Interesting stuff

  1. I really like the Odd Lots podcast. Their “10 things we learned in 2023” is a really nice introduction to their style and content.
  2. Women’s bodies (fertility, etc.) play a huge role in our social and cultural evolution. Listen to this discussion.
  3. Read this 2018 article on the “9.9 percent,” i.e., the rich-but-not-that-rich group of people who have gained at the expense of the 90 percent below us (yes — “us” – -the readers of blogs like this). Here’s a relevant excerpt:
    The source of the trouble, considered more deeply, is that we have traded rights for privileges. We’re willing to strip everyone, including ourselves, of the universal right to a good education, adequate health care, adequate representation in the workplace, genuinely equal opportunities, because we think we can win the game. But who, really, in the end, is going to win this slippery game of escalating privileges?
  4. Read how governments in middle-income countries are trying to get rich via industrial policy, etc. In 1945, Hayek explained how they would fail.
  5. Read about the (imminent? threat of a?) collapse of trust in the US. Things will NOT go well if that happens, and it kinda already is!

H/T to CD

Academics and freedom of speech

The First Amendment of the US constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The purpose of a constitution (ably explained in one of my favorite books) is  to protect citizens from the arbitrary exercise of power. The First Amendment thus protects (among other topics listed above) the right of citizens to speak (or write) freely.

I am a free-speech absolutist, in the sense of saying whatever you want, on any topic. I agree with the common exceptions to this freedom, except when it comes to obscenity (there, I am with Carlin).

America’s constitutional rights stop (in theory) at its borders, and governments elsewhere regulate the speech in different ways. In Germany, you cannot say many things (Nazi stuff is a famous example, as this American recently found out). In Russia, you cannot call war, “war.” In China, you cannot compare Xi to his look-alike.

On university campuses, freedom of speech is subject to different rules, since staff and students are “members of a community.” Those freedoms have been in the news recently, and I want to give my opinion as to why it’s news and how to fix the problem.

Hamas attacked from Gaza on 7 Oct 2022, killing over 1,000 Israelis (2/3rds of them civilians) in an unprecedented act of terrorism.

Side note: I am totally aware of the tension between Israel’s claims of progressive democracy and its treatment of the Palestinians (I am a “two-state solution” kinda guy), but I do not condone terrorism. America (with its religious nuts supporting the settlers), the Arab world (with its hypocrisies), and the Palestinian Authority (with its massive corruption) have really screwed over the Palestinian people, but that’s no excuse for terrorism.

Anyway, the reason we’re here is to talk about freedom of speech on universities, and the example that got everyone’s attention was the 7 October statement by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, which held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Thirty-three student groups at Harvard co-signed that statement. Remember that this was before Israel began its retributions and invasion of Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of civilians.

So the context is that Harvard’s administration tolerated THAT speech, in contrast to a lot of OTHER speech that Harvard has NOT tolerated. (FIRE may be biased, but facts are facts.) And Harvard is not alone.

So we’re talking about hypocrisy — your speech is bad, my speech is good — rather than anything close to a level playing field in how elite (private) universities handle topics that are favored by the left/hated by the right.

Related: This article points out that politicians — unable to regulate speech at private universities — are attacking speech at public universities, which they should not do. Elite media, such as the New York Times, are also suffering from hypocrisy, in terms of whose opinions are allowed and — worse — in terms of their news reporting. Read “When the New York Times lost its way.”

So, what “we” (Americans, but also citizens in the free world) risk here is a decay in our right to free speech, as various authorities “protect” us from “harmful” speech. That path, as Benjamin Franklin warned in 1722 (!), will deliver neither liberty nor safety.*

So, to recap: One side killed a bunch of people on the other side. Students spoke in favor of the killers, without condemnation from campus administrators who have shut down speech from the other side. I disagree with that history of censorship, since all sides should be able to speak.

So how did we get “here”? How did US academics become tolerant of one kind of speech but not another?

Whelp — it’s time to blame the mathematicians. No, the economists. No,  it’s the politicians (again) — as in the university politicians, or administrators (super insightful read).

Let me spell it out…

There’s been a huge interest in pushing students to study STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) over the past decade or so, often motivated by economic analyses that show STEM graduates getting more jobs at higher pay than graduates from other majors — especially the humanities (history, philosophy, cultural studies, languages, etc.)

IMO, the statistics are twice flawed. First, as every economist (should) know, the purpose of life is not about maximizing earnings, but happiness (“utils”), which can come from the things money buys but also what you do, who you work and socialize with, where you live, and so on. Money is very important for poor people, but college graduates in rich countries earn more than non-college graduates and are WAY better off than most people in poorer countries. Second, initial earnings do not always correlate with lifetime earnings. Liberal arts students (I teach at a lib arts college) do quite well in later years, for example.

But administrators are not that imaginative, and they — like most bureaucrats — can over-react in counterproductive (high-modernist) ways, as James C. Scott pointed out — so they started to favor STEM majors over other majors — and especially the “poor” humanities. Professors in the humanities decided that their best option was not to double down on what they were good at (building great intellects) but to engage in campus politics, i.e., to claim that they represented underprivileged groups, that they would make amends for colonialism, that they could fix racism, that they — and only they — could make the administrators look good to a public that worried about inequality, injustice, and… a host of other social ills — a series of steps described in that insightful read mentioned above.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a fan of racism, inequality, and all that, but it’s not like these problems are easy to fix or new (“the poor you will always have among you“). I’ve traveled in 100+ countries, and even quick solutions take more than a century to work.

So now we have administrators backing false prophets (not all professors of humanities, but enough of them) presenting over-simplified theories that cannot survive contact with reality (go Marx!) to idealistic students who live in post-modern bubbles where parents/loans pay the rent. I really love my students, and the passion they bring to many topics, but I also remind them (time and again) that I, as a professor, am not qualified to tell them about the real world that they will enter into, after 16+ years of schooling — a real world where nobody cares about your positionality, where nobody cares about your grades, a world where “diversity” means the working poor, the migrants, the less-educated — and especially the people whose politics they don’t just detest, but don’t understand. In that real world, “transdisciplinarity” means you get safe, tasty food made from ingredients coming from multiple producers; it means that your house doesn’t fall down; it means that there is a medical system that keeps you alive for twice as long as your (great-) grandparents. In the real world, nobody gives a shit about your major. In the real world you are a person, not a major, and what matters is how well you work with others.

So don’t pretend that your speech is more important than theirs.

The bottom line is that the failure to support real freedom of speech on campus — and real discussions about real human issues — boils down to another version of academics putting their theories ahead of reality, which will ruin us all.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to a mathematician who grew up in the USSR before migrating to teach in the US:

“I grew up in the Soviet Union, where people had to affirm their fealty to ideals, and the leaders embodying those ideals, on a daily basis,” he told me. “As years went by, I observed the remarkable ease with which passionate communists turned first into passionate pro-Western liberals and then into passionate nationalists. This lived experience and also common sense convince me that only true conformists excel in this game.

[snip]

“The main responsibility of every Soviet citizen was to facilitate the arrival of communism, where people would contribute to the society according to their abilities and receive from the society according to their needs—has there ever been a nobler-sounding goal? And yet historians cannot agree on an estimate of how many millions of people were starved to death, tortured to death, or worked to death, all in the name of that goal.”

Speak freely, everyone on everything, if you want to live together and overcome the dangers that threaten all of us.


*I am not quoting Franklin’s 1755 statement (“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”), which was about paying taxes to fund defense (!) but this statement from 33 years earlier:

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech … Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man …

Addenda (14 Jan): Substack could not decide between free speech and “community,” so now  people are unhappy.  Read this brutal takedown of dishonest universities.

Addendum (25 Jan): Good discussion on “the freedom to speak your mind” with the president of Wesleyan.

 

Interesting stuff

  1. Read: Dutch temperature anomalies, visualised.
  2. Read: It Sure Looks Like Phones Are Making Students Dumber [data!]
  3. Read: People think they are poorer because they are paying more attention to grocery prices than their income. Related: College (if you finish) is still a good economic decision. Also related: Americans think they are poor when gasoline is expensive, even if gasoline is a tiny share of their spending. And another discussion on the topic!
  4. Read: Want to save the world? Don’t replace that stone wall with concrete. Rebuild it.
  5. Read: The Economist catches up with my 2020 observation that Bitcoin is a new species — and thus beyond human control.
  6. Read: The US government should apply the lessons from Operation Warp Speed to other projects (=set a target, then meet it).
  7. Listen: Naomi Klein has some good ideas on how to defeat right-wing populists. (Hint: Work more with blue collar workers and less with lifestyle activists.) Related: Paganism “(the worship of natural forces) generally takes two forms: the deification of nature, and the deification of force… On the left, there are the world-worshippers, who elevate nature to the summit of sanctity. On the right, you see the worship of force in the forms of wealth, political power, and tribal solidarity. In other words, the paganism of the left is a kind of pantheism, and the paganism of the right is a kind of idolatry.”
  8. Read this excellent summary of ecosystem services, which uses the “value of a whale” to make its points. (The article reminded me of the Soviet’s disastrous policy of killing whales to meet planning targets rather than to harvest anything of value.)
  9. Read this fascinating investigation of Ukraine’s (likely) sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline.
  10. Read (and worry): Dictator Xi’s quest for ideological purity and party power (see pagan, above) is moving China closer to a new cultural revolution… and the victims, this time, will not just be Chinese.

Interesting stuff

  1. Read: Persistent employment misery (for American workers) is a myth.
  2. Read: How to stop over-medicalising mental health
  3. Read: How American teens in the 50s-70s used to hang out
  4. Read: Higher Interest Rates Are Good, Actually
  5. Read: (US) Universities Don’t Understand Academic Freedom Related listen: Niall Ferguson on Free Speech
  6. Listen: The founder of DryBar on growth, teamwork, etc.

Review: Humble Pi

I got this book after hearing the author (Matt Parker) a few times on various podcasts. Its perspective is captured in the subtitle: “when math goes wrong in the real world.”

The book is a page turner, moving crisply (and humorously*) from one disaster to another.

In most cases, problems arise from conversion errors (metric to imperial), mistakes in formulas (dividing by zero), disagreements on starting points (you’re “zero years old” until you’ve been alive 365 days?), misusing software (Excel is nota. database!), or things going on for longer than expected (the clock runs off a cliff). The resulting problems are sometimes funny but sometimes deadly.

Why?

This is a common theme in human progress. We make things beyond what we understand, as we always have done. Steam engines worked before we had a theory of thermodynamics; vaccines were developed before we knew how the immune system works; aircraft continue to fly to this day, despite the many gaps in our understanding of aerodynamics. When theory lags behind application, there will always be mathematical surprises lying in wait. The important thing is that we learn from these inevitable mistakes and don’t repeat them.

And then we can turn from making mistakes and learning from them to the situations where marketers are deceptive (“McDonalds: We have 6,000 meal combos!), where the “average person” doesn’t actually exist (just like the average height of a point between Mt Everest and sealevel is not 4424m high), where what we see now is not what was once there (survivor bias), or where scammers or attention seekers claim big significance in spurious correlations. For example:

If you love numbers and hate the people that abuse them, then read this book. FIVE STARS.


*This was in the end notes: “Charlie Turner fact-checked the crap out of the book and all remaining errors are hilarious jokes I’ve demanded be left in”


Here are all my reviews.

How Annecy’s Lake got so pure

Leo writes*

Annecy is a city in eastern France whose lake and vibrant colours attract tourists from all around the country. Boasting a modest population of around 120 000 people, Annecy is a small city with seemingly not many problems in regard to water (Wikipedia). The main attraction is its lake “Lac d’ Annecy.” Often called the blue lung of the region, Lac d’ Annecy helps with droughts and other water issues (Annecy Lake saves local ski station from drought).

This has not always been the case, as the lake’s water was not always so clean. In the last century, the lake was overwhelmed with water demand from growth in development and population (Barraqué, 1986).

When the lake’s water was initially used in 1908, water quality was good enough to forego treatment (Barraqué, 1986). But quality started to deteriorate in the “entre-deux-guerres” (interbellum) period (Barraqué, 1986), as waste waters were discharged into the lake (Le Dauphine). Numerous carnivorous fish species started to disappear — notably the famous Omble chevalier.

After the liberation of France in 1945, growing industry and tourism increased water demand as well as pollution (Barraqué, 1986).

It was only ten years later that the alarm was rung in face of the dire situation. Charles Bosson the maire of Annecy at the time, expedited the complete renovations of sewer systems and water treatment for all municipalities around the lake (Barraqué, 1986). A new syndicate was created in order to address water quality, the SILA (Intercommunal Syndicate of Annecy Lake) which still exists to this day (Le Dauphine).

A completely new system was designed: a collection belt around the lake brought waste water to Annecy for treatment. This solution, although more costly for Annecy spread the costs and benefits of the new system between the communes of the lake. For the scale of the town at the time, this construction was massive: 47km of collection pipes, 190 km of new sewer pipes and a new purification facility (Barraqué, 1986). All for 2,275 billion French francs or the equivalent of 350 million euros today (Le Dauphine). With the system’s completion in 1976, water quality improved (Le Dauphine). Today, Lake Annecy has a reputation as the purest and cleanest lake in Europe.

Bottom Line: The modernisation of Annecy’s water management systems permitted its transition from a polluted body of water to one of Europe’s purest lakes.


* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂

Valencia’s flood escape?

Bodil writes*

Valencia is known for its recurrent floods, with the first documented one occurring in October 1321. Since then, the city has experienced nearly 80 devastating floods over the years, caused by excess rainfall overwhelming the soil’s capacity to absorb the water fast enough. The river Turia, which runs through the city, brings death and destruction. The most impactful flood occurred in October 1957, when hundreds of people died, and three quarters of buildings were destroyed by waters rising five meters over their normal level. Something needed to be done to prevent such disasters from happening again (Valencia International).

Spain’s dictator Franco promised funding to reconstruct the city. Plan Sur proposed to divert the river around the city, and 16 years after the disaster, the Turia River was running 3 km south of Valencia for 12 km over a 175m-wide river bed (Caroline Angus).  The old river bed, now one of the biggest city parks in Europe (the Turia Gardens), is full of life and activities.

Map of the re-routing of the Turia

To regulate their waters, Valencia created reservoirs in case of drought and water escape routes in case of floods. Although the project might seem extreme and expensive, it is a necessary precaution to save lives and prevent the need for constant rebuilding. However, there are still very big quantities of water falling into this region, leading to a high risk of flooding. The 2022 record saw 260 mm of rain falling in 24 hours, with 2023’s record being about 150 mm in 24 hours. Considering that it rains on average 45 days a year and the annual rainfall is a bit less than 500 mm, this is a huge amount of water in just a few days.

In comparison, London receives approximately 600 mm of rainfall annually, yet it is known for experiencing a lot of rain as it rains approximately 112 days a year.  We would expect a bigger difference in mm, this shows just how immense the quantity of water that falls on the Valencia region in a day is. Even though the infrastructure has improved with the creation of immense storm drains, there are still many incidents of people getting trapped in their vehicles and houses getting flooded every year. In September 2023, there were already 30 severe incidents of flooding reported. Valencia’s greatest challenge is fighting drought for most of the year and then dealing with immense bodies of water that fall all at once.

Bottom Line: Valencia, a city going to extreme measures to keep the rare and great quantities of water out of the city.


* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂

Crisis in the Caribbean

Melle writes*

St. Maarten is a beautiful holiday destination for many. With its alluring beaches, fantastic nightlife, many attractions and of course the crystal-clear ocean surrounding the island, it seems like a surreal place to a lot of visitors.  Unfortunately, its true nature does not match its promise of paradise. It faces many challenges, such as hurricanes, political instability, economic hardships, and infrastructural failures. And at the moment, it also faces an unforeseen challenge, namely a billing error within the one and only drinking water company.

GEBE is the sole supplier of drinking water on St. Maarten. They buy water from the three desalination plants (owned by Seven Seas Water) and transport it to their storage tanks.  From there, the water is brought to households through pipes that criss-cross the island.

GEBE’s pricing is progressive, meaning the more you use the more you pay: “If a household uses 3 cubic meters of water, they are charged NAF 2.50 per cubic meter, an additional 7 cubic meters will then cost them NAF 5.50 per cubic meter while anything over that amount will cost the customer NAF 6.00 per cubic meter.”  To put this into perspective, NAF 6.00 is equal to approximately 3 euros. This might not seem a lot, but 3 euros is a lot for most of the population, and it is in general a lot for a cubic meter of water.

Besides this “choice” from the drinking water monopolist GEBE, customers can get water from rain (not readily available), discharges (not drinkable), or bottled water (crazy expensive).

Since March 2022, GEBE has been issuing correct bills to only 50% of its customers due to a “cyber event that disrupted its computer systems”. To the other 50%, they have sent nothing or incorrect bills. GEBE has given limited explanations and has decided to “solve” the problem by sending all bills since March 2022 at once. Customers who have not paid anything for 18 months now face massive charges.

To make matters worse, the different water pricing mechanisms are not taken into account when merging the bills. Normally, if customers use 3 cubic meters of water, they will pay less per cubic meter than if they used 10. But this concept is completely ignored with merging.  Instead, GEBE’s customers pay the top price for every cubic meter of water they used over the past 20 months. For the 19% of locals living below the poverty line, this is simply not possible.

Bottom Line: Many of St. Maarten’s residents face a billing (or payment) crisis due to GEBE’s mistake and a “solution” that is causing financial pain for everyone, but especially the poorest.


* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂

Toulon’s flood alert: erosion risk

Ness writes*

Le Gapeau is both the name of a river and a watershed in the south of France, Toulon, dominated by forests around its slopes, and urbanization and agriculture at the bottom of the watershed towards Hyeres (Rollet et al, 2022).

There is currently a sedimentary deficit in le Gapeau mainly due to extractions of granulates and sand that has been taking place since the 19th century. These “massive extractions” do not consider the dynamic nature of the rivers (SAGE, 2022). Between 1859 and 1986, measures were taken to reduce extractions, but illegal and “authorized” extractions continued. In 1966, the construction of the Hyeres airport used so much sediments that the river’s banks destabilized, reducing water quality and water retention. The government did not acknowledge those impacts, and information on them can only be found by talking with those who live by the river (riverains); there is no information on the internet (Capanni, 2022).

Nowadays, in the Golfe de Giens, a strong deficit in sediment is observed now of around 1 to 3 meters in 73 years, and in the rade d’Hyàeres, a natural zone classifies as a “Special zone of conservation,” erosion is important especially in the seasonal periods due to tourism (SAGE, 2022). Despite all of the above, it must be noted however that climate change exacerbated these issues regardless of human management, since increases in temperature increase the likelihood of storms, leading to even more erosion (Capanni, 2022). This affects the capacity of the water body to store water, leading to potentially water scarcity issues.

Extractions are not the only reason for sedimentary deficits. The presence of dams and weirs is argued to influence fluvial morphology. For instance, a definite issue causing presence was an anti-salt dam constructed in the 1970’s. This dam caused contamination of groundwater as well as siltation, which is the deposition of fine sediments, which now and in the future decreases the storage capacity of the river (Capanni, 2022).

Erosion has a direct impact on an already existing issue; the value of riparian areas. They are essential for the correct workings of the watercourse, they filter pollution, and habitat many species (SAGE, 2022). Farmers and riverains rely on these forests yet they do not care enough for them, which exacerbates issues of sedimentary changes as erosion degrades the health of these areas.

Flooding is especially exacerbated by this issue of deficits in sediment. The flood plain of Cuers drains le Gapeau and le Réal Martin, which are both main rivers of Le Gapeau watershed. There are sedimentary repositories in these plains, and during rain periods, flood plains are more likely to overflow (see image below) since they have a lower water holding capacity due to less sediment, which can also lead to erosion.

The floodplain of Cuers at the intersection between le Gapeau and Réal Martin. Source: Capanni (2022)

Bottom Line: Humans have taken too much sediment and erected too many barriers on Le Gapeau, thereby increasing flooding, lowering water quality, and harming ecosystems. Climate change will only worsen these impacts.


* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂

Interesting stuff

  1. Watch how amazing octopuses are!
  2. Watch “South Park The Streaming Wars” for an excellent farce on water rights (and mismanagement) in Colorado.
  3. Analyze the changing energy sources of our electricity. (The Dutch are probably the worst in Europe, and NL is certainly worse than the US!)
  4. Read: Gonzo right-wingers may destroy the US government’s administrative capacity (if the Supreme Court agrees). Wow.
  5. Read How the Feds bounced Binance
  6. Read “What happened after my wife and I removed Wi-Fi from our home” (their lives got better — and a marriage was saved!)
  7. Read how the natural gas industry keeps expanding its market share (and thus GHG emissions) with “bridge to sustainability” promises lies.
  8. Rhinos for sale? Good. Profit incentives can beat poachers.
  9. Holy fuck. The World Coal Association has rebranded itself as “FutureCoal: The Global Alliance for Sustainable Coal.” Matt Levine is hilarious on this (while also highlighting ongoing ESG fraud laziness):
    We talked a few months ago about a company called GreenSaif Pipelines Bidco, which is Saudi Aramco. I mean, it isn’t really; it’s a special purpose vehicle that owns some Saudi Aramco pipeline joint ventures and that sold some bonds to finance them. The bonds found their way into an index of environmental, social and governance investments, because technically they were not bonds issued by an oil or pipeline company (bad ESG) but by an investment company (good ESG, or at least neutral). Even though “Pipelines” is right in the name. But “Green” is in the name first. If you were an extremely careless ESG investor — and it is arguably rational to be an extremely careless ESG investor? — you might look at that name, see the word “Green,” stop reading before you got to “Pipelines,” and buy the bonds. I guess.
    Anyway here’s coal:

    The World Coal Association has rebranded itself as “FutureCoal: The Global Alliance for Sustainable Coal,” Chief Executive Officer Michelle Manook said at a press conference in Delhi.

    “For too long our global coal value chain has allowed anti-coal sentiment to dominate and fragment us,” Manook said in a statement. That’s “resulted in a lowering of the global coal IQ,” which the group defines as an understanding of coal’s contribution to society.

    “Lowering of the global coal IQ” is a magnificent bit of marketing and I lost several points of (regular) IQ just by reading it. But presumably the point here is that some investors, activists, governments, etc., are going to see that name and read “The Global Alliance for Sustainable” and figure “ah well that’s good then” without getting to the word “Coal.” I suppose starting with “FutureCoal:” is a mistake? Really they should put that off as long as possible. Call it “FutureGreen: The Global Alliance for Responsible, Sustainable and Clean Energy Derived From Natural Resources Such As Our Favorite Resource, One You Might Have Heard of, It’s a Really Good One, You’re Not Going to Believe This, Get Ready, It’s Coal.” No one’s gonna read that far.

H/Ts to MM and TB