February 2006 Archives

I know of several ancient multiplayer games, like Chess and Go, but what's the oldest single-player game? Solitaire? It seems like there must have been some single-player games before the invention of playing cards.

Although government-imposed solutions to social problems almost always turn out worse than the problems themselves, frequent readers know that I believe that it would be in the best interest of the public at large for the government to be more involved in the plight of the mentally ill. I don't know the best solution to the problem of homelessness, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't ideal to allow drug-addicted, mentally ill people to live on the streets and wander aimlessly through public spaces. Such people are a danger not only to the rest of the citizens around them, but to themselves. Santa Monica, California, struggles with one of my region's worst homeless problems, and recently-elected city councilman Bobby Shriver is proposing a plan to deal with the city's homeless. I don't know if every detail is perfect, but it looks like a reasonable start.

Frustrated residents are asking a fair question: Why do we still have the same number of people—some of them the same individuals—living on our streets and in our parks as we did in 1990? ...

We need a new strategy to handle chronic homelessness. Programs the City now funds do help many homeless people move into housing—but only those who are physically and mentally able to follow the programs' rules. We have no program for the chronic homeless—most of whom are addicted, mentally ill, or both—even though they are the ones who need the most help, use the most resources, and cause residents to avoid certain areas of the city. Our police are reluctant to arrest chronic homeless people who are inebriated in public because of the significant time and expense required to complete the paperwork, only to release them back onto the streets. ...

I recommend two immediate steps:

1. A "sober-up" facility in the new Public Safety Building. Rather than repeatedly jailing and hospitalizing chronic homeless inebriants, police can take them to this facility not only to sober up, but also to receive access to substance abuse, mental health, and housing placement services.

2. A "housing first" approach. From San Francisco to New York, cities are realizing that their costly shelter programs only provide a temporary respite for some—not a solution. Many people will never be able to overcome addictions or mental illness as long as they are living on the streets, or in and out of shelters. Pilot programs have shown that a small, but stable and secure, living space connected to medical, nutritional, occupational, and social services can be much more successful in helping people turn their lives around. ...

Services that do not contribute to our goal of returning people to permanent housing should be eliminated. The City should do all it can to convince well-meaning groups to stop their outdoor feeding programs and instead donate their time and resources to provide housing. We should discourage any program that plays the role of enabler to addicted people living on the streets. Every dollar allocated to homelessness must be spent to support our goal of permanently moving people into housing.

Many of these people will never be able to care for themselves, and we're only fooling ourselves if we think that they're homeless from choice or laziness.

Stanley Kurtz echos many of the same points that I've made before about the Democratic party: they'll never regain a majority unless they're willing to purge themselves of their far-left fringe element. Mr. Kurtz puts the issue in context by discussing the ousting of Harvard President Larry Summers.

Summers is from the sane side of the Democratic Party (yes, there is one). These moderate Democrats want to bring the academy closer to the center of the country. But when push came to shove, the leftist faculty wouldn't play along.

That left Summers and his moderate Democrat backers on the board to choose between appeasement and a serious public battle. Ultimately, Summers and his allies backed down because they are part of the same national political coalition as the leftist faculty (which contributes heavily to the Democratic Party). Moderate Dems would be happy to reform the academy, but they don't have the stomach to treat leftist professors as open opponents. Only Republicans can do that. So in a way, we are seeing another iteration of the paralyzing split between DLC types and the fire-breathing base. The Democratic left is just too big, too powerful, and too essential to victory to be purged, as Peter Beinart wanted to do.

Which is why Hillary may be a dangerous presidential candidate: she can afford to take centrist positions during the campaign because the far left will never abandon her. So she thinks; she also thinks that non-crazy voters will forget her far-left history. I'm not sure either of those is true, but she's banking on them and it's likely the rest of her party will go along for the ride. My own prediction is another decade of Republican dominance... though I'd much prefer that result if there were a minority party strong enough to reign in some of the Republicans' own shortcomings.

Meanwhile, regarding the far-left academy: former Taliban spokesman Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi is now a student at Yale University.

Now Yale is giving a first-class education to an erstwhile high official in one of the most evil regimes of the latter half of the 20th century--the government that harbored the terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

"In some ways," Mr. Rahmatullah told the New York Times. "I'm the luckiest person in the world. I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale." One of the courses he has taken is called Terrorism-Past, Present and Future.

Many foreign readers of the Times will no doubt snicker at the revelation that naive Yale administrators scrambled to admit Mr. Rahmatullah. The Times reported that Yale "had another foreigner of Rahmatullah's caliber apply for special-student status." Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions, told the Times that "we lost him to Harvard," and "I didn't want that to happen again."

The Democrats aren't smart to build their party in the mold of these "elite" "educators".

I've finally found a screensaver I like more than plain blackness: the Angband Borg Screensaver. Now your computer can have some fun while you're gone and simultaneously perform the valuable service of hunting down and killing Morgoth.

This is vague, but I heard on the radio yesterday that a researcher from some university is preparing to market an over-the-counter genetic test for the A1 "addictive personality" allele which is strongly linked to alcoholism. There is little doubt left that alcoholism and other addictive traits have a genetic component, and once there's a cheap and easy test to determine which people have the genes, how will that affect society?

Employers and insurers will obviously have strong incentives to avoid people with a high likelyhood of becoming alcoholics, but what if these addictive personality types can also become "workaholics"? Maybe not so bad for employers.

Even the dating game could be changed. Requests for STD tests are pretty common, but what if a potential mate asked you to have a DNA test before committing? Would your desire for a relationship with a person be affected if you found out that he had the addictive personality gene? If I found out that my child was dating someone with an addictive personality I would certainly warn her away from that person.

But then, genes aren't destiny. I believe in free will, and I'm sure there are more people with the gene who aren't alcoholics than who are. It's probably irrational for individuals to make any decisions about their friends or family based on genetics, and I doubt I'd hold anyone's genes against them in the face of contrary personal experience with the person. But when dealing with huge, statistically valid samples (like the government and corporations do) it could be completely rational to discriminate.

Finally, how might society change if people with "addictive personalities" couldn't find mates? The gene must be useful to the system or it would have died off a long time ago. Alcoholism and the like are terrible, but I don't know if a society without the A1 allele would be nearly as dynamic and interesting.

I can't wrap my head about the news that women are having plastic surgery to restore their hymens so they can "lose their virginity" again.

When Jeanette Yarborough decided to give her husband a gift for their seventeenth wedding anniversary she wanted it to be special. Really special. She decided that conventional treats such as Mediterranean cruises, gold watches, cars, a murder-mystery weekend, or even a boob job just weren’t going to cut it. She gave him something much more personal — and painful. Her virginity.

Well, sort of. Mrs Yarborough paid $5,000 (£2,860) to a cosmetic surgeon to stitch her hymen back together so she could “lose her virginity” all over again and her husband would have that thrilling conquest at the grand age of 40.

He did, and after that very expensive moment the ecstatic couple spent a passionate Valentine’s weekend last year having the kind of sex that they had almost forgotten about. Now they are busy telling family, friends and strangers that it is the best money they ever spent and everyone should do it.

Far more than breast augmentations or face lifts, a decision to have this kind of surgery involves some serious psychological components that are hard to even categorize. Lost innocence? Recaptured youth, of the most intimate kind? Regret over past actions? "Closure" for past abuse? It's hard for me to figure it out. Are there female readers out there who can comment on whether or not they'd ever do this, or why it might be desirable to someone?

The man CNS News says is likely to succeed Australian Prime Minister John Howard has told Muslims that if they want to live under Islamic law they should leave the country.

Anyone wanting to live under Islamic law (shari'a) might feel more comfortable living in countries where it is applied, such as Saudi Arabia or Iran, federal Treasurer Peter Costello said in an address to the Sydney Institute, a think tank.

In a pledge of allegiance, immigrants taking on Australian citizenship declare: "I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey."

Costello said that anyone "who does not acknowledge the supremacy of civil law laid down by democratic processes cannot truthfully take the pledge of allegiance. As such they do not meet the pre-condition for citizenship."

Any Muslim planning to immigrate to Australia should first consider its values.

"Before entering a mosque visitors are asked to take off their shoes," Costello said. "This is a sign of respect. If you have a strong objection to walking in your socks don't enter the mosque.

"Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objection to those values, don't come to Australia."

So to you multiculturalists out there, yes, there certainly are things Americans can learn from other countries.

Don't doubt that Muslims want to enact shari'a everywhere, and being allowed to set up Islamic courts in their "own" communities would be a foot in the door.

South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds says he's inclined to sign an abortion ban into law if it looks like it can save lives.

“I’ve indicated I’m pro-life and I do believe abortion is wrong, and that we should do everything we can to save lives,” Rounds said. “If this bill accomplishes that, then I am inclined to sign the bill into law.”

But Rounds said he didn’t necessarily agree with the “frontal assault” tactic the bill takes to overturning the decision that legalized abortion.

“Personally, I think we will save more lives by continuing to chip away at Roe v. Wade,” he said.

The bill would ban nearly all abortions in South Dakota. That’s unconstitutional under current U.S. Supreme Court rulings, and the goal of the legislation is to force the high court to take a fresh look at its 1973 ruling that legalized abortion.

But the state director of Planned Parenthood is concerned that some voices aren't being heard.

“I have to say I’m disappointed in the news that the governor has indicated he would sign the bill,” Kate Looby, state director of Planned Parenthood, said Thursday.

“We’re still hopeful he’ll hear the voices of women and families in South Dakota that say, ‘Please don’t sign this bill; please protect the health and safety of the women in this state.’ ”

Maybe Miss Looby should listen to the voices of unborn children saying, "Please don't murder me."

Formatting a dissertation is nearly as hard as writing it in the first place! Submitted for your consideration, UCLA's 35-page "Policies and Procedures for Thesis and Dissertation Preparation and Filing". And it makes the text so ugly!

The American military is still working hard to find and free three employees of Northrop Grummman who were taken hostage by Columbia's FARC and are the longest-held American captives in the world.

U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is working to bring home three Northrop Grumman [NOC] employees held hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Colombia, according to the commanding general.

"We are working every day to find those three people," Gen. Bantz Craddock, SOCOM commanding general, said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast yesterday.

The Northrop Grumman employees represent "the longest held U.S. political captives anywhere in the world" and have been held for three years as of Feb. 13, Craddock said.

Pray for the safety of Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell and for comfort for their families.

The essayist who writes under the pseudonym "Spengler" is quickly becoming one of my very favorite writers. I recommend to you his excellent "The devil's sourdough and the decline of nations".

For this reason Goethe is the most relevant, and paradoxically the least understood, of modern writers. Life's triumph is to digest the daily sourdough, and its anxiety and sorrow are the greatest temptations. Contrary to my namesake Oswald Spengler, Western society is not "Faustian" because Western man seeks power, but rather because Western man still plays dice with the Devil for his soul according to the rules of the game established by Faust and Mephisto. Technology and freedom offer modern man the temptations of Faust more than those of Job.

Faust thwarts Mephisto because he never ceases to strive, but Faust is an exceptional fellow, a proxy for the inimitable Goethe. What we learn instead from the lives of ordinary people - and from the life and death of peoples - is that a sense of divine presence is what makes the Devil's sourdough digestible. US evangelical Christianity is not "about" conservative values, school prayer, or heterosexual marriage. It is about Christ crucified, and the rest follows as a matter of housekeeping.

By the same token, Muslim unhappiness is not "about" the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or even the intrusion of Western secular values. It is about the Muslim perception that Islam's promise of success against its enemies has eluded them. It is a crisis of faith.

He's going on my list of people I want to meet.

My brother passes this along:

Bill Nye The Science Guy told me (the only thing he ever said to me): "If you want to get really rich, invent a better battery." At the time, we were looking under the hood of a display model of a hybrid car in the Los Angeles Federal Building downtown.

Presumably the world will beat a path to MIT sometime soon...

Researchers at MIT have developed a new type of lithium battery that could become a cheaper alternative to the batteries that now power hybrid electric cars.

Until now, lithium batteries have not had the rapid charging capability or safety level needed for use in cars. Hybrid cars now run on nickel metal hydride batteries, which power an electric motor and can rapidly recharge while the car is decelerating or standing still.

But lithium nickel manganese oxide, described in a paper to be published in Science on Feb. 17, could revolutionize the hybrid car industry -- a sector that has "enormous growth potential," says Gerbrand Ceder, MIT professor of materials science and engineering, who led the project.

It's safer, cheaper, and recharges faster than the lithium cobalt oxide batteries that power cell phones and the like. Still, I hate batteries on principle... let's just skip them and go straight to Mr. Fusion.

It seems that I've got two different standards for deleting comments and approving comments on old posts. Movable Type has a feature that allows me to pick time span after which comments to a post have to be approved before they'll show up, and I seem to have a higher threshold for actively accepting such comments than I do for deleting comments on open posts. That is, there are many comments that I wouldn't delete if I found them on an open post, but that I also won't approve when someone tries to add them to an old post. Assuming that the costs of approving and deleting are negligible, why should I have different standards?

An "artist" has designed a brand of custom uh... sneakers... she calls "crossing trainers" that are designed to help illegal immigrants get from Mexico into the United States.

They call the act of crossing the "brinco" - literally "jump" in Spanish. And that is the inspiration for Werthein's crossing shoes, called Brincos.

The trainers are adorned with unusual items.

"The shoe includes a compass, a flashlight because people cross at night, and inside is included also some Tylenol painkillers because many people get injured during crossing," [designer Judi] Werthein says. ...

The Brinco is an ankle-high trainer which is green, red, black and yellow.

An Aztec eagle is embroidered on the heel. On the toe is the American eagle found on the US quarter, to represent the American dream the migrants are chasing.

A map - printed on the shoe's removable insole - shows the most popular illegal routes from Tijuana into San Diego.

The best help might be to advise people to obey the law and not to try to cross the desert on foot. Anyway, in true leftist fashion, the shoes are now on sale in chic salons for hundreds of dollars.

A few days after passing out shoes for free to migrants, Werthein begins selling the shoes at a hip boutique trainer store in downtown San Diego.

The shop sells only limited edition trainers. A pair of Werthein's Brincos are displayed on a pedestal under glass with a price tag of $215 (£125).

(HT: Bernardo, Boing Boing, and Gizmodo.)

This page claims that water doesn't drain backwards in the Southern Hemisphere, but there was a whole Simpsons episode to the contrary. I don't know who to believe! Do I have any readers from Brazil who can settle the matter?

I love statistics, and being newly-married it's logical that I'd be interested in marriage statistics.

The average amount spent on weddings has increased to $27,852, up nearly 100 percent since 1990, and the number of weddings per year has increased by 200,000 during that time, according to a new study.

Since 2002 nearly every wedding expense has increased by over 20 percent. This includes the bride's and groom's attire (up 30 percent), engagement rings (up 25 percent) and a 60 percent increase in the cost of the wedding band, according to the Condé Nast Bridal Group.

Not to mention that most people don't just get married once anymore, so the wedding industry is booming!

The winter holidays are still the most popular time to get engaged, with 15 percent of all proposals happening in the month of December.

Ninety-nine percent of brides said they were proposed to, 81 percent plan to take their husband's name after marriage and only 3 percent expect to sign a prenuptial agreement.

This year, only 30 percent of brides' parents will pay for the entire wedding as was once customary. Instead, 32 percent of brides and grooms will pay for their wedding themselves, and 15 percent of couples will foot the bill with the help of both sets of parents, the study said.

I know I'm way behind the blogosphere curve on this issue because I've been pretty occupied recently, but I have a couple further thoughts on the Dubai Ports World takeover of some American port services.

1. It was strange to me to hear the President come out so strongly in favor of the deal so quickly. Even stranger, he now says that he didn't know about the deal until after it was approved by his subordinates. So why start out so gung-ho over a decision that will obviously be controversial? One possible explanation is that there's some huge quid pro quo behind the deal that we in the public aren't aware of. For instance, if Dubai has Osama Bin Laden in custody and will turn him over once the deal goes through. That specific trade would be foolish, but I suppose it's hypothetically possible that there's some sort of behind-the-scenes exchange going on that makes the political firestorm worthwhile.

2. Maybe one of the best ways to get Arab governments on board with the War on Terror is to draw them into further economic entanglement with the West. It seems that the United Arab Emirates will be all the more eager to help us stop terrorism if an attack is likely to hurt their own financial interests. Maybe. Then again, Arab/Muslim governments already stoke hatred towards the United States and encourage violence, despite the long-term effects such scape-goating has had on their economies.

Sometimes my job is fun, like when I get to spend the day investigating whether I'll need to use propositional calculus, first-order logic, or second-order logic to define the language I'm creating. Looks like first-order logic will suffice! Now I just need to find an inference engine that will do most of the work for me....

An allegory from Larry Kudlow about politics and ballooning.

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost.

She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The sailor consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude."

She rolled her eyes and yelled down, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've been no help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "Then you must be a Democrat."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but, somehow, now it's my fault."

Being newly-married, my wife and I have frequently discussed our career goals and how we want to manage our family both now and in the future when we have kids. I grew up in a family in which both of my parents worked outside the home, but when you run the numbers it often turns out that two incomes aren't better than one.

The main culprits for the financial failure of second incomes are a tax system that savagely penalizes second incomes and the high cost of quality child care. The result, among financially savvy couples with a single high wage-earner, is that spouses with much less earning power often stop working until the kids are in school. Those who stay on the job do so not for the money, but for the challenge and fulfillment they derive from work outside the home. ...

Peggy Ruhlin, a financial planner and certified public accountant in Columbus, Ohio, found it necessary to relate some hard truths about second incomes to her clients. She cites the case of a highly paid executive whose wife worked for a government social work agency. Her position was consuming and paid less than $25,000 a year, but it was deeply satisfying because she was helping people in need. Ruhlin ran through the numbers and showed that the wife was taking home a grand total of $1,500 a year when all was said and done. ...

Ruhlin says the Social Security cut was especially unkind because, on retirement, the wife will be entitled to the equivalent of half her husband's entitlement (he'll still get the full amount) even if she never worked at all. Her contributions from a relatively low-wage job would never entitle her to more on her own, and so her payments will never do her any good.

On top of all this were child care, commuting and other expenses. When the planner broke the news, the woman became teary-eyed. She started considering volunteer work with more flexible hours.

Even aside from tax considerations and other costs mentioned in the article, there are plenty of intangible benefits to having an adult focus on managing the home.

(HT: Sound Mind Investing Blog.)

Update:

Further, on the myth of the working mother:

George Gilder points out that "women in the home are not performing some optional role that can be more efficiently fulfilled by the welfare state. Women in the home are not 'wasting' their human resources. The role of the mother is the paramount support of civilized human society. It is essential to the socialization of men and of children. The maternal love and nurture of small children is an asset that can be replaced, if at all, only at vastly greater cost. Such attention is crucial to raising children into healthy productive citizens. In other words, 'the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.'"

I'm glad that the recent controversy about turning American port operations over to the United Arab Emirates has spurred greater concern for the security of our seaports. Regardless of who operates them, we need to be inspecting far more than the current 6% of containers. As for the controversy itself, I'm surprised that President Bush and his political advisors didn't see this bulldozer coming. Why give the Democrats an easily-won national security issue? The President should have recognized that putting a terrorist-harboring nation in charge of our ports is a Bad Idea -- that's a no brainer. It seems inevitable that Congress will block the move and the President will have to change positions, so he'll end up looking weak and foolish. Oh well, everyone makes mistakes, but this seems to be a particularly dumb one.

I've praised Michael Crichton for his solid understanding and realistic-futuristic portrayal of science in his novels, and when I saw the headline on Drudge that President Bush's meeting with an unnamed author worried "environmentalists" I knew which author the story was talking about.

In his new book about Mr. Bush, "Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year by Michael Crichton, whose 2004 best-selling novel, "State of Fear," suggests that global warming is an unproven theory and an overstated threat.

Mr. Barnes, who describes Mr. Bush as "a dissenter on the theory of global warming," writes that the president "avidly read" the novel and met the author after Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, arranged it. He says Mr. Bush and his guest "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement."

"The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more," he adds.

And so it has, fueling a common perception among environmental groups that Mr. Crichton's dismissal of global warming, coupled with his popularity as a novelist and screenwriter, has undermined efforts to pass legislation intended to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that leading scientists say causes climate change.

And good for Mr. Crichton. I've toyed with the dream of becoming a novelist, though I may not have the gift, and it would be awesome to be able to write such popularly successful and enlightening books as Michael Crichton.

In physics, "escape velocity" is the speed (and direction) at which a body can escape a gravity well without further acceleration. That is, if you're moving fast enough you can escape from a gravity well without propulsion. For example, to escape from the Earth/Moon gravity well you need to be moving at 11.2 km/s. Of course, you can escape at any speed if you've got an engine, but if you want to, say, fire a bullet away from earth it would need to be moving 11.2 km/s to really get away (excluding air resistance); otherwise it will eventually fall back.

If that's clear, then consider the idea of "life extension escape velocity": the rate of life extension after which people will stop dying from old age. For example, since 1850 life expectancy in the United States has risen from 38.3 years to 74.8 years: an increase in life expenctancy of approximately 3 months per year. However, imagine a world in which life expectancy increases at a rate greater than 1 year per year... some people would still die, statistically, but the average age of death would increase faster than people actually get older. Death from old age would become very rare.

One year per year is the "life extension escape velocity". If and when medical advances ever reach that point, death from old age will be effectively eliminated. A lot of biologists (and others) have considered the issue and debated how society would change if people stopped dying, and Stanford professor Shripad Tuljapurkar has gotten some attention for making at least one obvious point: we'll have to raise the retirement age, something existing oldsters will fight against tooth and nail.