... continues to be one of my favorite economic blogs.
This is an interesting piece on how economists are often "perplexed"
WSJ: "After the economy navigated a brutal hurricane season to post robust growth in the third quarter of 2005, growth cooled considerably in the fourth quarter. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of U.S. economic output, increased at just a 1.1% seasonally adjusted annual rate as free-spending consumers became more cautious and the gaping trade deficit continued to provide a drag on the expansion. For all of 2005, GDP growth averaged a 3.5% annual rate. What does the slowdown in the fourth quarter mean for the economy in the months ahead?
Economists weigh in with their reactions:
"In both its overall appearance and underlying detail, the 1.1% fourth quarter growth in real GDP ranks as the most perplexing report in memory. At face value, such weakness would seem to make it more difficult for the Fed to tighten monetary policy again. But the underlying details reinforce -- if not increase -- perceptions that much faster growth lies ahead. Nonetheless, the confusing and conflicting contradictions with other data make it difficult to be confident in any inferences about the outlook."
-- David Resler and Gerald Zukowski, Nomura Securities International
* * *
"Consumer spending was actually a little better than expected, rising by 1.1% in the quarter vs. our forecast of +0.3%. I think more of the decline in auto sales was apportioned to the business sector (fleet sales) and less to the retail side than we expected. Housing posted a reasonable gain of 3.5%, but this was less than half of our assumed rise. The monthly source data pointed to a bigger gain, so this is a bit puzzling."
-- Stephen Stanley, RBS Greenwich Capital
* * *
"The consensus was a bit optimistic but this is a big surprise. The softness against our 2.6% forecast is explained by two components, fixed investment and government consumption. The former rose only 3.0%, with equipment and software up only 3.5%. This is baffling, given the 19.5% annualized leap in the value of capital goods production and the 14.9% rise in shipments of core nondefense capital goods. We expect big upward revisions."
-- Ian Shepherdson, High Frequency Economics
* * *
"While this was a disappointing report, there are signs of a very sharp rebound in GDP growth in the current quarter. First, much of the miss in fourth-quarter inventories is likely to spill over to the first quarter. Second, at least a partial rebound in defense appears likely. Finally, the ramp for consumption spending is even more favorable in the aftermath of the fourth quarter data. The bottom line is that we now see a very good possibility of 5%+ GDP growth in Q1 -- versus our prior estimate of +4.2%."
-- David Greenlaw and Ted Wieseman, Morgan Stanley
Monday, January 30, 2006
Liftport Art
I have long been fascinated by the idea of a skyhook, a platform in geosynchronous orbit at the equator with a cable/powered-lift-system/rope-ladder hanging down that can be used to reach orbit cheaply. IF the human race is actually going to leave the planet, AND there is no technologizable change in the physics of inertia, THEN we need a sky hook.
Liftport has a terrific gallery of what the platform migh tlook like.
Liftport has a terrific gallery of what the platform migh tlook like.
Headline: People Make Poor Decisions!
Especially when it comes to politics:
Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.
…
"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," … "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."
Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.
…
"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," … "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."
Friday, January 27, 2006
Revenge Is A DIsh Best Served At High Volume
This is just beautiful. Read to the bottom for the payoff.
Right for the Wrong Reason
While I agree with his thesis, I think his arguement is actually wrong.
Fortunately some folks help out in the comments section.
Fortunately some folks help out in the comments section.
The technical term for this phenomena is called "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
A good rant on the physics of "go" verses the physics of "stop"
If anything, 4 wheel drive merely allows you to get yourself into more dangerous situations. We saw a Porsche 911 fishtailing all over the road. He was aware of his limitations in the snow and was going 30 mph. His torquey, rear wheel drive system had little in the way of traction in the snow -- and he knew it. He crept along in the right lane and still ran into some trouble. (On the other hand, I drove our rear wheel drive SLK home from White Plains Christmas Day 2002 in 6 inches of snow -- it took 3 and half hours versus the usual 60 minutes. I had no problem, but that's mostly because I am not an idiot.)
Now back to our 70 mph snow fools: In the event of loss of traction -- not too hard to imagine in 4 inches of snow -- you are merely a two ton hunk of steel sliding across a frictionless surface until you either regain directional control or run into some mass which stops you. Your Anti-Lock Brake System (ABS) is useless when your tires cannot make contact with the pavement. Modulating brake lock up when snowplaning on a 2 inch cushion of white stuff does you no good whatsoever. The technical term for this phenomena is called "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
If anything, 4 wheel drive merely allows you to get yourself into more dangerous situations. We saw a Porsche 911 fishtailing all over the road. He was aware of his limitations in the snow and was going 30 mph. His torquey, rear wheel drive system had little in the way of traction in the snow -- and he knew it. He crept along in the right lane and still ran into some trouble. (On the other hand, I drove our rear wheel drive SLK home from White Plains Christmas Day 2002 in 6 inches of snow -- it took 3 and half hours versus the usual 60 minutes. I had no problem, but that's mostly because I am not an idiot.)
Now back to our 70 mph snow fools: In the event of loss of traction -- not too hard to imagine in 4 inches of snow -- you are merely a two ton hunk of steel sliding across a frictionless surface until you either regain directional control or run into some mass which stops you. Your Anti-Lock Brake System (ABS) is useless when your tires cannot make contact with the pavement. Modulating brake lock up when snowplaning on a 2 inch cushion of white stuff does you no good whatsoever. The technical term for this phenomena is called "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
The Singularity (again)
Article by CertCo alum Frank Sudia posted over at KAI
If you worked for CertoCo and are scratching your head over who this is, I wouldn't be surprised. But if you were at Steptoe&Johnson or delt with the patents, then you know Frank.
Also, I must confess, despite the fact that I am not willing to take the existance of the singualrity as an obvious, forgone conclusion, I had thought of something very much like this.
That is to say me, and everyone else on the planet who has read David Brin's Earth.
If you worked for CertoCo and are scratching your head over who this is, I wouldn't be surprised. But if you were at Steptoe&Johnson or delt with the patents, then you know Frank.
Also, I must confess, despite the fact that I am not willing to take the existance of the singualrity as an obvious, forgone conclusion, I had thought of something very much like this.
That is to say me, and everyone else on the planet who has read David Brin's Earth.
Bumper Sticker == Serving In Iraq
That bastion of all that is right in Red State Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum:
“And yet we have brave men and women who are willing to step forward because they know what’s at stake. They’re willing to sacrifice their lives for this great country.
What I am asking all of you tonight, is not to put on a uniform. Put on a bumper sticker. Is it that much to ask? Is it that much to ask to step up and serve your country, to fight for what we believe in. To fight for the values that have made this the country the greatest count- we got her not because we were doing things really wrong, that our traditions and our morals were way out of whack, we got here because we were a good decent county. A country guided by divine Providence.
We will only stay that great country if we continue that fight. I’m asking ya to help me do that. God Bless you. Thank you.”
(via)
Where do people get ideas like this and why do they allow these people in public without their meds?
This pretty much sums it up for me.
“And yet we have brave men and women who are willing to step forward because they know what’s at stake. They’re willing to sacrifice their lives for this great country.
What I am asking all of you tonight, is not to put on a uniform. Put on a bumper sticker. Is it that much to ask? Is it that much to ask to step up and serve your country, to fight for what we believe in. To fight for the values that have made this the country the greatest count- we got her not because we were doing things really wrong, that our traditions and our morals were way out of whack, we got here because we were a good decent county. A country guided by divine Providence.
We will only stay that great country if we continue that fight. I’m asking ya to help me do that. God Bless you. Thank you.”
(via)
Where do people get ideas like this and why do they allow these people in public without their meds?
This pretty much sums it up for me.
If She is the Wonkette, is He...
the Wonker? Glenn Reynolds is subbing in for Ann Marie. Does he capture the irrepressible libidinal rauchieness that is the Wonkette and her charm?
You be the judge:
http://www.wonkette.com/politics//surprise-surprise-surpriiiise-150555.php
I'd say largely, yes!
You be the judge:
http://www.wonkette.com/politics//surprise-surprise-surpriiiise-150555.php
I'd say largely, yes!
How to Answer The Door
Here, although you have to read a bit to tget to the funny part.
The Temple got its name from an early commercial that my group, KU SOMA, shot for the college local-access TV station, to advertise our existance. The commercial was called "How to Answer the Door", and was made largely in reaction to a rash of door-to-door religion salespersons who had been causing quite a bit of amusement in our secular (read "lost") liberal town of Lawrence, Kansas.So we took advantage.
Cue the first shot, a standard old house in this town, with a cute front porch and a big white door. A narrator's voice booms, "How to answer the door, presented by KU SOMA."In the first scene, my girlfriend and I dressed up as a classic Southern Baptist televangelist and his dutiful wife. I hairsprayed my curls up into the most appalling bouffant hairdo I could manage, and held up a Bible to the spikey-haired SOMA chick, Becca, as she answered the door.
In my worst southern accent, I screamed at her, "DO YEW HAVE PRUH-TECK-SHUN FROM THE E-TURNAL FAHR!?" (Do you have protection from the eternal fire) In answer, she pulls back, grabs a fire extinguisher from beside the door, and blasts us with it. Let me tell you, THAT was fun to film!! As we throw up our hands amid the blast, the screen freeze-frames, and a red circle-with-slash graphic comes up over the scene, a buzzer sounds, and a voice admonishes, "NO!"
No! Bad Atheist! No Donut!
The Temple got its name from an early commercial that my group, KU SOMA, shot for the college local-access TV station, to advertise our existance. The commercial was called "How to Answer the Door", and was made largely in reaction to a rash of door-to-door religion salespersons who had been causing quite a bit of amusement in our secular (read "lost") liberal town of Lawrence, Kansas.So we took advantage.
Cue the first shot, a standard old house in this town, with a cute front porch and a big white door. A narrator's voice booms, "How to answer the door, presented by KU SOMA."In the first scene, my girlfriend and I dressed up as a classic Southern Baptist televangelist and his dutiful wife. I hairsprayed my curls up into the most appalling bouffant hairdo I could manage, and held up a Bible to the spikey-haired SOMA chick, Becca, as she answered the door.
In my worst southern accent, I screamed at her, "DO YEW HAVE PRUH-TECK-SHUN FROM THE E-TURNAL FAHR!?" (Do you have protection from the eternal fire) In answer, she pulls back, grabs a fire extinguisher from beside the door, and blasts us with it. Let me tell you, THAT was fun to film!! As we throw up our hands amid the blast, the screen freeze-frames, and a red circle-with-slash graphic comes up over the scene, a buzzer sounds, and a voice admonishes, "NO!"
No! Bad Atheist! No Donut!
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Centralia
Centralia PA made the news quite a bit in the late 70s and early 80s when I liven in Pennsylvania, famous fo rthe undergorund fire that had been burning for almost 20 years at that point.
It's good to know that, in the intervening 25 years the free market has finally solved the problem, the fires are out and land value in Centralia is on the rise.
Oh, wait a minute...
In 1983, there was fire under about 350 surface acres. By 1991, this area had been increased by about three-quarters. Worst case scenario would be about 3700 acres and possibly a hundred years. Finally 26 homes along Route 61 west of town were bought in April of 1991. There were no further plans to fight the fire. The population of Centralia as of 4/18/97 was 44 people and has dwindled since. There are just a few scattered homes today remaining in the town along with the borough hall. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania owns the remaining homes. The monetary value of each property is in escrow or tied up in the legal system. Until the remaining people move, the future of this town is unknown. The State is being very lenient at this time. The State owns the homes but the remaining people are still paying the property taxes on the houses.
Looks like neither the government nor the free markets have a workable solution here.
It's good to know that, in the intervening 25 years the free market has finally solved the problem, the fires are out and land value in Centralia is on the rise.
Oh, wait a minute...
In 1983, there was fire under about 350 surface acres. By 1991, this area had been increased by about three-quarters. Worst case scenario would be about 3700 acres and possibly a hundred years. Finally 26 homes along Route 61 west of town were bought in April of 1991. There were no further plans to fight the fire. The population of Centralia as of 4/18/97 was 44 people and has dwindled since. There are just a few scattered homes today remaining in the town along with the borough hall. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania owns the remaining homes. The monetary value of each property is in escrow or tied up in the legal system. Until the remaining people move, the future of this town is unknown. The State is being very lenient at this time. The State owns the homes but the remaining people are still paying the property taxes on the houses.
Looks like neither the government nor the free markets have a workable solution here.
Jesus Quiz
I picked this up from Nick who got it from Travis.
I tried to answer honestly but many of the questions conflate 2 or more ideas making it hard to give a single answer that make sense.
My result:
I note that there is no Atheist, Diest or Unbeleive category. This seems flawed but the framework of the test seems to presuppose belief.
I tried to answer honestly but many of the questions conflate 2 or more ideas making it hard to give a single answer that make sense.
My result:
You scored as Pelagianism. You are a Pelagian. You reject ideas about man's fallen human nature and believe that as a result we are able to fully obey God. You are the first Briton to contribute significantly to Christian thought, but you're still excommunicated in 417.
Are you a heretic? created with QuizFarm.com |
I note that there is no Atheist, Diest or Unbeleive category. This seems flawed but the framework of the test seems to presuppose belief.
Monday, January 23, 2006
The Conservative Zappa
Frank Zappa strongly influenced my views around liberty and "conservatism".
Here is a terrific piece with him defending the conservativism from the religious right on Crossfire in 1986.
Here it is 20 years later and we've largely lost this battle. The religious advocate is spouting the same big government, anti-free market solutions which make the positions of the far left equally unworkable.
Watch it all, it's worth your time (plus it has a young Robert Novak)
Here is a terrific piece with him defending the conservativism from the religious right on Crossfire in 1986.
Here it is 20 years later and we've largely lost this battle. The religious advocate is spouting the same big government, anti-free market solutions which make the positions of the far left equally unworkable.
Watch it all, it's worth your time (plus it has a young Robert Novak)
Sci Fi News
Some good bits over at this week's Sci Fi Weekly:
Sci Fi Channel to air new Doctor Who:
SCI FI Channel announced Jan. 12 that it will air the first season of the BBC's hit SF series Doctor Who, starting in March. The 13 episodes, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, will air as part of SCI FI Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
This is excellent news, as the new series is superlative.
Serenity Might Fly Again?
Loni Peristere, visual-effects supervisor for the SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that there's hope for future flights of the cast and crew of the movie, which just came out on DVD. Director Joss Whedon—who also created the canceled Fox TV show Firefly, on which the movie is based—expected that the movie might draw the low numbers it did in its theatrical release, Peristere said in an interview. But he added that the movie's sales on DVD, which came out on Dec. 20, are running neck-and-neck with the hit comedy Wedding Crashers, which bodes well for a possible Serenity sequel.
I've still never seen Firefly or Serenity, but I've stopped admitting that in public. Too many times my admitting of this lapse has been greeted with that slack-jawed, bug-eyed, lip-flapping, I-cant-believe-you-took-a-shit-in-the-confessional-and-now-I-have-to-go-in-there look I know so well.
I'll catch it on DVD.
OTOH, the Sci-Fi gods give with one hand and take with the other:
WB Nets Its Aquaman
After a three-month search, The WB has cast 28-year-old newcomer Will Toale as the star of its upcoming Aquaman series, created by Smallville producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, Variety reported. The Florida-born Toale worked as a model before landing a supporting role in A Streetcar Named Desire at Broadway's Roundabout Theater alongside Natasha Richardson and John C. Reilly. Toale beat out 400 contenders in England, Australia, Canada and several U.S. cities, Gough told the trade paper. The pilot will shoot in March, probably in Miami. The series is expected to be a signature offering next fall for the network and Warner Brothers TV. In the show, the aquatic superhero will be Arthur Curry, who owns a dive shop.
They could do worse than casting the hottie that played Aquaboy in the Smallville episode, but the casting directors never listen to me...
Sci Fi Channel to air new Doctor Who:
SCI FI Channel announced Jan. 12 that it will air the first season of the BBC's hit SF series Doctor Who, starting in March. The 13 episodes, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, will air as part of SCI FI Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
This is excellent news, as the new series is superlative.
Serenity Might Fly Again?
Loni Peristere, visual-effects supervisor for the SF movie Serenity, told SCI FI Wire that there's hope for future flights of the cast and crew of the movie, which just came out on DVD. Director Joss Whedon—who also created the canceled Fox TV show Firefly, on which the movie is based—expected that the movie might draw the low numbers it did in its theatrical release, Peristere said in an interview. But he added that the movie's sales on DVD, which came out on Dec. 20, are running neck-and-neck with the hit comedy Wedding Crashers, which bodes well for a possible Serenity sequel.
I've still never seen Firefly or Serenity, but I've stopped admitting that in public. Too many times my admitting of this lapse has been greeted with that slack-jawed, bug-eyed, lip-flapping, I-cant-believe-you-took-a-shit-in-the-confessional-and-now-I-have-to-go-in-there look I know so well.
I'll catch it on DVD.
OTOH, the Sci-Fi gods give with one hand and take with the other:
WB Nets Its Aquaman
After a three-month search, The WB has cast 28-year-old newcomer Will Toale as the star of its upcoming Aquaman series, created by Smallville producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, Variety reported. The Florida-born Toale worked as a model before landing a supporting role in A Streetcar Named Desire at Broadway's Roundabout Theater alongside Natasha Richardson and John C. Reilly. Toale beat out 400 contenders in England, Australia, Canada and several U.S. cities, Gough told the trade paper. The pilot will shoot in March, probably in Miami. The series is expected to be a signature offering next fall for the network and Warner Brothers TV. In the show, the aquatic superhero will be Arthur Curry, who owns a dive shop.
They could do worse than casting the hottie that played Aquaboy in the Smallville episode, but the casting directors never listen to me...
The Two Precent Company
Got there following a thread leading to this, but overall it's a good site and now on my browser favorites list.
Someday, you may be robbed at gunpoint. If that happens, will you call out to Batman to help you?
Some others say: "Who knows what I might do in a time of extreme stress — maybe for a moment, Batman might seem like a good option." Our response here is to acknowledge that sometimes terror can overtake logic, but that in the end, when the stressful situation is over, it's important to return to your senses, and understand that there really is no Batman.
Someday, you may be robbed at gunpoint. If that happens, will you call out to Batman to help you?
Some others say: "Who knows what I might do in a time of extreme stress — maybe for a moment, Batman might seem like a good option." Our response here is to acknowledge that sometimes terror can overtake logic, but that in the end, when the stressful situation is over, it's important to return to your senses, and understand that there really is no Batman.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
The Sandwich Strategy
A clever marketing strategy:
Branding pharmaceuticals to block generics
Interesting discussion today in the branding/positioning class about branding in the pharma industry.
We talked about how the patent on Prilosec (anti-heartburn) was expiring. It was selling for $3.95 per pill. Instead of accepting that generics would kill the market share of Prilosec, Pfizer pulled a marketing sandwich approach.
Prizer knew that the generics would sell at 61 cents each. Pfizer headed them off at the pass by releasing an over-the-counter version of Prilosec called Prilosec OTC and selling for 71 cents each. At the same time, Pfizer modified the formula/molecule, applied for a new patent, and released the new formula as Nexium, “The Purple Pill,” selling for $4.95 per pill. Prilosec users went to Nexium and paid the premium. And, the OTC version attracted new users and blocked the generics.
Basic marketing pricing strategy, but genius nonetheless.
So, Viagra will soon have a generic version to contend with. The generic name is mydixafloppin.
Yes, that was a long way to go for a short joke.
Branding pharmaceuticals to block generics
Interesting discussion today in the branding/positioning class about branding in the pharma industry.
We talked about how the patent on Prilosec (anti-heartburn) was expiring. It was selling for $3.95 per pill. Instead of accepting that generics would kill the market share of Prilosec, Pfizer pulled a marketing sandwich approach.
Prizer knew that the generics would sell at 61 cents each. Pfizer headed them off at the pass by releasing an over-the-counter version of Prilosec called Prilosec OTC and selling for 71 cents each. At the same time, Pfizer modified the formula/molecule, applied for a new patent, and released the new formula as Nexium, “The Purple Pill,” selling for $4.95 per pill. Prilosec users went to Nexium and paid the premium. And, the OTC version attracted new users and blocked the generics.
Basic marketing pricing strategy, but genius nonetheless.
So, Viagra will soon have a generic version to contend with. The generic name is mydixafloppin.
Yes, that was a long way to go for a short joke.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Intellectual Property Rights
Hey! Oracle can't use this template, it's Microsoft's!!
For journalists covering Oracle..
2004-08-04: 34 flaws found in Oracle database software2004-09-03: US gov and sec firms warn of critical Oracle flaws2004-10-15: Oracle Warns of Critical Exploits2005-01-20: Oracle Patch Fixes 23 ‘Critical’ Vulnerabilities2005-10-19: Oracle fixes bugs with mega patch2006-01-18: Oracle fixes pile of bugs
In the interest of helping journalists cover Oracle.. perhaps they should just move to a templated form to save time?
—
Many of the flaws have been deemed critical by Oracle, meaning they are trivial to exploit, were likely discovered around 880 days ago, and are trivially abused by low to moderately skilled [HACKERS/ATTACKERS/CRACKERS]. Some of these flaws may be used in the next worm-of-the-week.
“[DULL_QUOTE_FROM_COMPANY_WHO_DISCOVERED_0_OF_THE_FLAWS]” security company [COMPANY] said yesterday as they upped their internet risk warning system number (IRWSN) to [ARBITRARY_NUMBER]. “This is another example of why our products will help protect customers who chose to deploy Oracle software” [ARBITRARY_CSO_NAME] stated.
“[BULLSHIT_QUOTE_ABOUT_PROACTIVE_SECURITY_FROM_ORACLE” countered Mary Ann Davidson, CSO at Oracle. “These hackers providing us with free security testing and showing their impatience after a mere 880 days are what causes problems. If these jackass criminals would stop being hackers, our products would not be broken into and our customers would stay safe!”
Oracle has been criticized for being slow to fix security flaws by everyone ranging from L0rD D1cKw4v3R to US-CERT to the Pope.
For journalists covering Oracle..
2004-08-04: 34 flaws found in Oracle database software2004-09-03: US gov and sec firms warn of critical Oracle flaws2004-10-15: Oracle Warns of Critical Exploits2005-01-20: Oracle Patch Fixes 23 ‘Critical’ Vulnerabilities2005-10-19: Oracle fixes bugs with mega patch2006-01-18: Oracle fixes pile of bugs
In the interest of helping journalists cover Oracle.. perhaps they should just move to a templated form to save time?
—
Many of the flaws have been deemed critical by Oracle, meaning they are trivial to exploit, were likely discovered around 880 days ago, and are trivially abused by low to moderately skilled [HACKERS/ATTACKERS/CRACKERS]. Some of these flaws may be used in the next worm-of-the-week.
“[DULL_QUOTE_FROM_COMPANY_WHO_DISCOVERED_0_OF_THE_FLAWS]” security company [COMPANY] said yesterday as they upped their internet risk warning system number (IRWSN) to [ARBITRARY_NUMBER]. “This is another example of why our products will help protect customers who chose to deploy Oracle software” [ARBITRARY_CSO_NAME] stated.
“[BULLSHIT_QUOTE_ABOUT_PROACTIVE_SECURITY_FROM_ORACLE” countered Mary Ann Davidson, CSO at Oracle. “These hackers providing us with free security testing and showing their impatience after a mere 880 days are what causes problems. If these jackass criminals would stop being hackers, our products would not be broken into and our customers would stay safe!”
Oracle has been criticized for being slow to fix security flaws by everyone ranging from L0rD D1cKw4v3R to US-CERT to the Pope.
Well Said
I was looking at the blog of one of the commenters, Jake, and found this little gem:
Interestingly suicide, in many circumstanes, is still illegal. The government does not have the right to tell you whether you can take your own life. This is clear. Their interest in your life is also clear. The governement takes strong issue with taxpayers excusing themsleves from their duty to the state.
Interestingly suicide, in many circumstanes, is still illegal. The government does not have the right to tell you whether you can take your own life. This is clear. Their interest in your life is also clear. The governement takes strong issue with taxpayers excusing themsleves from their duty to the state.
Remember?
I'm appalled at how many of these things I remember although, to be fair, it was all winding down and there was an air of nostoglia about them even then. Still, I have a pretty good memory of being 3,4 and 5 years old and no small subset of these were part of life...
metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers (I don't really remember this one)
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Black Jack, Clove, and Beemans chewing gum (nope)
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie (no)
P.F. Flyers
Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines
Peashooters
Howdy Doody(no, not even in reruns)
45 RPM records/78 RPM, too
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's
Ugh! My life is a cliche!
metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers (I don't really remember this one)
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Black Jack, Clove, and Beemans chewing gum (nope)
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie (no)
P.F. Flyers
Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines
Peashooters
Howdy Doody(no, not even in reruns)
45 RPM records/78 RPM, too
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's
Ugh! My life is a cliche!
A Late Christmas Gift
I received, to my complete surprise, a late christmas gift from my sister. A 35lb box of books, mostly related to stuff talked about in The DeVinci Code. I was pretty happy with the gift, and uncommonly proud of my sister for done the reseach to choose them.
But that wasn't the best part.
Tucked away in there was a framed picture, which at first I took to be a picture of her from our childhood. "I remember this, " I thought. "This was her picture from the house on Brookside Drive. Why would she send this one? That's odd..."
Then I noticed the hair was very slightly different, a little fuller than I remembered it, the cheekbones were slightly off, the smile slightly different and I realized...
"This is Alexa. Wow! Does she look like her mother! Wow!"
She is the spitting image of her mother. Ain't genetics keen!
But that wasn't the best part.
Tucked away in there was a framed picture, which at first I took to be a picture of her from our childhood. "I remember this, " I thought. "This was her picture from the house on Brookside Drive. Why would she send this one? That's odd..."
Then I noticed the hair was very slightly different, a little fuller than I remembered it, the cheekbones were slightly off, the smile slightly different and I realized...
"This is Alexa. Wow! Does she look like her mother! Wow!"
She is the spitting image of her mother. Ain't genetics keen!
2050
An interesting article on 2050 and why there is some cause for..., well I won't say optimism, I'll say, "a break from the relentless pessimism I usually associate with where I think we'll actually end up".
Thursday, officials released a five-volume coda to the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an ambitious four-year attempt to explore the relationship between the environment and human development. Summary reports of the findings as they affected four international environmental treaties were released last year. These new volumes represent the detailed information that underpins the earlier reports.
I peeked at an advanced copy of this I got from a meeting in September. It's pretty good. I was a little dissappointed to find some of my Looking Backwards events had already been thought through.
By 2050, it estimates that the highly global approach - with liberal trade policies, and concerted efforts to reduce poverty, improve education and public health, yet respond reactively to environmental issues - could yield the lowest population growth and the highest economic growth. But the environmental scorecard would be mixed.
In a fragmented world that focuses largely on security and regional markets and takes a reactive approach to ecological problems, economic growth rates are the lowest and the population is the highest of the four pathways.
Two other paths, which place a greater emphasis on technology and a proactive approach to the environment, yield population growth rates somewhere in the middle, and economic growth rates that may be slow at first, but accelerate with time.
Of course, in 2050, some folks will be living in their asteroid harems, guarded by a benign super-intelligence and propelled there by magic (or at least physics that does require the use of calculus to understand). Why not trash the planet now? It's not like we'll have to live here or anything.
Thursday, officials released a five-volume coda to the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an ambitious four-year attempt to explore the relationship between the environment and human development. Summary reports of the findings as they affected four international environmental treaties were released last year. These new volumes represent the detailed information that underpins the earlier reports.
I peeked at an advanced copy of this I got from a meeting in September. It's pretty good. I was a little dissappointed to find some of my Looking Backwards events had already been thought through.
By 2050, it estimates that the highly global approach - with liberal trade policies, and concerted efforts to reduce poverty, improve education and public health, yet respond reactively to environmental issues - could yield the lowest population growth and the highest economic growth. But the environmental scorecard would be mixed.
In a fragmented world that focuses largely on security and regional markets and takes a reactive approach to ecological problems, economic growth rates are the lowest and the population is the highest of the four pathways.
Two other paths, which place a greater emphasis on technology and a proactive approach to the environment, yield population growth rates somewhere in the middle, and economic growth rates that may be slow at first, but accelerate with time.
Of course, in 2050, some folks will be living in their asteroid harems, guarded by a benign super-intelligence and propelled there by magic (or at least physics that does require the use of calculus to understand). Why not trash the planet now? It's not like we'll have to live here or anything.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Warning: Euphemisms Ahead!
I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet, but becuase I haven't been living in an Afgan cave with Osama Bin Laden, Elvis and the Ghost of Christmas Past, I have a vauge idea of what it's about.
Appearently, it's all about candy.
It's on Brokeback Mountain that Jack and Ennis discover their mutual love of candy. Because candy is not something cowboys and "real men" normally get excited about, Ennis and Jack resist their urge for sweets, but after awhile, it gets the better of them. One night, Jack looks at Ennis and asks him if he likes fudge. Well, it turns out that Ennis loves fudge. In fact, they both love fudge so much that they're certain everyone they know would like fudge and they should send them some fudge, so the two of them spend a lot of time on Brokeback packing fudge. And not only do they discover they like regular fudge, but that fudge with nuts is excellent too!
Appearently, it's all about candy.
It's on Brokeback Mountain that Jack and Ennis discover their mutual love of candy. Because candy is not something cowboys and "real men" normally get excited about, Ennis and Jack resist their urge for sweets, but after awhile, it gets the better of them. One night, Jack looks at Ennis and asks him if he likes fudge. Well, it turns out that Ennis loves fudge. In fact, they both love fudge so much that they're certain everyone they know would like fudge and they should send them some fudge, so the two of them spend a lot of time on Brokeback packing fudge. And not only do they discover they like regular fudge, but that fudge with nuts is excellent too!
Google cut to 'sell'
You knew this was going to happen. I only regret I sold at $400, not $450
It had to happen one day. An analyst said Google (GOOG, news, msgs) is too expensive.
Scott Devitt, analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus, cut the search-engine company to "sell" from "hold." The fact is that when you purchase a stock, you purchase a business, and Google's cash flow over the next three to five year can't justify the current price, Devitt told CNBC's "Squawk Box."
And it was Yahoo's poor results that indicated the turning point for Google, he said.
"When dealing with a cult stock you have to deal with a change in sentiment," Devitt said. "Yahoo's missed number is a leading indicator for change in online advertising."
Shares of Google sank 3.1% in midday trading.
It had to happen one day. An analyst said Google (GOOG, news, msgs) is too expensive.
Scott Devitt, analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus, cut the search-engine company to "sell" from "hold." The fact is that when you purchase a stock, you purchase a business, and Google's cash flow over the next three to five year can't justify the current price, Devitt told CNBC's "Squawk Box."
And it was Yahoo's poor results that indicated the turning point for Google, he said.
"When dealing with a cult stock you have to deal with a change in sentiment," Devitt said. "Yahoo's missed number is a leading indicator for change in online advertising."
Shares of Google sank 3.1% in midday trading.
Doctor Fun
Doctor Fun is still alive! He was one of the first humorists on the internet back in the Eldar Days (the Eldar Days were back when I was in grad school and most of you had never heard of this internet thingy).
I lost track of this about 10 years ago, so I'm pretty excited.
Enjoy!
Update: From the Doctor Fun FAQ
Is Doctor Fun the oldest comic on the Internet?
No. That would be "Where the Buffalo Roam" by Hans Bjordahl. "Where the Buffalo Roam" started in 1991, and had its own Usenet group long before Doctor Fun came along, and is still running on the web.
Was Doctor Fun the first cartoon on the World Wide Web?
There you go! You've got it - Doctor Fun was the first cartoon on the World Wide Web.
Here's the announcement from NCSA. (Of course, that link to the cartoon doesn't go anywhere now.)
I lost track of this about 10 years ago, so I'm pretty excited.
Enjoy!
Update: From the Doctor Fun FAQ
Is Doctor Fun the oldest comic on the Internet?
No. That would be "Where the Buffalo Roam" by Hans Bjordahl. "Where the Buffalo Roam" started in 1991, and had its own Usenet group long before Doctor Fun came along, and is still running on the web.
Was Doctor Fun the first cartoon on the World Wide Web?
There you go! You've got it - Doctor Fun was the first cartoon on the World Wide Web.
Here's the announcement from NCSA. (Of course, that link to the cartoon doesn't go anywhere now.)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
100 Year Dow Jones Industrials Chart
Interesting, although there seems to be some arbitrariness to someof his time frames.
I won't comment on some of the logic he uses to ascribe events to causes, but it does show an interesting periodicty.
I won't comment on some of the logic he uses to ascribe events to causes, but it does show an interesting periodicty.
Why Do The Terrorists Hate Us?
Behold the Republican Vision for America
The angels are just over the top.
Writer: "Errr.. I don't remember there being angels in this..."
Director: "What do you mean?"
Writer: "Well, I didn't write them in. Where did they come from?"
Director:"Wha.. What do you mean? They came from Heaven!"
Writer:"... sigh... Why did they come from Heaven?"
Director:"??? What do you mean? They are angels! You can never have enough angels!"
Writer:" err... okay. But do they have to fly out of his ass?"
Director:"They aren't flying out of his ass, they are spreading the Spirit of America!"
Writer:"From his ass?"
Director:"From behind him. You don't know much about directing. Or Angels for that matter. Or maybe even America!"
Writer:" But I WROTE this song!"
Director:"without angels appearently. You some kind of atheist? You're a godless athesit aren't you?"
Writer:" no! I am a Unitarian"
Director:"An angel hating unitarian! I figured! I'm calling the FBI..."
Writer:"Fine keep the damn angels"
Director:"Great! Now we need to add in some 9-11 shots. That's so patriotic it will make people cry! Genius!"
Writer:" Why not just go for the jugular and film it with the whole series of 'Precious Moments' figurines being smashed by a gay Arab with the Koran? On a burning flag wrapped around an aborted fetus?"
Director: ... quiver... "ah.. ah.. I .. ..ah.. That's Brilli.."
Writer:"I'm outta here!"
The angels are just over the top.
Writer: "Errr.. I don't remember there being angels in this..."
Director: "What do you mean?"
Writer: "Well, I didn't write them in. Where did they come from?"
Director:"Wha.. What do you mean? They came from Heaven!"
Writer:"... sigh... Why did they come from Heaven?"
Director:"??? What do you mean? They are angels! You can never have enough angels!"
Writer:" err... okay. But do they have to fly out of his ass?"
Director:"They aren't flying out of his ass, they are spreading the Spirit of America!"
Writer:"From his ass?"
Director:"From behind him. You don't know much about directing. Or Angels for that matter. Or maybe even America!"
Writer:" But I WROTE this song!"
Director:"without angels appearently. You some kind of atheist? You're a godless athesit aren't you?"
Writer:" no! I am a Unitarian"
Director:"An angel hating unitarian! I figured! I'm calling the FBI..."
Writer:"Fine keep the damn angels"
Director:"Great! Now we need to add in some 9-11 shots. That's so patriotic it will make people cry! Genius!"
Writer:" Why not just go for the jugular and film it with the whole series of 'Precious Moments' figurines being smashed by a gay Arab with the Koran? On a burning flag wrapped around an aborted fetus?"
Director: ... quiver... "ah.. ah.. I .. ..ah.. That's Brilli.."
Writer:"I'm outta here!"
Monday, January 16, 2006
Halstead-Reitan Battery
This was part of my neuropsych testing 2 weeks ago. I was calling it the Diamond Dogs test, but obviously it has a real name.
Ralph Reitan, one of Halstead's students, contributed to the battery by researching the tests' ability to identify neurological problems. In a remarkable study, Reitan diagnosed 8,000 patients using only their test results—without meeting the patients or knowing anything about their background.
Technically, it doesn't say they were correctly diagnosed...
A better decription of the session here.
Ralph Reitan, one of Halstead's students, contributed to the battery by researching the tests' ability to identify neurological problems. In a remarkable study, Reitan diagnosed 8,000 patients using only their test results—without meeting the patients or knowing anything about their background.
Technically, it doesn't say they were correctly diagnosed...
A better decription of the session here.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Did Christ Exist?
This is an interesting (and quite legitimate) question. If you are, at this moment, feeling your blood pressure rise, thinking “this is stupid liberal guff” and getting ready to click away, I would ask you; why?
I have always thought the answer to this question, btw, was yes.
The other question, "Was Christ Divine?", would be more difficult to answer, but I have always thought the answer was "No", in part because I don't believe in divinity but mostly because I have a hard time believing that, even after 2000 years, Christ would let himself go like that.
Personally, so many of the elements of the Christ story resonated with my NDE that I have always believed he was a real, historic figure who had had a transformational experience and shared it with others.
OTOH, there is a lot of evidence that he was a creation, but together out of a blend of other mythological figures. The time between the death of Christ and the first books of the Bible is almost 300 years. Longer than the existence of the United States. Given that we can't consistently interpret the intent of the founders in the Constitution, I tend to doubt an oral tradition handed down over 300 years bears as much factual information as literalists and Catholics would have us believe
A new movie explores this topic. I plan to go see it this weekend and see what they consider to be evidence. So far I've never seen anything persuasive that said he didn't exist, but assuming something exists and looking for proof it doesn't is a logical fallacy.
More after I see the movie and
Thanks for reading this far down! :)
I have always thought the answer to this question, btw, was yes.
The other question, "Was Christ Divine?", would be more difficult to answer, but I have always thought the answer was "No", in part because I don't believe in divinity but mostly because I have a hard time believing that, even after 2000 years, Christ would let himself go like that.
Personally, so many of the elements of the Christ story resonated with my NDE that I have always believed he was a real, historic figure who had had a transformational experience and shared it with others.
OTOH, there is a lot of evidence that he was a creation, but together out of a blend of other mythological figures. The time between the death of Christ and the first books of the Bible is almost 300 years. Longer than the existence of the United States. Given that we can't consistently interpret the intent of the founders in the Constitution, I tend to doubt an oral tradition handed down over 300 years bears as much factual information as literalists and Catholics would have us believe
A new movie explores this topic. I plan to go see it this weekend and see what they consider to be evidence. So far I've never seen anything persuasive that said he didn't exist, but assuming something exists and looking for proof it doesn't is a logical fallacy.
More after I see the movie and
Thanks for reading this far down! :)
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Sam Alito
I had a chance yesterday afternoon to listen to the Alito hearings on NPR. Now I have to say up front I didn't care a whit about Roberts and after listening to the Robert's hearings, I cared even less. I put him in the old tradition of just blindly confirming the president's choice, which I generally support (with the exception of Bork).
Ailto said some things that really bothered me and, this was a surprise. I expected not to care, especially after a long soliloquy by Sen. Graham about what a decent guy he is. I even cringed a little at Shumer's no-nonsense cross-exam.
OTOH, he's clearly lying about the CAP thing. He might not want to admit it, but he purposely put that on a job application knowing the political sympathies of his bosses and is now pretending not to remember anything about it. It's clearly a lie. I compare this to Ginsburg who, while a flawed candidate in a hostile Senate, stepped up and owned her words.
I'm not saying that Alito is a bigot, or misogynist or anything, I don't really know and am willing to take the word of the many people who wrote in on his behalf that he is not.
That's not the point.
The point is either, he's lying and I don't like government officials to start their careers with a lie, or he's a fool. And I don't think he's a fool.
Also, he is painting a picture of himself as someone who is a "pleaser", i.e. who will tailor his opinions (like CAP) to get a job. The only conclusion I can reach from the man's own defense is that he'll gladly say things he doesn't believe in to get a job.
While this is common, I expect a higher standard of ethics from a SCJ. I find I have gone from not caring to, very concerned.
(non-sequetor: I've composed a song about Sam sung to the tune of Mona Lisa. I will not list it here, but every time I hear his name I start to sing the damn thing)
Ailto said some things that really bothered me and, this was a surprise. I expected not to care, especially after a long soliloquy by Sen. Graham about what a decent guy he is. I even cringed a little at Shumer's no-nonsense cross-exam.
OTOH, he's clearly lying about the CAP thing. He might not want to admit it, but he purposely put that on a job application knowing the political sympathies of his bosses and is now pretending not to remember anything about it. It's clearly a lie. I compare this to Ginsburg who, while a flawed candidate in a hostile Senate, stepped up and owned her words.
I'm not saying that Alito is a bigot, or misogynist or anything, I don't really know and am willing to take the word of the many people who wrote in on his behalf that he is not.
That's not the point.
The point is either, he's lying and I don't like government officials to start their careers with a lie, or he's a fool. And I don't think he's a fool.
Also, he is painting a picture of himself as someone who is a "pleaser", i.e. who will tailor his opinions (like CAP) to get a job. The only conclusion I can reach from the man's own defense is that he'll gladly say things he doesn't believe in to get a job.
While this is common, I expect a higher standard of ethics from a SCJ. I find I have gone from not caring to, very concerned.
(non-sequetor: I've composed a song about Sam sung to the tune of Mona Lisa. I will not list it here, but every time I hear his name I start to sing the damn thing)
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
NeuroPsych Results
I have been fearing this moment for a week. I almost blogged this morning about how nervous I was, but decided to wait and get the actual facts. The following reflects quotes from Dr. Mary Pepping at the UofW who ran my tests and interpreted the results. I’ll have my copy of them in about 2 weeks.
When I walked in, Dr. Pepping was smiling and extraordinarily friendly. “This,” I thought to myself, “bodes well. Unless she does that when she gives people bad news! Ut-oh!”
It turned out there was Good News/Bad News and the just ... unusual
Good News:
"These are phenomenal results. In 25 years I've never seen results this consistent in so many categories. Even in your lowest categories, you scored in the Superior range". There turned out to be one exception to this on the mental tests. Regardless, this is the nicest thing anyone has said to me in ages, at least about my mentation.
We went through each set of results, one-by-one. Ironically, some of the ones I thought I did the poorest on, I did very well. Generally at this end of the spectrum, they rate results in several categories according to how many standard deviations above the norm they are; normal, bright, very bright, superior and very superior (I know, it’s grammatically wrong to have a very superior category, but that’s what they use).
Digits: 9 forward, 7 backwards. Very Superior The average is 5 forward 4 back.
Word Pair Lists: Very Superior. 10 correct pairs in 4 tries on recall after 30 minutes. Average: 5 in 4 tries. I mentioned that I thought I blew this one. "No, it's designed to be unmemorizable. The word pairs were chosen to they have little or nor relationship to each other without you inventing you're own system. It's also interesting that you had no false positives, i.e. you didn't identify any words that weren't there when you were quizzed and got all 12."
Spatial Reasoning: Perfect scores.
Tactile and kinetic reasoning, 1 perfect score, 1 in the very superior range.
Mathematical reasoning: Almost perfect. "You made one error where, although you got the right answer, you didn't reduce the fraction far enough". damn!
Verbal fluency: Superior
Executive Tests (cards and the "diamond dogs" machine). Very Superior. "almost perfect". I was right about the meta-rule, but, "it's designed not to be detectable by the subject. It's unusual for you to have noticed it at all."
Abstract Reasoning: Very Superior
Determination and Mental energy (apparently some of the tests, like the "diamond dog" one, can test how hard you are actually trying to solve them): Very Superior.
MMPI-2: Normal personality (notes below)
Conclusion: "If you have a cognitive deficit, it's coming down from such a level that these tests can't detect it." My mind is fine, including to my surprise, my short term memory. My general IQ is "north of 160"
Bad News:
The neurology tests (finger movement, eye movement), were not as good. My right hand, which should be the stronger of the two, was noticeably weaker. "It looks like, in the absence of other factors affecting the peripheral nerves, that there is motor neuron damage". This supports the MS or ALS theories, but tends to reduce (but not eliminate) the Huntington’s/Cerebral Ataxia theory.
Unusual: My answers to the story questions and interpreting a to a set of general facts was, "not wrong, everything made sense, just not what we were expecting. You only got in the 50th percentile on the stories. Normal, but odd given the high scores everywhere else. It's the biggest factor bringing your IQ down" Down to the 4 sigma level that is. It's weird that I scored this low on the inference tests since I would have thought I would do well, being fairly based on intuition and inductive (vs. deductive) logic.
Personality: Normal, but “you are only a hair over the extrovert line. This gives you a flexible set of tools for dealing with different social situations." Psychosis, no. Sociopathy, no, Dissociative disorders, no, Neuroses, no. "There is some indication you are worried about your physical health and, while not nowhere near clinically depressed, this does seem to have you upset."
Duh!
"You have the kind of personality that generally handles stress well until, suddenly it doesn't, at which point you probably obsess or collapse." I tend to collapse. Ask any of my friends from grad school who watched me after my divorce. Definitely a non-linear collapse.
"You're generally self-critical, self-effacing and tend not to speak your mind even when you know others are wrong or misguided". True, at least the last part.
Conclusion: I'm doing okay cognitively. I was flattered by her closing remark, "I really have never seen scores this consistently high across so many domains. You should be prouder of yourself then you actually are."
awwww....
So it really is motor neurons and not something which will take my mind. I can't tell you how relieved I am.
And, the quotes are all real. I am flattered (and more than a little uncomfortable) by the results.
When I walked in, Dr. Pepping was smiling and extraordinarily friendly. “This,” I thought to myself, “bodes well. Unless she does that when she gives people bad news! Ut-oh!”
It turned out there was Good News/Bad News and the just ... unusual
Good News:
"These are phenomenal results. In 25 years I've never seen results this consistent in so many categories. Even in your lowest categories, you scored in the Superior range". There turned out to be one exception to this on the mental tests. Regardless, this is the nicest thing anyone has said to me in ages, at least about my mentation.
We went through each set of results, one-by-one. Ironically, some of the ones I thought I did the poorest on, I did very well. Generally at this end of the spectrum, they rate results in several categories according to how many standard deviations above the norm they are; normal, bright, very bright, superior and very superior (I know, it’s grammatically wrong to have a very superior category, but that’s what they use).
Digits: 9 forward, 7 backwards. Very Superior The average is 5 forward 4 back.
Word Pair Lists: Very Superior. 10 correct pairs in 4 tries on recall after 30 minutes. Average: 5 in 4 tries. I mentioned that I thought I blew this one. "No, it's designed to be unmemorizable. The word pairs were chosen to they have little or nor relationship to each other without you inventing you're own system. It's also interesting that you had no false positives, i.e. you didn't identify any words that weren't there when you were quizzed and got all 12."
Spatial Reasoning: Perfect scores.
Tactile and kinetic reasoning, 1 perfect score, 1 in the very superior range.
Mathematical reasoning: Almost perfect. "You made one error where, although you got the right answer, you didn't reduce the fraction far enough". damn!
Verbal fluency: Superior
Executive Tests (cards and the "diamond dogs" machine). Very Superior. "almost perfect". I was right about the meta-rule, but, "it's designed not to be detectable by the subject. It's unusual for you to have noticed it at all."
Abstract Reasoning: Very Superior
Determination and Mental energy (apparently some of the tests, like the "diamond dog" one, can test how hard you are actually trying to solve them): Very Superior.
MMPI-2: Normal personality (notes below)
Conclusion: "If you have a cognitive deficit, it's coming down from such a level that these tests can't detect it." My mind is fine, including to my surprise, my short term memory. My general IQ is "north of 160"
Bad News:
The neurology tests (finger movement, eye movement), were not as good. My right hand, which should be the stronger of the two, was noticeably weaker. "It looks like, in the absence of other factors affecting the peripheral nerves, that there is motor neuron damage". This supports the MS or ALS theories, but tends to reduce (but not eliminate) the Huntington’s/Cerebral Ataxia theory.
Unusual: My answers to the story questions and interpreting a to a set of general facts was, "not wrong, everything made sense, just not what we were expecting. You only got in the 50th percentile on the stories. Normal, but odd given the high scores everywhere else. It's the biggest factor bringing your IQ down" Down to the 4 sigma level that is. It's weird that I scored this low on the inference tests since I would have thought I would do well, being fairly based on intuition and inductive (vs. deductive) logic.
Personality: Normal, but “you are only a hair over the extrovert line. This gives you a flexible set of tools for dealing with different social situations." Psychosis, no. Sociopathy, no, Dissociative disorders, no, Neuroses, no. "There is some indication you are worried about your physical health and, while not nowhere near clinically depressed, this does seem to have you upset."
Duh!
"You have the kind of personality that generally handles stress well until, suddenly it doesn't, at which point you probably obsess or collapse." I tend to collapse. Ask any of my friends from grad school who watched me after my divorce. Definitely a non-linear collapse.
"You're generally self-critical, self-effacing and tend not to speak your mind even when you know others are wrong or misguided". True, at least the last part.
Conclusion: I'm doing okay cognitively. I was flattered by her closing remark, "I really have never seen scores this consistently high across so many domains. You should be prouder of yourself then you actually are."
awwww....
So it really is motor neurons and not something which will take my mind. I can't tell you how relieved I am.
And, the quotes are all real. I am flattered (and more than a little uncomfortable) by the results.
If I Were God
...
well, just absorb that for a second.
ok.
anyway, if I were, this is the kind of thing I would do more often.
Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it.
"I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," Mares said from a motel room Saturday.
Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse ran to just beneath a window, and the flames spread up from there and throughout the house.
No was hurt inside, but the home and everything in it was destroyed.
Unseasonably dry and windy conditions have charred more than 53,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes in southeastern New Mexico in recent weeks.
"I've seen numerous house fires," village Fire Department Capt. Jim Lyssy said, "but nothing as unique as this one."
Double points for the correct grammatical use of unique.
It's worth pointing out that, statistically, you (yes, you!) witness about 3 events of probability 1:1,000,000 a year of 10 seconds or less.
well, just absorb that for a second.
ok.
anyway, if I were, this is the kind of thing I would do more often.
Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it.
"I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," Mares said from a motel room Saturday.
Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse ran to just beneath a window, and the flames spread up from there and throughout the house.
No was hurt inside, but the home and everything in it was destroyed.
Unseasonably dry and windy conditions have charred more than 53,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes in southeastern New Mexico in recent weeks.
"I've seen numerous house fires," village Fire Department Capt. Jim Lyssy said, "but nothing as unique as this one."
Double points for the correct grammatical use of unique.
It's worth pointing out that, statistically, you (yes, you!) witness about 3 events of probability 1:1,000,000 a year of 10 seconds or less.
This Is About Where I Step Off the Train
It looks like a school in California is taking up the challenge of teaching ID as religion, and people are suing to stop it. I have to kind of step off here as I don't really have a huge problem with this. I definately have a problem with teaching pure religion-as-truth, and it seems they might be skirting the border here, but I don't see this as a science issue.
OTOH, I lot of ID opponents do. Here's a good example.
There is an old adage that good physicists become bad philosophers in there old age, but I really don't see this as a science issue here. ID is an idea and, in general, ideas don't get supressed well. The onyl cure for a bad idea is exposure. I think the left here is emulating the worst book-burning instincts of the right and trying to close down a concept. That never works. Bring it up, teach it as philosophy and I bet the majority of kids realize how silly it is despite their teachers pronouncements.
That said, I'm not *encouraging* this, but if that's how they want to spend their philosophy dollars, well... as the saying goes, "god love'em"
OTOH, I lot of ID opponents do. Here's a good example.
There is an old adage that good physicists become bad philosophers in there old age, but I really don't see this as a science issue here. ID is an idea and, in general, ideas don't get supressed well. The onyl cure for a bad idea is exposure. I think the left here is emulating the worst book-burning instincts of the right and trying to close down a concept. That never works. Bring it up, teach it as philosophy and I bet the majority of kids realize how silly it is despite their teachers pronouncements.
That said, I'm not *encouraging* this, but if that's how they want to spend their philosophy dollars, well... as the saying goes, "god love'em"
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Superluminal
I was reading the AAS updates at the Bad Astronomy blog and came across this entry on Heim Quantum Theory for propulsion. I haven't read the paper yet, so I can't comment a curosry glance makes me highly skeptical.
Red Flags:
violates conventional conservation of momentum
proposes "new physics" which has not been observed yet
brings 2 new concepts in one paper (as opposed to the more traditional way of one breakthrough per paper)
new terms for new physics
renames existing terms or older physics
posits existance of parallel universe with covarient physics (2 assumptions there)
Ideas to which I am sympathetic:
quantized space
The basic idea is to create a vaccum pair with one partner having an interaction with baryonic matter and the other having a vanishingly small cross section for itneraction. This would have the net effect of transfering momentum to the baryons but leaving overall universal momentum seemingly conserved. It's a clever variation of Hawking Radiation, but it's not clear that any gravitophoton pair product would actually have this property. If it were true, I would expect to see something similar at higher energy with axion production which has not (to my knowledge) been observed.
Still, it's clever.
Update: I've read it twice now. A lot of the bits are correct on their own, I just don't know that they form a coherent framework. It's like a wall where each brick is solid, but upon closer inspection the wall is held together by vanilla frosting instead of mortor. There are a number of leaps between various ideas here, but I don't think it's overall correct.
It could be:
a) a sophisticated joke
b) a troll
c) the legitimate end product of a creative but slightly flawed piece of reasoning, each step moving a little further out on the branch of implausibilty
d) a paper written by a brilliant couple of guys at the end of a truely legendary bender.
Don't know. I'll read it again. I happen to have most of their references in my library and can check up on some of the middle pieces.
My hat's off to these boys. I may steal this bit for the propulsion mechanism in Looking Backwards. My ideas were a little along these lines, but nowhere near this detailed.
Red Flags:
violates conventional conservation of momentum
proposes "new physics" which has not been observed yet
brings 2 new concepts in one paper (as opposed to the more traditional way of one breakthrough per paper)
new terms for new physics
renames existing terms or older physics
posits existance of parallel universe with covarient physics (2 assumptions there)
Ideas to which I am sympathetic:
quantized space
The basic idea is to create a vaccum pair with one partner having an interaction with baryonic matter and the other having a vanishingly small cross section for itneraction. This would have the net effect of transfering momentum to the baryons but leaving overall universal momentum seemingly conserved. It's a clever variation of Hawking Radiation, but it's not clear that any gravitophoton pair product would actually have this property. If it were true, I would expect to see something similar at higher energy with axion production which has not (to my knowledge) been observed.
Still, it's clever.
Update: I've read it twice now. A lot of the bits are correct on their own, I just don't know that they form a coherent framework. It's like a wall where each brick is solid, but upon closer inspection the wall is held together by vanilla frosting instead of mortor. There are a number of leaps between various ideas here, but I don't think it's overall correct.
It could be:
a) a sophisticated joke
b) a troll
c) the legitimate end product of a creative but slightly flawed piece of reasoning, each step moving a little further out on the branch of implausibilty
d) a paper written by a brilliant couple of guys at the end of a truely legendary bender.
Don't know. I'll read it again. I happen to have most of their references in my library and can check up on some of the middle pieces.
My hat's off to these boys. I may steal this bit for the propulsion mechanism in Looking Backwards. My ideas were a little along these lines, but nowhere near this detailed.
A First Time for Everything
Glenn Reynolds has an interesting debate on Polyamory on his site and I basically agree with his core point: the state really has no business in marriage. Yes there are welfare and support issues, but those are not actually marriage issues.
But why does any relationship produce an obligation on the part of the government to provide recognition or support? It's certainly true, as some other readers pointed out (and as Clayton's linked Mormon story reports) that some polygamous arrangements now are basically welfare scams. But that's a welfare issue, not a marriage issue.
Kurtz, on the other hand, says that Western marriage is based on "companionate love." I certainly hope so, but I wonder whether the cultural concern that he describes forms an adequate underpinning for legal requirements. (And wouldn't that, in itself, be an argument in favor of gay marriage, so long as it was based on companionate love?)
I'm a little surprised to be linking to Instapundit, mostly becuase I generally disagree with Glenn. However, I try not to consume only a steady diet of things I agree with, that leads to inflexibility and (occasionlly madness). Often that strategy is annoying or frustrating, but it does occasionally yeild little interesting nuggets.
But why does any relationship produce an obligation on the part of the government to provide recognition or support? It's certainly true, as some other readers pointed out (and as Clayton's linked Mormon story reports) that some polygamous arrangements now are basically welfare scams. But that's a welfare issue, not a marriage issue.
Kurtz, on the other hand, says that Western marriage is based on "companionate love." I certainly hope so, but I wonder whether the cultural concern that he describes forms an adequate underpinning for legal requirements. (And wouldn't that, in itself, be an argument in favor of gay marriage, so long as it was based on companionate love?)
I'm a little surprised to be linking to Instapundit, mostly becuase I generally disagree with Glenn. However, I try not to consume only a steady diet of things I agree with, that leads to inflexibility and (occasionlly madness). Often that strategy is annoying or frustrating, but it does occasionally yeild little interesting nuggets.
They Call Him Goldfinger
The inspiration for the James Bond villian came from a really bad architect:
As he was a neighbour in Willow Road, author Ian Fleming's dislike of the design of the house (and the demolition of the previous Victorian properties) prompted him to name the James Bond adversary and villain Auric Goldfinger after Ernő. Goldfinger consulted his lawyers when the book was published in 1959 (which prompted Fleming to threaten to rename the character 'Goldprick') but eventually decided not to sue; Fleming's publishers agreed to pay his costs and gave him six free copies of the book. Goldfinger was a serious man and sometimes sacked his assistants if they were inappropriately jocular.
I don't really care for Ernő's buildings, but man, that's a grudge!
I've actully seen Goldfinger's Trellick tower. I was on the train from London to Reading and as we passed it by I remember thinking, "what kind of awful Cthuhulu mind would design that kind of beast. It's all wrong"
Now I know.
Also, there is a link between Goldfinger and the always regretable Boston City Hall (and presumably the UMass, Amherst campus as well).
As he was a neighbour in Willow Road, author Ian Fleming's dislike of the design of the house (and the demolition of the previous Victorian properties) prompted him to name the James Bond adversary and villain Auric Goldfinger after Ernő. Goldfinger consulted his lawyers when the book was published in 1959 (which prompted Fleming to threaten to rename the character 'Goldprick') but eventually decided not to sue; Fleming's publishers agreed to pay his costs and gave him six free copies of the book. Goldfinger was a serious man and sometimes sacked his assistants if they were inappropriately jocular.
I don't really care for Ernő's buildings, but man, that's a grudge!
I've actully seen Goldfinger's Trellick tower. I was on the train from London to Reading and as we passed it by I remember thinking, "what kind of awful Cthuhulu mind would design that kind of beast. It's all wrong"
Now I know.
Also, there is a link between Goldfinger and the always regretable Boston City Hall (and presumably the UMass, Amherst campus as well).
Christianity, Greeks, and the Public Schools
From Geoff:
Heres an interesting question:
Why is Greek mythology permitted to be taught in schools and yet modern religions, especially Christianity are not. This isnt a "me too" arguement, I'm just curious. I can see Egyptian religion being discussed from a historical standpoint to give better insight to the culture thereof, as has been my experience. Greek mythology has been offered as its own course in many public high schools. Again I'm not looking to say "they can do it, we should be allowed to also", just curious.
Excellent question.
Christianity can be taught in schools in exactly the same way as Greek mythology can be taught, as part of a non-denominational program of social studies or comparative religion. That doesn't violate the First Amendment since the government body, the school, isn't advocating, establishing or endorsing a particular religion. The problem only comes when public funds are used for teaching religion as a true set of facts, i.e. proselytizing. That’s why there is such an uproar over creationism and intelligent design. The transparent goal there is to teach religion out of content as a set of truths.
Often you see a similar version of this argument about the 10 commandments or town nativity scenes, i.e. they are okay as part of a larger context but unconstitutional on their own.
BTW, I had an excellent social studies teacher in high school who made us study Islam and read the Koran in 11th grade. He seemed to think it would be important for us to be familiar with it in the future. We also studied the shit out of India including Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucism. It was done exactly this way and was extraordinarily help.
As a general rule, many Christians are insulted when you put their beliefs in the same context as Greek mythology and so schools just generally avoid the whole subject, much to the detriment of the students education. Christianity has a lot going for it as a religion and does pretty well when compared to others. The problem is that many Christians don’t know that, think comparative religions are a kind of meta-physical beauty contest and are a little afraid they’d lose. If I were religious and a Christian, I’d be a strong proponent of these kinds of classes, done in a fair and objective way.
What sparked this:Work boredom, a thread on somethingawful about what people have done at work, the word mythology, and me remembering a conversation with you where you referred to the Bible as "a book of myths"
The bible is a set of allegories, stories which are probably not true in detail but make a philosophical or moral point. Generally when I've had enough "even steven"-ing from a religious advocate (non-beleif is a kind of belief, science is a religion etc.) I'll point out out that the Bible is a book of myths and stories.
Don't be fooled though, myths are very powerful. Nothing can strengthen or weaken a people as quickly or as throughly as myth and I would argue it's at least as important as philosophy in understanding the history our the human race.
But, calling the Bible a "book of myths" is technially correct.
The best *kind* of correct!
Heres an interesting question:
Why is Greek mythology permitted to be taught in schools and yet modern religions, especially Christianity are not. This isnt a "me too" arguement, I'm just curious. I can see Egyptian religion being discussed from a historical standpoint to give better insight to the culture thereof, as has been my experience. Greek mythology has been offered as its own course in many public high schools. Again I'm not looking to say "they can do it, we should be allowed to also", just curious.
Excellent question.
Christianity can be taught in schools in exactly the same way as Greek mythology can be taught, as part of a non-denominational program of social studies or comparative religion. That doesn't violate the First Amendment since the government body, the school, isn't advocating, establishing or endorsing a particular religion. The problem only comes when public funds are used for teaching religion as a true set of facts, i.e. proselytizing. That’s why there is such an uproar over creationism and intelligent design. The transparent goal there is to teach religion out of content as a set of truths.
Often you see a similar version of this argument about the 10 commandments or town nativity scenes, i.e. they are okay as part of a larger context but unconstitutional on their own.
BTW, I had an excellent social studies teacher in high school who made us study Islam and read the Koran in 11th grade. He seemed to think it would be important for us to be familiar with it in the future. We also studied the shit out of India including Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucism. It was done exactly this way and was extraordinarily help.
As a general rule, many Christians are insulted when you put their beliefs in the same context as Greek mythology and so schools just generally avoid the whole subject, much to the detriment of the students education. Christianity has a lot going for it as a religion and does pretty well when compared to others. The problem is that many Christians don’t know that, think comparative religions are a kind of meta-physical beauty contest and are a little afraid they’d lose. If I were religious and a Christian, I’d be a strong proponent of these kinds of classes, done in a fair and objective way.
What sparked this:Work boredom, a thread on somethingawful about what people have done at work, the word mythology, and me remembering a conversation with you where you referred to the Bible as "a book of myths"
The bible is a set of allegories, stories which are probably not true in detail but make a philosophical or moral point. Generally when I've had enough "even steven"-ing from a religious advocate (non-beleif is a kind of belief, science is a religion etc.) I'll point out out that the Bible is a book of myths and stories.
Don't be fooled though, myths are very powerful. Nothing can strengthen or weaken a people as quickly or as throughly as myth and I would argue it's at least as important as philosophy in understanding the history our the human race.
But, calling the Bible a "book of myths" is technially correct.
The best *kind* of correct!
Monday, January 09, 2006
Rapture Letter
One of the most common "even steven" arguments made by people of faith is that a lack of a belief of god is also an unprovable faith, i.e. you have have faith that he doesn't exist. This is shown to be a fallacy pretty simply because the postive and contrapositive reach the same same conclusion: believe in god-> faith, don't beleive in god-> faith. Everything is faith and there is no null hypothesis.
A Fallacy, and a pretty junior one.
OTOH, some folks, like to hedge their bets:
I especially like the Heaven is Hell line. It's got an armchair economist's logic to it.
A Fallacy, and a pretty junior one.
OTOH, some folks, like to hedge their bets:
I especially like the Heaven is Hell line. It's got an armchair economist's logic to it.
In His Image
A god familiar to any Penn State fan:
Anyway, the real motivation was to point out the foolishness of thinking you won the big game because God was pulling for your team (if you can imagine the classic image of God sitting on his couch with a beer in one hand, a remote control in the other, and a bowl of popcorn in front of him yelling at Mrs. God to shut the hell up, there's less than two minutes left, and the Packers are driving down the field).
Note: The rest of the article isn't nearly this funny.
Anyway, the real motivation was to point out the foolishness of thinking you won the big game because God was pulling for your team (if you can imagine the classic image of God sitting on his couch with a beer in one hand, a remote control in the other, and a bowl of popcorn in front of him yelling at Mrs. God to shut the hell up, there's less than two minutes left, and the Packers are driving down the field).
Note: The rest of the article isn't nearly this funny.
Friday, January 06, 2006
A Certain Kind of Beauty
can be found in pure, unadulteradted nonsense:
"So, the Bush Dynasty is being controlled by Cthulhu in order to destroy humanity?"
"So, the Bush Dynasty is being controlled by Cthulhu in order to destroy humanity?"
Lernout & Hauspie
A very well done Wall Street Journal Article on my old company.
And it has it's own Wiki entry (I love Wiki!)
FTR, while I've heard the SK story about Duerden and Soe from a number of people, I have never believed it. It all just happened to take place when Duerden was there and his reaction as an executive in a multibillion dollar comapny was not, "call the police" but instead was, "flee the country!". Nope. It just doesn't ring true to me.
The next year Mr. Bastiaens was out as CEO of Quarterdeck, having presided over a series of disastrous acquisitions at the company, which was taken over after its stock plunged. He quickly found a new job. He became president of L&H.
I quit in 1998 because I couldn't stand Gaston. It wasn't cultural, he was just a sleeze.
And it has it's own Wiki entry (I love Wiki!)
FTR, while I've heard the SK story about Duerden and Soe from a number of people, I have never believed it. It all just happened to take place when Duerden was there and his reaction as an executive in a multibillion dollar comapny was not, "call the police" but instead was, "flee the country!". Nope. It just doesn't ring true to me.
The next year Mr. Bastiaens was out as CEO of Quarterdeck, having presided over a series of disastrous acquisitions at the company, which was taken over after its stock plunged. He quickly found a new job. He became president of L&H.
I quit in 1998 because I couldn't stand Gaston. It wasn't cultural, he was just a sleeze.
Asymmetry
This occured to me too.
When I went to bed on Tuesday night, I had left the TV on Fox and the News was playing. I heard the phrase, "... miracle. You could feel the power of the Holy Spirit in the people and you just knew that god was walking among them." And this was a *news anchor*.
The next morning, I had girded myself for a day of putting up with angel sightings and ghost stories when I had instead heard the tragic horror of the story.
Personally, I would have put up with chatty women at the check out talking about angels and miracles if it would have saved those people's lives.
Sadly, that's not reality.
When I went to bed on Tuesday night, I had left the TV on Fox and the News was playing. I heard the phrase, "... miracle. You could feel the power of the Holy Spirit in the people and you just knew that god was walking among them." And this was a *news anchor*.
The next morning, I had girded myself for a day of putting up with angel sightings and ghost stories when I had instead heard the tragic horror of the story.
Personally, I would have put up with chatty women at the check out talking about angels and miracles if it would have saved those people's lives.
Sadly, that's not reality.
The Family Tradition
Geoff and I have a tradition where we stay in for a day, rent a batch of really bad movies, then spend the afternoon trying to break each other up MST3K style. Probably the high point of this was a few years ago during the infamous "Brain Eating Weekend". Somehow (somehow!) every movie we rented had brain eating somewhere in it. Flipped on the TV for cable movies... more brain eating! Sci Fi channel? Brain Eating! Fox News? Brain Eating! New commercial for Pepsi Light? Brain Eating! It was unavaoidable.
We haven't done this in a while and I'm thinking of foracbly kidnapping the boy and bringing him up here for this soon. Or at least springing for a ticket.
I've found a movie for the next one:
The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman
Meanwhile, in a bar with a large rack of postcards, Marcel and his apparent girlfriend Elvira (pronounced “El-vee-ra”) are discussing her Ph.D. project, which is about an evil Hungarian countess. You get nowhere with the review board if you do your project on an evil marquise or baroness. Countess Wandesa was a particularly evil woman, as we can see from the flashback that shows her wearing a very seventies-style updo and holding a black mass featuring a large painting of Satan with a face where his genitalia should be. Apparently she drank the blood of virgins to remain youthful, and later some lovers of hers were annoyed by this and thus stabbed her to death with a silver cross. Then they buried her with it. This will be important later.
...
Cut to that night, when Genevieve hears an eerie voice calling her name and promptly jumps up and runs off into the woods. She meets Wandesa at the coffin, now looking young and lovely and dressed like the love child of Morticia Adams and the Flying Nun. Wandesa nibbles her variously, which judging by Genevieve’s rapturous expression, is lots more fun than boring old sex.
We haven't done this in a while and I'm thinking of foracbly kidnapping the boy and bringing him up here for this soon. Or at least springing for a ticket.
I've found a movie for the next one:
The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman
Meanwhile, in a bar with a large rack of postcards, Marcel and his apparent girlfriend Elvira (pronounced “El-vee-ra”) are discussing her Ph.D. project, which is about an evil Hungarian countess. You get nowhere with the review board if you do your project on an evil marquise or baroness. Countess Wandesa was a particularly evil woman, as we can see from the flashback that shows her wearing a very seventies-style updo and holding a black mass featuring a large painting of Satan with a face where his genitalia should be. Apparently she drank the blood of virgins to remain youthful, and later some lovers of hers were annoyed by this and thus stabbed her to death with a silver cross. Then they buried her with it. This will be important later.
...
Cut to that night, when Genevieve hears an eerie voice calling her name and promptly jumps up and runs off into the woods. She meets Wandesa at the coffin, now looking young and lovely and dressed like the love child of Morticia Adams and the Flying Nun. Wandesa nibbles her variously, which judging by Genevieve’s rapturous expression, is lots more fun than boring old sex.
The Rise (Again) of the Machine
Every few decades, a set of political operatives discover the use of the "Machine", a set of money and patronage incentives to build a political monopoly. Historically, both democrats and republicans have done this, they build and keep a majority for a period of time, corruption scandles occur, reforms are passed the machine goes away and is reinvented a few years later when the heat has dies down. It seems to be a nautral, emergent property of political systems.
In that light, there is an interesting look at the DeLay Machine over at TPM.
One of the great questions of the last decade is how congressional Republicans managed to maintain such unprecedented party discipline. The standard answer is that that's how Tom DeLay earned his nickname 'The Hammer', by squashing anyone who threatened to get out of line. Only that's not really quite how the House GOP Caucus functioned. Notwithstanding the reputation DeLay liked to cultivate, he worked a lot more with Carrots than Sticks. And that means money. Lots and lots and lots of money. A lot of it unaccountable money; a lot of it 'don't ask where it came from' money; but lots and lots of money, and as long as you were there with the caucus on the important votes, a lot of it would be yours.
In that light, there is an interesting look at the DeLay Machine over at TPM.
One of the great questions of the last decade is how congressional Republicans managed to maintain such unprecedented party discipline. The standard answer is that that's how Tom DeLay earned his nickname 'The Hammer', by squashing anyone who threatened to get out of line. Only that's not really quite how the House GOP Caucus functioned. Notwithstanding the reputation DeLay liked to cultivate, he worked a lot more with Carrots than Sticks. And that means money. Lots and lots and lots of money. A lot of it unaccountable money; a lot of it 'don't ask where it came from' money; but lots and lots of money, and as long as you were there with the caucus on the important votes, a lot of it would be yours.
Digitial Economics
Over at David Friedman's Ideas blog, he makes mention of the idea of using MMORGs as testbeds of economic theory. It's a good if common idea, and David takes it one step further than most by actually proposing a methodology:
I am an economist, so my brief examples are economic ones, but there should be opportunities in other fields as well. One respect in which the worlds represented by different servers are not quite identical is in their populations. Servers whose internal clocks are on Pacific Standard Time are populated mainly by people from the west cost of the U.S.—with an occasional Spaniard or Korean. A server on Korean time—I am told the game is very popular in Korea—will have a rather different population. That should make it possible to do extensive studies of differences and similarities in social norms across a wide range of societies—without spending a penny on airline tickets or hotels.
So far as the cost of the game is concerned, a little over a thousand dollars a year—a small fraction of any serious research budget—will buy you a hundred characters each on every server. Most of the cost of such a project would be the time of the researchers—and grad students are not very expensive. If you select them properly you may get a good deal of their time for free, since from their standpoint you are paying the cost of their recreation.
Again, it's a good idea although there are a lot of variables in play. A lot. Not the least of which is the economic models for various games are quite different For example, in the game I play, City of Heroes, there is almost no economic incentives past a certain level, resulting in high level players literally giving the money away to people they randomly meet on the street. The first time it happened to me I saw shocked, but since then I've looked at it as a flaw in the economic design of the game. The experiment design would have to be very careful, but I certainly think it's doable.
Still, this as close as I've seen in to something that might be a repeatable experiment in economics, and I hope some one tries it.
OTOH, regulation is not as far away as one might think. This I picked up from Sci Fi Weekly:
Warcraft Hammers Bad Players
lizzard, developer of the hit massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, has suspended 18,000 accounts for violations of the game's terms of use, the GameSpot Web site reported. That amounts to roughly 200 accounts per day, the site reported. Most of the suspensions were of computer-run characters made to farm gold and items for resale in the real world. Blizzard is asking legitimate Warcraft players to report suspicious activity. VU Games recently announced that the game had reached the 5-million player level.
Which is telling them something about the design of their economy model.
I am an economist, so my brief examples are economic ones, but there should be opportunities in other fields as well. One respect in which the worlds represented by different servers are not quite identical is in their populations. Servers whose internal clocks are on Pacific Standard Time are populated mainly by people from the west cost of the U.S.—with an occasional Spaniard or Korean. A server on Korean time—I am told the game is very popular in Korea—will have a rather different population. That should make it possible to do extensive studies of differences and similarities in social norms across a wide range of societies—without spending a penny on airline tickets or hotels.
So far as the cost of the game is concerned, a little over a thousand dollars a year—a small fraction of any serious research budget—will buy you a hundred characters each on every server. Most of the cost of such a project would be the time of the researchers—and grad students are not very expensive. If you select them properly you may get a good deal of their time for free, since from their standpoint you are paying the cost of their recreation.
Again, it's a good idea although there are a lot of variables in play. A lot. Not the least of which is the economic models for various games are quite different For example, in the game I play, City of Heroes, there is almost no economic incentives past a certain level, resulting in high level players literally giving the money away to people they randomly meet on the street. The first time it happened to me I saw shocked, but since then I've looked at it as a flaw in the economic design of the game. The experiment design would have to be very careful, but I certainly think it's doable.
Still, this as close as I've seen in to something that might be a repeatable experiment in economics, and I hope some one tries it.
OTOH, regulation is not as far away as one might think. This I picked up from Sci Fi Weekly:
Warcraft Hammers Bad Players
lizzard, developer of the hit massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, has suspended 18,000 accounts for violations of the game's terms of use, the GameSpot Web site reported. That amounts to roughly 200 accounts per day, the site reported. Most of the suspensions were of computer-run characters made to farm gold and items for resale in the real world. Blizzard is asking legitimate Warcraft players to report suspicious activity. VU Games recently announced that the game had reached the 5-million player level.
Which is telling them something about the design of their economy model.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
If it's in The Register, it Must Be True
Surprisingly, this matches other things that I've read internally.
It might not feel like it, but Windows suffered less security vulnerabilities than Linux and Unix during 2005.
Linux and Unix experienced more than three times as many reported security vulnerabilities than Windows, according to the mighty US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) annual year-end security index.
Windows experienced 812 reported operating system vulnerabilities for the period between January and December 2005, compared to 2,328 for Linux and Unix.
CERT found more than 500 multiple vendor vulnerabilities in Linux and Unix spanning old favorites such as denial of service and buffer overflows, while CERT recorded 88 Windows-specific holes and 44 in Internet Explorer (IE). For a complete list of vulnerabilities, you can visit the CERT site here.
That said, I don't believe in these kinds of number comparisons. I've said so in the past when they have been both before and against us. When I get slides from corporate that contains numbers like this, I throw them away. I don't know what these numbers are actually measuring, I don't know how they are weighted by severity and, most of all, I have no idea what the actual defect rate is across the products, so I don't know what they mean. Are the Linux numbers high becuase they just disclosed a bunch of fixes? Is it because of upgrades to sub-systems like Oracle? I just don't know.
Days at Risk is a slightly better measure, but also has a very subjective componant.
I'm not crowing about this and not sure why any actual security professional would.
Of course, that lets off the sales and marketing staffs.
It might not feel like it, but Windows suffered less security vulnerabilities than Linux and Unix during 2005.
Linux and Unix experienced more than three times as many reported security vulnerabilities than Windows, according to the mighty US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) annual year-end security index.
Windows experienced 812 reported operating system vulnerabilities for the period between January and December 2005, compared to 2,328 for Linux and Unix.
CERT found more than 500 multiple vendor vulnerabilities in Linux and Unix spanning old favorites such as denial of service and buffer overflows, while CERT recorded 88 Windows-specific holes and 44 in Internet Explorer (IE). For a complete list of vulnerabilities, you can visit the CERT site here.
That said, I don't believe in these kinds of number comparisons. I've said so in the past when they have been both before and against us. When I get slides from corporate that contains numbers like this, I throw them away. I don't know what these numbers are actually measuring, I don't know how they are weighted by severity and, most of all, I have no idea what the actual defect rate is across the products, so I don't know what they mean. Are the Linux numbers high becuase they just disclosed a bunch of fixes? Is it because of upgrades to sub-systems like Oracle? I just don't know.
Days at Risk is a slightly better measure, but also has a very subjective componant.
I'm not crowing about this and not sure why any actual security professional would.
Of course, that lets off the sales and marketing staffs.
Kos Illogic
Kos makes the following error in logic:
I've always thought these crazy right-wing homophobes are all closet homosexuals. I mean, who obsesses over things like these other than those struggling with inner demons? If they struggle with same-sex attractions, they figure, then so does everyone else. And that's when it becomes a "choice" blah blah blah. Not that I'm looking for evidence for my theory, but I got some anyway.
This doesn't prove that right-wing homophobes are gay, it just proves *this* right-wing homophone like oral sex with men. Generalizing to a class from a specific is a common error, too common for someone like Kos to fall into, he certainly knows better.
People are homophobic for lots of reasons, education (or lack there of), philosophical creed, fear, self-loathing, principled stands and, of course, religion. Of them all, only the fearful and religious worry me. The former because they sometimes resort to violence and while I *enjoy* the right to bear arms, I don't want to *have to* do so (a distinction often lost on adherents on both the far right and the far left). The latter because they are generally not content to leave the judgment to god but often feel it's necessary to legislate to accomplish what proselytizing cannot achieve. I think good-faith folks on the religious side are content to let god judge, since that is who the beef is with. It's the ones who see god a source of personal power which try to get the rest of us to dance to their tune.
Either way, Kos is off base here.
I've always thought these crazy right-wing homophobes are all closet homosexuals. I mean, who obsesses over things like these other than those struggling with inner demons? If they struggle with same-sex attractions, they figure, then so does everyone else. And that's when it becomes a "choice" blah blah blah. Not that I'm looking for evidence for my theory, but I got some anyway.
This doesn't prove that right-wing homophobes are gay, it just proves *this* right-wing homophone like oral sex with men. Generalizing to a class from a specific is a common error, too common for someone like Kos to fall into, he certainly knows better.
People are homophobic for lots of reasons, education (or lack there of), philosophical creed, fear, self-loathing, principled stands and, of course, religion. Of them all, only the fearful and religious worry me. The former because they sometimes resort to violence and while I *enjoy* the right to bear arms, I don't want to *have to* do so (a distinction often lost on adherents on both the far right and the far left). The latter because they are generally not content to leave the judgment to god but often feel it's necessary to legislate to accomplish what proselytizing cannot achieve. I think good-faith folks on the religious side are content to let god judge, since that is who the beef is with. It's the ones who see god a source of personal power which try to get the rest of us to dance to their tune.
Either way, Kos is off base here.
Like a Birthday, or a Pretty View...
I always enjoy those days when, if I'm dilligant and wade through the swamp that is the NYT Op-Ed page, I can spot an unusual, rare prize. In this case, It's a segment of David Brooks' spine.
I don't know what's more pathetic, Jack Abramoff's sleaze or Republican paralysis in the face of it. Abramoff walks out of a D.C. courthouse in his pseudo-Hasidic homburg, and all that leading Republicans can do is promise to return his money and remind everyone that some Democrats are involved in the scandal, too.
...
First, they need to hold new leadership elections. As Newt Gingrich and Vin Weber told me yesterday, Tom DeLay needs to take care of his own legal problems and give up the dream of returning as majority leader.
But Republicans need to do more than bump DeLay. They need to put the entire leadership team up for a re-vote. That's because the real problem wasn't DeLay, it was DeLayism, the whole culture that merged K Street with the Hill, and held that raising money is the most important way to contribute to the team.
David, welcome to the world of the vertibrates. Its nice to see you hold the party of your sympathy to the same standards you hold the party of your antipathy.
I don't know what's more pathetic, Jack Abramoff's sleaze or Republican paralysis in the face of it. Abramoff walks out of a D.C. courthouse in his pseudo-Hasidic homburg, and all that leading Republicans can do is promise to return his money and remind everyone that some Democrats are involved in the scandal, too.
...
First, they need to hold new leadership elections. As Newt Gingrich and Vin Weber told me yesterday, Tom DeLay needs to take care of his own legal problems and give up the dream of returning as majority leader.
But Republicans need to do more than bump DeLay. They need to put the entire leadership team up for a re-vote. That's because the real problem wasn't DeLay, it was DeLayism, the whole culture that merged K Street with the Hill, and held that raising money is the most important way to contribute to the team.
David, welcome to the world of the vertibrates. Its nice to see you hold the party of your sympathy to the same standards you hold the party of your antipathy.
The Red Badge of Courage
Also from Dan Savage this week, a reader builds his street cred by publically admitting:
Before you write me off as a Fox News-watching, Wal-Mart-shopping, Bush-supporting Bible-thumper, please note that I am a liberal Democrat living in a blue-collar city in a blue state. I voted for Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, and Kerry. But I also try to live a Christian life. Your statements were sacrilegious. Jesus and Mary deserve a little respect.
Dukakis! Holy Crap! I wish his post had a picture with it. If I ever see this individual in public, I could then lean over conspiratorially to my friends and whisper, "Psst! That's *the* guy who voted for Dukakis!"
Dan writes the response I would have written:
I don't see how it's disrespectful, degrading, or theologically incorrect to point out that if Mary was a virgin when she conceived, and if you don't buy off on the Virgin Birth (the idea that Jesus somehow passed out of Mary's uterus and down through her vaginal canal without disturbing her hymen), then Mary's hymen broke when the Kid was born. Isn't the whole point of the Jesus Thang that He was the Word made flesh? And if Mel Gibson can portray His death in detail so gory it bordered on the pornographic, how can an aside about the mechanics of His birth be off-limits?
Before you write me off as a Fox News-watching, Wal-Mart-shopping, Bush-supporting Bible-thumper, please note that I am a liberal Democrat living in a blue-collar city in a blue state. I voted for Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, and Kerry. But I also try to live a Christian life. Your statements were sacrilegious. Jesus and Mary deserve a little respect.
Dukakis! Holy Crap! I wish his post had a picture with it. If I ever see this individual in public, I could then lean over conspiratorially to my friends and whisper, "Psst! That's *the* guy who voted for Dukakis!"
Dan writes the response I would have written:
I don't see how it's disrespectful, degrading, or theologically incorrect to point out that if Mary was a virgin when she conceived, and if you don't buy off on the Virgin Birth (the idea that Jesus somehow passed out of Mary's uterus and down through her vaginal canal without disturbing her hymen), then Mary's hymen broke when the Kid was born. Isn't the whole point of the Jesus Thang that He was the Word made flesh? And if Mel Gibson can portray His death in detail so gory it bordered on the pornographic, how can an aside about the mechanics of His birth be off-limits?
Dan Savage on Feeling Lonely
From this week's column:
Want someone to call you up just to talk? Get some girlfriends or stop paying off your credit cards.
Want someone to call you up just to talk? Get some girlfriends or stop paying off your credit cards.
World's Hardest IQ Test
I spent 9 hours yesterday going through a neuropsych exam at Uof Washington as part of my current set of diagnostic processes.
I had read about these things, but it really hadn't prepared me for the reality of just how hard parts of it are. It's a comprehensive set of cognitive tests that really tap out the limits of how far your mind can stretch in a couple of dozen ways and it's surprising how simple some of them sounds but get hard as the day wears on.
I don't get the results back until next week, and then there is a 2 hour debrief. Nonetheless, during the day a couple of things stood out to me:
I think my math and visual skills are fine, although there was some weirdness. Part of the test is draw some patterns they have you draw. The patterns start out simple, a line with 2 boxes, then get progressively more complex until they verge on Piccaso-like, abstract geometric forms. There are a little more than a dozen or so of them. Later in the day, they ask you to redraw them all from memory, as many as you can. Here's the weird part: I absolutely nailed the most complex patterns (in fact I worked the list backward from most to least complex). I utterly failed to remember the first 3 patterns. Couldn't recall them. It gets further weird because even later in the day, they show you flash cards with lots of patterns on them, and you have to pick out which ones were on the first list. I'm very sure I got 100% on that because I remembered them when I saw them, even though I could have drawn them to save my life.
They give you a set of cards in a sort of sorting game, your job is to put the right card in the right pile. You are not told the rules, only if the answer is right or wrong. Also, the rules change according to a meta rule. (they don't tell you that at first). I think I did okay on this, although I don't think I completely nailed the meta rule.
They show you a series of pictures, each representing some mathematical concept which you need to figure out, again based on feedback (in this case a door bell). It starts out very simple and gets pretty complex (and there are meta rules here as well). I was reminded of the Alistair Reynold's story Diamond Dogs, and a little grateful they were not chopping off my hands. I think I did well on this one.
They give you increasingly long strings of numbers to remember and feed back, forward, backwards etc. I petered out around 7 or 8, which I think is normal.
Okay, now for the weird, weird ones:
They tell you a story which you are to memorize and repeat back. It’s about 2 minutes long. I utterly failed at this. Utterly. I got some basic plot elements and that was about it. I was quizzed afterward and recognized all the relevant facts (at least I think I did, there was no feedback) but did not retell the story well. Okay, now here is where it gets weird. An hour later they asked me to retell the story again. Bang! I nailed it. Or, at least I did light years better than the first time. Details, plot, facts etc. Two stories, same results. Weird.
Same with lists of word associations. They would give me a list of 15 or so word pairs, e.g. elephant/glass, raccoon/paper, lizard/clown, insect/acorn (in fact, I can repeat the entire list now). They give you the list, then ask the first half, prompting for the second. Miserable failure. I couldn’t do it, try as I might (and there was a point of pride here). An hour later not only did I have the whole list but knew the 2 words the interviewer didn’t ask me. Weird.
It’s like there is something wrong with my short term memory buffer. Stuffs going in, isn’t getting lost, but isn’t available until it’s moved into medium or long term storage.
The other total failure was person/name association. I think I came close to a zero on that and was frustrated to the point of getting angry. I simply can’t remember peoples names and there doesn’t seem to be any long-term recovery effect. They are just lost.
There were other things, but it was the standard IQ stuff, arranging blocks with diagonal patterns into pictures, a spelling test (which was okay), how many words with the letter P can you name in a minute etc.
There was also a test where they blindfolded me, gave me some blocks of odd shapes and a vertical peg board and timed how quickly I could get all the pegs in the holes with my right hand, my left hand then both hands. Then they asked me to draw the board. Again, I think I did okay.
Actual, factual results come out next week Wednesday, and I’m really curious to see what, if anything is going on.
I had read about these things, but it really hadn't prepared me for the reality of just how hard parts of it are. It's a comprehensive set of cognitive tests that really tap out the limits of how far your mind can stretch in a couple of dozen ways and it's surprising how simple some of them sounds but get hard as the day wears on.
I don't get the results back until next week, and then there is a 2 hour debrief. Nonetheless, during the day a couple of things stood out to me:
I think my math and visual skills are fine, although there was some weirdness. Part of the test is draw some patterns they have you draw. The patterns start out simple, a line with 2 boxes, then get progressively more complex until they verge on Piccaso-like, abstract geometric forms. There are a little more than a dozen or so of them. Later in the day, they ask you to redraw them all from memory, as many as you can. Here's the weird part: I absolutely nailed the most complex patterns (in fact I worked the list backward from most to least complex). I utterly failed to remember the first 3 patterns. Couldn't recall them. It gets further weird because even later in the day, they show you flash cards with lots of patterns on them, and you have to pick out which ones were on the first list. I'm very sure I got 100% on that because I remembered them when I saw them, even though I could have drawn them to save my life.
They give you a set of cards in a sort of sorting game, your job is to put the right card in the right pile. You are not told the rules, only if the answer is right or wrong. Also, the rules change according to a meta rule. (they don't tell you that at first). I think I did okay on this, although I don't think I completely nailed the meta rule.
They show you a series of pictures, each representing some mathematical concept which you need to figure out, again based on feedback (in this case a door bell). It starts out very simple and gets pretty complex (and there are meta rules here as well). I was reminded of the Alistair Reynold's story Diamond Dogs, and a little grateful they were not chopping off my hands. I think I did well on this one.
They give you increasingly long strings of numbers to remember and feed back, forward, backwards etc. I petered out around 7 or 8, which I think is normal.
Okay, now for the weird, weird ones:
They tell you a story which you are to memorize and repeat back. It’s about 2 minutes long. I utterly failed at this. Utterly. I got some basic plot elements and that was about it. I was quizzed afterward and recognized all the relevant facts (at least I think I did, there was no feedback) but did not retell the story well. Okay, now here is where it gets weird. An hour later they asked me to retell the story again. Bang! I nailed it. Or, at least I did light years better than the first time. Details, plot, facts etc. Two stories, same results. Weird.
Same with lists of word associations. They would give me a list of 15 or so word pairs, e.g. elephant/glass, raccoon/paper, lizard/clown, insect/acorn (in fact, I can repeat the entire list now). They give you the list, then ask the first half, prompting for the second. Miserable failure. I couldn’t do it, try as I might (and there was a point of pride here). An hour later not only did I have the whole list but knew the 2 words the interviewer didn’t ask me. Weird.
It’s like there is something wrong with my short term memory buffer. Stuffs going in, isn’t getting lost, but isn’t available until it’s moved into medium or long term storage.
The other total failure was person/name association. I think I came close to a zero on that and was frustrated to the point of getting angry. I simply can’t remember peoples names and there doesn’t seem to be any long-term recovery effect. They are just lost.
There were other things, but it was the standard IQ stuff, arranging blocks with diagonal patterns into pictures, a spelling test (which was okay), how many words with the letter P can you name in a minute etc.
There was also a test where they blindfolded me, gave me some blocks of odd shapes and a vertical peg board and timed how quickly I could get all the pegs in the holes with my right hand, my left hand then both hands. Then they asked me to draw the board. Again, I think I did okay.
Actual, factual results come out next week Wednesday, and I’m really curious to see what, if anything is going on.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
If Mencken Were Alive and Blogging...
Oh, I have been going about this blogging thing all wrong.
This is how it should be done!
Dec. 15
Dr. Bush is convinced that his force-fed ministrations of liberty are having a salutary effect on the Iraqi body politic. Beholding the parliamentary elections, and the purple staining of 11 million fingers, he exulted, "This is a major step forward in achieving our objective, which is having a democratic Iraq." What twaddle! Democracy, especially in the hothouse atmosphere of the Holy Land, remains the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. The notion that the onetime caliphate of Saddam Hussein will benefit from its presence is as preposterous as expecting leadership from Howard Dean, or Christian charity from Ann Coulter.
Dec. 18
Hillary Clinton continues to believe she can be elected president. Someone should disabuse the good lady of this notion. It is not La Clinton's sex that disqualifies her. On the contrary. Women possess more intelligence and common sense than their male counterparts. Rather, it is Hillary's naked ambition that will keep her from high office. Earlier this year, against every innate fiber of her left-leaning body, she effectively said that abortion is always a tragic choice. Now she has come out foursquare for a bill that would ban flag burning. If pandering were sufficient entrée for public service, Hillary would be elected handily. As it is, even the masses can spot a poseur.
This is how it should be done!
Dec. 15
Dr. Bush is convinced that his force-fed ministrations of liberty are having a salutary effect on the Iraqi body politic. Beholding the parliamentary elections, and the purple staining of 11 million fingers, he exulted, "This is a major step forward in achieving our objective, which is having a democratic Iraq." What twaddle! Democracy, especially in the hothouse atmosphere of the Holy Land, remains the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. The notion that the onetime caliphate of Saddam Hussein will benefit from its presence is as preposterous as expecting leadership from Howard Dean, or Christian charity from Ann Coulter.
Dec. 18
Hillary Clinton continues to believe she can be elected president. Someone should disabuse the good lady of this notion. It is not La Clinton's sex that disqualifies her. On the contrary. Women possess more intelligence and common sense than their male counterparts. Rather, it is Hillary's naked ambition that will keep her from high office. Earlier this year, against every innate fiber of her left-leaning body, she effectively said that abortion is always a tragic choice. Now she has come out foursquare for a bill that would ban flag burning. If pandering were sufficient entrée for public service, Hillary would be elected handily. As it is, even the masses can spot a poseur.
The Ideas Blog
Okay, maybe I was mistaken.
I've been reading David Friedman's Ideas blog which seemed to have some interesting aspects. It does, but not in David's ideas which, at least so far, fall into a series of logical fallacies I expect from folks like Travis, but not from an actual expert.
His capital punishment argument is based on a set of emperical assumptions, none of which are backed up with evidence, e.g. mistakes are rare, killing a criminal saves lives, refering to made up or discredited data etc. He simply sidesteps or takes off the table other points which are valid but don't support his point, e.g.
I have ignored a fourth argument against the death penalty—that it doesn’t deter—since I believe the factual claim is probably false.
No, his arguments are not persuasive. However, the comments are very interesting and often offer a better insight into libertarianism than David does.
e,g,
In principle, there can always be false positives in death penalty convictions. I find this flies in the face of the principle of inviolability, which I think in fact underlies much of the libertarian ethics that this country is founded upon (and rightfully so).This principle states that you have a natural right not to be imperiled, by no fault of your own. This goes even for lofty principles of "deterrence"--which, taken too far, becomes an essentially socialist concept ("We can lower the crime rate in society by making examples of people who we think committed similar crimes").
The "breaking a few eggs" side of making this justice omelette is allegedly justified because if the state is seen as waivering, the system evolves to something costly and lengthy as it is in the US now.
Personally, I think the high cost of execution is simply a type market force evaluating a human life. This is good, im my opinion, becuase it seems to set the bar currently on the side of correcting mistakes and I am unconvinced by hand waving arguments that as long as more guilty get killed than innocent thats okay. However, the calculus may chnage in the future when the planet is more crowded and the value of life is "cheaper". Historically the US has been under-populated with relatively few high density populations areas compared to Europe or Asia. If that changes, I would expect to see opinions on the death penalty start to swing the other way.
The post I'll ding here from David's blog is the one on public schools and the First Amendment. he creates a false dichotomy, i.e. teaching science is, de facto, teaching a religion because science falsifies biblical literalism.
This is nonsense. No major religion crumbled when the world was proven round or that we live in a heliocentric solar system, although some did change a little. Education, if done well, gives you tools for understanding the world. It is perfectly possible to get a really good secular education and retain one's religious and philosophical convicitions. Atheists compose a mere 4% of the overall population. By David's argument, that means only 4% of us are actually educated.
What crap. And what an insult to educated people of faith.
I've been reading David Friedman's Ideas blog which seemed to have some interesting aspects. It does, but not in David's ideas which, at least so far, fall into a series of logical fallacies I expect from folks like Travis, but not from an actual expert.
His capital punishment argument is based on a set of emperical assumptions, none of which are backed up with evidence, e.g. mistakes are rare, killing a criminal saves lives, refering to made up or discredited data etc. He simply sidesteps or takes off the table other points which are valid but don't support his point, e.g.
I have ignored a fourth argument against the death penalty—that it doesn’t deter—since I believe the factual claim is probably false.
No, his arguments are not persuasive. However, the comments are very interesting and often offer a better insight into libertarianism than David does.
e,g,
In principle, there can always be false positives in death penalty convictions. I find this flies in the face of the principle of inviolability, which I think in fact underlies much of the libertarian ethics that this country is founded upon (and rightfully so).This principle states that you have a natural right not to be imperiled, by no fault of your own. This goes even for lofty principles of "deterrence"--which, taken too far, becomes an essentially socialist concept ("We can lower the crime rate in society by making examples of people who we think committed similar crimes").
The "breaking a few eggs" side of making this justice omelette is allegedly justified because if the state is seen as waivering, the system evolves to something costly and lengthy as it is in the US now.
Personally, I think the high cost of execution is simply a type market force evaluating a human life. This is good, im my opinion, becuase it seems to set the bar currently on the side of correcting mistakes and I am unconvinced by hand waving arguments that as long as more guilty get killed than innocent thats okay. However, the calculus may chnage in the future when the planet is more crowded and the value of life is "cheaper". Historically the US has been under-populated with relatively few high density populations areas compared to Europe or Asia. If that changes, I would expect to see opinions on the death penalty start to swing the other way.
The post I'll ding here from David's blog is the one on public schools and the First Amendment. he creates a false dichotomy, i.e. teaching science is, de facto, teaching a religion because science falsifies biblical literalism.
This is nonsense. No major religion crumbled when the world was proven round or that we live in a heliocentric solar system, although some did change a little. Education, if done well, gives you tools for understanding the world. It is perfectly possible to get a really good secular education and retain one's religious and philosophical convicitions. Atheists compose a mere 4% of the overall population. By David's argument, that means only 4% of us are actually educated.
What crap. And what an insult to educated people of faith.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
and Geoff gets Upset When I Say Things About Kwanzaa
But acording to his favorite conservative hottie:
(Sing to "Jingle Bells")
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani -- the same seven "principles" of Kwanzaa.
And, FTR, I happen to LIKE Kwanzaa.
However I wash my hands of Robannukah
(Sing to "Jingle Bells")
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani -- the same seven "principles" of Kwanzaa.
And, FTR, I happen to LIKE Kwanzaa.
However I wash my hands of Robannukah
"the most arrogant company in the world"
The plot stays the same, but the characters change in a decade long cycle.
Jerry Weinberger, chief executive of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), said he was the inventor of software programming that allows telephone calls to be placed over the Internet.
He said 120 companies, including Lucent, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo and Microsoft, have paid RTI to use the technology for "Voice over Internet Protocol" (VoIP) calls.
RTI filed suit in a Long Island federal court against Google two months ago because the search engine was using the technology without authorisation, Weinberger said after the New York Post reported the lawsuit Friday.
"They told us to go to hell," the RTI boss told AFP. "They are the most arrogant company in the world."
ATT, IBM, and Microsoft so far in my conscience lifetime. Google seems next.
Jerry Weinberger, chief executive of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), said he was the inventor of software programming that allows telephone calls to be placed over the Internet.
He said 120 companies, including Lucent, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo and Microsoft, have paid RTI to use the technology for "Voice over Internet Protocol" (VoIP) calls.
RTI filed suit in a Long Island federal court against Google two months ago because the search engine was using the technology without authorisation, Weinberger said after the New York Post reported the lawsuit Friday.
"They told us to go to hell," the RTI boss told AFP. "They are the most arrogant company in the world."
ATT, IBM, and Microsoft so far in my conscience lifetime. Google seems next.
So Were You Just Making Stuff About About Writing A Book?
asks a reader.
No. I have been making progress, just slowly. Events have overtaken some of it and I'm working out late 21st century plot elements. Unlike Ray Kurzweil, I'm not confident I know how things are going to pan out.
For example, I destroyed Miami in 2013 by a Cat 5 hurricane, then Katrina rendered the whole thing moot.
However, to prove my good intent, here is a sample from the outline.
10/1/2011
Economics
Gates
Bill Gates Retires: Steve Ballmer to remain until end of 2012. MSFT stock slides 20% on news.
Science
Immortality
Koreans Clone Chimp: Telomere Dog still healthy.
Entertainment
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise returns to rehab after assaulting nuns
Entertainment
Harry Potter
Despite Deaths, Final Harry Potter Movie in November
Space
American space
Hubble snaps last photo. 1 working shuttle remains in fleet: Atlantis
2/2/2012
Politics
Red States
Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas model anti-contraception legislation on Utah. Scott v. Utah appeal to reach SC next term.
Scott v. Utah challenge to Utah Anti-contraception law
Science
Internet
Pittsburgh joins NY/Boston/LA/Austin as free internet cities
Politics
Clintons
Hillary decides against running for president
Warner leads
Politics
GOP
McCain Challenges Romney for nom.
3/31/2012
Religion
Benedict XIV
Pope dies of stroke while shitting
The Catholic Schism
Religion
New Anglicans
New Anglicans popular with Americans, 1st worlders. GM, contraception, euthanasia cited.
Evolution of Church
5/1/2012
Religion
Pope Nicholas VI
Wilfrid Fox Napier, 71, named Pope Nicholas VI. Seen as hard right turn, growing strength of African Church
Isolation of the US/Euro churches increases
7/7/2012
Politics
Blue States
Washington, Oregon adopt Gay Marriage by Refferendum.
Politics
Blue States
Mass, Vermont, Washington legalize medical MJ.
Politics
DNC
Brian Schweitzer (G-MT) takes DNC nom. Offers Wes Clark VP.
8/8/2012
Politics
GOP
Romney/McCain ticket
Politics
Red States
Kansas passes anti-contraception
Politics
Blue States
California passes statute forbidding religion in classroom except for religion or philosophy classes
4/8/2013
Religion
Pope N VI
Pope instructs priest to deny communion, confession to politicians supporting gay rights, abortion. Stops just short of excommunication
Religion
Fatima
American Cardinal Brams, NY, hints that American Church may have a hard time following these orders.
Religion
New Anglicans
New Anglicans denounce Pope
Religion
Southern Baptists
Southern Baptists, Falwell, Robertson support Pope’s idea but not Pope
1/12/2014
Religion
Fatima
Few American, Europe Churches refusing communion, Pope furious. Calls conclave to Rome and screams for 16 hours.
No. I have been making progress, just slowly. Events have overtaken some of it and I'm working out late 21st century plot elements. Unlike Ray Kurzweil, I'm not confident I know how things are going to pan out.
For example, I destroyed Miami in 2013 by a Cat 5 hurricane, then Katrina rendered the whole thing moot.
However, to prove my good intent, here is a sample from the outline.
10/1/2011
Economics
Gates
Bill Gates Retires: Steve Ballmer to remain until end of 2012. MSFT stock slides 20% on news.
Science
Immortality
Koreans Clone Chimp: Telomere Dog still healthy.
Entertainment
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise returns to rehab after assaulting nuns
Entertainment
Harry Potter
Despite Deaths, Final Harry Potter Movie in November
Space
American space
Hubble snaps last photo. 1 working shuttle remains in fleet: Atlantis
2/2/2012
Politics
Red States
Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas model anti-contraception legislation on Utah. Scott v. Utah appeal to reach SC next term.
Scott v. Utah challenge to Utah Anti-contraception law
Science
Internet
Pittsburgh joins NY/Boston/LA/Austin as free internet cities
Politics
Clintons
Hillary decides against running for president
Warner leads
Politics
GOP
McCain Challenges Romney for nom.
3/31/2012
Religion
Benedict XIV
Pope dies of stroke while shitting
The Catholic Schism
Religion
New Anglicans
New Anglicans popular with Americans, 1st worlders. GM, contraception, euthanasia cited.
Evolution of Church
5/1/2012
Religion
Pope Nicholas VI
Wilfrid Fox Napier, 71, named Pope Nicholas VI. Seen as hard right turn, growing strength of African Church
Isolation of the US/Euro churches increases
7/7/2012
Politics
Blue States
Washington, Oregon adopt Gay Marriage by Refferendum.
Politics
Blue States
Mass, Vermont, Washington legalize medical MJ.
Politics
DNC
Brian Schweitzer (G-MT) takes DNC nom. Offers Wes Clark VP.
8/8/2012
Politics
GOP
Romney/McCain ticket
Politics
Red States
Kansas passes anti-contraception
Politics
Blue States
California passes statute forbidding religion in classroom except for religion or philosophy classes
4/8/2013
Religion
Pope N VI
Pope instructs priest to deny communion, confession to politicians supporting gay rights, abortion. Stops just short of excommunication
Religion
Fatima
American Cardinal Brams, NY, hints that American Church may have a hard time following these orders.
Religion
New Anglicans
New Anglicans denounce Pope
Religion
Southern Baptists
Southern Baptists, Falwell, Robertson support Pope’s idea but not Pope
1/12/2014
Religion
Fatima
Few American, Europe Churches refusing communion, Pope furious. Calls conclave to Rome and screams for 16 hours.
Media Training 641: Advanced Studies
There is a defacto Professor of Media Training at Syracuse University, Robert Thompson (the p is silent, like in swimming). I am in awe. He does everything I was ever trained to do and so much more.
Aluminium Webbed armchairs?? My hat is off to you Professor!
The key to Thompson’s savvy is staying ahead of the game. “You hope that by the time a journalist calls you’ve already been thinking about it,” he says. The 60th anniversary of the webbed aluminum lawn chair, he offers as a nontelevision, pop-culture example, is approaching, so he read up. The chair is fascinating, he says, “because you had all this extra aluminum after the war,” and some enterprising folks thought to “take this surplus of aluminum and match it with the explosion of the suburbs, which was helped with the GI Bill.” It’s his favorite type of topic. “It’s fun to learn the contextual history of things you take for granted. The stuff is so totally a part of who you are and you fail to see the significance.”
Aluminium Webbed armchairs?? My hat is off to you Professor!
The key to Thompson’s savvy is staying ahead of the game. “You hope that by the time a journalist calls you’ve already been thinking about it,” he says. The 60th anniversary of the webbed aluminum lawn chair, he offers as a nontelevision, pop-culture example, is approaching, so he read up. The chair is fascinating, he says, “because you had all this extra aluminum after the war,” and some enterprising folks thought to “take this surplus of aluminum and match it with the explosion of the suburbs, which was helped with the GI Bill.” It’s his favorite type of topic. “It’s fun to learn the contextual history of things you take for granted. The stuff is so totally a part of who you are and you fail to see the significance.”
Friday, December 30, 2005
Thursday, December 29, 2005
The Enemy of my Enemy
In a message dated 12/29/2005 10:40:22 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, geofferey.collinmiller.horvath@drexel.edu writes:
Nov 8- San Francisco passes a law that "prohibits the manufacture and sale of all firearms and ammunition in the city, and makes it illegal for residents to keep handguns in their homes or businesses." (Washington Post).I've searched on the ACLU site for any kind of call to action re: this, but found nothing. Nothing urging support for or against this, which is a huge Second Amendment concern. My question is, are they strictly hands-off with guns, or just picky about the civil liberties they defend?
I thought you wanted to get rid of the ACLU, now you want their help?
... okaaaaaay
Well, first of all, the ACLU is a private organization, so they are free to pick and choose whatever they want or don't want to defend. They don't have an obligation to take cases like this, or any cases in fact. I happily support them with a check now and again so I can keep burning flags with pictures of Jesus giving George Bush a blow job on them. If a majority of the membership thinks this is worth doing, then they will do it.
So it's not the ACLU you have to convince, it's people paying their bills.
Like me.
Second, there isn't a case here. In order for the courts to get involves, there has to be a case. None has been offered yet.
Finally, the ACLU stand on the second amendment is right on their website:
http://www.aclu.org/police/gen/14523res20020304.html
Update: I wanted to add: I was very "pro gun control" for a long time until I read the Federalist Papers. Understanding the context of the 2nd Amendment moved me to the ACLUs "neutral" position. I'm pleased (and a little surprised) that the ACLU and I agree on this view.
I happen to think they have it about right.
Maybe I should write them another check.... grabbing check book... looking for pen...
Gun Control (3/4/2002)
Gun Control
"Why doesn't the ACLU support an individual'sunlimited right to keep and bear arms?"
BACKGROUND The ACLU has often been criticized for "ignoring the Second Amendment" and refusing to fight for the individual's right to own a gun or other weapons. This issue, however, has not been ignored by the ACLU. The national board has in fact debated and discussed the civil liberties aspects of the Second Amendment many times.
We believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one, intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias to assure their own freedom and security against the central government. In today's world, that idea is somewhat anachronistic and in any case would require weapons much more powerful than handguns or hunting rifles. The ACLU therefore believes that the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons nor does it prohibit reasonable regulation of gun ownership, such as licensing and registration.
IN BRIEF The national ACLU is neutral on the issue of gun control. We believe that the Constitution contains no barriers to reasonable regulations of gun ownership. If we can license and register cars, we can license and register guns.
Most opponents of gun control concede that the Second Amendment certainly does not guarantee an individual's right to own bazookas, missiles or nuclear warheads. Yet these, like rifles, pistols and even submachine guns, are arms.
The question therefore is not whether to restrict arms ownership, but how much to restrict it. If that is a question left open by the Constitution, then it is a question for Congress to decide.
ACLU POLICY "The ACLU agrees with the Supreme Court's long-standing interpretation of the Second Amendment [as set forth in the 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller] that the individual's right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected. Therefore, there is no constitutional impediment to the regulation of firearms." --Policy #47
Washington Post Article:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/09/AR2005110900365.htmlAnd my personal feelings:
Nov 8- San Francisco passes a law that "prohibits the manufacture and sale of all firearms and ammunition in the city, and makes it illegal for residents to keep handguns in their homes or businesses." (Washington Post).I've searched on the ACLU site for any kind of call to action re: this, but found nothing. Nothing urging support for or against this, which is a huge Second Amendment concern. My question is, are they strictly hands-off with guns, or just picky about the civil liberties they defend?
I thought you wanted to get rid of the ACLU, now you want their help?
... okaaaaaay
Well, first of all, the ACLU is a private organization, so they are free to pick and choose whatever they want or don't want to defend. They don't have an obligation to take cases like this, or any cases in fact. I happily support them with a check now and again so I can keep burning flags with pictures of Jesus giving George Bush a blow job on them. If a majority of the membership thinks this is worth doing, then they will do it.
So it's not the ACLU you have to convince, it's people paying their bills.
Like me.
Second, there isn't a case here. In order for the courts to get involves, there has to be a case. None has been offered yet.
Finally, the ACLU stand on the second amendment is right on their website:
http://www.aclu.org/police/gen/14523res20020304.html
Update: I wanted to add: I was very "pro gun control" for a long time until I read the Federalist Papers. Understanding the context of the 2nd Amendment moved me to the ACLUs "neutral" position. I'm pleased (and a little surprised) that the ACLU and I agree on this view.
I happen to think they have it about right.
Maybe I should write them another check.... grabbing check book... looking for pen...
Gun Control (3/4/2002)
Gun Control
"Why doesn't the ACLU support an individual'sunlimited right to keep and bear arms?"
BACKGROUND The ACLU has often been criticized for "ignoring the Second Amendment" and refusing to fight for the individual's right to own a gun or other weapons. This issue, however, has not been ignored by the ACLU. The national board has in fact debated and discussed the civil liberties aspects of the Second Amendment many times.
We believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one, intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias to assure their own freedom and security against the central government. In today's world, that idea is somewhat anachronistic and in any case would require weapons much more powerful than handguns or hunting rifles. The ACLU therefore believes that the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons nor does it prohibit reasonable regulation of gun ownership, such as licensing and registration.
IN BRIEF The national ACLU is neutral on the issue of gun control. We believe that the Constitution contains no barriers to reasonable regulations of gun ownership. If we can license and register cars, we can license and register guns.
Most opponents of gun control concede that the Second Amendment certainly does not guarantee an individual's right to own bazookas, missiles or nuclear warheads. Yet these, like rifles, pistols and even submachine guns, are arms.
The question therefore is not whether to restrict arms ownership, but how much to restrict it. If that is a question left open by the Constitution, then it is a question for Congress to decide.
ACLU POLICY "The ACLU agrees with the Supreme Court's long-standing interpretation of the Second Amendment [as set forth in the 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller] that the individual's right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected. Therefore, there is no constitutional impediment to the regulation of firearms." --Policy #47
Washington Post Article:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/09/AR2005110900365.htmlAnd my personal feelings:
Zell Miller Syndrome
There must be something in the water in Georgia. First Zell Miller goes batshit, the President throws a collar on him and parades him around on stage, then he disappears. Truthfully, I really did think Zell had some kind of neurological problem, the change was so drastic and sudden.
But now, former congressman Bob Barr has it as well! Bob is the meanest, reddest republican who ever came from Georgia. He loves the War on Drugs, the FMA and was the leading congressman in the impeachment of Clinton. When asked why he and fellow republicans was pushing so hard for investigation after investigation until they found something , anything which would allow impeachment he notably responded, "because we can". He went as far as having Clinton's cat investigated.
But now, out of congress, Barr has changed his tune significantly. Once an author of the PATRIOT ACT, he is now one of it's most vocal critics, calling for scrapping it. He's joined the dreaded American Civil Liberties Union, the garlic and wooden spike of big daddy government. Very strange. Now this:
Two of the most powerful moments of political déjà vu I have ever experienced took place recently in the context of the Bush administration's defense of presidentially ordered electronic spying on American citizens.
First, in the best tradition of former President Bill Clinton's classic, "it-all-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-is-is" defense, President Bush responded to a question at a White House news conference about what now appears to be a clear violation of federal electronic monitoring laws by trying to argue that he had not ordered the National Security Agency to "monitor" phone and e-mail communications of American citizens without court order; he had merely ordered them to "detect" improper communications.
This example of presidential phrase parsing was followed quickly by the president's press secretary, Scott McLellan, dead-panning to reporters that when Bush said a couple of years ago that he would never allow the NSA to monitor Americans without a court order, what he really meant was something different than what he actually said. If McLellan's last name had been McCurry, and the topic an illicit relationship with a White House intern rather than illegal spying on American citizens, I could have easily been listening to a White House news conference at the height of the Clinton impeachment scandal.
Weird. Not quite a call for impeachment, but definately a clearer eyed evaluation than I would expect from someone with Barr's background.
But now, former congressman Bob Barr has it as well! Bob is the meanest, reddest republican who ever came from Georgia. He loves the War on Drugs, the FMA and was the leading congressman in the impeachment of Clinton. When asked why he and fellow republicans was pushing so hard for investigation after investigation until they found something , anything which would allow impeachment he notably responded, "because we can". He went as far as having Clinton's cat investigated.
But now, out of congress, Barr has changed his tune significantly. Once an author of the PATRIOT ACT, he is now one of it's most vocal critics, calling for scrapping it. He's joined the dreaded American Civil Liberties Union, the garlic and wooden spike of big daddy government. Very strange. Now this:
Two of the most powerful moments of political déjà vu I have ever experienced took place recently in the context of the Bush administration's defense of presidentially ordered electronic spying on American citizens.
First, in the best tradition of former President Bill Clinton's classic, "it-all-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-is-is" defense, President Bush responded to a question at a White House news conference about what now appears to be a clear violation of federal electronic monitoring laws by trying to argue that he had not ordered the National Security Agency to "monitor" phone and e-mail communications of American citizens without court order; he had merely ordered them to "detect" improper communications.
This example of presidential phrase parsing was followed quickly by the president's press secretary, Scott McLellan, dead-panning to reporters that when Bush said a couple of years ago that he would never allow the NSA to monitor Americans without a court order, what he really meant was something different than what he actually said. If McLellan's last name had been McCurry, and the topic an illicit relationship with a White House intern rather than illegal spying on American citizens, I could have easily been listening to a White House news conference at the height of the Clinton impeachment scandal.
Weird. Not quite a call for impeachment, but definately a clearer eyed evaluation than I would expect from someone with Barr's background.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Finally, What I Wanted for Christmas
A shred, just the smallest shred of integrity from someone on the Right. Looks like I got it, no matter how short lived it will prove to be.
From the Wall Street Journal owned Barrons (Subscription only)
AS THE YEAR WAS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, we picked up our New York Times and learned that the Bush administration has been fighting terrorism by intercepting communications in America without warrants. It was worrisome on its face, but in justifying their actions, officials have made a bad situation much worse: Administration lawyers and the president himself have tortured the Constitution and extracted a suspension of the separation of powers.
. . .
Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.
It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.
. . .
Published reports quote sources saying that 14 members of Congress were notified of the wiretapping. If some had misgivings, apparently they were scared of being called names, as the president did last week when he said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."
Wrong. If we don't discuss the program and the lack of authority for it, we are meeting the enemy -- in the mirror.
It won't last of course, but it is a sign that the current administration has gone too far even for it's allies. No one (except Cheney) wants a return to the days of Nixon when the president could wiretap the competition.
To my republican friends out there who think I am making too much of this, answer me one question. Is this the kind of power in the presidency you want to leave to President Hillary Clinton?
Barrons quote via
From the Wall Street Journal owned Barrons (Subscription only)
AS THE YEAR WAS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, we picked up our New York Times and learned that the Bush administration has been fighting terrorism by intercepting communications in America without warrants. It was worrisome on its face, but in justifying their actions, officials have made a bad situation much worse: Administration lawyers and the president himself have tortured the Constitution and extracted a suspension of the separation of powers.
. . .
Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.
It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.
. . .
Published reports quote sources saying that 14 members of Congress were notified of the wiretapping. If some had misgivings, apparently they were scared of being called names, as the president did last week when he said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."
Wrong. If we don't discuss the program and the lack of authority for it, we are meeting the enemy -- in the mirror.
It won't last of course, but it is a sign that the current administration has gone too far even for it's allies. No one (except Cheney) wants a return to the days of Nixon when the president could wiretap the competition.
To my republican friends out there who think I am making too much of this, answer me one question. Is this the kind of power in the presidency you want to leave to President Hillary Clinton?
Barrons quote via
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Interesting Blog
Here with a hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.
The Democrats have problems too. While things have been looking up for them recently, their ideological coalition has been losing strength for decades, leaving them in danger of long term minority status.The obvious solution to both sets of problems is for the Democrats to try to pull the libertarian faction out of the Republican party. How large that faction is is hard to judge, but it is clearly a lot larger than the vote of the Libertarian Party would suggest. The current administration's use of pro-market rhetoric suggests that it, at least, believes that a significant fraction of its base cares about such things. The conversion of a mere ten percent of current Republicans into Democrats would strikingly alter the current political balance.
Innumerable arguments with the Strawberry Woman years ago ended my blind faith in the DNC and pushed me to a Goldwater-esque republicanism which eventually ripened into a form of pragmatic libertarianism. Not the crazy anarcho-capitalist version which I file in the same folder as communism (both have a wildly unrealistic view of what motivates people, even if they are at polar extremes as to what those forces are), nor the wacky LaRouche kind where people in orange saffron robes try to sell flowers in the airport... wait... ... anyway, a more pragmatic, get the government out of my business but keep them for infrastrucutre purposes type of philosophy.
So I am looking forward to watching this blog.
The Democrats have problems too. While things have been looking up for them recently, their ideological coalition has been losing strength for decades, leaving them in danger of long term minority status.The obvious solution to both sets of problems is for the Democrats to try to pull the libertarian faction out of the Republican party. How large that faction is is hard to judge, but it is clearly a lot larger than the vote of the Libertarian Party would suggest. The current administration's use of pro-market rhetoric suggests that it, at least, believes that a significant fraction of its base cares about such things. The conversion of a mere ten percent of current Republicans into Democrats would strikingly alter the current political balance.
Innumerable arguments with the Strawberry Woman years ago ended my blind faith in the DNC and pushed me to a Goldwater-esque republicanism which eventually ripened into a form of pragmatic libertarianism. Not the crazy anarcho-capitalist version which I file in the same folder as communism (both have a wildly unrealistic view of what motivates people, even if they are at polar extremes as to what those forces are), nor the wacky LaRouche kind where people in orange saffron robes try to sell flowers in the airport... wait... ... anyway, a more pragmatic, get the government out of my business but keep them for infrastrucutre purposes type of philosophy.
So I am looking forward to watching this blog.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Enough Bricks to Build the Pyramids
Thats how many GOP lawmakers must be shitting over this:
Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under indictment for fraud in South Florida, is expected to complete a plea agreement in the Miami criminal case, setting the stage for him to become a crucial witness in a broad federal corruption investigation, people with direct knowledge of the case said.
One participant in the case said the deal could be made final as early as next week.
The terms of the plea deal have not been completed, and the negotiations are especially complicated because they involve prosecutors both in Miami and in Washington, where Mr. Abramoff is being investigated in a separate influence-peddling inquiry, participants said. Details of what he feels comfortable pleading guilty to are "probably largely worked out," the participant said, while the details of the prison sentence are less resolved.
Yes, the DNC will have it's problems too, but as I understand it, Abramoff's "gifts" to DNC members were more of an insurance policy that anything else. In case this kindof theing ever happened, GOP folks would be able to defend themselves with the "they did it too" strategy.
And, FTR, if the DNC folks really did "do it too", hang 'um!
Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under indictment for fraud in South Florida, is expected to complete a plea agreement in the Miami criminal case, setting the stage for him to become a crucial witness in a broad federal corruption investigation, people with direct knowledge of the case said.
One participant in the case said the deal could be made final as early as next week.
The terms of the plea deal have not been completed, and the negotiations are especially complicated because they involve prosecutors both in Miami and in Washington, where Mr. Abramoff is being investigated in a separate influence-peddling inquiry, participants said. Details of what he feels comfortable pleading guilty to are "probably largely worked out," the participant said, while the details of the prison sentence are less resolved.
Yes, the DNC will have it's problems too, but as I understand it, Abramoff's "gifts" to DNC members were more of an insurance policy that anything else. In case this kindof theing ever happened, GOP folks would be able to defend themselves with the "they did it too" strategy.
And, FTR, if the DNC folks really did "do it too", hang 'um!
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