Reason Magazine - Staff > Ronald Bailey > Hit & Run Posts

Sen. Bill Clinton (D-N.Y.)?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:08:00 EST

The Washington Post is running an op/ed today by Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac urging that New York's Gov. David Paterson appoint former president Bill Clinton to replace his wife should she be apponted Secretary of State. The op/ed offers the following reasons for this stunning proposal:

Amid the blizzard of résumés blanketing Washington as the Obama era dawns, there is a superbly qualified candidate for full employment whose name has been overlooked. We refer, of course, to William Jefferson Clinton, America's 42nd chief executive and commander in chief. Yet now, by a wonderful combination of circumstances, comes an opportunity to harness his unquestioned political talents to benefit his country, the Democratic Party, New York state and his spouse...

Who in his party could question so historic and dazzling a choice? In a stroke, the appointment would provide Sen. Clinton's indefatigable husband with a fitting day job, serve the interests of a state beset by a meltdown in its most vital economic sector and offer a refreshing reverse twist on a tradition whereby deceased male senators, representatives or governors are succeeded by their widows...

In today's unusual circumstances, surely beyond the imagination of any novelist, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not have to fret about suitable protocol for dealing with her spouse on foreign trips were he occupied, full time, with senatorial duties.

I, for one, am just worried sick about the "suitable protocol" issue. Am I the only one who thinks that this is a really bad idea?

Best Sports Stadium Name Ever?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:05:00 EST

The new Mets stadium is called Citi Field thanks to a $400 million contract with ailing financial conglomerate Citigroup.

Now two New York City councilmen would like to amend that name to "Citi/Taxpayer Field." As the New York Times' city room blog reports:

In 2006, Citigroup signed a 20-year, $400 million contract to name the Mets’ new stadium in Queens Citi Field. As recently as last week, the troubled financial-services conglomerate said it had no intention of backing out of the deal for the new stadium — the replacement for Shea Stadium, which is being demolished.

Well now, with Citigroup getting a second multi-billion-dollar rescue from the federal government, two City Council members would like to see Uncle Sam get some credit.

The two councilman, Vincent M. Ignizio and James S. Oddo, both of Staten Island, called on Tuesday for the stadium to be renamed Citi/Taxpayer Field. The two men will soon be the only Republicans on the 51-member Council; the only other Republican, Anthony Como of Queens, was recently defeated in a special election.
“Perhaps a name change is in order, since it will be the taxpayers of the country who will foot the bill for not only part of stadium, but for the company itself,” Mr. Ignizio said. “The taxpayers are spending billions for this company to maintain its operations and deserve the recognition for their largess.”

Of course, as reason has pointed out, nearly every stadium's name could be amended to include recognition of the contributions from long-suffering taxpayers.

When Does an Infant Industry Stop Needing Its Taxpayer Allowance?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:48:00 EST

Federal bioethanol subsidies are 30 years old this month. As reason has documented time after time after time after time, those subsidies to corn ethanol have had deleterious effects on the environment and the price of food around world.

It's way past time for the industry to stand or fall on its own economic merits. Food Before Fuel, a broad coalition of environmental, farming, taxpayer, consumer and other groups, is calling on the feds to drop counterproductive bioethanol subsidies:

“On many issues, these groups gathered here today do not see eye to eye. But we have come together because we all can agree that the government’s subsidization of the corn ethanol industry is a flawed policy that pits rural industries against one another, raises food prices for everyone and has failed to yield promised environmental benefits,” Brandenberger said.
Duane Parde, president of the National Taxpayers Union, was critical of the ethanol industry as a “demonstrative waste of taxpayer money in a time of economic hardship.”
"President-elect Obama and the 111th Congress have an opportunity to protect taxpayers and end business as usual,” Parde said. “We have spent 30 years and billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing the production of ethanol with little to show for it. Despite the subsidies, ethanol is not competitive in the marketplace and the industry only survives because politicians shovel our money into their pockets. We must end the bailouts and subsidies for industries that are unable or unwilling to stand on their own."
Craig Cox, Midwest vice president of the Environmental Working Group, said that, "After 30 years of subsidies, ethanol is displacing only 3 percent of the gasoline we use each year, is likely increasing rather than decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, and is threatening our soil, water and wildlife. Yet ethanol gets $3 out of every $4 of tax credits the federal government gives to all renewable alternatives including wind, solar and geothermal. It is time we direct our tax dollars to renewable alternatives, including biofuels, based on how well they protect our climate, our environment and our energy security."
Jason Clay, senior vice president for market transformation at the World Wildlife Fund, noted, “In its work with local communities and habitats across the globe, the World Wildlife Fund has seen the negative impacts of the biofuel policy not only on the environment, but on vulnerable populations throughout the world.”

As Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Marlo Lewis notes:

"After 30 years of government coddling, it's time for this infant industry to grow up and succeed or fail on its own merits. If ethanol is commercially viable then no government support is needed; if it is not commercially viable, no amount of government support can make it so."

Whole anti-subsidy coalition press release here.

Disclosure: I am an adjunct fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Pleistocene Park Just Got Closer

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:05:00 EST

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have sequenced most of the genome of wooly mammoths.

As Scientific American reports:

Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth lumbered across the tundra, scientists have sequenced a whopping 50 percent of the beast’s nuclear genome, they report in a new study. Earlier attempts to sequence the DNA of these icons of the Ice Age produced only tiny quantities of code. The new work marks the first time that so much of the genetic material of an extinct creature has been retrieved. Not only has the feat provided insight into the evolutionary history of mammoths, but it is a step toward realizing the science-fiction dream of being able to resurrect a long-gone animal...
Thus far the mammoth genome exists only in bits and pieces: it has not yet been assembled. The researchers are awaiting completion of the genome of the African savanna elephant, a cousin of the woolly mammoth, which will serve as a road map for how to reconstruct the extinct animal’s genome.

Armed with complete genomes for the mammoth and its closest living relative, the Asian elephant, scientists may one day be able to bring the mammoth back from the beyond. “A year ago I would have said this was science fiction,” Schuster remarks. But as a result of this sequencing achievement, he now believes one could theoretically modify the DNA in the egg of an elephant to match that of its furry cousin by artificially introducing the appropriate substitutions to the genetic code. Based on initial comparisons of mammoth and elephant DNA, he estimates that around 400,000 changes would produce an animal that looks a lot like a mammoth; an exact replica would require several million.

Here's hoping that researchers can find enough DNA to sequence the genomes of saber-tooth cats, ground sloths, and glyptodonts.

The Scientific American article can be found here.

Auto Bailout: "redistributing wealth from the successful to the failed, an implausible formula for prosperity."

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:41:00 EST

Washington Post columnist George Will nails the proposed Federal bailout of the Big 2.5 today:

"Nothing," said a General Motors spokesman last week, "has changed relative to the GM board's support for the GM management team during this historically difficult economic period for the U.S. auto industry." Nothing? Not even the evaporation of almost all shareholder value?
GM's statement comes as the mendicant company is threatening to collapse and make a mess unless Washington, which has already voted $25 billion for GM, Ford and Chrysler, provides up to $50 billion more -- the last subsidy until the next one. The statement uses the 11 words after "team" to suggest that the company's parlous condition has been caused by events since mid-September. That is as ludicrous as the mantra that GM is "too big to fail." It has failed; the question is what to do about that.
The answer? Do nothing that will delay bankrupt companies from filing for bankruptcy protection, so that improvident labor contracts can be unraveled, allowing the companies to try to devise plausible business models. Instead, advocates of a "rescue" propose extending to Detroit the government's business model for the nation -- redistributing wealth from the successful to the failed, an implausible formula for prosperity. (emphasis added)

And it only gets better. Read the whole column here.

Shocking News! State Mandates Increase the Cost of Health Insurance!

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:36:00 EST

Researchers at Brigham Young University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Brookings Institution have found that health insurance mandates raise the price for everybody. As the press release describing the study explains:

New research shows that the cost of health insurance for a typical family increases about $100 per month when state governments limit price adjustments based on factors like age, health or risky behaviors such as smoking.

The finding by Brigham Young University economist Mark Showalter is one of several examples of how one state's set of rules can result in widely different prices than what's found in the state next door. Perhaps the most eye-opening contrast exists in Trenton, New Jersey, where premiums cost about twice as much as those sold across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania...

Seven states prevent insurers from adjusting prices based on one or more factors like age, health status or risky behavior. The researchers found such rules - known as community ratings - increased family premiums between 21 and 33 percent.

The rule is intended to promote equity but may consequently make insurance too expensive for healthy people. The study found New Jersey's strict form of community ratings responsible for premiums set two to three times higher than if the requirement were not in place.

Who knew that ~~1,800~~ nearly 2,000 federal and state mandates would boost the price of health insurance? Well, actually, lots of analysts do. For example, Harvard business school professor Regina Herzlinger told reason:

"It's like I'm shopping for a car and my state mandates that all cars have heated seats," says Herzlinger. Car buyers would not long stand for a heated car seat mandate that raises the price of a car by $1,000, and similarly individual health insurance shoppers would object to unnecessarily expensive insurance mandates.

It is very likely that legislators rarely consider the costs of such mandates to consumers, so the good news is that the study now quantifies them so that these trade-offs can be made explicitly. Whole press release for the study is available here.

Religious Beliefs of Health Care Workers to Trump Those of Patients

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:42:00 EST

That is, if new "religious discrimination" regulations being rushed through by the Bush administration stand. President Bush and his minions evidently don't believe that they've done enough damage yet, so they are trying (as prior administrations have done) to impose new regulations before they return to a well-deserved exile in the private sector. In this case, as the New York Times reports:

A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job discrimination laws.

The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

reason warned that this was coming:

Can pharmacies, stem cell labs, or abortion clinics refuse to hire people who believe their activities are evil? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t think so. The agency is circulating draft regulations that would outlaw employment discrimination on the grounds of religious and moral beliefs by any entity that receives the department’s money.

Since Washington’s subsidies are so ubiquitous, the rule would apply even to local pharmacies, because the feds pay for some prescriptions. In effect, the government’s money is serving as a Trojan horse for the administration’s moral agenda.

The tension between the moral choices of health professionals and the interests of their patients has never been resolved. After Roe v. Wade affirmed a woman’s right to obtain an abortion in 1973, Congress quickly passed the Church Amendments, permitting health care providers that receive federal funding to refuse to perform or assist abortions or sterilizations on moral or religious grounds. This means, for example, that Roman Catholic hospitals don’t have to offer these services but can still receive government money. The Church Amendments also prohibit employment discrimination against health care providers who object to abortion.

Fortunately, there is a way out for people who find that certain medical treatments offend their consciences:

“Religious freedom is an important part of the history of this country,” Richard S. Myers, a professor at Ave Maria School of Law, told The Washington Post. “People who have a religious or moral belief should not be forced to participate in an act they find abhorrent.” Myers is correct. But why should the religious beliefs of others trump those of patients and employers? People who don’t want to participate in medical procedures they find abhorrent have a simple solution: They can choose to work elsewhere.

Whole New York Times article here.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies; When a new planet swims into his ken*

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:51:00 EST

Below is a photo of a new planet discovered circling the star Fomalhaut 25 light years away. The newly discovered planet is thought to be 3 times the size of Jupiter.

Jet Propulsion Lab press release here. Don't expect an imminent invastion of Fomalhautians since the star is only 200 to 300 million years old, so there has probably been not enough time for life to arise in that system yet.

*apologies to John Keats.

New Techniques Boost Healthy Mouse Lifespans to the Equivalent of 120 Human Years

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:33:00 EST

Spanish researchers are reporting that they have created mice that live the equivalent of 120 human years. How? By changing the expression of two genes. The first is a gene for telomerase which prevents chromosomes from unraveling as they age (making cells senesce) and the second boosts the activity of the cancer-fighting Par-4 gene. Making Par-4 more active is crucial because telomerase doesn't just slow aging. Cancer cells generally reactivate telomerase to help them proliferate and is a target for experimental anti-cancer vaccines.

According to the Telegraph:

The researchers found that mice which had been created in this way had better muscle in old age, healthier skin tissue and fewer digestion problems.

"By simultaneously increasing the amounts of telomerase and the resistance to cancer we are able to delay ageing in mice and also to extend their life span by 40 per cent," said Maria A. Blasco, from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), who carried out the study with colleagues from Valencia University.

"These mice get to live for as long as the eldest mice in records of the same kind.

"If we were to parallel it to humans, then it would mean reaching 120 years of age and also to start ageing much later in life."

Despite this progress, it doesn't sound as though these mice would be eligible for the Methuselah Foundation's multimillion dollar Mouse Prize.

Whole Telegraph article here.

Greenpeace Says Genetically Modified Corn is a Contraceptive...

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:42:00 EST

...for the 4th generation of mice, anyway. Greenpeace is trumpeting a new "study" that finds that mice fed a variety of pest-protected corn have fewer pups in the fourth generation. According to the organization's press release:

A study published today by the Austrian government identified serious health threats of genetically engineered (GE) crops. In one of the very few long-term feeding studies ever conducted with GE crops, the fertility of mice fed with GE maize was found to be severely impaired, with fewer offspring being produced than by mice fed on natural crops. Considering the severity of the potential threat to human health and reproduction, Greenpeace is demanding a recall of all GE food and crops from the market, worldwide.

With typical understatement, the Greenpeace spokesperson said:

"GE food appears to be acting as a birth control agent, potentially leading to infertility - if this is not reason enough to close down the whole biotech industry once and for all, I am not sure what kind of disaster we are waiting for," said Dr. Jan van Aken, GE expert at Greenpeace International. "Playing genetic roulette with our food crops is like playing Russian roulette with consumers and public health".

Just a couple of quick observations: (1) This is classic case of "science by press release." The "study" may be valid, but it has not been "published" nor has it been peer-reviewed; and (2) Greenpeace backed similar controversial claims by other researchers that genetically modified soybeans harmed the fertility of mice that were later debunked. (For more details see also here.)

When other researchers get a look at the study, I'll let H&R readers know what they find.

This just in: the study is now available here.

About Those Five Million "Green Collar" Jobs...

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:27:00 EST

...is a made up number that is meant to "inspire," according to its promulgators. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

The Apollo Alliance, a San Francisco coalition of environmental and labor groups, ... released a study in September. It concluded that five million green jobs could be had with an investment of $500 billion -- more than three times Mr. Obama's number [ of $150 billion].
Kate Gordon, co-director of the Apollo Alliance, says the numbers are less important than the message. "Honestly," she says, "it's just to inspire people."

Earlier this week, my colleague Jacob Sullum pointed out in his superb column "Green Herring":

...both the Apollo Alliance and Obama, who has liberally borrowed from its ideas, mistakenly treat the manpower required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a measure of success, when it should be viewed as a cost to be minimized.

Whole WSJ article here. Sullum's column can be found here.

The Bioethics Vote

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:08:00 EST

Uber-bioethicist, Arthur Caplan has an insightful column about how voters thoroughly repudiated bioconservativism in this election:

The state of Michigan passed Proposal 2, loosening restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. This means that in Michigan — whose universities such as Michigan State in East Lansing are major biomedical research powerhouses — scientists will be able to use the excess embryos created at in-vitro fertility clinics as a source of stem cells for research, as long as they have the written consent of the parents who sought treatment...
One of the main arguments against embryonic stem cell research is that all embryos are persons from the moment of conception. The voters of Colorado were given the chance to put that view into law with the proposed Amendment 48. The so-called “Personhood Amendment” sought to define fertilized eggs as human beings, extending them constitutional rights. Coloradoans defeated this amendment by a margin of three to one...
In South Dakota a measure that would have banned abortions — except in cases of rape, incest and serious health threat to the mother — also lost. An even tougher version, without the rape and incest exceptions, was defeated two years ago. The 2008 initiative went down to a resounding defeat of 55 percent to 45 percent...

And even medical marijuana:

Michigan became the 13th state to enact an amendment legalizing marijuana use for medical purposes. Proposal 1 passed by a margin of 63 percent to 37 percent. It allows patients with “debilitating medical conditions” to register with the state and, with the permission of a physician, legally buy, grow and use small amounts of marijuana to relieve pain, nausea and appetite loss, among other symptoms. Massachusetts decriminalized possession of one ounce or less of marijuana, shifting the penalty to a $100 fine.

Whole Caplan column is well worth reading here.

Voter Suppression in Virginia's 5th Congressional District

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:39:00 EST

I keed! I keed! The Virginia 5th Congressional District race between Republican Virgil Goode and Democrat Tom Perriello is one of the tightest in the country.

Bleeding heart Perriello is now leading nativist crank Goode by around 600 votes. What's interesting is that some votes were temporarily "lost." As one of the local TV stations reports:

The numbers are changing in the Fifth District congressional race thanks in part to new results from Charlottesville.

The city's voter registrar says two precincts did not report complete results on election night. The oversight at both Carver Recreation and Jefferson Park Avenue skipped almost 600 votes in the tight race between Tom Perriello and Virgil Goode.

"The chief election officer did not generate a tally tape on the e-scan machine. So when they reported the numbers back to the registrar's office, they only read the numbers from the e-slate machine," explained Charlottesville Electoral Board's Rick Sincere.

The additional votes have been reported to the state board of elections. We're told a majority of them were for Perriello.

I am particularly interested in this story because I happen to vote in the Carver precinct in Charlottesville, so one of the votes that may have gone astray was mine. Finding these misplaced votes in the People's Republic of Charlottesville has to be bad news for Goode.

Disclosure: Consistent with my stand that the Republicans have been very bad dogs and need to be rapped over their noses with a rolled up newspaper, I voted for Perriello. Besides I generally prefer bleeding hearts to nativist cranks.

Not So Junky DNA and Beware the Genome SPace INvaders

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:04:00 EST

Decoding the human genome found that only about 10 percent of the 3 billion or so base pairs of the DNA in the human genome consists of genes that code for proteins. The remaining 90 percent didn't have any obvious function, so researchers called it "junk DNA."

A new report in Genome Research by researchers at the Genome Institute Singapore find that it's not so "junky" after all:

Using the latest sequencing technologies, GIS researchers showed that many transcription factors, the master proteins that control the expression of other genes, bind specific repeat elements. The researchers showed that from 18 to 33% of the binding sites of five key transcription factors with important roles in cancer and stem cell biology are embedded in distinctive repeat families.

Over evolutionary time, these repeats were dispersed within different species, creating new regulatory sites throughout these genomes. Thus, the set of genes controlled by these transcription factors is likely to significantly differ from species to species and may be a major driver for evolution.

This research also shows that these repeats are anything but "junk DNA," since they provide a great source of evolutionary variability and might hold the key to some of the important physical differences that distinguish humans from all other species.

In other words, these apparently long boring stretches of repeat DNA base pairs are central to determining which genes turn on when and by how much. In addition, some of these DNA repeats jump around inside genomes changing the expression of genes and the course of a species' evolution.

University of California, San Francisco neurologist Raymond White speulates:

"This hypothesis for formation of new species through episodic distributions of families of gene regulatory DNA sequences is a powerful one that will now guide a wealth of experiments to determine the functional relationships of these regulatory DNA sequences to the genes that are near their landing sites. I anticipate that as our knowledge of these events grows, we will begin to understand much more how and why the rat differs so dramatically from the monkey, even though they share essentially the same complement of genes and proteins."

Even more amazingly, biologist Cedric Feschotte and his colleagues at the University of Texas in Arlington have found that some DNA repeats have actually jumped between mammalian and other tetrapod species including African clawed frogs, anole lizards, South American opposums, brown bats, mice and rats. This kind of horizontal interspecies DNA exchange happens among single-celled organisms all the time, but biologists find it very surprising that it can happen between large multicellular species. The repeat sequences have been dubbed "SPace INvaders" or SPIN transposons and may have been carried into these animal genomes by a virus 45 to 15 million years ago.

And this SPace INvasion may have been responsible for a mass mammalian extinction. According to The New Scientist:

The team thinks that the hAT transposon invasion occurred about 30 million years ago and spread across at least two continents. "It's like a pandemic, and one that can infect species that weren't genetically or geographically close. It's puzzling, scary almost," Feschotte says.

It may not be a coincidence that the time of the invasion coincides with a period in evolutionary history that saw mass mammal extinctions. This is usually attributed to climate change, Feschotte says, but it is not crazy to suppose that this type of invasion could contribute to species extinction.

The hAT transposon does not occur in humans, but some 45% of our genome is of transposon origin.

Feschotte's work on the hAT transposon is the first time that a "jumping gene" has been shown to have entered mammalian genomes, and the first time it has been shown to do so in at around the same time, in a range of unrelated species, in different parts of the world.

Feschotte admits that we cannot rule out another transposon offensive occurring in mammals....

Whole press release on junk DNA's new usefulness here. New Scientist report on SPIN here.

Japanese Scientists Clone Mice Frozen for 16 Years -- Mammoths Next?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:15:00 EST

Teruhiko Wakayama and his colleagues at the Institution Laboratory for Genomic Reprogramming in Japan have reported that they were able to create clones of mice that had been frozen for 16 years. According to U.S. News & World Report:

Wakayama...and his colleagues took brain tissue from a mouse strain frozen at minus 20 degrees Celsius for up to 16 years and transferred the nuclei (containing the genetic material) to empty egg cells.
These two-cell embryos were used to generate embryonic stem cell lines that resulted in 12 healthy cloned mice, which grew into normal adults.
The technique did not require nuclei from an intact donor cell. The cloning efficiency was about the same as using conventional cloning methods, the study authors stated....
Until now, researchers had believed that ice crystals formed in frozen cells would cause irreparable damage to the DNA, making cloning of long-dead animals impossible.

Wakayama told U.S. News that cloning a wooly mammoth from frozen remains from the Arctic tundra is "probably impossible."

Wakayama was apparently a bit more hopeful when he talked with The New Scientist:

The finding also raises hopes of one day being able to resurrect extinct animals frozen in permafrost, such as the woolly mammoth, says Teruhiko Wakayama of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, who led the research. "It would be very difficult, but our work suggests that it is no longer science fiction," he says....
Resurrecting extinct animals would be far trickier. Woolly mammoth carcasses would most likely have frozen and thawed several times over the aeons, which would cause far more damage to the nucleus than a one-off freezing.
Potentially easier would be cloning cryogenically frozen humans, though the consensus among cloning experts is that it would be unethical and dangerous to clone a human. In any case, people who sign up to be cryogenically preserved usually hope to be resuscitated rather than cloned.

The U.S. News report can be found here and The New Scientist report is here.

Your Personality and Your Vote

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:45:00 EST

ScienceDaily is running a press release featuring the insights of New Hampshire University psychologist John Mayer who details the personality traits that incline voters in either liberal or conservative directions:

Liberals:

View social inequities and preferred groups as unjust and requiring reform.
Prefer atheists, tattoos, foreign films and poetry.
Endorse gay unions, welfare, universal health care, feminism and environmentalism.
Exhibit creativity, which entails the capacity to see solutions to problems, and empathy toward others.
Tolerate complexity and ambiguity.
Are influenced by their work as judges, social workers, professors and other careers for which an appreciation of opposing points of view is required.

Conservatives:

Willing to defend current social inequities and preferred groups as justifiable or necessary.
Prefer prayer, religious people and SUVs.
Endorse the U.S. government, the military, the state they live in, big corporations and most Americans.
Are more likely to be a first-born, who identify more with their parents, predisposing them to a greater investment in authority and a preference for conservatism.
Have a fear of death, reflecting an enhanced need for security.
Are conscientious – the ability to exert personal self-control to the effect of meeting one’s own and others’ demands, and maintaining personal coherence.
Need simplicity, clarity and certainty.

So are you an empathetic and creative Obama voter or a fearful and simplicity-craving McCain supporter? Or do some psychologists have a certain unacknowledged preference for simplicity and clarity when it comes to politics?

Some of my other reporting on pathologizing conversatives here.

Free Market & Progressive Activists Against Bush "Midnight" Regulations

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:59:00 EDT

The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration is rushing to get regulations out the door before its minions return to private life:

The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.
The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.
Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.
Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.

A coalition of free market groups, including the Competitve Enterprise Institute and the Capital Research Center have joined with progressive-minded environmentalist groups, such as the National Wildlife Federation and Defenders of Wildlife, to urge a moratorium on new regulations.

As their open letter to President Bush notes:

The process of midnight rulemaking–something that Presidents of both parties have done with relish–does great damage to the soundness of our regulatory process and, indeed, our democracy. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 establishes a regulatory process that includes opportunity for public comment, review, and investigation of regulations. Ultimately, however, enormous power rests with the regulators themselves. The people, through their votes, provide a check on unwise rulemaking. When you issue regulations as a departing administration, you do so without this check and, in some cases, against the will of the people.
On your own administration’s first day in office almost eight years ago, you issued an executive order suspending the implementation of your own predecessors’ last-minute regulations. Much of the rulemaking during your first years in office involved revising, revisiting, and repealing these “midnight” regulations in order to implement your agenda. You should set a good example and avoid leaving your predecessor with the type of headaches you inherited.
Your administration has already issued more regulations than any in history (emphasis added). For eight years, you have been able to implement your agenda on a wide array of issues. We acknowledge that bona fide emergency rulemaking may become necessary at times but, true emergencies-by definition-are few, far between, and pertain to a small subset of issues. In addition, the issuance of regulatory action may be compelled by court-supervised deadlines or other mandates. These regulations are different from the discretionary actions undertaken in the final rush of the administration to advance controversial policies while subverting transparency, rigor, and legitimacy in the rulemaking process.
As a coalition, we do not take a position on any particular rule but, rather, a principled stand on the proper conduct of rulemaking. Our coalition likely contains proponents and opponents of nearly every major regulation you would consider. We have different interests but share a conviction: for the next few months, you should avoid issuing all but the most urgent new regulations.

Whole joint open letter can be found here.

A Step Toward Creating Medical Nanobots

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:20:00 EDT

Canadian researchers have created self propelled "nanobots" by coupling live, swimming bacteria to nano-sized beads. As Technology Review explains:

A team led by École Polytechnique de Montréal computer engineering professor Sylvain Martel ... is the first to show that such hybrids can be steered through the body using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

To do this, Martel used bacteria that naturally contain magnetic particles. In nature, these particles help the bacteria navigate toward deeper water, away from oxygen. "Those nanoparticles form a chain a bit like a magnetic compass needle," says Martel. But by changing the surrounding magnetic field using an extended set-up coupled to an MRI machine, Martel and his colleagues were able to make the bacteria propel themselves in any direction they wanted.

The bacteria swim using tiny corkscrewlike tails, or flagella, and these particular bacteria are faster and stronger than most, says Martel. What's more, they are just two microns in diameter--small enough to fit through the smallest blood vessels in the human body. The team treated the polymer beads roughly 150 nanometers in size with antibodies so that the bacteria would attach to them. Ultimately, the researchers plan to modify the beads so that they also carry cancer-killing drugs.

This far from the goal of self-directed nanobots with on-board computing as outlined by nano-medicine visionaries like Robert Freitas, but it's a start. (See above illustration.)

Republicans "Deceive" - Democrats "Repackage" - Or Is It Vice Versa?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:55:00 EDT

Everyone tries to put their best foot forward and persuade other people to like them. This common human social strategy is clearly magnified when it comes to politics.

So I was amused when I came across an article this morning in the New York Times which explained how many Democrats are "repackaging" their policy statements in line with the "Message Handbook for Progressives From Left to the Center" by Emory University psychologist Drew Westen. As the Times describes it:

Dr. Westen’s advice can be heard when Alisha Thomas Morgan, running for re-election to the Georgia House in a conservative suburb of Atlanta, uses the word “leadership” in place of “government” and speaks about the middle class instead of the poor.

Or when Andrew Gillum, a city commissioner in Tallahassee, Fla., who is fighting a ballot initiative against same-sex marriage, tells members of his predominantly black church of the human desire for dignity and respect instead of lecturing them on the evils of discrimination.

Democrats of higher office who have heard Dr. Westen have also shifted their rhetoric, as when Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, fending off a Republican challenger, not only says that “health care is a right for every citizen” but pointedly adds, “Particularly citizens who are working hard every day.”...

Instead of using euphemisms like “pro-choice” and “reproductive health,” his handbook suggests, liberal candidates might insist that it is un-American for the government to tell men and women when to start a family or what religious beliefs to follow, arguments that test well in focus groups with conservatives and independents. On illegal immigration, he recommends, candidates who have said their plan would “allow” immigrants to become citizens should instead say they will “require” it.

“The idea,” Dr. Westen said, “is to start to rebrand progressives using language that’s as evocative as the language of the other side, and stop using phrases that just turn people off.”

The handbook does not offer a script so much as a menu of options, each of which was poll-tested against conservative arguments. On economics, for example, one message begins with “I want to see the words ‘Made in America’ again.” Another reads, “We need leaders who don’t just talk about family values but actually value families.”

This kind of rhetorical framing is all very well and to be expected in political discourse. But when Republicans do it, some Democrats denounce it as deceptive. Take for example, the 2005 Times article on "The Framing Wars" which features University of California Berkeley linguist George Lakoff's views on Republican issue framing:

According to Lakoff, Republicans are skilled at using loaded language, along with constant repetition, to play into the frames in our unconscious minds. Take one of his favorite examples, the phrase ''tax relief.'' It presumes, Lakoff points out, that we are being oppressed by taxes and that we need to be liberated from them. It fits into a familiar frame of persecution, and when such a phrase, repeated over time, enters the everyday lexicon, it biases the debate in favor of conservatives. If Democrats start to talk about their own ''tax relief'' plan, Lakoff says, they have conceded the point that taxes are somehow an unfair burden rather than making the case that they are an investment in the common good. The argument is lost before it begins.

Lakoff informed his political theories by studying the work of Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster who helped Newt Gingrich formulate the Contract With America in 1994. To Lakoff and his followers, Luntz is the very embodiment of Republican deception. His private memos, many of which fell into the hands of Democrats, explain why. In one recent memo, titled ''The 14 Words Never to Use,'' Luntz urged conservatives to restrict themselves to phrases from what he calls, grandly, the ''New American Lexicon.'' Thus, a smart Republican, in Luntz's view, never advocates ''drilling for oil''; he prefers ''exploring for energy.'' He should never criticize the ''government,'' which cleans our streets and pays our firemen; he should attack ''Washington,'' with its ceaseless thirst for taxes and regulations. ''We should never use the word outsourcing,'' Luntz wrote, ''because we will then be asked to defend or end the practice of allowing companies to ship American jobs overseas.''

In Lakoff's view, not only does Luntz's language twist the facts of his agenda but it also renders facts meaningless by actually reprogramming, through long-term repetition, the neural networks inside our brains. And this is where Lakoff's vision gets a little disturbing. According to Lakoff, Democrats have been wrong to assume that people are rational actors who make their decisions based on facts; in reality, he says, cognitive science has proved that all of us are programmed to respond to the frames that have been embedded deep in our unconscious minds, and if the facts don't fit the frame, our brains simply reject them. Lakoff explained to me that the frames in our brains can be ''activated'' by the right combination of words and imagery, and only then, once the brain has been unlocked, can we process the facts being thrown at us.

So Democrats merely "reframe", while Republcans practice "deception" and "twist the facts." Or is that way of putting matters just another "reframing"? Or maybe it's a "deception"? My own "framing" of political discourse is: be extremely skeptical of anything that a person running for office tells you.

Newer Drugs = Less Disability

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:15:00 EDT

The Manhattan Institute has just released a new study by Columbia University economist Frank Lichtenberg that finds that using newer (and more expensive) drugs reduces disability rates. As the study reports:

...the report studies patterns in the dispensing of prescription drugs in forty-nine of the fifty states from 1995 to 2004, using data on Medicaid prescriptions in thirty therapeutic groups, which account for virtually all Medicaid medicines dispensed. The data includes the name of the drug and the year in which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its active ingredient—what we call the drug’s “vintage.” For instance, Zocor’s active ingredient, simvastatin, was approved in 1991, making 1991 the drug’s vintage.,,

he study found that states in which the difference between average vintage of Medicaid prescriptions in 1995 and average vintage in 2004 was the largest—these being states in which pharmaceutical innovations were adopted quickly—had the smallest increases in disability rates...

By our estimates, if the average vintage of drugs prescribed since 1995 and paid for by Medicaid had not become more recent, the rate of increase at which working-age people were classified as disabled would have been 30 percent higher than it actually was, resulting in 418,000 additional people receiving disability payments in 2004. Social Security benefits paid to this population would have been an additional $4.5 billion.

Consequently, it is reasonable to conclude that access to pharmaceutical innovations has been responsible for keeping large numbers of U.S. residents off disability rolls who otherwise would have joined them.

Whole Manhattan Institute report here. My article on Big Pharma -- "Goddamn the Pusher Man" -- here.

Socialized Banks Will Kill Innovation, Warns Times Columnist Tom Friedman

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:31:00 EDT

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says that President George Bush is right about something. What? That the Feds need to get out the banking business as soon as possible. As his Sunday column warns:

Let’s imagine this scene: You are the president of one of these banks in which the government has taken a position. One day two young Stanford grads walk in your door. One is named Larry, and the other is named Sergey. They each are wearing jeans and a T-shirt. They tell you that they have this thing called a “search engine,” and they are naming it — get this — “Google.” They tell you to type in any word in this box on a computer screen and — get this — hit a button labeled “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Up comes a bunch of Web sites related to that word. Their start-up, which they are operating out of their dorm room, has exhausted its venture capital. They need a loan.
What are you going to say to Larry and Sergey as the president of the bank? “Boys, this is very interesting. But I have the U.S. Treasury as my biggest shareholder today, and if you think I’m going to put money into something called ‘Google,’ with a key called ‘I’m Feeling Lucky,’ you’re fresh outta luck. Can you imagine me explaining that to a Congressional committee if you guys go bust?”
And then what happens if the next day the congressman from Palo Alto, who happens to be on the House banking committee, calls you, the bank president, and says: “I understand you turned down my boys, Larry and Sergey. Maybe you haven’t been told, but I am one of your shareholders — and right now, I’m not feeling very lucky. You get my drift?”
Maybe nothing like this will ever happen. Maybe it’s just my imagination. But maybe not.

Emphatically, it's NOT his imagination. This is exactly what will happen if the Feds own shares in banks for long.

Whole column can be found here.

Note: Of course, Google did not get their start up capital from a bank, but the point is still relevant.

What Happens When Super Smart Artificial Intelligence Arrives?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:00:00 EDT

The major venue for discussing this question is the 3rd Singularity Summit this Saturday in San Jose, Calif. The folks at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAS) are offering a $75 dollar discount off summit's registration fee for interested readers of Hit & Run (and other blogs) here.

So what is "the Singularity"? According to the SIAS:

The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence...

A future that contains smarter-than-human minds is genuinely different in a way that goes beyond the usual visions of a future filled with bigger and better gadgets. Vernor Vinge originally coined the term "Singularity" in observing that, just as our model of physics breaks down when it tries to model the singularity at the center of a black hole, our model of the world breaks down when it tries to model a future that contains entities smarter than human.

Human intelligence is the foundation of human technology; all technology is ultimately the product of intelligence. If technology can turn around and enhance intelligence, this closes the loop, creating a positive feedback effect. Smarter minds will be more effective at building still smarter minds. This loop appears most clearly in the example of an Artificial Intelligence improving its own source code, but it would also arise, albeit initially on a slower timescale, from humans with direct brain-computer interfaces creating the next generation of brain-computer interfaces, or biologically augmented humans working on an Artificial Intelligence project.

The Singularity Summits gather tech luminaries to consider the implications of this view--if it's true and what might be done about it. Participants in this summit include:

    * MIT's Cynthia Breazeal on the implications of robots with social intelligence.

    * Peter Diamandis on materializing audacious goals with Mega X PRIZEs.

    * Esther Dyson on the end of genetic ignorance – or was it bliss?

    * Ray Kurzweil presenting his latest research, a more rigorous standard for the Turing Test, and discussing IEEE Spectrum's Singularity Report.

    * Intel's CTO Justin Rattner on why the Singularity is a realistic possibility.

    * Acclaimed author Vernor Vinge in conversation with CNBC's Bob Pisani.

Ray Kurzweil, inventor and author of The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology explains:

What, then, is the Singularity? It's a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian or dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself. Understanding the Singularity will alter our perspective on the significance of our past and the ramifications for our future. To truly understand it inherently changes one's view of life in general and one's own particular life.

My coverage of the 2007 Singularity Summit can be found here and my interview with Paypal co-founder and singularitarian Peter Thiel is here.

Personal Genome Project Launches Today--Wanna Sign Up?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:01:00 EDT

The Personal Genome Project launches today. Visitors can take a look at the genetic information of such luminaries as Harvard psycholinguist Steven Pinker and tech venture capitalist Esther Dyson. The project website explains:

We believe individuals from the general public have a vital role to play in making personal genomes useful. We are recruiting volunteers who are willing to share their genome sequence and many types of personal information with the research community and the general public, so that together we will be better able to advance our understanding of genetic and environmental contributions to human traits and to improve our ability to diagnose, treat, and prevent illness.

What's more the project is looking to sign up 100,000 individuals who agree to let their genetic information be posted on the internet where researchers can mine it for genetic links to disease and health. As the New York Times reports:

The goal of the controversial project, which hopes to expand to 100,000 participants, is to speed medical research by dispensing with the elaborate precautions traditionally taken to protect the privacy of human subjects. In exchange for the decoding of their DNA, participants agree to make it available to all — along with photographs, their disease histories, allergies, heights, weights, medications, ethnic backgrounds and a trove of other traits, called phenotypes, from food preferences to television viewing habits.

Collecting phenotypes, which other genetic databases have avoided in deference to privacy concerns, should allow researchers to more easily discover how genes and traits are linked. Because the "PGP 10," as they call themselves, agreed to forfeit their privacy, any researcher can mine the data, rather than just a small group with the proper clearance.

But the project is as much a social experiment as a scientific one. "We don't yet know the consequences of having one's genome out in the open, but it's worth exploring," said George M. Church, a geneticist at Harvard who is the project's leader and one of its first subjects.

A new federal law prohibits health insurers and employers from discriminating against individuals on the basis of their genetic profile. But any one of the PGP 10 could be denied life insurance, long-term care insurance or disability insurance, with no legal penalty.

Because of the risks, Church required the first 10 participants to demonstrate the equivalent of a master's degree in genetics. Most are either investors or executives in the biomedical industry, or else teach or write about it, so they may have a financial interest in encouraging people to part with their genetic privacy.

The project has drawn criticism from scientists and bioethicists who caution that even its highly educated volunteers cannot understand the practical and psychological risks of disclosing information long regarded as private.
"I'm concerned that this could make it seem easy and cool to put your information out there when there is still a lot of stigma associated with certain genetic traits," said Kathy Hudson, director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University. "There will be new uses of this data that people can't anticipate — and they can't do anything to get it back."

Go here for the Personal Genome Project's website and maybe even sign up.

The Oracle of Omaha Says, "Buy American"

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:48:00 EDT

Tagging along as a spousal unit today at an investment forum by the Davis Advisors group, I listened to a fascinating presentation by portfolio manager Chris Davis on "What Happened and What Do We Do Now?" Basically, Davis argued that this is a normal financial cycle that got magnified by a financial "doomsday machine." Generally, a financial cycle has four stages, (1) an asset class produces good returns, (2) money pours into the class fueled by envy and commissions, (3) leverage is added reducing asset quality, and (4) the mix proves toxic and a collapse occurs. Davis pointed out that the tech bubble asset class was only $3 to $4 trillion whereas the financial asset class totaled about $20 trillion.

The "doomsday machine" that has magnified and accelerated the current collapse works the following way: (1) an asset price goes down, (2) it must be marked to market (thanks Sarbanes-Oxley), (3) which then lowers a company's stock price, (4) then rating agencies lowers the company's credit rating, (5) which results in forced selling, which (6) lowers asset prices and so the positive feedback loop continues ad nauseam.

I don't pretend to know if this analysis is right, I'm just reporting here. Davis and other participants were quite fond of quoting the legendary investor Warren Buffett's aphorism: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

And today, the Oracle of Omaha has an op/ed in the New York Times reprising his advice and looking past the gloom of a looming recession to a more profitable future:

THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.

So ... I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.

Why?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now....

A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.

Whole Buffett op/ed is well worth reading here.

Hawaii County Bans Biotech Coffee

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:29:00 EDT

The professional anti-biotech alarmists over at the Center for Food Safety are crowing in a press release (not yet available online) that the Hawaii County Council has banned growing biotech coffee and taro. According to the press release:

The new ordinance, which makes it unlawful to grow genetically engineered (GE) coffee or taro anywhere on the Island of Hawaii, was strongly supported by coffee and taro farmers, and passed by a 9-0 vote of the Council on October 9th. ...

Coffee growers testified that the planting of genetically engineered coffee would contaminate and damage markets for their premium Kona coffee, costing them their livelihoods. Many cited past episodes where biotech rice and corn have contaminated conventional varieties, resulting in marketplace rejection, dramatically lower prices, and large losses to farmers.

Coffee farmers argued that they would lose their "specialty coffee" status and/or organic certification if biotech coffee were ever planted on Hawaii Island. The Kona coffee industry brings more than $25 million into the state each year.

Beside fears of "contamination," some residents apparently brought up possible health concerns:

There were compelling testimonies from mothers of children who have complex allergies. Allergic reactions are one potential health threat of biotech crops, and taro is known world-wide as one the most hypo-allergenic foods on earth.

Never mind that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that any of the current varieties of biotech crops cause allergic reactions in people.

The coffee and taro growers should look at what happened to their neighbors who grow biotech papayas. In the 1990s, papaya growing in Hawaii was nearly extinct due to the ringspot virus. Fortunately, researchers developed a biotech variety that resists the virus, thus reviving the industry.

Other researchers have now developed a biotech variety of coffee that is resistant to insects such as the coffee leaf miner. Perhaps those nice Kona coffee growers will change their minds about biotech should the leaf miner ever make it to Hawaii.