A commenter on Instapundit:

Any other city in the world would have seen buildings flattened and the deaths of tens of thousands. To the best of my knowledge not one person in Tokyo died, although I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that some poor soul fell off a ladder.

Sound engineering, preparation, precaution, and technology saved the day. I could walk home last night secure in the knowledge that my kids, wife, and mother-in-law were completely safe despite experiencing the worst earthquake in Japanese history and the fifth-worst in the world ever.

He's absolutely right. If this quake had struck Los Angeles, much of the city would have been destroyed. Why? First this was one h&^% of an earthquake, but also because American engineering codes are not designed for the preservation of structures at all. As I was told when I was studying structural engineering, American codes are designed so that in a major earthquake the buildings fall down slowly.

Does that sound stupid? It isn't really as stupid as it sounds. Buildings in the US are designed for the preservation of life. If a building falls down slowly, the thinking is, then people will have a chance to escape. People live, the building doesn't. Billions of dollars in damage, but a low casualty and death count.

Japan has a much higher standard, both life and structures are supposed to survive.

Because a strong earthquake can be so expensive with the loss of so many structures here, there has been some discussion as to whether the US should adopt Japan's philosophy. But most of the country's earthquake zone buildings were built to the life-only standard.

As with any talk about US, earthquakes, and death and destruction, we must not only consider California, but the bigger fault line: New Madrid--sleeping soundly in the middle of the country. Let's hope it doesn't wake up.

This from the USGS website:

The earthquake locations and magnitudes cited in NOAA tsunami statements and bulletins are preliminary and are superseded by USGS locations and magnitudes computed using more extensive data sets.

Do I detect a hint of friendly competition? Or something more?

Kevin Drum:

Tyler Cowen has put together a list of common mistakes made by left wing economists. I'm not an economist, but I'm left wing and I comment on economics, so close enough. So I'm going to go through the list and note where I stand on each of his items. I'm not going to explain things or justify myself, I'm just going to stake out my position in a sentence or two. Here are Tyler's 14 mistakes:...

9. Overly optimistic views of the fiscal positions of state governments. Since the states don't have the same tax-raising powers that the feds do, and since state government spending is favored, there is a tendency to see these fiscal crises as not so severe, or as caused by mere obstructionists who will not raise taxes to the required levels.

In general, there might be something to this. Right now, however, state problems are largely caused by drops in revenue, not out-of-control spending, and many state problems are indeed caused by obstructionists who will not consider tax increases in any way, shape or form. However, it's possible that I'm biased in my views because I live in California.

Hello? "Problems are indeed caused by obstructionists who will not consider tax increases"...like California?

California is one of the most heavily taxed states in the country. High property taxes, high income taxes, high car taxes, high sales taxes, high business taxes, high environmental taxes, high breathing taxes. And yet Drum calls out California's tax "obstructionists" as being at fault in our fiscal nightmare? How about the fact that, despite full knowledge of California's meltdown, spending has skyrocketed under Schwarzenegger. Since 2003 spending has increased by 40%. This despite the fact that Grey Davis was recalled in part because of the cost overruns of the state government. Schwarzenegger and the Democrats went right on spending for the better part of another decade. And Drum thinks it's the revenue side that's the problem?

How about tallying up the unfunded mandates--in particular the unfunded pension leviathan?

Overall the numbers look like this: California's state retirement systems have promised current and retired workers around $3.35 trillion in pension, health care, and other post-employment befits as of 2008 but have $2.35 trillion on hand to pay for them. Strictly looking at the retirement system, there were $454 billion in pension and benefits on the book in 2008, $59 billion was unfunded liability, that means that the fund had the assets to cover 87 percent of its obligations. [ Data originated with a Pew Center study.]

Sure, Drum. It's the revenue side that's the problem, not the insane amount of spending and promising to spend. California has been doomed for over a decade because the politicians can't help but spend our money, our kids' money, our grandkids' money, our great grandkids' money....

Run! Run for your lives!!!

Of course that's what everyone with five brain cells and the ability to do so is doing.

... before some judge declares the Wisconsin Senates's action re collective bargaining for public employees null and void. It's a sure thing, no?

I am mulling over the following, which I posted as a comment here.

I have a question about Iowahawk’s analysis. In his follow-up post he describes Simpson’s paradox…:

“Hitter B has a higher batting average against both righties and lefties, but Hitter A has a higher overall average by dint of facing a different mix of pitchers. Now comes the question: it’s the bottom of the 9th, two out, and you need a base hit. Who would you insert as a pinch hitter, A or B? The detailed data suggests Hitter B, irrespective of whether the pitcher was right- or left-handed. The overall average, in this context, is worse than meaningless – it leads you to exactly the wrong conclusion.”

If this is legit analysis, it opens a can of worms, I think. Suppose that instead of handedness, we had pitchers with and without some “X Factor.” Suppose we didn’t even know what the X Factor is. Suppose we didn’t even know what the proportion of pitchers in the league have the X Factor. But suppose some third party did know, and simply provided us with a breakdown of our two hitters’ averages against the two types of pitchers, and they formed a Simpson’s paradox. Would it still be “wrong” to put in hitter A? Is it better to put in B, because he is better at hitting against both X and not-X pitchers? Color me skeptical.

How stupid are science reporters? How about this from MSNBC:

"The images show that refrozen ice makes up 24 percent of an area known as Dome A, a 13,800-foot-high plateau roughly the size of California. Much of the sheet and refrozen ice lies atop an underground mountain range."

What is this, Jules Verne? Journey to the Center of the Earth? How can you have an UNDERGROUND mountain range???

THE HILL POLL: U.S. future depends on cutting debt, voters say
By Bernie Becker - 03/07/11 06:10 AM ET

Likely voters overwhelmingly believe deficit reduction is crucial to America’s future, but generally oppose raising revenue through tax reform to cut those deficits, a new poll conducted for The Hill found.

A full 95 percent of likely voters believe that lowering the debt is either very or somewhat important, the poll found

The other 5% seem to be all my friends on Facebook. I've heard: "When will people realize that socialism is the answer!!" and echoing Michael Moore's "There's no problem, we have plenty of money!!!" even before he said it, and "We can pay off everything if we kill the DoD, so what's the problem?"

I love this on Instapundit today

AT AMAZON, a sale on typewriters. They still make those? As with VCRs, I’m tempted to buy a couple just to hoard against the day when they don’t . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ben Samuels doesn’t like that manual typewriter link: “Geebus, Glenn – did you read the reviews??? They say it’s a worthless piece of Chinese crap. You’d have been better off giving readers the link to a used Selectric.”

I replied: “I didn’t think anyone would actually buy one. I mean, good God. Maybe after an EMP attack you’d want a manual typewriter, except how much typing would you actually do?”

MORE: The inevitable followup email:

I know somebody who knows a guy who can get you a great deal on a sturdy 40 year old model that can handle superscripting.

Courage,
Dan Rather

Heh. (Via Brian Gates.)

Something else caused by Climate Change: insanity.

Now I'm changing my life again. Today, underneath the solar panels, there's a new set of deadbolt locks on all my doors. There's a new Honda GX390 portable power generator in my garage, ready to provide backup electricity. And last week I bought a starter kit to raise tomatoes and lettuce behind barred basement windows.

I'm not a survivalist or an "end times" enthusiast. When it comes to climate change, I'm just a realist.

Does the Washington Post think this guy's thoughts are rational? Very sad.

Isn't it interesting that in this article by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (about friends on Facebook breaking up over the Wisconsin situation), they couldn't find a single person who had problems with insulting or nasty things said by the union side? All of the problems mentioned are with the rudeness and nastiness of the Walker side.

The weather has been nice down here in the South. It was around 70 again today. Meanwhile, it's been snowing again in Milwaukee. Fortunately, there are some videos out there of Midwest weather to make me feel a little less homesick. Like this one, from Chicago:



h/t Threedonia

Wow is this piece from Reuters idiotic. The headline and lede:

Study says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes

(Reuters) - Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.

Note the conflation of sales and income (a pet peeve of my Dad's, as I recall.) Reading the article, we see that in the 8-year period studied, 57% of corporations paid no income taxes in at least one year. First of all, how does that get translated into "most"? Wouldn't "most" mean at least 50% each year?

But, more important, couldn't this mean that 57% of corporations don't make any money in 1 or more of 8 years? Note that 57%/8 = 7%. Is it reasonable to think that about 7% of corporations make no money in a given year? Seems reasonable to me.

Of course the article doesn't give us any details. It's just an anti-corporate hit piece, and giving details would likely spoil the fun.

So, is the fight in Madison over some long-held, deeply-cherished cornerstone of decades of public union powers?

Not according to John Fund in the WSJ:

The governor's move is in reaction to a 2009 law implemented by the then-Democratic legislature that expanded public unions' collective-bargaining rights and lifted existing limits on teacher raises.

So, Walker is actually just trying to take back union powers that they've had for a whoppin' 2 years.

On the flip side, since they've only had these powers for two years, you can't really blame the collective bargaining rules for the deep doo-doo that Wisconsin is in.

On the other flip side (we're up to three) since the unions did not have this power from 1848 through 2009, they can't really make the point that removing them would be a catastrophe and lead to working conditions where there's a guy beating on a drum while another guy walks up and down with a lash.

Update: I tried to find some contemporary coverage of Fund's claims, and I couldn't really find anything. The closest was the extension of collective bargaining to various teachers at UW--including grad students. If you read his words carefully, this might be what he is talking about, but it is not the wholesale implementation that he seems to imply.

If, as has been reported, some teachers marched their students to the Madison Capital to participate in the demonstrations, I have one question: did they have permission slips from their parents?

At every school I know, the teachers need a permission slip every time the kids are taken off campus--even for regular monthly trips, a permission slip comes home every time at our school. I've always assumed that was due to a law. If so, can't parents protest the taking of their kids without permission?

IBM's Jeopardy-playing computer, named "Watson" did very well today on Jeopardy.

On the 30-question game board, veteran "Jeopardy!" champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter managed only five correct responses between them during the Double Jeopardy round that aired Tuesday.

Usually, I am quite skeptical about this sort of thing, but I have to say I am pretty impressed. Note that the human players weren't just any players. Ken Jennings, and Brad Rutt are often cited as the best human Jeopardy players ever.

Watson did not have to process the audio, it was given the questions as text input. Since the players can read the questions too, this seems fair to me.

One point though is that it seemed to me watching that often the humans had the answer in mind but were not as fast as Watson at pushing their answer buttons. It used to be, in the old days of Jeopardy, that a player could ring in whenever he wanted, even before the question was completely read. Nowdays however, players must wait until the question is read completely before they press the button. It seems to me that Watson, knowing the question, would be able to ring in much faster than any human. This has nothing to do with "brain power," it's just human reflexes versus electronics.

Overall though, it's quite an achievement for Big Blue. Up there with their beating of Gary Kasparov at chess 10+ years ago.

In light of the President's new proposed budget...

Ok, so there are probably a billion reasons why I am not a billionaire. But the one that keeps coming to mind is that I have no clue why some companies, reportedly worth billions, are worth anything at all. The messaging service Twitter is said to be worth 8-10 billion dollars.

... what's remarkable is the money that people familiar with the matter say frames the discussions with at least some potential suitors: an estimated valuation in the neighborhood of $8 billion to $10 billion. This for a company that, people familiar with the matter said, had 2010 revenue of $45 million but lost money as it spent on hiring and data centers and estimates its revenue this year at between $100 million and $110 million.

So Twitter took in $45 million last year (from companies advertising on their site) but it cost more than that to run their computers. Where does the $8 billion come from then? Twitter, like Google and Facebook, seems to provide me with excellent services in return for absolutely nothing from me. How do they make up the cost of running the computers that do all this for me? Volume?

I recently switched from Internet Explorer to the Google Chrome browser. Google provides this browser for free. With a few more clicks, I installed AdBlock as well. AdBlock, also free, effectively blocks all ads on Google, Facebook, Twitter and practically everywhere else. It's great! So here is Google, providing me with free tools to avoid the only hope that Google has to make money off me. Estimates of how much Google is worth? 100 billion? Beats me.

Facebook makes money on ads too, or supposedly will some time in the future. Even before I installed Chrome and blocked all ads, I can't recall ever seeing an ad on Facebook. I think they are off on the side somewhere, but I certainly never clicked on one. I don't even think their presence registered in my brain. I recently saw a discussion on the Bloomberg business cable channel about Facebook. The analysts were raving about it, saying how it is going to revolutionize marketing. They were estimating a worth of $50 billion or more. In their vision, Facebook users will network with their friends to rate and recommend products targeted to them. Who is going to bother? Why? Is that why people use Facebook? So they can tell their friends how much they like Jiffy Pop?

Then there is Groupon. Groupon started in November 2008, and expects to have a $15 billion IPO this year. It is said to be the fastest growing company ever, going from a value of zero to a billion in about a year. At least Groupon has a kind of product. Essentially, you get an email every day offering you a coupon for a deal at a local business. If enough people commit to the deal, the business is bound to it. If not, then the deal is off. I don't really see why this appeals to businesses. Is there some economy of scale where only if a certain number of people want, say, 50% off a haircut, is it worth it to offer? Or are businesses hoping most wont bother to redeem the coupon? I don't get it. Anyway, I signed up for this a month or two ago. After a couple of weeks I cancelled it. I just wasn't interested in the items they were offering at a discount. Half off a dinner at a restaurant I've never heard of. Twenty percent off a ticket to a band I don't like. When you think about it, what are the chances that a random coupon offered to you is going to be something you are interested in having? There are millions of products out there, of which I purchase I tiny, tiny fraction.

Are these businesses really worth this much? Is this all some sort of bizarre market bubble/speculation phenomenon? A modern-day Tulip mania? Maybe if I were a budding billionaire I would understand.

I don't understand what's wrong with this ad:

It's been pulled from the air in China. I don't get it. Do people think it's racist? Why? Or is it the slapstick violence? Aren't presidents pretty much fair game for these sort of ads? Hasn't it always been so?

Ann says: It's obviously promoting violence against politicians through the use of fish sandwiches. If this airs, what's next, pelting with hamburgers? Rampages with Philly cheese steak? Where will it end!

More here.

How about this one? No problem, I guess.

Stay for the punch-line...

I don't think it is a wise investment now. An interesting post at NR, and the comments thereon prompted me to post a comment of my own:

State governments collect $0.27 per gallon in gas taxes. The Feds collect another $0.18. If we are going to make an honest assessment of highway subsidies, shouldn't these taxes be subtracted to get the net? Aren't these taxes essentially user fees?

Doesn't it make more sense to work on increasing freight rail rather than passenger rail? Getting more trucks off the highways would decrease fuel use and road wear, and wouldn't require the high speeds. For some reason, people rarely discuss the question of freight transport.