I thought I'd write about a comment I made to Kurt yesterday, where I joked about research. How does a social scientist scholar come up with ideas to research? It helps that because I edit a journal I get exposed to dozens of different methods, and am pretty well known in my own work for three. One method I use is an event study (looking at changes to stock prices when an event of interest occurs).
With the journal, and on my own I spend 2-3 hours a day reading, not just journals, but newspapers, blogs, magazines, etc. I look for stuff where I am curious. For an event study, I look for an event that affected multiple companies (the event doesn't have to be the same day). For a rough cut estimate, look at the percent change in a firm's stock price and compare it to the percent change in an index (S&P 500 is commonly used); if there's a big gap it could be newsworthy.
Last summer Twitter sued the World Federation of Advertisers. Okay, people have published on lawsuits, negative market reaction when filed, positive when settled. But what happens if an organization to which a company is a member is sued? No one has done that yet (I looked). Bingo! Here's an idea to explore. It turns out the WFA didn't settle, but shut down GARM, which was the problem division responsible for the lawsuit. This gets better, because that is different.
Now I read articles about event studies on lawsuits--is there a gap? I thought there was (see above), and I am confirmed. But I read what theory each article uses, looking to see how I can build a different argument. I came up with one, where we add a 4th dimension to a theory featuring 3 dimensions. Cool, that's a contribution.
I then go to the Wharton Data set (our university subscribes, but you can do this in Yahoo finance, which I sometimes do). Wharton and Yahoo use a different formatting style so I have to prep the data. I do that five firms at a time, in case there is an issue (sometimes they include dividends, which gives two actions on a date, so I have to manually remove those).
I then prep a file with the firm names and dates (in the WFA analysis there are 109 firms in my sample). I start generally at around 15-20 firms, to see if there is any hope of anything. Sometimes there is zero results, time to kill it. With WFA, it's positive about 0.7 percent. Bingo! That means I have a main effect, there's a chance there's a story here!
Now I add additional explanatory variables, looking for addition hypotheses to test. In this case, I add 3 more. My results from the event study get fed into a regression model, where we look for "moderators"; variables that make the results better/(worse). If the overall explanatory power is better than 20% (in this model it was 27%, in my DEI Rollback article it is 41%), then I feel I have a good story to tell.
I start writing out each hypothesis, explaining why it will predict what I've already found. Remember, mentally I was testing it before the analysis, now I am documenting my thinking.
I then build the intro, add a boatload of refences, write up the results and conclusions. I then send it to a copyeditor, who is amused by my mistakes (I often edit as I go, but don't get the edit fully correct, such as changing verb tense, or singular to plural). But she knows me well enough she can figure out what I want to say. She also tells me if she likes the story, if it flows well or not. If she sees a problem I re-write it.
So that's how I come up with ideas for research. I am blessed, because I am curious, and see ideas to test when I read. Katie will tell you I am a natural born academic, because I never really shut off my thinking about research.
When I write birthday letters to friends with milestone birthdays (I almost typed millstone), I use this analogy.
Let's assume the earth is 4.5 billion years old (estimates are 4.4-4.6). There are 31,556,952 seconds in a year, depending on how one measures it (humor me here and accept it). If we divide 4.5 billion by 31,556,952 seconds we get 142.6 years. Which means each second in one year represents 142.6 years of life on earth. That means my grandmother who was born in 1899 is less than a second old. Jesus was born less than 15 seconds ago. The oldest pyramid is less than 33 seconds old. The oldest dinosaur (no, not Joe Biden) is the Nyasasaurus parringtoni, estimated at 243 million years old, would be less than 20 days old.
Of course, depending on their age, I remind them how little they have aged. For someone turning 80 this year. With rounding, they will be 29,220 days old. that means the day before their birthday to today they have aged 0.0034225% since yesterday, or they are still 99.9965775% the same as yesterday! 😃 BTW, did you know Bob Seger, who sang "Still the same" turns 80 this year?
I still recommend they go to Ivanhoes Ice Cream Parlor to celebrate.
I loved this take: "But in some ways, it exudes a mood of secular emptiness, where scientific knowledge is relayed as cold, hard fact, beyond scope and scale, without the wonder that holds some promise of spiritual interconnectedness."
Rational thought is only part of our being. Emotions aren't rational, yet they profoundly influence our interactions. Wonder is both emotional and evocative of the spiritual. To lose wonder and its natural companion - gratitude - is to lose our way.
Hubby and I have been watching the 2023 Netflix series Life on Our Planet, narrated by the incomparable Morgan Freeman. Perhaps it's due to Lent, but every episode has left me awestruck at the handiwork of the Creator.
That happens to me all the time, since I teach environmental science. There would be no terrestrial plants - and therefore, nothing that eats plants - without Cation-Exchange Capacity, for instance.
Fascinating stuff. Whenever I think about the size or age of the universe, and concepts like light years, I quickly become overwhelmed and mind boggled. But I love the way these folks developed a model to help put it in a reasonably understandable perspective for this simple mind.
The news this morning reports that the wolves introduced into Colorado have made it to Pitken County and killed a few calves. The kill was in an area with one of our favorite hikes. Kind of exciting. And a little, just a little scary for the hikes. I'd love to see one - from a good distance.
Physics - biology factoidal analysis. This is what we (me a failed one, alas but one for the last 55 years), do. We scale, a lot. I do it all the time. Kinda crazy.
There are 1,000 Earth-ages of "universe-seconds" in every single human body.
There are 10^17 seconds in our universe -- We won't go multiverse - but --
There are 10^27 molecules in every human
There are 10^10 "universe-seconds" - in each of us.
or about 16 billion "universe-years" in every person
So, the universe is both quite big and quite old. But compared to the number of molecules in every 1 of the 8 billion people - not so long -!
Good morning. The guessers guessed wrong yesterday, with afternoon temps dropping into the 40s. This morning the temp is 25 with a predicted high in the low 50s. We’ll see.
The mothership is reporting on European nations building up their defense capabilities in the wake of Trump’s pivoting toward Russia and away from Ukraine and NATO.
"European nations building up their defense capabilities ..."
Good. It was not sustainable to expect someone else to take responsibility for their defense. It was not reasonable to assume there would be no need for defense.
True, but I don't think that's a particularly strong factor. Even if they were all, "We love the United States," the cost in money and deployed American personnel was unsustainable.
I read an interesting story on the Heritage Foundation's annual report where they measure and rank countries by order of government intervention into people's daily life. In 2007, they determined that China actually ranked well below the United States on government intrusion into people's lives, so they stopped doing the report in 2008.
I'll testify to that. It's not like Western media says. It's all messed up in other interesting ways, but as far as day to day life, one sees all the good stuff...high speed rail, incredible expressway system, incredible new bridges everywhere, beautiful subways that go everywhere, electric vehicle chargers all over the place, new everything and everything works, essentially zero crime and totally safe to walk anywhere. I'm sure saying this will upset some folks.
The social scoring thing isn't a thing, even a teeny bit. It was totally misrepresented so outlandishly I don't even talk about it. The Western media descriptions were/are total outright lies and misrepresentations.
Surveillance, yep. Everywhere. Lots of it doesn't work, or if it does, nothing happens to people misbehaving because lots of people misbehave and nothing happens.
The surveillance repression industry is both growing and shrinking. No one cares. I don't. You do understand, don't you, that you're being tracked right now down to the inch by entities you don't know that are selling your information to other entities all over the globe that you don't know. You are aware of that, aren't you?
The privacy thing...Americans obsess on this thing that they don't seem to understand they're already in up to their nostrils. Interestingly, China law now provides citizens ownership of their data. They cannot be used like Americans are used by our tech overlords. People are taking charge of their own data. Yes, it's true.
Thanks Kurt! I needed to read this and you've confirmed my suspicions about us Americans being constantly spied on, and used, by the profit sector. I suspect it's only a matter of time before a lot of us finally have proof that many services we pay for, such as medical services, are screening our financial history and figuring out whether we are "worth" treating on a regular basis.
“Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshanna What’s Her Face is a must read.
Westerners freak out about the surveillance state here, which is insane, yet completely ignore the fact that they are just as surveilled on every level of their existence by our own tech overlords who use the information in every manner that we aren’t allowed to know.
The “good stuff” I saw yesterday were the ground squirrels and road runners that came within inches of me while golfing. We played a more rural course on an Indian reservation. Later it was the sunset at Sentinel Peak. We also saw two ghost bikes yesterday which tend to make BC very sad.
There are quite a few ghost bikes around Tucson metro, sadly. We have a great cycling community. And lots of bike paths made along the side of the road. But there are risks aplenty.
A. To my knowledge, and I don't keep up with much local news, rarely is the auto truck driver at fault. It's usually the bicyclist.
B. I draw this inference from the fact that there are very few manslaughter or criminal charges made against the driver. Very rare
C. Some cyclists are distracted. As as some pedestrians reading their phone.
D. Some nice cycling roads literally require you to cross a double line to maintain the 2 to 3 ft distance from the biker. Asked a couple of Sheriff friends...they also cross the double line. Kind of a necessary exception.
One of my HS friends, Yale, WVU MD, kinesiology; does the off season Tour de France with a group.
It's a sad but true reality that bikes really should follow the "rules of the road" used in seagoing travel, i.e., the bigger ship has right of way regardless of any other rule. I'm an avid cyclist. I would no more ride on a public road than I would shoot myself. Cars are bigger than me. I don't let them get near me.
In this neck of the woods, cyclists and drivers do hate each other and dispute ownership of the public way, but what they have in common is complete disregard for pedestrians. Cyclists: "Get off my sidewalk!" Motorists: "I don't care if you have the walk light to cross, I'm on the phone, and I didn't get my license in this state (or maybe anywhere) so I don't care about the rules of the road."
At this point I'm hoping for a breakthrough in camera and recognition technology, and suitable modifications in the laws, such that these people could be caught red-handed and dealt with.
Dayton has really invested in Bike paths, and they are not used often. The issue is cyclists assume they have the right-away over both pedestrians and cars. You'll see them go through a red light without slowing down. I saw one get plowed by a driver; wasn't pretty, but fortunately it happened just a few blocks from Miami Valley hospital. The cyclist entered the intersection the same time as the car, had had a green light for several seconds and was up to speed at the time. BLAM!
It’s true that cyclists are often the problem. I ride all sorts of obscure roads, alleys, bike paths, and anywhere I don’t have to interact with automobiles.
Thank you for a non-partisan excellent question...
EPA...Yeah, the environment is all messed up. Air quality is WAY better now than just a couple years ago. It's as good as many American cities. The government has allocated and is spending hundreds of billions (yea, 100's of billions) on environmental clean up. I've seen a lot of it. They're doing a good job. They have a lot more to do, but they're doing it.
USDA...Working on it. It's way better than it was just 10 years ago. In many ways, Chinese handle this stuff themselves. People are extremely aware of food quality and do their own research and buy from people they know. The food scene is entirely different here. There are still LOTS of small family farmers growing good food and they sell it in markets and on corners. There are old women selling organic vegetables on a corner of our neighborhood. I've been to their garden; it's big and it's for real. It's a whole different scene because so many people grew up on farms and understand food quality in ways that Americans do not. Sam's Club is a huge success because they source from good suppliers and they source China organic produce from all over the country. I like Sam's and trust Sam's and so do millions of Chinese. The atrocities of past years have gotten stomped on and regulatory agencies are doing a good job monitoring the new Big Ag operations.
OSHA...it's bad. Workers have minimal to nonexistent protections.
Consumer Protection...Depends on the arena. Which areas are you curious about?
Kurt, I'm always interested in the financial regulatory side of things, particularly in terms of consumer protection. How do the banks work over there?
Banking is both excellent and a freak show of craziness. It's getting hammered out. They're enacting good regulations to prevent predatory lending. There's an entire ghost banking environment that has roots going back a few thousand years that is the problem. There's an entire underground lending environment intermingled with the mob (yes, there's a couple organized crime mobs) that's getting rooted out. It's an ongoing fluid environment moving in the right direction.
I would not want to be in the general stock market, i.e., anything resembling an index fund. Specific stocks (BYD, JD, etc.) have seen huge gains and the medical equipment and pharmaceutical industries are poised to explode upward.
We keep cash in CD's paying 5% through the ICBC, a SOE bank. It's been fine.
You're welcome. Here ain't like there and to try to explain it usually gets the standard litany of why China is awful instead of trying to understand it. I'll keep it up as long as anyone is interested.
Thanks. Interesting. In some ways the society does not seem economically and therefore experientially - practical experience, smashed fingers, water running downhill, conflicts between government desires and the technology to make them work affordably - fragmented in the ways the US can be. Perhaps akin to the US back in the 50s, when folks were not so far off the farm and children were assessed individually on their ability to use sharp objects (for instance).
You mostly answered the consumer protection part. People trust the businesses they know first hand rather than relying on the government to approve.
I do wonder about medicine and automotives/machinery, developing new products and conducting safety assessments.
Is there any legal recourse, liability if the issue can't be handled locally?
I find myself thinking that people without much practical experience can get ahead of themselves, that beyond a certain point being proactive is counter productive. And, I think, too much proactivity is rooted in fear of aggressive legal action.
"I do wonder about medicine and automotives/machinery, developing new products and conducting safety assessments."
You are going to be amazed in a couple years. I said this a few years ago, but expect China to dominate in medical and scientific research, their autos are already so much better than America's it's frightening, new high technology products are sprouting all over the place and their safety assessment industry/profession is becoming highly advanced.
All the stuff Americans think we're good at, expect the Chinese to easily match us and surpass us by a long shot. You ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Legal recourse... the courts...you don't want to be in a Chinese court. There is a notable increase in people with liability and/or civil complaints getting satisfaction, i.e., things are getting better. People are demanding it, and it's happening. That's something Americans refuses to accept. It's getting better because it has to.
There are still all sorts of huge problems, but I'm watching a society educating itself and making very good decisions about what to do. Anyone that spends any time here and studies the society says the same thing.
I think you have found the "nut" of this...education. The Chinese, along with most Asian cultures, have always had deep respect for education. Of course, that got a bit warped with the Maoist revolution, but in the long line of history, it was always expected that people would educate themselves and their children to the highest level possible.
That contrasts deeply with the US, where we have a long history of
only promoting education is service of maintaining the status quo, creating productive employees, or promoting a religion. Alongside that we also had the usual self serving whiners who either reject education themselves or want to deny it to others. I listen to the whiners here now demanding that we "return" to their perceived paradise of the 1950's with the factory jobs that seemingly required only minimal education. Meanwhile, the Chinese seem to be embracing new technology and educating themselves to produce it better than anyone else.
Thanks. You are so right. You want to know what group probably has the most statues and mini-shrines in parks all over China? Educators and teachers. Seriously.
Per your description of returning to the high wage paradise of the 1950's...that was the most extreme economic anomaly in history and it got enshrined in the public mind as "normal" and how the world should be ordered. A fluke upon which many think we should structure our society.
The auto factories in China are mostly robotic; you hardly see humans other than a few techs monitoring the machinery.
Per the Uighurs...another mischaracterization. There's lots of Uighurs all over the place that are not being bothered even a teeny bit, with a lot of them in Xinjiang wishing the radicals would cool it so everyone could get back to work without a bunch of PLA enacting martial law.
I know some Uighurs in our 'hood...they run a noodle shop. They left Xinjiang because of the radicals. The beat down is upon dissenters, secessionists, and all those tribes that have been fighting the same fight for 5000 years. The beat down cranked up to 11 after the thing in Kunming when a bunch of radical Uighurs chopped up a couple dozen Kunming-ites with machetes and critically injured several others, declared Xinjiang as their own, then did some other dastardly stuff to innocent civilians in other provinces. Of course, that's never mentioned in Western media, and the idea there is deep historical context is utterly ignored.
Folks might as well get used to the idea that Xinjiang is China, and that there won't be any land acknowledgements before Commie Party functions. If folks don't want to get used to that idea, I suggest we give America back to our indigenous tribes, but not until they promise to repeat the process and give it back to whoever was here before them.
I'm not saying the situation is good. I am saying it's like every other Western media description of China...completely lacking in context and of course we're the good guys and they're the enemy. Except, I have 4 words for folks that disagree.....Pine Ridge South Dakota.
There was reporting about Uighurs in the mothership that painted a different picture. And I can point that out without getting within hundreds if miles of the woke practice of “land acknowledgements”.
And really, let’s not get into whataboutism. If you have to go back to the 19th century I could go back no further than the 20th century to talk about the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution. And then there’s Tiananmen Square, less than 40 years ago.
I don’t doubt the picture we get in the West is incomplete. But what I get from your reports, added to Western media reporting, is that the PR Chinese Communists have mastered the art of totalitarianism with a very light touch, much more competent absolute rulers than the heavy-handed Soviets. It may take a lot to get their attention, but God help you if you do.
I can agree to understanding you are insistent in making China into what you want it to be.
Whataboutism isn't irrelevant. The topics you pick on are, like everything else, so entirely dependent on entirely a different history that really does go back 3000+ years, entirely different social structure, and...never mind. It is impossible to help anyone understand when they are committed to not understanding.
When we adopted from Ukraine, we lived in Cebactopol, less than a mile from the huge Russian Naval base on the black sea. Not far from us was a community of Tatars. They were interesting folk. They wanted to be left alone. They didn't care who governed them, they just wanted not to be harassed, and to do their own thing. They had a produce stand, and we bought fresh bread, tomatoes, and cucumbers from them. They were always polite to us, but we never discussed politics with them. The Russians have promised to mostly leave the Tatars there alone, so they're fine with it.
It's not like they want to be a separate country, they just run their own lives their way. Not unlike the Amish in the US. A little accommodation and a little "looking away" goes a long way in making it work.
Which applies to the Uighur situation in China. There's a lot of Uighurs that are fine with what the government has brought...roads, energy, housing, modern infrastructure...and just want to live their lives and bring in hordes of tourists so they can make money.
Xinjiang China has been fighting with the Uighurs, and before them the Steppe tribes, and before that the Xiongnu, and in between those tribes, other minority tribes from the northern steppe not to mention the Kahn's from various Mongol tribes.
I'm watching in fine detail how American foreign policy works, and I find it very disturbing.
I wholeheartedly believe your description. But in a big complicated country of over a billion people, experiences will diverge by a very wide margin. Especially what you say about low crime and high orderliness ring true.
When speaking up and dissenting come not only with personal costs but threats to ones friends and extended family, most will not speak up. Suppression does indeed work. When a government seeks to suppress ethno-cultural minorities and cover up its work, this may indeed succeed. As the saying goes, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
But the same feeling was there during the original “tea party” protests, before they were captured by DC-based organizers. The Obama administration and its press minions made it clear they intended to “expose” protesters with the implication they could be de-platformed from life in general, extra long IRS audits, etc.
Fair enough. I don't think it would be too difficult to find examples of this on both sides of the political spectrum. The "cancel culture" movement on the left certainly did its best to suppress certain ideas.
However, when quality politicians like Mike Gallagher are driven from office by death threats and a swotting incident and nothing is done about it, there's a definite problem.
The actions of the current administration are taking this to a whole new level though.
> when quality politicians like Mike Gallagher are driven from office by death threats and a swotting incident and nothing is done about it <
Exactly right! This sort of behavior, no matter who is/was behind it, should never be tolerated. They should have been coming down on people who did such things like a ton of bricks. It is absolutely not a legitimate form of democratic participation. No matter if the official on the receiving end is AOC or MTG or whoever…
I've thought for a while now that it "should" be an easy thing for someone to put forward a bi-partisan bill that significantly raises the penalties for making anonymous death threats or swotting someone and compels the phone and internet companies to implement technologies that make it easier to trace these people.
The Gallagher incident should have been a catalyst for this. Who knows what it would take now?
America is built on the idea that shaking your fist at authority and kicking doors to effect change is the cool thing.
Try to imagine a society where that is NOT the cool thing. Try to imagine someplace that is structured on entirely different modes of thinking. There are actually pathways and means for expressing dissatisfaction and making change but they take a long time when there are a billion people to consider. Time isn't something Americans understand.
Everyone reads idiotic ham handed hot takes on a place they have not studied even a teeny bit. If folks had even the teeniest inkling of the complicated nature of remaking the world, they'd not say silly stuff. They'd ask questions.
Lucy asked a very excellent question. I'm glad there are folks in here that understand how to do that.
> Everyone reads idiotic ham handed hot takes on a place they have not studied even a teeny bit. <
That’s a bit unfair. People can be curious about the place and come to rely on what’s touted as the conventional wisdom about it to the point they can recite the CW like a PEZ dispenser for conventional takes.
I can understand your frustration with folks reciting the CW back to you over and over ad nauseam. But it isn’t necessary to assume lack of curiosity.
You make a strong and compelling case for alternative views to the CW and provide reasons to be skeptical of the CW’s proponents. It makes logical sense anyway: experts can become wedded to groupthink and building careers on insisting their views are the only permissible ones. That’s how faculty pecking orders work, how sinecures are defended often enough.
What I’m bringing up isn’t intended as “You must believe me because the CW that I’ve read is infallible”. I, of course, know nothing of the sort. Your perspective is invaluable to me because I’m curious about the place and its people, and your ground-level view is about as authentic as they come.
Just saw this… Thanks. I just get tired of folks ideas based on politically (read economnically) derived opinions. It’s not hard to find awful things about any country, and if one wants to get historical, it gets worse. 3rd paragraph is so right. experts who build careers on hot takes who insist their’s is the only right one.
I enjoy reading your China insights. Doesn’t make me wanna live there though. 😛 Do you think the Chinese would prefer their style of life or the westerner’s style? In other words, would the Chinese prefer to live here or there?
You’d hate it here. You’d like certain things in specific locations a lot, but generally, day to day life, you wouldn’t like it.
Per your main question…We have this conversation a lot lately. A few years ago, it was the dream of every middle class individual to live in America. Not anymore. Not even a teeny bit. Recently, we stayed with good friends in Shenzhen that live in Mission Hills, Shenzhen. Google it. They’re upper middle class and have an extremely lovely life and have absolutely no desire to go to America. They’re upset that things are so messed up in America and wish it wasn’t so.
I’ve asked this of lots of people lately. No one wants to go to America. Youngsters want to go to experience someplace absent repression, but it’s not America they want, they want an absence of repression and are going to Japan, Thailand, America if they can get a visa, various European countries, etc. My middle class friends in Bangkok…asked them too. No desire to go to America. None of their friends want to go. The general view is that America used to be nice, but now it’s not.
I thought I'd write about a comment I made to Kurt yesterday, where I joked about research. How does a social scientist scholar come up with ideas to research? It helps that because I edit a journal I get exposed to dozens of different methods, and am pretty well known in my own work for three. One method I use is an event study (looking at changes to stock prices when an event of interest occurs).
With the journal, and on my own I spend 2-3 hours a day reading, not just journals, but newspapers, blogs, magazines, etc. I look for stuff where I am curious. For an event study, I look for an event that affected multiple companies (the event doesn't have to be the same day). For a rough cut estimate, look at the percent change in a firm's stock price and compare it to the percent change in an index (S&P 500 is commonly used); if there's a big gap it could be newsworthy.
Last summer Twitter sued the World Federation of Advertisers. Okay, people have published on lawsuits, negative market reaction when filed, positive when settled. But what happens if an organization to which a company is a member is sued? No one has done that yet (I looked). Bingo! Here's an idea to explore. It turns out the WFA didn't settle, but shut down GARM, which was the problem division responsible for the lawsuit. This gets better, because that is different.
Now I read articles about event studies on lawsuits--is there a gap? I thought there was (see above), and I am confirmed. But I read what theory each article uses, looking to see how I can build a different argument. I came up with one, where we add a 4th dimension to a theory featuring 3 dimensions. Cool, that's a contribution.
I then go to the Wharton Data set (our university subscribes, but you can do this in Yahoo finance, which I sometimes do). Wharton and Yahoo use a different formatting style so I have to prep the data. I do that five firms at a time, in case there is an issue (sometimes they include dividends, which gives two actions on a date, so I have to manually remove those).
I then prep a file with the firm names and dates (in the WFA analysis there are 109 firms in my sample). I start generally at around 15-20 firms, to see if there is any hope of anything. Sometimes there is zero results, time to kill it. With WFA, it's positive about 0.7 percent. Bingo! That means I have a main effect, there's a chance there's a story here!
Now I add additional explanatory variables, looking for addition hypotheses to test. In this case, I add 3 more. My results from the event study get fed into a regression model, where we look for "moderators"; variables that make the results better/(worse). If the overall explanatory power is better than 20% (in this model it was 27%, in my DEI Rollback article it is 41%), then I feel I have a good story to tell.
I start writing out each hypothesis, explaining why it will predict what I've already found. Remember, mentally I was testing it before the analysis, now I am documenting my thinking.
I then build the intro, add a boatload of refences, write up the results and conclusions. I then send it to a copyeditor, who is amused by my mistakes (I often edit as I go, but don't get the edit fully correct, such as changing verb tense, or singular to plural). But she knows me well enough she can figure out what I want to say. She also tells me if she likes the story, if it flows well or not. If she sees a problem I re-write it.
So that's how I come up with ideas for research. I am blessed, because I am curious, and see ideas to test when I read. Katie will tell you I am a natural born academic, because I never really shut off my thinking about research.
When I write birthday letters to friends with milestone birthdays (I almost typed millstone), I use this analogy.
Let's assume the earth is 4.5 billion years old (estimates are 4.4-4.6). There are 31,556,952 seconds in a year, depending on how one measures it (humor me here and accept it). If we divide 4.5 billion by 31,556,952 seconds we get 142.6 years. Which means each second in one year represents 142.6 years of life on earth. That means my grandmother who was born in 1899 is less than a second old. Jesus was born less than 15 seconds ago. The oldest pyramid is less than 33 seconds old. The oldest dinosaur (no, not Joe Biden) is the Nyasasaurus parringtoni, estimated at 243 million years old, would be less than 20 days old.
Of course, depending on their age, I remind them how little they have aged. For someone turning 80 this year. With rounding, they will be 29,220 days old. that means the day before their birthday to today they have aged 0.0034225% since yesterday, or they are still 99.9965775% the same as yesterday! 😃 BTW, did you know Bob Seger, who sang "Still the same" turns 80 this year?
I still recommend they go to Ivanhoes Ice Cream Parlor to celebrate.
Ummm, did this fully out me as a nerd?
I loved this take: "But in some ways, it exudes a mood of secular emptiness, where scientific knowledge is relayed as cold, hard fact, beyond scope and scale, without the wonder that holds some promise of spiritual interconnectedness."
Rational thought is only part of our being. Emotions aren't rational, yet they profoundly influence our interactions. Wonder is both emotional and evocative of the spiritual. To lose wonder and its natural companion - gratitude - is to lose our way.
I'm listening to an audiobook read by a British person. The reader says "sixpence" occasionally, and it sounds like "sex-pants."
Hubby and I have been watching the 2023 Netflix series Life on Our Planet, narrated by the incomparable Morgan Freeman. Perhaps it's due to Lent, but every episode has left me awestruck at the handiwork of the Creator.
That happens to me all the time, since I teach environmental science. There would be no terrestrial plants - and therefore, nothing that eats plants - without Cation-Exchange Capacity, for instance.
Fascinating stuff. Whenever I think about the size or age of the universe, and concepts like light years, I quickly become overwhelmed and mind boggled. But I love the way these folks developed a model to help put it in a reasonably understandable perspective for this simple mind.
The news this morning reports that the wolves introduced into Colorado have made it to Pitken County and killed a few calves. The kill was in an area with one of our favorite hikes. Kind of exciting. And a little, just a little scary for the hikes. I'd love to see one - from a good distance.
https://www.summitdaily.com/news/pitkin-county-sees-first-wolf-depredation-since-reintroduction
Physics - biology factoidal analysis. This is what we (me a failed one, alas but one for the last 55 years), do. We scale, a lot. I do it all the time. Kinda crazy.
There are 1,000 Earth-ages of "universe-seconds" in every single human body.
There are 10^17 seconds in our universe -- We won't go multiverse - but --
There are 10^27 molecules in every human
There are 10^10 "universe-seconds" - in each of us.
or about 16 billion "universe-years" in every person
So, the universe is both quite big and quite old. But compared to the number of molecules in every 1 of the 8 billion people - not so long -!
:)
Happy Friday
The dermatologist said to come back in a year. 62 is the forecast high today.
But what is the cosmologist's forecast today ? :)
Everything exactly the same as it has been for the last billion years?
probably not so :)
Good morning. The guessers guessed wrong yesterday, with afternoon temps dropping into the 40s. This morning the temp is 25 with a predicted high in the low 50s. We’ll see.
The mothership is reporting on European nations building up their defense capabilities in the wake of Trump’s pivoting toward Russia and away from Ukraine and NATO.
"European nations building up their defense capabilities ..."
Good. It was not sustainable to expect someone else to take responsibility for their defense. It was not reasonable to assume there would be no need for defense.
It was also not reasonable to count on us for so much, while criticizing us at every opportunity. We have enough of those people living here among us.
tbf, it was fun to call the French 'Cheese Swilling Surrender Monkeys' (a line from The Simpsons). Did we really mean it? naaaahhhh
"Going to war without the French is like going hunting without your accordion."
True, but I don't think that's a particularly strong factor. Even if they were all, "We love the United States," the cost in money and deployed American personnel was unsustainable.
Wuhan went Springtime...26ºC and sunshine.
I read an interesting story on the Heritage Foundation's annual report where they measure and rank countries by order of government intervention into people's daily life. In 2007, they determined that China actually ranked well below the United States on government intrusion into people's lives, so they stopped doing the report in 2008.
I'll testify to that. It's not like Western media says. It's all messed up in other interesting ways, but as far as day to day life, one sees all the good stuff...high speed rail, incredible expressway system, incredible new bridges everywhere, beautiful subways that go everywhere, electric vehicle chargers all over the place, new everything and everything works, essentially zero crime and totally safe to walk anywhere. I'm sure saying this will upset some folks.
I dunno. Social scoring and omnipresent surveillance seem pretty intrusive.
The social scoring thing isn't a thing, even a teeny bit. It was totally misrepresented so outlandishly I don't even talk about it. The Western media descriptions were/are total outright lies and misrepresentations.
Surveillance, yep. Everywhere. Lots of it doesn't work, or if it does, nothing happens to people misbehaving because lots of people misbehave and nothing happens.
The surveillance repression industry is both growing and shrinking. No one cares. I don't. You do understand, don't you, that you're being tracked right now down to the inch by entities you don't know that are selling your information to other entities all over the globe that you don't know. You are aware of that, aren't you?
The privacy thing...Americans obsess on this thing that they don't seem to understand they're already in up to their nostrils. Interestingly, China law now provides citizens ownership of their data. They cannot be used like Americans are used by our tech overlords. People are taking charge of their own data. Yes, it's true.
Thanks Kurt! I needed to read this and you've confirmed my suspicions about us Americans being constantly spied on, and used, by the profit sector. I suspect it's only a matter of time before a lot of us finally have proof that many services we pay for, such as medical services, are screening our financial history and figuring out whether we are "worth" treating on a regular basis.
“Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshanna What’s Her Face is a must read.
Westerners freak out about the surveillance state here, which is insane, yet completely ignore the fact that they are just as surveilled on every level of their existence by our own tech overlords who use the information in every manner that we aren’t allowed to know.
The “good stuff” I saw yesterday were the ground squirrels and road runners that came within inches of me while golfing. We played a more rural course on an Indian reservation. Later it was the sunset at Sentinel Peak. We also saw two ghost bikes yesterday which tend to make BC very sad.
There are quite a few ghost bikes around Tucson metro, sadly. We have a great cycling community. And lots of bike paths made along the side of the road. But there are risks aplenty.
A. To my knowledge, and I don't keep up with much local news, rarely is the auto truck driver at fault. It's usually the bicyclist.
B. I draw this inference from the fact that there are very few manslaughter or criminal charges made against the driver. Very rare
C. Some cyclists are distracted. As as some pedestrians reading their phone.
D. Some nice cycling roads literally require you to cross a double line to maintain the 2 to 3 ft distance from the biker. Asked a couple of Sheriff friends...they also cross the double line. Kind of a necessary exception.
One of my HS friends, Yale, WVU MD, kinesiology; does the off season Tour de France with a group.
A 20 yo female drunk driver going the wrong way killed the Sentinel Peak bicyclist and only got 8.5 years. 😡
It should be much more when drunk. 😡
It's a sad but true reality that bikes really should follow the "rules of the road" used in seagoing travel, i.e., the bigger ship has right of way regardless of any other rule. I'm an avid cyclist. I would no more ride on a public road than I would shoot myself. Cars are bigger than me. I don't let them get near me.
We still do a lot of road biking. CO/UT trip in May. I do have a healthy dose of fear when I ride. I probably only have a few more years in me.
In this neck of the woods, cyclists and drivers do hate each other and dispute ownership of the public way, but what they have in common is complete disregard for pedestrians. Cyclists: "Get off my sidewalk!" Motorists: "I don't care if you have the walk light to cross, I'm on the phone, and I didn't get my license in this state (or maybe anywhere) so I don't care about the rules of the road."
At this point I'm hoping for a breakthrough in camera and recognition technology, and suitable modifications in the laws, such that these people could be caught red-handed and dealt with.
You are absolutely correct.
Dayton has really invested in Bike paths, and they are not used often. The issue is cyclists assume they have the right-away over both pedestrians and cars. You'll see them go through a red light without slowing down. I saw one get plowed by a driver; wasn't pretty, but fortunately it happened just a few blocks from Miami Valley hospital. The cyclist entered the intersection the same time as the car, had had a green light for several seconds and was up to speed at the time. BLAM!
It’s true that cyclists are often the problem. I ride all sorts of obscure roads, alleys, bike paths, and anywhere I don’t have to interact with automobiles.
https://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/more-changes-are-coming-to-a-mountain-in-the-next-few-months
There's a lot to think about here. The presence, history, and motivation of "do-gooders" comes to mind.
How do they deal with things handled by EPA, USDA, OSHA for instance? Consumer protection stuff?
Thank you for a non-partisan excellent question...
EPA...Yeah, the environment is all messed up. Air quality is WAY better now than just a couple years ago. It's as good as many American cities. The government has allocated and is spending hundreds of billions (yea, 100's of billions) on environmental clean up. I've seen a lot of it. They're doing a good job. They have a lot more to do, but they're doing it.
USDA...Working on it. It's way better than it was just 10 years ago. In many ways, Chinese handle this stuff themselves. People are extremely aware of food quality and do their own research and buy from people they know. The food scene is entirely different here. There are still LOTS of small family farmers growing good food and they sell it in markets and on corners. There are old women selling organic vegetables on a corner of our neighborhood. I've been to their garden; it's big and it's for real. It's a whole different scene because so many people grew up on farms and understand food quality in ways that Americans do not. Sam's Club is a huge success because they source from good suppliers and they source China organic produce from all over the country. I like Sam's and trust Sam's and so do millions of Chinese. The atrocities of past years have gotten stomped on and regulatory agencies are doing a good job monitoring the new Big Ag operations.
OSHA...it's bad. Workers have minimal to nonexistent protections.
Consumer Protection...Depends on the arena. Which areas are you curious about?
Kurt, I'm always interested in the financial regulatory side of things, particularly in terms of consumer protection. How do the banks work over there?
Banking is both excellent and a freak show of craziness. It's getting hammered out. They're enacting good regulations to prevent predatory lending. There's an entire ghost banking environment that has roots going back a few thousand years that is the problem. There's an entire underground lending environment intermingled with the mob (yes, there's a couple organized crime mobs) that's getting rooted out. It's an ongoing fluid environment moving in the right direction.
I would not want to be in the general stock market, i.e., anything resembling an index fund. Specific stocks (BYD, JD, etc.) have seen huge gains and the medical equipment and pharmaceutical industries are poised to explode upward.
We keep cash in CD's paying 5% through the ICBC, a SOE bank. It's been fine.
I always enjoy your takes on what goes on in China. Thanks and keep them coming.
You're welcome. Here ain't like there and to try to explain it usually gets the standard litany of why China is awful instead of trying to understand it. I'll keep it up as long as anyone is interested.
Thanks. Interesting. In some ways the society does not seem economically and therefore experientially - practical experience, smashed fingers, water running downhill, conflicts between government desires and the technology to make them work affordably - fragmented in the ways the US can be. Perhaps akin to the US back in the 50s, when folks were not so far off the farm and children were assessed individually on their ability to use sharp objects (for instance).
You mostly answered the consumer protection part. People trust the businesses they know first hand rather than relying on the government to approve.
I do wonder about medicine and automotives/machinery, developing new products and conducting safety assessments.
Is there any legal recourse, liability if the issue can't be handled locally?
I find myself thinking that people without much practical experience can get ahead of themselves, that beyond a certain point being proactive is counter productive. And, I think, too much proactivity is rooted in fear of aggressive legal action.
"I do wonder about medicine and automotives/machinery, developing new products and conducting safety assessments."
You are going to be amazed in a couple years. I said this a few years ago, but expect China to dominate in medical and scientific research, their autos are already so much better than America's it's frightening, new high technology products are sprouting all over the place and their safety assessment industry/profession is becoming highly advanced.
All the stuff Americans think we're good at, expect the Chinese to easily match us and surpass us by a long shot. You ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Legal recourse... the courts...you don't want to be in a Chinese court. There is a notable increase in people with liability and/or civil complaints getting satisfaction, i.e., things are getting better. People are demanding it, and it's happening. That's something Americans refuses to accept. It's getting better because it has to.
There are still all sorts of huge problems, but I'm watching a society educating itself and making very good decisions about what to do. Anyone that spends any time here and studies the society says the same thing.
I think you have found the "nut" of this...education. The Chinese, along with most Asian cultures, have always had deep respect for education. Of course, that got a bit warped with the Maoist revolution, but in the long line of history, it was always expected that people would educate themselves and their children to the highest level possible.
That contrasts deeply with the US, where we have a long history of
only promoting education is service of maintaining the status quo, creating productive employees, or promoting a religion. Alongside that we also had the usual self serving whiners who either reject education themselves or want to deny it to others. I listen to the whiners here now demanding that we "return" to their perceived paradise of the 1950's with the factory jobs that seemingly required only minimal education. Meanwhile, the Chinese seem to be embracing new technology and educating themselves to produce it better than anyone else.
Thanks. You are so right. You want to know what group probably has the most statues and mini-shrines in parks all over China? Educators and teachers. Seriously.
Per your description of returning to the high wage paradise of the 1950's...that was the most extreme economic anomaly in history and it got enshrined in the public mind as "normal" and how the world should be ordered. A fluke upon which many think we should structure our society.
The auto factories in China are mostly robotic; you hardly see humans other than a few techs monitoring the machinery.
I appreciate the nuance without forgetting about people like Jimmy Lai, the Uighurs, underground Catholic and Protestant churches, and so on.
Per the Uighurs...another mischaracterization. There's lots of Uighurs all over the place that are not being bothered even a teeny bit, with a lot of them in Xinjiang wishing the radicals would cool it so everyone could get back to work without a bunch of PLA enacting martial law.
I know some Uighurs in our 'hood...they run a noodle shop. They left Xinjiang because of the radicals. The beat down is upon dissenters, secessionists, and all those tribes that have been fighting the same fight for 5000 years. The beat down cranked up to 11 after the thing in Kunming when a bunch of radical Uighurs chopped up a couple dozen Kunming-ites with machetes and critically injured several others, declared Xinjiang as their own, then did some other dastardly stuff to innocent civilians in other provinces. Of course, that's never mentioned in Western media, and the idea there is deep historical context is utterly ignored.
Folks might as well get used to the idea that Xinjiang is China, and that there won't be any land acknowledgements before Commie Party functions. If folks don't want to get used to that idea, I suggest we give America back to our indigenous tribes, but not until they promise to repeat the process and give it back to whoever was here before them.
I'm not saying the situation is good. I am saying it's like every other Western media description of China...completely lacking in context and of course we're the good guys and they're the enemy. Except, I have 4 words for folks that disagree.....Pine Ridge South Dakota.
Kurt, that last sentence seems to be the classic case of one finger pointed at your target and three backatchya.
Sure, if you want to see it that way. I don't understand what you're trying to say though.
There was reporting about Uighurs in the mothership that painted a different picture. And I can point that out without getting within hundreds if miles of the woke practice of “land acknowledgements”.
And really, let’s not get into whataboutism. If you have to go back to the 19th century I could go back no further than the 20th century to talk about the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution. And then there’s Tiananmen Square, less than 40 years ago.
I don’t doubt the picture we get in the West is incomplete. But what I get from your reports, added to Western media reporting, is that the PR Chinese Communists have mastered the art of totalitarianism with a very light touch, much more competent absolute rulers than the heavy-handed Soviets. It may take a lot to get their attention, but God help you if you do.
I think we can agree to disagree over this.
I can agree to understanding you are insistent in making China into what you want it to be.
Whataboutism isn't irrelevant. The topics you pick on are, like everything else, so entirely dependent on entirely a different history that really does go back 3000+ years, entirely different social structure, and...never mind. It is impossible to help anyone understand when they are committed to not understanding.
When we adopted from Ukraine, we lived in Cebactopol, less than a mile from the huge Russian Naval base on the black sea. Not far from us was a community of Tatars. They were interesting folk. They wanted to be left alone. They didn't care who governed them, they just wanted not to be harassed, and to do their own thing. They had a produce stand, and we bought fresh bread, tomatoes, and cucumbers from them. They were always polite to us, but we never discussed politics with them. The Russians have promised to mostly leave the Tatars there alone, so they're fine with it.
It's not like they want to be a separate country, they just run their own lives their way. Not unlike the Amish in the US. A little accommodation and a little "looking away" goes a long way in making it work.
Which applies to the Uighur situation in China. There's a lot of Uighurs that are fine with what the government has brought...roads, energy, housing, modern infrastructure...and just want to live their lives and bring in hordes of tourists so they can make money.
Xinjiang China has been fighting with the Uighurs, and before them the Steppe tribes, and before that the Xiongnu, and in between those tribes, other minority tribes from the northern steppe not to mention the Kahn's from various Mongol tribes.
I'm watching in fine detail how American foreign policy works, and I find it very disturbing.
I wholeheartedly believe your description. But in a big complicated country of over a billion people, experiences will diverge by a very wide margin. Especially what you say about low crime and high orderliness ring true.
When speaking up and dissenting come not only with personal costs but threats to ones friends and extended family, most will not speak up. Suppression does indeed work. When a government seeks to suppress ethno-cultural minorities and cover up its work, this may indeed succeed. As the saying goes, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Your second paragraph describes the current version of the US.
I tend to agree.
But the same feeling was there during the original “tea party” protests, before they were captured by DC-based organizers. The Obama administration and its press minions made it clear they intended to “expose” protesters with the implication they could be de-platformed from life in general, extra long IRS audits, etc.
Fair enough. I don't think it would be too difficult to find examples of this on both sides of the political spectrum. The "cancel culture" movement on the left certainly did its best to suppress certain ideas.
However, when quality politicians like Mike Gallagher are driven from office by death threats and a swotting incident and nothing is done about it, there's a definite problem.
The actions of the current administration are taking this to a whole new level though.
> when quality politicians like Mike Gallagher are driven from office by death threats and a swotting incident and nothing is done about it <
Exactly right! This sort of behavior, no matter who is/was behind it, should never be tolerated. They should have been coming down on people who did such things like a ton of bricks. It is absolutely not a legitimate form of democratic participation. No matter if the official on the receiving end is AOC or MTG or whoever…
I've thought for a while now that it "should" be an easy thing for someone to put forward a bi-partisan bill that significantly raises the penalties for making anonymous death threats or swotting someone and compels the phone and internet companies to implement technologies that make it easier to trace these people.
The Gallagher incident should have been a catalyst for this. Who knows what it would take now?
America is built on the idea that shaking your fist at authority and kicking doors to effect change is the cool thing.
Try to imagine a society where that is NOT the cool thing. Try to imagine someplace that is structured on entirely different modes of thinking. There are actually pathways and means for expressing dissatisfaction and making change but they take a long time when there are a billion people to consider. Time isn't something Americans understand.
Everyone reads idiotic ham handed hot takes on a place they have not studied even a teeny bit. If folks had even the teeniest inkling of the complicated nature of remaking the world, they'd not say silly stuff. They'd ask questions.
Lucy asked a very excellent question. I'm glad there are folks in here that understand how to do that.
> Everyone reads idiotic ham handed hot takes on a place they have not studied even a teeny bit. <
That’s a bit unfair. People can be curious about the place and come to rely on what’s touted as the conventional wisdom about it to the point they can recite the CW like a PEZ dispenser for conventional takes.
I can understand your frustration with folks reciting the CW back to you over and over ad nauseam. But it isn’t necessary to assume lack of curiosity.
You make a strong and compelling case for alternative views to the CW and provide reasons to be skeptical of the CW’s proponents. It makes logical sense anyway: experts can become wedded to groupthink and building careers on insisting their views are the only permissible ones. That’s how faculty pecking orders work, how sinecures are defended often enough.
What I’m bringing up isn’t intended as “You must believe me because the CW that I’ve read is infallible”. I, of course, know nothing of the sort. Your perspective is invaluable to me because I’m curious about the place and its people, and your ground-level view is about as authentic as they come.
Just saw this… Thanks. I just get tired of folks ideas based on politically (read economnically) derived opinions. It’s not hard to find awful things about any country, and if one wants to get historical, it gets worse. 3rd paragraph is so right. experts who build careers on hot takes who insist their’s is the only right one.
I enjoy reading your China insights. Doesn’t make me wanna live there though. 😛 Do you think the Chinese would prefer their style of life or the westerner’s style? In other words, would the Chinese prefer to live here or there?
Another excellent question…Thank you.
You’d hate it here. You’d like certain things in specific locations a lot, but generally, day to day life, you wouldn’t like it.
Per your main question…We have this conversation a lot lately. A few years ago, it was the dream of every middle class individual to live in America. Not anymore. Not even a teeny bit. Recently, we stayed with good friends in Shenzhen that live in Mission Hills, Shenzhen. Google it. They’re upper middle class and have an extremely lovely life and have absolutely no desire to go to America. They’re upset that things are so messed up in America and wish it wasn’t so.
I’ve asked this of lots of people lately. No one wants to go to America. Youngsters want to go to experience someplace absent repression, but it’s not America they want, they want an absence of repression and are going to Japan, Thailand, America if they can get a visa, various European countries, etc. My middle class friends in Bangkok…asked them too. No desire to go to America. None of their friends want to go. The general view is that America used to be nice, but now it’s not.
Europe is a lovely place to live...if you are wealthy. Working class is less lovely. I'd rather be working class in the US than in Italy.
"If folks had even the teeniest inkling of the complicated nature of remaking the world, they'd not say silly stuff."
I do like that. That kind of thinking could save us all a lot of time and trouble in our domestic politics.
And interesting commentary about life in China.
Thanks. I appreciate your not being challenged by simple observations. Lots of folks can't handle it. I'm glad you can.
Good morning. I'm going to the dermatologist in a few minutes. They nicely open at 8:00 a.m. and are located nearby.
John Mellencamp’s daughter Teddi is dying from melanoma. She’s only 42 with 3 young children. Get those skin checks!
That's very sad. Drama Queen had a melanoma a couple of years ago.
My dad did too…but more like 30 years ago.
DQ was only 23 at the time.
That’s very young for it.
Yes, it is.
Morning. What a perfect illustration of skin in the game.
Twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit here, light dusting of snow all over everything.
We have the temps without the snow.
And what a perfect response.
I feel for people experiencing 27 degrees and snow.
Chilling. It’s chilling.
Now I have to go for a walk and think about this.
That’s kinda what the video did to me…
I don’t think I’ll watch it, the concept of infinity makes me anxious.
Ponder the infinitesimal 🤔🤔🤔🐰
I recently saw that video or one very similar. Awesome.