April 2003 Archives

POWELL SOUNDS RUMSFELDIAN: Here are a couple of quotes by Colin Powell regarding the new French/German/Belgian/Luxembourgian European military operations center:

The project was immediately dismissed by Colin Powell, U.S. secretary of state, who called it "some sort of plan to develop some sort of headquarters." He said the four would have done better spending more money on guns, manpower and equipment. ...

For Powell, addressing the project in Senate committee testimony in Washington, the need was for more European manpower, a denser structure and better weapons - "not more headquarters."

Just from the tone it sounds like Powell may have been hanging out with Rumsfeld recently.

WHAT THEY AREN'T TELLING US: I think it's important to realize that even as trickles of information are now coming out of Iraq that implicate France (France, France, France), Russia (Russia), Germany, George Galloway, and aliens as aiding and abetting Saddam's thugocracy, there are likely to be pieces of juicy blackmail material that the US government is going to secretly hold on to for now. We're going to air enough filth to put our enemies in their places, and we're going to let them know through channels that there's plenty more where that came from and if they don't want it relvealed then they had better keep their mouths shut and stay out of our way.

That's how the world works, and the fact that our enemies don't know exactly what we've found gives us that much more power over them. I expect that we've got the goods on the various surrounding Arab countries as well, but it will be harder to blackmail the governments of nations that don't have a reasonably free press. Obviously the US government would never release incriminating evidence itself; rather, it would be leaked through media sources as having been "just discovered" so as it give it more credibility among anti-American populations.

Many of the links above are via Instapundit.

I love it when I read an essay that plainly articulates something that I've been thinking about for a while but just haven't found the right words for. Robin Goodfellow writes "we are at a time where a change of political axis is needed and will likely occur within the next few years" and I think he's correct. Both major political parties are losing ground to "independents", most of whom can be categorized as either socialists or libertarians. For the past couple of decades these growing factions of socialists and libertarians largely adhered to the Democrat and Republican parties respectively out of convenience and pragmatism, but it appears that we're nearly to the point where fewer than half of the population actually identifies themselves with one of these parties.

Imagine a game of tug-o-war. The rope is the people, and the Republicans are on one end of the rope and the Democrats are on the other. Between the two of them the middle of the rope isn't free-moving: it's strung through a ring that holds it in place. Now, if that makes sense, try and keep up here. When the parties were aligned with the desires of the people, the rope made a straight line, sliding back and forth through the ring as it it wasn't there. Now that the parties do not represent the ideologies of the population, they are pulling the rope into a V shape. The ring near the center of the rope sits at the point of the V, and the two parties are pulling partially against the ring and partially against themselves. The parties are trying to pull the population into the discussion that they want to have, but a large segment of the population doesn't care about the issues that the parties do anymore, and don't align themselves in the same manner.

I feel like I just wrote a bunch of nonsense. Oh well, it's a cool picture in my head, and if you draw out the force vectors on the rope you might get an idea of what I'm trying to explain with my dumb analogy. The point is that eventually the population will get tired of hearing the debates that the parties want to have, and will dump the parties altogether. For example, both parties are strongly behind the "War on Drugs", but a good portion of the population (maybe not quite a majority) thinks that this so-called war is a sham and a waste of money. Another example is social security... everyone knows it's not sustainable, but neither party has the guts to actually face the problem.

So, what's going to happen? I like Robin's conclusion and basically agree that the parties will re-form into a basically libertarian party and a basically statist party. The real question is, which goes which direction?

POST-WAR IRAQ: Here's a datasheet that was prepared by the UN (April 29th, 2003) and gives some details on the humanitarian situation in Iraq. There are some numbers, as well as regional reports from various cities and towns in the country. Via Instapundit.

I realize this is a controversial question, but this post by The Diablogger has forced it to the front of my mind, and I'm not one to shrink back in fear of the politically correct crowd. There are three possibilities that I can see:

1. Beauty and intelligence are both rare. If, say, 1 in 100 girls are beautiful and 1 in 100 girls are smart, then only 1 in 10,000 girls are both smart and beautiful.

2. Beautiful girls have learned that they can get whatever they want by using their looks; even the ones with the potential to be intelligent have not developed it. They have invested their time cheerleading rather than studying, and reading YM and uh... Cosmo (?) rather than Dostoyevsky and Tolkien. This is, in some ways, a function of our culture which values the appearance of a woman more than her brains; such a trade-off will not benefit an intelligent woman in the long run, however, since by neglecting her brains she is only increasing her attractiveness to unintelligent men. Intelligent men who are attracted to her will lose interest quickly enough.

3. Maybe beautiful and intelligent women are everywhere, and they avoid me. I just threw this in for completeness -- I think we can safely rule it out.

Whatever the reason, brilliant and studly men such as myself have a hard time finding women who are worthy of us.

FANTASY VS. REALITY: Jane Galt writes about one of the main differences between the humanities and the sciences.

What is the difference? I'd argue that it's a mindset. The scientific mindset is about a system of interlocking falsifiable premises that form a falsifiable theory. This system encourages mental habits that go beyond the "critical thinking" facility that liberal arts colleges like to tout. It means knowing your premises, and examining every theory, including your own, for how they conform to your premises, to other theories you have examined and believe to be true, and for possible disconfirming evidence. ...

The humanities simply doesn't have this rigor. In some cases, such as literature, you really can't, although you can certainly be more rigorous than many of the programs devoted to exposing the obvious truth that Shakespeare and company did not have the same racial and gender sensibilities as 21st century Americans, yawn. In other cases, such as sociology and political science, it's possible that you could, but don't yet. That's why discussions in those courses tend to revolve around the speakers' opinions on human nature, interesting and possibly right but very difficult to either prove or falsify.

As both a student at UCLA who is surrounded by liberal artists (or whatever liberal arts students are called) and an engineer who works at a major aerospace company, I can attest to the gaping philisophical chasm that exists between these two groups. To liberal artists it's more important to be interesting and provocative than "correct", if they will even conceed that there is such a thing as correctness. To an engineer, nothing is interesting unless it's correct. Liberal artists get emotionally attached to their pet ideas (I won't call them "theories" because they aren't) and can react violently when you disagree with them or *gasp* disprove them entirely. A true engineer, on the other hand, wants to know when they're wrong and should be grateful to whoever points it out.

Via SDB who comments and adds a double-helping of agreement with regards to engineering.

FUNNY BUT DEADLY: A lot of people seem to be laughing it up that Iraq's former information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf is probably alive and trying to surrender to US forces. Sure, his ridiculous pronouncements were amusing, but people should recognize that by making them he encouraged hundreds or even thousands of Iraqis to their deaths who would have otherwise given up and gone home.

GET RICH SLOW: Clayton Cramer (who I really like) has a series up about how to become wealthy in a realistic fashion. Check it out.

ARTIFICIAL LIFE: Most of the people at the conference I went to over the weekend were biologists, and I felt pretty lonely as the only computer scientist present. It's good to see that programmers will still have plenty to do even once the biologists take over the computer world! Really though, it's amazing to see the confluence of everything with computer science -- that's why I went into CS in the first place. As soon as biologists get these cellular computers working they'll need someone to show them how to best make use of them, and the theory and engineering will fall to those of us in computer science. Not that the biologists couldn't learn it, but I imagine that just as I get glassy-eyed when they talk about restriction enzymes and organelles, they won't have much patience for the complexity theory and distributed algorithms that will be necessary to make these cells perform useful tasks.

As an aside, these biological computers are a fascinating parallel line of research to nanotechnology. Sure, nanotech microbes will be much smaller, but I expect there will be a lot of crossover. Biological machines will have certain advantages over nanotech, and vice versa, and they will be able to play off each other significantly. Most obviously, nanotech will be incredibly useful for designing the biological computers and monitoring their function. Imagine developing a cell piloted by nanotech microbes! The cell could serve as a spaceship for the nanotech crew and provide transportation through the environment and protection from the elements, as well as microscopic tools orders of magnitude larger than the nanotechs themselves. Of course, we could always just build micro-spaceships for our nano-nauts rather than relying on biological components at all. Lots of details to sort out before we'll know what's optimal for a given circumstance.

(Link via GeekPress.)

SARS IN CHINA: Apparently, the Chinese people don't trust their government and are afraid that being quarantined with SARS will amount to a death sentence. So rather than obeying the government's requests and orders that are intended to stop the spread of the virus people are fleeing infected areas so that they don't get grabbed.

China has also ordered hospitals to treat or at least hold potential SARS patients until better-equipped hospitals can admit them. And it has told the poor that they will be given free treatment if they are infected.

Many people do not seem to believe that.

"Free medical care for me?" laughed Huang Dongshan, a 28-year-old laborer who left his job as a house painter to head back to his home in Guangxi, 1,000 miles to the south. "No one has ever given me anything for free. If I'm going to die, I want to die in my home. I don't trust the hospitals." ...

"Who knows where they'll put me in Chongqing?" [another man] said. "The hospital could be worse than the jail. I know I should have told them about this in Beijing. But I just didn't believe they would really help me. My life means nothing to them."

As direct result of it's oppressive, fascist government China is on the brink of a serious epidemic that could cost thousands or even millions of lives. South-East Asia has a rather high rate of AIDS infection as well, and I still predict that once SARS and HIV/AIDS meet we're going to see some tremendous death tolls.

Continuing the series (completely unplanned), consumer confidence "leaps" 32% in the wake of the successful Battle for Iraq. Consumer confidence is a really interesting metric that economists use to represent how positive the average person feels about the economy. Why does it matter how people feel? Because people who feel good about their economic future will tend to spend more money that people who are apprehensive or fearful, and consumer spending accounts for more than two thirds of the United States Gross Domestic Product. People who expect to remain employed or are confident of finding a job soon spend money. People who get a raise or expect to get one soon spend money. People who own property or stocks or bonds that are increasing in value spend money. People who own businesses that turn a profit spend money. And the more money people spend the healthier our economy is.

Why does spending help the economy? Here's a primitive example based on bartering. Say that I can craft an excellent knife, but I can't make a wheel to save my life. Likewise, you make top-notch wheels but your knives suck. I can sit around all day making knives, but they aren't worth that much to me because I can make them any time I want, and I've got a bunch of them already. Same with you and your wheels. However, when I give you one of my knives in exchange for one of your wheels we both get richer. The wheel you give to me is worth more to me than the knife I give to you, and vice versa, so both of us gain in wealth. It's very profound when you think about it.

My explanation is somewhat simplistic, but that's the basic idea behind capitalism. Trade is good, and trade increases wealth even if it doesn't increase production because it optimizes ownership and transfers products to those who value them the most. Growning consumer confidence indicates that people are more hopeful for the future and will be willing to trade their money/products to other people because they are sure there's more on the way.

One of the most important components of popular capitalism is freedom of information. Private investors need to have open access to financial information, otherwise they won't be able to make wise use of their money and will end up getting fleeced by the so-called professionals. Government regulation of industry leads to inefficiency, but truthfulness in financial markets must be enforced by legal authority simply due to the fact that private individuals cannot accumulate the information they would need in order for market forces to weed out the deceptive investment firms.

The Republicans are often accused of being too close to business, but this article describes how the Bush SEC has come down on 10 of Wall Street's largest firms, and even fined some executives personally for their deceptive and fraudulent actions.

SARS IN AFRICA: I haven't read much about the possiblity of SARS eventually reaching Africa, but it seems like a virtual certainty. With HIV and AIDS so widespread among the African population, I expect that SARS will have a substantially higher death rate there than it has had even in Asia. Those with weakened immune systems (such as the old, the young, and those with AIDS) are more likely of dying even in Canada, which has a relatively modern medical system.

It must be recognized that the past two decades really have ushered in the New Order of the Ages that is proclaimed on the back of our $1 bills. I like "New World Order" better, but apparently that's not an acceptable translation. Same difference.

Anyway, this article by Gregg Easterbrook in the NY Times claims that the sea, air, land, and space arms races are essentially over, and that every nation has surrendered and resigned itself to American superiority. He makes some persuasive points, including

global military spending, stated in current dollars, peaked in 1985, at $1.3 trillion, and has been declining since, to $840 billion in 2002. That's a drop of almost half a trillion dollars in the amount the world spent each year on arms. Other nations accept that the arms race is over.

He concludes his article by arguing that the result of this American superiority may be a strengthened desire among some nations to acquire nuclear weapons -- the only trump card that could possibly discourage American military action.

Frankly, I see it as inevitable that every country will at some point possess nuclear weapons. They're expensive and complicated, of course, but as technology advances the difficulties will grow less and less. This inevitability is the primary reason that it is essential for America and our allies to spread our New political Order to the rest of the world, and to encourage, coerce, and even force other nations into the liberal democratic mold. It is essential to our long-term security, and even to the survival of humanity as a species. With great power comes great responsibility, as we've been told, and the awesome power of nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of autocratic dictators whose only goals are their own survival.

We can discuss the morality of forcibly changing other nations' governments later, but it seems very simple to me. A dictator like Castro or Mugabe has no more right to rule a nation than I do, and far less right than the people of that nation themselves.

(Article found via Donal Sensing.)

Donald Sensing notes that this week is the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase, and points out that widespread property ownership is critical to successful economic and political development. The land purchased from France by the federal government was sold off to private citizens -- an otherwise unheard of practice in a world where property ownership was highly concentrated among royalty and nobility.

For some reason, I had been under the impression that home ownership rates in American had been dropping over the past few decades, but according to the US Census website, I was wrong. In fact, the rate appears to have held pretty steady since 1965, the first year with statistics on the Census site.

This article by Walter Mead describes some of the essential elements of popular capitalism, and why it is necessary that capitialism be popular in order to be successful. In post-industrial-revolution countries, it is inefficient for individuals to own small plots of agricultural land, and so home ownership takes the place of the small farm as the standard unit of ownership. By government encouragement of home ownership through tax breaks and other subsidies, and with the creation of the self-amortising mortgage by banker AP Giannini, it became possible for every American family to buy into the capitalistic dream. The stock market boom of the 1990s and the increased access to financial markets that the internet has brought to the average man have worked to open up another field of ownership that had previously been largely dominated by the wealthy. Far from concentrating wealth as "liberals" often claim, capitalism is the surest way to diffuse wealth through the population by enabling the people to directly own the assets and resources of their nation. The "means of production", if you will.

I've put up a new short story titled Going Home. Everyone wants to go home I think, but who knows where that really is sometimes?

The dimly lit train speeds through the darker night like a comet hugging the earth, twisting and turning a few feet above the ground. A young boy looks out from the window of his sleep compartment and catches fleeting glimpses of the ethereal terrain. No, he's not really a boy anymore - he's a man, even though he doesn't know it. The man doesn't know where he is, all he is sure of is from looking at his watch time is passing, and every tree-shaped wraith and ghostly town he leaves behind brings him that much closer to home.

The phantom tendrils of overheard conversation and mirth occasionally penetrate his compartment, but they can't break into his mind or tear his forehead away from the cold glass of the window. His eyes dart back and forth, searching for some landmark, some familiarity, some lost memory to drag his soul back to the home his body is hurtling towards. He's been away for a long time, and every curve of the track reveals another alien landscape. He's been here before, but it was all so different then.

The man presses the tips of his fingers against the window and taps on the glass as he thinks. His parents will be surprised to see him. He imagines they were shocked to wake up and find him gone, and so they'll certainly be surprised to see him back. And happy, he hopes. His eyes fill with tears when he thinks of what he did to his family and how much they must have worried when he disappeared. Especially his poor sister - she must have cried for days. The man rubs his face; his sister's birthday is only two weeks away, and he will make it up to her somehow.

His dad won't say much, but his mom will alternately bawl and scream, once she comes to her senses. He has it coming, he knows it, and he will endure whatever is necessary to make things right. He knows his dad will forgive him, maybe even be proud of him, but he won't say much. The old man will smile and embrace him and then stand back and let mom and sister have at him.

The man stares out the window, afraid to close his eyes and see the other faces that float before his mind's eye. His friends will have forgotten him by now, even those with names he can attach to faces. He had thought of his family continuously while he was gone; most of those friends had never crossed his mind, but their ghosts were rising from the graveyard to haunt him now. No matter, they will accept him back or they won't, he doesn't need anything from them. Nothing he has seen or done could replace his father's furrowed brow, his mother's soft voice, or his sister's mischievous grin, but the friends from his past seem like characters from an old movie. He has fond memories of scenes and settings, but perhaps that story is over and doesn't need a sequel.

There's the Comedian, he thinks. There's the Athlete, the Beauty, the Student, the Wallflower, the Instigator, the Depressed, the Talker, the Musician? the list goes on and on, and he wonders what he is when all of them closed their eyes and reminisce. He could be the Wanderer, or the Fool; either way, he has walked the earth and is finally coming back to where he started. Maybe his wandering is over; maybe his foolishness is over, too.

As the sun begins to rise outside, the train reverts to its common appearance, and the specters that had danced just out of reach become buildings, light poles, cars? substantial and vaguely familiar. The orange light spreads quickly and banishes the real world back from whence it came, back into the recesses of the man's mind. He checks his watch again. He is going home.

HOME AGAIN: Just got home. The conference was cool. I got to meet a lot of people and even did some hiking; there's nothing more entertaining than hiking through the forest with a dozen biologists who can answer all my questions about everything I see. I think I learned more about trees and plants and small forest animals this afternoon than I had ever thought about, and it was pretty neat. I'm sleepy, and it's time for bed.

MY RIDE: Oh, I just wanted to toss in a link to the website of the guy that I'm riding with, Nick Gessler. I should have gone into anthropology. Check out this paper from his site.

One often hears the sentiment from computermen that any philosophers worth their salt have long since transferred to computer science departments.

Well, I've thought it, but I haven't often heard it. Check out this cite from Marvin Minsky:

I think that Computer Science is the most important thing that?s happened since the invention of writing. Fifty years ago, in the 1950s, human thinkers learned for the first time how to describe complicated machines. We invented something called computer programming language, and for the first time people had a way to describe complicated processes and systems, systems made of thousands of little parts all connected together: networks. Before 1950 there was no language to discuss this, no way for two people to exchange ideas about complicated machines. Why is that important to understand? Because that?s what we are. Computer Science is important, but that importance has nothing to do with computers. Computer Science is a new philosophy about complicated processes, about life, about artificial life and natural life, about artificial intelligence and natural intelligence. It can help us understand our brain. It can help us understand how we learn and what knowledge is.

Aristotle, Kant, Descartes, and other philosophers didn?t know that you need an operating system, the part of the brain that does all of the housework for the other parts, to use knowledge. So all philosophy, I think, is stupid. It was very good to try to make philosophy. Those people tried to make theories of thinking, theories of knowledge, theories of ethics, and theories of art, but they were like babies because they had no words to describe the processes or the data. How does one part of the brain read the processes in another part of the brain and use them to solve a problem? No one knows, and before 1960 no one asked. In a computer the data is alive. If you read philosophy you will find that they were very smart people. But they had no idea of the possibilities of how thinking might work. So I advise all students to read some philosophy and with great sympathy, not to understand what the philosopher said, but to feel compassionate and say, Think of those poor people years ago who tried so hard to cook without ingredients, who tried to build a house without wood and nails, who tried to build a car without steel, rubber or gasoline.? So look at philosophy with sympathy, but don?t look for knowledge. There is none.

Holy crap.

GONE CONFERENCIN': I'm leaving this afternoon for an Artificial Life conference-type-thingy and I won't be back until Saturday night. It's being held at the James Reserve out near "Idyllwild, Californiia" as the website indicates. Excellent. I hope "Californiia" isn't California's evil clone or something (if you get that joke, that's sad) and I hope it doesn't take too long to get there during Friday traffic.

Everyone going is presenting something, which implies that I will be presenting something too. Since I didn't know I was going to the conference until this past Tuesday, I haven't had much time to prepare. Ergo, I will be presenting a bit of background on my PhD dissertation and trying not to look too ignorent [sic]. That is all, have a nice day.

BEST OF THE BEST OF THE WEB TODAY: Today's Best of the Web Today is even better than usual. I can't resist copying a few of the items....

Say It Ain't So, Joe
Antiwar Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia, who last month unburdened himself of the view that "if it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this," now says he's likely to endorse a pro-war Jew, Sen. Joe Lieberman, for president, reports Washington Jewish Week. We guess if pro-war Jews run everything anyway, one of them might as well be president.

They Know What's Good for You
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman is frustrated by democracy. "If American families knew what was good for them, then most of them--all but a small, affluent minority--would cheerfully give up their tax cuts in return for a guarantee that health care would be there when needed," he opines in today's New York Times.

Striking a similar tone, "a former head of the National Council of Churches, the Rev. M. William Howard Jr. of Newark, N.J., explained that church leaders have 'an informed' and 'critical assessment' of the war and the Bush administration's justifications that church laity, relying on popular media, lacks," according to columnist Mark O'Keefe.

Golden Anniversary?
Google.com has a cute graphic up today on its homepage. The two o's in its logo have been replaced by a double-helix. If you roll your mouse over the logo, this text pops up: "Celebrating DNA's 50th Anniversary."

Huh? Even creationists would agree DNA has been around for at least 6,000 years.

Good stuff. I've got to stay on top of those Googlers; I usually notice their little easter eggs myself.

POST-WAR IRAQ: The brilliant Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gives an interview to the AP. On moving towards local elections:

Rumsfeld: What we want to do is to first assure that there’s a relatively permissive environment, a secure environment. ... And increasingly a number of humanitarian people who are only allowed to do emergency situations are saying well we are leaving because there was not an emergency. ... In some cases they are actually forming town councils and beginning that process.

Town councils are indeed one of the most fundamental units of government, and it's a good start. The fact that emergency aid organizations are leaving is interesting, and something I hadn't read elsewhere. On whether or not Iraq's new government will be a theocracy:

Rumsfeld: ... And there'll be some sort of a representative government that will evolve and a non-dictatorial, a non-repressive government. And if you are suggesting how would we feel about an Iranian type government, with a few clerics running everything in the country. The answer is, that ain't gonna happen, I just don't see how that’s going to happen.

And the money quote, regarding future US military presence:

Rumsfeld: I don't anticipate or not anticipate. It seems to me that one would hope that Iraq would not invest in a military, in a way that distracted from the needs of the Iraqi people. They have a neighbor that they've been at war with. Iran. And, so there is that issue and the question is, what is best for Iraq and what do the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government that eventually all decides is in their best interest. It may be that they would like to have a security relationship with other countries that would enable them to not make those massive investments and still feel that they were in a relatively secure situation, relative to their neighbors. It may be that that's not the case and it's all so far in the future that it's not something.

That's a yes. Good thing, too.

Q: And what would you say to the weapons inspectors, in fact, Hans Blix said recently that the U.S. side of demonstration of this was pathetic in terms of finding

Rumsfeld: The U.S. what?

Q: That in terms of the record of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was pathetic and he thought the weapons inspectors should

Rumsfeld: Is it that his record or, was pathetic or U.N.'s record?

Q: The U.S. presentation, of the case that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Rumsfeld: I haven’t read what he said.

EDUMACATION: My mom is on the school board for the area in which I live, and so I've taken a keener interest in education-related issues recently. Joanne Jacobs has a blog up that discusses many of the problems facing public education, and it makes for a sobering read. Personally, I'm not convinced that the government has any business being involved in education at all (at least not the federal government), and I think that many of the problems with public education arise from the word public.