Critical Exponent

From the AP:

Eleven House Democrats said Thursday they would sue the Bush administration, alleging the $39 billion deficit-reducing legislation signed by the president is unconstitutional because the House and Senate failed to approve identical versions.

Today is Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust remembrance day.

Honor the fallen by taking action against today’s genocides and urging others to do the same.

Listen to Pink’s new song, Dear Mr. President.

The Washington Post writes about how LGBT families handled the Easter Egg Roll: by accessorizing.

OK, so they were rainbow leis. Nevertheless, the article’s point about subtlety and politeness is worth reading.

I just ran across an old yet interesting New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell on choking versus panicking. In short, choking is the “loss of instinct”– the instinctual responses that come with experience (muscle memory, skill, what have you)– in favor of the explicit, deliberate thinking that novices have. Panicking is the “reversion to instinct”–the most primordial survival instincts that block both experienced skill and novice deliberation.

Sean Wilentz of Princeton writes in Rolling Stone a scathing review of how GWB compares to other presidents, and how he will be judged by history. A fascinating read, well worth the time.

Thanks to AMERICAblog for the pointer.

Today was the first peduting (pedal-commuting) ride of the season on the just-tuned-up bike. It is so good to be outdoors in the morning!

(Funny story: as the clouds cleared during my ride, I realized I had forgotten my sunglasses— until I went to shower at work, when I found them in my jersey pocket, where I had put them so I wouldn’t forget. My foresight would be a lot more useful if I remembered I had it!)

Daniel Gilbert of Harvard writes in The New York Times about how we humans cannot help but be affected by biases.

In short, doctors, judges, consultants and vice presidents strive for truth more often than we realize, and miss that mark more often than they realize. Because the brain cannot see itself fooling itself, the only reliable method for avoiding bias is to avoid the situations that produce it.

I got my bike back from the newly-opened Landry’s Bikes in Boston. They did an overall tune-up, fixed my seatpost, supposedly loosened the left pedal so I can get it off next time I disassemble my bike, and retaped my handlebar. They even replaced my front brake which, while functional, was screeching (they were supposed to have done it by the time I got there but they wound up doing it on the spot. Oh, well…)

The one thing they, and all the other bike stores I’ve been to, haven’t been able to do is give me a replacement adjustment screw for my left rear brake. The head on mine is getting worn and is hard to adjust. You know the screw I’m talking about; it would be the one in the middle of the following picture:

All the bike stores say they don’t have any. What’s up with that? Same goes for the standard bicycle bolts. Last summer I had to bike out to the Home Depot to get some because not even my local hardware store carried them. I’m not sure I even got the right threading.

You’d think bike stores would be able to sell you little kits with all the standard bolts, screws, and other paraphernalia you may need to work on your bike on the road. Grumble.

Salon has an interesting story this week about what happens to computers and other electronics when they die. Let’s just say they don’t go to heaven.

The US is the only industrialized country not to sign the Basel convention. We are also the country with the highest per-capita concentration of electronics. We are thus leading the way in making the Third World our global dumpster.

For all the talk of free markets and unbridled competition, what often gets left out are the externalities that are not reflected in the free-market prices. In this case, that would be the cost of proper disposal to prevent environmental degradation and health risks to the poor who are currently crudely “processing” our scraps by the most primitive of means.

I think electronics manufacturers should incorporate the cost of disposal into the purchase price of their products. (Not a bad idea for all manufacturers, really. Call it “life-cycle pricing.”) Yes, it means higher prices at the checkout, but these are costs that society will have to pay sooner or later in one form or another. Simply pushing the costs out of sight to a leeching landfill in China manned by underpaid and unprotected peasants is not acceptable.

As an added incentive, perhaps a fraction of this additional recapture cost could be held in escrow and be refunded to customers when they return their machine to a certified recycling center. The escrow tag would be attached to each piece of hardware, so that even if equipment goes through multiple owners, the current owner always has the option of terminating the consumer life cycle of the equipment by taking it to a recycling center and getting the escrow deposit back.

It’s just a thought, but we need to do something to take responsibility for our own waste.