Two days ago Joseph Stiglitz gave a lecture here at the University of Siena for the Workshop Benessere e Imprenditorialità. It wasn't intended solely for economists and as such was often quite superficial and cursorily dealt with some of the issues that he was trying to promote. This was quite sad for me as I have often enjoyed and appreciated what he has written in Economics and I was hoping that he might have make some more rigorous arguments for the promotion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (one of the themes of the talk) and its link to generalized welfare.

His talk covered CSR mainly in reference to three themes:

1. Conduct in the recent credit crisis in the US and its movements worldwide

2. The role of business in climate change and sustainability

3. The misuse of GDP as an index for measuring welfare.

Each of these has several different implications in respect of world trade, international relations, the functioning of credit markets and so forth. I will try to comment on each of these (now and in later posts).

First, in terms of the credit crisis, there is now a fantastic amount of commentary on how this has permeated from the US into the world economy. I don't think it's particularly worthwhile for me to comment on that (check the Economist's View blog for good coverage of this and other topics). A point that he has made, which I think is particularly relevant, is that corporate social responsibility is not simply the fact that government needs to regulate companies so that they do the 'responsible' thing. It requires buy-in (yes, hand-wavey I apologize) from the companies themselves. Stiglitz gave the example of a Chinese company (which he couldn't name) asking the government to regulate the industry and suggesting specific regulations. The CEO of the company's argument was that if their company wanted to be both profitable and responsible it needed to inform government as to the types of regulation that are required. Why? Because if they are a profit-maximising company and they are competing with privately owned (unlisted firms) that don't have similar systems of reporting, etc then govt needs to insure the economy against malfeasance by these privately owned firms by regulating both privately owned and publicly owned firms. Why again? The publicly owned firms would lose competitiveness against the privately owned firms if the privately owned firms pollute, mismanage labour, etc. Hence, it is in the publicly owned firm's interests for it to promote regulations to ensure corporate social responsibility of all firms. However, this will obviously be 'tainted' by the extent to which this is in the interests of the publicly owned firms. In my mind there is a further asymmetry of information, that which exists between the publicly owned firm 'acting in govt's interests' and govt itself. Obviously the public firm wants to be competitive, in fact it would probably suggest regulation that it, as a larger and public firm could probably easily internalize, whereas the smaller private firm may not be able to. He didn't mention this and I think it warrants comment. Especially because so many private SMMEs are necessary for us to increase growth and employment generally. So yes, it is good for corporates to cooperate with govt, but govt needs to be equally sceptical of their 'input' and must, absolutely must find a way to regulate all firms in such a way that is sensitive both to the firms and to the needs of govt.

Stiglitz contrasted the above Chinese example with financial corporations and their interaction with govt subsequent to the credit crisis. Thes companies are arguing, still, that they DO NOT REQUIRE MORE REGULATION! What? Are these people insane? Have they not noticed the credit-crunch? Have they not seen that (literally) millions of Americans are losing and will lose their homes on account of the speculation of these companies and yet they say they are over-regulated? Come on!Moreover, that these companies have CEOs who walk away with incredible packages at the end of the year, while the average customer is walking away without their life savings and having lost a home is incredible (more on CEO remuneration later). He comments further that companies such as Citibank, with advertising campaigns saying 'Qualified at birth', or companies sending credit card forms to fourteen year-olds, is a form of indentured labour. The companies get the individuals into debt quickly and then keep them paying back the loans for the rest of their lives. Oh yes, on the above topic, don't even let me comment on George Bush's plan to veto the house's proposition to alleviate the pain caused by the credit crisis. Once more he is funny in the head.

Stiglitz also accurately commented on two different Business School and Corporate type supposed 'movements away' from evil profit maximising. Firstly, 'shareholder value'. Well, I'm not going to go into this one again with too much detail, but maximising shareholder value does almost nothing for ensuring the long-term value of the firm because the CEO and the firm generally become far too sensitive to short term movements in the market which may have absolutely nothing to do with the activities of the individual firms. Consider the market at the moment and food shortages, a decent analogy can be found in the various reserve banks being unable to control inflation internally because of the fluctuations in food prices internationally. It would be foolish to expect the individual reserve banks to be able to curb inflation in their own countries when core inflation is up so much. Ditto shareholder value and random fluctuations in the market. Stiglitz argued that shareholder value was actually doublespeak for maximising managerial wealth. Why does he argue this? Well, the US has actually had decent economic growth in the past 9-10 years. Has the 'ordinary American' gained anything from this? No! Real wages have not increased for the average worker, the benefits of from growth in the US economy have gone almost entirely to the top 5% of income earners (or even top 1%). CEOs take away massive remuneration packages at the end of each fiscal year. Stiglitz argues (again accurately in my opinion) that this is another area that CSR needs to tackle and in which govt needs to intervene. CEOs cannot continue to be the only group to benefit from growth in the economy, assuming that there is any growth after the recession created by overly risky loans.

Ok. that's enough for now. More later on Stiglitz and some of his suggestions.

Subsequent to my post two days ago on the Herrmann, Thöni & Gächter paper, Simon Gächter presented some more evidence at the Faculty of Economics. Having already heard some of the stuff before I was able to think about it a bit more and to think contemplate some of the additional repercussions of the work. Moreover, because we sat there for about two hours talking about the paper and the evidence, the contributions by several individuals increased my understanding even more. Fantastic times.

Anyway, one of the things I don't think that I gave sufficient weight to previously was the way in which this evidence directly contradicts the rational actor model. To me this has become almost trivial, but in interacting with others I regularly become aware how pervasive this view still is – the view that in order for us to have coherent economic theory we cannot deviate from a rational actor model, with regular preferences that are entirely self-regarding. Individuals preferences are evidently not entirely self-regarding. There is a surfeit of evidence to show this. Moreover, that something as ephemeral as 'culture' could actually enter into the ways that individuals behave is entirely contrary to the way in which economics operates, or, I should say, assumes individual agents to operate. Thus, the evidence that I discussed which Herrmann et al. found from their experiments is rather quite exceptional. It illustrates definitively that different cultures will act differently in situations of economic cooperation.

Subsequent to these experiments Gächter undertook further experiments in Switzerland and also in Russia. Once more the evidence there was anti-social punishment in Russia and the exceptional 'punishment results in cooperation' result in Switzerland. However in this set of data the sample in each of the countries was much larger than it had been in the inter-country comparisons previously. The samples covered rural and urban, mature and young. The anti-social punishment norm was pervasive in Russia, in Switzerland it was non-existent. This is astonishing. It provides evidence, once more, that conventional models in economics, i.e. the neoclassical Arrow-Debreu-Koopmans models I mention above are entirely inadequate to describe the behaviours of agents in modern day economies. I believe too that this kind of validation was necessary in order to show that their data wasn't simply quirky. Moreover, Benedikt Herrmann in personal communications, recently told me that experiments done by a colleague of his in Africa (though I hate that generalization) have had similar and particularly strong anti-social punishment results.

Moving away from these considerations, Gächter links the phenomenon of antisocial punishment to some of the (very) recent literature on 'Do-gooder derogation' (Monin, JPSP, 2008). The kind of situation where cooperators, or 'do-gooders' are sanctioned by others because these others view their behaviour as paternalistic, condescending and 'better than thou'. I haven't read Monin's paper yet, so I cannot comment on this, but my suspicion is that this may be accurate. Furthermore, when Gächter discussed indexes from Hofstede (I think) referring to individualism vs. collectivism, it was shown that those countries in which the individualism ranking was high and the collectivist ranking was low were less likely to anti-socially punish others than those in which the individualism ranking was low and the collectivist ranking was high. I think there may be a few factors endogenous to this though, as in their data their was a fairly strong correlation between lack or rule of law and lack of civic norms with the low individualism and high collectivism indices.

Speculation
It would be really interesting, imho, if we could somehow manage to control for various factors and say 'this is the marginal effect of the norm'. Don't think it's at all feasible, but it would still be interesting. Would this norm (dummy?) variable be something like the controversial 'Africa Dummy'?

More on this and other topics soon.

Herrmann et al. Cooperation and Antisocial Punishment Today's comment (probably the last one for a while depending on time and studying) is about the (2008) paper by Benedikt Herrmann, Christian Thöni and Simon Gächter in Science.

The main thrust of the paper is to do with what the authors label as 'antisocial punishment', i.e. punishing those people who are cooperating in a public goods game with you. This is contrary to most of the literature on the subject in which punishment normally ensures that players in public goods games end up at a Pareto superior solution of cooperate (most of the time).

The authors undertook 16 sets of experiments in 15 different countries (you can see the countries in the graphs). The authors then look at some specific reasons as to why the results could indicate such strange results for the different groups in the different countries. They argue that social norms (social preferences?) could exist which would promote specific patterns of behaviour rather than others. Thus they try to use an instrument for civic cooperation in society, which might be indicative of the necessity to punish free riders in order to display that such behaviour is unacceptable. However the converse, that low civic cooperation necessarily leads to antisocial punishment is not necessarily true, but they try to test the thesis regardless. To test this hypothesis they use the World Values Survey, The second hypothesis is that strong rule of law could lead to a situation in which personal revenge punishing, or antisocial punishment would be unacceptable – 'effective, fair, impartial' legal institutions could erase the need to personal revenge punishment (this is supported by an interesting, if slightly more anecdotal article by Jared Diamond in the recent New Yorker). To test this hypothesis the authors use an law indicator provided by the World Bank. Norms of civic cooperation were important in determining punishment in ensuring cooperation, but rule of law was not significant. With respect to antisocial punishment, better norms of civic cooperation and improved rule of law would decrease the likelihood of antisocial punishment. Stating the converse – countries with poor rule of law and low norms of civic cooperation were more likely to have antisocial punishment. Anyway, taking note of these conclusions, I think it is quite cool to have a look at the graphs. The first graph is the graph indicating whether cooperation occurs when the punishment option is not allowed, i.e. this forms the control group against which the punishment group is compared.

As is normal, we see that the groups start off cooperating, but then basically move downwards. However, what is astonishing is the disparate starting positions for the different cities and the different end positions. Normally, one would expect 'first world countries' (high civic cooperation, high legal institution quality) to have decent cooperation in general. This is not the case, for which Melbourne, Australia is the most interesting exemplar. Istanbul, Riyadh and Athens are however very near the bottom (and stay there in the second graph). Copenhagen has very high norms of cooperation, with cooperation being high in this graph and also in the second. In the second graph (where the experiment is run with the option to punish) we observe a massive change in behaviour for certain developed countries, again Melbourne is interesting as their behaviour has come into line with most of the other developed countries, but is not as high as Copenhagen or Boston.

Something which is fascinating to see when assessing the graphs side by side is that the behaviour in Minsk, Athens and Riyadh (and to a lesser extent Muscat) is almost exactly the same in the control as it is in the punishment treatment. This is quite astounding when considering the evidence that is normally offered in this literature. I think that this warrants substantial additional research. What makes the second graph particularly interesting is the variation in the final outcomes. In the first graph there was some variation (difference max-min = 7.6 units), but the shape of the curves was fairly similar for each of the societies. In the second graph there is dramatic variation in the outcomes for the different societies (difference max – min = 12.3). These are very rough, I admit - I don't have the data set, but I encourage you to read the paper for some more direct and applicable analysis of the dataset. I would also intuit that if you looked at the averages for the two groups Chengdu up to Boston against Minsk down to Athens you would get a significant difference between these groups, whether these groups deserve aggregation is something worth checking in terms of the civic cooperation and the legal institution index.


One additional comment I'd like to make is that I think that this kind of research would be especially worthwhile in both South America and Africa. The sample at hand covers groups from the US, Europe, Asia and Austalasia. It would be cool to see a couple more from the Australasia/Oceania region too, but I think there should be some experiments done in South America and Africa, as already stated. These would face additional and particular challenges, but are warranted nevertheless.

This post is a comment on the paper by Rodriguez-Sickert, Rowthorn and Guzmán (2008). It was the basis for the presentation given by Bob Rowthorn at the TECT/SOCCOP meeting.

The main theses of the paper are centred around

1. Genetic algorithms for specific behaviours

2. Learning algorithms again for behaviours

As is customary, it is assumed that individuals payoffs are not only a function of their own actions, but of the actions of others. Thus, if one individual is a defector and they interact with (are randomly paired with) a defector/cooperator/cooperator-punisher then their payoff is modified accordingly. The idea of 'learning' models as follows: individuals adopt the learning model of their parents, although this is open to mutation. Individuals therefore have one of three possible learning modules:

1. Conformism (copying the most common behaviour in their tribe)

2. Payoff-dependent imitation (copying the most profitable behaviour)

3. Best responder (homo economicus)

Individuals use these rules in order to choose whether to adopt defection/cooperation/cooperation & punishment behaviours in the relevant interactions that they face. Implicit in these learning algorithms is the belief that access to information is costless. Individuals cannot 'hide' their type. This paper is more about the description of the prevalence of behaviours than the arguments about costliness of behaviour and of arguments about encephalization and brain size. Each of the strategies could be argued to be costly in some manner, the level of the cost is relevant in other models.

The model is based on descriptions of hunter-gatherer society available in Bowles and Choi (2007) which it uses as starting conditions for the society. There are T tribes, each of which have constant and homogeneous size N. There is migration between tribes (through exogamy) and tribes go through cycles of (ritualistic) behaviours: hunting, war, reproduction, migration and learning (individuals interact and gain the strategy of their mentor with some probability, or they 'innovate' and get a strategy that neither agent has, innovation only applies to payoff-dependent agents, not others). Personally, I think that migration should come after war and before reproduction, but I could be wrong.

Selection pressures act at two levels: the within-group level (individual agents maximising their fitness) and the group level (tribes interacting and determining which is better off). I refer you to the model for details, one detail that I mention though is the probability of a cooperator to defect, which I think is necessary. However, if there is a stochastic chance of a cooperator (or punisher) defecting, then I believe strongly that there should be a possibility of a defector mistakenly cooperating. This is for us to remain consistent with what we mean by 'mistakes', otherwise we are saying only that people who cooperate are capable of making mistakes, which I think is problematic. I don't really know how consistent this criticism is with the literature though. I am also not entirely sure of exactly how one would mistakenly cooperate, but can conceive of how one would mistakenly defect. Still not convinced though.

With respect to the inter-group interactions, the simulations that the authors run results in a baseline situation (discarding the first 50 000 years of interactions) of fairly stable percentages of the behaviours. Groups were paired randomly and do battle (the war stage). The group with fewer defectors is more likely to win than the group with more defectors (indicating the tension between within-group and between group selection). The battles are deemed to be 'massacres' with every agent in the losing tribe being 'killed' and replaced as follows: the surviving tribesman 'clone' themselves (rape of women in the previous tribe for example), then clones and remaining tribesmen intermingle to create two new tribes. One problem I have with this model is that it uses a random pairing method for interactions. I think that this is inaccurate and that in order for the model to make more realistic predictions tribes should interact on a spatial matrix and only meet tribes that are within a specific distance of themselves. This could have interesting results for the pervasiveness of specific behaviour patterns.

After the simulations, Best Responders comprise 5% of the population, Payoff-Dependent imitators comprise 20% of the population and Conformists comprise 75% of the total population. When the level of migration is increased to 50% then these percentages change, with Best Responders increasing to 40.5% of the total population, Conformists 38.5% and Payoff-Dependent imitators 19% of the population. Alternatively, holding migration constant and halving the conflict rate, the population consists of 15% Best responders, 60% Conformists and 25% Payoff-dependent imitators. Lower levels of conflict thus result in lower levels of 'cooperation'.

This paper is very interesting in my mind, mainly for the fact that it has a large number of groups (T=20) interacting over the time frame, which is quite good for this kind of work. I do think though that the spatial nature of 'real interactions' is quite crucial and that it could lead to high quality later work on the subject. I refer the reader to Bowles and Choi (2007) for similar work, dealing instead with parochial altruism. I think that a coupling of the two systems would be quite interesting, i.e. learning agents who could be parochial altruists (or altruists in other manners) and see what that might do to the simulations and to the models.

This first commentary will be on the paper by Edwards, Hassall, Sutherland and Y, Selection for protection in an ant-plant mutualism: host sanctions, host modularity, and the principal agent game, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biology (2006) with some additional comments on the arguments Douglas Yu put forward at the TECT meeting.

The central arguments of the paper revolve around the observed facts that:

1. mutualisms evolve from antagonistic interactions,

2. and persist in the face of invasion by specializes parasites, and selection for cheating by the mutualists themselves.

I assess specifically the economic basis for the arguments presented by Edwards et al. and ask the reader to refer to the paper for the specific details offered on the experimental design, results, etc.

The essential points are the following, there are species of plants that have ant symbionts which populate the domatia that are produced by the plant. These domatia produce relevant benefits to the symbiont ant. Symbiont ants protect the plant from herbivory by investing in protection (a sunk cost), and thus maintain access to the domatia. Ants that seem not to protect the plant from herbivory (approx 10% of the ants that inhabit this specific plant species) that are found not to patrol (through some signal) will lose the benefit of the domatia. The argument is that this interaction is one that is customary to the principal-agent literature: there are two types of agents cooperators (protectors) and defectors (cheaters/non-patrollers). The idea is that the plant (the principal) will design a contract so that it can read the signals of the agents in order to know whether the agent is abiding by the contract. If the agent does not abide by the contract it is punished by the removal of the domatia on the branch that it did not protect.

Crucially, we must note several factors that affect how the ant-agents behave and how the plant-principals act. The plant-principals signal their success by the number of domatia that they produce for the ants. The ant-agents signal their successful defence by ensuring that herbivory does not occur. In the context of the experiment, herbivory was simulated by cutting off leaves in the area where the ants patrolled the branches. These branches would then die off if a certain number of leaves were cut off (leaves cut = 4), but not for a certain lower number of leaves removed (leaves cut = 2). This would indicate that only 'gross misconduct/laxity' by the ants (i.e. something similar to the complete lack of protection offered by the one ant species) would result in domatia mortality.

The study found that a certain pertinent level of domatia (d=23) was the level at which selection between cooperators and defectors would be ambivalent. However, if the number of domatia exceeded this level then it is likely that protectors would be selected. This seems to be coherent with the data as the average number of domatia on the plants was 28 in the site under inspection. Consider this as a wage problem in the principal-agent setting. The principal needs to set some optimal wage in order for the agent to maximise their output. Moreover, the wage can act as a selection tool, reading the signals that are sent by the respective agents.

I believe that the paper offers a really high quality and interesting application of economic insights to the world of biology. Edwards et al. correctly assert that modelling mutualism as a market structure would be erroneous on account of the information asymmetries that would be present in such a market and the inability for the mutualists to have a 'complete contract' (me imputing economics to what they are saying). Thus the use of the principal-agent problem as a descriptive technique is almost certainly more accurate than that progressed by Noë and Hammerstein (1994) for markets in mutualisms. The economics that Edwards et al. use seems intuitively applied and theoretically well-grounded. Douglas Yu is currently moving this work forward by looking at other plant-ant mutualisms, as well as at fig wasp-fig tree mutualisms. The paper on that topic is currently a work in progress, but I look forward to its results, especially because of the fact that 'abscising' (cutting off) of figs in which excess oviposition has occurred does not seem to be a general pattern (if I recall his talk accurately).

As my previous post said, I was at a conference (actually a work group meeting) in Barcelona for TECT. TECT is centred around the The Evolution of Cooperative Trade. The group of which I was de facto a part because of Sam Bowles is called SOCCOP, which is again to do with the evolution of social and cooperative norms.

Over the next while I'll be spending some time blogging about the papers presented. I don't have the expertise to comment rigorously on all the topics as it was an interdisciplinary meeting. I will inevitably have my 'economic hat' on during the analysis.

The papers I'll be talking about are all available here. Most likely I'll have the first one up some time later today and the rest as I manage to read them while studying. I read some before the conference and will dredge up my notes on them too. As a point of foreshadowing, the presentations I enjoyed the most were probably the following:
Douglas Yu on the evolution of mutualisms (ant-plant, wasp-fig tree, etc)
Sam Bowles and Sung-Ha Hwang on Social Preferences and Public Economics
Bob Rowthorn on Slow Learners and Conformism
Simon Gaechter and Benedikt Herrmann on Evolution of Cooperative Punishment

There were several others that were really good, but these appealed to me personally the most. I may spend more time on them than the others.

I am in Barcelona in between my IO and Macro exams (we wrote IO on Tuesday, will write Macro on this coming Tuesday). Anyway, I am here on account of being invited by Herb Gintis (via Sam Bowles) to a workshop for SOCCOP. SOCCOP is a research program involved in attempts to understand human prosociality (and antisociality) in the context of evolutionary theory, economics, biology, sociology and so forth. It's a fantastic opportunity, which is why I am here in the middle of exams.

Anyway, Sandra Polania, my colleague from UniSi, and I left Siena yesterday morning on the 07:10 bus to get to Pisa airport. We then waited there for a few hours, me studying a bit of macro and listening to Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion audiobook on my ipod, interspersed with passages from the novel that I am currently reading, Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park. The juxtaposition of these on one another was interesting to say the least.

We caught our flight at 14:30 and arrived safely and uneventfully in Barcelona. I sat next to a mother-daughter couple who were having an argument about the daughter having possibly left the mother's bag back in Pisa. But seconds later they were getting intimate about fashion tips from the in-flight magazine. Entertaining. Arguments in Italian are such fun.

Sandra and I then caught the train through to Barcelona where we began our search for the residence at which Arcadi Navarro had told us we'd be staying. We got slightly lost, but thankfully with Sandra being Colombian she could ask the natives where to go in Spanish. I keep on thinking to myself, not ANOTHER language to learn... But it's next on my list after Italian and a brush up on my French. Ok.

After settling into our rooms and me attempting to lie down for a bit (left Siena with cold and headache, worse having arrived, lol). We then went for a walk down to the beach front. It reminded me of home (Cape Town). There we were walking along the beach front, people jogging, cycling and even roller-blading/skating and it gave me distinct feelings of home. It's somewhat like Cape Town, but simultaneously more modern and more ancient. It has the same cosmopolitanism. It has the areas in the middle of the city that are dead quiet, and others that are busily pumping. Fantastic. We grabbed a schwarma for dinner (cheap students that we are), sat beside the dock to eat and then made our way back to the residence.

This morning we both got up at a decent hour and spent some time studying for the pending Macro exam. I managed to chat to Amy on Skype, YAY! It is so weird travelling without my wife, rather difficult to explain, but her presence is simultaneously energising and calming, especially when I'm a sick little traveller. Back to Barcelona. After studying for some time, plus Skype chat Sandra and I went to the Parc Guell, by Gaudi. It was a very interesting experience, I felt like I was walking into a fairytale castle cum attack on modernism. Very odd. The pillars at odd angles playing with Classicism, the almost-kitsch collage tiling. That being said, I really enjoyed it and took some fantastic photos (sadly I left my camera cable at home, photos to follow once I'm back in Italy).

From there Sandra and I took a turn to the old city, wandering around and taking photos as tourists are wont to. We went to the particularly beautiful basilica, Santa Maria del Mar. It has a brilliant array of stained-glass windows, one of which I thought was especially beautiful (again photos to follow). We then took a crazily long walk home, go us for misreading the map! Anyway, I am now back at the residence and procrastinating. Well, I was procrastinating while writing this. Back to macro now...

Before getting on to this let me state the following for those of you who, for whatever reason, don't know it. I am (in no particular order and with no hierarchy of ranking) a 26-year-old, male, heterosexual, married, white, non-religious, South African man studying a PhD in Economics at the Università di Siena, Italy.

One of the things that I have wondered about for a significant period of time is exclusivity in movements. Specifically in activism surrounding race and issues of sexuality.

This morning I was reading this article from z-net about the LGBT movement and how young LGBT individuals see the movement and how they believe that it is misguided in its attempts (in the US) to be so continually focused on equal marriage rights for LGBT individuals. What immediately came to my mind is that, once again, I was reading an article about LGBT individuals, asking questions of LGBT individuals and why they thought that the LGBT movement was becoming unsustainable. There were no references whatsoever about recruiting non-LGBT individuals to the movement. None. Why?

In the article they also had this photo:
Subtitled: Queer youth march in Springfield, Massachusetts—photo from www.gbpflag.org

From which the question, "Where are the non-queer youth?" follows. Where are the non-queers who could be marching in solidarity?

I have marched against discrimination towards PLWAs (People Living With Aids), for rights to medication, for gender and race equality, and against abuse of women and children. All of these movements have, to some greater or lesser extent, identified some salient descriptor of my identity (semi-summarized above) and allowed me access to fight for the movement, to be active on the movement's behalf. However, when it comes to sexuality I have often felt, validly or not, that there was some kind of exclusivity about sexuality that I, as a heterosexual male (and therefore as part of the oppressing class maybe?) could not understand, or to which I could not relate in the LGBT movement.

Before I get onto this, I am going to relate some personal anecdotes and experiences. When I was at high school (a traditional, religious, single sex college) I was continuously labeled as 'gay', 'fag' and 'queer' (whatever these terms mean to adolescent boys) on account of being different: enjoying acting, singing in the choir, being able to dance, being liberal, being non-religious. I questioned my sexuality and asked myself repeatedly 'Are they right? Am I confused about liking women? Am I meant to like men?' These may not seem relevant to many LGBT individuals who do actually prefer individuals of their sex, but to me it was particularly worrying, was I wrong about what I liked? Did a number of conservative, homophobic individuals have some insight into my personality that I did not? Was I too queer to be straight?

Luckily for me, I ended up in Drama School for my first year of university (after a gap year). But the people at Drama School were equally prejudiced towards me, in a way different to, but not unlike, people had behaved towards me at high school. Individual homosexual lecturers ridiculed me when I wanted to play a rugby match, other individuals tacitly excluded me from social interactions because I wasn't arty enough, I didn't smoke marijuana and I dressed too preppie (when I thought about what I dressed about at all) and I really, really liked women. I was too straight to be queer.

Whereas in high school my behaviour was sanctioned because it was labeled as 'gay'. In drama school it wasn't 'gay' (again in a very, very broad definition of gay) enough. Now, I understand in hindsight that for numerous individuals who had recently finished school and who had wanted to leave behind individuals who played rugby, who dressed preppie, who were tall & sporty, these were weird reminders of things away from which they wanted to move. I was as symbolic to them of things that they disliked, or which they feared as I had been to the conservative, homophobic individuals in my high school (who were a minority I must actually state).

What I wonder about though is that surely instead of alienating individuals like myself the LGBT movement should be embracing us. When I was at university during Orientation Week, I would always stop by the stall for the Rainbow Society, the 'Gay and Lesbian Society' on campus. I once asked one of the representatives, 'What about hetero people?' the reply was that 'Oh, they're welcome too.' I wondered though how we were meant to know that.

So, if the same position still stands, both nationally and internationally, with respect to LGBT movements, how are non-LGBT people meant to know that they can offer their services, not only that, but that LGBT individuals actually want them to do so. When are we going to be targeted by your media? When are you going to be asking us to help? LGBT issues comprise an area that still requires momentous amounts of activism and that will require more in the future. I want to ask, am I as a white, heterosexual, married, male welcome?

Post Script:
For anyone interested, I stopped doing drama. I picked up Economics, completed a Bachelor of Social Science in English Literature and Economics, completed my Masters in Economics, then a Masters in Creative Writing and, as I stated at the beginning, am now doing my PhD in Economics.

So, I read a number of blogs and other things on neuroscience, psychology and economics. I also try to keep up to date, if I can, with little things going on in the Science world. Anyway, one of the things that piqued my curiosity was this article on Chinese-Indian cooperation in science.

The main thesis is that China and India collectively have about 38% of the world's total population. Moreover, they both have scientists educated domestically and internationally who are capable of improving their domestic scientific output. Both China and India are well aware of this fact. The governments of both countries are supposedly trying their best to ensure that as many as possible (though still not enough) of their compatriots who are educated abroad return home. Moreover, if they can achieve a state of cooperation in the sciences between China and India, then they will have a hub of software and hardware driven research that could rival the best anywhere. American isn't respected for much in China, but the article says that it is still respected for its science. While the US cuts back on government-based investment in S&T (according to the article, but not according to the NYTimes - it was cut last year in December, but a new budget for 2009 was proposed with a different agenda), China and India are promoting increases in government spending on both. Scientists in both countries hope that this will aid in the eventual peaceful resolution of political border antagonism between the countries. Who knows?

What is more important to me is that there are better ways to resolve political problems than we often consider. Moreover, there are also ways to try to increase progress in countries, and as a consequence speed up development, that do not require the sanctioning by government of the activities of individuals. What I mean here is that there may be intercountry antagonism (such as the Sino-Indian border conflicts) which may be circumvented and possibly prevented in the future by reinforcement of cooperation elsewhere. Which is very cool in my mind.

It reminds me how we need to get back on track in South Africa. South Africa, which was previously a leader as a developing country, is now falling behind numerous South East Asian countries that have invested far more in education and the sciences than South Africa has. (Which, if I remember correctly is in this paper). South Africa desperately needs to increase investment in the physical and engineering sciences. Not only this but high school graduation rates of mathematics (at higher grade), science and chemistry need to improve rather than continue on the downward spiral that has been seen (ok, this may be hyperbole). One of the things I worry about is that South African education officials state that education is improving, without noting how there aren't dramatic improvements in the sciences. Sadly, growth is not driven by the arts, or the social sciences. Growth is driven by entrepreneurship and the sciences. I don't necessarily agree with how the mechanism works (i.e. philosophically), but there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that increased growth goes hand-in-hand with development in science and technology graduation rates (and also with the high school math and science grad rates I commented on previously). These aren't highlighted in everyday policy discussions in newspapers, though some do admittedly bring them up. Anyway, I could rant on about this more, but I'm going to leave it for the moment. Suffice to say that I don't think JZ would necessarily take cognizance of this and I don't believe he would surround himself with people conducive to such ideas. Intriguing indeed.

We took a walk down our road today. We try to do walks around and about our place every so often, so you'll get photos here and there. We were walking towards a place we were looking at for some friends to stay. It's quite a walk from where we are, but still on our road which runs all the way to Pieve al Bozzone (Hence the Strada di...).

Anyway, here are the photographs.




Amy, not as called as she might be, but looking over the fields toward the pond.


The road we had just walked, up the hill and over the meadows. So to speak.


A particularly enchanting tree, splitting down its middle.

3 Medium Melanzane (eggplants)

Coarse cooking salt

Vegetable oil

1 Large Brown Onion, chopped finely

2 Cloves of Garlic, crushed and separated (each clove goes somewhere)

3 Medium Tomatoes, chopped

400g Tin of Tomatoes, crushed

½ Cup Fresh Oregano

2 Tsp Sugar

500g Spinach, trimmed

250g Ricotta Cheese

1 Egg, lightly beaten

½ Tsp Nutmeg

½ Cup Grated Cheese

Cheese Sauce

50g Butter

2 Tbl Sp. Flour

1 ½ Cups Milk

1 Cup Grated Cheese

Cut eggplant into slices, place on a wire rack and sprinkle with the coarse salt. Leave to stand for ten minutes, then rinse, and leave on absorbent paper. After a further ten minutes, remove them from the absorbent paper and shallow fry them, in batches, in the vegetable oil until lightly browned on both sides. Drain them on more absorbent paper. I also used a bit of butter here, on the advice of Amy, which definitely gives them a nice bit of flavour. I didn't want to use too much oil for the shallow frying.

Cook onion and garlic until soft. Add the fresh tomatoes and cook, while stirring, until the tomatoes are soft. Add the crushed, tinned tomatoes, with all the juice; the oregano and the sugar. Note here that I didn't have any oregano, I added some dried oregano and some chopped fresh basil which was also really tasty. Leave this to simmer, uncovered, until it is reduced to half.

In the interim, clean and trim the spinach. Then boil until just wilted. We added a bit of bicarb and salt to the water when boiling the spinach in order to retain some colour. After boiling, squeeze off any excess water (Amy pressed it into our colander, which seemed to work well, they never tell you 'how' to do certain things in these recipes, How does one squeeze spinach properly?) chop the spinach coarsely. Combine the spinach, ricotta cheese, garlic and nutmeg in a bowl mixing it well.

To prepare the cheese sauce first melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour until the mixture is thick and bubbling. Gradually add the milk, stirring the whole while. Once this mixture has thickened somewhat, start to add the cheese, stirring in slowly (don't just gooi it in). The recipe says to use Cheddar Cheese, but trust an Australian recipe for Italian food not to realise that YOU CAN'T GET CHEDDAR CHEESE IN ITALY! So you, we used mixed grated cheese, or formaggio grattugiato – basically Parmesan and others. It turned out really well.

Once you have prepared all of the above, oil a decent oven-proof dish and use 1/3 of the eggplant as a base layer on the bottom. Then pour the tomato and onion mixture over this. Make a second layer of eggplant, which you cover with the ricotta and spinach mix. Add the remaining eggplant as a final vegetable layer and cover this with the cheese sauce. Sprinkle some cheese on top of this. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, until it is light and golden on the top.

It makes a fantastic main meal, or complements other meats nicely. We supplemented it with a good bottle of Chianti that I was given as a gift for proof-reading some stuff as a favour to one of my classmates: Conti Serristori Chianti Classico. What fun! Hope you enjoy the preparation and the food itself as much as we did.

Apologies for the second blurry picture. We were being silly and didn't check it. Also, we have no control over our heinous wine glasses, they are part of the package in our semi-furnished home.

I have long wondered what specifically makes an individual economist the way that they are. An associate of mine back in Cape Town, Mandisi Majavu, made me aware of this paper and I was wondering what others thought of it. It's called The Making of An Economist Redux (JEP, 2005), by Prof. David Colander and comments on a number of the top graduate schools in the States. Thoughts? Opinions?

You can get the paper at this link.

And also, for those of you who care, you can see in this Q&A from Freakonomics at the NY Times that Hal Varian uses Linux.

Hello Dear Friends and Family,

Well, it has been some time and I haven't written anything. Amy has been the one keeping many of you informed about our life here since our arrival. So yes, my life, apart from celebrating being married to my lovely wife, has been filled with my studies. Not too much exciting there. It's the typical first year of a PhD Economics program. Gruelling work on quite unbelievably boring, yet occasionally exciting stuff. Other than studying, Amy and I try to go in to town to do the occasional socialising with my classmates, or our shopping, or just wandering around Siena, beautiful city that it is. We haven't quite gotten the whole fare passagio (strolling through the city aimlessly) thing that the Senesi do, but hey. We do however enjoy our walks close to our home around the countryside, especially now that it is occasionally warmer, the views are fantastic, you can smell aromas from fig trees, and simply revel in the beauty of a sun dappled olive grove. Very rejuvenating.


At the moment I am writing exams. I recently wrote my exams for Macroeconomics and Microeconomics. Macro was a particularly difficult exam, but hopefully I will pass it. Ditto re: Micro. As is typical in these things, a pattern has emerged. Two years ago the Macroeconomics exam was difficult, then they made it substantially easier last year, which meant that in response that had to make it more difficult this year. Oh the woes of dynamic systems buzzing about equilibrium!

Other than these exams, Amy and I have joined an Italian class offered to the PhD students at the Università. The first class was loads of fun with Amy and I particularly enjoying how slowly and steadily the teacher spoke. The entire two hours we all just spoke Italian, which was really good. What made it more fun for us is that we aren't in the 'beginners' class. Learning to say “Mi chiamo Simon” (My name is Simon) yet again would have been mind-numbingly boring. Amy and I are also putting in our own effort otherwise by reading out loud in Italian to one another from a couple of Italian books we've bought, as well as watching Boston Legal (which I bought last year) in Italian, with English subtitles. All of this is of course quite unrealistic relative to actual speech with real Italians, but we hope to be able to hold normal conversations with real Italians (and yes this term must, of necessity, be highlighted).

Also, so you all know, to deal with the stress of studying I have taken, as I do, to baking. I recently managed to use various recipes to come up with an amalgamated Banana Muffins of Joy and Loveliness (© pending) recipe. Having made the mixture I would pop the baking tray into the oven while making morning coffee and Amy would be served freshly baked BMOJAL (refer to above) with her coffee while still languishing in bed, as she is wont to do. The funny thing about being married/living with someone is you realise not just the habits of the other person, but the random contrasts between the two of you, for example I generally require (want?) less sleep than Amy does. I often go to bed after her and get up before here. All good though, she gets muffins in bed. Oh yes, of course with baking comes my Chocolate Chip Cookies of Amazing Wondrousness (also ©). Those work more for exam stress alleviation than the muffins do though, and one friend of mine once mentioned that they tasted, in her mind, as the cookies in Stranger Than Fiction (the film) would taste, so they do act as something of a panacea for the malady of exams.

Some time after my exams (possibly next quarter) Amy and I are planning to go up to Reggio-Emilia, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. One of my classmates lives there with his girlfriend and they have basically offered free accommodation (most likely couches) as well as guided tours around the area. Supposedly there are some fantastic hot springs close by which we might be able to take advantage of one evening, though we've been told that there are a number of guards vigilantly patrolling the area searching for gefuffling (definitely not Italian, more like 'Rather imaginative old lady in Cape Town with dodgy hairnet' which is a language, just not as well known) couples. Not only that but we have been told that the BEST PIZZERIA IN THE WORLD is in Reggio. I have yet to be convinced, but with Guy (the friend who lives there) it seems to be quite a spiritual thing, almost transcendental really, so I imagine the pizza is good. Or at least I hope so for when Amy and I go there. Emilia-Romagna is also the home of several famous Italian towns: Ferrara (where the Ferrari comes from), Modena (Balsamic Vinegar anyone?), Parma (Yay! Parma Ham!) and several others. They are all fairly accessible from via train or bus and Amy and I are hoping to do a couple of things over the few days that we are there. If we have time we are also hoping to make it up to Milan, as there is an art show on there with some work by Churchill Madikida, a South African artist. We saw some of his work here at a show called .ZA Giovene Arte di Sudafrica (Young Art From South Africa). Seems like quite cool stuff. All of this depends on timing of course. Hmm...



Other than that, my exams finish and then after our few days away I immediately go back to Uni for classes. Literally we finish exams on the 7th and classes start again on the 12th. Ruthless I tell you, RUTHLESS! Although, we do get a statutory ten day vacation on account of Easter after a few weeks of term. Roman Catholic countries and Easter. You know it. We might try to organise another little jaunt during that time depending on what, how and how much. Uffizi anyone? A little day trip to San Gimignano?

In April too things look to be heating up. Amy is trying to plan to go to Frankfurt to a workshop at the Städel Museum (I think). Two particularly prominent feminist art historians, Griselda Pollock and Linda Nochlin, are involved. To put this in context Griselda Pollock is the author of one of the core texts for Amy's Masters, so if we can organise her going to Frankfurt it would be fantastic. Amy is also looking up possibilities in terms of meeting some of her friends from Honours in Art History, one of whom is currently in London and another of whom is staying in Eindhoven. Holding thumbs.

Also in April, I am off to Barcelona to attend a a conference on a project assessing the `Social and Mental Dynamics of Cooperation' with funding from the European Science Foundation. Its basically geared towards interdisciplinary research on pro-social and anti-social behaviour with input from economists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, evolutionary biologists, sociologists, etc. The research team is headed by Herbert Gintis, very cool Economist who has done a lot of research into evolutionary game theory and various other stuff. Sam Bowles (one of my Profs here) is also a leading principal investigator. Anyway, the basic idea is to consider human society as what is called a `Complex Adaptive System', to look at group and individual evolutionary pressures affecting behaviour, beliefs and preference formation. to assess gene-culture coevolution and other such things. Basically I am hoping that someone there will say, “Ah yes, YOU fine sir, you look like you could do with a PhD topic, here's a topic and some money to research it! Go forth and research!” One can fantasise. *SIGH* Nevertheless, the opportunity to go (and have things paid for) is fantastic. I am looking forward to it like no one's business. If you're interested I can tell you more personally at another point in time. But, so you know, this is basically the kind of work that I want to do, the raison d'être of my PhD if you will. Other than Bowles & Gintis, other cool people such as Ruth Mace (UCL), Arcadi Navarro (U Pompeu Fabbra), Dan Zahavi (U Copenhagen) and Ernst Fehr (U Zurich) are involved.



So I acknowledge that I haven't said too much about what has actually been happening, but nevertheless take it as granted that we are having a blast. Our home is a great little place, and it was made all the nicer by a brief visit by Gail from London (we're hoping one or two other friends might visit when the time is right). Gail and Amy also did a little day trip to Firenze. Amy and I are getting to know Florence better having been there a few times now, and can find everything from the food market, to random sports shops, to the 1€ for EVERYTHING shop (better quality than you'd imagine I assure you).


Another recent development has been our new computer. My laptop seems to have suffered a painful, grinding death. I have been told by the computer technician at the university here that, as it is still under its warranty, I can phone Hewlett-Packard, who will then send a technician to our home, pick it up, and then send it back when it's fixed. Supposedly. I have yet to make the call, my friend Vincenzo said he'd help as these Numero Verde (toll free number) people often assume you have at least 27 ¾ years of Italian under your belt, which I obviously don't. Anyway, we had Ubuntu installed on the new computer and we are loving it. It is incredibly stable and we have been having fun getting to know the system. I am also loving KILE (I write most of my documents for university in LaTex a science programming thingy, KILE, for Linux is the best program in which to do it, ever, better than ANYTHING I had on Windows). Also, we downloaded a TON of fonts for Amy in OpenOffice and she is having fun playing with those. So all round it's fun-fun-fun. I'm also learning all kinds of things as I start teaching myself to program using various internet sites. I really know next-to-nothing. I have started a couple of Python (a programming language) tutorials and am hoping to learn some things there.

Hmm... Other than the above, I have been reading various books and articles. Specifically I read Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth, a fun if somewhat epic read. I am also loving reading (when I can, and currently about 2/3 of the way through) Decisions, Uncertainty and the Brain: The New Science of Neuroeconomics by Paul Glimcher of NYU. It was a Christmas gift from Annette and Gordon and I have really enjoyed it, it feeds in well to what we'll be doing at the conference in Barcelona and hopefully I will have finished it by then and will be reading my next Economics (non-prescribed) text, either Behavioural Economics and is Applications by Peter Diamond and Hannu Vartainen or Advances in Behavioural Economics, Camerer, Loewenstein and Rabin (eds). I am currently reading another book I was given for Christmas – The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy. I loved The Road and No Country for Old Men (the title of which really doesn't translate well into Italian, I saw it in Feltrinelli bookshop the other day). I am also thoroughly enjoying All The Pretty Horses (The first part of the trilogy), but what makes it even more interesting is that you can see how his style and his themes evolved and changed from these books through to No Country and The Road. Very cool.

Anyway, enough work avoidance. Sending you all lots of love from Tuscany. I am going to try to pay more attention to my blog in the future. It has been some time. I'll put up everything from a photo or two, to other random things. You'll just have to see.

Ciao and love,
Si

Ok, so it has been some time. I promise to get back on the wagon and add more write-ups to this blog. I have been very lax of late, so I apologise. I finish exams tomorrow, and yes I am avoiding work right now. I thought I would change the look of my blog too, to go with the whole New Life thing. Who knows?

Anyway, instead of my usual political rants I thought I would entertain you all with some recipes. the first recipe is for some banana muffins. I love banana muffins and particularly enjoy making up a mixture, then baking them in the morning when I get up. Studying a bit while they bake, then having them with some coffee. Superb.

The second is a soup that I have taken to making, I only tried it out very recently and is an adaptation of some recipes that I've seen. I generally take recipes either from books or the net and then change and alter them how I see fit. Hope you enjoy them!

Banana Muffins of Joy and Loveliness

4 Large Bananas (Mashed)

¾ Cup Sugar

2 Eggs, lightly beaten

125g Butter softened

1 tsp Baking Powder

½ tsp Salt

1 ½ Cups Flour

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

100g Chopped Walnuts

Cream together the butter, sugar and eggs.

Sift the dry ingredients and and combine with the butter mixture.

Add the bananas and the vanilla essence.

Stir in the nuts.

Bake for about 25 minutes or so. I'm quite intuitive about this. I also like to bake them in the middle rack of the oven, then move them up when they're close to being down in order to get a crispy top. YUM!

Makes about a dozen.

Fantastic Rosemary and Bean Soup

750 ml Stock (whichever type you prefer, I use chicken)

400g Tin Tomatoes

400g Tin of Chickpeas (drained and rinsed)

400g Tin other beans (I have used Cannellini)

2 Garlic Cloves (Crushed)

8 Spring Onions

2 Tbl Sp chopped rosemary

2 Tbl Sp Olive Oil

Optional addition:

250g Pancetta (chopped bacon)

Warm the oil and add the chopped spring onions, garlic and rosemary. Cook until the onions are soft. Add the tomatoes, ensuring that they are crushed up. Cook for five minutes, allowing to boil. Do not cover! Add the stock, I generally use chicken stock as we regularly make roast chicken and I almost always use it to make stock. Having added the stock, add the beans and allow the soup to warm through simmering it for another five minutes. If you so choose, you can add the bacon close to the end, first frying it in its own fat, draining of the fat and then adding it to the soup. This reminds me of a favourite soup I used to purchase at Woolies. Fantastic for cold wintry days!

As always, lots to talk about. The hot topics today have to do with firstly, the resignation of Japanese Leader, Shinzo Abe, and my opinions on the appeals to the constitutional court about inequality in social security. I’ll also comment on a couple other random things I’ve read.

The first issue, with respect to Japan is who is going to lead the country now that Abe has resigned? There are a couple of possible candidates in the Liberal Democratic Party (Abe’s Party), the Secretary-General Taro Aso (Not General Taro Aso as some papers reported) and Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga. Aso was the first to be told of Abe’s intentions to resign and is fairly close to Abe in the policies that he would implement, being hawkish and aligned to Abe on a number of other issues. Nukaga has other factors affecting his candidacy, such as scandals (twice stepping down from positions because of said scandals), but he is a political veteran in Japan. All very interesting. That being said, one of the most interesting outcomes from this will be the dispute over whether Japan will aid US ships looking to refuel in Afghanistan. This is one of the most contentious issues at the moment and could have the largest impact on Japan’s relationship with the US and its constitutional pacifist stance. Very interesting – watch this space. The other interesting impact is on the Japanese markets – they took a bit of a hit yesterday after the announcement with the Yen devaluing against the Dollar and the Euro. Fun times ahead. Even more fun for the Japanese Democratic Party I assure you...

With respect to the equality of pensions w.r.t. social security I think there are numerous problematic issues. In terms of a moral/equality issue, it is ‘right’ for the SA government to adjust the laws and to ensure that the money is disbursed to all people over 60 (rather than the cynical approach of increasing the pensionable age to 65 across the board). The only problem is that, empirically, it has been shown that there aren’t any statistically significant poverty or welfare consequences in households where there is a male pension eligible individual, or a male individual receiving a pension (sometimes actual pension receipt is under-reported in surveys because the households worry about what the surveyors will do with the information). However, when females receive the social grant (the pension is a social grant even if you mightn’t think it is), there are benefits that are directly transferred to the welfare of grandchildren and most significantly to granddaughters. There is no empirical evidence to support such an effect for male receivers of the pension. In terms of this evidence I don’t think it is worthwhile to increase the access of the grants to older men – there just isn’t evidence to show that it will do what Chaskalson and co. say it will. I also don’t think that the argument about it discriminating against gay men is particularly important, but I would like to see evidence on the matter. The problem ultimately depends on what government is attempting to do with the policy – if it is meant as an individual welfare improver or happiness helper then by all means provide it to these men. If, alternatively, it is meant as a ‘social security net’ for entire households (which is what I suspect it is intended for), then maybe this should be stated outright and maybe the system should be altered as a consequence. It’s a difficult one.

Otherwise, I was intrigued to read Thom Friedman’s article about a recent visit to Dalian, China and a commentary on focuses on energy, the Olympic games and other factors to improve domestic welfare, rather than the obsession with foreign policy that the US has as the world’s watchdog. At the Dalian University of Technology there are currently 100 PhD candidates all working on energy research, the Chinese government is opening its national energy innovation research center at the university. Friedman was attending an international conference where the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, was speaking about the successes that China has had and the challenges it faces in terms of energy, sustainability and so forth. All really interesting. China is one of THE places to be. I really hope to do research there at some point. Friedman retold the following story about a US Officer in Baghdad:

His unit was on a patrol in a Sunni neighborhood when it got hit by an I.E.D. Fortunately, the bomb exploded too soon and no one was hurt. His men jumped out and followed the detonation wire, which led 1,500 feet into the neighborhood. A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was in the area and alerted the U.S. soldiers that a man was fleeing the scene on a bicycle. The soldiers asked the Black Hawk for help, and it swooped down and used its rotor blades to blow the insurgent off his bicycle, with a giant “whoosh,” and the U.S. soldiers captured him. That image of a $6 million high-tech U.S. helicopter with a highly trained pilot blowing an insurgent off his bicycle captures the absurdity of our situation in Iraq. The great Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi said it best: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

I love that image – the US as a Helicopter using its rotors to blow Iraq off its bicycle. Very entertaining.

Other cool article: Energy and South Africa – are we on a road to poverty with our growth plan? I don’t know, have to think about this more. Will comment another time.

Last thing – is Fred Thompson a valid candidate for the US presidency? I liked this comment by Gail Collins: “If it turns out that mixing a race for the most powerful job on the planet with two preschoolers is too much for any one 65-year-old man to do, millions of women will say, welcome to the club, Fred. We know how you feel.”

Ciao,

Si

Comment on Energy:

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=318870&area=/insight/monitor/

Comment on Equality of Pension Laws

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=318916&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/

Shinzo Abe and Ensuing Leadership Battle

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/world/asia/13japan.html

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-japan-abe.html

Iraq Idea vs. China Idea – Thom Friedman

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/opinion/12friedman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

OK so last night I was asleep in bed (because obviously one is often not asleep in one’s bed, but elsewhere). I awoke to the sounds of my dogs and the dogs next door going berserk (or bezek if you hear in South Africa). This blog is about my funny response.

To give you some background, we recently had a new alarm system installed. It has detectors on the walls, in the garden outside and we hear a chime every time someone walks in the garden outside, the obvious understanding being that we can hear if anyone leaps over the wall and prepare ourselves for anything that they might choose to do to us in our sleep. That and have an alarm that goes off if anything man-sized happens to be in our garden at night. Which is useful.

So there I was lying in bed, having awoken to the sound of dogs going completely off their rocker. I heard a car idling outside. I thought to myself, ‘I really hope that my car hasn’t been broken into, Oh well… if it is I can deal.’ The dogs upped their intensity for a moment.

At that point, I grabbed my tazer-torch and my garage opener that doubles as a mobile panic button (the big red button = I am panicking, help me). So there I was in blinking sudden wakefulness. Tazer in one hand, panic button in the other, pyjama pants leg riding up my thigh looking like the epitome of danger.

In walks my brother having just parked my mum’s car in the garage. He is trying to placate the dogs. It’s 2am and he’s come back from doing an open-mic thing at Zula on Long Street. It’s all indicative to me of the problem that crime constitutes in South Africa, a growing paranoia and a (professed and believed) necessity to ‘be prepared’. So that I was. But it isn’t the most psychologically pleasant feeling I must tell you.

I try to go back to sleep. But James leaves the lights on. I get up and swear at him in a brotherly fashion. Then beat myself up as I fall asleep for being grumpy at 2am. But that’s how I roll (or something equally vague and hip-hop).

Otherwise, I read a really entertaining article yesterday (suggested by Richard) on the different capacities of ‘liberal’ versus ‘conservative’ brains. Here’s the link:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003877213_brain10.html

The article made me laugh, but it also made me worry a bit. That being said, it appealed to the determinist in me. It also made me wonder what kinds of education or socialization make the brain more plastic or not and whether these factors are driven more by genetics than they are otherwise. Could be interesting.

Another interesting article, suggested by Mike Watson (a friend in the UK) refers to how Wi-fi and other wireless communication devices (mobile phones, etc) have had barely any testing on them with respect to their health outcomes. The German Environment Ministry has suggested that individuals should do their best to avoid using Wi-fi because of the potential damages to health, outcomes that have yet to be investigated properly by government domestically in SA or many others internationally. Other suggestions: use wire connections rather than wireless, using your landline phone rather than your mobile. Hmm… all very interesting.

Anyway, I am meant to be working. Only two days left. I am picking up my transcript translated into Italian today. R900 later of course! Crazy times. But that’s the price you pay for going to study at a foreign university…

So I was reading Paul Krugman’s Op-Ed today. He was talking about how the tax cuts in the US are meant to have affected your every day middle-class American. You can see the article at the following URL, or email me and I’ll put it up (though the NY Times may be a hater if I do that) http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/opinion/10krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss I stole his title 'Where's my trickle?' it was too catchy not to use it!

Anyway, I thought about how apt this is for South Africa. One of the reasons that people have been rioting on the N2 is because they are basically wondering “Where is my trickle?” Probably in stronger language that that, and quite probably not as astutely stated, but that’s basically what they want to know. They want to know where their houses, high quality services and access to better quality education all are. They want to know “Why are we still so poor?” Now, I’d be the first to say that policy takes a while to have an effect on actual outcomes, but there are numerous examples world-wide of projects that have worked for the poor and done so within a relatively short period of time.

A much-quoted and referred to example is Mexico’s PROGRESA project (now Opportunidades), that targeted poor families and was run as a randomized evaluation pilot project for the now larger scale Opportunidades. What made this program so important was that it offered a conditional cash grant rather than just a random ‘here-you-go’ grant (As an aside: PROGRESA targeted women in the household, you don’t need to be a genius to realize why). As a consequence, children’s school attendance, test scores, health outcomes, nutrition and other outcomes improved. Once more, this requires massive bureaucratic buy-in and competent individuals on the ground monitoring and evaluating what people are doing. Note too that there is evidence that simply monitoring schools by government has a positive effect – not only monitoring student attendance, but monitoring teacher inputs (basically just checking whether they arrive to teach!).

What astounds me is that we haven’t had something similar to this put in place in South Africa. Why don’t we hear of more pilot projects by government to implement poverty-alleviating policies? Why don’t we go to individual families directly and give them their ‘trickle’, rather than telling them that they’ll eventually be affected by policies that benefit those who are already rich and who don’t really need that great an incentive to get richer? Why aren’t there more incentive-compatible policies put in place to ensure that families act in such a way that they will be less likely to remain in poverty, rather than reinforcing behaviours and conduct that isn’t going to help the current generations or those that follow? I don’t get it.

Personally, I’m not too worried about where my trickle is – in fact I’ve probably received one or two immoral trickles as a direct consequence of apartheid. I don’t need policies to help me directly. But the poor in our country desperately do. They need something and they need it now. They need government to affect their lives directly in such a way that government is doings its best to help them, and also to help them help themselves. Anyway, enough. Read the Krugman. Read Duflo’s article on monitoring (I can provide the reference if you want it). Google papers on PROGRESA there are loads. Arrivedeci, Si.

Well, things have been happening in SA of late. Mostly odd and politically dangerous in my mind, but that could just be me overreacting to that which I observe. Last week a DA parliamentarian asked for information about Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, wanting to know whether the government had known if she had a criminal record. He was thrown out of parliament.

More recently, on Sunday September 9, the Mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille, was arrested for taking part in a march. The march was legal. The march was against police apathy and inactivity in Mitchell's Plain. The Mitchell's Plain police made the time though to arrest Zille, a drug-protesting Muslim priest (Imam) and several others. Go POLICE!

The ANC meeting in December looms. There are two well-stated camps. The one supports President Mbeki standing for a third time and the ANC amending the constitution. The other camp stands for Jacob Zuma being the ANC President (and therefore SA's next president). Neither of these are good outcomes. In fact they are particularly poor. Mbeki has several individuals who he thinks should get the presidency, of which Joel Netshitenzhe is one. However, Netshitenzhe is about as charismatic (and therefore as likely) to get the presidency as a soft-rotting carrot at the back of a fridge. He's a supremely bright character involved in the drafting of all central policy in the country, but none of the grass roots (the ANC's /Zuma's favourite people) know who the hell he is. Oh well...

And I am leaving in two and a half weeks. 16 days to be exact. Weird. I am going to have to become accustomed to an entirely different political structure in Italy and acquaint myself far better with EU politics than I am currently. British politics I have down pat - Cameron is a conservative twit with a carrot up his bum. Brown is the successor to a Blair who went wonky, but we're hoping he'll pull through and stop brown-nosing Bush. Apologies for the nether region imagery.

In other news it has finally and conclusively been shown that colourants and additives in food cause hyperactivity. GO the British FSA! Carefully controlled and tightly researched it shows that additives can affect ALL children and not just those 'prone to ADHD'. Hmm... Well done you lot, telling us what mum told me when I insisted on eating my box of smarties and then bounced around the room like a gummie bear on speed. Once and for all showing that Mum (and Mrs. Larsen) knows best.

Returning to me leaving (see what I did there) I have crazy amounts to do before departure. Non-trivially including the pending hand-in of my Creative Writing dissertation. Should be interesting. I am reaching the point with some of the poems where I feel (if I could validly anthropomorphise them) like strangling them, chopping their little heads off and treading them into a merry mulch. However, others are like cool, serene waters that placate me, caressing my warm head with gentle fingers and lulling me into a false sense of poetic security. Oh well...

Ok, must be off. I should be working.