Rational Action

Astute readers will remember a certain angry post I made a few months back. Basically, I had written an Op-Ed piece and gotten it published in the Columbia Spectator. The piece crticized the controversial film Columbia Unbecoming. The next day the newspaper had run a correction, claiming that because I had posted a similar version of the piece on my blog, the material had been “previously published” — an act that strictly violated Spectator guidelines.

Since I had first shown the article to the Spectator editors by giving them a link to the blog, I figured that they had simply forgotten to tell me of the policy. After they ran the piece, I received an e-mail explaining the Spectator reprinting policy — but not a notification that a correction would run the following day. I supposed that the editor who originally saw the draft had simply told some pedantic higher-up who didn’t want this mistake to happen again. I then shrugged my shoulders and moved on to the next message in my Inbox.

The next day Spectator ran the correction, and when I saw it, I was pissed. I immediately wrote a pretty scathing e-mail. However, after weighing the costs and benefits of fighting with the very people I needed to get my opinions in print, I closed the e-mail without sending it. So began the healing process. That was that… until now.

It seems that there is a student a Columbia who has a clear agenda with respect to MEALAC, but, having been kicked off the Spectator, lacks a public means of articulating his opinions. He runs a blog where he complains about bias in MEALAC and the Spectator, but unlike most campus media critics, he has valiantly decided to correct that bias by any means possible. To refute my piece, he turned to academia’s greatest embarassment: plagiarism.

This fellow, who goes by the name of Ariel Beery, sent a letter to the Spectator with these choice words:

What I do think you should be worried about, however, is plagiarism. The article you ran by Adam Sacarny was, in large parts, previously printed, which can also be found here (and added in the extended entry below in case he erases it). It doesn’t matter that the author of the two was the same person — just like you have to cite your previous work when you write a paper, a newspaper has to fully disclose when an article was previously printed, in whole or in part. What you published, then, can be considered by Columbia’s code of ethics “plagiarism.”

I had considered many kinds of challenges to my article and had considered logical responses for all of them, but I never thought that someone would try to discredit my argument without responding to its points at all! Thankfully, Spectator kept my article on their website, and they didn’t bother to sully it with the correction. I’m glad they don’t seem to have fully accepted Beery’s attack, because there’s an important question that I wish Beery and the Spectator editors had considered: does making a blog post equal publication?

You might be surprised to know that I think Beery’s on to something. If people beyond my inner circle of friends actively read the blog, if I had posted the article as a final copy and not as a first draft, and if I had attempted to conceal its presence on the blog from the Spectator’s editors, then yes, it would be reasonable to call my actions plagiarism. However, I posted the article on the blog so that my friends could review it: placing it on an easily accessible and reloadable site allowed me to show them my changes without sending e-mails back and forth. I stopped updating the online copy once the editors explained that they wanted to see the changes in word format — further evidence that it was only posted for review. Finally, when I first showed the article to the editor, I did so by giving him the address of my blog. He entered the address into the web browser and read the draft to an editor-in-training, criticizing it without warning me that what I was doing amounted to plagiarism.

Blogs are a new medium, and they can certainly be publications. At the same time, making a blog post is usually not tantamount to getting your piece in a newspaper, magazine, or nearly any other print media. For me, the article was on my blog not for publication, but for peer review. Beery should have contacted me and clarified the issue before sending his letter. Since he blogs too, the communication could have resulted in an interesting online debate about MEALAC — one which would have informed many people about the controversy. So why did Beery pass up this opportunity? I can only speculate, but it seems that he would prefer to silence unsavory views, rather than contribute to an open dialogue about them. Strangely enough, balanced discussions were just what Columbia Unbecoming supposedly sought to encourage. Since Beery doesn’t seem to have learned from the film, maybe we should consider his actions as more proof of its failure to convince.

This summer I worked with Thibault, the French cousin of my boss. It seems that one of his German friends grabbed a hold of his keyboard:

(16:08:25) Thibault: Allo
(16:08:34) Thibault: Wie geht es dir
(16:08:40) Thibault: geht’s
(16:08:42) Thibault: ghbtynugvty
(16:08:49) Thibault: moi aussi
(16:08:54) Thibault: tout à fait d’accord
(16:09:13) Thibault: yes c’est de la balle bébé
(16:09:22) Thibault: Es ist doch ein riesig geil
(16:10:05) Thibault: Haribo mach kinder froh und der erwachsenen eben so
(16:10:19) Thibault: It was my stupid friend*
(16:10:21) Thibault: rtlo$)e
(16:10:22) Thibault:
(16:10:24) Thibault: “é
(16:10:36) Thibault: no it’s a joke
(16:10:48) Thibault: we’re not so stupid
(16:10:52) Thibault: just german !!
(16:15:53) The conversation has become inactive and timed out.

Update #23213, wherein an animated gif is presented, and blinking text used:

AGHGHARHGHGGHHGHGG!

Brad DeLong channels Krugman on really problematic government deficits
The linked entry refers to the government without taking into account Social Security. Since Social Security is presently balanced, removing it from deficit calculations reveals a huge shortfall in the “general fund” (government minus social security). Think about this - the government only takes in 70 dollars for every 100 that it spends. To close the gap the government will need to collect about 40% more than it already does.

This is troubling, no? The U.S. government runs a deficit of around 4% of GDP (a measure of the size of an economy), which is comparable to that of some other big countries (Germany, France). But in Germany, government represents fully half of the country’s economy; in the U.S., government takes up only around a fifth. We tend to measure deficit relative to the size of the country’s economy, not relative to the size of the government. Measuring this way makes a 4% American deficit seem close to a 4% German deficit.

However, when you want to know how much taxation will have to change to cover government shortfall, it’s important to consider the current size of the government. When an entity that takes up fully half of the economy runs a 4% deficit relative to the size of the whole economy, as a single entity, it would have to raise taxes by a bit more than 8% to magically plug the shortfall. (deficit / current revenues)

The U.S. government, only taking up 1/5 of the economy, needs to close a 4% shortfall relative to 5/5 of the economy. When you end up dividing the current deficit by current revenue, the number is a ghastly 23%. (That number is smaller than the 40% from before, since we’re now including the currently balanced social security system.)

In sum: taxes on the whole would have to increase a whopping 23% (pay $1.23 for every $1 you pay right now to the federal government) to stop this year’s debt hemorrhage. For the moment, we’re getting a sweet deal. But this is all going to have to be paid back with interest. Enjoy the tax cuts while you can.

(Notes: Thank you CBO. Astute readers feel free to point out horrendous mathematical errors.)

I just watched Laguna Beach, one of those shows that’s supposed to be a guilty pleasure. By all means I should have enjoyed the program — facilitating the experience were Sapporo Ichiban Beef Flavored Ramen and C++: The Core Language. (For the unaware, television, ramen, and computer programming are a geek’s holy trinity)

Yet if it weren’t for the ramen and the C++, dare I say that watching 15 minutes of Laguna Beach would have brought me negative utility! Even after removing the embarassment factor of revealing to all passersby that I felt the urge to watch this teenage-girl-targeted faux-reality TV show, I still would have enjoyed another blubbering MAD TV rerun over this programming. Damn! What went wrong?

The trouble with Laguna Beach is that, as far as I can tell, nothing actually happens during the show. I may not have been paying close enough attention, but I don’t recall whether any characters made any appearances. From time to time, I could hear the sound of concurrent female whines emanating from the television speaker — shall we refer to these sounds as dialogue? Okay, I’ll cede that point. Occasionally I heard some dialogue.

Analysis of this “dialogue” led me to several conclusions:

• The directors told the actresses to ad lib their conversation
• The actresses are not very smart

Laguna Beach is no guilty pleasure. It doesn’t give you that good pain feeling. It doesn’t even give you that bad pain feeling, since at least bad pain captures your attention. This show is just boring.

Just letting everyone know: the new browser prototype issued by “Netscape”, which is based on Firefox 0.9.3, does not include any security updates created since that release. Don’t install it on friends’ computers and don’t use it on untrusted sites.

Even worse, users are reporting that it embeds IE via a plugin accessible to any website. That makes it vulnerable to both 0.9.3 and IE security holes.

You can verify yourself by checking the Mozilla Known Vulnerabilities page with the “Netscape Browser”. Click on a recent bug number and run its testcase. (For example, the Javascript clipboard access testcase worked, and the extremely wide BMP crashed the browser) You can also watch a random website embed IE by visiting this example. Users of the latest Firefox release may click all of these links in confidence.

The latest fad among those economics types is discussing the state of the American Dollar. As it stands, The U.S. is importing way more than it’s exporting — around 5% of GDP. We call that the current account balance. In order for us to have a negative current account balance, which means basically buying much more than we sell, we need to take on loans from other countries.

Much of our current account deficit is financed by Asian countries, which intervene in the currency markets to keep the American dollar artificially strong and their currencies artificially weak. From the American consumer’s standpoint, this process makes Asian goods artificially cheap. From the Asian consumer’s standpoint, American goods then become artificially expensive. The American producer likewise has a hard time selling to Asian markets, but the Asian producer has an easy time selling to American markets.

American “overconsumption” is financed by foreign countries, and at some point, they will begin to cash out. As countries shy away from American investment, the dollar will weaken against foreign currencies. As the dollar weakens, American products will cost less for foreigners, while foreign products will cost more for Americans. That’s how the current account deficit begins to correct itself. Which brings us to outsourcing.

An artificially strong dollar does not just make American goods unattractive to foreigners — it also makes American workers unattractive to foreign businesses. American workers seem more expensive when the dollar is artificially strong. The reverse is true as well: the strong dollar makes foreign workers seem more attractive to American businesses. As it stands, American companies have been moving parts of their operations to foreign countries, taking advantage of cheaper labor abroad. A weakening dollar could stem, stop, or completely reverse the flow of jobs overseas (if such a flow even exists).

Let’s pretend that foreign countries stop intervening to keep the dollar strong. We start:

US$1 = 50 Indian Rupees
American worker: $50,000/yr salary (R2,500,000)
Indian worker: R500,000/yr salary ($10,000)
American pay:Indian pay = 5:1

Panic! Panic! Massive dollar selloffs. Now the American currency depreciates by a factor of 2:

US$1 = 25 Indian Rupees
American worker: $50,000/yr salary (R1,250,000)
Indian worker: R500,000/yr salary ($20,000)
American pay:Indian pay = 2.5:1

Suddenly foreign labor becomes twice as expensive, and American labor becomes two times cheaper. Outsourcing looks like a much less attractive option to the CEO, and the jobs never leave the shores. Could a weakening dollar make outsourcing irrelevant?

I saw the New Deal at the Bowery Ballroom 2 nights ago, nearly 365 days on the dot since I last saw them, that time also at the Bowery Ballroom, also right after Thanksgiving. Aye.

Given this rather interesting yet repetitive turn of events, I considered a scenario. Take the Sacarny of yesteryear and ask him…

“Mr. Sacarny, one year from now would you expect to be…

1. About ready to declare as an Econ major
2. Painfully single
3. Doing computer grunt work for WBAR
4. Procrastinating with your blog

And I suppose this old version of me would have the following response:

“Mmmm… yeah, that sounds about right.”

My opinion piece about the movie Columbia Unbecoming was published in the Columbia Spectator on Friday. It’s titled “Shedding Light on MEALAC”.

Thankfully my fame didn’t end there. Today The Spectator ran this correction:

It has come to spectator’s attention that an Op-Ed submission by Adam Sacarny (”Shedding Light on MEALAC,” Nov. 12) was previously published on the author’s web log. it is our policy to only publish material original to Spectator.

Yes, that’s right. BlogSac is a publication!

Yes, yes, another whirlwind trip. Here is a timeline with a map!

To Montreal!

• 2:30pm - I leave Columbia University. Pandemonium ensues.
• 3:30pm - The Fung Wah bus departs. Thankfully, I am seated on it. Not so thankfully, it gets caught in the snow/rain, and travels at around walking speed for the next 6 hours.
• 9:30pm - The bus arrives at South Station. I take the infamous “Bran Van” back to Brandeis. At this point I have not urinated in approximately 8 hours.
• 12:30am - Ethan and I embark, dragging behind us the Blue Beast. It is snowing out and we recognize leaving in these conditions is a pretty stupid idea. But anyway, back to the story.
• 2:15am - With 10 miles remaining on the tank, we finally find a gas station. We are somewhere in the Middle of New Hampshire, and the attendant explains that there is no gas station open at this hour within 30 minutes in either direction. We fill up, buy beef jerkey, and continue onwards.
• 4:15am - We arrive at UVM. It is freezing out, and all of the people we were supposed to meet are already asleep. At some point, we go to sleep.
• 3:00pm (later that day) - To Montreal!
• 5:00pm - Bonjour. We arrive in Montreal.

I should speak about Montreal: I have been there before. It is a nice place, and French is a funny language. Good times were had by all, and these good times have been saved forever on Ethan’s picture gallery. All in all, I spent about 10 waking hours in the city, which is about half the time I spent getting there. Let’s just say that this trip was about the process, and the process was (mostly) a lot of fun.