The logic which asserts that terrorist attacks are “unlikely to worsen the medium- to long-term outlook” (Becker & Murphy, 2001) is based upon a comparison to economic recovery to natural disaster, specifically a 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan where 100,000 buildings were destroyed and 6,000 people died (Becker & Murphy, 2001). The damage from that earthquake was valued at about $114 billion, which represented over 2% of Japan’s GDP, “yet it took only a little over a year before GDP in the Kobe region returned to near pre-quake levels” (Becker & Murphy, 2001).
The problem with this theory is that terrorism is unlike natural disasters. Terrorism is man-made to evoke fear in the population of a country. Terrorists select specific targets they believe will best accomplish their ends. The shortcomings of the natural disaster comparison are outlined in a report on the economic cost of terrorism by the US Congress. In that report, short term impacts include “Immediate loss of human and nonhuman capital,” “uncertainty on consumer and investor behavior,” and “retrenchment on specific industries and localities” (U.S. Congress).
An oft-cited example of immediate economic loss of human and nonhuman capital is the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Estimates of the economic impact of the attacks range from “$25 to $60 billion” (Becker & Murphy, 2001) to “$80 to $90 billion” (Rosendorff & Sandler, 2005), with attention paid to the “lost productive capacity” (Becker & Murphy, 2001) of the workers who died in the attacks. This impact is, in a sense, shared by natural disasters, but natural disasters don’t intentionally select financial centers to impact a maximum amount of damage on a country’s economy.
The destruction of capital by terrorist activities can be devastating to a country. Most insurance companies’ policies now exclude coverage from terrorist-related cases (Hall, 1995), so owners of capital destroyed by terrorists are on their own to re-build. This represents another unseen cost of terrorism, the burden of rebuilding falls upon whomever is most affected by the terrorist attack.
Uncertainty in consumer and investor behavior is a critical impact of terrorism to a state’s economy. In the aftermath of a terrorist attack, uncertainty breeds a lack of investor confidence, which leads to market volatility. That same Congressional report states that “an immediate effect… [is] dramatic increase in uncertainty and apprehension which [becomes] evident in financial markets” (US Congress). Domestic investors move out of riskier stock investments and “into safer, more liquid, and shorter-term assets (such as short-term U.S. Treasury securities, gold, or cash)” (US Congress).
The uncertainty created by terrorist attacks reduces incentives for investment from foreign countries on a state attacked by terrorism. Investors are unwilling to put their money into an uncertain environment as “terrorism reduces the expected return on investment,” (Abadie & Gardeazabal, 2007). Estimates place the impact of terrorist risk “with a fall in the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 percent of GDP” (Abadie & Gardeazabal, 2007). Crain & Crain explain this phenomenon in that “risks might come either in the form of direct destruction of capital assets- from say a bomb attack- or indirectly in the form of a reduced product demand. Either way, a reduction in the expected rate of return on capital in a country would cause financial assets to flow to other countries, or into alternatives,” (Crain & Crain, 2006)
In the state of Israel, one estimate holds “had there been no terror in Israel since 1994, the country’s per-capital GDP would have been 8.6% higher” (Persitz, 2005).” Similarly, “if Germany deterred one terrorist incident [per year] GDP gains would be $1.6 billion (in 2003 dollars). In the Philippines, a reduction of [one incident] would increase its GDP by an estimated $122 million” (Crain & Crain, 2006). These short-term impacts cause a great deal of shock to an economy. In addition to the physical destruction they cause, terrorist attacks undoubtedly raise uncertainty in a country, which in turn destabilizes the economy.

The gender inequity equality expressed in this article recalls the same issues expressed in the chapter of that book we have to read for exams but never discuss in class. i thought that chapter of the book pushed the envelope a little bit, especially for a chapter of a book that we will literally never discuss in class. similar to the chapters of the book that we will never discuss in class, these blog responses will never be discussed in class. it's remarkable that a class that prides itself in a sort of enlightened omibus of human thought and experience woud assign so much unapologetic busywork. Dr Richards spends a lot of time in lecture outlining his unabashedly liberal agenda & and his vague opinions of egalitarian education without the abstract social construct of "grades" while still assigning us this same bullshit busywork due weekly, clearly not read by anyone and only counted for number of words.

in previous blog entries, i've spent a great deal of time writing thoughts that i spent a good deal of time thinking about and considering before submitting for a grade. upon review, i saw that my TA spent a couple weeks not counting my words until one day entering grades for several submissions at once, writing that three (3) submissions in a row did not meet the word count limit. i guess it's my fault for mistaking the word count to be 300 words, but only recieving 1/2 credit for an assignment that i spent a considerable duration of time thinking critically and writing considered prose is a little cheap.

an introduction to sociology class, one would imagine, would be rife with "definitions" or "terms" one could apply in a continued education in the study of sociology, rather than an extended exercise in the vanity of the instructor. Soc 001 is a continued editorial, these blog posts are exercises in word vomit. who the fuck cares if i take pride in the concise nature of my prose? i have to write 350 words about whatever the fuck is assigned for the week. theoretically, i could just write three hundred and fifty characters separated by spaces. maybe the word counter who grades these worthless fucking assignments would value that just as much as it does this stupid fucking rant. maybe i can just insert more adjectives before every noun and more adverbs before every verb like i did in 500 word essays in 7th grade.

but i really feel like i'm receiving a world-class education at world-class university every time i sit down to hear about Dr Richards & his wife's sex life. i feel like that's something i can apply to my continued study or sociology, or at least my holistic Liberal Arts education. i'm trying to convey that this is all bullshit in 350 words. i don't have a word counter availble to me right now so i'm stretching it, but i dont think anyone's going to mind,

There are several implicit contradictions embedded throughout this prisoner's letter. Firstly, how does one learn about women in jail? Jail, for the most part, is a place populated by men. There aren't any women in jails. More importantly, the author claims that his initial ideas about women's wants and needs were sexist but he has since changed his mind, that women only want money and sex. Then he goes on to use contrived language to imply that women only want money and sex. If the claim is that he used to think women only want money and sex but has since experienced a revelation (does anyone actually read these comments or do you only look at the word count) that women want a man's touch to take them to another galaxy, where's the growth? Where's the reflection?

The author is writing this not only from a real, physical prison, but also from the prison of his class- women may only concerned with money and sex in a lower income social network, but all the women I know are concerned with chastity and making their own money. Education clearly would have given both this individual, his peers, and the women in his society a different perspective. Their values would have reflected education and character rather than dominance, violence, and physical strength.

His initial sexist and hyper masculine ideal of what it means to be a man is indicative of a hegemony of those ideals within popular culture. Take The Fighter, for instance. This recent film takes place in Lowell, Massachusetts and chronicles the story of a boxer's rise to fame. In this movie, the roles of women are relegated to the hero's whiney, manipulative mother and his mindlessly supportive girlfriend who is valued only for her looks and appreciation of the main character rather than any ideas or dreams of her own. The rest of the film concerns the actions of men, fighting & arguing, acting brutally and going to prison.

Wealth distribution in the United States is clearly unequal. A small, tiny percentage of the population holds a wildly disproportionate quantity of the money in this country. It’s unfortunate, but its the way it is. Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones: capitalism is sort of the same way. It sucks that theres a small group of oligarchs that have a ridiculous quantity of money, but it’s theirs. If we start legislating against them and their sums of money, where does it stop? My parents aren’t the super rich but they’re do alright, would the government start to take their money?
While the wealth distribution in the United States isn’t great, it’s not the worst. There’s a measure called the GINI coefficent which measures wealth inequity in nations, there are color-coded maps on the internet you can google to find. In my Latin American Studies classes, I’ve learned about real problems with wealth inequality. In places like the favellas of Rio in Brazil, there is real poverty on an almost third-world scale. There are tall, tall walls & armed guards with machine guns to keep the poor in their place and the wealthy safe. At least the United States isn’t like that.
If you’re looking for an example of a western nation adopting wealth distrubition, look to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Chavez rose to power by promising to represent the urban poor, who in Venezuela are really, really poor. He rose to power and kept his promise, but screwed the rest of the country. He nationalized several industries and taxed the hell out of the rich, which was good in the short run but led to a brain-drain of the country’s best and brightest leaving the country for greener pastures.
It’s a bummer that the world isn’t perfect and everyone isn’t happy and given free money and food and jobs, but it’s the way it has to be. We have to have this system of incentives to inspire the best and brightest to innovate and keep our county the best in the world.

I think that this article is needlessly alarmist and sensational. It seems to be an over-simplification to suggest religion will become extinct; rather I think the underlying, overblown message is that the scope and nature of religion in modern society is shifting places it has been historically. The story doesn’t specify to much what methodology the researchers utilized to gather their numbers, but the projection that 70% a population will scorn religion in 40 years seems to be needlessly harsh. Perhaps, like many other facets of society and life, religion moves in cycles? Right now people are turning away from organized religion, but how can one predict that this trend will continue at a constant vector?
Personally, I was brought up in the Catholic Church, participating in and completing all sacraments and rituals, and attending church every Sunday. I never really understood why we had to go and hear the same stories over and over, and then, when all of the allegations of sexual misconduct between catholic priests and little boys came out in the Boston area, my family stopped going to church. I didn’t protest this change of events. I understand in principle the value of religion, but personally I think that modern organized religions are overdeveloped. I can see a simpler, humanist ideal taking root in people. The message of “be nice to one another” is much easier to follow than a set of religious tomes.

I grew up in Massachusetts outside of Boston, the liberal bastion of the North. For whatever reason, people in that area of the country have long been progressive; we rooted for the Celtics when they were the first team to play with an all-black starting five (and a Jewish coach). The community that I grew up in was so accepting of gays that it’s strange for me to consider that there are people out there who aren’t. As our nation and our society grows older, former ways of thought are realized to be out-of-date and ignorant- for a while we thought black people were property and women shouldn’t be able to vote. As our society loses its focus on landowning protestant men, the old barriers which used to divide us are questioned.
While I am liberal and socially progressive, I am also a small-government republican. I believe that people should be responsible for themselves and that the government should serve only a couple, very un-intrusive purposes. I believe that I (and every other American) should be free to do whatever they like as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. The republican party generally opposes gay marriage, civil unions, and any other gay rights issue—this doesn’t make sense. If the republican party is that of small government, why do they believe they should be legislating what goes on in the private homes of Americans? No one is negatively impacted by gay marriage.
I think Zach is a great example to disprove notions that two members of the same gender can’t adequately raise a child on their own. I believe in equal rights for all Americans to such a degree that I can’t even begin to comprehend on a cursory level why someone would not support this young man’s position.

The people of Helsinki face an unique problem in that sunlight is so limited at points in their calendar year & the lack of sunlight has a negative effect upon its citizens. I find it ironic (or is it just coincidental) that the name for the "disorder" these people face is called "SAD.". Nothing in this video is surprising to me- I know that my mood is directly correlated to the weather. When its grey and dismal for weeks on end in State College, I'm miserable and moreover miserable to be around. The second Penn State's campus starts to look more green, there's a pep in my step and i've likely changed into shorts.
Seasonal impact on individuals and societies is an important factor to consider. My daily interactions vary greatly depending on the weather- when it's nice, I'm in a good mood and polite and cheery to those around me. This can be applied to whole nations of people. The people of Helsinki need to find a way to perk up, as SAD is a real issue that confronts their society. If I were in charge I'd likely use tax dollars to send Fins to Florida rather than finance an art show about light-- that seems sadistic, to send people trapped on a dark continent to an exhibit that fetishizes a natural resource they lack. Why not just send people to brightly lit rooms?

Marriage is, for the most part, a social construct developed by societies over time. In nature, there are only a select few species that select one mate for life. However, as the product of several thousand years of human civilization, we are accustomed to marriages of one man and one woman. Several seasons of the HBO series Big Love would have me slightly more accustomed to the idea of polygamy with multiple wives. However, sharing one wife between several brothers is inconcievbable to me.
When I was watching this video, I started thinking about how the guy was preparing the potato with his kid on his lap. He was probably just going to boil it and eat it the way it was—their village didn’t look like it had access to sour cream or running water or a Cuisinart, which is culture shock enough the way it is. My ancestors ate potatoes that way in Ireland until they got kicked out and made new lives here in America—I don’t want to go back. The fact that the small issue of potato preparation has me bent out of shape should serve to show how inconceivable I find this notion.
I guess this is a dramatic example of necessity breeding innovation (no pun intended). I don’t get along with my brother; we couldn’t share a memory card for our Playstation without trying to kill one another when I was in 5th grade, I doubt we’d be able to agree upon and share a wife. The caviler manner by which they talk about passing their wife around sexually is also unsettling—in our culture, and I would think most cultures around the world, that type of behavior is avoided or at least looked down upon. The culture of the people in these mountains I guess makes sense for their lot in life, but is quite out of step with the rest of the world

The quotation that struck me most from this article was that "The boy is both initially a suspect… but also a victim," which I think concisely surmises the spirit of this event. Of course the boy shouldn’t be bringing a gun to class, but is it really his fault? Generally, it would be considered “safe” for a boy as young as five to sit in the back seat rather than be exposed to the threat of an airbag in the front—this presupposes, obviously, that there is not a loaded handgun in the backseat. The boy didn’t know any better, but the adult driving the car with a loaded handgun within reach of his stepson clearly should have a more developed sense of right and wrong. I’m not sure of the proper legal terminology, be it neglect or endangerment (or if there’s a term specifically for casually leaving a 5 year-old and a loaded handgun in your backseat while being reckless enough to not notice that the handgun is missing), but whatever the case may be, the child clearly needs to be removed from this dangerous person.
The issue here is that some people are not responsible enough to be left with children. Luckily the firearm was not discharged and there were no injuries, but if there were, who would be held responsible? Would the stepfather be charged with manslaughter? I think that the stepfather in this case should be sent to prison for a few years to think about the possible consequences of leaving firearms and children free to intermingle in the backseat of his car.
This article reminds me of a verse by hip-hop group Atmosphere from the song “Always Coming Back Home to You.” Basically, the lyricist tells about a time he was walking through Mineapolis and he saw a boy walking towards him with a gun. Before he could react, the boy yells that he found the gun in an alleyway and wanted to get it off the street. The lyricist takes the gun, and without knowing what else to do with it, pops it in a mail box, figuring “the post office knows what’s best to do with it.”

I think that when considering the common behavior of a large group of people it’s important to investigate their common origins; in Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers he examines exactly why it is that Asians statistically do well in school, eventually theorizing that it is a result of the common cultural heritage of rice farming. Unlike traditional western farming, rice farming is time-intensive and requires close attention and diligence from the farmer. Everything has to be perfect in a rice paddy otherwise the crop will be ruined and the farmer’s family will die. Gladwell even points to a traditional East Asian expression that goes something like “Any man can be rich provided he rises before the sun 360 days a year,” a testament to the diligent work ethic instilled in a people over thousands of years.

Gladwell goes on from there, but his message is that we today are a product of our heritage and it would be ignorant to disregard such an important factor. Why is the suicide rate for U.S. soldiers climbing? Perhaps it is a direct result of increased mental trauma on the battlefield, but perhaps it is also a reflection of a shift in society rather than just in the military. Both of my grandfathers fought in major overseas wars, one as a fighter pilot in World War II and the other as a tank driver in Korea. On my maternal side, my grandfather earned two purple hearts and a silver star for his service, he lost a bunch of friends and years of his life. Then he went on to climb telephone poles and fix live electrical wires for 40 years.

I know, speaking only for myself, that I would not be able to bounce back and live a normal life after going through something like that, but so many people did through the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. Maybe “the greatest generation” really did have something inherently within them that today we just lack; maybe the world has just changed since then. Maybe the reasons are due to a change in battlefield conditions or additional stress on the American solider, or maybe this statistical rise is a indicative of a broader shift in our culture.

Additionally, I just joined the class Wednesday evening and Friday’s lecture was my first class so if I did this wrong please let me know