An immigration quickie

It's fairly embarrassing that I've never linked to this chart, which does its best to explain the legal immigration maze.

Something to remember when angry people in border states complain that people should come here legally. I'm not advocating for illegal immigration, of course - just pointing out that the current clusterfuck of a process, which results in a few tens of thousands of people becoming permanent residents every year, and a couple other tens of thousands being eligible to work here, is beyond broken.

PS. Hat tip to AF for reminding me of this a few weeks ago.

A worthwhile commute

I drive to work exactly once a week right now. On Thursdays, we get veggies from a CSA set-up delivered to my office, and since I don’t have class that night (at least till later this summer), everything works out pretty well. This means that I have very few commuter habits: I’m never sure what to listen to, which path to take, when to be in the left lane and when to avoid it. It’s exhausting, that level of decision-making, but every now and then you have a very rewarding commute – rewarding not because it’s especially fast or problem-free, but because it reminds you that live where you live and not somewhere else.

 

In my case, this morning, it meant seeing the following:

 

-seeing a middle-aged woman being dropped off by a gentleman caller in a very posh section of Kalorama, doing the walk of shame. I could tell because she was wearing an Ovechkin jersey.

-while caught in funeral traffic, catching the distinct whiff of a presidential motorcade not too far behind me.

-still in funeral traffic, listening to the new Trans Am album, and thinking about how great the music sounds when you’re surrounded by police cars, secret service SUVs, and sirens, sirens, sirens.

-STILL in funeral traffic, seeing Donna Brazile and…daughter, I assume?...emerging from a cab.

-people dressed to mourn, but behaving as though they are at an important society gathering – which, anyone who remembers Craig Crawford being interviewed by Imus around the time of the Reagan funeral will remember, they sort of are. Funerals, protests, and inaugurations: these are the events that infringe on our daily lives.  

 

I was stressed till I realized that being 20 minutes late to work would have no discernible impact on my day or on my relative state of anxiety. Life was good.

I both do and don't hope that this exchange defines grad school for me

Innocent youngster: Why did Stupak care so much? I mean, there aren’t even abortion providers in his district.

 

Solid liberal prof, nodding in agreement: For sure, it’s a setback for reproductive rights.

 

Me: But…I’m not saying I buy it, but if you buy the argument that it’s a moral issue, then, you know, consider it by analogy to slavery. Telling someone, “Don’t like slavery? Then don’t have one” doesn’t work, because you don’t want anyone to have slaves.

 

Snotty lobbyist from Citizens Against Government Waste who is incapable of sounding nice: Actually? It had, like, nothing to do with that? It was really funding? For his reelection campaign? He couldn’t afford to lose support from his pro-life donors. We always had him voting for it. We knew he was going to support the bill.

 

Solid liberal prof: Because he said months ago he would? Why didn’t you think the dynamics had changed? As he ratcheted up the rhetoric, he was really boxing himself in.

 

Snotty lobbyist: Well? Yeah, we knew. We just knew. I mean, the pro-life Democrats had to put on a show, but they were going to vote in block because no one wants to be the deciding vote. But, for him? It was really all about the reelection.

 

 

This exchange happened the day before Stupak announced he would not seek reelection.

 

 

 

If I notice that the most recent episode of "Lost"...

…featured two references to songs on side B of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle,” what exactly about the statement dates me the most? The old Bruce album, or the fact that I remember that the songs referenced opened up side B of the album? And that side B of that particular album may be the greatest side in the history of rock?

morning-run talk

She: the physiological basis for ‘the bends’; the meaning of the term (ie, it’s hard to bend your joints when afflicted by it); nitric acid boiled into blood.

 

Me: Asymptotic covariances; the importance of homoskedasticity; hate of SAS.

 

But hey, at least we got out for a run.

In which I push music!

This is really Gordon's terrain (wiredformusic!) here, but I've been known to make the odd mix here and there, and being in grad school has awakened all the angst of being in high school and college, which were my prime mix-making years. I'm still working on an econ/public finance type-mix, but here are a few tunes that have made my quant playlist. There are a few missing tracks (Luna's "math wiz"! Lala doesn't think I own it, but lala, you're wrong about that, just as you're wrong about the Silver Jews not existing, and about me not owning "Supra Genius" by Soul Coughing or "Fractions and feelings" by Malkmus + Jix.)

Without further ado! The quant mixtape! Comments below.

Count me in: Songs about numbe...

1. 4 out of 5 (Soul Coughing)
Few bands spent as much time counting or listing numbers as Soul Coughing. Accordingly, they are something like the patron saints of this mix.
2. One (Aimee Mann)
Pretty self-evident.
3. Don’t tell me to do the math(s) (Los Campesinos!)
Every mix needs token bratty Scottish indie punk. Work on your algebra and stand out in the rain! Plus, the title reflects that charming British locution of calling it “maths.”
4. The Calculation (Regina Spektor)
“Counted up our feelings / and divided them up even / and it called that calculation perfect love.” HAHA, nice try, liar. Multivariate linear regression is the opposite of perfect love.
5. Plus Ones (Okkervil River)
Ah yes, the plus one. Because this song is explicitly about all the things that got left out of other songs that enumerate things (97th tear, 100th luftballoon), I think of it as being about the error term.
6. If you don’t like the effects, don’t produce the cause (Funkadelic)
Funkadelic goes right to the heart of the matter, don’t they? They bypass association entirely and go right to causality. This must be a bivariate model since they don’t touch on interaction effects. I’m hoping that at some point we’ll get to hear George Clinton’s thoughts on multicollinearity.
7. 100% Dundee (The Roots)
In evaluating Dundee-ness, it is clear that the Roots will not tolerate even the smallest alpha. This song mentions sigma, assumptions, and the phrase “lyrically calculus in this arithmetic hip hop metropolis.” It therefore makes math seem much cooler than it is.
8. 6’1” (Liz Phair)
Clearly what’s going on here is that the break-up in the song has caused Liz Phair to reparameterize her height variable, and she’s found that the recalibration gets her an extra 11 inches on her height measurement.
9. 123 goodbye (Elvis Perkins)
Abacus of the rain! Calculus of pain! It’s all there, and it’s all true. Elvis Perkins has written a couple of gorgeous songs about the death of his mom – she was on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center in 2001. This is one of them.
10. My mathematical mind (Spoon)
My English lit mind does not see the breaks.
11. Neverending math equation (Sun Kil Moon)
Originally a Modest Mouse song. Love this cover. Google the lyrics because they’re good, and while Sun Kil Moon has this great mopey voice, he’s also completely incomprehensible.
12. Feelgood by numbers (The Go! Team)
Except going by numbers makes me feel bad. On the other hand, this song makes me feel decidedly good, so maybe you can feel good by “Feelgood by numbers.” Hmmm.
13. Two sevens clash (Culture)
Marcus Garvey predicted that on July 7, 1977, something epic or terrible was going to happen. The sevens would clash. The band Culture made this prediction famous, and the song was so popular that supposedly when the date rolled around, most of Kingston shut down. Schools, stores – all closed for fear of the sevens clashing. Nothing happened, but we certainly do put a lot of faith in numbers, don’t we?
14. 100% (Sonic Youth)
Much like the Roots’ uncompromising approach to Dundee, Sonic Youth will not accept any degree of alpha in their “love for dead roadie model.”
15. Casiotone nation (Soul Coughing)
Again, with the counting.
16. I wish I could go back to college (Avenue Q cast)
Because this is how Quant II makes me feel.
17. A day to God is 1000 years (RZA)
RZA takes on the delicate issue of scaling in data. Sure, it’s just a day to God, but it’s 1000 years for humans. Be mindful of how to interpret the coefficient on your time variable in this model because of thi scaling issue. And, bonus thematic tie-in: The Wu guys are five percenters, or at least use a lot of it in their lyrics. So, we’re back to Soul Coughing, the oroboros of quant music.
18. Count me out (The Del McCoury Band)
Yes, Del. Sing it.

Unstructured time

I used to think it was a knock on adult life to say that you would never again have the same kind of seemingly never-ending amount of unstructured time with your friends. Possibly this is true, though at this point in my life, I really don't know what I would do with unstructured time.

It's bad enough for me when Ms. AC leaves before me in the morning - something that had been previously unheard of in our conjugal existence, but which now happens at least three times a week. The extra fifteen minutes or so are pleasant enough - Sportscenter or Morning Joe or possibly even a few minutes of Saved by the Bell - but having to then develop my own routine for leaving the house is worse than death. I never remember to check to see if the many things that should be on/off/open/closed/cleaned/stored are in order. I leave, get halfway down the stairwell, and wonder if I locked the door. So I go back, check, find the door locked, and rush out of the building. Then, across the street, I wonder the same thing. Is the door locked? I do a quick mental calculus - Ms. AC won't be home till xx:xx, which would give the cats z number of hours to play in the hallway of the building, giving them a significant chance of escaping the building entirely. Turn back, go check door, realize I'm ten minutes late already, curse the cats, repeat.

Tonight, I got home at 9 knowing full well Mrs. AC won't leave her campus till 11 pm. So, I went for a run, got really sweaty, took a cold shower, and now...here I am. Baseball game on mute, listening to Bill Callahan, and...well, what the hell do I do? Should I recode some variables for my final quant project, read about health care and the profit motive, or just, I don't know, have unstructured time?

Also, it's very hot, and our building hasn't switched over to cool air, and though I am tropical in genetic makeup, I'm sick of being sweaty at home. New theory: when you're hot, go for a run, take a cold shower, hang out in your boxers drinking scotch, and write about it. It won't make you feel cooler, but the scotch will elevate your body temperature enough that you'll be less cognizant of the heat. Like ice cream in winter.

The bill...

So, it's been a busy week but I'd be remiss not to post some thoughts about The Bill, as we've taken to calling it - especially given that I am preparing for a class debate about Medicare and have spent an inordinate amount of time learning about the system. (Incidentally, while I'm not crazy about single-payer, reading about Medicare makes it seem much, much more attractive.)

Das Binky has a great post about why mandated insurance is such an important part of the bill. Jacob Hacker - quoted on these pages before - agrees that, while not perfect, the bill is a good first step.

And despite concerns about the constitutionality of all this "mandating" - there seem to be some pretty capable minds who say, yes, this is all fair. I tend to agree with them because to take the other side literally would make, say, a progressive tax scale unconstitutional, and we all know that courts have repeatedly asserted that a progressive tax scale falls within the constitutional provision to tax and does not run afoul of any equal protection provisions.

On a side note, it was particularly rewarding to see my prof - an alum of the Clinton health reform wars - so excited in class this past Wednesday. "We've been teaching this class for years, and this is the first time we've had an expansion of entitlements of this magnitude in the history of the class!" she crowed. Later, she interrupted herself mid-sentence to gush about how excited she was to be finally moving in this direction.

Which is very germane because, going back to Hacker, government programs are especially subject to path-dependence. Half of the genius of Hacker's book/dissertation is chronicling how little steps can significantly restrict the range of choices going forward. Given Hacker's involvement in the writing of the public option and his support for even this neutered bill, he evidently believes that this version will ultimately put us on a path toward a public option which is, of course, fine by me.

It'd be nice if the plan did a bit more. Cost containment is of course the biggest issue, and to the extent that Medicare is successful in containing costs, this is largely a result of Medicare's stinginess. When you pay 81% of the rate that private insurers pay, and you cover fewer services, of course your expenses per enrollee will be lower. But Medicare provides a useful baseline for private insurers to measure their own fees against for a good that is notoriously difficult to properly value. However, the arguments against the bill, near as I can tell from Paul Ryan's roadmap - are basically just variants of the same old "market market market" argument, and I really dare anyone to argue credibly that health care is a normal good, and that health care consumers behave like consumers of other products and services. Not to mention the fact that the Paul Ryan plan is just phooey, from a budgetary standpoint.

I'm not sure where the cost containment will come from until we are able, as a society, to tolerate care that's just good but not ideal. In reality, we always demand the best, the most up-to-date, the most sensitive - and all of that costs more. Unless we are willing to have an honest debate about marginal gains in efficiency compared to marginal increases in cost without someone yelling out "death panel!", I'm not sure how we'll be able to ultimately contain costs. Tort reform is, sure, a part of it (because tort reform also eliminates incentives to always offer the most up-to-date-and-super-expensive care, and lest it sound like I'm arguing for crappy care, I'll just say that if we demand the best and always the best, we should be willing to pay for it. If we are happy to get good enough, we should be ok with the mild loss of quality too. And ideally, we'd be able to put a price on that trade-off, though this is also, of course, notoriously hard to do in the confusing patchwork of American social spending.

RIP

Mark Linkous made a ton of beautiful music while he was alive. I remember driving through West Virginia about ten years ago and not being sure of what I was looking for. Listening to "Good morning Spider."

A few years later, I was seeing the Flaming Lips on the Yoshimi tour, and for the opening act, this weird guy came out and played a few songs by himself in front a weird projection screen. He wasn't announced before taking the stage nor was he officially on the bill, but by the second song I knew for a fact it was Mark Linkous. Everything I saw that night was consistent with the little that I knew about him - reclusive, shy, tentative. As the years went on and I heard more and more about him collaborating with fairly big names - Tom Waits and Danger Mouse, to name a few - I figured it was a sign that Linkous had realized he belonged, that he had peers, and I kind of tuned out.

The news of his suicide and the grizzly details are really hard to stomach. I rarely mean the phrase "rest in peace" literally, but I really hope Mark Linkous can.

Still beer o'clock!

But first, let's test your memory. Remember how I once wrote about the Audacity of Hops Inaugurale? No? Fine.

Maybe you remember that more recently I wrote about JJF having some Westvleteren? Oh, you don't remember that either? Fine. I don't know why I bother somedays.

Anyway, readers and fractions thereof, I stand before you today to tell you that worlds are colliding. (When two worlds collide, no one survives, no one survives...)

The guy who brewed the Inaugurale apparently is in Belgium? Or something? That's what his gchat status says. But more importantly, he has a beer blog, and what's the first post I see when I head over to his blog? Worlds colliding, people. Perhaps the Onion was right. I'm getting a real Jacob's Ladder vibe from all this, and it's not just because tonight is Lostnight. Be careful out there, kids. The reddest of reds, the bluest of blues - the saddest of songs I sing for you (if you're beer-less.)

Soundtrack for this post courtesy of the late Mark Sandman.