Some Musings on Facial Hair

Typically, when I travel, I clip my moustache to a "horseshoe" from it's standard, be-handlebarred state.
Early on in this trip, though, I decided that I would grow out a World Beard and Moustache Championship "natural goatee" on account of the terrible beating my chin was taking, shaving everyday with cold water.  The goatee has come in quite nicely.  I can grow whiskers on my chinny-chin-chin pretty well these days, and only really have trouble growing hair on my cheeks.  Even that comes in with time.

I have attempted to keep it square at the bottom to make it a bit more distinctive than the average goatee, but it occurred to me that, unless he has recently changed his own facial hair, Carl will arrive on Tuesday with approximately the same facial hair as my own.  This is troubling, as I will appear like a shorter, squatter Carl with subtler shirts.

I believe my only hope is to begin training my moustache into a bit of a curl, in what I somewhat inaccurately like to refer to as the "Bolognesi".

Evangelical Churches and Noise (Trivial)

I'm tempted to make fun of Paul Krugman for his blog post complaining about how noisy restaurants are these days:

Noise (Trivial) - NYTimes.com

For the record, though I'm younger than Krugman's 98 years, and was born after the Great War, I also often find restaurants too noisy, particularly the one in my hotel here in Kampala, which, from my hotel room three stories above, always sounds like a nightclub after 8, even though there is no dancing, nobody is ever at the bar, and there are rarely more than two people in the dining room.

My room faces out on to a sort of interior courtyard that carries noise up from below, including the bass from the hotel restaurant sound system, trucks pulling in and out of the loading area down on the ground floor (the first two floors of the building are filled with shop spaces occupied by mattress, used shoe, and suitcase distributors), and the evangelical church services that happen on the third floor just about every night.

Actually, the church services are pretty mediocre, meaning that I can tune them out fairly easily.  Which is a pleasant change from evangelical services in Latin America, particularly in Guatemala, where the music is hilariously bad and very, very loud.  The Guatemalan evangelicals also start going to church at about 6:30 in the morning, and often don't stop until about 1AM.  And of course, the evangelical community is highly decentralized into many small congregations, so you will often be staying near several churches and really have to listen to evangelical services all day long, from early to very, very late.

These days, the Latin American Catholic church isn't much better.  It's not exactly Chant down there.  But at least the Catholics, who have had a couple of hundred years to allow their passion for faith to cool, constrain their church-going to reasonable hours.

In addition to my preference for the African evangelicals, I also get a kick out of the street preachers you see here in the city.  They range from pathetic (a girl in rags, preaching up by the University, who was struggling to read her dirty, dog-eared bible) to the well-rehearsed and very dramatic (two guys carrying on a dialogue on Christ in loud, gravelly preacher voices).  The other day, an angry-sounding preacher gave me a nasty look when I smiled at him.  "Okay!  I repent!  Please don't hit me!"

Although I kind of wish you would see them more in the areas around my hotel, giving sermons against pick-pocketing and thievery.  Or child exploitation, since you see these little kids (as young as two, it seems) begging on their own, and presumably being forced to give the money to some patron.

By no means take this as a diatribe against evangelicals or religion in general.  I view evangelical churches (and others) as important parts of civil society.  Evangelical churches are much more democratic than traditional, "mainstream" Christian religions, and they really do good work out in the countryside.  They call it "missionary work," even though it often doesn't look vey different from the work done by aid groups like Doctors Without Borders or the Red Cross.  And they're not living off the backs of the peasants like the Catholic and Anglican churches (among others) did for a thousand years or so.

Postal Service Adventures

Emily sent me a package which arrived a couple of days ago.  Nobody could figure out who this "Gleen Wright" guy was, though, so the box never got dropped off.  Instead, I had to hike down to the main post office in Kampala to pick it up once the Forestry School security dude finally figured out who the package should have been delivered to.  Actually, the walk wasn't a big deal, since I walk past the main post office just about every day on my way home.  Not a lot of ways for me to get exercise here in Kampala, aside from walking.

However, picking up a package at the post office was, like just about everything else here, so complicated I had a hard time not giggling through the whole intensely bureaucratic affair.  Sequence was as follows:

Walked into the post office.  Patted down with a handheld metal detector.  Bag searched.  

Walked into parcel pick-up office.  Patted down with a handheld metal detector.  Bag searched again.  

Presented package slip to clerk.  Presented a copy of my passport.

Sent upstairs to get a photocopy of my passport.  Bag searched.

Paid USh 200 for a photocopy (about 10 cents).

Brought photocopy back to clerk.

Photocopy stamped and signed by clerk.  

Signed photocopy and my package slip, and wrote my phone number on both.

Package slip stamped and signed.

Paid USh 9900 (about $4) in postage due and "delayed pickup" fees.

Receipt written out, stamped and signed.

Signed receipt and wrote my phone number on receipt per clerk's request.

Signed post office parcel pickup log book, and wrote my phone number, per clerk's request.

Clerk handed me receipt.

Package placed on counter.

Reached for package.  Stopped by clerk.

Package passed ten feet down the counter to "customs" official with package slip.

Package opened and searched.  

Finding no un-Islamic or prohibited items, package re-sealed.

Package slip was again stamped and signed by customs official.

Customs slip signed and stamped by customs official.

Signed customs slip over a carbon of a duplicate slip.

Handed package and slip.

Turned around, handed package and slip to security guard (directly behind me, not ten feet from the "customs" desk, and watching the whole process since I was about the only guy in the parcel office other than about ten employees.

Customs slip filed.  Bag searched.  

One other amusing thing about the parcel office was the poster showing prohibited or regulated items.  Just like in the US (can't ship guns, explosives, radioactive material or toxic chemicals).  Only difference is that you also can't ship items deemed "un-Islamic" by union of African-Islamic Nations or something like that.  The funny part was that the graphic showing an example of an un-Islamic item was a cartoon of a live pig apparently being packed in a cardboard box for shipment to... maybe the decadent United States?  Guess they might also be shipping that pig to Europe, but I suspect that they would be facing a lot of competition from the Spanish.  

Alaska, Medicaid, and human capital

Okay, last healthcare-related post for a while.  Promise.  Cross my heart and wish to eat some more goat curry.

Never mind that I really do wish to eat some more goat curry.  That shit was awesome.

In my previous post, I ranted about the free-rider problem in healthcare and how it isn't right for us to make free-riding illegal without making it possible for the poor to not be free riders.  But, of course, I'm a crass, cynical Political Scientist, and I don't really care about what's "right" and "wrong".  That's why I'm in Uganda, living off the sweat of the peasantry, eating chapatti rolex and drinking coffee and Mountain Dew and rolled up pancakes for breakfast and screaming at the wait staff every time they serve me English tea rather than English coffee.

Actually, mostly I'm the one doing the sweating (although I do sort of chuckle to myself when the Ugandans start bundling up any time the temperature dips below 78).  And I don't do much screaming, though I occasionally do reduce my exorbitant American-style tip when it takes them like an hour and a half to get me two pancakes (Seriously, Uganda, if you don't have any flour in the kitchen, just tell me and I'll order something else. Crikey)

There's basically one reason why I really care about the medicaid thing, and it's this:

Alaska has oil now, but once the oil runs out, our only hope, economically, is to develop some high-value added industries, or attract existing ones to the state.  Generally the way you do that is by having a well-educated, healthy population.  Economists call it developing your "human capital".  We need policies that do that.  And it's hard to imagine that providing health insurance to the poor won't make them healthier.  That will be one step that will put us on the road to surviving the collapse of the Alaskan oil industry.

For the record, other important steps would include doing things that improve our public education system, including greater investments in research and teaching in the UA system, and fixing our primary and secondary education systems.  Although I'll make a lot of people mad when I get into what I think we should do to fix K-12.  So I'll save that for another time.  But here's a hint: think hot dogs with avocado.

What should Alaska do about Medicaid expansion?

As a follow up to my earlier post on medicaid, and a comment on the article on whether Alaska will participate in the expansion of Medicaid, I wanted to post my thoughts on whether we should expand Medicaid in Alaska.  For convenience, the link to the Alaska Dispatch article that got me on a tear is here:

Will Alaska Expand Medicaid? Health Care for Thousands at Stake | Alaska Dispatch

I've talked about this before, but like it or not, the insured, under our current system, pay for the health care of the uninsured. So thinking about this as "Freedom versus Obamacare" is simplistic, and (as I have said before) kind of stupid.  Yes, prior to the Affordable Care Act (and prior to the Supreme Court's decision upholding the individual mandate) we did have the right not to buy health insurance.  Which means that we had the right to not pay for our own health care when we got sick, instead, forcing the insured to pay for our care.

So, basically, without the individual mandate, we had the freedom to make everybody else pay for our health care.

So I guess that as long as we define "freedom" as "freedom to be a free-rider," it's true that the ACA can be boiled down to "freedom v. Obamacare".

However, most of the people who are without health insurance don't really feel free at all.  They're not free-riding on purpose.  Most of them would really love to have health insurance, but they can't afford it.

That's one reason why opting in to the Medicaid expansion is important.  Without doing so, we'll be forcing a lot of people to break the law, since they won't be able to afford expensive private health care on their own (even though we hope that the ACA and individual mandate will bring down the cost of health care by bringing more healthy people into the health insurance system).

Bjørn Lomborg. Kind of a tool.

Bjørn Lomborg really pisses me off.  Here, he claims that we should not worry about the environmental costs of development, and pooh-poohs the idea of "green accounting"--that is, trying to take the environmental costs of decisions into cost-benefit analyses:


The Rio+20 summit focused too much greener ways to calculate wealth and GDP. - Slate Magazine


I really like Slate, but it is unclear to me why they pay this guy.  He seems to completely misunderstand the idea behind green accounting, and presents the reader with the hackneyed "development versus conservation" dichotomy.  He also misrepresents, or misunderstands his own examples.


Worst of all, he's a Political Scientist.  For the record, folks, this kind of polemical writing is not Political Science.  I'm not sure what it is--certainly not economics, and really not journalism, either.


As luck would have it, Lomborg uses Kampala as an example of green-accounting gone bad.  He notes that the World Bank encouraged Uganda to conserve the Nakivubo Swamp, a large wetland adjacent to the city, because the swamp functions to clean the sewage and grey water that runs into it.  The city has, thus far, decided to conserve the swamp...    

But there is also a significant risk of political misuse of such information. Kampala’s decision-makers decided to protect the area. In other words, they rejected ever considering alternative possibilities for the area.

Green campaigners often seek such outcomes, but they are entirely unjustified. The swamp is close to the city center and its industrial center, and there is a land shortage in Kampala. In all likelihood, the net benefits of job creation and economic growth that could result from creating a new district (in place of the swamp) would be dramatically higher than the $1.75 million. There is a reason why few large, rich cities, if any, have undeveloped wetlands in their midst.


Of course, this is nonsense.  I suspect that Lomborg has never been here in Kampala.  Otherwise, it would be clear to him that this sprawling metropolis has no "land shortage." Instead, the city sprawls.    And there is really nothing particularly desirable about the Nakivubo area, which is miles from the city center. To the extent that it is difficult to buy land, the reason is not because land is not available, but because mechanisms for land titling are weak, land is often purchased and left undeveloped (for money laundering and tax evasion purposes), and because land ownership institutions in general are uncertain. Paving over a swamp is not going to fix these problems.


He compares the Nakivubo conservation policy to an alternative which involves the construction of a sewage treatment plant, which he implicitly assumes would be built, would operate, and would be maintained effectively over time.


In a place like Kampala, where we seem to get power outages a couple times a day, where the city regularly floods because the storm drains are clogged with trash, where it takes years for the city to build roads that should be constructed in months, this is not the appropriate comparison.


Most likely, uncontrolled development would wipe out the Nakivubo wetland, no treatment facility would be built, or if it were built, it would operate intermittently and ineffectively, and sewage would make people sick.  It would also likely ruin inshore fisheries in Lake Victoria.  And the cost of these problems would be much higher than the $1.75 million/year that Lomborg cites.  Of course, these costs would fall disproportionately on the poor.  In short, the same problems that have caused Lomborg's "land shortage" would mean his policy prescription would be a failure.  


Lomborg assumes that by allowing development on the wetland, Kampala will develop more quickly.  Never mind that an absence of land is not a major obstacle to Uganda's economic development, while the lack of human capital--an educated, healthy workforce--is.  


In the developed world, we tend to think in these kinds of terms--development versus conservation--because we already enjoy a pretty clean environment.  We don't have problems with lung infections because our air is so dirty, we don't get ringworm or other parasites because our water isn't clean, and we don't miss work or school because we're sick from our exposure to chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  But to most people in the developed world, environmental conservation and public health can't be separated.  They care about conservation precisely because environmental degradation makes them poorer.  


Conservation, in most cases, is not an obstacle to economic development.  It is a way to economic development.   

What will Alaska do about Medicaid expansion?

I'm a little behind the 8 ball on this one, but on the 1st of July, the Alaska Dispatch commented on Gov. Parnell's upcoming decision on whether to opt out of the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid:

Will Alaska Expand Medicaid? Health Care for Thousands at Stake | Alaska Dispatch

One key passage:

"Provided that all states participated, the Medicaid expansion would cover roughly 16 million people across the country -- and roughly 32,000 Alaskans -- by 2014, the time when the Medicaid provision of the law would be enacted. The federal government will cover all of the costs of that expansion for the first five years. By 2020, the states will pick up about 10 percent of the costs."

So, what will we do?

It is of course true that Alaska is a conservative state, and therefore is unsurprising that the idea of "socialized medicine" will rankle some on the right.  And there may be some political hay to be made by deciding to opt out of the medicare expansion over the short term.

It is hard to imagine, however, that Alaska (or many other states, including Rick Perry's Texas) will stay out for long.  Because of generous federal subsidies, as Mark Begich notes, the expansion is a hell of a bargain for the states.  Alaskans may be conservative, but they're also pragmatic.  And if nothing else, Alaskans are very fond of federal government expenditures, provided they're in Alaska.  Although perhaps expenditures like this won't be as popular as expenditures on tasty, tasty, chicharrón-flavored bridges to nowhere (or everywhere, depending on whether or nor you're from Ketchikan).

While opponents of the Affordable Care Act/"Obamacare" insist that the act is somehow an infringement on freedom (including Parnell), I would argue that maybe poor people should also have the freedom to not be sick.  And I should have the freedom not to have to shoulder their health care expenditures, which is what insured people do when uninsured people get sick and get treated (generally at the emergency room, which is the most expensive place to get medical care).

Ugandan Bureaucracy Rules

Apologies to you, gentle reader, if you have already heard one or more versions of this story...

Just got done this week filing paperwork for the research project I'm working on here, to get a permit for foreign researchers (for me and the other people on the team) for when we start our project in a couple of weeks.  

The final step of this process involved going to the "Speke Road branch of Standard Chartered Bank" (as per the Ugandan government's instructions) and making a $300 US deposit in the Ugandan National Council for Science and Technology's bank account.  Although the payment needs to be $300, the account only accepts payments in Ugandan Shillings.  Once making the deposit, I needed to get a receipt stamped and signed by bank staff, then take the receipt to the Council for Science and Technology building on the outskirts of Kampala.  

There, I had to take my receipt to the finances office, where I would receive a receipt for my receipt (I am not making this up), signed and stamped, and in duplicate.  I apparently am supposed to keep one copy, while the other one goes to the case manager for our application. 

This is only the most recent step in an odyssey involving:

Two copies of our research proposal (80 pages)

Three copies of form SC-7 ("Foreign Researcher Application") for each researcher (four of us) (20 pages)

Two copies of form SR-1 ("Application for Permission to Conduct Research") for each PI and Co-PI (36 pages)

And four duplicate passport-style photographs per researcher.

Of course, you can't just print these things out because there isn't a functioning printer within like three miles of the University.  And even if there was, they don't have but 60 or 80 sheets of copier paper. 

The guy developing our passport photos very sweetly told me Joanna Stefanska, one of the Polish researchers on the team, is "very beautiful."  He then asked if she was my sister (?), and after I told him that she is not, he asked if she was available.   

If this was Bolivia, they would have lost our forms at least twice at the UNCST, but apparently, some sort of bureaucratic efficiency rubbed off on Uganda during the British colonial period, because although the bureaucracy is incredibly complicated, it actually is pretty efficient and even reasonably helpful.  It helps that all the people working on our case are former colleagues of our collaborators at the Makerere University forestry school.  

Now, I go to sacrifice a goat to the Gods of African Bureaucracy.

A New UAF Terrain Park

So, UAF (the University of Alaska, Fairbanks) is apparently building a terrain park on campus, out on the West Ridge.  Frankly, it's about damn time.  My understanding is that Fairbanks had downhill ski trails as recently as the '80s, but blocked them off because they were afraid of the liability risks.  Pansies.

I don't know how real our fears of being sued are, but it always seemed a little ridiculous to me that they had placed fences over the old trails, then erected enormous warning signs, letting us know not to sled or ski there because we might be injured by the "intermittent fencing."

Sounds like they're considering a rope tow as their first lift.  Which is awesome.  Allow me to express here my strongly pro-surface lift platform.  Though I would have to consult with the other members of my political party to find out if that contradicts our conventional support for wool knickers (not in the British sense, hippie--get your mind out of the gutter) and leather, lace-up ski boots.  Regardless, I feel very strongly that all new skiers should be introduced to the sport by having to struggle to stand upright as they cling to an enormous, heavy, prickly manila rope.  Also, getting clocked in the back of the head by a T-bar should remain an important skiing milestone.

Makes me wonder if UAS should seek to promote skiing in some greater way, beyond just putting pictures of students in ski gear on the web page, and beyond employing Kevin Krein.  We have much greater snow sport potential in Juneau than they do up in Fairbanks, including the most remarkable 1500 vertical feet of lift-served ski terrain I know of out on Douglas Island.

Some Updates

Sitting here in a very echo-y classroom at the Forestry building here at Makerere University.  Haven't posted anything here in quite a while--it's been pretty crazy, and on top of it, I haven't had much interesting to say--but I figured it was about time to put up an update or two.

Spent last week out in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Western Uganda.  QENP is a one of Uganda's great places to see animals, and I wanted to see some African animals before I leave Uganda this year.  And on top of it, it was my last chance to get out of Kampala for any period of time before my forestry course started here in the city.  Kampala has kind of been growing on me, but it's by far the most chaotic place I know of.

Early last week, I took a bus up to Fort Portal, which is a medium-sized town in Western Uganda, in beautiful, green, hilly country.  The bus ride took me out of the city and through lots of agricultural land.  Lots of banana plantations, and as you start to get closer to Fort Portal, you start to see tea plantations, which were introduced by (who else?) the British during the colonial period.  It seems like tea production has declined in some areas, but it's still a substantial industry.

Tough work, harvesting tea.  Standing out in the sun all day with a pair of hedge clippers putting tea in a basket slung on your back.  Makes me think of the tobacco picking that used to take place back home in Connecticut.  Hot days working hard out in the sun.  Glad I never had to do it.  Sounds like many of the locals are interested in getting more FDI to build up the tea industry again, though.  I was repeatedly urged to buy land in Western Uganda by locals, including one young couple who spoke very little English and were hoping I would buy some of their property.  I have no intention of buying land in Uganda, and it's hard to tell how representative these conversations are, but it is striking how different those attitudes are when compared to

Spent two days in Fort Portal--a pretty, comfortable town, but not much going on.  Met a couple of US Political Scientists doing work on climate change and conflict.  Basically, will climate change lead to more civil wars and so on?  Not clear from my discussion with them what the answer is, but it sounds like they have found some evidence of civil conflict, protests, and riots being associated with droughts and other extreme weather events which might be associated with climate change.

Also in Fort Portal, met up with a British couple who was also looking to move on to the park.  Together, we rented a car and driver and headed into the park.  Saw lots of animals over the course of three days (lions, warthogs, water buffalo, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, and even a leopard).  I will write more about that later.

After my three days in the park, headed back to a guesthouse outside of Fort Portal--The "Chimpanzee Lodge."  There are chimpanzees nearby, but I only saw monkeys and baboons (the raccoons of Uganda).  The lodge is also an old tea plantation, and I had the pleasure of sleeping in a wall tent there. Good times.  Made me feel like a boy scout again.

And now, after a six hour bus ride across Uganda in a bus with no opening windows (very hot and not a little smelly) I'm back in Kampala.  More on that later as well.