June 2008 Archives

Here's a neat article about tuned mass dampeners being used to balance wobbly skyscrapers. First off: that ball doesn't look so big to me.

Second, perhaps a similar effect contributes to womens' (anecdotally supported, at least) superior sense of balance.

(HT: GeekPress.)

Here's a great first-person account of netcentric operations in action.

I joined the Marine Corps when I was eighteen. That was in 1989, when the great Soviet armored divisions were still considered our primary threat, Communism was still the prevailing ideology to fear, and infantrymen ("grunts" or "ground-pounders" as we're often called) never ever touched computers.

How times have changed. Modern warfare is predominantly made up of decentralized small-unit actions and low-intensity skirmishes in complex "semi-permissive" settings. Today's adversaries are not assembled into the ponderous formations of yesteryear with static defenses and unwieldy supply lines. The prototypical "enemy" of the twenty-first century is an urban guerilla who is mobile, adaptive, and draws his strength and resources primarily from the indigenous population. The prototypical soldier needs more than a rifle to deal with him. He requires a different skill set, and needs speedy communications.

Coming from an older generation of infantrymen, I was astonished to see my unit suddenly being outfitted with every variety of electronic equipment, from "ruggedized" laptop computers with Internet access and instant messaging, to man-packed tracking systems, to a plethora of cameras, videos, and other imagery devices. These innovations were introduced to the battlefield in hopes of increasing situational awareness, rapidly gathering data, analyzing it, organizing it, then pushing it back out to operators as actionable intelligence. They also provide commanders with the freshest possible information and aid them in their moment-to-moment decision-making.

But with the diffuse and often dynamic nature of today's battlefield, the military discovered it needed not only a new line of electronic gadgets, but a new breed of soldier as well -- a thinking soldier.

Wars have always been about networks -- even when the "networks" were carrier pigeons and couriers -- but now every battle and every engagement is "netcentric", and the side with the better network wins.

There's something fishy about the Obama-related grafitti in Orlando.

The Orlando Police Department found dozens of city owned vehicles vandalized Saturday.

The vandal or vandals appear to have political intentions; most of the vehicles were spray painted with anti Obama sayings, with ‘Obama’ misspelled several times. Some of their vehicles had their gas caps removed. ...

The person or persons left a business card with political ramblings and other phrases such as ‘How ‘Bout them Gators’ and ‘Legalize Marijuana/ Stop Building Prisons’.

It seems clear that the perpetrators aren't conservative Obama-haters. Check out the card the vandals left behind:

Doesn't seem pro-McCain, does it? Maybe disgruntled Hillary supporters?

Just visited some family in Springfield for a few days and discovered Lambert's Cafe. My new favorite restaurant, bar none. They actually throw food to you. It's all you can eat, and the food is great. Best of all, however, is that when they drop the food on your table it's actually too hot to eat, every time. Made me realize that most restaurants serve luke-warm food that has been sitting on a counter for several minutes before you see it.

Today's SCOTUS ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller was a strong statement protecting one of our most valuable civil rights: the right to self-defense. The reactions from various politicians are especially interesting considering that while an expected 100% of Republicans quoted approve of the decision, so do three out of five Democrats.

Ilya Somin writes that most science fiction fans come to it early in life, but Megan McArdle says that love for science fiction can be acquired by adults, even women. I would have agreed with Somin a year ago, but over the past few months my wife has had a revelation: Battlestar Galactica, Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, and even Star Trek: The Next Generation are now among her favorite works of fiction. I'm amazed and derive great joy from this newly shared interest.

Two very different online flight simulators.

- This (nameless?) app from Electric Oyster lets you cruise over a beautiful snowy mountain range.

- Goggles is a simple flight sim that let's you fly over a Google Map location and shoot stuff.

I've long been an advocate of geothermal power: it's clean, doesn't take up much space, can be done almost anywhere, and could be a lot cheaper than space-based solar power. So I'm heartened to see that geothermal exploration is increasing across America.

According to experts, America is only just waking up to the ancient power source lying beneath dozens of states that has the potential to supply as much as 25 percent of the nation's energy needs.

"High prices and climate change are definitely creating a renaissance in geothermal interest, particularly on a state and local level," said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.

"There really is a tremendous amount going on right now."

As well as Alaska, geothermal projects, which are eligible for tax benefits, are underway in most Western states and across the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida, he said.

"It's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is possible," said Mr Gawell.

"If we really want to go all out for it, we could easily achieve a substantial amount, 20, 25 per cent of US energy needs within a few decades. We're limited more by public policy than the resource - the resource is enormous."

As drilling technology improves (maybe thanks to high oil prices?) geothermal power will get cheaper and easier to implement in a wide variety of locations, not just on volcanoes.

Either there hasn't been much to blog about recently, or my brain has been too stressed to find anything. Everything in my life feels crazy right now... not all in a bad way, but argh. Maybe I take on too much, I don't know. I definitely have a "if you want something done right, do it yourself" mentality and it's hard for me to leave responsibilities to other people when I think I can do it better. I'm not sure though what I could cut out:

1. Work. Gotta pay the bills. I'm not working overtime or anything, but work is stressful and very busy.

2. Church. I'm the director of my Sunday School class of 40 young married couples. This isn't a huge amount of work, but it can be draining at times. Fortunately there are a ton of spiritual leaders in our class.

3. Family. Jessica is pregnant! Yay! Very exciting, but the pregnancy is taking a real toll on her and therefore indirectly on me.

4. Hobbies. What hobbies? I play Travian (sign up there to get me bonus gold) but that's mostly a stress relief. Mostly anyway! A 24/7 game can get a little stressful at times.... But I've got to do something fun sometimes.

5. Side projects. My partners and I are getting very close to launching a new website we've been working on for almost a year. Can't quit now.

Anyway, woe is me, right? It's just life, I know, and I'm tremendously blessed to have the life I do. My complaints ring so hollow in even my own ears.

Paul Hsieh of GeekPress sent me a couple of links this morning about British authors Ian McEwan and Martin Amis being harassed for "despising Islamism". I'm sure both these men are extremely leftist and that we'd find little common ground, but I share their feelings on this matter.

The novelist Ian McEwan has launched an astonishingly strong attack on Islamism, saying that he "despises" it and accusing it of "wanting to create a society that I detest". His words, in an interview with an Italian newspaper, could, in today's febrile legalistic climate, lay him open to being investigated for a "hate crime".

In an interview with Guido Santevecchi, a London correspondent for Corriere della Sera, the Booker-winning novelist said he rarely grants interviews on controversial issues "because I have to be careful to protect my privacy". But he said that he was glad to leap to the defence of his old friend Martin Amis when the latter's attacks on Muslims brought down charges of racism on his head. He made an exception of the Islamic issue out of friendship to Amis, and because he shares the latter's strong opinions.

Pervasive political correctness forces us to choose our words very carefully, but even still isn't it acceptable to despise Islamism as long as you don't despise Muslims?

Despite my defense of these two authors, I do want to object to what is becoming a common slander against Christians as being "just as bad" as Muslims.

McEwan's interviewer pointed out that there exist equally hard-line schools of thought within Christianity, for example in the United States. "I find them equally absurd," McEwan replied. "I don't like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don't want to kill anyone in my city, that's the difference."

Ahhh! Those dreaded American Christians! They're so fat and rich and primitive. But really, where are these "hard-line" Christians? I'm a Christian, and I'm right here in America. I even go to a Baptist church! We're just about as fundamentalist as you get. I've never once heard anyone propose suicide bombings, stoning homosexuals, putting women in burkahs, chopping off heads, etc.

Comparing Bible-believing, evangelical Christians to murderous Islamists is invidious and completely unfounded. I understand that many leftists disagree with us vehemently on political, moral, and spiritual matters, but that's no reason to slander Christianity with this sort of blood-libel.

Spengler's most recent article describes a rarely-before-seen opportunity for Christian evangelism among Muslims, largely in Europe but also via the emerging Chinese church. There's no mention of Christianity's ascension in Africa, so add that on too.

In that sense, the president's war policy and the pope's pacifism arise from a common source, the politics of faith. Despite the exigencies of state security, which make necessary the employment of deadly force as well as harm to civilians, someone must speak the voice of mercy, and pray that the stern decree will pass from the world. A religious leader must say, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," while a head of state must follow the maxim, "Do unto others before they do unto you." What divides the president and the pope is not so much their conflicting positions, but rather a difference in the existential vantage point from which each must respond to the great events of the world.

Benedict XVI may preach against violence, but in his own fashion he takes a tougher stance than the American president. That surely is not the way it looks at first glance. Bush invaded an Arab country, while Benedict preaches reason to the Muslim world, receiving in the past few months Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah as well as delegations from Iran. He has agreed to a meeting with a group of 138 Muslim scholars at the Vatican in November. Why should Muslims fear Benedict?

For the first time, perhaps, since the time of Mohammed, large parts of the Islamic world are vulnerable to Christian efforts to convert them, for tens of millions of Muslims now dwell as minorities in predominantly Christian countries. The Muslim migration to Europe is a double-edged sword. Eventually this migration may lead to a Muslim Europe, but it also puts large numbers of Muslims within reach of Christian missionaries for the first time in history.

That is the hope of Magdi Allam, the highest-profile Catholic convert from Islam in living memory (see The mustard seed in global strategy Asia Times Online, March 26, 2008).

The Islamification of Europe is generally seen as a foregone conclusion, a dour and irreversible demographic trend projected by Anglophiles like Mark Steyn (who I greatly like). Spengler's reversal, granting the advantage to Christianity rather than to encroaching Islam, is a very different and intriguing perspective. I pray that he's right, as I pray nightly for missionaries to Muslims.

James E. Gaskin has a great piece about the slow maturation of artificial intelligence that helps answer the question: where's the artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence promised us great technology. But has it delivered?

Stanford University computer science professor John McCarthy coined the phrase in 1956 to mean "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines," In the early years of the artificial intelligence movement, enthusiasm ran high and artificial intelligence pioneers made some bold predictions.

In 1965, artificial intelligence innovator Herbert Simon said that "machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do."

Two years later, MIT researcher Marvin Minsky predicted, "Within a generation ... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved."

Popular culture jumped onto the artificial intelligence bandwagon and gave us Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons, HAL from the movie 2001 and R2D2 from Star Wars.

Yet, here we are, decades later and what has artificial intelligence done for us lately? If you define artificial intelligence as self-aware, self-learning, mobile systems, then artificial intelligence has been a huge disappointment.

And yet artificial intelligence is all around us... just going by different names. Once some bit of artificial intelligence actually works it stops being called "artificial intelligence" and gets named something like "Google search" or "GPS route planning" or "Half-Life".

Kyle Wingfield's profile of Robert Mundell offers some interesting insights into some of the economic principles that have shaped our time.

Robert Mundell isn't in the habit of making fruitless policy recommendations, though some take a long time ripening. Nearly four decades passed between his early work on optimal currency areas and the birth of the euro in 1999 – the same year he received the Nobel Prize for economics.

So when Mr. Mundell says that rescinding the Bush tax cuts "would be devastating to the world economy," that oil prices are "not so far off track," that Asia needs its own multilateral currency, or that the ham sandwiches sitting before us could use some mustard, one is inclined to pay attention – and, except in the case of lunch, to think long term.

(HT: The Pirate.)

Kids these days....

The pregnancy pact between 17 high school girls can be attributed to two things:

1. They have no concept of hardship. I'm sure these girls aren't rich by American standards, but I'm also sure that none of them has ever gone hungry and that they're all incredibly wealthy by historical measures. These girls have no idea what the real world is like, and no appreciation for the difficulties they would be facing if not for the stupid generosity that society will now heap upon them.

2. They have never been disciplined or taught right from wrong. The parents of these girls should be ashamed, as should the girls themselves. Instead, this community has "embraced" "young mothers" to an incredibly destructive effect.

The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. "We're proud to help the mothers stay in school," says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.

Despite the pleasant euphemism, these "young mothers" need to be made to face the harsh reality of their situation, not merely helped along as if everything is okay. Help of various forms will of course be necessary and should be provided, but by families and churches, not government agencies. These girls should face social opprobrium: they made some really stupid decisions and deserve their disgrace, and perhaps such denigration will discourage other girls from following in their footsteps.

Are you jealous of the billions of dollars those fat cats and their hedge funds are raking in while you struggle just to fill your car with gas? Don't be so sure that the fat cats aren't the suckers. Warren Buffett thinks hedge funds are basically a scam on the wealthy.

Will a collection of hedge funds, carefully selected by experts, return more to investors over the next 10 years than the S&P 500?

That question is now the subject of a bet between Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and Protégé Partners LLC, a New York City money management firm that runs funds of hedge funds - in other words, a firm whose existence rests on its ability to put its clients' money into the best hedge funds and keep it out of the underperformers. ...

We're way past theory here. This bet, being reported for the first time in this article (whose author is both a longtime friend of Buffett's and editor of his chairman's letter in the Berkshire annual report), has been in existence since Jan. 1 of this year.

It's between Buffett (not Berkshire) and Protégé (the firm, not its funds). And there's serious money at stake. Each side put up roughly $320,000. The total funds of about $640,000 were used to buy a zero-coupon Treasury bond that will be worth $1 million at the bet's conclusion.

My money's on the S&P 500. Let's take a look at the steep hill the hedge funds have to climb:

As for the fees that investors pay in the hedge fund world - and that, of course, is the crux of Buffett's argument - they are both complicated and costly.

A fund of funds normally charges a 1% annual management fee. The hedge funds it puts that money into charge an annual management fee of their own, which for funds of funds is typically 1.5%. (The fees are paid quarterly by an investor and are figured on the value of his account at the time.)

So that's 2.5% of an investor's capital that continually goes for these fees, regardless of the returns earned during a year. In contrast, Vanguard's S&P 500 index fund had an expense ratio last year of 15 basis points (0.15%) for ordinary shares and only seven basis points for Admiral shares, which are available to large investors. Admiral shares are the ones "bought" by Buffett in the bet.

On top of the management fee, the hedge funds typically collect 20% of any gains they make. That leaves 80% for the investors. The fund of funds takes 5% (or more) of that 80% as its share of the gains. The upshot is that only 76% (at most) of the annual return made on an investor's money accrues to him, with the rest going to the "helpers" that Buffett has written about. Meanwhile, the investor is paying his inexorable management fee of 2.5% on capital.

When you add up all those fees, Buffett thinks the super-rich would be better off investing like the rest of us non-Buffetts: in no-load, low-expense index funds.

The world's first billion-dollar private residence will be a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai.

Like many families with the means to do so, the Ambanis wanted to build a custom home. They consulted with architecture firms Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, the designers behind the Mandarin Oriental, based in Dallas and Los Angeles, respectively. Plans were then drawn up for what will be the world's largest and most expensive home: a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai with a cost nearing $2 billion, says Thomas Johnson, director of marketing at Hirsch Bedner Associates. The architects and designers are creating as they go, altering floor plans, design elements and concepts as the building is constructed.

Click below to see the concept art.

Mark Steyn has a great little bit on Obama's tendency to use naivety and ignorance as excuses for his screw-ups.

Nothing in Obama's resume suggests he's the man to remake America and heal the planet. Only last week, another of his pals bit the dust, convicted by a Chicago jury of 16 counts of this and that. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew," said the senator, in what's becoming a standard formulation. Likewise, this wasn't the Jeremiah Wright he knew. And these are guys he's known for 20 years.

Yet at the same time as he's being stunned by the corruption and anti-Americanism of those closest to him, Obama's convinced that just by jetting into Tehran and Pyongyang he can get to know America's enemies and persuade them to hew to the straight and narrow. No doubt if it all goes belly-up, and Iran winds up nuking Tel Aviv, President Obama will put on his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger face and announce solemnly that "this isn't the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I knew."

If Obama can't discern the character of his friends and spiritual advisers, is he really competent to negotiate with America's enemies?

Physician Richard Parker explains the irony of Ted Kennedy's reliance on our mostly-free healthcare market given his decades-long fight to eliminate it.

It was reported that Senator Kennedy chose his surgeon for this difficult operation after very careful research and consultation with his physicians in Boston. Using his free and independent judgment, Kennedy chose Dr. Allan Friedman, a surgeon renowned for his experience and expertise in the field of neuro-oncological surgery.

No government regulations restricted the Senator in this extremely important personal choice. Facing a life threatening illness, no bureaucrat forced the Senator to chose his surgeon nor hospital from a government “approved” list--a list not generated by Kennedy’s independent and free judgment, but by “public servants” who’s expertise is not Kennedy’s life, but the arbitrary and byzantine politics of “pull”, of favors owed and collected, of political pressure groups and the bitter reality of healthcare rationing. No, Kennedy was not forced to sacrifice his life, liberty nor property in the name of the so-called “greater public good.”

The surgeon he chose, Dr. Allan Friedman, has freely devoted his life to treating patients with neurological tumors. Dr. Friedman wasn’t coerced into medicine; his patient load is not presently rationed nor stipulated by bureaucrats. Dr. Friedman was still free to accept Senator Kennedy as his patient and was free to choose the best surgical approach for treating the Senator’s tumor. No bureaucrat stipulated how many patients per day, week, month or year Dr. Friedman may accept and treat during the long decades he spent perfecting his life-saving skill. Dr. Friedman is still relatively free to use his expert judgment in the face of the awesome responsibility he assumes with each patient he treats.

Ironically, however, if Senator Kennedy succeeds in his ambition of forcing a government financed (and therefore government controlled) healthcare system onto the American people, all these life altering and personal freedoms will vanish with the strokes of a few pens in Washington. This is the reality of any government enforced healthcare system—both patients and physicians will face a vast increase in taxation and the loss of additional property (fines) and liberty (imprisonment) if they violate the morass of arbitrary and contradictory regulations that will descend on a healthcare industry that is already all but crippled with the slow but steady creep of government controls over the past 50 years.

I'll be generous enough to hope that Kennedy's ongoing struggle will result in a reevaluation of his urge to nationalize our healthcare system.

(HT: GeekPress.)

Saw this yesterday, but I've been busy.

Researchers used cloned immune system cells to cure advanced skin cancer. As far as I can tell, no embryonic stem cells were used in the cloning process.

US doctors have for the first time successfully treated a skin cancer patient with cells cloned from his own immune system, a study released Wednesday showed.

The ground-breaking treatment for advanced melanoma, or skin cancer, led to a long remission for the patient and used his own cloned infection-fighting T-cells, said doctor Cassian Yee, the lead author of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Yee and his associates from the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle removed CD4+ T-cells, a type of white blood cell, from a 52-year-old man whose melanoma had spread to a groin lymph node and to one of his lungs.

The melanoma was already well advanced and in stage four.

The T-cells which specifically fight melanoma were modified and expanded in the laboratory and some five billion cells were then infused into the patient, who received no other kind of treatment.

Two months later no tumors were found during scans of the patient's organs. And he has been cancer free for two years, Yee said.

Amazing.