Benefits of Cruise Control

One of my beliefs is that Hegel was right, that thesis and antisynthesis is the way of the world, that physics is right--the equal and opposite reaction law, whichever one it is. Freedom often requires a countervailing force. Hence, my paean to cruise control, a feature on my new car with which I was previously unfamiliar. In taking a long drive yesterday, I found one of its benefits was to keep me to the speed limit (or a tad above) in situations where I'd usually find myself doing well above the limit. For example, on route 15 below Harrisburg the speed limit goes from 65 to 55 to 50 and I'd always have problems keeping my speed down in the 55/50 zones. After all, it was divided highway, the traffic was a bit heavier and access was less limited, but I tended to keep up with the locals. But with cruise control, I could make a decision and cut my feet and my irrational side out of the loop. Without cruise control, freedom was too much for me.

Implanted Patient-Data Chips--Ugh Factor and Who Benefits

The Post today has this article--Use of Implanted Patient-Data Chips Stirs Debate on Medicine vs. Privacy:

"The two D.C. residents are among just a handful of Americans who have had the tiny electronic VeriChip inserted since the government approved it two years ago. But the chip is being aggressively marketed by its manufacturer, which is targeting Washington to be the first metropolitan area with multiple hospitals equipped to read the device, a persuasive factor for Fischer and Hickey.

There's an "ugh" ("ick"??) factor to such chips. But there's also an overly easy knee-jerk reaction:

"...the concept alarms privacy advocates. They worry the devices could make it easier for unauthorized snoops to invade medical records. They also fear that the technology marks a dangerous step toward an Orwellian future in which people will be monitored using the chips or will be required to have them inserted for surveillance."

The question that needs to be asked is "why?", what is the motive, the potential gain for someone to snoop? People don't do things for no reason, so how would they gain from snooping into a 77-year old's medical history? I'm sure I'm not being imaginative enough, but as of now I don't see a big potential threat.

Why DC Cabbies Don't Come from Latin America

John Kelly had a column in the Post about the origins of DC cabdrivers. (Not sure the link to the list will work.) Here's an excerpt. Driving Around the World in D.C.: "Topping the list is Ethiopia. Of the 4,990 drivers that the commission has information on, 1,383 were born in that East African country. Next up was the United States, with 1,047."

What's notable, given that Latinos dominate in our immigrant population, is the absence of countries below the border. Why is that, I wonder?

Kelly's column suggests one answer is education/language. My impression is that most Hispanics who emigrate are lower middle class (they've got enough money to pay the coyotes but not much more). They might be uncomfortable navigating the bureaucratic ropes needed to learn to drive and get a cabbie's license, and dealing with customers. At least one driver he rode with had a college degree and suggested it was a good stopgap job.

Another answer might be the first-mover phenomena: an initial pioneer comes to the U.S. and finds a job, he tells his relatives and neighbors back home and they follow. That's one reason for Irish cops in NYC, Koreans in groceries and dry cleaning, and Patels in motel ownership.

Immigration and Crime

Tyler Cowan at Volokh.com links to an op-ed in the Times on the relationship of immigration and the crime rate. The professor says that studies show that immigrants have a lower crime rate than natives, more generally that Hispanics do better on socio-economic indicators than would be expected at the gross level. (i.e., many immigrants are young males living apart from women, the group we'd expect to have the highest crime rate.)

As I said in comments there, I think the professor oversells his thesis, but it is a reminder not to generalize. It would also be interesting to look at the cultural patterns related to years of residence of family (i.e., obesity, cancer rates, etc. etc.)

Framing the Issue--Ports Versus 3 Percent of Terminals

The administration lost its battle when the issue was framed as "UAE taking over 6 US Ports" instead of "Control of 3 Percent of Terminals Transferred". From today's Post: Dubai Firm to Sell U.S. Port Operations:

"DP World acquired management control of 24 of 829 container terminals at the ports of Baltimore, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami and New Orleans. Terminal operators are primarily responsible for transferring containers from ships to railroad cars and trucks, administration officials have noted, while port security is the responsibility of the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection."

ex-Mayor Barry, Playing Again

The Post reports Marion Barry Sentenced to Three Years Probation:

As a bureaucrat, and therefore partial to the IRS, I find this depressing.

"Assistant U.S. Attorney James W. Cooper, the lead prosecutor in the case, said Barry violated the spirit, if not the letter, of his plea agreement by dragging his feet to file necessary paperwork.

Barry did not file his tax returns until the day before the original sentencing date, and then waited a month, until yesterday, to have his accountant contact the Internal Revenue Service to initiate negotiations about a payment plan."

Twill be interesting to follow when and if he pays any of his back taxes.

Michael Collins, Revolutionary as Bureaucrat

Found this New Republic review of the new biography of Michael Collins, an IRA leader after WWI, interesting because of the use of "bureaucrat" throughout. (Free registration required.)

Who was the real Michael Collins?:

"Irish nationalism had always had a surplus of dreamers, poets, visionaries, rhetoricians, and idealists. What it lacked was bureaucrats. Collins became the indispensable man of the Irish revolution because he knew how to run things.

The guerrilla chief who demanded that his subordinates supply reports 'done in tabular form and furnished in duplicate' was simply a grown-up version of the boy in the Post Office Savings Bank, where hundreds of thousands of transactions had to be recorded accurately every day and clerical errors were not tolerated. The earnest, punctual Collins who earned a reputation as 'the speediest young clerk in the Savings Bank' was, in embryo, the leader whose favorite terms of castigation were 'lazy,' 'inefficient,' and 'unbusinesslike.' Obscured by the legend of the trickster-terrorist is the real Collins story: the literal treason of the clerk. "

Crap and Discrimination--A Moral

There's an interesting piece at Slate.com: The Crappiest Invention of All Time - Why the auto-flushing toilet must die. By Nick Schulz:

He includes this bit:

"Hands-free toilets and faucets are certainly smarter now than when they first came on the market. Pete DeMarco [an engineer and expert] told me that when automatic fixtures first got popular in the early 1990s, they had difficulty detecting dark colors, which tended to absorb the laser light instead of reflecting it back to the sensor. DeMarco remembers washing his hands in O'Hare Airport next to an African-American gentleman. DeMarco's faucet worked; the black man's didn't. The black guy then went to DeMarco's faucet, which he had just seen working seconds before; it didn't work. This time DeMarco spoke up, telling him to turn his hands palm side up. The faucet worked."

While Schulz tosses this off as human interest, it might really represent how some "discrimination" works. I suggest what happened is that the engineers who initially designed the faucet tested it out rather thoroughly. They probably used themselves as guinea pigs. And the faucet worked, so it was put on the market. But guess what, it just so happens that none of the engineers were dark skinned. Result: something that would appear to many like discrimination. And in a way it is. No one intended the result, but it was the by-product of the fact that blacks haven't been well represented in engineering. I'd suggest this sort of interrelationship is quite common, if you look hard.

Splitters and Lumpers/Bugs and Terrorists

The release of the names of the prisoners at Guantanamo (see Monday's papers and today's NYTimes editorial: They Came for the Chicken Farmer reminds us of the dangers of lumping--when DOD said the prisoners were "terrorists", we (i.e., any reasonable person) are led to visualize a bearded violent man (somewhat as the pirate Blackbeard was pictured in my youth). When you know the names and backgrounds you see a much more disparate group than you visualized, differences that inevitably increase the odds that mistakes were made in their capture and retention.

On the other hand the New York Review of Books has an article by Tim Flannery, reviewing 3 books on nature, including David Attenborough's latest venture on insects. He found spiders of the same species seeming to display personality differences, leading Flannery to this statement:
"The fact that invertebrates have characters seemingly similar in their fundamentals to those possessed by ourselves is a theme to which Attenborough returns repeatedly, and as he does so the gulf between the least and greatest of living things diminishes."

So it goes, the back and forth between lumping and splitting, on which see wikipedia.

Limits on Bureaucratic Rules--Basketball and Immigrants

Two articles over the weekend showed the limits on bureaucratic rules--they aren't self-enforcing:

• Basketball players need to receive valid high school diplomas and college educations? No. Players at major college programs attend paper high schools and have problems reading at the fourth grade level says this Washington Post article: A Player Rises Through the Cracks.
• You can't get a job unless you're in the country legally? Of course not. Employers don't try to enforce the rules, even when you give them access to a database to check says this NY Times article: The Search for Illegal Immigrants Stops at the Workplace.

The common thread is collusion--the wink, wink between college coaches and aspiring players (and their mentors, pushers, etc.) or between employers and employees. The bureaucracy that is supposed to police the rules (NCAA and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement respectively) are far away. There's little incentive for anyone to report violations. Even the media gains--they get the opportunity to win journalism prizes by doing the occasional piece on the issue.

(A nod to Professor Robin Williams, who long ago pointed out this sort of process at work in his American sociology class.)