Our experiment with democracy is more than two centuries old. And on this day, I wonder what our forefathers would say about the state of our union. What would Thomas Jefferson, the drafter of the constitution, say of our treatment of immigrants or of our profligate lifestyles? An important question, that we must all answer amidst company of friends and fireworks. My answer is derived from an observation.
I found myself in the Santa Barbara emergency room on June 2, 2008. While cycling along the coast of California, I was bitten by a bee somewhere along the Pacific Coast Highway. As I made my way into the emergency room I was half worried that my insurance would not be accepted. I entered the ER at 8pm and left the hospital at 1am. The story lies in what I saw.
The ER room is filled with the kind of gripping human drama that can bring meaning to life. There were couples with their new born, a young man with broken shoulder and a Hispanic man accompanied by his wife waiting to be treated. The couple had arrived at 6pm and the man appeared to be slipping in and out of consciousness. His two sons entered the hospital around 9pm with orange juice and energy bars. I had to look no further than into the sons' eyes to understand their frustrations. I saw helplessness, and anger that their father had not been seen for over 3 hours. One of the sons, went up to the admittance window and asked why his father had not received care. He asked not once but twice, returning to his seat each time. Amidst the chaotic scenes, I saw injustice before my eyes. I saw a son see his father suffer, a wife trying to comfort her husband through the pain, all of which are common threads of humanity that we can relate to. On that day, my reality became fused with the reality of those much less fortunate.
Despite the observance of an inequity in America, I cannot help but be hopeful. On this 4th of July, I ask you to think about the direction America is heading towards and take a moment to consider what you can do to uphold the simple premise that all men and women are created equal. We the people must work together in perfecting our union and strive towards our collective ideals that brought 48 men together to stand up against a tyrant. Make the pen of the revolution proud.
I've added a picture to accompany this article.
]]>And what was my sister doing digging around for coins in her purse? While I tried to avoid pouring our dinner all over the carpet, she crawled under a cabinet with some coins in hand, and voila, the lights were back. This was weird. Apparently, there was a light meter in their flat. It seemed that all our cooking and baking had quickly eaten away at the money she’d deposited the previous day.
Prepaid electricity meters that use hard currency or tokens to pay-as-you-go for power turn out to be fairly common in England, and indeed in many other parts of the world. This system is sometimes used for logistical reasons. For example, many grand old buildings that once housed wealthy families have been broken up into smaller flats, and in this case the personal meter system allows a landlord to retain the wiring infrastructure but simplify the payment scheme. It’s also a good system for those on a tight budget, who can deposit money when they have it and get by without electricity when they don’t. This works in developing nations in the same way that pre-paid phone cards work. Top it up when you’ve got some cash and hope for better times ahead.
Over the course of the ten days that we stayed in the flat, my sister noticed that she was paying about one pound every day. According to her, this was about double the normal energy consumption, which made sense since we had double the usual number of people and were cooking often. Interesting, I thought, that one would have such a simple index for tracking your personal energy consumption. There seemed to be some good applications for this source of information.
Unsurprisingly, I'm hardly the first person to think along these lines. The general idea is that consumers benefit from more information about their consumption, and if they're able to monitor their energy usage, they are more likely to identify energy-intensive practices, which could in turn lead to reducing these practices in the interest of saving themselves money. There have been some fantastic design spinoffs, like the Saver Clip that can help pinpoint energy-drainers in your home. Or, my favorite, a glowing tumor-like thing called The Energy Orb that changes color to indicate levels of consumption.
This is a simple cure for energy-consuming oblivion. It provides the resident with immediate information about real costs. Motivated by a desire to save money, they can utilize the information to make better decisions about their personal energy usage.
There are many applications of this principle. Pop quiz: what's the single best way to improve your fuel efficiency while driving? Answer: Drive 55! Yup, according to the EPA, speeding can reduce your mileage by as much as 33%.
If we all had some kind of Fuel Orb on our dashboard, we'd know this by now. If you’ve ever driven a Prius you’ve had the experience of watching your mileage crash and burn when you overtook that Pinto on a hill. If efficiency meters weren’t limited to Hybrids, we could all benefit from immediate information that would help us to train ourselves to be more efficient drivers. In the days of $5/gallon gas, who doesn’t like that idea?
It’s time to look at new ways for each of us to improve our efficiency. No mandates are necessary. People like to make decisions for themselves, and they certainly like to save money. Why not give them the necessary information to do both?
As for me, I’m off to do some online shopping. I don’t have the option of a pre-paid energy meter in my San Francisco flat, but I do have a blue coffee table that might look good with a green tumor resting on top of it. An Orb, I mean.
1. You may not get paid on-time, but at least you get carpal tunnel syndrome pretty quickly thanks to the ergonomic-nightmare that is your workstation.
2. You spend the first week trying to get hired by HR, only to find that...
3. It takes 2 weeks to get access to a computer.
4. When you do get a computer, you have to share a single network port with your cubicle-mate.
5. No one thought you would actually need office supplies. Or a chair.
6. On your first day, nobody thought to tell you to take a lunch break.
7. You have to resist the urge to check Gmail/Facebook/etc every 5 seconds. At least until you realize you could just purchase a privacy filter.
8. Your one meeting for the day gets canceled, and you don't know what you're going to do to look like you're busy.
9. You're horrified that your computer doesn't have Firefox tabbed web browsing.
10. You then realize that your computer monitor was manufactured in 2000, which explains why your eyes sting.
11. All your work e-mail chatter is subject to disclosure under the state Public Records Act.
12. You learn what it means to "prairie dog", and you immediately consider the purchase of a periscope.
13. In an attempt to be "green", your office's ceiling lights automatically shut off after a period of inactivity. In order to keep the lights on, you flail your arms periodically like a crazy person.
14. You get asked at least 3 times a week whether you have enough to do.
15. Your employer gives you parking stamps so that you can park in the same garage as everyone else. You wonder if these are transferable ration coupons and calculate their market price.
]]>Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sid Radhakrishnan and I am delighted to be one of the many guest bloggers over the summer. These are exciting times in American politics. As a young college Republican, going to Iowa to campaign for Obama was one of the formative moments of my maturation. All of us in Iowa expected the thing to be wrapped by New Hampshire and at the latest by Super Tuesday. Today, from Venice Beach, California, I watched Hillary's concession with two staunch Clintonites. After hearing her speak, we all agreed that she would make a great VP. It took a long time for the nominee to be decided and I believe the competitive nature of this year's nomination will make the Democratic party stronger for years to come.
Aside from American politics, I will try to monitor the seesawing of the global economy and its delicate dance around oil and price fluctuations. Besides the economy, I intend to touch on the war, issues of the environment and global food prices. Most importantly, I hope to share with you my observations and experiences all while making it relevant to your life.
Keep coming back, at the very least, I promise to keep you armed for any Yuppie house party or casual conversations at your kid's little league baseball game.
Still hopeful for the future,
Sid Radhakrishnan
]]>The release continues:
Let me share my two euro-cents on the matter: in my summer internship, I am examining the concept of "human security" at the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. In my first week here, I've learned that the key concern in a human security framework is the broad definition of what makes an individual free from fear and free from want (which was the basic understanding of "human security" at its advent in 1994). Who is responsible for declaring the acceptable amount of fear and want of a citizenry? Who steps in to protect these interests? The state? And what if it doesn't?
And, more urgently, what if the state is causing harm to its own people? The international community was motivated to coin and use the term partly because of failures of intervention such as those in Rwanda and Somalia. The motivation to correct those mistakes must not be forgotten.
Ultimately the sovereign state must have primacy in international policy, but in particular I wish the UN had had a more pointed discussion of the human security of the Burmese people, and the Burmese government's lack of interest in it. The failure of the Burmese junta to warn its population of the coming cyclone or to allow international aid workers access to the hardest-hit impact zones brings into question the international community's role in protecting "human security." It is a pretty concept, something poetic with which to dress up UN press releases, and may remain only that unless some international agency with the authority and capacity to do so uses it as a pretext for intervening in Burma.
I live near the intersection of 24th and Mission streets, a part of San Francisco that’s “colorful”, in the parlance of my soon-to-be-in-laws. The corner boasts a plethora of visual and auditory stimulants that some of us prefer to battle with noise-canceling headphones and sunglasses. But, to your average out-of-towner who steps off the BART train and struggles to look straight ahead, there is one beacon of comfort and familiarity. Lodged between the skulking gangbangers and the raving preachers sits our local McDonald’s, open 24 hours, selling Big Macs at a noticeably brisk pace. I’m always a little surprised to see people coming and going so steadily from the Golden Arches. After all, within just one block there are $3 tacos, $4 falafel, $1 tamales, and who knows what other local gems of San Francisco’s low-end culinary orgy that is the Mission district. But, inevitably, I’m barraged by the whiff of Egg McMuffins as I pass it in the morning and fries and burgers as I make my way home at night. I’ll admit that sometimes I’m tempted to pop in for some McNuggets but I’ve yet to succumb to the idea. I mean, fast food’s bad for you, right? Right?
Have you ever actually seen a description of the contents of fast food? I’ve looked at a poster once on the wall of a fast food restaurant, but I couldn’t tell you what it said. Alas, I’d forgotten my magnifying glass. The size of the font turned out to require one. Tom Ammiano, San Francisco Supervisor for District 9 (full disclosure: I currently intern for Ammiano) has recently managed to push through some important legislation that will allow anyone who walks into a chain restaurant to immediately know exactly what goes into her McMeal.
Supervisor Ammiano hit a legislative home run on this one. While it may have a dull title, San Francisco Ordinance number 40-08 “Menu Labeling at Chain Restaurants” represents a major victory for public health and nutrition advocates. This law will require all restaurants with over 20 locations in California to post extensive nutritional information about each menu item on the menu and overhead displays, in a font as large and prominent as that of the price. Diners will be able to see the number of calories, and the number of grams of saturated fat, carbohydrates, and sodium, plainly on the menu, in “a clear and conspicuous manner.”
There are at least a few ways that this information can have a beneficial effect on health outcomes. 1) Comparing the health stats of heftier menu options to the smaller, more basic items will result in healthier ordering. For example, a hamburger from McDonald's has 13 grams of fat and 520 mg of sodium, while a Double Quarter Pounder with cheese weighs in with 65 grams of fat and 1380 mg of sodium. Supervisor Ammiano hopes numbers like these will give diners pause before ordering. 2) Because of clearer labeling, chain restaurants could face increased pressure to introduce more healthy options and to resist “up selling” questions like “Would you like to supersize that?” 3) Eating out is generally less healthy than cooking at home. Restaurant meals are higher in fat and calories and lower in nutrients than at-home food. This kind of labeling could help highlight this fact and result in more at-home meals.
Now for some of the criticisms of Ammiano’s approach, and why I think they’re wrongheaded.
Criticism #1: As my teenage cousin would say: “OMG, TMI!” (Oh My God, Too Much Information. BTW, if you had to read between these parentheses, just pretend you didn’t.) When I said above that diners “will be able to see” this information, my phrasing connoted a desire to actually see this information. I should be so naïve. Who really wants to stare down their food, gram for pound, and size up your order in terms of its effect on your love handles? From a policy point of view, unfortunately the answer to that question is irrelevant. The economic, medical, and social burden of obesity and heart disease is too fearsome an animal to leave me with much sympathy. If the information is so offensive to the sensibilities of the fast food diner, perhaps she should reconsider her order.
Criticism #2: This legislation is passive. It simply puts the information out there and diners do with it what they see fit. What’s so great about that? As I explained above, there are several potential ways information could affect decision-making about food consumption. On the other hand, the diner is welcome to ignore the data and order at will. There’s no mandate for behavior here, only the availability of good information.
Criticism #3: In some cases fast food is the only thing people can afford. There are clearly socioeconomic and cultural factors that get people through the door of a fast food restaurant in the first place, and this legislation doesn’t address these issues. I can personally identify with this quandary. As a teenager, I remember ordering from Taco Bell because it was cheap, even though I would have preferred something healthier. But remember, the idea isn’t necessarily to reject fast food out of hand. Part of the plan is that people will order smaller, healthier items. Teens can still go to Taco Bell if they’ve only got a few bucks, but maybe they’ll skip the large Coke to go with their 7-layer.
But c’mon, enough with the back and forth already! San Francisco has moved on, and menu labeling will soon be a reality. Mayor Newsom signed the Ordinance into law on March 24, 2008 and the rules will take effect in June. So, next time you’re craving a Whopper, check out the new menus. If you’re in San Francisco, health conscious data should be up on the menu in a clear and conspicuous manner. You can leave your magnifying glass at home, but you may want to bring along your blinders.
I am pleased to announce that the Spring 2008 edition of the print journal "PolicyMatters" is now up on the blog for your reading and linking pleasure.
Read the full issue in PDF format.
The individual articles (in PDF format) are linked in the navigation box to the right.
Enjoy!
]]>However, a dark cloud looms. The history of the LGBT movement in the US shows that no great victory goes unchallenged. Already, opponents of marriage equality have submitted 1.1 million signatures to the Secretary of State in an attempt to place a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages on the November ballot. Of the 1.1 million signatures submitted, 694,538 must be verified to qualify for the election.
Gay marriage has often been used as a get-out-the-vote device for conservatives; regardless of if a given gay marriage proposition passes or fails, the thinking is that it will drive social conservatives to the polling booth and, at the very least, assist conservative candidates in trouncing more liberal ones. Not being an expert in such matters myself, I do have to wonder if the dynamics of this year's election will be markedly different from years past. There is an incredible level of interest in this year's presidential election, particularly from the left, and this alone may help counteract any conservative voting drive propelled by the specter of homemaking homosexuals.
Beyond that, I'm not sure that queers are quite so frightening to the right, or at least the California right, as we were even four years ago. Granted, I'm writing from a perch within a stone's throw of the San Francisco Bay, and in the middle of life as a semi-cloistered Berkeley grad student, but I think there are other bogeymen in 2008.
For example, Republicans. In all seriousness, George W. Bush has seemingly unwittingly (half-wittedly?) done real damage to the GOP's brand, and there are no signs of him becoming self-aware any time soon. Without further assigning blame or parceling out responsibility for evildoing to distinct parties, the country as a whole is in something of a sticky wicket these days. We can't seem to agree on much of anything in terms of how to execute the "Global War on Terror," how to regulate the financial industry, what to do about global warming, how to conduct foreign policy, or how to prosper in an increasingly global economy, never mind the answer to truly dire matters such as who should be America's Next Top Model. With "real" problems and uncomfortable economic insecurities facing voters, whether Michael marries Billy or Jean may be less pressing a concern.
Details from the Chronicle are available here.
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A unilateral - and potentially United Nations-approved - US military intervention in the name of humanitarianism could easily turn the tide against the impoverished country's unpopular military leaders, and simultaneously rehabilitate the legacy of lame-duck US.
A Voice From the Burmese Grassroots: a Talk by a Representative of
Burma's Only Grassroots Human Rights Organization
Date: Monday 5/5/2008
Time: 1:00 pm
Place: UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy
Room 250
2607 Hearst Ave. (Cross Street: LeRoy Ave)
Berkeley, CA 94709
This guest speaker is one of the co-founders of the Human Rights
Defenders and Promoters Network (Burma), and a Visiting Scholar at the
UC Berkeley Human Rights Center. He will be presenting about his
organization's work.
In 2002 the HRD started organizing human rights trainings in Burma,
acting since then as an unofficial grassroots network. It is
believed to be the only grassroots human rights organization in Burma
at this time. Our guest specializes in international relations for
the HRD.
You can read more about our guest (first name "Aung") in this Newsweek article from December 2007.
]]>For many in Little Saigon, memories of what they went through still shape their reality. Others -- many born here -- look to Vietnam for opportunities and for ways to improve lives.
By My-Thuan Tran, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer (April 30, 2008)
Lives remembered, lives rebuilt, attitudes changing -- 33 years after South Vietnam fell
Shooting down satellites isn't the sole purview of China-- the US also recently took a defunct spy satellite down to test its machinery.
The difference is that the US target was in low enough orbit that the debris will burn up on reentry relatively soon. The debris from the Chinese missile test was in a much higher orbit, so the millions of pieces of debris that explosion created will remain up there clunking into the working satellites for hundreds of years to come.
Turns out we need better policy in space, too!
By all accounts, the Ho Chi Minh City leg of the Olympic Torch relay taking place on the 29th of April is expected to be relatively trouble free for the Beijing government. Most likely, we will not see protesters in support of Tibet or Darfur in the streets due to Vietnam's strict laws governing public demonstrations. However, that does not mean that the Vietnamese people are welcoming the Olympic torch with open arms. On the contrary, for the past months, there have been intense discussions on internet forums and blogs of Vietnamese both inside and outside of Vietnam regarding the coming of the torch to HCMC.
Many Vietnamese, especially the educated young are actively campaigning for demonstrations on April 29th, which happens to coincide with the eve of the Fall of Saigon in 1975, to protest Beijing's aggressions in Vietnam's Eastern Sea (South China Sea). Vietnamese anger directed at Beijing is exploding once again fueled by recent renewed reports of the Chinese navy's capturing, shooting, and killing of Vietnamese fishermen. Previously anger surfaced in response to China's seizure of Paracel Islands in 1974, then again with the Spratly Islands seized since 1988. China asserts claims on all of the Paracel and Spratly Islands, and over 80% of Vietnam’s Eastern Sea, an egregious action that has no basis in international law. As a result, many Vietnamese fishermen who make their living in these waters have fallen victim to Chinese navy patrols.
Recently, Le Minh Phieu, a Vietnamese selectee to bear the torch in HCMC wrote to the IOC President to inform the Committee of Beijing's violations of Olympic rules by politicizing the sports festival. Phieu pointed out that Beijing took advantage of the Olympics to legitimize its illegal claims of Paracel Islands by depicting the archipelago on its relay route maps as Chinese territory. The tiny islands totaling only a few square kilometers in area appear enlarged and boxed off on the route map.
In December of last year, Vietnamese students staged protests in front of the Chinese embassy in Hanoi and the general consulate in HCMC for two consecutive weekends in response to Beijing's decision to establish the administrative region of Sansha to govern the Paracel and Spratly Islands. The protests in Vietnam spurred anti-Beijing protests staged by Vietnamese in many cities in Europe, Asia, and America.
Similar to its neighboring counterparts of New Delhi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Jakarta, Hanoi is also expected to be intolerant of protests on the occasion that the Olympic torch arrives to HCMC. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in a weekend meeting with officials in HCMC ordered them "to conduct the relay safely and solemnly, showing the patriotic, sports-loving and peace-loving spirit of the Vietnamese people and the Vietnam-China special friendship."
Hanoi has welcomed the Beijing's "men in blue" to help keep the relay incident free. But unlike the past protest attempts in which Vietnamese students were stopped by the police even before they made it to the designated site, this time, it is not possible, unless the city wants to stage an "audience-less" torch relay. So, everyone will have to be allowed to come to the site of the event.
But we can be sure that not everyone in the crowd will come to cheer for the torch. Some are expected to have a trick or two up their sleeves. If they do manage to pull off a protest or some sort of public gesture to show their anger at Beijing's aggression in Vietnam's Eastern Sea, the Vietnamese will most likely have all the media attention to themselves since it is unlikely that they have to compete with Tibet and Darfur groups. This was the obstacle that Vietnamese protesters faced in Paris and San Francisco, where virtually all the media attention was given to the Tibet issue, leaving the Vietnamese cause unnoticed.
The Olympic torch will come and go, but it is certain that the dispute over the Paracel and Spratly Islands will remain a quagmire for a long time to come. As China's economy grows along with its unceasing appetite for natural resources, Beijing will find it even harder to give up its claims on the islands and the waters of Vietnam's Eastern Sea, no matter how fragile those claims are from a legal standpoint. It has also been building a nuclear submarine base in Hainan Island to advance its ambitions. However, Beijing can also be sure that the Vietnamese people, especially the young generation, sense an urgency to defend Vietnam's territorial integrity and the lives of Vietnamese fishermen.
As Vietnamese are aware of Beijing's increasing aggression in the region, they are more likely to gather support and join hands in a concerted effort to thwart a possibility of Chinese hegemonic reality in Southeast Asia. When Beijing decided to establish Sansha last year, it probably did not expect that there would be such a strong reaction from the Vietnamese people. The issue at hand is whether Hanoi and the world is ready to take more assertive actions in the face of Beijing's outrageous violations against the Vietnamese people and their national territories.
This year's nano-toxicity panel brings representatives from Cal-EPA and LBNL to discuss how concerned should we really be, and what the government of our State is beginning to do about it.
For more information, or to register, please visit the website: http://nanoclub.berkeley.edu.
]]>How could U.S. interest rates at home possibly worsen food crises in countries like Egypt, South Africa, and Haiti? According to Feldstein, the interaction of lower Federal Reserve rates, inflation of food and energy prices, and central bank reactions in developing countries would all effectively reduce incomes in those countries. At the same time, riots have broken out in these same developing countries in response to high food and energy prices – global food prices alone have risen 83% in the last three years, according to the World Bank.
Feldstein’s column is an interesting study of the macroeconomics of Federal Reserve rate cuts, but it also highlights an important reality whether or not you agree with the details of his analysis: Our economy and economic policies are deeply intertwined with the rest of the world. China’s increased energy needs raise our oil prices. Our attempts to stem recession or replace gasoline with corn ethanol raise food prices in Egypt. Riots in Egypt raise uncertainty around oil supplies in the Middle East and raise our oil prices. The cycle repeats.
In this eternal season of U.S. presidential campaign rhetoric, Feldstein’s column points out the dangers of getting votes by promising simplistic and short-sighted domestic band-aids for problems like losing jobs oversees or high gas prices. Voters and candidates alike should keep in mind that many of our problems are harder – and more global – than they used to be. The world, it seems, is even smaller than we thought.
For Feldstein’s whole scoop and to test your macroeconomics literacy, see his column at the Wall Street Journal Online.
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