alphavictim

Missing public service?

2008-03-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

There's a porta-potty out front of the construction site down the road from my suburban house.

In the past few days, I've seen the mailman, a UPS driver, a couple of bike riders and a dog walker stop to use it.

Not sure how common this is...but public toilets in suburbia sure would save America a lot of wasted time and gas...as would small convenience stores.

Czechoslovak Legions in Russia...what a ride!

2008-01-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

The story of this outfit would make quite a movie.

Wikipedia has a nice article about them here.

They were even a reason for one of America's conveniently forgotten wars...

Lack of content

2007-12-09T22:22:00.000-08:00

It may be ironic for someone who only blogged once last month to say this, but:

I don't have a big, new flat screen TV because...there just aren't enough good movies being put out to justify the purchase.

What a bad year it has been for movies.

Maybe the worst.year.ever...craptastic.

The first trillion dollar company

2007-11-04T22:19:00.000-08:00

And it's Chinese.

*sigh*

China creep

2007-10-20T13:20:00.000-07:00

I randomly selected a few countries and compared where their imports came from in 2001 and in 2006. The 2001 numbers came from this old version of the CIA World Factbook. The 2006 numbers came from the current factbook.

In some cases, China's share of imports came from nothing in 2001. America's share usually drops, too. This is just over a period of 5 years. Growth of imports masks the full story, it is possible that American and EU revenues from exports to these countries stayed the same or even grew, but...China's revenue grew much faster.

Imports:

Iran

$17.2 billion (f.o.b., 2001 est.)
Germany 11%, Italy 8.3%, China 6.1%, Japan 5.3%, UAE 5% (1999)

$45.48 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.)
Germany 12%, China 10.5%, UAE 9.4%, South Korea 6.2%, France 5.6%, Italy 5.4%, Russia 4.5% (2006)

Canada

$238.3 billion (f.o.b., 2001 est.)
US 74%, EU 9%, Japan 3% (2000)

$353.2 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.)
US 55.1%, China 8.7%, Mexico 4% (2006)

Brazil

$57.7 billion (f.o.b., 2001)
US 23.2%, Argentina 11.2%, Germany 8.7%, Japan 5.5%, Italy 3.9% (2001)

$91.4 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.)
US 20.5%, Argentina 8.2%, China 7.9%, Germany 7.5% (2006)

South Africa

$28.1 billion (f.o.b., 2001 est.)
EU 41%, US 11.4%, Saudi Arabia 7.3%, Japan 7% (2001 est.)

$61.53 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.)
Germany 12.6%, China 10%, US 7.6%, Japan 6.6%, Saudi Arabia 5.3%, UK 5% (2006)

Afghanistan not going so well either?

2007-10-16T02:34:00.000-07:00

This month marks the start of America's seventh year in Afghanistan.

Coalition forces killed in Afghanistan this calendar year already exceed the number killed last year.

Four years of increasing deaths does not seem to be a positive trend.

Another political candidate Catch-22

2007-10-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

Crappy news outlet publishes anonymous charge against a political candidate.

If the candidate ignores the charge, it means they're "guilty," and through repetition, the charge becomes "fact."

If they do respond to the charge, then the big news outfits that wouldn't print the original charge declare that the candidate's response is news and spread the original charge much wider.

The "respectable" press become unpaid enforcement thugs for the screaming tabloid press.

The population of the United States in 1776 was...

2007-10-03T00:57:00.000-07:00

2,527,460

Compared to today's states, it would rank as the 34th most populous, below Arkansas and above Utah.

The U.S. population has grown around 140 times larger, yet we're still doing well.

Talk about extensible.

Nice job, Founding Fathers.

Woodrow Wilson's request for war

2007-09-30T04:30:00.000-07:00

In a speech before both houses of Congress, delivered April 2nd, 1917, Woodrow Wilson requested a declaration of war:

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval.

It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rules and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools.

Unhappy day are here again?

Juan Williams' previous Bush interview

2007-09-26T23:07:00.000-07:00

Juan Williams interviewed Bush back in January, right at the start of the surge.

I can't find any mention of al Anbar province in it. The goal of the surge was to stabilize Baghdad.

One interesting question and answer from it:

MR. WILLIAMS: All right. You know, you mentioned timetables. NPR has a reporter embedded with the Minnesota National Guard in Iraq, and one of the soldiers there asked the question – says, my name is Specialist Ryan Schmidt (sp) from Forest Lake, Minnesota, and my question for you, Mr. President, is what if your plan for a troop surge to Baghdad does not work?" What do you think?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I would say to Ryan, I put it in place on the advice of a lot of smart people, particularly the military people who think it will work, and let us go into this aspect of the Iraqi strategy feeling it will work. But I will also assure Ryan that we're constantly adjusting to conditions on the ground.

The politics of home schooling

2007-09-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

While browsing for kid's books online, I found out Bob Jones University is a leading supplier of textbooks for home schoolers. Bible Truths K4 Teacher's Picture Packet (color) is a pretty standard offering.

They also offer advise for home schoolers, which is how I found the link to the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Wow, are they ever organized on the political front!

Note the list of national and state legislation on the right (complete with an up or down recommendation on whether to support or oppose each bill).

A sample - Massachusetts House Bill 399: Mandatory Full-Day Kindergarten:

HSLDA's Position:
Oppose.

Action Requested:
Contact as many members of the Joint Committee on Education as possible and ask them to oppose this legislation. You do not have to identify yourself as a homeschooler, as House Bill 399 affects all families with young children.

In your own words, convey the message: “Please vote against House Bill 399. This bill is unnecessary. It restricts parental choice and wastes taxpayer money.”

Last shot presidential candidates

2007-09-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

Of the leading presidential candidates, Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Giuliani, Thompson, Romney and McCain, I think only Obama has a chance of running again in 2012 if he loses next year.

Call it the Bob Dole try.

Age and a shifting political climate pretty much guarantee we won't be seeing these candidates running again.

Who will take their place?

Eliot Spitzer seems like a lock to challenge Obama in 2016(2016? Yikes!) if Hillary wins two.

On the Republican side...hmmm?

Military expenditures as a percent of GDP

2007-09-14T04:17:00.000-07:00

1. Oman - 11.4%
2. Qatar - 10.0%
3. Saudi Arabia - 10.o%
4. Iraq - 8.60%
5. Jordan - 8.60%
6. Israel - 7.30%
12. Syria - 5.90%
16. Kuwait - 5.30%
17. Turkey - 5.30%

66. Iran - 2.50%

From the C.I.A.

Iceland - 0.00%

Save Firefly...and Iraq!

2007-09-11T03:47:00.000-07:00

While watching David Patraeus testifying before Congress today, I was reminded of the efforts to save the show Firefly from cancellation.

Dear Sir,

This petition is directed to the management of the Fox television broadcasting company regarding their new show “Firefly” currently shown at 7.00 pm on Fridays (http://www.fox.com/firefly).

Due to apparently low Nielsen ratings for the first three shows broadcast a number of rumours are circulating on the internet and conventional media that the show might be cancelled before the end of the first season.

We, the undersigned, wish to show our eagerness for the show to be given a chance to prove itself. The creative force behind the show, Joss Whedon, has already proved his talent for sophisticated genre shows with “Angel” and the phenomenally successful “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” now in its seventh season. Yet both of these shows took time to settle into their formats before fans were attracted to them in significant numbers...

Talented leader with past successes, plot that needs more time to unfold, etc.

Firefly fans couldn't save the show from cancellation, but they did help its producers raise enough money for a feature move.

I think Patraeus will get similar results.

F.Y. 2008 U.S. research budget: Cancer vs I.E.D.s

2007-09-08T15:40:00.000-07:00

Americans expected to die from cancer this year = 559,650.

Funding for fighting cancer next fiscal year = $4.7 billion.

Americans expected to die from I.E.D. attacks this year = about 700.

Funding for fighting I.E.D.s next fiscal year = $4.0 billion.

*sigh*

Fred Thompson's whole campaign in 2:28

2007-09-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

Success in al Anbar! - January 27, 2006

2007-09-06T02:51:00.000-07:00

Iraqi tribes in Anbar arrest 270 Arab and foreign al-Qaeda members!

The Anbar tribes’ campaign to rid the province of Zarqawi’s terror organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq is in its 2nd day and so far, 270 Arab and foreign intruders have been arrested.

[…]Usama Jad’aan, the leader of Karabila tribes in Qaim told al-Hayat that “the operation will continue to eliminate terror elements according to a quality plan” and added “270 Arab and foreign intruders have been arrested, in addition to some Iraqis who were providing them shelter”.

Sheikh Jad’aan added “the operation is conducted in coordination between the tribes and the minister of defense Sa’doun al-Dulaimi and since we arrested hundreds of terrorists, I don’t expect the operation to take a lot of time”.

From Iraq the Model.

Bush shouldn't manage our withdrawal from Iraq...

2007-08-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

Because he has no reason to do it the right way...and plenty of reasons to do it wrong way.

Does that mean we should keep most of our troops in Iraq until someone else is in charge of the military?

Someone who doesn't need to have our withdrawal be followed quickly by civil war and genocide to be proven right?

Maybe.

I guess this is what a quagmire looks like.

Side effects may include...compulsive gambling?

2007-08-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

I caught a TV commercial last night for a drug that treats "Restless Leg Syndrome." Normally I surf to another channel during commercials, but I have a perverse interest in the side effects of drugs and how the makers handle listing them in an ad (If a drug ad claims to cure a specific disease, the law requires them to list the side effects, too).

Up until now, explosive diarrhea and priapism have been my favs.

I thought I'd misheard the ad when sex addiction and compulsive gambling were listed as possible side effects for the RLS drug...but, no, it's real.

Wow.

A new champion.

1986: Kennedy v. Scalia

2007-08-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

The more things change...

I was reading over the transcript of Anton Scalia's Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing that took place on August 5-6, 1986 and the exchange between Edward Kennedy and Scalia struck me as...very timely.

Here's some excepts from this .pdf file:

The CHAIRMAN. The distinguished Senator from Massachusetts.

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Our ranking Member, Senator Biden, is currently on the floor with the introduction of legislation dealing with drug regulation, and he will be over here very shortly.

But I will proceed, if I might. Judge Scalia, if you were confirmed, do you expect to overrule the Roe v. Wade?

Judge SCALIA. Excuse me?

Senator KENNEDY. DO you expect to overrule the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision if you are confirmed?

Judge SCALIA. Senator, I do not think it would be proper for me to answer that question.

The CHAIRMAN. I agree with you. I do not think it is proper to ask any question that he has to act on or may have to act on.

Judge SCALIA. I mean, if I can say why. Let us assume that I have people arguing before me to do it or not to do it. I think it is quite a thing to be arguing to somebody who you know has made a representation in the course of his confirmation hearings, and that is, by way of condition to his being confirmed, that he will do this or do that. I think I would be in a very bad position to adjudicate the case without being accused of having a less than impartial view of the matter.

Senator KENNEDY. There have been at least some reports that that was one of the considerations in your nomination. There are a lot of other, clearly, strengths which you bring to your own qualifications. But I am interested in what precedence you put on that decision being on the lawbooks. I am interested in your own concept in stare decisis. Do you believe in it? What is it going to take to overrule an existing Supreme Court decision?

-----

Senator KENNEDY. YOU had in an area that this committee is interested in, and that is the question of executive privilege, being able to obtain certain documents.

I noticed in your exchange with Senator Muskie you were talking about this time they were talking about the Nixon case. And Senator Muskie concluded in his question, then, in your judgment, the right of the Congress to military and diplomatic secrets stand at a lower level than the right of the President to withhold those secrets, as a question And you said "No, sir." And then you continued along, "I don't mean to denigrate the congressional' I will include it all in the record, Mr. Chairman, if I may, that statement.

[Not available at press time.]

Senator KENNEDY [reading]:

I don't mean to denigrate the congressional power. They both, the Congress and the Executive have the right to assert their prerogatives. When it comes to an impasse, the Congress has means at its disposal to have its will prevail. The means are indicated in my testimony. The most effective is the withholding of funds from the Executive. The refusal to confirm Presidential nominees was also used several times under President Nixon, if I recall, to elicit information which had been previously denied. The Senate simply would not confirm nominees until the information was turned over.

I wonder if you still affirm that wonderful judicious statement and comment that is based upon all the excellent reviews that have been given to you? I imagine you still want to hold to that?

Judge SCALIA. It is true, Senator. How can I withdraw from it?

Senator KENNEDY. I do not know whether I should ask you whether you want to expand on that or not, whether I--

Judge SCALIA. It is one of the means that the Congress has at its disposal.

-----

Senator KENNEDY. In another area, Judge Scalia, this is on the questions of the national security and individual rights. We have gone through a rather important period in past history, in the early seventies, where we were trying to balance national security interests against the first amendment, and we have seen— recent history has taught us to scrutinize the claims of the executive branch in the possibility of inhibiting free speech and association of press and right of dissent under the names of national security.

And I just was interested in hearing your own attitude how you as an individual viewed their role, whether you view the role as an umpire in our federal system with a competing first amendment— between the first amendment and national security claims, or are you going to give the complete basic and overwhelming presumption to those who make the claim, or are you going to examine in some detail the background for such a claim, or how you will approach the issue generally?

Judge SCALIA. Well, I will certainly approach it with an awareness of the importance of both of the elements that are in contention there, of the first amendment as of normal importance in the
ability of the people to speak, to learn and, on the other hand, the national security interest is often of great importance.

That is the worst problem about being a judge. It is never something on one side. I mean you can be criticized for coming out against the first amendment, and one never hears what is on the other side of that case. There is always some important interest on the other side or it would not be a case.

I cannot be any more specific in response to your question except to say that I am seriously interested in both of the principles, both of the concerns that arise in those cases. I am aware of the importance of the first amendment, and will give it the full weight that the Constitution accords it.

Senator KENNEDY. The reason I bring that up is because when it was alleged in charge for national security reasons, we found the gross abuse of all these individual rights and preassembly during another period, the early period of the 1970's where we had extensive unauthorized unconstitutional wiretapping, of mass surveillance, questions of first amendment rights.

I hear my time is up. I thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

A U.S. combat soldier killed...in Basra?

2007-08-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

The first U.S. fatality in Iraq this month was killed in Basra, the southern oil port city under British control. The soldier's unit, the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), is based at LSA Anaconda, about 70 miles north of Baghdad.

This seems quite odd, only two other U.S. fatalities have occured in Basra over the last year, and they were non-combat related deaths at Camp Bucca.

Just bad luck, or are U.S. combat troops starting to fill in for the soon to depart British troops now?

Order of precedence - America's seating chart

2007-07-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

The order of precedence is the official government list of the social rank of various current and former U.S. government officials, foreign dignitaries and, curiously, cardinals and archbishops, put out by the office of the President. There seems to be some slight disagreements in ranks between the various copies of the list I found because they do or don't include certain people, like spouses, but the top usually goes:

President of the United States
Vice-president of the United States
Governor (in own state)
Mayor (in own city)
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Chief Justice of the United States
Former Presidents of the United States
American Ambassadors (at Post)
Secretary of State
Secretary General of the United Nations
Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Foreign Powers accredited to the United States (in order of the presentation of their credentials)
Widows of former Presidents of the United States
Ministers of Foreign Powers accredited to the United States
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court
Retired Chief Justices
Retired Associate Justices of the Supreme Court
Members of the Cabinet
President Pro Tempore of the Senate
Senators (according to length of continuous service)
Governors (when outside own state)
Former Vice Presidents
Members of House of Representatives (according to length of continuous service

Socially, at least, Hillary Clinton outranks all other Senators when attending a function with Bill.

Retired military officials seem to retain quite a high social ranking. Retired 4-star Generals and Admirals rank directly below active duty officers of the same rank and above active duty 3-stars.

State Governors are ranked by the order of their state's admission to the union, but Senators and members of Congress are ranked by personal senority.

Wikipedia has a nice (but incomplete) order of precedence page that shows which retired officials and widows are still around, plus how long each member of Congress has held office here.

I couldn't find where ordinary American citizens rank socially...

Partisan politics and the 10-point must system

2007-07-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

Boxing judges use what's called the 10-point must system to score fights. Each round, a boxing judge has to award 10 points to the fighter they think won, then score the fighter that they think lost the round a number less than 10. The worse they did, the lower the number (a tie is scored 10-10).

It's hard to find any non-partisan political commentary these days. Pundits will always claim their side "won" an issue, no matter what the facts say...they always give their side a 10.

What's important is how they "score" the other side.

Guano: Oil of the 1800s

2007-07-19T01:40:00.000-07:00

Guano, though no saint, works many miracles
-- Peruvian proverb

One of the stranger U.S. laws on the books is Guano Islands Act of 1858. Guano (dried bird poop) became a much-prized commodity to farmers around the world in the 1840s due to the efforts of some clever businessmen from Peru, Britain and France. Guano, a natural fertilizer, greatly increased the crop yield of farmland.

Guano accumulates in deposits hundreds of feet thick on oceanic islands with little rainfall and large fisheries nearby. Fairly easy to "mine" and ship, with the added bonus of being nearly odorless, the huge income its export generated for Peru and her trading partners drove explorer/entrepreneurs on a mad search of the oceans to find their own guano islands. Budding American guano merchants like W.R. Grace and Alfred G. Benson enlisted the aid of Congress, the act allowed the U.S. Navy to defend any guano islands discovered claimed by Americans.

The guano trade was quite profitable until the early 20th century, when the invention of chemical fertilizers largely killed the demand for this dwindling commodity. Or did the dwindling supply of guano (the mining process tended to kill off the birds that produced it) fuel the development of chemical fertilizers?

Some historians feel the Guano Islands Act played a part in turning America into an international economic and military actor after the conclusion of the Civil War.

A few of the more famous islands claimed by America during this time were Midway and Howland.

The Iraq War and the Ruhr Crisis

2007-07-13T00:03:00.000-07:00

When supporters of the Iraq War or those who want America to attack Iran want to bolster their position, they frequently cite British and French appeasement of Hitler in the run up to WWII. Not only is this a bizarre analogy to make when America has already been at war for almost six year now, but it misses one very important but largely forgotten pre-WWII incident:

The Ruhr Crisis.

Following WWI, Germany struggled to make its reparation payments imposed on it by the Treaty of Versailles. France thought Germany was wealthy enough to make the payments and also thought they might be secretly hoarding resources to rebuild its military with. Britain was busy elsewhere at the time and tried to delay action on the repayment issue. But, on January 11, 1923, using the excuse of a delayed shipment of telephone poles, France, along with Belgium, invaded the Ruhr Valley, home of Germany's coal and steel industries.

The French didn't find any secret military stashes, and efforts to directly extract reparations proved to be disastrous. Strikes by the coal, steel and rail workers of the occupied Ruhr region slowed the region's output to near zero. The German government supported the strikers with payments in cash that they simply printed and sent, which led to hyperinflation. A series of insurgent attacks further destabilized the region and the German government, which led to several coup attempts, including the Nazi's failed Beer Hall Putsch.

The Ruhr Crisis was ended by the Dawes Plan in Spetember of 1924. It called for France and Belgium to withdraw their troops, Germany to renew its reparation payments with the help of an eased payment schedule, foreign loans, new taxes and an allied reorganized central bank.

Less than a decde later, the spectre of the Ruhr Crisis haunted Britain and France during the rise of German military strength and aggression under Hitler and played its part in their decision not to engage Germany militarily.

I think the occupation of Iraq may prove to be America's Ruhr Crisis. Once we finally withdraw from Iraq, it's doubtful that America will be willing invade another Middle Eastern country for decades to come.

Selected FY2008 Defense expenditures

2007-07-07T01:24:00.000-07:00

I've been looking over H.R. 1585, the House's version of the next fiscal year's (starts Oct 1, 2007) Defense budget. It has to be agreed to by the Senate, but I doubt the numbers will change much.

It seems to me that the Navy and the Air Force are getting rather large slices of the Procurement and R & D pies, considering the wars we're currently fighting and expect to be fighting in the future:

Procurement (in billions):

$23.4 Army
$36.8 Navy + Marines
$33.6 Air Force
$ 3.5 Defense-wide
$ 1.1 National Guard and Reserve

$98.4 Total

R & D (in billions):

$10.0 Army
$17.3 Navy + Marines
$25.7 Air Force
$20.1 Defense-wide

$73.1 Total

Does the Navy really need $15 billion worth of new ships next year when it is already larger than the next 17 biggest navies...and they are all our allies?

It also seems like the monies for Iraq and Afghanistan are finally being included in the regular Defense budget instead of being funded through "emergency" funding bills.

Interesting to note that if this bill passes, Congress will lose the ability to use Iraq funding as any kind of leverage as this bill provides money for the war through September 30, 2008.

The Senate begins their debate on this bill Monday, so if you wanted to let your senators know how you feel about this bill...now is the time.

Anyho0, here are the Procurement and R&D budgets by service, plus the upcoming fiscal year's budget for maintenance and operations for Iraq and Afghanistan:

Subtitle A--Authorization of Appropriations

SEC. 101. ARMY.

Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for procurement for the Army as follows:

(1) For aircraft, $3,928,139,000.

(2) For missiles, $2,114,902,000.

(3) For weapons and tracked combat vehicles, $3,311,117,000.

(4) For ammunition, $2,238,176,000.

(5) For other procurement, $11,465,456,000.

(6) For the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund, $500,000,000.

SEC. 102. NAVY AND MARINE CORPS.

(a) Navy- Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for procurement for the Navy as follows:

(1) For aircraft, $12,750,767,000.

(2) For weapons, including missiles and torpedoes, $3,058,387,000.

(3) For shipbuilding and conversion, $15,744,120,000.

(4) For other procurement, $5,443,612,000.

(b) Marine Corps- Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for procurement for the Marine Corps in the amount of $2,580,257,000.

(c) Navy and Marine Corps Ammunition- Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for procurement of ammunition for the Navy and the Marine Corps in the amount of $1,060,484,000.

SEC. 103. AIR FORCE.

Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for procurement for the Air Force as follows:

(1) For aircraft, $12,356,270,000.

(2) For ammunition, $868,917,000.

(3) For missiles, $5,138,002,000.

(4) For other procurement, $15,441,762,000.

SEC. 104. DEFENSE-WIDE ACTIVITIES.

Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for Defense-wide procurement in the amount of $3,537,834,000.

SEC. 105. NATIONAL GUARD AND RESERVE EQUIPMENT.

Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for the procurement of aircraft, missiles, wheeled and tracked combat vehicles, tactical wheeled vehicles, ammunition, other weapons, and other procurement for the reserve components of the Armed Forces in the amount of $1,131,850,000.

SEC. 201. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for the use of the Department of Defense for research, development, test, and evaluation as follows:

(1) For the Army, $10,082,498,000.

(2) For the Navy, $17,333,601,000.

(3) For the Air Force, $25,738,960,000.

(4) For Defense-wide activities, $20,141,264,000, of which $180,264,000 is authorized for the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation.

TITLE CC--AUTHORIZATION OF ADDITIONAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM AND OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

SEC. 1508. OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE.

Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2008 for the use of the Armed Forces for expenses, not otherwise provided for, for operation and maintenance, in amounts as follows:

(1) For the Army, $45,350,964,000.

(2) For the Navy, $5,426,407,000.

(3) For the Marine Corps, $4,013,093,000.

(4) For the Air Force, $10,536,330,000.

(5) For Defense-wide activities, $6,098,990,000.

(6) For the Army Reserve , $158,410,000.

(7) For the Navy Reserve, $69,598,000.

(8) For the Marine Corps Reserve, $68,000,000.

(9) For the Army National Guard, $466,150,000.

(10) For the Air National Guard, $31,168,000.

(11) For the Strategic Readiness Fund, $1,000,000,000.

A new meme is actually an old joke

2007-07-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

I've seen the It's not enough to be right, you must be right for the right reasons meme being floated on many right-wing sites lately in reference to the Iraq War.

The anti-war crowd may have been right about Iraq, but they're still wrong because they were right for the wrong reasons.

This line reminds me of an old Buddy Hackett joke:

A couple, on vacation in Las Vegas, is having an argument in their hotel room:

"How could you lose $200 playing slots!" he yells

"Why are you yelling at me," she says, "you lost $3,000 shooting craps!"

He says "Yeah, but I know how to gamble!"

I think the pro-war crowd is now working hard to pack away their remaining support for use in starting a future war.

Hence the "lucky guess/backstab" memes being trotted out once again.

One terrorist being tried in a U.S. civilian court

2007-07-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

"In early 2005, Colombia extradited FARC leader Anayibe Rojas Valderama (aka "Comandante Sonia") and other criminal associates for drug trafficking and terrorism charges. Colombia also extradited Cali Cartel leader Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela in 2005. Other high-ranking drug trafficking targets arrested and/or extradited include Consolidated Priority Targets and members of the North Valley Cartel’s Top 10 list, such as Gabriel Puerta Parra, Jose Rendon Ramirez, John Cano Carrera, and Dagaberto Florez"

Anayibe Rojas Valderama was sentenced to 17 years in prison today on the drug charges.

The jury will now consider the terrorism charges against him.

U.S. civilian courts seems to be able to handle terrorism cases just fine.

Goebbels' Echo

2007-06-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

It's not surprising when a modern leader, faced with a similar problem to one a historical leader faced in the past, echoes that historical leader in his speeches.

It is surprising to see how differently the same basic idea can be phrased, though.

Joseph Goebbels, the unquestioned evil master of the art of political rhetoric, frequently gave a speech on the eve of Hitler's birthday. It is fascinating to read through them in order to see the arc of his rhetoric, from the triumph of 1933, where he portrayed Hitler as a great man, uninterested in the silliness of political celebration:

Today he has left the bustle of the capital. He left the wreaths and hymns of praise in Berlin. He is somewhere in his beloved Bavaria, far from the noise of the streets, to find peace and quiet. Perhaps in a nearby room someone will turn on a loudspeaker. If that should happen, then let me say to him, and to all of Germany: My Führer! Millions and millions of the best Germans send you their best wishes and give you their hearts...

to the one he gave on April 20, 1944, when it was becoming obvious Germany was losing the war:

Not only fortune, but also reputation is always shifting during a war between great men and nations. It is therefore difficult, perhaps even impossible, to determine the political and military importance of individual events in the midst of war. What yesterday seemed a brilliant move can within several weeks or months prove a major mistake, and that which seemed short-sighted and mistaken can later become a decision of deep wisdom. Only when a war is over, and usually some time after that, once its lasting results have become clear to all, is it possible to objectively weigh and evaluate its individual events.

That was true of every past war, and presumably of this one as well. The war can be evaluated only as a whole. Beside the events of the moment, a war has larger historical significance. Only a trained and practiced eye can understand that larger significance during the war itself. For example, consider the vast differences in Frederick the Great's reputation during the Seven Year War, particularly from 1760 to 1763. His personal reputation and that of his work during his day was influenced by partisan considerations, but today we evaluate him historically, that is, objectively and justly. His individual actions and decisions were evaluated in various ways. Given the circumstances of the time, some seemed to lead to victory, others to defeat. Even those in his entourage could not properly evaluate them.

A genius acts from instinct, sometimes consciously but often unconsciously, which raises his actions out of the ordinary sphere. Great, timeless personalities have to fulfill not only the tasks of the moment, but larger historical missions as well. Unfortunately, the two do not always agree. A war of vast historical significance brings with it the heaviest sacrifices and burdens. The less these problems are seen by people in their broader historical significance, the likelier the struggling generation will be misunderstand them, or even to think them avoidable.

This explains why those at the time and posterity evaluate historical events differently. We can think of numerous historical examples. We can hardly understand today why the contemporaries of Alexander the Great or Caesar or Frederick the Great did not understand their true significance.

To us there are no secrets any more.

In other words: "We will be vindicated by history."

A line we've been hearing a lot lately.

No doubt we will continue to hear it forever, in one form or another.

There will always be another war that is going badly for somebody.

Here is an excellent archive of Goebbels' speeches and writings that have been translated into English. It is well worth taking a little time to browse through them, if only so you can spot which modern politicians have, too.

What can Brown do for you?

2007-06-27T02:29:00.000-07:00

Gordon Brown takes over as British Prime Minister today.

One ranking of past Prime Ministers:

1	Clement Attlee (Lab. 1945-51)	8.34
2	Winston Churchill (Con. 1940-45, 51-55)	7.88
3	David Lloyd George (Lib. 1916-22)	7.33
4	Margaret Thatcher (Con. 1979-90)	7.14
5	Harold Macmillan (Con. 1957-63)	6.49
6	Tony Blair (Lab. 1997- )	6.30
7	Herbert Asquith (Lib. 1908-16)	6.19
8	Stanley Baldwin (Con. 1923-24, 24-29, 35-37)	6.18
9	Harold Wilson (Lab. 1964-70)	5.93
10	Lord Salisbury (Con. 1895-1902)	5.75
11	Henry Campbell-Bannerman (Lib. 1906-08)	5.01
12	James Callaghan (Lab. 1976-79)	4.75
13	Edward Heath (Con. 1970-74)	4.36
14	Ramsay MacDonald (Lab. 1924, 29-31, 31-35)	3.73
15	John Major (Con. 1990-97)	3.67
16	Andrew Bonar Law (Con. 1922-23)	3.50
17	Neville Chamberlain (Con. 1937-40)	3.43
18	Arthur Balfour (Con. 1902-05)	3.42
19	Alec Douglas-Home (Con. 1963-64)	3.33
20	Anthony Eden (Con. 1955-57)	2.53

Wonder where Brown will finish up.

Five things that don't bear close scrutiny well

2007-06-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

1. Hotel linens
2. Restaurant meals
3. Election results
4. Wars
5. News reports

I'm sure there are others...

Who is killing civilians in Afghanistan?

2007-06-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

According to the AP, the tally so far this year is:

NATO - 236 civilians killed
Taliban - 178 civilians killed

Hearts and minds.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, six of the al-Anbar tribal chiefs we'd talked into fighting on our side were killed in Baghdad today.

*sigh*

Maybe we should have provided them with better security?

Perfect competition

2007-06-19T00:23:00.000-07:00

I've attended several graduation ceremonies over the past couple of weeks. They all had good speakers, but they tended to discuss the world in rather idealized terms. Work hard, don't cheat, be kind to others, brush off setbacks, etc. and you will be a success at whatever you choose to do with your life.

But in reality, few career paths are perfect competitions.

What is the model for a perfect competition?

A few factors I believe to be crucial:

1. Everybody needs to know they are competing for something.

2. Everyone in the competition has the same knowledge.

3. The competition, at least at the lowest level, is open to anyone.

4. The goals of the competition are known to all competitors.

5. Performance is judged objectively.

6. There is turnover at each stage so people can advance.

Professional sports are the only careers I can think of that come close to being perfect competitions. Sure, there is the occasional cheating, but in most cases, the best players can and do rise to the top.

How do other career paths get corrupted?

In addition to fields where cheating isn't actively monitored for and punished, a few "isms:"

Credentialism - The requirement that people who want to compete have to first acquire an expensive and limited in number credential.

Cronyism - The friends and family members of the "judges" get advanced before the most talented players.

Team Playerism - Quiet, uncritical "players" get promoted. Players who offer up opinions are not.

No room at the top"ism" - The "winners" in a field stick around forever...and the entire competitive ladder below then becomes a logjam, too.

Stolen Creditism - Another player (usually their boss) steals credit for player's successes.

False Blame"ism" - Players get blamed for other player's mistakes.

One of my favorite quotes is: Seeing through the game is not the same as winning it.

Not sure who first said it, but it is an important idea.

Cynicism is usually what overcomes people once they realize the "game" they're playing isn't fair.

Cynicism comes, at least in part, from the idealized view of competitions gotten in youth.

It would be nice if our graduates got a little realistic career advice along with the encouragement:

If you want to succeed in a field, understand how the game is played first...

Nixon's 1968 GOP nomination acceptance speech

2007-06-09T23:03:00.000-07:00

Full text here.

An interesting snippet:

Look at our problems abroad. Do you realize that we face the stark truth that we are worse off in every area of the world tonight than we were when President Eisenhower left office eight years ago? That's the record.

And there is only one answer to such a record of failure, and that is the complete house cleaning of those responsible for the failures and that record. The answer is the complete reappraisal of America's policy in every section of the world. We shall begin with Vietnam.

We all hope in this room that there's a chance that current negotiations may bring an honorable end to that war. And we will say nothing during this campaign that might destroy that chance.

And if the war is not ended when the people choose in November, the choice will be clear. Here it is: For four years this administration has had at its disposal the greatest military and economic advantage that one nation has ever had over another in a war in history. For four years America's fighting men have set a record for courage and sacrifice unsurpassed in our history. For four years this Administration has had the support of the loyal opposition for the objective of seeking an honorable end to the struggle.

Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively. And if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past. That is what we offer to America.

And I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next Administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.

In praise of the British honours system

2007-06-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

I caught a commercial for a show that promised an appearance by Sir Paul McCartney and decided to check out what the Sir thing was all about. Turns out its quite complicated and a pretty good idea.

First, consider how lame America's civilian honors are. An unscientific survey revealed that few Americans know that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is actually the highest civilian honor America can bestow on a citizen. I think the first time most Americans heard about this award was when Bush awarded it to three of the guys who brought us the Iraq War.

Here are the Presidential Medals of Freedom awarded by Bush and Clinton.

A respected civilian honors system has some obvious benefits:

1. It encourages people to be better citizens (in the hopes they will be awarded one).
2. Once awarded, they encourage continued good behavior (the award can be taken away).
3. It hardly costs anything to run.

How the British honours system work:

A list is released on the Queen's birthday in June and another list is released at the end of the year. Up to 1000 people received an honour each year.

There are quite a few awards, here are the "main" ones:

A Life Peer - You are created a Baron (but your children don't inherit the title) and you get to serve in the House of Lords.

A Knights Bachelor - The one most Americans know, you are knighted and get to put Sir in front of your name.

Order of the British Empire - This is the one I found most interesting. There are five ranks:

1. Knight (Dame) Grand Cross
2. Knight (Dame) Commander
3. Commander
4. Officer
5. Member

A vast majority of British honours fall in this category.

A few facts:

The first two levels also allow its recipients to call themselves Sir.

So if the Queen (on advise from the government), wants to "Knight" someone, she can either award them a "Knights Bachelor" or name them a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

I don't believe woman can be given a Knights "Bachelor" award, so they seem to get awarded a Knights Commander more often so they can call themselves "Dame," (Dame Judi Densh).

The top rank seems quite rare. Here is a list on Wikipedia of GBE's (not sure if it's complete). The first King of Jordan got one for some reason. He was assassinated, just like his poor grand nephew, the last King of Iraq.

Recipients can affix to the end of their name their rank: GBE, KBE, CBE, OBE or MBE.

You can receive more than one honour.

Paul McCartney is actually Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE.

He was awarded a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1965 and a Knights Bachelor in 1997 (Sir).

So, you can receive multiple honours (keep being good!) and you can be "promoted" within the Order, from MBE to CBE for example.

I left out several orders, like the Bath, St. Michael and St. George, etc., but the idea is the same if on a rarer and smaller scale.

Here is the honours list where Sir Sean Connery was Knighted.

Anyway, I think it would good if America had a decent, well-recognized system of civilian awards, too. As I said, they motivate people to do good works and they don't cost a thing.

If Britain, with a population of 60 million, awards around 1000 a year, then America, with 300 million civilians, could award around 5000 a year.

Most would be at the lowest level, in recognition of public work.

I know some people think it would smack of Royalty, but few people would confuse Sir Paul McCartney with a stuffy monarchy, would they?

It's not like Americans don't already have titles (Dr., Gen., Honourable, etc.).

Order of America, perhaps?

Did Congress really cut off funds to South Vietnam?

2007-06-04T00:24:00.001-07:00

In a word, no.

U.S. military assistance to South Vietnam:

Fiscal Year 1974 - $813 million.
Fiscal Year 1975 - $700 million.

Fiscal Year 1975 ran through September 30, 1975.

Saigon fell on April 30, 1975.

Congress only cut military funding to South Vietnam by 14% in its final year of existence, but, that cut combined with increased fighting against the North Vietnamese and a 12% inflation rate that year that made things like ammunition and spare parts more costly, ate up the money fast.

Here is the best write up I found on the subject.

Lamest U.N. Security Council Resolution ever?

2007-05-29T03:20:00.000-07:00

United Nations Security Council Resolution 43

April 1, 1948

The Security Council,

In the exercise of its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,

1. Notes the increasing violence and disorder in Palestine and believes that it is of the utmost urgency that an immediate truce be effected in Palestine:

2. Calls upon the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Arab Higher Committee to make representative available to the Security Council for the purpose of arranging a truce between the Arab and Jewish communities of Palestine, and emphasizes the heavy responsibility which would fall upon any party failing to observe such a truce;

3. Calls upon Arab and Jewish armed groups in Palestine to cease acts of violence immediately.

Building a terror-resistant city

2007-05-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

If you could start from scratch, how would you construct a city that minimizes the destruction and chaos terrorism could cause there?

The terror-resistant city would also have to be as pleasant to live in as a normal city. No hiding people in underground concrete bunkers.

First, lets split terrorist attacks into two categories:

1. Attacks that interrupt vital services (electricity, water) to a large number of people.
2. Attacks that cause large number of casualties.

Looking at the first kind of attacks, the Internet is a good model to follow, I think. The Internet was initially designed as a communications system that would still function after sustaining several nuclear attacks. The Internet has no central core, just a series of inter-connected nodes that each have many connections to other nodes. A node may be destroyed, but the rest of the grid still functions fine.

Cell phones and satellite TV are good examples of services that follow this model already. Terrorists have no way of blocking large numbers of people from receiving them due to their design.

How could you deliver the two most vital services a populace needs, power and water, in a way that resembles the Internet or cell phone service?

Power distribution seems to be the easiest to tackle: a combination of solar power panels on individual building and small, neighborhood generators linked together in an Internet-like grid. It would be tough for a terrorist attack to deny large numbers of people electricity were it to be distributed in this manner.

Water is a tougher problem, but a similar design would still work. Drill as many individual wells as possible coupled with a large scale water distribution system again modeled after the Internet. Also, each home could have a large water storage tank that held at least a weeks worth of water in case of an outage.

Turning to the second kind of attack, the ones that kill large numbers of people, a few things are obvious from the start:

Cars and trucks need to be completely separated from the city's population, period.

This suggests what the city's layout should look like: a long thin rectangle with the center devoid of cars and trucks, or perhaps a circular deign with a ring road. Anyone who needed their car would still have it close by, but outside the city. Delivery trucks could still get close to where they need to get to, just not inside the city.

Large numbers of people need to be discouraged from gathering, period.

Small, neighborhood shops, restaurants, theaters, work places, etc. vs. large ones. Not really a problem, most big cities already have these. Nothing like being able to shop, dine out and take in a movie without once having to get into your car.

Schools and factories present a problem. Schools could be kept small or schooling could even be provided via teleconferencing. Any factory that required large numbers of people would have to be located outside the city. No huge office towers, office parks only.

The idea is to come up with a terror-resistant city design, not a terror-proof one.

It would be interesting to see what an architect's contest sponsored and advised by the military could come up with.

I bet some of the ideas they came up with would be worth applying to Baghdad and other cities at risk.

New Palestine - An idea for Middle East peace

2007-05-25T03:45:00.000-07:00

A peace plan that Israel could carry out unilaterally:

1. Carve out a chunk of northern Israel such that any reasonable person would say it is a fair swap for the West Bank and Gaza. A line drawn west from somewhere on the Israeli-Jordanian border to the sea.

2. Declare that in 10 years, this land will be New Palestine and the West Bank and Gaza will become part of Israel.

3. Slowly begin evacuating Israeli citizens from New Palestine while at the same time offering inducements (free house, land, cash, etc.) to encourage Palestinians to voluntarily move to New Palestine, starting with the Palestinians living in Jerusalem and northern Gaza.

4. After a few years, take over Jerusalem and northern Gaza. Allow any remaining Palestinians in these areas who want to stay a chance to, deport any troublemakers to the "old" Palestine.

5. Repeat step (4) with the rest of Gaza and the West Bank over and over until Israel has taken over the entire West Bank and Gaza.

6. All the while, maintain peace and services as best as possible in New Palestine with some combination of Israeli, U.S., NATO, U.N. or even New Palestinian troops (Iraq occupation done right). Provide a stipend for residents of New Palestine to live comfortably on while getting established.

7. At the end of 10 years, allow the residents the option to vote out the peacekeepers/service providers or have them stay on.

Advantages:

1. Israel is a much more defensible country with only three neighbors.
2. The Palestinians have one contiguous country.
3. No more Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah is now bordering on New Palestine.
4. No more Israel-Syria border. Assad, meet your new neighbors.
5. No more problems from Gaza.
6. No endless negotiations, Israel could do this on its own (with financial aid from the U.S./U.N. for resettlement costs and inducements).
7. No need to evacuate Israeli settlers now living in the West Bank.
8. PEACE AT LAST (or at least a better chance for it).

Disadvantages:

1. Loss of nothern Israel obviously, along with its infrastructure and cities like Haifa (The Palestinians gain, though).
2. Disgruntled Palestinians who didn't want to move out of the West Bank and Gaza or live under Israeli rule (hopefully only a few hundred thousand if sufficient inducements were offered).
3. Disgruntled Israelis who liked living in northern Israel (can be offered their choice of land in reclaimed Gaza or West bank plus some cash to ease their pain).

That's my idea in response to a challenge to come up with one...what's yours?

Gaza's complicated natural gas deposits

2007-05-23T01:16:00.000-07:00

British Gas owns 90% of a rather large natural gas deposit that sits off shore from the Gaza strip.

Because of certain technical issues in getting it to market, the most likely customer for Gaza's natural gas is...Israel.

To say the negotiations for the deal are rather complicated is an understatement.

More weird war news

2007-05-18T01:33:00.000-07:00

An insurgent mortar attack on the Taji Army Airfield in Iraq took out somewhere between 1 and 16 of the Army's helicopters yesterday. These maps show the base in question. The runway is about a mile long, the mortars used in the attack probably have a range of at least twice that length. Quite a security problem judging by the number of civilian building that surround the base.

The destroyed helicopters cost a minimum of $6 million each.

Attacks like these can quickly erase the 1000:1 funding advantage our forces have over the insurgents.

And the Washington Post reports that Israel waved 500 Fatah fighters trained by the U.S. in Egypt into the Gaza battlefield today to combat Hamas.

So much for being an honest broker in the Middle East conflict.

Heroes under attack

2007-05-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

Cops, journalists, teachers, soldiers, scientists, judges and preachers are all getting bad press these days.

Even moms are the targets of rage and scorn lately.

Everyday heroes who try to do the right thing, make an effort to make the world a better place for the rest of us, are under attack.

Why?

It's not uncommon for societies to tear down the old heroes to make way for new ones, or try to make the current ones not look so bad in comparison. But nobody is rising up to replace them this time.

I suppose it could be seen as a tribal thing.

The left attacks soldiers, preachers and cops.

The right attacks journalists, teachers, scientists and judges.

But what happens to a society where there's nobody to look up to?

I guess we'll just have to look for our heroes in the past.

Fox TV: Best 2 out of 3

2007-05-10T01:49:00.000-07:00

There are five major TV networks in America: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CW.

Fox is frequently reported as the most watched network, but is that really accurate?

The ratings reported are for "prime time" broadcasts. That's 8 pm to 11 pm Monday - Saturday and 7 pm to 11 pm on Sunday. That comes to 22 hours of prime time TV a week.

But...Fox (and CW) goes off the air at 10 pm every night!

They show 1/3 less shows than ABC, NBC and CBS.

Here is a typical week's worth of TV ratings (in .pdf format).

A rating point = 1% of American households with a TV.
A share point = 1% of American households with a TV turned on when the show was aired.

So a show's share will always be larger that a show's rating. (In the unlikely event that every single American home with a TV had it turned on, a show's rating and share would be indentical.)

As you can see from the link, Fox (and CW) are showing 15 hours of prime time shows a week while ABC, CBS and NBC are showing 22 hours a week. Yet they are all judged by their average rating. This is fine for setting ad rates, but not when it comes to determining which network is the most watched.

Fox can't even fill its paltry 15 hours a week with original programming. It fills an hour each Sunday with repeats of Family Guy, King of the Hill or The Simpsons and Friday night it runs repeats of House and Bones.

Even though its the night when hits like Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart used to run, Saturday night is now a junkyard for all the networks. They all tend to run movies, repeats and cheap news and "reality" shows.

So, basically, Fox's ratings consist of American Idol plus House....2 1/2 hours of TV that are so popular that they drag the average rating of the other 12 1/2 hours Fox puts on high enough for it to score a ratings win or a place for the week.

Without American Idol, Fox would be competing with CW for the least-watched network crown.

With American Idol, Fox frequently "wins" the ratings race.

That's why Idol judge Simon Cowell gets $30 million a year to be mean for one and half hours a week.

And that's why every network keeps trying out new Idol clones every few weeks...

Dept. of WTF? - Afghanistan Branch

2007-05-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

A member of the Afghan National Army gunned down two of our soldiers?

As far as I can tell, Col. James W. Harrison Jr. is the highest ranking member of our military to be killed in Afghanistan in 5+ years of operations there.

What makes a country independent?

2007-05-06T16:18:00.000-07:00

I was reading responses to Israel's Winograd report, the look into why the Second Lebanon War went so poorly for them and saw quite a few comments that implied Lebanon, at least the southern and eastern parts, is in reality still just a province of Syria.

So how does one country exert control another country?

The most obvious suspects are the usual three methods:

1. Military
2. Political
3. Economic

How one country can exert control another country militarily:

1. Occupy it
2. Control an armed faction within the country
3. Have a credible military threat against the country
4. Have loyalists within the ranks of the country's military

How one country can exert control another country politically:

1. Have its guy running the country
2. Have one or more political parties that work to further its interests
3. Have control over the media of the country

How one country can exert control over another country economically:

1. Own its means of production
2. Control its export and/or its imports
3. Hold enough of its debt

Those are the means I could think of off the top of my head, I'm sure I've missed a few.

Within the global economy, few countries are completely free of foreign influence these days. But clearly, there has to be a certain level of influence before one country could be said to "control" another country.

The old Soviet Union scored high in each of the three categories, leaving little doubt they controlled the Eastern Bloc nations. You can also see which categories began to escape their control before they lost it completely.

Looking at Syria's influence in Lebanon, I think a reasonable conclusion is it remains just that: influence, not control.

Racism and The Tragedy of the Commons

2007-05-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

Externalities have always been my favorite field of economic study. The costs and benefits that accrue to people outside of an economic transaction.

A simple example of an externality is that of a homeowner who fixes their place up and also adds to the value of their neighbor's homes as well (a positive externality). Or the flipside, a homeowner who is a slob, who drags down the value of his neighbor's homes too (a negative externality).

The most famous statement on externalities is probably The Tragedy of the Commons:

It descibes a public pasture where farmers are free to graze their cattle. The benefits of adding one more cow to the field accrue only to the farmer, while the cost (in less well-fed cattle) is borne by every farmer who has a herd grazing in the pasture.

Taken to its extreme, there will not be enough food for any of the cattle to survive on, and they all die.

While studies of externalities usually focus on things like polluting factories, I see a Tragedy of the Commons problem developing in racism in America.

It's fairly obvious that racism is being employed for political and economic gain these days. The people who want to continue the war in Iraq demonize all Muslims quite blatantly. Talk radio hosts practice a milder form of racism to increase their audience. Politicians push the fear of a Mexican invasion to win votes. etc.

But I think all these "farmers" of race have gone too far. Too many have jumped into the racism game in the last few years, and the ones already in the game have become even more racist to hold on to their audience in the face of competition.

I think they've triggered a backlash from the majority of Americans who realize that the corrosive effects of racism, taken to the extreme, will tear America apart.

Don Imus had his herd put down.

Who's next?

A tower in the desert

2007-05-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

The Burj Dubai looks like it's going to be an amazing building. Twice as tall as the Empire State Building (click on the tower on the linked page to get a neat comparison chart to the world's next tallest buildings), by far, the world's tallest.

I wonder why the U.A.E. feels comfortable building such a thing smack in the middle of the Middle East?

It's clear that the stable countries of the Middle East fear terrorism far less than America's militant pro-war crowd.

Why?

What do they know that we don't?

Suborbital commuting

2007-04-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

Space vacations are getting a lot of press lately. You can even book your space vacation right now if you have $200,000 in next year's vacation budget.

But what about suborbital commuting? Traveling at 17,000 mph could sure cut down the time spent traveling on long business trips. If you're Steve Jobs, you can travel in a Gulfstream V, but you're still only going at 740 mph.

Time is money.

If you were willing to pony up around $15 million or so, three people could cut the commute from, say, LA to Singapore from 15 hours to about 1/2 an hour in one of these and be dropped onto the lawn of the office building of your choice (provided it was insulated from the landing rocket's blast, of course).

But who makes so much money that saving a day's traveling would be worth $5 million?

The top three hedge fund managers do (well close, their average income is around $4 million a day).

Will space commuting be far behind space vacations?

Time is money.

Swiftboating the White House press corp

2007-04-26T23:16:00.000-07:00

The left side of the blogosphere is jumping on the White House press corp for their failure to...have written piece after piece saying Bush is lying in the lead up to the Iraq War and its aftermath.

Sycophants and royal courtiers are the terms being applied to those hapless reporters who failed to ask the "tough questions."

But, if you read through the White House press briefings from that time, you can see those reporters did indeed ask the tough questions.

The things is, when the president says something, it's news and get reported as such.

A question from the White Huse press corp to the administration's spokesmen that gets a noncomittal answer isn't news.

That's the way it works.

Old money vs. noisy money

2007-04-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

My dream of spending a quiet sunny afternoon reading in the hammock thwarted in the usual way: a neighbor has decided he must have an Olympic-sized Koi pond built in his back yard.

I figure two to three days of jackhammering will be needed to remove the sport court he had installed in the same spot last year.

Then weeks with other work crews operating their noise generators to follow.

Do newly rich people secretly get together and make sure at least one of them has a project going that shatters the neighborhood peace at all times?

Modern playground equipment sucks

2007-04-22T03:20:00.000-07:00

My local parks and schools continue to install bizarre new pieces of equipment that are more like works of art than somethings kids can actually play on. They're dangerous, prone to vandalism (plastic burns) and offer kids far less fun and exercize than old-fashioned swings, slides and monkey bars.

I'm sure the latest generation of playground equipment looks very appealing to whoever is in charge of buying this equipment. Bright colors, fancy accessories like climbing walls, etc. must look great in the catalogue.

I get informative letters and meeting announcements all the time asking for my input in important civic improvements like transit projects, but you never hear about new playground equipment being installed. You just show up with your kids one day and there it is. No way there's money in the budget to dig it up, ship it back and put something more fun and functional in.

*sigh*

China: Four years to #1?

2007-04-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

China's National Bureau of Statistics has announced that China's economy grew at an annual rate of 11.1% in the first quarter of this year, despite government efforts to cool down the economy.

If you go by the method the CIA uses to measure the size of a country's economy, purchasing power parity, and you use an annual growth rate for China's economy of 11% and use an annual growth rate for America's economy of 2.2%, this means China's economy will surpass America's in size in about four years.

Of course, there's some real guess work in there, but none of it is that wild. I think China's economy may begin to grow at an even faster pace in the next five years or so, as consumer spending really takes off. And 2.2% isn't that far off the mark for America's economic growth rate considering many economists are predicting a recession (two quarters or more of negative GDP growth) for us soon.

I think we are indeed living in interesting times.

Education costs

2007-04-09T03:19:00.000-07:00

Cost to send an 18 year old to Harvard for a year - about $50,000.

Cost to send an 18 year old to Iraq for a year - about $750,000.

"American" interests

2007-04-09T02:16:00.000-07:00

Curious about the recent rise on the right of pro-Climate Change propaganda, I dug into exactly which states have a financial interest in preventing Kyoto-like restrictions on CO2 emissions.

I focused on industrial emissions because cutting back on the other major sources of CO2 emissions (transportation and energy generation) will most likely be subsidized at the federal level.

Here is some data I found in this .pdf file from the EPA.

Industrial CO2 emissions by state from burning fossil fuels, million metric tons - 2003:

1. Texas - 251.57
2. Louisiana - 91.33
3. California - 70.63
4. Indiana - 52.89
5. Pennsylvania - 46.62

Total - 513.04 49.2%

6. Illinois - 38.18
7. Ohio - 35.73
8. Michigan - 24.42
9. Alabama - 22.65
10. Alaska - 21.89

Total - 142.87 13.7%

++ State Average - 20.88

11. Georgia - 19.94
12. Tennessee - 19.84
13. Kentucky - 19.22
14. Oklahoma - 18.93
15. Virginia - 17.44

Total - 95.37 9.1%

16. Washington - 17.06
17. New York - 16.22
18. New Jersey - 15.75
19. Wisconsin - 15.45
20. North Carolina - 15.10

Total 79.58 7.6%

21. Iowa - 14.31
22. Kansas - 14.19
23. South Carolina - 13.86
24. Florida - 13.85
25. Minnesota - 13.60

Total - 69.81 6.7%

26. West Virginia - 13.41
27. Colorado - 11.64
28. Arkansas - 11.06
29. Missouri - 10.37
30. Mississippi - 10.19

Total - 56.67 5.4%

31. Wyoming - 10.12
32. New Mexico - 7.43
33. North Dakota - 7.11
34. Maryland - 7.05
35. Massachusetts - 6.81

Total - 38.52 3.7%

36. Utah - 6.42
37. Oregon - 6.40
38. Nebraska - 5.62
39. Montana - 4.97
40. Arizona - 4.03

Total - 27.44 2.6%

41. Delaware - 3.95
42. Idaho - 3.34
43. Connecticut - 2.90
44. Maine - 2.48
45. South Dakota - 2.27

Total - 14.94 1.4%

46. Nevada - 1.96
47. Hawaii - 1.44
48. New Hampshire - 1.07
49. Rhode Island - 0.57
50. Vermont - 0.51

Total 5.55 0.5%

America - Total 1043.79

State Average - 20.88

Texas alone produces 24.1% of America's industrial CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning.

As CO2 emissions will likely be reduced by law sometime in the near future, it might be in the interest of Texas companies to back Kyoto now while they have one of their own running the government.

Founding a new Great American City

2007-04-08T04:50:00.000-07:00

I looked up the top 25 American cities by population and then looked up when they were founded and came up with this list:

New York 1625
Boston 1630
El Paso 1659
Philadelphia 1682
Charlotte 1692

Detroit 1701
San Antonio 1718
Baltimore 1729
San Diego 1769
San Francisco 1776
San Jose 1777
Jacksonville 1791

Columbus 1812
Milwaukee 1818
Memphis 1819
Indianapolis 1821
Austin 1835
Chicago 1837
Houston 1837
Dallas 1841
Fort Worth 1849
Los Angeles 1850
Seattle 1851
Denver 1858
Phoenix 1881

I was looking for the date some kind of permanent settlement began, you could quibble over the exact year in some cases, but close enough for my purpose.

The last top 25 American city to be founded was Phoenix, over 125 years ago, by a guy who was just passing through and realized it would make a great place for farming if he built a little irrigation first.

Why did the founding of such cities come to an abrupt halt over a century ago?

Not a single one founded in the 20th century.

Anyone who has driven through rural American knows there are some great, virtually deserted places where a major city could have thrived if only America's pattern of immigration and expansion had been different or a major deposit of precious metals had been located nearby.

Nice climate, cheap land, pretty setting, lots of water, etc.

Just no jobs, I guess.

With so many virtual office workers who can live anywhere around these days, could they somehow get together and found a 21st century New York somewhere in rural America?

Arming the tribes of al-Anbar (again)

2007-04-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

So I see part of the "surge" is to arm the tribes of al Anbar and encourage them to go after the bad guys once again (this is our third attempt for this plan).

Anbar province, with a population of a little over a million, has been the most deadly province for U.S. soldiers since the start of the war. 1198 U.S. military personnel have been killed there. Second deadliest, of course, is Baghdad with 904 killed.

Arming and training the tribes may seem like a good idea in the short term, but I can't help but think that, in the long run, this decision will come back and bite us as similar tactics have in the past.

Iraq doesn't need any more armed militias.

The way we were

2007-04-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

Our case is simple:

On the 1st of May, Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet.

This left the Archipelago in the hands of its proper and rightful owners, the Filipino nation.

Their army numbered 30,000 men, and they were competent to whip out or starve out the little Spanish garrison; then the people could set up a government of their own devising.

Our traditions required that Dewey should now set up his warning sign, and go away.

But the Master of the Game happened to think of another plan – the European plan.

He acted upon it.

This was, to send out an army – ostensibly to help the native patriots put the finishing touch upon their long and plucky struggle for independence, but really to take their land away from them and keep it.

That is, in the interest of Progress and Civilization.

-Mark Twain
Anti-Imperialist League of New York, 1901

http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/twain.htm

My favorite Congressman

2007-03-28T02:40:00.000-07:00

Almost 3 months into the 110th Congress' first session and a little over 1600 bill have been introduced in the House, which works out to an average of a little less than than four bills introduced by each of the 435 Members of the House.

I was plowing through all the bills on Thomas to see who had introduced the most bills when I came across the record of Rodney Alexander:

H.R.924

Title: To require the Food and Drug Administration to permit the sale of baby turtles as pets so long as the seller uses proven methods to effectively treat salmonella.

That's it.

One bill and it's in support of baby turtles.

Perfect.

When I can stop giggling about this, I may get back to researching my orginal post topic.

Isaac Newton and the Apocalypse

2007-03-22T01:41:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through some of Isaac Newton's lesser-known writings at The Newton Project when I stumbled across a record called untitled treatise on Revelation. Considering Newton is generally regarded as one of if not the smartest person ever to live, I figured even an atheist such as myself should have a peak at what he had to say about the end of the world.

What a rabbit hole it turned out to be. At around 320,000 words, mainly in English but with many passages in Latin and citations in Greek, it was quite a challenge to get through. In addition, the treatise was never prepared for publication by Newton. Rather, it was more like his lab notes from over thirty years of trying different methods to fit the puzzle pieces of the Book of Revelation into history as he knew it.

And Newton sure knew his history. When the guy who came up with Calculus and a big chunk of Physics set his mind to studying history, he acquired a broad and detailed knowledge of every single country and king starting with early myths and ending with the times he lived in. And then he set to work.

Under titles such as:

Position: The Subject of this Prophesy is the Roman Empire signified by the Dragon & Beast.

and:

Position: The first Trumpet began with the invasions of the Eastern regions A.C. 395. The second with the invasion of the western A.C. 408. The third with the invasion of Afric A.C. 427. And thefourth with the wars in Italy A.C. 536.

you find a detailed matching of actual history to Christian prophecy.

Sadly, at the end of the treatise, Newton offers no final conclusions. Futher research into his writings indicates he had concluded only that there were several matches between the earlier parts of the Apocalypse and historical events that had occured since the final book of the Bible had been written, but he offered no opinion on how it would end.

Besides being a great insight into Newton's view of history, the first section of the treatise gives some real insight into how Newton himself thought and went about learning:

Let me therefore beg of thee not to trust to the opinion of any man concerning these things, for so it is great odds but thou shalt be deceived. Much less oughtest thou to rely upon the judgment of the multitude, for so thou shalt certainly be deceived.

Interestingly, Newton seems to be applying the Calculus he developed to his study of the Apocalyse in this bit of advise:

To proportion the most notable parts of Prophesy to the most notable parts of history, & the breaches made in a continued series of Prophesy to the changes made in history And to reject those interpretations where the parts and breaches of Prophesy do not thus bear a due proportion to the parts & changes in History.

Back to the much simpler world of modern politics for me, but if you have a little time, Newton himself invites you to check out his research:

Having searched after knowledge in the prophetique scriptures, I have thought my self bound to communicate it for the benefit of others...

Birth states of the U.S. presidential candidates

2007-03-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

It sure seems like certain states get more than their share of presidential candidates. But, looking at the numbers shows a fairly good distribution of states represented in the past 100 years of Republican and Democratic presidential candidates:

New York 6

California 5

Massachusetts 4
Ohio 4

Illinois 3
Texas 3

Virginia 2
Michigan 2
South Dakota 2
Arkansas 2
Georgia 2
Connecticut 2
Iowa 2

Vermont 1
Pennsylvania 1
Indiana 1
Missouri 1
Arizona 1
Nebraska 1
Minnesota 1
Kansas 1
Washington, D.C. 1
Colorado 1
W. Virginia 1

Yeah, birth state may not always best represent which state a candidate is "from," but any other measure is open to debate, so that's what I went with.

Over the past 100 years, of 50 total major party presidential candidates, 23 of the 50 states (plus one from Wash., D.C.) have had at least one major party candidate.

Certain candidates have skewed the data, like Roosevelt's (New York) 4 campaigns and Nixon's (California) 3 runs.

Biggest surprise, I think, is South Dakota has had two seperate nominees (Humphey, McGovern).

The 1920 election was between two Ohio natives, 1988's was between two Massachusetts natives.

Here are the Republican and Democratic nominees for the past 25 presidential election, with the winner listed first:

1908 Taft - Ohio - R vs. Bryan - Illinois - D

1912 Wilson - Virginia - D vs. Taft - Ohio - R

1916 Wilson - Virginia - D vs. Hughes - New York - R

1920 Harding - Ohio - R vs. Cox - Ohio - D

1924 Coolidge - Vermont - R vs. Davis - W. Virginia - D

1928 Hoover - Iowa - R vs. Smith - New York - D

1932 Roosevelt - New York - D vs. Hoover - Iowa - R

1936 Roosevelt - New York - D vs. Landon - Pennsylvania - R

1940 Roosevelt - New York - D vs. Willkie - Indiana - R

1944 Roosevelt - New York - D vs. Dewey - Michigan - R

1948 Truman - Missouri - D vs. Dewey - Michigan - R

1952 Eisenhower - Texas - R vs. Stevenson - California - D

1956 Eisenhower - Texas - R vs. Stevenson - California - D

1960 Kennedy - Massachusetts - D vs. Nixon - California - R

1964 Johnson - Texas - D vs. Goldwater - Arizona - R

1968 Nixon - California - R vs. Humphrey - South Dakota - D

1972 Nixon - California - R vs. McGovern - South Dakota - D

1976 Carter - Georgia - D vs. Ford - Nebraska - R

1980 Reagan - Illinois - R vs. Carter - Georgia - D

1984 Reagan - Illinois - R vs. Mondale - Minnesota - D

1988 Bush - Massachusetts - R vs. Dukakis - Massachusetts - D

1992 Clinton - Arkansas - D vs. Bush - Massachusetts - R

1996 Clinton - Arkansas - D vs. Dole - Kansas - R

2000 Bush - Connecticut - R vs. Gore - Wahington, D.C. - D

2004 Bush - Connecticut - R vs. Kerry - Colorado - D

Some very interesting people among the candidates that didn't win, btw. Worth a look for sure.

The college application death march

2007-03-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

Over 300 hours of work by people with mad IT, internet and record keeping skillz.

Over $1000 in fees and expenses.

Still.not.done

I don't think any American child whose parents don't have the skills, patience, free time, document storage, money and anal retentiveness required to conquer today's college application process has a hope in hell of getting accepted to a decent school no matter how good their grades are.

Quite a barrrier to higher education we've erected to keep out the bright children of poor, busy and not very tech savvy parents.

When did this fairly easy process turn into some straight out of Brazil?

American occupations of Germany and Japan

2007-02-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

I've heard so many references to America's post-WWII occupations of Germany and Japan that I had to look into them more.

The most striking fact about them I think is that they began during a rapid demobilization of the U.S. military. The U.S. Army (which included the Air Force at the time) shed 7 million troops in a little under 2 years.

U.S. Army strength:

Summer 1945 - 8 million
End of 1945 - 4 million
Summer of 1946 - 2 million
Summer of 1947 - less than 1 million

Another interesting point is that they were quite unpopular.

Not only was President Truman under pressure from Congress and the American people to "Bring the Boys Home," but in the summer of 1946, when the troops still waiting to be shipped home were informed that they were being kept to participate in the occupations, riots broke out at many U.S. bases around the world. Truman had to relent and continue the demobilization.

The two occupations were quite different. The Japanese government was kept largely intact while their constitution was written and members of parliament elected. Germany was much more like Iraq, where the government was de-nazified and then restaffed over many years.

In both cases, though, they went quite smoothly. It was the rise of Soviet (and later plus Chinese) Communist spheres of influence that forced the conversion of the relatively lax occupation forces into defensive forces by early 1948.

By 1950, the U.S. Air Force had split from the Army and the Army itself was left with a troop strength of 592,000 volunteers. Roughly half of them were stationed in Germany and Japan (100,000 in Germany, 130,000 in Japan).

Country populations - 1950:

U.S.A - 158 million
Japan - 84 million
W. Germany - 50 million

The Soviet and U.S. spheres of influence were established, leaving divided Korea in a no-man's land with only a few Soviet and American advisors in their respective halves. When the North Koreans invaded South Korea, the U.S. forces occupying Japan were sent to support the South Koreans.

Our occupation forces in Germany and Japan grew rapidly during the Korean War. After the Korean War, the number of troops stationed in Japan steadily declined from a peak of 220,00 to about 50,000 today. Troop numbers in Germany remained at about 250,000 until the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s then fell rapidly to about 60,000.

It's hard to find comparisons between America's post-WWII occcupations of Japan and Germany and our current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The German and Japanese occupations met with little resistance. They weren't popular domestically. And they were soon overshadowed by the beginning of the Cold War.

America's shrinking slice of the pie

2007-02-14T23:32:00.000-08:00

The 2006 numbers are in at the CIA and they show that America's share of the global economy has fallen below 20% for the first time.

I dug up the numbers since 1999(in billions):

Year........U.S. GDP............World Economy...........U.S. share
1999.........$9,255....................$ 40,700...................22.74%
2000........$9,963....................$43,600....................22.85%
2001......$10,082....................$47,000....................21.45%
2002......$10,400...................$49,000....................21.22%
2003......$10,980...................$51,410.....................21.36%
2004......$11,750....................$55,500....................21.17%
2005......$12,360...................$60,710.....................20.36%
2006......$12,980...................$65,000....................19.97%

I think many people still have the idea that America accounts for a quarter of the world's economy. China and India's high rates of economic growth seem to be taking their toll on that figure. It's been quite a while since America's economy grew at the world's average economic growth rate.

What policy changes this will lead to is hard to see, but I think America is already starting to question whether it can afford to be the world's policeman for much longer.

Constitutional Amendments since the Bill of Rights

2007-02-13T11:04:00.000-08:00

I got interested in the six Constitutional Amendments that have been passed by Congress but haven't been ratified by the states yet (ERA, Statehood for Washington, D.C., legalizing slavery!, etc.), which led me to look at the Amendments that have passed.

I figure the first ten Amendments, The Bill of Rights, are actually part of the original Constitution as they were ratified so soon after the Constitution itself. That leaves 17 actual Amendments that have passed Congress and been ratified by the states:

11th ratified 1798 - Prevents states from being taken to federal court by citizens of another state or foreign power.

12th ratifed 1804 - Splits The vote for president and vice-president to avoid possible ties.

13th ratified 1865 - Outlaws slavery.
14th ratified 1868 - Citizenship for former slaves and equal rights for all American citizens.
15th ratiifed 1870 - Voiting rights for former slaves.

16th ratified 1913 - Legalizes federal income taxes.

17th ratified 1913 - Allows direct election of Senators.

18th ratified 1919 - Prohibition.

19th ratified 1920 - Woman's sufferage.

20th ratified 1933 - Shortens Lame Duck period between elections and the winner taking office.

21st ratified 1933 - Repeals Prohibition.

22nd ratified 1951 - Linits President to two terms.

23rd ratified 1961 - Gives Wahington, D.C. some electoral votes for president (no more than least populous state (3)).

24th ratified 1964 - Eliminates Poll Taxes.

25th ratified 1967 - Clarifies presidential succession.

26th ratified 1971 - Gives 18 year olds the right to vote.

27th ratified 1992 - Raises Congress votes itself don't take effect until the next session.

So, 17 Amendments in 218 years.

Is the Amendment process working as intended?

Does it still have relavance?

Numbers: 1 Amendment in the 18th century, 4 in the 19th century, 12 in the 20th century.

So, at least the numbers are picking up, but are we really just seeing bursts of reform?

How important are each of the 17 Amendments?

Two, the 18th and 21st, cancel each other out, so they are practically worthless unless chalked up to "lessons learned."

Seven, the 12th, 17th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, and 27th, are essentially bookkeeping Amendments, of minor importance, really. (The 27th was actually part of the Bill of Rights, but was one of two Amendments that weren't ratified).

That leaves eight that, IMHO, could be considered important.

The 11th Amendment, that prevents certain people from suing states, is interesting, but not really that important (legal scholars may differ).

The 24th Amendment, that outlaws Poll taxes, is of modest impotance. Only five states used them at the time it was ratified and I believe Civil Rights legislation was far more effective in preventing discrimination.

The 15th, 19th and 26th, allow, respectively, former slaves, woman and 18 year olds the right to vote. Very important to certain groups. In a class of their own, really.

So that leaves my top three Constitutional Amendments:

1. 14th - This one, again IMHO, is the number one Amendment. Citizenship defined, Due Process and Equal Protection clauses. As far as impact on average American citizens today, none come close.

2. 13th - Banned slavery, 'nuff said.

3. 16th - Allowed income taxes. Before, fedearal taxes had to be divided equally among the states based onpopulation.

I guess I'd have to say the Constitutional Amendment was important in spreading rights to all Americans over the years, but it is no longer an important part of modern governence.

Amendments are proposed these days are more publicity stunts for certain groups than actual attempts to change the Constitution.

America is deeply divided now, and the bar to pass an Amendment is so high (2/3 of both Houses of Congress plus 75% of the states), that it's hard to imagine another meaningful Amendment will be ever be passed again.

Dubious celebrity speaking engagements

2007-02-06T01:18:00.000-08:00

Doing some research on cruises, I came upon this one hosted by The Nation.

Booking actor Richard Dreyfuss, who last starred in a remake of The Poseidon Adventure, a movie about a cruise ship that gets hit by a giant tidal wave and flips over, might not be the best marketing move they could make.

Then again, if you have to eat all your meals sitting next to Ralph Nader, you might actually start wishing for a tidal wave to hit your ship...

Out of Africa

2007-02-04T01:27:00.000-08:00

The recent discovery of a village near Stonehenge and the battle over the classification of the "Hobbits" got me back into reading about archaeology. But this recent foray, like all the ones I have done in the past, ended up in disappointment.

"Modern" humans have been around 250,000 years or more.

Yet we only have written records dating back maybe 6-7000 years.

Beyond that, all we have are tools, cave paintings, pottery and bones to try and guess, from scraps, what the most interesting (IMHO) period of human existence was like.

Our earliest ancestors were just as smart and creative as we are now and they conquered the planet. They fought Ice Ages, some rather fierce beasts and even earlier hominids along the way. And then they took to farming and founded empires.

Sad to think that the wisdom of countless Paleolithic Einsteins, Shakespeares and Caesars are probably lost to us forever.

Long-term costs of meddling in other countries

2007-01-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

Compared to most other countries, America is very rich. A modest amount of our money spent in a third world country can bring about big changes.

But even if toppling a dictator or backing a rebel group looks like a good idea in the short-term, should we do it?

What else should we consider?

1. The enemy of our enemy isn't always worth backing.

Some consideration should be given to what will happen if the group we back does win. (Taliban, etc.)

2. Where will the bad guys go if our guys do win?

If our guys win, will the bad guys flee to another country and destabilize it or at least cause problems? (Taliban in Pakistan, Janjaweed in Chad)

3. What happens to the guys we back if they lose?

Will they flee to other countries and cause problems? (MS-13 fleeing to L.A.)

4. How will neighboring countries react if our guys do win?

Will they become more militaristic or anti-American? (Iran, Venezuala)

5. Will any gains be erased when America's involvement comes out?

(Chile)

6. Will America get blamed for things we didn't do when our meddling is revealed?

(Death squads in Iraq)

7. What are the chances the group we back will turn anti-American?

(Viet Minh during WWII)

A few things to ponder before we try to topple Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin or ????

The right tool for the job

2007-01-28T00:43:00.000-08:00

I'm having a rather unproductive weekend.

I have two tasks I'm trying to complete, one home repair and one programming, and I don't have the right tool to complete either of them. I figure my options are either:

1. Muddle through with the tools I have.
2. Scrap the projects entirely.
3. Fork over the bucks for the right tool.

I tried the "going with the army I have" approach to both tasks today and made very little progress on either.

In fact, I think I actually made them both worse.

For the home repair job, I can rent the tool I need, but it's expensive and there's a nontrivial chance I'll kill or maim myself with it.

For the software task, the right tool is expensive, but I can order it through work at no cost, but I might not get it until the deadline for project completion has passed.

Some sympathy for our rather unloved president this evening...

Innovation vs. Repetition

2007-01-24T01:39:00.000-08:00

There's a great little hamburger drive-in by my house that I'd eat at every day if I could convince my family to join me. Sadly, I can only talk them into it about once a month.

There isn't enough money in the world to bribe me into seeing yet another movie about a plucky underdog sports team that somehow manages to defy the odds and win the big game, though. Yet there must be an audience that wants to see these things because Hollywood cranks one out about every couple weeks.

Some couples manage to stay married to each other their whole lives. Other people will get married many times and probably have affairs even while they are married.

Lifelong Republicans and Democrats vs. Independents who can vote either way.

Live in one place your whole life or always on the move?

One career or a new job every few years?

Food, movies, partner(s), politics, home, job, etc.

Where do you have the tendency to be satisfied with with the tried and true?

Where do you have an insatiable desire for something new?

How do they mesh with modern society?

Do you think your particular needs could have been better met in another place or time?

If you're an explorer type, always wanting to be the first to see new lands, you're out of luck these days...

If we shrank the U.S. military down far enough...

2007-01-19T15:43:00.000-08:00

...would our opponents renounce IEDs and sniper rifles and agree to meet us in "stand up" fights?

We'd probably have to cut back pretty far to get them onto the field.

Of the 174 countries the CIA says has actual defense expenditures, only 5 could be called our "enemies:"

North Korea $5,217,400,000
Iran $4,300,000,000
Syria $858,000,000
Cuba $694,000,000
Somalia $22,340,000

Total military spending by America's "enemies" last year = $11,091,740,000

America spent $518,100,000,000 on its military last year.

Even if you don't count the military spending of America's 168 allies, partners, friend and protectorates, we still spent 47 times what our "enemies" spent last year...

Say you were dragged before the king...

2007-01-17T23:09:00.000-08:00

...thousands of years ago...and he told you to entertain him or else...off with your head!

What could you do?

No props:

Sing
Dance
Tell a story
Tell some jokes
Acrobatics

Throw in a prop and you could also:

Play Music
Juggle
Do magic tricks
Create some art

Add a few people and you could:

Put on a play
Stage an athletic contest
Stage a talent contest

Not much has changed in the entertainment field since...the start of humanity.

Wonder why?

Rejecting the premise

2007-01-17T12:54:00.000-08:00

Say you work for a software company whose management has decided to increase sales by going into the doughnut business. You don't think it's a good idea, but you don't have the power to kill the expansion.

What do you do?

1. Continue to point out that the doughnut idea is doomed to fail?
2. Drink the Kool-Aid and work towards the best doughnut/software fusion ever?

Sadly, number 2 is probably your best choice.

Team players get promoted and cynics are fired.

Now suppose your are a pundit working in a country that thinks it can impose democracy on another country by force...

Were the blog wars inevitable?

2007-01-15T23:40:00.000-08:00

While doing some research I came across this passage in a cable sent by Edward Corry, America's Ambassador to Chile in September of 1970, during our failed attempt to keep Salvador Allende from winning that country's presidency:

I have confessed repeatedly in these communications my equal distrust of a right that blindly and greedily pursued its interests, wandering in a myopia of arrogant stupidity.

They disdained organization and deliberately scorned the one element of their forces that has some semblance of structure, The National Party, they preached vengeance against the Christian Democrats whom they regarded as a more justifiable enemy because of its betrayal of class than their class enemy, the Communists.

They fought the First Rule of nature, of change, and insolently believed that time stands still.

They only tolerated the few modernists in their midsts, men who were certainly no less rich, no less self-interested, but who at least understood the flux in which we are all caught.

Ignoring the obvious comparisons to modern politics in this well-written missive, the bolded passage made me wonder if the current habit of many well-known bloggers on the left and right spending most of their time just trading insults with each other was bound to happen.

Do people naturally seek out and attack those who they feel are their equals?

By attacking someone, are you declaring them your equal?

Most competitions held divide contestants into classes of relatively equal talent, why not blogs, too?

Things I don't know

2007-01-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

Where my car keys are.

How a toilet works.

What we're still doing in Iraq.

Ratings for Fear & Hatred continue to slide

2007-01-13T19:09:00.000-08:00

Once America's top TV program, Fear & Hatred is now struggling to stay in the Top Ten behind recent hits like Accountability!, Real Estate Bubble and What the Hell Were We Thinking?

The producers of F&H have tried all the usual gimmicks this season to buoy their flagship show's sinking ratings, including:

The controversial killing off of two main characters (Though the door was left open for a guest appearance by Rummy later this year in a flashback).

The hiring of a lovable child actor, The People of Iraq.

A vacation special, F&H Goes Somalian.

And the just-aired very special episode entitled: Poor Condi's Womb.

Yet these gimmicks have failed to keep the ratings high enough to justify F&H's enormous production costs. Producers are now said to be focusing on keeping the show on the air long enough to have enough episodes for the lucrative syndication market.

Calls to confirm the rumored cancelling of a spinoff show, F&H:Iran, were not returned.

What kind of philosophy...

2007-01-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

...allows people to believe:

It's okay to falsely accuse an entire country, try it and convict it.

But causes the same people to get up in arms when three college boys are (possibly) falsely accused of sexual assault?

Is it really just garden-variety racism?

Bad Juju

2007-01-11T12:33:00.000-08:00

In the civil wars of Western Africa, the combatants render themselves bulletproof by wearing wigs and woman's dresses, fetishes made of hair and spells cast on them by jujumen.

The even try covering themselves with urine.

Of course none of these things work...but it's the belief that they will that's important.

Right?

An Oily Mystery

2007-01-09T02:14:00.000-08:00

Checking out the handy stat sheet on U.S. oil production and consumption the Energy Information Administration puts out, I came upon a bit of a mystery:

U.S. crude oil production - 5,178,000 barrels/day
U.S. petroleum consumption - 20,802,000 barrels/day

Dependence on net petroleum imports - 60.3%

Hmmm.

5,178,000/20,802,000 = about 25% or about a 75% dependence on imported oil.

The answer probably lies in the fact that petroleum doesn't exactly equal crude oil.

"Petroleum products" can be made with imputs besides crude oil and you can get more than a barrel of petroleum from a barrel of crude oil.

The raw data shows America is well past its peak oil production.

And imports of crude oil and petroleum products continue to grow at a steady pace.

In Defense of the Dursleys

2007-01-08T13:28:00.000-08:00

Just finished a bedtime routine reading of the second Harry Potter book with my youngest.

The Dursleys are portrayed as quite the villans, but are they really such bad people? To be sure, they didn't really provide Harry with enough emotional support, but they did take him in and raise him.

What are they accused of?

1. They tried to suppress Harry's magical side.

Not a bad move considering both of Harry's parents died of magical causes.

2. They didn't provide Harry with any material comfort beyond basic food, clothing and shelter.

Harry is rich...his parents left him a fortune. Couldn't the magical folks who left Harry with the Dursleys have left a few Galleons with them to help defray the cost of his upbringing?

3. They tried to stop him going to Hogwarts.

They are his legal guardians. Shouldn't they decide where he goes to school?

While the Dursleys aren't the Huxtables, they did an okay job raising Harry. They certainly treated Harry better than Dumbledore and the magic community treated them...

Band of Rich Brothers

2007-01-05T00:53:00.000-08:00

It's one of Hollywood's most tired cliches: A group of upper class medocrities tries to keep a talented lower class contender down by excluding them from some competition. In the end, the lower class star always thwarts the schemes of the band of snobbish thugs and wins.

But is that how things work in real life? Not really. The "bad" guys usually win.

Are the upper class thugs really doing anything wrong, though?

Banding together with people who want to succeed is one of the surest ways to win yourself.

Banding together with a group that wants to succeed and has easy access to the tools needed for for success (money, political power, connections in the business world, etc.) is even better.

And if this groups is willing to make it hard for talented newcomers to compete against them, better still.

This phenomemom can readily be seen in action with blogs.

Two interlocking groups, one right-leaning and one left-leaning politically, have risen to the top of the blog world by linking to each other's blogs, praising each other's brilliance, reposting each other's posts and even giving each other awards.

Some of them are very generous in providing links to "talented newcomers," but many have blogrolls that haven't been updated in years...the most generous bloggers tend to be the ones who have successful careers already outside of blogging.

Is Admitting to Mistakes UnAmerican?

2007-01-02T16:17:00.000-08:00

We've had a rash of hit and run accidents around my town lately.

When the drivers are caught, they frequently turn out to be average citizens, not the heartless sociopaths many had predicted.

Then we have the case of the Bush administration being accused of failing to admit mistakes with the assumption that this failing is an impeachable offense.

Yet we have have enshrined in the Constitution the right not to have to admit our mistakes.

While the Fifth Amendment was likely put into the Constitution to protect citizens against toture...I think it is also an admission of our true nature.

Few Americans readily admit to mistakes unless the admission gains them something more than the admission costs them.

Trying to get politicians to admit to their mistakes is a fool's errand...and a touch unAmerican to boot.

What is America's total net worth?

2006-12-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

Total value of all publicly traded American companies - about $15 trillion

Total value of America's natural resources - around $3 trillion?

Total value of American real estate - around $40 trillion?

But publicly traded companies own a large share of our natural resources and real estate, so that value is already reflected in their share price....hmmm.

Total value of America's infrastructure - $10 trillon?

Minus around $8 trillion in public debt and $2 trillion in consumer debt

Looks like a first-pass estimate/guess of America's total net worth is around $50-60 trillion.

That comes to around $200,000 per American.

Your share may vary, of course, but with America's per capita income of around $40,000...that would mean a 20% annual "return" on the average American's $200,000.

Not bad.

Neocon Year Zero

2006-12-28T02:08:00.000-08:00

I've seen a few neocon pundits who have decided to pretend that Iraq, budget deficits and the recent election never happened and have begun to recycle their rhetoric from around 2002.

Interesting strategy.

Will the neocons formally split into those who feel nothing has changed and those whose outlook has been modified by the results of their policies being enacted?

Neo-neocons and paleo-neocons?

Two for One

2006-12-24T13:48:00.000-08:00

The world's population hit 3.25 billion during the Kennedy administration.

Pax America now has to guarantee peace for twice that many people.

With a 6.5 billion population, there are now 6 acres of land per person.

If you leave out deserts and mountains and such...each person has about one third of an acre of arable land to support them.

What would Thomas Malthus say these days?

The debate has shifted from whether everyone can survive to whether everyone can enjoy a first world lifestyle.

Maximizing Data Presentation

2006-12-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

Suppose you have a set of data and you want to present it in an order that maximizes its positive impact, how do you go about it?

Is there a science to it?

Say you have five pieces of info:

5 - really impressive
4 - fairly impressive
3 - mildly impressive
2 - not very impressive at all
1 - bad, actually

If your data set is stars appearing in a movie, the rule seems to be a straight descending order: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The best presentation order when you are competing for the attention of a customer in a crowded market, perhaps? If you've only got a few seconds of their attention, better start with you most impressive piece of data?

Another obvious way is a straight ascending order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Build to a big finish.

Good if you've already got someone's attention and you're trying to build to a sale or have them leave your presentation with a positive opinion? Make sure the last thing they remember is your best peice of data, and your worst is already fading from their memory?

Another way is to mix up the good and bad data: 3, 1, 4, 2, 5.

Perhaps the best presentation order if you've got someone's attention but you need them to pay attention for a long time...sprinkle in the good data at regular intervals? Still, finish on a high note...

Wonder if this could be applied to blogs somehow?

Local Hero Protectionism

2006-12-19T02:59:00.000-08:00

In the days before the Industrial Revolution, when the vast majority of people lived in rural areas and rarely traveled far from home...everyone in the village had a good chance of being the best at something...a local hero. You could easily be the tallest, strongest, richest, prettiest person around without being particularly tall or strong or rich or pretty.

But the migration to urban areas coupled with improved communication and literacy rates raised the bar considerably. Odds were slim you were the richest person in a city of 100,000 or more. Odds are slimmer still now that you're better looking than Brad Pitt.

America, though, has done a remarkable job of keeping its local heroes safe from foreign competition. While the rest of the world watches Formula One racing and cheers on David Beckham, we have crappy NASCAR and American Football. We may import good foreign movies or TV shows, but they are almost always recast with American stars.

Foreigners occasionally gain fame in America (The Beatles, Yao Ming), but most foreigners famous in America are either dead (Winston Churchill) or villains that our local heroes fight (Osama bin Laden).

How long will our heroes be able to compete safely in our little village?

How long before the heroes of the global village come knocking?

Which living foreigner is most admired by Americans today?

Simon Cowell from American Idol, maybe? He's really playing the traditional villain role.

Tony Blair? Popular once perhaps, but now really just Bush's unpopular poodle now.

I'm sure there's someone obvious I'm forgetting...I just can't come up with their name.

An Ill Wind

2006-12-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

A rather large storm hit my little bubble of prosperity.

The next day brought out rude, self-centered behavior in people as they struggled to find food and gas for their cars at the few merchants that still had power...we even had modest amounts of violence.

If a few days without power can bring about such things in the land of millionaires and billionaires...what chance did Iraq really have?

When you are powerless to feed or even protect your family, you will take any offer that promises you a chance to do so, no matter what that offer is.

Boundries

2006-12-14T02:03:00.000-08:00

Something changes about a period of history when the last person to live during it dies.

Not sure what it is...but it does.

It's like the point where the wake of a great ship fades and becomes indistinguishable from the surrounding ocean...

Elizebeth Bolden, born August 15, 1890, R.I.P.

The baton passes to Emiliano Mercado del Toro and August 21, 1891.

Propaganda: A Siege Weapon Only?

2006-12-13T02:04:00.000-08:00

Propaganda can help you seize power.

It doesn't work nearly as well once you've stormed the castle, though.

Then the peasants expect a few results...

A Pair of Aces

2006-12-12T01:34:00.000-08:00

Why are so many successful tech companies founded by two people?

Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Bill Hewlitt and David Packard

Probably because the ability to:

1. Come up with a good idea for a tech product
2. Raise the money to develop the product
3. Actually make the product
4. Market the product

...rarely resides in a single nerd.

To make a tech company go, you really need a charismatic visionary type to raise money and market your product...and you need a hermitic, insanely focused tech guy to actually make the product. Designing the product seems to require both types.

At least that's my guess.

An online matchmaking service for budding tech billionaires might be a valuable service for countries trying to enter the worldwide tech marketplace:

Shy software genius seeks outgoing type who can raise $10 million with just a smile, a handshake and this doodle I made on a cocktail napkin...

Peep Your Enthusiasm

2006-12-11T01:54:00.000-08:00

I caught an episode of the British comedy Peep Show on BBC America over the weekend and actually laughed out loud several times. I went to Amazon to order the DVD and, sadly, they don't sell the flavor that works in American DVD players yet.

I think the closest American comedy show to it is Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Thanks to YouTube, I managed to see a bit more of this show. Here's the most representative I could find:

And here's the shows website:

NSFW and only for those with a...twisted...sense of humor.

When Echo Chambers are Okay

2006-12-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

Some people, when faced with an argument or some data that challenges their beliefs, simply get angry. I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know if there's a name for this, but I assume it is why some people have to take anger management classes.

These people are out there, though.

They are physically incapable of engaging in rational discussions.

In cases where most people would reconsider their beliefs or formulate a counter-argument, these people can only respond with rage.

It would be interesting to see how this type of person form their opinions in the first place.

The Avengers

2006-12-09T16:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't thought that much about the nature of evil until recently. I suppose if I was asked to name someone who was evil, I'd come up the usual list: Ted Bundy, Hitler, etc. A person would have to be very bad indeed before they made my list. A supreme indifference to human suffering coupled with many acts of violence against innocents for personal gain or worse yet, for pleasure.

I would just dismiss rhetoric like "Axis of Evil" as political grandstanding not meant to be taken seriously.

But it has come to my attention that some people do take evil very seriously and they don't set the bar very high at all.

They view themselves as avenging angels who must seek out and punish "evil."

The confronting of evil to them is life's highest calling and must be carried out even if many innocents suffer in the process.

Is this what' going on in Iraq right now?

The Avengers see an evil that must be wiped out no matter what the cost?

Pointing out civilian deaths to the Avengers is meaningless in that case...a sad but necessary sacrifice in their eyes.

The security of America isn't even a factor to the Avengers, evil simply must be confronted.

A question beyond rational debate?

Asymmetrical Monetary Warfare

2006-12-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

A recently leaked report from the U.S. government shows the Iraqi insurgency is operating on around $100 million a year.

The U.S. is spending about $100 billion a year to station troops there.

So, America is spending 1000 times as much as the insurgents and can only achieve "not winning" against them...troubling.

These numbers imply the insurgents would only need a modest increase in their funding to offset any majorAmerican effort.

Should historical examples come with expiration dates?

2006-12-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

Or should that be a sell-by date or a half-life?

While the political antics of Ancient Greece may bear some resemblance to the modern world of politics, surely there are other factors that have changed so much that the comparison is nearly meaningless now.

At the very least, people who use historical examples to support their position concerning modern dilemmas should be forced to use all the examples from a period, not just the ones that back up their arguments.

If you're a free trader who also supports the privatization of Social Security, for example...

If you're gonna use the evils of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 to rail against protectionism...

...shouldn't you also have to admit that investors who put their money in the stock market in 1929 saw their investment fall in value and they didn't break even for another35-40 years?

In other words...1930 era economic examples (if anything) teach us:

1. Tariffs are always bad.
2. Stock markets can have very long down periods.

If there are indeed some historic examples that have longer expiration dates that others...how can you tell which ones have gone moldy and should be tossed out...

...and which ones are keepers?

Zune Zune Zune

2006-12-05T22:42:00.000-08:00

Wow, the Zune is bad!

A clunky iPod clone...in brown.

Maybe Microsoft will get serious about its consumer electronic products when it stops making billions from its older product lines.

JFK on Truth

2006-12-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Is Hollywood the Last Bastion of Capitalism?

2006-12-04T01:51:00.000-08:00

Hollywood is frequently attacked as a Marxist enclave, but what American business sector is more purely capitalistic?

The defense industry is almost wholly dependent on government money.

Agriculture receives huge government subsidies.

Medicine relies on many types of government funding.

The oil and gas industries derive much of their income from resources extracted from government land, much of it below market value.

Housing and utilities rely on government-supplied roads, dams, sewers, etc.

Even the most "modern" American industries (software, computers, jet aircraft, the internet, biotech, etc.) were built on top of massive government-funded research and development efforts.

Outside of a little money for PBS, I can't think of any support Hollywood gets from the government. In true capitalistic fashion, studios risks tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on projects, then cross their fingers and release them into the purest market in America.

Today, the spirit of Adam Smith lives on more in Hollywood than anywhere else in America.

Unintended Consequences: America and Japan

2006-12-03T22:44:00.000-08:00

When Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to join the modern world in 1854, I doubt he expected they would grow strong enough to attack America 87 years later...but they did.

And when America's WWII military leaders encouraged the Soviets to help us finish off the now-modern Japan in 1945, I doubt they realized it would lead to America having to deal with a nuclear-armed North Korea 60 years later...but it did.

What future problems will arise from America's current struggle to turn Iraq into a "modern" country?

Guess we'll have to wait and see...

If America is attacked again...

2006-12-02T14:38:00.000-08:00

Will the next terrorist attack on America add weight to the arguments of the pro-war or anti-war people?