Thinking on the Margin: July 09, 2006

Friday, July 14, 2006

Who's More Upset?

Regardless of what side of the political divide you are on, this picture is funny!

Are Constants Constant?

Now what does this say about what they taught me in engineering school?

Public confidence in the "constants" of nature may be at an all time low. Recent research has found evidence that the value of certain fundamental parameters, such as the speed of light or the invisible glue that holds nuclei together, may have been different in the past.

"There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant," says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. "These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are."

Read the whole thing. It's quite fascinating!

Read more on this here.

Hattip Common Sense Technology.

Dell Ending Mail-In Rebates Too

Looks like Dell is also dropping mail-in rebates:

Dell has announced that it will be ending mail-in rebates on PCs they sell and making pricing more transparent in order to be more consumer friendly. According to Dell, the number of promotions for any single product will be cut by 80%.

As I've blogged before, Good Riddance!

Read more about how much of a scam mail-in rebates can be on Slate and Tech Central Station.

Online Textbooks

Arnold Kling has some great links to online textbooks:

Walter Antoniotti has compiled a big list of free online textbooks in economics, business, statistics, etc.

I glanced at one of the economics sites, Cybereconomics by Robert E. Schenk, and it looked quite good. I also liked the Quick Notes on Statistics.

The Trouble With Econ...

Tyler Cowen gives his advice to would-be economists:

Two core groups of people are well-suited to be economists:

1. You math GRE score is over 800, you are totally focused, you love working long hours on your own, and you have good enough letters of recommendation to get into a Top Six or perhaps Top Ten graduate school. Note that white Americans from this category have been partially preempted by competition from foreigners.

2. You could be happy as an academic without much of a research career. Working at a teaching school is a rewarding life, albeit a poor one relative to your investment in human capital.

Hmm... does this mean since GMU isn't a top ten school, I'm stuck as a #2? Is my memory wrong? Isn't it impossible to get above an 800 on the math GRE score?

Arnold Kling expounds further:

I would say that #1 is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition, to head in the direction of becoming an academic star. I would say that #2 should come with the caveat that many of the small colleges that value teaching are in small towns, which puts limits on spousal career opportunities and may otherwise constrain your lifestyle. Also, the caliber of students at small colleges may be declining, for a variety of reasons.

Sounds like the situation is getting worse...

...or is it? Bryan Caplan seems to disagree:

Tyler is once again handing out career advice to potential Ph.D. students in economics. I stand by my previous claim (here and here) that he makes some good points, but is far too negative.

Where does Tyler go wrong? His standard of "success" is far too high. He barely considers himself successful. But I say there's no shame in doing 10% as well as he's done. Compared to your next best option, that could easily be a very sweet life. If you want to live the life of the mind, econ's the place to do it. As I said a little while back:
Overall, the econ Ph.D. is such a good deal that I would seriously advise people who want to do research in political science, psychology, or even history to just get an econ Ph.D. and become a professor of economics. Even if you have to research topics you don't care about until you get tenure (and you probably won't have to), you could easily earn tenure in econ before you would have defended your dissertation in another field.

Interestingly, in his post, Tyler Cowen goes on to say (emphasis mine):

Should you become a legal academic? You will have a greater chance to work with ideas and concepts. A greater chance to write books and also to read them. You are more likely to strut, wear three-piece suits, and speak in stentorian tones. If I were starting out today, perhaps I would take that route, although I would fail at the strut and the suits. The pay is higher and upward mobility is easier to accomplish.

Greg Mankiw shares his thoughts on the JD vs PhD and careers in Law and Economics.

Maybe I should give more thought to GMU's JD/PhD program? Would that give me the best of both worlds?

Thursday, July 13, 2006

I nomrally use Firefox for my web browser and just discovered my blog has been having trouble displaying in IE 7.0 (the formatting looks kinda funky). Has anybody else been having any difficulty with viewing my blog in any other browsers? Any older versions of IE having similar trouble?

I know Blogger was having a few issues earlier today and my blog wasn't displaying properly, but they seem to have been fixed.

I'd appreciate feedback if anyone is still having any issues viewing my blog.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Train Blasts Kill 170 in India

This is very sad:

At least 170 people were killed and hundreds more injured on Tuesday after a series of co-ordinated explosions ripped through Mumbai’s commuter transport network in the middle of the evening rush hour.

No warning was given for the blasts, which came within hours of a wave of explosions in Srinigar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, where a series of grenade attacks killed eight people and wounded more than two dozen.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings, which echoed the attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London last year. The blasts came in quick succession – a tactic employed both by Kashmiri militants, who have repeatedly targeted India’s cities, and al-Qaeda. Intelligence sources on Tuesday night said there was a strong link between the Srinigar and Mumbai attacks.

Read a first-hand account from a Wall Street Journal reporter who witnessed one of the blasts.

Pajamas Media has a roundup on the news including:

Mumbai Help is a gathering place for Indian bloggers who are trying to coordinate help. The same for Global Voices. The Counterterrorism Blog has an accurate map of the Mumbai rail system. Mumbai Metroblogging has video from people who were there. A firsthand account from the Mumbai Marauder. “I grabbed my camera, ran towards the scene, and once there, regretted my decision.”

More roundups at Indian blogs India Uncut and Varnum and American blogs Instapundit and Gateway Pundit.

See photos from the bombing here.

My Indian friend Triya shares her thoughts:

I just got the news about seven bomb blasts in Mumbai in the metro trains during rush hour last evening (IST). I have friends and family I am trying to get in touch with, some of them I have managed to speak to, others are not answering their phones. Why would someone want to do this?

I can only imagine what those with loved ones in the area are going through right now.

India has had a special place in my heart since my visit there in 2003. Please join me in praying for the survivors and the families of the victims.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Liberal Christianity is Paying for its Sins?

Here's an interesting article on the decline of mainline churches in the LA Times of all places:

When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million).

According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.

When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.

This echoes what Dr. Iannaccone was teaching in his economics of religion class last year. If a church doesn't distinguish itself from the beliefs of the world, it essentially has nothing to offer.

"Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference."
-- Edmund Burke, 1795

Dr. James Buchanan (Nobel Prize Winner) taught at a seminar I attended last spring. He feels as though the churches in the US have traditionally been the guardians and preservers of cultural morals necessary for the preservation of our society. He also believes that they have been failing in their mission -- particularly the mainline denominations. According to Buchanan, if people stop believing in God, they will start to look for salvation from the government. I think he is right and that explains much of the trend towards government solutions for all of society's ailments over the last 70-80 years.

"When a Man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything. "
-- commonly attributed to G.K. Chesterton

As churches abandon their historical doctrine, they not only being to decline in membership and fade away into irrelevance, I believe there is a large decay in the social capital of society. This must be part of what Jesus meant when he commanded Christians to be the "salt and light of the world".

I believe Christianity is a key cornerstone of Western culture in general and American culture specifically. I do not know what direction our culture will take if Christianity loses its foothold in influencing Western thought and morals.

Questions: What will become of the West if churches decline? Is there a general decline of religiosity or orthodoxy in the US or it just happening in certain denominations with others responding by strengthening their beliefs? What data would you use to support your belief? Do you agree that Christianity a cornerstone of Western culture? Why or why not?

Further Reading:
Here is an article from Business Week on the Economics of Religion.

Hattip WorldViews

What I've Seen of the World So Far...

Oh yeah, plus Antarctica!

There's a lot of grey area on that map -- looks like I still have a lot of exploring yet to do!

Create your own visited country map.

Hattip Brooke's Adventures

Quote of the Day

This was in an e-mail from a friend today:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it! "
- William H. Murray, "The Scottish Himalaya Expedition", 1951

Battlestar Galactica Videos

Here is a great trailer for the current Battlestar Galactica series:

(Click here to watch a larger version.)

And here is a tribute to the original show:

(Click here to see a larger version.)

See some other really cool Battlestar Galactica videos here, here, here, here, here, and here.

There's even a video that crosses BSG with Smokey and the Bandit.

Here is a trailer for Season 3 starting this October.

Read of my previous post on why I like the show so much.

You can also see some of my other related posts here and here.

Watch a full-length episode of the new series here.

Thinking on the Margin