Cognitive Apostate

Blogging Sabbatical

2007-04-24T21:39:00.000-04:00

Sadly, with the start of my new job, its four hours of daily commuting, the weekend trips to Philly to repair my 85 yr-old house, and the additional time demands of cohabitation, I have not been able to blog much.

I imagine that will be the case until I sell my house (and there's still a ton of work) or quit / get fired (four weeks in and I have some stories already!) I'll not have time to blog. These days I can't even read blogs...or sometimes even news.

I do plan on posting more regularly (someday) but in the meantime, help yourself to the blogs in the sidebar.

The strange case of David Hicks

2007-04-01T00:52:00.000-04:00

As an Australian fighter in the Taliban, David Hicks is one of those rare Gitmo detainees, who has "media potential" (by which I mean he's a white native English speaker). There's a lot of sides to this story: he's obviously a bad guy, but seems to have been mistreated. Some stories alledge retribution against his military appointed counsel, and then there are diplomatic efforts from the Australian State Dept. Today though what's most intriguing is the terms of his plea-bargain.

There was a really good article on this in the Philly Inquirer today, but I'm not sure how long that link will last, so here's a shorter digest. From the Inquirer:

A panel of military officers had recommended a term of up to seven years, but a plea agreement that had been kept secret from the panel capped the sentence at nine months for David Hicks, who has been held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years.

Hicks also stipulated under his plea deal that he had "never been illegally treated by a person or persons while in the custody of the U.S. government," Kohlmann said.

Furthermore, the judge said, the agreement bars Hicks from suing the U.S. government for alleged abuse, forfeits any right to appeal his conviction, and imposes a gag order that prevents him from speaking with news media for a year from his sentencing date.

Hicks previously reported being beaten and deprived of sleep during his more than five years at the Guantanamo prison for terrorism suspects.

Shayana Kadidal, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many Guantanamo detainees, said the provisions appeared aimed at preventing abuse allegations from emerging and politically damaging the Bush administration.

So Hicks went from a really bad guy...down to someone who was found guilty and prosecutors wanted to lock up 7 years...down to someone who only serves 9 months (in Australia, no less) - provided he agrees not to sue us.

Evidently it's more important to buy his silence than keep him incarcerated. Kinda makes you wonder why...

The gross files

2007-03-31T23:02:00.000-04:00

I interrupt the blogging hiatus with breaking news from one of my cats. Evidently Bennie has a hairball or something since he's gagging an heaving a bit. Unfortunately he is still hungry, so he was eating food, then spitting a bit up, then eating it again. Gross, huh?

Or maybe it's Feline bulemia? He's historically been unconcerned about his figure, and I doubt he's slimming down for swimsuit season. Lately though, some people have been calling him fat, so maybe that has sparked body image issues.

On a more serious note: ever since we've moved (about 10 days ago), he's also had an urge to use the litterbox 3-4 times an hour. I'm hoping it has something to do with the move/exposure to a new cat and not anything like the recent food poisoning in cats. Of course we checked his food against the recall list, but when I read lines like this:

Sundlof said the FDA had not found any studies of melamine in cats, and the results of only a single 1945 study that tested it on dogs. That study suggested the chemical increased urine output when fed to dogs in large amounts.

I worry the contamination might be more distributed than the pet food suppliers are letting on. It's time for a vet visit.

Adjusting to changes...

2007-03-28T19:31:00.000-04:00

So I recently moved most of my belongings from my house to an already occupied 1-bedroom (on the Upper East Side of Manhattan). My cat is slowly adjusting to the environment, though fiancee's cat has a bit of trouble coping with the idea of shared territory. The fiancee herself was keen to share territory - but perhaps not equally (at least when it comes to closet space). It's been a challenge finding space for all my shit.

On top of that, I've started a new job this week, and I really like it. This is my first job at the PhD level, and I was hired for my "expertise" in two fairly esoteric fields. That having been said, when you're hired into a job with a backlist of problems that have been awaiting the new PhD engineer, you quickly discover how little you know and how much you have to learn (and, oh, by the way, your project was supposed to be done a month ago).

The big downside of the job is that it's two hours away each way. I get up at 5 AM to get into work by 7:30, and don't get home before 7. That's kinda sucky.

So on top of unpacking, and the eternal commuting, and trying to learn my new job, I'm trying to get my house fixed in Philly to sell. I'll be going down tis weekend...that's a 3+1/2 hr trip on my day off. But hey it's less than my daily commute. When I get back Sunday, we're going to go get a entertainment center from a 5th floor walk-up.

Anyway, that's life. Blogging may be light for like...the forseeable future.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

2007-03-22T21:14:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been thinking I should blog about things I actually know and do less of my usual, ahem, making shit up. The problem is, the stuff I know is largely boring, and moreover it kinda reminds me of work. Well, maybe my 2 weeks of pseudo-unemployment (I start a new job on Monday, and nominally had these 2 weeks off) have rekindled an interest in blogging about technical stuff. Or maybe I'm feeling didactic. Either way, when I read this bit below, I thought it was time for a lesson. (from TPM)

Six of the eight U.S. attorneys fired by the Justice Department ranked in the top third among their peers for the number of prosecutions filed last year, according to an analysis of federal records.

I thought...what are the odds of that? And then I thought, well that can easily be calculated by binomial statistics (better here). The binomal distribution is used when things are split into a binary (two option) state with a certain probability. The chances of rolling a 6 on a die is 1 in 6. The chances you don't are 5 in 6. You either do or don't (ie binary), and you have a probability of 1 in 6 (ie known probability). In engineering terms, you have a probability distribution of either one state or another each has a defined probability. In general the probability distribution for multiple events can be obtained by the mathematical convolution of the probability distribution with itself multiple times. Convolution sounds scary, but it's not bad for binomials. It is a little harder because there are more states: you could have 0 sixes, 1 six, 2 sixes ... 5 sixes. Anyway the whole problem was worked out long ago and reduced to a formula.

Unfortunately, some of the mathematical notation required to explain the formula is really hard to type into Blogger (if you recognize that as a cheap excuse, you win a cookie). So instead of hitting the theory, I'll show you how to cheat and just get the answer out of Excel! (Go surf a mathematician's blog if you want theory, engineers are all about plug 'n chug.)

The Excel formula is:
=BINOMDIST(number,trials,probability,cumulative)

In this case the number and trials are, 6 (high-performers) of 8 (trials).

On to probability. We are given the criteria that some attorneys were in the top third of their peers. What's the probability that someone might be in the top third? Hmm, let's think hard... AHA! how about 1/3 (or 0.33333) ?

The next part gets technical. If we want a cumulative value, which is the sum of all smaller values in the probability distribution, we type "true". If we type "false" we get the probability for exactly 6 of 8. In this case we'll take the cumulative value to express the odds of getting 5 or less.

That gives us an answer of 0.9974. Probabilites are given on a scale of zero to one, so that means you have a 99.74% chance of getting zero through five attorneys from the top third. Alternatively, it means is if you randomly picked US district attorneys, there's a 0.26% chance that you would get 6 or more in the top third. When conducting a difference test one starts with the null hypothesis that two populations are the same. In this case, we compare our population to the general US attorney population. In most applications the threshold to demonstrate a significant difference is 5%. A result at 1% is usually considered a "highly significant" difference. So our value of 0.26% is highly significant. All of which reinforces the intuitive point of the article: that these attorneys were better than the baseline.

The White House originally claimed it fired the attorneys for performance reasons...and now we find that as a group, they do have a pretty uncommon performance record. Uncommonly good. Maybe so good they got fired?

Now the White House has retracted the performance issue (probably to draw attention away from the relatively good records). Even so, the chance of them randomly picking a set of attorneys with this quality work is under 3 in 1000. The chance of the White House being full of shit...it's significant.

BONUS MATH: If this is true, and the White House had not fired the loyal loser then the probability value would have been 0.99954. That would have been "extremely significant".

TAKEHOME PROBLEM: How many losers should the White House have fired to cover up for their purge of people actually doing too good a job?

Interesting doublespeak

2007-03-21T09:20:00.000-04:00

Lefty blogs are getting excited about the pressure being put on Alberto Gonzales for the firing of 8 US district attorneys. They're starting to talk about impeachments, and digging into the "data-dump" of 3000 pages of voluntarily released communications. Random thoughts, in no particular order.

1. The legislation to allow Gonzales to appoint replacements that was squeezed into the PATRIOT act (feel safer yet?) will be remedied by Congress, and probably unopposed.

2. The whole thing has an air of "Fitzmas" to it. I think perhaps the rabid masses are getting ahead of themselves. I too, share the conviction that there is something shady here, but I don't think it's what people think it is. On top of that, it doesn't matter what people think, it matters what they can prove.

3. Against the Fitzmas concern, is the suddenly real possibility that Bush is positioning to let Gonzales take the fall. That's not out-of-character for the guy who fired Rummy the day after elections. If Bush would only learn to act sooner...

4. Pundits are always saying things like I just said in 3 and you're supposed to believe them becuase they're knowledgable or some shit. Since I routinely opine on things where I have no clue, let me say why I'm starting to lean towards #3. Via TPM, Tony Snow (the president's mouthpiece) said

SNOW: The president's said he's got confidence in Al Gonzales. This is not fact-gathering on whether to allow him to maintain his employment. We hope he stays.

Q: He will remain in office for the rest of the administration?

SNOW: Well, we hope so

(In politician speak, this reads: Gonzales may decide on his own that he needs to spend more time with his family (wink wink), but we hope not, and in any case it would totally be his decision (wink wink), and not us throwing him under the bus.)

4. Data dumps of enormous amounts of info are great versus a small legal team. Sometimes there are nuggets in there that become hidden among the gobs of irrelevant BS. But you put that same mountian in front of a hoarde of liberal bloggers with an axe to grind, and they'll burn through it like nobody's business.

5. Personally, I think Gonzalez's time has come and gone. I think the best way to describe his mindset is "quaint". (Just like anti-torture provisions in the Geneva Conventions)

Two Years of Blogging!

2007-03-17T08:30:00.000-04:00

Spanning three St. Patrick's days...yay for me 'n all.

Blogging will be light as I've cancelled the internet in preparation for moving to NYC and starting a new job. Exciting stuff!

Happy International Women's Day

2007-03-08T19:57:00.000-05:00

Evidently it's gender week here at Cognitive Apostate.

Did you know today is International Women's Day? I wouldn't either, except I listened to some BBC world report news this morning. (All day on NPR they cover silly things like women's protests in Iran... what about Paris Hilton news? Pfft. They should learn journalism.) So I went looking for an International Women's Day Card. Sure enough, they have them! Unfortunately, they all appear to be women-to-women cards, so none of the women in my life will be getting any. After reading 3 or 4 I'm left with a pretty flakey perspective of this holiday. If there're any feminists out there who might want to comment on this tripe they peddle to women for other women, feel free to chime in. Hey did you know that today is a day for women to organize and make their needs known the world over? In Iran women under 40 aren't allowed to leave the country without male custody, and a pile of them just got beaten and arrested for a peaceful protest. I know, let's celebrate with an e-card about endless chit-chat, shoppin' sprees, and hours of relaxin!

Commercialism aside, if you happen to have 2 X chromosomes (or as I've recently been corrected: lack of a Y chromosome), then Happy International Women's Day!

Also, as a followup to recent posts on the genetics of homosexuality, this letter is pretty entertaining.

If you ask a heterosexual, he or she will generally deny that they had any kind of choice in the matter. They say that they were just born that way or at least knew at the first stirrings of sexual awareness that they were heterosexual. “It just feels natural,” they say and seem genuinely puzzled that anyone would wonder about it....

No one seems to have found any genes for heterosexuality. Nor have studies of human brain found anything that impels males to be attracted to females or vice versa...

Humorous. I understand some folks may be insulted if you propose searching their DNA to find a rationale for their behavior. Me? I still think we should look for a genetic basis for sexuality. Maybe it's the engineer in me just wanting to see how we're all wired. One thing I don't care to understand: What posessed the people who made those awful e-cards?

And since this is a political blog, and we're talking about women and homosexuals, I'd be remiss to not at least mention this.

This feels good...

2007-03-08T02:37:00.000-05:00

Just finished prep work for my very last experiment of grad school today. Officially 2 more days of school. After 5&1/2 years, it is time.

Will justice dept officials be subpoenaed?

2007-03-07T21:01:00.000-05:00

Interesting stuff here. So a Senate Committee is going to request 5 officials testify voluntarily. They're also going to vote on whether to subpoena the people if they refuse. Isn't that odd? Why not wait until they actually refuse? There's a few ways this could play out.

1. The people want to talk and do it voluntarily.
2. The people don't want to talk, but would rather do it voluntarily (possibly not under oath) than by subpoena.
3. As with the US district attorneys, these Republican footsoldiers at least pretend to not want to talk, but will grudgingly spill the beans if subpoenaed.

I think we can mostly rule out case #1. These guys have some serious skeletons in the closet, and their only motivation to talk will be to keep from being somebody bigger's fall-guy. I can also predict they will decline the invite if the vote fails. So in that respect the voluntary bit is not only a courtesy, but a one-sided courtesy.

As for the vote, my initial guess was party line. But that gets a little tricky...if it's going through anyway, the Republicans might sign on to not look bad. One thing you can be sure of...these subpoenas would never have happened if Republicans still ran Congress.

Good news from Dr. Rice

2007-03-07T20:09:00.000-05:00

We recently elected the first Muslim Congressperson, Keith Ellison. (If you follow political theatrics, he's the one who was asked by Glen Beck to "prove to me you are not working with our enemies." Also, he's the one who was sworn in on Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Koran. )The good news is, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has recruited him to help improve our international image among Muslims. I wonder if he's Sunni or Shia, or if that's a totally ridiculous question. (I know close to zero about Islam.)

Anyway, freedom of religion is a good thing. It has advantages. Using them is a no-brainer. Props to both for being bipartisan and doing what's best for the US.

Stat of the Day

2007-03-06T18:58:00.000-05:00

While China’s total greenhouse gas emissions were only 42% of the US level in 2001, they had soared to an estimated 97% of the American level by 2006.

reference

Intelligent design and homosexuality

2007-03-05T18:27:00.000-05:00

Not sure whether I've posted this before, but the previous post reminds me of an interesting irony. I'll preface this by saying I'm going to address two reasonably taboo subjects (homosexuality and religion) fairly clinically. If it comes across as insensitve, I apologize.

Let's suppose homosexuality is genetic (I have doubts, but for the sake of argument). And let's suppose it's a yes/no binary thing (ie no bisexuals).

The question is: how do we evolve to have homosexuals? By standard methods, a homosexual couple cannot have children. So if you happen to believe in evolution, you'll recognise this as a negative selection: an evolutionary dead-end. Typically, such traits are breeded out. So homosexuality is not a stable endpoint of evolution. In a way, it is evidence against evolution.

An alternative theory of genesis (aka Genesis), "Intelligent Design", supposes we exist in our current state because Somebody designed us this way. As such, we are no longer subject to evolutionary constraints. It's simple enough to claim God designed homosexuals the same way He did everything else. Of course, the intelligent design crowd is too homophobic to ever entertain that homosexuals are the result of God's will.

I find it funny. Creationists have too much baggage to argue that particular weak spot in evolution.

Of course, there are explainations compatible with evolution. Homosexuality could be recessive, it could be non-genetic, incomplete, or selection could be overruled by societal demands. I hear societal stigmas have lead to a lot of homosexuals having families (Ted Haggard anyone?). If that's really the case, there's another irony. Making homosexuality a social stigma actually increases it's prevalence in the human gene pool, as insecure men crank out the kids to demonstrate their heterosexuality. Good stuff.

Anyway, the above arguments are so rife with assumptions, that they're obviously silly. But they are silly in an interesting way, and the more general question of how people become chemically attracted to others is worth more study. Genetic profiling and molecular mechanisms would make for some fascinating publications. I'm totally out of my league here, but I believe on a percentage basis there are more gay men than gay women. That's common for genetic traits that are X-linked. As the X chromosme is the one that determines gender, it would at least be an obvious place to start looking.

Marketing Science to the Southern Baptists

2007-03-05T18:14:00.000-05:00

This makes me wince. Via Sullivan, check out this quote from Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

"If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin."

So on a professional level, I'm happy to see these nuts are devolping an interest in science. On an ethical level, the bigotry is painful. And on a scientific level...why on Earth would it have to be a prenatal test? People aren't sexually active until years and years after they're born...

...unless your plan is to never have them be born...

More on the prosecutor purge

2007-03-03T19:43:00.000-05:00

Maybe you haven't been following this story. When the Patriot Act was renewed late last year there was a clause slipped into the bill the the Attorney General would have the power to appoint interim replacements for US district attorneys for up to 120 days without congressional approval.

On the surface this makes basic political sense. The Republican congress, just before it lost control of the legislature transfered some power to the executive, where Republicans still have control. That's not how checks and balances are suppoed to work...but so far it's kinda par for the course.

They then set about using this power, by purging 8-10 district attorneys. All of these attorneys were appointed by Bush and the saying goes they "serve at the president's will" so if the Pres decides to can them, that's hunkie-dory. I guess there's a minor scandal in that the administration initially claimed they were canned for performance reasons, but now it looks like they've come clean and are saying it's for political reasons.

Part of this new truth campaign is because four of these attorneys are scheduled to testify to congress this Tuesday. One attorney believes he has been fired because he did not indict a Democratic lawmaker before elections. Evidently, he was called by two members of congress and urged to indict before election. He didn't do it - and two months later was fired. He's about to testify to Congress on Tuesday. Another DA was responsible for the conviction of Former Republican "Duke" Cunningham, who is currently in jail for corruption. So a pattern is emerging wherein the administration is firing DA's who prosceute Republicans or do not indict Democrats.

The good news is the administration has finally learned that it's not the action that burns you, it's the cover up. So now they're claiming it has political motivations. They're probably going to run some partial-truth cop-out like they're trying to deepen the bench of judicial nominees. As I say there is some partial truth there and it might be enough to keep Congress and the Press off their backs for what's really a vindictive and corrupt purge of people who were actually doing their jobs.

But that's not really the story. The president could have fired the DA's without changing the Patriot Act (and who exactly made that change anyway?). By firing ten he would certainly affect the legal climate and send a message to all the DAs. But they went that extra step to get the law changed. Why? There's something more nefarious here - and that's the real story. The missing piece is the ability to appoint DAs without cnogressional approval. Who are they appointing and why? That's the key.

Oh, and let me just say that the Patriot Act was supposed to be for our national safety. Using that bill to work in riders for political machinations is disgusting. It's not a new low, but I don't think it's well known to the average American how much the administration is using 9/11 to screw the Constitution. It's time it became more well known.

On top of subpoenaing the fired attorneys, Congress should subpoena their replacements and ask them under oath whether they had any quid pro quo marching orders. The answers could be very interesting.

Decaying journalism

2007-03-03T00:17:00.000-05:00

You'd think this comes from the Onion.

CNN has a story about the Associated Press making an effort to not cover Paris Hilton news for a whole week. It's now news when Paris isn't making news? You gotta be kidding me.

That would be a problem

2007-03-02T21:06:00.000-05:00

Alberto Gonzales, is Attorney General and former White House Counsel. Surely a man of such prestigious credentials would cover his ass better than to directly lie to Congress...right?

It's time for congress to get cracking with the subpoenas.

Stupid blogger shit

2007-03-02T20:50:00.000-05:00

Switched to the new blogger last week.

The good news is I can add labels now.

The bad news is I missed the verification e-mail and couldn't post comments on anyone's blog for a full week until I figured out what happened.

Update: trying to make a label of "stupid" and it keeps autofilling "stupid headlines" I guess stupid is as stupid does or whatever. I'm reminded of my mom's inability to program the VCR...this shouldn't be happening to me at 30.

Iraqi Oil-Revenue sharing

2007-02-27T21:26:00.000-05:00

So the Iraqis are going to share out oil revenues. The idea is that the entire country will then have a vested financial interest in peaceful production of oil. I'm fine with whatever works, but it seems strange to me that so many conservatives are on board with this.

I mean you have a nation selling oil and sharing the profits with it's citizens...doesn't that sound like communism?

If a Democrat started a humanitarian war that resulted in a theocratic communism, holy shit, these people would be pissed.

Obama and black voters

2007-02-27T20:48:00.000-05:00

From CNN's main page today, I followed this link:

"Black America cool on Obama" to the article titled:

"Obama getting a cool reception from Black America"

To me those say opposite things...but whatever...

This line brings says it all.

Obama suffers, in part, because voters are not familiar with him and there is doubt whether the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, who was raised in Hawaii and educated in elite schools, can relate to the black American experience.

I'm no expert on African American culture (not even with 5 years in Philly), but that rings true to me.

On the other hand, this is politics, and the current image matters way more than the reality (ie: a Yalie cheerleader wealthy Connecticut boy half-convinced voters he is a Texan Cowboy). My guess though, is Obama is going to hold Black Culture at arm's length. He'll probbaly act like every other modern presidential candidate.

YouTube, the War, and Music

2007-02-26T00:16:00.000-05:00

Isn't YouTube awesome? Someday I'll learn to embed these, but for now here's 3 music videos for your contemplation.

The first focuses on American troops and liberating Iraq from Saddam. It's pretty graphic and relatively pro-war. Of course, anything set to set Johnny Cash's Hurt, is going to portray painful reality of war.

The second is distinctly anti-war. Same song, different perspective. It gets crazy with the Bush-Hitler stuff, but it's still a powerful expression.

The final is Dylan's Masters-of-War. About as anti-war as things get, as sung by a master of anti-war. Watch at your own risk.

For all that people talk about Iraq while wearing suits on Sunday morning talk shows and evening news, I feel like most of us are fairly divorced from the reality of the war. We aren't paying for it with increased taxes (yet) and we don't have rationing. There isn't a depletion of able-bodied men like in WWII or a draft like Nam. You could almost ignore it entirely if you wanted. Some people do.

Any one of these videos is liable to make you think (a hell of a lot harder than Wolf Blitzer will). It's a powerful medium. Think carefully.

Fun Site of the Day: CONSERVAPEDIA!

2007-02-24T23:00:00.000-05:00

Built to conteract the evil liberal bias of Wilipedia, Conservapedia is an online resourse for conservative thinkers! From the main page:

Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America. Conservapedia has easy-to-use indexes to facilitate review of topics. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of "political correctness".

Political Correctness? Maybe even free of correctness altogether!

Here's an example at random (seriously, the first thing I thought of) : Galileo

1564-1642 Italian astronomer who perfected the telescope and was persecuted for adhering to the theory of Copernicus. In 1609, Galileo perfected the telescope. It was modeled after other telescopes made in Europe. With it, he was able to witness a supernova, observe our moon, and document the phases of Venus. He also located sunspots. These discoveries helped support the Copernican system.

[Hey that's not too bad...say...how did that Copernican theory turn out anyway? Also, who persecuted Galileo? Probably Muslim terrorists or something. Who cares though...all he did was copy other people's telescopes.]

Here's Wikipedia's version. See how biased it is?

Link credit to Sadly, no which takes a few shots, and had the patience to find a doozy. A teaser:

The existence of unicorns is controversial. Secular opinion is that they are mythical. However, they are referred to in the Bible nine times,[1] which provides an unimpeachable de facto argument for their once having been in existence.

Free of bias and perfect for homeschoolers!

PS:

Post-Noachian references[1] to unicorns have led some researchers to argue that unicorns are still alive today. [btw, post-Noachian means after Noah. fyi, Noah was a guy in the Bible]

I so wish my research involved unicorns. Maybe I'll try for a unicorn studies grant...

Iraq War makes more people vote Conservative

2007-02-22T21:33:00.000-05:00

No, I didn't forget the beating Republicans took in 2006.

I mean the Tories and Labour.

I cut myself today, to see if I still feel...

2007-02-13T19:32:00.000-05:00

I've been playing with some music sites, like Pandora and Rhapsody. Pandora's got a real interesting deal where it matches similar songs into a personalized radio channel. Rhapsody is kinda like iTunes, except you get 25 free songs per month. Both are neat sites to check out.

One of my favorite musical themes is covers. U2 has the best Helter Skelter, and if you can find it, Indigo Girls do a great Watchtower. I even like Puff Daddy's Kashmir and Madonna's American Pie.

A short while back there was a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song, "Hurt", by a fellow named Johnny Cash. It's a rare 70-year-old who even listens to a heavy metal song, let alone cover it, but Cash had the talent to know talent. Not surprisingly for a song named "Hurt", Trent Reznor wrote a lonely, painful, bitter song. Cash remade it: lonely, painful and bittersweet. He took it acoustic, dropped out the drums, slowed the tempo and softened it. Reznor's lyic "I wear this crown of shit" gentrified into "crown of thorns". It was mostly faithful to the original, but a solid new work in it's own right. Without Reznor's angry energy, the same lyrics are transformed from a angstful rage to a story about the passive deadening and pains of age and loss. It was on the last album Cash put out before he died.

Accordingly, Cash got his props back from the meathead rocker community. Sevendust is one of those bands that headlines the kind of concert where you can surf a mosh pit (story for another day). It turns out, they cover Hurt too. But they don't do the hard-rocking NIN version: they do it the way Cash did. The rockers stop crowdsurfing, and listen to the slow steady tribute. I kind of doubt this link will work, but if you're into this kind of thing try to find Sevendust's "Hurt (dedicated to Johnny Cash)" from their album Southside Double. This 3rd rendition is still a sad song, but now it's a song about the loss of a man who we're still proud to remember.

Back from vacation - some personal navelgazing

2007-02-13T18:44:00.000-05:00

Back from a beautiful vacation in Colorado. It was a great break and it was good to spend time with the fiance and her family. It was also startling to hear that the future in-laws at least occasionally read the blog! Uhoh! I've heard people suggest you never write anything you wouldn't want your mother to read, but how about your mother-in-law? Some of the things I've written...I shudder to think. (Good thing she's not Republican.) Anyway, I might have to change my tone some, or get an editor something... Nah, fuck it, the cat's out of the bag. (Sorry K!)

Speaking of cats, it's good to be back home with mine. Yes, for anyone who didn't know, I have cats. I don't Friday cat blog, because for the most part people don't care about my cats. Also they value their privacy. Besides, they're unclothed and under 18, so no photos (and stop asking you pervert). Moving on now...we hit cats, how about a story about a dog.

The story goes something like this: an elderly family friend has diabetes, and also had some sort of foot injury. The wound became infected and had to be amputated. That's pretty sad, as my own grandfather had a very similar situation before he passed away. Fortunately, the family friend has largely recovered, and gets around on a prosthetic or on a electric scooter. Which brings me to the dog. I'm not sure exactly what kind of breed Skippy is, but I'm picturing a 20lb spaniel-type thing. Skippy's getting on in years himself and doesn't have all his teeth. It must hurt the poor little thing to chew hard things like dog biscuits. Anyway, Skippy found himself a solution to that problem. These days when he gets a dog biscuit he puts it behind the wheel of the electric scooter, knowing that when the scooter runs it over it will be crushed and he can eat the pieces without having to chew so hard.

And they say old dogs can't learn new tricks...

Holy Hagel!

2007-01-25T01:26:00.000-05:00

Not blogging much, sorry. Might get a chance to write down my take on the SOTU. Or maybe not.

But don't miss this speech by Chuck Hagel. He's got fire in his belly. Holy shit.

(via Jeremy)

AEI and NASA?

2007-01-20T16:01:00.000-05:00

One of my guilty pleasures is reading the libertarian coffeeshop: Hit n Run. This post over there talks about different edcation standards for different level students. I was paying attention until I saw this: (emphasis mine)

This is obviously politically untenable, but I wonder how much the market corrects for the relative intelligence of young people right now. Below-average people can go to college, but their records are not passed on to NASA or AEI fellowship programs. They are courted by different industries; the army, for example, spends more time spelunking for recruits from State University than they do from Yale.

I don't know about you, but when essayists start comparing AEI fellows to rocket scientists, I start to question their judgement.

Educator in chief?

2007-01-15T23:14:00.000-05:00

I'm going to pretend I didn't read this.

New White House Counsel

2007-01-08T21:46:00.000-05:00

Via TPM (sidebar), here's the scoop on the new White House Counsel, Fred F Fielding.

Fielding was persuaded to leave his lucrative position as a senior partner in the Washington law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding with "an appeal to patriotism" and an assurance that he would not just be the President's lawyer but would be deeply involved in Congressional strategy and negotiations, the official said.

These negotiations will be something like... how about you convince the Pres to sign our Democratic legislation instead of vetoing it, and we'll forget to subpoena people for illegal wire-tapping? I could be wrong, but I think the Democrats are going to trade Bush back all the skeletons in his closet one by one in order to push their liberal agenda. Me, I'd rather see accountability and transparency than blackmailing a lame duck into an effective majority.

"The key for the Administration is going to be drawing the lines on these boundaries of executive privilege and access to documents and congressional oversight — drawing the lines around the really important issues and trying to be a little more flexible on the others," said a former colleague of Fielding. "They're not going to fold, because Fielding is a very serious, hard-nosed person, and he's a tough negotiator. But they're also going not to take a totally stonewall position. That doesn't mean they're going to cave in. What it means is they're going to negotiate and focus on the things that they're truly protecting and that are truly important."

So....what do you think the administration is going to focus on protecting? And what will they give away to protect it? So much to negotiate, and the president has a bucketful of liabilities. It's a bad time to be a conservative.

I wish I were decimated by taxes...

2007-01-08T21:08:00.000-05:00

This is a public service announcement to everyone who uses the word "decimate".

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

De-ci-mate: Latin for... one tenth (deci-), to kill (-mate) .
To kill 1/10th.

It should not be used as it was by Washington Post columnist William A Arkin describing Iraq:

In other words, short of decimating the insurgents and the militias and the terrorists in an all-out renewed war, which isn't going to happen, what has already happened has left behind an image and a legacy that withdrawal won't make worse.

I imagine we've decimated the terrorists a few times over, but it takes a half dozen decimations to even get a majority.

Nor should it be used as by this McGill Professor

I’ve always thought of some of what academics do as “playing at” being of a higher social class than we are. Major field-wide conferences [cough]NCA![/cough]are held at hotels so expensive that they decimate university travel budgets.

I could be wrong, but I think he's complaining that the hotel cuts into a lot more than 10% of the travel budget (or he goes to too many conferences!).

So what makes a professional writer (and his editor) and a college professor all flub it up?

Decimate has come to be such a loaded word because its use by the Romans was punitive and barbaric. When a legion failed to perform they could be decimated, in which they would draw straws and the 9/10ths of the "winners" would be forced to bludgeon every 10th member to death. I can only imagine that was a pretty horrible occurance, and much of that horror persists in the word to this day.

Opposites attract? You sure have a purdy immune system

2007-01-08T20:54:00.000-05:00

It's generally a bad idea to get scientific input from Wikipedia, so I'll pass this on as an utterly uncorroborated disturbing thought. MHC is the major histocompatability complex that does immunological things (like organ rejection).

It has been suggested that MHC plays a role in the selection of potential mates. MHC genes make molecules that enable the immune system to recognise invaders; generally, the more diverse the MHC genes of the parents, the stronger the immune system of the offspring. It would obviously be beneficial, therefore, to have evolved systems of recognizing individuals with different MHC genes and preferentially selecting them to breed with.

Yamazaki et al. (1976) showed this to be the case for male mice, who show such a preference for females of different MHC.

In a 1995 experiment, a group of female college students smelled t-shirts that had been worn by male students for two nights, without deodorant, cologne or scented soaps. Overwhelmingly, the women preferred the odors of men with dissimilar MHCs to their own. However, their preference was reversed if they were taking oral contraceptives. [3] The hypothesis is that MHCs affect mate choice and that oral contraceptives can interfere with this.

This experiment has yet to be satisfactorily replicated and as such is still an issue of much contention.

That was too amusing not to pass along. Call me very skeptical. Still, the idea of women having different preferences on and off the pill has an amusing danger to it. Also, I hope those poor girls were compensated well for sniffing the stinky clothes.

Speaker Pelosi

2007-01-04T19:44:00.000-05:00

Today is the closest a woman's ever come to being President (3rd in succession).

Also Harriet Miers resigned today as White House Counsel. The same day a new Congress comes in with an oversight agenda, the President's personal counsel leaves?

(Hmmm...
Nah.
Well... I guess we'll see. )

Philadelphia Peace Movement: Jan 2007

2007-01-04T19:31:00.000-05:00

I wonder what the average age was in the recent peace protest? Not exactly spring chickens...I bet most of them have protested wars before. I guess hawks don't have to worry about the protest babe theory.

Busy holidays

2007-01-02T23:54:00.000-05:00

With all the fun I forgot to blog.
Actually I don't have much to say, Ford, Saddam, and James Brown died.
There's a new war between Ethiopia and Somalia.

So to tide people over until I have something worth saying, here's a detailed explaination of the game theory of leaving the toilet seat up. It describes the feminist position (ie "seat stays down") thusly:

Consequences of strategy M:
In strategy M the seat is always left down. When John performs operation #1 he lifts the seat before the operation and lowers it after the operation. The respective average cost of toilet seat transfer operations is:

John: 2pC
Marsha: 0

In these strategy Marsha bears no cost; all of the incremental costs are borne by John. John objects.

As I understand it though, the issue isn't really the work of flipping the seat.

The real issue for men is they're busy shaking, flushing, and zipping...that and we don't care. It's not like men protest when the seat is down.

The real issue for women is those who are used to the seat being down sometimes forget to look where they sit.* The risk of falling into the toilet is enough to warrant an argument even when the effort of flipping a seat is not.

So in essence, the costs are reversed. The incremental risk of falling in the can is almost uniquely borne by women (for some reason men just don't have that problem...at least not sober). True, in the absence of men, women could just leave the toilet seat down forever and never worry about it. But I'm not too sympathetic to the case that someone is too oblivious to watch where they put their ass. In fact, anyone who tells me they're likely to fall in the toilet if I leave the seat up is begging me to give it a try.

*Special disclaimer: These insights were gleaned from female college roomates and high school friends...the fiance has yet to opine on the matter. Fair warning though babe: if you do fall in, I'm gonna laugh my ass off.

Things that make you less festive

2006-12-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

Working all night into Christmas Eve morning, trying to finish an experiment kinda sucks.

Coming home and finding your cat peed in your travel bag just makes it that much worse.

Santa knows one cat on the naughty list.

Stop the MADDness

2006-12-22T18:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes crap like this ircs me....

Mothers Against Drunk Driving said Wednesday it was severing ties with Miss Teen USA Katie Blair [18] because it was "disappointed" by news reports that she had been spotted partying with Miss USA Tara Conner in New York clubs.

Elsewhere in our universe, other 18-yr-olds patrol Tirkit in the service of Uncle Sam.

American electorate to teenagers: No, you can't drink. You're too young and immature to shoulder the responsibility. Instead, shoulder this machine gun and go make split-second life-or-death descisions.

We have soldiers dying everyday who are well under the legal drinking age. Any mothers mad about that? (... obviously not "security moms"...) It's ok to have teens in a war in Iraq, but booze is teh DevIL. Some fucking priorities. I'm of the opinion that anyone with a military ID should be allowed to drink whatever they want. (Better do it before deployment though, 'cause Iraq's pretty dry.) It would amuse the hell out of me to see that proposed in Congress. It's too radical of course. No one would dare to go on record either for or against it. You never know though... it could even boost military recruitment. Not that I'm suggesting a new special way to prey on the teen psyche...the 40k signing bonus is predatory enough. (Yes soldiers deserve that and more. It's still a gimmick; otherwise we'd drop the bonus and increase the salary.)

Mad Mothers. Talk about a nanny state. We've got bigger things to worry about than fluzies getting loaded (and here's as good a place as any to point out that hotties in college tend to party...it's beyond the norm into near-certainty). Yeah, they were breaking the law, but A: it's a stupid law, and B: they weren't driving. So MADD can drop that second D. This isn't about drunk driving, it's just about drinking. Link credit to RTLC. Lee's forming a group, Drunks Against Mad Mothers.

Also, Trump's a sick bastard. Yes, this is to be expected of a superficial media-whore who runs organizations based on young women's sex-appeal and people's gambling adicitions. No, it doesn't excuse him, and the sooner people start treating him like the shit he is, the better.

As for Trump's new battle with Rosie, I don't think it's going to benefit either of them. I do think it would be cool though, if Rosie started a scholarship fund to rescue those poor girls from Trump...or at least to assist Miss Blair now that she's been thrown to the wolves.

Time's person of the year :It's You!

2006-12-19T22:19:00.000-05:00

Fine, I'd have a hard time picking a person of the year too (maybe Warren Buffet?), but that's totally a punt. It's like the chance slot in Yahtzee. It's the dog-ate-my-homework of hero-worshipping. I realize they can't come forward and say there's just no one of greatness this year... but this is a cop-out.

At least it's a cop-out that sells magazines.

I'm not saying You didn't deserve it... ok, yes I am.

Iraq Study Group

2006-12-16T10:33:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me that I haven't said anything about the Iraq Study Group. Ok. Here goes: It doesn't matter. Bush will screw things up. I know that sounds unfair to the president or pessimistic in the extreme, but it's not.

I've never believed we would be successful implementing a Weatern-style democracy through an occupation. You can't have democracy at the barrel of a gun. If King George had tried to impose a democracy on the US, we would have told him to go fuck himself and made Washington Emperor of the Americas. People don't like foreign soldiers walking around with guns. Double that sentiment when the soldiers regularly kill people (add more for torture, recreational rape/murder, and whatever this is called). There comes a time when you simply cannot tell people you are trying to help them, while concurrently shooting significant portions of their population. I'm surprised more people didn't consider that contradiction.

What I didn't anticipate, was the destabilization of Iraq into sectarian warfare. In a coldly objective sense this is kind of better for the US than a unified opposition, because at least our soldiers aren't the primary targets. The flip side is it spreads instability through the whole region, opening the possibility of a Saudi-Iranian-Turkish war. Now is the time to open bets on how many countries get burned. Why drop one country into chaos when you can bring war and anarchy to 3 or 4?

So even though my initial prognostication was very pessimistic: failure in Iraq, a long-enduring (Nam-style) guerilla war, and a global increase in Muslim hatred (eventually coupled to more terrorism)....even I wasn't pessimistic enough to predict we might trigger a regional war. Instead of hundreds of thousands killed, we could have millions. Every day that looks like a more credible possibility. People are beggining to realize that we've made some very foolish choices.

Of course there's always a chance cooler heads will prevail, which was supposed to be the point of the Baker Commission. They might not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together, but they can at least help us discover where we are and chart a course out of this mess. That might even work if our problem were limited to a few foolish mistakes, but it's not. Our problem is actually fools. The bad decisions are institutional. They aren't caused by bad input, they're caused by people who take action without regard to input.

Our wonderful bipartisan Iraq study group assessed the state of things in Iraq, but never wrote up how we came to this pass. We got here through stupidity. The people who organized and built this war are idiots, and until that problem is corrected, none of the others will be. These are the people who sent Colin Powell to the UN with a vial of white powder as proof of Saddam's WMD program. Trust me, they don't give a shit what Baker thinks.

Thanks for trying ISG, but I predict this gets worse and worse for at least two more years. Stupid is as stupid does.

Tell the truth and shame Bill Bennett.

2006-12-16T10:15:00.000-05:00

James Wolcott cites Bill Bennett:

"In all my time in Washington, I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself..."
--Bill Bennett, inflating to three times his normal size in righteous umbrage over the Iraq Study Group

Usually Wolcott goes for the throat over things like this. Since he granted Bennett a pass, it falls to me to point out that a decade agoour Republican Congree impeached the president for getting a blowjob.

Smugness? check.
Arrogance? check.
Insufferable moral superiority? oh hell yeah.

So to conservatives... it's in the national interest to impeach the president for banging an intern, but abhorent to analyze the lack of progress in a war that's spiralling out of control.

Just for fun, here's Bennett with Jon Stewart. Jon spanks Bennett so hard, he starts to feel bad for him.

Hillary Clinton, for liberals and conservatives.

2006-12-07T20:51:00.000-05:00

I've not really liked Senator Clinton since she went after video games and co-sponsored the pointless flag-burning ammendment. She's hawkish, socially conservative, and likes to spend government money (kinda like Bush really). She's anti-libertarian, which sadly, can be called "populist" these days.

Anyway, I was amused by the hit piece Arainna Huffington ran against her in favor of Barrack Obama (read it, it's good). Senator Clinton, once beloved of the liberal community, has sunk in stature. Kos paints a picture of Senator Obama winning the Dem primary, purely based on the primary structure (Kos sounds more like a consultant every year). I love Obama, but I'm not confident of his chances. It was recently leaked that Obama's middle name is "Hussien". (If you think the American electorate is too smart to vote based on someone's name, consider our current president.) Finally, we have Michelle Malkin coming to Clinton's aid against Huffington. It's pretty rare to see a member of the conservative rage machine defend Hillary Clinton.

At this rate maybe Clinton will win over conservatives after all...

What you expect congress to work?

2006-12-06T17:32:00.000-05:00

Stolen in it's entirety from Josh Marshall:

So many instances where it's hard to distinguish the real news from the stuff that shows up in The Onion. From the Post, new Congress to shelve old two day work week for a five day work week. No, not makin' this up.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) -- one of the worst from the old GOP Congress -- on why working for a living is against family values: "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

Not to state the obvious, but this is pretty stupid coming from a man who sent over 100,000 Americans away from their families....halfway around the world....years on end...at a fraction of his salary. I guess it's different when it's his family. At least he still gets weekends off.

Someone should inform Kingston that this is a weekly Congressional stoploss program.

Proud to present (finally) Battlepanda!

2006-12-03T17:25:00.000-05:00

In my custom of blogroll indoctrination, here's a few sample posts from the newest addition. The blog in question Battlepanda, an awesome blend of liberalism and libertarianism. Battlepanda is co-written by the newly pseudononymous Battlepanda, and a fellow named Brock. Here's a sample post in which it is shown that while everyone knows the Canadian health care system is socialist and government run, not many people know the US government pays more per citizen for health care than the Canadians. Insightful, no? I love it when people break down sterotypes with data. Another memorable post is her insight on the combatitive nature of blogs. She leads:

I don't think I remember the last time I called someone "a crock of shit" in real-life. Online, though, I think it was either yesterday or the day before. I can't remember. And I consider myself a relatively well-behaved member of this noplace we call the blogisphere.

(Her memory is actually better than she lets on.) Anyway, it's a great blog, and closer to my philosophical mix than most. I should point out that the Battlepanda is the first female blogger to be added to my blogroll, which is itself interesting. Why did it take so long? Is that perhaps a reflection of the blogosphere, or my personal tastes? I'm not looking for a Kevin Drum or Larry Sanders moment, so I'll resist the urge to blame women (and if you don't get that, it just means you're not a blog-nerd).

Ironically, Battlepanda and I first corresponded over the strange case of Ben Barres, in which Barres had more success in acadmics after getting a sex change from female to male. Back then BP was blogging under her actal name. Now that she's gone androgenous (or would you have guessed "Battlepanda" is masculine?), she gets more bloggy love from me. It's not like that A! I swear! The reason it's taken so long, is I haven't done anything administrative here in forever. Also you were only two clicks away through Legal Fiction, and I'm lazy. (and now you're only one, so I can be extra lazy)

Anyway, Battlepanda rocks. I traditionally include some caveat or critique of new blogs so I don't seem like a total kiss-up, but my most substantive complaint is that BP and Brock don't post often enough (yeah I don't post frequently either, but that's my honest complaint). Guess today I'm a kiss-up.

UPDATE: Hmm. I'm not sure which of my little sidebar categories is most appropriate. This is the problem when you try to pidgeonhole diverse thinkers into categories. I'll have to think on it. Meanwhile the first link in the post works fine to get to the site.

Laundry Day!

2006-12-03T15:03:00.000-05:00

I can't imagine anything more mundane and trivial than announcing to everyone with an internet connection that today is my laundry day. The upshot is I've decided to udate, modify, and tidy the blog between loads (which possibly still no one cares about). I'm gonna try to get a header, and a new design, maybe switch to the new blogger format, add tags, and update the sidebar.

Realistically, though, I'll be happy if I manage one of those. As far as a header goes, I found this quote on a postcard and thought it might work nicely. Well, I like the philosophy anyway...we'll see if I can get through the technical issues.

Voting Machine Oversight

2006-12-02T21:01:00.000-05:00

Within the massive federal beaurocracy, there are a few organizations that do a really good job. One that I have a lot of respect for is the National Institute of Standards and Technology. (ok, it's a geeky organization to admire, but I'm an engineer) If you make a measurement with a calibrated instrument (in the US), it's certifiable back to NIST. They ensure that a gallon is the same volume next year as it is this year, etc..etc.

When I worked in pharmaceuticals there was a huge degree of scrutiny from the FDA. That's not so much related to NIST, but it's another government organization that exists to define and enforce standards. In making drugs, everything has to be documented, and functionally it has to be on paper (the heightened requirements for a paperless system make it more expensive and harder in practice). On the other hand, there seem to be a lot of electronic voting machines, and they don't seem as controlled. Some have had distinct problems.

So I'm thrilled to see the regulation of voting machines has fallen to one the NIST, who are the treating the measurement of votes with a clinical no-nonsense responsibility. I hope the system to elect our representitives gets the same level of regulation, oversight, and validation as the process to manufacture asprin. Or, to take an example from another highly accountable electronic device, is as secure as an ATM machine. Speaking of ATMs, I'd also like to see voting machines give recipts.

If I were designing a voting machine system...

It would be electronic, both for the clarity of the system (no hanging chads, etc), and also for the immediacy of the tallies.
Voters would be issued a paper recipt with their votes on it, and a annonymous unique identifier.
A second paper recipt would be printed by the machine at the time of the vote and stored in a locked chamber within the machine.
All results would be posted online (searchable by ID number).

A little complicated maybe, but the premise here is that it's easy to program a computer to throw elections. This method ensures a full circle of accountability. First, people would be able to confirm that their vote was correct by checking their recipt vs what they typed into the machine.

Second they can confirm their vote was recorded by checking the identifier on-line. In the case of a discrepancy, they have a recipt to take to the Feds.

In the event of a recount, officials have a paper record within the machine. That can easily be recounted, (as easily as current recount methods) and it can also be compared to the online database. If the paper copy matches the online record, it can be assumed it matches people's recipts.

The final way to cheat the system would be for a programmer to issue the same tracking number to muliple voters (say a 5 party Democrats get issued the same recipt, none would know it is a duplicate, and it would check out online) and then register false votes for the last 4 of them. The obvious way around this problem is to timestamp the recipts, and list the time online as well. Unfortunately that could have voter annonyminity issues. The second way around this glitch is to have voters insert a pin number that will be included on both recipts, and included on the website. That would "customize" their vote and greatly hinder computerized voter fraud.

Again, it may be complicated, but there's a lot of power at stake in free elections. Only a fool would think that people won't try to rig the system sooner or later. So let's take the time to make it secure. NIST has a better chance than most of getting it right.

PS: In checking the NIST site I see they have a "Draft Report on Voting System Vulnerability" (warning: boring). It delineates the various groups involved and their responsibilities. NIST seems to not have direct oversight. Still, I'm glad they're involved, because they've got their stuff together more than most.

How to open a rant...

2006-12-01T19:22:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's fun to read some of the wilder types on the far-right.

From No End but Victory:

If you share my burning desire to see the Mainstream Media go down in flames and be relegated to the ash pile for their acts of sedition, and crimes against the general population by usurping the first amendment to justify their propagandizement of the Liberal American agenda, pay attention.

That cracks me up.

Ironically (given the overlap of haystack's and my beliefs is slim), I actually agree with the purpose and ultimate message he's conveying. (The mesage to be thankful and attentive to our troops, not the psychotic rage part.)

Accent

2006-11-29T00:06:00.000-05:00

What's your accent?

I grew up about 100 miles from Boston, and both my parents grew up in MA. What a wicked awesome quiz!!

Sidenotes for historians

2006-11-28T02:43:00.000-05:00

Atrios says:

When the history of this era is written, I hope it is remembered that the President of the United States created a deck of cards with "bad guys" on it. The media, rather than seeing this is a bizarre and infantile thing, thought it was wonderful.

I guess that is a little bizarre in retrospect. But is it more bizarre than Republican congressmen painting their fingers purple for a state-of-the-union speech? More than renaming a cafeteria food to "Freedom Fries"? Infantile is a good adjective. It should get more use in politics.

These remind me of another annecdote that I suspect is forgotten by many. Back when we first invaded Afghanistan, the president asked that all US children donate a dollar to help out Afghani children. It harkened back to the compassionate conservative theme of the 2000 election and was also supposed to help children learn responsibility. I was actually supportive of the initiative at the time. It was cute, harmless, and helpful.

And then the president launched a second war while pushing for a 2nd round of tax cuts, blowing away the surplus of the 1990's, and increasing deficits to record amounts. Congress fattened up on earmarks while while Republicans increased the size of government more than any president back to LBJ. All the while we borrowed money from the Chinese (as we continue to). I'm confident historians will record how Bush sold future generations into debt so he could have an elective war while suspending the estate tax. But when it comes to passing the bill onto future generations, I really hope they include the part where he started by asking for a dollar.

Vengeance, Ledyard football, and other junk

2006-11-25T22:04:00.000-05:00

So I'm back early from Thanksgiving with the family so I can take care of my other pets, the mouse stem cells. It ain't easily having 20 million little mouths to feed. The holiday was wonderful, despite some sadness in the wedding planning department (a nice venue was not nice enough and got the axe). While home I managed to check out the local paper "The Day" which is a really great paper in a number of respects. (One downside is links are only good for 8 days at The Day, so if you want to check these stories out, browse at the above link soon. I'm not going to bother permalinking.)

Two stories jumped out from the front page, due to their common theme of revenge. In one, Shias have started burning Sunnis alive. Death squads are dousing people with kerosene and incinerating them. That's a bad way to go (debate later whether that's worse than being tortured and killed by power drills) . In another article, a former KGB agent and Russian dissenter has accused Putin from his deathbed. The man was looking into the suspicious death of another Russian critic when he came down with a rare case of radioactive polonium-210 poisoning. Hairless, weak, and suffering from multiple organ failure (ie another bad way to go) he dennounced the Russian president Vladimir Putin who had this to say:

A death of a man is always a tragedy and I deplore this. it's extremely regrettable that such a tragic event as death is being used for political provocation.

Another non-denial denial? Somebody's sending a pretty clear message. It's somebody with better access to rare chemical reagents than I have...and mine's pretty good. Barring some official at the KGB (or whatever it's successor is called) taking care of this without Putin's knowledge (ie plausible deniability), I worry about the convergence of motive and capability.

Recently Bill Maher came out against the 22nd ammendment (that prevents presidents from running 3x). When I see tryanny like this, I'm glad we have it.

In other news: on top of people killing each other in new nasty ways, Iraq's gone to hell and Lebanon may soon follow. Happy Thanksgiving from the big Lanky Black Cloud of Bad News!

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In local hometown blogging, Mignault is still in charge of Ledyard football, and they're going to the playoffs this year. Unfortunately, their loss to Fitch this weekend cost them 2 starters to injury and has them playing the top seed in class M. I wish the 2 players a speedy and full recovery. Go Colonels!

--------------------------------------------

And in personal blogging, I'd like to point out how much I hate travelling with a suitcase in Philly. Worse, I'd brought a pillow. Nothing says "easy target" like a guy carrying a pillow. I had to come back Saturday night for lab work. My train dropped me off at 9:20PM and I began the walk to UPenn. Now this isn't ordinarily a bad walk (not compared to the route from Penn to my house), but I've been avoiding the subway since a shooting incident, and I was going to walk the 6 blocks. So I'm walking down Market street, which has just enough traffic to make it "safe", and I pass this guy idly sitting on a rail under an overpass. A sketchy fucker hanging out alone under a dark overpass, but whatever, no biggie. Then, after I passed, the guy decided to get up, cross the street, and began following me some distance behind. Alarms go off. Ordinarily this would not be a big deal, he was a ways back, I was aware of him, and I was wearing sneakers. However, trailing a suitcase limits my mobility and makes me a target, so now I'm concerned. 2 blocks down Market, still following, still concerned. I'd planned to cut across Drexel and Penn to get to lab, which would have meant crossing to his side of the street, and treking through some secluded areas (which are usually safer due to campus police...unless you're followed in). Long story short, I felt stalked and vulnerable. After 5 years my urban survival skills are instinctive enough that I trust them. So I took a cab for 4 blocks. I'll be second-guessing that all night, but I'm pretty confident I made the right decision.

Then I get to lab, and this state-of-the-art 1990's reasearch building has had another water-damage incident (you could see missing ceiling tiles and splotches on the floor). A sign says the elevator's down (presumably from the water damage) so I had to carry the suitcase up 4 flights of stairs. I'm leaving the suitcase here tonight.

Richard Cohen - Twice reformed war cheerleader

2006-11-22T20:21:00.000-05:00

I'm going to stick with my previous assessment of war cheerleaders.

Yesterday the WaPo columnist Richard Cohen chimed in.

It's a very moving tale of Cohen's four different personalities who were alternately wrong and right about Vietnam and Iraq. Aside from the megalomania of a columnist talking about four people, all them himself, my primary observation is this: Way to go shithead, you're 0 for 2. Hilzoy thinks the guy should resign. I think he should just be more straightforward with an "I was wrong". Ok, given his track record: "I was wrong twice, and probably will be again."

Back when I wrote this:

Converts, I'm happy to welcome you to reality (happier than you'll be when you finally see it), but I want you to remember something. The reason I'm not interested in your revelations is because inside, at the core of your being, you're still the same ditzy cheerleader you were last week, month, or year. People like you brought this clusterfuck to pass, and you should be ashamed of yourself. I don't expect you to have the grace to shut-up, but at least put away the megaphone. You're embarrassing.

Cohen's who I was talking about: the same ditzy cheerleader who fell for the same thing twice. He's still got a megaphone. Someday he'll use it to be wrong a third time.

Light posting

2006-11-22T20:16:00.000-05:00

Light posting. On day 1 I claimed I blog for therapy, and I still think it might be true. I know most of my readers (both of you) will miss me if I lose the will entirely, but we can keep in touch via e-mail.

Of course we can probably count on me blogging through 2008. Politically, I still need the therapy. Up next another hawk comes clean.

Post Election Stuff

2006-11-18T09:41:00.000-05:00

More commemmorative than anything else. After elections everyone tries to spin what it means into what they believe and want anyway.

Oh so close:
In such a close election everyone second guesses every little thing. There's a "for want of a nail post" looking at Conrad Burn's insult to firefighters. A "butterfly effec t" post revolving around Macaca. The Demagogue sends an amusing list of liberal thank-yous for various Conservative mistakes, including the Rush Limbaugh's mockery of Michael J Fox's terminal disease, which in addition to being contemptable, bought McKaskill free air time. Somewhere there was a post on how Kerry's stupid troop comment didn't break the Democrats, despite the dangerous timing and immense stupidity. On the flip side, if it removes Kerry from the presidential campaign pool I think that will benefit Democrats in the end.

To all of these I will add the sordid case of Michael Scanlon, one of Tom Delay's aides who is pretty much responsible for not only Delay's political death, but also a lot of the corruption theme. Scanlon was engaged to a pretty young Republican staffer, Ms. Emily Miller(this one). Anyway, if you're into dirty things (ie criminal) it's a really bad idea to cheat on your partner (with a manicurist - what a delightfully irrelevant detail!) because your fiancee might rat you out to the Feds.. Later, while you play stoolie and jailbird, others will give you credit for the premature implosion of the party and everything you've ever worked for. But not exclusive credit, there's so much to share.

A simple truth:
Kevin Drum captures 90% of it here.

But I want to add one more thing so simple-minded that I'm almost embarrassed to mention it. Here it is: if you pursue popular policies, you win. If you pursue unpopular policies, you lose. Ideology is secondary.

In George Bush's first term, Republicans passed tax cuts, No Child Left Behind, campaign finance reform, Sarbanes-Oxley, a Medicare prescription drug plan, went to war against Afghanistan and Iraq, and appointed a bunch of conservative judges. Liberals may not have liked all of this stuff, but all of it polled pretty well. They were popular policies.

In Bush's second term, Republicans pursued Social Security privatization, made a spectacle over Terri Schiavo, and fiddled while New Orleans drowned. In addition, they passed a bankruptcy bill and an energy bill that didn't win them any points with rank-and-file voters, fought over immigration legislation, refused to expand stem cell funding, and wouldn't even allow a vote on widely supported measures like a minimum wage increase. This did not exactly reflect the popular will.

Of course being a huge fuck-up and damaging the country doesn't help either.

The next Congress:
Here's my 2 cents on the next Congress. The Republicans not only went with the same A-holes who were in leadership when they lost (minus Hastert), they brought back Trent Lott from political exile. Lat's hope for their sake the electorate is as fond of 2nd chances as the leaders are.

Thankfully, the Dems avoided the lightning rod of Jack Murtha and picked a leader I'd never heard of (that's how I like Congress: quiet and undistinguished). That, coupled with the recent political diminishings of John Kerry and James Carville, brings hope of a Democratic Party that can tell it's head from it's ass.

And a follow-up...
Q: How glad are Republicans that they never invoked the nuclear option in the senate? (btw Lee predicted a Senate swing over a year ago - that's an impressive call 5 months after Bush's re-election)
A: Not as glad as they may be in 2008 if they get spanked again and (maybe if I say it, it won't happen) Hillary Clinton's Democratic Congress is putting people in power.

Offending the politically correct

2006-11-10T02:15:00.000-05:00

The president of the University of Pennsylvania is catching flack for posing for a Halloween photo with a student dressed as a suicide bomber. In addition to the ruckus in The Daily Pennsylvanian (Penn's student paper), this has evidently made news elsewhere (including Israel).

Here's her apology.

OK fine, it's bad taste to wear a suicide bomber costume. Also, it's politically foolish for Gutmann to pose for a photo with one. Finally, I know people have high expectations that Ivy League Presidents be politically correct. But seriously people...last time I checked, Osama Bin Laden masks were a huge Halloween sale. So what makes it ok to be a guy responsible for thousands of deaths, but not a garden variety suicide bomber?

Here's another tip. The reason terrorism works is because we get our panties in a bunch over it (ie we get terrified). Are we really so afraid that a college student's costume stirs up this much trouble? Or is it just cultural sensitivity? Yes, I realize terrorists are a serious business, but if we had the stones to laugh at them we would steal half their thunder.

(I feel like I'm not getting something here. I must be a bad person or something.)

Funny business at NRO

2006-11-09T22:29:00.000-05:00

Usually a title like that means they're trying something deceptive, but they've been a little off-kilter this week. It's to the point where Jonah Goldberg is actually amusing.

I think James Baker and Dick Cheney should take Bush out to the woods around Camp David. After 24 hours in a sweat lodge, he should be given only a loin cloth, a hunting knife and a canteen of water. Bush should then set out to track and kill a black bear, after which he should eat its still beating heart so he can absorb its spirit. He should then fly back to Washington in Marine 1. His torso still scratched from the bear's claws, his face bloodied and steaming in the November chill, he should immediately give a press conference at which he throws the bearskin on the front row of the press corps, completely enveloping Helen Thomas, declaring, "I'm not going anywhere."

I'd pay to watch him try. I'm convinced it would be safe enough since Bush is probably too inept to find a bear. But what I want to know, is how much of a Bush worshipper do you have to be actually believe Bush would win? Duh, smart money on the bear! Even if the bear is as lazy and stupid as Cheney's farm-raised quail, Bush's chances are roughly zero. That having been said, it is true that Cheney has put Bush up to some really stupid shit, but he doesn't need a sweat lodge to have irrational visions. He's practically spiritwalking already. Still Jonah's fantasy is impressive. That's how you get a job in conservative punditry- you gotta think outside the box, even at 6:49 AM.

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Alice in Wonderland

Sooo, I have a fantasy too. Instead of Camp David, my version has Bush in Iraq. Instead of a loincloth and a knife, he gets standard infantry equipment. Instead of hunting bear, he's on a patrol outside the green zone. See: impossible thoughts are contagious.

Wow

2006-11-08T18:10:00.000-05:00

I knew the Republicans had that coming, but I wasn't sure the country would deliver. That and the cynical side of me never underestimates Democrats potential to screw up. Still, after their performance yesterday, maybe I'll have to stop bashing on them...at least for a few months.

This new competency thing: it can only be good for the country. Everyone's going to have their own opinion on what this all means, and I'm sure I'll have more to say later, but I wanted to give a few thoughts off the top of my head.

First, I'm glad I got to vote in PA rather than NY. Not that my vote would put anyone over the top either way, but I was happy to make the choices I did.

Second, how much does it suck to be George Allen? Here's a guy with a presidential aspirations that can't even get elected to the Senate. And worse...it's because he screwed himself. And worse still, it's close enough to drag on and on through a lengthy recount, a continuing evaluation of whether or not he's truly a loser. He might be tempted to concede and save face, but he can't. The cosmic coincidence is that the Virginia seat determines control of the Senate. No matter the odds, the republicans have to try for it. So there will be no face-saving concession. Barring a miracle (or dirty play) Allen will be crowned a huge loser twice. Maybe more if it goes to litigation.

Third, how much does it rock to be Lieberman? Now I don't like Lieberman. I don't like his politcs, and I'm mad at myself that I've voted for him twice. But on the flip side, a one seat majority maximizes his personal power, and I recognize the political skill that put him there. I wouldn't blame him for a little vengeance. Still he's been around long enough that he's probably looking to stay. I think he's skilled enough that he won't go overboard burning bridges, I foresee a little retribution and a lot of horse-trading. Certainly both sides wil be looking to curry favor with him. (I still love the idea of Independent senators, even when I dislike the individuals.) My hometown in CT came out huge for Lieberman...but then they also went for Bush in 2004. Go figure.

Fourth, I love the idea of a wave (This map shows where it hit), but I have to say the design of Congress really sucks. The Founders' concept was that there should be massive changes and responsiveness in the House, and more stability in the Senate. Unfortunately, they didn't anticipate the bullshit gerrymandering of states into safe seats. So in this "huge wave of national discontentment", what do we get? A turnover of 29 (and maybe a little more) seats. Let's break that down: in a landslide victory we still only get about 7% turnover. Seriously, is that accountability? It's smaller than most corporate layoffs. I'm unhappy there's not real change. Ironically, we get more accounatbility in the Senate, since all those blue and red counties are averaged. If 5 of 33 senate seats flip that's a more respectable 15%. So most of the House is beholden only to their base (save a few unlucky moderates in swing districts who will be voted in and out routinely). whereas the Senate needs genuine bipartisan support (saved Lieberman's behind, didn't it?). What a wierd dynamic.

Fifth, GWB is putting on a good show of accountability. I wonder if somebody important in the party sat him down and explained how badly he's screwed the Republicans. More, I wonder who it is that has the authority to set him straight. He didn't want to let Rumsfeld go (and while it's fine to fire Rummy, I don't think any of the King's other men can put Humpty-Dumpty back together either) so I wonder what carrots or sticks were offered to convince him it had to be done. Has he finally embraced pragmatism? Is he afraid? Ashamed? I dunno. In the end Rumsfeld doesn't go because of any specific issues or mistakes in Iraq. He goes because Republicans lost elections here in the US. I guess that's what an accountability moment means.

Sixth, I wonder how GWB will work with the opposition. In many respects this could be good for him. He needs oversight and input into his bubble. Hopefully we'll have a better country for it. Accountability does wonders for reconciliation.

On the day he was sentenced to death, Saddm Hussien said this: "I call on all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands"

And today in the US, Bush said this: "The message yesterday was clear: The American people want their leaders in Washington to set aside partisan differences, conduct ourselves in an ethical manner and work together to address the challenges facing our nation."

Cleaning house makes your house cleaner, go figure.

VOTE

2006-11-07T12:40:00.000-05:00

Today, you're "The Decider"

Go on out and have yourself an accountability moment.

Gayness in the air

2006-11-06T22:39:00.000-05:00

Ever since the Foley thing, everyone's been talking about the gay. This Haggard thing is even worse. Ordinarily I wouldn't kick someone when they're down, but I've decided to suspend all scruples today in pursuit of an object lesson. Haggard was the pastor of one of the largest evangelical churches in the US and he's been doing meth and male prostitutes. Seriously dude, way to blow the lid off the notion that evangelicals are boring prudes! It's pretty uncool to do drugs though, lame to have to pay for sex, and legitimately sinful to break one's marriage vows. (the only upshot is at least he wasn't "coveting another's wife")

So the serious point I wanted to make was people always give Catholic priests shit for being gay. It's true there are a lot of gay priests, and without going into specifics let's just say that some clergy have other sexual issues. One proposed solution has been to allow Catholics to marry, which in some people's mind would fix that right up. Behold evidence it would not in the form of Haggard.

As a lesser point, I read James Wolcott's post on the Haggard thing, in which he's starts out talking about teabagging (this might be a good point to mention that this post may be NSFW), segues into his opinion that all republicans are gay (which simply can't be true), and concludes that he misses Will and Grace (which is practically coming out of the closet himself). Anyway in the course of Wolcott's irreverent diatribe, it crosses my mind that Haggard is married to the type of woman who marries an evangelical pastor. Now I know I'm making horrible assumptions, but I'm guessing between the 5 kids and the pastor-wife thing, maybe he can't get a decent BJ in his homelife, let alone a professional one. Now I rather imagine that Mr. Haggard is homosexual or fully bisexual, but part of me wonders whether ordinary sexual unfulfilledness played a role in his combination bender/bend-over. It sure seems like an act of desperation. I know I'm probably blaming the victim here, but I wonder whether his wife was just too prudish for him.

Speaking of the wife...I can't imagine how much it sucks for her to find out her husband has been doing hardcore drugs and cheating on her with a male prostitute, not to mention the family losing it's main source of income, and her husband being revealed as a hipocrite and a national embarassment. If you want to throw in the typical evangelical mindset, she probably thinks her spouse is destined for Hell too. The last thing she needs is random assholes on the internet making suppositions about their marriage and sex life. Hmmm. Ok, I feel a little bad now. But if there's even a chance that a healthier marriage could have prevented this, I think that would be a valuable lesson.

And then we have this discussion between Andrew Sullivan and NRO, in which NRO claims:

This is why gay marriage threatens heterosexual marriage.

Hmm. I don't see it myself. It's not like Haggard was looking to marry the man-whore. OTOH- it's closest evidence to date that there's any substance to that ridiculous argument. At least in this case it can be argued that a gay relationship (coupled of course with the Meth) casued marital issues. Nahh, I think that's still total BS.

And for those remaining "libertarian republicans" out there...get a load of this:

If everyone were in control of his appetites, there would be no need for the government to be involved in endorsing some sexual relationships while withholding endorsement from others.

NRO, that intellectual beacon of conservative thought, is now claiming that it's the government's responsibility to endorse or deny sexual behaviors. State's rights are dead and buried. Let me break this down: A married pastor hired a male prostitute to get high on meth with and screw. And NRO thinks the problem is the homosexuality?

Speaking of governments regulating sexuality, let's not forget to vote against Santorum tomorrow, right?

Momentous times

2006-11-05T20:05:00.000-05:00

So this weekend I went to Punkin Chunkin! It was awesome seeing punkins hurled by catapults and shot out of cannons. Between defending my thesis and punkin chunkin this has been an awesome month!

Oh also, I got engaged. That was cool too.

So blogging has been light, mostly on account of it not being a priority. I'm a little sorry about that, especially since I've devoted so much time to politics and THE BIG DAY is coming up. I promise an update later on the Punkin Chunkin, kindly refer folks to the sidebar for politics, and probably won't blog at all about the engagement (hey, it's private). Best wishes to all!

-Lanky

PS: Go vote on Tuesday, even if it's to cast a write-in ballot for Oprah. Ordinarily I'd say "may the best man win", but on top of being a smidge sexist, it's also sadly unrepresentitive of actual politics. So, in my little cynical way, I'll offer this instead: "May the biggest asshole lose."

Awesome

2006-10-25T23:26:00.000-04:00

Sucessfully defending one's thesis is an incredible rush. It feels unbelievable.

If you can follow it up with a happy hour, a bar crawl, and dinner with family at Buddakan, by all means, go for that too.

D-E-F-E-N-S-E!

2006-10-25T00:55:00.000-04:00

T minus 12 hours. nervous as hell. really wish i was blogging about football.

War cheerleader looks around and has an idea

2006-10-20T03:10:00.000-04:00

I had a hard time getting through Goldberg's column. Goes something like....

Iraq was a mistake, but I still hate you liberals!

There is a treat near the end though if you hold your nose and stick through it.

I've mentioned what I think of people like Goldberg, who realize (ummm 4 years late) that it was a mistake to authorize war powers for Iraq....but the idea of having Iraqis vote on us staying or going sounds like a pretty valid exit excuse to me. Besides the Iraqis like voting and they haven't had an election in like 8 months.

It's time to sleep more when....

2006-10-18T21:03:00.000-04:00

So it took a lot of work to get my thesis written (even somewhat late). I haven't gotten a lot of sleep this week.

When do you know it's bad? When you print out the cover page for your thesis, the very first page of the embodiment of 5 years of work, and you stare at it for 50 seconds, and finally realize that its a "DISSERTATION", not a "DISSERTAION". (I think spell check didn't flag it because it was in all caps?)

Anyway I caught that one. Barely. I'm so afraid of what else I may have done.

Problem for another day. Time to go to bed.

Ok one more...then back to work

2006-10-16T20:39:00.000-04:00

Via the Carpetbagger.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, today:

QUESTION: Just a simple question: Are we winning [in Iraq]?

SNOW: We're making progress. I don't know. How do you define
winning?

What's with this Zen shit? You don't put 100,000 troops in a war zone without a goal. Winning is accomplishing that goal. Now quit fucking with us and answer the question.

Kinda messed up...

2006-10-16T20:32:00.000-04:00

What's wrong with this?

Screen capture from WaPo.com

Stress Monkey

2006-10-11T22:04:00.000-04:00

So my written thesis is due immenently, and I think it still needs work. I don't know how my committee feels about not have the written the requisite 2 weeks in advance, and I'm not happy to have to ask them.

Then I get this foutune cookie with dinner:

Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

On any other day I would have thrown that out and said "What the f*** does that mean?". Today though, it's pretty clear. Scary.

More science philosophy

2006-10-10T21:35:00.000-04:00

There's a tendency to think of scientists as egghead intellectual types, even among themselves. I'm going to differ though. It seems to me that intelligence isn't remotely a success trait in science. Sure you need enough to get by, but it rarely makes or breaks you. The best scientists have a combination of two things: intuition and perseverance. Intuition is all about knowing what research will be useful, solvable, and interesting. It's having a good feel for worthwhile managable projects. Perserverance is a matter of dedication and the ability to work through the unanticipated issues that invariably pop up. Combine those two traits with a smidge of innovation or creativity and you've got ispiration. Intelligence can't compete with inspiration, it's not even close.

Explain this to me... or I could just call it like I see it

2006-10-09T21:45:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan links to Fareed Zarkaria's article in Newsweek offering up that "If Fareed is giving in, you know it's beyond serious."

Now I'm going to get a little cruel here on the conservative warrior-types, both those who have been drinking the kool-aid and those still swilling it. Why is it that sudden converts to the school of "hey, things are fucked up!" have so much more credibility than people with the foresight to say "whoa, this is gonna get fucked up!" I mean, does actually being wrong and then later changing sides somehow make you wiser? I can see how nobody likes a pessimist, but to give extra weight to the opinion of someone who has been wrong about a life-and-death matter for years? I just don't get it. Let me rephrase...

It's great when the war cheerleaders put down their pompoms for a second to take a look at the scoreboard. Whether that person eventually comes to that conclusion that the reason we're woefully behind in this contest is because the coach calls bad play after bad play after bad play, or because he took us to the wrong stadium from the start doesn't matter. I'm not trying to diminish the value of that awakening by splitting hairs: knowledge and insight are wonderful things. Converts, I'm happy to welcome you to reality (happier than you'll be when you finally see it), but I want you to remember something. The reason I'm not interested in your revelations is because inside, at the core of your being, you're still the same ditzy cheerleader you were last week, month, or year. People like you brought this clusterfuck to pass, and you should be ashamed of yourself. I don't expect you to have the grace to shut-up, but at least put away the megaphone. You're embarrassing.

I hope I didn't lose anyone on the metaphor.

(PS: since I linked to Sullivan, it's only fair to say: he's one too. It's time for him to stop make-believing that changing anyone on our end will fix Iraq.)
(PPS: apologies to actual cheerleaders)

Playboy's 10 favorite political blogs*

2006-10-06T18:35:00.000-04:00

Check them out here.

They certainly run the ideological spectrum. There's the uber-Democractic DailyKos and the uber-Republican Powerline . As a pornographic magazine, it's not surprising they gave a shout-out to the internet's biggest Libertarian watering hole (Hit&Run), but it is a little surprising that their top choice is run by a gay man (not exactly their demographic). For that matter, they also cite Pandagon, a highly PC intellectual feminist site. God only knows what Pandagon thinks of getting traffic from Playboy.

*There are other types of blogs out there more in tune with Playboy's interests. Playboy surfs them for the articles.

Karma vs the afterlife

2006-10-05T21:47:00.000-04:00

Watch me rip off Andrew Sullivan's entire post:

If Hastert Stays ... the GOP could lose 50 seats, according to an internal poll. And if he quits? Maybe they didn't ask that question. One aspect of this is worth further noting. The base of the GOP has been fed homophobia and gay-baiting for years now. It was partly how Rove won Ohio and the presidency. Gay-hating is integral to their machine. Now, the very homophobia these people stoked and used is suddenly turning back on them. Part of me is distressed that the GOP could lose not because of spending recklessness, corruption, torture, big government, pork, and a hideously botched war ... but because of a sex scandal which doesn't even have (so far as we know) any actual sex. But part of me also sees the karmic payback here. They rode this tiger; now it's turning on them. And it's dinner time.

It's nice to see the beginnings of accountability, even if it's for the wrong sins.

Karma's a bitch, but it's got nothing on the Christian dogma of Final Judgement. Maybe you believe in a judgemental afterlife? How do you suppose these same people will try to explain the difference between coersion and torture to God? I'm no angel, but at least I stack up well against Congress.

Quikies

2006-10-05T18:05:00.000-04:00

Knee-deep in thesis, so I'll keep this short. Writing a thesis tends to put one in a bit of a wierd mood. It's a strange state of mind, with sort of a manic, organized chaos of thoughts. Almost like juggling. I don't know if I'll agree with anything I write here later, but hey, writing it down's the best way to find out. (Besides, maybe if I expunge the wierdness here I can focus more rationally on the thesis.)

In addition to the data in my woefully disorganized lab notes, there are a good number of doodles, stray thoughts, and profane expressions (a lot of experiments just don't work). One of these was clearly meant to be optimimistic and get me through a bad time.

Yea though I walk through the valley of science, I shall fear no data.

I still like that one. It has long been my mantra that the role of a scientist is to worship science and the role of an engineer is to make science your bitch. For those not biblically inclined, the original quote goes something like "Yea though I walk through the valley of Death, I shall fear no Evil." Now don't get me wrong, I like science, and 5 years of research has given me a very healthy respect for scientists. So I don't equate science with death, or bad data with evil. The quote was more meant to boost faith in my abilities as a scientist, because the truth is: some days I'm a scientist, and some days I'm an engineer.

But for the record: when an engineer has business in the valley of science, he really ought to drive a car instead of walking.

A late irony

2006-10-05T00:35:00.000-04:00

After invading Iraq because we thought Saddam had weapons not allowed by the Geneva conventions, Congress has now given the president the authority to define torture differently than described in the Geneva conventions.

Poor beautiful (quaint) Geneva. From reason for war to casualty of war.

Why waterboarding is wrong...

2006-10-05T00:04:00.000-04:00

It amazes me to have to write this, but a lot of conservative types out there don't understand why we shouldn't be torturing people. Here's my rundown, and since I tend to use torture and waterboarding interchangably, I'll explain now. It's my view that any form of "coersion" which causes people to prefer being dead is probably torturous.

OK, I'll try to keep this simple. Torture is bad because:

1. It's sadistic and cruel. It's a crime against humanity and God.
2. It's a bad strategic decision in our ideological war on terror. Each person in this world can chose to align with us, with terror, or with neither. When we run around waterboarding people, it doesn't really endear us to the world. The way to win an ideological war is to have a better ideology.
3. It's a bad strategic decision militarily. A lot of people bring up the issue that if we waterboard others then it's likely our POWs will be waterboarded. I don't want to diminish that argument, but mostly the people who advocate torture aren't worried about ever becoming POWs. So let me put it this way. Torturing captives makes people less likely to surrender. Instead, we should be doing everything possible to encourage our enemies to surrender. WWII would have been a lot harder if Italy had stood it's ground and not turned on the Germans. In the first days of the Iraq war, the Iraqi army was surrendering in droves. Those are strategic victories that we won because our enemy would rather surrender than fight. On the other hand, if our emenies come to expect four years of secret detention and torture, maybe next time they'll fight to the death. That's a strategic loss.

I'll note in passing that many have argued torture is ineffective. I don't care for that argument myself(because my gut response to something not working is to figure out how to do it better), so I'm not going to advance it. Another passing note is it's bad to allow the government that kind of power, but the libertarian argument can be shelved for another day.

There are so many good reasons to oppose torture/waterboarding/etc, and yet so many still support it. Who would have thought Americans wanted so badly to torture people?

PS: The repeated claims that "the US doesn't torture" despite evidence to the contrary don't help our global stature.

Says McCain

2006-10-03T01:11:00.000-04:00

Conservatives came to office to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. But lately we have increased government in order to stay in office.
And, soon, if we don't remember why we were elected we will have lost our office along with our principles, and leave a mountain of debt that our children's grandchildren will suffer from long after we have departed this earth. Because, my friends, hypocrisy is the most obvious of sins, and the people will punish it.

John McCain finds the balls to criticize his party while speaking to Tories, but not to Americans.

RNAi visits Stockholm

2006-10-03T00:08:00.000-04:00

Quick shout-out to Fire and Mello, the nobel prize winners (in medicine), for their discovery of RNAi.

RNAi stands for RNA interference, a process in which cells regulate expression at the post transcriptional level by using compementary oligonucleotides to degradate mRNA.

It's both less and more complicated than it sounds, but the upshot is the discovery enables "gene silencing", the ability to tune down the expression of a protein within cells. Proteins are the main functional units that make up cells, some being able to turn them down at will is very powerful tool. Medically, it enables a wide variety of new treatments for targets as diverse as AIDS, Cancer, or genetic diseases. Other benefits include the ability to design tissue specific expression and the silencing of genes for fundamental studies.

The field is less than a decade old and has vast potential to not only open up other areas of discovery, but also to save and improve lives. To have gotten as far as it has this quickly is a major testimonial to the power of the field, but it also speaks well of the scientists who developed, shared, and promoted the technology. A worthy award.

Blog News Priorities

2006-10-01T23:04:00.000-04:00

OH MY GOD, A REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN SENT INDISCRETE E-MAILS TO AN UNDERAGE MALE PAGE!!!

Oh, also Congress just legalized torture and tore a corner off the Magna Carta.

OH MY GOD HE SPONSORED LAWS AGAINST CHILD PREDATORS!! HE'S A HYPOCRITE AND MAYBE GAY TOO!

Which issue strikes you as more threating to the republic?

Netanyahu on Bill Maher

2006-09-30T12:22:00.000-04:00

This discussion between former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Bill Maher was pretty engaging. Aside from the kissy faces Maher and Netanyahu make to each other and each others' country, it's a really good interview.

The better part of the interview is towards the end where Netanyahu talks about the world opinion of Israel. Now as it happens, I thought Israel acted extremely or disproportionately in the recent war with Lebanon. I've made noises to that effect before, and I still believe it. However, Netanyahu stands there and makes a persusasive and intelligent defense of their actions. I don't buy it, but this was never a black and white issue, and what used to be a dark shade of gray is one step closer to neutral.

Now obviosly, it's important for Israel to curry favor with the US, but put that aside and consider this. Just watch how good at Netanhayu is at handling questions on the fly and answering them. He's fricking great at making his position look good! This is a skill some leaders have, it's called diplomacy. Now why on Earth can't we have a persusasive leader like that? Can you imagine George Bush going and doing interviews in Germany and England and Saudi Arabia, and answering honest questions (a different issue from answering questions honestly) about our rationales and behavior and rallying international support for our cause? With more allies, more troops, and more international pressures and concensus we might have had a different impact on Iraq. Diplomacy has gotten a bad rap lately as a cowardly alternative to the "hard work" of fighting, but Irsael demonstrates it's not an either-or situation. What if we'd fought and used diplomacy to fight too?

A popular neocon whine is that we aren't losing the Iraq war, we're losing the PR battle. I think Iraq was mostly screwed from the get-go, but I'll throw them this bone. If we'd had a diplomat of Natanyahu's caliber in office instead of a smirky, twitchy, bumbler, things would be different.

Internets buzz

2006-09-25T23:48:00.000-04:00

Political fix of the week. (ok last week, I'm late) If you haven't seen it, watch Clinton's interview with Fox. It's good stuff.

Free advice worth at least ten times that...

2006-09-25T00:34:00.000-04:00

From Kirsten at Enjoy Every Sandwich (bonus: gratutious shout-out to Battlepanda for having such diverse sidebar links)

Perhaps a bit longer than the usual fair excerpt, this is a new wording for some age-old advice. The reality is your attitude and outlook on life are immensely important to just about everything. But can people actually change their outlook? People who have anger issues don't want to be told to chill, people who are hardcore cynics don't want to try to improve their attitudes, and people who are anxious don't want to let go of obsessions. Watch as the fiery profanity of Kirsten's diatribe speaks truth, not to power, but to the bullshit that resides in everyone.

Shit has a tendency to happen. Shit does not have a tendency to unhappen.

A lot of people, maybe most people, get handed a big sack of shit at some point in their lives. Often it's not their fault. It's sad shit. It's scary shit. It's shit that makes you mad. It's shit that if all were just and right in the universe, some fucking bastard would die a slow and painful death for over and over again. You have every right to hang onto that sack of shit as long as you choose.

I hung onto mine for a good long time. Near the bitter end of an eight-year relationship, my ex-husband did me the biggest favor of my life by saying something that really got me thinking. He said that I liked to be angry. I thought that one over good and hard. I didn't like to be angry, but it was my normal mode of operation. Why was that? I realized that I was focusing on being right, not on being happy. My parents, an ex-boyfriend, my ex-husband all wronged me. I was right about that, damnit! And boy was I pissed! P-I-S-S-E-D! And I wasn't gonna let go until someone made it right! But when I realized that the only way to make it right was for those things to unhappen- and that was entirely impossible- I rearranged my priorities. Instead of waiting around for my idea of justice to never happen and being very miserable waiting for the impossible to inevitably not happen, I decided to see about the business of being happy from here on out.

And I found that the trick to being happy was not to carry my sack of shit around with me forever.

We all have qualms, fears, preferences, or bitterness that keeps us from being happier. We call them mental baggage, because they're cumbersome as we tote them around. Kirsten reminds us that the reason we carry them is because we choose to, and that we could just as easily choose not to. The candor of this post is what works. Malcontents don't want help from Dr. Smileyface, so here's a colder truth that's undeniably evident. Is it truth enough to rival your precious personal baggage? It barely scratches mine. Still, I'll absorb what I can.

More diversion

2006-09-23T13:31:00.000-04:00

Kinda turned off political blogging these days, whether it be the bold steps taken by congress to determine what degree of torture should be legal, or the gearing up of inevitably acrid campaign seasons. There's also an interesting kerfluffle between the Pope and the Arab world, but I don't care to write much about it atm.

Instead, I'll stay true to my geek roots (like I have a choice) and bring you this work of true awesomeness! In response to the decade old debate of which was a cooler 1980's video game Metroid or Mega Man (metroid, duh), someone has recoded a version of Metroid in which you play as MegaMan!

If you've played both games and liked them, you'll love this. (If not, um, probably not )

Lanky's response to chain letters.

2006-09-21T21:52:00.000-04:00

Since the phrase chain-letter came up in the last post, here's the Lanky method to avoid chain-letters. However many they ask for, send them all back to the person who sent one to you. I don't know if that breaks the chain, cursing either your butt or that of the original sender, but I can tell you: that person won't send you stupid chain letters anymore.

Chronicles of inanity

2006-09-21T21:27:00.000-04:00

With props to a fellow grad student I bring you this:

What does one do with the enormous amounts of free bandwidth one can obtain on blogger, flicker, or you-tube? One person out there has decided to post pictures of toothpaste. Everyday. Twice a day. Toothpaste.

This went on for the bulk of a year. That dogged, pointless determination drew the attention of many, including such sites as Boing-Boing. But alas, in that the toothpastery flew too close to the sun, as aforementioned grad student (who has a peculiar genius that may be low-grade autism) noticed that two of the the toothpastes were the in fact the same picture!!

Oh the horror!

It appears that the toothpaste phenomenon has withered in the light of this sordid corruption and the toothpastery no longer posts daily photos.

At the end of this tale I was left asking: What the fuck is the point!? I felt as though data had been seared into my mind that was utterly useless; the very definition of inane. And so to lend it value, I've passed it onto you. Like a cursed chain-letter of inanity, whatever time it took you to read this post, you have learned nothing of substance.

Reminds me in a way of grad school.

Silly Brit notation

2006-09-15T21:54:00.000-04:00

Friday night and I'm reviewing proofs from a paper I will soon have published. Mostly sucks to be me, but it's already past deadline. I am remiss in many duties, including blogging. The blog suffers because my life is busy with minutae. Egro, expect posts to reflect that.

Tonight I write about the British editing of scientific papers. Brit editors have changed a number of subtle aspects of the paper. For the most part, the edits are invisible, even to me (and I wrote the 7,500 word monster). Some, like the conversion of 100,000 to 100 000 were expected. And yet, I'm unclear on why the 7 instances of the word "since" were pared down to only two. A pattern emerges wherein any use of "since" at the beginning of a sentence resulted in it’s replacement with the word “as”. Use of "since" in the middle of a sentence apparently passes editing. Clearly this is a grammatical rule! I had no idea! One particularly robust sentence includes two semi-colons and an "and/or" conjunction. This is a fine edit of a brutal passage. Yes, it's a monster of a sentence, but it's just how I would have liked to have written it- except that I lack the knowledge and confidence to use semi-colons myself. (I mean in real writing; I'm happy to misuse them at will here)

As I have been busy of late (and specifically not "Since I have been busy") this is what you get to read. One hopes for all our sakes, that we can return to the normal status quo soon.

Categorically wrong

2006-09-07T20:04:00.000-04:00

Individual strands of DNA are unidirectional. Typically we call one end 5' and the other 3'. My most recent experiment had good results (finally!). Earlier today I wrote and sent out a 2 page brief to my advisors telling them the results.

Unfortunately, in all the excitement I messed up my nomenclature and confused the 3' ends and 5' ends. All of my conclusions were exactly backwards. Ouch. The trends I brilliantly identified were all completely wrong.

The good news is the write-up was easy to fix, I just replaced swapped every place I wrote 3' or 5'. The other good news is I figured it out before ordering thousands of dollars of DNA for follow-ups. It was an easy mistake, but still, nothing makes one feel retarded like telling your boss(es)- hey, everything I told you a few hours ago is categorically wrong.

Things i hate

2006-09-03T16:25:00.000-04:00

1. Writing a thesis.
2. Continuing experiments while writing a thesis.
3. Failed experiments with a looming defense deadline.

blogging will be light

Meathead dissent

2006-08-26T14:18:00.000-04:00

So I guess rockers are supposed to be rebellious, but when you combine the lyrics of Phil Collin's "Land of Confusion" with the heavy metal sound of Disturbed, you get a rock ballad to strike a political power chord. The song itself kicks ass. But the video goes a mile further. You might remember the original viseo had a claymation Reagan sweating in his bed.

This video is not specifically targeted at the president, but it has even more anti-authoritarian punch. It's a cartoon designed to make our testosterone laden youth violently peaceful, and rabidly anti-totalitarian. I don't think either of those are bad traits.

It's probably the most subversive thing I've seen all year.

Not wearing uniforms. Vapid reflections on a vapid observation.

2006-08-22T23:09:00.000-04:00

One of my least favorite conservative themes is that "bad guy X" doesn't deserve humanitarian treatment or application of the Geneva Convention because "he wasn't in uniform". The argument frequently gets applied to modern day bad guys, whether they are Gitmo detainees from Afghanistan or Hezbollah guerrilla fighters.

And to some extent, they have a point. A lot of these bad guys don't wear uniforms. (Excepting Hezbollah who kind of have a uniform in those creepy-ass ski masks. You just know anyone in a ski-mask is a bad-guy- that's like 8yr old TV comprehension level.) Anyway, the purpose of the Geneva conventions uniform clause was to distingush soldiers, who should be treated with dignity, from spies, who should get hung. You can argue if you want that guerilla fighters should be treated as one or the other, but me, I think it's the nature of war to evolve and they're another flavor of their own.

But here's what I don't like about the uniformed/non-uniformed distinction. When you invade a country, as we did in Afghanistan, or Israel did in Lebanon, you have to expect resistance from some sorts of irregulars. If some Islamic country were occupying your hometown, you might feel inclined to fight back. Admittedly, it's a ludicrous hypothetical from the get-go, but if it were to happen...do you really think you'd go out and find a uniform before waging armed resistance? Yeah, I doubt it. Just be careful you aren't caught, because according to conservative bloggers, if you aren't wearing a uniform the occupying army is free to do whatever it wants with you.

And then there's the intrinsic contrast with our treasured American lore.* When Washington wintered the Army in Valley Forge, they famously had trouble providing shoes for the men. I'm guessing if you have half barefoot soldiers, your uniforms aren't quite up to snuff. You think the Redcoats used to bitch that the colonials didn't all dress alike? Maybe they did. They used to fight wars by lining up and shooting each other like civilized people. (Probably the purpose of the red coats was to not show the blood when your army was getting shot. Call me silly, but I much prefer the concept of camoflage.) But those crazy Americans, they kept chaging the rules. Whether it was taking potshots at convoys on windy backwoods roads, or Washington's crossing of the Deleware on Christmas for a surprise attack on the hung-over Hessians, the Americans played to win. That's the nature of war. At the end of the day, people use whatever tactics they think are most effective.

And then there's the case of the Boston Tea party, where a bunch of Bostonites not only set out to destroy the the East India Tea Company's property (worth millions in todays dollars), they dressed up like Indians while they did it. (That had to be inspired by beer.) Full props to the colonials for giving our country such a great initiation, but if a similar stunt went down today, it would probably be labeled "terrorist". Anyway, our esteemed forefathers planned and launched these little attacks from annonmity and blended in with the civillian population to escape retribution. That's our very own history, and we've known it for hundreds of years. So let's try not to be so shocked when similar dynamics pop up in other occupation situations.

*Disclaimer: The last time I took a respectable US history class was 8th grade, so this really is more lore than fact. Maybe the colonials had real spiffy uniforms, and maybe the Sons of Liberty didn't dress up as Indians. Maybe Samuel Adams and his buddies never touched the sauce. Of course all of this can be checked through the power of the internets, and if you want to, go to it! But it's my blog, so I'm gonna go with what the voices in my head say. (Except the voice that keeps telling me it's wrong to start sentences with conjunctions. Or write in fragments.) Anyway here's your disclaimer. There's probably a 50% chance I'm full of shit. That's like David Broder odds, but at least I write a disclaimer.

PS: it looks like there's some controversy over whether the Indian bit was true. Seems like an odd thing to not know. Is someone whitewashing the shennanigans, or was the whole Indian thing just a PR smear against those vandalous Sons of Liberty? Of course, you can also ask whether being dressed as an Indian that counts as a uniform, or whether you're blending in with the civilian population and using them as shields.

Terrorist organization wins hearts and minds

2006-08-16T19:09:00.000-04:00

Via Sullivan, this NYT piece explains how an Iranian backed Hezbollah is buying off the Lebanese with reconstruction.

In his victory speech on Monday night, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, offered money for “decent and suitable furniture” and a year’s rent on a house to any Lebanese who lost his home in the month-long war.

“Completing the victory,” he said, “can come with reconstruction.”

Sheik Nasrallah said in his speech that “the brothers in the towns and villages will turn to those whose homes are badly damaged and help rebuild them.

“Today is the day to keep up our promises,” he said. “All our brothers will be in your service starting tomorrow.”

They may gotten whupped on militarily, but they're going to win the people of Lebanon, nonetheless. And in a democracy, that buys political power. So Israel fought to install democratically elected state-sponsored terrorists next door. Sounds to me like winning the battle, but losing the war.

Lastly, do I really need to draw the analogy between this:

Hezbollah men also traveled door to door checking on residents and asking them what help they needed.

And our reconstruction of Iraq? It's not just a matter of money: we've spent well over $10,000 US for every one of the 27 million people in Iraq. Could we have leveraged that differently, in a way which made their lives better? We'll never know. We can try to help Lebanon rebuild and compete with the Iranian influence, but let's face it: locally they're going to do better than we can. It's already more personal and better managed than our response to Katrina.

Duh

2006-08-16T09:37:00.000-04:00

This morning it occurs to me that the line from Animal Farm is actually more like "Four legs good, two legs better." (probably still a misquote)

Someday I'll reread those books, but I'm a little afraid to at the moment.

Four legs bad, two legs good.

2006-08-15T23:33:00.000-04:00

The Daily Show highlights the sudden shift in administration propoganda from "Stay the Course" to "Adapting to win". You've got to see it to believe it.

Says Steward: "You see that's the beauty of propaganda. It has no internal logic or integrity to violate."

It's a good clip if you've ever read 1984, (though one could argue that Animal Farm fits better).

"Fixing" the War Crimes Act

2006-08-15T23:16:00.000-04:00

Not to bring up old shit, but I'd wanted to write about this before I left for Bermuda. While on the topic, I'll mention that while no one at the wedding had a problem with Americans, a few people expressed critical views of our administration. Very very critical.

Via Washington Post, it looks like Bush wants a "ammendment" (retraction) of portions of 1990's War Crime laws. The purpose is to reduce the chances that our institutions will be penalized for not following them.

Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts -- such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- that fall short of torture.
"People have gotten worried, thinking that it's quite likely they might be under a microscope," said a U.S. official. Foreigners are using accusations of unlawful U.S. behavior as a way to rein in American power, the official said, and the amendments are partly meant to fend this off.

I soo want to hear the debate on this one.

Argument 1:
Dear Sirs and Madams of Congress,

We need to rewrite the 1996 War Crimes Act to reflect post 9-11 reality. The simple truth is that we are at war with an insidious enemy, an enemy who is evil to the core and wants to destroy us and all we hold dear. These evil terrorists have no remose and are utterly devoid of any human qualities. They are more demon than human. These evil demons of Islamofascim are the greatest threat the nation has ever faced. They are a bigger threat than the Communists, the Nazis, and homosexuals all combined. Fortunately we have discovered a way to combat Commie-Nazi gay demons, and that is to strip them naked, place women's underwear on their head and make them form a pyramid.

Without this crucial tool in our arsenal, the fight on terrorevilradicalbadness will be doomed. Some might say that these measures have never been required in the past, that our forefathers would look upon us with shame for treating people this way. Some might point out that as recently as the eighties we were involved in a Cold War and nobly faced down our enemies in a world perpetually on the brink of human annhiliation without resorting to such treatments. But those people are on the side of the islamo-fascist commie-nazi gay demon enemies! If the only way to protect the world from anarchy and keep from shitting our beds in rank cowardly fear is to use women's underwear as a weapon then we must find the resolve to do it!

Thank-you and God bless.

Argument 2:
Dear Sirs and Madams of Congress,
It has come to our attention that it might be determined in a court of law that we're been committing War Crimes right and left. If it's not too much trouble, could you pass some legislation to cover our ass? Thanks. Oh by the way, we're not running for elections anymore, but Congress is in a few months. Step in line quick, because if we go down we're taking you with us.

Which sounds most likely to you?

Alright, while on the toture theme- the honest truth is I'd rather people be stripped naked and stacked like a pancake than be waterboarded, or stripped naked, sprayed with water and put in a 50 degree room. But on top of the message it sends the world when we back out of legislation based on the Geneva Conventions, on top of ecouraging mistreatment of our POWs, and on top of the implication that the government should be allowed to first break the law and then use that as impetus to force a change in it, I doubt this stuff is all that effective. You really think these hardcore, "trained in terror camps to lie and use the media against us" terrorists are going to crack over underwear games? We might get the less sophisticated bystander or accidental pick-up types to break with psychosexual mindfucks, but do those people know anything useful?

As a bigger point, what kind of assholes don't follow a War Crime bill that's only a decade old and then go back to the very people who passed it and ask for a repeal? Those criminal embarassments are not making the US a better place, and their rank ineptitude implies they probably aren't making us any safer either.

Once upon a time the greatness of the US was self-evident in that we not only took the moral high road, we owned it and protected it with the force of law. This? This is pathetic.

Math...harder than it looks.

2006-08-14T23:56:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum indulges in a bit of wishful thinking and hopes that next-generation lie detectors can help catch terroists in airports.

Even in a test environment, the machine missed 15% of "terrorists" and incorrectly flagged 8% of innocent travelers. Cogito's goal is to get that to 10% and 4%, which is still far too high to be of very much value.

This technology isn't ready for prime time yet, not least because sticking people inside an MRI machine at airports isn't exactly a feasible concept. But I wouldn't be surprised if a better and more reliable version of this technology were available within five to ten years. If, say, it could replicate Cogito's planned accuracy, and the two were combined, the resulting device might have a 99% chance of catching terrorists and only a .1% rate of false positives. That would be genuinely useful.

Let's see whether this holds up to a quick analysis. The 99% end looks pretty good. Even a large terror cell with say 2 dozen memebers would be unlikely to get a member through. Looks promising. However, a 0.1% rate of false positives is 1/1000. That sounds pretty good at first, but a decently sized airport like BWI gets 54,088 passengers a day. That's 54 potential terroists to process every day, from a single airport. So you're looking tens of thousands of suspects per year, just from one airport. Multiply that by a few dozen airports, and you're in for a pretty big haystack to search for that same 24 member terror cell. How many hundreds of thousands of people a year can we delay, detain, or investigate?

2006-08-14T23:45:00.000-04:00

So on Thursday morning my girlfriend and I got up at 4:30 to catch a plane to Bermuda. After a sleepy but uneventful subway from Manhattan to JFK, we discovered that Thursday was a really bad day to travel internationally. Bermuda was beautiful: more on that another day. As for the airports, imagine how much faster it would be if we all just traveled nude. I’m joking of course, but follow the hypothetical. Even with buck naked passengers, a terrorist on a suicide mission probably wouldn’t quibble over stuffing a condom full of “liquid explosives” up the poop chute. So unless you add cavity searches to the already ridiculous proposal, it probably won’t make us any safer.

So while, I don’t object to the regulation of liquids when there is a good reason, I think naked transit (preceded by a cavity search) is the only way to be sure no one has smuggled explosives on a plane. That having been said, it seems like the better method of protection is to be less reactionary, and go after the source. That’s why I support the war in Iraq, which has finally brought Saddam to trial for 9/11. (Ha, ha, just messing with you.) In fact, it's why I support the solid policework of the UK that identified the terrorists and then their plot. It’s difficult to identify the bad guys and learn their plans, but ultimately that's more effective than guessing the plans and hoping to identify them perpetrating. Two minutes of brainstorming will show that we’ll never be prepared for every terrorism disaster that could occur. Our best recourse is to identify the the terrorists before they strike. Beyond that we have a few other things to deter terror. We can limit the number of people who want to be terrorists by promoting pacifying institutions. By that I mean not just democracy, but Baywatch, Jack Daniels, the Beach Boys, air conditioning, dentistry, peace, love, rock’n’roll, and all the other mindless shit that effectively opiate the Western Hemisphere. We should limit terrorist capabilities by having informants among them, limiting their travel, and cutting off their funds. But most of all, we should limit their accomplishments by not shitting ourselves and invading an unrelated country every time they say “boo”.

As Roger says:

This is it, folks. This is the world, from now on. Even assuming the War on Terror is a not just a bad metaphor and there is an actual measurable winning point*, the short 4GW [4th generation warfare] struggles last fifty years or so. We're going to be stopping one or two of these bastard mass-murder plots a year, minimum, for the rest of our lives. Hell, the way terror tactics and tech evolve, five years from now we're going to be pining for the dudes with the flammable juice boxes.It's now part of our life.
Let's try not to hop like the trained monkeys every time it happens.

It seems like practical advice to me. That’s why I’m pretty sure we won’t follow it. You never know though, once we all get used to the cavity searches, maybe they’ll turn out to be fun.

Link Credit: Battlepanda

Never thought I'd say this...

2006-08-08T18:31:00.000-04:00

...but I miss the days when conservative bloggers used to whine that the press just isn't reporting the good news out of Iraq. Without the cheerleading, all we have is the depressing news reports, and even more depressing charts. (data via Iraq Index) Violence is at to the point where a country 1/10 our size is getting 9/11 scale casualties every month. What is the exit strategy for the average Iraqi?

Faith in the internets restored

2006-08-07T19:38:00.000-04:00

Faith in graduate school, gets a minor boost as well.

Grad School Fatigue and a Failure of Google

2006-08-07T19:13:00.000-04:00

Sucks writing a thesis. So close, and yet so much left to do. As I scrolled through my mind for a suitable image, I remembered the tough-guy sailor in Master & Commander who had "Hold Fast" tattooed across his knuckles. I could really use something like that. I wanted to at least get an image of it, but I can't find one on Google. Notice how disapointed I become when Google can't immediately serve up whatever ecclectic reference pops into my head? That's a testimony to the power of the internet and the fickleness of humans (or at least me). I'm still miffed though. Google, when you become self-aware, you've got a scolding coming.

Hillary Clinton

2006-08-07T18:53:00.000-04:00

I haven't much liked H. Clinton since she cosponsored the flag-burning bill. (Isn't it just my luck that I'll be moving to NYC soon?) Her move towards central social conservative values (video game hearings) is a calculated effort to garner some bipartisan support without really sacrificing any Democratic sacred cows. Just the same, Kos talks about a sweeping undercurrent of discontent in the rank and file.

That was actually my first thought when I heard Bill Clinton was campaigning for Lieberman. There are plenty of reasons why Joe is going down. He's pro-war and socially conservative, with closer ties to the DC establishment than his constituency. Suppose he goes. Who is next? Maybe a senator from New York. I think Bill Clinton supported a man who largely stabbed him in the back during the impeachment days mostly to provide political cover for his wife's move to the center. If voters decide they need fresh blood, well there aren't many politicians more "establishment" than Hillary Clinton.

Comic relief

2006-08-05T12:23:00.000-04:00

Since the last comedy link was a little heavy on the soul, I give you something a little different. This 1965 film on the evils of pornography (approximately PG 15, I wouldn't view it at work) is meant to be scary, but is really quite funny if you think about it. If you like the 9 minute sampler, you can look for the whole half-hour program.

Credit Link: Hit and Run

UPDATE: My labmate sends me an edited version that's even funnier.

Anti-Semitism I

2006-08-05T11:52:00.000-04:00

I really didn't understand why neocons were so quick to play the "anti-semitism" race card against various people who have pointed out that the Irsraeli incursion into Lebanon is against US interests. On the other hand it may be anti-Semite racism is more prevalent then I've been led to believe from (and I hate this phrase) "The Ivory Tower" at UPenn. Maybe surrounded by a large Jewish population my local experience is just too mixed to carry the level of bigotry found elsewhere (kind of the way New Yorkers aren't as homophobic as the South). Anyway, I've been very dismissive of the concept that people are opposed to the Irsraeli war out of anti-Semitism.

And then comedy stepped in. Watch this video from Borat/Ali G (link credit: Atrios). Certainly that's not the most liberal or enlightened crowd, but it is scary to see a pack of Americans singing, clapping, and cheering along to "throw the Jew down the well". It's a bizzare sort of comedy: I guess meant to be funny, but really kind of scary if you think about it.

Anyway, now I wonder whether anti-Semitism is more than just a convenient shield, and might actually be a valid issue.

Apostate day

2006-08-02T19:20:00.000-04:00

Slightly skewed reflections on a mixed bag of events:

First up, is RobertFarley’s post, “Condi”. (I still object to the trend where powerful women are called by their first names rather than their last.) He points out that Dr. Rice has not managed to quell the violence in Lebanon/Israel, (assuming that was her intent). A lot of liberals are reading into that, and finding her weak or ineffectual. All of which is possible. Mark me down as undecided. The Middle-East is tough. Still, I can’t help but wonder what Bill Clinton would have done had he been president. I’m betting he would have had his ass flown out there for peace talks by day 4. He was so a lover, not a fighter.

But really, I introduce Dr. Rice only to segue into the most bizarre link to her I’ve seen in a long time. Evidently, she keeps a hand in with the theoretical physicists, and participated in one of their little joke prognostication sessions for a conference. They have a panel to judge the most surprising discovery in the field, and she suggested “the discovery of stable black hole remnants with associated physics indicative of noncommutative spacetime”. I don’t like her politics, but I do give her credit. That's some high power intelectual bullshit. Most places she goes, she’s going to be the smartest person in the room (with increasingly better odds the closer she is to the White House).

Second, here’s credit to Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, who in the course of her unusual letter detailing why Middle-Easterners hate us, includes this tidbit:

The Iraqi's perception is that we are all powerful. We watch them from space with technology they cannot even imagine. Surely if we wanted to turn on his electricity we could do so. He has no idea how large the problem is but he knows we can do anything. He was angry. Eventually his air conditioning began running and his anger cooled.

Overall the letter is a little…um, overgeneralized? Pedantic? I hate to copy Ann Driscoll, but “sophomoric” hits the nail on the head. (Side note: Evidently it’s ok to rip on Iraqis on the internet. Probably it’s a technology they cannot even imagine.) And so while it pains me to agree with her, I must confess that I too have a pet theory that Iraq would be much better off if we’d managed to get them better electricity. I recently suffered the loss of my home air conditioning, and it made me rather pissed at the world. If I’d lost not just AC, but all power, and I lived in an equatorial region where people are shot for wearing shorts…well, I’d probably go apeshit after the first year or two. So Lanky’s pet theory on counterinsurgency: provide AC. (Also, I get mean when I have a toothache, so dentistry is also key.) Air conditioning and dentistry. It doesn’t escape me that these sound simple and stupid. And pedantic. And it’s outrageous that some asshole sitting at a computer (ie me) might suggest to a country with 14,000 casualties in the last 6 months, that the “real issue” was a lack of air conditioning. But at some level, I believe AC is really important. People do crazy shit in the heat. So whatever craziness prompted Schmidt’s epistle, that part at least resonated with the craziness in my head. (I share because I'm honest, at least I have the grace to be embarassed.)

Third. I hadn’t wanted to blog about Mel Gibson, until my girlfriend asked why everyone is talking about the bigoted nonsense coming out of Mel Gibson’s mouth, rather than the fact that he was risking people’s lives by drunk driving. Perhaps she noticed because she’s a physician. I’ve blogged before on the Draconian punishments imposed on California physicians caught with a DUI. They can lose their licenses and have their careers destroyed. Since Mel’s a celebrity, people seem to not care about irresponsible life-endangering behavior. He will probably get probation and a few weeks on a shady ranch. Yes, Mel’s worldview makes him an asshole. But it’s supposedly within his rights to be that kind of asshole if he chooses. If he wants to dress up in a white hood, or burn crosses on his lawn, that’s his individual choice. But when he decides to go twice the speed limit while drunk, it crosses the line from a simple asshole to public menace asshole (also known as a "criminal"). I have no objection to people pointing out he’s a reprehensible person, but let’s not lose sight of the fact than he was arrested for a substantial crime that goes way beyond racial slurs. (Even if he’s a psycho like Tom Cruise, at least Cruise isn’t putting people’s lives in danger.)

And finally, there’s this gem from The Hill. A Republican’s military service record is being questioned by Democrats. When conservatives do this isn’t it called “swift-boating”?

Perspective - Statistics edition.

2006-07-31T19:05:00.000-04:00

Pop math quiz! Identify the daily per-capita horrid death probability.

1) 1 : 93,000
2) 1 : 337,000
3) 1 : 1,600,000
4) 1 : 2,300,000
5) 1 : 80,000,000

....choose from....

A) Daily chance of being killed in Iraq (National average).
(toll, population, Jan-June 2006)

B) Daily chance of being a homicide victim in Philadelphia
(toll, population, 2005 year)

C) Daily chance of an Israeli being killed by Hezbollah
(toll, population, July 12 - July 30)

D) Daily chance of a Lebani being killed by Israel
(toll, population, July 12 - 30)

E) Per ticket chance of winning the Powerball.
(Math, it's only math)

Go on, figure it out: to fill in sapce with an idle diversion I give you this promo for http://www.despair.com/. (This one is soooo grad school)

OK fine. Answer time. (Caveat: Check the math yourself, 'cause I might have made a mistake!)The lotto has the worst odds. It always does in virtually any comparison. Don't play the lotto, it's stupid.

Just about everyone has a better chance of buying the farm, than winning the lotto on a ticket a day. But how many Nasty Premature Death Lotto tickets do people in these various danger zones buy each day? Units are in per-capita death lottery tickets every day.

Israel: 1 : 2,300,000 ~ 35 tickets.
-Of the 51 reported fatalities, 18 were civilian.
Philly: 1 : 1,600,000 ~48 tickets.
-Our fifth largest city had 377 homicides last year.
Iraq: 1 : 337,000 ~ 237 tickets.
-14,400 deaths in 6 months = "last throes"
Lebanon: 1 : 93,000 ~861 tickets.
-Life is tough in war zones.

On average, a Philadelphia resident is more likely to be killed in a violent crime than an Israeli is likely to be killed at war with Hezbollah. Factor out the military deaths, and it's a lot more likely. On the other hand, the average the death rate in Lebanon is about four times higher than in Iraq, which is considered by some to be in the midst of a civil war.

You might notice a difference there, but you'd be better off pretending you didn't. At a minimum you'd better not identify anything as "disproportionate", because people will not only accuse you of being anti-semitic, they'll accuse you of rooting for Hitler.

Quickie

2006-07-29T17:36:00.000-04:00

Light posting this week since my internet's been down. Also I had to get my AC fixed for some big $$. And for icing on the cake, the car I was borrowing from my parents got stolen. Gotta love Philly.

I do want to make a quick post about a genius tactic by the Republicans to ward off the beating they've taken on not raising the minimum wage. Now they've decided it's ok to raise the minimum wage, so long as the estate taxes go too. It's a brilliant way to recoup some electorate while still throwing a gold plated bone to the folks who really matter (the ones with estates). I think it's going to work.

Now it happens that I think the estate tax is one of the best possible ways for the state to get revenue. More on that another day. Today I want to talk about what this bill really is all about. Fucking the middle class. The poor get a tangible benefit, and the rich get their billions in bonuses. But all the shrinking middle class gets is a larger share of the tax burden.

Do you make more than 7$ an hour? If you don't have any millionaire relatives who plan on leaving you an estate, you're the one getting screwed by this bill.