January 2012

Morning Media Summary

by Lee Doren on August 26, 2011

in Odds & Ends

Tech:

Advertiser start using facial recognition to tailor pitches:
“Picture this: You stop in front of a digital advertising display at a mall and suddenly an ad pops up touting makeup, followed by one for shoes and then one for butter pecan ice cream.”

Global Warming / Environment / Energy:

CERN: ‘Climate models will need to be substantially revised’:
“CERN’s 8,000 scientists may not be able to find the hypothetical Higgs boson, but they have made an important contribution to climate physics, prompting climate models to be revised.”

Insurance / Gambling:

Nevada Gaming Control Board Offers Proposed Internet Poker Regulations:
“Wednesday the Nevada Gaming Control Board published proposed regulations intended to establish state regulations for legal online gaming, namely online poker. This set of guides was produced to satisfy the 2011 Nevada Legislature Assembly Bill 258.”

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The Texas Empire Strikes Back

by Rand Simberg on August 26, 2011 · 1 comment

in Regulation, Space, Tech & Telecom

Well, I made a prediction here yesterday:

It will be interesting to see how those in Congress who have been demanding that NASA build a heavy-lift vehicle for which there is no mission with insufficient funding, while starving Commercial Crew, will respond. Judging by history, it will be with non sequiturs, and bashing of American enterprise by supposed conservatives and Republicans, such as Senator Shelby of Alabama (the senator from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center), Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas (the senator from Johnson Space Center), and Orrin Hatch of Utah (the senator from ATK, manufacturer of the giant Shuttle solid boosters that the Congress insists be used in the new launcher), or Science Committee Chairman (from Johnson Space Center) Ralph Hall.

Emphasis mine. As reported over at Space Politics, Senator Hutchison indeed responded, right on cue:

“As we have already seen with the multi-year delay with commercial providers of cargo to the space station, the country would greatly benefit from the timely implementation of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and development of the Space Launch System (SLS) as a back-up system,” Hutchison said in the statement, which was more about the SLS and the summary of the independent cost assessment of the program than it was about the Progress failure.

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Who’s Afraid of Snuggles the Bear?

by Angela Logomasini on August 25, 2011

in Environment, Features, Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Post image for Who’s Afraid of Snuggles the Bear?

As the East Coast braces to be pummeled by Hurricane Irene, a new study in the Journal Air Quality and Atmosphere Health, gives consumers yet another thing to fear:  Snuggles the bear’s fabric-softening sheets. The study claims that lurking in your washing machine and dryer are dangerous chemicals from fragrances in fabric softeners for which there is “no safe exposure level.”

Are you quivering? Don’t bother. If you buy this line a bunk, don’t ever have a glass of wine again, nor enjoy whole milk, non-fat milk, whiskey, sake, apple juice, soy sauce, or beer. These are just some of the foods that contain at least one of the “dangerous” chemicals listed in this study: acetaldehyde. According to the study, this chemical flowed in the air from dryer vents at levels up to 47 parts per billion.

Supposedly, that warrants more study (and perhaps government research dollars flowing to these researchers’ budgets) to assess the potential impact on human health. Snuggles should file a defamation lawsuit for such wrongheaded fear-mongering.

The levels reported were too tiny to be of any real consequence. And despite the claim that there are no safe levels, these chemicals are not as dangerous as the authors suggest. The study focuses a good deal on acetaldehyde because it had some of the highest concentrations in the samples tested under conditions set by the study, which may or may not be typical in real life.

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CEI Podcast for August 25, 2011: Mr. Fuddlesticks

by Ryan Young on August 25, 2011

in Podcast, Privacy, Tech & Telecom

Have a listen here.

Mr. Fuddlesticks is an anonymous YouTube user who posted embarrassing videos about the Renton, Washington, police department. They convinced a judge to let them request Mr. Fuddlesticks’ personal information from Google, YouTube’s parent company. While the charges were eventually dropped, Research Associate Nicole Ciandella thinks this highlights a major problem in applying telephone-era laws to the Internet era.

The Sidewalks of Madison

by Ryan Young on August 25, 2011

in Politics as Usual

George Will took a trip to Madison recently and had this to say about some graffiti he found:

“Solidarity forever” was perhaps painted by a graduate student forever at the University of Wisconsin.

Insults are not always needed to make one’s opponent look bad; they often do that themselves well enough:

The authors of the sidewalk graffiti have at least read Jefferson: “The tree of liberty is watered by the blood of tyrants.” The tyrant is “$cott Walker American Fa$ci$t.”

Fascists started World War II and attempted to wipe every Jew from the face of the Earth. All in all, fascist governments directly killed more than 14 million souls. Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin.

A word of advice to Wisconsinites who are upset with Scott Walker’s policies: if someone wants to be taken seriously, they first have to be able to be taken seriously.

NLRB to Businesses: Tell Employees they Can Unionize

by Ivan Osorio on August 25, 2011 · 2 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Labor, Politics as Usual, Regulation

The National Labor Relations Board has issued a new rule “requiring most private-sector employers to notify employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act by posting a notice.” The NLRB’s new rule, in its background section, suggests which right the Board considers paramount:

The NLRA, enacted in 1935, is the Federal statute that regulates most private sector labor-management relations in the United States.1 Section 7 of the NLRA, 29 U.S.C 157, guarantees that

Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all such activities[.]

In short, the ruling is part of the NLRB’s ongoing efforts to enact policy changes favorable to organized labor.

While the posting of a notice is hardly assured to send a flood of new members into union ranks, the new notice rule clearly fits into a pattern of pro-union activism by the NLRB — including proposals to shorten election periods and to allow unions to organize by remote electronic voting (essentially electronic card check), as well as the Board’s campaign against Boeing for opening a factory in a right to work state.

The notice rule’s impact may pale in comparison to those other actions, but it does suggest that the NLRB is throwing everything at the wall in the hope that something sticks well enough to keep Big Labor happy and on board, for political reasons. The Obama administration failed to enact pro-union legislation like the so-called Employee Free Choice Act when Democrats controlled the House, so now it is trying its hardest to get the unions something to keep them fully on board and engaged for the 2012 election.

The rule is scheduled to be posted in the Federal Register on August 30 and then to go into effect 75 days later, on November 14.

For more on the NLRB, see here.

For more on labor policy, see workplacechoice.org.

Morning Media Summary

by Lee Doren on August 25, 2011

in Odds & Ends

Tech:

Standford Gets Blessed With High-Speed Fiber, How About The Rest of Us?:
“Like some sort of archangel descended from internet heaven, Google has bathed Stanford University in glorious high-speed goodness as part of the beta test of their new gigabit fiber network. Since the program was announced, the service, which is now being provided free to students and faculty in the Palo Alto area, has caused a lot of people to ask (sometimes beg) that their city be next on Big G’s list for communication salvation. But can Google save us all from crappy internet? And more importantly, is it a good idea to let them?”

Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple:
“Steve Jobs, the visionary CEO at the helm of the most valuable tech company in the world, has stepped down.”

Global Warming / Environment / Energy:

Study links El Nino climate to civil wars, unrest:
“Scientists have found another thing to blame on the climate demon El Nino: civil strife in poor tropical countries.”

Insurance / Gambling:

Internet gambling’s new best friend? Conservatives:
“Advocates for legalizing Internet gambling have neutralized opponents with arguments designed to appeal to fiscal and social conservatives.”

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Our Space Policy Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

by Rand Simberg on August 24, 2011 · 30 comments

in Features, Space, Tech & Telecom

Post image for Our Space Policy Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

With the retirement of the Space Shuttle last month, the U.S. and its international partners are now entirely reliant on non-U.S. providers for transportation to and from the International Space Station — Russian Progress tankers and others for cargo and Russian Soyuz capsules for crew transfer and lifeboat services. There is currently no U.S. backup or capability.

It turns out that this is a problem, because the venerable Russian rocket that had successfully delivered 43 consecutive Progress missions failed today, with the cargo destined for the ISS instead scattered across the forests of Siberia. Concern is compounded by the fact that Roscosmos, the Russian company responsible for the launch, had also put a communications satellite in the wrong orbit just last Friday, meaning that they had two failures in less than a week.

But wait! It gets better.  There was supposed to be a crew delivery to the station next month, and it was planned to go up on…you guessed it…the same type of rocket that failed today. If crew had been on today’s flight, they might have survived (the Soyuz has an abort system), but there’s a good chance they would have been injured — cosmonauts have been injured severely enough to end their careers in previous similar aborts.  So now plans for crew replacement this fall are on hold.

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Time to Stop Increasing Education Spending?

by Hans Bader on August 24, 2011 · 2 comments

in Economy, Employment, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Even The New York Times is now questioning the massive spending increases on education that have occurred over the last generation in a discussion entitled “Spending Too Much Time and Money on Education?”:

Americans are spending more and more on education, but the resulting credentials — a high-school diploma and college degrees — seem to be losing value in the labor market.

Americans who go to college are triply hurt by this. First, as taxpayers: state and federal education budgets have ballooned since the 1950s. Second, as consumers: the average college student spends $17,000 a year on school, and those with loans graduate more than $23,000 in debt. And third, as a worker: in 1970, an applicant with a college degree was among an elite 11 percent, but now almost 3 in 10 adults have a degree.

Given that a high school diploma, a bachelor’s degree and even graduate school are no longer a ticket to middle-class life, and all these years of education delay the start of a career, does our society devote too much time and money to education?

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Eminent Domain, Rick Perry, and the Trans-Texas Corridor

by Marc Scribner on August 24, 2011 · 8 comments

in Features, Mobility, Property Rights, Regulation

Post image for Eminent Domain, Rick Perry, and the Trans-Texas Corridor

Attorney Alan Ackerman has a post up highlighting and commenting on an article that argues that critics of Texas Governor Rick Perry from the right should temper their rhetoric with respect to Perry’s support for the Trans-Texas Corridor. It is true that condemnation of private property is all but inevitable in order for the state to assemble the highway’s right-of-way:

Former California State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore wants critics from the right and left to lay off Texas Governor Rick Perry, who proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, a 4000-mile north to south development with toll roads, rail corridors, and utility lines.

Texas’ growth has exploded in recent years, and it is likely to continue as shipping between Mexico, the United States, and Canada increases. The state needs this infrastructure development badly to support its own growth and increasing international trade.

While critics decry this as an exercise in big government, in reality this project would be privately funded and managed, without relying on tax increases or government budget cuts. Some also criticize Perry because the Corridor would require eminent domain. But as DeVore points out, roads and railways are quintessential public uses. The Constitution has always contemplated takings for infrastructure projects like the Trans-Texas Corridor and the (hopefully soon to be built) Detroit International River Crossing. Whether condemning agencies treat property owners fairly is, of course, another issue altogether. Regardless, these sorts of infrastructure projects will be necessary to support growth in the United States.

I think Ackerman raises some reasonable points about the legitimate (read: constitutional) uses of eminent domain. Texas is badly in need of new and expanded transportation infrastructure and the currently-shelved TTC-35 project was innovative in a number of ways, particularly in its reliance on private-sector financing (pp. 10-11). But to simply sweep away critics’ legitimate concerns over eminent domain abuse with, “in reality this project would be privately funded and managed, without relying on tax increases or government budget cuts” and claim that mega-takings are somehow not an “exercise in big government” is a bit much.

As I’ve pointed out, eminent domain condemnations are not only inherently distortionary, the burden is disproportionately borne by those with the least means to resist takings: specifically, poor minorities. Given that government at all levels spends an absurd amount of money attempting to spur entrepreneurship and economic development among low-income groups, their land-use and development policies are essentially shooting their misguided but well-intended poverty reduction programs in the foot.

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