This time, paper rejection

I received this in my mail (postal mail, not email) a few days ago from the American Water Works Association (AWWA):

Dear Mr. Vedachalam:

Thank you for submitting your abstract entitled (sic) "Designing an Automated Delivery Device for Chlorine Dioxide Disinfection" to the International Symposium on Waterborne Pathogens Planning Committee for consideration for a presentation at the 2010 symposium.

On behalf of the technical committee, I'm sorry to inform you that your abstract was not chosen for a technical session. The planning committee reviews all the submitted abstracts, taking into consideration the timeliness of the abstract topic, the number of abstracts submitted on a specific topic, and the limitation on the number of sessions.
...

And the letter talks about how my abstract was good, but didn't have a place in the program, yada, yada. I am sad, not for getting this paper rejected, but because I missed a chance to visit Manhattan Beach, California, the venue of the symposium. If you didn't know, the median price of a single family dwelling with an ocean view is close to 2.1 million dollars in that town. Wow!

Proposal Talk

I gave a proposal talk at my program (Environmental Science Graduate Program) seminar couple of weeks ago. The talk was recorded (audio + Powerpoint slides). Click here to view the streaming presentation.

Michigan Week

The annual Michigan Week is back. ESPN's Adam Rittenberg has this to stay about Ohio State football coach Jim 'Vest' Tressel:

AP Photo/Jay LaPrete

Ohio State coach Jim Tressel is going for his sixth straight win against rival Michigan.

Jim Tressel may go on to win another national championship at Ohio State.

He'll likely win more BCS bowl games and more Big Ten titles. When he's finished coaching, he might enter politics or open his own sweater vest manufacturing company.

But when we look back on Tressel's place in college football history, he will always be remembered for this week. Michigan week.

No one does it better.

Read the rest of the article here. I think the part about the 'sweater vest manufacturing company' is really funny. But one thing is true: when it comes to Michigan, 'Vest' knows best.

Fall Colle(r)ction 2009

An attempt to capture the changing colors

AID Freshers Party this Saturday

Conference Presentation

From the inbox:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Congratulations! The following papers have been accepted for presentation during Session 11 of Urban River Restoration 2010 which will be held in March 2010.

Session 11 Creating and Measuring the Value of Urban Rivers
Tuesday, March 8, 2010
1:30pm - 5:00pm

11D 3:30pm Non-Market Valuation of Water Quality Along the Ohio River
Sridhar Vedachalam, The Ohio State University

1 Course Project + Summer Independent Study = 1 Conference Presentation. Wow!

It is not yet decided if we will go ahead and present.

SNL uncovers the truth behind "You Lie"

If you are not familiar with the "You Lie" incident, I refer you here. This Wikipedia link may get deleted (as stated by the administrators), so please go to this link for more details.

Mary Jo Kilroy is not so clear on that one

Not only did Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH-15), my local Congresswoman, took a long time to send her response to my email, she does not use the term "public option", in spite of the fact that I commended her for supporting it in her public statements. Here is the complete text of her email:

Thank you for contacting me about health care reform. I appreciate hearing from you.

The cost of health care is one of the most pressing issues in our country and that is why it is at the top of my agenda for this year. Health care needs a uniquely American solution to the challenges of cost, quality and accessibility. Reform must include the choice and freedom that Americans with health care have come to expect. The most important change I hope most Americans will see is the cost of health care expenses going down.

Americans need quality health care that is affordable and accessible and also guaranteed. Health care is vital to our economic recovery and reducing our long term spending. Businesses are paying too much for health care and all of us pay the "hidden tax" of the uninsured. Moving our country forward will depend upon reducing the cost and increasing the choices in health care. I hope to work with my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, to craft this reform.

Thank you again for taking the time to reach out to me. Please contact me if I can be of further assistance.

The email is at best, vague, and meant for a middle-of-the-line independent/centrist voter. I have a feeling that many of the elected officials are mis-calculating the support for the public option, and may pay for it dearly in the next elections, a la Al Gore in 2000.

Sen. Sherrod Brown reiterates support for the public option

In a response to my email, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) states (only part of the email reproduced) :

Since first coming to Congress in 1993, I have refused to enroll in the coverage offered to members of Congress until every American has access to high-quality, affordable health insurance. Should a health care reform bill pass that offers a public insurance option, I would be pleased to enroll.

I strongly believe that our health care system is in need of reform. First and foremost, we must reduce the long-term growth of health care costs for patients, taxpayers, and businesses; protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health expenditures; guarantee a choice of doctors and health plans; invest in prevention and wellness; improve patient safety and quality of care; assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans; and end barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

What the insurance industry needs is some healthy competition from a public insurance option. This option would not replace employer-sponsored coverage and no one would be forced into it; the public option would simply give uninsured or underinsured Americans the choice of enrolling in an insurance plan that does not engage in the same cost-avoidance tactics as private insurance plans do. The public health insurance option would also be a vehicle for improvements in quality, coverage, and provider-access that sets the bar higher for private insurance plans. This option would be available to all Americans: both private and government employees, including members of Congress and their staffs.

It's great to have such folks in the U.S. Senate!

Paper acceptance

From the inbox:

31-Jul-2009
Dear Mr. Sridhar Vedachalam:

I am pleased to advise you that your revised manuscript SW-07966-2009.R1 "Automation of Delivery Device for Chlorine Dioxide Disinfection" is accepted for publication in Applied Engineering in Agriculture. The most recent files you submitted (uploaded) will be used.

Thank you for your contribution to the literature of the profession.

Living Sustainably (and bigger)

Is that even possible? It may not be entirely possible, but give our current state of affairs, we could at least evaluate ourselves to see which set of people are living most sustainably relative to others. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a reputed non-profit environmental group, rated large, medium and small cities based on a sustainability index. Their scoring/ranking criteria is explained below:

We sought the advice of academic, non-profit and government experts to come up with a broad set of criteria by which to measure and compare sustainability efforts in cities across the U.S. The ranking scheme, developed with the help of a scholar from Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, was intended as a tool for identifying, for the purpose of spotlighting, those cities that are taking the lead in addressing the major environmental challenges of our time, from global warming to clean air and water.

The cities were evaluated based on air quality, energy production and conservation, recycling, transportation, water quality, etc. More details on the criteria are provided here.

The Top 15 large cities list is dominated by the West - 9 cities, with 6 from California. Seattle, WA tops the list, followed by San Francisco, CA and Portland, OR. 2 cities from the Northeast, Boston and New York as do the two Texas cities - Austin and Dallas. Finally, two cities from the Midwest complete the list - Chicago, IL and Columbus, OH. Wow... Columbus makes it to the top 15 large sustainable cities in the US...at the 15th spot! See the rankings here:
http://smartercities.nrdc.org/rankings/large

Except for the Texas cities, no other city from the South makes it to the Top 15. Louisville, KY takes the 21st spot, making it the only southern city to feature in the Top 30. Well, Louisville is just a few miles away from Cincinnati, so it does not represent a typical city from the South.

Madison, WI tops the list for medium cities, followed by Santa Rosa, CA and Fort Collins, CO (again from the West). Another Western city captures the top spot for small cities - Bellingham, WA.

The profile on Columbus claims that the city and the Mayor are working towards expanding the bike routes in the city to make Columbus the "biking capital" of the country by 2012.

http://smartercities.nrdc.org/cities/columbus-oh

Healthcare quotes

Quotes from today's web on Obama's healthcare plans:

Karl Rove writes in the nation's trusted newspaper, WSJ (see my earlier post):
On Tuesday, Gallup showed Mr. Obama’s personal approval was 55%, down from more than 60% a few weeks ago and lower than the 56% George W. Bush had at this point in his first term.

Didn’t know 1% made all that difference. I guess he didn't get to take a Statistics course, before dropping out of college...twice!

Betsy McCaughey using the same mouthpiece:

Since Medicare was established in 1965, access to care has enabled older Americans to avoid becoming disabled and to travel and live independently instead of languishing in nursing homes….. Medicare has made living to a ripe old age a good value. ObamaCare will undo that.

So, Medicare is good, in spite of being run by the....government, while insurance run by the same government can wreak havoc.

Intershame frames the debate quite well:

Complaining that a inherently socialist concept like insurance - the collection of funds by many to redistribute to the needy - will somehow be more socialist if the government gets involved is laughable.

while Gail Collins at The New York Times blames Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT):

Meanwhile in the Senate, everyone is waiting on Max Baucus of Montana. Nothing is going to happen on health care without the approval of Baucus, whose vast authority stems from the fact that he speaks for both the Senate Finance Committee and a state that contains three-tenths of one percent of the country’s population (emphasis mine).

Wall Street Journal: fair and balanced?

Few days ago, my good friend Srivathsan forwarded a link to a Wall Street Journal article to me on India's success with reducing rural poverty and contrasted it with China's approach. Though WSJ has won an impressive 33 Pulitzer prizes for excellence in reporting, it continues to hire editors and columnists, whose work can be explained in one word: shoddy. One-more word to describe WSJ: neo-conservative.

Via Wikipedia: Two summaries published in 1995 by the left leaning Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and in 1996 by the Columbia Journalism Review.^[23] repeatedly criticized the editorial page of the Journal for inaccuracy and dishonesty in the 1980s and 1990's. During the Reagan administration, the newspaper's editorial page was particularly influential as the leading voice for supply-side economics. Regarding issues of international politics and national security, the Journal editorial page is squarely in the neo-conservative camp, for example supporting the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and the legitimacy of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The Journal in recent years has strongly defended Lewis Libby, whom it portrays as the victim of a political witchhunt. The editorial page routinely publishes articles by scientists skeptical of the theory of global warming, including several influential essays by Richard Lindzen of MIT.

Although their reporting on the news is fairly impartial and even liberal, its editorial content is too conservative to easily tilt the balance towards the right. Another recent example is the public face of WSJ on TV: Peggy Noonan. Here are two statements she made recently.

On the release of Bush torture memos by the Obama administration, she said: "Sometimes in life you just want to keep walking", and, "Some of life has to be mysterious."

On SC Gov. Mark Sanford's hike to the Appalachian Trail and the revelation of the affair by the media: "Um..I must say I've been thinking about Clinton a lot and it seems to me that in the Clinton era, during that famous story, a new devilishness was unleashed, especially in the media where a new meanness took style."

I started with an idea of commenting on the WSJ article, but went on to write a lot about WSJ itself. I guess I will comment on the article in my next post. Keep waiting.

Somalia - the libertarian paradise

Six years

Since the financial meltdown has dominated the headlines for the last few months, I thought of reminding everyone that today marks 6 years since the Iraq War started. Jon Stewart reminded us about the war few days ago in his special segment "Mess O'Potamia".

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Mess O'Potamia - The Iraq War Is Over
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things w/ Demetri Martin Political Humor

Fallout of the AIG Bonuses

I guess everyone is aware of the employee retention bonuses awarded by AIG to its executives last Sunday. In the light of the federal stimulus money supporting the company, this comes as a great shocker for many. What was to be an intra-company affair became a national headline for 3 consecutive days beyond that. How did the bonus story became such a rage that lawmakers are considering various options to "get back" the bailout money. Opinion polls show people across the country are aghast at the greed of the company executives and want the money back.

Let's step back a moment and look at the story once again. Congress approved bailout money to support the dying-AIG, presumably because that was one way to prop up other large corporations like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Meryll Lynch, Bank of America, etc. Now, I don't claim this - this theory is from former New York Attorney General and Governor Eliot Spitzer, who spent much of his lifetime pursuing white-collar crimes, before he resigned as Governor following the prostitution scandal. There was an attempt from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to include a provision in the bailout to cap the executive bonuses a $100,000, but it apparently died in the negotiations. As a result, there were no legal provisions in the bailout agreement to either restrict or cap the executive bonuses.

Fast forward Sunday, March 15: AIG announced executive bonuses, without realizing the ramifications of that action. By Monday morning, the blogosphere and later the mainstream media was full of stories and commentaries about how this action was unethical, even illegal to pay employees who created the financial mess in the first place. Senators and White House officials were asked for their reactions, and everyone's response was: it is shameful, and shouldn't have been done. Some officials even went to the defense, suggesting that it was difficult to stop them from issuing bonuses, since they were part of the company contract to the exmployees. Meanwhile, Eliot Spitzer's successor at the office of New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo issued a notice to the company to reveal the names of the executives who were being paid the bonuses. Over the day, lawmakers started deliberations to introduce a new piece of legislation to tax the bonus at ridiculously high rates (one proposal was to tax them at 100%). IRS already taxes bonuses above 1 million at 35%.

Now there are some key questions arising out of this situation:
1. Should the company have issued the bonuses: No, considering the fact that the U.S. government holds 80% stake in the company. So, in effect, it is the taxpayers' money that is going to fund a few executives who created the mess in the first place.

2. Is there a way to get back the bonuses: Maybe, but taxing them is not a great idea.

3. Why shouldn't the bonuses be taxed: Though such a measure would find popular support, I believe it would be unconstitutional to introduce a legislation that would tax the bonuses issued prior to the enactment of the legislation. Whatever happened to being "grandfathered"?

4. Should the executives return the bonuses: That might be the only option left. It is morally incorrect to take home bonuses at the expense of taxpayers, when millions are losing their jobs, much less taking home bonuses. As someone said yesterday, 'morality cannot be legislated'.

5. Did the White House screw up on this issue: Totally. I believe the bailout was mishandled by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the White House administration. They hoped that AIG would use the money properly, without inserting any enforceable clause in the agreement. They gave easy access to fire in the hands of a pyromaniac asked to watch over a building. How did they think AIG got to this position in the first place?

6. Should we make a big deal out of this? Hmmm... may be, may be not. $165 million is roughly 0.1% of the $150 billion in bailout money AIG received. So it doesn't make sense to go after the bonuses, when there are bigger fishes to fry. But the issue is not about substance, but attitude. The whole episode just shows gross disrespect towards the feelings of millions of people who have lost their jobs and/or homes. To put things in perpective, Ohio's share of the federal stimulus money is nearly $8.2 billion. The AIG bonuses are roughly 2% of Ohio's stimulus share. That might not look like a lot of money, but it can help complete most of the projects listed in this Dispatch article.

And the Oscar goes to...

So how did Nate Silver's predictions fare against the actual Awards?

He got the Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and the Best Picture correctly. 4 out 6.. not bad, I would say! Penelope Cruz beat Taraji Henson to win the Best Supporting Actress and Sean Penn knocked Mickey Rourke out of the Best Actor award. Sean Penn was a total surprise. May be it was the guilt over the passing of Proposition 8 that made the Academy look at his role more closely than usual. I thought his acceptance speech was powerful. He could be the poster-boy for gay rights, given that he has dabbled in political activism at times.

The other heartening awards - A R Rahman winning 2 Oscars for the Best Score and Best Song for Slumdog Millionaire. Add one for Gulzar (lyricist for Jai Ho) and Resul Pookutty (Best Sound Mixing - Slumdog Millionaire) - A near sweep by the underdog team. So much for the name! To top it all, Smile Pinki won the award for the Best Documentary. You might be surprised to know that the movie was made in Hindi and Bhojpuri and describes the tale of Pinki, a young girl with cleft lip who receives a free surgery from The Smile Train program.

P.S.: A reader asked me if prediction was an educated guess. My response is that though prediction is much more educated than a mere guess, it is more based on facts which precede the event. The 2008 election results were predicted (even state-by-state) based on the opinion polls conducted all throughout the summer, rather than on educated guesses (which is sometimes called guesstimate).

Oscar Predictions

What do we do when we don't know the outcome of a future event? We predict, and hope that our predictions come true. Is it the same as guessing? More often than not, people blur the line between the two and use the terms interchangeably. You predict that it will snow tomorrow, but you guess that the next throw on the dice will be a six. It is possible to predict the dice throw as well.... and that's what this article is about.

Now that we are approaching the Oscars, everybody wants to take a shot at predicting (or should I say guessing) the winners. There might be some obvious winners (Heath Ledger?), but it's a tough competition otherwise. Many folks base their judgment on previous awards such as the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild of America, BAFTA, etc but what happens when the nominees split the awards. That's where I found the prediction from Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight fame interesting. Having successfully predicted the state-by-state outcome of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections, Nate goes on to predict the winners of the 6 major awards at the Oscar ceremony. Briefly, here's how he arrived at his predictions:

Formally speaking, this required the use of statistical software and a process called logistic regression. Informally, it involved building a huge database of the past 30 years of Oscar history. Categories included genre, MPAA classification, the release date, opening-weekend box office (adjusted for inflation), and whether the film won any other awards. We also looked at whether being nominated in one category predicts success in another. For example, is someone more likely to win Best Actress if her film has also been nominated for Best Picture? (Yes!) But the greatest predictor (80 percent of what you need to know) is other awards earned that year, particularly from peers (the Directors Guild Awards, for instance, reliably foretells Best Picture). Genre matters a lot (the Academy has an aversion to comedy); MPAA and release date don’t at all. A film’s average user rating on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database) is sometimes a predictor of success; box grosses rarely are. And, as in Washington, politics matter, in ways foreseeable and not.

List of winners according to Nate Silver and their chances of winning in percent:

Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) 85.8%
Supporting Actress: Taraji P Henson (Benjamim Button) 51.0%
Lead Actor: Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) 71.1%
Lead Atress: Kate Winslet (The Reader) 67.6%
Best Director: Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) 99.7%
Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire 99.0%*
* Nate claims that Milk has an outside chance of winning the Best Picture award (that's where politics plays a role)

Read the detailed analysis at: http://nymag.com/movies/features/54335/

Internship Search

My search for a Summer internship (2009) in environmental policy (with special emphasis on water policy analysis) is currently on. I am applying to a few institutes, but if you have any places in mind, please let me know.

Featured on namesake media outlet

I was featured in a namesake media outlet (The Columbus Dispatch) that carries the same name as this blog (or is it the other way around?) sometime after the Mumbai terror attacks. Incidentally, this media outlet is the prominent newspaper circulated in the city of Columbus, OH. Here is the link (scroll down to the last paragraph to see my statement)