As described  great documentary Why We Fight (NetFlix here), President Eisenhower warned about the rise of the "military industrial complex" (his words).   In an age not so long ago when presidents treated citizens as intelligent, literate, and worthy of respect, and when citizens expected their elected public servants to answer to them, with well thought out, cogent arguments rather than sound bites to justify their national policy, he stepped out of office with the following remarkable warning:

Rolling Stone just published this story on why we fight in Iraq.  It's interesting that as momentous a report as this comes from a pop culture rag, and not the so-called news media.

Ike's full unedited speech, by the way, makes for remarkable listening.  It's available here and here.

• People that bought adjustable rate mortgages for more than they could afford, gambling that their property would double in a few years so they could sell before the rates went up.
• Mortgage banks that made half-million dollar balloon loans to people who couldn't afford them, so they could foreclose and make a profit on the property, since the property would have doubled by then.

Today, the WSJ ran an editorial on the recent revelations about Rep. Foley (R., Florida) and the resulting fallout.  Apparently, in WSJ-land, you either help cover up the fact that underage guys are complaining about the esteemed congressman's sexual advances, or you assume all gay men are sexual predators:

But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?

Obviously, it's all Nancy Pelosi's fault.  I guess election season is heating up...  (Thanks to Emilio for the pointer.)

A recent speech by the Pope quoting a Byzantine emperor has been causing a lot of controversy. The quote in question is:

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only bad and inhumane, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Nonetheless, there have been mass condemnations of the Pope mischaracterizing Islam itself as being violent. In reaction to the quote, a Palestinian Muslim group firebombed and opened fire on churches, while in India and elsewhere, the pontiff was burned in effigy, presumably to demonstrate to the world that Islam is indeed a peaceful religion.

The Pope, meanwhile, says he regrets this reaction to his speech -- which he says was only meant to show that belief in God (whether by Christians or Muslims) sanctions only rationality, and not violence.  But to those of us not blessed with infallibility and don't happen to be God's voice on earth, it seems like the reaction of the more extreme elements of the Muslim world was entirely predictable, and that the resulting violence could have been prevented with a little tact and humility.  This is not to say that the firebombing wing-nuts should be excused, but I feel that the Pope should be held to a higher standard than a common terrorist.

Perhaps, violence and the lack of rationality are not properties of religions but of people -- it's a shame they both seem to be demonstrated in such ample quantities by people that claim to speak for God and God's "true" believers.

I wanted to try out this cake from Orangette, so I had Shyam, Thanuja, and Patrick over.   I didn't really notice the "fondant" in the title, so I wasn't expecting quite that high a goop factor.  Also, I'd been reading Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking which explains (among the other things), the mechanics of cakes. So I can understand what's going on a bit. This cake has no rising agent - no baking powder etc. The eggs aren't pre-beaten, so they don't carry air into the cake either. The key is in the granulated sugar, which traps air next to the crystals, and the beating in off the eggs by hand, which traps air bubbles in the batter. Since there's not much starch (I doubt the one measly tablespoon of flour does anything except help with the nice crackly crust), the finished cake kind of sinks into a goopy mass, which is pretty nice for hard-core chocolate fans, but isn't that cakey.  So even if the sugar all melted, and the batter wasn't beaten that hard, it doesn't really matter, because it'll be a goopy chocolaty mass anyway. 

I sprinkled a bit of Grand Marnier on it, and served it with crème fraîche and macerated strawberries, instead of the loose whipped cream. Next time, I'm going to try adding in quite a bit more flour (about 1/4 - 1/2 cup) and see how that changes the texture.  I'll post an update.

UPDATE:  Using 3 tbs of flour makes it almost solid, still moist.  I think I prefer the goop.

So Jenn called me on my last post and demanded hard numbers.  Here goes.

We're going to compare buying or renting a 1200 square foot 2 bedroom apartment on the west face of Capitol Hill.  For the sake of the example, we'll use a monthly rent of $1400 and a buying price of $400,000.  In today's market, this would be about right, though still on the high side for renting and on the low side for the purchase.

I'm going to assume an unmarried home buyer, in the top marginal income tax bracket -- since single high bracket people get the biggest tax advantage by buying.  We'll assume the current 30-year mortgage rate of 6% with no points, 1% property tax (King County's at about 11%, but assessments can lag about 10% behind market value), and that the seller pays closing costs of about 7% of sale price.

My calculations are based on rent, as well as the standard tax deduction increasing with inflation, and property tax being assessed on the market value of the house.  I compare two hypothetical people, one who buys and the other who rents.  The renter puts his down payment in a "safe" index fund.  Each month, the renter invests the difference between his rent and the buyer's monthly payment (mortgage plus property tax minus tax savings) in the fund.  Eventually, if/when the renters's rent becomes higher than the buyer's payment, the buyer puts his savings in a similar investment.  At the end of some number of years, the seller sells and pays the 7% closing costs on the sale, and we see who came out ahead. 

Assuming a 10% down payment ($40,000), 4.15% inflation, 8% return on the index fund, and 10% appreciation on the house, the buyer does better than the renter if he holds for even a year.  But even though real estate in the area has appreciated 15-20% in the last couple of years, this would be a speculative buy.  If real estate rises at just above inflation at 5%, the buyer breaks even in 4 years.   At 4.5%, it takes 6 years.  If it stagnates at the 4.15% inflation rate, it takes 8 years to break even.  If it nominally appreciates at 3.5% (depreciating in real terms), the buyer never catches up.

If inflation rises to 6%,  things get a bit better -  the buyer catches up in 10 years even at 3.5% appreciation, and 4.5% appreciation is enough to catch up in five years.  But if the stock market return goes up to 9% with inflation, then this goes back up to 8 years, but the renter eventually catches back up.  If inflation stays the same, and the stock market slows to 7%, the buyer needs 4.25% to catch up in five years. 

Finally, with a 20% down payment, thing's get worse --  it takes 8 years to break even at 4.5% appreciation and 5 years at 5%. 

The bottom line -- in the best case, it's not worth buying now unless you're pretty sure that real estate will appreciate faster than about 4.5% over the next few years.  Given that the real estate markets in the East and in California are starting to deflate, this means that you need to be sure that Seattle is very different. 

The conventional wisdom seems to be that renting is for suckers (linked from the Seattle Bubble blog). My father, my friends, the newspapers, the random guy I carpooled with, all tell me so. But is it really true? I finally ran the numbers to find out.

The arguments for buying (and why I don't necessarily buy them) are:

• Leverage -- You buy property using the bank's money. The idea is that if your property appreciates at a rate higher than the interest rate, you get to pocket the difference in the rates times the value of the house you bought. Since you take more risk in buying the house that the bank did in lending to you, and the real estate and debt markets are efficient, the property should appreciate faster than your interest rate. Why I don't buy it -- there's no free lunch. The only reason for property to appreciate faster is that there's higher risk. Leverage cuts both ways. If the property crashes, you still have to pay the bank. Leveraged half million dollar investments aren't exactly no-brainers.
• Tax treatment -- This is actually related to the previous point. Since taxes on primary/secondary residences are tax deductible, you get to pocket the taxes you would have paid on your interest. In effect, you're passing on a portion of the risk in owning to the federal government. I actually buy this argument. Though one caveat is that the effect of this shrinks fairly quickly, because mortgages front-load the interest.
• Hedge against inflation -- Rental costs rise with inflation, while a fixed mortgage is "locked in." And eventually you own your house, so you don't have to pay anyone. This is the argument in the renting is for suckers article. Of course, the article conveniently ignores property taxes. If the property appreciates significantly, so will the property taxes. For example, suppose the purchase price of a house is about 300 times its monthly rent (in Seattle, it's actually closer to 400). Say property taxes are 1% a year, inflation is 4.5% a year, and houses appreciate at 8% a year. By the end of a thirty year mortgage, property taxes will be about 70% of the rent -- nothing to sneeze at.

My conclusion: Yes, buying makes sense, if property appreciates at at least 4.5% to 5%  the next few years, but it's not the no brainer everyone seems to think it is -- and I've got the spreadsheet to prove it. Turns out small differences in appreciation rates and stock market returns make a big difference in the outcome.

9:30 am	4,300 ft	Started hiking up from the White River campground. Luckily, cloud cover protected us from the heat. The sources of the White river are the Inter and Emmons Glaciers, as well as the Winthrop Glacier which feeds the West Fork. The plan was to go up the White River Valley, and climb the Inter Glacier to the Emmons.
1:00 pm	6800 ft	Start ascending the Inter Glacier.
3:00 pm?	9,000 ft	Just above Camp Curtis. Camp Curtis is situated on a rocky ridge (Ruth Ridge) that seperates the Inter Glacier from the Emmons. From Camp Curtis, it's necessary to scramble down a few hundred feet onto the glacier. After a nice leisurely break, we needed to find out how to descend down onto the Emmons Glacier. Most parties coming down the Emmons from Camp Schurman seem to be descending past us, across a large crevasse, and then up the scree/rubble below Curtis to get to the Inter Glacier. A few others were taking different route that climbed up to us. We decided to take this route. The rock was pretty rotten, and loose. The bottom of the scramble led straight into a deep moat. Careful!!! We pass a party of three scrambling up. One of them is clearly a bit freaked out by the situation.
5:00 pm?	8,500 ft	The Emmons. We rope up into two rope teams (me and Geoff, Ciprian and Mike) and head up the Glacier. Only a couple of crevasses, easily navigated. Met a party coming down, and Geoff managed to buy a Thermarest for $20. A new way to travel light!!!
7:00 pm?	9,500 ft	Camp Schurman. Camp Schurman is at a huge rock formation (Steamboat Prow) which is the top of Ruth Ridge. It's actually possible to reach Schurman by scrambling then downclimbing from Curtis. Steamboat Prow is an impressive location, with the Emmons Glacier flowing down to the climber's left and the Winthrop Glacier flowing down to the climber's right. Geoff and Mike decide to set up their bivy sacks on the rock. Ciprian and I can't agree about where to set up the tent. There have been rumors of thunderstorms, so I think the rock would give us better drainage, Ciprian thinks the snow would protect the tent more. I suggest Rock, Paper, Scissors. The Romanian does not know the game. No coins being availalbe, he tosses a non-symmetric object (!!!), and I lose the toss. We set up the tent on the snow. Ciprian's water filter comes in handy, since there's conveinient melt-water at the edge of the rock. We start boiling water, eating, drinking water, using the facilities, etc. I had climbed with four liters of full-strength Cytomax. With the rate at which we were losing water at elevation, this turned out to be too much Cytomax and not enough water. For the next day, I packed three liters of dilute (half strength) Cytomax and a liter of pure water.
10:00 pm		Finally get some shut-eye. Large team of about 10 is starting for the summit already. Probably with Mountain Madness or the Mountaineers. Wake up a couple of times to go pee in a crevasse. It's the Diamox helping me acclimatize.
midnight		Wake up. Get dressed. Get our packs together. Boil water, rehydrate, refill. Last visit to the facilities. Rope up.
2:00 am		We're off.  Pretty soon, I taste blood at the back of my throat and I'm gasping for breath after every step. There's 65% as much oxygen in the air up here, 50% as much at the top.
3:30 am?	11,000 ft?	We're moving pretty briskly, and pass the large team that left early. Our pace is not sustainable, we slow down.
5:00 am?	12,000 ft?	Sunrise. We take a sit down break. The large team passes us again. I take pictures of the sunrise, and of Little Tahoma Peak below us.
7:30 am?	13,000 ft	Ciprian and Mike have pulled ahead. Geoff and I take a break, eat something. We meet a party of two coming up, in very good spirits, very good shape. Talk to Ciprian and Mike on the radio. They're at the bergshrund, 13500 ft.
9:00 am?	13,500 ft?	Just below the bergshrund, we run into another party of three. One of them is done for the day, physically and psychologically exhausted. His rope-mates have set a couple of snow anchors, and anchored him to it, and are  starting to climb for the summit without him. He's not too happy with the arrangement. I'm thankful that I'm with more sympathetic team-mates who'll turn around with me if the need arises. A bit later we cross the bergshrund onto the Winthrop Glacier.
10:00 am		We can see the crater rim above us. Ciprian radios down to expect a tricky crevasse crossing.  The strong team of two had unroped, and one of them had taken a crevasse fall, but luckily gotten wedged in.
11:00 am	14,200 ft	We reach the crater rim. Ciprian and Mike, as well as the party of two are waiting for us. The two-person team had done a much more gradual ascent, 3000 feet a day, camping at Camp Curtis, and bivying at just above 11,000 feet. They plan to sleep on the rim and head down the next day.
noon		We start heading down.
2:00 pm	12,000 ft	The going is slow. It's hot, Geoff's pretty beat, and we're running low on water.
3:00 pm	11,000 ft	We're out of water, and exhausted. Mike and Geoff switch packs because Mike's is lighter. Ciprian and Mike go on ahead. The plan now is to keep going without stopping, since we're losing water as we spend more time under the sun. Pretty miserable, and pretty tense, since it's late, and the snow's soft. I should have brought four liters of water and a liter of Cytomax instead of three of Cytomax and one of water.
4:00 pm	9,500 ft	Camp Schurman. Start drinking water, and try to lie down and catch my breath for a bit. I don't think I can go down without a night of sleep. Ciprian and Mike start trying to come up with a plan while Geoff and I try to sleep. Sleeping isn't working out for me. I can't breath lying down -- my breath gets pretty raspy. Either a lot of phlegm or altitude sickness (or both). I tell Mike about it, and we both know the solution is to descend ASAP.
6:30 pm		The ranger gives us some extra food. We eat, drink water, and refill our containers, and prepare to descend. Geoff and i try to rest up as much as we can. Ciprian takes my group gear (fuel, tent poles), breaks down the tent, and packs.
9:00 pm		We start descending as we lose light.
11:00 pm	8000 ft?	We reach the bottom of the scramble up Ruth Ridge. It's dark, and there doesn't seem to be an obvious way up. Geoff goes up by headlamp, and finds a way up. We scramble up after him.
midnight	8500 ft	On the Inter Glacier. Ciprian calls Dolo on my cellphone to let her know we're ok and still descending. Mike calls Julie. Apparently I have line of sight to the cell tower on Crystal mountain. Not sure if it's my phone (Cingular 2125/HTC Faraday) or the provider.  I'm tired, thirsty, and hungry. The snow's soft, and plunge steps sometimes turn into standing glissades. The descent is pretty miserable, but not without moments of humor  -- Ciprian takes a fall down a relatively safe slope and gets reprimanded by Geoff for leaving too much slack on the rope. "But I just fell and managed to arrest my fall."  "Well you should have called falling then."
2:00 am	6500 ft	We reach the end of the glacier, and are lost. We can't find the trail. We spend about an hour discussing what our options are and what we should do. I find a small piece of chocolate in my pack.  Mmmm.  Eventually, we backtrack a bit, and find a path across the rocky moraine.
4:00 am		We get to a stream, and Ciprian starts pumping water through his filter. Going is very slow -- the filter needs to be cleaned soon. Mike takes a nap, like he has whenever we've had a five minute pause. I decide to scout around, and go up the side of the valley, in search of the trail. Bad idea. I'm out of breath, and need to sit and catch my breath. And there's no sign of the trail. I head back to the others. I get back to Mike fast asleep, curled up on the rabbit path. Ciprian's putting his pad down on a flat rock. I put on my down jacket, lean my pack against a rock, put my pad on it, and fall asleep leaning up against it. Mike wakes up and puts on his down and puts his pad under him.
5:15 am		It's starting to be light out. We wake up, and discuss which way we should go. After about 15-20 minutes, we decide on the obvious course -- follow the path downhill. A few minutes in Ciprian realizes that we are on the trail. We hadn't realized it because of the dark and the exhaustion.
6:00 am	5700 ft	Mike still has delusions of making it to work in the morning. Mike and Geoff go on ahead.
8:00 am	4500 ft	Back at White River trailhead. Mike and Geoff attempt to drive to Seattle. They end up pulling up and sleeping by the roadside. After deciding we're never doing this again, Ciprian and I end up getting a room at Crystal and getting in a good day of sleep, before having a very nice meal and heading back to Seattle.

A week later, I'm thinking about my next trip up...

Pictures here and here.

So Washington just passed ballot initiative 901, banning smoking in public spaces and places of employment.  On first glance, you'd think this was a great idea, since we all know that smoking is bad for the health of those around the smoker.  On closer inspection, it seems a bit over-reaching.  First of all, it includes bars in its definition of "public places."  Bars without smoking seems kind of wrong, even though I hate the way my clothes smell when I get home.

But really, "feels wrong" is no good reason to oppose an initiative that protects people's health.  The "presumtively reasonable distance" clause, however, is.  It states that smoking is banned within 25 feet of doors, windows, and ventilation intakes etc of public places.  This means that on streets that are lined with bars, restaurants and other public places, there's NOWHERE a smoker may legally light up, except perhaps the midle of the street.  Seems a bit vindictive.

It gets worse.  Other than the $100 smoking tickets that local law enforcement can write to smokers, the local health department can issue $100 citations to the owner/management of the public place where this occurs.  Now, does this mean that an business can be fined $100 because someone was loitering outside, smoking a cigarette?    How exactly is the business supposed to prevent people from smoking outside?    Well, the initiative isn't clear on this.  Which is why I think it's a well-intentioned, but badly written/thought-out initiative that the voters should have rejected.  Perhaps the State Supreme Court will be good enough to do it for them, or at least provide clarity on the confusion/inequity brought about by the 25 foot rule.

And no, I don't smoke.  Disgusting habit. :)