It's just money... really.

A Dallas-based pizza chain called "Pizza Patron" decided, on a promotional basis so far, to accept Mexican pesos in their stores, which are scattered throughout the southwest, as far north as Denver.

The result (predictable but sad): People with nothing better to do are sending threatening emails.

I used to work for a large Seattle-based coffee chain, at a store in the Seattle area, and we accepted Canadian currency. Now, I probably only saw it 2-3 times in the three years I worked there. I also got zero calls saying that I was on the side of the Canucks and this is not the "United States of Canada." (As much as I may sometimes wish it were).

Dude, it's money. And it's good business. If it isn't, they'll stop doing it. (Conservatives, isn't "good business" supposed to be a good thing? I guess only when conducted in English).

Back to the drawing board for Israeli Labor, again

Labor's leadership election looms in May and current leader Amir Peretz looks extremely vulnerable. When the Kadima-Labor coalition took power, some felt it was a good move on Peretz's part to take the Defense portfolio, since he couldn't get Finance. He can establish himself as a competent minister and not take the heat for tough budget and taxing decisions, it was said. Well, Olmert and the IDF screwed that up for him, looks like...

Now Peretz faces opposition from several fronts--it's only early January, but Peretz has been in trouble since Lebanon. Former Labor leader Ehud Barak is jumping back in as a Labor establishment candidate and is supported by such long-term Labor figures as Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shin Bet, is a candidate, backed by Avishay Braverman. Both are relatively new to electoral politics but have been prominent figures for a longer time. They appear to be pragmatists without the baggage of Barak. Finally, there is Ophir Pines-Paz, the principled ex-cabinet member who left government over the appointment of Yisrael Beitenu's Avigdor Lieberman to a ministry.

At this point, Ayalon and Barak appear the front-runners. Of all of them, Ayalon seems to most represent the perspective of a social-liberal party, which Labor now is; Pines-Paz is too left, and not really a major figure, while Barak seems more to the right, and still very vulnerable to criticism, though not immune to bouncing back, due to the general low standing that all public figures today enjoy. Personally, I saw Ayalon speak while in college, as he was doing a tour on his citizens' initiative with Sari Nusseibeh, and while he certainly held back for what I believe to be public-image concerns as well as very real personal beliefs, I believe he is sincere (not to be making any comparisons with Ehud Barak...).

What does this mean for the peace process? Ehh... essentially nothing. Unlike past times when it's been asserted that "there is no Palestinian partner" except that there really was, Israel now through its destructive policies has managed to self-fulfill this prophecy. Now there really is no partner, at least for now--not because nobody will negotiate, but because the legitimacy of whoever does it will be questioned by a majority. (Given that Israel controls the process overall, this is not an insurmountable obstacle if they really wish to take action; but the problem is that the Palestinians must present a united front to challenge them at the table, or the Israelis simply will not move due to domestic political concerns).

As for Ehud Olmert... check out this great post for how he's doing.

SWEET! THE PROBLEMS IN IRAQ ARE SOLVED!

As much as I try to stay away from Iraq, now I am optimistic. At first, I thought the fact that Bush was going in his own direction might possibly be like before, when he ignored everybody else to pursue an entirely inane strategy. But, according to The New York Times, there is a new foolproof plan as part of the Bush team's new proposal:

Plan Sets Series of Goals for Iraq Leaders

Even better,

Without saying what the specific penalties for failing to achieve the goals would be, American officials insisted that they intended to hold the Iraqis to a realistic timetable for action, but the Americans and Iraqis have agreed on many of the objectives before, only to fall considerably short.

Yes, but now we have something different, because

Plan Sets Series of Goals for Iraq Leaders

Sounds awesome! I am thinking about what the goals could be right now, perhaps:
(1) When you say you're going to confiscate cell phones, mean it.
(2) Establish a committee to talk about establishing cooperation between ethnic groups, and not have any parties walk out of the meetings, or any member of the committee disappear.
(3) Establish militia quotas so that only 90% of the personnel in any given government ministry can be members of the minister's party's militia. (They can still have 100% of the guns, though).

Before I am berated for sarcasm, has the Iraqi government actually done any of the above? (Maybe #3 in a few instances). Seriously, a government that cannot even carry out an internationally-watched execution with dignity, nor control its own supposedly loyal personnel to the point that they violate the ground rules for the procedure, cannot be trusted to carry out anything.

And perhaps I am a little pessimistic and cynical, but when the president rejects the proposals of a bipartisan study group and the feelings of the voters who demolished his party in the election due to this very issue, I expect better than a "series of benchmarks" and keeping already-tired troops in the country another few months.

Serbian elections upcoming

Serbia will hold its first elections since separating from Montenegro in two weeks, on 21 January. The general backstory to these elections: the country recently approved a new constitution, which made some minor changes and reinforced that Kosovo is a part of Serbia (which will, of course, be detached following the elections). The feeling was that the Government wanted to hold these elections before any decision on Kosovo to prevent the right-wing Radicals, of Hague defendant Vojislav Seselj, from winning an overall majority.

The Serbian parliament is elected by proportional representation. One of the recent rules changes allows minority parties to win representation with 0.4 percent of the vote; other parties or coalitions require 5 percent.

The party lineup is as follows:

• Radical Party of Serbia (SRS), Seselj's party, which essentially took over representing the far right after Milosevic's downfall.
  
• Democratic Party (DS), the party of the assassinated PM Zoran Djindjic, and of current president Boris Tadic. Generally pro-European and left-leaning; currently in opposition; has suffered some splintering in recent years.
• Democratic Party of Serbia--New Serbia (DSS-NS). Originally a breakoff from DS more than a decade ago and more conservative, DSS is the party of current PM Vojislav Kostunica. This time around it is running in coalition with New Serbia, a smaller party that ran with SPO last time.
  
• G17 Plus (G17+). G17 was formed as a group of 17 intellectuals to push for reforms and eventually became a right-liberal political party, still with a very economic focus. It left the Kostunica government over the failure to apprehend fugitive general Ratko Mladic.
• Liberal Democratic Party--Civic Alliance of Serbia--Social Democratic Union--a couple other parties (LDP--GSS--SDU...). This is a union of smaller social-liberalish parties. LDP is a recent splinter from DS; GSS ran on the G17+ list last time around.
• Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO). Led by Vuk Draskovic, who a long, long time ago was the main Western hope to replace Milosevic (back in the mid-'90s). Draskovic, however, is actually a rather regressive rightish and monarchist character who reportedly doesn't get along too well with anyone else. Currently a part of the coalition government, where Draskovic is foreign minister.
  
• Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), Milosevic's old party, which has lost pretty much all its support by this point.
• Last but not least, a bunch of other parties that won't win seats, and the minorities (including parties representing Presevo Albanians, Sanjak Bosniaks, the Vojvodina Hungarians, and the Roma).

It appears from the polls that have been posted on Wikipedia that SRS is, not surprisingly, still running ahead, but will probably make a similar showing to last time (a little under 30 percent). DS, as the main respectable opposition, has surged ahead to around 25 percent, which would represent a major increase from 2003. DSS-NS is a little under 20 percent (about where DSS alone finished last time), and G17+ a little under 10 percent (down a bit). The big losers are SPS and SPO, which both seem unlikely to win seats; the social-liberal coalition led by LDP is on the edge.

The biggest point is, whoever wins will have to form a broad coalition to again exclude SRS in Serbia's version of the cordon sanitaire. It would appear that even should DS make major gains, Kostunica's DSS will be indispensable to any government--which was a big problem last time, since the two parties get along very badly and are indeed quite different in many policy areas, with DS taking a much more pro-EU and pro-Western approach and DSS much more nationalistic and Euro-skeptical. However, the way things are looking, there probably will not be an alternative.

A question of will

The New York Times a few days ago published an interesting article on the issue of free will--i.e. are humans independent moral actors who are consciously taking actions? This article attracted me in particular because of a friend of mine who consistently debates whether everything in life is predetermined due to 100% consistent action from subatomic particles--a concept which I actually find difficult to refute.

Here's one interesting point:

In the 1970s, Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and told the volunteers to make random motions, like pressing a button or flicking a finger, while he noted the time on a clock.

Dr. Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them.

So, the decision is made and then conveyed to the consciousness. Interesting. According to a certain Dr. Silberstein, indirectly quoted by NYT, "every physical system that has been investigated has turned out to be either deterministic or random." That would put the lie to any sort of predetermined path (since there is an element of random probability), but at the same time, still would preclude any sort of conscious decision-making element.

As far as I can read the text, it seems that one of the major debates is about the idea of increasing complexity. That is, while (theoretically) knowing what is going on at a subatomic level enables you to make predictions, does increasing complexity of institutions create its own set of new rules? As a polisci major I would juxtapose this to the complexity of global institutions vs. local ones. It is relatively easy to predict events in a town of 8 people, but harder in a larger area with more institutions such as the state of Texas, and harder yet with the entire world, which has its own, self-determining institutions such as the UN and sovereign states. I think a comparison to biology would invoke individual cells vs. organs vs. an entire organism. The major point is that the new institutions or larger organisms are self-regulating in a way that fundamentally changes the old rules.

To quote: "In 1930, the Austrian philosopher Kurt Gödel proved that in any formal system of logic, which includes mathematics and a kind of idealized computer called a Turing machine, there are statements that cannot be proven either true or false." So computers cannot tell you how long it will take them to perform an action or the result of a computation, because the process of finding that answer is the same thing as performing the computation. I think that translates well into reality: The only way to know what the result of your action is, is to carry out the action.

So then, my take: I find such philosophical arguments to detract from the question of what we are doing here and now. After all, regardless of whether or not we actually have free will, we're under the illusion, aren't we? We might as well use that illusion, if it is one, to make things better. There's nothing to lose.

Audacious hopes

It is early to be making decisions about a presidential primary. And really, it is too early for anyone to be talking about it, but thanks to the ridiculous American system, we are.

So, who is lined up so far? We have Democrats Edwards, uh... Kucinich... Vilsack... and of course not officially yet, we have Clinton and Obama. And there's the possibilities like Bill Richardson. (And how about Al Gore?)

If I followed American politics with the same persistence as Canadian politics, I would be able to make much more specific comments about each candidate. What I can say is that Hillary Clinton's "slide to the center" doesn't impress me and I'm not greatly comfortable with her as a candidate, both for her shifts on issues and for the fact that there is a fairly large bloc that isn't comfortable either.

I read Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, over the break. It certainly is not your standard political book. Obama has some good ideas, and I recognize a lot of my own sentiments in his statements of tolerance and working together towards a common future. I would have liked to see more from him as regards the environment, but he shows me that he understands both sides of most issues, something that is too rare in the prevailing atmosphere today.

Yes, Obama is inexperienced, and yes, experience is generally a good thing. But there's a lot of experienced people who don't know how to follow the Peter principle, and instead keep rising to incompetence. And he will of course face a rougher ride if/when he officially declares his candidacy. But look: Obama will appeal better than Clinton or any other candidate to that elusive "Middle America" (purple voters, I guess they are called).

If Al Gore joins the race (I would assess this "unlikely" at the moment), it would make the decision harder. But even were he in right now, I would still state that I tentatively support a Barack Obama bid for the nomination. It seems like the best hope for me to not have a vomit reflex whenever I hear about what's going on in Washington.

Starbucks penetration: Part II

More numbers on Starbucks--here, running the numbers on the top 50 largest cities in the U.S., according to the census estimates of 2005. Not surprisingly, the largest cities have more Starbucks per capita than entire states. Again surprisingly, Las Vegas comes through on top, above Seattle, since all the casinos seem to have multiple Starbucks.

New York City actually has the most Starbucks of any city, but the population is so big, it's actually a relatively very small per capita number. Also worth noting that there are many cities near Seattle (my hometown of 50,000, for example) that have as many Starbucks as cities like Oakland or Detroit. A possible area of future analysis is an income breakdown, and possibly an ethnic breakdown.

Here are some partial numbers (these are city limits only, not metro areas, and include only residential, not daytime population):
1. Las Vegas, NV - 1 store per 3,922 residents
2. Seattle, WA - 1 per 4,449
3. Portland, OR - 1 per 6,131
4. Sacramento, CA - 1 per 7,736
5. Denver, CO - 1 per 8,086
6. Washington, DC - 1 per 8,687
7. Atlanta, GA - 1 per 8,716
8. San Francisco, CA - 1 per 9,360
9. Miami, FL - 1 per 10,734 (note that this includes a bunch of airport locations)
10. Honolulu, HI - 1 per 10,782
...
47. New York City, NY - 1 per 48,471
48. Philadelphia, PA - 1 per 58,531
49. Detroit, MI - 1 per 73,889
(I didn't run numbers for New Orleans since its population has diminished significantly and is still uncertain).

Largest numbers of raw Starbucks:
1. New York City, NY - 168
2. Chicago, IL - 151
3. Las Vegas, NV - 139
4. Seattle, WA - 129
5. Houston, TX - 115
6. San Diego, CA - 112
7. Portland, OR - 87
8. Los Angeles, CA - 84
9. San Francisco, CA - 79
10. Dallas, TX - 76

Wal-Mart's caring makes me reflexively suspicious!

"The environment is begging for the Wal-Mart business model."
--H. Lee Scott, Jr., CEO of Wal-Mart

The New York Times reports that Wal-Mart, of all companies, is trying to get people to buy flourescent bulbs instead of incandescent (the typical yellow bulb). The article is very sympathetic to top brass and explains how they bought into how flourescent bulbs can help the environment by greatly reducing carbon emissions. It explains how they valiantly donated their prime shelf space to pushing these bulbs despite their relative unpopularity.

Now, I am excited by this I must say, and I actually plan to go out and get some floruescent bulbs ASAP--I hadn't realized how much energy they save.

But I can't help but be skeptical about the motives of a company that treats employees as Wal-Mart does. Is their plan to overpower the emotions of wannabe environmentalists like myself so that we forget about their labor issues? Hey, they are even offering cheap prescription drugs! ... All this is really cheaper than allowing their workers to unionize and giving them breaks?

Starbucks penetration: Part I

Highest concentration of Starbucks per person by state ("Starbucks" including all locations, company run and business alliances):

1. District of Columbia 1 per 8,217 residents
2. Washington 1 per 10,748
3. Nevada 1 per 11,077
4. Colorado 1 per 13,216
5. Oregon 1 per 13,792
6. California 1 per 16,705
7. Hawaii 1 per 17,960
8. Arizona 1 per 21,756
9. Alaska 1 per 22,122
10. Virginia 1 per 27,720
...
National average 1 per 32,444
14. Texas 1 per 34,170
...
48. Arkansas 1 per 106,891
49. West Virginia 1 per 113,554
50. Mississippi 1 per 139,099
51. Vermont 1 per 155,763

Lobbyists and congressmen have to meet somewhere, I guess. As for Vermont... my theory is a little bit of rusticness, a little bit of ruralness. (Is that a word?)

A fun new transit tool from Google

Google's got another amazing new project... check out Google Transit. You can only use it in a few areas (my hometown of Seattle being one of them), but I would assume they are actively working to expand it, and then perhaps incorporate multi-city capability?

Update: I guess it's been around for a few months, which takes some of the sheen off. That said, I think there's potential... but not everything with potential develops, as Ryan Anderson knows.