Dr. Forbush Thinks

The sub-prime lending crisis is another opportunity for us to test our math skills.

My children never seem to stop asking me the question: “When will I ever use math in real life?” Just the other day my daughter and her friend got into an argument as to which was more useful, statistics or calculus. I could resist the urge to say, “They are both important, we use calculus to calculate some very complicated statistics problems.” But, the truth is that the average American tries to avoid math at every opportunity.

The Christian Science Monitor used the ignorance of the American public to create a shocking graph and fear mongering story on the crisis. I don’t understand the reason for this obvious exaggeration of the lending crisis. Maybe its just to sell more papers. Maybe there is another reason. I honestly don’t know. But the graph and the story make it look like the world is crashing down all around us. The truth is bad enough for the people that this crisis effects. Why do we need to create panic among the rest of the people?

First of all lets look at the graph that the Christian Science Monitor published. It can be found here.

I reproduced the graph from the data presented. It looks like this:



This graph gives the impression that housing prices are going up, and then suddenly the bottom has dropped out this year. What the graph really shows is the housing bubble. If you read this graph more closely we see that the graph shows the percent increase from the year before. In a good economic situation we would like all objects to hold real value. We don’t like it when our car gets old and we need to buy a new one. The truth of the matter is that things age and fall apart. Similarly houses age and fall apart. But houses age slowly. Another reality is that inflation is real. In an ideal economic situation a house would be bought at a price, and at some time later it would be sold for the same price taking into account aging and inflation. And, a very low constant inflation rate would be the best situation.

When we move away from the ideal situation we suffer. This is because eventually the market catches up to the reality. This action in the housing market is known as bursting of the bubble. So, if we look at the reality of the situation the way that we all think about this we would come away with a calmer outlook on this crisis. I am not saying that there isn’t a crisis. Obviously people who bought houses last year are actually going to have loans for amounts that are greater than the current value of their home. Similarly many people were swindled into borrowing money that they could most likely never be able to pay back. But, the crisis isn’t as dire as the Christian Science Monitor suggests in this article.



If we look at this same information in the way we normally would we see something much different. We see a house purchased in 1987 for 100% of its 1987 value. We can see the price of the house rise to over 300% of its 1987 value in 2006. Then in 2007 the price of the house falls to 294% of its 1987 value. These questions must be asked: “Is the person who’s house fell in value from 302% to 294% of its 1987 value really suffering very much? Have these people really lost anything that they deserved to have?”

The point here is that if you bought a house last year, and you want to sell it now you might have a problem. However, if you bought your house two years ago or more you have no problem even if you want to sell it today. Your house is worth less than what it was last year, but last year people were willing to pay more than its was actually worth. Most likely they are still willing to pay more than it is really worth, even though it is less than it was recently worth.

This sounds confusing, because people have a hard time realizing that 2007 dollars and 1987 dollars are not necessarily the same. People also don’t always understand percentages. And, in this case “percentage of change in price from the previous year” is not a clear concept. But, the real question is “Why would the Christian Science Monitor want to confuse the general public with this article?”





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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Reflection

In less than a month General David H. Petraeus is supposed to tell congress what the situation is in Iraq. People on the ground in Iraq already have a very good idea as to what is going on. The strategy for the last eight months has been to increase the troop strength in Iraq in order to calm the insurgents and allow the political process to go forward. The increase in American troops in Iraq has a definitive window of time. Without a draft we only have so many troops to dedicate to this plan. We can take away, or reduce leave time, but the long term implication of that strategy is the reduce the moral of the troops. American troops are people too, and they can only sacrifice so long before the pain becomes to great. The suicide rate for American troops continues to increase, which is some abstract measure of the stress involved in this effort.

While the window created for political action is limited the Iraqi government has chosen to withdraw and take vacation. The time is being wasted and it is running out. On the American side, much of the government is also on vacation. The president has taken a break from putting pressure on the Iraqi leaders.

General David H. Petraeus has told us himself that the only solution in Iraq is a political one. We can not use force to make the insurgents give up hope and surrender. The insurgents are driven by moral belief that what they are doing is for the greater good. They believe that the inhuman acts that they commit are worth it in the long run because they believe that they know the greater good. They have the same belief that Karl Rove had in his vision to win at any cost - the election victory is worth the lies and deception used to acquire that win. People who think that they know the right answer believe that the ends justify the means, whatever those means should be.

Of course when there are several groups that all believe that they have the truth, and that truth is not universal, then we have a recipe for civil war. Peace can only be accomplished by compromise. But like the situation in our political world, compromise is not an option for the majority of citizens.

This idea can not be changed over night. We can look at the situation in our own country for an example. Republicans don’t want to compromise, so they vote the party line. Democrats don’t want to compromise, so they vote the party line. We are getting nowhere fast. How then can we expect Iraqis to behave any differently when they look to us for an example?

Well, George W Bush knows this. He knows that we can’t win in Iraq by force alone. He knows that political action isn’t likely to happen. He knows that General Petraeus doesn’t have good news for us in September. So, George W Bush doesn’t want him to testify publicly.

George W Bush doesn’t want the public to hear General Petraeus tells us the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t want General Petraeus to tell us that this war can not be won by the use of American force. He doesn’t want the public to hear the truth about his failure from the mouth of the man who has been put there to make it happen. George W Bush knows that if General Petraeus tells us the truth the Republicans who have been supporting him will finally say enough is enough. A Republican politician would not have a chance in any political race if they continue to support the Iraq War after General Petraeus tells us the truth. So, George W Bush knows that the best strategy is to have General Petraeus’ testimony classified as a national security issue held behind closed doors so that the Republicans that continue to support the war will not be forced to change that support. Is this Karl Rove’s final obfuscation?

I’ve been called a Bush hater in the past. But, that certainly isn’t the case. I have always seen George W Bush caught up in politics like a whirlwind that he couldn’t control. He doesn’t have much of an imagination, so he is the idea candidate for a group of people that have their own ideas to imprint on him. These people wanted an actor to speak to the people while they wrote the script. George W Bush has done that job, even though his reading of the script wasn’t quite as good as Ronald Reagan’s. But, his quirks were accepted by the people who could relate to his inarticulate manor by identification. This is a good strategy for getting a predetermined agenda taken care of. But, when history brings challenges, imagination is the key to success. I sympathize with George W Bush sitting in the oval office as each tragedy hit our country through his term, and he had no answers. He sat there hoping that the people he appointed could come up with something. But, he had no vision and could not know if those ideas were any good. He was eager to flex American power and prove himself, so the Iraq War wasn’t a problem when Cheney or Rumsfeld or Wolfewitz suggested it. I don’t hate George W Bush for this short coming. I hate the sin, not the sinner. And, I have a problem with the American people who couldn’t see through the propaganda created by Karl Rove to sway the people in the elections. I hope and pray that Americans will learn from this failure of oversight and finally pay close attention to who they elect, and why. In that back of my mind I know that this is just a pipe dream.




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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Reflection

Fighting the Good Fight

Even to this day many supporters of the Iraq War contend that the war is an effort to battle terrorism. The confusing statements from the Bush administration prodded the naïve to believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11/2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The more savvy supporters of this aggression believed that Saddam Hussein had dealings with terrorists or supported them in other ways. The implication was that Saddam Hussein was bad and he deserved to be hanged, therefore a guy that bad must have had terrorist connections and deserved to be attacked and held up as a terrorist icon.

Even at the time of the invasion many people knew the truth and spoke out. But, as we all know the leader of the free world gets a lot more press than the academics with the real information. The American people tend to put faith in their leaders and believe what they say until they are proven wrong. And, it takes some time to prove that lies are lies and truth is truth. The sad truth is that it is easier to accept as fact something that someone tells you than it is to weigh the evidence and come to a true conclusion. In this way religion and politics are quite similar. No wonder the old taboo about talking politics or religion has so much support. This is because to challenge someone’s religious or political beliefs is to challenge their faith in what they believe to be true and is often unsupported by strong pillars of fact.

The facts are beginning to come out on many of the Bush administration’s articles of faith.

When it was discovered that the terrorist organization al Qaeda had attacked us on 9/11/2001 many of us already knew that they had terrorist training centers in Afghanistan. We knew this because we had already retaliated against al Qaeda with cruise missiles, and this had been in the news. We had already known that the fundamentalist leaders of Afghanistan were thugs with no respect for ancient culture when they destroyed the giant stone Buddhas. Human rights activists on the political left had been pleading for some action against these people for their treatment of women in their country. So, retaliation against the Taliban and al Qaeda was considered a reasonable reaction by most Americans - left, right and center.

On the other hand, Iraq was singled out from other nations that might not be behaving as we might like them to behave. The majority of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. Some funding of al Qaeda came from Saudi royal family accounts. Iraq was actually our proxy against the terrorist supporting Iranian regime. And, al Qaeda moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan where they found safe haven from the long arm of American military forces. Why did we go into Iraq, instead of Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan?

Iran, was mentioned in the President’s “Axis of Evil” State of the Union speech. This means that at least George W Bush thought that they should be a target of our government. But, for some reason it was determined that Iraq was priority number one. The administration went to extremes in order to justify taking action in Iraq. Of course the possibility that Saddam Hussein had begun to develop weapons of mass destruction was the key issue sold to the public. The fact that Iran, North Korea, India, Israel and Pakistan had nuclear programs didn’t come up in the discussion. Of course, Iran and North Korea were singled out as being members of the axis of evil, but Pakistan, Israel and India were left off the list. Of course all three of these countries have extremist groups that would love to have nuclear weapons in order to make the world bend to their will.

Even after the infamous weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, the administration continued to justify their action in Iraq by claiming that Saddam was not Democratically elected, just like General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. Or, ten years ago Saddam had violated the human rights of his people, just like many of the current African leaders. In fact, just about every excuse that the administration used to defend and justify the war in Iraq could be applied to several other countries. In fact, most of these very claims could be applied to Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. But, for some reason Pakistan never made George W Bush’s list of the axis of evil powers that threaten our civilization.

So, why was Pakistan left off this list? Why was Barack Obama ridiculed for such an obviously rational thought that we should attack the perpetrators of 9/11/2001 where they live - Pakistan?

We have been assured and reassured that Pakistan might have extremist groups, but Pakistan was not a state sponsor of terrorism. This distinction was just about the only thread that could be drawn upon in order to distinguish Pakistan from any of the other countries in the axis of evil. But, today under the Freedom of Information act we now know that Pakistan was actually a state sponsor of terror. Why was is so difficult to get this information? Was this information held back for political reasons.

Personally I am against preemptive war in general. Even if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction the invasion of a sovereign nation requires some international agreement that we certainly did not authentically have before we invaded Iraq. Therefore I am not making the case that we should attack Pakistan. Instead, I am simply pointing out the hypocrisy of taking action in Iraq when we were even more justified in following al Qaeda into Pakistan and finishing the war against al Qaeda. Pakistan should not be let off the hook in this global war on terror. With Pakistan we have a country we need to be aware of their motivations and actions. Just don’t single out one country and tell us how much more evil they are and then refuse to do anything about the rest of these countries that are just as evil.








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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Reflection

In the end Man vs. Nature is the ultimate conflict that we all end up losing. This is because nature is the environment that we all live in. Nature encompasses everything we know. Other men, society, and ourselves can all be reduced to nature itself because all of these are products of nature. In literature when we explore one of these so-called non-nature conflicts we are only peeling off one subgroup of conflict in order to examine it more closely.

Man is always in a battle against nature. This was obvious in ancient civilizations when every danger lie just outside the campfire circle. But, even today the diseases that we fight - be they bacterial, viral or even cancerous - they come from nature in various ways to damage our bodies and age them little by little. Even oxygen and the sun age our bodies little by little. Nature eats away at us every day and no matter how we fight it - we will ultimately loose that final conflict.

We don’t like to think about this fact of life. But, every once in a while death comes a little closer than we might like. Yesterday was one of those days for me.

Yesterday I took on nature by choice. Like I did last year I chose to swim from Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay to San Francisco. The famous island lies about 1.25 miles north of San Francisco in the cold bay waters normally between 55 and 63 degrees Fahrenheit. In these waters hypothermia is a real threat, but swimming hard for less than an hour will generate enough heat for most people to counter this problem. I survived this swim last year with some major chills and shivering, but nothing life threatening. I can normally swim a mile in about 25 minutes - 30 minutes would be a lazy pace. So, I wasn’t very worried about this swim at all.

But, nature doesn’t always cooperate.

About 650 people joined me on a one-way cruise out to Alcatraz. I had no fear, because I had done this before. But, looking back on this short trip out to the island there was some foreshadowing. I began to talk to some of the experienced swimmers. Last year I worried about everything, where to site, how to pace myself. This year I made the sophomore mistake of throwing worry to the wind. Of course most of the swimmers wore wetsuits. I didn’t wear one last year, why would I need one this year?

I met a few guys who also chose to swim “naked” as they call it. Two of them worked out every day swimming in the Aquatic Park. Another guy told me that this was his twentieth crossing. I asked him if there was anything that he had learned from all of his experience. He told me, that the most important thing was that every crossing was different. And that sentiment is still bouncing around in my head today.

As we traveled across the bay, the boat was being tossed around. Someone noted that there were whitecaps on the waves. And, another guy said, “This is going to be challenging.” I began to wonder what he meant by challenging.

Last year it took me 40 minutes to swim this short distance, mainly because I needed to occasionally stop and look around. I was also slow off the boat, which I believe added to my official swim time. This year I was quick to get toward the front of the line. I wanted to get started. Why wait? I jumped into the water, pushing the button on my watch in order to get the perfect boat to beach time.

I swam ahead away from the boat, following the crowd of swimmers that had jumped before me. Like most swimmers, freestyle means front crawl, the easiest and most efficient swimming stroke. I saw the swimmers in front of me and I kept up with them as we began to swim for the shore. Then a large wave hit me. I got my breath, but the wave slammed me into the water hard. I stopped for a second, picked my head up, and swam a few strokes of breaststroke. With my head above the water I could see the waves coming, but of course my progress was much slower. I put my head back in the water and continued on with my front crawl. I was hit by waves again and again. I was slammed into the water again and again. This was different from anything I had experienced before. Then a wave hit me in the face and I sucked in water. I coughed and gagged. I picked my head up and once again began breast stroking toward the shore.
Well, I tried to swim front crawl a few more times, but the waves were killing me. One well-placed wave just might drown me. The safest thing to do had to be breaststroke, but I didn’t do just regular breaststroke, I swam breaststroke with my head up. This was slow and steady, but at least I wouldn’t be drowned by those stupid waves. This was obviously “real” open water swimming. I saw other swimmers around me. One person had their hand up signaling a boat. The boat was a few feet away. They had told us if we needed any help that we should signal the boats that would be along the course.

The waves must have been about three feet high. This might not seem like much, but it was just enough to get you high enough that I could survey the swimmers around me. I felt better knowing that there were other swimmers around me. Last year I felt like I was alone in the sea. I couldn’t see anyone around me until I got pretty close to the finish line. This year I could see heads bobbing all around me. I felt pretty good that I wasn’t alone. But, people were passing me as I did breaststroke, and somehow these people were able to swim front crawl in all of these waves. I imagined that I must be like a runner that grew up in Kansas running quite well on all the flat roads that run around the cornfields. Suddenly I was placed in the Rocky Mountains and told to run a 10K. I’d be dying on every up hill, and trying to slow myself down on every downhill. Obviously I wasn’t prepared for this swim.

I stubbornly pushed myself forward. Breaststroke wasn’t fast, but the swim wasn’t only about winning a race. There wasn’t much chance that I was actually going to win the race. This was Man against Nature now, and I was going to win this battle. This swim started out an idea that I would beat my time from last year. And, this time I was going to run after the swim was over. The race was actually to swim from Alcatraz, then run seven miles over the Golden Gate Bridge and back again. It certainly didn’t sound impossible when I started, but it sure was taking me a long time to get to the beach.

Nature, being what it is, isn’t about just one thing. Nature in the traditional sense is about aggressive wild animals, storms, lightening, volcanoes, mountains and more. And, nature in my case wasn’t just about nauseating waves. It was also about the cold water. Putting two things together, the lack of a wetsuit and the much slower pace that I was making due to the waves I was beginning to take quite some time to make this crossing. Occasionally I would panic a bit and begin to push myself a little harder. This was not necessarily the best strategy. I was already doing my best to fight the waves, did I really need to fight the exhaustion. Wait a minute, swimming at the pace I was with my head up avoiding the waves was already exhausting me. The extra time that this swim was taking was already exhausting me. And, the cold water was exhausting me.

I was thinking to myself that I was certainly in better shape this year than I was last year. What would have happened if I had to battle these same waves last year? This could have been worse. Maybe I should have worn a wetsuit? It would have been my insurance policy, giving me the margin that would have made the difference. I was certainly getting colder and my hands and feet were beginning to tingle. I could see the shore that I was aiming for, but it sure seemed to be a long way off. I struggled and pushed myself but it seemed like I wasn’t making any progress. I even tried to swim front crawl again. But, in my tired condition, even the smaller waves near the shore took their toll on me. With about 300 yards to go I finally realized that I should have been swimming sidestroke instead of breaststroke. I got a nice strong scissors kick going, and I started to pass the person swimming next to me. I felt like I was making some progress again. But I was already in a state of hypothermia.

I got out of the water and I ran to the place that I was supposed to change into my running gear. My wife met me there, and she was crying. I had taken an hour and twenty minutes to make this crossing. It took me 40 minutes last year. The difference was the waves, but my wife had seen an ambulance drive up, and she thought the worst. Even after seeing that I was OK, she was still upset, because someone wasn’t. In fact, a 51 year old woman who was swimming this same race had died. They found her floating in the bay and they didn’t know what had happened to her.

I don’t know any other way to explain how I felt after that swim, except that I had “fog brain.” I couldn’t think clearly. I knew that I was supposed to run seven miles, but didn’t know if I could. I probably needed some fluids, but I didn’t feel thirsty. My wife was trying to help me, but nothing seemed to make any sense. I had hoped that by running I would generate some heat and all of this would correct itself. At least that was the plan. I put my shoes and socks on and my wife and I started running. We ran slowly, but I was beginning to realize that I wasn’t going to be able to do this. My fog brain wasn’t going away and I was going into shock. I knew that this was bad, and my wife knew that it was bad. We turned around as we realized that this was just not worth the risk. The race was for fun. I could have run back and drink something and tried again. But, I knew that that would just be stupid. I was sad and dejected. Nature had won this one, but I had lived to fight another day. The fight goes on, even though we all really know that nature will win in the end. We just don’t know when.