When I was done with my year's teaching in 2000-01 I was asked to comment on the experience. Here is what I wrote about the students and the teaching experience.
June 2001
I found that teaching the students at the Center was overall a very positive experience. The students were articulate, motivated and extremely bright. That said, the purpose here as I understand is to point out some of the challenges.
First, I often found it difficult to tell if the students understood the concepts on which I was lecturing. There was a general tendency for the students to keep silent and only rarely ask questions or make comments. A great deal of this was no doubt due to the fact that I lectured a lot, and rarely held class discussions. I would change that, if possible, but the subject matter makes it difficult.
Second, I found that there was a great deal of variance in terms of background – particularly in the principles class. Some students had bachelor’s degrees in economics and were pursuing advanced degrees in the field, and others had never taken an economics course in their life and had only minimal exposure to the math tools they needed. Still, I found that the majority of students were willing to learn difficult concepts and math tools, once they saw why and how the tools were used. I used a great deal of calculus in my principles class and found that those students who were unfamiliar with the concepts took the time to learn them. This was a pleasant surprise, as I was prepared to drop back to non-calculus based approaches, if necessary.
Third, I like students to cooperate on homework. So I encouraged them to get together in study groups. However, I suspect that a great deal of the time, they merely copied the homework of one of the two or so class leaders who had a clear understanding of the material from previous exposure to the topic. I don’t see anyway to enforce this, but I think it hurt many students at exam time, as they were inadequately prepared.
Finally, I found that overall the experience was not all that different from teaching US students. I did need to explain things clearly, but I could tackle more complex concepts more quickly, as well. Also, I had to be careful not to pick jokes for class that relied too heavily on puns or plays on words.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Product Labels
From the humor folder on the hard drive:
On Sears hair dryer:
Do not use while sleeping.
On a bag of Fritos:
You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside.
On a bar of Dial soap:
Directions: Use like regular soap.
Some Swanson frozen dinners:
Serving suggestion: Defrost.
On a hotel-provided shower cap in a box:
Fits one head.
On Tesco's Tiramisu desert:
Do not turn upside down. (Printed on the bottom of the box.)
On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding:
Product will be hot after heating
On packaging for a Rowenta Iron:
Do not iron clothes on body
On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine
Do not drive car or operate machinery
On Nytol (a sleep aid):
Warning: may cause drowsiness
On a Korean kitchen knife:
Warning keep out of children
On a string of Chinese-made Christmas lights:
For indoor or outdoor use only.
On a Japanese food processor:
Not to be used for the other use
On Sainsbury's Peanuts
Warning: contains nuts
On an American Airlines packet of nuts:
Instructions: open packet, eat nuts.
On a Swedish chain saw:
Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands.
On Sears hair dryer:
Do not use while sleeping.
On a bag of Fritos:
You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside.
On a bar of Dial soap:
Directions: Use like regular soap.
Some Swanson frozen dinners:
Serving suggestion: Defrost.
On a hotel-provided shower cap in a box:
Fits one head.
On Tesco's Tiramisu desert:
Do not turn upside down. (Printed on the bottom of the box.)
On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding:
Product will be hot after heating
On packaging for a Rowenta Iron:
Do not iron clothes on body
On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine
Do not drive car or operate machinery
On Nytol (a sleep aid):
Warning: may cause drowsiness
On a Korean kitchen knife:
Warning keep out of children
On a string of Chinese-made Christmas lights:
For indoor or outdoor use only.
On a Japanese food processor:
Not to be used for the other use
On Sainsbury's Peanuts
Warning: contains nuts
On an American Airlines packet of nuts:
Instructions: open packet, eat nuts.
On a Swedish chain saw:
Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Reed Smoot Hearings
In 1904 the US senate held a series of debates about whether to seat Reed Smoot, the senator-elect from Utah, who was not a polygamist, but who was a member of the LDS church's quorum of twelve apostles. During the debates, senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania glared at one his Senate colleagues who was well-known as a womanizer and said, "As for me, I would rather have seated beside me in this chamber a polygamist who doesn't polyg than a monogamist who doesn't monog."
Friday, December 19, 2008
North Korea in 2003
Back in 2003, North Korea revealed that it had been operating enrichment program and tensions with the US were very high. I got an email at the time because someone somewhere thought I was a Korea "expert". It might have been the Daily Universe, BYU's student newspaper, or it might have been part of a survey from a Korean studies organization, or maybe neither; I don't remember now.
I answered the questions as laid out below. Much has happened since then, but the situtation today is not all that different, so maybe the answers are still as useful as when I wrote them (however useful that was).
1) Why are things the way they are, or how did the situation get to this point?
How much background do you want on this one? The whole thing boils down to the fact that nobody won the Korean War so the country is still divided. If you mean how the whole nuclear weapons mess get started, the best source I can point you to is a detailed discussion by Joshua Muravchik.
The root of the problem is that North Korea is so isolated we have little to use as a disciplinary device. If Lybia acted this way we could threaten trade embargos, or cancel treaties or freeze financial assets, etc. North Korea has, in effect, done all of that to itself already. The only threat we have is military action, and we need to be very careful about actually using it. The North Koreans know this.
2) In your opinion, what are the possible solutions to the problem?
There are several possible outcomes, I don’t know if they are solutions.
A) Maintain status quo – this seems unlikely since the North is apparently busy producing weapons grade plutonium. If we wait long enough the status quo is gone and we are faced with a North Korea that both has a significant number of atomic bombs and may have “extra” to sell to rogue states and terrorists.
B) Military strike – this would (possibly) remove the threat, though the North probably already has one or two atom bombs from previous extraction and who knows where they are. If we bomb the extraction facility, they have promised to use these bombs, possibly on Seoul or even Tokyo. Would they? Do we want to risk it? The end result could be a second Korea War. The US and South Korea would undoubtedly win that war, but are we willing to allow the loss of civilian life. The South Koreans most definitely want to avoid this outcome.
C) Embargo and contain – this seems to the administration’s choice. That still leaves the North producing weapons, though maybe not exporting them. We can’t unilaterally impose an effective embargo, the Chinese need to be on board and probably the Russians, too. The Chinese seem to think that this is a US problem and don’t appear to be doing much, though who knows what’s going on behind closed doors. To give some kind of idea of what the Chinese could do, consider the following. There are a huge number of North Koreans currently hiding in northeast China. They’ve snuck across the border to flee the regime. The Chinese government doesn’t want a flood of refugees, so they have been rounding them up – often with North Korean cooperation – and sending them back. If China were to reverse this policy and openly welcome North Korean refugees, the flood of people across the border might well be like the flood of people out of East Germany just before the Berlin Wall fell. It could easily spell the end of the North Korean regime. Nobody else in the region: Japan, South Korea, the US or Russia has that kind of a card to play.
D) Negotiate – this might defuse the situation, but it sets a very, very bad precedent. Basically it tells the North that bad behavior pays off. It might be the easiest way out of the current mess, but it would only lead to bigger messes later on. The North Koreans have cheated over and over again on their promises. How can you trust them to stick to a new set of agreements? Would they accept the kind of invasive monitoring that weapons inspectors in Iraq are allowed? Only as a last resort, and maybe not even then.
3) What kind of a resolution do you anticipate?
I fear what the North Korean really want is attention. The leaders of the regime are faced with very bad options. They seem to believe that if they do not get some sort of non-aggression treaty with the US, the US will covertly or overtly work to bring their regime down. They may well be right. However, faced with the choice of lose power by revolution or lose power fighting a war, they might well chose to fight a war and hurt the South and the US as much as possible on the way out. What kind of a resolution is that then? Frankly, I don’t know. There is far too much uncertainty as to what really motivates the North and what kind of concessions they are willing to make. The answer right now seems to be none, and that is worrisome.
4) Do you believe the current strategy/plan is effective?
That is up to the North Koreans. There is little the US can do but capitulate and we won't do that. The only people with any real choice are the North Korean leaders who think they are (and probably in reality are) struggling to maintain their existence. The other party with leverage is the Chinese, and they seem to be content to let things develop before they decide to change policy. They probably don’t want a nuclearized Korea, but a united Korea may look pretty scary too. Maybe their frozen in indecision, maybe they’re working frantically behind the scenes, maybe the leadership in Beijing is so divided on the issue they can reach a decision what to do. In any case, there is little the US can do to resolve the crisis.
I answered the questions as laid out below. Much has happened since then, but the situtation today is not all that different, so maybe the answers are still as useful as when I wrote them (however useful that was).
1) Why are things the way they are, or how did the situation get to this point?
How much background do you want on this one? The whole thing boils down to the fact that nobody won the Korean War so the country is still divided. If you mean how the whole nuclear weapons mess get started, the best source I can point you to is a detailed discussion by Joshua Muravchik.
The root of the problem is that North Korea is so isolated we have little to use as a disciplinary device. If Lybia acted this way we could threaten trade embargos, or cancel treaties or freeze financial assets, etc. North Korea has, in effect, done all of that to itself already. The only threat we have is military action, and we need to be very careful about actually using it. The North Koreans know this.
2) In your opinion, what are the possible solutions to the problem?
There are several possible outcomes, I don’t know if they are solutions.
A) Maintain status quo – this seems unlikely since the North is apparently busy producing weapons grade plutonium. If we wait long enough the status quo is gone and we are faced with a North Korea that both has a significant number of atomic bombs and may have “extra” to sell to rogue states and terrorists.
B) Military strike – this would (possibly) remove the threat, though the North probably already has one or two atom bombs from previous extraction and who knows where they are. If we bomb the extraction facility, they have promised to use these bombs, possibly on Seoul or even Tokyo. Would they? Do we want to risk it? The end result could be a second Korea War. The US and South Korea would undoubtedly win that war, but are we willing to allow the loss of civilian life. The South Koreans most definitely want to avoid this outcome.
C) Embargo and contain – this seems to the administration’s choice. That still leaves the North producing weapons, though maybe not exporting them. We can’t unilaterally impose an effective embargo, the Chinese need to be on board and probably the Russians, too. The Chinese seem to think that this is a US problem and don’t appear to be doing much, though who knows what’s going on behind closed doors. To give some kind of idea of what the Chinese could do, consider the following. There are a huge number of North Koreans currently hiding in northeast China. They’ve snuck across the border to flee the regime. The Chinese government doesn’t want a flood of refugees, so they have been rounding them up – often with North Korean cooperation – and sending them back. If China were to reverse this policy and openly welcome North Korean refugees, the flood of people across the border might well be like the flood of people out of East Germany just before the Berlin Wall fell. It could easily spell the end of the North Korean regime. Nobody else in the region: Japan, South Korea, the US or Russia has that kind of a card to play.
D) Negotiate – this might defuse the situation, but it sets a very, very bad precedent. Basically it tells the North that bad behavior pays off. It might be the easiest way out of the current mess, but it would only lead to bigger messes later on. The North Koreans have cheated over and over again on their promises. How can you trust them to stick to a new set of agreements? Would they accept the kind of invasive monitoring that weapons inspectors in Iraq are allowed? Only as a last resort, and maybe not even then.
3) What kind of a resolution do you anticipate?
I fear what the North Korean really want is attention. The leaders of the regime are faced with very bad options. They seem to believe that if they do not get some sort of non-aggression treaty with the US, the US will covertly or overtly work to bring their regime down. They may well be right. However, faced with the choice of lose power by revolution or lose power fighting a war, they might well chose to fight a war and hurt the South and the US as much as possible on the way out. What kind of a resolution is that then? Frankly, I don’t know. There is far too much uncertainty as to what really motivates the North and what kind of concessions they are willing to make. The answer right now seems to be none, and that is worrisome.
4) Do you believe the current strategy/plan is effective?
That is up to the North Koreans. There is little the US can do but capitulate and we won't do that. The only people with any real choice are the North Korean leaders who think they are (and probably in reality are) struggling to maintain their existence. The other party with leverage is the Chinese, and they seem to be content to let things develop before they decide to change policy. They probably don’t want a nuclearized Korea, but a united Korea may look pretty scary too. Maybe their frozen in indecision, maybe they’re working frantically behind the scenes, maybe the leadership in Beijing is so divided on the issue they can reach a decision what to do. In any case, there is little the US can do to resolve the crisis.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
In the Bleak Midwinter
Christina Georgina Rossetti, wrote this poem in 1872 in response to a request from the magazine Scribner’s Monthly for a Christmas poem. Gustav Theodore Holst put the poem to music in 1906 It is my wife, Yeongmi's, favorite Christmas song
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can give Him: give my heart.
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can give Him: give my heart.
NAFTA in 1994
I was asked to give a talk back in 1994 to the Spanish Fork Rotary Club. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has just passed and this was the economic topic most on people's minds. The talk outlined below is not the one I gave. I had to scrap much of it in the interest of time.
Trade agreements are still an important issue. The arguments for and against NAFTA outlined below are the same ones we hear with regard to the Columbia and South Korea free trade agreements which are currently hung up in congress. So hopefully the ideas are topical even if NAFTA is not.
The North American Free Trade Agreement passed by congress late last year generated a great deal of public attention. There was much discussion of its potential harms and merits in the media. This discussion, while not all bad, did not seem to me to be focused on the real economics of the issue.
NAFTA is now law and a fact of life for at least the foreseeable future. But, we still face many of the same policy decisions on different fronts. Whether the issue is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), our ongoing negotiations with the Japanese, or political pressure by domestic firms for protection from imports, we, as citizens of the United States will continue to face the choice between free trade and trade restrictions.
It is my hope that I can discuss in a rather general way the benefits and costs of free trade and in this context say something about the likely impact of NAFTA on the U.S. and Mexico.
I would like to start with an illustration, if I may, of the potential gains from free trade.
In order to boil the argument down to its bare essentials let us construct a simple model of the economy. I want to make some very gross oversimplifications, not because I think they are accurate, but because they will help us focus on the important aspects of the issue.
Let us assume for the time being that there are only two goods produced and consumed in the whole world: tennis shoes and personal computers. Assume that tennis shoes are produced in factories using lots of manual labor. PC's, on the other hand require the use of sophisticated machinery and relatively little labor. Suppose that Mexico and the U.S. have tariff barriers that are so high that no trade at all occurs; (again I am not trying to be too realistic, but to illustrate a point as sharply as possible).
In such a world, both Mexico and the U.S. would be forced to produce everything they consume. There would be firms in the U.S. producing both tennis shoes and PC's. And the same would be true in Mexico.
Suppose for the sake of simplicity that the U.S., if it chose to could devote all it's labor and capital to the production of PC's and produce 100 of them (a nice round number). If we instead chose only to produce tennis shoes we could also produce 100 pairs. Since we have to produce both the market would dictate that we not end up at either extreme. We would instead produce something like 50 PC's and 50 pairs of tennis shoes.
In Mexico, where labor is more abundant and capital is scarce, the economy could produce 200 pairs of tennis shoes at one extreme or 50 PC's at the other. Again the market will dictate production somewhere in between, say 25 PC's and 100 pairs of shoes.
Thus, in this world with no international trade there are 75 PC's produced and 150 pairs of shoes.
Since there is little capital in Mexico and no trade. Capital would be very expensive and labor relatively cheap. Since PC's require alot of capital to produce they would be relatively expensive to produce, while tennis shoes would be very inexpensive.
Now imagine that trade between the U.S. and Mexico is opened up. Where would people buy their PC's? In the U.S., of course where the cost of capital is lower. Similarly people would turn to Mexico for tennis shoes where the cost of labor is lower.
As a result we might see the U.S. cease production of shoes entirely. The footwear industry would fall "victim" to international competition. Similarly the Mexican computer industry would disappear. Where does this leave us? We said earlier that the U.S. could produce 100 PC's if that is all it produced and Mexico could produce 200 pairs of shoes if it produced only shoes. As a result we would end up with 100 PCs as opposed to the 75 we had with trade restrictions and 200 pairs of shoes as opposed to the 150 previously. Very clearly the world as a whole is better off. In other words there are gains from trade.
One might, of course, be interested in how the gains from trade are distributed. In our simple world this is what would happen. As the U.S. stopped producing footwear some capital and alot of labor would be freed up. However, the computer industry does not normally require alot of labor. One of two things must happen, either workers must accept lower wages to entice computer firms to hire them, or some workers must remain unemployed.
An exactly identical argument for Mexico predicts that the return on capital must either fall, or capital must lie idle.
At this point it is tempting to conclude that while NAFTA will probably bring net gains is does so by rewarding U.S. owners of capital alot and harming U.S. workers. This is not the conclusion one should draw, however.
While trade between the U.S. and Mexico stands restricted until NAFTA takes full effect, capital is free to move across international boundaries. We therefore expect capital to seek it highest return. This would lead, in our simple model, to a flow of capital into Mexico even if trade in tennis shoes and PC's was completely shut down. The results for world production would be exactly the same as for the case with free trade. If labor were mobile across international boundaries we would see flows of labor from Mexico into the U.S. and again we would reach the same total production as with free trade. In fact it is a standard result of many models of international trade that free movement of capital or labor is identical to free trade in goods.
If we take this twist at face value we are left with the conclusion that all the fuss over NAFTA was a waste of time, there should be no real gains from trade as they are already exhausted by the fact that capital free to move between the U.S. and Mexico. This is not the conclusion one should draw either.
Let me now consider a more realistic (but still highly simplified) view of the issue. Suppose capital is free to move and that there is now trade in PCs or tennis shoes. Also suppose that there are two types of labor, skilled labor which is used alot in the production of PC's and unskilled labor which is used alot in tennis shoe manufacturing. If we assume that there is more skilled labor in the U.S. and relatively more unskilled labor in Mexico, then we con return to our original results and substitute the word skilled labor for capital.
That is that skilled labor in the U.S. will get higher wages as production in PC's goes up, while unskilled labor will be forced to take wage cuts or be unemployed. Similarly, the wages of unskilled workers will rise in Mexico and wages for skilled workers there will fall.
This is, I believe, a realistic general prediction for the effects of NAFTA.
Let me add a final caveat. While we can predict the direction that wages will move, we cannot say anything about the size of the changes unless we know something about the sizes of the two economies. My earlier example used economies of roughly the same size. In reality the Mexican economy is much smaller than the U.S., not only the population lower (90 vs. 250 million or 1/3rd), but it's productive capacity is much smaller ($960 billion vs. $6000 billion for 1992 or 1/6th)
This tends to amplify the effects for the smaller country and mitigate them for the larger one. Thus, one would predict some lowering of U.S. unskilled wages and some moderate increases in skilled wages, but a much greater rise in Mexican unskilled wages. This is also generally true for the gains from trade. Small economies tend to benefit more from opening trade than large ones. Thus, the Mexicans are the ones who stand to gain alot, and who will most likely experience the greatest changes in employment, production and wages. Let me stress that the U.S. stands to gain as well, but not as much in percentage terms or per capita as Mexico.
I would like to present and examine some of the arguments I have heard opposing NAFTA and other free trade arrangements.
1.) NAFTA will cause jobs to be lost in the U.S. The argument goes something like this: As we open our borders to foreign produced goods, U.S. firms will either pack up and move south of the border or will be driven out of business by firms already there. This will leave a large portion of the workforce in the United States unemployed, perhaps permanently so.
As we have seen from our simple model, there will undoubtedly be some loss of jobs to Mexico. These will tend to be jobs in industries that rely on large amounts of relatively unskilled labor. Certainly the textile industry stood to lose alot from Mexican competition under NAFTA, until textiles were largely excluded from the agreement.
The U.S. faced a similar circumstance in the early 1980's when the steel industry in the U.S. began to loose market share to foreign produced steel. Some protections were put in place, but not enough to completely protect the industry. Many steel plants were closed and the steel belt turned into the "rust belt" as the suppliers of steel mills also closed their doors. Yet we do not see vast armies of unemployed steel workers in these areas today. Many took early retirement, most found new jobs, and many young people looked elsewhere for their first job. It is difficult to determine exactly how worse or better off the steelworkers were after they lost their jobs, but they were not tremendously worse off and they did not become chronically unemployed. Consumers in general benefited from lower steel prices
Time magazine ran an article last fall prior to the NAFTA vote which spotlighted Dayton, Ohio. They noted that a local auto parts manufacturer had already closed shop and opened a new plant across in Mexico. They also noted that a local manufacturer of heavy equipment had moved to Mexico at roughly the same time and had recently moved back because of a scarcity of skilled labor which they needed in assembly of their complicated machinery.
This indicates to me that U.S. labor can compete with Mexican labor even with large differences in wage rates. The anxiety workers seem to feel about NAFTA may be attributable to the fact that specific job skills are becoming increasingly important in the U.S. labor market.
The Wall Street Journal also ran an interesting article on Mexican shoemakers who were worried that NAFTA would wipe out their business. They produced fine handmade leather shoes, but doubted they could compete with cheaper lower quality mass-produced shoes from the U.S. It cite this article because it reveals that reservations about NAFTA cut both ways. We worry about cheap labor and the Mexicans worry about out high productivity.
I have noted alot of attention lately to the issue of jobs. Job creation seems to be a very important issue on many people's minds. This is an issue I have a bit of difficulty understanding. Creation of jobs is actually a very easy thing to do. We could, if we wished, pay people to dig holes and fill them up again. With a high enough wage we could entice everyone unemployed into a job.
I submit that most of us would think such an arrangement quite silly. This is because while we might generate jobs we don't generate anything in the way of goods and services that is of value. I think it is necessary when we look at various public policies to bear this in mind. Supporters and detractors of various policies will make all sorts of claims about the numbers of jobs lost or created; while the real issue should be how does it increase or decrease the welfare of the average citizen.
I cannot resist another illustration. Vice President Gore has argued publicly that increased environmental regulation will create jobs. This may well be true, at the extreme we could all be employed as environmental watchdogs making sure that everyone else does not pollute. But if we are all busy watching each other no one will be producing anything for consumption. It may well be that regulating pollution more strictly will make us all better off, but the argument should be made in terms of how it affects production of goods and bads, and not in the number of jobs it creates.
2) NAFTA will cause production in Mexico to rise (somehow) this will lead to exploitation of Mexican workers by firms in Mexico. Mexican labor laws are not as stringent as U.S. laws and thus firms will be less likely to provide clean, healthy and safe workplaces. Thus, with trade barriers in place we protect Mexican workers from exploitation.
The flaw with this argument is the assumption that Mexican workers are better off with no jobs at all than the ones new firms would generate. Certainly the Mexicans do not think so. The assumption, albeit an implicit one, is that Mexican workers are not smart enough to know what is for their own good. If the new jobs created are dangerous and worse than the jobs Mexicans have now, then the Mexicans will turn them down. The fact that they appear to want these jobs indicates that either the jobs are better than what they have, or they don't understand what is going on.
While it may be the case that jobs generated in Mexico will be less safe and pay less than those lost in the U.S. it really is none of our business as long as the Mexicans accept these jobs voluntarily. The decision on what level of safety and cleanliness should prevail in Mexican factories is fundamentally a Mexican decision.
One might argue that these decisions are made by a corrupt political system which does not have the best interests of the average Mexican at heart. This appears to less the case than in the past, but even if it is true it is not at all clear that the best way for the U.S. to address this problem (if indeed we should) is by keeping trade barriers up. It may, in fact, be the case that free trade is a very good dose of medicine for curing political corruption. Since corruption is costly, it is harder for corruption to exist when firms face stiff competition.
3) NAFTA will cause production in Mexico to rise (again somehow) and this will lead to contamination of the environment by firms in Mexico. Mexican environmental laws are not as stringent as U.S. laws and thus firms will be more likely to pollute the air and water in Mexico. If we allow trade barriers to remain in place we protect the environment.
This argument is subject to the same criticism as the previous one. That is, Mexicans should have the right to determine the level of pollution they are willing to live with, and not us. To the extent that we are concerned about air pollution blowing across the border into the U.S. we may be mildly concerned with lax environmental regulation in Mexico, but again there are better ways to deal with such problems, should they arise than restricting trade.
4) NAFTA will lead to a loss of U.S. sovereignty. This is because it creates several transnational bureaucracies to oversee the enforcement of the treaty. These bodies will have enforcement power which supersedes that of federal, state and local governments. Any current or subsequent laws and regulations which conflict with the provisions of NAFTA will be effectively eliminated. This means that policy directly effecting the lives and livelihoods of U.S. citizens will be under the control of commissions and many of these members, being Mexican and Canadian, will not have the best interests of the U.S. in mind.
I must admit to having a bit of sympathy with this view. Certainly an ideal NAFTA would not require the 2000 pages of addenda that were attached to this one.
Most of the enforcement granted under NAFTA was aimed rather explicitly at Mexico in the areas of labor practices and environmental protection. The indirect costs to the U.S. are likely to be small, and the direct costs of maintaining the enforcement agencies are a very very small portion of the overall government budget.
In any case NAFTA should not be dismissed on these grounds alone, if they are a net cost they still need to be weighed against the gains from trade.
Allow me one slight digression at this point. While I believe that NAFTA will result in net gains on both sides of the border, I do not think that NAFTA as written is the best agreement if realizing the largest possible gains is our objective. NAFTA was originally a 16 page document, to which several thousand pages o qualifications and exceptions were added over the course of its negotiation. Most of these were exceptions for specific commodities. There were also extensive sections dealing with pollution and labor regulation and their enforcement. Each of these exceptions protects a small group of producers or other interested parties. But they do so by lowering the benefits to the rest of us. In fact, were I to bore you with graphs and economic theory it would be straightforward to show that the cost to the rest of us outweighs their benefit.
An ideal NAFTA would have had something akin to article 1, section 9 of the U.S. constitution which states:
5) NAFTA will cause many industries in the United States to dwindle or disappear entirely. Some of these goods will be vital to national security. If these strategic industries are missing when a war breaks out, we will be in a very precarious position. Thus, these industries must be protected against such an scenario. Some of the industries cited as examples are heavy machinery, steel, petrochemicals, non-ferrous metal mining (tungsten, etc.).
While this argument may seem reasonable, it is a very unlikely prospect. Steel, for example, is available from any number of countries on international markets. The likelihood that each of these would declare war on us or be unable to supply steel is very small. Even if such a scenario were likely, a better solution would be to create stockpiles of strategic materials, this way we would get the goods at lower prices and still have them available if needed.
The strategic industries argument also lends itself easily to abuse. Any number of industries could be considered "strategic" by the appropriate interpretation of the word. Indeed, U.S. mohair producers are subsidized by the federal government using exactly this argument.
6) The United States is very good at doing basic research and development. We have arguably the best university system in the world. However, many of the ideas Americans develop first are produced and marketed by foreign firms. This is because foreign government support these industries while the U.S. government does not. Sometimes this support takes the form of government backed coordination, other times it take the form of outright subsidies which allow these industries to stay in business while making a loss. Thus, the U.S. should erect barriers to trade to protect these industries in their early stages of development. Once they are well established they will be able to compete without the aid of trade barriers, but such barriers are vital for early stages of the industry's development. This is referred to as the "infant industry argument".
As a general rule, infant industries that are protected from competition never grow up. Latin American countries, for example, are still carrying along many infant industries that sprang into being as early as 40 years ago. While the infant industry argument may make sense under limited circumstances, it is hard to find an example where an industry protected early on later flourishes without protection.
7) Foreign governments subsidize many well-established industries. Thus, while U.S. firms may equally or even more efficient, they cannot compete with foreign goods. The U.S. should step in and set tariffs to offset this unfair advantage. This levels the playing field and allows the most efficient firms (i.e. the U.S.) ones to compete.
From strictly a U.S. point of view this is exactly the wrong thing to do. By imposing trade barriers we force ourselves to buy goods which are produced at greater cost than on the world market. We would be better off if we produced something else as bought these goods from the subsidizing countries. It is as if the citizens of that country give us a gift; they allow us to buy the good at below cost. If this is what foreign countries wish to do, so be it. It is foolish on their part, but we would be just as foolish to throw the gift away.
8) Foreign firms often engage in dumping, that is they sell goods in the U.S. market at prices below those they charge in their own country; the price they charge may even be so low that it is below the costs of production. Foreign firms are willing to do this because they can undercut the prices of U.S. firms, drive them out of business and corner the market. Once there are no U.S. firms left producing, they can raise the price of the good and gouge consumers. Thus, trade barriers, compensate for the artificially low prices and keep foreign firms from gaining a monopoly.
It is difficult to see how a foreign firm could afford to raise prices substantially once it cornered a market. This is because any significant price increase would be sufficient incentive for a U.S. firm to begin producing again. Thus, the foreign firm must either sell below cost even after eliminating the U.S. producers (an unlikely event) or it must eventually raise its prices to competitive levels. There is a third possibility, which is the foreign firm is not, in fact, charging a price below its costs and is really a more efficient producer.
This indeed seems to be the case with the U.S. television industry. Japanese firms undercut the prices of U.S. television manufacturers in the early 1960's. As a result the U.S. producers disappeared or began to produce other goods (like computer chips in the case of Motorola). The price of televisions has not risen dramatically due to Japanese gouging, however. Mainly because Japanese firms still compete fiercely with each other in the U.S. market. As a result we get televisions at a much cheaper price than we could produce them here and we produce other goods intend, like pharmaceuticals and computers.
I hope I have been able to present accurately the arguments surrounding NAFTA. To summarize I think that NAFTA will be a net benefit to both the U.S. and Mexico. Although the gains are likely to be small in the U.S. because of our size and the numerous restrictions included in NAFTA. The winners from NAFTA in the U.S. are likely to be skilled labor and workers and owners in high-tech industries. The losers in the U.S. will be unskilled labor.
In Utah I see more gainers than losers. The workforce here is largely skilled and engaged in technologically advanced production. I include agriculture in this category; U.S. farming techniques are relatively capital and skill intensive. A great many of the goods & services we produce will be unaffected by free trade with Mexico because transportation costs are prohibitively high even without tariffs. We will not be competing with Mexican barbers and movie theaters, for example.
We will have opportunities as a nation in the future to expand the scope of our free trade. We may, for example, have a chance to include Central or South American countries in a NAFTA-like arrangement, we will continue to negotiate with Japan and with Europe. It is my hope we will have the foresight to seize these opportunities and not pass them by because of unfounded fears.
Trade agreements are still an important issue. The arguments for and against NAFTA outlined below are the same ones we hear with regard to the Columbia and South Korea free trade agreements which are currently hung up in congress. So hopefully the ideas are topical even if NAFTA is not.
The North American Free Trade Agreement passed by congress late last year generated a great deal of public attention. There was much discussion of its potential harms and merits in the media. This discussion, while not all bad, did not seem to me to be focused on the real economics of the issue.
NAFTA is now law and a fact of life for at least the foreseeable future. But, we still face many of the same policy decisions on different fronts. Whether the issue is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), our ongoing negotiations with the Japanese, or political pressure by domestic firms for protection from imports, we, as citizens of the United States will continue to face the choice between free trade and trade restrictions.
It is my hope that I can discuss in a rather general way the benefits and costs of free trade and in this context say something about the likely impact of NAFTA on the U.S. and Mexico.
I would like to start with an illustration, if I may, of the potential gains from free trade.
In order to boil the argument down to its bare essentials let us construct a simple model of the economy. I want to make some very gross oversimplifications, not because I think they are accurate, but because they will help us focus on the important aspects of the issue.
Let us assume for the time being that there are only two goods produced and consumed in the whole world: tennis shoes and personal computers. Assume that tennis shoes are produced in factories using lots of manual labor. PC's, on the other hand require the use of sophisticated machinery and relatively little labor. Suppose that Mexico and the U.S. have tariff barriers that are so high that no trade at all occurs; (again I am not trying to be too realistic, but to illustrate a point as sharply as possible).
In such a world, both Mexico and the U.S. would be forced to produce everything they consume. There would be firms in the U.S. producing both tennis shoes and PC's. And the same would be true in Mexico.
Suppose for the sake of simplicity that the U.S., if it chose to could devote all it's labor and capital to the production of PC's and produce 100 of them (a nice round number). If we instead chose only to produce tennis shoes we could also produce 100 pairs. Since we have to produce both the market would dictate that we not end up at either extreme. We would instead produce something like 50 PC's and 50 pairs of tennis shoes.
In Mexico, where labor is more abundant and capital is scarce, the economy could produce 200 pairs of tennis shoes at one extreme or 50 PC's at the other. Again the market will dictate production somewhere in between, say 25 PC's and 100 pairs of shoes.
Thus, in this world with no international trade there are 75 PC's produced and 150 pairs of shoes.
Since there is little capital in Mexico and no trade. Capital would be very expensive and labor relatively cheap. Since PC's require alot of capital to produce they would be relatively expensive to produce, while tennis shoes would be very inexpensive.
Now imagine that trade between the U.S. and Mexico is opened up. Where would people buy their PC's? In the U.S., of course where the cost of capital is lower. Similarly people would turn to Mexico for tennis shoes where the cost of labor is lower.
As a result we might see the U.S. cease production of shoes entirely. The footwear industry would fall "victim" to international competition. Similarly the Mexican computer industry would disappear. Where does this leave us? We said earlier that the U.S. could produce 100 PC's if that is all it produced and Mexico could produce 200 pairs of shoes if it produced only shoes. As a result we would end up with 100 PCs as opposed to the 75 we had with trade restrictions and 200 pairs of shoes as opposed to the 150 previously. Very clearly the world as a whole is better off. In other words there are gains from trade.
One might, of course, be interested in how the gains from trade are distributed. In our simple world this is what would happen. As the U.S. stopped producing footwear some capital and alot of labor would be freed up. However, the computer industry does not normally require alot of labor. One of two things must happen, either workers must accept lower wages to entice computer firms to hire them, or some workers must remain unemployed.
An exactly identical argument for Mexico predicts that the return on capital must either fall, or capital must lie idle.
At this point it is tempting to conclude that while NAFTA will probably bring net gains is does so by rewarding U.S. owners of capital alot and harming U.S. workers. This is not the conclusion one should draw, however.
While trade between the U.S. and Mexico stands restricted until NAFTA takes full effect, capital is free to move across international boundaries. We therefore expect capital to seek it highest return. This would lead, in our simple model, to a flow of capital into Mexico even if trade in tennis shoes and PC's was completely shut down. The results for world production would be exactly the same as for the case with free trade. If labor were mobile across international boundaries we would see flows of labor from Mexico into the U.S. and again we would reach the same total production as with free trade. In fact it is a standard result of many models of international trade that free movement of capital or labor is identical to free trade in goods.
If we take this twist at face value we are left with the conclusion that all the fuss over NAFTA was a waste of time, there should be no real gains from trade as they are already exhausted by the fact that capital free to move between the U.S. and Mexico. This is not the conclusion one should draw either.
Let me now consider a more realistic (but still highly simplified) view of the issue. Suppose capital is free to move and that there is now trade in PCs or tennis shoes. Also suppose that there are two types of labor, skilled labor which is used alot in the production of PC's and unskilled labor which is used alot in tennis shoe manufacturing. If we assume that there is more skilled labor in the U.S. and relatively more unskilled labor in Mexico, then we con return to our original results and substitute the word skilled labor for capital.
That is that skilled labor in the U.S. will get higher wages as production in PC's goes up, while unskilled labor will be forced to take wage cuts or be unemployed. Similarly, the wages of unskilled workers will rise in Mexico and wages for skilled workers there will fall.
This is, I believe, a realistic general prediction for the effects of NAFTA.
Let me add a final caveat. While we can predict the direction that wages will move, we cannot say anything about the size of the changes unless we know something about the sizes of the two economies. My earlier example used economies of roughly the same size. In reality the Mexican economy is much smaller than the U.S., not only the population lower (90 vs. 250 million or 1/3rd), but it's productive capacity is much smaller ($960 billion vs. $6000 billion for 1992 or 1/6th)
This tends to amplify the effects for the smaller country and mitigate them for the larger one. Thus, one would predict some lowering of U.S. unskilled wages and some moderate increases in skilled wages, but a much greater rise in Mexican unskilled wages. This is also generally true for the gains from trade. Small economies tend to benefit more from opening trade than large ones. Thus, the Mexicans are the ones who stand to gain alot, and who will most likely experience the greatest changes in employment, production and wages. Let me stress that the U.S. stands to gain as well, but not as much in percentage terms or per capita as Mexico.
I would like to present and examine some of the arguments I have heard opposing NAFTA and other free trade arrangements.
1.) NAFTA will cause jobs to be lost in the U.S. The argument goes something like this: As we open our borders to foreign produced goods, U.S. firms will either pack up and move south of the border or will be driven out of business by firms already there. This will leave a large portion of the workforce in the United States unemployed, perhaps permanently so.
As we have seen from our simple model, there will undoubtedly be some loss of jobs to Mexico. These will tend to be jobs in industries that rely on large amounts of relatively unskilled labor. Certainly the textile industry stood to lose alot from Mexican competition under NAFTA, until textiles were largely excluded from the agreement.
The U.S. faced a similar circumstance in the early 1980's when the steel industry in the U.S. began to loose market share to foreign produced steel. Some protections were put in place, but not enough to completely protect the industry. Many steel plants were closed and the steel belt turned into the "rust belt" as the suppliers of steel mills also closed their doors. Yet we do not see vast armies of unemployed steel workers in these areas today. Many took early retirement, most found new jobs, and many young people looked elsewhere for their first job. It is difficult to determine exactly how worse or better off the steelworkers were after they lost their jobs, but they were not tremendously worse off and they did not become chronically unemployed. Consumers in general benefited from lower steel prices
Time magazine ran an article last fall prior to the NAFTA vote which spotlighted Dayton, Ohio. They noted that a local auto parts manufacturer had already closed shop and opened a new plant across in Mexico. They also noted that a local manufacturer of heavy equipment had moved to Mexico at roughly the same time and had recently moved back because of a scarcity of skilled labor which they needed in assembly of their complicated machinery.
This indicates to me that U.S. labor can compete with Mexican labor even with large differences in wage rates. The anxiety workers seem to feel about NAFTA may be attributable to the fact that specific job skills are becoming increasingly important in the U.S. labor market.
The Wall Street Journal also ran an interesting article on Mexican shoemakers who were worried that NAFTA would wipe out their business. They produced fine handmade leather shoes, but doubted they could compete with cheaper lower quality mass-produced shoes from the U.S. It cite this article because it reveals that reservations about NAFTA cut both ways. We worry about cheap labor and the Mexicans worry about out high productivity.
I have noted alot of attention lately to the issue of jobs. Job creation seems to be a very important issue on many people's minds. This is an issue I have a bit of difficulty understanding. Creation of jobs is actually a very easy thing to do. We could, if we wished, pay people to dig holes and fill them up again. With a high enough wage we could entice everyone unemployed into a job.
I submit that most of us would think such an arrangement quite silly. This is because while we might generate jobs we don't generate anything in the way of goods and services that is of value. I think it is necessary when we look at various public policies to bear this in mind. Supporters and detractors of various policies will make all sorts of claims about the numbers of jobs lost or created; while the real issue should be how does it increase or decrease the welfare of the average citizen.
I cannot resist another illustration. Vice President Gore has argued publicly that increased environmental regulation will create jobs. This may well be true, at the extreme we could all be employed as environmental watchdogs making sure that everyone else does not pollute. But if we are all busy watching each other no one will be producing anything for consumption. It may well be that regulating pollution more strictly will make us all better off, but the argument should be made in terms of how it affects production of goods and bads, and not in the number of jobs it creates.
2) NAFTA will cause production in Mexico to rise (somehow) this will lead to exploitation of Mexican workers by firms in Mexico. Mexican labor laws are not as stringent as U.S. laws and thus firms will be less likely to provide clean, healthy and safe workplaces. Thus, with trade barriers in place we protect Mexican workers from exploitation.
The flaw with this argument is the assumption that Mexican workers are better off with no jobs at all than the ones new firms would generate. Certainly the Mexicans do not think so. The assumption, albeit an implicit one, is that Mexican workers are not smart enough to know what is for their own good. If the new jobs created are dangerous and worse than the jobs Mexicans have now, then the Mexicans will turn them down. The fact that they appear to want these jobs indicates that either the jobs are better than what they have, or they don't understand what is going on.
While it may be the case that jobs generated in Mexico will be less safe and pay less than those lost in the U.S. it really is none of our business as long as the Mexicans accept these jobs voluntarily. The decision on what level of safety and cleanliness should prevail in Mexican factories is fundamentally a Mexican decision.
One might argue that these decisions are made by a corrupt political system which does not have the best interests of the average Mexican at heart. This appears to less the case than in the past, but even if it is true it is not at all clear that the best way for the U.S. to address this problem (if indeed we should) is by keeping trade barriers up. It may, in fact, be the case that free trade is a very good dose of medicine for curing political corruption. Since corruption is costly, it is harder for corruption to exist when firms face stiff competition.
3) NAFTA will cause production in Mexico to rise (again somehow) and this will lead to contamination of the environment by firms in Mexico. Mexican environmental laws are not as stringent as U.S. laws and thus firms will be more likely to pollute the air and water in Mexico. If we allow trade barriers to remain in place we protect the environment.
This argument is subject to the same criticism as the previous one. That is, Mexicans should have the right to determine the level of pollution they are willing to live with, and not us. To the extent that we are concerned about air pollution blowing across the border into the U.S. we may be mildly concerned with lax environmental regulation in Mexico, but again there are better ways to deal with such problems, should they arise than restricting trade.
4) NAFTA will lead to a loss of U.S. sovereignty. This is because it creates several transnational bureaucracies to oversee the enforcement of the treaty. These bodies will have enforcement power which supersedes that of federal, state and local governments. Any current or subsequent laws and regulations which conflict with the provisions of NAFTA will be effectively eliminated. This means that policy directly effecting the lives and livelihoods of U.S. citizens will be under the control of commissions and many of these members, being Mexican and Canadian, will not have the best interests of the U.S. in mind.
I must admit to having a bit of sympathy with this view. Certainly an ideal NAFTA would not require the 2000 pages of addenda that were attached to this one.
Most of the enforcement granted under NAFTA was aimed rather explicitly at Mexico in the areas of labor practices and environmental protection. The indirect costs to the U.S. are likely to be small, and the direct costs of maintaining the enforcement agencies are a very very small portion of the overall government budget.
In any case NAFTA should not be dismissed on these grounds alone, if they are a net cost they still need to be weighed against the gains from trade.
Allow me one slight digression at this point. While I believe that NAFTA will result in net gains on both sides of the border, I do not think that NAFTA as written is the best agreement if realizing the largest possible gains is our objective. NAFTA was originally a 16 page document, to which several thousand pages o qualifications and exceptions were added over the course of its negotiation. Most of these were exceptions for specific commodities. There were also extensive sections dealing with pollution and labor regulation and their enforcement. Each of these exceptions protects a small group of producers or other interested parties. But they do so by lowering the benefits to the rest of us. In fact, were I to bore you with graphs and economic theory it would be straightforward to show that the cost to the rest of us outweighs their benefit.
An ideal NAFTA would have had something akin to article 1, section 9 of the U.S. constitution which states:
No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.Indeed, the best example of the benefits of a free trade agreement is probably the United States. Imagine how different our economy would be if each state could levy tariffs on goods produced in other states.
No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over another; nor shall vessels bound to or from one state be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another.
5) NAFTA will cause many industries in the United States to dwindle or disappear entirely. Some of these goods will be vital to national security. If these strategic industries are missing when a war breaks out, we will be in a very precarious position. Thus, these industries must be protected against such an scenario. Some of the industries cited as examples are heavy machinery, steel, petrochemicals, non-ferrous metal mining (tungsten, etc.).
While this argument may seem reasonable, it is a very unlikely prospect. Steel, for example, is available from any number of countries on international markets. The likelihood that each of these would declare war on us or be unable to supply steel is very small. Even if such a scenario were likely, a better solution would be to create stockpiles of strategic materials, this way we would get the goods at lower prices and still have them available if needed.
The strategic industries argument also lends itself easily to abuse. Any number of industries could be considered "strategic" by the appropriate interpretation of the word. Indeed, U.S. mohair producers are subsidized by the federal government using exactly this argument.
6) The United States is very good at doing basic research and development. We have arguably the best university system in the world. However, many of the ideas Americans develop first are produced and marketed by foreign firms. This is because foreign government support these industries while the U.S. government does not. Sometimes this support takes the form of government backed coordination, other times it take the form of outright subsidies which allow these industries to stay in business while making a loss. Thus, the U.S. should erect barriers to trade to protect these industries in their early stages of development. Once they are well established they will be able to compete without the aid of trade barriers, but such barriers are vital for early stages of the industry's development. This is referred to as the "infant industry argument".
As a general rule, infant industries that are protected from competition never grow up. Latin American countries, for example, are still carrying along many infant industries that sprang into being as early as 40 years ago. While the infant industry argument may make sense under limited circumstances, it is hard to find an example where an industry protected early on later flourishes without protection.
7) Foreign governments subsidize many well-established industries. Thus, while U.S. firms may equally or even more efficient, they cannot compete with foreign goods. The U.S. should step in and set tariffs to offset this unfair advantage. This levels the playing field and allows the most efficient firms (i.e. the U.S.) ones to compete.
From strictly a U.S. point of view this is exactly the wrong thing to do. By imposing trade barriers we force ourselves to buy goods which are produced at greater cost than on the world market. We would be better off if we produced something else as bought these goods from the subsidizing countries. It is as if the citizens of that country give us a gift; they allow us to buy the good at below cost. If this is what foreign countries wish to do, so be it. It is foolish on their part, but we would be just as foolish to throw the gift away.
8) Foreign firms often engage in dumping, that is they sell goods in the U.S. market at prices below those they charge in their own country; the price they charge may even be so low that it is below the costs of production. Foreign firms are willing to do this because they can undercut the prices of U.S. firms, drive them out of business and corner the market. Once there are no U.S. firms left producing, they can raise the price of the good and gouge consumers. Thus, trade barriers, compensate for the artificially low prices and keep foreign firms from gaining a monopoly.
It is difficult to see how a foreign firm could afford to raise prices substantially once it cornered a market. This is because any significant price increase would be sufficient incentive for a U.S. firm to begin producing again. Thus, the foreign firm must either sell below cost even after eliminating the U.S. producers (an unlikely event) or it must eventually raise its prices to competitive levels. There is a third possibility, which is the foreign firm is not, in fact, charging a price below its costs and is really a more efficient producer.
This indeed seems to be the case with the U.S. television industry. Japanese firms undercut the prices of U.S. television manufacturers in the early 1960's. As a result the U.S. producers disappeared or began to produce other goods (like computer chips in the case of Motorola). The price of televisions has not risen dramatically due to Japanese gouging, however. Mainly because Japanese firms still compete fiercely with each other in the U.S. market. As a result we get televisions at a much cheaper price than we could produce them here and we produce other goods intend, like pharmaceuticals and computers.
I hope I have been able to present accurately the arguments surrounding NAFTA. To summarize I think that NAFTA will be a net benefit to both the U.S. and Mexico. Although the gains are likely to be small in the U.S. because of our size and the numerous restrictions included in NAFTA. The winners from NAFTA in the U.S. are likely to be skilled labor and workers and owners in high-tech industries. The losers in the U.S. will be unskilled labor.
In Utah I see more gainers than losers. The workforce here is largely skilled and engaged in technologically advanced production. I include agriculture in this category; U.S. farming techniques are relatively capital and skill intensive. A great many of the goods & services we produce will be unaffected by free trade with Mexico because transportation costs are prohibitively high even without tariffs. We will not be competing with Mexican barbers and movie theaters, for example.
We will have opportunities as a nation in the future to expand the scope of our free trade. We may, for example, have a chance to include Central or South American countries in a NAFTA-like arrangement, we will continue to negotiate with Japan and with Europe. It is my hope we will have the foresight to seize these opportunities and not pass them by because of unfounded fears.
Children's Books You Will Never See
Someone sent this to me several years ago. Remember these are examples of books that DON'T exist, for obvious reasons.
Strangers Have the Best Candy
The Little Sissy Who Snitched
Some Kittens Can Fly!
Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her
The Attention Deficit Disorder Association's Book of Wild Animals of North Amer - Hey! Let's Go Ride Our Bikes!
The Kid's Guide to Hitchhiking
You Are Different and That's Bad
POP! Goes the Hamster...and Other Great Microwave Games
Curious George and the High Voltage Fence
The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables
Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will
The Care Bears Maul Some Campers and Are Shot Dead
How to Become the Dominant Military Power in Your Elementary School
Controlling the Playground: Respect Through Fear
Why Can't Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
Strangers Have the Best Candy
The Little Sissy Who Snitched
Some Kittens Can Fly!
Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her
The Attention Deficit Disorder Association's Book of Wild Animals of North Amer - Hey! Let's Go Ride Our Bikes!
The Kid's Guide to Hitchhiking
You Are Different and That's Bad
POP! Goes the Hamster...and Other Great Microwave Games
Curious George and the High Voltage Fence
The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables
Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will
The Care Bears Maul Some Campers and Are Shot Dead
How to Become the Dominant Military Power in Your Elementary School
Controlling the Playground: Respect Through Fear
Why Can't Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Book Review - Napoleon in Egypt
Napoleon in Egypt, by Paul Strathern
I finished this book today and enjoyed it greatly. Obviously, the book focuses on Napoleon's invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1798. This is not a period of history about which I knew much and I found this well-researched book quite interesting.
Strathern discusses all aspects of the venture, including the scientific accomplishments. But the focus of the book is clearly on Napoleon and the what, how and why of the invasion. He makes a very good case that Napoleon was intent on following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and establishing an empire based in Egpyt founded on French culture and science. The large number of "savants" he recruited for the mission is just one piece of evidence supporting this idea.
Strathern discusses the major military engagements as well as the political maneuvering between and among France, England, Austria, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and other states.
My favorite chapters were 18 & 19 which document the pursuit of Murad Bey, one of the previous Mameluke rulers, south along the Nile into Upper Egypt by Napoleon's general, Desaix . This was country through which few, if any, Europeans had traveled and the ancient temples and other ruins they passed were unknown to European historians. The artist, Donon, accompanied the soldiers on this campaign, and the hundreds of sketches he brought back were instrumental in sparking European interest in ancient Egypt and establishing modern Egyptology.
Ultimately, the French were expelled from Egypt by the combined forces of Britain and the Ottomans. Napoleon abandoned his army and returned to Franch before this, however, in 1799, after a failed invasion of Palestine.
The parallels between Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the US war in Iraq are many, though by no means perfect. This gives the book a lot of contemporary interest beyond the history.
Strathern notes that, "between 1o,000 and 15,000 Frenchmen were probably killed or died of disease during the occupation of Egypt, as well as many times that number of Muslim warriors and Mamelukes -- all in the vain attempt to impose European civilization upon a backward people whose religion encouraged them to regard all change and all foreigners with the deepest suspicion." Regardless of how accurate that assessment is, the book still documents a very good historic example of the limits of military power.
I finished this book today and enjoyed it greatly. Obviously, the book focuses on Napoleon's invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1798. This is not a period of history about which I knew much and I found this well-researched book quite interesting.
Strathern discusses all aspects of the venture, including the scientific accomplishments. But the focus of the book is clearly on Napoleon and the what, how and why of the invasion. He makes a very good case that Napoleon was intent on following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and establishing an empire based in Egpyt founded on French culture and science. The large number of "savants" he recruited for the mission is just one piece of evidence supporting this idea.
Strathern discusses the major military engagements as well as the political maneuvering between and among France, England, Austria, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and other states.
My favorite chapters were 18 & 19 which document the pursuit of Murad Bey, one of the previous Mameluke rulers, south along the Nile into Upper Egypt by Napoleon's general, Desaix . This was country through which few, if any, Europeans had traveled and the ancient temples and other ruins they passed were unknown to European historians. The artist, Donon, accompanied the soldiers on this campaign, and the hundreds of sketches he brought back were instrumental in sparking European interest in ancient Egypt and establishing modern Egyptology.
Ultimately, the French were expelled from Egypt by the combined forces of Britain and the Ottomans. Napoleon abandoned his army and returned to Franch before this, however, in 1799, after a failed invasion of Palestine.
The parallels between Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the US war in Iraq are many, though by no means perfect. This gives the book a lot of contemporary interest beyond the history.
Strathern notes that, "between 1o,000 and 15,000 Frenchmen were probably killed or died of disease during the occupation of Egypt, as well as many times that number of Muslim warriors and Mamelukes -- all in the vain attempt to impose European civilization upon a backward people whose religion encouraged them to regard all change and all foreigners with the deepest suspicion." Regardless of how accurate that assessment is, the book still documents a very good historic example of the limits of military power.
Three Men Pictographs in Calf Creek Canyon
I just discovered that you can send photos from you Flickr account to a blog. So I am testing this to see how well it works. Here is a photo of the three men pictograph from Calf Creek Canyon. These are most likely Fremont in origin. The horns are a typical Fremont motiff.
It looks to me like the posting works fine, by the way.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
More Libertarianism
In 2ooo I ran for elected office. Yes, really. I signed up to run for the state senate as the candidate for the Libertarian Party. I was not committed to doing anything to win, mind you. I viewed the whole thing as a sort of civic duty - so that there would at least be a Libertarian candidate on the ballot.
After registering as a candidate, I subsequently took a one-year leave from BYU, and moved to Nanjing, China for a year. I was not even in the US when the election was held. I wrote a letter to the county registrar and withdrew my candidacy and I don't believe I was actually on the ballot. However, if you Google my name and look hard enough you can find the official vote tally with my name listed and no votes cast for me. That's right, I didn't even vote for myself.
During the course of my brief candidacy, I received the following email and made the attached response. It may be of some interest to someone.
Original Email
Candidates --
After finding on the Internet that you are running for an office that I am concerned about and have interest in, I am seeking information about you.
What are your concerns that have prompted you to run, especially to oppose an incumbent? (Please note that I would be willing to vote for a non-incumbent!)
What are specific issues that you would promote, sponsor, encourage, etc?
Without getting too personal or mean, what haven't you liked about the incumbent?
What different viewpoints do you have?
Basically, I'm asking "Why are you seeking public political office?" and "Why should I vote for you?"
Sincerely,
XXX, very concerned citizen/voter
American Fork
My Response
Dear XXX:
Thank you for your interest in my candidacy. I am running for the state senate as a Libertarian. Libertarians in general and I personally believe in a limited role for government. We basically believe that the government should not interfere with anyone without overwhelmingly good cause. I believe that there are a few legitimate roles for the government to play in society - enforcing contracts and enforcing laws against violence, theft & fraud, for example. I am very uncomfortable when the government, be it state, local or federal, steps beyond these bounds. I am aware that there are many cases where free individuals acting together may make socially poor choices. Some people will argue that in most of these cases there is a legitimate role for the government to play in correcting the situation. Laws against monopoly behavior are one example. While I agree that there may be the potential for the government to correct such problems, I do not agree that the government necessarily has the know-how or the incentives to properly solve such problems. Experience has shown that such arguments are used time after time to promote expansion of the government, without really solving the problem and in many cases making it worse.
Despite the fact that Republicans talk of small government, I see no evidence, especially at the state & local level, that they really do anything to make government small or limit its control. I have nothing personal against our current state senator, John Valentine - I am sure he is a nice person and votes as he sees best - I do think the current state legislature generally passes poor laws. If elected, I would not vote to increase taxes for any reason. I believe the state government already tries to do too many things and generally does them poorly. I would oppose any law that placed unnecessary constraints on the behavior of businesses or individuals.
Ultimately the government uses coercion of various types to enforce the laws it passes. If I break a law, the government may arrest and detain me in jail. If I try to escape from jail they may use deadly force to stop my escape. I believe that we should be very careful about the use of such coercion. Very few of the things the government does are worth killing someone for.
I am not so naive to think that I will win the upcoming election. Utah county will most likely continue to elect Republicans to the state legislature for the foreseeable future. What I hope to accomplish by running for office is let people know that there are alternatives to the status quo. I believe that most people in Utah county are sympathetic with libertarian viewpoints, indeed it probably matches their political preferences better than the Republican Party. However, they may not realize that the Libertarian Party exists as an alternative.
I hope the above comments have adequately answered your questions. If I have not done so, or if you have further questions please feel free to contact me at this email address. I will try to respond promptly.
After registering as a candidate, I subsequently took a one-year leave from BYU, and moved to Nanjing, China for a year. I was not even in the US when the election was held. I wrote a letter to the county registrar and withdrew my candidacy and I don't believe I was actually on the ballot. However, if you Google my name and look hard enough you can find the official vote tally with my name listed and no votes cast for me. That's right, I didn't even vote for myself.
During the course of my brief candidacy, I received the following email and made the attached response. It may be of some interest to someone.
Original Email
Candidates --
After finding on the Internet that you are running for an office that I am concerned about and have interest in, I am seeking information about you.
What are your concerns that have prompted you to run, especially to oppose an incumbent? (Please note that I would be willing to vote for a non-incumbent!)
What are specific issues that you would promote, sponsor, encourage, etc?
Without getting too personal or mean, what haven't you liked about the incumbent?
What different viewpoints do you have?
Basically, I'm asking "Why are you seeking public political office?" and "Why should I vote for you?"
Sincerely,
XXX, very concerned citizen/voter
American Fork
My Response
Dear XXX:
Thank you for your interest in my candidacy. I am running for the state senate as a Libertarian. Libertarians in general and I personally believe in a limited role for government. We basically believe that the government should not interfere with anyone without overwhelmingly good cause. I believe that there are a few legitimate roles for the government to play in society - enforcing contracts and enforcing laws against violence, theft & fraud, for example. I am very uncomfortable when the government, be it state, local or federal, steps beyond these bounds. I am aware that there are many cases where free individuals acting together may make socially poor choices. Some people will argue that in most of these cases there is a legitimate role for the government to play in correcting the situation. Laws against monopoly behavior are one example. While I agree that there may be the potential for the government to correct such problems, I do not agree that the government necessarily has the know-how or the incentives to properly solve such problems. Experience has shown that such arguments are used time after time to promote expansion of the government, without really solving the problem and in many cases making it worse.
Despite the fact that Republicans talk of small government, I see no evidence, especially at the state & local level, that they really do anything to make government small or limit its control. I have nothing personal against our current state senator, John Valentine - I am sure he is a nice person and votes as he sees best - I do think the current state legislature generally passes poor laws. If elected, I would not vote to increase taxes for any reason. I believe the state government already tries to do too many things and generally does them poorly. I would oppose any law that placed unnecessary constraints on the behavior of businesses or individuals.
Ultimately the government uses coercion of various types to enforce the laws it passes. If I break a law, the government may arrest and detain me in jail. If I try to escape from jail they may use deadly force to stop my escape. I believe that we should be very careful about the use of such coercion. Very few of the things the government does are worth killing someone for.
I am not so naive to think that I will win the upcoming election. Utah county will most likely continue to elect Republicans to the state legislature for the foreseeable future. What I hope to accomplish by running for office is let people know that there are alternatives to the status quo. I believe that most people in Utah county are sympathetic with libertarian viewpoints, indeed it probably matches their political preferences better than the Republican Party. However, they may not realize that the Libertarian Party exists as an alternative.
I hope the above comments have adequately answered your questions. If I have not done so, or if you have further questions please feel free to contact me at this email address. I will try to respond promptly.
3D Photos
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Click for a larger version |
Did you ever use a Viewmaster as a kid? The photo above works on the same principle. You can generate three dimensional views by taking photos of an object from slightly different angles. There are special attachments you can buy for cameras that will split the exposure to get different viewpoints at the exact same point in time. This is really the only way to get action photos. However, if you are taking photos of objects that don't move you can use a much cheaper approach known as the "cha-cha" method. This is what I do for 3D landscape photos. You take one photo and then quickly take a step or two to the right or left and take another. The further you step, the greater the 3D effect. For large objects like the natural bridge above, you can pick out three dimensional details that you would not pick out even being there in person. This is because rather than the parallax from the few inches separating your two eyes, you can generate parallax as big as you want, in effect amplifying the 3D effect. The biggest I have ever done is a hundred feet or so at Rainbow Point at Byrce Canyon.
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| View of Molly's Nipple from Rainbow Point in Bryce Canyon National Park |
To view the images I take you need to be able to cross your eyes. If you can do this, then you will line up the two images on top of one another. The image for the right eye is on the left and the visa-versa, so when you line them up by crossing your eyes you create the 3D effect.
If you have managed to do this take a look at the photographs here and on my 3D photo page. Notice how you can easily determine relative distance with this photos in ways you could not with a single photo. For objects that are really far away you cannot tell relative distance with the unaided eye(s) because your eyes are too close together to get any significant parallax.
The technical name for this "amplification" is hyperstereo.
Monday, December 15, 2008
A Hainan Airplane Allegory
In April 2001 a US reconaissance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet near Hainan Island in southern China. A full review of the incident is available from Wikipedia. I was in Nanjing at the time and there was clearly a great deal of diplomatic tension between the US and China because of this, though there was very little ill-will or resentment that I could see from regular people in Nanjing (as I mentioned in a previous post).
The US press blamed the incident on a hot-dogging Chinese pilot, who was killed in the collision. The Chinese press blamed the US, claiming the incident was due to reckless provoction. As a father of small children at the time, the whole thing seemed very familiar. It was like my two youngest jumping on the sofa and pushing each other around. Then when one falls off and gets hurt they both blame the other and in some sense they are both right and both wrong.
Anyway, here is my short allegory which I wrote at the time.
No analogy or allegory is perfect, but sometime you can learn something from one.
Once upon a time there was a fairly successful U.S. business; let’s call it something quasi-meaningful like the Enterprise Corporation. Enterprise was on a role, expanding it’s sales after several years of poor management. They had a new product line out that was doing very well and they were now the second or third biggest supplier in their industry. Stock prices were up and things look generally pretty rosy. Especially since they had overcome a period of terrible sales following a near bankruptcy several years earlier. During that turbulent era the company had lost sales to a series of large international rivals. These companies had raided Enterprise’s R&D labs and hired away all of their best engineers. Though no one was able to prove any illegality, it was pretty clear that they had stolen many of their best design ideas in the process. Eventually one of these had emerged as the dominant firm in the market; let’s call them Hercules International, based in the Far East. Hercules was clearly the market leader with more than half the industry’s sales.
Anyway, things were going well. Enterprise had a largely loyal workforce, though there were some troubling labor rumblings. Financially, things could’ve been better, but they had certainly been worse.
In the midst of all of this, corporate security reported that there were some disturbing goings on. Every week or so a large unmarked van drove by the main research campus and rolled slowly past the warehouse doors where Enterprise kept it’s latest prototypes. It didn’t take much effort to discover that the van was full of photographers hired by Hercules that were snapping away in hopes of getting useful photos. Enterprise wasn’t run by dummies, and they did the best they could to keep their latest ideas under wraps, but they knew they eventually had to test them out-of-doors and they were worried that Hercules might pick up on something they could exploit.
Enterprise decided that they would not let this continue uncontested. They had several security people who began patrolling the roads around the plant on motorcycles. Whenever the van would show up they would tailgate, or zoom in front and then slow down and otherwise harass the driver. Part of this was to distract the photographers, but mostly it was to send a clear message to Hercules that they knew what was going on and were not happy about it.
Eventually, the whole thing developed into a real road race, with motorcycles swerving back and forth and the van alternately speeding up and slowing down and occasionally changing lanes unexpectedly (just like your run-of-the-mill action film).
Well, as you might expect (since there’s supposed to be a point to this story), one day there was an accident. Though the details weren’t clear it appeared that the van swerved to avoid one motorcycle and hit the other. The rider was seriously injured and was rushed to the hospital. The van plowed through the retaining fence stopping on Enterprise’s property. Plant security responded and took the van driver and his passengers to the infirmary where they were treated for minor cuts and bruises. While the van was unattended much of the photographic equipment and film disappeared. Enterprise eventually turned everything over to the police, but not until after they developed the film and made copies.
Now the questions: Who is responsible for the accident? Who was the aggressor and who was the victim? Or do such distinctions make any sense in this case?
The US press blamed the incident on a hot-dogging Chinese pilot, who was killed in the collision. The Chinese press blamed the US, claiming the incident was due to reckless provoction. As a father of small children at the time, the whole thing seemed very familiar. It was like my two youngest jumping on the sofa and pushing each other around. Then when one falls off and gets hurt they both blame the other and in some sense they are both right and both wrong.
Anyway, here is my short allegory which I wrote at the time.
No analogy or allegory is perfect, but sometime you can learn something from one.
Once upon a time there was a fairly successful U.S. business; let’s call it something quasi-meaningful like the Enterprise Corporation. Enterprise was on a role, expanding it’s sales after several years of poor management. They had a new product line out that was doing very well and they were now the second or third biggest supplier in their industry. Stock prices were up and things look generally pretty rosy. Especially since they had overcome a period of terrible sales following a near bankruptcy several years earlier. During that turbulent era the company had lost sales to a series of large international rivals. These companies had raided Enterprise’s R&D labs and hired away all of their best engineers. Though no one was able to prove any illegality, it was pretty clear that they had stolen many of their best design ideas in the process. Eventually one of these had emerged as the dominant firm in the market; let’s call them Hercules International, based in the Far East. Hercules was clearly the market leader with more than half the industry’s sales.
Anyway, things were going well. Enterprise had a largely loyal workforce, though there were some troubling labor rumblings. Financially, things could’ve been better, but they had certainly been worse.
In the midst of all of this, corporate security reported that there were some disturbing goings on. Every week or so a large unmarked van drove by the main research campus and rolled slowly past the warehouse doors where Enterprise kept it’s latest prototypes. It didn’t take much effort to discover that the van was full of photographers hired by Hercules that were snapping away in hopes of getting useful photos. Enterprise wasn’t run by dummies, and they did the best they could to keep their latest ideas under wraps, but they knew they eventually had to test them out-of-doors and they were worried that Hercules might pick up on something they could exploit.
Enterprise decided that they would not let this continue uncontested. They had several security people who began patrolling the roads around the plant on motorcycles. Whenever the van would show up they would tailgate, or zoom in front and then slow down and otherwise harass the driver. Part of this was to distract the photographers, but mostly it was to send a clear message to Hercules that they knew what was going on and were not happy about it.
Eventually, the whole thing developed into a real road race, with motorcycles swerving back and forth and the van alternately speeding up and slowing down and occasionally changing lanes unexpectedly (just like your run-of-the-mill action film).
Well, as you might expect (since there’s supposed to be a point to this story), one day there was an accident. Though the details weren’t clear it appeared that the van swerved to avoid one motorcycle and hit the other. The rider was seriously injured and was rushed to the hospital. The van plowed through the retaining fence stopping on Enterprise’s property. Plant security responded and took the van driver and his passengers to the infirmary where they were treated for minor cuts and bruises. While the van was unattended much of the photographic equipment and film disappeared. Enterprise eventually turned everything over to the police, but not until after they developed the film and made copies.
Now the questions: Who is responsible for the accident? Who was the aggressor and who was the victim? Or do such distinctions make any sense in this case?
Synopsis of Pericles
Another one from the archives. We went to see Pericles at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City several years back and I wrote this for the family and friends as a way to familarize everyone with the plot.
Antiochus is the king of Antioch (duh!). He has been carrying on a secret incestuous relationship with his beautiful daughter. In order to hide the mess, he has declared that any who wish her hand in marriage must solve a riddle he gives them. If they answer correctly they get the girl, if not they loose their head. Pericles, the young prince of Tyre, comes to Antioch to seek Antiochus's daughter as his wife. He correctly solves the riddle, and by so doing learns about the incest. Antiochus decides to kill him anyway, but he escapes to Tyre with an assassin, Thaliard, on his heels.
In Tyre he decides to take a boat trip 'til the whole thing blows over and leaves his trusted advisor, Helicanus, in charge of things while he's gone. He takes a fleet of ships to Tharsus and helps alleviate the famine there. This earns him the friendship of the governor, Cleon, and his wife, Dionyza. He sets sail again, but the fleet is caught in storm and only Pericles survives to be cast up on the shore near Pentapolis. He manages to salvage a suit of armor and wins the local jousting match in honor of Thaisa, the king's daughter's, birthday. Of course he wins over her father, Simonides, and marries the girl.
In the meantime, Antiochus and his daughter have been toasted to ashes by a bolt of lightning. The people back in Tyre are convinced that Pericles is dead and are asking Helicanus to become the new king. Pericles finds out and sails homeward with his very pregnant wife. As we should expect (since the play is only half over) there is another storm and Thaisa dies giving birth to their child, whom Pericles names Marina (and since she's the daughter of a king I guess that makes her Marina del Rey). In any case, the sailors convince Pericles that a dead body on board is bad luck and they toss Thaisa's body into the sea in a coffin. They make their way to Tharsus, where Pericles asks Cleon and Dionyza to raise his daughter for him. He then sails back to Tyre to straighten things out.
In the meantime, Thaisa's coffin washes up on the shores of Ephesus and she is brought back to life by the ministering of Cerimon, who is apparently a really good doctor. Thinking that she's the only survivor, Thaisa becomes a vestal at the Temple of Diana in Ephesus.
Fourteen years pass and Marina has become a beautiful and talented young lady. So beautiful and talented that she eclipses Dionyza's own daughter in court. Dionyza gets her servant Leonine to whack the girl. Fortunately? she is captured by pirates just as he is trying to finish her off. The pirates take her to Mitylene and sell her into a brothel.
Pericles makes a voyage back to Tharsus to see his daughter (for the first time in 14 years, one assumes he did send child support). Cleon & Dionyza tell him she died of natural causes and show him the tomb. Being a bit gullible, Pericles believes the story and is so upset that he stops shaving and laundering his clothes.
In the meantime, Marina has not been much of a hit in the brothel. Every time customer comes to see her she makes them feel so sorry and guilty that they quit their wenching days for ever. One of these is Lysimachus, the governor. Marina manages to convince the owners of the brothel that it's in their own best interest to send her off as a servant girl in a more respectable house.
A while later Pericles' fleet sails by. The sad news of his acute bout of depression has preceded the boats. Lysimachus decides that the girl he met in the brothel is just the remedy for a sad sack like Pericles and he sails out with Marina to see him. After a lengthy group therapy session on the deck of the ship it becomes apparent that Marina is Pericles's (assumed) dead daughter. Pericles shaves, puts on a clean set of clothes and allows Marina and Lysimachus to get engaged. He then sets sail back to Tharsus to rearrange Cleon and Dionyza's anatomy.
However, that night the goddess Diana (sans Charles) appears to Pericles in a dream and tells him to sail to Ephesus instead and tell his story on the steps of the altar in her temple there. Realizing what happens to mortals that tick off Olympian gods, he does so and is reunited with Thaisa who has become the chief vestal of the temple. The dysfunctional family is finally all together. News comes that Thaisa's daddy is dead, so Pericles et al run off to Pentapolis for the wedding and then send the two love-birds off to rule Tyre while Pericles and Thaisa settle down in Pentapolis.
Synopsis of Pericles, Prince of Tyre
or A Whirlwind Tour of the Eastern Mediterranean
by that Shakespeare guy.
or A Whirlwind Tour of the Eastern Mediterranean
by that Shakespeare guy.
Antiochus is the king of Antioch (duh!). He has been carrying on a secret incestuous relationship with his beautiful daughter. In order to hide the mess, he has declared that any who wish her hand in marriage must solve a riddle he gives them. If they answer correctly they get the girl, if not they loose their head. Pericles, the young prince of Tyre, comes to Antioch to seek Antiochus's daughter as his wife. He correctly solves the riddle, and by so doing learns about the incest. Antiochus decides to kill him anyway, but he escapes to Tyre with an assassin, Thaliard, on his heels.
In Tyre he decides to take a boat trip 'til the whole thing blows over and leaves his trusted advisor, Helicanus, in charge of things while he's gone. He takes a fleet of ships to Tharsus and helps alleviate the famine there. This earns him the friendship of the governor, Cleon, and his wife, Dionyza. He sets sail again, but the fleet is caught in storm and only Pericles survives to be cast up on the shore near Pentapolis. He manages to salvage a suit of armor and wins the local jousting match in honor of Thaisa, the king's daughter's, birthday. Of course he wins over her father, Simonides, and marries the girl.
In the meantime, Antiochus and his daughter have been toasted to ashes by a bolt of lightning. The people back in Tyre are convinced that Pericles is dead and are asking Helicanus to become the new king. Pericles finds out and sails homeward with his very pregnant wife. As we should expect (since the play is only half over) there is another storm and Thaisa dies giving birth to their child, whom Pericles names Marina (and since she's the daughter of a king I guess that makes her Marina del Rey). In any case, the sailors convince Pericles that a dead body on board is bad luck and they toss Thaisa's body into the sea in a coffin. They make their way to Tharsus, where Pericles asks Cleon and Dionyza to raise his daughter for him. He then sails back to Tyre to straighten things out.
In the meantime, Thaisa's coffin washes up on the shores of Ephesus and she is brought back to life by the ministering of Cerimon, who is apparently a really good doctor. Thinking that she's the only survivor, Thaisa becomes a vestal at the Temple of Diana in Ephesus.
Fourteen years pass and Marina has become a beautiful and talented young lady. So beautiful and talented that she eclipses Dionyza's own daughter in court. Dionyza gets her servant Leonine to whack the girl. Fortunately? she is captured by pirates just as he is trying to finish her off. The pirates take her to Mitylene and sell her into a brothel.
Pericles makes a voyage back to Tharsus to see his daughter (for the first time in 14 years, one assumes he did send child support). Cleon & Dionyza tell him she died of natural causes and show him the tomb. Being a bit gullible, Pericles believes the story and is so upset that he stops shaving and laundering his clothes.
In the meantime, Marina has not been much of a hit in the brothel. Every time customer comes to see her she makes them feel so sorry and guilty that they quit their wenching days for ever. One of these is Lysimachus, the governor. Marina manages to convince the owners of the brothel that it's in their own best interest to send her off as a servant girl in a more respectable house.
A while later Pericles' fleet sails by. The sad news of his acute bout of depression has preceded the boats. Lysimachus decides that the girl he met in the brothel is just the remedy for a sad sack like Pericles and he sails out with Marina to see him. After a lengthy group therapy session on the deck of the ship it becomes apparent that Marina is Pericles's (assumed) dead daughter. Pericles shaves, puts on a clean set of clothes and allows Marina and Lysimachus to get engaged. He then sets sail back to Tharsus to rearrange Cleon and Dionyza's anatomy.
However, that night the goddess Diana (sans Charles) appears to Pericles in a dream and tells him to sail to Ephesus instead and tell his story on the steps of the altar in her temple there. Realizing what happens to mortals that tick off Olympian gods, he does so and is reunited with Thaisa who has become the chief vestal of the temple. The dysfunctional family is finally all together. News comes that Thaisa's daddy is dead, so Pericles et al run off to Pentapolis for the wedding and then send the two love-birds off to rule Tyre while Pericles and Thaisa settle down in Pentapolis.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Reminiscing about Nanjing
For some reason, lately I have been thinking alot about the year our family spent in Nanjing, China. I spent the 2000-01 academic year teaching at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center there. There were 6 international professors there who taught classes in English mostly to the 50 Chinese students who were studying there. There were also another 45 or so international students taking classes in Chinese from Chinese faculty, mostly from Nanjing University. There was a US staff of three, and several Chinese staff all of whom were bilingual. In fact most everyone was bilingual, except the professors. Our joint faculty meetings with the Chinese faculty too a while because everything had to be translated.
The students, the international faculty families, and the US staff all lived in the center. The Chinese and international students were paired up as roommates (the only place in China where that was allowed). There was a really nice sense of community there. The staff did a wonderful job of helping us settle in and making life in a strange, new place comfortable.
I taught pretty much the same classes I teach at BYU: Principles of Economics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, International Trade Theory & International Monetary Theory. The students there were the best students I have ever taught. The competition for the 50 slots was fierce and only the cream of the crop were admitted. While I was teaching the principles class the first semester, I mentioned as an aside that the explanation would be easier if I could use calculus. Several of the students noted that they knew calculus and asked if I could teach using math. When I surveyed the class I found that all but two of the students had taken calculus. So I said, "Sorry, it's not fair to these two to use tools they don't understand." To which they replied, "It's OK, we'll learn calculus." And they did. They checked out math books from the library and crammed to learn the principles of calculus along with the economics. It is the first and only time I have taught principles of economics using calculus.
We were there for the 2000 election in the US, when the voting in Florida was such a mess and no one knew who the next president would be for several weeks. That was quite a treat for the Chinese students taking the class on American government.
We were there when the US reconaissance plane collided with the Chinese jet off Hainan Island and had to make an emergency landing there. Things seemed a bit tense if you watched CNN and maybe it was up in Beijing. I was out riding my bicycle with Alan during the time the US airmen were being held in Hainan. The tire went flat on the bike, so I pulled over to one of the many roadside bike repairmen. He found the valve stem was not tightened properly, fixed it, and reinflated the tire. In the meantime, a small crowd had gathered around. I guess I was in a part of town where foreigners rarely travel, or perhaps they had never seen such a chubby guy on a bike before. Anyway, when I asked how much the repair cost, the repairman waved me off with a smile and said, "guoji guanxi". In effect, "It's free for the sake of international relations." If that was his real intent, it worked. That is one of my best memories from that year.
Our whole family had a great experience. We lived in what for us seemed like cramped quarters, but the closeness was good in many ways. The lack of 50+ English language TV stations was also a blessing in disguise.
We attended church with a small group of LDS people in Nanjing. Five of them were affiliated with BYU's China Teacher's Program, and one was a BYU graduate studying Chinese at Nanjing Normal University. With six people in our family, we were half the group. We met in the apartments of the two retired couples. With such a small group you got to give a talk or teach a lesson almost every week.
I kept a journal of sorts of the year. You can find it here on our family's website.
I would really like to go back and do another year in the future. With kids going to high school in a year or two, though, I don't know when we will be able to go.
The students, the international faculty families, and the US staff all lived in the center. The Chinese and international students were paired up as roommates (the only place in China where that was allowed). There was a really nice sense of community there. The staff did a wonderful job of helping us settle in and making life in a strange, new place comfortable.
I taught pretty much the same classes I teach at BYU: Principles of Economics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, International Trade Theory & International Monetary Theory. The students there were the best students I have ever taught. The competition for the 50 slots was fierce and only the cream of the crop were admitted. While I was teaching the principles class the first semester, I mentioned as an aside that the explanation would be easier if I could use calculus. Several of the students noted that they knew calculus and asked if I could teach using math. When I surveyed the class I found that all but two of the students had taken calculus. So I said, "Sorry, it's not fair to these two to use tools they don't understand." To which they replied, "It's OK, we'll learn calculus." And they did. They checked out math books from the library and crammed to learn the principles of calculus along with the economics. It is the first and only time I have taught principles of economics using calculus.
We were there for the 2000 election in the US, when the voting in Florida was such a mess and no one knew who the next president would be for several weeks. That was quite a treat for the Chinese students taking the class on American government.
We were there when the US reconaissance plane collided with the Chinese jet off Hainan Island and had to make an emergency landing there. Things seemed a bit tense if you watched CNN and maybe it was up in Beijing. I was out riding my bicycle with Alan during the time the US airmen were being held in Hainan. The tire went flat on the bike, so I pulled over to one of the many roadside bike repairmen. He found the valve stem was not tightened properly, fixed it, and reinflated the tire. In the meantime, a small crowd had gathered around. I guess I was in a part of town where foreigners rarely travel, or perhaps they had never seen such a chubby guy on a bike before. Anyway, when I asked how much the repair cost, the repairman waved me off with a smile and said, "guoji guanxi". In effect, "It's free for the sake of international relations." If that was his real intent, it worked. That is one of my best memories from that year.
Our whole family had a great experience. We lived in what for us seemed like cramped quarters, but the closeness was good in many ways. The lack of 50+ English language TV stations was also a blessing in disguise.
We attended church with a small group of LDS people in Nanjing. Five of them were affiliated with BYU's China Teacher's Program, and one was a BYU graduate studying Chinese at Nanjing Normal University. With six people in our family, we were half the group. We met in the apartments of the two retired couples. With such a small group you got to give a talk or teach a lesson almost every week.
I kept a journal of sorts of the year. You can find it here on our family's website.
I would really like to go back and do another year in the future. With kids going to high school in a year or two, though, I don't know when we will be able to go.
Anyway here are a few photos from that year.
At the Yangtze River Bridge
Taking the Kids to Preschool
Lunch with Center Students
Our Church Group
Saying Goodbye after Graduation in June
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Natural Arch Website
I ran across a really cool website for anyone who might be interested in natural arches. The site is http://www.archmillennium.net/ and is maintained by Guilain Debossens.
And here is the satellite view courtesy of Google Maps.
Southern Utah has thousands of natural arches and I love looking at them and photographing them. If you look at this site under the "special areas" tag on the left-hand side you can find hundreds of links to pages with photos of natural arches from all over the world. There are quite a few sections devoted to parts of Utah and the Four Corners area.
Here is his shot of Cliff House Arch in the Escalante River Canyon a few miles upstream from the highway 12 bridge. This is taken from the rim of the canyon, right next to the arch.
Here is one of my photos of the same arch from the canyon floor.
And here is the satellite view courtesy of Google Maps.
Update on Utah Gas Prices
In a post last week, I pointed out that Utah gas prices are among the lowest in the nation.
Here is the Gas Temperature Map from GasBuddy.com for today.
Here is the Gas Temperature Map from GasBuddy.com for today.
Remember THIS graph the next time you hear someone complaining about how Utahans pay too much for gas.
If you live in Utah and all you care about is the price of gas, then you should be glad you don't live in California or New York. I've been following this map for quite a while now and those two states are NEVER green. It's probably because of high gas taxes there.
I have to wonder how much lower the price of gas can go. It has dropped from $4.04, when I filled up on August 13th to $1.42 when I filled up today. That's a drop of 65%. As I recall, Utah was red or orange on the map back then, which means our price decline has been much sharper than the rest of the country. It can't keep falling at this rate. There is a lower bound of zero.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Who Owns the Moon?
From Space.com via Yahoo News:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20081210/sc_space/whoownsthemoon
Laws tend to build on precedent. Since there's little precedent for lunar laws, some look to the sea for suggestions. That is, the use of ocean floor minerals beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. Such valuable resources are designated by some as a Common Heritage of mankind, not subject to national appropriation.
Could the Common Heritage concept work as the basis for a Moon Treaty?
Virgiliu Pop is a research specialist at the Romanian Space Agency. He has for years been keeping a legal eye on the area of space property rights, and his new book, "Who Owns the Moon? - Extraterrestrial Aspects of Land and Mineral Resources Ownership" (Springer, 2008) was published this month.
Pop has been delving into what has shaped the law of extraterrestrial real estate, and the norms which express this law. And in his view, the norms and rules regarding property rights in the celestial realm are rather limited, even failing to define basic concepts such as what is a celestial body.
Pop favors property rights over group hugs.
"Despite the noble ideals of equity and care for the have-nots, the Common Heritage paradigm of the Moon Treaty has more faults than merits," Pop told SPACE.com.
It may seem like a silly thing to think about, but ownership of the valuable resources in space is a question that will eventually need to be addressed. As a libertarian, naturally, I favor private ownership. How the ownership should be determined is a tricky matter. As Pop notes in the article, some sort of homestead law might be a good way to go. You wouldn't be able to claim a piece of property unless you were actively using it.
The alternative is to allow for government or trans-governmental "community" ownership. To imagine how well this might work just think of how the break room at your job looks.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Phillips Family Christmas Newsletter 2008
Another year has come and gone since I last wrote a Christmas newsletter and much has happened. I just can’t really remember what. I’m just kidding. Of course I can remember… some things.
The biggest event for us was traveling to Korea as a family and living in Seoul for six weeks. Evan finished his mission in Busan in the middle of July, but I went over to teach at Korea University at the end of June and classes did not end until the 2nd week of August. It was an interesting experience. In exactly the same way that the survivors of Hurricane Katrina found their experience to be “interesting.” We stayed in a family apartment on the Korea University campus in their newest facility there, the CJ International House. I’ve stayed there in past summers in a studio apartment which resembles a broom closet with a bed, bathroom and stove. Actually, it’s nicer than that, but I have this strong need to be sarcastic. Apparently the Korean definition of a family is two midget parents and a single child, because the apartment had a small double bed in one room and an even smaller twin bed in the other. We put Alan in one bed, Joan on the couch and Lynn slept on the floor. We bought a couple of air mattresses to make things easy for her and they worked OK for the first few weeks. Toward the end they were usually flat by morning.
I have decided, with my famous 20/20 hindsight, that taking two adult women and a tween-age woman anywhere for six weeks without a job or classes or some other form of responsibility that eats up time, is a very, very bad idea. Unlike men, who are happy, wandering around aimlessly and looking at old musty temples and such, women (at least those with the genetic heritage in our nuclear family) can think of only one worthwhile leisure activity: shopping. So the trip, while enjoyable on some dimensions, was a bit on the expensive side. I’m sure it was money well-spent, but I don’t personally have any idea what it was spent on. I do remember eating, so I guess some of it went for that. But I sure don’t remember eating as much as the bank account indicates.
The best time to go to Korea, in my humble opinion, is the autumn when the leaves are changing. After that, the 2nd best time would be spring. Then maybe early summer, or winter. The absolute worst time to go is July. So, of course, that’s when we were there. It all makes a bit of perverse sense if you think about it long enough during the hot, humid Korean summer. The weather in late-June through early August consists of two seasons. The rainy season, when it is hot, humid and raining all the time and you wish it would stop raining just so you could see the sun. This is followed by the non-rainy season, when it is hot, humid, but not raining and you wish it WOULD rain again so that you didn’t have to go out in the sun. Because of this, several years ago when Koreans were first designing their educational calendar, they wisely left this time of year empty so that people could stay home and complain about the weather, rather than go to school and complain there. Despite the sarcasm, please note a deeper truth here: there is a reason why classes are not held this time of year. At Korea University an overpaid administrator, probably one with an air conditioned office, decided a few years ago that since the buildings on campus lie idle during this period, it would be a wonderful time to hold a summer school. This is where I fit in, because I got to teach classes during those six weeks.
Despite the heat, close quarters, expense of shopping for only the absolute necessities of life, and having one bathroom for three females, things went rather well. No one was seriously injured by anyone else and we succeeded in bringing Evan back in one piece.
On the way home we had a connecting flight through Honolulu with an 11-hour layover. We were hosted by our long-suffering friends from our days in Ann Arbor, the Huffs, who live there and who took us around and showed us the sites. We wandered around like sleep deprived zombies, because that is, in fact, what we were, but they put up with us anyway.
We did have other things happen this year. And some of them were even good. Here’s a partial rundown.
Kerk had knee surgery in January and discovered that he has a bad knee. Now, Kerk knew this before surgery. That is, after all, the reason he had knee surgery in the first place. Kerk’s doctor says he will need partial knee replacement one of these days. Kerk is simply tickled pink whenever he thinks about that. He is drawing a salary at BYU, because he has “tenure” and can’t be fired. He is coordinating the international relations degree and will be for another year and half. He is still serving as the scoutmaster in his ward, but believes a more accurate description of the calling would be, “cat herder.”
Yeongmi is still working at Noah Webster Academy, which is not really an academy; it’s our local charter school. She is working in the 5th grade. Last Spring she was awarded the prestigious and highly-coveted “Teaching Aide of the Year” award. The award included a certificate and came with a generous stipend of one basket of cookies. She likes her job a lot. Really.
Evan is back from his mission and enrolled at BYU. He is trying to pick a major. He’s thinking of maybe dentistry or neuroscience or Korean or… you get the idea. He is studying better than he did the year before his mission, but that’s like saying he’s more honest than Bill Clinton. He spends a suspicious amount of time on his computer doing homework to the sounds of dying orcs. He calls it “multitasking”
Lynn is also enrolled at BYU and is pursuing an degree in public health with an emphasis in epidemiology. With the recession and massive layoffs and such, she has decided to bite the bullet and will be studying somewhere else in the spring: London. She is living, for now, in an apartment in Provo, but she just sold her contract and is considering one of three options: find another apartment or house in Provo, move back home with us, or live in an old refrigerator box down by the railroad.
Alan is in 8th grade and doing well in school. He is the deacons quorum president at church and gets to spend lots of time with his dad on Sundays and Wednesdays. He is taking French Horn like his older brother did, but unlike his older brother, he will be dropping it like a hot potato next term. He missed scout camp this summer because he was in Korea, and shed nary a tear. He did get to go to Timberline in June and spent a wonderful week huddled in the rain and snow on a mountainside learning how to be an effective youth leader. He is glad he went. Really.
Joan is in 6th grade and will be moving on to Junior High next fall. She turned twelve in October and goes to Young Women now. She prefers this to primary and was very, very, very glad when the primary program in sacrament meeting was scheduled for the week after her birthday. She does very well in school and is a member of the “scholar” council. They don’t have students at Noah Webster Academy, just scholars.
In sadder news, Sammy, our cat of fifteen years passed away this fall. He got very sick at the end and his kidneys failed, so we had to put him down. Lynn and I went with him to the vet and stayed with him ‘til the end, It was hard.
In happier news, Joan got two kittens this spring. They are littermates and we named them Moki (after a character from Johnny Lingo) and Midna (after a character from the Zelda videogames). They are now fully grown, but haven’t gotten so grumpy that they won’t chase cat toys yet.
All is generally well with us at this holiday season. We invite the truly bored to visit our website at http://family.pomosa.com/ and learn all sorts of embarrassing things about us.
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Really.
The biggest event for us was traveling to Korea as a family and living in Seoul for six weeks. Evan finished his mission in Busan in the middle of July, but I went over to teach at Korea University at the end of June and classes did not end until the 2nd week of August. It was an interesting experience. In exactly the same way that the survivors of Hurricane Katrina found their experience to be “interesting.” We stayed in a family apartment on the Korea University campus in their newest facility there, the CJ International House. I’ve stayed there in past summers in a studio apartment which resembles a broom closet with a bed, bathroom and stove. Actually, it’s nicer than that, but I have this strong need to be sarcastic. Apparently the Korean definition of a family is two midget parents and a single child, because the apartment had a small double bed in one room and an even smaller twin bed in the other. We put Alan in one bed, Joan on the couch and Lynn slept on the floor. We bought a couple of air mattresses to make things easy for her and they worked OK for the first few weeks. Toward the end they were usually flat by morning.
I have decided, with my famous 20/20 hindsight, that taking two adult women and a tween-age woman anywhere for six weeks without a job or classes or some other form of responsibility that eats up time, is a very, very bad idea. Unlike men, who are happy, wandering around aimlessly and looking at old musty temples and such, women (at least those with the genetic heritage in our nuclear family) can think of only one worthwhile leisure activity: shopping. So the trip, while enjoyable on some dimensions, was a bit on the expensive side. I’m sure it was money well-spent, but I don’t personally have any idea what it was spent on. I do remember eating, so I guess some of it went for that. But I sure don’t remember eating as much as the bank account indicates.
The best time to go to Korea, in my humble opinion, is the autumn when the leaves are changing. After that, the 2nd best time would be spring. Then maybe early summer, or winter. The absolute worst time to go is July. So, of course, that’s when we were there. It all makes a bit of perverse sense if you think about it long enough during the hot, humid Korean summer. The weather in late-June through early August consists of two seasons. The rainy season, when it is hot, humid and raining all the time and you wish it would stop raining just so you could see the sun. This is followed by the non-rainy season, when it is hot, humid, but not raining and you wish it WOULD rain again so that you didn’t have to go out in the sun. Because of this, several years ago when Koreans were first designing their educational calendar, they wisely left this time of year empty so that people could stay home and complain about the weather, rather than go to school and complain there. Despite the sarcasm, please note a deeper truth here: there is a reason why classes are not held this time of year. At Korea University an overpaid administrator, probably one with an air conditioned office, decided a few years ago that since the buildings on campus lie idle during this period, it would be a wonderful time to hold a summer school. This is where I fit in, because I got to teach classes during those six weeks.
Despite the heat, close quarters, expense of shopping for only the absolute necessities of life, and having one bathroom for three females, things went rather well. No one was seriously injured by anyone else and we succeeded in bringing Evan back in one piece.
On the way home we had a connecting flight through Honolulu with an 11-hour layover. We were hosted by our long-suffering friends from our days in Ann Arbor, the Huffs, who live there and who took us around and showed us the sites. We wandered around like sleep deprived zombies, because that is, in fact, what we were, but they put up with us anyway.
We did have other things happen this year. And some of them were even good. Here’s a partial rundown.
Kerk had knee surgery in January and discovered that he has a bad knee. Now, Kerk knew this before surgery. That is, after all, the reason he had knee surgery in the first place. Kerk’s doctor says he will need partial knee replacement one of these days. Kerk is simply tickled pink whenever he thinks about that. He is drawing a salary at BYU, because he has “tenure” and can’t be fired. He is coordinating the international relations degree and will be for another year and half. He is still serving as the scoutmaster in his ward, but believes a more accurate description of the calling would be, “cat herder.”
Yeongmi is still working at Noah Webster Academy, which is not really an academy; it’s our local charter school. She is working in the 5th grade. Last Spring she was awarded the prestigious and highly-coveted “Teaching Aide of the Year” award. The award included a certificate and came with a generous stipend of one basket of cookies. She likes her job a lot. Really.
Evan is back from his mission and enrolled at BYU. He is trying to pick a major. He’s thinking of maybe dentistry or neuroscience or Korean or… you get the idea. He is studying better than he did the year before his mission, but that’s like saying he’s more honest than Bill Clinton. He spends a suspicious amount of time on his computer doing homework to the sounds of dying orcs. He calls it “multitasking”
Lynn is also enrolled at BYU and is pursuing an degree in public health with an emphasis in epidemiology. With the recession and massive layoffs and such, she has decided to bite the bullet and will be studying somewhere else in the spring: London. She is living, for now, in an apartment in Provo, but she just sold her contract and is considering one of three options: find another apartment or house in Provo, move back home with us, or live in an old refrigerator box down by the railroad.
Alan is in 8th grade and doing well in school. He is the deacons quorum president at church and gets to spend lots of time with his dad on Sundays and Wednesdays. He is taking French Horn like his older brother did, but unlike his older brother, he will be dropping it like a hot potato next term. He missed scout camp this summer because he was in Korea, and shed nary a tear. He did get to go to Timberline in June and spent a wonderful week huddled in the rain and snow on a mountainside learning how to be an effective youth leader. He is glad he went. Really.
Joan is in 6th grade and will be moving on to Junior High next fall. She turned twelve in October and goes to Young Women now. She prefers this to primary and was very, very, very glad when the primary program in sacrament meeting was scheduled for the week after her birthday. She does very well in school and is a member of the “scholar” council. They don’t have students at Noah Webster Academy, just scholars.
In sadder news, Sammy, our cat of fifteen years passed away this fall. He got very sick at the end and his kidneys failed, so we had to put him down. Lynn and I went with him to the vet and stayed with him ‘til the end, It was hard.
In happier news, Joan got two kittens this spring. They are littermates and we named them Moki (after a character from Johnny Lingo) and Midna (after a character from the Zelda videogames). They are now fully grown, but haven’t gotten so grumpy that they won’t chase cat toys yet.
All is generally well with us at this holiday season. We invite the truly bored to visit our website at http://family.pomosa.com/ and learn all sorts of embarrassing things about us.
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Really.
From the Newspaper
I have no idea where these are from, or if they are genuine, but they make me laugh.
For sale: an antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers.
Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond of children.
Stock up and save. Limit: one
Illiterate? Write today for free help.
Tired of cleaning yourself? Let me do it.
Luke Chapter Two
Latin
Factum est autem in diebus illis, exiit edictum a Cæsare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis.
Hæc descriptio prima facta est a præside Syriæ Cyrino:
et ibant omnes ut profiterentur singuli in suam civitatem.
Ascendit autem et Joseph a Galilæa de civitate Nazareth in Judæam, in civitatem David, quæ vocatur Bethlehem: eo quod esset de domo et familia David, ut profiteretur cum Maria desponsata sibi uxore prægnante.
Factum est autem, cum essent ibi, impleti sunt dies ut pareret.
Et peperit filium suum primogenitum, et pannis eum involvit, et reclinavit eum in præsepio: quia non erat eis locus in diversorio.
Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes, et custodientes vigilias noctis super gregem suum.
Et ecce angelus Domini stetit juxta illos, et claritas Dei circumfulsit illos, et timuerunt timore magno.
Et dixit illis angelus:
Factum est autem in diebus illis, exiit edictum a Cæsare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis.
Hæc descriptio prima facta est a præside Syriæ Cyrino:
et ibant omnes ut profiterentur singuli in suam civitatem.
Ascendit autem et Joseph a Galilæa de civitate Nazareth in Judæam, in civitatem David, quæ vocatur Bethlehem: eo quod esset de domo et familia David, ut profiteretur cum Maria desponsata sibi uxore prægnante.
Factum est autem, cum essent ibi, impleti sunt dies ut pareret.
Et peperit filium suum primogenitum, et pannis eum involvit, et reclinavit eum in præsepio: quia non erat eis locus in diversorio.
Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes, et custodientes vigilias noctis super gregem suum.
Et ecce angelus Domini stetit juxta illos, et claritas Dei circumfulsit illos, et timuerunt timore magno.
Et dixit illis angelus:
Nolite timere: ecce enim evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum, quod erit omni populo:
quia natus est vobis hodie Salvator, qui est Christus Dominus, in civitate
David. Et hoc vobis signum: invenietis infantem pannis involutum, et positum
in
præsepio.
Et subito facta est cum angelo multitudo militiæ cælestis laudantium Deum, et dicentium:
Gloria in altissimis Deo,et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis.
Et factum est, ut discesserunt ab eis angeli in cælum: pastores loquebantur ad invicem:
Transeamus usque Bethlehem, et videamus hoc verbum, quod factum est, quod
Dominus ostendit nobis. Et venerunt festinantes: et invenerunt Mariam, et
Joseph, et infantem positum in præsepio.
Videntes autem cognoverunt de verbo, quod dictum erat illis de puero hoc.
Et omnes qui audierunt, mirati sunt: et de his quæ dicta erant a pastoribus ad ipsos.
Maria autem conservabat omnia verba hæc, conferens in corde suo.
English
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
Learning About Archaeology in the San Rafael Swell
I really like traveling through the San Rafael Swell. I find the geology and history of the place very interesting. An excellent source of information on the archaeology of the Swell can be found at Dr. K Renee Barlow's blog. I highly recommend her entry on ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SAN RAFAEL for anyone who plans on a visit to the Swell or surrounding areas.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Rochester Creek Rock Art Panel
The rock art panel at Rochester Creek is easily accessible and worth a trip. It is located east of Emery, Utah on a rock face overlooking the confluence of Muddy Creek and Rochester Creek. Take highway 10 and turn onto the road to Moore between mile markers 16 & 17. A half mile from the highway is a graded road headed south, it is an other 4 miles from here to the trailhead parking lot. From the parking lot the trail to the panel is a half mile or so.
Almost all the rock art here is petroglyphs; that is, art made by pecking away the dark surface rock, the "desert varnish", to reveal the lighter rock underneath. It is a mixture of all ages. There are definitely some Fremont glyphs, and some Ute ones, and some that look suspiciously like African animals which were probably carved by non-Indians.
The panel is impressive and there are numerous carvings on other rock faces nearby, so be sure to look around. One that many visitors miss is found inside a rockfall cave behind the main panel.
Almost all the rock art here is petroglyphs; that is, art made by pecking away the dark surface rock, the "desert varnish", to reveal the lighter rock underneath. It is a mixture of all ages. There are definitely some Fremont glyphs, and some Ute ones, and some that look suspiciously like African animals which were probably carved by non-Indians.
The panel is impressive and there are numerous carvings on other rock faces nearby, so be sure to look around. One that many visitors miss is found inside a rockfall cave behind the main panel.
The Main Panel
A Closer View of the Main Panel
A Fremont-style Figure
Figures inside the Rockfall Cave
Go to this webpage for more of my photos from a visit in the Spring of 2008.
Links with further explanation about this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_Rock_Art_Panel
http://net.indra.com/~dheyser/bc/bc_a.html
http://scienceblogs.com/chaoticutopia/2006/06/the_art_of_time_ii_traces_of_t_1.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_Rock_Art_Panel
http://net.indra.com/~dheyser/bc/bc_a.html
http://scienceblogs.com/chaoticutopia/2006/06/the_art_of_time_ii_traces_of_t_1.php
Animal Emotions
An interesting article from Reuters.
Envy is a dog's life, study finds
Envy is a dog's life, study finds
LONDON (Reuters) – Dogs can sniff out unfair situations and show a simple emotion similar to envy or jealousy, Austrian researchers reported on Monday.
Dogs sulked and refused to "shake" paws if other dogs got treats for tricks and they did not, said Friederike Range, an animal psychologist at the University of Vienna, who led the study into canine emotions.
"It is a more complex feeling or emotion than what we would normally attribute to animals," said Range.
The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also showed dogs licked and scratched themselves and acted stressed when they were denied rewards given to other dogs.
Other studies have shown monkeys often express resentful behavior when a partner receives a greater reward for performing an identical task, staging strikes or ignoring what they view as inferior compensation.
It turns out dogs are able to show a similar, if less sensitive, response, said Range in a telephone interview.
In a series of experiments using different breeds of dogs, the researchers looked at how two animals sitting next to each other reacted to unequal rewards after handing a paw to a researcher.
Dogs not given a treat licked their mouths, yawned, scratched and showed other signs of stress and stopped performing the task, Range said.
To show this was not just because the animals were not getting food, the researchers then tested the dogs alone and found that in this situation the envious canines cooperated longer before stopping.
"It is really about the unequal distribution of the reward," Range said. "If it was only about frustration they would stop at the same time."
Book Review - Meltdown
Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, by Mike Chinoy
I started this book last Thursday and finished it this morning. It is a fascinating look at US policy toward North Korea during the Bush administration (up through early 2008). There is also some good background on US-North Korean diplomatic relations. The most interesting part of the book, to me, was the documentation of the internal warfare in the US foreign policy bureacracy over what the correct US policy ought to be. The book is meticulously researched and would be a good read for anyone interested in North Korea, or in the mechanics of US foreign policy.
Chinoy is obviously a supporter of negotiations with North Korea, but he makes a good case. For the most part the book is historical documentation of what actually happened with little or no editorializing. The fact of the matter is that, despite a hard-line attitude toward North Korea, the Bush administration eventually ended up with pretty much the same deal that the Clinton administration had, but North Korea acquired several addition nuclear bombs in the meantime.
North Korea is run by a reprehensible ruling elite with an awful human rights record, but Chinoy makes a very good case for the US talking with them anyway.
I started this book last Thursday and finished it this morning. It is a fascinating look at US policy toward North Korea during the Bush administration (up through early 2008). There is also some good background on US-North Korean diplomatic relations. The most interesting part of the book, to me, was the documentation of the internal warfare in the US foreign policy bureacracy over what the correct US policy ought to be. The book is meticulously researched and would be a good read for anyone interested in North Korea, or in the mechanics of US foreign policy.
Chinoy is obviously a supporter of negotiations with North Korea, but he makes a good case. For the most part the book is historical documentation of what actually happened with little or no editorializing. The fact of the matter is that, despite a hard-line attitude toward North Korea, the Bush administration eventually ended up with pretty much the same deal that the Clinton administration had, but North Korea acquired several addition nuclear bombs in the meantime.
North Korea is run by a reprehensible ruling elite with an awful human rights record, but Chinoy makes a very good case for the US talking with them anyway.
Links to Thoughts on the Auto Industry Bailout
Bush and Detroit: A bailout that won't enhance the Republican's legacy - an editorial from the Wall Street Journal.
The Bailout That Won't: Would you buy a car from Congress? - Holman W. Jenkins, in the Wall Street Journal.
A Fake Ad, which was sent me by a source who wishes to remain anonymous (warning, this ad uses four-letter curse words).
The Bailout That Won't: Would you buy a car from Congress? - Holman W. Jenkins, in the Wall Street Journal.
A Fake Ad, which was sent me by a source who wishes to remain anonymous (warning, this ad uses four-letter curse words).
Camille Paglia on Gay Marriage
From an article in Salon:
This is one area where I actually agree with Paglia. Allow people to form whatever legal union they want. Allow them to legally declare whomever they want as beneficiaries of their social security benefits, but don't call it "marriage".
I may be an atheist, but I respect religion and certainly find it far more
philosophically expansive and culturally sustaining than the me-me-me sense of
foot-stamping entitlement projected by too many gay activists in the unlamented
past. My position has always been (as in "No Law in the Arena" in my 1994 book,
"Vamps & Tramps") that government should get out of the marriage business.
Marriage is a religious concept that should be defined and administered only by
churches. The government, a secular entity, must institute and guarantee civil
unions, open to both straight and gay couples and conferring full legal rights
and benefits. Liberal heterosexuals who profess support for gay rights should be
urged to publicly shun marriage and join gays in the civil union movement.
This is one area where I actually agree with Paglia. Allow people to form whatever legal union they want. Allow them to legally declare whomever they want as beneficiaries of their social security benefits, but don't call it "marriage".
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Redefined Words
I am still digging through the "Humor" folder on the backup hard drive. I ran across this.
The following are from the Washington Post Style Invitational (a weekly contest for readers). The idea is to redefine words from the dictionary.
Carcinoma--n., a valley in California, notable for its heavy smog.
Esplanade--v., to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Flabbergasted--adj., appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Negligent--adj., describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
Lymph--v., to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle--n., an olive-flavored mouthwash.
Bustard--n., a very rude Metrobus driver.
Nincompoop--n., the military command responsible for battlefield sanitation.
Coffee--n., a person who is coughed upon.
Flatulence--n., the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Internet--n., the web of interns in which Ken Starr has tried to snare Bill Clinton.
Balderdash--n., a rapidly receding hairline.
Mausoleum--n., floor covering used in crypts. Attractive from the top and bottom.
Semantics--n., pranks conducted by young men studying for the priesthood, including such things as gluing the pages of the priest's prayerbook together just before Vespers.
Rectitude--n., the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Lobster--n., a slick-talking, oily, obnoxious person who represents special interest groups on Capitol Hill.
Macadam--n., the first man on Earth, according to the Celtic bible.
Marionettes--n., residents of Washington D.C. who have been jerked around by the mayor.
Oyster--n., a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Abdicate--v., to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
The following are from the Washington Post Style Invitational (a weekly contest for readers). The idea is to redefine words from the dictionary.
Carcinoma--n., a valley in California, notable for its heavy smog.
Esplanade--v., to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Flabbergasted--adj., appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Negligent--adj., describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
Lymph--v., to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle--n., an olive-flavored mouthwash.
Bustard--n., a very rude Metrobus driver.
Nincompoop--n., the military command responsible for battlefield sanitation.
Coffee--n., a person who is coughed upon.
Flatulence--n., the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Internet--n., the web of interns in which Ken Starr has tried to snare Bill Clinton.
Balderdash--n., a rapidly receding hairline.
Mausoleum--n., floor covering used in crypts. Attractive from the top and bottom.
Semantics--n., pranks conducted by young men studying for the priesthood, including such things as gluing the pages of the priest's prayerbook together just before Vespers.
Rectitude--n., the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Lobster--n., a slick-talking, oily, obnoxious person who represents special interest groups on Capitol Hill.
Macadam--n., the first man on Earth, according to the Celtic bible.
Marionettes--n., residents of Washington D.C. who have been jerked around by the mayor.
Oyster--n., a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Abdicate--v., to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Nationalizing the US Auto Industry
Here's a background article from the International Herald Tribune, though I'm sure one could find many similar articles from other sources.
Taking risks with bailout for U.S. automakers
Here are a few quotes to start this entry:
For the record, I think this is a very, very bad idea. If the congress wants to restructure the auto industry through some bankruptcy-like receivership, why not use actual bankruptcy? Having a "car cazr" running the automobile companies is just plain stupid. One contributing reason (though certainly not the sole one) for the auto companies' mess today is the mandates that congress has imposed on producing vehicles that American consumers did not want to buy. This problem will be exponentially bigger with a "car czar". There is no way the restructing process is going to remain free of politics. Decisions will be made based on political payback and partronage, rather than on economic efficiency.
Beside which, this is (as the article points out) all pretty hypocritcal.
Taking risks with bailout for U.S. automakers
Here are a few quotes to start this entry:
"We don't want government to run companies," Obama told Tom Brokaw on "Meet the Press." "Generally, government historically hasn't done that very well."
But what Obama went on to describe was a long-term government bailout that would be conditioned on government oversight. It could mean that the government would mandate, or at least heavily influence, what kind of cars companies make, what mileage and environmental standards they must meet and what large investments they are permitted to make — to recreate an industry that Obama said "actually works, that actually functions."Depending on how the longer-term revamping of the industry proceeds, Washington could become a major shareholder in the Big Three, it could provide loans, or, in one course that Obama seemed to hint at on Sunday, it could organize what amounts to a "structured bankruptcy." In that case, the government would convene the creditors, the unions, the shareholders and the company's management, and apportion a share of the hit to each of them. If that "consensus building" sounds a lot like the role of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry in the 1970s and the 1980s, well, it is.
For the record, I think this is a very, very bad idea. If the congress wants to restructure the auto industry through some bankruptcy-like receivership, why not use actual bankruptcy? Having a "car cazr" running the automobile companies is just plain stupid. One contributing reason (though certainly not the sole one) for the auto companies' mess today is the mandates that congress has imposed on producing vehicles that American consumers did not want to buy. This problem will be exponentially bigger with a "car czar". There is no way the restructing process is going to remain free of politics. Decisions will be made based on political payback and partronage, rather than on economic efficiency.
Beside which, this is (as the article points out) all pretty hypocritcal.
"If Japan was doing this, we'd be threatening billions of dollars in retaliation," said Jeffrey Garten, a professor at the Yale School of Management, who as under secretary of commerce in the 1990s was one of many government officials who tried in vain to get Detroit prepared for a world of international competition. "In fact, when they did something a lot more subtle, we threatened exactly that," referring to calls for import restrictions.
To promote the Japanese car industry on the way up, the trade ministry nudged companies toward consolidation, and even tried to mandate which parts of the market each could go into. (Soichiro Honda, the founder of the company, rebelled when bureaucrats told him he was supposed to limit himself to making motorcycles.) By the 1980s, Congress was denouncing this as "industrial policy," and arguing that it put American makers at a competitive disadvantage — and polluted free enterprise.
Now, it is Congress doing exactly that, but this time as emergency surgery. Other nations will doubtless complain, or begin doing the same for their own companies. "We're at this moment in history, in which the Chinese are touting that their system is better than ours" with their mix of capitalism and state control, said Garten, who has long experience in Asia. "And our response, it looks like, is to begin replicating what they've been doing."
I find the policy responses to our latest recession simply stunning. The political class from both parties seem to think that doing something is better than nothing, even if that something is just plain bad.
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