Pacific Standard. Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. |
- Fleeing Los Angeles for Harrisburg
- Is the U.S. Cowardly in Its Approach to Energy Efficiency?
- The Contagiousness of Suicide in the Classroom
- The Long-Term Harm Caused by Short-Term Exposure to Violence
- Today Is the Fourth of July
- The Most Hated American Soccer Team Plays in Germany
- Should the World Cut Off Egypt’s Foreign Aid?
- The Cost of a Presidential Campaign
- What Comes After Bitcoin?
- Soap Operas Can Save the World
- Extroverts Live Happier Lives
| Fleeing Los Angeles for Harrisburg Posted: 02 Jul 2013 06:39 PM PDT  Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that is. Los Angeles doesn’t need a state like Angelina doesn’t need a Jolie. That explains a lot of residential relocation. You go where you know. Well, the tables have turned:
Some scholars might call Melville’s journey a failed migration. I see an emerging trend, ironic migration. Talent is leaving unexpected places:
OK, why is leaving an “OECD” country remarkable? OECD countries are the haves. No one abandons Havesville, ever. Los Angeles, California, is a Havesville. You move to Havesville to improve. Havesville doesn’t suffer from brain drain, until now. Escaping New York City, New York for Cleveland:
As “failed” migrant Melville stated, “I make about the same amount that I did in L.A., but I can survive off of it." The gist of the Harrisburg tale is one of retention. For young adults, the economy sucks everywhere. There is no frontier. The grass isn’t greener:
TMI. If we know too much, then we won’t go. Los Angeles, California, or New York City, New York, is too expensive. You won’t make it there, or anywhere. Might as well stay put. The truth about migration, it is more Midnight Cowboy than Girls. Like start-ups, most ventures outside of your hometown are failures. The Rust Belt, a place to be when things are going to shit. |
| Is the U.S. Cowardly in Its Approach to Energy Efficiency? Posted: 02 Jul 2013 05:22 PM PDT  How efficiently does the United States use its energy? According to the first of what's expected to be an annual report (PDF) from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the answer is bright yellow and on the cusp of avocado green. The colorful result, the advocacy non-profit explains, means that the U.S. has made some progress on energy efficiency (hence the yellow portion of its five-hue red to forest green scale) and is close to achieving modest progress. If that sounds, well, all relative and imprecise, that's because the rating reflects the nation's own energy efficiency goals, which are mostly non-existent on a national scale and all over the map across 50 states. Rather than be able to create a definitive answer, say along the lines of an index score, the non-profit examined 15 indicators and rated this year's data compared to last year's. Those indicators include legislative benchmarks like the existence of mandatory energy efficiency resources standards or updated building codes, symbols of intent like budgets for efficiency programs and use of public transit, and actual measurable outputs like greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy of new cars and trucks. The cumulative score for all the indicators was then rolled into the final judgment—yellow. Last July, using data sources that could be compared across international boundaries, the same group did create a numerical score for the U.S. energy efficiency. It was 47 out of 100, which landed the U.S. ninth out of the dozen largest economies. The United Kingdom came in first, followed by Germany and Italy (could we have been bugging our buddies on the Continent for energy saving tips?). Following the U.S., in order, were Brazil, Canada, and Russia. The counsel of Dick Cheney still echoes: “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” Conservation isn't just for chumps, though, and there are a number of areas where the U.S. can up its game, from greater use of public transit and more efficient transportation of freight to better combining the co-production of electricity and heat for industrial uses. But the key problem, in the council's eyes, is that no one's in charge of any of this stuff on a national scale. While the white paper doesn't say this, now seems an unlikely time to see more power placed in the hands of the central government, especially in green pursuits, during a time of greater domestic energy production (why be ants in an age of grasshoppers?) and a burgeoning economic recovery. In the eternal struggle between the carrot and the stick, we're enjoined from wielding any sticks and, after the stimulus, there's no more budget for carrots. Not that there are no efforts at improving energy efficiency from the top, although much of that comes down to fine rhetoric. Let's take the example of co-production of electricity and heat, the only one of the 15 indicators where the council, using EPA figures, saw the U.S. go backwards. So-called "combined heat and power," or CHP, either uses heat generated by the production of electricity to warm buildings, or uses heat generated by industrial processes to produce electricity. The boffins at Oak Ridge National Laboratories have been arguing for years that greater use of this frugal—and venerable—technology could save energy, reduce carbon output, and make money. Their plan, admittedly for "high deployment," calls for doubling the installed CHP use in the U.S., currently nine percent of the U.S. total generating capacity, to 20 percent by 2030.
In short, sweet! So how did we rate again in the council's white paper? In 2011, 31 percent of the industrial sector's electricity consumption was from CHP—down 1.5 percent from the year before. In short, not so sweet! In August President Obama issued an executive order encouraging investment to expand the use of CHP. Again, the benefits are manifest: "Accelerating these investments in our nation’s factories can improve the competitiveness of United States manufacturing, lower energy costs, free up future capital for businesses to invest, reduce air pollution, and create jobs." But the order came with no money. While it's good for regulators and innovators on the federal government's payroll to know they should be smoothing the way for CHP—and they are—it will require local government buy-in and almost a business-by-business campaign to reach the 20 percent goal. This summer, committees in both houses of Congress are considering the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act, which would encourage more energy efficient buildings and manufacturing, with the charge led by the nation's largest single energy user—Uncle Sam. Meanwhile, just before he left for Africa, Obama released his Climate Action Plan, which contains a number of calls for greater efficiency:
Regardless of where one falls on climate change, these are laudable, and perhaps even vital, national goals. As the council—admittedly pro-efficiency—argues:
After all, in the face of a real national challenge, who wants to be yellow? |
| The Contagiousness of Suicide in the Classroom Posted: 02 Jul 2013 04:00 PM PDT  Teens who have a classmate die of suicide are more likely to consider taking, or attempt to take, their own lives, according to a new study. The idea that suicide might be “contagious” has been around for centuries, senior author Dr. Ian Colman, who studies mental health at the University of Ottawa, told Reuters Health. Past studies supported the idea, but none had looked at such a large body of students, he said. “There were a lot of surprising things about this study, we were surprised that the effect lasted so long and just how strong it was,” Colman said. “Sometimes the closest friends are not the ones that are most likely to harm themselves because they’re so up close and aware of the painful fallout with the family of the deceased.”Colman and his colleagues used data from a long-running national survey of more than 8,000 Canadian kids aged 12 to 17 years old. Students were asked about suicides of schoolmates, friends, and their own thoughts of suicide, and researchers checked in with the kids two years later. By the age of 17, one in four kids had a schoolmate who had committed suicide, and one in five knew the deceased personally, according to results published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. For the 12- and 13-year-old adolescents exposed to a schoolmate’s suicide, 15 percent reported thinking seriously about killing themselves and seven percent actually made an attempt, compared to three percent and two percent of unexposed kids, respectively. The effect persisted even if the schoolmate had died more than a year earlier. Results were similar for 14- and 15-year-olds and 16- and 17-year-olds, but older kids who had not been exposed to suicide were more likely to have thought of or attempted it. “For 12- and 13-year-olds, they were approximately five times more likely to report thinking about suicide,” Colman said. “That’s a huge effect.” They found no difference between kids who personally knew the deceased and those who didn’t. In the U.S., about 4,600 people aged 10 to 25 years old commit suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control. NEW POLICIES? It may make sense that kids who knew the deceased and those who didn’t seemed to have no difference in risk, Frank Zenere, a school psychologist at the Miami-Dade County public school system, told Reuters Health. “Sometimes the closest friends are not the ones that are most likely to harm themselves because they’re so up close and aware of the painful fallout with the family of the deceased, which can actually be a protective factor,” Zenere said. The younger kids tend to be most vulnerable and impressionable, he said. “There’s a lot more drama in middle school grade levels, they tend to have much more of an emotional outpouring, early teens versus late teens,” he said. Though the current study indicates the effect persists for at least two years, Zenere believes it may go on even longer. Some school districts may rewrite policies and procedures in light of these results, but those at most, including his own, are probably already designed to take relevant factors into account. “It’s really important for parents to talk to their kids about mental health and to help them get professional help if needed,” Colman said. |
| The Long-Term Harm Caused by Short-Term Exposure to Violence Posted: 02 Jul 2013 01:28 PM PDT  The international news page brings us reports of political upheaval and violence all over the world: sometimes incredibly drawn-out and tense, as in Egypt and Israel and Palestine, for instance, or sometimes seemingly sudden and furious, as in Tanzania and western China. Other clashes have such massive casualty and refugee numbers that they resist categorization. Even if these tensions are quelled, and the reporters pack up and leave, how will these episodes reverberate for the rest of the survivors' lives? A hint of the long-lasting impact on the youngest and most vulnerable from these regions is forthcoming in the journal Psychology of Violence, in a report on the aftermath of the 2007-2008 political crisis in Kenya. "In school, children who had sat side by side one week were suddenly being told they were enemies."The study was conducted by a team of researchers from Kenya, Italy, and the U.S., led by Ann T. Skinner of the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy. Studying the effect of violence was not actually the team's original intent. Skinner and her colleagues had gone to Kenya to study parenting methods, and just happened to be there when civil unrest was sparked by the results of the December 2007 presidential election. The series of ethnically based attacks that followed the election killed more than 1,100 people and injured over 3,500; hundreds of thousands more were displaced. By April 2008, several political leaders had negotiated a power-sharing agreement that eventually calmed the violence. When working with families in Kisumu, Kenya, Skinner and her colleagues found that many of the children who had witnessed the clashes exhibited troubling behavior more than a year after the violence had subsided. According to their report, these children "showed increased delinquent and aggressive behaviors, including such problem behaviors as bullying, vandalism, stealing and skipping school." The widespread impact of these problems perhaps reflected the immediacy of the conflict. Upheaval in Kenya was brief but horrible. According to Duke University, during this episode, "Gunfire and death were suddenly so common that in a survey of 100 Kisumu youths and their mothers, more than half of mothers reported seeing a dead body, and 95 percent of children heard gunshots." The fighting was personal, and it hit close: "The violence split neighborhoods and classrooms among ethnic lines," Skinner said. "In school, children who had sat side by side one week were suddenly being told they were enemies." Past studies have looked at exposure to chronic violence and its effect on child development—for instance, in dangerous urban areas in the U.S., and in politically unstable places and periods, like Northern Ireland in the 1960s and ’70s—and have found similar resulting behavior. But brief flare-ups of violence have not quite been studied to the same degree. This particular study demonstrates that professional assessments, treatment, and psychological counseling should continue for much longer after a violent event than was previously understood. A child's physical safety is obviously paramount. But when the immediate danger subsides, that is when the real psychological work with each young witness begins. |
| Posted: 02 Jul 2013 12:50 PM PDT  Today is the second of July, which is the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July, the holiday, is supposed to be a celebration of our nation’s independence from Great Britain—hence: “Independence Day.” It coincides with the creation of the Declaration of Independence. And while colonists had been “declaring” independence for a years prior, Congress actually voted to declare independence for the 13 colonies on July 2, 1776. As John Adams wrote in a letter to his wife Abigail Adams:
Adams, obviously, was wrong. Congress deliberated over various details of the Declaration of Independence for two more days—take notes, 112th Congress—and the document wasn’t finalized until the fourth. But the document itself wasn’t signed by all members of Congress, according to multiple historians, until August 2. If independence was declared on July 2 and the Declaration of Independence was signed on August 2, then why do we celebrate Independence Day on July 4? It’s the date that’s listed on the document, which, it seems, made for a lot of mistakes and confusion and tall tales that coalesced into the acceptance of something incorrect. As more emphasis was put on the signing of the document over time, July 4 sort of accidentally became the date associated with American independence. So, want to celebrate America’s declaration of independence? Do it today. Want to celebrate the Declaration of Independence? Do it a month from today. Want to celebrate the creation of a document that was just a mere formality but not even a formality until almost a month later? Celebrate July 4. |
| The Most Hated American Soccer Team Plays in Germany Posted: 02 Jul 2013 12:00 PM PDT  My brother and I sat down on the stadium-bound train at about 1:00 and watched a legion of half-drunk Eintracht supporters file on. We were headed to watch Hoffenheim play their 2012-2013 German Bundesliga season opener at home against Eintracht Frankfurt. Hoffenheim's stadium isn't actually in the town of Hoffenheim—it's next door in Sinsheim–and when the train passed through Hoffenheim, population about 3,000, the Eintracht supporters pressed up against the windows, snapping photos and snickering. This was my first Bundesliga experience. I'd recently moved to Heidelberg, and Hoffenheim was the closest Bundesliga team—about a half-hour away by train. With two American national team players on the roster, it was also the team I knew best at the time. The match ended up as one-sided as they come: a 4-0 annihilation by Frankfurt. On the train back to Heidelberg, a group of Eintracht supporters offered us beer. We toasted their victory, which they explained was sweetened by the fact that it came against Hoffenheim. It's a "village team," they told us. It has "Keine Geschichte," no history. Every German in earshot nodded his head and chuckled. THE HOFFENHEIM “VEREIN,” OR club, was founded in 1899 as a gymnastics organization. In 1945 it merged with a local soccer verein, and by 1998 the soccer team was playing in the semi-professional fifth tier of Germany's pyramid-like league structure. (Below Germany's third tier, the national league breaks into regions, and below the fifth tier, sub regions. Depending on the region, there are between nine and 11 tiers, total; in Hoffenheim's region there are about 900 teams below the fifth tier.) In 1999, Dietmar Hopp, a former Hoffenheim youth player who later earned billions as one of the founders of the corporate software giant SAP, returned and bought about 49 percent of the club. Whereas other billionaire club owners—like Chelsea's Roman Abramovich and Manchester City's Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan—adopted strategies that consisted of buying the best players around, without regard for cost, Hopp initially took a more sustainable approach. He improved the club's training facilities, and brought in the best back-room personnel he could find. He invested heavily in the club's youth program, dreaming of one day fielding a Bundesliga team full of players from the Rhine-Neckar region. By 2001, Hoffenheim was already playing in the third-tier of German soccer. “Nobody hates Bayern anymore because now everybody hates Hoffenheim.”In 2007, Hoffenheim had advanced to the second Bundesliga. As the club made the final push to the first Bundesliga, Hopp took a step back from his regional approach and brought in a crop of excellent, young, mostly-foreign players. The change in strategy paid off. After only one year in the second Bundesliga, the team earned promotion. Hoffenheim had achieved four promotions in less than a decade. Billions or no, what Hopp and his team accomplished is remarkable. Hopp was by no means the only wealthy owner of a lower-division European team. The long-term goal of every club is to earn top flight promotion. For most fifth division teams, whatever their finances, actually doing so is more fever dream than reality-based goal. You'd think Hoffenheim's achievement would have been celebrated across Germany, not least by those fans from the region, which prior to Hoffenheim's promotion hadn't had a top-flight team in about a decade. Hoffenheim seems like a classic American underdog story—and they are. But that's why everyone despises them. “NOBODY HATES BAYERN ANYMORE because now everybody hates Hoffenheim," Timo Hagemeister, a friend and St. Pauli supporter, told me. Opposing fans have long viewed Bayern Munich as the Yankees-like evil empire of the Bundesliga. It's the Bundesliga's winningest club—often referred to as "FC Hollywood"—and a team not afraid to flex its considerable financial muscle in pursuit of yet another Bundesliga title. Germans most frequently criticize Hoffenheim for its supposed lack of history. What's funny is that you rarely hear anyone criticize Bayern for lacking a truly historic identity—or even a contemporary one. When German soccer fans talk about "historic clubs," they're talking about teams that were dominant or had a large fan base prior to the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963. It may be all-conquering now, yet Bayern wasn't even a founding member of the Bundesliga. And today, perhaps influenced by NFL marketing, Bayern is by far the most globalized, branded team in the Bundesliga, catering to bandwagoners the world over. "All this [criticism of Hoffenheim's] history or 'tradition' is unimportant," Jürgen Wadlinger, a Hoffenheim season-ticket holder, told me via email. "When does tradition even begin?" So while the criticism of Hoffenheim's history is misguided, its rise through the league has nevertheless put it in a difficult spot. Fan culture in Germany doesn't leave much room for rapid change. Hoffenheim doesn't have Bayern's international reach or even a built-in, Bundesliga-caliber fan base. In a way, this makes it a more genuine club than Bayern, but it's also a problem. The team plays its home matches at the Rhine-Neckar Arena, capacity 30,150. It was completed in 2008 for about 60 million Euros—Thanks, Dietmar!—and is a fine complex. But it's also in Sinsheim, population about 35,000, which means that in addition to Hoffenheim's original stock of dedicated supporters, the team needs to draw fans from the bigger cities nearby, like Heilbronn or Mannheim, if it has any hope of filling the place. This is not an easy task. The lure of nearby Bundesliga football is no match for Germany's long-held regional and community loyalties. Until 1871, Germany did not even resemble a unified nation-state but rather an amalgamation of hundreds of independent kingdoms, duchies, and free cities. Contemporary Germany remains a fiercely regional country. Sometimes just riding your bike to the next city over, or crossing a river, can mean hearing a completely different (and to a non-native speaker suddenly unintelligible) dialect. In other words, growing Hoffenheim's fan base isn't just about marketing and fielding a successful team, it's also about geopolitics. It goes way beyond soccer. Outside of work and school, the clubs are the main social outlet for people.There are more localized hurdles, too. "People follow [soccer] teams very differently here than in the U.S.," Hagemeister said. "A lot of people in Germany make their entire personal life about soccer. That's where they have their friends." Many German soccer fans are also members of their team's verein, and every team in the German league is majority owned by its verein. This means the fans literally own their team. Vereins are as much fan club as they are governing body. Members vote on all kinds of club decisions. Some vereins are bigger than others—Borussia Dortmund's verein is orders of magnitude larger than the 11th-tier team in my neighborhood—but the sense of ownership is the same. It's difficult to overstate the importance of the verein system in Germany. It goes way beyond soccer. Outside of work and school, the clubs are the main social outlet for people. In Heidelberg, for example, in addition to a handful of soccer vereins, there's a German Shepherd verein, several boating vereins, a hunting verein, and a couple of tennis vereins—and that's just off the top of my head. Although not professional, many of these clubs have their own club houses, complete with bars and restaurants, where members spend much of their free time. And they've been doing so for generations. Soccer vereins are a somewhat special case compared to, say, a knitting verein, because of the money involved. For each club participating in the German league setup, there is at least a theoretical possibility of professionalism and the money associated with it. In the 1990s, as European soccer began to see higher rates of outside investment, the Bundesliga imposed its now famous "50+1 rule," which protects the rights of members by insuring that the verein maintains at least 51 percent ownership of its club. This is where the German fans have a problem with Hoffenheim and Hopp. With the club's small fan base, it certainly couldn't have achieved what it did without Hopp's money, and for many German soccer enthusiasts, that's just the problem. The size of Hopp's investment—north of 250 million Euros—represented more than 49 percent of the club's initial worth. There is near-constant speculation that Hopp actually owns more than 49 percent, but putting that aside, the general feeling is that his investment undermines 50+1, and by extension threatens Germany's democratic, stabilizing system of verein ownership altogether. "Some people are scared, because you see the same thing in English soccer: you get an investor at your club," Hagemeister said. "And then at some point they just lose interest, and you're in bankruptcy all of a sudden." These are all fair points, I suppose, but what would Hopp's critics do with his resources? How many of them would consider returning to their village with a plan and an open wallet? Wouldn't doing so be an act of pure authenticity? Isn't that what every verein member in Germany dreams of doing? Now what if I told you the whole country would hate you for it? IN JUNE, HAGEMEISTER INVITED me over to his apartment to meet with some of his friends and watch a screening of Tom Meets Zizou—a Hoop Dreams-like documentary that follows a gifted, German youth player as he tries to make it in the professional gantlet that is the modern Bundesliga. As we chatted before the film, Hagemeister realized I'd now lived in Germany for a year and still didn't support a German team. He asked his friends to help me pick a German club of my own. The suggested options included Hamburg, Werder Bremen, and Hannover, none of which are anywhere near Heidelberg. Apparently as a foreigner, I'm free from the shackles of Germany's regionalism, but nevertheless, I said I would feel silly supporting a team that wasn't from the area. To do so would be inauthentic. At that, an Eintracht supporter named Philip turned to me and said, "You don't pick the team, the team picks you." As much as the Germans won't like it, I think one already has. |
| Should the World Cut Off Egypt’s Foreign Aid? Posted: 02 Jul 2013 10:28 AM PDT  Every hour it seems like Egypt’s military could step between faltering Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi and the 2011-esque crowds calling for his resignation, if not his head. If there’s a coup this week in Cairo, should the world cut off aid to Egypt? Devex tracked down economist Martin Ravallion, who used to run the World Bank’s research department—that would be the bank’s number crunchers—and is currently teaching at Georgetown and a fellow at the Center for Global Development. Ravallion looked at the economic incentives behind various approaches to political crisis in countries where foreign aid is an important part of the government’s budget. He found that the common, seemingly intuitive move to use aid as a carrot to encourage democratic reforms—and as a stick when those reforms disappear—may cause more instability than it prevents.
Ravallion looked at Madagascar in 2009, when the Indian Ocean nation of 20 million underwent a political crisis that saw its leadership fall to military rule. Following the coup, the international community broke most ties with the new government, refusing to grant the coup legitimacy. This was “No doubt seen as providing an incentive for a rapid rebound to democracy, and a favorable continuing trajectory of development,” writes Ravallion. Foreign aid that many Malagasy institutions relied upon lost about half their foreign aid support, and tourism, which was a large part of the country’s income, crashed. “[A]n already poor country got poorer,” according to Ravallion. “Unlike much of the developing world, Madagascar has made no progress against absolute poverty for many years, and by some measures things have got worse. The political crisis continues.” Of course, there’s aid and there’s aid. Guns or butter, as the saying goes. And Egypt is not Madagascar (which is not Libya which is not Mali which is not Kosovo which is not…). But as ministers resign in Cairo, the world’s leaders and institutions will have to consider what to say on the first phone call with whomever comes next. Even if it’s another dictator. Ravallion’s analysis suggests that doing business with thugs is at times the best of the possible choices: Faustian in the short term, but the quicker route to stability in the medium term. It’s hard to know what aid can be cut and replaced, without doing too much damage to a country. “Do the donors know best?” he asks (rhetorically, by the tone of it). “Are rich-country political institutions the ideal for poor countries? How much of the incentive is felt by coup leaders, or are the costs borne largely by innocent citizens, including the poor?” |
| The Cost of a Presidential Campaign Posted: 02 Jul 2013 10:00 AM PDT  Just how much was spent on last year’s presidential election? A simple answer is $1.1 billion—that’s how much the Romney and Obama campaigns spent on advertising, staff, volunteer offices, etc., according to numbers compiled by OpenSecrets.org. But that figure is likely massively misleading. For an excellent and detailed explanation as to why, I strongly encourage you to read political scientist Michael Franz’s new piece “Bought and Sold: The High Price of the Permanent Campaign” in The American Interest. But I’ll try to convey some thoughts here about the challenges we face in measuring spending in presidential campaigns and how we attempt to figure out whether $1.1 billion is a lot of money or not. Probably a better question than “How much was spent?” is “Was 2012 an unusual year for spending?” We can answer that by comparing spending in 2012 to previous years, but one problem with just talking about the raw number of dollars is that it fails to address important changes in the country over time. That is, even if we can adjust the spending levels for inflation, that doesn’t take into account the fact that the nation is wealthier and larger than it used to be, and that the costs for running for office have shifted significantly. For example, television advertising time has gotten more expensive in recent decades, but electronic communications (email, Web ads, social media, etc.) have dramatically shrunk the costs of getting a single piece of advertising in front of a typical voter. It’s also a lot cheaper for a candidate to travel around the country than it was 100 years ago, but they’re expected to do a lot more of that now. Here is a chart comparing a selection of presidential elections since 1860 based on two different spending measures: dollars spent per vote cast, and dollars spent per thousand dollars of gross domestic product (inspired by this post from Dave Gilson). The first measure attempts to compensate for the growing population, the second for the growing wealth of the country: As can be seen, spending in 2012 was basically the same as spending in 2008 by both measures, but both of these elections were relatively pricey compared to those of recent decades; we’ve been on an increase since 2000, when presidential candidates started abandoning the public finance limits set in the early 1970s. Still, note that these elections don’t hold a candle to 1896, when six cents out of every hundred dollars spent in the U.S. went toward a presidential candidate. That election (and 1892, which isn’t depicted here) were about the most expensive in history by many measures. As Franz explains, this was when East Coast Republican financiers devoted huge sums to presidential campaigns to protect their financial interests from what they (correctly) perceived to be a threat from politically agitated Western farmers. Franz also notes, though, that even these spending figures are inadequate. The dollars-per-voter figure above, for example, doesn’t deal with the fact that the campaigns aren’t really trying for all of the votes that will ultimately turn out. Roughly 28 million votes came out of California, New York, and Texas last year—that’s 22 percent of all the votes that would be cast nationwide—but the presidential campaigns didn’t lift a finger to win those votes from those non-competitive states. Most of the money spent just went to a handful of swing states. The spending figures above also fail to account for spending by parties, 527s, Super PACs, interest groups, and other organizations devoted to influencing the outcome of the presidential campaign. Some of these figures are knowable; some are simply beyond our ability to track. But all evidence suggests that this spending is on the rise. As Franz writes:
That is, it’s easier for outside groups to get involved than it used to be, and the national political scene is more competitive than it used to be. There doesn’t look to be much movement toward tighter regulation of political contributions right now. And the national political environment doesn’t look to be getting any less competitive. (Can we state with any certainty which party will likely control the White House or either chamber of Congress after the next election?) Given that, we can probably expect spending to continue to rise for the foreseeable future. This is not in itself a bad thing! Remember, most campaign spending is just a public information and voter turnout campaign financed voluntarily by the wealthiest Americans, and it doesn’t have nearly the impact on the vote that many claim it does. But if political ads on television annoy you, you might want to take up book reading in 2016. |
| Posted: 02 Jul 2013 08:00 AM PDT  Bitcoin, a digital currency launched by the pseudonymous programmer Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, hit a peak trading value of $266 per coin in April 2013, the biggest point in a bubble that would burst soon after. The cryptocurrency, which is anonymous, untrackable, and can be used to buy illicit goods online, caught the attention of the U.S. government—and not in a good way. In May, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security froze the Wells Fargo account of Mt. Gox, the largest exchange that trades Bitcoin for other currencies, arguing that the company broke anti-money laundering laws. On June 20, the exchange suspended withdrawals from its accounts in USD, leaving users with piles of less-than-liquid Bitcoin (still worth around $95 each). But even as it drew political and legal controversy, Bitcoin highlighted the possibilities of a mainstream digital currency. "The current banking system sucks because it was invented 60 years ago, before the Internet was created," Jonathan Mohan, the founder of BitcoinNYC, a digital currency-focused meet-up group, complained to me in a recent phone conversation. Cold, hard cash has inherent inefficiencies. It's bulky and difficult to transfer between owners (wheelbarrows notwithstanding). These days, money is barely even paper bills—it's just a number stored on a computer signifying credit or debit. Digital currencies take that idea one step further, creating self-regulating mediums of exchange through peer-to-peer networks. When transferring money in today's international banking system, the value has to move through several entities before it gets to the end user, and each middleman takes a cut.Bitcoin might be the largest such network, but its success has given rise to a new generation of digital currencies, each with its own vision for the future of money. Ripple is one of the main contestants for the title of Bitcoin successor. Launched by OpenCoin, a company founded by Chris Larsen in 2012, Ripple is both a currency and a payment system that promises to create a frictionless, transparent method for instantly transferring money anywhere in the world, in any currency. It's already catching on—in May of this year, the company received investment from none other than Google Ventures. "We are doing for money what email did for communication," Larsen wrote to me. OpenCoin is Larsen's third technology start-up, but each business has changed how we think of money and what can be done with it. E-Loan made credit scores free and available to customers while Prosper created an online infrastructure for making personal loans outside of the banking system. "All three companies share a common DNA—to eliminate needless waste and middlemen in the financial process," Larsen explained. Ripple exists in two parts: the XRP, a mathematically regulated currency unit similar to Bitcoin, and a payment system. Users have "wallets" on the Ripple system that they can add value to in any currency by means of an online exchange backed by a bank, like Bitstamp (Mt. Gox doesn't deal in XRP). Once the wallet is full, that value can be transferred to any other user on the Ripple network in any currency in seconds. Bitcoin transactions, in comparison, can often take minutes to verify. When transferring money between currencies in today's normal international banking system, the value has to move through several entities like banks and exchanges before it gets to the end user, and each middleman takes a cut of the value. Ripple minimizes that process to one step, moving effortlessly between USD, Yen, Bitcoin, XRP, or even Icelandic Krona with just one exchange. The only charge is a tiny fraction of an XRP (currently worth slightly more than a penny), which guards against the kind of large-scale cyber attacks that have disrupted Bitcoin. Ripple's potential is to make businesses like Western Union, which charges an average of 10.8 percent in money transfer fees, obsolete, giving a capital influx to countries that depend on worker remittances. It could also subsume Bitcoin itself. On July 2, OpenCoin announced that Ripple holders can send money to Bitcoin users in any currency, and they will receive it in Bitcoins. The move provides access to the Bitcoin economy for the newer currency, and also creates a simple bridge between Bitcoin and other non-digital currencies. Like Ripple, MintChip is a digital currency designed to make monetary exchanges smoother—but it's run by a government rather than a private company. The Royal Canadian Mint says that its new system is "better than cash," but it's actually a technology-enabled equivalent of the Canadian dollar. Like an official version of Bitcoin, MintChip "operates without the need for personal identification, is instantaneous and does not have any age or credit requirements for use," Marc Brule, the RCM's chief financial officer, recently noted. "MintChip could be the digital equivalent of cash for online transactions." Each currency has its strengths and weaknesses. Overseen by a government, MintChip certainly can't match Bitcoin's anonymity or its utility for buying illegal goods. Nor does Ripple provide a "solution without an agenda," Mohan critiqued, because it's controlled by a for-profit business rather than mathematics. Some have even suggested that Ripple's owners are hoarding the currency. Created by Charles Lee in 2011, Litecoin is the frontrunner for a Bitcoin successor that remains wholly independent. "We wanted to make a coin that is silver to Bitcoin’s gold," Lee explained in his post launching the currency. In order to discover new Bitcoins, users must "mine" them with high-end computer equipment by solving complex equations. Litecoins, currently worth around $2.80 each, are easily mined by any normal computer set-up, and the currency has more coins in circulation than Bitcoin, with an 84 million cap versus Bitcoin's 21 million. This accessibility, along with its increased transaction speeds and better encryption, means that Litecoin might have an easier time of being adopted by more mainstream users. These examples are just the most prominent in a sea of obscure cryptocurrencies. There's DYM, a Ripple-based currency that uses pre-1965 U.S. silver dimes for backing, and Feathercoin, which Mohan described as the "copper to Litecoin's silver." Freicoin augments Bitcoin with a charge that mounts the more time you don't spend currency, the reverse of gaining interest from savings. Despite roadblocks and competition, there's also a chance that Bitcoin is simply the best in the field. Every currency depends on its users' trust for legitimacy, and Bitcoin still has the largest fan base by a long shot. No matter what denomination they come in, now that cryptocurrencies have broken into the mainstream, they're not going back. What remains to be seen is which currency will emerge victorious: Bitcoin, Ripple, or a future, government-controlled digital payment structure. The competition could be a good thing. "Technology has revolutionized communication, health care, and dozens of other industries … but our underlying financial infrastructure has hardly changed," OpenCoin's Chris Larsen argued. "We are finally evolving." |
| Soap Operas Can Save the World Posted: 02 Jul 2013 06:00 AM PDT  Meet Jessie, a shy Latina teen in East Los Angeles who just wants to survive chemistry class, help out her single mom, and escape high school still a member of what she and her best friend call "the virgins' club." High-school society, unfortunately, has other plans. Jessie is at the winter ball when she steals a dance with Jacob—the super- hot quarterback of the football team. Sparks fly, and Jessie is soon caught in a tempestuous love triangle with Jacob and his queen-bee girlfriend, Vanessa. So when an iPhone sex tape of Vanessa starts circulating, who could be to blame but Jessie? Welcome to East Los High, a soap opera for young adults that debuts this June on Hulu. Filmed in L.A. and written in a slangy mix of English and Spanish, the show follows a handful of Latino teenagers as they preen, flirt, and brawl their way through high school. Between dance-offs, drive-bys, and grinding hip-hop soundtrack, casual viewers might think they were watching MTV. "These are programs that play themselves out over hundreds of episodes. If the program is good, then you not only grab attention, but you grab it over a period of time."But East Los High is funded by Population Media Center, a Vermont-based non-profit that produces "pro-social" radio dramas in developing countries around the world. The shows address issues like family planning, maternal health, and HIV transmission. East Los High is Population Media's first foray into both America and the Web. Whether the series bombs or goes viral depends on how well it weaves its do-right messages together with believable characters and compelling screenwriting. The idea of marrying melodrama and public health was first developed in Mexico in the 1970s by Miguel Sabido, a television executive who believed that national welfare mattered as much as ratings. His shows promoting literacy and family planning became smash hits and generated impressive impacts. The year Sabido's first program, Ven Conmigo, appeared, the number of people signing up for government literacy classes jumped from 99,000 to 840,000. Following the run of a second show, Acompáñame, sales of over-the-counter contraception spiked 23 percent. Today Johns Hopkins University, the University of Southern California, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United Nations Population Fund all have centers dedicated to promoting public health through Sabido-style educational entertainment. The Gates Foundation and USAID provide millions of dollars in funding for such efforts. Radio and television dramas based on Sabido's model have appeared in dozens of countries. Educational entertainment is nothing new, of course. The sitcom Diff’rent Strokes was famous for its "very special episodes" tackling issues including bulimia, racism, and pedophilia. The 1988 Harvard Alcohol Project popularized the term designated driver by partnering with prime-time shows to dramatize the consequences of drunk driving. And after a 2001 episode of The Bold and the Beautiful, in which 4.5 million Americans watched a character test positive for HIV, calls to the CDC's AIDS hotline jumped from fewer than 200 per hour to more than 1,800. East Los High follows Sabido's method, which draws on social psychology, dramatic theory, and Jungian archetypes. A "transitional" character— Jessie—is shown caught between doing the wrong (often popular) thing and the right (often difficult) one. As the season unfolds, Jessie wavers between her friend Soli's good advice and Jacob's persistent overtures. Stick with the virgins' club, Soli counsels her. "I'm not going to end up like my tías, waiting around for their welfare with loads of babies and no baby daddies," Soli says. Then one night when Jessie tutors Jacob for an upcoming chemistry exam, they begin swapping positive ions on the couch. Jacob paws at her, but Jessie pushes him away. "If you don't want to take it that far, I respect that," he tells her. "I just need more time," she replies. "Cool." He fixes her with a smoldering stare. "Tomorrow?" "This is not a one-hour after-school special, or a one-minute public-service announcement," says Arvind Singhal, a professor of communication at the University of Texas-El Paso who has researched the impact of such shows. "These are programs that play themselves out over hundreds of episodes. If the program is good, then you not only grab attention, but you grab it over a period of time." To develop the shows, researchers typically spend weeks talking to people in the target community and identifying the issues that matter to them. That can involve some careful diplomacy, given the intense politics of reproductive issues. "At the local level, there are sometimes frictions," says Douglas Storey, associate director at Johns Hopkins' Center for Communication Programs. "This kind of work involves cultural change. We sometimes don't like to talk about it in those terms, because it sounds like it may be manipulative or coercive." Vanessa's sex tape, it turns out, was leaked not by Jessie, but by Vanessa's supposed best friend, bitter over losing the winter-ball queen title. Jessie's cousin Maya, meanwhile, is busy robbing taquerias and selling cocaine when a local kingpin begins dropping bodies, nearly catching Maya in the crossfire. And Jacob's father is on the verge of losing his restaurant, leaving Jacob torn between accepting a full basketball scholarship in Indiana and staying in L.A. to help run the family business. Will Jacob give up his college dream? Will Jessie keep her virginity? Will any of this help reduce teen pregnancy? Stay tuned. |
| Posted: 02 Jul 2013 04:00 AM PDT  Can you really project the trajectory of someone's life based on his or her youthful personality? A new British study, which brings to mind the engrossing 7 Up series of documentaries, makes a strong case for that somewhat unsettling proposition. "Personality dispositions by the time of early adulthood have an enduring influence on well-being decades later," concludes the research team, led by Catharine Gale of the University of Southampton. Specifically, researchers who followed a large group of people over 40 years report strong links between two key personality traits, as measured in young adulthood and the participants' level of contentment as they approach senior-citizen status. A feeling of well-being has been associated with greater success in both work and love, lower mortality rates, and a slower rate of physical and mental decline.Extroversion had "direct, positive effects on well-being," they report in the Journal of Research in Personality. Neuroticism, in contrast, had a negative impact, due to its connection with "poorer mental and physical health." Gale and her colleagues examined data on 4,583 people compiled by the National Survey for Health and Development, conducted by the U.K.'s Medical Research Council. All were born in 1946; they completed a short personality inventory at age 16, and again at age 26. Extroversion was assessed by determining their sociability, energy, and "activity orientation." Neuroticism was assessed by such measures as emotional stability, mood, and distractibility. Decades later, when the participants were 60 to 64 years old, 2,529 of them answered a series of questions measuring well-being and their level of satisfaction with life. They also reported on their mental and physical health. Their answers point to a distinct pattern. "Even after a period of nearly 50 years," the researchers report, "extroversion is a direct predictor of well-being." Neuroticism, in contrast, predicted poorer levels of well-being, but it did so indirectly. Young neurotics were more susceptible to psychological distress later in life, "and also, to a lesser extent, poorer physical health," the researchers write. As the researchers point out, a feeling of well-being has numerous ramifications: It has been associated with greater success in both work and love, lower mortality rates, and a slower rate of physical and mental decline. So, its inherent pleasures aside, there are good reasons to strive for contentedness. The catch is that, due to personality factors shaped early in life, this quest appears to be significantly harder for some of us than others. |
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