http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html

• ‎Percentage of federal budget spent on "General Science, Space, and Technology": 0.85%
  
• ...or $31.45 billion, roughly 2-3 months of either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars alone.
• Percentage of federal budget spent on helping the elderly go on vacation for the last several decades of their lives: 38.6%
• Percentage of federal budget spent on interest for deficit spending: 6.8%, or 8 times what we spend on the general science research that drives economic growth.
• We spend 2.33 times as much on disability as we do on "General Science, Space, and Technology".  I'm not against society helping truely disabled people survive when their disability prevents them from being able to survive on their own, but my current apartment building is filled with people on disability who are perfectly capable of working despite whatever minor handicap they might have and others who have obviously brought their disability on themselves via their own irresponsibility.
  

Have fun with the graphic and post anything else you find interesting in the comments.

I am in a career that was my childhood dream job, but it's not a lucrative career.  Because of that, I have been growing steadily more obsessed with investing in stocks and mutual funds to provide myself financial security in the future.  I first started investing in March 2009, two weeks after what turned out to be the very lowest point the stock market reached during the Great Recession.  At the time, I knew I didn't know anything about stock other than 'buy low, sell high.'  So I started with the basic idea that--at this very unique time--all I needed to do was find some companies to buy stocks in which were down because everything was down, but would likely survive the recession.  General Electric and Tata Motors (of India) were two of the major companies I decided to invest in and I did indeed make a good percentage on them.  There were others I made money on, and a few lost quite a bit on.  Overall, I'm still ahead and convinced that recessions are a great opportunity for buying stocks--it's when they are at their lowest.

My obsession on this has only grown since and now, even though I don't currently have much that is still in stocks and little money to throw into them, I'm constantly searching for investing ideas.  So I watch the markets daily and keep an eye out for promising companies or new industries.  I've also gotten into mutual funds since I now have retirement accounts with Fidelity which are invested in mutual funds.  For those who don't know, mutual funds are a way to invest in a particular industry or financial sector without taking on the risk of having your money depend on the survival of a single company.  They are considered one step safer than stocks because the risk is spread over many companies, but there is the added layer of a middle(man/woman/team) who professionally look into particular stocks of companies and decide what is best to have in their porfolio.  Often, there are mutual funds that are connected to a particular industry, country, or region.  For instance, the 'Fidelity Housing and Construction' mutual fund is required to invest at least 80% in stocks related to companies in that industry.  Another is 'Fidelity EMEA' for 'emerging-Europe, Middle East, and Northern Africa, which is require to invest at least 80% in that region, but no particular industry.  Coincidentally, just days before the earthquake happened, I had moved money out of a couple of my retirement mutual funds that I no longer had faith in and moved them into 'Fidelity Japan'.

So, since I watch the markets daily, I happen to notice that the Japanese markets are down ~8% today and some companies like Toshiba are down ~16% because of the earthquake/tsunami.  As a scientist, I am already completely accustomed to removing all emotion and ego from the equation of solving a problem.  What's happened is terrible, but I'd be lying if I also didn't notice that it looks like it could be a rare golden investing opportunity.  Admittedly, my first impulse was: "Is it morally admissible to invest and make a profit off of other peoples' misery in such a way?"

I thought about it some and have come to the conclusion that consciously buying Japanese stocks/mutual funds as a result of this tragedy is okay.  Here are the points:

1. Did I cause the tragedy in question?  No, this an occurrence of nature that is obviously beyond my control.
2. Would my investment activities hurt anybody involved in this tragedy or otherwise?  No, I don't see how this could hurt anybody in any way.  Quite the contrary, a lot of Japanese companies are now liquidating their own investments to have cash on hand for reconstruction.  Stocks are a mechanism for companies to collect capital in return for dispersing partial ownership in a company.  Buying stocks in these companies actually, though indirectly, sends capital their direction and helps keep the valuation of their stock prices higher.  Further, the capital is being sent through an infrastructure that already exists for doing so, hopefully keeping the flow efficient.

So when I ignore that initial gut reaction and think through the situation objectively, I do not see a moral dilemma in investing in stocks/mutual funds that are lower as a result of tragedies that are beyond our control.

As always, I make a point to consider the possibility that there are arguments I may not have considered.  Does anybody have comments or criticisms?

Let be begin with a disclaimer: I am a physicist, not a biological anthropologist, though I find the latter fascinating as well.  As such, the argument I present here is intended purely as my own personal conjecture, although I also do not claim that it is my own original idea.  I remember parts from an introductory undergrad class I took.  The issue of women who cheat has been an issue in my family this past year and it has caused me to think a bit about the issue.  This is my attempt to get it out of by brain.  I welcome any comments or criticisms, especially by those with professional experience in biological anthropology.

The common perceptions are that men cheat and women don't, or that mean cheat because they are horny bastards and women cheat because they are looking to replace or find love that doesn't exist in their primary relationship.  Both of these pop-culture, over-simplified ideas presume that men are generally horny bastards and should be ashamed of themselves for it and that women have no innate desire for sexuality on it's own.  Rather, women usually do [or should] use their sexuality sparingly (since they don't have sex drives of their own), withholding it as much as possible to keep men interested or give them something to look forward to.  This is the traditional (pre-birth control) role of sexuality in a romantic relationship.  The opposite of this--women having sex sooner and more frequently in a relationship (or out of one), especially to indulge their own sexual desires--is frequently called "cheap" sex.  My retort is this: to those use espouse the use of sexuality by females to entice men into relationship, nothing "cheapens" the idea and practice of sexuality more than using sex as a commodity to be traded for something else, whether it be relationship entrapment or cold hard cash.  If you treat sexuality this way, the relationship you are trying to entrench is doomed from the start anyways.  Rooted at the core of the practice is a fundamental disrespect for your partner.  But this is not the anthropological part...

So what of the very common occurrence of married women who habitually cheat on their husbands, hide it well, and have no intention of leaving their relationships?  The traditional view tries to pretend this doesn't happen, or if it does happen it is very rare and the individual women are mindlessly dismissed as "sluts"--a perpetually ill-defined term in its own right.  But I leave that discussion for another day.

In nature, it is easy to understand why men cheat in their primary relationships.  Survival of the species depends on competition to spread genes.  Those who are best suited to survive and reproduce do so, beating out their immediate competitors and spreading "fitter" survival genes to the next generation.  Human children need years of nurture to survive to adulthood, and thus an age when they can reproduce themselves.  So the male-female long-term bonding is necessary for raising the children, but since a male can reproduce as often as he can copulate, having sex with many other females on the side only increases his genetic contribution to the next generation.  Some of those other children may not survive to a reproductive age, but it's just a bonus on top of his contribution in his primary relationship.  Women, however, need at least 9 months to have an offspring, and usually only one at a time.  Thus, it is understood that women are far more selective in who they are willing to breed with; they only have a few shots at reproducing so they need to get it right the first time. This also assumes that women tolerate the cheating.  I can think of a few reasons why, but that would be a digression from my current point.

So do the female humans in nature have a genetic, anthropological reason to cheat in their primary relationships?  I conjecture "yes".

When I was an undergrad, I took a couple of those "Intro. to Anthropology 101" type classes and found them very interesting.  I still remember one particular day when the professor claimed that there is one attribute in females that men are attracted to in every human culture on Earth, and that there is one attribute in males that females are attracted to in every culture on Earth.  Men in every culture tend to be attracted to a female waist-to-hip circumference ratio of 0.7 (or something like that, if I got the number wrong).  "Women in every culture are attracted to *he holds up his hand and rubs his thumb against his first two fingers, i.e. the "money" gesture*.  So whether wealth is measured by money, yams (some traditional African cultures, thank you Chinua Achebe), or whatever else, women are attracted to that.  This is also easy to understand, in a natural setting, the probability of an offspring surviving to reproductive age is far lower than modern times.  If, then, females are attracted to wealthy males and find one to partner with, why would they cheat?

Remember what I said about females only having a few shots a reproduction in their lifetimes.  The simple understanding is that these females find maximal probability of having offspring that survive to reproduction age by finding that wealthy male that can feed and protect them until they are old enough.  However, I posit that there is a reproductive strategy from the females' point of view that offers and even better probability of having their offspring survive to reproduction.  The man with the wealth and the man with the best genes are not always they same individual.  The female's goal is best met when she copulates with the male seen to have the strongest genes (typically manifesting in what we now call sexual attractiveness), but has the wealthy life-partner raise the children thinking they are his.  If this conjures the modern-parallel image of the wealthy socialite wife in a mansion nailing the buff pool-boy on the side, it should.  Keep in mind also that this whole strategy is predicated on the assumption that the wealthy male does not know of her cheating, so women are also biologically selected and therefore predisposed of being very convincing liars concerning their faithfulness.

If you are a wealthy man and you have a wife that is considerably hotter than you are, you better damn well assume that she may be cheating on you eventually, if not already.  You are deluded if you think otherwise, but the egos of many wealthy men--especially those born into wealth--leave them permanently deluded (and also cheaters themselves) anyways.  It's natural.