Somalia - the libertarian paradise

Six years

Since the financial meltdown has dominated the headlines for the last few months, I thought of reminding everyone that today marks 6 years since the Iraq War started. Jon Stewart reminded us about the war few days ago in his special segment "Mess O'Potamia".

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Mess O'Potamia - The Iraq War Is Over
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things w/ Demetri Martin Political Humor

Fallout of the AIG Bonuses

I guess everyone is aware of the employee retention bonuses awarded by AIG to its executives last Sunday. In the light of the federal stimulus money supporting the company, this comes as a great shocker for many. What was to be an intra-company affair became a national headline for 3 consecutive days beyond that. How did the bonus story became such a rage that lawmakers are considering various options to "get back" the bailout money. Opinion polls show people across the country are aghast at the greed of the company executives and want the money back.

Let's step back a moment and look at the story once again. Congress approved bailout money to support the dying-AIG, presumably because that was one way to prop up other large corporations like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Meryll Lynch, Bank of America, etc. Now, I don't claim this - this theory is from former New York Attorney General and Governor Eliot Spitzer, who spent much of his lifetime pursuing white-collar crimes, before he resigned as Governor following the prostitution scandal. There was an attempt from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to include a provision in the bailout to cap the executive bonuses a $100,000, but it apparently died in the negotiations. As a result, there were no legal provisions in the bailout agreement to either restrict or cap the executive bonuses.

Fast forward Sunday, March 15: AIG announced executive bonuses, without realizing the ramifications of that action. By Monday morning, the blogosphere and later the mainstream media was full of stories and commentaries about how this action was unethical, even illegal to pay employees who created the financial mess in the first place. Senators and White House officials were asked for their reactions, and everyone's response was: it is shameful, and shouldn't have been done. Some officials even went to the defense, suggesting that it was difficult to stop them from issuing bonuses, since they were part of the company contract to the exmployees. Meanwhile, Eliot Spitzer's successor at the office of New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo issued a notice to the company to reveal the names of the executives who were being paid the bonuses. Over the day, lawmakers started deliberations to introduce a new piece of legislation to tax the bonus at ridiculously high rates (one proposal was to tax them at 100%). IRS already taxes bonuses above 1 million at 35%.

Now there are some key questions arising out of this situation:
1. Should the company have issued the bonuses: No, considering the fact that the U.S. government holds 80% stake in the company. So, in effect, it is the taxpayers' money that is going to fund a few executives who created the mess in the first place.

2. Is there a way to get back the bonuses: Maybe, but taxing them is not a great idea.

3. Why shouldn't the bonuses be taxed: Though such a measure would find popular support, I believe it would be unconstitutional to introduce a legislation that would tax the bonuses issued prior to the enactment of the legislation. Whatever happened to being "grandfathered"?

4. Should the executives return the bonuses: That might be the only option left. It is morally incorrect to take home bonuses at the expense of taxpayers, when millions are losing their jobs, much less taking home bonuses. As someone said yesterday, 'morality cannot be legislated'.

5. Did the White House screw up on this issue: Totally. I believe the bailout was mishandled by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the White House administration. They hoped that AIG would use the money properly, without inserting any enforceable clause in the agreement. They gave easy access to fire in the hands of a pyromaniac asked to watch over a building. How did they think AIG got to this position in the first place?

6. Should we make a big deal out of this? Hmmm... may be, may be not. $165 million is roughly 0.1% of the $150 billion in bailout money AIG received. So it doesn't make sense to go after the bonuses, when there are bigger fishes to fry. But the issue is not about substance, but attitude. The whole episode just shows gross disrespect towards the feelings of millions of people who have lost their jobs and/or homes. To put things in perpective, Ohio's share of the federal stimulus money is nearly $8.2 billion. The AIG bonuses are roughly 2% of Ohio's stimulus share. That might not look like a lot of money, but it can help complete most of the projects listed in this Dispatch article.

And the Oscar goes to...

So how did Nate Silver's predictions fare against the actual Awards?

He got the Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and the Best Picture correctly. 4 out 6.. not bad, I would say! Penelope Cruz beat Taraji Henson to win the Best Supporting Actress and Sean Penn knocked Mickey Rourke out of the Best Actor award. Sean Penn was a total surprise. May be it was the guilt over the passing of Proposition 8 that made the Academy look at his role more closely than usual. I thought his acceptance speech was powerful. He could be the poster-boy for gay rights, given that he has dabbled in political activism at times.

The other heartening awards - A R Rahman winning 2 Oscars for the Best Score and Best Song for Slumdog Millionaire. Add one for Gulzar (lyricist for Jai Ho) and Resul Pookutty (Best Sound Mixing - Slumdog Millionaire) - A near sweep by the underdog team. So much for the name! To top it all, Smile Pinki won the award for the Best Documentary. You might be surprised to know that the movie was made in Hindi and Bhojpuri and describes the tale of Pinki, a young girl with cleft lip who receives a free surgery from The Smile Train program.

P.S.: A reader asked me if prediction was an educated guess. My response is that though prediction is much more educated than a mere guess, it is more based on facts which precede the event. The 2008 election results were predicted (even state-by-state) based on the opinion polls conducted all throughout the summer, rather than on educated guesses (which is sometimes called guesstimate).

Oscar Predictions

What do we do when we don't know the outcome of a future event? We predict, and hope that our predictions come true. Is it the same as guessing? More often than not, people blur the line between the two and use the terms interchangeably. You predict that it will snow tomorrow, but you guess that the next throw on the dice will be a six. It is possible to predict the dice throw as well.... and that's what this article is about.

Now that we are approaching the Oscars, everybody wants to take a shot at predicting (or should I say guessing) the winners. There might be some obvious winners (Heath Ledger?), but it's a tough competition otherwise. Many folks base their judgment on previous awards such as the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild of America, BAFTA, etc but what happens when the nominees split the awards. That's where I found the prediction from Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight fame interesting. Having successfully predicted the state-by-state outcome of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections, Nate goes on to predict the winners of the 6 major awards at the Oscar ceremony. Briefly, here's how he arrived at his predictions:

Formally speaking, this required the use of statistical software and a process called logistic regression. Informally, it involved building a huge database of the past 30 years of Oscar history. Categories included genre, MPAA classification, the release date, opening-weekend box office (adjusted for inflation), and whether the film won any other awards. We also looked at whether being nominated in one category predicts success in another. For example, is someone more likely to win Best Actress if her film has also been nominated for Best Picture? (Yes!) But the greatest predictor (80 percent of what you need to know) is other awards earned that year, particularly from peers (the Directors Guild Awards, for instance, reliably foretells Best Picture). Genre matters a lot (the Academy has an aversion to comedy); MPAA and release date don’t at all. A film’s average user rating on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database) is sometimes a predictor of success; box grosses rarely are. And, as in Washington, politics matter, in ways foreseeable and not.

List of winners according to Nate Silver and their chances of winning in percent:

Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) 85.8%
Supporting Actress: Taraji P Henson (Benjamim Button) 51.0%
Lead Actor: Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) 71.1%
Lead Atress: Kate Winslet (The Reader) 67.6%
Best Director: Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) 99.7%
Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire 99.0%*
* Nate claims that Milk has an outside chance of winning the Best Picture award (that's where politics plays a role)

Read the detailed analysis at: http://nymag.com/movies/features/54335/

Internship Search

My search for a Summer internship (2009) in environmental policy (with special emphasis on water policy analysis) is currently on. I am applying to a few institutes, but if you have any places in mind, please let me know.

Featured on namesake media outlet

I was featured in a namesake media outlet (The Columbus Dispatch) that carries the same name as this blog (or is it the other way around?) sometime after the Mumbai terror attacks. Incidentally, this media outlet is the prominent newspaper circulated in the city of Columbus, OH. Here is the link (scroll down to the last paragraph to see my statement)

Is this science?

Yesterday, I was in the lab, trying to get my setup working before next Thursday's meeting, when I saw Carrol with some kids coming into the lab. She then introduced her daughter and two lovely grandkids, both girls, to me. The kids were in 6th grade school, and were on vacation from Arlington, TX. Carrol explained to them about my research, but then wanted me to tell them more. So I started explaining to them about wastewater treatment and how I was trying to get rid of the 'microbes' in the dirty water. And then, one of the kids asked me, "Is this science"?

That question startled me for a second. I have interacted with high school kids and have talked to toddlers (who have no other option but to listen, and they can't talk back!), but it has really been a long time I talked to kids in primary/middle school, and that too about research. For kids, there is a clear demarcation of science, history and language. What we see as molecular genetics, wastewater treatment and wireless communication, they see as 'science'.

I replied to her, saying "Yes, this is science and engineering". This was not the only one, there were more to follow. The kid later asked me, "We have our school from 8 in the morning till 3.30 in the afternoon. Do you also have a specific time at which you come here and then leave". The whole conversation with the kids set me thinking on how far I have come from school. At her age, I would have asked similar questions to a graduate student. I don't know if she understood my explanations, but when asked about research and my work, she said, "It is very interesting and exciting". I hope she carries positive memories of this conversation and choses a profession that best appeals to her.