Review: The Dark Knight

Some pretty much spoiler free thoughts on The Dark Knight movie

Here's the thing about the Batman move that impressed me so much. The superheroes and villains seemed more human in this movie than any of the other comic book movie I've ever seen.

One of the constant themes through the movie was how the public of Gotham City treated Batman, and without getting too spoilerish, I'm just gonna say that it ain't pretty and yet rang very true to human nature, IMHO. People forget that Batman is an Outlaw in the eyes of most people. And more importantly, we forget that Batman is a human being and his life _sucks_ because he has to be Batman and he is actually desperately grabbing at straws to have some semblance of a normal life.

Likewise, the joker, is not so much a supernatural evil force as he is an insane human being. For the most part, the things you see The Joker doing are not too far beyond the pale for someone that is insane, amoral, and unconcerned about whether he lives or dies. He even makes a point about 3/4 of the way through the movie that he favors simple tools like knives and barrels of explosives, and fire, etc. Throughout the movie, you get these insights into the origin of his insanity, but they aren't quite consistent with each other. In any case, the origins of his insanity seem almost mundane, as if any average Joe could become the Joker. And as insane as he is, The Joker understands that he and Batman have much more in common with each other than they have in common with the people of Gotham. And the Joker uses this to his advantage on multiple occasions. Likewise, the Joker understands the fickleness of the public and knows how to manipulate people both using mass media and in one on one situations.

The make up job on the Joker is really the least creepy thing about him. It's his insanity that creeps you out the most because it seems so human. And while much has been made of the creepy makeup job, the real genius in this portrayal of the Joker is in how Heath Ledger plays him physically. It's a combination of multiple nervous ticks with a lanky, slack, devil-may-care posture that really sells him as an amoral, insane man.

Harvey Dent's descent into insanity and transformation into Two Face was equally compelling though less developed just because he doesn't get the screen time that Batman and the Joker get. But there's a very subtle message in the Two Face sub plot because it adds some subtext to Batman's personality. It makes you realize just how easily Batman could crack up and turn just as insane as Two Face. It makes you realize just how tenuous Batman's grasp of being good guy is.

To reinforce the authenticity of the human motivations of the super heroes and villains, the Gotham City in this movie is super realistic. They do little to hide the fact that Gotham City is Chicago. And in fact I think the movie makers deliberately filmed at some of the famous Chicago landmarks so that you would realize that this Batman is set in the here and now and people are acting exactly like people in the here and now would react to Batman and the Joker, etc.

There were a couple plot tropes that got on my nerves a bit. The one that stuck out the most was a riff on the issue of mass surveillance which I thought was handled poorly. But I can overlook it in the spirit of just not having enough screen time to deal with it properly. Likewise, there's an exploration on how people act differently in crowds vs individually which was kinda crammed into the movie.

My only substantive gripe about the plot was that they were trying to ground the superheroes and villains deep into every day human nature. And this is why the movie works so well. But they contradict it a bit by giving The Joker and almost superhuman ability to set up all his traps and bombs and mass media manipulations in very short periods of time. But I guess it's easy to underestimate how much chaos an insane man can cause when he's literally got nothing else to do.

Lastly, I have to call the film makers out on one major point which is that this is an adult movie and honestly I would not recommend that kids see it. It is too brutally violent. With very selective editing, they managed to imply but not show all the gore in the movie. And there's no doubt in my mind that the film makers worked very very hard to qualify for a PG-13 rating, following all the objective criteria. But even so, the brutal violence is just too much for most 13 year old kids, IMHO. The film makers should have just gone for the R rating. Maybe they wouldn't have broken all the box office records like it did, but they would have convinced the world that there really can be a damn good comic book movie for adults.

Egg picture

Mr. Crandall's Speech To The Wings Club

On June 10, 2008 Robert Crandall gave a speech to the Wings Club, which advertises itself as "the premier global society of aviation professionals and the leading forum on aviation issues." The event was widely advertised and as I understand it, covered by major media outlets, including National Public Radio.

A video of the speech and the text of his speech can be found at The Wings Club web site.
It's an interesting read. What's even more interesting is how Mr. Crandall is billed. Note this screen shot of the The Wings Club home page.



Mr Crandall is advertised as the "Former Chairman, President, and CEO of American Airlines." This will become important later on. But note for now that every single major media outlet coverage of the Mr. Crandall's speech describes him this way.

Mr. Crandall is long know for his opposition to deregulation of the airlines industry. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Crandall was a vehement opponent of airline deregulation and actively opposed the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act. In his most recent speech Mr. Crandall is still opposed to deregulation and is now calling for re-regulation.

Read the speech for yourself. His remarks are full of hand-wringing about the financial state of the airline industry, citing how many airlines have come and gone since deregulation and how much money airline investors have lost. He calls for us to think of airlines not as companies, but as public utilities that need to be managed by the federal government. And he speaks very negatively about the United State's capabilities, "The United States used to be good at solving problems. These days, we don't seem up to the job."

I give Mr. Crandall credit for not blaming the airlines' problems on rising oil prices. He correctly notes, IMHO, that the airlines were suffering their current malaise well before the recent spike in oil prices.

Interestingly, he also is quick to argue against the nationalization of airlines.

"If consolidation were really the answer, it is conceivable that the system could be run by a single efficient operator. However, consumers clearly benefit from the existence of multiple airlines; the absence of alternatives does not encourage good customer service. Thus, our goal should be to harness competition and regulation to create a system responsive to both the imperative of efficiency and the desirability of decent service."

So Mr. Crandall wants a combination of competition and regulation. Which parts should be competitive and which parts should be regulated? To quote from his speech, he outlines what he believes are the three broad fundamental problems in the airline industry:

• "First and foremost, we have failed to confront the reality that unfettered competition just doesn't work very well in certain industries, as amply demonstrated by our airline experience and by the adverse outcomes associated with various state efforts to deregulate electricity rates. In my view, it is time to acknowledge that airlines look and are more like utilities than ordinary businesses.
• Second, our government has failed to develop a national transportation plan of any kind and has thus been indifferent to the continuing decline of our highways, our railroads and our airlines.
• And third, the government has failed to invest in the capabilities and resources which only it can provide, most notably by failing to implement the new air traffic control system that everyone agrees we desperately need."

Lets' look at these in reverse order.

He says that the government has failed to invest in the capabilities and resources which only it can provide, notably the air traffic control system that "everyone agrees we desperately need."

Fair enough. For better or worse, when the airline industry was in its infancy, the FAA was created and one of its responsibilities is to create, manage, and run the air traffic control system. That's the way it's been since the beginning and it's not likely to change in the foreseeable future. The air traffic control system effectively limits the capacity of the industry. It governs the flight routes, and how many planes can take off at any given time. Ultimately this creates a limit on the number of airplane seats there are for any given time period. Mr. Crandall doesn't specify what types of investment are needed in the air traffic control system. Does the air traffic control system have an availability problem? In other words, is the industry suffering because the air traffic control system goes down too often and prevents airlines from making their flights, effectively taking airplane seats out of the air? While there have been some highly publicized cases of such events in the past few years, I find it difficult to believe that all of the airline's financial woes can be blamed on that. Does the FAA have a safety problem? Has there been mistakes in the air traffic control system that have made air flight significantly more risky? Not that I've heard. The only other issue that I can think to lay at the feet of the FAA is _capacity_. And I do recall seeing news reports about lack of capacity at airports and lack of capacity in the routes. A quick internet search can yield lots of stories about lack of capacity in the air traffic control system and assessments of the air traffic control system like this one show big increases on air traffic capacity while keeping costs and safety risks constant. So absent any other indicators from Mr. Crandall, I have to assume his statement about failing to invest in the air traffic control system is about problems with capacity.

Now let's look at the second fundamental problem Mr. Crandall outlines. "failed to develop a national transportation plan of any kind and has thus been indifferent to the continuing decline of our highways, our railroads and our airlines." I give Mr. Crandall high marks for rhetorical flair. He dutifully lists highways, railroads, and airlines as things that have been neglected. Now let's play that Sesame Street game of "one of these things doesn't belong here." If you guessed airlines, you guess correctly. Why? Because the railroads, at least from a passenger service perspective, are already run by the Federal government. Highways, are run through a combination of federal programs and state programs. So their infrastructure is completely run by government. But airlines aren't. While it makes sense for the government to have a "plan" for infrastructure that it is responsible for. It doesn't make sense for the government to have a "plan" for an industry that it doesn't run. So by including it in the list, he implies that the decline of the airline industries are the responsibility of the government. As noted above, the government does run parts of the airline infrastructure. But it doesn't run the airline industry as a whole and therefore is not responsible for having a plan for the airline industry as a whole.

What does Mr. Crandall think a "national transportation plan" should include?

• "First, to strengthen our national economy by encouraging the creation of a cost effective, energy sensitive transportation network which will permit people to move easily from one place to another
• "second, to assure safe, courteous and on time service for consumers
• "and finally, to improve the financial performance and international competitiveness of America's airlines.

Gee. How can you be opposed to any of that? I especially love the "cost effective, energy sensitive" part. Could we get any more vague? Can we get any more motherhood and apple pie? The question is what the feds should be doing to achieve these noble and lofty goals.

And now to take his first "problem". He states that we need to be treating airlines as "utilities" not as businesses. OK. What's the difference? Well, as far as I can see the two big differences are that with utilities, the governing authority says who can and can't operate. It sets standards for service. It sets prices. It controls how much profit or not the utility is allowed to make.

And indeed, these are the main issues that Mr. Crandall wants to have addressed.

He calls for the government to reduce it's labor costs by giving it more negotiating power with labor unions. He says that "airplane seats" cannot be stockpiled and an airline has huge fixed capital costs. So strikes have a huge impact on airlines. He calls for the railway labor act to be amended to include airline labor. This would force the airline workers into binding arbitration rather so that organized labor would be "deprived of its ultimate weapon." We'll get back to this later, but for now I'd just point out that there are other industries that are in similar situations. Hotels for example. You can't stockpile hotel nights. So when their labor strikes, they are severely affected and they have huge capital costs that can't be quickly reduced in the event of a strike. So would Mr. Crandall support amending the railway labor act to include hotel workers into binding arbitration and taking away their right to strike?

Mr. Crandall also calls for the end of congestion at major airports. How. By outlawing it. He says,

"In the short term, the only solution is a regulatory mandate that limits the number of flights scheduled to what the runways, terminals and air traffic control facilities at a given airport can handle."

So every one has to give up an equal share of their traffic at congested airports. he does NOT call for the reduction of traffic at all airports. He just calls for the reduction of traffic at congested airports. For the sake of argument, I am going to make the claim that "congested" airports are synonymous with "major airports" that have a large number or flights, and in particular, I'm going to make a claim without supporting evidence that most, if not all airports that are major airports with congestion are also airports which are a major hub for one of the big airlines. This is an important claim because Mr. Crandall has a lot to say about hub and spoke systems which I'll get to in a minute.

Next he calls for stricter financial standards for start up airlines. The reason for this is that

"In the years since deregulation, nearly 200 airlines have come and gone. These inadequately financed carriers, whose principal goal has often seemed limited to either lasting long enough to reap the rewards of an initial public offering or satisfying the ego of yet another would be airline mogul, have consistently cut prices to attract passengers. Such short-term antics have destabilized the pricing structure required by a healthy industry, and have offered no lasting benefit to anyone."

Apparently Mr. Crandall doesn't consider price reductions for airline customers to be of any benefit to the public good. If you turn this around, the "stricter financial standards must therefore prevent start up carriers from offering prices that are lower in order to not jeopardize the health of the industry. So apparently the health of an airline is more important than the prices consumers pay. Who says? Sounds like the protectionist rhetoric of an industry insider to me. We'll have more to say about this later.

But Mr. Crandall's most radical recommendations are that he wants price controls for the airline industry.

As he puts it:

It must now be clear to all that one of the industry's fundamental problems is the way in which it prices its product. As you all know, airlines work with a very distorted supply-demand equation. The instant perishability of empty seats, the impossibility of quickly reducing fixed and semi-variable costs when demand falters, the public's view that all airline seats are interchangeable commodities, the plethora of competitors and the desire to protect the reach of networks all create a great temptation to sustain volume by selling seats too cheaply."

So the problem, in his view, is that airlines are selling seats too cheaply. So guess whether or not he wants airline seats to be more or less expensive? He wants them to cost more, of course. And he wants government regulation to create more expensive airline seats. This is what anyone else would call a government subsidy. And the subsidy comes directly out of the pockets of air travelers.

Mr. Crandall does a lot of panic mongering, implying that the drive to cost reduction has led to a myriad of safety and convenience issues. The conclusions he'd have you draw is that by forcing air travelers to pay more to subsidize the airline industry, they'd get more convenience and safety. But as the government air safety assessment linked to above clearly shows, there hasn't been a decrease in safety even during the recent years. As to inconvenience, I don't know. I'll say that every air traveler I have personal experience with has consistently chosen price over convenience. Maybe my friends are not typical.

Mr. Crandall paints himself as a moderate by eschewing complete government controls of prices and then offers this relatively moderate proposal which he calls the "sum of local fares" model.

"Suppose for a moment that in a world where every airline set its own prices, a regulatory agency required that any passenger traveling between two points via a connecting point pay the sum of the local fares on his or her itinerary."

"Ask yourself this: if the non-stop fare from Detroit to Los Angeles is $450, why should a passenger be able to travel via a connection for the same amount or, as is the case today, for even less?"

Why indeed. Especially if you buy into Mr. Crandall's assertion that

"As we have all known for many years, the cheapest way to carry a passenger from point a to point b is non stop, and the most efficient way to do it is by using the largest airplane compatible with demand."

I don't buy it. Sure. there are some costs that are linear in relation to the number of miles traveled. For example, the amount of jet fuel used is in direct proportion to the number of miles traveled. And if the only thing you look at is the costs that are directly related to the miles traveled then of course the direct routes are going to cost less than routes that require a going through a hub.

But surprise! There are in fact costs to airlines that are not directly related to miles travelled. In fact, the airline industries have done a lot of analysis of operating models and there is a large body of academic research that supports the idea that the hub and spoke model is the most cost efficient model for a transportation networks and that the savings in other costs more than offset the increased costs related to miles traveled. To get a feel for this start with the Wikipedia article on "Spoke-hub distribution paradigm." The benefits of the hub and spoke model include:

• For a network of n nodes, only n - 1 routes are necessary to connect all nodes; that is, the upper bound is n - 1, and the complexity is O(n). This compares favorably to the (n(n - 1))/2 routes, or O(n2), that would be required to connect each node to every other node in a point-to-point network.
• The small number of routes generally leads to more efficient use of transportation resources. For example, aircraft are more likely to fly at full capacity, and can often fly routes more than once a day.
• Complicated operations, such as package sorting and accounting, can be carried out at the hub, rather than at every node.
• Spokes are simple, and new ones can be created easily.
• Customers may find the network more intuitive. Scheduling is convenient for them since there are few routes, with frequent service.

The Wikipedia article also notes some drawbacks to hub and spoke, but they do not relate to efficiency.

So when Mr. Crandall says

"As we have all known for many years, the cheapest way to carry a passenger from point a to point b is non stop, and the most efficient way to do it is by using the largest airplane compatible with demand."

it is simply not true. The airline industry has known for decades that the most efficient way, when you factor in ALL of the relevant costs, of getting a passenger from A to B is NOT ALWAYS a direct flight and in fact more often than not it is actually cheaper, OVERALL, to send a passenger through a hub.

Mr. Crandall ran American Airlines for many years and was a key player in major airlines before that. He should know the benefits of the hub and spoke model. Scratch that. I'll go so far to say that Mr. Crandall MUST know the benefits of the hub and spoke model. It's inconceivable IMHO for a CEO of American Airlines to so completely misunderstand the economics of running a major airline.

At very least, he owes us a more complete explanation about why the benefits of the hub and spoke model don't apply to the airline industry when they apply to other forms of transportation and the principles of hub and spoke apply to other domains of study such as distributed computing.

So when he says "As we have all known for many years, the cheapest way to carry a passenger from point a to point b is non stop." I have to conclude that his is deliberately misleading his audience.

But why? Why would be make such an easily refuted claim in a public forum?

Why is Mr. Crandall so against the hub and spoke model? Why does he want to use government regulation to destroy the economic advantage of the hub and spoke model? If the hub and spoke model is more efficient and the airlines can offer airplane seats through a hub that are cheaper than direct flights (when you factor in all the costs) why should the government use its regulatory power to eliminate the advantages of this efficiency and force passengers to pay more?

So let's recap. When you factor in all the costs of running an airline, the hub and spoke model is more efficient than having direct flights. In fact, it's common today for a passenger to spend less on a route through a hub than a direct flight. It's to the airline's economic advantage to do so, even factoring in the inconvenience to the passenger for having to travel longer. So the hub and spoke model _helps_ airlines stay economically viable.

Why would Mr. Crandall be against it? Why would Mr. Crandall arguer for the government to artificially raise prices of passengers going through the hubs in order to eliminate the cost efficiencies of the hub and spoke model? Why would Mr. Crandall have an interest in making the direct routes more competitive to the hub and spoke routes? Why would Mr. Crandall advocate that passengers should pay more, while at the same time eliminating the efficiencies of the hub and spoke model in favor of less efficient direct routes?

In five minutes of internet searching, I could find at least one credible reason that Mr. Crandall would make these counter-intuitive recommendations. I found at least one credible reason why we should not trust Mr. Crandall's recommendations.

Mr. Crandall has a financial interest in destroying the hub and spoke model. In fact basically every single recommendation Mr. Crandall made has more to do with his financial self-interest than any interest in the welfare of the big airlines and the airline industry. In fact, Mr. Crandall has a financial interest in ensuring that the big airlines are less competitive.

In his speech, Mr. Crandall said, "As you all know, I am no longer active in airline management, and thus lack the sophisticated analytical tools I so enjoyed in years past." And remember the web site advertising Mr. Crandall as "Former Chairman, President, and CEO of American Airlines." This would imply that Mr. Crandall is no longer working in the airline industry.

That speech was delivered on June 10th, 2008. But as I write this article on July 10th, a month later. Mr. Crandall is in fact the Chairman and CEO of POGO airlines. Check it out for yourself on the web site's leadership page. And there is a press release currently on the POGO web dated February 28th 2008. The press release announces the appointment of two new people to POGO's Board Of Directors and at the end of the press release the press release clearly states that "POGO’s management team is led by Robert Crandall, the former president, CEO and chairman of American Airlines. I don't know about you, but I am unable to reconcile this statement with Mr. Crandall's statement that "As you all know, I am no longer active in airline management.

So Mr. Crandall is at the most charitable interpretation, misleading the audience when he says he is "no longer active in airline management." Given the gravity with which his opinion is taken in the industry I'll go so far as to say it's unethical of him to not disclose his obvious financial interests in the airline industry in his speech.

But wait, it gets worse.

POGO airlines is not just any startup airlines. They have a unique strategy.


From the "What is POGO?" page of the web site:

POGO is a development-stage company, not yet certified or offering service. We plan to become operational as a FAA-certified Part 135 operator by the first quarter of 2009.

Our idea is simple: to make on-demand, private air travel more affordable, easier to use, and more convenient.

Our plan is to use the low purchase price and operating costs of today’s Very Light Jets with intensive use of the planes to significantly lower the cost of private aviation. Our on-line booking system will permit customers to quickly arrange a flight that most closely fits their needs. And, by serving a vast network of underutilized small airports, POGO customers will be able to bypass congested hubs. In fact, our customers will be able to choose from over 400 airports in our initial service area."

Oh really? So by using the smaller, lighter airplanes and underutilized small airports, POGO's customers will be able to arrange a flight that more closely fits their needs. Is the web site implying that maybe customers are more likely to find a direct flight that bypasses the congested hubs? Cool! Customers will find it much more convenient to fly a POGO flight because its routes are more likely to be direct.

But what if, due to the hub and spoke model, the big airlines are able to actually offer flights between the small airports at a lower cost that POGO can due to it's reliance on direct routes? As the Wikipedia article shows, there are clear efficiency benefits to using the hub and spoke model. So what if the big airlines really can get a passenger from a to b cheaper than POGO can? Now the customer has a choice between the lower cost or more convenience. I don't have access to industry survey data, but I'd be willing to bet that, other things being equal, my friends would choose the lower price every time.

So what's a CEO to do? Here's an idea. Why not convince the government to force the big airlines at those congested hubs to peg their prices to the number of air miles traveled. That way there's NO WAY, enforced by government regulation, that big airlines can compete with POGO on price.

So it turns out the Mr. Crandall's "sum of the local fares" model has little to do with the health of the airline industry, little to do with global warming or the price of oil and all about making his new shiny airline more competitive at passenger expense.

And in fact, when you look at Mr. Crandall's speech in light of the knowledge that he was in fact the Chairman and CEO of an airline at the time he made his speech, every single recommendation he made makes much more sense in the light of his self interest in the success of his shiny new airline.

Let's go through some of Mr. Crandall's recommendations again.

As we've noted. The "sum of local fares" model of price controls he advocates will prevent the big airlines for getting passengers from a to be cheaper than his airlines can.

He calls for more investment in infrastructure, especially in the air traffic control system. Note that because his airline is not following the hub and spoke model, he'll have far more flights and routes. In fact they brag about using more and smaller planes. As Wikipedia notes, if he doesn't use the hub and spokemodel, the number of routes needed for his airline in crease with the square of the number of airports he serves. So you bet he's concerned with the capacity of the air traffic control system!

Mr. Crandall calls for the railway labor act to be amended to include airline labor so that airline labor can't strike and is forced into binding arbitration. Hmm, as CEO of POGO, do you think Mr. Crandall could foresee himself in labor negotiations in the future? Wouldn't it be nice if the government made the labor unions weaker for him?

Mr. Crandall calls for the government to use its power to eliminate the number of flights going into and out of "congested" airports. By the words of the POGO website, the congested airports are the hub airports. So if the government forcibly reduces the number of flights going into and out of hubs, and assuming the number or travelers remains more or less the same, won't that increase demand for POGOs routes, which bypass the hubs?

He argues against the nationalization of airlines, maybe because he's trying to start one himself.

I could go on, but that's enough for you to get the idea.

Maybe some of the recommendations make sense for the pubic and maybe they don't. But in my opinion, Mr. Crandall's speech to the Wings Club was unethical, misleading, and entirely self-serving and cannot be taken seriously as a honest policy analysis.

Getting Creative Work Done

From youtube, a video of Ira Glass, from This American Life, on getting creative work done. Very inspiring for anyone doing any kind of work that's remotely creative.

Key message: If you want to create a thing, you already love it and you have good taste and high expectations. When you are starting out, there is a gap, possibly abig gap, between what you can produce and what your standards are. Can't let yourself be discouraged by that. Must be willing to admit to yourself that the gap is there. Face the music. Best way to close the gap is to produce a large volume of completed work. On a schedule. Put yourself on a schedule. Or better yet commit yourself to a schedule for others to recieve your work, even if it's not paid work.

SIT0008: Biofuel, Headscarf, Peach

July 6, 2008: Biofuel, Headscarf, Peach

Listen:
sitp0008.MP3

Current Events:
My Car Is A Vegetarian And Part Of The Problem

Cultural Phenomena:
Headscarves and Hairdressers

True Stories:
Peach Fuzz

Legal:

The Stuck In Traffic theme music by Duane Andrews of duaneandrews.ca and is used with permission.

The podcast as a whole is copyright 2008 by Calvin powers and all rights are reserved.

Bovine Geocaching

The Economist web site has an interesting story about high tech cow herding. Maintaining fences to keep cows constrained to your property is an extremely expensive, time consuming and labor intensive activity. According to the economist, fences can cost $20,000 per kilometer just for the materials. Given that ranching is a very low margin business, this is a huge expense.

So researchers have been looking at alternate ways to keep the cows where they need to be. One of the thngs they've been working on is using the same basic technology that has been used to keep dogs in fenceless yards.

The way it works is that the cows are fitted with some high tech head gear called an Ear-a-round. The Economist article describes it like this:

The Ear-a-round consists of a small, light box that sits on top of a cow’s head, and a pair of earpieces made of fabric and plastic. The box contains a computer chip, a GPS tracking device and a transceiver that enables it to be programmed remotely. The earpieces serve both to keep the box upright and to supply command signals—either sonic or electric—to the animal wearing the device. For maximum working lifetime, the whole thing is powered by lithium-ion batteries that are topped up by solar cells.

The cows are then monitored by satellite GPS tracking. I imagine you could then create a Google Maps application to show where your cows are at any given time! You then use the tracking system to identify the area where the cows need to be. When they start to go astray, they either feel a shock or hear a bad sound in one of their ears. The cow then turns in the right direction to get away from the negative feedback.

The device is smart enough to learn which feedback works with each cow and how much is needed. As the animal gets used to the device, the signals become less and less harsh. And now they are even starting to experiment with positive signals. And, I kid you not, they are experimenting with piping in cowboy songs that are hundreds of years old into the ears of the cattle to see how effective they are at guiding the cows to the right area.

This amuses me to no end.

They are also experimenting with fitting just a limited number of cows with this gear instead of every sigle one. The idea being that if you get a critical mass of cows followng the signals, the rest of the cows will follow the herd on their own.

There are some other benefits to fenceless cow herding, It has less impact on the environment. Environmentalists have long complained that fences impede the natural migration of roaming wildlife. So this system would address that concern as well.

Peach Fuzz

This past week I had an adventure, of a sort. OK. It was a very minor adventure. OK. Maybe not exactly an adventure. But I Tried Something New and approached it with some trepidation. I know that peach fuzz shouldn't cause anyone grief, but there ya go. This week I overcame my aversion to peach fuzz.

Ever since I was a little kid, I had it in my head that I don't like peaches. I cannot think back to a single bad experience with them. It was never attacked by peaches in my dreams. I never got sick from eating peaches. I was never punished by being forced to eat peaches.

Indeed, I remember eating peaches from a can when I was a little boy. I don't recall especially liking or disliking them. And yes, I know peaches from a can taste completely different than fresh peaches. I'm just saying that I haven't been able to think of a reason why I've had this mild aversion to them my whole life.

When I was in college I had the occasion to try peach cobbler a few times and fell in love with it. The fresher the peaches the better. Of course what's not to like? Carby-goodness, milk, cream, peaches, sugar. And it wasn't like the flavor of the peaches was hidden by all the other stuff. I actually liked the taste of the fresh peaches. And over the years I got to the point of seeking it out. About once a summer I'll buy some fresh peaches at a roadside stand and make some peach cobbler. It's one of the few things I'll suffer the time it takes to bake.

And yet. And yet. I never ever ate a fresh peach. It never occurred to me. Even when I was buying peaches at the roadside stand for a cobbler, it never occurred to me to eat a fresh one.

Well, I was hanging out with a couple of friends at our local "whole foods" coop a few days ago and somehow the conversation turned to fresh fruits and peaches and I admitted that I didn't like fresh peaches. You would have thought my friends had just discovered a second head sticking out of my neck.

Of course I back peddled. I admitted to liking cooked peaches in cobblers etc. And allowed as how maybe I should give fresh peaches a chance sometime. Immediately, one of my friends said he was going to go into the store and buy some fresh peaches for us to try.

Gulp. I can't say I felt like making a run for it. But I did feel this mild panic and my mind raced through options for diplomatically getting out of this sudden obligation to eat peaches with my friends. There weren't any good options.

There's something about facing your fears. or at lest in this case being forced to face the fear through good natured peer pressure to make it crystal clear. For the first time in my life I realized that it's not the taste of the peaches I don't like. It's the peach fuzz that seems kinda weird to me. The idea of biting through something fuzzy just seems, I dunno, not right some how.

One of my super hero skills is the ability to make a mountain out of a mole hill in my head. In the 5 minutes it took my friend to go buy some fresh peaches, the idea of biting through peach fuzz grew bigger and nastier in my head. I was getting all stoic about it in my head. Trying to compose myself so I would not make a fool of myself by gagging on peach fuzz or some other involuntary bodily reaction.

Given all that buildup, of course, the end of the story is anti-climactic. Yes. It was kinda weird feeling the peach fuzz on my lips and tongue. But it's paper thin and as soon as your teeth tear through it, you are rewarded by the deliciousness of peaches that are a perfect combination of fleshiness and sweetness. And I'll even go so far as to say that there is a brief moment after you take that initial bite but before you start shewing when there is a contrast in your mouth between the warm fuzziness of the peach fuzz and the cool fleshy sweetness of the peach which is absolutely amazing.

My Car Is A Vegetarian And Part Of The Problem

On July 4^th, The Guardian newspaper in the UK published an news article about an unpublished report commissioned by the World Bank that cites damming evidence that demand for biofuels has pushed world food prices up by as much as 75%. This notably contradicts claims by the United States government that biofuel demand has affected world food prices by only 3%. There is some speculation that the World Bank has so far chosen not to publish the report precisely because it would embarrass the Bush administration.

Biofuels were once seen as a major components of plans to reduce greenhouse gases but over the past couple of years there have been a myriad of unintended consequences relating to governments’ support ofr biofuels that are making biofuels look less and less attractive all the time.

The controversy over rising food prices are just the latest, though perhaps the most obvious negative consequence. The British government already requires that all fuels sold in the UK contain 2.5% biofeuls and the EU is considering a requirement of 10% biofuel. The Guardian reports that the World Bank report says:

"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.”

The Guardian article goes on to say that:

“It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.”

The United States is perhaps the biggest subsidizer of biofuels and is arguably the biggest distorter of food prices as a result. Biofuel subsidies have been one of the most popular topics of legislation over the past few years and there’s a myriad of bizarre ways in which the US government has given money to the biofuels industry.

In 2007, the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Commissioned a report simply to document and understand all the different ways that the US government subsidizes biofuels. The report titled, “BIOFUELS - AT WHAT COST ?” is freely available and is a fascinating read. It’s truly amazing how creative legislators can get when they want to hand out money to an industry.

Table 4.1 of the report is shown below, as you can see, there are no less than 14 different ways in which the US government supports the biofuels industry.

The estimated subsidy for ethanol in 2008 alone is somewhere between $9.2 billion and $11 billion and the 2008 subsidy for biodiesel is between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion. When all the subsidies for both types of fuel are added up from 2006 through the estimates for 2012, the total subsidies add up to somewhere between $66 billion and $91 billion. FYI. That’s a lot of money!

The biggest subsidy by far is the Volumetric Excise Tax Credit. I had no idea what this is until I read the report, which states that:

The volumetric excise tax credits for blending biofuels remain the single largest implemented subsidy to both ethanol and biodiesel. Rates have remained the same over the past year, with every gallon of ethanol (including imports) receiving a 51 cents per gallon blender’s credit. For biodiesel, rates have remained at 50 cents per gallon for biodiesel from waste cooking oils and $1.00 per gallon for biodiesel made from virgin agricultural feedstock. No caps or linkage to oil prices have been instituted; as a result, the subsidy cost has risen linearly with domestic consumption.

Furthermore, the tax law for most subsidies of this sort is taxable. But not biofuel subsidies. Quoting from the report:

“In our October 2006 report, we noted the existence of a further tax loophole that enabled the excise tax credits to be excluded from taxable income (most tax credits are added to taxable income, reducing their cost to the Treasury). Sources within both the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress (JCT) and the U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury) have confirmed that there have been no technical corrections in how the excise tax credits are treated by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). As a result, the credits are still excludible from taxable income. The incremental benefit of this exemption was $ 1.2 billion for ethanol in 2006 on top of a direct revenue loss of $ 2.8 billion; and $ 105 million for biodiesel, on top of $ 250 million direct revenue loss. The incremental subsidy from this tax loophole, supposedly a policy accident, has become the third largest subsidy to ethanol and the second largest to biodiesel.”

These subsidies have lead to a practice called “splash and dash” among biodiesel producers. I found a good explanation of this practice in The Christian Science Monitor in a 2007 article which describes the practice like this:

Created under the 2004 American Jobs Act, the "blenders tax credit" was supposed to boost US production of biodiesel by encouraging US diesel marketers to blend regular petroleum diesel with fuel made from soybeans or other agricultural products. It succeeded, perhaps too well.

Attracted by the $1-per-gallon subsidy, US diesel-fuel marketers mixed away, setting off a nationwide boom in biodiesel refinery building. But no one anticipated splash-and-dash.

The maneuver begins with a shipload of biodiesel from, say, Malaysia, which pulls into a US port like Houston, says John Baize, an industry consultant in Falls Church, Va. Unlike domestic diesel-biodiesel blends, which typically contain from 1 to 10 percent of biodiesel, the Malaysian fuel starts off as 100 percent biodiesel, typically made from palm oil.

Then, the vessel receives from a dockside diesel supplier a "splash" of US petroleum diesel. It doesn't take much to turn it into a diesel-biodiesel blend that is eligible for US subsidies.

If the ship holds roughly 9 million gallons, it takes only about 9,000 gallons of traditional diesel (0.1 percent of the total) to make the entire load eligible for the blenders tax credit.

The US importer of the load applies to the Internal Revenue Service for the credit – a dollar for each of the 9 million biodiesel gallons, Mr. Baize calculates. The next day the tanker can set sail – dash – for Europe. There, the US importer resells the biodiesel, taking advantage of European fuel-tax credits that, in effect, keep biodiesel prices above US prices.

So for each tanker that does this, the taxpayers pay $9 million to the company and the fuel is not even sold to US consumers.

The other unintended consequence of biofuel subsidies is more like a lack of a consequence. The IISD report also crunches some numbers to calculate the efficiency of these subsidies in terms of reducing greenhouse gases and displacing carbon fuels and concludes:

“our basic conclusion remains the same: even using the most favorable assumptions regarding displacement values for biofuels, the cost per unit displaced was far higher than other options existing in the economy.”

So let’s recap where we are with biofuels and the U.S. subsidies that support them:

• The cost to US Taxpayers from 2006 -2012 is somewhere in the ballpark of $66 billion and $91 billion.
• US Consumers often don’t benefit from the subsidies due to “splash and dash practices”.
• a “policy mistake” exempts the biofuel subsidies from taxation
• there is at least one credible study that shows with some degree of certainty that the U.S. subsidies of biofuels is less efficient at displacing carbon fuels usage than other alternatives.
• the massive subsidies of the biofuels industry is arguably contributing to the massive rise in food prices.

The IISD report sums it up bureaucratically:

“Given the inefficiencies that have been identified, combined with the rising environmental costs of biofuel production around the world, there is no reason that this one particular approach aimed at addressing energy security and climate change concerns should be given a free rein.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of exploring as many energy alternatives as possible and in an era of $4 per gallon gas (and rising), a lot of the energy alternatives are becoming economically viable in their own right. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to explore energy alternatives. Massive government subsidies are becoming more and more obviously the wrong way to go about it.

The next time I see one of those smarmy bumper stickers like the “My car is a vegetarian too” sticker, I’m not going to be nearly as impressed as I used to be. In fact, I’m gonna start thinking of them more as a “part of the problem” than “part of the solution.”

Headscarves and Hairdressers

The Evening Standard of London recently published a news story about a London Salon owner becoming the center of a controversy over a Muslim job applicant. This has quickly become one of those battle-fronts-in-the-culture-war stories because it has raised all sorts of issues about discrimination, freedom of association, and practicing religious customs in public spaces.

As I understand it, a Ms. Sarah Desrosiers owns a salon in London called Wedge. In the news story she’s quoted as saying

"I sell image - it's very important - and I would expect a hair stylist to display her hair because I need people to be drawn in off the street," said Ms Desrosiers. "It's the nature and style of my salon that brings people in and someone having their hair covered conflicts with that. If someone came in wearing a baseball hat or a cowboy hat I'd tell them to take it off while they're working. To me, it's absolutely basic that people should be able to see the stylist's hair."

I think the gallery photos on the Wedge web site back her up:

Clearly she’s going for an urban alternative vibe and she does indeed show off her stylists and her stylists’ hair.

Ms. Bushra Noah, pictured below, is suing Ms. Desrosiers for discrimination. In a legal letter sent to the tribunal overseeing the discrimination suit, Ms. Noah claimed that she was discriminated against because of her Muslim custom of wearing a head scarf at all times.

photo credit: The London Standard

Apparently, Ms. Desrosiers conducted her initial interview by phone and offered Ms. Noah a “trial day” at the salon. Ms. Noah apparently made no mention of her headscarf practices in the interview so it wasn't until the trial day that Ms Desrosiers found out about it. Ms. Desrosiers apparently made it clear that the stylists were expected to help sell the image of the shop because they how they appeared helped draw in walk by traffic.

According to her news story, Ms. Noah had applied for approximately 25 hairdresser jobs without success and she is quoted as saying,

“I decided to sue this hairdresser because she upset me the most. I felt so down and got so depressed, I thought if I am not going to defend myself, who is? ... Ever since I was in high school hairdressing is what I wanted to do. It is sad for them to not give me the opportunity. This has ruined my ambitions. Wearing a headscarf is essential to my beliefs.”

There are lots of thorny issues in this case. First of all, is it OK for the salon owner to require the stylists display their hair as part of the image they are trying to create for the shop? Why or why not? And how does that balance against religious customs involving a hair. What if a job applicant was bald? What if a job applicant simply had unwashed/unkempt hair? What if the job applicant was a Hassidic Jew wearing his traditional payot? What if the job applicant was a Rastafarian wearing dreadlocks? What if the applicant was a good ol’ boy who insisted on wearing a John Deer baseball cap every waking hour? Which of these applicants should Ms. Desrosiers be able to reject on the basis of the appearance or lack of appearance of their hair? Does it matter if the customs relating to the applicant’s hair are religiously motivated or not? Does religious practice trump job requirements? Is the appearance of the stylist and the stylists’ hair a legitimate issue for Ms. Desrosiers to make hiring decisions?

Forget hair for a second. Ms Desrosiers claims she is selling an image. Is that legitimate? Is she allowed to create an image for her salon according to her preferences and vision? Can this image she’s striving for include exclusion of people who don’t fit that image? Would it be OK is she had simply said, “The woman just doesn't fit the image I’m striving to achieve?” What if the job applicant had been a Hindu woman who wore bindis on her forehead and other sorts of tilak every day? Would this be a legitimate reason to reject her as a job applicant?

I think that starts to get to the nub of the issue and the reason it makes so many of us uncomfortable. When you start discussing the issue in that way, you begin wandering down a very slippery slope that ends in gender-exclusive clubs, Aryan nationalists, class hierarchies and all sorts of other nasty things.

I think there are two key issues we have to keep in mind regarding this lawsuit.

First of all, the issues of free association, workplace behavior, job requirements, and religious practices all have to be balanced against each other. None of these issues is absolute and takes precedence over the others at all times.

In particular, we've learned over the years that there are times when our participation in public life requires that we curb our religious practices in public. Catholic churches have learned not to ring their bells at all times of the day and instead restrict themselves to a schedule and volume that’s acceptable to their local community. Most employers discourage or even forbid the display of religious symbols when “on company time.” Likewise there are issues which employers have seen that it’s good to accommodate employee’s religious practices when possible.

In order for people of many faiths to coexist and live together peacefully, these sorts of restrictions and accommodations have to be made. We work these out one case at a time and build up a body of case law and customs and acceptable practices over time. There’s nothing wrong with that. And letting freedom of association, or business requirement trump religious custom in one case is not automatically going to turn us into evil bigots. True, we have to be constantly vigilant against that danger and we have to have a good healthy debate and dialog over the evolution of our customs to make sure we don’t go too far. But it’s OK to let other issues trump religious practices sometimes.

Likewise, believe it or not, the concept of free association isn't entirely dead. No one owes Ms. Noah a job. Ms. Desrosiers certainly doesn’t owe Ms. Noah a job. Over the years we've been very careful to not allow discrimination and exclusivity based on a variety of issues. Everyone can recite these by memory. And one of these is religion.

So the question becomes, if you claim that a religious custom is interfering with the image you are striving for in the workplace, does that constitute discrimination? As I understand this particular case, the claim is not that Ms. Desrosiers rejected Ms. Noah because she is a Muslim, but because her religious custom interferes with the plans she has for her business. She seemed to be willing to give Ms. Noah a trial period if she was willing to remove her headscarf. So is it discrimination or not

This leads me to the second important lesson from this case. Given that there are going to be cases in which workplace custom, free association, and other factors are going to trump religious custom, it’s important that all religions be treated equally. If we decide that Ms. Desrosiers we indeed guilty of discrimination, then must she also accept Hassidic Jews, Rastafarians, and Hindus as well? I would say the answer is yes. You can’t favor one religion’s customs over another. You codify into law special treatment for Muslim customs, Christian customs, or any other religion. So when we look at this particular case, we have to set aside the fact that the particular religion involved in this case is Islam and look at it in a broad sense regarding all religious customs as they conflict with the salon’s image.

In this particular case, I tend to side with Ms. Desrosiers. I think she has voiced counter-balancing interests and business issues that are sufficient to justify her exclusion of Ms. Noah because she wouldn't display her hair. I'm sorry that Ms. Noah's ambitions suffered as a result of being rejected for 25 jobs. But her ambitions do not trump Ms. Desrosiers' ambitions which would almost certainly be equally destroyed if she were forced to hire people against her will. If the job in question were a more a mundane field, such as accounting, I'd be a lot more sceptical. It’s interesting to turn the issue around. Suppose business wanted to cater to devout Muslims and therefore wanted all its female employees to adopt the modest dress requirements. Would we want to force that business to hire a woman that didn't want to adopt the headscarf requirements? I wouldn't, for exactly the same reasons I side with Ms. Desrosiers in this one.

SIT0007: Religous Tolerance, Hamburgers, Random Kindness

June 28, 2008: Religous Tolerance, Haburgers, Random Kindness

Listen: sitp0007.mp3

Current Events:
Survey Shows Religious Tolerance

Cultural Phenomena:
Two Stories From The Fast Food Front

True Stories:
Today's Random Act Of Kindness


Legal:

The Stuck In Traffic theme music by Duane Andrews of duaneandrews.ca and is used with permission.

The podcast as a whole is copyright 2008 by Calvin powers and all rights are reserved.

Today's Random Act of Kindness....

Today I was the lucky recipient of one of those "random acts of kindness" that really made a very stressful day a lot easier.

I'm in Boston for a set of customer meetings this week being held a very nice Mariott. They fly in a bunch of key customer representatives for 2 days of product roadmap discussions and technical presentations. I'd weaseled my way on to the agenda because I'm desperate for some feedback on a prototype proposal that I've been working on for months and months. I really needed to get some good feedback and direction on this so I was very stressed out about giving this presentation and the round table discussion after.

My presentation was not until late in the afternoon so I stayed in my room for most of the morning catching up on work e-mails etc. I'd put my "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door so that the housekeeping people would know that I had not left yet.

Anyway, around 10:30 I headed down to the meeting rooms. As I was walking down the hall, I saw an asian woman working on cleaning a room a few doors down from mine. She had her housekeeping cart in front of the door ad she was standing in the doorway getting towels off the cart. As I walked by she looked up at me and in a very thick asian accent said good morning. I sai d Good Morning back and mentioned off hand that 217 was ready to be cleaned. She nodded and smiled and I wasn't sure if she understood me or not. But it really didn't matter. I knew she would get to it eventually. I just felt like saying something more than Good Morning.

I went down to the meeting rooms and listened in on some of the other presentations for about an hour and then I realized I'd left my notebook power cord in the room. I probably coul have gotten by without it, but I decided to run back up to the room and get it.

When I got back the room, the housekeeping lady was working on my room and her cart was in front of the door etc just like it had been for the other room. I could see her in there working. So I moved her cart and slipped into the room. I said hello and that I was just stopping in to get my power cord. She smiled and profusely nodded and said Good mornign about hundred times and other minor phrases and I quickly got the impression that she had no idea what was going on and that she really didn't know English very well and only knew a few phrases to get her through the day. Anyway, I picked up the power cord and pointed to it in an exaggerated fashion so she could see what I was there for and then quickly left.

I got through the day. Presentation went about as good as I could hope for. Some aspects of my prototype proposal did not go over well at all and I'm going to drop them. But most of the customers agreed with the core idea. So I think I have enough to go forward. My presentation was 90 minutes long and I was exhausted when I was done. All I wanted to do was got out of there and get back to my room. I hung out for a few minutes but as soon as was "polite" I got the hell out of there and went back to my room.

When I got back to my room, I noticed that on the night stand someone had written a note on the notepad. I knew that I hadn't written anything on it. So I went over to see what was written on it. What I saw made my day:



After stressing out for 90 minutes this was an incredibly nice surprise to have. Put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance

The New York Times has an article titled, "Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance" which reports on the results of a survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The study shows a large degree of religious tolerance in the U.S. across all sects and segments of society.

From the NYT article:

For example, 70 percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or denomination said they agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life,” including majorities among Protestants and Catholics. Among evangelical Christians, 57 percent agreed with the statement, and among Catholics, 79 percent did.

Among minority faiths, more than 80 percent of Jews, Hindus and Buddhists agreed with the statement, and more than half of Muslims did.

The findings seem to undercut the conventional wisdom that the more religiously committed people are, the more intolerant they are, scholars who reviewed the survey said.

Now if only other countries were as equally tolerant.

Two Stories From The Fast Food Front

The juxtapostion of two news stories involving burger joints is just to delicious to pass up.

First, there's a news story in the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis, MN, about a man in Quinton Virgina who lost 80 pounds by eating every meal at Mc Donald's. Yes. You read that right. He _lost_ 80 pounds by eating every meal at McDonalds. According to the news story, he didn't eat the burgers, but instead he ate "Mostly salads, wraps and apple dippers without the caramel sauce."

Chris Colson started off at 278 pounds and now weighs 199. He says he wants to get down to 185, the weight he was at when he married his wife.

Second, earlier this week, Fox News reported that Burger King announced that it had just brought to market the world's most expensive hamburger. According to the news story:

The fine ingredients of what is called simply 'The Burger' include Wagyu beef, white truffles, Pata Negra ham slices, Cristal onion straws, Modena balsamic vinegar, lambs lettuce, pink Himalayan rock salt, organic white wine and shallot infused mayonnaise in an Iranian saffron and white truffle dusted bun.

All proceeds from the $200 burger go to a London charity for abused children.

I think when Mr. Colson reaches his goal, somone ought to buy him "The Burger" to celebrate.

Congressman Calls For Nationalization of Oil Refineries

US House Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) is a member of the the House Appropriations Committee and has been known as one of the leading opponents of allowing oil drilling off the coasts of the US.

During a press briefing yesterday, he was quoted by several news sources including MSNBC as saying,

"We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market."

Yeah. Right. That'll help a lot.

Of course if you don't actually let the oil companies drill, what is there to refine?

Also, note that he didn't say that the government would actually increase the amoint of oil refined if they nationalized the refineries. He said that the government would control it. Not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.

A Chill On The Internet

I recently learned of a blog posting from someone in Germany named Florian Sander who was commenting on a recent survey in Germany. Unfortunately the original survey report is in German.

But the blog post is in English and the author makes a point that I've long believed:

The problem with surveillance is not primarily that some bored officer might learn about some embarrassing private detail (although this is a problem as well). The fundamental problem with surveillance is that it changes people. People under surveillance behave differently than people who are not monitored - differently than free people.

I've long kept my eye open for scientifically credible studies that back up this point, but have never run into one.

The author however has posted information about a law tht was recently put into effect in Germany. From the author's blog:

Unfortunately, this fundamental problem has just been proven in Germany. Since the beginning of this year, communication providers are required to record who communicated with whom and when (but not the content of the communication). This data is stored for six months and available to law enforcement in cases related to certain forms of crime.

The author goes on to reference a survey done recently be a research firm in German, which discovered:

• 73% know about the data retention
• 11% said that they had already abstained from using phone, cell phone or e-mail in certain occasions
• 6% believe to receive less communication since the beginning of the data retention
• 52% said they probably would not use telecommunication for contacts like drug counselors, psychotherapists or marriage counselors because of data retention

In addition to the German law, more and more countries are invading their citizens privacy on a massive scale. Sweden is in the process of giving law enforcement officials the right to monitor all forms of electronic communication that cross Swedish borders with no court oversight whatsoever.

In India, the government is pressuring Blackberry to give it the keys to it's encryption mechanism so that the Indain government can monitor all traffic on the blackberry network in India.

It goes on and on. No one seems to care about how these laws are going to be affecting society as a whole.