flying cars by 2011?

And an fuel efficiency improvement over current small airplanes, and many cars, apparently!



h/t Mark.

nyt profiles secretary of energy chu's transition to washington

The New York profiled on Sunday my favorite Cabinet member, Nobel laureate Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy. Secretary Chu is ready to tackle several of the Obama Administration's top priorities: stopping global warming; ending our dependence on carbon-based fuels, such as coal and petroleum; and making us a more energy-efficient nation. Excerpts from NYT:

President Obama has assigned Dr. Chu to carry out some of his central priorities: wean America from dependence on fossil fuels, rebuild the nation’s electrical grid and address the challenges of climate change.

[...]

Yet as he takes on one of the toughest policy and management challenges in government, Dr. Chu brings certain assets that none of his peers or predecessors have had: a Nobel Prize, a YouTube following (for his lectures on climate change) and an unofficial theme song (“Dr. Wu” by Steely Dan). He is a major celebrity in Taiwan, where scientific achievement is rewarded with rock star status. He is a member of Academica Sinica, Taiwan’s most distinguished scholarly society, as was his father.

[...]

Dan Leistikow, the Energy Department’s director of public affairs, said that Dr. Chu was a scientist, not a politician, and should be given a little time to adjust.

“A Nobel scientist is more likely to figure out Washington than a career politician is to figure out how to deal with carbon sequestration,” Mr. Leistikow said.

[...]

Dr. Chu said he had been frustrated by the job vacancies and the glacial pace of his department. He is eager, he said, to get on with what he sees as his main task: finding and financing the scientific breakthroughs that will end the nation’s dependence on carbon-based fuels and solve the climate change problem.

Borrowing an analogy from the world of physics, he said that in Washington, Newton’s first law — a body in motion tends to stay in motion — does not apply. “In a bureaucracy, if you start something in motion, it either stops or gets derailed,” he said. “You have to keep applying force.”

He intends to keep applying that force, he said, because it could help solve the world’s energy and climate change problems.

“If we don’t spend this money wisely and invest in new technology that addresses these challenges,” he said, “we will have failed the country. We will have failed the world.”

I hope, for all our sake, that Dr. Chu succeeds.

h/t angry asian man.

harold koh to state dep't; supreme court up next?

Though those who have known him in other contexts have some legitimate critiques, I've only known of and seen Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh in the context of his advocacy for human rights, particularly the United States' responsibility to comply with international human rights law, both abroad and at home. I wrote about his smackdown of Originalists' rejection of international law last year.

So welcome news this week that Dean Koh has officially been nominated as the State Department's top attorney, the official title being, I believe, State Department Legal Adviser. An innocuous name for a very influential position, one where Koh will be able to reform many of those policies and practices that he critiqued during the Bush Administrations.

Also interesting is the speculation that Koh is under consideration for a Supreme Court vacancy, if and when one should appear. As noted in the NYT:

Earlier this year, when the Supreme Court announced that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was suffering from early-stage pancreatic cancer and speculation rose about a possible vacancy on the high court, Mr. Koh’s name was among those mentioned as a possible candidate.

Again, not sure about Koh's overall legal views, but he'd certainly be a champion for greater consideration of international law in our domestic jurisprudence. This is, after all, a guy who said:

Human rights is not marginal to who we are; human rights defines who we are. The United States is a country defined by human rights. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all persons are created equal’…. What I’m saying is, it is not that human rights are as American as apple pie. Apple pie was founded, as far as I know, in Bavaria. Apple pie would be as lucky to be as American as human rights.

It also goes without saying that Koh would be the first Asian American Supreme Court Justice, should that vast series of improbable events all come together.

teach a man to fish, and he'll sneak out of an internment camp to do it

Photo by Toyo Miyatake

Via angry asian man, a fantastic story on the Manzanar internment camp, where up to 150 Japanese American internees escaped... and then went fishing. From the San Diego Union Tribune:

For 65 years, a photo taken of [legendary fisherman Heihachi] Ishikawa by fellow Manzanar internee Toyo Miyatake was the only photographic evidence that more than 150 of the Manzanar internees “escaped” camp to go fishing. Manzanar was the first of 10 internment camps that housed an estimated 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast at the start of World War II. From March 31, 1942 to Nov. 21, 1945, Manzanar would hold more than 11,000 internees.

Ishikawa's incredible story of living off the land in the hard Sierra mountain range for a couple of weeks at a time is one of many incredible stories of survival that make up Cory Shiozaki's work in progress. Shiozaki's partially completed documentary, “From Barbed Wire to Barbed Hooks,” will preserve the stories of how Japanese-Americans used their ingenuity and called on their bravery to fish Sierra streams and lakes.

“The most important message I got after getting all the oral histories and experiences of the internees is how they were able to endure,” said Shiozaki, 59, a film maker from Gardena. “The fabric of their character was like bamboo. They bent, but they bounced back and rebounded. There is an expression in Japanese, 'shigataganai,' which loosely translated means, 'it can't be helped.' They embraced that and found a way to live through it. That, more than anything, has inspired me to continue this project and has made me proud of my Japanese-American heritage.”

Shiozaki will display photos, fishing equipment made in the camp and other items from Manzanar at next week's Fred Hall Fishing Tackle and Boat Show which runs Wednesday through Sunday at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. He said he has exhausted a $30,000 grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program that enabled him to begin the project. Now he seeks funding so he can finish it.

More at Cory Shiozaki's website: Manzanar: "From Barbed Wire to Barbed Hooks"...fishing stories from Manzanar.

disgraced former gov. spitzer explains aig

Before he was the hypocritical "Client 9," former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York was a populist crusader and scourge of Wall Street. Having avoided prison but having difficulty finding a a new gig, he apparently has the time to share with us his special insight as the man who once tried to bring AIG down (before, you know, they completely destroyed the economy). And what he says is that we're all being bamboozled; the real outrage isn't the bonuses of a mere $165 million, but the tens of billions that are being funneled away to the speculators who caused this calamity in the first place:

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

[...]

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG's counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG's contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse.

But wait a moment, aren't we in the midst of reopening contracts all over the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes—income taxes to sales taxes—to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won't be laid off. Why can't Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn't we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren't they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven't we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn't they have accepted a discount, and couldn't they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars—that is, our dollars—flowed?

The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.

So Says Spitzer. And if you can't trust disgraced former-populist politicians these days, who can you trust?

turning red when drinking means possible cancer risk

Everyone turns red if they drink enough; for many folks of East Asian ancestry, the "enough" is much lower. But if you start turning red on first sip, it may be a warning sign for heightened risk of cancer, says a report this week from the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine journal:

Lots of people turn slightly red if they imbibe too much. At issue here is facial flushing from a small amount of alcohol. It's due to a deficiency in an enzyme that helps metabolize alcohol, called ALDH2.

People with a severe deficiency of the enzyme usually don't drink because it makes them feel too bad; in addition to flushing they feel nausea and a rapid heartbeat.

But people with a partial deficiency — they inherited one bad copy of the enzyme-producing gene instead of two — may put up with the flushing. A series of studies by Dr. Akira Yokoyama of Japan's Kurihama Alcohol Center found that those people are six to 10 times more likely to develop esophageal cancer than people who drink a comparable amount but aren't enzyme-deficient.

Scary stuff, but important to note.

h/t EHE.

court throws out bush rule restricting plan b

In a victory for reproductive rights, federal district court Judge Edward Korman of New York has struck down Bush-era FDA regulations banning access to Plan B contraception over-the-counter for women under age 18. A victory, as well, for both the rule of law and science:

Plan B has been available by prescription in the United States since 1999.

But because the drug must be taken so soon after intercourse to be effective, in 2001 more than five dozen public health groups, with endorsements from World Health Organization and the American Medical Association, asked the F.D.A. to make Plan B available over the counter.

Not until 2006 did the F.D.A. rule, saying that the drug could be sold without a prescription only to women over 18. In order to enforce the age restriction, the agency also ordered that Plan B be stocked behind pharmacy counters, in contrast to other over-the-counter contraceptives like condoms.

[...]

Citing depositions, Judge Korman wrote that agency officials had improperly communicated with White House officials about Plan B. And, he said, F.D.A. employees sought to influence decisions by appointing people with anti-abortion views to an independent panel of experts reviewing Plan B for the agency.

The agency also departed from its normal procedures, the judge wrote, by ignoring favorable conclusions about the drug by an advisory panel as well its own scientists and officials who found that the drug could be safely used by women at least as young as 17.

Such “political considerations, delays and implausible justifications” showed that the F.D.A. had acted without good faith or reasoned decision making, Judge Korman wrote.

Go science!

aig insanity

I can't even process the whole banking bailout anymore. This is nuts. $160 million in bonuses to "retain key employees" and then this:

Twenty-two people received more than $2 million, and 73 received more than $1 million. And even though the bonuses were aimed at retaining key employees, at least 11 are no longer with the company.

Even the "retention" farce doesn't pass the laugh test! These bonuses aren't meant to keep people around; they're meant to keep paying people at the outrageous levels they were being paid during the bubble they created!

The Administration's reaction, to fine AIG the amount in bonuses and to reduce their $30 billion bailout package by the same amount doesn't hold water. $330 million is 1% of the money AIG is receiving. Where's the incentive for them to change their ways, when there's still no oversight whatsoever into how this money is being spent? Note that most of the money is just being funneled through AIG to pay off the speculators that invested in them, and there are no rules at all for those speculators to not use this taxpayer money to pay out ridiculous bonuses. Where AIG money is going, in case you hadn't heard, is a trade secret. Blargh.

So it's just 1% of the money, right? But it's still $160 million, and this is about rewarding people who didn't just run their own business terribly, but took down the whole economy with them. The fact that they have jobs at all is an outrage. Are you telling me that there is no one sane and talented to run these companies, no one willing to actually work to make banks act like banks and not a drunken guy at the racetrack?

Related, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) may lose his Senate seat over this, and at the end of the day, he might not be the only one. Consider that Democrats had figured that something like this might happen, but Dodd stripped it out of the bailout bill in conference committee:

Before the AIG payouts became known, Congress had taken steps toward taxing bonuses, but pulled back. The Senate adopted an amendment to the economic stimulus bill that would have required recipients of bailout funds to repay bonuses above $100,000 or face a 35% excise tax.

The provision was dropped in conference negotiations with the House and replaced with a watered-down provision from Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) that exempted bonuses in contracts signed before Feb. 11. The AIG contracts were signed early last year.

Dodd received $280,238 in campaign contributions from AIG and its employees from 1989 to 2008, more than any other member of Congress, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. A spokeswoman for Dodd said he was unaware of the AIG bonuses at the time of the conference committee talks.

[Montana Democratic Sen. Max] Baucus, who was one of the negotiators on the stimulus bill, said Tuesday that he was not aware the provision had been dropped from the legislation. "That should have passed, but it didn't," he said.

Great. Our Senators don't know what they're voting on and passing.

Not change we can believe in.

update: Apparently I wasn't paying attention and we do know the counterparties now:



update 2: Firedoglake reports that Treasury Secretary Geithner is being dishonest in trying to scapegoat Dodd for the change in final TARP language, and that it was actually the Administration's doing that the compensation provision was watered down.

web 2.0 and mobile browsing killing the law

From the NYT:

It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges.

[...]

Jurors are not supposed to seek information outside of the courtroom. They are required to reach a verdict based only on the facts that the judge has decided are admissible, and they are not supposed to see evidence that has been excluded as prejudicial. But now, using their cellphones, they can look up the name of a defendant on the Web, or examine an intersection using Google Maps, violating the legal system’s complex rules of evidence. They can also tell their friends what is happening in the jury room, though they are supposed to keep their opinions and deliberations secret.

A juror on a lunch or bathroom break can find out many details about a case. Wikipedia can help explain the technology underlying a patent claim or medical condition, Google Maps can show how long it might take to drive from point A to point B, and news sites can write about a criminal defendant, his lawyers or expert witnesses.

It the adversarial system sustainable with so much jury access to external information? Or will juries need mobiles confiscated ahead of time?

we're happy to have our money back, thank you very much

Banks complain that bailout funds require them to change their wasteful ways; want to give us our money back:

Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive pay packages. They must slash dividends, cancel employee training and morale-building exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens.

As public outrage swells over the rapidly growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the Obama administration and lawmakers are attaching more and more strings to rescue funds.

The conditions are necessary to prevent Wall Street executives from paying lavish bonuses and buying corporate jets, some experts say, but others say the conditions go beyond protecting taxpayers and border on social engineering.

Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to return the bailout money. The list includes small banks like the TCF Financial Corporation of Wayzata, Minn., and Iberia Bank of Lafayette, La., as well as giants like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.

First of all, NYT-ese translator on the "onerous" conditions:

• "put off evictions and modify mortgages" = Addressing both the macro and on-the-ground consequences of the banks' subprime disaster and stimulating the economy by putting a floor on foreclosures.


• "let shareholders vote on executive pay packages" = actually, it means what it says, but most people think that's a great idea and not onerous at all. Executives work for the shareholders, so the shareholders should get to say what their employees make.


• "slash dividends" = stop giving away our money to investors and use TARP for what it's supposed to be for: shoring up your capital.


• "cancel employee training and morale-building exercises" = cancel taxpayer-funded vacations to Las Vegas and Florida.

Second, if they want to give back the funds, I say, great. If they're in a position to pay us back, that means they didn't really need to be bailed out in the first place, doesn't it? And that probably means they shouldn't have gotten our money.

If the TARP funds are really "rescue funds," as Wall Street is trying to frame them, then they should go to banks that need to be rescued. And I'm pretty sure banks that need to be rescued are the ones that screwed up. As such, complaints that business-as-usual is not allowed for bailout recipients garners only a single Hollywood tear and the world's tiniest violin.

more dishonest uaw wage reporting from the NYT

Since mythbusting rarely works, I shant repeat the number in the myth of how much United Auto Worker members employed by the Big Three American car companies (GM, Chrysler, Ford) maker per hour. Suffice to say, the number is nonsense because it includes the benefits received by retirees, i.e. non-employees. This would be the equivalent of someone telling your hourly wage was around three times what you actually make because we're going to count the pensions of folks who used to work at your company, even those who have been gone for 20 years.

The truth is that in terms of actual wages, Big Three employees make between $14 and $33/hour. UAW admits that this is perhaps marginally higher than the wages at Toyota and Honda at their American plants. And a GM executive confirms, stating that: "There is not a significant difference between what GM pays its U.S. hourly workers and what Toyota, Honda and Nissan pay their U.S workers."

So it's understandably irritating that the NYT continues to inaccurately publish numbers that create the appearance of a massive labor cost disparity between the American and Japanese car companies. There are two and only two issues that should be on the table regarding how the Big Three get back on their feet:

1) Health Care Costs Are Out of Control: This is true not just for the Big Three, but all American companies, big and small, but especially in labor-intensive industries like auto. This is a national problem that affects all companies employing folks here, including the Japanese auto makers. Health care reform is the number one necessity for real economic revitalization that will end the current recession more quickly.

2) American Car Companies Have Had Poor Management: American car buyers aren't choosing Japanese cars over Big Three cars because of how much UAW members make. That doesn't even pass the laugh test. Make better cars, the kind that consumers want, and get out ahead of the curve (fuel efficiency, hybrids, and electrics are not rocket science) instead of being reactive to what the Japanese are doing. The end.

sen. feingold's 28th amend. idea picks up some steam

NYT reports on the proposal by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) to amend the U.S. Constitution to require the direct election of Senators to vacancies, in response to the filling of the seats vacated by Pres. Obama (IL), Vice Pres. Biden (DE), Secretary of State Clinton (NY), and Secretary of the Interior Salazar (CO).

Russ is no longer alone on this, now with strong support from Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and John McCain (R-AZ), and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). Durbin is Senate Majority Whip, and Conyers is Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. McCain, of course, has collaborated with Feingold on election reform before in the form of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act.

sen. boxer will win reelection, even against the terminator

via dKos:

Field says that the California budget crisis ("crisis" seems too tame, let's call it a "fiasco" or "debacle") has severely crippled Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's favorability. This essentially guarantees reelection for junior Sen. Barbara Boxer, as Schwarzenegger was considered the strongest possible Republican opponent for Boxer.

This is awfully nice, because in October 2007, the Running Man actually led Boxer in such a matchup. Since that time, Ah-nold's chances have been terminated.

The Field Poll also tested McCain advisor Carly Fiorina. [...]

Field Poll. 3/2-4. Registered voters. MoE 4%. (October 2007)

Barbara Boxer (D) 54 (43)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) 30 (44)

Barbara Boxer (D) 55
Carly Fiorina (R) 29

repubs/insurance industry afraid of the market

This is telling, from the NYT:

In a letter to Mr. Obama, [five Republican Senators] said that “forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition.”

“Ultimately,” the letter said, “we would be left with a single government-run program controlling all of the market.”

In short, private insurance plans are unable to compete against government-run programs, and the market would suffer because people would no longer have access to the inferior programs.

Makes so much sense.

cnn's sanjay gupta out for surgeon general

CNN personality Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the Obama Administration's top choice for Surgeon General, has withdrawn himself from consideration, citing family reasons and a desire to continue practicing as a surgeon. He was not formally nominated, but was already the target of opposition by public health and health care reform advocates, as well as Congressman John Conyers and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who criticized his factually inaccurate reporting on Michael Moore's Sicko, as well as his lack of preventative or public health care experience.

do the opposite of what cnbc says

Jon Stewart: "I'd have a million dollars now if I followed CNBC's advice. Provided I started with $100 million."

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