pizza could be a vegetable if it has enough vegetables in it.

When the story first broke that the food lobby wanted pizza to count as a vegetable in school lunches, I knew there was more to the story.  But of course, the major news sites are more interested in ratings/circulation than getting the facts straight so they did a lot of opinionating and left out the rational part of the argument.  So now that the furor has died down, if you are interested in what really happened, here is the story behind the story.

How much tomato constitutes one serving?  That is a purely nutritional question that nutritionists have been answering for years.  The existing standards before the controversy made the equivalent of ¼ cup of tomato sauce equal to one serving.  As you all know, budgets are tight.  So school systems asked if they could call 2 Tbsps of tomato sauce as a serving.  This is about half as much.  This would save them a lot of money because they could use less tomato sauce in their pastas, etc. etc.  Well, it turns out that 2 Tbsps of tomato sauce is the amount that is in the size of the pizza that many school systems serve.  So if they changed the standard, pizza would all of a sudden have a serving of vegetables in it – 2 Tbsp of tomato sauce. 

So nobody claimed that pizza itself should be a vegetable.  It was just a question of whether 2 Tbsp or ¼ cup of tomato sauce should be called one serving.  The pizza angle was just an unfortunate side effect that made for much better news stories.  And got the pizza lobby all excited.

Of course, I disagree with the approach to shortchange our kids by halving the amount of vegetables we give them.  So if ¼ cup of tomatoes provides the nutrition needed to count as one serving, they shouldn’t be playing games with that amount just to save money.  But the decision has nothing to do with pizza.  Even with the old standard, pizza could count as a vegetable if they put ¼ cup of tomato sauce on it. 

Political Correctness and the holidays

A talk show personality remarked that he had received invitations to two events at the Massachusetts State House by Governor Patrick (written by Patrick’s staff and probably vetted by political consultants).  One was an invitation to the lighting of the “holiday tree.”  It was in the papers that they are calling it the holiday tree rather than Christmas tree because they want to be inclusive of all faiths.  Very nice sentiment.

But then the second invitation came.  It was to the lighting of the Hanukah Menorah.  For some reason, the people who decided the Christmas Tree should be called the “holiday tree” didn’t think the Hanukah Menorah should be renamed the “holiday menorah” to have that same inclusive sentiment.

My guess is that there were a few things that led to this decision.

1. The staff was probably more aware when naming the Christmas Tree, but didn’t think much about it when naming the Hanukah Menorah.
2. No one is going to think that the Patrick administration is promoting government preference of Judaism, since he isn’t Jewish.  But since he (and the majority of Massachusetts citizens) are Christian that is a more likely perception.
3. Other government trees (national, state, and local) have been called holiday trees.  But I am not sure how many menorahs there are that have been called holiday menorahs. 

The reason I bring it up is that I hate the hypersensitivity to political correctness.  Most years, Hanukah comes before Christmas.  So on Hanukah I wish my Jewish friends a “Happy Hanukah” and on Christmas I wish my Christian friends a “Merry Christmas.”  If I happen to know they celebrate something else (Kwanzaa, Tet, Eid el Fitr, or whatever other holidays come along at other times), I will wish them a happy that too.  And if on Christmas someone who doesn’t know me wishes me a “Merry Christmas” I appreciate the sentiment.  When I pass strangers on the street on Christmas, I wish them a “Merry Christmas.”  I figure odds are that it is the right choice, and someone else shouldn’t get offended anyway. 

I understand why government agencies have to be extra careful.  I believe in a strong separation of church and state both in action and in perception.  But everyone else should just take a Valium.  Do what makes you and others happy.  Appreciate to positive sentiments of holidays, even when they are not yours.  

This morning a different radio host said that they should call it the "____ tree" and let everyone fill in their own modifier when they look at/think about the tree.  I like that idea :-D.

The war between the West and Iran has already started?

I commentator I respect for usually being hesitant to spread conspiracy theories made this suggestion last night. Actually, he asked the question, but he provided lots of evidence suggesting it may be on the verge.

Iran is getting close to intercontinental nuclear missile capability.  Israel will feel compelled to do something and the US would also be very tempted.   They have clearly been having very high level discussions about what, when, and how to do something.  Plus . . .

1.  The explosion at the Iranian cruise missile facility was most likely done by US/Israel but no one is taking credit for it.
2.  The CIA drone that Iran now has (either shot down or they just got lucky when it crashed) contained strategic technology.  And just the fact that it was over Iranian territory suggests CIA surveillance for something . . .
3.  Iran is whipping up its population - see the assault on the British Embassy.
4.  Iranian ally Syria needs to do something to take the pressure off its internal rebellion.
5.  Iranian allies Hamas and Fatah are reconciling, which puts them at the ready to attack Israel
6.  Iranian ally Hezbollah has been re-arming for years since the brief war with Israel. 
7.  Diplomatically, Iran has gotten the assurance of Russia and China that the UN Security Council won't be passing any resolutions against them.
8.  The European financial crisis means they don't have the energy or the money to support anything against Iran.
9.  The US has become so depleted in Iran and Afghanistan that they don't have the military financial resources or the public energy for another Middle East conflict.
10.  Turkey is getting very nervous about the developments in Syria and Iran.

None of these are proof, but they all add a little bit of strength to the suspicion.  Something might be close.  This could make Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts look like the invasion of Grenada.

4th Amendment in the Supreme Court

First some background.  The 4^th Amendment is one of the most important of the Bill of Rights, but is also one of the least discussed.  This is the one that says “The right of the people to be secure in their houses, persons, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizures, shall not be violated.”

The 18^th century textbook example was the police breaking into someone’s house to find evidence of a critic of King George III.  The founding fathers wanted to protect citizens of the new country against this.

At first, the Supreme Court took these categories (houses, persons, papers, and effects) literally.  Anything that wasn’t in one of these categories was fair game for police to search to their hearts desire without a warrant (a warrant  is one of the things that  makes searching these four categories reasonable).  

But technology changes the world and our law has to change with it.  Even with Justice Scalia’s idea of original intent, we can’t ignore the world changing around us in our interpretation of the Constitution.  With the 4^th Amendment, it was Justice Brandeis in the 1920s who made the first judicial leap.  Rather than stick to these four categories, or passing Constitutional Amendments every time a new technology was invented, he thought it made sense to consider the extent of the typical citizens expectations of privacy in 1800 for these four categories and then apply that level of privacy to new technologies.  So instead of saying that wiretapping telephones is allowed because it doesn’t require going into a house (it can be done at the telecom junction), he thought that this was as intrusive in 1920 as going into the house would have been in 1800. 

In 1920, Brandeis was the minority opinion.  But in 1967, the rest of the court agreed with Brandeis.  The standard shifted from literally the four categories written into the Constitution to “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

The reason this is important today is that the Supreme Court is currently considering a case that could set the precedent for another hundred years.  The question revolves around whether the police are only limited to existing explicit categories (which now includes wiretapping because of the 1967 decision) or whether the court has to continuously evaluate new technologies with respect to the standard of what citizens current perceive as “reasonable privacy.”

The specifics of the case are pretty straightforward.  The police put a GPS tracker on a car and mapped out everywhere it went and how long it stayed there 24 hours a day over the course of several weeks.  The police argument is that they could have followed the car around and recorded exactly this same information and that would have been legal.  All they did was use new technology to save money.  There is nothing unconstitutional about that.  I initially thought that this side had such an obviously strong case that is was a no brainer who should win.  Why would the Court even take the case?

Then, I read another opinion that muddled mine.  If a suspect is the equivalent of Al Capone, the police may be willing to spend the money for a 24/7 tail.  But with GPS, they can do it with every random person of interest.  “Round up the usual suspects” so to speak.  So before, the typical citizen had an expectation of privacy, not because the police COULDN’T track them, but because they weren’t worth the money and effort.  So now that anyone can be tracked almost for free, it makes sense that unless it is Al Capone, the police should need probable cause, which is the standard to get a warrant.  This puts the amount of privacy one gets at about the equivalent of what the original 4^th Amendment provided in 1800. 

I used to think it was a no brainer that the police could use the GPS tracker without a warrant.  I was convinced that all they were doing was saving money compared to what they could already do legally.  But Justice Brandeis convinced me, even 90 years later.  Now I think it is a no brainer that they should need a warrant.  I love when that happens.  I really learned something today.

Of course, the 4^th Amendment only constrains government law enforcement.  Google, Facebook, Apple, and all other private companies are still able to do this.  Remember when Apple got some really bad PR because they were tracking iPhones without asking permission or providing an opt-out that anyone could find?  This was legal, but they stopped because of the publicity.  With the growing prevalence of security cameras, photo uploading, etc., it won’t be long before these private companies can know everything about us there is to know.  Click on a headshot, put it into Google Image Search, and find out everywhere the person has been, 24/7 for weeks.  The police couldn’t do it, but advertisers could.  Jealous spouses could.  Employers could. 

I am philosophically against legally constraining innovation when not absolutely necessary.  If a company wants to try out a product or service, let the market decide.  But perhaps something might be necessary in this case because it can be used without the market (customer/spouse/applicant) ever finding out. 

Seasteading for tech workers

Immigration is a sensitive subject and there are many dimensions to it.  But most people who understand enough of macroergonomics agree that when really smart people come here, even if we give them valuable full time jobs, it is good for the country at large.  As with anything, there are winners and losers in the short term.  But this is one kind of immigration for which there are many more winners than losers and the few losers are only down for a short amount of time, until the smart immigrants create additional new jobs because of their work.  Whether this is true of migrant farmers, landscapers, and nannies I will leave to another debate.  But if we can find a few Sergei Brins and Andy Groves out there, we all win.  But because of the politics, the number of H1-B visas (the ones for tech workers) remains too low to meet the demand of the tech sector.  Even if you think we can convince more American high school students to go to college and major in engineering, in the short term we need to import them.

There is a new effort emerging from some small businesses in the high tech sector to come up with a non-governmental, work around the system, way to get smart people into the US to work.  They can’t afford sponsoring H1-B visas, even the few that are available.  Only the big guns like Microsoft and IBM get them.  These companies would rather the government get its act together, but since that seems less and less likely, they are doing what they have to do.   Here is the basic idea.

The workaround business is called Blueseed.  What the founder, Max Marty, is planning is to buy a large ship (think cruise ship size), turn it into apartments and shared office space, anchor it 12 miles out from Silicon Valley (international waters) and then have a daily ferry that would bring residents to jobs in Silicon Valley.  By going back to their “own country” every night, they don’t need an H1-B visa, they just need a B-1 visa. These are for business visitors and are much easier to get.   There would be a daily hassle of going through immigration and having their papers checked every morning, but that would just add an hour or two to their workday.  Occasionally, they may be denied entry for some technicality, but this should be rare.

There would also be workspace on board so employees could telecommute from the ship or US employees could travel to the ship and they can set up the company on board.  This would require a little more technical infrastructure than just apartments, but with wireless access, cloud computing, and virtual corporate networks getting easier and cheaper, this isn’t just an imaginary wish.  Think of it like riverboat gambling for the high tech industry.

Once the company grows large enough to afford real H1-B visas, they would apply and move permanently and fully to the US.  Or if the US increases the number or ease of applying for H1-Bs, then the ship wouldn’t be needed at all.  

The idea of “seasteading” has been around for a long time and has been considered for a variety of different purposes (check out the econlog blog for lots of intelligent examples and the seasteading institute for something comprehensive).  But no one has ever really implemented any of them.  Blueseed is probably a long shot too, but I would love to see what happens if they try.

What the 99% really needs

There was a great discussion on the Diane Rehm show yesterday.  It started out about the Occupy movement, but it focused mostly on the inequality of power among different special interests.   The Occupy movement thinks that this is caused by the difference between rich and poor (as I blogged yesterday) and therefore we need more income redistribution.  The panelists (Lawrence Lessig, Tyler Cowen, and a few Occupiers) represented both the right and the left (not GOP and Dem, but philosophically) and everyone was very well informed, intelligent, and not demagogic. 

Tyler Cowen made a few great points from the right.  He said that even in the 2008 election when Obama dominated the young vote, older people still outvoted young people by a wide margin.  So rather than occupying parks, maybe they should do more occupying of voting booths.  He also made the point that the wealthy and powerful interest groups will always seek to influence government for their own benefit and government (right and left) will always be susceptible to their influence. So the best way to make things equal is to minimize the influence of government on the economy in the first place. 

Of course you could take that too far:  we do need progressive taxation and a social safety net of some kind.  And regulating food safety, workplace safety, drug approval, and these kinds of things need to be regulated at the federal level to be efficient.  But if everyone were more educated about the issues, and not whipsawed this way and that by extremist talk show hosts (on both sides), maybe we can make the system more equal. 

Lessig made the great point that free market capitalism and crony capitalism are not the same things.  The free market has equal opportunity for everyone and does not allow the wealthy to abuse their power.  Crony capitalism is ostensibly free, but if the wealthy are free to use their wealth to exert influence, change the rules, and perpetuate their wealth (i.e. privatize profits and socialize risks), then that is a freedom we can do without.  What we need is the right kind of regulation that keeps the playing field level and then opens up a free market within that constraint. 

I want to download the podcast and listen to it 2 or 3 times.  There was so much good stuff in there.  If I get some new insights, I will add to this discussion.

The Occupy Movement

I think the Occupy movement has a strong point, but not the one they think they do.  They think they are protesting against a free market system that advances the interests of the top 1%.  But their best point is that the free market has been adulterated to the point that the top 1% manipulates the market so that is no longer a free market.  Friends of the powerful get mysterious benefits on both sides of the political spectrum.  Obama supporters getting green energy loan guarantees; Koch brother supplicants getting tax breaks and regulation waivers written into law as earmarks; Berlusconi cronies getting licenses for extra wireless network bandwidth; Russian oligarchy mysteriously getting access to new markets while their toughest competitors are indicted on tax fraud charges; US companies in China mysteriously getting inspected for safety violations that are clearly more violated by Chinese companies that haven’t been inspected, and on and on it goes. 

What the Occupy movement should be protesting for is not a step back from the free market but an acknowledgement that the free market is not really free and we need to admit is has its flaws.  We either need to prevent manipulation or rethink the way the market is implemented.

Science and the Supernatural

Yesterday’s second hour of On Point was an interview with a theoretical physicist who was talking about the nature of the universe and existence.  As usual with these kinds of interviews, someone had to call in and ask if her research would eventually prove or disprove the existence of G-d or other supernatural phenomena usually considered in the realm of religion.  I hate when they mix these two things up.

I like Stephen Hawking’s view on the subject, which I think I have blogged about before but will add a few additional thoughts.  He says that science can never answer these questions.  By definition, the supernatural is made up of whatever we believe to be true but cannot prove with science.  So as soon as we prove or disprove it with science, it ceases to be supernatural in the first place.

The reason I like this perspective is what it means for faith.  There is some comfort and reliability that we get from having science prove and disprove things.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to design technology, medicine, and all of the other perks of civilization.  But there is also some comfort and strength that we gain from having pure faith in something, the kind that is based on zero physical or logical evidence.  Anyone who hasn’t experienced this kind of faith may not know what I am talking about, but it is a really powerful feeling and can be used for an incredible variety of life enrichment and betterment goals. 

Not only would a scientific proof or disproof of a supernatural phenomenon remove it from the realm of the supernatural, it would also eliminate it from the realm of faith.  We might gain some knowledge that gives us more of the technology perks, but we would lose the spiritual perks we get from faith.  I wouldn’t want to make this sacrifice even if I could.  I would rather not have existential physicists proving or disproving supernatural phenomena.  I get a lot of benefit from my unscientific faith. There are plenty of other good things for physicists to research.

Of course, I am not talking about organized religion and the associated bureaucracy.  Telling me to believe something because some text or prophet says so is not faith either.  I would be relying on their knowledge in the same way that I am relying on the chemist’s knowledge of how to distill crude oil into gasoline.  These might be based on trust, but not pure faith.  Pure faith is when you believe in something because you BELIEVE in it.