Author Archives: legallysociable

The home states of military personnel

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Richard Florida uses some data to flesh out Defense Secretary Robert Gates recent comment that there is a growing gap between American civilians and the military. Florida suggests part of the issue is the origin of the military personnel: they tend to come from two particular parts of the country.

Aside from relatively high concentrations in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington state, and North Dakota, the military is overwhelmingly concentrated in two distinctive areas of the Sunbelt: The southeast running from Virgina and North Carolina through Kentucky and down through South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi; and the corridor fromTexas through Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Wyoming. Texas and California now drop out. The upper mid-west and the northeast, especially New England, which tend to be more liberal and left-leaning than the rest of the nation, have very low concentrations of military personnel.

A couple of thoughts:

1. I don’t think this is terribly surprising (though it is helpful to see it in map form).

2. A question: does the military think it might be worthwhile to try to even out these geographic distributions? If so, how could this be done?

3. Are these differences only due to political views (conservatives vs. liberals) or is this really due to social class?

4. I’m glad Florida added data that accounts for differences in population size – the initial map simply showed more military personnel come from more populous states.

h/t Instapundit

Ben Folds + Nick Hornby = new album

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Time reports on the collaborative efforts of musician Ben Folds and novelist Nick Hornby. Here is a description of what the creative process looked like for the album that was released September 28:

For Lonely Avenue, Hornby e-mailed lyrics to Folds, who turned them into songs. “The process almost goes against what I’ve learned, which is that songwriting should be a labor,” says Folds. “I find it so easy this way. It’s natural and quick.”

Well, not that quick. The songs on the album took several months to produce, with Hornby writing lyrics in London and sending them to Folds, who arranged and recorded the music in Nashville. An e-mail between the songwriters, reprinted in the liner notes, illustrates the complex process of turning one man’s words into another man’s music. Hornby wrote a song called “Belinda,” about an aging rock star who has to sing his big hit, a love song about someone he no longer loves, at every concert he plays. “You’ve quoted the chorus of this fabled hit song in the second line of the verse,” Folds says to Hornby in the e-mail, before going on to explain the difficulty of writing a song about a song, and the placement of the fake chorus in between the real one. “It was like a hell [of a] crossword puzzle.”

I am going to have to go to Amazon and listen to the song clips right away. To me, Folds and Hornby operate in the same creative genre: tales of sad sack, hipster, occasionally endearing, 20 to 30 somethings. So if the two are put together, will we get an extra heavy dose of sad sack hipsterdom? Or will they create something new?

Middle class cuts spending on alcohol, clothes, eating out

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In these troubled economic times, new data suggests the middle-class is cutting back spending in certain areas:

Households in the middle fifth of the population sliced their average annual spending to $41,150 in 2009, the Labor Department said Tuesday in its annual spending breakdown. That was down 3.1% from 2007 and 3.5% from 2008, the steepest one-year drop since records began in 1984. The drop came even as those households’ after-tax income remained relatively stable over the two years, at an average $45,199.

Middle-class households reined in spending mainly on discretionary items. On average, from 2007 to 2009, they cut spending 20.1% on alcoholic beverages, 15.2% on clothing, and 9.5% on restaurants and other food away from home. They also spent less on some groceries, cutting back on items such as fresh milk and cream, as well as seafood.

Some of the change in spending could reflect a shift to cheaper alternatives, such as picking McDonald’s over sushi.

So when middle-class families need to cut back on spending, this is where they limit their spending: alcohol, clothing, and eating out. Presumably, more positive economic climates lead to more spending in these areas.

This is interesting in that it provides some indication of what the middle class considers “luxury items.” These are not generally big-ticket things but having the ability to drink more alcohol, buy more clothing, and eat out more may be the height of middle-class enjoyment. To reach the middle class may mean that one is able to spend in these areas without worrying too much about the budget.

American sports leagues eye $155 million income for sponsorships on uniforms

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It was recently reported that English Premier League teams earn about $155 million a year from the sponsorships on their uniforms. How much longer before American sports leagues follow suit and try to benefit from such a ready-made revenue stream?

More on the study of happiness: the role of priorities

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Measuring happiness is a small industry among researchers. A new study suggests another important factor: the priorities that people set for their life affects long-term happiness.

Most of us have thought, ‘If only I could win the lottery, then I’d be happy forever.’ But according to one of the first studies to look at long-term happiness, major life events, like a sudden cash windfall, are not what make us happy, rather, it’s the priorities we set in life.

“The main thing that’s surprising about these results is that it challenges this whole field,” said lead author Melbourne University sociologist Bruce Headey. “This study goes against the prevailing wisdom that happiness is fixed.” The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Previous studies suggest that happiness is predetermined by genetics and early upbringing, and that we eventually revert back to the same level of happiness regardless of changes in our lives. Looking at data from about 60,000 Germans for up to 25 years, however, Headey found that the more people decided to prioritize goals such as good relationships and good health, the happier they were, regardless of major life events.

While there are some critiques of this study (for example, it measures long-term happiness rather than daily satisfaction), it suggests again that the topic of happiness is a complex one to research with many possible factors influencing outcomes.

So should people set easier-to-reach priorities to be happy? What happens to people who set good priorities but aren’t able to reach them?

This also seems to be an interesting dataset with 60,000 people being tracked over the last two and a half decades.

(I’m also curious about the lead author saying that the study challenges “the prevailing wisdom that happiness is fixed.”)

Of “non-genius” and gratitude

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In a previous post, I commented on the surreality of watching The Social Network, the recent movie about the founding of Facebook, at a movie theater just off the Harvard University campus.  Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg is getting a lot of scrutiny in the movie’s wake, including over at the NYTimes where Robert Wright suggests that–contrary to the movie’s portrayal–Zuckerberg may not be a genius.  Wright asks rhetorically:

[C]an you be considered a genius, a visionary, if the globally dominant network you built wasn’t the fruit of far-reaching vision — if, indeed, the network’s internal momentum was such that it was almost destined to build itself, and the question was only which driven and capable entrepreneur would happen to be standing at the right place at the right time when it started to unfold?

I think that Wright’s observations are relevant–if familiar to anyone who’s ever gotten advice about finding a job.  The platitudes about “making your own luck” and “something will turn up eventually if you keep trying” may have played out on a vastly larger scale for Zuckerberg than they do for most of us, but the difference is in degree rather than kind.  Deep down, we all know that the race is not always to the swift (sorry Orkut, Friendster, et al.) and that the real world is less of a meritocracy than we delude ourselves into thinking.

To which I say:  thank goodness.  I think Wright’s right in his observation of the mechanics, but I disagree with his implication.  Zuckerberg may have benefited (unfairly!) from “positive network externalities,” but so have we all.  We all benefit from centuries of mathematical, scientific, and agricultural discoveries that allow us plentiful food and leisure.  Particularly in the U.S., we benefit from a long-running, stable democracy that few of us have made significant sacrifices for–and none of us started.

Thank God for positive network effects.  It doesn’t take a genius to remember that our response to the Zuckerbergs of the world must not be jealousy but gratitude for the unmerited, unearned gifts we ourselves have received.

Michael Gerson: Obama’s faith-based campaigning has lost steam

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Michael Gerson, President Bush’s head speechwriter for most of his time in office, argues that while President Obama successfully courted religious voters during his campaign, those same voters have now turned against him. Here are Gerson’s reasons for why this has happened:

There are a number of reasons for the believers’ remorse. Social issues blurred during a campaign naturally become more vivid and divisive in the process of governing. Obama’s campaign appeal to reconciliation — which impressed many religious voters — has dissolved into prickly partisanship.

But the failure of Obama’s religious appeal is also ideological. It is true that evangelicals are generally not libertarian. They admit a place for government in encouraging values and caring for the needy. Yet they do not believe that governmental elites share their values or have their best interests at heart. Among conservative Christians, government is often viewed as a force of secularization — a source of both bureaucratic regulation and moral deregulation. By identifying with expanded government, Obama fed long-standing evangelical fears of the aggressive, secular state.

It sounds then like the issue may be that while voters liked what they were hearing, they don’t particularly like the way this was to be carried out through an increased role for government. Putting these values from the campaign into practice has proven to be a difficult task.

But it is interesting to note that Gerson concludes that religious voters, a good number of whom are conservative, cannot break from their views on the size of government to support Obama’s faith plans. Gerson suggests that many of these voters have been pushed by Obama into an ideological choice: big government or faith concerns. Why do these two concerns have to be so linked? This is a bigger issue that Gerson touches on by suggesting that “There are a range of options between government as the first resort and government as the enemy — options that few in our political debate seem willing to offer.”

Symbolic punishment? Fraudulent French trader ordered to pay $6.7 billion

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The economic crisis has raised interesting questions about who is responsible. In the United States, much blame has been placed on the large financial institutions, investment firms and banks, who played a role (though others have also argued that the government and consumers share the blame).

But in the courts, blame could be assigned to any of these parties. In a recent decision in France, a trader who worked for France’s second largest bank was ordered to pay the bank $6.7 billion in damages for fradulent activity linked to the economic crisis. Here is a quick summary of the case’s outcome:

The court rejected defense arguments that the 33-year-old trader was a scapegoat for a financial system gone haywire with greed and the pursuit of profit at any cost — a decision sure to take some pressure off the beleaguered banking system overall.

By ordering a tough sentence for a lone trader, the ruling marked a startling departure from the general atmosphere of hostility and suspicion about big banks in an era of financial turmoil. It was a huge victory for Kerviel’s former employer Societe Generale SA, France’s second-biggest bank, which long had a reputation for cutting-edge financial engineering and has put in place tougher risk controls since the scandal broke in 2008.

Kerviel maintained that the bank and his bosses tolerated his massive risk-taking as long as it made money — a claim the bank strongly denied.

The story goes on to say that both sides, the trader and the bank, admitted to mistakes along the way. But the court ruling suggests that the trader was the culpable party.

The assignment of blame after large traumatic events is a fascinating phenomenon to observe. Who is eventually seen as the responsible party can depend on a number of factors including national culture, time in history, court cases, public opinion, and other particularities. Whoever becomes the scapegoat can often become the symbol of the traumatic incident, forever linking that person or party to phenomenon that are often quite complex.

The problems with cell phone on airline flights

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What is it exactly that irritates people around them talking on cell phones? This issue is surfacing again as Singapore Airlines moves closer to allowing cell phone calls during their flights:

Singapore Airlines announced today that it will soon allow wireless connections — for text messages, Blackberrys and perhaps cell phone calls — on its medium- and long-haul flights.

The move comes as the airline announces a multi-million-dollar collaboration with in-flight connectivity provider OnAir to offer Wi-Fi Internet access and other services on its flights.

Details are still being worked out, but when the airline implements the system early next year, it could be the first carrier to allow passengers to make and receive voice calls on their personal cell phones. The airline is waiting to see how customers respond to the idea.

The main issue seems to be that of private space: cell phone conversations can be invasive as one person is trying to do something else (read, sleep, eat, etc.) while someone else is jabbering away on the phone. Yet, there are other activities on flights that cause similar issues that don’t seem to provoke the same ire. People talk with others around them and they can move around quite a bit, particularly on long-haul flights.

Perhaps cell phones amplify these issues by their ubiquity. One person in the article mentions the idea of “cell phone manners” which seems to have something to do with the volume one uses when speaking on a cell phone. This might be a technology issue that can be solved over time but people could also learn to talk more quietly. And perhaps the bigger issue is that once everyone can talk on their cell phones, as one person notes in the article, that means phones could be ringing all the time. So then it is not cell phones per se but rather the fact that everyone is likely to be using them (even those who are irritated by them) once they are allowed.

Cheerleaders fight skimpy uniforms

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High school cheerleaders in Bridgeport, Connecticut are requesting uniforms that don’t bare their midriffs. The school district is now working to deal with the problem.

But why not have a larger discussion about whether there should even be cheerleaders? NBC Connecticut ties the midriff-baring to a recent study about college cheerleaders:

As noted by NBC Connecticut, the Bridgeport cheerleaders’ plea comes on the heels of a recent study of college cheerleaders, which found that college cheerleaders whose uniforms exposed midriffs faced a significantly higher risk of developing eating disorders.

How about a different comparison: do cheerleaders of any kind (midriff baring or otherwise) have higher rates of eating disorders? Even if midriffs are covered, I would assume appearance is still an important component for many cheerleaders – and whether appearance should be promoted in this way is debatable in itself.