March 2007 Archives

The line between "virtual" money and "real" money is very fuzzy, especially in an age where even real money is earned and spent mostly electronically. I get my paycheck directly deposited to my bank account, I manage that account through a website, I spend the money with a credit card, and I pay off the credit card through another website. I rarely handle cash, even for very small transactions. So what's the difference between a Chinese yuan and a QQ coin?

HONG KONG -- China's fastest-rising currency isn't the yuan. It's the QQ coin -- online play money created by marketers to sell such things as virtual flowers for instant-message buddies, cellphone ringtones and magical swords for online games. ...

Then last year something happened that Tencent hadn't originally planned. Online game sites beyond Tencent started accepting QQ coins as payment. The coins appeal as a safer, more practical way to conduct small online purchases, because credit cards aren't yet commonplace in China.

At informal online currency marketplaces, thousands of users helped turn the QQ coins back into cash by selling them at a discount that varies based on the laws of supply and demand. Traders began jumping into the QQ coin market as an opportunity to make a quick yuan off of currency speculation.

State-run media reported that some online shoppers began using QQ coins to buy real-world items such as CDs and makeup. So-called QQ Girls started accepting the coins as payment for intimate private chats online. Gamblers caught wind, too, and started using the currency to get around China's anti-gambling laws, converting wins in online mahjong and card games back into cash. Dozens of third-party trading posts sprouted up to ease transactions, turning the QQ coin into a kind of parallel currency.

The only thing that separates QQ coins from yuans is that the former isn't issued by a government... but then that's never been a requirement in the definition of "money". Wikipedia offers a pretty standard set of criteria that I remember from my economics classes:

Money is generally considered to have the following characteristics, which are summed up in a rhyme found in many economics textbooks and primers: "Money is a matter of functions four, a medium, a measure, a standard, a store".

1. It is a medium of exchange: A medium of exchange is an intermediary used in trade to avoid the inconveniences of a pure barter system.

2. It is a unit of account (also called a "measure" or, alternatively, a "standard" of relative worth and deferred payment): A unit of account is a standard numerical unit of measurement of the market value of goods, services, and other transactions. A unit of account is a necessary pre-requisite for the formulation of commercial agreements that involve debt.

3. It is a store of value: To act as a store of value, a commodity, a form of money, or financial capital must be able to be reliably saved, stored, and retrieved - and be predictably useful when it is so retrieved.

Electronic currencies like frequent flier miles or QQ coins have all these characteristics, and in many cases are far more stable than currencies issued by smaller governments.

What's particularly interesting is that QQ coins are undermining the Chinese government's control over their monetary supply.

The rapid rise of the QQ coin has caused angst for the government in China, where circulation and trade of the real currency is strictly controlled. Last month, 14 Chinese ministries and China's central bank together waged a QQ coin crackdown of sorts, calling on companies to stop trading them in order to prevent money laundering. ...

Despite the Chinese government warnings, people continue to trade QQ coins. The new capital controls, in fact, have given them new scarcity value, driving up the price by 70% in recent weeks, says Milly Chen, who trades QQ coins.

"Over the past months, the system has been getting more complicated to transfer credit, and there is less supply" she says.

It's very difficult for governments to restrict free/"black" markets except through political oppression... which is one of the communists' strengths.

(HT: My brother Nick.)

Meir Javedanfar theorizes that Iran took the 15 British soldiers hostage as a ploy to "Carterize" Tony Blair and knock the UK out of the Global War on Terror.

By capturing the servicemen, Tehran is hoping that the British people, particularly the majority who are already against the war in Iraq will openly blame Blair for the crisis, by saying that it is his fault for endangering the lives of troops by sending them into a conflict zone.

Such internal dissatisfaction, Tehran hopes, would subsequently deal a deadly blow to any plans Blair or his successor may have to support an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The solution to dealing with thugs is to turn to Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan. Every time we give an inch they push for another, and pretty soon we're living under sharia law and baseball is replaced as the national pass-time by stampeding off bridges.

I pray nightly for the safe return of those British soldiers, but I cringe at the policies that allowed their capture. I hope that American troops would have been free to resist capture, but I'm not confident of it thanks to our weak-kneed politicians.

Walid Phares thinks he knows what Iran will do next.

2) The regime "needs" an external clash to crush the domestic challenge.

As in many comparable cases worldwide, when an authoritarian regime is faced with severe internal opposition it attempts to deflect the crisis onto the outside world. Hence, Teheran's all out campaign against the US and its allies in Iraq, Lebanon and the region is in fact a repositioning of Iran's shield against the expected rising opposition inside the country. Hence the Khomeinist Mullahs plan seem to be projected as follow:

a. Engage in the diplomatic realm, to project a realist approach worldwide, but refrain from offering real results

b. Continue, along with the Syrian regime, in supporting the "Jihadi" Terror operations (including sectarian ones) inside Iraq

c. Widen the propaganda campaign against the US and its allies via a number of PR companies within the West, to portray Iran as "a victim" of an "upcoming war provoked by the US."

d. Engage in skirmishes in the Gulf (and possibly in other spots) with US and British elements claiming these action as "defensive," while planned thoroughly ahead of time.

3) The regime plan is to drag its opponents into a trap

Teheran's master planners intend to drag the "Coalition" into steps in engagement, at the timing of and in the field of control of Iran's apparatus. Multiple options and scenarios are projected.

a. British military counter measure takes place, supported by the US. Iran's regime believe that only "limited" action by the allies is possible, according to their analysis of the domestic constraints inside the two powerful democracies.

b. Tehran moves to a second wave of activities, at its own pace, hoping to draw a higher level of classical counter strikes by US and UK forces. The dosing by Iran's leadership is expected to stretch the game in time, until the departure of Blair and of the Bush Administration by its political opponents inside the country's institutions and public debate.

So basically they plan to keep jabbing us until President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are out of office, at which point the mullahs expect our next leaders to capitulate and sue for peace. Seems like they're familiar with the Democrats.

I'm not sure how common this practice is, but it sure calls into question the value of political endorsements. After dropping out of the race, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack has agreed to endorse Hillary Clinton; in a completely unrelated matter, Hillary Clinton has offered to pay off Vilsack's campaign debt.

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack gave Sen. Hillary Clinton his endorsement for her presidential campaign.

The Clinton campaign has promised Vilsack to help pay off a $400,000 campaign debt he built up during his run for the White House.

A representative for Clinton's campaign said they are not sure how their campaign will do that. They concede that at some point, Clinton will have to contact her supporters.

The campaign said there is no connection between Vilsack's endorsement and their commitment to help pay off his campaign debt.

That Clinton's representative didn't know how they'd do it indicates to me that this practice isn't too common. In any event, I'm not going to weight Vilsack's endorsement too highly.

(HT: James Taranto.)

Yes, Sanjaya Malakar is a poor singer. He's a kid, so that's no knock against him as a person... but c'mon, he's one of the top 10 unsigned singers in the country? Ludicrous. I think it's hilarious that VoteForTheWorst.com has kept him in this long and that he'll get to go on the top-10 tour this summer. Idol fans shouldn't be upset, because in the end they'll have more votes than VFTW's followers and they'll get the singer they want, but in the meantime it's quite entertaining to see the horror of the audition round extended a few more weeks.

[VFTW founder] Della Terza claims Fox once issued a cease-and-desist order demanding he take copyrighted "Idol" material off his site, a move Fox confirms.

"Millions of fans of 'American Idol' vote for their favorites each season," the network proclaims in a statement, "and that success speaks far louder than the specious ramblings of any mean-spirited and insignificant Web site."

Della Tersa is undeterred. "They're as dumb as the 12-year-olds that write to us," he says.

"All we're doing is getting people to watch their show. ... You're idiots. We're [earning] you money for the sponsors!"

It's just a huge game, it isn't a matter of life and death. VFTW enhances the entertainment value of Idol immensely, not least because Simon Cowell has threatened to quit if Sanjaya wins. Let the circus continue!

Here's a pretty sweet spaceship size comparison chart. I'd host it myself, but the bandwidth could get excessive.

Here's another, interactive site about Starship Dimensions.

(HT: Donald S. Crankshaw and Deep Space Bombardment.)

Ryan Sager writes about McCain-Feingold and five years of CFR failure.

Last but not least — and here we get to the real nub of campaign-finance regulation — McCain-Feingold supporters promised that the bill would curb the scourge of "negative" and "dirty" advertising. "It is about slowing political advertising," Ms. Cantwell said during the debate. "Making sure the flow of negative ads by outside interest groups does not continue to permeate the airwaves."

Of course, curbing and "slowing" speech critical of politicians by "outside interest groups" (a.k.a. "citizens") is in no way a permissible goal under the First Amendment. But, ultimately, the politicians may have failed in this most nefarious goal.

Let's hope this unconstitutional law -- which impinges on our freedoms far more than the Patriot Act -- will be dismantled soon.

(HT: Instapundit.)

It seems like cancer is in the news more than ever these days, and the health benefits of light alcohol consumption have been touted for years (even claims that alcohol improves brain health). However, new research indicates that even light alcohol consumption will increase your risk from cancer.

Scientists have known for a hundred years about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. A study from Paris in 1910 showed that 80 percent of patients with cancer of the esophagus or gastric track were alcoholics. More recently, scientists have found correlations between alcohol consumption and cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, large bowel, and even the breasts. Yet lab experiments have always failed to show the effects in animals that investigators knew to be true in humans.

Until now.

It seems past studies used too much alcohol -- in concentrations of 20 percent -- and the animals just wasted away while showing no tumor growth. But when Gu used concentrations of one percent -- about one to two drinks per day in humans -- to study blood vessel growth, he detected stimulated tumor growth in both chick embryos and mice. ...

Gu's findings, now confirmed by other scientists, are evidence of what many have long suspected -- alcohol, even in moderation, increases cancer risk.

Therefore I'll continue my policy of teetotaling.

Australia seems like a nice place... except for the huge toads.

DARWIN, Australia - An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a "monster" toad the size of a small dog.

With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer. ...

Frogwatch, which is dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals, picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.

Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia's northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia's delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

Despite the deep saddening of toad-bloggers, it really would be best for the gazillions of other animals in Australia if the Cane Toads were eliminated.

Congress wastes a lot of time on useless posturing, but sometimes they actually pursue policies that seem designed to harm American citizens. Most recently, the Senate just passed a bill 94-2 declaring that no new US attorneys will be approved for an indefinite period of time. It's called the "Preserving U.S. Attorney Independence Act of 2007", which is silly because US attorneys aren't supposed to be independent, they're political appointees. That doesn't mean that the US attorneys should overlook wrongdoing by allies of the President, but he is their boss.

The Senate passed this bill that would prohibit the attorney general from filling U.S. attorney vacancies for an indefinite time period. The attorney posts are subject to Senate approval.

As I wrote earlier, the to-do over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales firing some of his subordinates is nothing more than the typical criminalization of politics. This bill is nothing but a job security program for US attorneys appointed by President Clinton that President Bush decided to keep around for whatever reason (even though Clinton himself fired all 93 US attorneys when he took office).

On the House side is the "Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007" which is completely removed from reality.

This House bill would require the government to replace public housing that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The Department of Housing and Urban Development determined that 7,500 apartments are unsuitable for repair and has plans to raze the buildings to clear the way for new construction of mixed-income housing. Supporters contend that plan would leave poor people displaced by the hurricane with no housing. The bill would require HUD to make public housing available to displaced tenants and prohibit the agency from razing any public housing without a plan to replace it. Opponents contend that the mixed-income housing would increase the standard of living in neighborhoods with public housing by providing economic development.

The bill passed the House 302-125, but hopefully it will die in the Senate. Newsflash: millions of poor people left the Gulf region and aren't going back. Building government housing to a level that may not be needed is a stupid waste of money. Of course I oppose all government housing on principle, but I'm especially opposed to building structures that won't even be used because the poor people who would have lived in them are gone.

GeekPress linked to a Wired article by Bruce Schneier about how human brains are poor judges of risk, but unfortunately the article approaches the question from an entirely wrong direction and therefore comes to some meaningless (and ridiculous) conclusions. (Set aside the pervasive issue of assumed evolution for the time being.)

The article does set up the problem reasonably well, highlighting the difference between our reflexive amygdala and our analytical neocortex.

But the world is actually more complicated than that. Some scary things are not really as risky as they seem, and others are better handled by staying in the scary situation to set up a more advantageous future response. This means there's an evolutionary advantage to being able to hold off the reflexive fight-or-flight response while you work out a more sophisticated analysis of the situation and your options for handling it.

We humans have a completely different pathway to cope with analyzing risk. It's the neocortex, a more advanced part of the brain that developed very recently, evolutionarily speaking, and only appears in mammals. It's intelligent and analytic. It can reason. It can make more nuanced trade-offs. It's also much slower.

So here's the first fundamental problem: We have two systems for reacting to risk -- a primitive intuitive system and a more advanced analytic system -- and they're operating in parallel. It's hard for the neocortex to contradict the amygdala.

Fine. The problem comes when the article asserts that the neocortex is bad at making predictions because it has "rough edges".

All this is about the amygdala. The second fundamental problem is that because the analytic system in the neocortex is so new, it still has a lot of rough edges evolutionarily speaking. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert wrote a great comment that explains this:

The brain is a beautifully engineered get-out-of-the-way machine that constantly scans the environment for things out of whose way it should right now get. That's what brains did for several hundred million years -- and then, just a few million years ago, the mammalian brain learned a new trick: to predict the timing and location of dangers before they actually happened.

Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain's most stunning innovations, and we wouldn't have dental floss or 401(k) plans without it. But this innovation is in the early stages of development. The application that allows us to respond to visible baseballs is ancient and reliable, but the add-on utility that allows us to respond to threats that loom in an unseen future is still in beta testing.

A lot of the current research into the psychology of risk are examples of these newer parts of the brain getting things wrong.

That's silly. Sure, the neocortex often makes bad predictions, but the reason for that has nothing to do with "rough edges" (whatever that means). The problem is very simple: the immediate future is much easier to predict than the distant future. If you're walking down the sidewalk and a lion starts running at you, it isn't hard to imagine what's going to happen next; a quick, irresistible physiological "fight or flight" response is a good way to handle a life-threatening situation that demands immediate action. The neocortex might prefer to weigh the various options: will fighting this lion make my peers respect me? Would a lion-skin rug look better in my living room or foyer? But such predictions are almost impossible to make very far in advance, which is what we imply when we say "hindsight is 20/20".

The author believes that our neocortex is flawed because it can't predict the future as well as computers can.

And it's not just risks. People are not computers. We don't evaluate security trade-offs mathematically, by examining the relative probabilities of different events. Instead, we have shortcuts, rules of thumb, stereotypes and biases -- generally known as "heuristics." These heuristics affect how we think about risks, how we evaluate the probability of future events, how we consider costs, and how we make trade-offs. We have ways of generating close-to-optimal answers quickly with limited cognitive capabilities. Don Norman's wonderful essay, Being Analog, provides a great background for all this.

Someone please show me where I can buy one of these computers that can predict the future. Alas, they don't exist. Computers are no better at predicting the future than are humans, and in some areas humans do significantly better. We can analyze more varied information than computers can because we're great at parameterizing a wide spectrum of data types. Our heuristics and "hunches" are beyond the ken of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, and there's no immediate prospect that this will change.

The fact of the matter is that we don't know the best funds to pick for our 401(k) because that sort of prediction is hard, not because our neocortexes are somehow lacking. It's easy to predict if a baseball is about to plonk your nose or if a lion is dangerous, but as the time horizon extends it becomes increasingly hard to analyze risk, and that won't change no matter how long our neocortexes have to evolve.

Finally, the most complex systems that humans interact with are composed of other humans. If all of our neocortexes were improved by evolution (or cybernetic enhancement, or whatever), the net effect would probably be zero. If everyone else in the stock market has a super-neocortex just like me, what advantage I have when I select my investments? None, because my competitors will all be using their superior analytical skills against me.

Update:

AdamReed points out in the comments that the economy isn't a zero-sum game in which wins by one party are equal to losses by another party. This is true! In competitive markets the wins can be larger than the losses, which is why we see economic growth over time. My point in the "finally" paragraph above is that improved neocortexes wouldn't give one investor an advantage over any other, and wouldn't give one businessman an advantage over another in a particular niche. Improved neocortexes probably would improve the creation and exploitation of new niches, however, and thereby enhance broad economic growth in an absolute sense if not in a relative sense.

In January Mark Steyn wrote in a book review that if you're not "obsessed with victory" then you shouldn't have gotten into the war in the first place. Alas, the newly-elected Democrat majority in Congress is obsessed with many things, none of which involve America winning the Global War on Terror.

Now as [in the 1970s], America seems less a sleeping giant than a helpless one, ensnared by Liliputians and longing for release. Some Republicans distance themselves from the President’s “surge” in Iraq, others dutifully string along with it, but without any great confidence it will make a difference. Democrats, meanwhile, are all but urging on defeat. Explicitly threatening to cut off funds for “Bush’s war”, Senator Ted Kennedy trotted out the old Vietnam “quagmire” analogies but added a new charge, bizarrely formulated: “In Vietnam,” he recalled, “the White House grew increasingly obsessed with victory, and increasingly divorced from the will of the people and any rational policy.”

“Obsessed with victory”? In the history of warfare, most parties have been “obsessed with victory” to one degree or another, ever since Caveman Ug first clubbed Caveman Glug. If you’re not “obsessed with victory”, you probably shouldn’t have got into the war into the first place. It would be more accurate to say that Kennedy and his multiplying ilk are obsessed with defeat, and they’re prepared to do what’s necessary to help inflict it. The famous photographs of the departing choppers lifting off from the US embassy in Saigon with pleading locals clinging to the undercarriage are images not just of defeat but also of the betrayals necessary to accomplish it. “In reality,” writes John O’Sullivan in his splendid new book The President, The Pope And The Prime Minister, “the betrayal was truer than the defeat. America had not been defeated on the battlefield and South Vietnamese ground forces had themselves defeated a full-scale North Vietnamese invasion in 1972 when they still enjoyed US air support. Not only did the United States withhold such support in 1975, but Congress also refused to supply even the ammunition and military supplies that it had promised when the American forces left. For some perverse psychological motive, the American establishment acted as if the United States would not be genuinely free of involvement in Vietnam until its allies were conquered and occupied.”

Only a leftist would consider it a crime for our President to be obsessed with American victory.

The Pirate sent me a funny article about how locals blame all their ills on ex-Californians who move into their state. The piece mostly focuses on the public smoking bans we Californians are so fond of, but people also apparently don't like they way we drive up home prices.

Since 1991, the number of Californians moving out topped the number of people moving in to the state. And where do they go? The top five states Californians moved to between 2000 and 2005 were Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Washington and Oregon, according to William Frey, population expert for the Brookings Institution.

For many Californians, they want what eludes them in their state — open space, clean air and not so much traffic. So they sell their houses for a chunk of change, move somewhere else in the West, buy a bigger house and start driving up the housing prices, much to the dismay of locals.

Sherrie Watson has lived in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, since she was 16 and is quite fed up with Californians.

“They complain how cold it is. And they just moved here because it is cheaper and to ’get away,’ but then they keep saying things like, ‘We did it in California this way, so why don’t you change?’ ”

“They came here because they liked it the way it was when they visited, but then they want to change it. I don’t get it,” she said.

Hopefully the rest of the country won't be assimilated by expatriate Californians and won't replicate our bizarre behavior -- except for the public smoking bans. C'mon, smoking is gross.

I've never understood why a generic gas station can be empty while right across the street customers are lining up at a Shell station charging twenty cents more per gallon. As I'd always assumed, generic gas and brand-name gas are essentially identical.

At the Maryland Fuel Testing Laboratory, chemists conducted a battery of tests. First, they verified that gas was formulated correctly for the season. Then, they checked for contaminants, like excessive sediment or diesel, accidentally mixed with the gasoline.

They also ran the gas through an elaborate engine to make sure it got the 87 octane level people pay for. Both samples easily met state standards.

"By and large, it's one and the same. … You will find results will almost mirror each other," said Bob Crawford, who works at the lab. "There are going to be slight variations -- but gasoline is gasoline."

When gasoline arrives at regional distribution centers, it's all the same. Different gas station chains then buy the raw fuel and add their own blend of detergents. In the past, there might have been more of a difference between different brands of regular unleaded, but these days the EPA requires that all gas contain a minimum amount of detergent to keep car engines clean.

If you're paying for a particular brand of gasoline, "you would be paying more for brand loyalty, primarily," Crawford said. "Some people feel more comfortable dealing with a particular brand." ...

"The generic, no, will not do harm at all," Crawford said. "I use the lowest price. It makes no difference what the brand is."

Paying extra money for a brand-name is a foolish waste of money, whether we're talking about Prada purses or Shell gasoline.

"The man from Tallahassee" Ben asked for has to be Locke's dad. What's more, I agree with TeleValues who thinks that the con man who motivated Sawyer was also Locke's dad.

Just as Robert Mugabe ruined Zimbabwe -- formerly "the jewel of Africa" -- with his "agrarian reforms", tyrant Hugo Chavez is preparing to seize private farms and convert them to "collective property". History has shown that this will not work well. When Zimbabwe was known as Southern Rhodesia it exported food to its neighbors and was incredibly prosperous... now people there are starving to death. How's socialism working in Venezuela?

Chavez, who hosted Sunday's program from a ranch in Venezuela's sun-baked plains, said his government would move to expropriate large ranches and farms spanning more than 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) and redistribute lands deemed "idle" to the poor under a nationwide agrarian reform.

Since the reform began five years ago, officials have redistributed over 1.9 million hectares (4.6 million acres) of land that had been classified as unproductive or lacked property documents dating back to 1847, according to a recent government census.

Critics say reform has failed to revive Venezuela's agriculture industry, which does not produce enough food to satisfy domestic demand. The government has been forced to import food amid shortages of staples such as meats, milk and sugar.

The quickest way to ruin a country is to nationalize private property and turn it over to the masses.

Pray for the British soldiers who were abducted by Iran and are now going to be put on trial for spying. The Iranians may be all bluster, but they may also be trying to provoke a conflict to boost oil prices and throw us Brits and Americans off our game. The soldiers caught in the middle are in a lot of danger.

FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”

Punishable, obviously, by death. The British deny that their soldiers were in Iranian waters.

Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy, dismissed suggestions that the British boats might have been in Iranian waters. West, who was first sea lord when the previous arrests took place in June 2004, said satellite tracking systems had shown then that the Iranians were lying and the same was certain to be true now.

It's interesting to read that recently updated sanctions might be hurting the Iranian leadership enough to motivate this sort of provocation.

Intelligence sources said any advance order for the arrests was likely to have come from Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards.

Subhi Sadek, the Guards’ weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that the force had “the ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks”.

Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the effect of UN sanctions on his own finances.

Sanctions must hit rogue leadership personally to be effective, since most tyrannies don't care how much the regular people of the country suffer. Good for America and the UK for insisting on tough sanctions.

Also via GeekPress (just go there and quit reading my blog) is a really cool bit about how police interrogations work. The main thing to remember is that you shouldn't say anything without a lawyer. Anything. You probably won't get more lenient treatment by talking, despite what police officers may imply, and saying anything without legal advice will only end up hurting you.