Fortunately my partner has reality-based beliefs.

We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you’ve received your reward. Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.  We are currently active in 20 states and growing. Our representatives have been screened to ensure that they are atheists, animal lovers, are moral / ethical with no criminal background, have the ability and desire to rescue your pet and the means to retrieve them and ensure their care for your pet’s natural life.

I wonder if anyone is actually buying this insurance?

What is it about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition that leads so many of its most prominent spokespersons to make hateful, bigoted, life-diminishing and personal security-endangering statements when it comes to human sexuality?

First the religious right were asked to pray for rain during the Denver Democratic National Convention:

Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family, one of America’s leading evangelical groups, was shown in a video filmed at Denver’s Invesco Field, where 75,000 are expected to cheer Mr Obama on Aug 28, asking Christians to pray for “torrential” rain.

“I’m talking ‘umbrella-ain’t-going-to-help-you rain,” the former pastor and television meteorologist said. He explained on the video: “I’m still pro life, and I’m still in favour of marriage as being between one man and one woman. And I would like the next president who will select justices for the next Supreme Court to agree.”

Did it rain on Mr Obama’s parade? Did it heck.

But what’s this? Hurricane Gustav has prompted a rethink over the Republican convention. John McCain said:

“But you know it just wouldn’t be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near-tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster. So we’re monitoring it from day to day and I’m saying a few prayers too.”

If the Big Guy is sending rain according to which side he’s on, then He seems to be a Democrat.

The transcript of the briefing by US officials on Air Force One going home from Gleneagles says different.

There are few issues for which the political consensus is so distant from both common sense and expert opinion. Right-wing economists,left-wing environmentalists and almost anybody in-between who doesn't receive a check from the Department of Agriculture or depend on apolitical donation from said recipients understand that Americans are spending billions to prop up the last of the horse-and-buggy industries. …

Subsidies combined with trade barriers (another term for subsidy) prop up the price of food for consumers at home and hurt farmers abroad. This is repugnant because agriculture is a keystone industry for developing nations and a luxury for developed ones. This keeps Third World nations impoverished, economically dependent and politically unstable. Our farm subsidies alone — forget trade barriers — cost developing countries $24 billion every year, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis. Letting poor nations prosper would be worth a lot more than the equivalent amount in foreign aid. But Big Agriculture likes foreign aid because it allows for the dumping of wheat and other crops on the world market, which perpetuates the cycle of dependency.

For an alternative view, see Daniel Davies's contribution at Comment is Free – and make sure you read the interesting discussion in the comments.

The issue is simple: should internet service providers be under an obligation to carry all network traffic without discrimination? Those in favour of net neutrality say that such a requirement is needed to protect the open, innovative nature of the net. Those against net neutrality say that market forces will ensure continued innovation and that legislating this requirement will stifle investment in new broadband services.

This is not about the ability of internet service providers to charge consumers more for faster, high-bandwidth connections; they have always been able to do this.  It is about whether the ISPs can enter into arrangements with particular content providers to give their data preferential treatment as it travels through the net.

The cable and telephone companies want to be able to charge content providers.  Ed Whitacre, CEO of AT&T, said this:

Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!

Of course, the problem with this argument is that consumers already pay for the cost of those services, in rough proportion to the amount they use them.  What the telephone companies want is something more: they want to be able to share in the value created by content providers.

None of us likes the idea of government regulation of the internet, which has grown and propsered largely on a self-regulating basis.  If the network providers faced significant competition, there would be a strong case for letting the market decide.  But they don't: telephone and cable companies have legally backed monopolies, and without net neutrality they will be able to use their market dominant position to extract a share of rents earned by value-added content providers such as Google and Yahoo.  Cable and telephone companies have a product – the network – which is increasingly a low-value commodity, with surplus capacity, and they are keen to use their market power to grab a share of the value being created upstream.

Tony Wu at Columbia University, described the danger in graphic terms:

it's just too close to the Tony Soprano vision of networking: Use your position to make threats and extract payments. 

In other words, without net neutrality the service providers will in effect be able to extort protection money from every content provider, by threatening to slow or even block the websites and services of their competitors or those who refuse to pay up.

One of the great successes of the internet has been that it is a 'dumb network' – that is, all the 'thinking' is done by machines at either end. The network just carries the data from one place to another, irrespective of what it is.  This property facilitates innovation – Tim Berners Lee, for example, was able to invent the protocol that underlies the web, and Dave Winer could invent RSS feeds which underpin blogging – without needing to persuade anybody who operates the network in between to support their new service.  Without net neutrality, this disappears. The network itself will treat different sorts of data differently, so it will be harder to innovate and add new services that compete with existing products.

If we allow Big Media and Big Entertainment to buy up the internet, we will all lose out.  Bloggers will find their traffic is in the slow lane relative to the news output of the large media corporations.  New internet startups will not be able to compete against incumbents because they won't be able to afford the ticket onto the superhighway.  

But the prospect of larger monopoly rents is a powerful motive. The phone companies are spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying against net neutrality. On the other side is a coalition which is non-partisan and which brings together large companies, NGOs, lobby groups, bloggers and most of the people who care about the future of the internet.  Companies such as Google, Microsoft,  Amazon and EBay (not always natural bed-fellows) have joined together with groups as diverse as MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition of America to campaign to protect net neutrality. 

The news today is not good:

In a dramatic tie vote Wednesday, a U.S. Senate committee rejected an amendment that would have preserved the status quo of equal pricing for all Internet traffic, an issue known as network neutrality.

But all is not yet lost:

The amendment that failed was part of a larger telecommunications bill that passed the committee and now heads to the full Senate. A similar amendment could be reintroduced into the larger bill before that vote.

in my view this is significant issue. If you like the internet without big business being able to use its financial strength to keep the little guy out, you should care about this.  If you don't act now, please don't complain when the net is taken over by big corporations. 

So what can you do? The Save the Internet Coalition has a handy list of seven things you can do if you want to protect net neutrality. 

I do not regard this as a purely personal choice: I would readily vote for a political party which was committed to making it a criminal offence to eat an animal for pleasure. 

Even so I would have no hesitation in eating an animal if my life depended on it. To say that animals have rights is not the same as saying that they have the same rights as humans.  (I would also have few qualms about a group of people killing and eating a fellow passenger in a shipwreck if there is no other way to survive.  Rights can be trumped by other rights.)

I believe that the qualitities that attract moral consideration – essentially, consciousness and especially self-consciousness – are present in many animals but are more significant in humans than in guinea pigs and rats. I believe that a human being has a more signficant claim on our moral attention than a guinea pig.

I today signed ‘The People’s Petition‘ supporting the use of animals in medical research in the UK.  The petition says

‘I believe that medical research is essential for developing new medical and veterinary treatments.  I understand that finding safe and effective treatments and medicines requires some studies using animals. 

I believe that medical research using animals, carried out to the highest standards of care and welfare, and where there is not alternative available, should continue in the UK.

I believe that people involved in medical research using animals have a right to work and live without fear of intimidation or attack.’

I do not support animal testing for cosmetics.  But I believe that the good to mankind of medical research far exceeds the harm done to animals.  I understand that animal models are not perfect measures of the risk and benefit to humans, but they are not, as the critics would have us believe, useless. They provide essential information that saves millions of lives and reduces suffering and disability. Even as a committed member of the vegetarian jihad, I therefore support the controlled use of animal testing.

Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid.. America is a generous and open country and these qualities make America a beacon to the world. We should not let exaggerated fears dim that beacon.

Economists from any political background are invited to sign. I agree, of course, and have emailed to say so (though I am far less eminent than many of the economists who have already signed up.)

Personally, I would go further. My sympathies are with Chris Dillow, who argues for free immigration.  He makes this interesting point:

I’m not saying here that immigrants should have rights to welfare benefits. They have a liberty right to live where they like, not a claim right upon our money (ta, Norm).  I suspect most hostility to immigration is based upon the failure to see this distinction.

Here is the text.

Dear President George W. Bush and All Members of Congress:

People from around the world are drawn to America for its promise of freedom and opportunity. That promise has been fulfilled for the tens of millions of immigrants who came here in the twentieth century.

Throughout our history as an immigrant nation, those who are already here worry about the impact of newcomers. Yet, over time, immigrants have become part of a richer America, richer both economically and culturally.

The current debate over immigration is a healthy part of a democratic society, but as economists and other social scientists we are concerned that some of the fundamental economics of immigration are too often obscured by misguided commentary.

Overall, immigration has been a net gain for existing American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 13 trillion-dollar economy.

Immigrants do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.

Immigration in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small, with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from eight percent to as little as zero percent.

While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in goods and services, the gains from immigration outweigh the losses. The effect of all immigration on low-skilled workers is very likely positive as many immigrants bring skills, capital and entrepreneurship to the American economy.

Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants. Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system that enables Americans to be more productive with high-wage skills.

We must not forget that the gains to immigrants from coming to the United States are immense. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid.

America is a generous and open country and these qualities make America a beacon to the world. We should not let exaggerated fears dim that beacon.

Linux is a free alternative to Windows.  For technically-minded people, it can be more powerful, safer and much cheaper to use than Windows.  It is now widely used by businesses for servers (most webservers run on Linux).  Easy-to-use desktop versions have been slower to emerge, partly because many of the geeks who contribute their time (free) to write, debug, improve and document Linux have not always given a high priority to developing an easy user interface.

If you have been using Firefox web browser (and about 20% of the readers of this blog do) you will know that free, open source software can be considerably more powerful, more reliable, easier to use, and more safe than the proprietary alternatives such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  And what is true for the web browser is true for the entire operating system.

The latest version of SUSE is a joy to use.  I have Windows XP on my laptop, and I can honestly say that I think SUSE is better desktop operating system.  It comes laden with free software, from music players (without any Digital Rights Management) to a free alternative to Microsoft Office which does the job at least as well (and in some ways better).

Installing and updating Linux on my desktop was quicker and easier than installing and updating Windows XP on my laptop.   Installing Windows required me to update the driver for my laptop’s sound card so that I could update successfully to Service Pack 2; install SP2 (which takes an hour or more); and then uninstall various Windows services that I do not need to secure my laptop.  SUSE Linux, by contrast, recognised all my hardware automatically, installed all the correct drivers, and updated itself online in 20 minutes.

I’ve made some notes here about the installation, mainly relating to ensuring that the computer correctly handles multimedia (such as MP3 files and commercial DVDs). 

In addition, I have set up my own IMAP mail server at home.  This is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut (I now have a commercial strength, secure mail server) and is quite involved (just as it would be in Windows).  But it is also rewarding, as it gives me a very powerful and easy to use central mail system which I can access in many different ways.    Full details here. 

A group of K-Stars ran the Silicon Valley Half Marathon this morning. All enjoyed it, and Tomas (1:29:53) and Dave O’Connor (1:24:50) achieved personal records. Christine (1:40:20) won her age group. Grethe ran 1:38:07 and I ran 1:21:49. Andy (1:22:56), Dave and I scored for the team. We were not the fastest team but don’t know if we were in the top three. (Update: we were third team.)

Now for a large breakfast.

In the photo (clockwise): Tomas, Mike (1:55:54), Owen, Andy, John (1:27:43), Dave O’C, Dave P (1:30:02), Christine, Grethe.  Missing from photo Heather (1:42:03 – second in age group).   In the 5km (not in photo) were Janet and Malinda.

Full results here.

I don’t normally bother to cross-post from here, but this is a very interesting paper. 

Intellectually, I find it hard to justify a smoking ban in private businesses.  It should be for the owner of a bar or restaurant to decide if he or she wants to allow smoking or not, and for customers to choose the establishment that meets their preferences. 

Here in California, smoking is not allowed in bars or restaurants, and the improvement in quality of life for me is substantial. I can go out to a bar and have a few drinks without coming home smelling like an ashtray and having to wash everything from my jeans to my sweater.  I actually enjoy spending time out in clubs now; with the result that I go out to bars more often here than I would in London.

You would think that there are enough people like me who would choose a smoke-free environment that some pubs and clubs would allow smoking and others would not, and then we could choose where to go to.  Something like this works for coffee bars already: in London, Starbucks does not allow smoking and Caffe Nero does: it is a free market, and I can choose which I want to go to.  So why doesn’t it work the same way for pubs, restaurants, and clubs?  But for some reason it doesn’t happen – I am not aware of any non-smoking pubs and restaurants in London.

I am with Third Avenue on this (perhaps not surprisingly, as we are both Brits living in America).  Though intellectually I think there should be a choice, the improvement in quality of life from a smoking ban is much larger than I would have expected; the market does not in fact provide the choice; and I would vote for a ban.

I don’t understand why the UK is finding it hard to put together legislation.  There are well-functioning examples here in New York and in California, and as I understand it, the ban in Ireland works OK too – so how hard can it be?

James Surowiecki has an interesting piece in the New Yorker which seems to support the case for aid:

Between 1946 and 1978, in fact, South Korea received nearly as much U.S. aid as the whole of Africa. Meanwhile, the billions that Taiwan got allowed it to fund a vast land-reform program and to eradicate malaria. And the U.S. gave the Asian Tigers more than money; it provided technical assistance and some military defense, and it offered preferential access to American markets. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the two Middle Eastern countries that have shown relatively steady and substantial economic growth—Israel and Turkey—have also received tens of billions of dollars in U.S. aid.

But this anecdotal analysis is no more valid than the opposite argument which was put by Bill Easterly in the New York Times on July 3rd:

From 1960 to 2003, we spent $568 billion (in today’s dollars) to end poverty in Africa. Yet these efforts still did not lift Africa from misery and stagnation.

Saying that we have given aid to Africa and yet Africans stayed poor is not an argument against aid; just as saying that we gave aid to Korea and they got rich is not an argument in favour of it.

As I argued here on June 30th, the question is whether aid makes a difference – and that requires some evidence about what would have happened in the absence of aid. You need to do a proper statistical analysis, controlling for other variables, to establish what difference, if any, aid makes to a country’s growth.

Plenty of studies have been done, and they nearly all find that aid is strongly, positively correlated with sustained economic growth in the medium term. My colleagues at the Center for Global Development did a study which looked at the relationship between aid and growth which finds:

higher-than-average short-impact aid to sub-Saharan Africa raised per capita growth rates there by about half a percentage point over the growth that would have been achieved by average aid flows. The results are highly statistically significant and stand up to a demanding array of tests …

And in a comprehensive survey of all the empirical research on thiark McGillivray at the OECD (pdf file here) finds that poverty would have been much higher in the absence of aid.

I’ve done a series of blog postings on aid effectiveness which set out the compelling micro and macro evidence for the effectiveness of aid. Jim at Our Word is Our Weapon is also a reliable source of evidence-based analysis.

These views reflect a common theme: they leave the rich world blameless for Africa’s multitude of problems. I greatly fear that Live 8 is inadvertently strengthening the notion that we in the rich world must be missionaries to save Africans from themselves. The truth is already being lost– the deep, comprehensive responsibility of western nations and western financial institutions for so much of Africa’s continuing underdevelopment and poverty.

The U.S. contribution would include $674 million — enough to feed 14 million people — and a significant commitment will also be made by the British, the official said.

This is a derisory piece of window-dressing: no new money, and nothing on the scale needed to tackle the problem. Let’s hope that the UK and other G8 countries are able to put pressure on the US to come up with something more substantive in time for Gleneagles.