2010-08-22 2130: I was sad this morning to hear the news that Jack Horkheimer, director emeritus of the Miami Museum of Science and Space Transit Planetarium, passed away. Horkheimer was familiar to many as the host of the little Star Gazer show that aired on many PBS stations; he would tell viewers about interesting things that could be seen in the sky that week with the naked eye. As a former planetarian (I volunteered and worked for the Kendall Planetarium at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry as a high school and college kid in the late 1970s), I always enjoyed Horkheimer's enthusiasm and the corny video effects he employed.
2010-08-21 2100: The other day, I bought a copy of The Atlantic magazine, to read the Jeffrey Goldberg article detailing the Israeli threat of war against Iran. The article was interesting and sobering. But at the end of the magazine, Goldberg has a rather off-kilter advice column called "What's Your Problem?" A reader submitted the question: I'm still roomates with a guy I lived with in college. We were both soccer players, and smoked a lot of dope. I stopped smoking after we graduated, but my roommate hasn't stopped and now doesn't have the energy to play a game he loves, much less start a serious career. Should I stage an intervention, or just assume he'll grow out of this phase? T. S., Charlottesville, Va. Goldberg's response begins as follows: Dear T. S., I had a very good friend in college whose diet consisted entirely of Doritos and bong resin. Today, he is a maxillofacial surgeon in Los Angeles. The point is, never have maxillofacial surgery in Los Angeles …
2010-08-11 2130: I've just finished the book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. This book, heavily researched (with hundreds of end notes for each chapter), details how several prominent Cold War-era scientists—including Fred Singer, Frederick Seitz, and Robert Jastrow—took conservative, pro-business positions on key environmental and health issues, and influenced the scientific debates on these issues. The authors sketch how the tobacco companies fashioned a scientific and public relations campaign to create doubt on the medical research incriminating their products, and how similar campaigns were used in later battles on acid rain, the ozone hole, environmental tobacco smoke, and global warming. But they focus on these scientists and their efforts to soften scientific reports on these pressing problems.
The book is not without faults. The authors seem to betray a certain anti-technological attitude, as when describe industrial civilization as dining in luxury in a fine restaurant but refusing to pay when the server arrives in his white dinner jacket with the bill. This brought to mind the solution offered by the Sierra Club for the climate and energy problems: cut energy use in half while increasing reliance on renewable energy. My skepticism for this solution prompts a little sympathy for the old Cold Warrior scientists, whom the authors describe as being motivated by a faith in technological progress and free enterprise.
But the authors do a valuable service in detailing a more recent manufactured controversy: the claim that environmentalists are responsible for the deaths of millions of people to malaria because of the banning of DDT (often coupled with slurs on Rachel Carson, whose seminal book Silent Spring is sometimes credited with beginning the modern environmental movement). This claim is highly different than the truth: DDT had already lost most of its effectiveness (as insects evolved resistance to the pesticide) before it was banned, and it was not banned outside the US where malaria was still active. The authors found a particularly egregious lie: that malaria had dropped to a handful of cases in a certain country that used DDT to control mosquitos, but had risen again to previous high levels as DDT was banned. But it turns out that the country had been using DDT all the while; it had lost its effectiveness, and only when the country switched to a more expensive pesticide (malathion), did they begin to regain control of malaria. The authors do not completely trace the origins of the claim about DDT, but they do indicate that it appears to be nothing more than an attempt to make environmentalists look bad. This is a striking episode, because the claim about DDT is in wide circulation on libertarian and conservative pro-business media—in spite of how divergent it is from the science, which was a settled matter 50 years ago.
2010-08-11 1800: Last month, I read an extraordinary book: Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. He tells the absolutely incredible story of how several unusual investors realized long before anyone else that the major Wall Street firms had produced and bought trillions of dollars of utterly worthless financial instruments based upon subprime mortgages. These investors positioned themselves to profit from the anticipated collapse in the markets, eventually making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. (A "short" in Wall Street parlance is an investment designed to profit when a stock or other instrument loses value.) One such investor Lewis describes is a physician with Asperger's syndrome, named Michael Burry, who used his ability to focus intensely on fine detail to dissect AAA-rated financial instruments and see that they were destined to implode. Burry is interviewed, along with Lewis, in an episode of 60 Minutes that aired on March 14, 2010. These interviews give a very good sense as to what the book is about (search for Michael Lewis on the 60 Minutes web site, and you'll find links that let you stream the interviews).
Two stories from the book are worth repeating here. One is a story about an investment firm named Cornwall Capital, which was operated by its two partners out of a garage in Berkeley, California. They began their improbable operation with only $110,000. But they scored an early big success by realizing that Capital One (the familiar credit card company) was undervalued on Wall Street. Wall Street feared that Capital One had overstated its health as its CFO resigned under investigation by the SEC; its shares had dropped in value from $60 to roughly $30 a share. With hard work and research, they determined that Capital One was actually a sound business, so they bought some options to buy Capital One stock. They paid $3 a share for the privilege of being able to buy a share for $40. When the Capital One's stock recovered, moving up to $60 a share, they exercised their options and made $20 for every $3 invested.
Another remarkable story: Another one of Lewis's short-sellers, Steve Eisman, was invited to speak at a meeting of investors held on March 14, 2008. He followed a legendary bullish investor who explained why he had invested in Bear Sterns. Eisman was then introduced as a bear; he gave a brutal appraisal of the financial system and explained why it was going to blow up. But no one was listening to him because they were following the collapse of Bear Sterns on their Blackberries.
2010-08-11 1730: I've discovered some rather pernicious software: the McAfee security suite.
I switched from Symantec to McAfee a year ago, when the Symantec software began to malfunction on my machine. I paid for and downloaded the McAfee software online.
I looked into the Microsoft security software, but at that time, they'd discontinued selling their security software, and their free security software was still in beta and not yet available. Since then, the Microsoft security product become available, and it was well-reviewed. So I decided that when my McAfee license expired, I would replace it with the Microsoft product, Microsoft Security Essentials.
But therein lies my mistake: McAfee auto-renewed itself, charging my credit card $89—one month early (11 months into the year's service). Apparently, in the fine print of the original install, I had agreed to this procedure. And it turns out to be hard work to get rid of the McAfee software, and obtain a refund. You must uninstall the software (prompting an obligatory warning that your computer will be unprotected). Then you must request them to cancel the service (cancel the autorenewal and automatic billing); you must contact customer support directly. This involved a chat session with a Mr. Dinesh Kumar. Mr. Kumar proved to be quite polite, but as I expected he made an effort to get me to change my mind. He first claimed that Consumer Reports rated their product above Symantec and Microsoft, which was not true as of June 2010 (I subscribe to CU online). And then he offered me a 50% discount if I decided to use their software. Finally, he agreed to cancel my service and told me to expect the charge to be refunded to my credit card within 5 days (the confirmation email said 5 to 10 days).
By the way, the computer services folk at IU Southeast are now using Microsoft Security Essentials on computers on campus; they installed this on my computer last week.
2010-08-04 2230: Judge Walker overturned California's Proposition 8 today. This ruling will allow same-sex marriages to again take place in that state (but the district court granted an emergency stay expected to last several days that delays resumption of same-sex marriages). I believe this ruling is morally correct: same-sex marriage should protect and encourage caring, committed relationships in the gay community. This is beneficial if for no other reason that persons in a permanent relationship are much less likely to become dependent on the state due to illness, job loss or other misfortunes. Same-sex marriage may also encourage monogamy in the gay community, which would be good because men in monogamous relationships would be very safe in regards to HIV or other sexually-transmitted infections.
But legalization of same-sex marriage also provides public recognition and validation of same-sex love and relationships, a positive virtue given the intensity of animosity towards gay people that still exists in much of society. As evidence of the latter, I found on the well-known conservative web site FreeRepublic.com the following comments in reaction to today's ruling:
(These were on a thread, SOURCE: CA Prop 8 held to be unconstitutional under due process and equal protection.)