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Labels: ICT, intelligence, thinking
Planning Higher Education
I watched an interesting debate on American higher education that was suggested by my friend Julianne. One side took the position that the United States needs to provide more college education for our young people while the other side held that we might better provide alternative forms of education to improve our long term economic prospects.
I agree that some kids would be better served by a four year apprenticeship to become a first class plumber or mechanic rather than the four year program in a second rate college in humanities or area studies that they will actually get. Indeed, we probably have the ratios of doctors to nurses, engineers to technicians, lawyers to paralegals and generally professionals to paraprofessionals wrong for maximum economic efficiency.
On the other hand, who says that maximizing economic production is the sole goal of higher education. Education is not only an investment in future earnings; it is also a consumer service. People like to learn interesting things. We could be a more productive society if we cut out other consumer services. If we worked more and spent less time in relaxation we would produce more, but who wants to live in Sparta?
It was pointed out that there are now other countries with a higher percentage of college graduates in the 25 to 30 age bracket than the United States, and a debater suggested that we should educate more to compete. It seems to me that that is comparing apples to oranges. If one were to seek a valid comparison to Scandinavian education levels, one might seek a Scandinavia size area of the United States that has the same concentration of industries as Scandinavia. Thus New England, with its high education levels might be a suitable comparison.
On the other hand, it does you little good if you live in Texas and need a doctor or lawyer to have under employed doctors or lawyers in Boston. In a continent spanning nation, one should be considering the needs and demands for higher education by region.
It seems a common error to assume that one should calculate the rate of return on investment in education only taking the future earnings of the individual. That can't be right. We know for example, that there are spill over effects. Areas with more college graduates have higher per capita income for those college graduates than do areas with fewer college graduates.
My old friend Steve, after he had finished his MD and Internship, went on to get a Masters degree in Public Health, and then a further Doctorate in epidemiology. He pointed out that his lifetime earnings expectation went down with each degree past the MD. Fortunately for society we have some physicians who choose to go into public health. Fortunately for society, we have some public health physicians who choose to further specialize and work as epidemiologists figuring out the nature of the health problems we face and the value of proposes solutions to those problems. The social value of their services is not well measured by the remuneration that they receive.
Think about our system of governance. Think about how poorly governed were some of the new African nations which had few if any college graduates after decolonization. Think about the different voting behavior indicated by surveys for college graduates versus those who have not attended college. I would prefer a more rather than a less educate electorate!
It would also be nice if every person who will devote decades to raising children was thoroughly educated in the care and raising of children. Not only would that seem to justify a four year college course, but a strong program in continuing education to provide just-in-time learning to meet the needs for parenting of developing children. The investment in educated parenting would not show up in increased GDP for a generation (and indeed might look like a step back for a generation) but it might be the best investment we could make.
Two essays on culture and development
Mapping Authority and Survival or Well Being.
Source: R. Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization
Yesterday I posted some thoughts on UNESCO's culture program, questioning whether it was adequately focused on promoting cultural changes in order to achieve the Organization's mission of promoting peace. This post summarizes two recent essays dealing with culture and development.
1. "Natural experiments: Working in the history lab," JARED DIAMOND and JAMES A. ROBINSON, The New Scientist, 29 March 2010.
The authors have a new book out, Natural Experiments of History, which explores the idea that the methodology of natural experiments used in other fields (such as natural history and economics) can be useful as a tool for historians. The article is taken from the book, focusing significantly on the comparison of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Since these two countries share the same island and have quite similar endowments of natural resources, the authors ascribe their very different economic histories largely to their very different cultures (although factors such as the French demand for reparations and the general isolation of Haiti in the first half of the 19th century are also cited).
2. "Haiti and the Voodoo Curse: The cultural roots of the country's endless misery," LAWRENCE HARRISON, The Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2010.
Harrison is the author of a classic book, Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. In the current article he attributes much of the failure of Haiti to progress economically to the roots of Haitian culture in the African culture of the slaves who revolted successfully against France two centuries ago. He too cites other factors.
Neither article focuses on the occupations of these countries by the United States (Haiti, 1915 to 1934 and 1994 to 1995; Dominican Republic, 1916 to 1924 and 1965 to 1966), nor the impact of the governance regimes set up by the United States in ending those occupations. It might be thought that the occupations by the United States were sufficiently similar that they would not account for a major difference in the economic trajectories of the countries. However, U.S. occupying force prejudice against the Black Haitians might have been quite different than that against the Hispanic Dominicans, and thus the impact of the occupations might have been different.
I would guess that Diamond and Robinson go on in their book to examine "natural experiments" in which peoples with similar cultures adapt to different physical environments with different economic and social outcomes.
Using a very broad definition of culture -- the "integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior" of a nation's inhabitants -- it is hard to argue with the proposition that culture is a major determinant of success in economic development. In this broad definition, culture includes the institutions in the nation and the policies that the people accept in those institutions -- factors identified by an alternative theory of development.
However, if one is interested in economic growth as a way to diminish poverty and improve the quality of life for the poor in poor countries, saying that culture, as broadly defined, holds back development is of little use. The question must be raised as to what cultural changes would be both acceptable to the people and effective in promoting growth.
UNESCO, Culture and Development
I have previously posted (on another blog) an explanation of how the concept of culture has changed in UNESCO over its 65 year history. I also posted on UNESCO's efforts promoting cultural change to enhance development, concluding:
UNESCO's efforts in the field of culture and development seem less extensive and less effective than those in the field of preservation of cultural heritage. One wonders whether in the 21st Century UNESCO should redouble its efforts to bring together the leaders of the world's inellectual community and serve more effectively as a laboratory of ideas on Culture and Development. Indeed, if UNESCO can catalyze the creation of a consensus on culture-based appoaches to promote social and economic development and on cultural objectives of social and economic development, should it not then embark on a program of capacity development to assist its member states to utilize the knowledge of that consensus?
Labels: culture, Development
Energy In the United States
Source: National Academies: U.S. energy at a crossroads
The complexity of the American energy system, as shown in the above illuminating illustration, explains why it will be so hard to change systems to reduce carbon emissions. If you look carefully it would seem that reducing the "rejected" energy, and increasing energy efficiency could be important approaches to the task.
Labels: energy
Thinking about UNESCO's Culture Program
City of Potosi
Herdis Hølleland, in her blog Sites of Transformations, has a posting on the World Heritage Site of the City of Potosi in Bolivia. The mines of Bolivia, and especially the silver mines of Potosi produced wealth that fueled much of history in the past half millennium, not only in South America but also in Europe. Those mines have also exploited labor -- in the past and now -- in an exceptionally brutal way. Young men entering the mines for the first time have a life expectancy of some 20 years due to the harsh conditions in which they will work. Helleland writes of the Potosi world heritage site:
(I)t is a site where the past and present meet – as a tourist destination it is not only a historic city, but a site reminding visitors of history gone wrong. While historically it might fit well into the framework of 'World Heritage', its present state is perhaps not the picture perfect for UNESCO's overall values and goals.
Why do nation's seek World Heritage status for their sites? What is the value attached to the designation? In part it is financial, as World Heritage sites draw tourists who bring money, and for poor countries the status allows the countries to compete for grant funding for maintenance and restoration of their sites. The designation also confers prestige, and it is easy to imagine that some of that prestige indirectly benefits those governing the country.
In short, I suggest that UNESCO by conferring World Heritage status on a site within a country indirectly supports the regime governing that country.
The decision to confer World Heritage status on a site is made by the World Heritage Committee, elected by the World Heritage General Assembly. Sites are nominated by member states and the nominations are reviewed by technical advisory bodies, but their technical recommendations can be and sometimes are overridden by the political bodies. Indeed, the strategy of the World Heritage program is explicitly to add sites from developing nations to "correct" a perceived bias in the early decades of the Center towards recognition of sites in Europe.
Helleland has raised the question as to whether the designation of the City of Potosi is consistent with UNESCO's mission. That question can be extended to the entire list, which currently includes 890 sites. Is the process of selection one that helps to preserve sites which truly merit the designation of World Heritage and to educate people everywhere about the common heritage of mankind, or is its politicization such as to support governments -- some of which may not merit such support? Should World Heritage status be denied to sites within countries in which governments do not respect and protect the human rights of their citizens and visitors?
More Generally About UNESCO and World Heritage
The following is the list of treaties created by UNESCO dealing with cultural heritage, with the dates on which they were signed:
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, 14 May 1954
Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, 14 November 1970
Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, 16 November 1972
Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, 2 November 2001
Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 17 October 2003
Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, 20 October 2005
Recall that during World War II, the Nazi invaders appropriated the movable cultural treasures of the regions that they conquered, removing them to Germany. This was certainly not a new nor a unique event, but it is understandable that the founders of UNESCO in the aftermath of the war sought to prevent such a thing from happening again.
Three of these conventions were created in the first 55 years of UNESCO's existence, and three more were created in the last decade.
The first two conventions appear to protect against the theft of cultural objects, the second pair to recognize and protect archaeological sites, monuments and natural sites of cultural importance, and the third pair to recognize intangible cultural heritage. Note that the protection provided in the third pair is not against the copying of forms such as music or dance (as is done in the earlier copyright conventions), but rather to preserve them from being discarded in favor of new (and imported) forms.
What we see here is a significant "mission creep". The member states of UNESCO have chosen to broaden the protections offered by its treaties from objects, to sites, to the intangible.
The process by its nature has been intensely political. Consequently, one may question the motives of the government parties to the new conventions. Which governments benefited from the mission creep? Was the expansion of the Organization's mission in protection of cultural heritage consistent with its larger mission of "building the defenses of peace in the minds of men," or indeed could the implementation of the protections provided by the new conventions by an intensely political process be destructive to that mission?
More Generally Still, About UNESCO's Cultural Program
I suggest that UNESCO was created to promote certain cultural changes, and that the promotion of cultural change remains central to UNESCO's mission. The two world wars could and must be seen as the result of the cultures of the peoples involved in those wars. UNESCO was created to change the way people think -- to make changes that would make war less and less likely. It was to produce cultures of more educated and thoughtful peoples who better understood each other and who would be less and less likely allow their governments to undertake wars of aggression and conquest.
From its inception, UNESCO had seen promotion of respect for human rights as fundamental to its mission. This too implies that UNESCO sought to change cultures so that peoples would be more likely to protect the human rights of their own members and the members of other nations.
When UNESCO was founded, the word "culture" in its title was generally interpreted in the sense of what we now tend to term "high culture" -- the best in the cultural products such as great art, literature and music. It was thought that greater dissemination of these products and greater appreciation for the best cultural products of other peoples would tend to reduce the willingness to war.
We now more frequently use the word "culture" in the sense it is used by the social sciences, implying the "integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior". Indeed we define a people as a group largely sharing the most important elements of a common culture, It is in this sense that UNESCO's mission is to change the knowledge, beliefs and behavior of peoples in such ways as to promote peace and prevent war and conflict. Cultural exchanges, in the earlier meaning of the term "culture", can be an important vehicle for promoting such cultural change.
This raises the issue as to whether UNESCO in seeking to conserve intangible culture and to promote the diversity of cultural expression is in conflict with the primary mission of UNESCO, which is to promote cultural changes that will make the world more peaceful and humane.
Labels: UNESCO
Another challenge to mind-body separation
Source: "Mind over matter? How your body does your thinking," 24 March 2010, Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist
My friend Julianne suggested this article.
Until recently, the assumption has been that our bodies contribute only to our most basic interactions with the environment, namely sensory and motor processes. The new results suggest that our bodies are also exploited to produce abstract thought, and that even seemingly inconsequential activities have the power to influence our thinking.
One result reported is that eye movements occur which are predictive of random numbers generated by subjects in an experimental setting. The interpretation is that the Americans may associate larger numbers with higher regions in the field of view and regions more to the right, and that the involuntary eye movement up and right is part of the brain's function to generate a larger "random" number.
A second, similar result suggested that moving things up in space tended to make people's responses more positive, and moving them down in space to make responses more negative.
I heard recently on a radio broadcast a result which I can not reference, but that a subject hearing sneezes will tend to be more concerned about health than if he/she had not heard the sneeze.
Labels: thinking
Without Comment
>"Poetry - a clot of universal echoes. But you know her better; she should get off the pedestal, to find their place in the midst of life. To do this, it should actively collect study, publish and translate."
Labels: Without comment
Perhaps the best health care option for America combines public and civil society
As a retired civil servant, I enjoy health care options provided by contracts with the federal government. As an old guy, I enjoy Medicare financing for my medical care, provided under the Social Security system. For many years I have obtained health care through Kaiser Permanente, a non-profit Health Maintenance Organization. The combination of a federally contracted, federally funded HMO works great for me.
The United States has a long history of civil society organizations, and HMO's which provide health services without a profit motive work quite well. I think no one would dare tamper with Medicare, and indeed it seems to work well and efficiently. Indeed, the financial transactions between the federal government and the HMO seem to be very simple and efficient, and no trouble at all for me.
I wish the new health care law had made this option more widely available. Even more, I wish that the law had not left ten to fifteen million Americans without health insurance, and had extended coverage to non-citizens living in the United States.
Still, we now have a comprehensive health care law and the system can be improved in the future.
A thought on the unintended consequences of technological innovation
Ely Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. Within a few years Richard Trevithick introduced engines using high-pressure steam. The combination of the steam powered cotton gin revolutionized the cleaning of cotton and led to a revolution in cotton production in the United States. That in turn made slaves much more profitable in the states in which they were used as labor to produce cotton, which in turn made America's "original sin" of slavery much more difficult to
Of course, the steam engine also led to a revolution in transportation and steam ships and eventually railroads made it possible to efficiently transport cotton bales from America to England. (Whitney went on to revolutionize the production of rifles and to become a powerful and effective exponent of manufacturing with interchangeable parts -- what came to be known as "The American System of Manufacturing".
Cotton cloth had been developed as a major export from the Indian subcontinent. With the development of shipping routes between Europe and India in the 18th century, India cotton became a high value luxury good in Europe.
John Darwin, in his book After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405, suggests that as the wool industry in England was threatened by the increasing import of cotton cloth from India, inventors were induced to invent machines that would allow the English to compete with the efficient and cheap Indian labor. The spinning jenny was invented about 1764. Cartwright patented a power loom in 1785 and within a few decades that technology had been sufficiently improved that there were a number of factories in England producing cotton cloth at very low cost.
The English began exporting cotton thread to India and then cotton cloth, not only substituting English cotton cloth for Indian imports in the home market but also taking export markets from Indian producers and even taking away the Indian markets. Darwin suggests that cheap British cotton cloth exports to India proved a key element in the English conquest of India and the development of the British Empire.
Labels: History, Technology
Quotations: Benjamin Franklin
A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.
For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
The doors of wisdom are never shut.
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.
Who is wise? He that learns from everyone.
Labels: quotation
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Congresswoman Donna Edwards
"In the short time that Congresswoman Donna Edwards has been in the House, she has distinguished herself as a leader on issues crucial to the American people, including health care, job creation, and economic security. During the health care debate, Congresswoman Edwards expertly presided over the House: ensuring that the voices of all Members were heard and that civility reigned. Her support for reform, based on its positive benefits for the health of her district and the fiscal health of our nation, was essential to its passage. All of us in the Democratic Caucus will continue to rely on Congresswoman Edwards' experience, knowledge, and leadership in the days and years to come."
Labels: Donna Edwards, Health, Obama administration
The Benefits of the New Health Care Law
An email from Senator Ben Cardin lists the following benefits:
Closing the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug "Donut Hole" and a $250 cash rebate in 2010
Tax credits that help small businesses pay for affordable quality health coverage for their employees
Prohibiting discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions
Protection from insurers who want to cancel policies when you get sick
Protecting and strengthening Medicare for seniors
Limiting out-of-pocket costs for medical care by prohibiting lifetime limits on benefits, and restricting the use of annual limits
Allowing dependent youths under age 26 to maintain coverage under their parents' insurance plans
Free preventive services under all insurance plans and free annual wellness checkups for seniors
Prohibiting insurers from discriminating on the basis of gender
Allowing enrollees in new health plans to choose their own primary care doctor
Allowing women in new health plans to visit their ob-gyn without pre-approval from their insurance company
Allowing parents to select the pediatrician of their choice as their child's primary care provider
Requiring all new health plans to guarantee access to needed emergency care services, according to the prudent layperson definition
Guarantee all new health plans allow an independent external review of any denied claims
At the same time, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which President Obama signed into law, will reduce costs for families and small businesses and cut the federal budget deficit by over $100 billion in the first 10 years and over $1 trillion in the next 10 years.
Comment: I am very glad to see that the law will make health insurance available to more people, and will not allow insurers to deny coverage to those who need it most. I am glad to see the emphasis on preventive medicine. I am encouraged by the cost savings.
I have become more concerned with regulation of the health insurance industry since the debate over the bill began, and I am glad to see consumer protection built in to the new law.
I would have preferred to see universal health insurance achieved, a public option, and indeed some more reforms of medicare.
Still legislation is based on compromise, and this law should improve the situation and seems better than I had expected.
Senator Cardin and his Democratic colleagues in the Congress deserve our thanks and support. The Republicans just said "NO!" Indeed, none of them had the courage to vote conscience in opposition to the party line. They deserve our anger and opposition. JAD
Labels: Health, Obama administration, rants
A Good Profile of Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren is a new hero of mine due to her oversight of the TARP program and her advocacy of consumer protection and financial regulatory reform. The New York Times has a nice profile of her.
Ms. Warren's climactic hour begins now: three years after she hatched the idea for the agency, the White House has backed it, the House of Representatives has approved it and it is a top Democratic priority in the Senate.
Many fans, including RepresentativeBarney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, hope Ms. Warren will run it.
Sounds like a good idea, but it is not every educator and theorist who can run a government agency. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Labels: Economics
Higher Education: Towards a Global Knowledge Society
Source: "Bologna Policy Forum Keynote Speech – Building the global knowledge society: systemic and institutional change," Juan Ramón de la Fuente and Eva Egron-Polak, GlobalHigherEd, March 12, 2010
(P)erhaps the most important development in the last couple of decades and a key driver of change is the very importance assigned to higher education as a sector today and the expectation that it can provide solutions or respond to society's challenges. There is general consensus that no state, indeed no society, can afford to ignore how well its higher education and research sector is performing.....
Since 2003, when the first Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranking was first published, the global context has become the reference and research performance the undisputed measure of quality, despite continuous criticism. The failure, so far, for the most frequently used rankings to recognize that higher education fulfills other goals, is a real danger. Such goals as the provision of equitable access to enhance social cohesion, or the institution's commitment in other efforts such as poverty alleviation, conflict prevention, cultural awareness and many other challenges often expressed within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals, cannot be ignored in any dynamic and context-sensitive measures of quality.....
In less than a decade – between 1999 and 2006 – the number of students enrolled in higher education increased roughly by 50% – from about 93 million to 144 million (UNESCO, 2009) and the growth trend appears to be stable for a few years to come.
The IAU maintains a world wide database on higher education which, in 1983 included approximately 9,000 universities and other higher education institutions in 153 countries. Today, the database has more than 18, 000 institutions in 183 countries. In one decade, China has doubled the number of HEIs and multiplied by 5 the number of students who are enrolled. In Ethiopia, in 2000 there were 34,000 students enrolled in higher education, in 2007 this number increased to 120,000.....
Today 30% of global higher education enrollment is in the private sector and it is the fastest growing part of the sector worldwide.
Comment: The explosive growth of colleges and universities is having an obvious beneficial effect. Half a century ago, when decolonization was in full swing there were newly formed countries without a single university graduate. On the other hand, the unbridled expansion is creating huge quality problems. I suspect that the quality range is especially great among private universities: some have gone to the private sector to create high quality by avoiding the limitations of public eduction in poor nations, while others enroll students in programs of execrable quality by avoiding regulation. JAD
Reading Polls Carefully
There is a new Harris Poll that is presented as demonstrating that there is very wide spread belief in the United States in a number of propositions about Barack Obama that seem to be patently ridiculous. An article by the Director of Polling at ABC News points out that the Harris Poll methods were seriously flawed, including poor sampling methodology:
The poll starts by telling respondents "here are some things people have said about President Obama," then asking if they think each is true or false. Fifteen statements follow, with all (excluding "he is a Muslim") unrelentingly negative. "True" answers run from a high of 40 percent, for "he is a socialist," to a low of 13 percent, for "he wants the terrorists to win."
The problems are fundamental. "Some people have said" is a biasing introductory phrase; it imbues the subsequent statements with an air of credibility – particularly when you don't note that others say something else. (That approach can have problems of its own; the "some people" vs. "other people" format implies equivalence.)
The subsequent statements, for their part, are classically unbalanced – there's no alternative proposition to consider. A wealth of academic literature, neatly summarized here, demonstrates that questions constructed in this fashion – true/false, agree/disagree – carry a heavy dose of what's known as acquiescence bias. They overstate agreement with whatever's been posited, often by a very substantial margin. (This reflects avoidance of cognitive burden, which tends to happen disproportionately with less-educated respondents, as is reflected in Harris' results.)
Using all negative statements, rather than a mix of negative and positive ones, reflects another non-standard approach, one that can further bias responses. (The ordering of items, unclear in the Harris release, can be troublesome as well.)
The criticism reminds us that we have to be careful about believing polling results since not only can polls be misleading, but it is possible for polling organizations to deliberately create polls that leave a mistaken impression in the unwary reader.
On the other hand, the poll does seem to be credible in suggesting that the more education held by the respondent, the less likely the respondent was to give foolish answers to the items in the poll.
Labels: analysis, election, information
US Congress eyes science diplomacy program
A prominent US congressman has proposed that the United States should set up a foreign policy programme to boost international scientific collaboration, especially with Muslim countries.
The Global Science Program for Security, Competitiveness, and Diplomacy Act of 2010 was introduced to the House of Representatives last week (10 March) by Howard L. Berman, Democratic representative and chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Read more on SciDev.Net.
Labels: SandT Cooperation, SandT for Development
I don't understand how people can fail to sympathize with both
How can one not sympathize with both the majority of Israelis and the majority of Palestinians? Both people are suffering. Both groups are divided politically with many factions disagreeing on the right way to work towards a safer more sustainable situation. We have to realize that solutions seem much clearer to those of us who are generally uninformed and looking on from a distant sideline, so we can not criticize too much the leaders in the region struggling with the complexities of their realities.
In any case, sympathy for people should not depend on their being right, but only on their suffering without seeing a way out.
Epidemiologists focus on Welfare and Health
A new book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson and health researcher Kate Pickett makes the case that societies that reduce radical differences in the economic wellbeing of their populations reap many other benefits in the welfare of their people.
Here are a couple of reviews of the book, suggesting it is a must read:
"Bleeding Heart Liberals Proven Right: Too Much Inequality Harms a Society," Robert Fuller and Thomas Scheff, The Huffington Post, June 18, 2009
"The way we live now," Lynsey Hanley, The Guardian, March 14, 2009
We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens' incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks' holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we'd trust each other more.
Math Models: From financial meltdown to global warming
Computer modeling allows experts to extrapolate the implications of complex sets of assumptions and data in a timely fashion. In a few decades they have become a fundamental tool of the analyst. The computer models amplify analytical efforts in a manner analogous to the way mechanical engines amplify muscle power. Indeed we would no more be able to check the computer analysis without computers than we would be able to replace the machines in a coal mine with manual labor.
News reports suggest that an important factor in the financial meltdown at the end of the last decade was the use of mathematical models for risk management by the financial industry and its regulators. While I worked on mathematical models in another context, I don't know enough about those used in finance to comment intelligently. Still, the models that were in use must have failed to provide their users with adequate warning of the risks they were running. I would bet that the chief executives and boards of directors of the major firms involved neither had the expertise to understand the details of the models being used nor that they had taken the time to make a detailed investigation of those models on which they were betting their firms. A lot of those firms lost those bets.
Climate change is a sufficiently complex subject that powerful models must be applied to its analysis. A lot of very good scientists and modelers are doing so. Again, I am not expert in these models, but it is clear that there exist several different very strong models, indicating both the fact that there is not now an agreement on the perfect form for such a model and that the models are sufficiently robust to agree generally in their predictions. I am sure than none of the heads of government or major legislative bodies are experts in climate change nor these models. I suggest that there is a possibility that the existing models might fail to predict radical, non-linear climatic effects of factors that are not fully included in the theory or parameterization of the existing climate models.
While the bigwigs of the financial firms that got into such troubles made a lot of money in salaries and bonuses during the period in which they failed to take into account the risks that their models were wrong, the rest of us are paying for their failure in risk management.
The politicians who deny the risks that the current climate models are fatally flawed may reap short term political benefits. Let us hope that our children and their children do not pay for the failure to act now to reduce the threat of climate change. Prudence suggests that we not bet the future of the planet and the human race that the models -- which already predict major climate changes -- are not too conservative in their predictions.
Labels: decision making, Environment, Models, Risk
How has culture changed since UNESCO was founded?
We are all familiar with two different meanings of the word "culture".
Farouk Hosny, the unsuccessful candidate last year for election to the post of UNESCO Director General, is the long time Minister of Culture. We understand that his portfolio extends to museums, galleries, and theaters, to literature, music, drama and film, and art. His is the realm in which a "man of culture" would be expert. In the case of Egyptian Hosny, an important aspect of his duties is the protection of antiquities and Egypt's heritage of Pharaonic, Greco-Roman and Arabic artifacts and monuments.
Anthropologists use the term "culture" in a more inclusive manner such as these definitions from Wikipedia: "An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning" and "the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group".
What may not be so clear is that since UNESCO was founded in 1945, the primary meaning of the term has changed the former to the latter. UNESCO has added elements to its cultural program, from a concern for books and museums, to protection of historical monuments and movable elements of cultural heritage, to a broader concern for recognition of intangible cultural heritage and promotion of dialog among cultures and promotion of a culture of peace.
How has culture itself changed in the 65 years since UNESCO was created?
Globalization certainly has made profound changes. People are more exposed to cultures other than their own. Increased travel and increased migration results in more people experiencing other cultures in person. The growth of the global information infrastructure allows people to experience other cultures more via the media.
The creation of a large number of new nations has reduced or at least changed cultural imperialism in those decolonized states, while commercial distribution of cultural products is greatly increasing the inter-penetration of popular cultures, especially the penetration of the successful marketers of cultural products into other cultures.
Many more people speak the major international languages (although some languages have disappeared and many are endangered.) The advance of technology has allowed not only faster and easier language learning, but access to significant amounts of online automated translation. During last year's UNESCO election, for example, with the help of friends and Google I was able to monitor the press coverage not only in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, but also in German, Russian, Bulgarian and Arabic. Languages themselves have changed, not only by adopting new words from abroad but inventing new words for new things and new thoughts.
The world stock of literature, art and drama has increased. We have not only printed and filmed materials, but a world of digital material. We have also seen the phenomenon of "the long tail". We have access not only to that which we own, that which we can find live on the media, and that in the stores, but to huge collections available online. This week, for example, I found an online copy of a long out of print book by my great uncle, and more surprisingly, of a hand written poem he has sent to a colleague in the 1920's.
The explosion of schooling has equipped many more people with more and better tools for cultural exploration and appreciation. So too, the growth of the world economy has allowed a huge increase in the affordability of cultural products and travel.
Birth rates have fallen everywhere, people are living longer, and families are smaller. For the first time in history, most people in the world live in cities. The occupational structures of society have changed with a smaller percentage of workers in agriculture and a greater percentage in services.
There have been radical changes in institutions, including political, economic and social institutions. Indeed, even I suspect in religions and their expressions.
And of course, cultures have evolved both according to the external pressures and influences and to the internal actions and preferences of their peoples.
One must ask then if UNESCO has or could have changed its culture program sufficiently to meet the new challenges and opportunities of todays cultures?
Labels: culture, UNESCO
What has happened since I was born
I was born in 1937. Look at some of the changes that have taken place in the world since then. Perhaps the best place to look is Gapminder, which you can explore on your own.
Source: Treehugger.com
Growth of the Global Economy
Source: The Futurist
Source: American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Source: Internet World Stats
Most of the countries that exist today did not exist when I was born.
I am pretty sure that most of the scientists who have ever lived became scientists since I was born. I would bet that most of the people who ever got a university degree (B.S., M.S. or Ph.D) did so since I was born.
The United Nations system was conceptualized during World War II, and the key agencies were created by 1950. It was built with only the failed example of the League of Nations to guide its founders. How likely do you think it is that the founders of the United Nations system could predict the world of today? How likely do you think that they understood or cared what our values would be today?
How likely do you think that we would create the United Nations system in the same form that they did, or that we would create it in the form it exists today if we were to start again?
How likely do you think that we could make it better if we started a major reform now?
Labels: History, UN
Support for Women's Treaty Should Include the US
Source: UNA-USA World Bulletin
The Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, a landmark international treaty protecting the rights of women, has been ratified by 186 of the UN's 192 members. The US remains the only industrialized democracy in the world that has not ratified it, leaving the US in the company of such nations as Iran, Somalia and Sudan, where violations of women'srights are rampant.
I find it hard to believe that the people of the United States do not rise up and demand that the government ratify the Conventions on the Rights of Women and on the Rights of the Child.
Education Pays Off
An interesting article from an issue of the New York Times from last October provides this graph illustrating its thesis that education level is strongly determinant of long term economic growth. It provides the following cautionary paragraphs:
One reason that historical education levels have such predictive power is that educational investment is extremely persistent. School enrollments in 1900 can explain more than 72 percent of the variation in years of schooling across countries today, as measured by data collected by Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee; a similar degree of persistence occurs across United States cities.......
One explanation for the extraordinarily strong relationship between national earnings and education is that the correlation is largely spurious.
Perhaps, richer countries choose to become more educated, so that higher income causes higher levels of education rather than the reverse. Perhaps countries with other positive attributes, like better governments, are both richer and better schooled. The individual level research has labored hard to find so-called "natural experiments" — like mandatory schooling laws that start abruptly and relatively arbitrarily in a particular year in a particular state — that enable researchers to estimate the returns to education holding individual aptitude constant. Cross-country work is not nearly as well-identified and it never will be.
Labels: Development, Economics, education
Smithsonian to Debut Cromwell Series on St. Patrick's Day
Do the executives at the network not realize how much the Irish Catholics are going to object to that? Cromwell is associated with the brutal Protestant conquest of Ireland, the infliction of penal laws oppressing Catholics, the Cromwellian Plantations expropriating lands from Catholics and giving them to Protestant soldiers and other English, the enslavement of large numbers of Irish who were sent to the Caribbean, and the forced movement of large numbers of Catholics from their homes to the west of Ireland. For those who are color blind, March 17th is the day in which Catholics celebrate the patron saint of Ireland (by the wearing of the green).
Bring Back the Office of Technology Assessment!
Again from Fallows' article in The Atlantic:
In 1972, Congress created an Office of Technology Assessment as a source of nonpartisan expertise on scientific and technical questions, ranging from the utility of early anti‑ AIDS treatments to the practicality of alternative fuels for cars. The model was hailed and imitated internationally; here, it helped inspire the creation of the Congressional Budget Office two years later. The CBO remains, but in 1995 Newt Gingrich, in one of his early acts as speaker of the House, led a movement to abolish the OTA, as a symbolic strike against government waste. Its annual budget at the time was $22 million—less than a dime per U.S. citizen, or 20 minutes' worth of financial-bailout spending early last year. "We are willfully making ourselves stupid," Ralph Nader said about the absent OTA. He has urged the current Democratic congressional majority to reinstate it. But, he says, "they are so afraid of attacks for supporting 'big government,' they won't dare."
I actually participated in one of the assessments done by OTA before it was murdered by the Republican Congress and I can attest it did important work very efficiently. It is time to reestablish that function, and probably to do so in an advisory function to the legislative branch.
Labels: foresight, Technology
On the composition of the U.S. Senate
James Fallows wrote in The Atlantic earlier this year:
We are now 200-plus years past Jefferson's wish for permanent revolution and nearly 30 past Olson's warning, with that much more buildup of systemic plaque—and of structural distortions, too. When the U.S. Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had 10 times as many people as the least populous, Delaware. Giving them the same two votes in the Senate was part of the intricate compromise over regional, economic, and slave-state/free-state interests that went into the Constitution. Now the most populous state, California, has 69 times as many people as the least populous, Wyoming, yet they have the same two votes in the Senate. A similarly inflexible business organization would still have a major Whale Oil Division; a military unit would be mainly fusiliers and cavalry. No one would propose such a system in a constitution written today, but without a revolution, it's unchangeable. Similarly, since it takes 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster on controversial legislation, 41 votes is in effect a blocking minority. States that together hold about 12 percent of the U.S. population can provide that many Senate votes. This converts the Senate from the "saucer" George Washington called it, in which scalding ideas from the more temperamental House might "cool," into a deep freeze and a dead weight.
The Senate's then-famous "Gang of Six," which controlled crucial aspects of last year's proposed health-care legislation, came from states that together held about 3 percent of the total U.S. population; 97 percent of the public lives in states not included in that group. (Just to round this out, more than half of all Americans live in the 10 most populous states—which together account for 20 of the Senate's 100 votes.)
I don't know whether it is possible to amend the Constitution to change the composition of the Senate, but it seems to me that it is worth trying. There is some justice in wanting a government that takes time to make big changes, but giving 12 percent of the population veto power over the rest, or making deals among Senators representing 3 percent of the population necessary accommodations to get legislation passed makes no sense.
Labels: government
About Earthquakes
Source: "Natural Disasters, National Diligence: The Chilean Earthquake in Perspective," Daniel Kaufmann and José Tessada.
The earthquake and tsunami in Chile was terrible, and it will put the nation back years in its development. Chileans are understandably complaining that they wish more had been done in terms of warnings and post disaster relief. Yet the death and injury toll could have been much worse. The epicenter of the quake was deep underground, and that apparently helped. It was in a less populated area than that in Haiti.
One thing that has not been mentioned is that Chileans know about earthquakes and tsunamis. When they felt the quake they took action to get out of the way of falling objects and stayed out of doors during the long chain of aftershocks that is still happening. Coastal villagers when they felt the shocks literally ran for the hills, not waiting for the tsunami warning (which never came).
Some of the amelioration of the quake damages should be attributed to good governance. There are building regulations in Chile and the level of government and industrial corruption is sufficiently low that they are widely enforced, leading to buildings that resist earthquakes. The military could reach the affected cities relatively soon to impose order and the government had emergency stores that it could mobilize quickly and ship to the affected population. I suspect that utilities were also more rapidly restored than would have been the case in Chile decades ago (when I lived there), or than would be the case in many other countries.
The table above shows how frequent are major earthquakes and how many people they kill. It does not show how many more people are seriously injured nor how many suffer serious inconvenience in the aftermath of quakes, nor how much property damage the quakes do and how hard it is to recover economically from them. Good governance counts!
A thought about the age of imperialism
The age of western imperialism is generally thought to be about the 19th century when Western European powers created empires in Africa and Asia. It occurs to me that American "Manifest Destiny" might be seen as an example of the imperialistic impulse that drove Europeans.
A relatively small population of European-Americans concentrated on the east coast of North America expanded to a nation reaching to the Pacific. European empires of the 19th century were built on small numbers of Europeans living in and administering the periphery which was inhabited primarily by the indigenous populations. The U.S. imperialism was built on immigration of large numbers of people, mostly Europeans, who were over time acculturated into U.S. political and economic institutions; the immigrants conquered and replace most of the indigenous population which had been greatly reduced by diseases after the Colombian exchange.
The course of European empire building and U.S. western expansion building are quite different in many ways. Still, there seems to have been a perception among the founding fathers that European Americans were to dominate a large geographic area which in their time was occupied by indigenous people by a process of expansion and colonization.
The European empires disintegrated in the 20th century, while the United States went from strength to strength during the 20th century.
I wonder whether the experience in Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil could be seen similarly as examples of imperialism by European marginal populations seeking to create imperial domains over areas sparsely populated by disease decimated indigenous populations.
Labels: History, Other
Enigmas of Chance
I have been reading Mark Kac' book, Enigmas of Chance: An Autobiography. Kac was a very good mathematician who spent most of his career at Cornell and Rockefeller Universities. The book is surprisingly fun, since he had a great sense of humor. The math is suggestive of what he did, and not that hard to understand.
Kac (pronouced Katz with an "ahh" like "say ahh") was an expert in statistics and probability theory who actually used them in his daily life.
There are lots of Mark Kac stories. I have one. I had the great pleasure of working with him the summer I got out of grad school. (He was exceptionally generous with a young colleague!)
When Kac arrived in Los Angeles a colleague who had been his graduate student and our boss went to pick Kac up at the airport. For some reason they were late. Kac had left by the time they arrived to pick him up. My colleague, Dave, said not to worry. He knew Kac very well and could find him. So boss and Dave got in the car and started to drive. Every once and a while Dave would give a direction. "Mark would have turned right here"; "He would have turned left here". Finally, 40+ miles later, Dave said, "Thats the kind of motel Mark would stay in." The stopped and sure enough, Kac had checked in and was waiting for them!
Kac says there are geniuses and there are magicians. Once someone like you or me see how a genius has done something it doesn't look so hard. For the magician, you just scratch your head!
Labels: book review, Other
Where does USAID's Money Go?
The top 20 recipients of USAID funding receive 52.5% of its total funding. Other foreign Aid is provided by the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Department of Defense,
The distribution is interesting. Heavy spending in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq is no doubt related to the Bush administration's wars. Heavy spending in the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and Egypt are related to support for the state of Israel.
I note that U.S. Aid to Israel through 2008 is estimated at $114 billion. That is not 2008 dollars but simply a summation of the current dollars donated over the years; the purchasing power of those past dollars would be much higher now. Israel is estimated to have 7.4 million inhabitants, so the total corresponds to about $15,400 per person.
It is not clear to me why so much goes to Sudan and Ethiopia. Nor is it clear why so much goes to South Africa, the richest country in Sub-Saharan Africa nor to Nigeria, known for massive oil exports and massive corruption.
Would a distribution more focused on humanitarian goals be better? Apparently the State Department and the Congress did not think so.
Labels: foreign aid
"Egypt says it will propel African science agenda"
Source: Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net, 5 March 2010
Egypt has vowed to "maintain momentum" in building African science and technology (S&T) capacity when it takes over as chair of the African Ministerial Council on Science and Technology (AMCOST) this month.
The two-year role will pass to Egypt from the current chair, Kenya, when AMCOST meets in Cairo next week (7–10 March).
Maged Al-Sherbiny, Egypt's assistant minister for scientific research, "said that 25 African science ministers will attend the meeting along with a host of foreign organisations, including the WHO, various UN agencies and the US National Science Foundation. A delegation from Japan's Office of the Prime Minister will also attend to discuss ways in which it can support African science."
Labels: Africa, SandT Cooperation, SandT for Development
A thought about monitoring greenhouse gasses
Air pollution in China
The Economist has an article pointing out that while scientists are trying to monitor greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, politicians are trying to develop public information systems to monitor the release of these gases from different sources in their economies. The two approaches give different answers:
Ray Weiss of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, has been studying the difference between these approaches. In most cases, he has found that the top-down estimates are appreciably higher. In some, such as that of sulphur hexafluoride, a powerful greenhouse gas that is used as an insulator in high-voltage electronics, the trends as well as the values are different: bottom-up accounts say emissions are falling; top-down analysis says they are going up.
Of course industries whose gas emissions are being monitored may have incentives to make those emissions appear less than they really are. If only scientists can develop means to incriminate the polluters from the distribution of pollutants in the atmosphere at reasonable cost, we may have a better regulatory approach.
Labels: Environment, indices
About the finances of the International Development Banks
Banks leverage their capital by borrowing money, which they then loan out. They are able to pay lower interest rates for the money that they borrow than they charge for the money they lend because the banks have better credit ratings than the borrowers. Regulations require that banks have enough capital to protect against unforeseen risks. The margin between the income from loaned money and the cost of borrowed money pays the costs of the banks' operations and the profit on the invested capital.
International development banks are intended to be non-profit. They borrow on capital markets. They have relatively low risks in part due to the fact that they have many borrowers and the risks of those borrowers defaulting on their loans is somewhat uncorrelated. The borrowers also tend to give priority to honoring debts to international banks. And of course, highly professional back staff work with borrowers to try to assure that the loans are "bankable" and have returns that more than justify the cost of money.
The international development banks get their capital from member nations. Part is in the form of paid in capital, but part is in the form of callable capital. Because the member nations are fully trusted, they don't have to actually pay in the callable capital unless the bank's paid in capital is drawn down. I am sure private banks would love to have higher than allowed loan to capital rations by promising regulators that they would pay in the capital if (and only if) it were needed.
The World Bank is now seeking to secure an additional $3 billion-5 billion in paid-in capital
The Asian Development Bank is seeking to triple its capital base to $165 billion, but only 4% of the increase would be paid-in capital.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) plans on augmenting its €20 billion ($27 billion) capital base by 50%, including €9 billion in callable capital.
The African members of the African Development Bank want to triple its capital to $99 billion (94% of which would be callable).
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank are finalising their capital-increase plans ahead of their annual meetings in March and April respectively.
As a result of these capital increases, the international development banks should be able to help poor nations to deal better with the reduced private capital flows that are resulting from the global economic crisis.
Labels: Development, foreign aid
"Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls"
Source: The Economist, March 4, 2010
In many cultures, there is a strong preference for boy children. In China, there are sanctions against having more than one child. Technology allows sex selection in some countries and in others girl babies are simply killed. In some countries favoring of boys results in higher child mortality for girls. The result is that some countries, mostly in Asia, are seeing many more young males than females.
The unusual thing about son preference is that it rises sharply at second and later births (see chart 2). Among Indian women with two children (of either sex), 60% said they wanted a son next time, almost twice the preference for first-borns. This reflected the desire of those with two daughters for a son. The share rose to 75% for those with three children. The difference in parental attitudes between first-borns and subsequent children is large and significant.
The reality of violent prejudice against girls is itself horrible. The long term effects on societies in which there are many unmarried young men are hard to foresee, and may also be bad!
Stanford U Class Day Lecture 2009: The Uniqueness of Humans
Thanks to Julianne for cluing me into this great talk on how we as humans are the same and how we are different than other mammals.
Thoughts occasioned by a book on the Hidden Brain
I recently heard a discussion by Shankar Vedantam about his book The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives. I was struck especially by three points which I will put in my own words, perhaps doing some violence to what he actually believes and said.
Very often we seek information in order to justify biases which we unconsciously hold rather than seek a broad range of information that will both challenge and support our preconceptions and thus lead to better understanding. Of course, finding confirmatory information when one refuses to see contrary information, does not lead to better decisions.
As social animals, we very often seek a social construction of past events and the appropriate response to those events. While this certainly must help build group cohesion, and may often lead to better understanding and decisions, it certainly takes time to reach consensus. Vedantam suggests that the social construction of response may be deadly in emergency situations.
We form lots of opinions through observation of things or people, often without any purpose of teaching by the person observed. If a child sees only people of one color as trusted by those in his environment, or sees only one gender in specific roles (e.g. doctors and nurses) they may form opinions that only people of that color are to be trusted or only people of one gender can play a given role. The unconsciously formed opinions may be very hard to overthrow by argument.
Vedantam must be correct in his riff on Freudian theory of the unconscious, in that a lot of our learning may be unconscious, and a lot of our behavior may be influenced by biases or preconceptions which we do not put into words.
Here is an audio of an interview much like that which I mentioned.
Internet Access a Human Right
Results from a new poll of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries done for the BBC World Service.
Comment: I guess I agree that Internet access should be a human right, although I recognize that for billions of people that right can not now be provided, and I recognize that most people who have Internet access don't have as much access as I do with FIOS connectivity.
I wonder whether I am not more worried about cyber attacks than the things identified in the second bar chart. How vulnerable are our power grids, transportation networks, health services, and other vital services going to be in the near future to malicious attacks from enemies. Most people don't recognize how much our societies' critical institutions are coming to depend on the Internet. JAD
Check out BBC's Digital Giants
Sam Petroda's comments are especially good. Petroda has been and is one of the people leading India into the Information Revolution!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/digital_giants/8551904.stm


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The Croatian Sovereignists () are a conservative and Christian right-wing political party in Croatia. The party was founded in 2019 and is led by Marijan Pavliček.

History

Foundation
The party was originally founded in November 2019 as a political platform between the Croatian Conservative Party, Hrast-Movement for Successful Croatia, and some citizens' initiatives, such as "Istina o Istanbulskoj" and "Hrvatski bedem".

2020 parliamentary election

In 2020, the party entered the Sabor (Croatian Parliament) in a Homeland Movement-led coalition. As of 2021, the Croatian Sovereignists have four MPs in the Sabor.

Merge of smaller right-wing parties
On October 2, 2021, a unification assembly was held in Croatia's capital Zagreb. During the assembly it was announced, that three smaller conservative and right-wing parties (Croatian Conservative Party, Hrast-Movement for Successful Croatia and the Generation of Renewal) will become defunct to merge and work together as the Croatian Sovereignists.

Expulsion of Zekanović from the party
On December 17, the presidency of the Croatian Sovereignists launched proceedings to expel Hrvoje Zekanović from the party, which was conducted on January 17. The final decision will be made within 30 days. Zekanović surprised everyone with a speech about vaccinations in the Croatian Parliament a week earlier on Thursday, which was followed by his removal as a president of a parliamentary club and Hrvoje Zekanović was officially expelled from the Croatian Sovereign Party on January 19, 2022.

"Protect the Croatian Kuna"
After Andrej Plenković (HDZ), the Prime Minister of Croatia, announced that he expects Croatia to join the eurozone by the beginning of 2023, the Croatian Sovereignists launched a campaign called "Protect the Croatian Kuna" (). Hrvoje Zekanović announced that the Sovereignists will start collecting signatures for a referendum and claimed that "not a single citizen of the Republic of Croatia out of two-thirds who voted for the EU knew that we had committed ourselves to introduce the euro within a certain period of time, ie enter the eurozone." Sovereignist Member of Parliament Marijan Pavliček argued in a parliament speech that: "such an important topic where part of the sovereignty is lost, in this case monetary sovereignty, cannot be decided by individuals in their offices after an agreement with the powers in Brussels. On this topic only the Croatian people can decide through a referendum."

The initiative is also supported by the Croatian Party of Rights, the Independents for Croatia, and Generation of Renewal.

On October 24, 2021, the "Protect the Croatian Kuna" initiative started collecting signatures demanding a referendum. Sovereignist Member of Parliament Marko Milanović Litre said in an interview, that already after five days 157,000 signatures were collected. For a referendum on the subject, the initiative needs to gather 368,867 signatures by November 7, 2021. After the collection of signatures was over, the Sovereignists announced that they had collected 334,582 valid signatures, which is not enough to call a referendum.

Program
On its website, the party names:
 national sovereignty
 self-sustainability
 Christian values
 personal freedoms
as its program guidelines.

Election results

Legislative

See also
 List of political parties in Croatia

References

External links

2019 establishments in Croatia
Conservative parties in Croatia
Christian political parties
Eurosceptic parties in Croatia
Right-wing politics in Croatia
Political parties established in 2019

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Earlier this year I decided to part with my X100 and just focus on building up my lens collection for the X-E1. It was sad to part with the X100, it was a lovely camera that's taken some great photos, but after you've been using a faster more modern camera it's always a bit jarring to go back to something a bit older and clunkier. As my budget wouldn't stretch to a shiny new X100S, my choice of replacement X lenses were the 23mm f1.4, the 27mm f2.8 or 35mm f1.4. The 23mm while amazing, was really too expensive for me, and also a little bit large and heavy. I wish Fuji would offer a smaller and less expensive f2 variant. Between the 27 and 35 it was a harder choice, both were within budget and ticked the right boxes for sharpness, size and weight. Ultimately I decided the 35mm focal length (52.5mm equivalent) was a little long for my tastes and the truly tiny dimensions of the 27mm helped seal the deal.
The first mockups Fuji showed of the 27mm made it look similar in size to the 18mm pancake. When it ultimately shipped, Fuji surprised everybody by making it even smaller, in fact barely bigger than a normal lens's end cap. The tiny size and light weight are certainly attractive features, it makes an already lightweight camera system even more portable. Pair it with the 18mm pancake and you can leave the camera bag at home, this lens can be kept in your shirt pocket when you're not shooting with it! Even though it's tiny and light, the 27 has the usual excellent build quality you'd expect from a Fujinon.
There was a sacrifice made to achieve that tiny size though – note the conspicuous absence of an aperture ring. This was quite a ballsy move on Fuji's part. One of the primary appeals of the X series are the traditional controls, the aperture ring being one of the key ways you control your camera. To my pleasant surprise, I find I don't actually miss it that much. I always found the aperture control on the X100 a little fiddly and can imagine it would have been a similar affair with the 27 given its size. Changing the aperture using the rear thumb dial works nicely (you may need to upgrade your firmware to get this ability if you've not been keeping up-to-date).
The other omission from the lens is less forgivable, that would be any kind of lens hood. While the marketing people will tell you about how great the "Super EBC" coatings are, the reality is if you have the sun in the wrong position you will get lens flare. Hoods also provide valuable protection to the front element without requiring you to compromise the lens's optical quality with an extra piece of glass. Thankfully nice metal screw in hoods are cheaply available, even for the awkward 39mm filter thread Fuji insisted on using here.
The 27 is sharp from corner to corner and at its best from f5.6 to f8. At wider apertures the center stays remarkably crisp, but the corners fall off a bit. The maximum aperture of f2.8 doesn't make it super easy to throw the background out of focus and this isn't helped by the rather pedestrian minimum focus distance of 34cm (about 13″). The bokeh you can get can be a little busy, but at minimum focus distance it's fairly smooth with a pleasing degree of roundness. This really isn't a lens for people who are looking for serious subject isolation and you'll be disappointed if you get it for that.
For those wanting to maximise depth of field and have everything really crisp, this lens excels. Its practical 40.5mm equivalence and unobtrusive size make it ideal for a range of applications like street or travel photography. Its sharpness and good micro-contrast also lend it to landscape work where you really want as much detail out of foliage as possible to avoid getting a green mush in distant fields and trees.
Distortion is reasonably minimal and corrected in camera and most RAW processors as you'd expect. Unlike with the 18mm lens, the correction doesn't overly impact sharpness at the edges of the frame. There is very little to no chromatic aberration or purple fringing to worry about, so shots generally look good without requiring much work. As mention above, flaring can be an issue if the sun or another bright light source hits the lens at the wrong angle, even with a hood you may find you have to adjust your composition sometimes to avoid it. To be fair this is true of nearly every lens so it's certainly not a show-stopper.
The 27mm isn't a lens for everybody, those with deep pockets will likely opt for an X100S or 23mm f1.4. But for anybody looking for a really tiny, affordable lens to make their X series body as portable as possible and with a good all-round focal length, its hard to beat. It punches far above its weight in terms of sharpness, rivalling Fuji's best performing primes from f5.6. AF is quick and quiet although sadly not internal, so the front element does pump in and out during focusing. The 39mm filter ring is a fairly uncommon size, only the 60mm macro shares it in Fuji's lineup. This means filters tend to be more expensive than for more common larger sizes, despite the smaller amount of glass required. I found using a step-up ring caused AF to fail so you may have limited luck adapting larger filters . Overall though I'd still find it hard not to recommend this lens, it's just fun to use and I've yet to be disappointed by its optical quality. It does't replace the 23mm f2 my X100 had perfectly, but no lens in the current Fuji X mount lineup really does.
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Alice Project From Essential Modern Orchestra
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Vance R. Koven
The capacity crowd at Jordan Hall Friday night knew they were gathered for an Event. For only the second time, and probably the last time in his lifetime, composer David Del Tredici heard his complete Child Alice, the hugest and most elaborate of his many settings from Lewis Carroll's Alice books. Thanks to the generosity of the Recording Industry's Music Performance Trust Fund, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project's superb show with soprano Courtenay Budd under the direction of Gil Rose was free.
Del Tredici's relationship with Carroll's writings parallels the relationship between the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the Liddell sisters, particularly Alice Pleasance Liddell, who became his muse when she was but six, and later the dedicatee of his stories. Thus one might even say that Del Tredici's work is an obsession about an obsession, with even more layers added for both artists' use of these materials in exploring processes of becoming—in Carroll's case the unenthusiastic procession from childhood to adulthood, in Del Tredici's case the change he embraced from an atonal to a tonal harmonic idiom.
Be all that as it may, from Pop-Pourri and An Alice Symphony in 1969 through the 1995 opera Dum Dee Tweedle, and despite a wide range of compositions with other inspirations, few composers have been as tightly associated with a single literary source. Del Tredici penned the bulk of these works between 1969 and 1981, during which time he wrote practically nothing else. After the enormous success of Final Alice in 1976 (we remember well its performance by the BSO in 1978), which set several scenes from the books (principally the trial scene at the end of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), Del Tredici commenced on the four large works that coalesced into Child Alice; these took the introductory poems to Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass for their texts. The first, In Memory of a Summer Day, won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize. All four sections were sketched between 1977 and 1979, with the orchestration occupying the following two years. Quaint Events, Happy Voices and All in the Golden Afternoon premiered separately, with the entire shebang receiving only one performance, in 1986.
Like many, maybe most, neo-tonal composers (that is, composers who, like George Rochberg and Easley Blackwood, have repented of earlier atonality, rather than never having embraced it), Del Tredici's compositional processes are richly complex. His orchestra is huge—we've never seen more instruments on the Jordan Hall stage, including a siren and wind machine—and his goal is to squeeze as much expression as possible from a few relatively simple tunes (not quite that simple, as there are often stray non-diatonic elements to them—"I torture tonality" is how he put it in his pre-concert onstage interview with Robert Kirzinger). Over the course of a ten-to-fifteen (or even twenty) minute Beethoven symphony movement, or even, in the case of the Fifth, a half-hour symphony, one can easily fit such a concept into one's frame of reference. Think, however, of the second movement of Mahler's Eighth Symphony, double or triple it, and you have a better idea of the scope of Del Tredici's ambitions. Add to that a strong predilection for piling one climax on top of another, and one can conclude, Mick Jagger to the contrary notwithstanding, that too much can indeed be too much. Del Tredici has indeed cranked it up to 13 for Child Alice.
Within this expansive framework, the actual structure of the component parts is quite intelligible. Part I of Child Alice, which runs over an hour, is based on an ABA structure in which the outer sections are settings of the Wonderland poem, the first mostly bright and clear as if from Alice's point of view, the other darker and richer, reflecting Carroll speaking across the gulf of years that separate not only them as child and adult, but the summer afternoon giving rise to the story (1856) and the publication of Carroll's book apotheosizing it nine years later; Del Tredici refers to this as the mood of "rapture and regret," for which he even devised a motto chord. In between comes a crazy, Mad Hatter march (with much else interpolated) based on the single melody. The composer richly deserved the Pulitzer for this tour de force. Part II, which follows a "composed" intermission (Part I ends with a short phrase that becomes the beginning of Part II) consists of the other three "movements," which in a large sense parallel the structure of Part I, with a lively and relatively straightforward vocal movement, based on the child's sense of the applicable poem (in this case the one from Looking Glass), a massive orchestral interlude, and a deeper, more rapturous version of the poem at the end. In Part II the orchestral interlude is Happy Voices, which Del Tredici took in punning fashion and created a raucous fugue followed by a "quodlibet" of all the tunes from the piece. It would be fatuous to attempt anything like a detailed description of the music to this two-and-a-quarter-hour work; there are links below to where you can hear various recordings of each of the sections, along with the composer's elaborate notes on them.
Getting down to the particulars of the Friday performance, it must first be pointed out that in all his vocal-orchestral Alice settings, Del Tredici had to come to grips with the fact that his orchestral and vocal forces were wildly out of balance; so, even though in many places he has sensitively scored the music to allow the soprano to be heard, he wisely chose to specify that the singer be amplified. Budd, who has worked with Del Tredici for many years has a special affinity for his music. Her lovely timbre and excellent intonation, when given the chance, reveal a flair for dramatic contrasts, though to be honest, except in Quaint Events there isn't a whole lot of variation in tone within her particular settings—little distinction exists between the darker hues needed for the "adult" renditions of the poems and the quite similar ones for the "child". There are several cadenzas written in, which were uniformly lovely and silkily sung. Even with the benefits of amplification, though, it was impossible to distinguish most of the words without closely following them in the program book, and as you will realize if you listen to the recorded performances with the words in front of you, even with big names like Phyllis Bryn-Julson it's easy to get lost in Del Tredici's convoluted prosody.
The orchestral performances were superb. Like most Americans composers, Del Tredici's orchestrations are "black in the brass," and his writing for them is brilliant; the fugue represents a kind of apotheosis of American "big band" writing, sort of Stan Kenton-meets-Elmer Bernstein-meets Kurt Weill. In the relatively few sections in which the woodwinds get to come out of the shadows of the brasses, they sounded wonderful. In rather substantial parts, harpists Amanda Romano Foreman and Krysten Keches were evocative and sonorous, and the vast percussion section was flawless. And over all this, Rose's direction was solid, attentive, and impeccably coherent. While no composer should have grounds for dissatisfaction with one of Rose's performances, his is not the most nuanced of podium personalities, so occasionally we were left wishing he could get more dynamic variation—that is, at the lower end of the decibel meter. He does, though, deserve high credit for bringing this massive undertaking off with no discernible hitches.
As promised, here are links to recorded performances (all different) of the various components of Child Alice on Del Tredici's website. Note that since these were free-standing performances, he has composed extended conclusions for some of them that don't appear in the full rendition. One's reconstruction of the whole from these pieces, therefore, will be approximate; we look forward to BMOP's release of the integral whole. During the grueling week when the BMOP performers had been preparing for the live concert, they also recorded Child Alice for eventual release through a Kickstarter campaign.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Bitbox is alway running in the background saving your work. This is modeled on how your typical iPhone app works. It also follows the model of being able to pick up where you left off in a future session.
Desktop software and some of our other products, like synthbox, are different. You have to manually press the Save button to keep your work.
Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Manual save gives you the ability to walk away from changes you don't like. It seems like a better option when there are a lot of presets you may want to tweak but ultimately keep in place. Auto save makes sure you alway have the latest version to be able to come back to it later.
For bitbox, are you happy with the current auto save model? We appreciate your thoughts.
What about a "save as" option? This would only work with manual save. Would there be value in being able to save your work under a different preset name so you don't lose the original that inspired you and you don't lose the work you just did?
"Previously entered content was automatically saved. Restore or Discard." Interestingly enough I visited this post and got this from the Forum haha.
I think it would be cool to have the ability to snapshot, and/or manually save together. If you took snapshots like auto-saves along the way, you could have the ability to A/B your differences you made. Along with this you can walk backwards to where you ended up, while have safety knowing your working is being backed-up. If I manually save, this can be formally named, etc as a preset. Maybe a Preset/Snapshots navigation where you separate the auto-saves and the formal save-as into two lists, with some more defined categories/folders.
I usually like to keep different version of a work in progress, so I would appreciate to have a "save as" option. It also gives you the option to take a basic setup as a starting point, tweak as you go along in a performance and still being able to go back to the original version with a simple click.
And while we are at the topic of presets: would it be possible to have a preset management in the bitbox like we have in fxbox / synthbox / toolbox? Having a list to scroll through which holds more than 12 presets (maybe limitless?) would be great.
The preset management in bitbox has come up repeatedly in the wishlist. I'm pretty sure Aaron started this thread as research into the design for those changes.
I recently posted information about how to do "save as" type functionality for the other boxes here. Aaron said that would be available in the new version of bitbox in the future as well.
I would really like the option to save to a different location than the current preset. For example, I often start a new idea based on an old one. With the current set up that means I have to recreate the whole preset from scratch which is less efficient.
Maybe the best option would be to have a setting to turn auto-save on/off?
Auto save function enabled or not enabled, i like a "save as" function, this way you can start with an existing preset and go from there. Also naming them would benefit.
In bitbox firmware 1.3.4 we have switched over to the manual save model and provided the ability to have unlimited presets. You will recognize the new preset screen from all our other modules.
As a special bonus, we also included the "Save As" functionality. Thanks for your ideas and support.
For some reason I'm not able to save at all. Each time o create a group of samples and shut down or change presets I lose all my work.
Press the Home button until you see the menu screen. This is the screen with four options: Main, Presets, Tracks and Settings. Touch Presets to display the preset management screen. Touch Edit in the menu. Touch Save or Save As in the edit submenu.
Let me know if it's still not saving. You can find this information and much more in the user manual available for download at https://1010music.com/bitbox-documentation.
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PCMag Australia
The 10 Best Original Films on Netflix
There are plenty of TV shows to binge watch on the streaming service, but if you want the best movies on Netflix, add these Originals to your list.
By Eric Griffith
20 Dec 2019, 4:10 p.m.
The 10 Best Original Films on Netflix Always Be My Maybe Beasts of No Nation Bird Box The Fundamentals of Caring I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore Marriage Story Mudbound Okja Tallulah Roma Other Top Originals
Netflix spends billions on content. Yes, billions with a B. This year alone, it was expected to spend $15 billion on original content—more than the gross domestic product of many countries.
Netflix not only makes a lot of stuff, it buys the rights to many films as well. This strategy fills Netflix to the hilt with hours upon hours of expensive video. It's ironic considering people complain when stuff leaves the service. But originals? They're most likely here to stay. Even if there are fewer movies than TV shows on Netflix, there are still so, so many options that it's impossible for Netflix to effectively market them all. Only word of mouth will truly work.
That's where we come in. Below, behold what we deem the 10 very best films on Netflix as of this writing. These aren't just films for geeks—that's a separate list. This is a look at pure quality, as close to Oscar-caliber as you can get with Netflix Originals. If we left your favorite off the list, head to the comments and start a fight. I know I can count on you.
Ali Wong, a stand-up comedian of prodigious talent (watch her Netflix specials for proof) wrote Always Be My Maybe with Fresh Off the Boat star Randall Park and Michael Golamco, who she's known since the 1990s. She and Park star in the film as childhood friends who had a disastrous teen love encounter and meet again as adults. It hits all the usual romantic comedy highlights but brings with it something more: true laughs, from the way they interact, to the ultimate cameo of the year 2019. (SPOILER: It's Keanu!)
Between Beasts of No Nation and First They Killed My Father, Netflix has two winners about a horrible subject: child soldiers. This one—Netflix's first big original film to garner some awards attention—may be the most harrowing. It stars Idris Elba as the commandant who takes young Agu (Abraham Attah) from his family. A hard but important watch.
Isn't it nice when a thriller can be a major blockbuster, a true scare fest, and a well-acted quality film? Sandra Bullock leads the cast in this post-apocalyptic tale that jumps back in time long enough to show the apocalypse happening in real time. It's not a realistic end of the world, but it's no more a wacky reason than some zombie tale. The conceit that people must never have their eyes exposed while outdoors (and birds in a box can alert them to danger) or risk literally killing themselves leads to many tense, harrowing blindfolded scenes for Bullock and co-stars like John Malkovich. That includes two small children she'll only call Boy and Girl, for reasons that make the utmost sense.
A coming-of-age road trip movie with Paul "Ant-Man" Rudd? Of course you want to see that. In The Fundamentals of Caring, Rudd stars as the caretaker of a sarcastic, caustic, wheelchair-bound boy (Red Oaks' Craig Roberts) on a road trip to meet the boy's father and a lot more.
Melanie Lynskey—long overdue for leading lady status—leads this crime-dramedy about a woman at the end of her rope. Elijah "Frodo" Woods is her martial artist neighbor.
In director/writer/producer Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson play a couple in the death-throes of their marriage, helped along by a marriage counselor played by Laura Dern. It's a couple of stunning performances that remind you these two are serious actors, not just Kylo Ren and the Black Widow. The film is already in the top 10 list from the American Film Institute for 2019, and is up for Critics' Choice and Golden Globes galore, to name just a few of the accolades pending and already won.
Nominated for Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Supporting Actress (Mary J. Blige), and Best Original Song ("Mighty River," sung by Blige), Mudbound is based on the Hillary Jordan novel about WWII vets—one black, one white—who return home to the land their families share. The men deal with their issues, the families deal with poverty, and they all deal with racism until it boils over.
One of the best Netflix Original films is an action-adventure fantasy with the desire to make the world a better place. Okja, Joon-Ho Bong's followup to the legendary Snowpiercer, is a sci-fi take on the worlds of animal activism and scientific ethics. Jake Gyllenhaal's role as a TV zoologist is epicly weird, and it never hurts to have Tilda Swinton as your villain, either. The real star is a "super-pig" CGI creation named Okja, which just may have you thinking better of your habits after you watch.
Tallulah (Ellen Page) is living out of her van, trying to get some money out of her ex-boyfriend's mom. While stealing food at a hotel, she stumbles on a kid, and, uh, kidnaps it. Not exactly a feel-good hit kinda setup, but Page and the always-amazing Allison Janney slap some comedy into this drama written and directed by Sian Heder, a writer on Orange is the New Black who once had to babysit for guests at a swanky Beverly Hills hotel. Netflix bought this one before it even got its Sundance premiere in 2016.
With Roma by Alfonso Cuarón, Netflix finally stepped into the world of high-end awards. He wrote, directed, shot, produced and co-edited the semi-autobiographical black & white film about life in early 1970s Mexico City. Letting such a gifted director—famed for films from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban all the way to Gravity—tell his life story led to a film that earned 10 Academy Award nominations. It won three, becoming the first Mexican film to win Best Foreign Language Film.
Other Top Originals
For more, check out our picks for the best original:
Geeky Movies on Netflix
TV Series on Netflix
Geeky TV Series on Netflix
Documentaries on Netflix
Foreign-Language TV Shows on Netflix
TV Series on Amazon Video
TV Shows on Hulu
Horror TV Shows
'Zuck no different to Murdoch'
About Eric Griffith
Eric narrowly averted a career in food service when he began in tech publishing at Ziff-Davis over 20 years ago. He was on the founding staff of Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine (all defunct, and it's not his fault). He's the author of two novels, BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale"--Publishers' Weekly) and KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. He works from his home in Ithaca, NY.
More From Eric Griffith
The Most Watched Movies on Netflix This Week
The Most Watched Shows on Netflix This Week


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Mika Singh banned from Indian film industry
IANS August 14, 2019 02:57 PM IST
New Delhi: The All Indian Cine Workers Association (AICWA) has banned singer Mika Singh from the Indian film industry for performing at an event in Karachi, Pakistan.
The event in Pakistan was organised by former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's close relative.
A 30-second video clip tweeted by a Pakistani journalist showed Mika performing at the event, despite India severing all artistic and social ties with Pakistan in the aftermath of the removal of Article 370.
A letter from AICWA President Suresh Shyamlal Gupta stated: "AICWA bans and boycott singer Mika Singh from the Indian film industry for performing at a high profile event at Karachi dated August 8, 2019."
"AICWA takes a tough stand of immediately boycotting all his association with movie production houses, music companies and online music content providers."
The statement further read that "AICWA workers will make sure that no one in India works with Mika Singh and if anyone does, they will face legal consequences in the court of law".
"When the tension between the countries is at the peak, Mika Singh puts money above the nation's pride," the film association said.
The association also sought the intervention of Information and Broadcasting Ministry in the matter.
Mika performed with a 14-member troupe at the pre-wedding ceremony of of a girl who's father, Adnan Asad, is reportedly a cousin of former Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf. Mika and his crew have been given visas for 30 days to perform in three cities -- Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad.
MORE IN MUSIC


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Abuse - Child Abuse
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Wood burning Kumma Sauna Stove, the best sauna stove made, I can change it to electric stove if you wish.
Glass front sauna door so you can see the fire glow (if you want the wood stove).
Stainless steel side water tank, warm water reservoir (if you want the wood stove).
Back and side sauna heat shield (if you want the wood stove).
Sound system with separate volume controls in sauna and changing room.
Dimmer lights in sauna room and changing room, promoting ambient lighting.
Hand made quality sauna door with window.
Flat screen monitor, audio visual hook ups.
Custom, professionally designed to be the best sauna you'll ever take.
Tongue and Groove cedar throughout interior.
Quality build Tuff Shed 8'x12' structure with manufacturer warranty.
What a great gift! Commit to purchase today, and in a few days we could have it in your backyard with a bow on it. This sauna is on display at Uncommon Gardens 5750 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis. Stop by and check it out.
This isn't my job, this is my passion. I've built a bunch of saunas and this is an excellent sauna. I am selling this one as I am going to build another, identical sauna on it's own trailer.
This sauna has been used only a few times. It's in great shape, stove is safely broken in, and it comes with a few 'extras' when we'll deliver it to your backyard. Give me a call, Glenn 612-801-7126.