib reports on radiocarbon dating from the richest site there, called the Alvey site, and from four other sites in the Escalante drainage. I have not been able to find any published information on this particular site, so it may not have ever been excavated. Nonetheless, information about the other sites sheds light on who was living in the area and when.

Gieb finds evidence from his radiocarbone dating that the Fremont were well-entrenched in the area, raising corn & squash and using pottery during the period from 200 AD to 900 AD. This date is a bit earlier than previous researchers had hypothesised. The Alvey site consisted of three layers the middle of which corresponds to this time period. The top layer had objects of both Fremont and Anasazi origin mixed together. This indicates that the Anasazi appeared here after the Fremont. The most common dates I have come across for the Anasazi are in the range of 1000 to 1250 AD.

According to Don Montoya, Museum Curator at the Anasazi State Park Museum in Boulder, UT, there is rock art scattered through this general area dating back as far as 5500 BC. So, the figures that are not obviously Fremont could be archaic or Anasazi. Or perhaps of some other orgin altogether.

Bottom line is that the side trip up the sandy hill is well worth the effort. The pictographs are in excellent condition and you can get up fairly close to them to see what they look like.

Dave Spencer at the Panel

I am informed by Dave who was informed by other knowledgable sources named Elliot, that there is another well-known pictograph panel in the Gulch. When we were hiking in I saw a well-worn trail high up the side of the canyon on another sand hill that I suspected might lead to pictographs or a cliff dwelling. Perhaps this is where they are.

I found a photo of a different panel on Flickr. Perhaps this is the other site

Update

I enhanced the contrast on one of the photos and reproduce it below:

It looks to me like there are two more faintly scratched figures here. The "tennis racquet" is painted over the top of one. On closer examination, it may be that it was scratched over the top of the racquet. If fact, it may have been painted, but if so the paint has mostly worn off. The other is just to the right of the central white horned figure. You can make out the horns to the right of its head.

Actually, all the easily visible figures look like they are painted on top of or around older, fainter ones.

Another Update

Here are two photos that show the main figures in the panel. One show where I think there are faint horned hourglass figures. Maybe I'm just seeing things, though.

And I have an opinion from an expert as well. Dr. Renee Barlow from the CEU Prehistory Museum in Price says in an email:

"It is quite beautiful, and does appear to be somewhat impressionistic with elements resembling Fremont figures. I think though, that overall the panel does not look like typical Fremont rock art in this region, so it may be difficult to assign a definitive cultural affiliation. If the rock art were dated, that would help of course."

Report on Hiking Coyote Gulch

2009-04-25T06:47:00.012-06:00

Jacob Hamblin Arch from Downstream

The backpacking trip to Coyote Gulch went off without a hitch this week. OK, it went off with only minor hitches.

After much debate, we opted to go in via the trailhead near Chimney Rock, rather than the climb down the slickrock near Jacob Hamblin Arch. This added a couple of miles to the hike in, but the descent was relatively gradual and the scenery was great. It required route finding over the sand and slickrock for about a mile or so from the trailhead into Hurricane Wash, but the entry was easy to spot after cresting a ridge after a half mile. The descent over the slickrock into the wash was a bit round about to avoid potholes and such, but not difficult.

The young men from my church group are planning on doing an overnighter here in June. Dave's son is also thinking about taking his scouts here sometime in the future. So with this in mind I wrote up some thoughts on how one might approach this hike with young men and only one night in the gulch.

We hiked in a little past Jacob Hamblin Arch near the base of the slickrock exit there. The park service has installed a two-seat composting toilet there because it is such a popular site. Many people like to camp there before climbing out along the ridge the next morning. We counted 4-5 different groups in the general area.

Dave brought bratwurst for dinner which he had frozen before the trip and they were nicely thawed by dinner time.

The next day we hiked downstream further with daypacks and the going was much easier. We made it about four miles downstream at a very leisurely pace. The highlights included several beautiful cascades and waterfalls, a natural bridge, a cliffside arch, and a stunning set of pictographs. I will devote a whole post to the pictographs later, but in the meantime you can view all the photos at my website.

The trail was very easy to follow. The only semi-tough spots were a boulder field just upstream of Cliff Arch, and a pair of waterfalls just downstream of Cliff Arch. You need to bypass the later two, but the trail was easy to miss and we ended up above the lower falls with a 15 foot drop or scramble down and no obvious way back up. A group of French hikers came up from below while we were eating lunch there and we just sort of shrugged at each other. We couldn't find a way down and they couldn't find a way up.

We turned around at this point because I was getting tired and Dave was starting to feel blisters on his feet. This turned out to be a good idea because the blisters were more serious than he thought initially.

We hiked out the next morning the way we had come in. The climb out of Hurricane Wash was a beast. We knew the general direction was almost directly due east, but the trailhead is not visible from the wash and you have to take a twisting route up through the slickrock to avoid the really steep spots and the potholes. We did not take a waypoint reading at the trailhead and this turned out to be a big mistake. Instead, we read off the coordinates from the map. These are 37º 24' 59" N and 111º 05' 54" W. However we made a typing error and put in 25' rather than 24'. That turns out to be 1.15 miles north of the trailhead. So after climbing out of the wash we took a heading on the GPS and headed off to the NW rather than due west. This took us to much higher terrain and over some steep sandy ground. I was pretty pooped out by the time we crested the ridge. Dave got there first and said, "Well, if there was a truck out there I would see it for sure and I don't see one." The truck was about a half mile to our SW, however, and about 90 degress off the heading we had been taking. The rest of the way was pretty easy, but we were both exhausted by the time we got back to the truck.

To top everything off, the truck would not start. Everything was totally dead. Its a quirk of the vehicle (since repaired) that the battery connector occasionally comes loose, so you have to pop the hood and jiggle it around to get a good connection. I knew this and wan't too worried, but I think Dave was for at least a little bit.

All in all it was a wonderful trip. The scenery was stunning and the hiking was fun despite the challenges. The pictographs were a very pleasant surprize, much better than expected. More on that later.

Stuart Varney: Obama Wants to Control the Banks

2009-04-04T10:55:00.004-06:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123879833094588163.html

I worried that this would happen. I hoped it wouldn't. I should have known better.

Why are we letting this happen? Is this what we, collectively, really want? If not, then why do we seem to care so little?

Highlights:

Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He's been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.

Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can't a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can't special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit -- until now.

Which brings me to the Pay for Performance Act, just passed by the House. This is an outstanding example of class warfare. I'm an Englishman. We invented class warfare, and I know it when I see it. This legislation allows the administration to dictate pay for anyone working in any company that takes a dime of TARP money. This is a whip with which to thrash the unpopular bankers, a tool to advance the Obama administration's goal of controlling the financial system.

Robot Achieves Scientific First

2009-04-03T08:02:00.002-06:00

This is really astounding if you stop to think about it. The robot formulated a hypothesis and carried out a series of experiments designed to test that hypothesis resulting in new scientific knowledge. All without any input from his human designers. This is amazing! It's not just manual workers who stand to lose jobs to machines, but we Ph.D.'s may need to start worrying. Fortunately, I do have tenure.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2b97d9a-1f96-11de-a7a5-00144feabdc0.html

Ethics in Government

2009-04-03T07:57:00.001-06:00

Today's Shoe Comic

Idiots We?

2009-03-30T08:41:00.005-06:00

Not this week. Well not as much as we could be anyway.

This was my truck this morning as I left for work.

The forecasts for Escalante, UT (the closest town to Coyote Gulch) are mixed, but apparently it is snowing there this morning and the temps are in the teens. The rest of the week looks dry, but it seems likely that the overnight temps in the gulch will be well below freezing. And there is wind in the forecast. None of these are unsurmountable obstacles, of course, but the whole point of going is to enjoy the trip, not to build character by overcoming adversity. (This will not stop me from claiming I overcame a great deal of adversity, but I don't actually want to experience any.) So after a lengthy conversation of less than 5 minutes this morning, we both decided to postpone the trip until later in the month when the weather MAY be better.

Here's the National Weather Service forecast as of 9:00 a.m.:

Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 56. West northwest wind between 3 and 11 mph.
Tuesday Night: A 30 percent chance of rain, mainly after midnight. Partly cloudy, with a low around 30. West northwest wind between 10 and 13 mph.
Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 51. Breezy, with a west northwest wind 10 to 13 mph increasing to between 19 and 22 mph.
Wednesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 26.
Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 61.
Thursday Night: A slight chance of rain. Partly cloudy, with a low around 33.
Friday: A chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 60.

These lows are for the town of Escalante, the canyon at Coyote Gulch gets less sun, so it will be a bit colder.

Gary Becker Interview in the Wall Street Journal

2009-03-27T09:24:00.002-06:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123759849467801485.html

A very interesting interview. It is well worth reading the whole thing. One particular part that caught my eye was Becker's comments on policy during the current economic crisis.

Yet the professor is no laissez-faire ideologue. He says we have to think about what the government can do to "moderate the hit to the real economy," and he says it should start with "the first law of medicine: Do no harm." Instead it has done harmful things, and chief among them has been the "inconsistent policies with the large institutions . . . We let some big banks fail, like Lehman Brothers. We let less-good banks, big [ones] like Bear Stearns, sort of get bailed out and now we bailed out AIG, an insurance company."

Mr. Becker says that he opposed the "implicit protection" that the government gave to Bear Stearns bondholders to the tune of "$30 billion or so." So I wonder if letting Lehman Brothers go belly up was a good idea. "I'm not sure it was a bad idea, aside from the inconsistency." He points out that "the good assets were bought by Nomura and a number of other banks," and he refers to a paper by Stanford economics professor John Taylor showing that the market initially digested the Lehman failure with calm. It was only days later, Mr. Taylor maintains, that the market panicked when it saw more uncertainty from the Treasury. Mr. Becker says Mr. Taylor's work is "not 100% persuasive but it sort of suggest[s] that maybe the Lehman collapse wasn't the cause of the eventual collapse" of the credit markets.

He returns to the perniciousness of Treasury's inconsistency. "I do believe that in a risky environment which is what we are in now, with the market pricing risk very high, to add additional risk is a big problem, and I think this is what we are doing when we don't have consistent policies. We add to the risk."

I am becoming increasingly convinced that the big lesson from this crisis once the dust has settled will be that government policy needs transparency. The take-away from the Asian financial crisis in the 1990's was that banks and finance needed transparency. This crisis is showing that governments need to convey information on the fundamental rules or principles which drive policy and when people get mixed signals or the signals are not easily interpretable, the result is an big uptick in uncertainty. So called pragmatic policy-making that evaluates each mini-crisis independently and lets one firm fail while another seemingly similar firm is bailed out is counterproductive.

The geniuses at Econosseur (disclosure: one of them has the office across the hall from mine) have posted a nice clip from a recent South Park episode that illustrates this rather nicely.

Art of the Ming Dynasty

2009-03-27T09:04:00.001-06:00

A 12-photo slide show of an exhibit currently showing in St. Louis. Also a link to an article on the exhibit. This is some pretty cool stuff!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123802055331341637.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB123801614813541293%26articleTabs%3Dslideshow

Mossberg: Some Favorite Apps That Make iPhone Worth the Price

2009-03-27T08:49:00.002-06:00

From WSJ - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123801598971341281.html

Highlights:

Despite all the economic misery, the past nine months have been a little like the heady days of the early 1980s when the personal computer was just getting rolling and new software programs were popping up like weeds.

That's because we have a new computing platform, the modern hand-held computer, which is also attracting new software and new functions in droves.

The leader in this phenomenon has been Apple's iPhone, though I expect that this year a few competitors will also begin to attract loads of apps, or widgets. These are small software programs, easily downloaded and purchased, that often connect to the Internet to perform a specific function.

We've seen this before, on a smaller scale, with third-party software for the original Palm platform, for Windows Mobile, and, to a limited extent, for the BlackBerry. But these new apps can be far more sophisticated, and they are appearing at a much faster rate.

Mossberg's list:

Tweetie ($2.99)
Facebook (free)
Kindle (free)
ICE (99 cents)
Easy Wi-Fi ($2.99)
ReaddleDocs ($9.99)
Quordy ($2.99)
Google Mobile (free)

Further Plans for Coyote Gulch

2009-03-26T22:03:00.003-06:00

Having decided the the Jacob Hamblin Arch entrance to lower Coyote Gulch is perhaps "Kerkable", I have been turning my attention to other sites in the area.

Right now the plan is to hike in on Tuesday afternoon and camp somewhere close to the entrance under an overhanging cliff, if possible. On Wednesday (the day that looks most likely to be wet according to the forecasts today) we will hike downstream to the Escalante and Stevens Arch and back. On Thursday we will sightsee upstream in the morning and then hike out around noon or so. We'll drive back north and stop to see four scenic gulches in upper Coyote Gulch. We will either camp near the truck, or perhaps near one of the gulches. We'll walk through them on Thursay afternoon and Friday morning before heading back home

Here are descriptions of each of them:

Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch
Peekaboo Gulch
Spooky Gulch
Brimstone Gulch

Getting Ready for Coyote Gulch

2009-03-24T17:31:00.019-06:00

I am off backpacking with a colleague from work next week at Coyote Gulch in the Escalante drainage north of Lake Powell in Southern Utah. This is a pretty popular destination and so there are lots of decriptions of the hike. One of the most popular routes is to drive to the trailhead along Forty Mile Ridge and walk about 2 miles to the rim of the Escalante Canyon. Here there is a crack in the wall that will take you down 15-20 feet or so to the top of a large sand dune. You can see this very clearly on Google Maps below.

View Larger Map

The exit that seems to be most often used is a ridge of sandstone just east of Jacob Hamblin Arch, at the center of the map below:

View Larger Map

My colleague talked with his son, who has done the hike before, and he said that going in and out this route is, "doable". Now, I know that doable for him is not the same as doable for me, but he also realizes that this is true for his dad, my colleague. So he and his brother invented the term, "dadable", meaning my colleague could do it. He says the route is "dadable". My question is whether or not the route is "Kerkable", which I define as "can be done in a wheelchair."

I have been looking around for some indication via text or photos of what this way in and out looks like. I found the following today:

Here's a group the came in from the north along the spine of Jacob Hamblin Arch and out the south along the path we would take. It's hard to tell how difficult they thought it was since it was a bit anticlimactic compared to climbing the arch. http://www.tumtum.com/climbing/trips/Escalante98_part2.shtml
Here's a discription of the typical route: in through the crack in the wall and out via the slickrock climb. This one has some good photos of the way out. http://braydenslife.blogspot.com/2007/10/coyote-gulch-4-day-hike.html
Another account of this route from someone who is a bit more skeptical about the ease of this route out. http://bristleconepine.blogspot.com/2007/05/coyote-gulch-in-may.html

UPDATE 3/25

Here is a video from YouTube showing a couple of people climbing out of Coyote Gulch via the sandstone fin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjD2AIRpB0
This the first group above on another trip a few years later that went in and out this route. They call it "the slabs". They also came down the spine of Jacob Hamblin Arch on their way out. http://www.tumtum.com/climbing/trips/Escalante01_part1.shtml

Bloomberg: Congress ‘Hypocrisy’ on Company Trips Irks U.S. Hotel Industry

2009-03-23T09:38:00.001-06:00

Hypocricy is exactly the right word.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aRQWnoXi_6Zk&refer=worldwide

About a dozen Democrats, including Dodd, 64, gathered at the Marriott-operated Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, Florida. Donors who gave at least $15,000 were invited and offered a “coastal view” room at the group rate of $469, according to the Democrats’ invitation.

At least 11 Republican senators held a similar retreat at The Breakers resort in Palm Beach. Rooms could be had for $475 a night. For another $292, participants could play in a golf tournament. The invitation urged guests to make reservations for the resort’s spa “indulgences.”

Economics Is the 'Just Right' Liberal-Arts Major

2009-03-23T09:18:00.002-06:00

Thanks to Mark Showalter for pointing out this essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education by David Colander.

http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/Economic_Major_CHE.pdf

Highlights:

To that end, I asked my students why they considered the other social sciences
easy. The answer was twofold. First, far fewer courses in those fields are taught quantitatively than is the case in economics, even though much of the relevant research work is highly quantitative. Other social-science curricula could challenge students more by adding some applied-statistics, math, or computer-science courses as standard requirements. The second reason my students considered the other majors too easy was that they believed the grading standards were undemanding. If they are right, those standards could be raised. For example, social-science courses could require students to write substantial papers that are subject to rigorous standards of logic and exposition.
When I asked my students how the natural sciences could become "just right" majors, they suggested that those departments focus less on training future scientists and more on educating future citizens about the exciting developments in science today. That way, science majors would be able to wait to become scientists in graduate school; they could learn about science during their undergraduate years. One way to accomplish this might be reducing both the number of required courses and the number that require labs. My students also suggested that natural-science introductory classes could be changed from "hurdles" — classes designed to scare away students who are not fully dedicated — to "gateways" that allow students to experience the wonder of science while welcoming them into the field.

Today's Fortune Cookie

2009-03-20T13:11:00.002-06:00

From Chen's Noodle House where the Econ Department went for lunch:

This seems applicable in my life on so many dimensions.

Dilbert from March 10th

2009-03-20T09:40:00.002-06:00

I don't think I am this bad. Yet.

Today's "In The Bleachers"

2009-03-20T09:33:00.002-06:00

Yet another reason why skiing is dangerous.

Kimberly A. Strassel: 'Greed' Is Not Good

2009-03-20T08:17:00.003-06:00

From today's WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123751023925990683.html

Bankers are not the only ones who succumb to greed.

Highlights:

Once upon a time, Washington told the nation a story. It was a dark tale of economic distress brought on by villainous, greedy Wall Street bankers.

The storytellers loved this yarn. The public wanted some one to blame for their unemployment, their foreclosures, their falling 401ks, and Wall Street made an easy target. It was also so much simpler than the real story of societal credit mania, in which the Federal Reserve, Congress, regulators, credit-rating agencies, Fannie and Freddie, Wall Street -- and yes, many homeowners and consumers -- were all complicit.

...

This spectacle has left the financial community with one impression: Stay away. What healthy bank, what hedge fund, what private equity firm wants to take part in an Obama plan to sell off toxic assets, or to revive consumer lending, with the knowledge that they might be Washington's newest bonfire? Executives are already working to get out of TARP, fearful of political punishment. This despite a recession, falling house prices and growing bank losses.

As it happens, the administration has suggested the banks might need yet more public capital, not less. But just who in Congress is today prepared to vote to provide more funding, with greedy AIG on the public mind? It's too busy passing laws to levy 90% taxes on bank employees everywhere.

Even More on the AIG Bonuses

2009-03-19T17:48:00.007-06:00

Well, the House of Representatives has voted to impose a retroactive 90% tax on bonuses that it explicitly voted to allow only a month ago. Our congressmen could argue that they didn't know this provision was in the legislation when they passed it. And that is almost certainly the truth. However, parking cop might say, "Ignorance of the law is no defense." If congress didn't know what was in the bill, perhaps they should not have voted on it until they knew what they were voting on. I can feel no sympathy for a group of people that behaves this way.

Perhaps a better phrasing more in line with today's events would be, "The law is no defense."

Earlier, I compared our political system to that in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. However, I think an even better comparison. Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. The US is on track to become the new Venezuela.

Perhaps it is time to stop blogging before the thugs come to visit me at my home.

On a more practical note. I assume these taxes must also pass the Senate and perhaps the world's greatest deliberative body will actually stop to deliberate and think about the matter. But, assuming the taxes do become law, is there grounds for the bonus recipients to sue on constitutional grounds? I don't know the answer, but the whole idea of retroactively taxing a selected minority seems opposed to the principles behind the constitution if it is not actually unconstitutional.

The precendent is also a very, very bad one. If bankers become politically popular someday and unions are not, what is to stop a pro-union congress from retroactively taxing unions on supposed moral grounds? Could a liberal leaning state legislature (perhaps like that in California) vote to impose taxes on the LDS church in retaliation for the money spent by its members on the Proposition 8 vote? To me the principle seems the same.

President Obama's Teleprompter has Its Own Blog

2009-03-19T15:27:00.002-06:00

And it's pretty funny.

http://baracksteleprompter.blogspot.com/

More on the AIG Bonuses

2009-03-19T08:13:00.005-06:00

According to this AP report, the House of Representatives is set to vote today on a bill to tax away 90% of the bonuses awarded by AIG.

It was also reported yesterday, that the language of the stimulus bill that explicitly allowed these bonuses was inserted by Senator Chris Dodd. Dodd claimed, however, that the language was inserted at the insistence of officials in the Obama administration. The Obama camp, of course, denies this is the case.

So hit rewind for just a minute and think back to a month ago when the stimulus package passed. Recall that even the leadership of congress that was pushing this bill so heavily had not had a chance to read the whole thing before the vote. Is it any wonder that we end up with all sorts of unintentional consequences given how little vetting to which the package was submitted? I suspect that the AIG bonuses are only a small fraction of the problems that have been, are, and will be generated by that poorly thought-out piece of legislation.

I love this quote from the Bloomberg report:

Other Democrats who voted for the stimulus bill have ramped up criticism of AIG’s bonuses, including Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who told reporters, “I think the time has come to exercise our ownership rights.”

Why bother with the fiction of owernship rights? The congress can confiscate what it wants from whoever it wants by simply passing a well-targeted piece of legislation. The only difference between doing it this way and the way that Saddam Hussein would've done something similar is the political theater associated with a formal vote in an elected assembly.

I bothers me a great deal that whenever politicans are caught doing something immoral one of the pat defenses they roll out is that their actions were not illegal. Here we have a case where it is politically convenient to ignore the law and act in defense of higher morals. But, isn't such selective morality also immoral?

WSJ Editorial: Obama's AIG Panic

2009-03-18T21:41:00.004-06:00

The editorial board raises some very good points.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742023932678335.html

Highlights:

Senator Chris Dodd, down in the 2010 election polls after his sweetheart Countrywide mortgages, is busy rewriting the TARP compensation limits he only recently stuck in the stimulus bill. His last-minute measure explicitly exempted from compensation limits bonuses agreed to prior to the passage of the stimulus bill: "The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009 . . ." So Senator Hedge Fund is suddenly morphing into Huey Long to save his career.

This is all too much even for Rep. Charlie Rangel, the House's chief tax writer, who says the tax code shouldn't be deployed as a "political weapon." He's right. AIG's managers may be this week's political target of choice, but the message to every banker in America, indeed every business in America, is that you could be next. At least we haven't yet seen the resolution that was proposed in the English parliament, in 1720 in the aftermath of the South Sea bubble, that bankers be tied in sacks filled with snakes and tipped into the Thames. But it's still early days.
...

The Beltway's banker baiting seems to increase in direct proportion to the government's incompetence in nurturing a financial recovery. Anger rises when Americans learn after three bailout revisions that they haven't been told the truth that the AIG nationalization was a conduit to save counterparties, and even hedge funds, that gambled on housing. Only two weeks ago, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn told Congress he couldn't disclose who AIG's counterparties were. Americans also wonder why taxpayer guarantees should be provided to Citigroup, a three-time loser, but with little accountability for the board and managers who brought the company low.

Reviving a financial system is a long process that requires a combination of capital support, workout ability and discipline for mistakes. The public has to believe the end result will be a better, sturdier system in return for taxpayer support, while at the same time being assured that gamblers aren't saved from their own mistakes.

If this balance is beyond the ability of Mr. Obama's current economic team, he needs a better team. The worst mistake he can make is to deflect attention away from government's mistakes by joining the attack on the very bankers he needs to lead an economic recovery. That's how a deep recession becomes a Depression.

Do We Believe in the Rule of Law in the US?

2009-03-17T13:58:00.005-06:00

The pat answer is "yes, of course." Perhaps followed by, "What a stupid question."

Read the following AP article and then see if you still think it is a stupid question.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090317/ap_on_go_co/aig_outrage

Here are a couple of telling quotes:

"Recipients of these bonuses will not be able to keep all of their money," declared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in an unusually strong threat delivered on the Senate floor.
"If you don't return it on your own, we will do it for you," said Chuck Schumer of New York.

I am not saying the AIG bonuses were proper. But they were clearly legal and if AIG had not paid them they would've been sued by the people that "earned" them under the terms of their contracts with the company.

Are we going to anull any or all contracts that outrage the public or the political class? If so, then in the words of one of my colleagues over lunch, "In what meaningful way does our political system differ from that of any tin-horn dictatorship?"

Rather than spending political capital exacting revenge, perhaps our exhalted leaders could concentrate more on passing appropriate policies so these types of things don't happen in the future. Had the federal government not bailed out AIG in the first place, no one would no be complaining about $170 million dollars in bonuses being paid out of taxpayer money.

Lefrak and Shilling: Immigrants Can Help Fix the Housing Bubble

2009-03-17T08:55:00.002-06:00

Now here is an interesting mix of policies. Allow immigrants who buy houses to become legal permanent residents of the US.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123725421857750565.html

Highlights

Excess inventory is the mortal enemy of house prices, which have already fallen 27% since the peak in early 2006. We predict another 14% drop through the end of 2010 if nothing is done to eliminate the surplus.

...

A better idea is to offer permanent residence status to the many foreigners who are clamoring to get into the U.S. -- if they buy houses of minimal values (not shacks). They wouldn't need to live in those houses, but in order to remove the unit from the total housing market, they couldn't rent them. Their temporary resident status granted upon purchase would become permanent after, perhaps, five years, if they still owned the houses and maintained clean records. The mere announcement of this program might well stop the ongoing collapse in house prices, especially in cities such as Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix and San Francisco, where prices are down 40% -- but where many foreigners like to live.

WSJ Editorial: The Real AIG Outrage

2009-03-17T08:37:00.002-06:00

The Wall Street Journal's take on the AIG mess from today's edition:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123725551430050865.html

Highlights:

Given that the government has never defined "systemic risk," we're also starting to wonder exactly which system American taxpayers are paying to protect. It's not capitalism, in which risk-takers suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And in some cases it's not even American. The U.S. government is now in the business of distributing foreign aid to offshore financiers, laundered through a once-great American company.
...

The Washington crowd wants to focus on bonuses because it aims public anger on private actors, not the political class. But our politicians and regulators should direct some of their anger back on themselves -- for kicking off AIG's demise by ousting Mr. Greenberg, for failing to supervise its bets, and then for blowing a mountain of taxpayer cash on their AIG nationalization.

Whether or not these funds ever come back to the Treasury, regulators should now focus on getting AIG back into private hands as soon as possible. And if Treasury and the Fed want to continue bailing out foreign banks, let them make that case, honestly and directly, to American taxpayers.

The focus of our political class on the excesses of the private sector really is astounding in its hypocracy. Not that the private sector is entirely guiltless, but the amount of money wasted on AIG salary bonuses is chump change compared to the waste the government itself generates.

Today's In The Bleachers

2009-03-15T09:11:00.002-06:00

North Korea Economy Watch: Kaesong Zone battered and bruised

2009-03-14T18:53:00.002-06:00

http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2009/03/14/kaesong-zone-bruised-and-battered/

North Korea is a mess, of course. This blog entry illustrates why it is such a mess.

Breaking Apple's Grip on the iPhone

2009-03-14T18:46:00.002-06:00

An interesting read from the Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629876097346481.html

How open should software be for the iPhone? It lacks a lot of obvious features it could easily have, as illustrated by the number (1.7 million?) of jailbroken iPhones out there. I am tempted to install the Cydia software on mine from time to time, but frankly, the idea that this voids the warranty or that the software might be illegal does bother me enough that I have not done it yet.

MotionX-GPS for the iPhone

2009-03-14T15:16:00.007-06:00

I took my first hike today in a long while. My son, Alan, went with me and I tried out the GPS feature built into the iPhone for the first time in any serious way. I bought MotionX-GPS at the iTunes app store and tried it out on the hike. It is a pretty neat feature and works very well with the iPhone.

One disadvantage is the battery use. It was a short hike and I started with the battery at about 75%. By the time we were at the turn-back point 1:15 later the battery was at 25%. I probably could've done much better by turning off the 3G and some other features, but this was still a significant drain on the battery. Undoubtedly much of the drain is due to the app being in contact with either cell phone towers or GPS satellites almost constantly. This produces really cool tracks, but they may not be worth it for longer hikes. If I am going to use this for longer hikes or backpacking, I will have to turn off the phone between stops and only take waypoints.

You can either take just waypoint data, or you can also take a snapshot of the spot using the iPhone's camera. This automatically sets a waypoint at the same time. Once you are done you can email yourself the waypoints and/or the track data. These come in .gpx and .kmz formats, the latter of which imports easily into Google Earth.

A sample kmz file with both the track and the waypoints from today's hike can be found at this link . The file is 1121K in size and includes photos taken with most of the waypoints.

All-in-all the app worked great. As long as I am willing to strictly manage the battery drain I think this is a suitable substitute for a stand-alone handheld GPS. At least for the type and amount of hiking I plan on doing.

Pepper … and Salt

2009-03-13T12:09:00.002-06:00

From today's Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123683152555005003.html?mod=article-outset-box

Megan McArdle: Obama too sunny?

2009-03-12T13:52:00.003-06:00

This blog entry was included in James Taranto's Best of the Web Today and is worth a read.

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/03/obama_too_sunny.php

Highlights:

Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I'm not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that's, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.

Mary Tompkins Lewis: The Tale of the Temeraire

2009-03-10T13:55:00.001-06:00

A fascinating article on J.M.W. Turner's painting of the H.M.S. Temeraire, a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed to the shipbreaker's yard.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123637988614357383.html

William McGurn: When Congress Spends, Worse Is Better

2009-03-10T08:31:00.002-06:00

Why does congress pass huge bills that are so obviously laden with pork?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123664192950777585.html

Highlights:

What the public does not understand is that the more earmarks there are in a bill, the harder it will be to vote against it. The reason is simple: With every earmark, a congressman or senator gains a personal stake in the passage of a bill he or she might otherwise oppose.

...

"Washington is like 'the Godfather,'" says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "The earmarks are favors from the Don. And once you've asked for his help, you're in it together -- whether you want to be or not."

Peggy Noonan: A Tragedy of Errors, and an Accounting

2009-03-06T08:58:00.003-07:00

An interesting contrast between the response of the Marine Corp to an avoidable plane crash in San Diego, and the mortgage meltdown.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629513232645561.html

Highlights:

The day after the report I heard from a young Naval aviator in predeployment training north of San Diego. He flies a Super Hornet, sister ship to the plane that went down. He said the Marine investigation "kept me up last night" because of how it contrasted with "the buck-passing we see" in the government and on Wall Street. He and his squadron were in range of San Diego television stations when they carried the report's conclusions live. He'd never seen "our entire wardroom crowded around a television" before. They watched "with bated breath." At the end they were impressed with the public nature of the criticism, and its candor: "There are still elements within the government that take personal responsibility seriously." He found himself wondering if the Marines had been "too hard on themselves." "But they are, after all, Marines."

By contrast, he says, when the economy came crashing down, "nowhere did we see a board come out and say: 'This is what happened, these are the decisions these particular people made, and this was the result. They are no longer a part of our organization.' There was no timeline of events or laymen's explanation of how a credit derivative was actually derived. We did not see congressmen get on television with charts and eviscerate their organization and say, 'These were the men who in 2003 allowed Freddie and Fannie unlimited rein over mortgage securities.' Instead we saw . . . everybody against everybody else with no one stepping forth and saying, 'We screwed up…'" There is no one in national leadership who could convincingly "assign blame," and no one "who could or would accept it."

One of Easterly's points in his lecture here at BYU yesterday is that a key reason aid agencies fail is that there is no accountability. Does this principle extend beyond aid agencies?

Charles Krauthammer: Deception at Core of Obama Plans

2009-03-06T08:26:00.008-07:00

Worth a read. If I were cynical I might begin to believe that the recession is not, in itself, a priority for the administration, but rather a convenient vehicle for pushing through a variety of social reforms that would otherwise be much more difficult for the general public to stomach. Fortunately, I belive in hope and not cynicism.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/a_dishonest_gimmicky_budget.html

Highlights (emphasis is mine):

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.
...
Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.

Policy Lessons from the Latest Recession

2009-03-05T21:29:00.003-07:00

I have been pondering lately what I think the long-run lesson(s) from this recession will be. Of course, this is pretty hard to guess at right now. However, lack of knowledge or perspective has never been much of a barrier to pontification, so here goes.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that government policy can really mess things up. The home mortgage crisis, severe as it was, should not have caused a recession as serious and as deep as the one we are experiencing. John McCain was widely criticized late last summer when he said the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Ex post he was very, very wrong. But at the time what he said was pretty consistent with the evidence.

When the government (and I include the Federal Reserve under that blanket) decided that it had to move to shore up the banking system, one of the things it did was signal to the average consumer that the economy was in a lot worse shape than they previously thought. Couple that with the haphazard way in which policy was made, with few or no discernable principles determining which institutions were too big to fail and which were not, and you create an environment with a lot of uncertainty. The congress' on - off -on passage of the TARP bill was another example of policy being made in an environment of great uncertainty.

Current policy is still being made under this rubric. The stimulus package was passed without a single member of congress having read the bill. How much certainty does that inspire? There are similar problems with the budget.

We may be moving away from policy under extreme uncertainty. At least the president's address to congress cleared up the uncertainty about his policy priorities that were never addressed during the campaign. However, the policies are so clearly bad that we are begining to replace uncertainty about whether things will be good or bad with certainty that they will be bad.

Even that may not be true. If the policies are bad enough, then congress may actually fail to enact them.

The lesson I have drawn so far is that clear policy principles are really important. I suspect that even adherance to suboptimal policies early on would have been better than moving all over the map haphazardly.

Easterly on State-Promoted Industrialization

2009-02-27T11:38:00.002-07:00

Easterly will be visiting BYU next week. His blog today has implications for the likely effectiveness of the Obama administration's attempt to drive the economy via the government.

http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/2009/02/asian_success_mythology.html

Highlights:

So my general claim is that heavy reliance on markets is associated with long-run success, using as data the Asian successes, the earlier European and North America/Australia/New Zealand successes, the failure of non-market central planning in the Communist Bloc, and the failures of statist policies in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. It is true that Asian successes used state intervention more than the earlier European examples, but on average state intervention does poorly across all countries, so we have no Popper-standard evidence that state intervention contributed to their success. So my claim is based on evidence, not ideology.

So I stand by my claim that the 66-year-old idea of state-promoted industrialization has failed, and that it was irresponsible of Collier and UNIDO to resurrect it as a “major conceptual breakthrough.”

In The Bleachers

2009-02-27T10:03:00.001-07:00

Today's In the Bleachers comic strip made me chuckle.

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/inthebleachers

Daniel Henninger: A Radical Presidency

2009-02-26T10:32:00.003-07:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123561433557778201.html

He sounds very, very worried. We now know for sure that the President is just as liberal as his voting record indicated. He is less and less the empty vessel into which one can read any motives one wishes and revealed more and more to be a typical left-wing liberal. I think Henninger is right to be worried.

Highlights:

He told Congress he does not believe in bigger government. I don't believe that. It's becoming clear that the private sector is going to be demoted into a secondary role in the U.S. system. This isn't socialism, but it is not the system we've had since the early 1980s. It would be a reordered economic system, its direction chosen and guided by Mr. Obama and his inner circle.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's postspeech reply did not come close to recognizing the gauntlet Mr. Obama has thrown down to the opposition. Unless the GOP can discover a radical message of its own to distinguish it from the president's, it should prepare to live under Mr. Obama's radicalism for at least a generation.

Annoying Russian Spam and How I Finally Got it to Stop Bothering Me

2009-02-26T08:19:00.003-07:00

Maybe it's just me, or maybe others have experienced the same problem, but in the past month or so I have seen a huge spike in spam emails that are totally in Cyrillic characters (I assume they are Russian, but don't know for sure).

I have been struggling with how to get these to go automatically to my Junk mail folder. They come from a variety of sources and the text is not identical, but they are completely devoid of Roman characters (like the ones you are reading now). It turns out that MS Outlook will not let you set up an email rule that sorts by the script of the email. You can't throw away email based on the inclusion of Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese, or any other writing system.

My fix was to pick out one common Cyrillic character, д, and set up a rule that tossed any email containing it as a word fragment. There is a potential drawback here, of course, which is that if anyone sends a legitimate email I want to receive, but they include a д for some reason, it will still go to the Junk folder, even if the rest of the letter is in English. I am willing to live with that risk.

This morning's Junk folder shows 9 of the 16 items accumulated since last night are Russian spam, so it seems like a reasonable and useful fix.

Taxing the Richest Won't Raise Enough Revenue

2009-02-26T06:44:00.004-07:00

This has been known for years. But in the current political climate it bears repeating.

From the WSJ opinion page today, the following quote:

Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Few of us realize how progressive our income tax is and how much of the largess the government doles out depends on the earnings of so few.

Today's Dilbert Cartoon

2009-02-25T17:12:00.003-07:00

Today's is one of the best of all time. Hattip to Dave Spencer.

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-02-25/

A Unique Gift Idea

2009-02-25T13:20:00.003-07:00

Have a Palestinian graffitti artist spraypaint whatever message you choose on Israel's security wall in the West Bank. The cost is 30 euro (about $40).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090225/wl_nm/us_palestinians_israel_wall_1

http://www.sendamessage.nl/your-message-on-the-wall/?lang=eng

Self Explanatory Picture

2009-02-25T13:09:00.003-07:00

I saw this on Greg Mankiw's blog - http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/02/ricardian-equivalence.html

Why 5 Bank Accounts Are Better Than 1

2009-02-25T10:35:00.003-07:00

from MyBankingWay.com
http://www.bankingmyway.com/article/why-5-bank-accounts-are-better-1

If you are trying to budget effectively, here is an interesting bit of advice. It makes a lot of intuitive sense. I may even try this in our household. If Yeongmi approves, of course.

Highlights:

Meanwhile, separating your wants from your savings goals will help you achieve those goals faster. "If the two accounts are mingled, it's much easier to spend your money on the wrong things," says Ray. If they’re kept separate, you'll have to stop and think about whether that impulsive splurge will delay your vacation plans.

Managing several different accounts might seem like a lot of work, but most of the extra effort is at the beginning, when you’re setting up the accounts. After that, it's mostly a question of monitoring balances to avoid overdrafts, and keeping your overall budget on track.

Musical Gems from Pandora Radio

2009-02-23T15:07:00.005-07:00

I've been listening to Pandora Radio for several months now. What a wonderful musical tool! Here are a few of the songs I picked up that I had never heard of before. If you like a rock/country "roots" musical style you might like these. Most of them came from stations that were seeded with songs by Mark Knopfler and Chris Isaac.

The first one, Down in Mexico, by Delbert McClinton was a real find. Great guitar work and a captivating story to go with it.

My second favorite is probably 9 Volt Heart, by the Iguanas.

Rick Santelli: A Chicago Tea Party!

2009-02-19T16:04:00.001-07:00

This video from CNBC is worth the five minutes it takes to watch it. Some people are very unhappy with the administration's economic policies. A Chicago Tea Party is in the works!

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853

James Taranto on Students, Professors and Grades

2009-02-19T15:52:00.003-07:00

From today's "Best of the Web" column.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123505515951422771.html

Fail Your Customers

The New York Times has an amusing piece about the frustrations of college professors:

Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.

"Many students come in with the conviction that they've worked hard and deserve a higher mark," Professor Grossman said. "Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before."

He attributes those complaints to his students' sense of entitlement.

Another prof, Ellen Greenberger of the University of California at Irvine, has published a study called "Self-Entitled College Students":

Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.
Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

"I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade," Mr. Greenwood said. "What else is there really than the effort that you put in?"

"If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?" he added. "If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher's mind, then something is wrong."

Anyone who works for a living is immediately struck by the contrast between this attitude and the real world. When you hire someone to do a job, you look for results, not "effort." Someone who works effectively and effortlessly is much more valued than someone who tries really hard and produces mediocre results. Why should schoolwork be any different?

The answer is that, except at the highest levels of higher education, school "work" is the opposite of real work. Students do not work for professors; professors work for students--or, to be precise, students (in combination with their parents and the government) contract with institutions of higher education, which in turn employ professors to deliver services to students.

If students have a sense of entitlement, it is a sense best captured in that old saying: The customer is always right. They're spending tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree so they can go out and find a job, and they're working hard on their assignments to boot--you're darn right they feel entitled to good grades!

Professors, quite understandably, see it differently. To the best of them, their calling is to impart knowledge and intellectual refinement. The degree is merely a symbol. The real "product" that colleges produce is educated young people.

What we have, then, is a mismatch between what customers are buying and what institutions are selling. Colleges and universities have had great economic success marketing themselves as sellers of job-hunting licenses. If they embraced instead an old-fashioned vision of learning as an end in itself, the quality of their product doubtless would improve immensely--but their market would shrink correspondingly.

Professors may be unhappy to be working for institutions that, to a large extent, have degenerated into mere diploma mills. Many of them, however, owe their jobs to that degeneration.

Holman W. Jenkins Jr.: How Democracy Ruined the Bailout

2009-02-17T20:32:00.002-07:00

from Wednesday's Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123491508784704057.html

Highlights:

"Never was it a good idea to have a financial crisis in the middle of a presidential election. Involving Congress was a mistake. Letting the technical matter of keeping the banks afloat become a political football was a terrible idea. Letting our willingness to deploy giant sums of taxpayer money become the measure of credibility was a disaster. Letting all this be sold on Capitol Hill amid shrieks about the country collapsing into a Second Great Depression was a confidence killer across the economy, which until that point had held up well."

An Interesting Article on Ebooks and the iPhone

2009-02-17T13:35:00.002-07:00

From the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13109596

"Might e-books be approaching the moment of take-off, akin to Apple’s launch of the iTunes store in 2003, which created a new market for legal music downloads?"

Musical Torture

2009-02-17T13:17:00.002-07:00

I was reading the Wall Street Journal today and ran across the following article on torture through music, by Terry Teachout - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123456310592185753.html. Apparently, some of the music I listen to on a regular basis is or has been used in interrogation of suspected terrorists. I don't quite know if I should feel insulted or offended by this knowledge. On the one hand, it would seem to indicate that my tastes in music are a bit unsophisticated. However, I might also choose to interpret this as a sign that I am a pretty tough guy, if I can voluntarily subject myself to torture on a regular basis.

Here is a list of torture music from zero dB and Reprieve, with my music in bold.

AC/DC ("Hells Bells," "Shoot to Thrill")
Aerosmith
Barney the Dinosaur (theme song)
Bee Gees ("Stayin' Alive")
Britney Spears
Bruce Springsteen ("Born in the USA")
Christina Aguilera ("Dirrty")
David Gray ("Babylon")
Deicide
Don McLean ("American Pie")
Dope ("Die MF Die," "Take Your Best Shot")
Dr. Dre
Drowning Pools ("Bodies")
Eminem ("Kim," "Slim Shady," "White America")
Lil' Kim
Limp Bizkit
Matchbox Twenty ("Gold")
Meat Loaf
Metallica ("Enter Sandman")
Neil Diamond ("America")
Nine Inch Nails ("March of the Pigs," "Mr. Self Destruct")
Prince ("Raspberry Beret")
Queen ("We Are the Champions")
Rage Against the Machine ("Killing in the Name")
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Saliva ("Click Click Boom")
The "Sesame Street" theme song
Tupac ("All Eyes on Me")

Bret Stephens: Geert Wilders Is a Test for Western Civilization

2009-02-17T10:41:00.003-07:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123483168531395775.html

It is well worth the time to read this oped piece. Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who has called for the banning of the Quran and who is being prosecuted for hate crimes in his home country.

Highlights:

For liberals, the issue is straightforward. If routine mockery of Christianity and abuse of its symbols, both in the U.S. and Europe, is protected speech, why shouldn't the same standard apply to the mockery of Islam? And if the difference in these cases is that mockery of Islam has the tendency to lead to riots, death threats and murder, should committed Christians now seek a kind of parity with Islamists by resorting to violent tactics to express their sense of religious injury?

For conservatives, especially of the cultural kind -- the kind of people who talk about defending Western Civ. -- Mr. Wilders's case should also provoke some reconsiderations. It may not be impossible to denounce the likes of Mr. Serrano [the artist who, 20 years ago, put a crucifix in a jar of urine] while defending the likes of Mr. Wilders. But a defense of Mr. Wilders is made a lot easier if one can point to the vivid difference between a civilization that protects, even celebrates (and funds!), its cultural provocateurs and a civilization that seeks their murder.

Quote from Barak Obama

2009-02-17T10:28:00.002-07:00

From his book, Audacity of Hope.

"Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained -- by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate -- to negotiate in good faith.

"If these conditions do not hold -- if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so -- the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'

"For the minority party in such circumstances, 'bipartisanship' comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being 'moderate' or 'centrist.'"

Quoted by William McGurn in today's Wall Street Journal.

An Old, but Relevant, Cartoon

2009-02-17T10:16:00.002-07:00

I clipped this from the Wall Street Journal several years ago and posted it on my office door at work. I noticed it this morning and thought it was worth posting here.

Using the iPhone

2009-02-16T21:20:00.006-07:00

I got the income tax refund this last Friday and I went and bought myself a new iPhone 3G. I already have At&T service and was up for a phone upgrade, but it was expensive nonetheless. I've been getting to know it since then and have the following observations.

Things I Dislike:

1) The battery charge does not last very long. This is well-known, but it is surprizing how quickly it depletes. I've discovered that if I turn off the 3G, GPS, and other bells and whistles when I am not using them, the battery does quite well. Since it is pretty easy to turn these on when I need them, I expect the battery life to be adequate. The phone came with a car charger and that may help.

2) The phone will not take videos. It takes decent still shots for a camera phone, but won't do video. There are some 3rd party apps that will allow you to shoot video, but they require "jailbreaking" the iPhone and most likely void the warranty. This seems a very odd omission.

3) It does not come with multimedia messaging. That is, you cannot send photos or other such things to other people's phones. Fortunately, there are free apps available that allow you to do this, you just need to download them from the iTunes store.

4) The phone uses alot more data than a regular 3G phone, so the coverage is $30 per month for unlimited data, as opposed to the $15 per month with my old phone. This seems a bit steep to me, but I did agree to pay for it, so it must be worth it.

Things I Like:

1) I love the seemless integration of my email through BYU's MS Exchange Server. It took a little while figuring out how to configure it. I'm sure BYU's tech guys could've told me how to do it in a few minutes, but it was the weekend and I didn't want to wait. You have the option of syncing your contacts and calendars when you sync the iPhone over its USB connection or wirelessly the same way you sync your email. Beware if you switch from one method to the other all the old contacts are erased and rewritten. You won't lose any information, but all your custom ringtones will need to be reset.

2) I love the photo storage. In fact I will probably use it as much or more than I will the music player. Uploading is simple and the screen size is big enough to see things very clearly.

3) I like all the extra apps. I am hoping to try out some of the GPS apps on my next hike or campout just to see how much it helps. The free apps only give your coordinates, but if you have a good topographic map of the area that helps a ton.

4) I like all the internet specific apps that are available. I've already installed the ones for Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Pandora Radio. They speed things up greatly over using the standard Safari browser that comes with the phone.

Overall I am very glad I bought the phone and think it will turn out to be a good purchase.

Quote from Tom Sowell

2009-02-13T08:05:00.001-07:00

via Dave Spencer

“Human beings are going to make mistakes, whether in the market or in the government. The difference is that survival in the market requires recognizing mistakes and changing course before you go bankrupt. But survival in politics requires denying mistakes and sticking with the policies you advocated while blaming others for the bad results.”

Lynn's Warning

2009-02-12T20:17:00.003-07:00

My lovely daughter wrote this for me to put on the door of my office while I am grading. I use it on occasion.

Taxes in the 1500s

2009-02-12T08:30:00.002-07:00

In the 1530's Francisco Pizarro and his band of Spanish conquistadors conqured the Inca empire. Afterward they attempted to extract as much gold as possible from the Incas. The people soon learned to hide their wealth from the Spanish rather effectively, however. The Spaniards discovered that the more wealth Incas were happier and consequently could often be found humming to themselves as they walked around. To exploit this correlation, they imposed a substantial fine on any Incas found humming. This is the first historic example of a tax that is now widely used throughout the world, the "Inca Hum Tax."

Daniel Henninger: Exactly How Does Stimulus Work?

2009-02-12T08:18:00.003-07:00

Henninger's column is always worth reading, even if you don't agree with everything he says, he almost always has an interesting point of view on an important topic. Today he is in good form.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123440338832275537.html

Highlights:

The whole congressional effort is an irrelevant sideshow; only the final spending number matters. The economics don't matter, because the real political purpose of the bill is to neutralize this issue until the economy recovers on its own. Much of its spending is a massive cash transfer to the party's union constituencies; a percentage of that cash will flow back into the 2010 congressional races. The bill in great part is a Trojan horse of Democratic policies not related to anyone's model of economic stimulus.

Hainan Airplane Letter

2009-02-11T16:20:00.002-07:00

I wrote this letter to the editor of the Deseret News in 2001 and just recently discovered that it was published.

http://archive.deseretnews.com/archive/836628/Plane-incident-irrelevant-for-most-Chinese.html

Listening to the media coverage of the downed U.S. plane in Hainan, it would be easy to get the impression that the Chinese state-run media are on the verge of igniting a rash of anti-American protests. Here in Nanjing, at least, that is not the case.

My family and I have been living here since last August, where I am teaching for a year at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese & American Studies at Nanjing University. We are part of a small American community here in this city of 5 million. We meet regularly with a very small group of LDS people living in town (five are from Brigham Young University's China Teachers Program, and one is a recent BYU graduate studying Chinese). From our point of view, interacting with Chinese students every day, it appears that for the time being, this is not a terribly serious issue.

Unlike after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago, when large crowds gathered spontaneously (but peacefully) to shout slogans and wave banners, nothing in the way of overt anti-Americanism is perceptible. The Chinese are very nationalistic (or patriotic, depending on your point of view) at times, especially the students and intellectuals. But for the average person on the street here it is just another new item with little direct relevance.

Perhaps the best illustration I can point to occurred yesterday afternoon as I was riding my bicycle through the downtown area. I stopped at a historic building to look inside, and after showing me around, a gentleman there asked me where I was from. I replied that I was from the United States and then mentioned that I was a bit nervous telling people that right now given the airplane incident. He laughed and said, "That's a nation problem, not a people problem."

It might be best to remember right now that the mood of the Chinese press does not necessarily mirror the mood of the majority of the Chinese people.

One thing that might come as a surprise is the amount of access Chinese citizens have to Western news sources over the Internet. CNN's Web site is regularly blocked, but there are myriad other sources available which are not. (The Deseret News being but one case in point).

While it is true that Internet access remains out of reach for the majority of Chinese, it is generally accessible to the students and intellectuals who were the most active element in the post-Belgrade demonstrations. Most students realize that the incident was an accident and not a deliberate attempt to harm. They may be a bit irked that U.S. surveillance planes regularly patrol their coast, but there seems to be little overt anger at America and Americans.

Wise Words via Dan Kim

2009-02-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

http://fromonecambridgetoanother.blogspot.com/2009/02/one-question.html

My Serbian barber chided with me that American are absolutely terrified because the value of housing is declining a bit and retirement mutual funds aren't doing too well, while we don't blink imposing crippling economic sanctions as political leverage. He should know. He lived through some of them. I can't blame him for not having sympathy for the wealthiest nation's short term economic dilemmas.

Andy Kessler on How to Solve the Toxic Debt Problem

2009-02-11T11:56:00.003-07:00

Why Markets Dissed the Geithner Plan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123431465155370931.html

Highlights:

First, strip out all the toxic assets and put them into a holding tank inside the Treasury. Then inject $300 billion in fresh equity for both Citi and Bank of America. Create 10 billion new shares of each of the companies to replace the old ones. The book value of each share could be $30. Very quickly, a new board of directors should be created and a new management team hired. Here's the tricky part: Who owns the shares? Politics will kill a nationalized bank. So spin them out immediately.

Some $6 trillion in income taxes were paid by individuals in 2006, 2007 and 2008. On a pro-forma basis, send out those 10 billion shares of each bank to taxpayers. They paid for the recapitalization.

Each taxpayer would get about $100 worth of stock for each $1,000 of taxes paid. Of course, each taxpayer has the ability to sell these shares on the open market, maybe at $40, maybe $20, maybe $80. It depends on management, their vision, how much additional capital they are willing to raise, the dividend they declare, etc. Meanwhile, the toxic assets sitting inside the Treasury will have residual value and the proceeds from their eventual sale, I believe, will more than offset the capital injected. That would benefit all citizens, not the managements and shareholders who blew up the banking system in the first place.

Some Good Stuff from Camille Paglia Today

2009-02-11T08:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/02/11/stimulus/

Most mainstream American voters are undoubtedly suffering from economist fatigue these days. This one calls for tax cuts; that one condemns them. One says we're wasting hundreds of billions of dollars; the other claims that sum falls pathetically short. A plague on all their houses! Surely common sense would dictate that when Congress is doling out fat dollops of taxpayers' money, due time should be delegated for sober consideration and debate. The administration's coercive rush toward instant action, accompanied by apocalyptic pronouncements of imminent catastrophe, has put its own credibility on the line.

Speaking of talk radio (which I listen to constantly), I remain incredulous that any Democrat who professes liberal values would give a moment's thought to supporting a return of the Fairness Doctrine to muzzle conservative shows. (My latest manifesto on this subject appeared in my last column.) The failure of liberals to master the vibrant medium of talk radio remains puzzling. To reach the radio audience (whether the topic is sports, politics or car repair), a host must have populist instincts and use the robust common voice. Too many Democrats have become arrogant elitists, speaking down in snide, condescending tones toward tradition-minded middle Americans whom they stereotype as rubes and buffoons. But the bottom line is that government surveillance of the ideological content of talk radio is a shocking first step toward totalitarianism.

Macroeconomics Models & Policy Prescriptions

2009-02-11T08:10:00.006-07:00

At the urging of two of my colleagues here at BYU, I have been reading through an article by Chari, Kehoe & McGratten in the inaugural issue of the American Economic Journal Macroeconomics. A couple of quotes in the introduction caught my eye, especially with regard to the current debate over the stimulus package and the use of TARP funds.

Until recently, the major conflicts in macro policy in the postwar era were between the Old Keynesians and the neoclassicals. The Old Keynesian view is eloquently and forcefully summarized by Franco Modiglianai, who argues that the fundamental, practical policy implication that Old Keynesians agree on is that the private economy "needs to be stablized, can be stabilized, and therefore should be stabilized by appropriate monetary and fiscal policies." The neoclassical economists, of course, recommend quite different policies: commitment to low average inflation rates on the monetary side and tax-smoothing on the fiscal side. Moreover, neoclassicals argue that even efficient allocations could fluctuate sizably.

Something insufficiently appreciated today is that even though the New Keynesian model has many elements of the Old Keynesian stories, such as sticky prices, the New Keynesian policy implications are drastically different from those of the Old Keynesians and are remarkably close to those of the neoclassicals.

Most modern macroeconomists of both traditions use equilibrium models with forward-looking private agents, so a commitment to rules is essential for good economic performance. Even in the frictionless versions of modern models, efficient allocations fluctuate sizably. So, even under optimal policy, a model will display sizable business cycle fluctuations. Eliminating all of them is considered bad policy.