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Kameron Hurley: Why your gun-toting chick isn’t feminist, redux

Kameron Hurley does a much better job at explaining the things I felt uncomfortable with in Cabin In The Woods.

Also, this is a test of the link format type for WordPress. Click on the title to take you to Ms. Hurley’s article. Formatting may come out weird in RSS or on LJ.

Edit: re-testing

crossposted from King Rat.

One of the problems with the economy is that we are up against the zero lower bound. For my non-economics inclined friends, one of the ways that the government (specifically the Federal Reserve, our central bank) manages things is by raising or lowering interest rates. If inflation gets too high, they raise interest rates. If unemployment gets too high, they lower them. In other words, to combat high inflation, they put people out of work. To combat high unemployment they allow inflation to rise.

However, unemployment has been high in the U.S. for long enough that the Fed has run out of room to lower interest rates. It’s been at 0.25% since December 2008. They can’t lower it any more, which causes all sorts of issues. Paul Krugman has been blogging about this for 3 or 4 years.

However, it turns out that the zero lower bound is more psychological than real. I missed it at the time, but Sweden instituted a negative interest rate in August 2009. Banks that banked their money with the Swedish central bank actually paid a penalty to do so. I don’t think they went negative on interest rates to loan money, which might be more complicated. The Fed funds rate above is more like the second, but the two interest rates should move in tandem. (Couldn’t find a link to the comparable Fed rate.)

What penalizing banks for saving money does is make it worth their while to loan it out, where they can make money.

And what’s the result been? Sweden’s highest quarterly growth rate ever.

crossposted from King Rat.

Two from Bruce Schneier

Privacy and Control — To the older generation, privacy is about secrecy. And, as the Supreme Court said, once something is no longer secret, it’s no longer private. But that’s not how privacy works, and it’s not how the younger generation thinks about it. Privacy is about control.

New York and the Moscow Subway Bombing — [Movie plot threats] threats are infinite, and the bad guys can easily switch among them. … A far better strategy is to spend our limited counterterrorism resources on investigation and intelligence – and on emergency response. These measures don’t hinge on any specific threat; they don’t require us to guess the tactic or target correctly. They’re effective in a variety of circumstances, even nonterrorist ones.

A few on Virginia’s Confederate History Month declaration

McDonnell’s Confederate History Month proclamation irks civil rights leaders — After getting criticized for a Confederate History Month declaration that didn’t include a mention of slavery, McDonnell says he didn’t include it because there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.

Spelling “Free Black Labor” in Greater Britain and Virginia, 1866 — for reasons of my own, let me take you back to a particular corner of it that I’ve gotten interested in, white reconstruction as a model for the British Empire. Aaron Bady digs up excerpts from books about Reconstruction, published during Reconstruction.

Sons Of Confederate Vets Split On McDonnell Apology — Brandon Dorsey of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (his actual position isn’t stated) calls the apology and addition of slavery to the proclamation regarding Virginia Confederate History Month and insult.

The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not — The interns hired into our department at Expedia actually got to take on significant projects. We didn’t have them do drudgery so that we didn’t have to. Every time I see a place advertise for an unpaid intern that will be given all the crap work in exchange for contacts or the mere ability to list the employer on their resume, I seethe. The Stranger does the a lot.

Federal Air Marshal Service Has Taken Actions to Fulfill Its Core Mission and Address Workforce Issues, but Additional Actions Are Needed to Improve Workforce Survey — G.A.O. report from last year on the Federal Air Marshal program. Mostly boring stuff about employee satisfaction, but one thing that I noticed is that the program measures it’s success essentially by number of flights it sends marshals on. Not on whether or not it’s prevented any problems, not on arrests, not on anything else. Basically, how many flights were covered. Which is kind of like measuring the Seattle Police Department’s success by how many miles their officers cover. It’s bad if they are on no flights, but more flights doesn’t necessarily mean success.

I randomized the law, and the law won — Actual randomized experiments in policing to see what’s most effective. I wish we could do this a lot more, both in criminal justice as well as all sorts of other industries.

Demolition Dude — My time-waster today.

You’re welcome.

From Tech Know: Kinky boot that whips

Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there.