Category Archives: Web Article Review

The Sierra Madre

This is a weird story. In the South China Sea, there is a Philippines ship that ran aground on a shoal in 1999. Sailors from that country have occupied the ship ever since, and are regularly resupplied while being bombarded by the Chinese navy using things other than guns, like water cannons and lasers.

That month, the Sierra Madre ran aground at Second Thomas Shoal, a small reef in what was then disputed territory, about 120 miles off the coast of Palawan island. A second ship did the same at another shoal later that year. Beijing suspected that Manila was using the beached ships to create outposts.

Philippine officials initially played coy, saying that they meant to repair the Sierra Madre but were having trouble finding the materials, while the other ship was eventually towed away. Yet, more than two decades later, the Sierra Madre remains grounded, a rusted dieselpunk monolith interrupting an otherwise pristine swath of tropical waters. A small group of sailors crews it; they pick their way through its slightly listing steel skeleton as they monitor the area for incursions. Their rotations generally last two months but can stretch up to five. Carlos referred to these tours as a “test of sanity…”

Beijing blatantly ignores this ruling. When the Philippines delivers supplies for the sailors on board the Sierra Madre via small boats escorted by coast-guard ships, Chinese ships attempt to block them. In early August, the Chinese coast guard used water cannons to prevent Philippine boats from reaching the outpost. A second attempt later that month was successful, as was one in September, when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft flew overhead.

Atlantic

The U.S., of course, feels the need to get involved in all this. Not by being a voice of reason, but by ramping up tensions and threats of violence.

“useful principles”

Here is an interesting blog post called “30 useful principles“. I would agree that the majority of them are useful. Anyway, here are a few ideas and phrases that caught my interest. I’ll try to be clear when I am quoting versus paraphrasing or adding my own interpretation.

  • “When a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good measure.” Makes sense to me – measuring is necessary, but I have found that people who are actually doing things on the ground need an understanding of the fundamental goals, or else things will tend to drift over time and no longer be aimed at the fundamental goals.
  • “A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with 2 watches is never sure.” A good way to talk about the communication of uncertainty. Measuring and understanding uncertainty is critical in science and decision making, but how we communicate it requires a lot of careful thought to avoid unintended consequences. Decisions are often about playing the odds, and sometimes giving decision makers too much information on uncertainty leads to no decisions or delayed decisions, which are themselves a type of decision, and not the type that is likely to produce desirable results. Am I saying we should oversimplify and project an inflated sense of certainty when talking to the public and decision makers? and is this a form of manipulation? Well, sort of and sometimes yes to both these questions.
  • “Reading is the basis of thought.” Yes, this is certainly true for me, and it is even true that the writing process is an important part of thoroughly thinking something through. This is why we may be able to outsource the production of words to AI, but this will not be a substitute for humans thinking. And if we don’t exercise our thinking muscles, we will lose them over time and we will forget how to train the next generation to develop them. So if we are going to outsource thinking and problem solving to computers, let’s hope they will be better at it than we ever were. A better model would be computer-aided decision making, where the computers are giving humans accurate and timely information about the likely consequences of our decisions, but in the end we are still applying our judgment and values in making those decisions.
  • “punishing speech—whether by taking offence or by threatening censorship—is ultimately a request to be deceived.” It’s a good idea to create incentives for people to tell the truth and provide accurate information, even if it is information people in leadership positions don’t want to hear. Leaders get very out of touch if they don’t do this.
  • “Cynicism is not a sign of intelligence but a substitute for it, a way to shield oneself from betrayal & disappointment without having to do or think.” I don’t know that cynical or “realistic” people lack raw intelligence on average, but they certainly lack imagination and creativity. The more people have trouble imagining that things can change, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that things will not change.
  • “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” I’m as horrified by pictures of dying babies in a hospital in a war zone as anyone else, but it also raises my propaganda flag. Who is trying to manipulate me with these images and why? What else is going on at the same time that I might also want to pay attention to?

Taiwan’s 2024 election

There is an important election taking place in 2024 that affects people far beyond the borders of the country where it takes place. I’m talking, of course, about Taiwan. Well, the three (?) sides don’t even agree on what the borders of the country are, so we could start there.

Far be it from me to express any opinions about the politics of Taiwan. But it is worth watching because it affects relations between Taiwan and (Peoples Republic of) China, and this potentially affects everyone. The idea of a full-frontal invasion of Taiwan has always seemed far-fetched to me. It seems more likely to me that there would be some form of subversion, election interference (like we saw BOTH the U.S. and Russia do in Ukraine), confusion about who is in charge, shadowy paramilitary forces (Russia in Ukraine), etc.

I’ve always thought Taiwan must have the best counter-intelligence in the world. It must be a bit like Cold War Germany, where the two antagonist sides basically look identical and speak the same language. Only there is a lot of economic interaction, free information flow, at least some travel, and the two sides are not as far apart culturally as, say, Cold Water era Germany and today’s North and South Korea. (In the latter case, the two sides might look and speak similarly, the comparison ends there – certainly no free flow of information, travel, and very little economic interaction, so it is hard to imagine how North Korea could place spies effectively in South Korea). So how does Taiwan manage to secure its elections and keep its government from being a nest of spies? But somehow, they seem to manage this on an ongoing basis.

“Our Megathreatened Age”

The “Megathreats” according to Nouriel Roubini are that “economic, monetary, and financial threats are rising and interacting in dangerous ways with various other social, political, geopolitical, environmental, health, and technological developments.”

This is a long article with a lot in it, but one thing I always like to puzzle over is how real-world phenomena translate to money and financial markets. One advantage of understanding this would be to find numbers provided by financial markets that translate back to the real world, and in an ideal case maybe these could even serve as early warnings when things are really about to go seriously wrong. Anyway, this article doesn’t have all the answers, only clues, but here are a few:

  • energy and food costs – this is fairly obvious, although short-term noise may obscure any useful predictive ability
  • labor costs – tells us something about demographics and population structure
  • public debt servicing costs – maybe a more useful thing to think about than just the size of the debt or deficit, because it tells us something about the size of the debt, interest rates, and inflation together, and it can be compared to tax revenues and/or a society’s overall productive capacity. This in turn tells us something about limits to (economic) growth and the ability of a society to weather potential shocks.
  • military spending on conventional and unconventional weapons – not exactly public information, but there are some sources out there, and this tells us something both about overall global risk and about government’s priorities and ability to solve other problems
  • climate change adaptation and mitigation spending, and gap between actual spending and what is needed to meet the agreed targets – not sure exactly how to measure this, but people must be trying. We could compare this spending with measured results to get some sense of efficiency, and again it tells us something about government priorities and ability to solve long-term problems. Roubini compares climate spending to reconstruction after a war, which I find interesting: “Though a surge of investment in reconstruction can produce an economic expansion, the country is still poorer for having lost a large share of its wealth. The same is true of climate investments. A significant share of the existing capital stock will have to be replaced, either because it has become obsolete or because it has been destroyed by climate-driven events.”
  • “unfunded implicit liabilities” to deal with pandemic preparedness. Again, seems hard to measure but people are undoubtedly trying.
  • “To prevent populist regimes from coming to power and pursuing reckless, unsustainable economic policies, liberal democracies will need to spend heavily to reinforce their social safety nets – as many are already doing.” Well, not the U.S. so much. At least we are not doubling down on this, and the political cost of advocating it seems high while opposing it seems to appeal to many voters.
  • Retirement pension and health care spending, actual and estimated gap with what is needed.
  • long-term government bond rates, and “risk premia on public bonds” – tells us something about perceived risk that a government can keep up with its obligations long-term
  • mix of foreign currency reserves held by governments – somewhat obscure, but again a measure of risk that governments can meet their obligations and solve their societal problems
  • We can always measure fun things like poverty, inequality, and migration, and of course “stagflation” which I would define as real GDP growth net of inflation.

Taken together, what all this suggests to me is an analysis of government budgets, financial markets, and some demographic/migration data to see where various governments’ priorities lie relative to what their priorities probably should be to successfully address long-term challenges, and their likely ability to bounce back from various types and magnitudes of shock. You could probably develop some kind of risk index at the national and global levels based on this. And then what would you do with it? If you were a rational government, you could choose policies that reduce it. Maybe you turn everything over to the AIs and ask them to figure it out.

air pollution kills

U.S. coal power plants have killed (i.e. caused premature deaths of) 460,000 people over 20 years, according to the Guardian. That is not going to include future premature deaths due to climate damage. Sure, even switching to natural gas is much better than this, but I can’t help comparing it to nuclear power. Deaths and risks due to nuclear power have been much exaggerated, in my view. I can imagine a world where nuclear power was implemented on a much larger scale, along with electric vehicles and electric HVAC in buildings, decades ago. It could have been the bridge fuel that got us to a more renewable future. Or maybe we would have even learned enough by doing to decide it was a good choice for the long haul. So the question now is whether to double down on nuclear research and implementation, or just throw all our eggs in other renewable baskets.

And as for air pollution, there are just so many reasons to make it a central issue, from the obvious health impacts of breathing particulate matter to the multiple benefits of spending more time outdoors getting around under our own muscle power in clean air. It could be a virtuous loop if we really made it a priority.

anti-immigrant riots in Ireland?

Ireland is not immune to the surge in anti-immigrant sentiment. Could there be shadowy anti-EU political actors fanning these flames? I recommend examining the photos carefully to see if Steve Bannon is lurking somewhere in the background, wearing an Emperor Palpatine hood with the ghost of Joseph Goebbels whispering in his ear.

migration

In the U.S., it’s “secure the border”. In the UK, it’s “bring down net migration“. In the Netherlands, it’s the possible rise to power of an openly anti-Islam party. As I happen to be reading one of the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr (A Quiet Flame, 2008) set partially in 1930s Berlin with the Nazis on the cusp of power, I find all this thought-provoking and concerning. In most countries, we’ve come far enough that openly advocating discrimination against a group already in the country is not an acceptable mainstream position. But expressing open anti-immigrant nationalist views is the next best option.

There is some rational fear of job loss and wage suppression that all this feeds on. But inequality between richer and poorer countries is somewhat clearly the root driver of migration, and climate change driven disasters and droughts are adding fuel to the fire. Add in some old-fashioned geopolitical conflict and you have a very volatile mix. The irony is that the policies needed to counteract these forces – economic and technological aid from richer to poorer countries, education, trade, reasonable guest worker programs, arms control and peace negotiations, serious emissions reduction and climate change adaptation investments to name a few – are anathema to anti-immigrant nationalist politics. So you have a feedback loop where the migration pressure drives the anti-migration political rhetoric, and the political rhetoric drives politicians and policies that increase the migration pressure.

Rationally explaining all this to enough voters to elect politicians who would break these feedback loops does not seem to be a viable option. It’s a tough one, and if I come up with the answers that have eluded a lot of smarter people than me up until now, I will let you know.

automatic speed regulators

Automatic speed regulators on private vehicles – YES PLEASE. This is an idea that will save lives, and its time has come. Won’t somebody please think of the children?

The article suggests limiting speeds to 100 mph, but come on! Why not limit them to the local posted limit? Or if saving lives that way is too interventionist for “‘Merica”, then install the technology and let insurance companies massively penalize people who choose to turn it off. This could be a middle ground between self-driving cars and people who insist on the preventable mass murder of letting human beings continue operating deadly highway vehicles on city streets, once it is no longer necessary.

America’s shoplifting panic

Recently I purchased a small bottle of dishwashing liquid for less than $2 at a Walgreens in Center City Philadelphia, and I had to call a clerk to unlock it a Plexiglass case and get it for me. I also notice that shelves are oddly empty in many stores, and I have certainly seen and heard the stories about shoplifting and “flash mobs”.

As always, I like journalism that provides some data to back up storytelling and anecdotal evidence. So kudos to CNN here:

Shoplifting reports in 24 major cities where police have consistently published years of data — including New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas and San Francisco — were 16% higher during the first half of 2023 compared to 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice analysis.

However, excluding New York City, the number of incidents among the remaining cities was 7% lower.

CNN

The article also provides some interesting context on past “shoplifting panics”, including one in London when women first ventured into public in significant numbers. People believed they were stealing for the thrill of it. I would speculate that it may have been more a question of whether they had access to cash or what their husbands may have thought about them spending said cash. Then there was a hippie shoplifting panic in the 1960s. And now we have a “breakdown of law and order in cities” narrative fueling the current one.

The article also talks about the enormous pressure on brick and mortar retailers to compete with online sales. I suspect this narrative provides them some convenient leverage in negotiating with landlords, insurers, and local politicians. I also wonder if shoplifting has always gone on but modern surveillance technology means insurance companies are more easily aware to quantify it, and it is just more prevalent than they thought.

115 traffic deaths and counting for Philadelphia in 2023

The Bicycle Coalition has a grim but nicely done map and infographic of traffic deaths in Philadelphia. 115 and counting, including 52 pedestrians, 2 scooter riders, 11 motorcyclists, and 9 bicyclists (but I believe there was a 10th since these numbers were updated.) This is the worst in 24 years, according to the site.

Public opinion tends to blame the victims – pedestrians to some extent, and certainly bicyclists and scooter riders. Public opinion thinks motorcycles are just awesome, despite how deadly they clearly are. I see a trend of people riding motorcycles without helmets, which is just taking a huge risk with absolutely no reward to go along with it. Public opinion tends to blame the police to some extent for lack of enforcement. And last but not least, drivers tend to blame other drivers, because of course every driver considers themselves well above average.

As an engineer, I blame ignorant, incompetent street design first and foremost. I blame the engineers who are not up to date on best practices, ignorant bureaucrats who constrain them even if they are, and ignorant politicians who constrain the bureaucrats and engineers. On the latter, the outgoing Philadelphia mayoral administration at least has a Vision Zero program on the books, massive failure though it has been. The incoming mayor is not known to be a friend of safe streets, and is a proponent of the corrupt “councilmanic prerogative” system that allows ignorant politicians to overrule competent planning and design decisions in our city. The poster child for the latter, Kenyatta Johnson, is set to become the leader of our city council, by most reports.

So I am keeping my hopes and expectations under control. If in some parallel universe the incoming mayor asked my opinion, I would advise her to bring in new management for our streets department (I have no personal knowledge or experience with our current streets department leadership, except to note that they have failed to design safe streets, maintain streets, or pick up garbage and recycling as effectively as other cities.) I would ask that new management to at least bring our street design standards up to the safest level our state transportation department allows. I would ask that new management to put a professional asset management program in place to keep those streets in the best state of repair possible with the funding available. I would give that new management challenging yet achievable metrics and deadlines, and hold them accountable. That’s the relatively easy stuff. The harder stuff is dealing with the police, dealing with the state legislature, and chipping away at public opinion. On the latter, if pictures of dead and suffering children in Gaza are upsetting to people, can we maybe learn something and focus on showing and telling more stories about the risk and suffering street violence is causing to our own children here at home?