Where's the coverage?

This is exactly the kind of news that gets drowned out while the media freaks out about Chinese products.

Civil Liberties and False Positives

The Economist has a brief and lucid editorial on civil liberties. Quite unexpected from the bastion of rightist thought.

Migrant Statistics

Another excellent interactive graphic from NYTimes - this time about migrants by country, and the amount of money they send home.

Housing Prices in Major Cities

NYT has an interactive graphic that charts housing prices (both nominal and real) vs national averages.

LA Homicide Map

The LATimes has a site that maps out the homicides in the county. Data rich and interactive, it is fascinating. For example not only was I able to find out that there were three homicides in pasadena (well, northern pas to be exact) - I could find out there names and the details surrounding the crime. Macabre yet engrossing.

Debtor Nation

Meaty article in the Harvard mag that analyzes the US debt/deficit situation. It is, like most interesting problems, multivariate in nature and nobody really knows with any certainty what is going to happen in the future. But regardless, some very interesting points in the market - Why is China holding on to so many US T-notes? How are the current trade deficit and the housing price bubble related? What happens when foreign investors decide to withdraw their investment in the dollar? The article doesnt quite do justice to all these weighty questions - can someone quickly write a book with all (or some) of the answers?

Restting ARMs

Looks like there is going to be a world of hurt for mortgage borrowers in 2007 ...

Cerberus

A not too deep glance into the opaque world of private equity and Cerberus Capital.

The Two Chinas

ESPN, the unlikeliest of magazines, has a profile of China drawn around the theme of Olympics. It is a fairly engrossing travel narrative describing how a cross section of the country is changing in the new millenium.

Cowabunga!

The simpsons movie was good enough to get a rah-rah from The Economist. And deservedly so - it is full of wit, energy, and silliness that kept me hooked through the undergrad years. Go watch it on the big screen, man. And take some donuts.

Dr Ron Paul, the lone wolf

Profile of Ron Paul on NYTMag - will Dr Paul be to the 2008 race what Ross Perot was to 1996? I hope so.

Tshirt Democracy

NYTMag has a feature on Threadless, a tshirt site that sells user submitted designs selected by user voting.

Judicial Independence?

Turns out judicial candidates are allowed to raise campaign funds according to this article on the Economist. Interesting. So what really is the incentive to be impartial? That one ethics class that you took in lawschool?

Progress and ChartBloat

Think people are getting more informed as the arrow of time moves forward? Turns out the answer is that they are getting less informed. Here's the wired study.

Watch out for that graphic though - it sensationalizes the statistics. The metrics are mapped to the diameter of the circles and not the area. Makes the effect appear much more amplified than it really is. Someone needs to buy the reporter the Tufte book.

Mellow Terrorists

Funny beyond belief.

Smaller is Better

Gladwell strikes again and makes another strong case that he is one of the best analyst/writers in the country. In "Big and Bad" Malcolm takes on the SUV myth that bigger is safer. The article is peppered with quotes ("An elegant woman said that she needed her full sized-Lexus 470 to drive up over the curb and onto the lawns to park at parties in Beverly Hills"), anecdotes ("SUV buyers tend to be insecure, vain, self-centered, and frequently nervous about their marriage"), statistics ("the driver fatality rate humble camry is more than three times that in the mighty 4Runner), psychology research ("learned helpnessness") - and is a meaty and filling read. The basic gist is that SUVs are very bad at active safety, ie being nimble enough to avoid running into objets - and they tend to make drivers think that they are safe just by the virtue of being huge, and hence SUVers are less inclined to avoid collisions. The latter is a fallacy because safety standards for cars are much higher than those for trucks.

And incidentally, it praises the VW Jetta - "clearly audible engine, light and precise steering, short wheelbase - and so dwarfed by other cars on the road that it reminds an intelligent driver the necessity of driving safely and defensively". Quite a coincidence that last Sunday these exact features saved me from getting into a fender bender. I did a rolling stop manuever on a stop sign, and it turned out that it was not a four way stop and there was a minivan coming in from the right side. I slammed on the brake and swerved to the left and avoided a certain collision and patted myself on the back for my quick reaction time. Now I know that were I in a SUV - that would have been a certain crash. Suddenly I like my Jetta a lot more :D Danke, Wolfsburg!

Trade Policy: Goods vs Information

Good article by Cory Doctorow. The argument is that the US allowed cheap imports to flood the US market in exchange for developing countries promise to opt into the american IP laws. It is not clear (and I doubt it could be proven) whether that premise can be proven, or whether there was a conscious decision to go that route - but that is what happened in essence. Now the only option for US is to go whack-a-mole over companies in China and Russia that abuse the unenforceable IP laws. Good luck with that sisyphean task, old man Sam!

Farm Policy and Waistline

Sounds interesting - will read later.

Michael Lewis on the Subprime Mess

This article argues that the reckless borrower is as much to blame as the creditor. Lewis also points out that the real loser is the scrupulous subprime borrower who now cannot get a loan for his mortgage. Who is the winner in all this? In my opinion, it is the real estate agent who gets a guaranteed transaction cut, and the loan broker who pretty much gets paid regardless of how the loan turns out. It is a case of perverse incentives, where it is in the best interest of both of these parties to see the deal close - and no consequences if it goes sour later on. I for one, really hope that redfin succeeds in creating a new model for house purchases.

No signs of progress ...

Research from the Pew institute indicates that the internet and the 24 hour news channels arent really making us more informed.