evolution

Hot.

I posted the following to an actuarial students’ forum.

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Ideal job. Near home. Work on mutual funds/product design. In other words, where do I sign?

Then… comes the INTERVIEW. (terrified scream in background).

1. Typo on resume. Wrote 2004-05 for my stint in a mathematics Ph.D. program rather than 2003-04 (when it actually happened). This did not concern me too much, I calculated, because they had to have seen it, figured out what I meant to say, and called me in for an interview anyway. I sent my app on Monday, they called Tuesday, and I went in today. They pointed it out, I apologized and affirmed that their internal error-correcting code was indeed correct, and let it go.

Content portion of interview went okay, until last two minutes. When it all went wrong. (terrified scream)

2. The dreaded cell phone ring. I brought it in case my car crapped out (more on that later), realized halfway through the three hour session that I hadn’t turned it off before I came in the building. Sure enough, two minutes before we were concluding, the damned thing rang. On the exterior, I coolly silenced it after the first ring and said “I’m terribly sorry”. Internally, I figured I was sunk.

3. On the way home, my car snapped a tie-rod going over a set of train tracks. I’d been having problems with it, but I wasn’t doing anything at an unreasonable speed. The next thing I knew, one tire was pointing one way, and the second tire was pointing another way, and I was sitting in a corn field twenty feet from the road. (Thankfully, I wasn’t going very fast.)

Nothing injured but my pride. I figure I’m down one good job and one good car today.

I figured you all could use a laugh. I know I could. I could also use a (read: several) strong drink (read: drinks).

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Catch you tomorrow.

Brain fried from studying. More tomorrow.

The third installation of the Citizens Journalism Academy, a joint venture of the KU School of Journalism and the World Company (which owns among other things the Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence.com, and Sunflower Broadband), is now taking applications for its meetings in October. Its intent is to expose average citizens to the many ways in which news is selected and reported.

I was a part of the first installment (although due to time constraints and other things I haven’t had a lot to do with it since), and Paul was part of the second — let me tell you that if you live in the Lawrence area, it is worth your time. I remain deeply cynical about the media industries, but it showed me that there is good to be had out there if you want it. I hope bloggers will be represented in the third edition.

There’s nothing quite like the joy of having to wallpaper the fricking Midwest with one’s résumé.

Found at ZipSkinny. See your neighborhood’s demographic data. Here’s the set for my neighborhood.

Antigua is a tiny island in the Caribbean with a population about half that of Topeka, but what it has done before the World Trade Organization over the last few years may have a profound effect on the U.S. and the international law apparatus.

Antigua argued before the WTO in 2004 that the U.S. did not have the right to impinge upon Antigua’s right to free trade caused by the U.S. government’s banning of its own citizens from placing bets online. Online casinos, it turns out, are the island’s second-largest industry after tourism. The ruling against the U.S. was upheld twice on appeal.

There are several important issues raised by this Times story on the topic. Read it all, and then bear with me as I jump around through it to raise those issues here.

More than a few people in Washington initially dismissed as absurd the idea that the trade organization could claim jurisdiction over something as basic as a country’s own policies toward gambling. Various states and the federal government, after all, have been deeply engaged for decades in where and when to allow the operation of casinos, Indian gambling halls, racetracks, lotteries and the like.

On its face it should be absurd that a free nation such as the United States should find itself subordinate to any worldwide “governing” body*, but remember that the United States essentially created the WTO as a vehicle for liberalizing trade around the world, and provides most of the body’s motive force. The Times’s headline reads “Gambling Dispute With a Tiny Country Puts U.S. in a Bind”, and a bind is indeed what we are in.**

The way I see it, we have the following possible outcomes:

1. The Bush administration and Congress complies with the ruling by repealing the ban on placing bets with offshore casinos. Congress won’t do anything for which polling data and TV cameras aren’t available, and reversing course is something the Bush administration doesn’t do. This is the least likely scenario.
2. The Bush administration and Congress could comply with the ruling by banning all Internet-based gambling in the U.S., period. This would probably result in several expensive and time-consuming lawsuits from the several states, many of which would like to move their state lotteries online and have regulated casinos, dog tracks, horse tracks, and the like. These suits could put Uncle Sam between a rock and a hard place: Suppose the Supreme Court rules that such a ban is un-Constitutional.
3. The Bush administration and Congress could ignore the ruling.

The last of these presents several problems.

First, having the United States ignore the WTO’s order would undermine the WTO and might undermine the one thing for which most Americans have reliably stood — free trade.

Another is the unique compensation for which the Antiguans have asked — the right to violate U.S. copyright and intellectual-property law by freely distributing such things American music, movies, and software. That would set such a bad precedent for other large countries with emerging technological capabilities (say, India and China) that I doubt that the WTO will grant it. What will probably happen is that the U.S. ignores the ruling and pays some other penalty handed out by the WTO, The lawyers are presently arguing over just what “damage” has been done.

The arguments the Bush administration has offered to counter the WTO’s decision make me nauseous. Argument #1:

Washington responded to Antigua’s complaint by claiming it was within its rights to seek to block online gambling on moral grounds, just as any Muslim country would be within its rights under international trade agreements to ban the import of alcoholic beverages. The W.T.O. rejected this argument as inconsistent with American policy.

So does that mean that the FBI can chop off your hand if you bet overseas online? If it’s good enough for 11th-century theocracies, it’s good enough for us? The Bush administration official who made this argument should be slapped about the face and head repeatedly.

Argument #2:

If anything, the Bush administration raised those stakes in May when it announced it was removing gambling services from existing trade agreements. John K. Veroneau, a deputy trade representative, said that the federal government was only “clarifying our view” that it had never meant to include online gambling in any free trade agreements.

“It is truly untenable to think that we would knowingly bargain away something that has been illegal for decade upon decade in this country,” Mr. Veroneau said, adding that Washington is not defying the W.T.O. but simply pursuing its case through all legal channels.

I think he should read my footnote marked “**” again. Either way, it reveals a mistake on the part of the United States. Either the U.S. agreed to something the consequences of which were not fully understood (most likely) or did a poor job of negotiating the agreement.

None of this, though, goes to my larger point, which is that global governance — the WTO, the UN, the International Criminal Court — is neither possible nor desirable. To describe the ultimate futility of globalized governing bodies in a heterogeneous world, here’s Wretchard at The Belmont Club:

The Antigua story underscores how asymmetries operate in international trade and political relations. A regulatory regime is created, but that fact does not guarantee “fairness”. The huge disparity in the size between Antigua and the United States makes the island’s trade retaliatory power weak. And in a straight trade dispute the odds would weigh overwhelmingly in favor of the US. But lawyers are clever and the loophole cited by the New York Times makes it possible for Antigua to demand the right to pirate US intellectually property — under the rules — and “morally” too because a mechanism which allowed the US to use is preponderant economic power would be “unfair”. Where have we seen this before? Pretty much everywhere. While not exactly the same, the Antigua decision has structural similarities to the way some international lawyers think about the Geneva Convention and human rights legislation. The US is “bound” by the letter of the law, and if a terrorist mass murderer can find a legal loophole to escape then he is “entitled” to use it. But the Convention is not obeyed by weaker parties because it is impractical to enforce it. Just as pirated DVDs can be found being openly sold in many street corners in Asia without being similarly available in places like Australia, countries with well-functioning legal systems find themselves at a disadvantage compared to countries with no enforcement. In the area of human rights, for example, America has courts before which lawyers can appear. Al-Qaeda has a cave in Pakistan where accommodations are notoriously poor. The US will obey a legal judgment. Legal judgments against al-Qaeda are an exercise in futility. Who will lawyers sue? Under these conditions the full weight of international law will always come down hardest on the most law-abiding. It’s ironic that WTO may be reluctant to enforce its own judgment because it has such an appearance of unfairness that it may create a backlash against itself. But give them time and they will become as stone faced as the human-rights advocates.

The condition is so pervasive it almost seems natural. For example, illegal immigrants are allowed to use every US statute on the books to plead their case, as they should be. But others parties technically bound by the same obligation are under no de facto compulsion to behave similarly. “A Mexican Senate committee passed a measure Wednesday urging President Felipe Calderon to send a diplomatic note to the United States protesting the deportation of an illegal migrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year,” even though Mexico itself summarily deports thousands of Central Americans who cross into it. The power disparity between countries like the United States and other countries is offset by the disparity in expectations of compliance. It would be considered natural for Khalid Sheik Mohammed to ask for his “rights” under international law, but an American soldier captured by al-Qaeda can hardly make the same request — unless he wants to kill his captors with laughter — which might be a violation of the Geneva Conventions itself. The application of “international law” to heterogeneous world often results in a split-level regulatory environment in practice. And that, sad to say, is probably how it is intended.

Indeed.

Who would have thought that an online casino in Antigua could potentially cause legal upheaval in American law, society, and trade agreements? Maybe considering that question will cause us to more carefully consider the international arrangements and situations we involve ourselves in in the future.

But I doubt it.

Passenger on Denver-to-New York red eye throws a nutty; passengers and flight crew duct tape him to his seat:

August 26, 2007 — A deranged airline passenger gave his fellow travelers a mid-air fright yesterday when he ran to the back of a New York-bound jet and tried to rip open the exit door.

Passengers and crew members on the red-eye Frontier Airlines flight from Denver were able to stop the man, whom a source described as mentally ill.

The 35-year-old man, whose name was not released, was taken to Elmhurst General Hospital in Queens for evaluation after Flight 514 touched down at La Guardia Airport at 6:30 a.m.

He was not charged.

Passenger Bobby Vigil told KUSA-TV in Denver that he was sitting next to the crazed man.

It took several flight attendants and passengers to subdue him and tie him down with duct tape.

“The whole rest of the flight, all the way in, he was yelling and trying to bite the tape,” Vigil said.

Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas said the passenger never came close to opening the door.

It’s a good sign that there are people still willing to take matters into their own hands when it’s necessary and appropriate.

But did that guy sit next to him the whole flight? You know, after he got taped down?

An entire bottle of Cab and three beers later I can still type. Who knew?

Well, I still “suffer” from a heavy case of the blahs brought on by what’s going on in the world out there — and it hasn’t helped at all that I’ve had a cold for nearly a week, and that my brain is fried from studying the mathematics of loan amortization and bond valuation. The latter, of course, is what I’ve been focused on — it just makes all that other crap a little tougher to swallow.

I still want to blog; I suppose I’m just waiting to catch fire again. I guess this is called “trying to write my way out of it”.

We’re having a birthday party for my nephew (and his dad) tomorrow, so that whole fire thing might wait another day.