Author Archives: Jean-Paul

From DS9 To Buffy

Continuing my quest to watch TV shows from the 90s that I missed, I am now watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  So far, it’s a little campy but fun. Thankfully, they discontinued the incredibly annoying Buffy fighting action sounds.  Sarah Michelle Geller could not pull them off at all.

At episode five or so, the principal of Sunnydale High School gets eaten by a pack of teenager-hyenas.  These things happen.  Who, to my surprise, shows up as principal number two?  Armin Shimerman!  Better known as Quark from Deep Space Nine.  Seeing him in two different TV shows back to back made me look up his profile on IMDB.  Dude’s been in everything!  I’ve never really recognized him as an individual, though.  He has a very distinct voice and mannerisms, but apparently not memorable voice or mannerisms.

He does a lot of voices for video games as well.  You dorks may remember him as Andrew Ryan from the Bioshock series.  He also voiced characters in the Mass Effect series, Starcraft II, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and God of War II just to name a few.

Now that I know who he is, I’m probably going to see him popping up all over the place.  Kind of like when you buy a new car and suddenly you realize that everyone seems to have the same car as you.

The Platinum Coin Vortex Continues

As I spend the day reading about all the foofaraw surrounding the possibility of minting a $1 trillion platinum coin, there are certain things that I don’t expect to see.  High atop that list would be a limerick homage to the platinum coin.  That is just one of many poems on a blog that is dedicated to mixing the dismal art of economics with poetry.  Limericks Économiques, making economics just a little more tolerable.

Cool Video Of The Day

Witness Apollo Robbins in action.  He is considered one of the best pickpockets in the world.  It looks like he uses his arts for good instead of evil, but I’m not sure we’d ever be able to tell.

I Love The Whole Platinum Coin Debate

We are, once again, quickly running up to the debt ceiling.  And Republicans are, once again, holding the economy hostage by demanding draconian economic cuts in order to raise the debt ceiling.  It’s like deja vu all over again.

An interesting, though inelegant, solution to this problem is for President Obama to authorize the minting of a $1 trillion platinum coin and have the Federal Reserve buy it.  This is because there is a law that authorizes the President to mint only platinum coins in any denomination he so desires.

The debate for and against it is absolutely fascinating.  Some say that it is illegal.  They are clearly wrong.  Some say that it’s immoral.  They have a better argument, but it’s certainly less immoral than defaulting on the debt in an attempt to score political points.  Some say it’s a bad idea, which it is, but see the prior sentence for why it’s less bad than the alternative.  Some say that it goes against the spirit of the law.  They are almost certainly right.  The platinum coin law was almost assuredly meant for seigniorage and not for increasing the debt limit.

Which brings us to the fascinating topic of seigniorage.  Take a look at that $1 bill in your pocket.  How much is it worth?  Most people will say $10.  They are only partially correct.  It’s actually worth about 3 cents in materials and labor.  The Federal Government just makes a promise that that 3 cent item will always be worth $1.  Coins work the same way.  The Federal Government will mint a $1 coin commemorative coin that costs them pennies and sell it for $1.  They then pocket the difference since the coin will, in all likelihood stay out of circulation.  The Federal Government makes around $25 billion a year this way.  So if Obama goes the $1 trillion commemorative coin route, it will probably show on the books as a $1 trillion seigniorage profit.  Strange days indeed.

The Federal Reserve Made A Record Profit in 2012

The Federal Reserve is an incredibly complicated pseudo-business/pseudo-governmental entity.  Whenever you have a complicated entity that very few people can understand, you have simplistic views of the entity that dominate.  Many Republicans and Libertarians will have you believe that the Federal Reserve is the epitome of all that is evil about the Federal Government.  They would like governmental economics to behave exactly like familial economics does.  They would like money to be backed by something tangible like gold.  This is magical thinking.  Gold backed securities may work fine in normal economic conditions, but they also hamstring efforts to fix economic issues in non-normal economic conditions.  And we are almost always in non-normal economic conditions.

Take, for instance, the tripling of the monetary base that has occurred in the last decade.  Under normal economic conditions, this would prove disastrous to the economy.  Under current economic conditions, when we are in a liquidity trap, inflation barely rears its head at all.  Another benefit to the printing of all that money?  The Federal Reserve made a record profit in 2012!  They made over $91 billion.  Even better, most of that profit,  $89 billion, went right back to the Federal Government!  All that money that is being printed is being put to use and making us a giant profit.

Given, that $89 billion only represents one month of money that will be printed in the coming year, but it is things like this that often go over the heads of anti-Fed agitators.  That money that is being printed will continue to be put to use and will continue to make us money as long as the Fed continues to buy the debt.

Don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense to you.  I only marginally understand all the intricacies of how this works.  Maybe this will help.  Say the Federal Government pays you $100,000 to perform work.  You may think that the Federal Government would then be out $100,000.  You would be wrong.  You are taxed on that $100,000.  Let’s say your tax rate is 20%.  That means that you’re really only getting $80,000.  So the Federal Government gives you money and almost immediately takes some of it back it back.  That is the gist of the relationship between the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government right now.

This is also why infrastructure spending is such a no-brainer.  It requires hiring a lot of workers and a good percentage of that money the Federal Government gives to those workers comes right back to the government!  All that and it improves conditions to grow the economy!

Oh, Poo

This is certainly interesting.  You can send a company a fecal sample (you can also to oral or skin samples for those of you that are scatologically squeamish) and they will tell you what your gut flora is composed of and how it compares to everyone else who participates.  Not only that, but you will help them understand how dietary and lifestyle choices affect gut flora.  That is pretty cool.

If anyone that knows me is interested in participating, let me know.  The more you order, the less it costs.  I’ll order the kits and you can pay me.  Then we can brag about who has the best shit.  It’ll be fun.  And remember, it’s for science!

The Law Of Least Harm/Most Good

A friend, when commenting on my new-found vegetarianism, asked me half jokingly, half snarkily when I’m going to stop buying clothes that are made in sweatshops and when I’m going to stop buying vegetables picked by cheap immigrant labor.  He has a point.

The problem is, you can’t step outside your home without causing harm to someone or something.  Heck, you probably couldn’t touch anything in your house without causing harm to someone or something.  Those appliances don’t build themselves and they ain’t built in America by well treated employees.

What’s a globally conscience individual supposed to do?  You try to follow the law of least harm/most good.

This makes things like becoming a vegetarian an easy choice.  Meat production in the United States can be said to follow the law of most harm/least good.  Meat provides you with nothing that you can’t find somewhere else so there absolutely no necessity in eating meat.  That, by itself, isn’t enough to say that you shouldn’t eat meat, but in order to justify eating that meat, it better be a fairly humane process.  And it is not.  Wow, is it not.  The law of least harm/most good is easy to follow in this case.

Then there are things like tomatoes.  To eat tomatoes or not to eat tomatoes?  That is the question.  It is issues like whether to eat tomatoes or not where it becomes difficult to tell which side to fall on.  Tomato farming has some of the most unfair labor practices in the United States.  Tomato picking is done exclusively by immigrants who are easily taken advantage of because of their illegal status.  At the same time, though, these are jobs that the people might not otherwise have.  What little money is made often gets sent home to families that desperately need it.  Not eating tomatoes would mean a loss of jobs for those immigrants and a loss of those jobs could be deadly to their families.  Good is being done despite evil intentions.  That makes an issue like this prime for vigorous activism to push for better conditions and better wages for the pickers while at the same time continuing to eat tomatoes.

Speaking of activism, if you want to follow the law of least harm/most good you should be volunteering.  It doesn’t matter for what.  No, you are not too busy.  No, it doesn’t take a lot of time to make a difference.  Under 30% of adults above the age of 16 currently volunteer.  That’s around 60 million people.  Those volunteers average 51 hours a year volunteering.  That’s 3 billion volunteer hours a year.  Imagine if all 200 million people over the age of 16 gave just 40 hours a year ( under 4 hours a month!)  to volunteering.  That would be 8 billion volunteer hours a year.  Think of the good that could be done with that.  All it takes is one simple step.  Call an organization whose cause you agree with and offer to volunteer.

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you are only one person and one person can’t make a difference.  It’s true, you are just one person and it’s true, you might not make a difference, but it is guaranteed that you won’t make a difference if you do nothing.  You will be amazed at what just a little bit of effort following the law of least harm/most good can accomplish.

Book Review: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Warning: The contents of this book may be hazardous to your very comfortable eating habits.

Continue reading →

This Is Why Environmentalism Is So Important

A recent article from Kevin Drum points to the fact that there is a pretty good causal effect between crime rates and lead poisoning.  Crime rates in the United States are on a sharp decline and the removal of lead from everyday life may be the cause.  How cool is that?

This is why environmental issues are so important and also why people have a hard time seeing environmental issues as needing to be solved.  It can take decades for the effects of what we are doing to the environment to become readily apparent.  Eat lead paint as a toddler today and you kill someone 15 years from now.  Your average person would never make that connection.  There are hidden costs to many of our everyday activities that we would never be willing to pay if the costs were known up front.  Corporations know this.  Science takes decades and there is a lot of money to be made in those ensuing decades before something is considered harmful.

The lead we pump into the atmosphere from factories and coal fired plants costs us more for correctional facilities.  Your tube socks you buy at Wal-Mart cost you much more than what you pay for it because of the welfare support needed for its employees since Wal-Mart refuses to pay a living wage.  The meat you eat costs much more than what you pay for it because of the diseases they cause and the harm the factory farms do to the local environment.  Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere decades ago is causing global warming now.

Humanity has trouble taking responsibility for things that happened yesterday.  It is no wonder that it is nearly impossible for us to take responsibility for things that happened decades ago.

By The End Of This Book, I Will Be A Vegetarian

Willfully ignorant is not a phrase that anyone would use to describe me.  When it comes to eating meat, however, that is really the only phrase that can apply.  I have known about the horrific state of animal husbandry in the United States for years.  I have heard many stories about the abysmal conditions in which animals are kept in factory farms.  I am aware of the vast ecological destruction that occurs from industrial fishing practices.  I have known that the meat we eat often makes us sick, the people who work in the industry sick, and the people who are unfortunate enough to live nearby a factory farm sick.

These are all facts that have been fed to me little by little over the years.  I have known about them the way I know about the fact that the sun rises in the morning.  Very little thought was put into it.  That has all changed because of a book.

I am currently reading “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I’m about half way through the book and I’m finding that nothing I’m reading is new to me.  There are no new facts and no new conclusions.  What there is is everything I have known as disparate facts all condensed into one book.  And it is devastating.  There really is something incredibly powerful about reading page after page of how awful factory farming is to force you to come to terms with your complicity in perpetuating mass suffering.

99% of all meat and animal byproducts consumed in the United States comes from factory farms.  They live in inhumane conditions from the day they are born to the day they die.  They live in pain from the day they are born to the day they die.  They are killed in ways that are inefficient and often lead to fully conscious animals being skinned and gutted.  And that’s if they live that long.  Male chicks are almost all killed after hatching.  Unhealthy pigs are taken by their hind legs and swung against the ground bashing their heads in.  None of the meat that comes from these animals can be considered healthy because of the conditions in which they are processed.

Terms like “cage free” and “free range” and “grass fed” are merely marketing ploys and are all but meaningless.  “Cage free” can mean that the enclosure the animal is placed in doesn’t meet the definition of a cage even though the animals are packed in just as tightly.  “Free range” can mean that the animal can look through a screen window and see the outdoors.  “Grass fed” can mean that a minimal portion of the animal’s diet is grass.  If you do not have first hand knowledge of the conditions in which the animal was raised, you must assume those terms are a lie.

Seafood, alas, isn’t much better.  One pound of caught shrimp can cause over 20 pounds of bycatch (sea creatures that are not the intended target).  The world average is 6 pounds of bycatch for every pound of shrimp caught.  Almost all this bycatch dies and is thrown overboard.  “Dolphin friendly” tuna is anything but.  All it means is that they don’t specifically target dolphins when looking for tuna.  All tuna fishers end up with dolphin bycatch.

There are much more humane alternatives, but they are difficult to find and require research that is really not possible for big city dwellers.  And even if you can find them, they are only more humane.  There is no such thing as a humane way to kill a living animal.  There is only more humane and less humane methods.  Even the most humane current standard causes suffering.

Despite all that, I still find it really difficult to say that I will give up meat.  It is a completely unnecessary food item to consume in a first world country with a vast agricultural distribution network.  I don’t need meat’s nutritional content and I get plenty of pleasure from other non-meat food items.  There is really only one logical, moral, and ethical choice in the matter, though, and that is to give up eating meat.