Getting it out of my system

Following a very long discussion last night I feel it necessary to point out to the world at large (not that it's reading) that.

The populations of Holland and NY State are similar.

The crime rates however are not. According to this Home Office Report (pdf download). Dutch police recorded just over 1m crimes in 1990, and just under 1.2m crimes in 2000. Included were around 230 murders a year.

While not exactly comparable this US Bureau of Justice Report notes that the murder and non-negligent manslaughter rate combined in New York dropped from over 2600 in 1990 to just under 1000 in 2000. A massive drop to be sure, but still about four times more dangerous than Holland in 2000.

The report also lists absolute totals for a number of offences. These too look broadly comparable when you sum the American ones and compare them with the Dutch. However... The US numbers exclude a vast range of non-violent crimes including drug related offences (possession, dealing etc). In absence of these figures its hard to say how much worse things are in NY state than the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but its certainly fair to say that NY is not somewhere with half the crime rate of Holland and given what I know about the place almost certainly spends much more money on crime prevention.

Moving on...

The US govt spends around 30% of national GDP and this has been increasing ever since the massive state spending required by WWII was abandoned. A good graph based on US national statistics is here. The rise seems to be about 0.25%. That said the level fell during the Clinton boom and rose during the Reagan one, I'm not sure there's much point trying to get anymore out of the numbers than a general upward trend.

This paper from the University of Florida looks at the correlations between the size of government and growth in GDP. Useful is a review of literature at the start which shows a debate evolving from a position of 'big government is unambigously bad' to a position of 'big government may be bad' to the rather interesting 'most governments are about the right size'. The authors of the paper in question think that state investment is good, but state consumption can be bad.

After much much much looking I found on the OECD website this spreadsheet looking at government spending as a percentage of GDP. At first glance the evidence is mixed to say the least. The long booms of Ireland and Portugal have been accompanied by a shrinking state (but you could argue they were sparked by a comparatively large one), while the equally spectacular boom in Korea has seen the state grow by more than 50% to just under 30% of GDP (which you could argue was facilitated by a small one).

Meanwhile the Dutch do have a big state (48%) but its not spectacularly large compared to places like Austria (51%), Denmark (56%) or Sweden (58%). Its also a lot smaller than it was in 1986 when the data starts (57%), and its about average for the EU. Perhaps Hollands current stagnation requires a good Keynesian shot in the arm.

Japan and America have similar sized states over the 20 year period covered, and enjoyed wildly different fortunes.

Cutting the size of the state might lead to economic growth, then again so might state investment, public works programs and the like. Is the state more efficient than companies? Well that's a long long long argument, but the growing discussions about missing markets and the like suggest that some things need state intervention if they're going to work properly, and it would be a fairly rabid right winger who'd suggest that universal unemployment benefit be replaced with unemployment insurance. (Take a look at the line at the dole queue, someone's going to insure the folks who've been there 20 years on the offchance they find a job and can pay premiums? - yeah right...)

Finally, this from the World Bank has statistics on India and China's state GDP as well as a general discussion of state size and it's fairly critical of centralised state spending. It was written before current reform attempts with 'third way' economics and the like. This on the other hand explains just how much it sucks to be poor in India where the state is small.

How much future prosperity should we forgoe to relieve present poverty? Is that really a ridiculous question?

Anyway, I feel much calmer now, and somewhat relieved that my worldview is more or less intact. Must be time to do some work.

Slack updates

Too busy building a different website to publicise my freelance work. This is a shame cause I've got lots to write about. Ah well. Normal service will resume one day.

Load of balls

Just a thought, but might St David of Beckham not be being entirely on the level in this article?

Should probably check if the other players mentioned are signed up to Nike first.

The other body count

Writing in today's Guardian Naomi Klein points out that US rhetoric about the war is increasingly casting Americans and others as the 'victims' of the wars failures - we were lied to, is the cry. She points out that there is no official tally of civilian Iraqi dead but that the best available estimate is around 10 000.

This is low. That estimate records people who died from bombs and bullets. In France, in the summer of 03 when US troops were starting their occupation of Baghdad the record heat killed an estimated 700 elderly people. Failures of air conditioning and emergency services were blamed. In Iraq the population was struggling along with intermittent power and a failing water supply in temperatures well in excess of those in France. Of course no-one had the means to even notice, much less count if something similar happened in Iraq, but I'll bet it did. And I bet in countless other small ways the traumatic dislocation of society that war causes has buried even more Iraqi's than the bombs and bullets did.

Its not about the soldiers, its about the people. A few weeks ago CNN tried to get this number, asking every official coalition figure they could, but they just got straight denials. "We don't have those numbers", or "We do keep track but I don't have those numbers and I wouldn't want to guess". Its not good enough.

More serious freelancing

With full time paid employment still some way away it may be time to take my freelance work more seriously. Step one then is to work out what it is I'd actually like people to pay me for, what I can do better than the competition and then build a website to promote it. I've had a quick trawl through the open directory for people doing similar things and while there are some out there I haven't found a decent looking site yet.

Catch 22

Blimey that was a good book. If you haven't read it I suggest you do. Absolutely hilarious, except for the bits where its completely horriffic.

No security

Riverbend has been having it especially tough in Baghdad lately. A member of her family was kidnapped and eventually ransomed. Read about it here.

When you've read that read about the anniversary of the bombing of the Amiriyah Shelter in 1991, a Valentine from Bush senior to the Iraqi people

Surely these stories are newsworthy? When I look at the 24 hour press conference and soundbite coverage of Iraq and compare it to stuff like this its clear. Get your news from TV and expect to get a very narrow view.

Things to read

"In a simple small room with blue mattresses laid on the floor to sit on, Ayatollah Sistani, one of his sons and an assistant met a group of Sunni university professors, tribe leaders and dignitaries. During the 3 hour meeting not one single verse from the Quran was recited, he expressed his fear that federalism might lead to the fragmentation of Iraq and said that if the elections had to be delayed for legitimate reasons he will endorse the delay. My father came back from this meeting quite awed."

Salaam Pax is writing consistently and well again, after months of disjointedness. It also seems his father is someone of note (not much, but enough to meet Sistani to talk about elections). Its hard to form an opinion about Sistani at the moment, so private is the man. His actions however seem to be reasonable so far and its just possible that this Imam might be the best hope Iraqi's have.

Rewind

I just reread this - Robin Cooks speech during the Iraq War debate. History has only proved him right. Funny how with all this talk of an eventual Blair Brown succession no-one mentions Cook as a contender anymore. I'll say it now, if Blair goes Brown won't walk it.

Very Brief

A very brief history of the universe (although it gets a little local in scope at the end)

Slowly coming back

Fencing last night was interesting. Partly because the club now have installed their lovely new electronic equipment. This gives six pistes with full electric fencing kit. I'm generally ambivelent about electric fencing but this is at least designed in a way that removes one major problem - the lights are positioned at either end of the piste rather than in the middle. This avoids everyone doing the 'I think I've hit/been hit turn round to look at the box' thing which always struck me as both looking odd and encouraging bad habits.

Still, half way through my second fight my opponent paused to point out that 'you should try moving around a bit more'. He was right too. Years ago when I'd been doing this a lot I used to bound around the piste lack the energiser bunny on speed. For the last few weeks I've been remarkably flat footed. Suddenly all kinds of things came back to me, I scored some good hits and generally fenced rather well. Then in my next bout I got all carried away and gave up a lot of stupid points trying things I'm not sure I could ever do well.

Still, live and learn.

Online Strategy Games

Some friends of mine from Oxford have just launched Red Emperor, an online strategy game company.

First game out is called Empires, and its a civilisation style game of diplomacy, conquest and development. The game works by sticking more or less to recorded history. The ancients period that is available at the moment is played over six ages each lasting seven turns. In a given age new empires rise up and are assigned to players. The players then guide their empire to the end of the age at which point it will either collapse, decline or continue. If your empire does anything other than continue you get one of the new ones appearing that age.

Hopefully the result will be that the map always looks vaguely plausible, and even if my current incarnation as ruler of Egypt were to see me enslave the mediteranean world by the end of age 3 the empire will be dust, swept away by those arriving in ages 2 and 3. I meanwhile will have abandoned Egypt for one of the upstart nations. Its a neat idea, but slightly weird. I played a playtest of a game which was a forerunner to this many many years ago, that was fun. This could be a lot of fun.

E-voting on hold

This was the verdict of the experts on the prototype SERVE electronic voting system the Pentagon built.

"Because the danger of successful, large-scale attacks is so great, we reluctantly recommend shutting down the development of SERVE immediately and not attempting anything like it in the future until both the Internet and the world's home computer infrastructure have been fundamentally redesigned, or some other unforeseen security breakthroughs appear,"

One suspects these experts were a touch annoyed not to have been asked in advance. You're also left wondering why Accenture (who built the thing) didn't realise this was the case sooner. Full story at the Register.

Shady doings

The Guardian have this piece about how the investigation into Sir Alex Fergusons private life has been conducted. If Magnier is as famously private as is usually claimed he's not going to enjoy a minute of the publicity he's getting over this. I mean Ferguson must know that half the country dislikes him, but he can rest assured that he's still got their respect, not to mention the adoration of 20% of the nation.

Magnier on the other hand is probably finding himself lacking privacy or respect right now, the ironic result of his attempts to undermine Fergusons'. He's probably right to allege that football clubs could be run more transparently, but this isn't the right way to do things.

More Statistics

Some nice writing here on the use of statistics to argue about deaths from driving and the impact of speed cameras. Oddly those who think they should be allowed to drive *as fast as they like cause they're responsible* seem to be wrong when they say that speed cameras are dangerous.

Grrr

I am sick and tired of reading about Janet Jackson not quite exposing herself for almost no time at all during the superbowl half time show. If people are upset by that they should be a damn sight more upset by the new Britney Spears video which MTV has just shown.

But they're not. The whole things a mass of opportunism and media hype. Jackson and MTV are the main beneficiaries, closely followed by the faux moralists lining up to criticise.

Not too busy to surf

One has to assume Tony isn't too stressed at law school because he found World66, a handy thing that generates maps like this




Yup. The ones in red are the ones I've been to (I think). And here's a rather less impressive map of the world...




The interesting one though is a test of the six degrees of separation theory. Here's a map showing all the countries for which I know at least one citizen reasonably well.




So notable gaps in Africa, the Middle East and Indonesia. That last one shouldn't be hard to deal with since I'm living in Holland where Indonesian immigrants abound. On the middle east front I used to live opposite the son of the Jordanian Ambassador, who was a nice guy, but it was many years ago and I don't think we'd recognise each other now. My 'friends in Africa' score just sucks though.