Bedtime Music: Tears for Fears - Sowing the Seeds of Love

OK, so I was listening to Tears for Fears' Sowing the Seeds of Love on the train home tonight, and I decided to include it for my Bedtime Music. I love this song. (Apparently a lot of other people do too. Funny that. ;) )

It's said (in Wikipedia) that StSoL "is notable for being an intentional pastiche of The Beatles", and certainly there are a lot of Beatles-ish/Monty Python-ish elements to the video. But musically, I've always thought that StSoL was more in the vein of Paul McCartney & Wings' Band on the Run. Band on the Run is written in a three-part structure, and StSoL is not only a multi-part "musical collage," but I think it perfected this genre. Anyway, enough of my analysis. Watch the video!

Bedtime Music: Lonestar - Amazed

One other request by Ronin, which I'm more than happy to oblige: the 1999 hit, Amazed, by country music band Lonestar. (I'd been meaning to put on some country videos eventually, so I'm glad you recommended this song, Ronin!) Amazed is a musical rarity: a song that topped both the country charts and the Billboard Hot 100. The last single to do that had been Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton back in 1983.

Bedtime Music: Lenny Kravitz - Again

Tonight's song is a request from Ronin, a Singaporean Malay Muslim blogger (whose blog, I'm sorry to say, is invitation-only). I had never heard Again, by Lenny Kravitz, until just a few minutes ago, but now that I've heard it I understand why this is such a popular song. "Again" was released in 2000 as a single on Kravitz's Greatest Hits album, and won Kravitz his his third straight Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance in 2001.

Be warned: there's some tongue action and Kravitz's bare butt in the video. ;)

Yahoo Sports on Dennis Johnson (1954-2007)

There's a nice tribute essay to former NBA great Dennis Johnson at Yahoo Sports, now that the Lakers and Celtics are playing against each other once more in the NBA finals. "DJ" was a fan favorite in Phoenix when I lived there in the early 80s, but he didn't get along very well with the Suns' coaching staff and Jerry Colangelo traded him in what I consider the worst trade Colangelo ever made, for Rick Robey and draft picks.

I appreciate this article because I can relate to "the grind of making it." When you're a naive high school teenager, it seems like life will remain as easy as it had been. But I found that, for me, getting through college and then creating a life, both at work and at home, wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be. Even having this child has been exceedingly difficult with a lot of false hope and emotional heartbreak over the past five years. So with the story of a guy like DJ, who overcame his odds yet remained true to himself when the limelight had passed him by, yeah, I can appreciate that type of story.

Some excerpts:

He was 52 years old Feb. 22, 2007, in the Austin Convention Center, coaching his second season for the Toros in the NBA Development League. Two years ago, Smith had been an undrafted NBA prospect out of the University of Maryland, arriving in town weeks ahead of his teammates. Without an apartment until the first of the next month, with nowhere to stay, Johnson invited Smith to stay with the coach’s wife and four children.

After Smith moved out, he still had to wait for his washing machine to get hooked up. He stopped over to the Johnsons to throw a load into theirs. When Smith returned, he discovered that Johnson – cast to the bush leagues as a five-team NBA All-Star, a three-time world champion, an NBA Finals MVP, the most underappreciated player in the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers Finals of the 1980s – had thrown his clothes into the dryer, folded them neatly and stacked them in a basket.

“Here was a great player, a Hall of Fame player, who would do that for … me,” Smith said. “It just showed the kind of humble man he was.”

And so, after that practice, D.J. had thrown up his hands in the face of Smith, until the player swished three, four, maybe five straight. Johnson laughed, and with a dismissive wave, said, “I ain’t messing with you no more.” He walked outside to his car with the team’s publicist, Perri Travillion, and teased her that the police had spared him the parking ticket they had tagged on her windshield.

Together, they laughed. And then, he gulped, “Catch me!” and collapsed onto the sidewalk. Dennis Johnson died of cardiac arrest.

When Magic Johnson thinks of the Celtics-Lakers battles in the 1980s, it isn’t just Bird that comes to his mind. “My rivalry was really with D.J.,” Magic said. He called him, “one of the best individual defensive players probably to ever play in the league,” and has never gotten over the way Johnson systemically took him out of the ‘84 Finals. Larry Bird called Johnson the best teammate he ever had.

Johnson had 15,000 points and 5,000 assists with the Sonics, Suns and Celtics, one of just 11 players ever to do so. With the Suns in ‘80, he was first-team All-NBA with Kareem, Dr. J and Bird. He was the Finals MVP in 1979 with the Sonics, and an immense part of two Celtics titles in ‘84 and ‘86.

Before arriving in Austin in 2005, he had run out of assistant coaching jobs and scouting jobs. He had a short run as an interim coach with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2003, but it never turned into something bigger. Bird, Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge had been NBA coaches and GMs. Even M.L. Carr had a turn running the Celtics.

Nothing like that came for D.J., and no one ever heard him gripe about it. He belongs in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame...

Whatever happened, Johnson coached his last team in Austin without nostalgia over what had been, without bitterness of what never was. The Toros never heard him talking about Bird and Magic, about winning Game 5 of the Finals in ‘85 with a jumper, about catching that pass off Bird’s steal in ‘87 and beating the Pistons with a twisting layup in the conference finals.

It wouldn’t be long until his players understood the reason why: For him to help them chase a dream the way that he did, they needed to hear the stories of his own personal grind. He never talked much about the glamorous Big Eighties, but his own improbable passage in the Seventies.

Johnson told them about how he had never gotten off the bench in high school, how he had been working in a warehouse when a junior college coach discovered him in a Los Angeles playground game. He told them about getting picked in the second round of the 1976 NBA draft out of Pepperdine, and how he was the last player to make the Sonics roster that season.

“He always talked about the grind of making it,” Toros guard Cheyne Gadson said. “If you wanted to know a lot about the Celtics days, you’d have to look it up. But he wanted us to understand how hard it was to get from Pepperdine just into the NBA.”

On the long D-League bus rides, Johnson sat in the front row. Never sleeping, he considered his responsibility to make sure the driver stayed awake. Whatever the job, he did it. He had so little ego, so much pride. For over a decade, he had been an assistant with the Celtics and Clippers. He did advance scouting, a grueling, thankless job that most ex-NBA players – never mind past stars – leave to the video coordinators and ex-college student managers on the way up.

When the Toros hired him, he moved his wife, Donna, and his children to town. He immersed himself. He did every community event for the team. He spoke to every 4-H club, and rotary and biddy league basketball camp. “I don’t remember him ever turning one down,” Toros president Mike Berry said.

...

They still revere him in Austin. He had been there simply a season and a half, but as San Antonio Spurs GM R.C. Buford said, “That community holds so much affection for him.”

...

As it turned out, it wasn’t the old Celtics and Suns and Sonics carrying Dennis Johnson’s casket up that cemetery’s hill in Gardena, Calif.

The players were the pallbearers, the Austin Toros. “An honor I’ll never forget,” Smith said.

The Austin Toros carried their coach past Bird and McHale and Ainge, and laid him to rest. These kids were living the hardscrabble basketball stories that had so much in common with Johnson’s own journey. Now, it’s the Celtics and Lakers all over again, and Johnson has come back to life in the old footage. Maybe he would’ve made his way back with them, maybe not.

“I know Dennis wanted to get back to the NBA, but I think he would’ve been fine if he never did,” Berry said. “He was at such peace with himself.”

He was Magic’s greatest defender, Bird’s greatest teammate, but so much of the big heart that finally gave out on Dennis Johnson belonged in the bushes, belonged to his last team.

Bill Moyers Pwns Porter Barry of Faux News

This was classic; I love how Bill Moyers was able to both suggest to Porter Barry that he turn away from the Dark Side and set up conditions for appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show that will be next to impossible for Faux News to fulfill. The sound is rather poor, being in a crowded hall; you'll have to concentrate to hear everything. From Crooks & Liars:

At the National Conference for Media Reform, Bill O’Reilly producer Porter Barry ambushes journalist Bill Moyers and asks him why he won’t appear on The O’Reilly Factor. Moyers, a class act to the last, makes Barry look like the small and petty man he is. But the joke is on Barry, because other journalists, including Uptake correspondent Noah Kunin, who got this raw footage, turned tables on ol’ Porter and gave him a little taste of the FOX News-style ambush journalism. I don’t think he liked it much.

Movie Sunday: Breaker Morant and Gallipoli

I originally decided to feature the movie Breaker Morant today, but could find only one decent clip. So we'll add a similar movie to go with it, that being Gallipoli.

Whereas the 1902 court-martial of Australian soldiers Lt. Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant, Lt. Peter Joseph Handcock, and Lt. George Witton caused Australia to become increasingly resentful of the British military and British rule in general (the Australian army never again accepted British Army justice in cases involving its soldiers), the debacle at Gallipoli is considered the birth of national consciousness in both Australia and New Zealand, bringing about the psychological independence for both countries from British rule.

The final scene in Gallipoli is supposed to be of the Battle of the Nek (Nek being the Afrikaans word for "mountain pass"), which took place on August 7, 1915. The infantry assault by the Australian 3rd Light Horse Brigade was scheduled for 4:30 am, preceded by a naval bombardment of the Turkish machine gun lines that faced the Australians. However, the bombardment ended prematurely, at 4:23 a.m., allowing the Turkish soldiers time to return safely back to their lines prior to the assault, which they now knew was coming:

The first wave of 150 men from the 8th Light Horse Regiment, led by their commander, Lieutenant Colonel A.H. White, "hopped the bags" and went over the top. They were met with a hail of machine gun and rifle fire. A few men reached the Turkish trenches, and marker flags were reportedly seen flying, but they were quickly overwhelmed.

The second wave of 150 followed the first without question and met the same fate. This was the ultimate tragedy of the Nek, that the attack was not halted after the first wave when it was clear that it was futile. A simultaneous attack by the 2nd Light Horse Regiment (1st Light Horse Brigade) at Quinn's Post against the Turkish trench system known as "The Chessboard" was abandoned after 49 out of the 50 men in the first wave became casualties. In this case, the regiment's commander had not gone in the first wave and so was able to make the decision to cancel.

Lieutenant Colonel N.M. Brazier, commander of the 10th Light Horse Regiment, attempted to have the third wave canceled, claiming that "the whole thing was nothing but bloody murder." He was unable to find Colonel Hughes and unable to persuade the brigade major, Colonel J.M. Antill, who believed the reports that marker flags had been sighted. So the third wave attacked and was wiped out. Finally Hughes called off the attack, but confusion in the fire trench led to some of the fourth wave going over.

When Commonwealth burial parties returned to Gallipoli in 1919, the found the bones of the Australians still lying on the battleground. A total of 326 soldiers were buried at the Nek Cemetary, of which only ten (six Australians and four New Zealanders) were identified.

Notes: In the second clip for Gallipoli, the movie proper ends at the 4:05 mark; whoever created this clip left the credits running for the remaining 3:16. You may also notice that "Major Barton" (who gives the pep talk to the soldiers just before they're slaughtered) is actor Bill Hunter, whom we last saw on a Movie Sunday post as "Barry Fife" in Strictly Ballroom.

It really ain't the place nor time to reel off rhyming diction, but yet we'll write a final rhyme while waiting crucifixion. For we bequeath a parting tip of sound advice for such men who come in transport ships to polish off the Dutchman. If you encounter any Boers, you really must not loot 'em, and if you wish to leave these shores, for pity's sake, don't shoot 'em. Let's toss a bumper down our throat before we pass to Heaven, and toast a trim-set petticoat we leave behind in Devon.

Shoot straight, you bastards - don't make a mess of it!

Jack: What are your legs?
Archy Hamilton: Springs. Steel springs.
Jack: What are they going to do?
Archy Hamilton: Hurl me down the track.
Jack: How fast can you run?
Archy Hamilton: As fast as a leopard.
Jack: How fast are you going to run?
Archy Hamilton: As fast as a leopard.
Jack: Then lets see you do it.

The thing I can't stand about you mate is you're always so bloody cheerful.

You Are Here

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of the interesting things about astronomy is that it's always being revised; there's always new information coming in that reshapes our understanding of the universe. The other day, NASA brought out a press release that gives us a new picture of our home, the Milky Way galaxy. Instead of four arms that the Milky Way was thought to possess, it turns out that there are only two major arms, which fits in with what other galaxies with similar structures (barred spirals) possess.

BTW, our Sun isn't in either of the two main arms of the Milky Way. Instead, we're located in what's known as the Orion Arm or Orion Spur. It lies about halfway between the Scutum-Centaurus Arm ahead of us (i.e., toward the galactic center) and the Perseus Arm behind us.

...[N]ew images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are shedding light on the true structure of the Milky Way, revealing that it has just two major arms of stars instead of the four it was previously thought to possess.

...

Since the 1950s, astronomers have produced maps of the Milky Way. The early models were based on radio observations of gas in the galaxy, and suggested a spiral structure with four major star-forming arms, called Norma, Scutum-Centaurus, Sagittarius and Perseus. In addition to arms, there are bands of gas and dust in the central part of the galaxy. Our sun lies near a small, partial arm called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur, located between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms.

...

Large infrared sky surveys in the 1990s led to some major revisions of these models, including the discovery of a large bar of stars in the middle of the Milky Way. Infrared light can penetrate through dust, so telescopes designed to pick up infrared light get better views of our dusty and crowded galactic center. In 2005, Benjamin and his colleagues used Spitzer's infrared detectors to obtain detailed information about our galaxy's bar, and found that it extends farther out from the center of the galaxy than previously thought.

The team of scientists now has new infrared imagery from Spitzer of an expansive swath of the Milky Way, stretching 130 degrees across the sky and one degree above and below the galaxy's mid-plane. This extensive mosaic combines 800,000 snapshots and includes over 110 million stars.

Benjamin developed software that counts the stars, measuring stellar densities. When he and his teammates counted stars in the direction of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, they noticed an increase in their numbers, as would be expected for a spiral arm. But, when they looked in the direction where they expected to see the Sagittarius and Norma arms, there was no jump in the number of stars. The fourth arm, Perseus, wraps around the outer portion of our galaxy and cannot be seen in the new Spitzer images.

The findings make the case that the Milky Way has two major spiral arms, a common structure for galaxies with bars. These major arms, the Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms, have the greatest densities of both young, bright stars, and older, so-called red-giant stars. The two minor arms, Sagittarius and Norma, are filled with gas and pockets of young stars. Benjamin said the two major arms seem to connect up nicely with the near and far ends of the galaxy's central bar.

"Now, we can fit the arms together with the bar, like pieces of a puzzle," said Benjamin, "and, we can map the structure, position and width of these arms for the first time." Previous infrared observations found hints of a two-armed Milky Way, but those results were unclear because the position and width of the arms were unknown.

Though galaxy arms appear to be intact features, stars are actually constantly moving in and out of them as they orbit the center of the Milky Way, like London commuters in a busy traffic circle. Our own sun might have once resided in a different arm. Since it was formed more than 4 billion years ago, it has traveled around the galaxy 16 times.

Econbrowser on Oil

Econbrowser, the blog on economics by James Hamilton and Menzie Chinn, have published two interesting posts on oil. The first, The Oil Shock of 2008 by Hamilton, looks at the potential for recent oil price increases to contribute to an economic downturn. Some quotations:

...[W]hen oil prices started to rise again five years ago, many of us suggested that things would be different this time, in part because the price was rising much more gradually and so should be less disruptive of consumer spending patterns. Others emphasized that, despite the price increases, oil was still cheaper than it had been historically if you took into account inflation. However, once you include the most recent data, neither of those claims would still be true.

Another reason consumers had been largely shrugging off the oil price increases of the last few years is that they could afford to do so, since energy expenditures had fallen so significantly as a fraction of total income. However, as a result of rising oil prices, that, too, is no longer the case.

...

We've reached the point where American businesses and consumers simply can no longer afford to ignore the price of fuel, and we're getting clear indications of real changes in behavior. Counts of the number of cars on the roads suggest that U.S. vehicle miles traveled fell 4.3% in March. U.S. gasoline consumption so far in 2008 has been 70,000 barrels/day lower than in the first five months of 2007. And sales of SUVs are crashing. Sales of light trucks manufactured in North America last month were 26% below the level of May 2007.

...

BLS seasonally unadjusted establishment data indicate that the number of Americans employed in motor vehicles and parts manufacturing fell by 107,000 between April 2007 and April 2008, which is bigger than the 88,000 decline between April 1990 and April 1991. GM this week announced plans to close 4 North American plants, idling an additional estimated 8,000 workers. Ford plans a 15% cut in its 24,000 salaried employees.

Continental Airlines announced plans to cut 3,000 jobs in response to higher fuel prices, following similar announcements from United, Delta, and American Airlines. Based on the experience in earlier oil shocks, we can anticipate that there will be broad changes in many other categories of business and consumer spending that will pose challenges to a number of affected industries.

Is America's economy able to dodge a recession at this time? Hamilton's conclusion: he's not sure.

Chinn's post, Oil Prices in Other Currencies, is quite short and compares oil prices in terms of the US dollar, the Euro, and the Special Drawing Rights (SDR)* from 2000 through 2008. Chinn concludes that the US dollar is helping to raise the price of oil due to its devaluation, especially with respect to the Euro and SDR, but that other factors have driven the price of oil up much more significantly than the dollar's devaluation. (I wrote a similar post back in March that came to the same conclusion despite looking at a much shorter time frame.)

Be sure to check out the two posts directly; I haven't used any of the graphs that Hamilton and Chinn incorporated into their posts here. Looking at the graphs might be helpful to you.

Special Drawing Rights are a type of international currency used by International Monetary Fund (IMF) members that is itself a "basket" of four currencies, the US dollar, the Euro, the Yen, and the Pound Sterling.

Drum Corps Saturday - 1975 Troopers

It's not my intention to show the Troopers back-to-back, but a number of videos for the 1975 finalists are available, so I thought I'd go through those that I can in reverse order of finish. The Troopers came in 12th in 1975, getting a 79.60 in the prelims, and a 76.20 in the finals. The 1975 DCI finals was held on August 16th in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Franklin Field, the University of Pennsylvania). I was there for the prelims, but my Dad had to be at work the next day, so I missed the finals. :P

The Repertoire: Introduction and Fantasia * Gentle On My Mind * Night on Bald Mountain * The Virginian * No Goodbyes * Bound for the Promised Land

"Rage Boy" at the Office

I think we can safely assume that "rage boy" here was fired. ;) Actually, I'm surprised no one tried to grab him when he fell down at the 1:16 mark of the video.

Bedtime Music: Wang Chung - Everybody Have Fun Tonight

Warning! Don't play this video if you suffer from epileptic seizures!

One of the nice things about Youtube is that it allows me to catch up on old music videos. Now here's a video that's over 20 years old and yet I saw it for the first time just the other day. :) Seriously. I was working on my Bachelor's degree back in '86 when this video came out, and I didn't have a TV, much less time to watch one, back then. So, good song, great video; who gives a $#|+ what Blender thinks?

Puke-in-your-mouth trivial fact: Wang Chung's Everybody Have Fun Tonight peaked at #2, behind The Bangles' Walk Like an Egyptian.

Bedtime Music: A-ha - Take On Me

Unless I'm really familiar with an artist or their song, I'll spend a few minutes doing some research just so I have something relevant to say about the daily video. Such is the case for a-ha's first hit, Take On Me. Yes, #1 hit in 1985, #24 on VH1's "Greatest Songs of the 1980s," inspired by Michael Patterson's animated film Commuter and the movie Altered States. Yada yada yada.

What I was surprised to find is that Bunty Bailey, the girl in the video, has her own MySpace page, on which she wrote:

Hello! My name is Bunty Bailey and i am the girl out of the A-ha video Take On Me. So a lot of you may recognise me from that video. I did date Morten Harket and the rumours about Billy Idol are rubbish. I did star in the 1987 embarrassing film called Dolls. I live in London working as a Dance teacher / actress / Model and i am happily married.

Bedtime Music: Uhm Jung Hwa - Da Ga Ra

When I lived in Korea, I discovered that about the only popular music that's played there is Korean pop (K-pop); it was very rare to hear anything else on the radios (although you could easily buy cassette tapes and CDs of other types of music). In the late fall of 2001, there was a song that came out that really appealed to me with its catchy melody. I spent some time trying to find out who the singer was and the song's title. The singer turned out to be a young woman by the name of Uhm Jung-Hwa (엄정화), who also acts and, apparently, has recently started selling her own line of lingerie. The song is "Da Ga Ra" (다가라), which is on her seventh album, "Hwa" (화). This was the first of about ten albums I bought in Korea.

Words Fail Me

I just can't seem to write something that expresses my complete and utter disgust at this couple. Insha'allah, the authorities will throw the book at them. From CNN:

A man and a woman have been charged by police in Italy after they were found having sex in a confession box, it was reported Wednesday.

The Italian ANSA news agency said the young man and woman were taken into custody by police in the northern city of Cesena following a telephone complaint from a man attending morning Mass in the city's cathedral.

Authorities were alerted after a parishoner heard "rustling and groaning" coming from inside the confession box and pulled back the curtains to reveal a goth-rock couple engaged in oral sex, ANSA said.

The agency said the pair -- a 31-year-old laborer and a 32-year-old teacher -- defended their conduct saying: "We are atheists and for us, having sex in church is like doing it any other place."

However, Bishop Antonio Lanfranchi of Cesena-Sarsina took said the couple's behavior was "an outrage of notable proportions which bespeaks unutterable squalor."

He added that a special ceremony would be held to purify the confession box.

On Global Cities

The following appeared in ShanghaiDaily.com. Read the article first; I have some comments down below.

Is there anything negative about a global city?

Sassen: Global cities are two-edged swords. They bring economic dynamics - and that means jobs, life on the streets at night, vibrant restaurants, and so on.

But they do create 20 percent of the population which is extremely prosperous and a risk that they will take over key areas of the city with luxury office buildings, luxury housing and consumption spaces. This displaces smaller shopkeepers, the old modest middle classes. They lose.

My research suggests that ultimately cities are better off being dynamic (and hence global cities) but they do need political and civic leadership to balance out the extreme outcomes that markets left to themselves can produce.

European cities are much better than US cities. New York, the ultimate market town, has the highest share of very rich people and very powerful firms in the US and the highest share (over 20 percent) of officially counted poor ... and, according to the most recent count, over 100,000 homeless. That shows something about matters left to markets.


Will a global city lose its historic identity?

Chen: There is a tendency for cities to lose their historical identities and cultural traditions as economic forces push them to become more important centers in the global arena.

Cities like Mumbai and Dubai are doing what Shanghai is doing. They are all in the same race, running in the same direction, and trying to get to the same destination.

In doing so, these cities tend to lose their distinctive features and identities as they tear down traditional neighborhoods to build modern skyscrapers.

Shanghai has already gone far down this road. But global cities don't have to lose their historical and cultural identities.

In fact, some of Shanghai's traditional features are resilient enough to survive and even thrive in the face of penetrating global economic and cultural forces.

Some of the research I and a Fudan University collaborator have done has demonstrated a mixed local consumer lifestyle that reflects an interesting blend of being conscious of global brands and traditional motives. This will be shown in my work ''Shanghai Rising'' which will be published in Spring 2009.

Saskia Sassen is the Lynd Professor of Sociology and member of The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. Chen Xiangming is director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies and professor of Sociology and International Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut.

For most of my life I've lived in large cities (Phoenix, Arizona; Busan, South Korea, and Singapore) although, of the three, I think only Singapore classifies as a "global city." Both Phoenix and Busan try hard to be global cities, but neither succeeds, IMO, especially when compared to their larger neighbors, Los Angeles and Seoul, respectively.

Given the trade-off between vibrancy vs. pollution, I'd go with vibrancy any day. A town or city that cannot provide for its inhabitants economically is not worth living in. Pollution can be a problem, although, ironically, the cities I've lived in didn't have pollution problems so much of their own making, but due to either natural causes or from someone else's making (the winter temperature inversion in Phoenix and the "yellow dust" in Busan, blown in from the Gobi desert; the "haze" in Singapore that blows in from the Sumatran forest fires, where the Indonesians continue to practice slash-and-burn farming; likewise, in Hong Kong, the air pollution that blows in from the Chinese factories in the Pearl River delta).

The problem of the homeless seems to be more of a problem due to high costs of living. Granted, I haven't been to a whole lot of countries, but those countries that I've been to with the worst homeless problems were Japan and the US, both of which have very high costs of living. In Korea, Malaysia and Singapore, where the costs of living are lower, homelessness isn't much of a problem. When Dr. Sassen said, "That shows something about matters left to markets," from my own observations, the problem of homelessness is primarily due to the markets. The markets have priced people out of homes. People aren't able to cope with the high demands made on them by the markets, and they fall by the wayside. Those who think that the markets are the end all and be all, the panacea for every economic problem a society faces, are naive.

As for losing historic identities, I don't think this is much of a problem if local governments keep on top of the issue. Archaeology magazine had a recent article about how people in Beijing have been working to save the residential neighborhoods known as hutongs ("alleyways" flanked by courtyard houses). However, in my three cities, maintaining historic identities hasn't been a problem. The business districts weren't expanding to the point where they threatened older neighborhoods (as in the case of Beijing). However, I do think communities need to balance between creating the best business, industrial and residential facilities available, preserving one's past as best one can, and maintaining the heartlands (as we call the residential neighborhoods here in S'pore) so that all can live affordably.

HT: Economist's View

Bedtime Music: Madonna - Express Yourself

It's somewhat difficult to find a video by Madonna that can be appropriate for this blog and which I like the music to. I had first thought of putting up Vogue and Take a Bow, both of which I rather enjoy. Instead, I've chosen Express Yourself, which is a decent enough song.

What a Guy!

Oops, maybe not so much. Hope your wife didn't mind you giving all that satisfaction. ;)

HT: Advertising is Good for You

June 6th: Wear Your Kaffiyah with Pride!

Credit: ShaikR

The following comes from Facebook, which is what steps 2, 3 and 4 below refer to. Regardless, I hope you'll help support this event by wearing your kaffiyah (if you have one, insha'allah). Don't let clowns like Michelle Malkin frame the debate; wear your kaffiyah with pride!

A peaceful, visual protest against the clear racism displayed by a certain right-wing blogger, and her pals, after their ridiculous demand that Dunkin' Donuts pull an online ad featuring Rachael Ray wearing a distinctive black/white scarf, which apparently looked too much like the Palestinian kaffiyeh. According to said blogger, the kaffiyeh is the “traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”

Our response: what a load of xenophobic tosh!

More details about the incident here.

Instructions for the protest...
Simple: on Friday June 6th

1) Wear a kaffiyeh! Preferably whilst standing outside your local Dunkin' Donuts. ;)
2) Change your profile pic to one of the images listed at the top of this description.
3) Change your status message to: is wearing their kaffiyeh with pride! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=20090243695
4) Take a photo/video of yourself wearing your kaffiyeh (with pride) and post it on the event page.
5) If you own a blog or website, please write about the event & either link to this page or to the following: http://imuslim.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/wear-your-kaffiyeh-with-pride-day/

Invite everyone to join in: Arab, and non-Arab. The more the merrier! A variety of participants will serve to highlight that the kaffiyeh is simply a piece of cloth, and not a symbol of murder and oppression, God forbid.

Bedtime Music: Duffy - Mercy

I've got to admit, I don't really keep up with the latest pop music; what I do like to do is "dance" for Milady with the goal of cracking her up. :) (I usually succeed.) The other day, when we were in our car, Duffy's Mercy came on the radio and Milady said, "Here's a song that you can dance to; this is your beat." And that's good enough for me. Pardon me, now, while I go dance...

Keepin up with the van den Bergs?

An odd economics study about Dutch lottery winners, what they do with their money and, most interestingly, how non-winning neighbors react when a winner lives nearby:

Each week, [the Dutch Postcode Lottery (PCL)] allocates a prize to participants in a randomly chosen postcode (containing 19 households on average). About one third of the Dutch population participates in the lottery. A participant wins €12,500 per ticket. In addition, one of the participants wins a BMW. From an experimental design perspective, the lottery provides PCL participants in the winning code with an unexpected temporary income shock equal on average to about eight months of income, while leaving all other households’ incomes unchanged. In addition, a randomly chosen subet of those households receive a significant part of their transfer in kind (in the form of a new BMW).

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[W]e find that the vast majority of BMW winners trade their BMW for cash, despite significant tax or transactions costs associated with this. Consistent with a simple life-cycle model of consumption, we do not detect any own effect of winning the postcode lottery on most components of households’ expenditures, including food at home, transportation, and total monthly outlays. Own effects are, however detected for durables expenditures and car consumption.

Meaning, winning the lottery doesn't necessarily change how much food the winners eat at home, the amount of travel - presumably local - that they do, or how much money they spend in any given month. However, they do use their lottery winnings to buy durables (cars, refrigerators, stoves, furniture, etc.).

We also detect an effect of temporary income shocks on food expenditures away from home

Lottery winners also eat out at restaurants more often.

Turning to social effects, we detect statistically significant effects of neighbors’ lottery winnings on car consumption and exterior home renovations. For example, PCL nonparticipants who live in winning codes are more likely to acquire a new car in the six months after the lottery win than nonparticipants living in non-winning codes. Further, we find that non-winning households who live next door to PCL winners are significantly more likely to purchase a car in the six months after the lottery than non-winning households located elsewhere, and that non-winning households living in postcodes where a large number of households won the PCL are more likely to start a major exterior home renovation in the six months since the lottery than non-winning households located elsewhere.

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In addition to the monetary prizes, one of the street-prize winners wins a new BMW. The BMW winner is chosen by randomly selecting one of the winning lottery tickets. BMW winners have the option of receiving the cash value of the BMW in lieu of the car itself. This however involves a substantial tax penalty, since the PCL authority pays the 25% lottery tax for winners who accept the BMW in kind, but not for those who choose the cash equivalent (about €25,000). Of course, winners also have the option of selling their new BMW, and incurring any associated transactions costs.

What I find interesting is that despite having a car that is, presumably, less expensive and less "nice" than a BMW, most winners of the BMW trade in that car for cash, even though it costs them more money to do so (in the form of a 25% tax and transaction costs), even though they could have chosen to take all of the money (instead of the car) without any penalty. Why is this? Are the BMWs too expensive to operate over time (e.g., gas, insurance, maintenance, etc.)? Are the BMWs more subject to theft? Or are the winners "bored" of the Beemer after the neighbors (and themselves) have been sufficiently impressed?

We do detect social effects of lottery winnings, but only for two goods: car consumption and exterior home renovations, both of which are likely to be easily, and repeatedly, visible to a household’s neighbors. While we observe a strong cross-sectional association between (non-lottery) income and self-reported happiness in our data, lottery winnings do not make households happier, nor do they make neighboring households less happy. Together, these results are consistent with a scenario in which (a) happiness is more linked to permanent than to short-term increases in income, and (b) at least in the short term, income comparisons with one’s residential neighbors do not affect happiness.

What simple models of consumer behavior might explain the social effects estimated in our data? While it is tempting to interpret our estimates as reflective of a psychological need to (be seen to be?) “keeping up with the van den Bergs”, we note that they could also be driven by other factors. For example, our results for home renovations are also consistent with a scenario where a simultaneous lottery win provides a focal point (and perhaps eases liquidity constraints) for voluntary contributions to the local public good of neighborhood (or even building) appearance. Social spillovers in car consumption in our data could be driven by information-sharing about cars and/or dealers..., or by something as simple as households passing money to immediate neighbors, who might be family members. Also, it is worth reemphasizing that our estimates do not distinguish ‘imitative’ consumption patterns (I buy a car because you buy one) from more general effects of neighbors’ incomes on a household’s consumption. Still, we do find that households’ consumption of visible, durable goods (and only such goods) are affected by genuinely exogenous shocks to their neighbors’ incomes. We find these effects intriguing and deserving of further study using lottery-based or other research designs.

I don't know. On the one hand, I agree that there are probably a lot of other factors that may be influencing the purchase behavior of the non-winning neighbors. On the other hand, I think there's a lot to be said for the idea of "keeping with the Jones" (or, as the authors of this study put it, "keeping up with the van den Bergs") as a psychological motivator.

HT: Economist's View