On Being an Outsider

The Post tomorrow carries a piece by a Princeton grad, black and female, who is now a Post reporter, discussing her and perhaps Michelle Obama's experiences at Princeton (just stumbled across it).

It struck a cord--she found herself not in the in-group (i.e., the rich preppies) and therefore became more conscious of her blackness. I had a similar experience almost 50 years ago. Not that I was black, but I was a farm boy from upstate NY in a college whose tone was set by urban New York City dwellers. It made me more conscious of being an outsider. But since I wasn't a member of a recognized minority, I was pushed out, not into another group.

Miscellaneous Factoids

There are eleven Spanish-language radio stations in the DC area.

17 percent of the French own a second home. Dirk Beauregard

Blogger is available in Malay.

There are 1 million Hindus in the U.S. and women are now training as Hindu priests.

Two Silos--DOD and VA

Here's a very good story on the problems in passing injured military from DOD to VA--it's a classic two silos story. Two bureaucracies, each with their own focus, their own laws, and their own history, meaning the individual can get screwed. Or at least, understanding the background for neither, the individual definitely feels screwed by faceless bureaucrats.

What a Weak Dollar Does

Help agricultural exports increase, almost doubling in two years. See this ERS pub.

The Economics of Diversity

Freakonomics points the way to an interesting post on the economics of acting, particularly the day players (having one or two scenes in a TV episode sort of thing). Because it's harder and more costly to get actors with more unique qualities, the tendency is to go with more generic characters, which makes it harder for unique actors to get jobs, which drives them out of the business, which makes it more costly to get such actors. It's your classic vicious circle.

Pick on Economists Day

I gently mocked Brad DeLong earlier, now I repeat some lines from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, in a post about how much to save for retirement:

"Sure," I said, "don't forget one of us will probably die before the other and I'm not saving for your future husband." "Why," she replied with a sigh, "can't economists be more human?"

Brad DeLong Is Surprised

Surprised to find that highly educated, sophisticated people are idiots:

The unwinding of the real estate bubble in 2007-2009 is so far not going well. There is, by contrast, more financial distress than I believed possible. Who thought that quantitatively sophisticated hedge funds would have enormous unhedged exposure to subprime risk? Who would have thought that highly-leveraged investment banks with an originat-and-sell business model would keep lots of the securities they had originated in their own portfolios--and kept them because they were high yield for their rating, i.e., because the market did not believe they were as low risk as the investment banks had bamboozled the ratings agencies into claiming? Who would have thought that those buying subprime mortgage securities from the likes of Countrywide had done no investigation into how Countrywide was screening out borrowers?

Sometimes economists overestimate the rationality of people. Sometimes I understate my conclusions.

B.F.Skinner, Walden II, Twin Oaks?

Talk about a blast from the past, this obituary of one of the pioneers of the Twin Oaks commune, based on the preachings of B.F.Skinner, the once-famous behavioral psychologist, in Walden II evoked all sorts of memories.

Unfortunately, a bit of Schadenfreude (sp?), based on this quote, and my comfortable belief that the hippy style of life was short-sighted, which meant my own life choices were superior:

"Although she was involved in founding two other income-sharing communities -- in Missouri and Virginia -- she told The Post in 1998 that communal life had not measured up to her expectations.

"My mother was disappointed that Twin Oaks did not turn out to be the model for what the rest of our society would be," said her daughter, Dr. Josie Kinkade of Louisa, Va. "When she found out that it was really just a nice place for some middle-class people to live, she was disappointed."

And You Think FSA Has Problems?

Over the past years FSA (Farm Service Agency for newcomers) has made news for having computer problems, for not having the capacity to implement the new ACRE program, for paying the estates of dead people for too long, etc. (Their good work goes unreported, as is normal.)

The British counterpart of FSA has its own problems, as these excerpts from a UK Computerworld article show:

The government agency overpaid subsidies under the Single Payment Scheme by £37 million in 2005 to 2006, and some 20,000 farmers were paid incorrectly, according to the ‘progress update’ report by the Committee of Public Accounts.

A third of claims this year, or 34,499 claims, could still be affected unless farmer entitlements were properly checked, it said.

The agency also overspent by £50 million on a business change project that was intended to meet the new payments scheme, taking total project costs to near £300 million.

“The agency’s service to farmers is still undermined by weaknesses in its IT systems, such as its inability to provide farmers with a predicted amount and payment date to assist them with their financial planning,” the report said.

It is spending £750 to process each farmer’s claim for a subsidy payment, and greater automation of small claims processing as well as better use of electronic payments was “essential” in reducing these costs, the report said.

Its IT system was “rigid and task based”, and was “unsuited” to the agency’s needs, the committee said. The Accenture contract was renegotiated so that from September 2007 to 2009, Accenture will receive a managed service fee of £14 million in total, and risk will be better spread.

How To Fight the War on Terror: Attn: Obama

Orin Kerr at Volokh.com offers a suggestion:

Finally, I hope the Bush Administration will think creatively about how the Al Marri opinions handed down today could be used to bring the war on terror to a quick and victorious end. In particular, the opinions could substitute for waterboarding. Instead of waterboarding the bad guys, the government should force Al Qaeda detainees to go through all 216 pages of the different decisions in one sitting. I would think that even the hardest of Al Qaeda terrorists will break down and confess before making it through, saving many American lives.