*Best Of*: July 2003 Archives

I've determined that I'm not a geek. You may think it's strange that I'm getting a PhD in artificial intelligence and still don't consider myself a geek, but let me explain.

I like technology, but I'm not enamored with it. I don't have a laptop, and I have no real desire to get one so I can blog from Starbucks. I have a PDA, but it's several years old and the batteries aren't even charged. My cell phone is a three-year-old Nokia that doesn't have a color display or digital camera, and can't download ringtones. I did build my own computer, but I hate fiddling with it. I know very little about Linux, and have no desire to install it on anything: not my PC, not my Xbox, not my PS2, not my microwave.

I liked Blade Runner and Snow Crash, but thought they were both overrated. I haven't read Fark in months (too long), and I haven't read Slashdot in over a year. Not since I started getting into blogs, anyway. Oh yeah, I do have a blog, but I don't think that qualifies me as a geek just by itself.

I do know that there are only 10 types of people in the world: those who know binary and those who don't. I don't play first-person shooters anymore (although I did write Quake Superheroes, and I'm using the Q2 engine for my PhD work), and I haven't liked a real-time strategy game since Age of Empires 2. And I hardly played that.

I don't download music. I don't use IRC. I don't have a network of any kind set up in my house. I've only been to a couple of LAN parties, and I got bored pretty quick. I did use an exclusive-or in the title of a recent post, however.

So what am I? I'm an engineer. Now, some engineers are geeks, and some geeks are engineers, but they aren't equivalent. The geeks I know revel in technology, but many of them have no real desire to understand it or create anything of their own. The engineers that create the technology the geeks adore are probably geeks themselves, but not all engineers fiddle with gadgets and gizmos.

I haven't quite pinned it down yet, but I think of myself as a philosopher-engineer. That's why I got into artificial intelligence; I want to understand the human mind, language, culture -- the building blocks of humanity. I considered going into psychology, but after taking several psych classes (undergraduate and graduate level) I realized that it's a very soft science, if it's science at all. I want to quantify intelligence, but psychologists just want to hypothesize endlessly.

I respect geeks, and I know a lot of them, but it's just not who I am. Sure, the toys are fun, but to me they're only a tool for studying the deeper issues of existence, and not an end unto themselves.

Bill Hobbs has a good piece on blogs becoming journalism rather than merely reforming journalism, and he makes some good points.

Now I believe that blogs will increasingly become journalism. Right now, most news-oriented blogs are punditry rather than reporting, though some of the better blogs do sometimes provide original reporting. I've done original reporting here, most often related to the state budget and tax debate over the last four years, digging out and reporting facts and data ahead of the mainstream media on many occasions. I suspect over time bloggers will increasingly add original reporting to their blogs to go with the large helping of punditry.

What's the big difference between punditry and reporting? Reporting on anything other than your own everyday activities takes time above and beyond what is required to merely type the first thousand words to pop into your head. Therefore, reporting takes money.

Before blogs can become journalism, someone is going to need to develop a profitable business model. Maybe Andrew Sullivan has done so, but I suspect people who want to read news are going to want to read a site with the quantity and diversity of information that can be found in major newspapers, and not simply what can be assembled by a single person, no matter how talented. Perhaps the Tech Central Station format paradigm offers more, but I don't think they have enough money to put reporters in the field, and they publish mostly punditry anyway.

So, while yes, I do agree that blogs have a great deal of potential, they face many of the same difficulties that all internet concepts face: how do you get the money to take the idea to the next level?

Update:
Check out the comments section of Bill's post to see his idea for a business model.

In the comments section of my "A Brief Defense of Suburbia" post, Jody writes several times and mentions his fear/certainty that a continuously expanding suburbia will lead to the "depletion" of natural resources and available land. However, his concept of depletion is an economic myth that's used by various dooms-dayers to manipulate the masses.

The following explanation can be applied to almost any non-renewable resource, such as land, oil, or diamonds. (Renewable resources, such as trees and animals, will obviously never be depleted. Yes, animals can become extinct, but that's not because they're "used up".) I am not an economist, but I play one on TV. If you'll note the title of this blog, I'm not a master of anything, but the following views on depletion are economic and logical fact.

The myth of depletion is simple to state: if we don't force people to reduce their consumption of resource X, eventually all the X will be gone. This is false. It is true that if there is a finite supply of X that it can eventually be consumed, but it is not true that it is necessary to force people to reduce consumption in order to prevent depletion.

Consider oil. As the readily available supply of oil dwindles, the price of oil will start to increase due to free-market principles of supply and demand. This increase in price will have many effects.

1) People will use less oil, because it's more expensive. Thus the mere increase in price will reduce consumption all by itself, without any need for government coercion.

2) Suppliers will start hoarding. As prices rise, suppliers will observe that their oil will be more valuable in the future than it is today, and so they will begin to hoard their supply for the future (with each supplier making the determination of when to hold and when to sell based on their own costs). If too many start withholding, then others will start to sell as the price gets even higher. There is no need for cooperation between suppliers (and in fact cooperation cartels are always bad in free markets). Suppliers will act to ensure that they are able to reap the benefits of future scarcity, and thus there will always be some supply remaining to be had at some price.

3) New sources will become economically viable. There's lots of oil everywhere, but most of it is too hard to get to and isn't worth pumping. For example, there's far more oil under the ocean than there is under the dry land -- unfortunately, except for the parts of the ocean right near shore it's very expensive to utilize. However, as prices rise, sources of oil that aren't worth drilling now will suddenly become profitable, thereby increasing the available supply.

These three factors together will ensure that humanity will never "run out" of oil, or any other non-renewable resource. What about land? Good question. Apparently, there's more than 70 sextillion stars out there, I'll bet some of them have some nice real estate. Maybe even oil!

We are a common law nation, ruled by a sovereign populace which decides for itself -- by millions of private actions and interactions -- where and how its liberty should be limited. Such common law is not, and cannot be, written down in full; rather, our legislators and judges seek to codify the commonly accepted principles of "just" and "unjust" that emerge spontaneously from our society.

No person or group sat down one day and decided that the best way to determine the facts when a person is accused of wrongdoing is to have the accused stand before a jury of their peers; instead, the concept of trial-by-jury came about over the course of hundreds of years, mutating, morphing, adjusting, until it was widely recognized as the fairest and most effective method for enforcing justice. Likewise with many of our society's critical building blocks: democratic elections; seperation of powers; judicial enforcement of contracts; judicial review of laws; private property rights; freedom of speech, religion, and assembly; freedom to keep and carry weapons; freedom of parents to raise their children without government interference. Many of these principles we take entirely for granted, but they are by no means universal. As Americans, the right for an individual to keep property and to have exclusive authority over its use is natural and ingrained, but where did the concept come from? Common law.

Our legislatures and courts are supposed to craft our laws with deference to the common law principles that are embodied first in our Constitution, and secondarily in the shifting opinions and actions of the population as a whole. That's why I believe many traffic regulations are unjust: if they are broken routinely by a majority of drivers, then that itself is an indication that the regulations are not in line with the will of the people. Laws that are held in contempt by the people are, under common law, unjust.

Sometimes the last two principles I mentioned are in conflict. Consider the difficulties facing the RIAA as it tries (ineffectually) to stem the tide of music sharing. They argue that when people trade music over the internet it costs them CD sales; on the other hand, music traders claim that they buy more music than they had previously, and that sharing on the net actually increases public awareness of many bands who would otherwise not be noticed. Either or both of these may be true, but neither touches on the crux of the matter. The music industry owns the copyrights of the music being traded, and as such they have sole authority to determine how that music is used and distributed. The public as a whole doesn't want to honor those copyrights, and the RIAA believes that these millions of people are criminals. Under current definitions, they are, but these millions of people form the foundation for the common law that governs our society.

Eventually, one side will lose. Society cannot tolerate the stress of such mass criminalization, especially if the RIAA begins enforcing its property rights through the judicial system. While the music industry is in the right as a matter of written law, society itself is the ultimate arbiter of how that law is written. Copyrights were instituted as a bargain between creators and society: society will enforce your exclusive rights to your intellectual property for a limited amount of time, and in return that property will enter the public domain after the copyright expires.

The system has served us well for quite a while, but technological changes may have generated such a shift that society no longer feels the bargain is fair and equitable. Copyright terms have been extended many times, and with the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 works are protected for the life of the author plus 75 years, or plus 95 years if the work was created for a corporation. (Since the law was created shortly before Mickey Mouse was destined to enter the public domain, it's often called "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act".) That's an incredibly long time, and it's hard to argue that such a long period is necessary to encourage creators to invest the time, money, and energy to required to develop new and innovative ideas. Would artists suddenly stop creating if their works were only protected for, say, 20 years? I doubt it.

Likewise, the internet has made it easier than ever to distribute intellectual property. Society reasons that if copying a TV show onto a video cassette is acceptable, why should copying a song onto a hard drive be any different? It's a rhetorical question, and the massive use of online file-sharing services demonstrates that a great number of people have reached the same conclusion.

This conflict has been brewing for several years, and may finally be coming to a head. Its final resolution won't come from a judge or legislature, even though the opening acts may well be played out in a courtroom or capitol building. Society as a whole will decide that copyright in its present state is valuable and equitable enough to keep around -- and will reflect that in its actions -- or copyright as we know it is doomed.

Personally, I suspect that the our current concept of intellectual property will be torn down and rebuilt anew. The form of that future bargain between artists and society will be determined over time.

Update:
Mark Aveyard points out that file sharing systems are already adapting to the lawsuits.

The UC Regents have decided to prohibit faculty members from engaging in sexual or romantic relationships with their students. Naturally, every department has it's own take on the new policy.

The astronomy faculty says they may have trouble handling their telescopes without student assistance, possibly hindering the discovery and exploration of new black holes. The biologists shouldn't have any difficulty with their bacteria-ridden microscopes, however.

As always, the electrical engineers are worried about their short circuits. Computer scientists are worried that the pigeonhole principle will lead to crowding as the number of available holes declines, but they've always got tail-recursion to fall back on.

The paleontologists don't mind, since they tend to prefer old bones anyway. The physics department frets that it may have to stop assuming there's no friction when solving rigid body problems, but the chemists say they've got some fluid in their testtubes that might help.

The economists don't care, since they'll still end up paying. The historians say they've never noticed the issue, and the English department doesn't think it's very penetrating. The cunning linguists are still tongue-tied.

The Psychology department wants to put the students through more tightly controlled experiments before being bound by the new policy. Pediatrics obviously objects, as do the oral biologists.

Update:
Thanks for the link, Fred K. As I promised, you have exclusive linking rights to this post -- no one else is allowed to link to it. To you new visitors: most of what I write isn't humor, but check it out. And hey, leave a comment!

Best of the Web Today points to a Washington Times article which indicates that the Saudi royal family is starting to fire and ban jihad-loving, al Qaeda-sympathizing Wahhabi clerics in the wake of the al Qaeda suicide bombings in Riyadh two months ago.

I suppose this is good news, but wouldn't it be even better if there was some hint of actual religious freedom, rather than just a switch to state religious tyranny that's more to our liking? After all, American approval of friendly dictators is supposely one of the Arab street's prime grievances against us. Taranto looks at these moves as "halting steps toward joining the civilized world", but in the civilized world the government doesn't tell you what is and is not accepted religious doctrine.

So yes, I'm glad that our staunch allies in Saudi Arabia are firing the most anti-American clerics, but not as glad as I'd be if the Saudi government fired all the clerics and took their mitts out of the religion business entirely. Iraq, even under Saddam Hussein, has had one of the most religiously free governments in the region, and I hope now that a truly free nation is being established there will be some concrete moves away from state-sponsored/-mandated Islam.

Three months ago, Time Magazine ran an excellent interview with Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Although I'm sure that many non-Christians cringe when they read about Christian missionaries lining up by the hundreds to spread the gospel to Arab Muslims, this interview might give you a new perspective.

"No one is going to flip a switch and make Iraq a Christian nation. America is not a Christian nation; it's a mission field. Conversion can't come at the point of a gun. I think this is a true test, in a post-modern, post Cold War age, of how America is going to establish a model for the recovery of freedom. Religious freedom has to be at the center and foundation of that freedom. If Iraq were to be established in a way that religious freedom was honored, it would stand out from its neighbors in the area."

"It would be an appalling tragedy if America were to lead this coalition and send young American men and women into battle, to expend such military effort, to then leave in place a regime that would lack respect for religious liberty. I think one of the major Christian concerns, and one of my personal concerns, is to see religious liberty, religious freedom," take a prominent position in "the vision of freedom that America holds up to the world."

Bill Hobbs and Donald Sensing both link to this Charles Krauthammer piece which explains liberals' willingness to use force in Liberia but not in Iraq thusly:

What is it that makes liberals like Dean, preening their humanitarianism, so antiwar in Iraq and so pro-intervention in Liberia? ...

They all had a claim on the American conscience. What then was the real difference between, say, Haiti and Gulf War I, and between Liberia and Gulf War II? The Persian Gulf has deep strategic significance for the United States; Haiti and Liberia do not. In both Gulf wars, critical American national interests were being defended and advanced. Yet it is precisely these interventions that liberals opposed.

The only conclusion one can draw is that for liberal Democrats, America's strategic interests are not just an irrelevance, but a deterrent to intervention. This is a perversity born of moral vanity. For liberals, foreign policy is social work. National interest - i.e., national selfishness - is a taint. The only justified interventions, therefore, are those which are morally pristine, namely, those which are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.

Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States.

Bill and Donald both seem to imply that liberals' aversion to using force is based on a belief that America is bad. Maybe I'm putting words in Bill's mouth, but Donald says directly:

I think it is the Left's belief, no longer subject to empirical analysis, that America is bad for the world. Actions, whether military or not, that enhance America's national self interests are therefore anathema. If old "Engine Charlie" Wilson's motto was, "What is good for General Motors is good for America," the Left's motto runs perversely: "What is good for America is bad for the world." ...

In their mind, America is an imperialist nation, imperialist in many forms - economic, cultural, linguistic and especially militarily. If America's gross transgressions are to be corrected, then America's national power must be turned away from promoting America's national interests. Hence, America's armed forces can be used only for reasons that do not serve its interests.

I don't dispute that some liberals view America this way, but I don't think that most do. Hey, I'm as cynical as the next guy, but Charles Krauthammer has a better analogy when he compares foreign policy to social work. I don't think that most liberals want to hurt America; rather, they think that our nation should act more like a world judge or referee rather than a participant. We have the most power, and we should use it to enforce fairness, not to promote our own interests.

The backbone of liberal ideology is arrogance and elitism, and this perspective on foreign policy follows directly (and strikes me as very European). America should act as the third world's daddy, because we're smarter, richer, and just better in general. It's not fair for us to use our power to our own advantage, and as a judge would we should recuse ourselves from any situation that presents us with a "conflict of interest", such as Iraq. On the other hand, we're allowed to intervene in Liberia precisely because we have nothing to gain; we can be neutral and fair and calm the squabbling children.

My main toilet was 100% clogged for about 3 days. I tried plunging it, but to no avail. I let the water in the bowl sit for a whole day and it didn't drain a single inch. I went to the store to buy Drano, but the back of the bottle says that it's not for use in toilets. The problem with using Drano in toilets is that the Drano can't get to the clog due to the trap design; I knew that if I could find a way to deliver the Drano to the clog, I'd be home free.

Note the winding path that the water has to follow when the toilet is flushed.

What to do? I thought of 3 options:
1. Pour in lots of Drano. If I could fill the bowl with Drano it would overflow into the trap below. This would probably take quite a bit of Drano, and I only bought one bottle.
2. Use a length of rubber hose to get the Drano through the trap. By pushing the hose down into the drain of the toilet and through the trap, I would be able to then pour the Drano down directly into the pipes. I expect that this would have worked quite handily, but I didn't have a suitable hose.
3. Apply the one bottle of Drano that I already had, and then plunge it down to the clog. I knew this would be the easiest method, but also the most dangerous. Drano's active ingredient is sodium hydroxide and it has a pH of around 13; if you've got enough to fill a bathtub, you can dissolve a whole human body in a few hours and it'll go right down the drain.

I decided to go with option 3. Normally when you plunge a toilet you want to try to pull the clog towards you (i.e., you use more force pulling the plunger up than pushing it down), but since I wanted to move the Drano to the trap I did the opposite. Insert Drano; plunge plunge plunge. Within a few minutes, the drain was clear! Huzzah!

As an added bonus, my toilet was incredibly clean from all the Drano sloshing around inside. In the future, I may use Drano to clean all my hard surfaces.

I'm Michael, not Mike. Oh sure, some people call me Mike; most of the time I don't even notice, although I really don't like the sound of it. In my head, to myself, I'm always Michael.

Names have power. The power to name something is the power to define its very essence. Consider all the energy that goes into labelling different philosophies and ideas: it's not "discrimination", it's "affirmative action"; it's not "anti-life" vs. "anti-choice", it's "pro-choice" vs. "pro-life"; it's not "terrorist", it's "militant". When it comes to people, names in our American culture don't carry the same direct denotations that they have historically, but even still most people know what their name means at its root. Michael means "Who is like God?" Good question.

Knowing someone's name gives you a certain intimacy, and a certain sense of power. You know their name, and you know them. You aren't strangers anymore, you're acquaintances. You may pass by hundreds, even thousands of unknown faces on the street, but the next time the two of you meet there will be at least a nod or smile of recognition.

At times, this power makes me a bit uncomfortable. When I approach a girl and try to strike up a conversation, I never know if I should get her name at the beginning or at the end. Trying at the beginning seems awkward to me. Hi, I'm Michael, what's your name? It's much easier and more natural for me to start a conversation by talking about the place we're at, or whatever is going on around us. Plus, asking a girl's name at the outset is offensive to me: an overly intimate act, a forceful attempt to transform a stranger into an acquaintance without so much as a by-your-leave. Exchanging names isn't an incredibly significant event, but imposing that expectation on a stranger feels like a not-quite-benign form of emotional rape.

So my normal strategy is to engage the conversation using circumstantial observations and questions. Make a few wry remarks, share a laugh or two, and then once the conversation starts to drift I introduce myself and ask for a name in return. Once the Other lets you in a little through conversation, sharing names is part of the natural progression.

Most of my friends and acquaintances don't know my middle name. There's nothing embarrassing about it; it's a fine name. Sometimes people ask and I demur, I try to change the subject and avoid telling them. Why? I don't exactly know, but there's some inkling inside me that tells me to hold something back. Don't let anyone know too much about you, it says. The subject rarely comes up (because who really cares about middle names, anyway?), but even with life-long friends I get uncomfortable at the thought of revealing that corner of my identity. It's meaningless, useless, mere trivia -- but it's mine.

I've written before about the total depravity of mankind, and so the question naturally arises: if humans are inherently and thoroughly depraved, why is there good in the world? That's a good question, and the answer is the existence of what is called "common grace".

"Grace", in a theological sense, refers to a favor or blessing that God bestows on us and that we do not deserve and have not earned. Most often, Christians talk about "saving grace" -- that is, the grace that God shows us through Jesus Christ that allows us to be forgiven for our evil acts. We do not earn forgiveness by doing good things to "balance" out our evil; rather, God forgives us freely by his grace. Saving grace is available to all mankind, but some people do not accept it, and thus do not reap the benefits of God's benevolence.

However, there is another type of grace that God gives to all humanity called "common grace", and this grace is the root cause of the goodness that we can see in ourselves and in the world around us. Common grace is manifested in many ways; some are very simple and direct, while others are more subtle. The most obvious example of common grace is creation itself; if you acknowledge the existence of God, then no matter how you believe he brought the universe into being, the fact that he did so at all is a result of his common grace. Likewise, the physical laws of nature that govern our universe are both an effect of common grace (because of creation), and the proximate cause of many forms of common grace that we experience. The earth provides us all, believer and unbeliever alike, with food, clothing, shelter, and everything else that makes life possible. As with saving grace, some people may choose to reject common grace (e.g., by taking their own life). Most people, however, accept God's common grace without a conscious thought of its origin or an acknowledgement of its existence.

God created the church (and local churches individually) as his instrument for spreading saving grace to humanity. God uses churches to reach people with his saving grace. In a similar manner, God instituted governments to administer much of his common grace. Some governments are corrupt and ineffectual (as are some churches), but those that function properly bring the benefits of God's common grace to their people: peace, safety, prosperity, productivity, liberty.

Romans 13:1-7
1. Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

A ruler or government fulfills God's purpose when it punishes those who do evil and commends those who do good. Although every government I can think of extends itself beyond this simple mandate, these dual responsibilities should form the foundation for a just and proper nation. Consider also that the first few verses give governments considerable discretion in administrative matters; Paul was writing to Christians living under a rather oppressive Roman empire, and we should step very carefully when we consider overthrowing an authority that God has set up. (Nevertheless, taken in context I believe it's clear that when a government ceases to implement God's common grace it loses its legitimacy, but that's a discussion for another day.)

On the 4th of July, the day we celebrate the founding of these United States of America, it's important to be thankful for the grace that God has shown us by allowing us to live in the freest and most prosperous nation that has ever existed on the face of the earth. Not one of us has earned this privilege, and most of us inherited it through the circumstances of our birth. It is by God's grace that we live freely, speak freely, worship (or not) freely, assemble together freely, hold property securely, and pursue happiness with fewer restaints and more opportunity than any people ever have before us.

In Luke 12:48 Jesus says, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." We in America have been given a great deal; we have not earned it, but it was given to us freely by God because of his grace. God expects us to use our freedom and power wisely, justly, and generously as an instrument of his common grace.

I don't understand the concept of "civil unions". Supposedly they're meant as a compromise relationship that would allow gays to get the benefits of marriage without using the same name, right?

Well what's to prevent me from civilly unioning with my roommate to get free health coverage from his work and to save money on taxes? Or, for that matter, what's to keep me from unioning with a family member or a business partner for similar financial reasons? Once the financial transaction in question is completed, we could simply dissolve the union, thereby freeing ourselves to form other unions as it became advantageous.

Would civil unions convey legal spousal privilege? If so, then criminals could simply union to avoid testifying against each other. Likewise, such privilege could be used by parents unioning with their children to cover sexual abuse. The list of potential problems seems endless to me, and I don't see any clear criteria that could be used to draw a line.

It would certainly be absurd to require two people to somehow prove that they're gay before allowing them to enter a "civil union". Most states allow for minors to get married with their parents' permission, and so I see no reason to think that children would not be allowed to enter into civil unions, possibly even without parental consent. If a girl can get an abortion without parental notification, then why can't she get civilly unioned? Similarly, parents are not allowed to marry their children, but does a civil union necessarily require or expect there to be sexual activity between the two partners? If not, then there's no reason not to allow parents to union with their kids.

The complications go on and on, and any inclusions or exclusions will end up being entirely arbitrary. The well-defined structure of marriage has been the building block of civilization for all of known history; creating an institution of "civil union" would necessarily undermine that order. Proponents may or may not admit it, but I think that undermining the current social fabric is one of their main intentions.