The Other Democrat

One of the things I like the most about Cornell is the people it attracts. Earlier today I was looking at the list of events to see that former senator Mike Gravel was giving a talk about five minutes later.

Mike Gravel is the person who an online quiz on presidential candidates last fall said I would agree with more than any other candidate. He also shares the distinction of being one of only 3 democrats still actively campaigning for the presidency. Sure he is not fooling anyone into thinking he will win, but he is still a big name figure.

So, I immediately got up and headed over to the talk. To be honest I wasn't that impressed. He seemed to be pushing really hard for a direct democracy system like that in California where the voters can vote on making laws directly. In California I vote against all of these out of principal. They are rarely well thought out or implemented. He didn't talk at all about some of the issues that I would agree with him the most, most notably ending the war on drugs.

To be honest, I probably would have gone home pretty happy with the man though if he didn't show off his support of getting rid of all Nuclear power plants.
One Hundred Nuclear Power plants in America, no deaths resulted in decades from them, and he still thinks of them as a menace! His replacement plan: replace them with wind and solar. OK, at least he didn't mention biofuels. I would agree those two sources need to be used more. However they initially should be used to keep new fossil fuel power plants from being built. Then they should be used to replace coal power plants. Then they should be used to replace Natural Gas power plants. Then they should be used through some sort of plug in hybrid system to replace most motor fuel. Then, and only then, should serious thought go into replacing the nuclear power plants. Until then we should be expanding Nuclear, and replacing Coal, the power plant with by far the worst safety and environmental record, as fast as we can.

Silly Careers...

I was just looking at the "Most Overrated Careers" on US News. Sure enough, medical scientist is on the list.

At least Engineer did quite well.

This reminds me. I need to keep taking hard core Optics, Business, and Electronics courses.

If I wasn't poor...

If I wasn't poor, I would say that right now would be a great time to buy stocks. Probably I would do so in the form of index funds, and put some percentage overseas just in case I am way off here. I didn't realize just how poorly the stock market had really done though:

"Conventional stock-market wisdom holds that if investors buy a broad range of stocks and hold them, they will do better than they would in other investments. But that rule hasn't held up for stocks bought in the late 1990s or 2000.

Over the past nine years, the S&P 500 is the worst-performing of nine different investment vehicles tracked by Morningstar, including commodities, real-estate investment trusts, gold and foreign stocks.

Big U.S. stocks were outrun even by Treasury bonds, which historically perform much less well than stocks.

Adjusted for inflation, Treasurys are up 4.7 percent a year over the past nine years, and up 5.8 percent a year since the March 2000 stock peak. An index of commodities has shown about twice the annual gains of bonds, as have real-estate investment trusts.

Stocks also underperformed other investments during the 1930s and the 1970s. During both of those periods, stocks would rally strongly, only to fade. It took well over a decade in each case for stocks to move lastingly upward."

Source

I honestly didn't realize just how bad stocks had got over the past decade. This rather surprised me. The source sounds legit, it appears to come from the Wall Street Journal.

I cannot imagine a world where stocks stay a worse investment than gold. Maybe I am short sighted, but I read that and think: It has been a decade and stocks haven't risen much. The last two times that happened it lasted about a decade. Therefore stocks are due for some massive increases. Stocks really should be pretty cheap in comparison to other investments. Perhaps our huge trade deficit, and public debt mean an end to the stock market being a good place to put money. I am not counting on it though. Stocks have just done too well historically, they are almost certainly due for a run up. Chances are high that now is the equivalent of buying gold in 2000 when it was cheap as heck, and no one thought it was a good investment.

Not addicted

I did a google search for "glmory" for the first time in a long time. Apparently there are 56 000 hits. I am famous!

Gold

I am starting to hear a lot of people talk about gold, in the same way they were talking about housing three or four years ago. This graph is just to remind you that the price of gold is very volatile and a risky investment.



Source

Yay for unwinnable arguments

Arguments about who has it better males or females always amuse me. Most women have been fed enough feminist doctrine over their lives to make the answer obvious to them. Guys have an unfair advantage. Just being male allows them to get ahead when women wouldn’t.

This argument seems pretty easy to support. The average feminist looks at the number of female CEOs, Congressmen, Noble Prize winners and comes up with the obvious conclusion. Society favors males.

The real answer is far more complicated. Yes, being a male at the top of the totem pole is probably the best position in society. It does not however come without great cost however.Males are also far more likely to end up at the bottom. Examples include the following:

A white male is 4 times as likely to commit suicide as a white female(even more shockingly they are twice as likely as a black male, but among every race men commit suicide more)

Ten times as many males than females are in prison

Three out of four murder victims are male. Interestingly here, both males and females are more likely to murder males. Women being 5 times as likely to murder a male than a female, males being 3 times as likely to murder a male than a female.

One out of every fifty U.S. Deaths in Iraq were female.

Men historically have been half as likely to have children. In modern America the effect is smaller because of the lack of polygamy. But a small number of men still have a large percentage of children.(that linked article is a masterpiece)

And of course women average living 5+ years longer than men. If memory serves me correctly the difference is about 7 years in America.

Essentially life as a male is more precarious. You have the ability to rise farther, but you also have the ability to fall farther and harder. Life is forced to be more of a competition. Is that good or bad on a whole? It is neither. It totally is a matter of preference.

Some of the commonly argued reasons it is better to be male have no basis in reality. Women love thinking they work more hours than men for example. Just about every study that has looked at this subject has found them to work equal hours, at least in America.

Women of course will quickly, and rightly, point to sexual violence, periods/pregnancy, a "glass ceiling" and so on. These are legitimate reasons why being female isn’t ideal. However saying that one sex has it better than the other, or has any real advantage remains impossible. It is totally a matter of preference. No matter how many feminists try to beat the idea that males have it easy into your head. As a male at the top of the totem pole I am in a damn good position. However if I had worse luck in life I might be thinking being female would be superior. When I am 75 and dying, I know ill sure be wishing for those extra 7 years.

Damn Upstate NY

My friend is getting married. She mentioned that her boyfriend just bought a house. Now, he just got out of the military and is hardly rich, so that surprised me a bit. Then she linked the house to me.

I don’t want to go back to CA so much anymore :(

Yes, that is the price.

The owner accepted a slightly lower offer though.