June 2005 Archives

I'm pretty busy playing with helicopters... not that there's much news anyway. Gotta hit the sack and get ready for another full day tomorrow. Stay tuned!

It looks like Abu Gingy's suggestion is being tried in the real world as a developer goes after Justice Souter's house to build a hotel.

Weare, New Hampshire (PRWEB) Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land. ...

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."

Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.

"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."

Love. It. Tell me where to donate.

The media complains that President Bush doesn't do enough press conferences, but then when he schedules a speech about Iraq most major broadcasters won't even cover it.

CBS, NBC and Fox all said they would decide sometime Tuesday whether to carry the speech. Concerns centered on the potential newsworthiness of the speech and the fact that it was being given not in the Oval Office but far from Washington.

"You want to be certain you are broadcasting something that is newsworthy and vitally important to the American people," said one network executive who asked not to be identified.

As "vitally important" as "Average Joe: The Joes Strike Back"? Gosh, it's just the leader of the free world talking about the future of the biggest American military deployment in 30 years.

"On the one hand, they recognize if the president actually is going to make substantial news on Iraq, they probably should cover it," Sabato said. "But on the other hand, they realize this White House is famous for constructing political rallies and convincing the networks to cover them with the sole beneficiary being the president, not the American people."

That doesn't even make sense. The only way the President can benefit is if the viewing public at least thinks it is benefitting also. So Larry Sabato is saying that people are idiots for thinking they're benefitting when really the President is taking advantage of their stupidity. But on the third hand, maybe Larry Sabato isn't qualified to tell the American people when they are and aren't benefitting -- after all, his Crystal Ball didn't do very well at predicting close races during the last election cycle.

I'm thinking of selling off my underperforming mutual funds and buying plain old index funds such as VFINX. I've read that only one-third of mutual funds outperform the market in any given year, and that it's never the same third, so index funds may be the way to go. Though, if you beat the market a third of the time you can still come out ahead if you beat it by a lot and then later lose to the market by only a little. I'm also looking at emerging market funds, like EOW which invests in Eastern Europe. Eh. I'm not sure what to do, and I don't trust any of the financial advisors I've talked to.

Update:
An article by Todd Zywicki reinforces my own thoughts about diversifying home equity... maybe I won't use my tuition reimbursement to pay down my home equity line of credit. Argh, the decisions....

The leftist fascination with appeasing and apologizing for Muslim fanatics is pretty disturbing. This isn't a new observation, of course... but it strikes me that they're incredibly selective. Our soldiers have to handle Korans with gloves because the Muslims think we're "unclean", but I haven't heard any leftists discuss how pissed the Muslims would become if we elected a woman or homosexual to the presidency. How can Hillary Clinton even consider running, when she knows that her victory would just further inflame our enemies around the world and put our soldiers at greater risk?

Apparently criminals are undeterred by restraining orders and police have no obligation to enforce them. Duh. In case you didn't know, your local police have no legal obligation to protect you from any specific crime. This is why law-abiding, mentally healthy citizens should be allowed to carry concealed weapons. Otherwise, we're just victims-to-be.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police cannot be sued for how they enforce restraining orders, ending a lawsuit by a Colorado woman who claimed police did not do enough to prevent her estranged husband from killing her three young daughters. ...

City governments had feared that if the court ruled the other way, it would unleash a potentially devastating flood of cases that could bankrupt municipal governments.

Gonzales contended that police did not do enough to stop her estranged husband, who took the three daughters from the front yard of her home in June 1999 in violation of a restraining order.

Hours later Simon Gonzales died in a gun fight with officers outside a police station. The bodies of the three girls, ages 10, 9 and 7, were in his truck.

The city governments were right to be afraid, and I think this court decision was probably correct. I don't know enough about the case to say that a gun would have been helpful, but there are many circumstances in which one would be.

From Bernardo, here's a pretty cool picture of a real-life Eye of Sauron. Good thing it's pretty far away. If anyone else has good astronomy pics, why not post some links in the comments?

I know everyone's seen this by now, and I'm sure many people will have much more intelligent commentary on the matter than myself, but I'm astounded by a pair of Supreme Court rulings this morning that sound for all the world as if the Court is just making stuff up as it goes along.

WASHINGTON -- A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday upheld the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on government land, but drew the line on displays inside courthouses, saying they violated the doctrine of separation of church and state.

Sending dual signals in ruling on this issue for the first time in a quarter-century, the high court said that displays of the Ten Commandments _ like their own courtroom frieze _ are not inherently unconstitutional. But each exhibit demands scrutiny to determine whether it goes too far in amounting to a governmental promotion of religion, the court said in a case involving Kentucky courthouse exhibits.

In effect, the court said it was taking the position that issues of Ten Commandments displays in courthouses should be resolved on a case-by-case basis.

By who? Apparently not legislatures or elected officials, since the courts have no respect for their discretion. So we need a federal judge to evaluate every display? Absurd. None of the other commentary I've seen appears to recognize the lunacy of these decisions. Maybe we should have the Supremes tour the country during their off-season and let them vote on everything they see.

As for the Commandments, it's not really a big deal to me if they're displayed or not... the presence or absence of the Commandments is not likely to win a single soul for Christ. My biggest complaint is that I think the matter should be left up to the states. The federal government needs to quit meddling with everything and let the smaller (and slightly more responsive) state governments deal with these issues. That's the whole point of the "federal" system.

Interestingly, Howard M. Friedman predicted this result last month. Referring to an article written by a reporter but based on an interview with him, Professor Friedman blogged:

As reported, I predicted that the Texas display would be upheld, partly because of the Justices concern about forcing bulldozers to tear down these displays around the country. But I also emphasized the peculiar history of the monuments that were furnished by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Similarly, though not in the article, I predicted that the Kentucky display in the companion case before the Court would be struck down because of its different history. By the way, my record on accurately predicting Supreme Court results is not good.

Michelle Malkin links to other conservative commentators if you want more opinions... but isn't mine enough?

(More on the follies of foreign aid.)

Another illustration of why most foreign aid does more harm than good: "£220bn stolen by Nigeria's corrupt rulers".

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has spoken of a new Marshall Plan for Africa. But Nigeria's rulers have already pocketed the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. After that mass theft, two thirds of the country's 130 million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water supply.

With more people and more natural resources than any other African country, Nigeria is the key to the continent's success.

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, set up three years ago, said that £220 billion was "squandered" between independence from Britain in 1960 and the return of civilian rule in 1999.

Unless we get to control how the money is spent and distributed, we're fools to give the thugs that rule Africa another penny. Every cent we give them is used to further entrench their own power and to oppress the African people. Most foreign aid is a literal crime against humanity -- it's too bad that ridiculously ignorant celebrities can't see the effects of their bleeding hearts. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

I've never seen more detailed and extensive reporting from the frontlines of Iraq than what's written by Michael Yon. I can't stop reading it, it's unbelievable. (HT: Clayton Cramer again.)

Clayton Cramer alludes to an curious strategy for political victory during his discussion of "Why Democrats Should Support the Flag Amendment, and Republicans Should Sit On Their Hands".

If you think about it for a minute, the ways in which Democrats and Republicans have lined up on this amendment makes no sense politically. Flag burning discredits the leftists who do it, because of emotional reaction that it promotes. Democrats should want some way to stop the left-wing of their party from engaging in these antics, because it makes the Democrats look like they hate America. Republicans should sit back and allow flag burning because it causes a patriotic, jingoistic frenzy in a very large number of Americans--and makes them even more hostile to the Democratic Party because of the actions of a few spoiled rich kids. That Republicans and Democrats are taking positions contrary to their political interests inclines me to think that both sides are taking their positions out of genuine conviction--not simple political advantage.

Ignoring the issue he's addressing -- flag burning and amendments against it -- Mr. Cramer seems to think that the best strategy for long-term victory is to foster short-term defeat. Leftists burning flags motivates rightists to action, ergo the lack of an anti-burning amendment is a boon for the right; enacting an anti-burning amendment would motivate the left and placate the right, which would cause the right to fight less hard.

It's logical: the closer the world is to your ideal the less you care about changing it. But is a desire to maintain motivation a reason to purposefully avoid approaching the ideal? Isn't the whole point of having motivation to use it move you closer to your ideal? If you can't use your motivation for that, then what good is it? I suppose Mr. Cramer is saying that the right should "spend" its motivation on more worthwhile things, but if flag burning really does cause "a patriotic, jingoistic frenzy in a very large number of Americans", then mabye banning it is worthwhile.

Here's a question for any C# gurus out there. I've created a delegate in C# to pass out to unmanaged C as a function pointer. It works fine, but how can I explicitly make sure it doesn't get garbage collected? I can't use any Microsoft-specific interoperability stuff because the code needs to work with Mono. In fact, it does work with Mono because Mono must do garbage collection differently than Microsoft does; my main problem is preventing Microsoft from collecting the delegate before my unmanaged code is done with it. Right now I'm continually reassigning the callback function pointer in a loop in C#, but that's not very elegant.

"I apologized for accusing you of stealing me bike, so now you should apologize for accusing me of stealing your ball."

"But you did steal it!"

The "controversy" over Karl Rove's recent comments about Democrats not appreciating the full importance of the War on Terror is pretty amusing. They're pointing to Senator Durbin's weasel non-apology for calling American soldiers Nazis and claiming that Mr. Rove should now likewise apologize for his critical remarks. I guess the main difference is that Senator Durbin the Turban was wrong, whereas Karl Rove is right.

Rove, the architect behind President Bush's election victories, on Wednesday night told a gathering of the New York Conservative Party that "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

He added that groups linked to the Democratic Party made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.

I can't even count how many times I had to listen to whiny pleas to "try to understand why they hate us". Ironically, I'd like to understand that, and fix it, but priority number one has always been to make sure that if more dying is necessary it's them that's doing it, not us. Can't we all just get along? Yes, we can, as soon as they stop blowing stuff up; and since we have no reason to trust them, we'll have to eliminate their capacity for violence.

Anyway, the left has been wobbly on terror since 9/11. That's no secret. Sometimes some hesitation was worthwhile, but most of the time their complaints are designed to hamstring America and protect our enemies out of misplaced (or entirely disingenuous) "compassion".

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, in a letter to Rove co-signed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Democratic senators from Connecticut and New Jersey, called the presidential adviser's speech "a slap in the face to the unity that America achieved after Sept. 11, 2001."

There are more important things than unity for a country. What's more, the idea that unity is "achieved" and must then be preserved is nonsense. There's unity when people agree about important issues, but unity is the result of that agreement, not the cause of it. In that way, unity is like peace.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday there was no reason for Rove to apologize because he was "simply pointing out the different philosophies when it comes to winning the war on terrorism."

"Of course not," McClellan said when asked by reporters whether Bush would ask Rove to apologize.

Ace points to The Therapist's main complaint:

Rove's recent comments, in which he said that liberals sought "therapy and understanding" in the wake of the attacks on September 11th, 2001, is being touted as "the most" incendiary of comments yet delivered in the rapier-thrust arena of politics--primarily in how Democrats charge that Rove "deliberately and maliciously" plotted to not slam American fighting forces. ...

Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin said he "knows first hand" how to go about dispensing incendiary remarks, and that Rove's non-comparing of the troops to Nazis was "part and parcel of the nefarious GOP strategy to unite Americans behind America."

Meanwhile, James MacDuff bemoans the connotations of "liberal".

But read Rove's comments again. Remember the Presidential election? How many times did you hear the Democratic ticket described as the 4th and 2nd "most liberal" Senators as if it were a disease? It is truly fascinating how pejorative the term "liberal" has become to our Southern neighbours - if you are a liberal, you are a waffling wimp with no moral compass. A "liberal" voting record is a bad one in middle America, case closed. Conservatives in Canada likely have the same grudge at Liberals for successfully linking the extremist elements to the core of the party, hence its "scary" nature.

I generally use "leftist" rather than "liberal", because to me a real liberal is someone who favors, you know, liberty, which most American leftists abhor. Anyway, if people associate "liberals" with waffling America-haters, whose fault is that?

There was some discussion on my earlier thread about Arnold's propositions about rules for drawing district lines that would eliminate the problem of gerrymandering. Wacky Hermit proposed a rule limiting the ratio between the perimeter and area of a district, and Ben Bateman proposed creating a computer model to optimize over a wider range of constraints.

My own thought is that attempts to group people that "fit" together into a district based on demographics is inherently anti-democratic. I think districts should be based on city and county lines, and I would propose two simple rules for two types of districts.

1. Type A districts can contain multiple cities. Any city in a Type A district must be contained entirely within that one district. More than one city can be in a Type A district, but none of those cities can cross the district line.

2. Type B districts can contain part of only a single city. Any city too large to fit in a Type A district can be broken into multiple Type B districts, but no two cities can share a Type B district.

These two rules would ensure that district lines are drawn that represent the local government structure. State and federal representatives should work with the same lines as local representatives; it'll make everyone more accountable, and reduce confusion and waste.

Update:
And then there's bioregional democracy:

Bioregional democracy (or the Bioregional State) is a set of electoral reforms designed to force the political process in a democracy to better represent concerns about the economy, the body, and environmental concerns (e.g., water quality), toward developmental paths that are locally prioritized and tailored to different areas for their own specific interests of sustainability and durability.

Interesting concept, and the article has some examples of how it's put into practice. I'm not an environmental fanatic by any means, but I like the idea of political structures built with environmental interest geographical boundaries in mind -- that way, people in a given environment can treat it as well or as poorly as they want, with minimal effect on other groups.

Update 2:
Richard Tallent emailed with an algorithm he devised to allow voters to draw district lines (with some pixelization).

There is only one fair method to creating districts: as much as possible, let the voters choose for themselves with whom they want to vote. Create a number of similarly-populated geographic "blocks" using a semi-random computer algorithm that is simply taught to avoid splitting up cites or counties where possible. Let each voter pick up to "X" other blocks along with his own, where "X" is the size of the represented region divided by the average number of people in each block. Require that voters can only choose regions either neighboring their own block or sharing some border with at least two other blocks they have also selected. Aggregate these to determine the wishes of each block, and use these numbers to shape the borders with a deterministic best-fit algorithm.

Interesting and possibly effective, but voters won't trust a system that's too complicated for them to understand -- just remember the recent EU Constitution debacle. Why not just take the next step and untie representation from geography entirely?

I had a few Muslim fellows commenting hundreds of times on this old Shia vs. Sunni post, but I'm having to close the conversation because the number of comments is overloading the server. Perhaps if they want to continue the conversation they can do so here; if anyone else has questions for them about the difference between Shia and Sunni history or beliefs, go for it, they seem pretty knowledgable.

Sweet. Apparently recently-arriving evangelical Christians are causing a stir in Iraq, even among other Christians.

BAGHDAD -- With arms outstretched, the congregation at National Evangelical Baptist Church belted out a praise hymn backed up by drums, electric guitar and keyboard. In the corner, slide images of Jesus filled a large screen. A simple white cross of wood adorned the stage, and worshipers sprinkled the pastor's Bible-based sermon with approving shouts of "Ameen!"

National is Iraq's first Baptist congregation and one of at least seven new Christian evangelical churches established in Baghdad in the past two years. Its Sunday afternoon service, in a building behind a house on a quiet street, draws a couple of hundred worshipers who like the lively music and focus on the Bible.

"I'm thirsty for this kind of church," Suhaila Tawfik, a veterinarian who was raised Catholic, said at a recent service. "I want to go deep in understanding the Bible."

Sounds great to me! But some more "traditional" -- in the Iraqi sense -- Christians don't seem happy.

Some Iraqi Christians expressed fear that the evangelicals would undermine Christian-Muslim harmony here, which rests on a long-standing, tacit agreement not to proselytize each other. "There is an informal agreement that says we have nothing to do with your religion and faith," said Yonadam Kanna, one of six Christians elected to Iraq's parliament. "We are brothers but we don't interfere in your religion."

[Patriarch Emmanuel] Delly [head of the Eastern rite Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq's largest Christian community] said that "even if a Muslim comes to me and said, 'I want to be Christian,' I would not accept. I would tell him to go back and try to be a good Muslim and God will accept you." Trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, he added, "is not acceptable."

If you don't like it, take it up with God.

And it looks like Christianity is thriving elsewhere in the Middle East as well.

Iraq's new churches are part of Christian evangelicalism's growing presence in several Middle Eastern countries, experts say. In neighboring Jordan, for example, "the indigenous evangelical presence is growing and thriving," said Todd M. Johnson, a scholar of global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.

Nabeeh Abbassi, president of the Jordan Baptist Convention, said in an interview in Amman that there are about 10,000 evangelicals worshiping at 50 churches in Jordan. They include 20 Baptist churches with a combined regular Sunday attendance of 5,000, he added. The organization also operates the Baptist School of Amman, where 40 percent of the student body is Muslim.

While most evangelicals in Jordan come from traditional Christian denominations, Abbassi said, "we're seeing more and more Muslim conversions, not less than 500 a year" over the past 10 years.

It's a start. Let me echo Jesus' own exhortation on evangelism:

Matthew 9:36-38

When he [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

I've been pretty supportive of Governor Arnold since he took office, and I think he's accomplished a lot of good for the state I love. The special election he's called for this November is his most daring challenge to California's political establishment yet, and his three ballot measures (plus two others) could potentially upset the status quo that's held California in stasis for decades. First:

The most economically important is Measure 1131, which would put additional controls on state spending. Mr. Davis drove spending up by one-third in his five years in office; Mr. Schwarzenegger's proposition would limit spending increases to average revenue growth over the previous three years and give the governor the power to reduce spending if revenue decreases and the legislature fails to act to correct the deficit.

The state has to stop spending more than we take in, and a Tabor-style spending cap is one of the best ways to do it. Why? Because a spending cap eliminates the incentive to raise taxes -- even if taxes are raised, the money taken in over the spending cap has to be returned to taxpayers.

A second proposition seeks to improve the quality of California public school teachers' skills by requiring five instead of three years of work before they gain tenure and making two consecutive unsatisfactory evaluations sufficient reason to fire a teacher.

Some teachers are great, but some teachers are terrible. One of the biggest flaws of our bureaucratic public education system is that there's no way to reward the former and eliminate the latter.

Finally comes the most politically explosive Schwarzenegger proposal--mandating the drawing of legislative district lines by retired judges. There is no question that when legislators of both parties work together to draw district lines there is political collusion to safeguard their own seats. As California economist Art Laffer (a supporter of the proposition) pointed out, among the 80 state Assembly seats, 20 Senate seats and 53 U.S. House seats up for election in 2004, "not one seat of the 153 changed party affiliation." The Declaration of Purpose of the proposition has it right: "Partisan gerrymandering, uncompetitive districts, [and] ideological polarization" govern the redistricting process.

Emphasis mine. Both parties are guilty of gerrymandering, and it's a despicable practice for anyone who values democracy to engage in. Some reform is needed, and this plan sounds plausible at least.

The final two are:

Two other emotional proposals have already qualified for the November vote--parental notification and a two-day wait for unmarried girls 17 and under to receive an abortion, and requiring a public employee's written consent before a union can spend his dues money for political contributions.

Gov. Schwarzenegger has not endorsed the abortion measure, but it will bring a great many people to the polls on Nov. 8. An April Fox News poll showed 78% support for parental notification--and no wonder. Under existing California law 14- to 17-year-olds need parental permission to use tanning machines or to get their ears pierced. How does one then argue that a young girl's abortion requires no parental notification?

Because abortion is the unifying issue for leftists, the third-rail of American liberalism. Of course, an outright ban on the vast majority of abortions would be the best option, but the Supreme Court has already decided that the populace is not qualified to make that decision through the democratic process. I'm so glad we have elite lawyers to tell us what to do.

Meanwhile, it's funny how the left is against so many "choices" except abortion.

Union political use of public employees' mandatory dues is a real issue too--why should anyone required to join a union have to financially support candidates or policies that he disagrees with? If Enron or Tyco had used employee money to support their policy proposals and political candidates, the liberal left would--quite properly--have been apoplectic. But the left supports unfettered union use of state employees dues for political purposes. Indeed, the California teachers union has already slapped an annual $60 dues assessment (for up to three years) on its members to raise the $50 million it needs to fight Mr. Schwarzenegger's November ballot proposals.

Most unions exist not to help their members, but to help themselves and their leaders. They don't want to lose power, so they'll fight giving members the choice to refuse to contribute to political causes.

These propositions aren't perfect, but they're several steps in the right direction; I intend to support all five. I love California, and I don't want it to go down the drain. Now, if only we could do something to stop illegal immigration....

The biggest story of the day has got to the the 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London that basically says there are no limits to eminent domain.

The Supreme Court today effectively expanded the right of local governments to seize private property under eminent domain, ruling that people's homes and businesses -- even those not considered blighted -- can be taken against their will for private development if the seizure serves a broadly defined "public use."

In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the ability of New London, Conn., to seize people's homes to make way for an office, residential and retail complex supporting a new $300 million research facility of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. The city had argued that the project served a public use within the meaning of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution because it would increase tax revenues, create jobs and improve the local economy.

There is no more private property in America. Whatever you own can now be taken and given to someone else for them to profit off of at the whim of the government. If you don't like it you'll have to sue to keep your stuff, and even if you fight it all the way to the Supreme Court, apparently they'll spit in your face.

A group of homeowners in New London's Fort Trumbull area had fought the city's attempt to impose eminent domain, arguing that their property could be seized only to serve a clear public use such as building roads or schools or to eliminate blight. The homeowners, some of whom had lived in their house for decades, also argued that the public would benefit from the proposed project only if it turned out to be successful, making the "public use" requirement subject to the eventual performance of the private business venture.

This isn't even for the "public" good -- which would be bad enough -- it's for the good of Pfizer and Pfizer's shareholders. They're the ones who will be making a profit off the theft of these homes. If they want the land so bad, they should just buy it. That's how a free market works.

I think it's time for some impeachments. If not the five who joined this majority decision -- Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer -- then let's just throw the whole bunch of them out and start over. It's time for limited terms for federal justices.

I know some leftists wouldn't be happy to have President Bush appoint nine new justices, but how about if we start them on eighteen-year terms staggered every two years? So Bush would get to appoint all nine now, but by the time the next president comes around in 2008 he'll get to appoint two of his own, and so will the next president, and so on forever. Eh, there's flaws I'm sure, but it would be better than the system we've got now.

Another possible solution is proposed by Abu Gingy who wants to develop over some Justices' homes.

If there are any well connected real estate developers in the DC area reading this, please drop me a line. If we can come up with some project that would kick these schmucks out of their own homes, I doubt the irony would be lost on the learned justices.

Michelle Malkin links to Brash Limburg who points out that property rights are more important than library records.

While You Were Busy Protesting The Patriot Act... ...the government took your house. I'm sure the residents of New London, Connecticut will be happy to know that while their houses are being demolished, their library records will be safely locked away.

I wish the left would use its protest energy for something useful like this... or am I mistaken in thinking that leftist Americans would be opposed to the elimination of private property?

Update:
Eugene Volokh has a more balanced look at Kelo v. City of New London and examines the effects of the ruling, setting aside (apparently) any moral objections to government takings.

But I think Clayton Cramer's analogy is better, because I don't think the moral aspects can be ignored.

If you aren't a property owner, consider this analogy: you believe that you labor is worth $10 per hour. You aren't prepared to work for less. A corporation decides that your labor is essential to what they are doing, but they aren't prepared to pay you $10 per hour--so they have the government draft you, and pay you a private's wages--and assign you to work for that corporation, arguing that the corporation's products would enhance the overall economy. You would properly recognize that you had been enslaved.

Qdoba just opened a location near my house and the food's pretty good, but one thing is really insultingly stupid: their loyalty card. You eat ten meals with them and what do you get? A free meal? No. A free burrito? No. A free drink? No. A free bag of chips. No guacamole, nothing. And the bag of chips is tiny; I counted eight chips in the bag, total. How stupid do they think we are?

One of the hardest things to do in the field of artificial intelligence is to interpret what exactly a neural network is doing and why it's doing it. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are deterministic in the sense that, given adequate information about one's state, it is always possible to exactly predict what it will do. However, due to their complexity and chaotic nature it is almost always difficult to go backwards from an end state to discover how the various parts of the neural network contributed to that end state. By "difficult" I mean that it is theoretically possible but practically impossible; the math says it can be done, and we know how to do it, but the calculations are so onerous that it basically can't be done. (Very simplified explanation.)

For this reason, it is very difficult to determine where in a given ANN a certain piece of knowledge is stored. We can put in inputs and get out outputs that indicate that the ANN knows something, and we can probe for real-time data, but it's difficult to determine which neuron (or connection between neurons) or set of neurons (or set of connections) stores a given piece of knowledge just by looking at the structure. Sometimes, in simple networks, neurons can be analyzed and isolated to demonstrate their function, but most of the time a given piece of knowledge is distributed across many neurons, all of which contribute towards generating the appropriate output. One advantage of distributed storage is that if a single neuron breaks the output will only degrade slightly (in theory).

Human brains are far more complex than artificial neural networks, but they're similar in many respects (or so it would appear). Recent research from UCLA and Caltech indicates that knowledge may not be as distributed across neurons as was previously thought. Earlier speculation was that no single neuron was responsible for any specific piece of knowledge, but that everything we consider "memories" is distributed across billions of neurons. However, now there's some evidence that, even if no specific piece of knowledge exists only on a single neuron, some neurons are tied to a specific piece of knowledge.

In the current issue of the journal Nature, a research team led by neuroscientists at UCLA and Caltech has rather haphazardly located a neuron that "looks for all the world like a 'Jennifer Aniston' cell," writes Charles Connor of John Hopkins University. Conner was not involved in the study.

The cell in question was found in the brain of one subject as part of an epilepsy study. When the person was shown 87 images of various celebrities, well-known buildings, animals and objects, the neuron only fired for seven separate snapshots of the Friends actress.

It may be that many other neurons that weren't probed also fired for Jennifer Aniston. It may also be that the researchers simply couldn't find another thought that would trigger that neuron, but that such a thought does actually exist. Either way, these results are somewhat surprising.

However, no one is claiming that there is only one cell in the brain for Jennifer Aniston, the Eiffel Tower, and your grandmother.

"One straightforward objection to this idea is that we don't have enough neurons in the brain to represent each object in the world," said Connor.

Well, the adult human brain has around 100 billion neurons, which would seem to be more than enough to devote one to each person you know or know of, plus more than enough for every other proper noun conceivable. Futher, there are far more connections than there are neurons, and connections certainly play a role in thought and memory, perhaps even more of a role than the neurons themselves. (In ANNs, the connections between neurons are where all the work is generally done.)

"Sparseness has its advantages, especially for memory, because compact coding maximizes total storage capacity," Connor said.

Actually though, the method of knowledge distribution (sparse or dense) probably has little effect on how much capacity a given piece of knowledge requires to store. There may be some overhead associated with distributing knowledge across neurons and weights, but given the highly parallel nature of the human brain it's not likely to be very much.