How Dense Can You Get?

Today I want to toss up a TED talk and get in some time working on the soccer book. (Clubs covered so far: 636. On deck: Velez Sarsfield of Argentina.)

So here's Alex Steffen in Edinburgh, Scotland, talking about how to reduce carbon emissions on a city-wide level. (First hint: the higher the city's density, the lower the emissions.)

It's Just A Fad

In all the hoopla of the credit downgrade, there was a birthday yesterday that we need to mention. ...no, not Lucille Ball, but I grew up partially on old I Love Lucy reruns, so hey, happy birthday, Mrs. Rotted-Out Corpse Unless You Were Cremated.

In fact, we're celebrating here the 20th birthday of the World Wide Web. You know, the 'www' that websites don't even bother making you type out anymore. Yesterday in 1991, the very first website was created. That website is here. The content of the site, back at the start, was to inform visitors how to make text, create their own sites, search the then very very tiny Web for information etc. Today, such information hard-wired into the psyches of the online population, the site tells the story of the Web's invention.

The Web's only 20 years old. For all the ages of things out there that make you feel old... the Web can't even legally drink yet.

Countries By Credit Rating

So... the US got downgraded by Standard & Poor.

Where does that leave us in relation to the rest of the world?

If you don't follow credit agency ratings regularly, the names of the ratings are likely to look a bit inflated. Every rating from the three major agencies- S&P, Moody's and Fitch- contain the letters A, B or C, often multiple times. Or at least, every rating that any country with a rating currently has.

For ease of comprehension, here, we're going to throw all those alphabet-block ratings in the garbage. We will rename them by their tier number: the best rating from a given agency will be reassigned the number 1, the second-best rating gets a 2, and so on. I figure that's something much more easily understandable. We'll also note the dividing line between "investment-grade" and "speculative-grade"; aka the junk bond line. For all three, the line happens to divide tiers 10 and 11.

As of today, here are the countries sitting on each rating. Note that not every country has ratings from all three, and some countries have no ratings at all.

In case you're wondering, one country currently matches the United States in all three ratings. That country is New Zealand.

STANDARD AND POOR'S
1- Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
2- Belgium, New Zealand, South Korea, United States
3- Abu Dhabi, Bermuda, Kuwait, Qatar, Slovenia, Spain
4- China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan
5- Chile, Italy, Slovakia
6- Andorra, Czech Republic, Estonia, Israel, Malta, Oman, Ras Al-Khaimah, Trinidad and Tobago
7- Aruba, Botswana, Malaysia, Poland
8- Bahamas, Cyprus, Ireland, South Africa
9- Bahrain, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Mexico, Russia
10- Barbados, Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Hungary, Iceland, India, Montserrat, Morocco, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Tunisia
----JUNK BOND LINE----
11- Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Latvia, Romania, Uruguay
12- Costa Rica, Egypt, Guatemala, Jordan, Macedonia, Montenegro, Philippines, Serbia, Turkey
13- Angola, Bangladesh, Cook Islands, El Salvador, Gabon, Mongolia, Venezuela, Vietnam
14- Albania, Bolivia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Uganda, Ukraine, Zambia
15- Argentina, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Honduras, Lenanon
16- Ecuador, Fiji, Grenada, Jamaica, Pakistan
20- Greece

MOODY'S
1- Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States
2- Belgium, Hong Kong
3- Bermuda, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Qatar, Slovenia, Spain, United Arab Emirates
4- Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Macao, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan
5- Czech Republic, Estonia, Israel, Malta, Oman, Slovakia, South Korea
6- Botswana, Poland
7- Bahamas, Malaysia, South Africa
8- Bahrain, Cyprus, Lithuania, Mexico, Russia, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago
9- Brazil, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Mauritius
10- Barbados, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Hungary, Iceland, India, Latvia, Panama, Peru, Romania, Tunisia
----JUNK BOND LINE----
11- Azerbaijan, Guatemala, Indonesia, Ireland, Morocco, Uruguay
12- Armenia, El Salvador, Jordan, Philippines, Portugal, Turkey
13- Angola, Bangladesh, Egypt, Georgia, Montenegro
14- Albania, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Lebanon, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Senegal, Sri Lanka, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Vietnam
15- Bosnia/Herzegovina, Cambodia, Honduras, Ukraine, Venezuela
16- Argentina, Belarus, Belize, Jamaica, Moldova, Nicaragua, Pakistan
17- Cuba
18- Ecuador
20- Greece

FITCH
1- Australia, Austria, Bermuda, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States
2- Belgium, Hong Kong, Spain
3- Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Slovenia, South Korea
4- Chile, China, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia
5- Czech Republic, Estonia, Israel, Malta, Slovakia
6- Malaysia, Poland, Ras Al-Khaimah, San Marino, South Africa
7- Cyprus, Thailand
8- Bahrain, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Mexico
9- Aruba, Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Morocco, Namibia, Peru, Russia, Tunisia
10- Azerbaijan, Colombia, India, Panama, Portugal, Romania
----JUNK BOND LINE----
11- Costa Rica, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia, Macedonia, Philippines, Turkey, Uruguay
12- El Salvador, Lesotho, Nigeria
13- Angola, Armenia, Cape Verde, Gabon, Kenya, Serbia, Sri Lanka
14- Bolivia, Georgia, Ghana, Mongolia, Mozambique, Seychelles, Suriname, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia
15- Argentina, Benin, Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Rwanda, Uganda, Ukraine
16- Cameroon, Ecuador, Jamaica
17- Greece

Rapid-Fire Book Club, Toilet Mishap Avoidance Edition

The handle broke on the toilet and I went into Madison while it got fixed. What, you were expecting a geyser of fecal matter to gush forth from the bowl or something?

Anyway. Two books to report today...

Hartston, William- The Encyclopedia of Useless Information

And it's pretty much that. None of the stories are very long, mostly just little factoids, but the thing it has going for it is a lot of stuff my other books don't contain. When I get books like this, I flip through them quick to gauge if there's very much new material in it or just a bunch of stuff that's either in my other books or that I'm already well-aware of. This one passed inspection and I'm likely going to carve it up for prompts that I can expand on here. Just like the other random-trivia books in my arsenal.

Poignant, Roslyn- Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle

In 1882, nonwhite races had a hard time dealing with the Western world. They tended to be regarded as "savages" that needed to be "civilized", something that generally involved one of a couple things:

*Missionaries showing up one day and declaring everything they saw an affront to God and then obliterating entire cultures and replacing them with Bible studies,
*Colonialists showing up one day and declaring everything they saw as property of Europe and then shooting entire cultures until that became true, or...
*The kind of thing that happened to the subjects of this book, a group of Aborigines from North Queensland, Australia. What happened to them was that they were "recruited" by someone from the West, shipped to the West, and paraded around as the "uncivilized" "savages" they, according to the West's sensibilities of the time, were. A lot of the time, the word "cannibal" would be thrown in as well, whether or not that was actually true. Most of the time, a "savage" so "recruited" would never see home again. I mentioned another such instance back during the Vancouver Olympics, that of "Anthropology Days" in the 1904 Games in St. Louis. But a better-detailed story on it can be found at Slate.

Welcome To Guttenberg

I'm continuing to try and brainstorm any possible way that we as a nation can find our way towards gaining and maintaining a leadership of reasonable, rational adults. I'm sure you have too, but I would like to have ideas to use beyond 'Vote out ALL incumbents! Both sides!' To me, that's not really enough. I mean, the past three elections- 2006, 2008 and 2010- have been considered 'waves', elections where large chunks of seats changed hands, and after three straight rounds of electoral carnage- on both sides- this is where we stand, a place most would agree is even worse than where we started before those three elections.

So a straightforward throw-the-bums-out mentality, with no further direction, isn't working.

'Term limits!'

12 year-limit, right? You tell me what possible good a term-limiting is going to have on someone that's doing their damage within months, weeks, DAYS of taking office. Scott Walker didn't even wait for his inauguration before pressuring outgoing governor Jim Doyle to kill a high-speed rail project. There is no term limit in the world that's going to prevent that. No, I want something else. Something new. Something outside the box.

Something like a political hall of fame.

...okay, how many of you stopped reading and went off to go ogle pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt?

For the rest of you, I'm envisioning an American Political Hall of Fame. First off, halls of fame are awesome. Second, and more to the point, done correctly, it can be used as an inspiration to greatness- a concrete, independently-bestowed, high-profile honor that cannot be bought or campaigned for but rather must be earned. It can also be a humbling device, a way to tell those getting a big head, 'you may think you're some hotshot, but these are your betters, and they expect more of you'.

This might also, incidentally, have an effect on the rest of the public. You see, as much as some of them may deserve it, even when elected officials behave themselves, we're still pretty hard on them. We any offhand remark saying how they'd like to see something or other happen as a "promise" to be filed alongside the stuff they stump for in campaign rallies, and damn the man or woman who then "breaks" their "promise" by subsequently regarding that offhand remark as an offhand remark. Damn the elected official who loses a vote and then fails to find some way to brazenly ignore the vote and ram through their defeated policy goals anyway. Damn them if they ever go home and take a day off of work. Oh, no. They're playing golf. While people are out of work and/or starving and/or getting killed by something or other, which in a total coincidence has been the case at every time ever. The BASTARDS.

When called on this, every single time the response will be along the lines of 'Well, they're being held to a higher standard.' Nobody ever actually defines this standard. It's this morphing, evolving thing that nobody ever actually seems to reach.

With a Political Hall of Fame, that 'higher standard' is no longer that kind of moving target. There's your higher standard, cast in bronze and marble and free on Tuesdays. Here's who you're trying to live up to.

But you've got to put it together properly in order for it to be any of these things.

First, we need a location. Someone's got to house the Hall of Fame. But I want to start by noting where I DON'T want it: anywhere in the Beltway or environs. Too insular. Too self-congratulatory. Doesn't send a good message at all. I also do not want it in any city in the country where it would not be the town's primary claim to fame. A good Hall of Fame makes the town synonymous with its Hall. 'He's going to Cooperstown.' 'He's going to Canton.' That's what I want here.

Think of it like this: take every city that houses a major league team in the five major leagues- MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS. Eliminate every single one of them. Take any city that houses an NCAA Division 1 program. Eliminate those cities too. And Division 2. And Division 3. All out of consideration.

While you're at it, you can also dump any city claiming to have the first or biggest of anything or which prominently claims to be the 'capital' or 'home' of anything or anyone.

All done? There's your starting point.

I'd like to have it in Iowa, near the Mississippi. First off, I've been in that area and it's just lovely. Second, the Mississippi has a nice Americana value to it. Third, Iowa is the home of the first Presidential primaries. Any semi-serious candidate, anyone serious enough to stump in Iowa, would be almost obligated to show up at some point. How much of an effect it has on them is up for debate, but the assumption here lies on it either having at least some effect, however small, on some of the candidates, and/or it having an effect on the voters who visit and then almost certainly look at the candidates and go 'why can't YOU be like that?'

As for a specific town, I'm going to pick Guttenberg. It's a small town, about 2,000 people, and local geography dictates that it'll never be all that much more than that, but that's fine. If you want a town to be destined as a synonym for what we're doing, you don't want any town that's known for anything. Which limits you largely to small towns. Guttenberg's main claim to fame is that they have a lock and dam of the Upper Mississippi. That's it. (The local geography of Guttenberg is that it's a thin strip of development on the riverbank, pressed in by bluffs. The bluffs can be built on, though, and are reachable, so we'll stick the Hall up there. It'll be a nice view and it cuts down on flood risks. Am I thinking about this way too much? Like I care.)

So we have a location. Now the much more relevant question: how to determine who's going to Guttenberg.

First, let's define who's eligible for enshrinement. There are two main rules:

1. Eligible candidates must, of course, have something to do with politics. This could be elected officials, unelected members of the public sector (such as Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, staffers, members of the bureaucracy, etc.), campaign workers, journalists, lobbyists, activists, pollsters, whatever. However, whoever they may are, they can only be judged on their political body of work. John McCain, for example, can't have his Vietnam experience count for him except as it relates to his use of it as a utensil over his political career.

2. Candidates become eligible for induction after having been dead for a minimum of 25 years. No exceptions. Any earlier than that and I feel the process will become too partisan for there to be a good enough appraisal. I do not believe the political world can be trusted to properly judge its own contemporaries; there will be too much partisan posturing and not enough historical hindsight into a candidate. Besides, there really is no 'retirement' to speak of. You can continue to have an effect on politics right up to your final breath and beyond the grave. It really will not do to have anyone who's alive get inducted, run for office on it and win, and then proceed to suck. That costs everyone involved credibility.

Next, the induction process.

Round 1 will be public nominations. I want to, at some point in the process, involve the general American public, give people a sense of ownership of the place. This is my method of doing that. The main ballot- Round 2- will consist of 50 names in any given year. 45 names on the inaugural ballot will be decided by the public, through online nominations. We'll say they can nominate up to 10 people. The top 45 names- after the removals of fakes and ineligibles- go on the ballot. The other five slots will be handed to... well, here we'll just call it the Veterans' Committee like most Halls of Fame call their secondary committee. We can call it something else later. The Veterans' Committee is a panel of whoever the Hall of Fame curators deem fit. Their job is mainly to fill in the mental gaps. They're going to try and put more obscure names on the main ballot, names that the general public wouldn't really ever think to nominate.

Round 2 is the main ballot. Here, let's just be honest, I'm cribbing heavily from baseball's procedure. It's a good way of doing things and fits in nice with what we're trying to do. The main ballot is sent to a group of political historians, none of which can already have been on the Veterans' Committee. We'll aim for somewhere between 500-1,000 of them. They're our equivalent of the baseball writers- they specialize in the knowledge base we need, and besides, of all the groups of people that get dragged into political fights, they actually largely get left alone to do their thing. They're perfect Hall of Fame voters. They'll get the main ballot of 50 names and be asked to vote to elect up to 12 names. Just like in baseball, anyone who claims at least 75% of the vote is inducted into the Hall of Fame. 75% is well and plenty enough to keep above a partisan fight. Plenty of political types would get 50% of the vote. It's that last 25% that'll get you.

If you don't get 75%, you're not in, at least not yet. However, other top performers on the ballot get a consolation prize: anyone who gets at least 10% is guaranteed a place on the ballot for the next year. The remaining places on the ballot are placed up for grabs in the next Round 1 nominations, with 3 spots reserved for the Veterans' Committee in years after the first.

On the other hand, should anyone be so unfortunate as to not claim a single vote- it happens in baseball, so don't laugh- that person becomes ineligible for five years. This will help cut down on people trying to shove a name through the nomination process that are just totally, completely unacceptable.

Usually in a Hall of Fame, that's the end of it. You're in, you're in. However, this is history we're talking about. Times change. Sentiments change. People who seemed like good choices upon their induction can, over time, turn out to not look nearly as good. This has happened before in a related hall, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City, housed at Bronx Community College. (It also had a dead-for-25-years requirement, though they bent it a few times.) That Hall, while a point of national pride in its time, was intensely campaigned for in only the one round of balloting (this is why the public is not given the final round) and made some very questionable choices. James Buchanan. Stonewall Jackson. Sidney Lanier, campaigned for by the Daughters of the Confederacy after Booker T. Washington had gotten in. You look at such names now, and honestly, James Buchanan is not someone worth honoring like that. That's not like putting Eppa Rixey in baseball's Hall of Fame. That's like inducting Turk Wendell. Bad choices like that cost a Hall credibility in later years.

The Hall died off for lack of interest, mainly because not enough people were getting elected. People were used to electing 10 people at a time, once every five years. (We're doing a much smaller annual induction, so that won't be much of an issue.) It also got overshadowed by baseball's Hall of Fame, which was inducting people who were still alive. (We'll hold firm on that point. We also will refrain from simply reanimating the Hall for Great Americans, as it took from all walks of society and we're focused squarely on politics.)

We're going to allow for the possibility of bad choices with an ejection mechanic. We'll let the first ten years of the Hall go, so we can build up the place a bit. Starting in Year 11, nominations will ask the public which single Hall of Famer they feel to be the least deserving of enshrinement. The Hall of Famer with the most votes will be placed onto an ejection vote on the main Round 2 ballot.

However, just as it's tough to get in, it's just as tough to get yanked back out. It will take 75% of the vote to evict. If 75% vote to evict, out they go. Their plaque will be saved, but placed in a special exhibit outside the walls of the Hall of Fame with a second plaque explaining why they were kicked out. (They are, however, eligible to be re-enshrined.) If they don't get 75%, that Hall of Famer is safe for one year, plus an extra year per 10% of the vote they came in under 75%. If in Year 1 Abraham Lincoln got 74% of the vote to evict, he would be safe in Year 2 but would be eligible for eviction again in Year 3. If he got 65%, he'd be safe in Years 2 and 3 and would be eligible again in Year 4. however, the voters were more reasonable, said 'wait, are we seriously voting on whether to kick Abe Lincoln out of the Hall of Fame?!' and under 5% voted to evict, that's eight years of safety he's got ahead of him.

So when on the calendar are we doing all this? I'm timing the induction ceremony for around late August: nice weather in eastern Iowa, still green and nice but after the worst of the summer heat passes. We work backwards from there: online nominations go on over March and April, the main ballot is drawn up, printed out and deliberated on over the course of May and June, and I'd like the inductees announced on July 4 for obvious reasons.

So now we just need to get someone to pay for and build the thing. Also maybe we should tell the people of Guttenberg, Iowa about the plan. They might not like it if someone came along and just started randomly pouring concrete without warning.

Now how do we find the money? Darned austerity.

Housekeeping Note

You may have already noticed over the past few days, but I've been making another run through the Blogger toolbox and seeing how I can fill the place out.

Noting the changes quickly:

*There's a 'contact' page now at the top. The info is repeated in the introductory post way back from the day the blog kicked off, but it recently occurred to me that that arrangement is getting more ridiculously inconvenient every day.
*There's now a share function over to the side. I tried attaching it to the bottom of each post, but the only way I could get it to work was when it attached to the bottom of the page, not bottom of the post.
*Finally, there's a most-popular page listing. Due to the unwieldy design and size (those stupid, stupid diamonds, mainly), though, that may not last long. I'm still trying to work out how to make it so that it doesn't stretch a page the length of Route 66.

Standing For Something

So, barring a shock vote in the Senate, it's August 2nd and we're out of the debt-ceiling crisis. For now. (It'll keep being 'for now' as long as we have a debt ceiling to raise, something we enshrined during World War 1 with the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 and modified with Public Debt Acts during World War 2. It wouldn't be very difficult to repeal the ceiling if we didn't want to have one anymore.)

Beyond the point just noted, we're not going to discuss here my feelings on the bill itself. I'm more focused on the feelings channeled through the bill and the debate over it. And those feelings are abysmal. Just about everybody hates... well, everybody hates everything. We're angry at each other for the feelings our opposite number holds. We're angry at the middle for not picking a side. We're angry at our own side for not getting enough out of the bill.

One person I saw, a Democrat or progressive or liberal or whatever term it is we want to use today, noted that they had a sort of grudging respect for the Tea Party, because "at least they stand for something."

At least they stand for something.

Whenever I hear this phrase uttered, it is always from a person fed up that their side hasn't gotten close enough to their ideals. That they compromised-- actually, no, "compromised" is never the word used in this context. The word is "caved" or "folded" or something else to that effect. My side lost. The other side 'at least stood for something'.

'Standing for something' is in this context just about always confused with 'being a stubborn asshole'. 'Standing for something', I would argue, plays a very large part in how Congress got to its current state. Use the two phrases interchangeably, and you tell me if the sentiment changes at all. In fact, oftentimes that's the first half of the sentence. 'He may be a stubborn asshole, but at least he stands for something'. It's somewhat unintentionally redundant.

Congress is full of people who stand for something. They stand for something so much that they only talk to each other in the most technical sense of the word, never seriously making progress towards critical, must-pass legislation until the very last possible second before disaster hits. And some won't even talk then. There are only barely enough people to barely operate for barely enough time to function. Imagine a plane flying through a mountain range, headed straight for a cliffside. Essentially, we are gunning the engine and headed right for it, only to wildly yank on the controls while screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and missing the cliff by 20 feet... only to aim the plane straight at the next mountain over and start it all again. Sooner or later, that plane is going to slam into a mountain.

And there are mountains ahead. There's a government shutdown fight coming up not too long from now. The debt ceiling will raise its head again. And then there's every routine bill that can be blocked, held, filibustered or otherwise held hostage in any way, shape or form.

The thing is, there are a whole lot of things that can be stood for. Political positions. Sports teams. Coke or Pepsi. And, as is becoming increasingly apropos, the positions held in wars. Which wars? At the risk of sounding like Sarah Palin: All of them. Pick your favorite. Every war ever began because people stood for things quite forcefully.

"We believe rather fervently that your oil/land/people actually belong to us. We also believe that you should be dead."
"We disagree."
"Well, let us settle this disagreement through grievous bodily harm on the grandest possible scale."
"Kudos to you for standing up for your beliefs, but by the same token, I do hope you enjoy the sight of your own blood, good sirs."

We reached a point, somewhere along the line, where the middle is unacceptable. If a bill goes left, it angers the right. If a bill goes right, it angers the left. If a bill goes anywhere in between, it angers EVERYBODY.

And on some level, we have to realize that we did this to ourselves. The sentiment- and Nate Silver's analysis bears it out- may show that the will of the voters and elected officials are in total disconnect with each other. But don't think yourself blameless. Each and every one of them is only there because the voters put them there. (And please don't give me the 'it's who counts the votes' line. If anyone should be using that line right now, it's me. I'm from Wisconsin. Look at all the shenanigans going on here with open sacks of votes and fliers muddying the knowledge of when Election Day is and fake candidates who say outright that they're fake... and I'm not boycotting or acting like my vote doesn't count even given all that. Why? First off, that's just not how I operate. Second, because I know if I stay home the other side won't care. Me staying home seems to be what they're actively trying to CAUSE. Me staying home is only going to be seen as an increase in their margin of victory. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction. They want me not voting, they are going to have to physically hog-tie and drag me from the precinct.)

You put them in. You- or people you know; you may have supported their opponents- went into the booth and checked the name of each and every person in that body. America voted for gridlock, for checks on one-party rule, and gridlock is exactly what America got. You voted them in, and you can vote them out as well. At the very least, this particular set of people has proven fundamentally incapable of working with each other. Given that the legislative process is built around debate and negotiation and compromise, what that means is that this set of 535 people is incompatible with the system.

What needs to happen, if we are to avoid fights like this in the future, is that there needs to be a movement towards people who are compatible with the system. People that aren't stubborn assholes. People who can talk to each other like adult human beings. People who, instead of arguing over whether the plane in the mountain range should veer at the mountain on the left or the mountain on the right, stop and consider that maybe the plane should fly over the mountains and not veer at any of them.

You know. People who don't stand for things so much.