Augmented reality

Augmented reality, that real-time meshing between the physical real-world environment and virtual, computer-generated imagery, used to be stuff of sci-fi.

But with internet-linked, GPS-embedded cell phones, it isn’t so anymore. Here is a little taste of what is about to arrive, but has arrived already:

Among the other augmented reality programs that recently have hit Apple’s App Store is Robotvision. If you hold your phone parallel to the ground, Robotvision displays a map of your surroundings. Hold the phone up, however, and it goes into augmented-reality mode, highlighting places like coffee shops and bars. Robotvision also can search for other kinds of businesses with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. You can view pictures that people took nearby and posted to Flickr with a “geotag” of the shot’s physical location.

 

The Crow and the Pitcher

Dropping stones

“I had always wanted to see if there was a way to test what the crow did in Aesop’s fable,” explains Nathan Emery, University of London.

As the 2000-year-old story goes, the crow filled the bucket of water with stones until the level became high enough for him to quench his thirst.

A number of corvids have been found to use tools in the wild, and New Caledonian crows appear to understand the functional properties of tools and solve complex physical problems via causal and analogical reasoning. A 1980s study tells how a rook plugged a hole in its aviary to allow a pool of water to form.

Emery’s experiment includes four captive rooks, presenting them with clear tubes partly filled with water with a bug floating on top, and piles of stones. The tube contained the larvae of a wax moth–the birds’ favorite food–floating near the bottom, just beyond the reach of the rooks’ beaks.

The researchers then placed a small pile of stones next to the tube; in some of the experiments, these varied in size, so the birds had a choice of using either large or small stones. The amount of water in the tube also varied, requiring that the birds drop between one and seven rocks in order to get the prized worm.

Video footage is astonishing: it shows the rook first assessing the water level by peering at the tube from above and from the side, before picking up and dropping the stones into the water. Within a couple of trials the birds had figured out how many stones they needed to bring the bug within reach.

The experiment is a further demonstration of convergent cognitive evolution between the primate and corvid lineages, with both groups having a generalized understanding of the physical world. The rooks are “clearly combining some sort of understanding of the task with an understanding of the tool and are able to solve the task so quickly.” At the very least, adds Emery, the experiments demonstrate the rooks’ talent for “innovation, because they are adapting their previous experience with stones and tubes [in other experiments] to a new problem.”

 

On the virtue of the spleen

Where is my spleen?

Galen considered the spleen to be a source of one of the four bodily humors, specifically the black bile associated with irritable, melancholic cranks. “Splenetic” describes a person affected by ill humor or irritability, although the first book of the Talmud (Berakoth 61) says the spleen “produces laughter” (and “the lungs absorb all kinds of liquids”, and “the liver is the seat of anger”).

The new research entitled “Identification of Splenic Reservoir Monocytes and Their Deployment to Inflammatory Sites” and published at Science Mag shows that the spleen is a reservoir for monocytes, and that in the event of a serious trauma to the body like a heart attack, gashing wound or microbial invasion, the spleen will disgorge those monocyte into the bloodstream.

From the abstract:

A current paradigm states that monocytes circulate freely and patrol blood vessels but differentiate irreversibly into dendritic cells (DCs) or macrophages upon tissue entry. Here we show that bona fide undifferentiated monocytes reside in the spleen and outnumber their equivalents in circulation. The reservoir monocytes assemble in clusters in the cords of the subcapsular red pulp and are distinct from macrophages and DCs. In response to ischemic myocardial injury, splenic monocytes increase their motility, exit the spleen en masse, accumulate in injured tissue, and participate in wound healing. These observations uncover a role for the spleen as a site for storage and rapid deployment of monocytes and identify splenic monocytes as a resource that the body exploits to regulate inflammation.

The role of spleen in the production of antigens is well known. It has been found that the brain has the capacity to stimulate the production of antigen specific antibodies by its parasympathetic autonomic output.

But spleens are rather sensitive organs and can rupture during contact sports or accidents, at which point the risk of hemorrhaging is so that a surgical removal is the best choice. The new findings doesn’t counter this practice, but suggest that the loss of the organ is more than a mere “inconvenience”, and could help explain previous reports showing an enhanced risk of early death among people who have undergone splenectomies. In 1977 researchers compared a group of WW2 veterans who had had their spleens removed as a result of battle injuries with a similar size sample of veterans who had suffered other war injuries but had kept their spleens. The splenectomized men, the researchers found, were twice as likely to die of cardiovascular disease as were the veterans in the control group.

 

Timing is everything

August 3rd, 20:30pm PST:

“NKorean media says Clinton arrives in Pyongyang” (Associated Press)

August 4th, 2009, 1:09 PM EDT:

“Clinton’s Unwise Trip to North Korea” – John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006, for the Washington Post.

August 4th, 2009, 4:07 p.m. EDT:

“North Korean media say leader Kim Jong Il has pardoned two American journalists and ordered their release during the visit of former U.S. President Bill Clinton.” (Associated Press)

* * * UPDATE

In late 1993, evidence of a North Korean clandestine nuclear weapons program came to public. Pyongyang then abruptly announced its intention to become the first nation ever to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, defying its earlier commitments to submit its nuclear activities to full international inspections, unleashing a potentially nuclear crisis. The whole story about the 1994 crisis is told in “Going Critical“, including how former President Jimmy Carter went to North Korea as a “private citizen”. In this book, Bill Clinton gave his view:

“Look, I knew I was going to take some heat for letting Carter go there,” Clinton recalled. “But I also knew I needed to give the North Koreans an escape hatch, some way to climb down without losing face. I figured if they could say to themselves that a former president had come to their country, it would allow them to do that.”

Deja-vu.

 

Wolfram

Wolfram Alpha, the “computational knowledge engine”, is online. The engine is well worth visiting: tons of information nicely presented altogether. From the same guys that brought Mathematica, this engine is already taunted as an adversary to Google and perhaps Wikipedia: with short, descriptive queries and tons of compiled data.

All in all it’s a big hit, so big their servers couldn’t handle. I got this already:

And some Easter eggs have been found already: when querying “to be or not to be”, it responds “that’s the question”.

Indeed.

 

Upside down

What happened in Vegas, this time, didn’t stay in Vegas. There, 2 out 3 houses are upside down: they owe more than their homes are worth.

Nationwide,

the number of borrowers who are underwater climbed to 20.4 million at the end of the first quarter from 16.3 million at the end of the fourth quarter. The latest figure represents 21.9% of all homeowners, according to Zillow, up from 17.6% in the fourth quarter and 14.3% in the third quarter.

 

Irony

An expedition team on a carbon emission-free trip to Greenland, relying solely on sail, solar and man power to promote climate change awareness, has been rescued by an oil tanker.

 

Trillion is the new billion

A stimulus package of about $800 billion, plus another $350 billion or so as financial bailout. A trillion dollars, just like that. These are big numbers, even Dr. Evil got confused.

Mint.com has a series of graphics showing what 1 trillion dollars actually mean.

That’s the GDP of Australia, China and Spain combined.

If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills.

One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun.

It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.
 

A million dollars a day for 2,000 years is only three-quarters of a trillion dollars.

How does it look like?

A man and 1 trillion dollars

 

Comparing bears

Comparing bears

An useful and interactive graphic from the New York Times comparing historical bears. Current one has been considered “epic“.

But as the movie below shows, there is hope. Some even say the worst has already passed…

 

“Never again”

Robert Shiller, one of the guys behind the S&P Case-Shiller Index, spoke at Seattle Pacific University; his presentations focused on the role that psychology plays in economic markets. The primary thesis is that economic markets are strongly influenced by psychology that seems rational to individuals, but on the whole is “collective madness”.

During the session, Shiller mentioned a localized Los Angeles housing bubble in 1885, describing the mentality in 1885 Los Angeles as people thinking “Los Angeles is special!” He quoted from an article in the LA Times which was published during the aftermath of the collapse in 1886:

We Californians have learned something. And that is that home prices can’t just go up forever—they have to be supported by something. Never again will Californians make this mistake.

SeattleBubble.com has the notes of the presentation and even the audio. Interesting.

 

“My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is.”

Eight police officers two civilian staff serving with Strathclyde Police, Scotland’s largest force, listed their official religion as Jedi in voluntary diversity forms.

Jane’s Police Review editor Chris Herbert, who requested the information, made fun of the situation:

The Force appears to be strong in Strathclyde Police with their Jedi police officers and staff. Far from living a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, some members of the noble Jedi order have now chosen Glasgow and its surrounding streets as their home.

About 390,000 people listed their religion as Jedi in the 2001 Census for England and Wales. In Scotland the figure was a reported 14,000. With these numbers surrounding him, the funny editor shouldn’t grow too proud of this technological terror he has constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Do, or do not. There is no try.

 

Specter’s betrayal

At this point everybody knows it: Arlen Specter, the longest-serving Senator in Pennsylvania history, will switch parties and join the Democrats.

Lots of blog posts are seeing this move as good for the Democrats. But nobody mentions the betrayal of 2,925,080 people who, in 2004, voted for a Republican Specter.

 

Abengoa’s new solar tower in Spain

Spain's newest solar tower

A second solar tower is now in operation near Seville, Spain.

Wikipedia says “a solar tower configuration uses a field of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver held in the tower. The heat creates steam which turns a turbine to make electricity”.

This new Spanish solar tower, called PS20, is the largest in the world with a capacity of 20 megawatts. It will surely be a hit on Google Earth.

For comparison, that is as much as the Salton Sea Geothermal power plant produces in Imperial County CA, or the Copco #1 Hydroelectric plant up in the Klamath river.

 

Sleeping bag for jedis

"Classic Star Wars sleeping bag simulates the warmth of a Tauntaun carcass"

At ThingGeek.com. Enough said.

 

Housing collapse: an end in sight?

The bursting of the housing bubble is arguably the main factor behind the current recession. So it makes sense people would be checking the housing market and looking for a sign of reversal of the downward trend. Even back in 2007, BusinessWeek was already hoping for a reversal of fortune.

Last time I checked, it seemed the crunch would take longer than expected. Yet six months later there are signs prices are returning to where they should be. at least according to a housing affordability ratio based on median household income and median house prices.

Last data for the median household income from the Census Bureau is from 2007. Applying the nominal Home Price Index from S&P Case-Shiller (last data is for the 2008 Q4), and adjusting for inflation using the Consumer Price Index from BLS, we are reaching again the 3-3.5 range.

Median Home Price / Median Income

The question now is whether there will be a soft land or an overshoot, with prices drilling down the historical range. With the deepening recession, there is no reason for prices not to go beyond current bottoms, especially in specific markets. Detroit, for example.

 

Block is going to bust

Blockbuster is getting ready to go belly-up. According to auditor’s assessment, the company might not be generating enough cash to fund its operations:

Even if the amended credit facility is funded upon the terms contemplated, we may not have sufficient liquidity to finance the ongoing obligations of our business, which raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.

In other words: even if they get some loans and refinance existing ones, they simply are not making enough money to pay their bills.

One of the culprits is Red Box and their kiosk-style movie rental structure. Cheaper to maintain than college kids.

 

Widespread recession

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia produces a state-level coincident index combining four indicators: nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, the unemployment rate, and wage and salary disbursements deflated by the consumer price index (U.S. city average). This index has been around since 1979.

And since 1979 (thanks to Calculated Risk for pointing out), throughout four recessions, there was a never a moment when indexes for consecutive months were negative for all 50 states… until now.

Number of states with positive growth

Recession is widespread, no state is spared:

Red states

 

Detroit Electric is back with a vengeance

Detroit Electric. Yes, there is such thing. Detroit Electric was an automobile brand in Detroit, Michigan, from 1907 to 1939. They manufactured electric cars, powered by a rechargeable lead acid battery, and advertised as reliably getting 80 miles between battery recharging. The company was in business until the stock market crash of 1929, when filed for bankruptcy and was acquired and kept in business on a more limited scale for some years building cars in response to special orders. Then in February 2008 , almost 100 years later, China’s Youngman Automotive Group said they were reviving the 100 year-old electric car brand. And an year later, in March 2009, Detroit Electric announced a partnership with Proton, Malaysia’s largest automobile manufacturer, to mass produce the E63, an all-electric sedan. Under the agreement, Detroit Electric will license two Proton vehicle platforms and contract the company to assemble the electric vehicles that will be marketed under Detroit Electric’s brand, providing Detroit Electric with a cheap manufacturing base. The E63 will be a four-door sedan with two range options: either 111 miles for $23,000 to $26,000 or 200 miles for $28,000 to $33,000. The company plans to introduce the car in Europe and Asia in February 2010 and then in the U.S. a few months later. The quick turnaround will be possible by outfitting Proton’s existing car models with Detroit Electric’s engine design instead of designing a whole new model.

Old Detroit Electric ad

 

Capitalism finds a way

Los Angeles County’s Metropolitan Transportation Agency decided to hand out $44 million from the federal stimulus package in the form of $500,000 transportation grants to each of the county’s 88 cities. But some cities didn’t have any shovel-ready transportation projects and couldn’t do anything with those grants.

So cities started to buy and sell federal stimulus funds from each other at discounted prices. Ironically, local officials actually created a short-lived regional derivatives market, as they traded future credits (basically a promise of federal money) for present money.

La Habra Heights, a city of 6,000, has sold its $500,000 in federal funds to the city of Westlake Village for $310,000 cash. Irwindale, population 1,500, also sold its $500,000 to Westlake Village, for $325,000 cash.

Spontaneous re-allocation of resources towards Pareto efficiency. Capitalism found a way.

Later the MTA axed the deals, but it is interesting to see the natural process taking place when you least expect it.

 

Greenspan says it’s not his fault

Wasn't me.

It all began with the “conundrum”: the disconnect between Fed-based short-term rates and long-term mortgage rates when the latter failed to respond as expected to the Fed tightening in mid-2004. In theory, long rates are the geometric average of expected future short rates plus the risk that increases with duration of the instrument. So tightening short-term rates should be followed by an increase in long-term rates, say the 10-year Treasury notes.

During previous monetary policy tightening cycles (88–89, 94–95 and 99–00), the 10-year Treasury yield (green line) responded to increases in the federal funds rate (purple line):

Short x Long

But during 04-05, there was no response. Fed rates went up but long term rates remained. Something different was happening then.

Back in 2005, before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Greenspan admitted his disbelief:

Long-term interest rates have trended lower in recent months even as the Federal Reserve has raised the level of the target federal funds rate by 150 basis points. This development contrasts with most experience, which suggests that, other things being equal, increasing short-term interest rates are normally accompanied by a rise in longer-term yields. [...] For the moment, the broadly unanticipated behavior of world bond markets remains a conundrum. Bond price movements may be a short-term aberration, but it will be some time before we are able to better judge the forces underlying recent experience.

Now, in a long Wall Street Journal piece, Alan Greenspan tries to convince us the Fed didn’t cause the housing bubble. He blames it on the global decline on long term rates rates (and thus mortgage rates as well) spawning the speculative euphoria. And the cause of this global decline? The fall of Communism and consequent rise of China:

U.S. mortgage rates’ linkage to short-term U.S. rates had been close for decades. Between 1971 and 2002, the fed-funds rate and the mortgage rate moved in lockstep. The correlation between them was a tight 0.85. Between 2002 and 2005, however, the correlation diminished to insignificance.

The presumptive cause of the world-wide decline in long-term rates was the tectonic shift in the early 1990s by much of the developing world from heavy emphasis on central planning to increasingly dynamic, export-led market competition. The result was a surge in growth in China and a large number of other emerging market economies that led to an excess of global intended savings relative to intended capital investment. That ex ante excess of savings propelled global long-term interest rates progressively lower between early 2000 and 2005.

That decline in long-term interest rates across a wide spectrum of countries statistically explains, and is the most likely major cause of, real-estate capitalization rates that declined and converged across the globe, resulting in the global housing price bubble.

From 2002 until late 2004, foreign officials purchased millions in Treasury securities. More specifically, Asian central banks had consistently increased their holdings of foreign reserves while boosting exports, mainly to the U.S. An incredible economic growth led to record-high trade surpluses, that were in turn invested in U.S. and European Treasury bonds, compensating the usual effect of short-term rate hikes.

Foreign Purchases x 10-Year Treasury Yield

 

Bear market

It was a bear market back in 1987…

A grizzly bear took a deep bite in a A Montana game-and-wildlife warden right leg, as he was trying to release the animal into the wild. The bite was so powerful that it broke the leg bone below the knee.

Two photographers from the Outdoor Writers Association of America were observing the bear release.

One of them took this series of pictures:

Bear market in Montana, 1987

* * *

The bear returned almost three months later, as October 2, 1987 was a very dark Monday: Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 508 points in one day, losing a still unbeaten record 22.6%.

 

China’s narrow vision

When the Spanish basketball team did it, it was “racist“. Even the Angry Asian Man complained!

But Walter Lohman (see his picture here), ironically Director of the Asian Studies Center for the Heritage Foundation, gets a free pass:

The U.S. must be engaged with China. China is too big to ignore. … But let’s keep our eyes open. At this point in history, and for the foreseeable future, China’s vision is too narrow to leverage the value of “responsible stakeholderhood”.

Probably not intentional, but still very funny.

 

Short honeymoon

How long will it last?

Obama has approval ratings around 60%, comparable to the first 90 days of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter. But Sean Trende is thinking of Republicans chances in 2010:

All honeymoons end, and with an economy on a shaky foundation, the ending of this honeymoon could prove to be particularly brutal for Democrats. [...] As the out-party in a midterm election, with the economy unlikely to recover fully by 2010 and with many Democrats in Republican-leaning districts, Republicans are poised to perform well in 2010.

The LA Times, who in 126 years had never endorsed a Democrat for president until doing it for Obama “without hesitation“, recently seemed disappointed for the bait-and-switch approach used in the stimulus package:

He says he wants to fix the financial crisis, but he’s focusing on selling his long-standing liberal agenda on healthcare, energy and education as the way to do it, even though his proposals have absolutely nothing to do with addressing the housing and toxic-debt problems that are the direct causes of our predicament.

Truth be told, the stimulus package was mostly a creation of House Democrats. But the notion of Obama as a double-talker pushing a partisan agenda while marketing “new politics” is spreading:

Obama thinks he can ignore these blatant inconsistencies. Like many smart people, he believes he can talk his way around problems. Maybe. He’s helped by much of the media, who seem so enthralled with him that they don’t see glaring contradictions. During the campaign, Obama said he would change Washington’s petty partisanship; he also advocated a highly partisan agenda. Both claims could not be true. The media barely noticed; the same obliviousness persists. But Obama still runs a risk: that his overworked rhetoric loses its power and boomerangs on him.

Even Newsweek, who all but eulogized the new Messiah, is reporting some disappointment from the establishment:

Luckily for Obama, the public still likes and trusts him, at least judging by the latest polls. But, in ways both large and small, what’s left of the American establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lacking.

Is the honeymoon ending? Hard to tell. Obama supporters still believe in him, and a common subject is now how the new President inherited all these problems from eight years of right-wing policies. For these die-hard supporters, the honeymoon will last four years. For the remaining people, a tough 2009 and a not-easier 2010 will probably mean some Republican come-back in the House, although still keeping a Democrat majority. And in 2011, when the economy finally fixes itself as it had in the past, Obama will be able to reap the glories.

 

Monkeys and Typewriters

Un million de singes...

The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a favorite of many. It was selected by Wired.com as one of the Top Eight Best Thought Experiments ever, and it was attempted in real life once by six monkeys and a £2,000 grant.

The concept is as simple as often repeated: half a dozen, dozens, an army, a million, or infinite monkeys, in front of as many typewriters, given enough time, would type in all the works of Shakespeare, or the books in the British Museum, or the books in all languages in all the finest libraries in the world.

But who came up with the idea in the first place?

Many will assign it to Arthur Eddington, the British astrophysicist mainly famous for his work with relativity. In 1927 he wrote:

… If I let my fingers wander idly over the keys of a typewriter it might happen that my screed made an intelligible sentence. If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum. The chance of their doing so is decidedly more favourable than the chance of the molecules returning to one half of the vessel.
(A. S. Eddington. The Nature of the Physical World: The Gifford Lectures, 1927. New York: Macmillan, 1929, page 72.)

Yet it was Félix Émile Borel, the French mathematician with works in set theory, that, in 1913, first conceived the probabilistic consequence of having a million idle monkeys with typewriters available:

… Concevons qu’on ait dressé un million de singes à frapper au hasard sur les touches d’une machine à écrire et que, sous la surveillance de contremaîtres illettrés, ces singes dactylographes travaillent avec ardeur dix heures par jour avec un million de machines à écrire de types variés. Les contremaîtres illettrés rassembleraient les feuilles noircies et les relieraient en volumes. Et au bout d’un an, ces volumes se trouveraient renfermer la copie exacte des livres de toute nature et de toutes langues conservés dans les plus riches bibliothèques du monde. Telle est la probabilité pour qu’il se produise pendant un instant très court, dans un espace de quelque étendue, un écart notable de ce que la mécanique statistique considère comme la phénomène le plus probable…
(Émile Borel, “Mécanique Statistique et Irréversibilité,” J. Phys. 5e série, vol. 3, 1913, pp.189-196.)

Allez singes!

 

Oil, oil every where

Nor any drop to sell.

At least that’s what they want us to believe:

The latest government records show U.S. inventories are bloated with a virtual sea of surplus crude, enough to fuel 15 million cars for a year. Inventories have grown by 26 million barrels since the beginning of the year alone.

Sounds like a lot. But those “15 million cars” are a drop in the American auto bucket: in 2006 there were 251 million registered passenger vehicles in the US, with 54% as regular cars and 40% as SUVs and pick-up trucks.

Weekly crude oil reserves as in days of supply

This extra inventory actually represents 25 days of supply, although the annualized average is closer to 22 days. Better than the 18 days of 2003-2004, but still a far cry from the 1980s, when supply would last 26 to 28 days.

Weekly oil reserves (excluding strategic reserves)

In absolute numbers, today’s reserves of 350 million barrels match the normal reserves for most of the 1980s. In fact, it wasn’t until 1994 that reserves started to creep down and oscillate heavily. If we are “bloated with a virtual sea of surplus”, what would we say of those 12 years when reserves matched today’s?

Oil imports have been steady for four years while demand slumped. But global economy will eventually turn around and demand will rise swiftly. For something that springs out of the ground, one would think oil production would be able to keep up with consumer whims, but things don’t really work that way. When the demand hike happens, we might see a sudden rise on oil prices as producers scramble.

(Crude oil stats: Department of Energy)

 

The Citi that never sleeps

There is nothing sacred anymore: the U.S. government will exchange up to $25 billion in emergency bailout money it provided Citigroup Inc. for as much as a 36 percent equity stake in the struggling bank.

Meanwhile, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee: it’s not nationalization, it’s just partnership.

We don’t need majority ownership to work with the banks. I don’t see any reason to destroy the franchise value or to create the huge legal uncertainties of trying to formally nationalize a bank when it just isn’t necessary.

Existing shareholders would see their ownership stake shrink, and the bank is eliminating all dividends on common shares. Shareholders didn’t like the terms and C lost 38% in one morning. I guess they wanted government that give away money but not take any stake. And wanted cherry on top. And some whipcream.

 

About the 2% Illusion

An opinion piece on WSJ called “The 2% Illusion” is quickly spreading through the blogosphere.

It argues that Obama will need tax increases on more than just “the rich” to fund new spendings and effectively cut the deficit in half as promised.

While the conclusion makes sense, the means for it were convoluted, if not misleading. The article starts with this:

On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end “tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans”

The actual quote, however, was this:

In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.

That “also” means ending tax breaks is *part* of the process, which included ending “education programs that don’t work”, “direct payments to large agribusiness that don’t need them”, and “no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq”.

Whether or not these measures are meaningless or a recipe for disaster, that’s a whole other topic. But there was never the impression that those tax breaks would be the only action needed.

The article continues with some crass arithmetical mistakes:

But let’s not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let’s go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion [...].

But $1.3 trillion is their total adjusted gross income, which includes $350 million already paid in taxes (IRS spreadsheet here). The actual extra revenue would be less than $1 trillion, in 2006 dollars.

And this hypothetical extra revenue, taken solely from individual income taxes, should be compared against the deficit, not the overall budget. Individual income taxes already cover 45% of federal receipts.

In fact, this hypothetical extra revenue would cover more than half of the predicted $1.7 trillion deficit for 2010, thus fulfilling the promise of halving the deficit.

Of course, it’s an impossible hypothesis and the Laffer Curve would make sure no extra revenue would be earned. Yet, it brings up the point regarding the Conservative mantra preaching lower taxes will necessarily increase revenues. If anything, economic theory predicts a lower income tax rate will bring in more revenue if tax rates are already too high. In this already-too-high scenario, we would see new investments withheld or postponed because high taxation would be a disincentive. Is this the case today?

 

More than any other president ever

In just 30 days, more done than ever.

A senior White House official said in a background briefing:

“President Obama has accomplished more in 30 days than any president in modern history.”

Bill Clinton, at this point in his presidency, was dealing with the “gays in the military” controversy. But Obama, he continued, “has a set of wins under his belt”.

Those “wins” refer to legislation on children’s health insurance, the “Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,” and the famous stimulus bill. VP Joe Biden couldn’t remember, but the website is www.Recovery.gov. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the website is getting 3,000 hits per second.

There, you will find an interesting break-down of the stimulus package:

"Where is your money going?"(from recovery.gov)

If you think “$288 B” seems too inflated when classified as “tax relief”, compared to everything else that has been circulating on the media since the House approved a first version of the bill, you are not the only one. It’s all in the semantics.

According to US Budget Watch Project’s analysis, the stimulus breakdown is slightly different:

Another point of view

Those $288B of tax relief can then be separated into 5 groups: $116.2 + $69.8 + $46.5 + $6.2 + $47.9.

The largest of all, $116.2, is the “Making Work Pay Credit”, a handout payable to everyone that works regardless of tax liability; if you can get it without paying taxes, it’s hardly a new tax cut.

The second largest, $69.8, is the AMT Patch, which has become an annual tradition in Congress: it passed in 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004… It would likely be approved again in 2009. If you can get it every year, it’s hardly a new tax cut.

That leaves the rest, 35% of the “tax relief”, as real new tax provisions. The tax relief part gets to be advertised as 2.8 times larger than what it really is. More than any, ever.

 

Your stimulus package has arrived…

Another great “Non Sequitur“:

The stimulus packaged arrived...

 

The Siege of Tyre

Tyre was a fortified city occupying a small island off the coast of today’s Lebanon. The geography made it inexpugnable and, as Wallace Bruce Fleming describes in his The History of Tyre, an enticing prize for many superpowers over history.

Some scholars believe the capture of Tyre during the Alexander Campaign was strategically unnecessary. Tyre had offered surrender, but had refused Alexander the right to sacrifice in the temple of Melqart during the great festival in February, because only a native king could perform the necessary religious ceremonies. According to Lucius Flavius Arrianus, in his Anabasis Alexandrinus,

Thence he advanced towards Tyre; ambassadors from which city, despatched by the commonwealth, met him on the march, announcing that the Tyrians had decided to do whatever he might command. He commended both the city and its ambassadors, and ordered them to return and tell the Tyrians that he wished to enter their city and offer sacrifice to Heracles. The reason of this demand was, that in Tyre there existed a temple of Heracles, the most ancient of all those which are mentioned in history. It was not dedicated to the Argive Heracles, the son of Alcmena; for this Heracles was honoured in Tyre many generations before Cadmus set out from Phoenicia and occupied Thebes [...]
To this Tyrian Heracles, Alexander said he wished to offer sacrifice. But when this message was brought to Tyre by the ambassadors, the people passed a decree to obey any other command of Alexander, but not to admit into the city any Persian or Macedonian; thinking that under the existing circumstances, this was the most specious answer, and that it would be the safest course for them to pursue in reference to the issue of the war, which was still uncertain. When the answer from Tyre was brought to Alexander, he sent the ambassadors back in a rage.

No Persian king had ever made such an outrageous demand, yet Alexander had felt insulted and had insisted.

Modern military scholars believe Tyre was a strategic coastal base in the war against the Persians. Under attack, the Tyrians were forced to recall the ships that had been fighting in the Aegean sea. Since the other Phoenician towns had already recalled their ships after the towns had surrendered to the Macedonians, the Persian naval offensive in the Aegean sea came to an end.

In January 332 B.C., Alexander’s siege began with a blockaded Tyre. To reach the Tyrian walls, the Macedonians needed a bridge.

A recent study shows a leeward wave shadow generated by this island, allied with high sediment supply after 1000 B.C. and a slowdown in sea-level rise that began around 4000 B.C., culminated in a natural sand bank varying between 1 to 2 meters below sea level.

Swells around Tyre lead to sand bank formations

The formation would probably have been known to sailors, for whom it might have hindered navigation. Alexander’s engineers cleverly exploited this shallow proto-tombolo, using the sandbar as a foundation for the bridge. To reach the Tyrian walls, the Macedonians built a 70-m-wide, 1-km-long causeway using timber, stone, and debris of the abandoned mainland city, destroyed by Nebuchenazzar 250 years earlier.

Approaching Tyre (Ancient Siege Warfare, Duncan B. Campbell)

But the Tyrians still commanded the sea and made the construction extremely difficult. Alexander needed ships to protect the construction, and he was lucky, because Aradus, Tripolis, Byblus, Beirut and Sidon had just recalled their navies. When it was ready, he brought his siege engines along it to the walls.

The Siege of Tyre (The Department of History, United States Military Academy)

The citizens now fought desperately, and the Greeks were repeatedly driven back. But after seven months the city was running out of food and, after a seven month siege, the town was attacked from three sides: the Phoenician fleet destroyed the Tyrian fleet in the “Egyptian port”; Macedonian ships attacked the walls with siege engines; and marines from Cyprus landed in the “Sidonian port” and forced their way into the city. Tyre fell.

Alexander was so furious that this one city had halted his progress for so long, that he gave the city over to plunder and his soldiers sacked it without mercy. Macedonians lost 400 men, but 8,000 Tyrians were killed in the fighting, 30,000 were enslaved. Alexander indulged in his anger: he ordered 2,000 Tyrians to be crucified on the beach. The king and a few of his retinue were pardoned:

Alexander gave an amnesty to all those who fled for refuge into the temple of Heracles; among them being most of the Tyrian magistrates, including the king Azemilcus, as well as certain envoys from the Carthaginians, who had come to their mother-city to attend the sacrifice in honour of Heracles, according to an ancient custom. The rest of the prisoners were reduced to slavery; all the Tyrians and mercenary troops, to the number of about 30,000, who had been captured, being sold. Alexander then offered sacrifice to Heracles, and conducted a procession in honour of that deity with all his soldiers fully armed. The ships also took part in this religious procession in honour of Heracles. He moreover held a gymnastic contest in the temple, and celebrated a torch race.

More interesting though, the siege of Tyre had a lasting effect: the mole stayed, silted up, and today Tyre is connected to the mainland. Alexander, in his drive to conquer, permanently changed the face of the land.

Tyre in 332BC x Tyre today

After the victory at Tyre, the causeway irreversibly changed the flow patterns in the water surrounding the former island: long-shore currents were interrupted, and at both north and south of this causeway two bays were formed, slowly silting up.

Around 7.5 million square feet (700,000 square meters) of new land were created, forming the broad peninsula that can be seen today.

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Almost 800 years later, during the First Crusade in 1111-12, Tyre would be under siege yet again, this time by King Baldwin I. The fighting, which also included siege towers, was chronicled by Ibn Al-Qalanisi, a contemporary scholar from Damascus.