Unexpected Benefits of Being a Wetmouth

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I have a few physical attributes that I find truly annoying.  First, I seem to be replacing all the hair I’m losing from my head with hair on the rest of my body, particularly my back.  I’ve seen guys with worse back hair (much worse) but I’m not happy that I’m starting to resemble Bigfoot.  Second is my amazing propensity to sweat.  It can be 50 degrees outside and if I walk more than a couple of blocks I’m in a full-on, shirt-drenching sweat.  It truly makes the summer miserable sometimes.  Third is my mouths ability to produce spit.  It usually doesn’t bother me that much, but when I go to the dentist it’s a royal pain in the ass.  If they don’t have that sucker thing in there just right I can drown in a matter of seconds while the hygienist is blissfully scraping away.

Well, I think I need to embrace my spit glands.  I just read this little item at Freakonomics:

As much as I generally dread the dentist’s chair, I always wind up
learning something. Yesterday was no exception. I was asking Dr. Reiss
about the causes of tooth decay—genetics vs. diet, etc. etc.—when he
began explaining why toothpaste is such a bogus product. Any claims
that toothpaste makes about preventing decay, whitening teeth, etc.,
are totally falacious, Dr. Reiss told me, because the F.D.A. can’t and
won’t allow the ingredients necessary to perform those chores in an
over-the-counter product that children can easily get hold of. (That’s
why he recommends an antibacterial product like GlyOxide, a fairly
foul-tasting but apparently effective means of killing the bacteria
that cause decay.)

The other thing I learned yesterday was
far more interesting, with far greater implications. He told me that
tooth decay in general, even among wealthy patients, is getting worse
and worse, particularly for people in middle age and above. The reason?
An increased reliance on medications for heart disease, high
cholesterol, depression, etc. Many of these medications, Dr. Reiss
explained, produces drymouth, which is caused by a constricted salivary
flow; because saliva kills bacteria in the mouth, a lack of it means
increased bacteria, which leads to increased tooth decay. Given the
choice of taking these medicines versus having some tooth decay, I’m
sure most people would still choose the medicines—but I am guessing
that most people haven’t thought about the link between the two.

So my spit is my friend!  Maybe I’ll discover equally encouraging news about my sweaty ape tendencies, but somehow I doubt it.

Whole Lotta Hittin’ Goin’ On

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Here’s a little piece of YouTube goodness for you. These are some all-time classic NFL hits and my personal favorites are those featuring Earl Campbell.  You’ll also see a lot of hits that would be illegal today since some are QB headhunters and others involve spearing or leading with the helmet. Enjoy:

More Fun With Congressional Payrolls

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I’ve done a little more digging over at Legistorm and here are some fun numbers about the payrolls of North Carolina’s congressional delegation.  This time I’ve included the Senators, both of whom are Republican (Dole and Burr).  Please keep in mind that these numbers are extrapolated from the first quarter 06 numbers reported by House members, and 1/2 of the payroll reported by the Senators between 10/1/05-3/31/06.  That means they may not be exact to the dollar but they’re definitely close:

  • Total Payroll for Congressional Staffers in 06, not including the members’s salaries: $17,579,880
  • Cost per NC resident to cover Congressional staff salaries in 06 (not including the members’ salaries and based on US Census’s most recent Estimate of NC Population): $2.02
  • Total Number of staffers: 359 (306 full time)
  • Avg. pay per staffer: $48,969.03
  • Avg. pay per staffer in Senators’ offices: $80,135
  • Avg. pay per staffer in Rep.’s offices: $42,849
  • Highest payroll for a NC member of the House: $969,552 (McIntyre, D-7th)
  • Lowest payroll for a NC member of the House: $645,382 (McHenry, R-10th)
  • Average payroll for Republican House members: $802,231
  • Average payroll for Democratic House members: $906,577
  • Average payroll for Senators: $2,023,399
  • Average number of full time staffers for Senators: 42
  • Average number of full time staffers for Representatives: 17

If you want to be a well-paid Congressional staffer in NC you
definitely want to first try and get on a Senator’s staff (they pay
almost 90% better than House members do) but since there’s a limited
supply of those jobs you’re more likely to get a job on the House side.  I had my suspicions that the amount that members of the House were paying might have a correlation with how long they’d been in office, so I decided to rank them by seniority and then by their payroll.  Below is a list of Representatives in descending order (longest serving to shortest) and in parentheses is their rank in terms of payroll (1 is highest payroll and 13 is lowest).

  • Rep. Coble (2), R, 11th term 
  • Rep. Price (4), D, 9th term
  • Rep. Taylor (10), R, 8th term
  • Rep. Watt (5), D, 7th term
  • Rep. Myrick (3), R, 6th term
  • Rep. Jones (9), R, 6th term
  • Rep. McIntyre (1), D, 5th term
  • Rep. Etheridge (8), D, 5th term
  • Rep. Hayes (11), R, 4th term
  • Rep. Miller (7), D, 2nd term
  • Rep. Butterfield (6), D, 2nd term (served a partial term in 04)
  • Rep. Foxx (12), R, 1st term
  • Rep. McHenry (13), R, 1st term

My suspicion was borne out somewhat.   If you want to work for a Representative who pays well then you need to work for one who’s been in office for at least five terms and if you can’t hire on with one of them then get in on the ground floor with Rep. Butterfield;  he’s showing early signs of being a generous boss, at least financially.

Or just go after the Democrats, since with the exception of Rep.’s Myrick and Coble the Republicans appear to be pretty tight with the dollar.  Here’s the ranking by party, again 1 is the top paying office:

  1. Dem
  2. Rep
  3. Rep
  4. Dem
  5. Dem
  6. Dem
  7. Dem
  8. Dem
  9. Rep
  10. Rep
  11. Rep
  12. Rep
  13. Rep

Of course the real money play is to get a job with one of these folks, put in a few years and then go work for a lobbyist.  The trick, of course, is to make connections on the right side of the aisle (i.e. for the party that’s in the majority) so you may want to wait until after this November to apply.

What Do Foxxy and Her Cohorts Pay?

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There’s a new website called LegiStorm that allows you to look up what the members of Congress pay their staffs.  My US Representative is Virginia Foxx and she paid her staff $167,538.89 from 1/1/06-3/31/06, or in other words the first quarter of the year.  If the payroll stays consistent then her payroll for Foxx’s staff for the year will be about $670,000. If you include the Congresswoman’s salary of $165,200 for the year then the overall payroll for her office is $835,200. Here’s the breakdown by staffers with quarterly income and then the estimated yearly amount:

  • Rep. Foxx, Member, $41,300.00 ($165,200.00)
  • Richard Hudson, Chief of Staff, $27,941.67 ($111,766.68)
  • Deana Young Funderburk, Legislative Dir., $18,750 ($75,000.00)
  • W Todd Poole, District Director, $15,000.00 ($60,000.00)
  • Robert Honold, Legislative Asst., $11,000.01 ($44,000.04)
  • Amy Auth, Press Secretary, $9,624.99 ($38,499.96)
  • Christopher Wall, Legislative Asst., $9,000.00 ($36,000.00)
  • Michael Church, District Caseworker, $8,750.01 ($35,000.04)
  • Aaron Whitener, Field Rep, $8,375.01 ($33,500.04)
  • Mary Carpenter, Executive Asst., $8,000.01 ($32,000.04)
  • Joshua Wall, Constituent Liaison, $7,749.99 ($30,999.96)
  • Erica Shrader, Legislative Corresp., $7,500.00 ($30,000.00)
  • Rebecca Potts, Constituent Liaison, $6,750.00 ($27,000.00)
  • Emily Beth Richardson, Constituent Liaison, $6,624.99 ($26,499.96)
  • David Ward, Jr., Staff Asst., $6,458.33 ($25,833.32)
  • Teddie Hathaway,Shared Employee, $5,499.99 ($21,999.96)
  • Carrie Church, Part-time Employee, $3,750.00 ($15,000.00)
  • Lindsay Moore, Part-time Employee, $3,000.00 ($12,000.00)
  • Nicole Gustafson, Shared Employee, $3,000.00 ($12,000.00)
  • Jeff Stockdale, Staff Asst., $763.89 ($3,055.56)

So if you include Rep. Foxx herself you could look at her office as a small business "owned" and financed by we members of NC’s 5th Congressional District with 20 employees, 14 of whom are full time, and a total payroll of about $835,000.  This is another reason why we truly need to work hard to hold our representatives accountable; not only are they setting the direction for our country they are also a considerable investment of our money and resources.  And remember this is payroll; it doesn’t include other expenditures of the Member’s office or even the employees’ benefits.

Now I’m not being critical of Rep. Foxx or her employees here. (If you look at the comparison of all NC Representatives she has the second lowest payroll).  No one is getting rich off of these salaries, especially those who are working in her DC office.  Even Mr. Hudson’s six-figure salary doesn’t go that far when you take into account the DC housing market.  And those lower level staffers who work in DC aren’t in it for the money.  They’re either doing it out of idealism, or they’re putting their time in before they leave the Hill to make their financial futures on K Street, or maybe both.  Still, this is a significant investment of our taxpayer finances and we need to keep an eye on it.

So how does Rep. Foxx compare to her NC counterparts in the house?  Here’s the payroll for each Rep.’s office, including the member’s pay, for the first quarter of 06 with projected annual numbers in parentheses:

  • Rep. Butterfield, D-1st, $266,157.44 ($1,064,629.70)
  • Rep. Etheridge, D-2nd, $258,866.49 ($1,035,465.90)
  • Rep. Jones, R-3rd, $257,483.31 ($1,029,933.20)
  • Rep. Price, D-4th, $268,588.22 ($1,074,352.80)
  • Rep. Foxx, R-5th, $208,838.89 ($835,355.56)
  • Rep. Coble, R-6th, $277,340.42 ($1,109,361.60)
  • Rep. McIntyre, D-7th, $283,688.05 ($1,134,752.20)
  • Rep. Hayes, R-8th, $227,819.41 ($911,277.64)
  • Rep. Myrick, R-9th, $272,511.11 ($1,090,044.40)
  • Rep. McHenry, R-10th, $202,645.39 ($810,581.56)
  • Rep. Taylor, R-11th, $246,365.99 ($985,463.96)
  • Rep. Watt, D-12th, $267,562.67 ($1,070,250.60)
  • Rep. Miller, D-13th, $262,803.37 ($1,051,213.40)

So if you total it up North Carolina’s payroll just for our members of the House of Representatives is $3,300,670.76 for the first quarter of ’06 which projects to $13,202,682.52.  In my next post I’m going to look at North Carolina’s Congressional delegation in a little more detail.

Iraq for Sale

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If there’s one area that I think most people can agree on the war, whether they’re ‘fer it or agin’ it, I think most would agree that profiteers are the lowest of the low.  There’s a new movie out (and yes it looks like it was made by some lefties) that I’m hoping comes out on Netflix soon or I’ll end up buying it.  It’s called Iraq for Sale and if you visit the site you’ll find that there’s a blog and all kinds of other information to be had there.

I’ve often written about the soaring real estate prices in DC throughout the late 90s and early 00s, but they didn’t really take off until after 9/11.  The late 90s could be explained by the tech explosion (many people don’t realize how much of the internet/telecomm infrastructure was based in the DC area) but I think the early 00s can only be explained by the huge run up of defense spending after 9/11 and through the beginning of the war.  DC has always grown rapidly during wars, but I think this expansion was particularly sharp because of all the money flowing to contractors who then created very high paying jobs (contractors pay their people much better than the government/military pays theirs).

I want to see this film, but I also want to see more hard hitting reporting done on the contractors.  Some of these companies are making HUGE money on the war, much more so than in past conflicts because so much more work that used to be done by military personnel is being done by contractors.  I want to see how the money is being spent with contractors, what the contractors are delivering in return and exactly how much lucre some of these companies’ executives are getting at the cost of American blood.  Personally I think it’s a non-partisan issue, and if some people see that kind of questioning as an attack on certain leaders of the country then I’d say that’s a tacit acknowledgement of exactly what many of us suspect is going on. 

Screw it, I’ll just say it: George, Dick and Don’s friends are getting awful fat off of this little adventure in Iraq.

In Defense of La Siesta

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Some of the smartest people I’ve known have been avid nappers.  For full balance and accuracy I should also tell you that some of the laziest people I’ve ever known are also avid nappers, but the difference is there is often no discernible time between sleeping and napping.  Anyway, it ends up that some brain studiers (neurobiologists) did a memory study on a bunch of folks and found that those who napped did 15% better than those who didn’t.

It will not come as a shock to my friends and family, many of whose names I can never remember, that I never nap.

This is Your Egg. This is Your Egg Being Launched by an Induction Coil Rocket Launcher

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How do people who are really smart (i.e. geeks) with some time on their hands entertain themselves?  Why, they build a do-it-yourself electro-magnet rocket launcher using something called induction coils.  If you care you can read about it here, but take my word for it that they get a lot of bang out of this gizmo.  Don’t believe me? Watch the Youtube video below of them launching an egg.  Keep watching until the end to see how the inside of the egg ends up:

This is Your Brain. This is Your Brain on…

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So Bill Gates sets up a huge non-profit foundation with his wife that is funding some amazing projects around the world.  What has his old partner, Paul Allen done?  Well let’s see. 

Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science
in Seattle are today celebrating the completion of a new digital atlas
of the mouse brain. The achievement will likely lead to a greater
understanding of how the human brain works…

Mice brains and human brains have significant differences, but are
similar enough that a complete "atlas" of the mouse brain is seen by
many scientists to be as important a milestone as the Human Genome
Project, which mapped the DNA sequence.

Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft 30 years ago with Bill
Gates and is one of the world’s richest men, donated $100 million to
create a searchable 3-D digital map called the Allen Brain Atlas. The map is the inaugural project of the Allen Institute for Brain Science…


Allen’s funding helped to assemble a dream team of scientists, who
methodically scanned ultra-thin slices of mouse brain with the aid of
robot helpers. Those scans help to identify how individual genes are
"turned on" in different areas of the brain…

Link to related text and images at Wired News.

You know I’m starting to feel a little better about all the cha-ching I’ve spent on Office and Windows over the entire span of my adult life.  Here’s a sample pic from the atlas:

Mousebrain

Poker Econ or Econ Poker?

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So I’m mowing my lawn on Saturday and is it’s wont to do my brain started wandering off without me.  During its journey it stumbled across an idea that I’m thinking of actually trying to implement.  Here it is in bullet point via the stream-of-conciousness path that my brain took:

  • I wonder why I love playing poker in person, but not online.
  • I miss playing poker.
  • I should put together a poker game.
  • Didn’t those Freakonomics guys say they were going to study the behavior of poker players and weren’t they looking for people who would keep track of how their hands were played? (Yep, it’s called Pokernomics).
  • I wonder if people with different economic outlooks play poker differently?
  • I wonder if liberals play differently from conservatives?
  • I wonder if you could have a poker tournament with special rules that would somehow replicate economic or political situations?
  • I don’t know crap about economic or political theory…maybe I could recruit someone to help me create rules and then see if peoples’ behavior changed.  I think we’d have to run two games: one a control with normal rules and then a second with the changed rules and then track how people play in each. 
  • Is this even feasible?  I mean if someone is a horrible poker player it doesn’t really matter what they’re economic theory is does it?
  • Yep, I need to recruit someone to help me with this.
  • If we can make it work this would be a great fundraiser.  We could donate at least some of the pot to charity, although this might be an economic exercise in and of itself.  People will play awful loose if their stake is a sunk cost.  Maybe we’ll have to come up with another incentive for winning.
  • Wow, the lawn’s done.

After mowing I researched this a little bit and I found a guy who posited the idea of using poker as an analogy in teaching law/economic theory.  I also found a site that has rules for something called Solidarity Poker; in my brief review it looks like it might be an interesting experiment for the liberal (i.e. communist) side of the spectrum, but I’ll have to review further.  I’m thinking this could be a fun thing to do, but I really need to get some help on this.  Maybe Boyd?  Suggestions are welcome.

And if we can’t make it work then screw it, I’ll just put together a good old fashioned game of 7-stud or hold ’em.