I was surprised to hear that Obama won the Nobel Peace prize after such a short time in power. On the cutoff date for nominations, he was barely in his second week of office. And I'm still scratching my head trying to identify what achievement justifies the honor. Then I remembered that the Nobel Peace prize doesn't always go to people who earn it. Teddy Roosevelt won it. So did Henry Kissinger. As much as I respect Teddy for his creation of the national park system, I have a different vision when I think of him charging up San Juan Hill. I was more amazed than amused when the prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger, a war criminal who deserves incarceration for life without possibility of parole.
Not that Obama is like Kissinger or Roosevelt. It's simply that Obama hasn't earned it. It looks like a windfall. The five-member committee in Oslo, bending the rules to name him the winner before he deserved it, may be optimists or perhaps psychics. Their show. Their rules.
Maybe Oslo gives him too much credit simply because he has a dash of charisma, espouses values that promote peace and world cooperation, and knows how to talk. After the mean-spirited, go-it-alone prick exited the stage, Obama's commitment to rejoin the community of nations is a long-sought after breath of fresh air, equal parts warm and fuzzy. But it's the fuzzy part that bothers me. Looking good and saying things people want to hear is not sufficient.
Obama's dilemma is that he rules an empire with more military firepower than any other sovereign state on earth. He presides over two wars that he doesn't seem able or willing to end. As long as he stays the Bush course in Afghanistan and Iraq, he cannot be a person deserving of a Nobel Peace prize.
Oslo should have a rule that says you don't get the prize if you prosecute a war knowing that you are killing innocent civilians every day in far away places even if you don't mean to. Obama may intend peace as the outcome of his efforts but waging war for peace is like drinking your way to sobriety. It doesn't work.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Actuarial Table
With the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Karl Malden and my friend Claire Burch, author and videographer, all happening in the space of a couple of weeks and then having a birthday fall around the same time, I thought I’d better check the actuarial tables at the Social Security website to find out how much time I have left.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html
I want to make sure to get all the stuff done on my list before the bell rings. I realize the vast majority of folks deviate from the statistical death forecast as reflected in the social security life chart but what can I do about that? It’s the best I’ve got to work with.
The tables show unsurprisingly that women live longer than men but the gap has narrowed over the past twenty to thirty years. Men’s life expectancy has increased faster than women’s.
An infant is as likely to die in the first year of life as a man in his midfifties is likely to die within one year. In year two, the mortality rate declines precipitously.
The safest year to be alive for males is age 10 and females, age 11. The probability that a ten year old boy will die within one year is a scant 0.000096. For an eleven year old girl, the probability is 0.000106. One percent of males, however, will be dead before the age of 13 and one percent of females will die before age 20. Clearly, the early years are more deadly for boys.
Ninety-eight percent of males make it to 24 and that same percentage of females reaches age 37. Wow.
When you reach age 54, 10% of males born when you were born will be dead. For females, that happens at age 62.
At age 59, you have a 1% chance of dying within one year. Women reach the 1% threshhold at 64.
Seventy-nine percent of males make it to age 65. For females, it’s 87%.
If you make it to age 70, you have 13.30 years left to live if you are a male. For a female at that age, you have 15.69 years left.
A man has a 10% chance of dying within one year at the age of 84, the same as for a woman at age 87.
Of a statistical group of 100,000 men born in the same year, 45,986 will make it to age 80. For women, 60,540 will make it. You can see from this why social security is going broke.
Of our statistical group of 100,000 of each sex, 543 men and 1,981 women will make it to 100. At 100, a man has a 38% chance of dying within one year and a woman has a 35% chance.
The table is based on statistics for the year 2005 so it’s slightly dated. Since then I suspect a small shift has occurred in the direction of longer life unless it’s true that the world will end on December 21, 2012, as some say the Mayans have predicted because that's the last date shown on their famously accurate calendar. But we really don’t know the world will end that soon. Maybe the Mayans did mean to signal the precise end date but it seems just as likely that they got lazy or bored with what must have seemed a monotonous abstract exercise and simply walked off the calendar construction job to grow more maize. We’ll just have to wait and see.
I don’t have a strong opinion about what happens after death. I’m open to the idea that in the bardo state, I could make an election to follow the bright light and blend into a cosmic superconsciousness or just return to this plane of existence for an encore. On the other hand, I may have no choice at all. It could be up to some anonymous grader who will examine my life and say I’m good to go or have to return to make up some incompletes.
Another possibility is that when life ends, that’s it. Annihilation. Eternal darkness. The only way to make this acceptable is to remember that I won’t be around to witness it so it will hardly matter to me.
So I go back to this question of getting things done before my final exit. I certainly want to make sure that I’ve left my dog adequate food and water to last until my body is discovered. Before people start snooping and figuring out I'm some kind of loser, I will have wanted to take out the garbage, mop the floor, clean the toilet, cancel my magazine subscriptions and pay Chase. I definitely want to make sure I’ve visited a number of foreign countries and all fifty states. I have three states to go. They are Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. I’ve got lots of other things on my list but I won’t bore you with them.
After consulting the tables and making appropriate corrections to account for heredity, good or bad habits, and environmental influences, you can do your own calculations and map out a to-do list for the time you have left. So what are you waiting for?
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html
I want to make sure to get all the stuff done on my list before the bell rings. I realize the vast majority of folks deviate from the statistical death forecast as reflected in the social security life chart but what can I do about that? It’s the best I’ve got to work with.
The tables show unsurprisingly that women live longer than men but the gap has narrowed over the past twenty to thirty years. Men’s life expectancy has increased faster than women’s.
An infant is as likely to die in the first year of life as a man in his midfifties is likely to die within one year. In year two, the mortality rate declines precipitously.
The safest year to be alive for males is age 10 and females, age 11. The probability that a ten year old boy will die within one year is a scant 0.000096. For an eleven year old girl, the probability is 0.000106. One percent of males, however, will be dead before the age of 13 and one percent of females will die before age 20. Clearly, the early years are more deadly for boys.
Ninety-eight percent of males make it to 24 and that same percentage of females reaches age 37. Wow.
When you reach age 54, 10% of males born when you were born will be dead. For females, that happens at age 62.
At age 59, you have a 1% chance of dying within one year. Women reach the 1% threshhold at 64.
Seventy-nine percent of males make it to age 65. For females, it’s 87%.
If you make it to age 70, you have 13.30 years left to live if you are a male. For a female at that age, you have 15.69 years left.
A man has a 10% chance of dying within one year at the age of 84, the same as for a woman at age 87.
Of a statistical group of 100,000 men born in the same year, 45,986 will make it to age 80. For women, 60,540 will make it. You can see from this why social security is going broke.
Of our statistical group of 100,000 of each sex, 543 men and 1,981 women will make it to 100. At 100, a man has a 38% chance of dying within one year and a woman has a 35% chance.
The table is based on statistics for the year 2005 so it’s slightly dated. Since then I suspect a small shift has occurred in the direction of longer life unless it’s true that the world will end on December 21, 2012, as some say the Mayans have predicted because that's the last date shown on their famously accurate calendar. But we really don’t know the world will end that soon. Maybe the Mayans did mean to signal the precise end date but it seems just as likely that they got lazy or bored with what must have seemed a monotonous abstract exercise and simply walked off the calendar construction job to grow more maize. We’ll just have to wait and see.
I don’t have a strong opinion about what happens after death. I’m open to the idea that in the bardo state, I could make an election to follow the bright light and blend into a cosmic superconsciousness or just return to this plane of existence for an encore. On the other hand, I may have no choice at all. It could be up to some anonymous grader who will examine my life and say I’m good to go or have to return to make up some incompletes.
Another possibility is that when life ends, that’s it. Annihilation. Eternal darkness. The only way to make this acceptable is to remember that I won’t be around to witness it so it will hardly matter to me.
So I go back to this question of getting things done before my final exit. I certainly want to make sure that I’ve left my dog adequate food and water to last until my body is discovered. Before people start snooping and figuring out I'm some kind of loser, I will have wanted to take out the garbage, mop the floor, clean the toilet, cancel my magazine subscriptions and pay Chase. I definitely want to make sure I’ve visited a number of foreign countries and all fifty states. I have three states to go. They are Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. I’ve got lots of other things on my list but I won’t bore you with them.
After consulting the tables and making appropriate corrections to account for heredity, good or bad habits, and environmental influences, you can do your own calculations and map out a to-do list for the time you have left. So what are you waiting for?
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The most litigious person in the world
The Guinness Book of World Records has identified Jonathan Lee Riches as the most litigious person in the world. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/may/23/man-sues-book-over-most-litigious-crown/ It estimates that he has filed 4,000 lawsuits worldwide. Since he's locked up in a federal prison and no doubt has law library access, a right afforded him under the Constitution, he apparently has both the resources and the time to hone his pleading and practice skills. “I’ve filed so many lawsuits with my pen and right hand that I got arthritis in my fingers, numbness in my wrists, crooked fingers,” he wrote – by hand – in the latest filing. “I flush out more lawsuits than a sewer.”
Now Riches is suing the Guinness Book of World Records for naming him the most litigious person in the world. And they didn't see this one coming?
Now Riches is suing the Guinness Book of World Records for naming him the most litigious person in the world. And they didn't see this one coming?
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
California's Flawed Initiative Process
The recent California Supreme Court decision upholding Proposition 8, which declares that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in this State, disappointed many as evidenced by demonstrations all over the country denouncing the Court. But the problem lies elsewhere than with the Court. It lies with the scant 52.3 percent majority of the voters who approved the measure and with the flawed initiative process itself which allowed a bare bigoted majority to change the California Constitution.
I don't think the word "bigot" is too strong to describe these voters. I haven't heard or read anything on the "yes" side of the Proposition 8 debate that suggests I'm being too harsh. Ultimately, the "yes" crowd's argument relies on the idea that marriage traditionally has been recognized only between a man and a woman. But as the Cal. Supremes pointed out in their earlier decision in the Marriage Cases, tradition is not a good enough reason to deprive gays of the right to marry. Instead they should be afforded the same respect and dignity under the law that heterosexual couples enjoy.
I would add that if tradition is an adequate reason to deprive a minority of the right to marry, then there should have been nothing wrong with the old miscegenation statutes invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia because until that case was decided, there had been a long tradition barring interracial marriage. Jim Crow generally had a long tradition. If tradition trumps civil rights, why not have Blacks drink out of separate water fountains again?
Much of the opposition to gay marriage is based in religious strictures. In fact, the largest financial contribution to the pro-Prop. 8 forces came from the Mormon Church, probably the most homophobic church in the country, apart from Fred Phelps' little congregation of haters in Kansas. Churches are free to reject gay marriage for themselves under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. But insofar as marriage is a civil institution, these religious precepts are entirely irrelevant to the question of equal rights.
The California Supreme Court was forced to accept the will of the voters. It could not conscientiously do otherwise. In the Marriage Cases, the court held that state laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman were unconstitutional because they violated the equal protection clause of the State constitution. Once voters amended the Constitution to reimpose the traditional limitation on marriage, the court had to recognize an exception to the equal protection clause reflected in the language of Proposition 8.
The structural problem leading to this disappointing result is the initiative process itself which allows a bare majority of voters to change the Constitution. Because it is so easy to do, the California Constitution has been amended by voters more than 500 times since it was enacted in 1850. By contrast, the United States Constitution, which has a more rigorous amendment process, has only been amended 27 times since 1789.
So much for the California Constitution as an enduring framework for the guarantee of individual rights. And herein lies the rub. Protection of individual rights is fundamentally at odds with democratic governance. The rights of the majority are always protected, at least theoretically, under a democratic model of government. It is the minority whose rights must be jealously guarded from encroachment by the majority. Enactment of constitutional amendments by a simple majority through the initiative process fails to protect minorities from majority tyranny. At the same time, this is a state that requires a 2/3 vote of the Legislature to pass a budget or impose a tax increase.
This is not the first time the initiative process has been used to weaken rights. For example, the California Constitution was amended by the voters to declare that capital punishment is not cruel and unusual.
In a proposition known euphemistically as the "Victims' Bill of Rights", voters stripped away an entire body of state law which afforded greater protection to Californians than the federal government recognizes under the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. As a result, California courts are powerless to depart from United States Supreme Court precedent which in recent years has systematically chipped away at these rights and moved the country in the direction of a police state.
Finally, voters have enacted provisions which weaken procedural protections for criminal defendants in court. These include depriving them of a post-indictment preliminary hearing, allowing hearsay testimony by police officers instead of requiring victim testimony at preliminary hearings, imposing limitations on plea bargaining (which in practice are ignored) and removing judicial discretion at sentencing. The effect of these choices has been to overcrowd the prison system to the point that conditions have been declared unconstitutional. This has led to federal court intervention which will force the state to release prisoners early.
So the strategy now should be to put an anti-Prop. 8 measure on the ballot. It will pass. Once that's done, we need to change the Constitution to require a 2/3 vote to pass a constitutional amendment.
My $0.02.
I don't think the word "bigot" is too strong to describe these voters. I haven't heard or read anything on the "yes" side of the Proposition 8 debate that suggests I'm being too harsh. Ultimately, the "yes" crowd's argument relies on the idea that marriage traditionally has been recognized only between a man and a woman. But as the Cal. Supremes pointed out in their earlier decision in the Marriage Cases, tradition is not a good enough reason to deprive gays of the right to marry. Instead they should be afforded the same respect and dignity under the law that heterosexual couples enjoy.
I would add that if tradition is an adequate reason to deprive a minority of the right to marry, then there should have been nothing wrong with the old miscegenation statutes invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia because until that case was decided, there had been a long tradition barring interracial marriage. Jim Crow generally had a long tradition. If tradition trumps civil rights, why not have Blacks drink out of separate water fountains again?
Much of the opposition to gay marriage is based in religious strictures. In fact, the largest financial contribution to the pro-Prop. 8 forces came from the Mormon Church, probably the most homophobic church in the country, apart from Fred Phelps' little congregation of haters in Kansas. Churches are free to reject gay marriage for themselves under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. But insofar as marriage is a civil institution, these religious precepts are entirely irrelevant to the question of equal rights.
The California Supreme Court was forced to accept the will of the voters. It could not conscientiously do otherwise. In the Marriage Cases, the court held that state laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman were unconstitutional because they violated the equal protection clause of the State constitution. Once voters amended the Constitution to reimpose the traditional limitation on marriage, the court had to recognize an exception to the equal protection clause reflected in the language of Proposition 8.
The structural problem leading to this disappointing result is the initiative process itself which allows a bare majority of voters to change the Constitution. Because it is so easy to do, the California Constitution has been amended by voters more than 500 times since it was enacted in 1850. By contrast, the United States Constitution, which has a more rigorous amendment process, has only been amended 27 times since 1789.
So much for the California Constitution as an enduring framework for the guarantee of individual rights. And herein lies the rub. Protection of individual rights is fundamentally at odds with democratic governance. The rights of the majority are always protected, at least theoretically, under a democratic model of government. It is the minority whose rights must be jealously guarded from encroachment by the majority. Enactment of constitutional amendments by a simple majority through the initiative process fails to protect minorities from majority tyranny. At the same time, this is a state that requires a 2/3 vote of the Legislature to pass a budget or impose a tax increase.
This is not the first time the initiative process has been used to weaken rights. For example, the California Constitution was amended by the voters to declare that capital punishment is not cruel and unusual.
In a proposition known euphemistically as the "Victims' Bill of Rights", voters stripped away an entire body of state law which afforded greater protection to Californians than the federal government recognizes under the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. As a result, California courts are powerless to depart from United States Supreme Court precedent which in recent years has systematically chipped away at these rights and moved the country in the direction of a police state.
Finally, voters have enacted provisions which weaken procedural protections for criminal defendants in court. These include depriving them of a post-indictment preliminary hearing, allowing hearsay testimony by police officers instead of requiring victim testimony at preliminary hearings, imposing limitations on plea bargaining (which in practice are ignored) and removing judicial discretion at sentencing. The effect of these choices has been to overcrowd the prison system to the point that conditions have been declared unconstitutional. This has led to federal court intervention which will force the state to release prisoners early.
So the strategy now should be to put an anti-Prop. 8 measure on the ballot. It will pass. Once that's done, we need to change the Constitution to require a 2/3 vote to pass a constitutional amendment.
My $0.02.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Consumer Tip of the Day
Don't buy a Moon Pie from a liquor store.
I stopped at the classic liquor store on the corner today. I was looking for a bottle of water and found parking right in front. In Berkeley, you take whatever space you can find. When you see a space, you become euphoric, even a little cocky about your good fortune.
On my way to the cold drinks, I spotted a chocolate Moon Pie. I hadn't eaten one since December 12 and thought now's the time.
Once back in the car, I removed the wrapper and bit into it hoping for the best; at the same time suppressing my disappointment at the discoloration of the surface chocolate layer. My taste buds registered no reaction to this Moon Pie. It was thoroughly dessicated. Fossilized. Probably it had been sitting on the shelf since Ronald Reagan's second term just waiting for a sucker like me to come along and pay full retail.
Thinking about it later, it occurred to me that I should have known better. Who goes into a liquor store to buy a Moon Pie? What alcoholic beverage does a Moon Pie go with? Maybe the strawberry and banana Moon Pies go with daiquiries but even that's a stretch.
Buying Moon Pies at a liquor store is like buying carrots at a tire shop.
Don't get burned. Caveat emptor.
I stopped at the classic liquor store on the corner today. I was looking for a bottle of water and found parking right in front. In Berkeley, you take whatever space you can find. When you see a space, you become euphoric, even a little cocky about your good fortune.
On my way to the cold drinks, I spotted a chocolate Moon Pie. I hadn't eaten one since December 12 and thought now's the time.
Once back in the car, I removed the wrapper and bit into it hoping for the best; at the same time suppressing my disappointment at the discoloration of the surface chocolate layer. My taste buds registered no reaction to this Moon Pie. It was thoroughly dessicated. Fossilized. Probably it had been sitting on the shelf since Ronald Reagan's second term just waiting for a sucker like me to come along and pay full retail.
Thinking about it later, it occurred to me that I should have known better. Who goes into a liquor store to buy a Moon Pie? What alcoholic beverage does a Moon Pie go with? Maybe the strawberry and banana Moon Pies go with daiquiries but even that's a stretch.
Buying Moon Pies at a liquor store is like buying carrots at a tire shop.
Don't get burned. Caveat emptor.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Grand Palace Tour
You don't have to go to Bangkok to enjoy the wonders of the Grand Palace. Watch this.
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