December 2004 Archives

Since I'm going to give a tour of UCLA today, I figure I may as well post a secret treasure map of the university's soft underbelly: the steam tunnels.

The sweet adverturous nectar your departmental overlords don't want you to see!

Legend has it that the tunnels have been sealed since my conspirators and I last explored them, but I'm sure an enterprising urban adventurer could find her way in. There's all sorts of treasure to be claimed and mysterious chambers to explore, like the Toilet Graveyard, the steam plant, and the Royce Towers (as seen on the seal of UCLA).

Dangers await as well, such as certain expulsion (so we hear), rats, burning hot steam pipes, exposed electrical wires, and zombies. Haha, just kidding about the rats. Also: Shelob. Take a flashlight, because the tunnels are mostly pitch black; wear long pants and sleeves, despite the sweltering heat, because there are lots of hot and sharp things that will hurt you. Occasionally the tunnels are flooded with up to a foot of water, and maybe more if it rains a lot. Remember: water + electricity == fun + zombies.

If you go, write up an account of your quest and leave a comment here to let me know how it was.

Here's are a few accounts, some with pictures: one, two, three, four.

Is it considered heresy for a Christian to doubt that a particular book of the Bible ought to have been included in the canon? There must be at least some books that are heretical to doubt, otherwise we could doubt away the whole Bible -- but there are books that don't appear to be essential. Even if one believes that the books of the Bible that ought to be included in the canon are divinely inspired, does that mean that questioning the selection of the canon itself is off limits?

As the death toll climbs for the tsunami and earthquake in Asia -- 125,000 by current count -- I began wondering how many people die around the world every day. According to the CIA World Fact book, the average death rate for the world is 8.68 deaths per 1,000 people; with a population (estimated) of 6.4 billion, that gives us 155,000 deaths per day by all causes, and almost 57 million per year. It looks likely that the tsunami and earthquake doubled the number of worldwide deaths for a single day.

According to the World Health Organization, 1.2 million people in 1998 died as a direct result of injuries sustained in a motor vehical accident -- over 3,200 per day.

I bet 2005 will be filled with "tsunamis" thanks to the recent tragedy in Indonesia. "Bush is nominating a tsunami of conservative judges!" "Tsunami of terror floods Iraq before elections!" "Deficit tsunami swamps federal budget!" And so forth.

I've written a lot about the theory of evolution and why it's not really that scientific, and Rand Simberg has an excellent explanation of why his belief in science requires faith.

With regard to my statement that science is a philosophy that rests on faith, I wrote the following:

Belief in the scientific method is faith, in the sense that there are a number of unprovable axioms that must be accepted:

1) There is an objective reality
2) It obeys universal laws
3) Its nature can be revealed by asking questions of it in the form of experiments
4) The simplest explanation that fits the facts is the one that should be preferred

There are other tenets, but these are the main ones. ...

So if science is a religion (in the sense of a belief system, which I think it is), then is it a legitimate subject for public schools? As I've said previously, this is largely a symptom of a much larger problem--the fact that we have public schools, in which the "public" will always be at loggerheads about what subjects should be taught and how. But given the utility of learning science (something that I employ every day, whenever I troubleshoot my computer network, or figure out what kinds of foods are good or bad for me), I think that it is an important subject to which everyone should be exposed. But if I were teaching evolution, I would offer it as the scientific explanation for how life on earth developed, not a "fact" or "the truth."

He notes repeatedly that science isn't a set of facts:

Science is not a compendium of "facts." Science is about how we turn unrelated, boring facts into useful knowledge. Science is a method, not an encyclopedia. That's why I get upset when someone says that "evolution is a fact." Not just because it's untrue, but because it misses the point entirely.

Science is a means of inquiry. It cannot be learned by simply memorizing a set of dry unconnected facts, but that's what is implied by the "science quiz" described above, and much of what passes for science education in primary schools (and even more frighteningly, in many colleges and universities).

He goes on to explain why physics was his favorite scientific subject in school (mine too) and how he hated the memorization required for biology and chemistry (me too).

All that to get to this:

The problem with creation theories is not that they're inconsistent with the evidence--they are totally consistent, tautologically so, as Eugene [Volokh] says. The problem is that they tell us nothing useful from a scientific standpoint. In fact, there are an infinite number of theories that fit any given set of facts. I can speculate not only that all was created, but that it was created (complete with our memories of it) a minute ago, or two minutes ago. Or an hour ago. Or yesterday. Or the day before. Or, as some would have it, 6000+ years ago. Each is a different theory (though they all fall into a class of theories) that fit the observable facts. They are all equally possible, and all (other than some form of naturalistic evolution) untestable.

Except, of course, that unless one has a time machine naturalistic evolution is pretty untestable as well. In truth, evolution is a poor theory. Mr. Simberg continues:

And furthermore, they offer no hope of making predictions for the future. After all, if a creator can whimsically create a universe in whatever manner he wishes, including evidence that he didn't do it, how can we know what he'll choose tomorrow? Orrin Judd likes to make much of the fact that many evolutionary psychologists believe that free will is an illusion, but if that's the case in a naturalistic world, how much more so must it be with a whimsical creator, who can not only make us as he chooses, but unmake, and remake us on the same basis, whenever he chooses?

Kinda how evolutionists constantly revise their predictions to fit the facts?

I heartily agree with Mr. Simberg's characterization of science as a method of inquiry. In fact, I'm a scientist myself and I use science all the time. I've also studied the theory of naturalistic evolution quite a bit -- and used it in my artificial intelligence research -- and I find it to be quite lacking. That doesn't prove that evolution is wrong or that God created the universe 6,000 years ago or 5 seconds ago, but I don't think there's any greater scientific basis for the former than for the latter. Science works by disproving things until only one thing is left, not by proving anything. (Basically, the theory of evolution is based on induction, and induction isn't science!)

Dr. John Mark Reynolds has an excellent response as well (actually, that link is number three; see especially one and also two).

Patterico takes the Dog Trainer to task in his year-end review of my city's major "newspaper" -- it's definitely made of paper, but I use the term loosely. It's beyond me how he found the energy to sift through the necessary piles of rubbish to find these gems of garbagitude, and he promises that this is only part one of two.

Update:
Part two.

I'm surprised there aren't more photos of the tsunami itself. Yahoo News has some pictures of the aftermath, but I can't find any of the wave. You'd think that in such touristy areas there would have been more people armed with cameras. FoxNews had some amature video clips posted, but I can't find them anymore, and they weren't that great anyway. Does anyone have any good links? I'm surprised The Daily Recycler isn't all over this, but he hasn't posted anything for over a month!

Update:
Tsunami photos and videos! Thanks, TheFreak.

Just when I thought the UN was doing something vaguely useful by organizing relief efforts for the decimated coastlines around the Bay of Bengal, some UN spokeswoman uses the disaster to lecture the United States on the evil of low tax rates.

"The United States, at the president's direction, will be a leading partner in one of the most significant relief, rescue and recovery challenges that the world has ever known," said White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy.

But U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland suggested that the United States and other Western nations were being "stingy" with relief funds, saying there would be more available if taxes were raised.

There's plenty more of one thing available for you anyway, Jan (oops, he's a man!): my fist to your face. I will elbow you straight in the nuts without even thinking about it. You're obviously unaware that private international assistance makes up more than 60% of America's contribution to developing countries -- that's right! We're so freaking generous that our government doesn't need to take our money at gunpoint through taxation -- we like helping people.

At $9.9 billion, ODA accounts for just 18 percent of total U.S. assistance-public and private-to developing countries (table 6.1). Private international assistance, by contrast, is $33.6 billion-60 percent of the U.S. contribution, and projected to grow to 65 percent by 2010. Every year the publication of the DAC report results in press reports and statements by academics and opinion leaders disparaging America’s "stinginess," asserting that U.S. foreign policy will be ineffective without more ODA, and claiming that U.S. foreign aid programs collapsed after the Cold War. But ODA is a limited and outdated way of measuring a country’s giving. Given the enormous growth in the private sector around the world, donors should reevaluate the measure.

I betcha Jan the Man isn't even taking into account the non-monetary contributions the United States is providing -- and that only we are capable of.

Money and food are not the only types of aid being sent by the Bush administration. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also is sending a 21-member disaster-relief team to the region.

Also, the Pentagon has dispatched military patrol planes from the Pacific Fleet. President Bush has written letters of condolence to seven of the affected nations — Bangladesh, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, the Maldives and Malaysia.

Yes, that's right, only the United States of America can send letters of condelence from President Bush -- so suck it, Jan (who is a man, despite his name).

Oh, plus we've got military assets to ensure security in the aftermath of the disaster and prevent China from just sweeping in and pushing the survivors into the sea. Yeah, China, you know, that huge country right next door that hasn't yet offered to assist at all? They've got plenty of taxation, since they're communist and all, and yet they don't seem to be measuring up to Jan's ideal. Maybe he should publically denigrate them and see how far he gets.

So to the Man-Jan and the UN: screw off. My sufficiently high taxes pay a quarter of your salary, so don't lecture me on being generous towards the less capable.

Update:
The UN spokeswoman has decided to back-pedal in response to my comments.

Additionally, Israel is sending relief supplies to the majority Muslim victims even though some of their help is being rejected. No word yet on how much assistance Muslim nations are planning to send.

I don't think they exist. Or maybe they do!

The Pirate says that he'd rather live in a place that's prepared for natural disasters than in a place unlikely to bear the brunt of them, but I think that's pretty silly.

Dispite what Mike Williams suggests, I'll live in a area that is prepared for a natural disaster, rather than one that would be decimated by one if it happens to occur. We have a good building code in this country, better materials, better construction quality management, better laws regulating construction and better enforcement. In the third world its a disaster, even if there is a building code its not well enfoced. Just look at the quakes in places like Bam and turkey, a shaker that may break your wine glasses in LA, kills 10's of thousands. This is where Attila is exactly right when she says that even developing countries need a minimal building code and importantly they need to get people to follow it and they need someone to enforce it. I would say adopt either the California UBC for siesmic design (where many California regulations are overbearing and pointless, I like the siesmic code being strict because I have this thing against dying) or the specs the Japanese use.

The problem with this proposal is that residents of third-world countries simply can't afford to build structures to the same standards we can in America. It's not that the beach-dwelling fishermen of Sri Lanka don't want to live in steel-reinforced high rises, it's that they aren't productive enough to support a society can can afford such safety. The choice they face is often either living under a tree or building a box house out of cinder blocks that'll come tumbling down in a tremor, crushing everyone inside.

What their governments can afford are mitigation technologies with concentrated costs and distributed benefits, such as tsunami detection and alarm systems. A few buoys and warning sirens could have saved thousands of lives around the Bay of Bengal a couple of days ago. Earthquakes are a bit trickier, of course.

Third-world countries don't have the resources to build hardened lines of defense against natural disasters -- just as America doesn't have the resources to put a parachute on the back of every airplane passenger. Money is scarce, and it has to be spent in ways that save lives as efficiently as possible. For instance, it would be foolish to spend money building earthquake-proof buildings if you couldn't first afford to provide clean drinking water. I'm not suggesting that every decision made by these governments was wise or correct, but saying that they simply need safer building codes is essentially "let them eat cake!"

The ultimate solution is liberty, which leads to prosperity, which leads to safety.

Update:
OpinionJournal agrees: "Prosperity is the best defense against a tsunami".

I just finished The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower by Stephen King, and I don't quite know what to say about it yet other than that it concludes what is possibly the best modern fantasy epic I've read, say true. Here we -- the last of his friends; silent members of his ka-tet -- finally travel with Roland to the object of his quest: the Dark Tower. The journey took Mr. King more than 34 years to complete, and ages longer for his hero, and the end is as sweet as the alkali desert that set our boots to earth was bitter, though it left me just as thirsty. Not for more of the same -- this story is done, and well-done for it -- but thirsty for a water of my own creation, if I can dig a deep enough well to find it.

The A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin is close in power, but since it's not finished yet (and not as fresh in my mind) I can't rightly compare it. Mr. King avoids the extraneous trappings that bog down the later volumes of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, say thankee, but still delivers enough meat to gorge a ravenous imagination.

My only disappointment was in the ignominious fate of Walter o' Dim, that black rogue. But alas, what's done is done.

The Bible Gateway -- my favorite internet Bible resource -- has an awesome collection of audio Bibles in many different versions and a few different languages. They've also got a link to The Book of Life project of the International Bible Society: a Modern Standard Arabic translation of the Bible. And yes, they've got Arabic audio too! Certainly a worthy occupation.

Why isn't there a way to listen to radio stations on my cell phone? Why don't stations offer a number to call to listen to their programming via telephone? Maybe I should just buy a Walkman... the problem is that I hate anything that uses batteries I have to replace. Batteries are so 20th century.

DeoDuce writes:

Take a gun-toting, redneck Republican and put him in the woods and you get the United States.

Basically.

In yet another absurd stunt by environmentalists, the Rainforest Action Network has hijacked a bunch of kids and coerced them into holding signs to protest against the nebulous destruction of rainforests.

NEW YORK — A group of Connecticut second graders was bused to New York last week for a well-publicized protest to save the rainforest. And the field trip has some up in arms.

The kids wielded posters they made in school as part of a contest sponsored by an environmental group called the Rainforest Action Network.

"Today we have rainforest heroes, kids the earth can count on are here today to visit J.P. Morgan Chase (search), the world's second largest bank, to ask them to save the rainforest," said Michael Brune (search), executive director of the network.

Mr. Brune must realize that his loony beliefs have no basis in reality or he wouldn't resort to shallow emotional appeals like kids holding signs. You'll note that this sort of tripe is generally only a tool of the left, pulled out when they can't help but lose arguments in the world of adults.

Does anyone think the 6- and 7-year-olds are actually expressing their own reasoned opinions on deforestation? Or are they simply holding up whatever signs are handed to them and spewing forth whatever slogans pounded into their brains? It's a joke, but a dangerous one.

The irony of using a bus to transport kids to a rally against oil drilling and holding paper signs to protest logging isn't lost on critics who say RAN's propaganda has no place in elementary school.

"I think these kids need to learn how to read, write and do 'rithmetic and think. I think first and second grade is way too young to be brainwashed with any sort of political agenda," said Steve Milloy of CSR Watch, a watchdog group for corporate social responsibility.

Thanks, FoxNews; I bet the irony would have been lost on any other news network. It's a shame the Rainforest Action Network cares more about trees than about kids' futures. Methinks Mr. Brune should spend a little more time watching television and learn from the wisdom of South Park: Rainforest Schmainforest.

It looks like the new Afghan government is finally ready to start tackling one of the most insidious evils facing their country: opium.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — From March to August, the United Nations says, almost 90 percent of the world's opium is grown in the fields of Afghanistan. The U.N. says cultivation of opium poppies, which can be made into heroin, is up 64 percent over last year in Afghanistan.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai (search) says that's humiliating. "We should fight poppy with the same zeal as we fought the Russians. If we do not, our homeland ... will face danger again."

It would have been nice for the US to firebomb poppy fields during the invasion, but it would have been self-destructive and would have hindered the coalition of warlords that helped us overthrow the Taliban. We couldn't accomplish every type of good all at once, but let this serve an an example to people who think we should do nothing just because we can't do everything. Give us time.

Interestingly, the more total time I spend in relationships with women,the more slick moves and mad skills I acquire. I suspect that if one were to take a 75-year-old man who'd been married for 50 years and transplant him into a 25-year-old body he'd have all the girls swooning.

For my more experienced (read: older, married) male readers, do you think you've learned anything from your married lives that could be beneficially applied if you went back in time and re-entered the dating scene?

Update 041223 10:53pm
Just to be clear, I'm not asking for advice! I'm asking if you all agree that the experience you've gotten from your relationships has given you insight into women that would make it easier for you to pick up on them if you were single again.

Richard Rahn explains why we should eliminate the corporate income tax, and points out that economists around the world agree. Emerging economies in New Europe are slashing rates and leaving America uncompetitive with a combined federal and state corporate tax rate average of 42%.

There are still some, but fortunately a diminishing number of mentally lightweight leftists, who believe you somehow can tax a corporation without taxing the workers, customers, suppliers and stockholders (who in many cases are invested in pension funds) of the corporation. When they make the cry, as they surely will, that eliminating the corporate income tax benefits the rich and rewards the greedy, they should be challenged with facts and logic. Advocates of sound economic policy have too many times allowed themselves to be bullied by loudmouths who claim compassion, yet cause misery. Tax reform is too important to allow ignorance to prevail.

Indeed.

(HT: The eminent Larry Kudlow.)

Dave Pollard at How to Save the World has an interesting post on the tyranny of structurelessness in which he points to many earlier posts on his theory of democractic self-structuring organizations. I haven't yet read the posts he links to, so my comments below are only based on my intuitive understanding of the concepts, which may differ from reality.

In essense, Mr. Pollard advocates collaboration within a group rather competition -- presumably competition between groups is desirable. He dislikes hierarchical structures and prefers egalitarianism, and in response to the various problems that prevent social groups from functioning this way he writes:

My (admittedly idealistic) proposal in Natural Enterprise is that self-selection of the group should prevent these problems from occurring in the first place. Those who are disinclined to work for someone who tends to want to dominate will select the dominant types out of the group. Those who want to be dominated, to be told what to do and how to do it, will self-select into groups that include that type of individual. Furthermore, in Natural Enterprise, the self-selecting group's first task is to set out the mutually agreeable principles by which it will operate. Of course, this is a learning process, one that will be very new to most of us, so it should not be surprising that it takes some time for the self-selection process to work. In its early days, every Natural Enterprise will be expelling those who didn't work out, allowing others who didn't understand what they were getting into to select themselves out, and others to be invited or opt in in their place. Every system is messy when it first begins. And I have a great belief in instinct -- it is rare when my first instinctive impression of a work colleague, positive or negative, has proven dead wrong. Nature has given us this marvelous gift of instinct to make the process of group self-selection easier and more reliable.

The idea that people should be allowed to join and leave groups under their own free will is not particularly new (see the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution). In America, anyway, most people are entirely free to join and leave super-groups at will (such as companies, clubs, churches, unions, even families), but the internal structures of these groups is generally hierarchical.

Interestingly, corporations are perhaps the most egalitarian type of group; shareholders vote in proportion to their ownership without regard for any social considerations; of course, shareholders almost universally vote to create a hierarchical structure led by a board of directors, a president, and various managerial types. Employees of the corporation do not, in the strictest sense, "belong" to the corporate group unless they are shareholders, but when they decide to accept employment they know about the structure they're joining and do so voluntarily. I'm not sure how this fits into Mr. Pollard's philosophy; I assume he would argue that the shareholders could achieve a greater return on their investments if they created a more egalitarian management structure. This would, however, reduce their ability to oversee and direct their employees and the use of their capital, so it may be that the more efficient egalitarian structure would be more productive but not in the direction the shareholders desire.

As to collaboration more generally, Mr. Pollard asks some pointed questions.

Are these behaviours -- excessive dominance, bullying, ganging up, hoarding resources, competing instead of collaborating, and doing things without consulting others -- unlearnable? And how about the behaviours that make these foolish behaviours possible -- others' submissiveness, cowardice, self-victimization, self-isolation, passivity, meekness, resignation -- can they be unlearned too? Is it naive and unrealistic to think that we all have something valuable to contribute, we all instinctively seek and belong to communities, and, given a chance, we could and would all participate as equals in every community and organization to which we belong?

I appreciate that nature has endowed us with dominant and submissive genes, to establish a natural pecking order so that, even without language, we can maintain order in our groups. But in nature there is enormous collaboration and sharing of resources, infinitely more peace and equality and less suffering than we find in most human institutions. I'm not saying we need to learn to be exactly equal, just that by 'ousting the egos and outing the wallflowers', we need to learn to be more egalitarian.

I do not share Mr. Pollard's belief that there is enormous collaboration in nature. In nature, pure physical power is the only limit on the actions of any creature. Death runs rampant, justice is a meaningless concept, and suffering is so universal that we can barely perceive it.

Cooperative anarchy may be a desirable condition, but despite common perceptions anarchy is not a natural equilibrium state. Power is always consolidated by the strong, and anarchy inevitably gives way to despotism -- the most fundamental emergent social structure. If we're fortunate (and blessed), despotism eventually yields to democracy, which is more stable than anarchy but still only precariously balanced by the structural forms we build into the system and protect by force, both social and physical.

The New York Times has a surprisingly harsh article about the Christmas surge of illegal immigration written by Charlie LeDuff.

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 20 - Every year at this time, the restaurant kitchens and vegetable fields of California empty out. Prayers are said to San Cristofo, money is removed from mattresses, and Mexicans head home.

The United States-Mexico border is broken, say United States immigration and customs officials. And at no time is the stress on the border more visible than the holidays, when immigration and customs officials say they are most overwhelmed. ...

More than one million Mexicans will go south for the holidays, about half of them exiting through San Diego into Tijuana, officials say. Some are legal residents, but most, border officials say, are illegal immigrants, who in a month's time will pay thousands of dollars to have smugglers sneak them back to their jobs in the United States.

The story is remarkably bereft of holiday sob stories about poor illegal immigrants struggling to make their way in America and longing to see their families in Mexico for Christmas. In fact, Mr. LeDuff does well to acknowledge the root cause of our immigration problems:

When immigrants make their way to Mexico, they must contend with corrupt Mexican police officers and border guards, who extort, harass and often demand a little Christmas gratuity from those returning home with cash and gifts.

"The Mexican system is corrupt," said Gilberto Serrano-Contreras, 40, who keeps a home in Tijuana and has been working intermittently in Los Angeles for the past 20 years. "That's why so many go north. You can't get ahead here."

Rodrigo Salinas-Márquez, 37, a gardener in Orange County, shrugged as Mexican customs officials rooted through his pickup truck. "You pay going in, you pay going out," he said. "That's the life of the Mexican."</