Month: February 2012

  • A lesson on racism

    Ok not really, but I needed a laugh and @foliagedecay reminded me of this hilarious band! I have a crush on both of them

  • Economists do it with models

    I love economics. Love them, but more than that I love behavioral economics. I am not a person of strong conviction. When an argument is made, I see both sides. Sometimes I hop back and forth to try to figure out what side I belong on. But the simplicity and beauty of economics is non moral, non partisan, non religion. I do not need strong convictions to love and follow basic economic sense! I am just not clever enough to form my own opinions on things without a measuring tool. 

    Which brings me to Jody Breggs. I have been following her for years, and even have a bumper sticker that says “Economists do it with models”. (I never claimed to be cool.) She is a behavior economist and offers funny, cute, short blurbs about how economic reasoning can factor into everyday thinking. Take this post, for example:

    http://www.economistsdoitwithmodels.com/2007/07/09/lesson-of-the-day/

    This explains incentives, kindergarten style. Ok, so I know you won’t click on it, and you won’t read it. I know economics is the DULLEST topic on earth. Not the economy, mind you, but basic economic mechanics and theories. But I love it.

    More of my favorite authors are the authors of the Freakonomics books. They also have a blog that is very entertaining, and you can find it here: http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/ They are controversial and not really recognized for the geniuses they are, but they are. And they are funny.

    Finally, I love Jeffrey Sachs. I love him so much I would be a stalker if I were more ambitious. He wrote “Common Wealth” and “The End of Poverty”. No, they aren’t commie books, but they are humanitarian focused economic possibilities that aren’t impossible to implement. Here is a link to his articles, he writes all the time. http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1804

    His latest article (yesterday) discussed the World Bank and some of the benefits they could provide with better leadership. 

    So I know that this could be (and probably will be) taken as a political blog, but it is not. I simply wanted to share some of the people and ideas that make me feel hopeful about the world, because it seems like the world could use a little hope. 

     

     

  • Our own little world

    I recently finished a book by Temple Grandin called Animals in Translation. I had heard of the book, was familiar with it’s topics (I am from farm and ranch country, so of course I was) but I had never actually read it. Fascinating! It is just as much about Autism as it is animal husbandry, and her simple, obvious statements made so many things make more sense to me. I wonder sometimes how the most brilliant genius is so simple, and why we miss it. 

    One of her points is that people believe autistic people live in their own world, because they struggle to communicate and to react to the world in a way that we feel is normal. She pointed out the normal people (those without autism) have so many filters that we do not see the world as it is, only as we expect it to be. People classify and category everything in their world to make it sensible. We have an enormous database of facts that we can base assumptions on that we draw on with everything we do and encounter. For example, as a child I knew that when I had to wear a dress, we were going to church. Therefore – dresses equal church and people who wore dresses were church people. If I didn’t like church, I also didn’t like women that wore dresses. This is a very simple example and very elementary. Obviously as I grew older, I was able to make new categories of why people wore dresses and remove my association and prejudice. Humans rely on their databases of information to help them make decisions without even realizing it, which also helps explain why some are racist, anti-religion, or hate odd things like cab drivers. We all unconsciously rely on our databases of knowledge and experiences and can only move beyond that by adding more knowledge and experiences. 

    Autistic people share some things with animals when it comes to sensory input. Normal people see, hear and sense only what is important, relevant and expected. Animals and autistic people do not have that filter, and see,feel, sense and hear everything coming at them with little ability to block it out. The books talks extensively about things like contrast – the lights and darks of shadows, of bright colors verses earthy tones, of sounds that we never hear because we are filtering it out. The author explains that though “normal” people believe autistic people are trapped inside their own world, that it is actually “normal” people that view the world only as we want to view it. 

    There were two examples I want to briefly sum up - 

    1. A group of people were watching a basketball game. They were instructed to count how many scores were made in a 30 second span. During that span, a woman dressed as a gorilla came into view and danced. After the 30 seconds were up, only half the people knew there was a gorilla in their midst. 

    2. Airline pilots (seasoned veterans) were running a simulator test for landing. There was a plane in the middle of their runway on the simulator. More than half the pilots landed on top of the other plane. They didn’t see it because they filtered it out, it had never happened in their experience so they didn’t see it as valuable stimulus and simply NEVER saw it.

    This book was fantastic, and though I don’t envy autistic people for their perception, I am amazed by it. I wonder now how many things I never notice, never see. How much of the world am I missing out on? 

    We are the ones in our own little world.

     

     

  • Beneath the Neon Lights

    I have been working with @We_Deny_Everything on a post about homelessness and poverty. He aided me with this blog, and pointed me to the article and the book that could open my eyes to some of the ugly here in America.

    Sometimes we don’t know how lucky we are. With foreclosure rates remaining steady, unemployment rates comparable to the 80s, and record high personal debt levels it is no wonder why homelessness is increasing. Homelessness is at a record high in many urban areas, namely Las Vegas. Las Vegas has always had a high population of transients, homelessness, and poverty due to the appeal of gambling, night life, substance abuse and moderate temperatures. Las Vegas also has a large number of low paying jobs that cannot sustain low income rents. 

    I recently finished a book called Beneath the Neon Lights. This is a story about people who make the sewer systems beneath Las Vegas their home. These are semi permanent dwellings and many of the residents have lived beneath the city for years. These “camps” house families, couples, and singles. They house drug dealers and murderers. They house insane people, brilliant people, and people’s who are not completely classifiable. 
    The conditions are just as you would imagine living in a sewer. Filthy, smelling of feces and garbage, dead bodies that need to be  pushed out of the ends of the tunnels, roaches, rats and black widows. Toxic fumes and gasses. Dark, wet and dangerous.
    The journalist who wrote the story, Matthew O’Brian, shares many stories about the people he met and encountered. One is a man from Omaha named Lawrence  that moved to Las Vegas with an inheritance. He gambled and drank his money away, and ended up under ground. He is an educated man that stores his possessions and bed 4 feet above the sewer floor so it isn’t washed away with the flash floods that occur in the sewers. He uses a side tunnel as his restroom and garbage can so he doesn’t attract as many roaches, spiders and rats to his own area. He discussed at length his ideas about homelessness with Matthew, and suggested that policies that dated back to the early 80′s in the Regan administration led to so many mentally ill and chronically homeless people being on the street. He stores a bicycle in his camp and rides it to and from work everyday. He even wrote a poem about his dwellings:
    ” I look upon the night
    And sometimes wonder
    What kind of tunnel I dug for myself; 
    Dark, cold, lonely and damp.
    I long for the warmth.”
    Lawrence has been living in the sewer for 7 years, and still considers it a temporary position he is in.
    Another man Matthew talked about was “The Troll”. All the dwellers feared the troll. He is almost a mystical man, they say he can see in the dark and he beats anybody to death that attempts to cross his area. They met the said “Troll” while he was carting a dead body of a friend of his out. The Troll suggested he died of natural causes. 
    The sewer does offer its residents some semi-permanent state. They hang pictures, store food, have beds and clothing there. If they were above ground they would be kicked out of doorways and sleeping holes by security and police. 
    Vegas is only one city, and the Sewers are only one area. There are homeless camps everywhere in America. One of the most famous is the “Moles” in New York that live in subway tunnels. Though patrolling and a lot of media coverage has reduced that area, they haven’t eliminated it. 
    People have mixed opinions on how to handle the homeless. There are wet houses, dry houses, shelters, halfway houses and low income housing projects. Despite the money and attention placed on this, only 1 in 20 have overnight shelter. Many people do not want to help the homeless – they made their beds, they can sleep in them. Many want to rehab the homeless, clean them up, sober them up, and stand them back up. Then there are those that only want to offer safety and warmth, with no expectations of rehab. These are the most controversial, but also the most successful. Oregon has had terrific successes with their wet houses.
    The cost of homelessness on the tax payer go beyond the shelters and rehabs. Imagine the cost of jails, police, emergency room visits, detox stays, and ambulance rides. This is only what they do to themselves. There is also the cost of petty crimes, of theft, assault, disorderly conduct. The price of housing values declining near homeless areas, the price of maintaining parks that people are afraid to walk through at night. These are indirect costs of homelessness but they add up to ten times the amount spent on shelters. 
    • The national rate of homelessness was 21 homeless people per 10,000 people in the general population. The rate for veterans was 31 homeless veterans per 10,000 veterans in the general population.
    • Chronic homelessness decreased by 3 percent from 110,911 in 2009 to 107,148 in 2011. The chronically homeless population has decreased by 13 percent since 2007. The decrease is associated with an increase in the number of permanent supportive housing beds from 188,636 in 2007 to 266,968 in 2011. Permanent supportive housing ends chronic homelessness.
    • A majority of homeless people counted were in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs, but nearly 4 in 10 were unsheltered, living on the streets, or in cars, abandoned buildings, or other places not intended for human habitation. The unsheltered population increased by 2 percent from 239,759 in 2009 to 243,701 in 2011, the only subpopulation to increase.
    • The number of individuals in homeless families decreased by 1 percent nationally, but increased by 20 percent or more in 11 state.(Including Nevada)The number of poor households that spent more than 50 percent of their incomes on rent – defined by HUD as households that are “severely housing cost burdened” – increased by 6 percent from 5.9 million in 2009 to 6.2 million in 2010. Three-quarters of all poor renter households had severe housing cost burdens.
    • The number of unemployed people increased by 4 percent from 14.3 million in 2009 to 14.8 million in 2010. The unemployed population increased in 32 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Unemployment rose by 10 percent or more in 11 states.The average real income of working poor people increased by less than one percent, from about $9,300 in 2009 to about $9,400 in 2010. There was not a single county in the nation where a family with an average annual income of $9,400 could afford fair market rent for a one-bedroom unit.
    • Foreclosure activity continued to increase with nearly 50,000 more homes in foreclosure in 2010 than in 2009. Foreclosures increased from 2.83 million units in 2009 to 2.88 million units in 2010, a 2 percent increase. Nationally, 1 out of every 45 housing units was in foreclosure in 2010. In Nevada, 1 out of every 11 housing units had a foreclosure.
    • For a young adult who has aged out of foster care the odds of becoming homeless are 1 in 11.

     

    I don’t care what your moral views, ethical views, or socials view are – you cannot deny the economic sense it makes to invest more money into shelters and other housing areas for all of the homeless, including substance abusers and felons. This will keep everyone safer and save the taxpayers. 

     

    Citations 
    “Beneath the Neon Lights” Matthew O’Brian 

     

  • People are basically good

    I am one who truly believes that people are good. We all have flaws, inner demons, etc –  but we all seek the same types of things. Happiness, love, security and safety. I ran across this article http://www.shamar.org/articles/basically_good.php#.Tz8WcfGPV2A that I cannot agree with. Let me sum it up:

    1. “if you believe people are born good, you will attribute evil to forces outside the individual.” – The article uses an example that we blame external forces (poverty) for terrorism. That isn’t true. Terrorism is awful, but the people committing these awful acts do not think they are evil! They didn’t dream of being the bad guys when they were kids. They are acting on a belief, whatever that is, that they are doing the RIGHT thing, and that the objects are the wrong thing. The innocents are casualties, much like war. Do not mistake me, I am not saying that any act of terrorism is justifiable or good – only that they believe they are on the side of right.

    2. “if you believe people are born good, you will not stress character development when you raise children” - This one makes me mad, too. Did not stress character development? Grrr. The article states that people like me do not teach kids to develop their character, but rather to fight against external forces. Let me tell you a thing or two… My kids were raised volunteering, working, cleaning their room, making grades, learning to manage themselves SO THEY COULD manage external forces. “They learned that their greatest struggles were with society, and I learned that the greatest struggle was with me, and my natural inclinations to laziness, insatiable appetites, and self-centeredness” - This must have been thrown in there just to piss me off.

    3.”if you believe that people are basically good, God and religion are morally unnecessary, even harmful. ” – This is not true, either. I think that MOST people I know that are religious or faithful in anyway are some of the most earnest people when it comes to character development. They work very hard at improving their flaws, and do not harm others in the process. I know this isn’t always true, some people use religion as a weapon. Do I think people without religion are more evil or wrong? Not at all. 

    4. “if you believe people are basically good, you, of course, believe that you are good — and therefore those who disagree with you must be bad, not merely wrong” – Now this doesn’t even make sense. If I believe people are basically good, and someone disagrees with me, I think they are bad? This is stupid and I am not going to bother arguing with it.

    He ended with this note: “If the West does not soon reject Rousseau and humanism and begin to recognize evil, judge it and confront it, it will find itself incapable of fighting savages who are not noble.”

    I prefer the Ghandi approach, “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”


  • My favorite toys

    My 7 year old niece asked me what my favorite things are. I first replied with sunshine, friends and family. She rolled her eyes (because I am SO DUMB) and said “No… like your favorite toys!” I had to think about it. This is what I decided.

    1. My Kindle – Having a library of books at my fingertips and all of my notes about them in one place brings me hours and hours of entertainment. 

     

    2. My Ipod – I have hours of music, movies and audobooks, and always make sure the battery is full. It keeps me company when I drive, clean, and even sometimes when I run.

    3. My Garmin. This is the coolest thing ever. It tracks my speed, distance and even keeps a path of where I have been so I can upload it when I walk in the door. The elevation counter sucks, but I know that upcoming models will be better.

     

    My niece let out an exasperated sigh and said I am SOOOO BORING! I guess she’s right. What are your favorite toys?

  • My new cause

    Everyone has a cause, something they are passionate about. I think my new cause is going to be animal rights. 

     

    Yes, this is just a joke… remember your sense of humor and have a great weekend!