Okay, I'm going to respond to my open source critics here, because I think I need more space than is available in the comments.
First of all, I should rephrase what I said about IBM. My commenters point out that IBM does, in fact, fund open source now. To which I respond, why do you think this is? Because IBM is a nice company that wants to help some deserving kids get a start in the world? Umm. . . no. IBM hopes to kill Microsoft, in the hopes that the hardware manufacturers will regain some leverage in the PC market.
No Microsoft, no free money. As a business matter, pouring billions into something when you have no way of ensuring that its benefits accrue to you rather than competitors is not a sustainable practice -- not if the shareholders get wind of it, it isn't.
And I am aware that the open source folks talk about business models that will support their habit. The problem is, they don't quite think those business models through. Let's think about the financials of open source.
Assume that you can make open source work with approximately the same number of programmers, give or take, as there are in the world now. Maybe you need 15% less because Open Source is so damn efficient.
Well, all the programmers currently working for software companies won't be any more. That's no longer a revenue stream.
Corporations don't need more IT consultants or programmers than they have. Switching from NT administrators to Linux guys doesn't increase the net number of paying jobs in IT.
More than 15% of programmers currently work for software companies, particularly when you leave out the wizened old mainframe guys at large industrials, who won't be working on open source linux code in their retirement.
Companies won't pay a ton for non-proprietary consulting. Look at the differentials between a SAP consultant and ordinary contract programmers. Again, less money in the system.
No software companies means no corporate funding for CSci departments. Look for a reduction in the number of university positions in the US as the Computer Science tries to make do with the same level of funding as the Lit department.
So you just lost more than 15% of your wages; you probably lost (a wild ass guess) 30% of jobs, between the software firms and the university cutbacks. Plus let's throw in a conservative 15% across the board wage reduction for those who are left. What? I hear you scream. That's economics. Consulting services aren't scaleable; you are limited by the number of hours you can work in a week, unlike selling software. Consulting services have considerably higher marginal costs for scheduling, sales, and such. So you have both minimized your revenue stream, and maximized your cost, in relation to selling software. Meanwhile, the proprietary systems which push up revenue, like SAP or Microsoft, are no longer certifying authorities that up your rate. Because customers can't be sure of what they're getting, rates go down for everyone. Plus there's now a glut on the market. All of these things make a 15% average wage reduction not only likely, but timid. Are programmers really going to work at 7-11 to support their Linux habit? Maybe initially. But the flood of entrants into CS will slow, further reducing the programmers we think we need to make good code.
Open source is good code and bad marketing. Linux is great, but it would scare the hell out of your average consumer. And who do they call when it breaks? IBM isn't going to keep a staff of Linux gurus on staff gratis. Microsoft does the troubleshooting on its programs and pushes that data out to the OEM's. Who's collecting a database of all the fixes? How do users know what's good and bad? What's the difference between a legit website and some scary dude who wants to hack your machine? Brands exist for a reason.
Here's the thing: tech people hate Microsoft because Microsoft doesn't produce the kind of software they like. But Microsoft provides a whole slew of services that consumers do like, and for which open source has not yet offered a reliable alternative.
Let me summarize this way: there is, at this point, X amount of money in the world software developement system, squeezed out of corporations and consumers in exchange for the software and systems they like. The "new paradigm" takes out all the money currently gotten from revenues on software, and doesn't put any back. Companies pay for customization and optimization now. A marginal increase in the amount of optimization required does not increase the amount of money in the system to support the developers who write the code. Nor could consulting replace software revenues even with a drastic increase in the amount of consulting, because the cost structure is disadvantageous. Hardware companies are not going to drastically increase their R&D budgets when the benefits accrue as much to their competitors as to themselves. I'm not an idiot who doesn't understand business models; I'm a veteran of three startups who understands TANSTAAFL.
I'm not saying that there's no business model that makes open source work, but the ones that I've seen rely on not examining the hidden subsidies from the software industry that percolate all through the system, from R&D to salaries, and money from companies that are trying to kill Microsoft now in the hopes that they can extract those extortionate market rents instead. IBM isn't looking for a way to redirect the money that Microsoft now gets for its software to Linux programmers; it's looking for a way to redirect that money to IBM. Clearly open source works as a coding system, but I haven't yet seen it work as an economic one. Which is why most of the people predicting that Linux will displace Windows are programmers, not bankers.
I'm extremely fascinated by Open Source prophets because it never seems to occur to them to wonder who is going to pay for the food, shelter, and gadgets of the legions of programmers who will be working on the Open Source code after the software companies go out of business.
If you actually read his article, he's not claiming that the mainstream media is unbiased. What he's claiming is that the media in toto is not biased in a way that benefits liberals.
I don't know if it's true or not, but his claim is that the mainstream media has a liberal bias but mutes it (to a greater or lesser degree) in an attempt to be unbiased. In contrast, right wing media outlets like Fox News, the Wall Street Journal OpEd page, and various talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, are much more openly partisan. So that these voices, although not as widely distributed or heard, balance out the weaker bias of the mainstream media in public perception and influence, because there is no liberal counterpart to them. You've got a strong voice saying weakly liberal things, and a weaker voice saying strongly conservative things, so the net effect is a wash.
I don't know if I believe this analysis, although it's intriguing. But turning around and showing that there is a bias at the New York Times is not a refutation of what Kurtz is saying.
Well, first of all, he is saying, in effect, that the media isn't biased, or at least that that bias doesn't really affect reporting. And second, the point that Patrick is making is that in being unabashedly partisan, conservative voices give their audiences the opportunity to take their opinions with a grain of salt; liberal voices pretend that they are weighing both sides equally, when in fact they aren't. Need a quote on women? Call NOW. Need a quote on animal rights? PETA. African-Americans? Who the hell is Shelby Steele? I've already got Kweisi Mfume on speed-dial. Make sure that your audience knows that conservative voices are conservative; label liberal activists, even ones pretty damn far to the left, in neutral or positive terms that do not identify their political affiliation. Those are all measurable things that happen on the news pages -- not the editorial pages -- of the New York Times, the WaPo, and most other coastal papers. Nor would I call the New York Times practice of finding the stupidest conservative they can to make the other half on an argument "balanced".
And third, Howard Kurtz is more than a little selective:
Liberal media detractors – you know who you are – take note.
The conventional wisdom is that the mainstream liberal media helps, well, mainstream liberal politicians. That conservatives can't catch a break from the big media companies. That journalists have their thumb on the scale, tilting it to the left.
Those on the right, in this view, have to scramble to get their voices heard but are drowned out by the libs, who don't even know they're libs, since everyone they know in the media is lib.
Maybe so. But there's another theory.
That the conservative press is purely partisan, while the mainstream weenie press is concerned with issues like fairness and balance – and, in fact, often criticized Bill Clinton and other Democrats.
That it's not really an even fight, heavyweight boxers versus high school debaters.
That Democrats are actually hamstrung because they try to play to the major editorial pages, while the Republicans, with knives in their teeth, couldn't care less.
That's the argument mounted by Washington Monthly Editor Paul Glastris in a piece titled "Why Can't The Democrats Get Tough?"
It's got a great cover – a menacing-looking Joe Lieberman, Tom Daschle and George Stephanopoulos, in muscleman T-shirts, wielding stillettos, chains and truncheons.
First, the premise: "The Bush team can attack Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), lose $4 trillion of the surplus, and meet with campaign contributors whose company stock they own, and Democrats just watch. ... And then there's Enron. Is there any doubt that if the situation were reversed, Republicans would be exploiting the scandal more aggressively? Would they have hesitated, as Democrats have, to frame Enron as a political scandal, or to bombard the White House with subpoenas? Democrats can't afford to go all wobbly, especially now."
Now the media critique: "The difference in partisan intensity also reflects the different media outlets to which the parties play. Democrats in Washington focus incessantly on the establishment press: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS, CNN, NPR. That is where their worldview is shaped, and where they look for validation of their ideas and status. Republican leaders are hardly indifferent to the establishment outlets. But they increasingly take their cue from the expanding alternative universe of conservative media: The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, Fox News Channel.
"Needless to say, these two media worlds are governed by radically different rules. Yes, there is a certain amount of liberal bias in the mainstream press. But on balance, the big national papers and broadcast networks take seriously the traditional journalistic strictures of fairness, accuracy, and independence of judgement.
Which we know because the editor of the Washington Monthly says so.
"The conservative press, by and large, does not labor under these constraints. It does not pretend to be in the business of presenting all sides fairly, but of promoting its side successfully. 'The conservative press is self-consciously conservative and self-consciously part of the team,' observes conservative strategist Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform (who, like most conservatives I spoke with, doesn't buy the idea that Republicans fight more ruthlessly than Democrats). 'The liberal press is much larger, but at the same time it sees itself as the establishment press. So it's conflicted. Sometimes it thinks it needs to be critical of both sides, to be nonpartisan.'
"You see this all the time. The editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times supported or kept silent about the Republican Senate's strategy of blocking votes on Clinton judicial nominees. Now these papers cry foul when Democrat senators try to do the same to Bush. The New York Times and Washington Post editorials, on the other hand, have been consistent in their condemnation.
Well, true, but this is cherry-picking your issues. The New York Times condemned the Bush budget during the election cycle but kept silent about the equally idiotic Gore budget. It went after Enron and fell silent on Global Crossing. It lauded Bellesiles in no fewer than nine articles, then went dark on the subject for more than a year when evidence came forward that he was making it all up. They fact-checked The Bell Curve, but not Arming America. And the news section of the WSJ doesn't have an editorial direction like that of the Times.
"But to the conservative press, intellectual consistency is for, well, intellectuals. What's more important is to stiffen the resolve of GOP lawmakers to fight the Manichaean battle against liberalism. If the mainstream papers want to undermine the will of Democrats with a lot of high-minded consistency, that's their business. Let 'em get medals for fair play. We'll get the federal judiciary.
Which is entirely different from the way that the New York Times went after welfare reform.
"The same dynamic plays out among TV pundits. Conservatives such as Robert Novak, Kate O'Beirne, and Jonah Goldberg are ideological warriors who attempt with every utterance to advance their cause. Their center-left counterparts, people such as Juan Williams, Margaret Carlson, and E.J. Dionne, simply don't have the same killer instinct. While their sympathies are obvious, liberal pundits are at heart political reporters, not polemicists, who seem far more at ease on journalistic neutral ground, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of both sides, rather than in vigorously defending Democrats."
Umm. . . okay. Where's Eleanor Clift?
Overall, I find Howard Kurtz unconvincing. He selects examples which fit his theory -- where are the news pages and news programs in all of this, which is where conservatives claim the bias is most damaging? -- and ignores the ones that don't.
Which doesn't leave you with much doubt about where his sympathies lie, does it?
Update Charlie Toft points out that most of what I criticized is straight quotes from the Washington Monthly article. I don't have any particular bone to pick with Howard Kurtz; either he's quoting the piece straight, in which case the Washington Monthly is the one I want to criticize for selective quotation; or he's quoting selectively, in which case I'm still mad at Howard Kurtz. Either way, I don't think much of the argument.
Moving even in the direction of adopting a preventive war stance Bush said this- "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons." In this vein, he referred directly to North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as constituting "an axis of evil" whose pursuit of weaponry of mass destruction was grounds enough for a preemptive assault. It is true, of course, that such weaponry, as abetted by long-range delivery capabilities, could pose a grave threat to America and others in the future. But it is also true that these three states have not shown any disposition to attack the United States directly, and have confined their activities to their own geographical neighborhood; besides this, they had no connection at all, or none of any substance, with either al Qaida, Osama bin Laden, or the September 11 attacks. As such, even the more flexible framework of just war cannot be adapted to validate this type of American extension of the war on global terror. To engage in preventive wars on the basis of contrived links to global terror is to undermine in a dangerous and destructive way the whole enterprise of law and morality to circumscribe as narrowly as possible the discretion of states to wage war.
The author is essentially arguing three things: first, that we can't attack the "Axis of Evil" because they aren't bothering us right now, just their neighbors; second, that we can't attack Iraq because it's not a logical extension of the direct war on us launched by Al Quaeda, and third, that preventitive wars are a priori wrong.
Well, as much as I hate it when every conservative drags out Hitler to justify every war ever waged, I must point out that point one would seem to indicate that even if we'd known the full extent of what was going on in Europe, America wouldn't have any reason to invade until Hitler started bothering us. I'm pretty much just as horrified by the idea of Sadaam Hussein using nuclear or chemical weapons on, say, Tehran as I am by the thought of his using them on us.
Point two I'll address by saying that, first, it's clear that there are links between the Al Quaeda and Sadaam Hussein, and second, there's another war we haven't quite finished up -- if Sadaam doesn't let the weapons inspectors in, which he hasn't, we're quite justified in going in. That the changed mood of the American public is due to 9/11 does not mean that every military action we take must be in direct response to Al Quaeda.
Point three, though, is where the article really falls apart. It's all very well to say that you shouldn't attack unless attacked, but when weapons of mass destruction are at issue, this is not a sufficient response. For one thing, the asymmetry of power it gives a nuclear nation is devastating. A nuclear Iraq also implies a nuclear Turkey and a nuclear Iran. A nuclear Iraq and Iran near a nuclear Israel is a recipe for disaster. For another thing, regimes centered around dictators, as Iraq and North Korea are, are inherently far too unstable to have a bomb. What if a coup overthrows Sadaam and he's about to be overrun and executed? The man gasses and starves his own people to maintain his power -- can we rule out the possibility that he might decide to take Tehran or Tel Aviv with him? And for a third thing, there is no reason to think that Iraq's use of nuclear weapons would be a traditional military one. How about a nuclear bomb hidden somewhere in New York, Paris or London with a deadman's switch and a suicide bomber? Sadaam could demand anything he wanted. It is this asymmetry of power that resulted in the revolution in geopolitical theory in the post-WWII era, a revolution that the author seems to have missed.
Here is the article's prescription for dealing with a potentially nuclear state:
As the Preamble of the UN Charter so memorably intones, the purpose of the nations gathering at the end of World War II was "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." The shape of international relations has not permitted this ideal to be realized, but surely responsible global leadership by the United States should certainly restrict the war option as used by itself and other to narrow grounds of necessity. Here, those grounds do not exist at present. Terrorist groups with specific nationalist objectives need to be dealt with by law enforcement and counter-terrorist methods, not by global war. The countries with possible capabilities to use weaponry of mass destruction need to be contained by deterrence or enticed to enter into broader disarming processes whereby all countries, including the nuclear weapons states, rethink their reliance on such weaponry. In its historic Advisory Opinion on the Legality of Nuclear Weapons rendered five years ago, the distinguished tribunal of judges, including the judges from the United States, Britain, France, Russia agreed on one point- that under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty all nuclear weapons states had an obligation in good faith to seek nuclear disarmament via international negotiations.
What deterrence does the author suppose will work, other than military threat? We've already cut off most economic activity with Iraq, and name calling doesn't seem to be effective. Such rhetoric foolishly supposes that it is not in Iraq's best interest to have a device. It is. Sadaam Hussein with a nuclear weapon is immensely more powerful than Sadaam Hussein without.
Disarmament is simply not a stable state. Imagine a non-nuclear world. Collectively, we may all be better off this way, but any one nation can improve his own position by getting a nuclear device. If we disarm the West, who have shown reluctance to use this power, we merely open the field to nations that have already proven that they have no compunction about bullying other countries. If Hitler, Tojo, or Stalin had gotten their hands on the atomic bomb before we did, we would all be living under the worldwide nuclear empire of whichever nation got there first. We are not, because it is not in the American political, social, or economic model to build that kind of empire. But this is not evidence, as some seem to feel, that other nations would behave similarly.
Geopolitically speaking, it is simply not enough to say "sovreignty" and step out of the way. We are not playing a touch football game where good sportsmanship is the ultimate end. If the US allows North Korea or Iraq or Iran to get nuclear devices, which they clearly aim to do, and something goes wrong, millions of people will die. Millions. A defense strategy which does not take this into account and seek to prevent it is not much of a strategy.
Via Oliver Willis: very interesting article on the former Clinton appointees who are running for office this cycle says that even Andrew Cuomo has thrown the Clinton connection overboard in preparing for the campaign. This does not bode well for his legacy. . .
Blogfest NY! last night was so enjoyable that I find myself unable to express it in words. Check out Andrew Hofer and Sophismata for details and pictures, including my world famous "Cousin It" imitation. Meanwhile, I was introduced to some new blogs: Amy Langfield, Arrogant Rants, and Clay Waters. I also gleaned some interesting gossip about more famous bloggers than I am, which I won't repeat, partly because it wouldn't be nice and partly because now if any of them find this page, they can just wonder what the rest of us lesser lights know . . .
First of all, it offers the activism of Creationists trying to get evolution banned in the local schools as if these things had already happened, which they haven't and never will -- remember the Supreme Court? There are all sorts of wing-nuts trying to get all sorts of bizarre things done in the schools at a local level -- how come we only hear about the Creationists, instead of the guy who thinks that whites are satanic "Ice People"? or the one who wants the social studies class to do a full unit on cheesemaking?
Second of all, it says 40% of Catholics subscribe to the Creationist creed, which is unlikely -- Catholics who think the world was created a few thousand years more likely believe that the universe was created old than deny evolution, which is on the curriculum at all Catholic schools. You may not agree with the idea that God created the Universe already several billion years old, but there's no reason that you know of that this couldn't be true -- at least no reason that doesn't devolve to, "Well, if I were an omniscient, omipotent and omnipresent deity, I wouldn't. . . "
And third of all, it conflates Creationists with people who think that the world was created less than 100,000 years ago. Given that more than half of all Americans can't place dates within the correct half-century, I would like to know how many of those people are simply confused about the age of the universe, rather than subscribing to a literal chronological reading of the Old Testament.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm a big fan of evolution, and I in no way support teaching creationism in the schools. But I'm tired of the endless "Look! All those people out there in the sticks really are right wing nut jobs who couldn't tie their shoes if their Second Amendment Rights depended on it!" reporting.
You don't need to change your links to www.janegalt.net just yet! Get ready. . . but I need to straighten out the FTP'ing of my archives before it's a go.
Peggy Noonan offers a fair-minded take on the Aaron Sorkin debacle. Her piece makes the point that conservatives shouldn't be outraged, since he's flying his true colors proudly . . . and indeed, the people most upset by this seem to be the people at the network, who are treating him like an 8-year old who accidentally blabbed a family secret.
But the best part of the piece is this:
A note on Aaron's art. If he screened out the propaganda on his own it would not only make it easier on a lot of us, it would put him that much closer to being a dramatist of the stature of a William Inge or Tennessee Williams or Paddy Chayevsky. With a first-rate artist you can often guess his politics. Walker Percy, who wrote about the secret brokenness and lostness of our selves, which is to say our souls, was probably in many ways a conservative. Tennessee Williams with his great tugging heart toward the outsider, the outrider, the one who doesn't fit, was probably a liberal. Eugene O'Neill, if he had lived 20 years longer, through the 1970s, would probably have completed the transit from socialist to right-wing nut. Or so I imagine.
But I have to guess. Their work doesn't bludgeon me with the political views of the dramatist (or, in Percy's case, the novelist.) Their work stands, speaks and stays, untethered to passing political views and positions. Which is one reason they're great.
His show would be better if Aaron Sorkin tried to be great.
I confess I don't watch the show; one-sided political commentary doesn't make interesting TV for me. But I admit that I might find it compelling if it weren't such a polemic.
Via James Rummel: a Harvard researcher has come out with a study that says that children die at higher rates in states with higher gun ownership. Certainly provocative, although as Rummel points out, this same researcher has given us such research gems as "smoking causes suicide" (the good doctor does admit, grudgingly, that the causal relationship might be reversed), and "binge drinking leads to gun ownership", so as Rummel says, the one piece of rock solid data we can glean from this study is that its author, Dr. Matthew Miller, doesn't like drinking, smoking, or guns.
Still, some of the evidence is facially convincing:
The study showed that the five states with the highest gun ownership levels had many more firearm-related deaths among children than the five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership.
The two groups of states had almost the same number of children, but in the high gun-ownership states there were 253 accidental firearm deaths compared to just 15 in the low gun-ownership states.
There were 153 firearm suicides in the high gun-ownership states compared to 22 in the low-ownership states and there were 298 firearm murders in the high gun-ownership states compared to 86 in the low-ownership states.
Meanwhile, the rates of non firearm-related suicides and murders in the two groups of states were much closer, leading Miller to conclude the increase in deaths was attributable to the higher number of firearm-related deaths.
Of course, any gun statistics for either side have to be taken with a shaker of salt, because the reporting problems are so difficult. For one thing, whether an incident gets reported as a murder, a suicide, or an accident varies tremendously from precinct to precinct; the best guess is that many gun "accidents" are actually homicides or suicides. So there's the possibility, for instance, that states with higher levels of gun ownership are less likely to give credence to the idea that "it just went off by accident" then are states with lower levels. I note that the article mentions only the levels of gun-related suicides or homicides; from the fact that it leaves out accidents, I infer that these are in fact higher (since similar or lower levels would have bolstered the argument). This seems to bolster the possibility of reporting error.
I also note a little oddity lower down in the article:
The difference remains even when the data is controlled for poverty, education and urbanization, the study found.
"Although no conclusions about cause and effect can be made, this study provides compelling evidence that states with high firearm availability are states with high childhood firearm death rates," Dr. Therese Richmond of the University of Pennsylvania's Firearm Injury Center wrote in an editorial.
The five states with the highest rates of gun ownership are Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia. The five with the lowest are Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Delaware.
How on earth would you control for urbanization between five almost entirely rural states, and five states of which four are on the Northeast Corridor and one is a resort mecca? There is a point at which controlling your data reduces your sample size too far to produce good results; think of the study which showed that gun ownership caused suicide, in which "controlling" for location discarded 2/3 of the data points.
Which is not to say the study is wrong. Indeed, at the margin I would assume that higher rates of gun ownership increase accidents, just as does higher rates of car ownership. The question, of course, is whether or not the benefits of gun ownership offset the risks; John Lott and others say they do, but of course their data has the same kind of reporting problems. I will be interested to see what the inevitable critics make of the data.
But I'm not going to listen to anyone who wants to argue that guns change marginal behavior in owners, but not in criminals.
John Ellis says that the reason that the Dems aren't taking advantage of the corporate governance issue as they should is is that Terry McCauliffe is vulnerable because of his Global Crossing connections. In which case, he's hurting the party to save his own ass, and the Democrats should toss his ass overboard faster than you can say "Sweetheart deal".
I don't see why not; its not as if McCauliffe's Clinton-era glamour is the asset it once was. But I'm probably naive.
Hey, y'all -- anyone who's linking the tapes, I appreciate it -- just make sure that the actual link (you know that "a href=" thing) includes the words Danny Pearl Tape, etc, so that Google gets it.
VodkaPundit is moving, and so am I. Look for these files over at www.janegalt.net just as soon as I fix up my little FTP problem at my new host. You know, you could, like, bookmark the new link now so that there won't be any problems with the switchover. Just a suggestion.
Things I need to do before I can edit my article on the Microsoft Civil Complaint
1) Reboot my computer 2) Clean the screen 3) Get Q-Tips and clean the keyboard 4) Readjust my chair 5) Look up the closing price of Microsoft on the day the AOL complaint was filed 6) Go to the store for more Diet Coke 7) Check my hit counter to see if anyone new is visiting 8) Search my name on Google to see why I'm getting hits from Alt.Sex.Spanking 9) Get another glass of Diet Coke. 10) Go to Microsoft to see if they have a response to the complaint. Download all relevant updates for my copy of Windows. 11) Search for legal clipart on the web. 12) Search for my ex-boyfriend the M&A lawyer. 13) Search for all my ex-boyfriends. 14) Get the bottle of Diet Coke from the fridge so I don't have to keep getting up. 15) Walk the dog. 16) Go through my old college yearbooks to make sure that my ex-boyfriend the M&A lawyer actually was once cute. 17) Readjust my chair. 18) Watch Friends. 19) That new show looks pretty good too. 20) Send my sister out for another bottle of Diet Coke. 21) Go to TurboTax to estimate my tax burden this year. 22) Buy books on Amazon. 23) Organize my pencils. 24) Highlight relevant passages in the complaint. 25) Make a list of all the things I have to do before I can edit my article on Microsoft.
The Times' take on the designer baby reads: Baby Spared Mother's Fate by Genetic Tests as Embryo. This is not technically correct. The baby actually escaped the fate of its sibling embryos who were found to be unworthy of implantation and destroyed. The egg which was fertilized to form the chosen embryo already had not inherited it's mother's faulty gene. It is incorrect to say, then, that the child which grew from that embryo was spared from the mother's fate by the screening process. It's as though you picked a black marble from a bag of whites and declared that it was your selection of it which it made it black. It was already black-- that's why you picked it. Likewise, this child was born because it did not share its mother's flaw. Had it had the bad gene it would have been destroyed with the others, and another embryo would have been implanted. That embryo would be as different from the girl which was just born as one is from one's brother or sister. All you can say is that its parents were spared the heartache of bearing a child who would develop Alzheimer's disease should it live to be forty, and to achieve this end, who knows how many embryos were created and then destroyed.
I don't have an opinion on fetal research/cloning right now; I was disturbed by this case more because it seems irresponsible, to me, to make a special effort to bring a child into this world when you're going to be too senile to parent it within ten years. Nonetheless, while this story may or may not be heartwarming, dpending on your point of view, it gets us no further on the fetal research debate.
Charles Kuffner asks an interesting question about Andrea Yates:
Ask yourself this question: If Yates' erratic and ultimately lethal behavior had been caused by a brain tumor, would you feel differently about her? If the answer is yes, then why is postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia not enough to mitigate your emotions?
I don't have an answer. On the one hand, I think it's pretty clear that she's as nutty as a junebug. On the other, I feel the same way about Jeffrey Dahlmer, and I didn't want him walking around, because then aren't we giving people a sort of an incentive to make their crimes as heinous as possible?
I know I'm all with the Heinlein quotes these days, but this one (I'm paraphrasing -- my books are in storge) seems to fit: "I figured there were two possibilities if he was sick. Either he wouldn't get well, in which case why leave him suffering? Or he would, in which case how could he go on living, knowing what he'd done. In the end, I figured the important thing was that no more little girls would die. That satisfied me. I went to sleep." Which I offer not to justify executing Andrea Yates, or even locking her up -- but how can she live with herself, if she isn't evil? Are we saving her life just to prolong her suffering?
Check out this excerpt from American Jihad, the new book on extremist muslim groups in America. If it's true, it's. . . well, take a look for yourself.
Okay, this is going to sound awfully self-righteous and angry, but darn it, I am angry, which just naturally leads to the self-righteous part.
The other day, a radio station in New York that one of my co-workers listens too read a play-by-play of the R Kelly videotape. It is the first time I've ever been made actually nauseous by something I heard or watched. For those who aren't aware of it, R Kelly is a musician who purchased the services of a 14-year old girl from her family and . . . no, I can't go on. It makes me want to get sick just thinking about it.
Well now websites are offering clips of it. Some say it's just journalistic and are offering it for free; others are charging for it. Either way, it's appalling.
However, this, combined with this article, got me thinking. I have the following proposal. Let those of us in the Blogosphere post the following two links on our pages:
These go to my ISP, which has no counter, so I'm not trolling for hits. The idea is to make this page top the list of the Google searches. If others want to get into the act, we can at least make it harder for people to find the stuff.
A kind reader sent me this article, thinking that after the bra wars, I'd get a kick out of it. Which I did, in more ways than one -- the lingerie store it talks about is ten blocks from my parents' apartment. My grandmother is one of the last women on the planet who wears a girdle, and when the garters wore out, we couldn't find them anywhere. I must have looked through hundreds of google sites. But then one day my mother stopped into the Towne Shop on the off chance that they might have them -- and they did! My mother practically fainted with gratitude. The man who sold them to her told her that they sold 6, 8 sets a year, and that he had suggested to the owner -- his 94 year old grandmother -- that they discontinue them because they sold so few, but she made him continue to carry them so that she, and the other old women who had patronized the shop since they bought their trousseau there in the 20's, could get them whenever they wanted.
That 94 year old grandmother is the subject of the article, and apparently she's a pistol.
And it turns out that I may need her services. We just got our first (soon to be disappointed) Premium Member of the Countdown to Drunken Rioting!
Someone's been playing another game of "bait the religious" with the modern secularists favorite sport -- dragging verses out of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and waving them at Christians or Orthodox jews. Usually this is done for the amusement of similarly minded friends, which is why those who do it are so shocked and embarassed to find that no, the religions in question didn't just, for example, take their position on homosexuality because they're mean, homophobic people (they may be, but that's neither here nor there; they all have well reasoned scriptural precedents for their positions. Whether or not you happen to agree that scripture is a sound basis for decision making is not relevant.) This particular letter is addressed to Dr. Laura, which just goes to show that whoever wrote it is ignorant as hell, because the last thing you want to do is get into an argument with an Orthodox Jew about the Law. Rabbis who were smarter than you and more fond of arguing spent a hundred years or so debating every possible permutation of every single law in the Torah, and then wrote it all down so thet the Orthodox you just picked a fight with can bore you for hours on the subject. It's called the Talmud, and go read Chaim Potok if you don't believe the shiksa.
The refugee camps have been a stronghold for Palestinian militia groups, because Israeli military is so hampered by the small alleys that militia leaders have bragged that Israeli soldiers wouldn't dare enter the camps.
On the one hand, it does seem like those in the refugee camps have gone through enough without a military assult. On the other hand, the refugees are kept in those camps by Arab governments who won't let them resettle, precisely because they wish to provide a stronghold from which to push the Israelis back to the sea. And the AP report seems to indicate that the majority of those hurt were in fact holding guns at the time they were wounded. Before I hear anything about the evil Israelis, I want to hear a little about the morality of using civilians as human shields.
Go read Stephen Green's list of celebrity put-downs by . . . Stephen Green. It's much better than most people writing about their own writing, mostly because Stephen doesn't try to hide it when he pats himself on the back for a job well done.
Some vandals have stolen the entire print run of the California Patriot, an alternative newspaper at Berkely, because self appointed guardians of the student body morals didn't like what it said. Over at Banana Counting Monkey, Robin is issuing a clarion call to those of us with a little of the ready to help these kids get up the money to print another run. I'm putting in a little via PayPal, and encourage others to do so as well.
An anonymous reader from the bowels of academia, who is still trying to think up a good pseudonym, forwards the following missive to illustrate the "Separate and Unequal" place ethnic studies occupies in the academy:
I'm forwarding a message sent to all students (and faculty, staff, and administration) here today. I should admit up front that all departments are guilty of what my friend Esmerelda Von Clausewitz (not her real name), an archaeologist who considers herself especially good at it, calls "major whoring": recruiting enough majors to one's department to keep the administration from cutting one of your tenuretrack "lines" (i.e. jobs).
But I've never seen another department use the argument that its faculty are better scholars than their colleagues ("some of the finest faculty at the college"). This claim is false (says me), but how would one go about offering a counterargument except by public criticism of the scholarship of one's colleagues? (Which would be uncool under any circumstances, but in this case would also have you tarred and feathered as a racist.)
Dear Students,
Many of you are in the process of deciding upon your major. As Chair of the Africana Studies Program here at F&M, I want to encourage you to examine the Africana Studies Program as a possibility. There are three reasons why I believe Africana Studies merits your consideration. First, Africana Studies is a rapidly developing interdisciplinary field of study with many pioneering, worldclass scholars at the forefront of the field. Indeed, some of the greatest scholars in the United States today are specialists in Africana or African-American Studies. As evidence of this, I invite you to examine the faculty at Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, NYU, and Columbia Universities. Second, many thoughtful observers believe that both the promise and difficulties that are faced by the people of Africa on the continent and around the world will, in this century, move from the periphery of international concern to the center. As a consequence, vast intellectual, humanitarian, economic and political resources will likely be brought to bear in service to the peoples of Africa, and we will need well-trained scholars in Africana studies to play a role. Last, the Africana Studies Program at Haverdell College has, at its disposal, some of the finest faculty at the college. Some of these include Professors [names expunged to protect the guilty] (among others).
If you think that you might be interested in exploring Africana Studies as an area of concentration - either as a major or minor -- I invite you to contact me.
With warm regards, [Name Witheld]
Now coming up with tenuous rationales for persuading unwitting students to choose your major is hardly unique to any field of study. But I've never seen a department claim it had the best scholars on campus -- not if it wanted to hold its own in the annual mudfest that surrounded funding battles at my Alma Mater.
The Professor posts a piece on Enron that includes this passage from Paul Krugman on the faked-up trading floor:
the company's pride and joy is a room filled with hundreds of casually dressed men and women staring at computer screens and barking into telephones, where cubic feet and megawatts are traded and packaged as if they were financial derivatives. (Instead of CNBC, though, the television screens on the floor show the Weather Channel.)
which he contrasts with the truth:
. . . the phony trading room was staffed with. . . employees to resemble a real trading operation. . . "They would build out a set with a big, 36-inch flat panel screens and the teleconference conference rooms." Elkin said that it was all an act, and that no trades were actually made there. The people on the phones were talking to each other.
Okay, let's think about this. Hundreds of employees. None of whom told the other employees in time to prevent them from sinking their 401(k)s into the company? Or considered telling the clueless analysts about the fraud they were helping the to perpetuate?
The Democratic Party has invited me to join in their Countdown to Victory! with a credit card donation. Well, I'm inviting the DNC, and all of you readers, to join me in my Countdown to Drunken Rioting! by contributing as generously as possible to the tip jar at right. And if you donate more than $25, you'll get a hand-autographed photo of yours truly, debating Logical Positivism in a sheer negligee. Guaranteed to become a collector's item!
James Lileks' new Screed is just hilarious. It's on the Euroweenies, and . . . no, you 'll just have to go read it yourself.
While I'm making fun of high school kids, do the bleating eurocrats remind anyone else of the kids in junior high who didn't get invited to other kids' birthday parties? "I wouldn't want to be a superpower. You have to be all mean and nasty. If I were a superpower, I'd invite everyone to my foreign policy meetings and I'd let them have a say. Except Tiffany, because she didn't invite me to hers. I'd make Tiffany cry."
Question of the Day: "Chinese Walls" are supposed to protect research analysts from receiving non-public information about a company's financial state. They are also supposed to prevent research analysts from reporting favorably on companies that their bank is doing business with. So what exactly are the synergies that are supposed to justify the joining of equity research and investment banks?
In a related story, Jonathan Hillyard (16) of Ramapo, NJ told his parents, Cindy and Tom, that he had no idea that there was going to be alchohol at that party, and that while he was surprised and shocked to find people drinking when he walked in the door, he had nonetheless stayed so that he could drive home any of his friends should they become intoxicated. Moreover, he stated that he had no idea how marijuana could have found its way into the glove compartment of the family's Ford Expedition, but suggested that perhaps it was his parents fault for failing to lock the car properly each and every time they exited the vehicle. "You can't just blame me for everything that goes wrong," Jonathan was heard to say, as his father lifted him from the ground and hurled him into the car by his ear. "How am I supposed to know?"
Timothy Anderson (15), with whom Jonathan was supposed to be spending the night, could not be reached for comment. However, other students at Ramapo High reported that he had been heard muttering to himself in study hall "It's not my fault he went. . . I wasn't even invited to Claire's stupid friggin' party, now I get all the blame because I didn't tell my friggin' parents. . . like I'm not a big enough dork already. . . " The other students adamantly denied that such goings-on are common, but they did confirm that Timothy Anderson is a pretty big dork.
On a lighter note, a friend sends this tidbit, with the following blurb:
Isn't this the real reason we all went to work on Wall Street: to spend more on a few bottles of wine than we did on our B-school tuition? Oh well. Note that they washed it all down with a couple of $5 beers. . .
The article discusses six Barclays bankers who managed to spend £44,000 on one meal. Aficionados of business dinners will know that this wasn't actually spent on the meal (the befuddled restauranteur comped the food) but on the wine, most of which was older than they are. All this in the face of a decline in both profits and prestige in investment banking -- one thinks of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his cronies dancing on the edge of the abyss. Now all but one of them has been fired -- not for spending so much, although that's frowned on in today's more austere banking culture, but for trying to expense it.
Even more priceless, however, is this bit from the otherwise left wing New York Times:
The extravagance occurred as banks were instituting what some complain are draconian measures, requiring employees to fly economy class on business trips and limiting the amount spent on entertaining clients - sometimes to as little as £100 a person, or $140 - as business suffers one of its worst slumps in two decades.
Investment bankers flying coach! Oh, the humanity!
The ex-boy was a Morgan Stanley banker, and for a little while he was quite taken with the theory that the mothballing of planes had actually caused occupancy to rise on most flights post-9/11. Now, I knew from reports about capacity levels that this wasn't true; it didn't even seem to be true on any but a couple of high-traffic routes. Yet he insisted, based on his experience and those of his colleagues (all of whom spent more time in the air than most birds) that it was so. Then one day a light dawned. "Darling," I asked gently, "do you think that this had something to do with the fact that the cutbacks are forcing you to fly coach?" Even when you love them, it's hard not to take a little delight in the utter discombabulation of I-Bankers forced to live the way the peons do.
One would think this were tongue in cheek, if the Times weren't so relentlessly humorless these days. While half of me thinks this is a rare flash of wit in the staid Gray Lady, the other half thinks that this columnist is dismayed to find that her wealthy friends will no longer be able to bring her along on their lush vacations . . . Ayn Rand's Lillian crying "You don't understand! I'm not talking about not having money. . . I'm talking about real, stinking poverty!" But the article goes on to discuss prices and menus at the restaurant in a more traditionally indignant style, so I suspect a case of sudden onset adverb deficit disorder (ADD), which is often mistaken by laymen for subtlety.
Sigh. They spent all that money on wine, when they could have helped a needy MBA almost completely pay off her loans. . . up the revolution! Grab your calculators and your compilers and march on Wall Street! Underemployed professionals of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but 8-20 in accomodations no worse than the ones you have now!
Over on Dodgeblog, MommaBear reports that the Daniel Pearl videotape is apparently up for sale to the highest bidder. If it's true, profanity is too weak. What words can possibly describe the depth of depravity to which one must have sunk to seek out such a videotape, much less pay for it? The utter soullessness of which is exceeded only by that of the human blood lice who would actually profit from such a sale.
MommaBear asks us in BlogWorld to think of ways we can stop this. The only thing I can think of is raise enough money to 1) buy all copies of the tape and burn them and 2) put a price on the head of whoever's selling them. Neither of these is very practical, but luckily, my readers are smarter than I am.
Mother of God. I'm still against the death penalty . . . but things like this weaken one's resolve.
Meanwhile, Rand Simberg comes out in favor of the electoral college. He also points out why arguments about the popular vote were so specious: in a safe state, Wyoming, which was guaranteed to go to Bush, he voted for Nader, hoping to get the man enough Federal money to continue being a thorn in the side of the Democrats.
I did very much the same thing from the other side -- New York was going Gore no matter what, so I got to cast my ballot for the Libertarian candidate. In a close state, I would have gone Bush on the Supreme Court issue. So who knows what the "popular" vote actually was?
My Democratic friends say that I only feel this way because it supports my side; they say the same thing about my assertion that the Supreme Court did basically the right thing in the election. I would hope that I would have the integrity to follow my conscience no matter whose ox is being gored (heh heh) but no matter; in this case, my position is the right one, not merely the beneficial one. As Simberg points out, changing the rules after the fact is death to an election system.
Don't get me wrong; I'm as human as the rest, and I'm sure that I would have had a position no matter how the Florida court had ruled. But in this case, the ruling was really disturbing. It overturned existing laws on how to conduct elections, and made only cursory reference either to law or to the constitution. Moreover, given that "legislature" thing, it's not clear to me that the Florida court had the authority to overturn the election results.
The concern about the rule of law speaks to a broader principle, which is this: it is death to a democracy to change the rules after the vote. Putting the choice of which votes get cast into the subjective hands of human beings who know how many votes are needed to get the result they want is but a short step from the Robert Mugabe "Choose Your Own Adventure" style Democracy. Democrats who think this is partisan bickering, imagine that those chad counters had been 2-1 Republican. Still think the result would have been fair? Of course not. Those vote counts were splitting down party lines. Just as most Republicans and Democrats found the arguments that best supported their candidate during the controversy, the chad counters, on the margin, found the ballots that supported theirs. Whichever candidate this benefits -- or even if it washes out this time -- it's an insanely dangerous precedent.
Unfortunate accidents notwithstanding (and what were you going to do about those alleged 10,000 Republicans in the West who got out of line when the networks called Florida early? Or are we only fixing accidents that hurt Democrats?) you can't turn back the clock by rewriting the rules. No matter how well intentioned, this invites what we got: a naked excercise of power by whoever controls the apparatus; a step backwards to Tammany Hall. Let's be honest. No one was trying to ensure a fair process -- they were trying to wrest control of the apparatus from the other side so they could vote themselves in. The Democrats I'm sure believed their cause to be just, but it was not the justice of their cause that they were relying on in the Florida court; it was that the buck seemed to have stopped with their apparatchiks. The only vaguely objective guy in the process -- the Democratic judge who stopped the count -- was widely reviled by his own party.
It seems clear to me that the Supreme Court recognized and feared this, given its 7-2 ruling against the selective recount. The more liberal justices may have wanted a different remedy, but they agreed in substance that the court had way overstepped its bounds. As would the Democrats agree, if those nine justices had all been Republicans. As Robert Heinlein said, the supreme test of a fair deal is whether it looks fair when you turn it around and take the other end.
Ultimately, if it had gone against Bush and they'd stopped with the machine recount, I'm sure I would be mad that my guy didn't win. But it wouldn't look unfair, so long as those were the rules that everyone else had always had to go by. Now ask yourself, if you're a Democrat, whether the deal you were prepared to hand the Republicans -- counting by committees stacked always 2-1 against you, with rulings on the subject handed down by a court comprised entirely of fairly extreme members of the other party -- would feel fair. And if it doesn't, ask yourself if you want to live in a country where elections get decided based on who can get the fix in quicker.
UpdatePatrick Ruffini has an excellent elaboration of the nastiness we would have seen absent the electoral college.
Will the gentleman in the center row with the fading media profile please sit down? You're annoying the audience.
Two hilarious posts on mindless celebrities offering unwanted opinions (unwanted by me, at least; someone's obviously buying all those copies of People):
First Stephen Green provides several answers to the Time magazine's question of the week: Can Bono Save the World?
If you're a celebrity and you answer "yes" to any of the following questions, you should never, ever, be allowed to speak about political issues in public. 1. Is your first name Cher? 2. Are you, or have you ever been, a Scientologist? 3. Are you, or have you ever been, Richard Gere? 4. If you received an envelope in the mail containing a white, powdery substance, would your first impulse be to snort it? (Be honest, Mr. Sorkin...)
Yes? Then do us all a public service and step away from the microphone...
However, it should be noted that this guy wasn't the only one doing this down at Ground Zero. There were swarms of them, before they realized that the Proletariat was not going to rise up with them -- or even give them an amused pass as silly kids or eccentric wingnuts -- this time. So while I am sure that the prosecution is influenced by what he was saying, the public disturbance must have had something to do with it.
James Cramer says that Global Crossing is worse than Enron . . . sit down, all you donkeys, not because the Democrats are tied to it, but because it represents a kind of financial chicanery, unlike Enron's, that's perfectly legal. The mechanism is known as a "Lazy Susan" and it works like this: I'm a big company. You're a little one. I invest money in your company on the condition that you turn around and hand that money back to me as sales of services. The beauty of this is that I get to carry that cash on the books twice: once as whatever security asset I acquire as a result of my investment, and again as sales driving through to the bottom line. Totally legal. Also totally bogus. The transaction has no economic value other than to inflate the stock prices of both parties to the transaction.
I know, I've said it before. Nonetheless. The boom in the investment banking industry, to my mind, has been driven in a large way by transactions that have little economic value other than avoiding taxes or regulations. I was out to dinner with older bankers from an unnamed investment bank who pointed out that in 1970, they didn't sell business; they sat back politely and waited for clients to decide to do a transaction. Now they sell like hell. And how do clients judge them? By who pushes the regulatory envelope the hardest. Now, as a libertarian, I'm mostly against regulation. But I am for providing a common framework by which information gets exchanged. And in many of these transactions the other word for "pushing the regulatory envelope" is "lying".
As stock values erode, I think we're going to see a lot of these transactions unwind. And as we do, I think we're going to see congress, having pistol whipped the auditors, turn on the bankers. (Though this may be wishful thinking. Congress won't do anything about the trial lawyers until they've bankrupted every other man woman and child in America, because so many of our legislators hail from the legal profession. Now with Corzine and his ilk joining the fray, we may see a constitutional amendment to protect IB margins.)
Now here's a question I just thought of: let's say that Europe has a security crisis on its hands sometime soon. Do we enthusiastically support them because. . . well, because that's just the sort of chaps we are, as a British friend likes to say . . . or do we give them the same kind of support they're giving us now? And if we don't support them, are we hypocrites? Are we cutting off our noses to spite our face? And if we do, are we encouraging Europe to think that Daddy will always rescue them no matter what? Is it time for some tough love, or just a little family therapy?
. . . the last 13 European allies I saw — French officials, British journalists, and EU bureaucrats — have uniformly voiced dissatisfaction with America. In some cases they express an almost visceral dislike of the United States. Perusal of some European magazines and newspapers reveals a similar continuum of disdain.
There are two general themes to their unhappiness — other than simple envy. First, European criticism is without a doubt deeply embedded in aristocratic socialism. We Americans somehow are purportedly cutthroat and exploiting in our manner of capitalism, and yet manage to allow our unwashed, crass, and parochial classes to define our culture. Do they hate us for trampling upon our less fortunate — or allowing our less fortunate to trample high culture and so dominate the American landscape from McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and Britney Spears to Oprah, Nascar, and Jerry Springer?
Make up your minds. . . in the pool of the proletariat, or standing high and dry on the sidelines, shouting instructions. You can't take credit for both, boys.
Grandma used to say that "the devil quotes scripture for his own purposes". Now Andrew Dodge reports that the irrational nutbags can use the forms of scientific inquiry, of which I am generally very much a fan, to their own ends.
Big Idiot Bonehead award three goes to Los Angeles, California school district official, Jim Konantz, who, in response to the pulling from a Los Angeles public school library nearly 300 copies of a book on the Muslim religion that describes Jews as "illiterates who reject knowledge," announced that the books may be back after he determines whether there is research to support that Jews are "illiterates who reject knowledge."
I'm waiting to hear how one designs a rigorous, double blind study on the subject. . . and how its authors would explain the seeming anomaly of illiterate doctors, scientists, lawyers and academics who "reject knowledge".
"He should talk to Calvin Coolidge, who, in his last address, rather complacently took credit for the overwhelming prosperity associated with his name. A few months later, literally overnight, he came to be seen in a radically different light, and fairly or unfairly, 70 years later, he's never quite escaped from the shadow of the Crash." Smith pauses for a moment. "September 11, it can be argued, is Bill Clinton's Black Tuesday."
The terrorist attacks made Clinton's ex-presidency vastly more difficult. When he discusses his administration's actions on terrorism, he appears to be defending the indefensible. And when he discusses the rest of his administration's record, including its actual accomplishments, it all seems small in light of September 11. There's nothing he can do about that; he has no more chances to be president.
But Clinton could improve the public's perception of him by long, hard, focused work in some useful role. Jimmy Carter left office a failed president, and whether one approves of his post-White House career or not, it is indisputable that Carter raised himself in the public's esteem by working very hard at his new role-sometimes under unpleasant conditions and sometimes without the presence of admiring celebrities. So far Clinton has shown no inclination to do that kind of work, although he is said to want the kind of admiration that Carter enjoys. But one is not possible without the other.
I agree. Clinton reminds me of the football stars at the college reunion. They just can't believe the magic's gone. . . those vanished days when no action was too outrageous, and their smallest gesture was greeted with intense adulation? Rather than settling down to become a damn fine stockbroker or medical parts salesman, they try to recreate the magic of old by repeating, verbatim, the same stunts that were popular when they were eighteen and immortal. At the fifth reunion this is amusing. . . at the tenth, tiresome . . . at the fifteenth, irritating. . . and by the twentieth there he is in the bar, drunk and vehement, palling up to people whose names he didn't know in college so that he can tell them how unfair it all is . . . he was cheated . . .
Clinton can't seem to just retire gracefully. But he seems to be unable to comment on anything except as it relates to the Great Me -- hardly the ticket to a place in history. And supporters who are still bewitched by the glamor of his presidency (though Clinton doesn't seem to realize, either, how badly the pardons hurt him) will, in time, find newer models to admire, and thre repetition, for the umpteenth time, of Clinton's performance will evoke little more than tired pity . . . tireder and more pitying because Clinton will still be pretending that he is center stage.
But even for those of us who didn't vote for him, it's embarassing . . . you want to look away, or failing that, to signal the bartender to cut him off so you can get him in a corner and tell him to grow the hell up. Perhaps, in this respect, he is a victim of his own stature; he is able to surround himself with people who won't puncture his ego until it's too late. Or perhaps the message is coming, but it's just arriving 20 years too late.
Osama Bin Laden may have been tricked into buying what he thought was radioactive material by unscrupulous arms dealers. Containers found at the site were apparently hand painted with a skull and crossbones (we can only assume that OBL thought this was an example of the fine native craftsmanship to be found outside the decadent West) and dipped in medical waste to fool a geiger counter. Now, one side of me wants to go off into a long rant about the kind of terrible things that happen when the rule of law is absent. Luckily, the more sensible side has prevailed, and I'm just going to chortle madly at the realization that OBL is more credulous than a tourist at a 3-card Monte game.
Of course the unfunny side is that this confirms that Al-Quaeda is determined to get its hands on a nuclear device. I think we can safely assume that they don't want it to assure their own security. . . so it becomes even more imperative to root out every bud and branch of the organism. Especially since a chilling note at the bottom of the article indicates that weapons-grade material has gone missing in Russia.
From today's Smarter Times, a brilliantly succinct exposition of how engagement has failed:
Nixon's opening to Communist China in 1972 was probably a mistake. But the case for it rests largely on the fact that, at the time, America was fighting a Cold War with the Soviet Union. The argument was that it was to America's strategic advantage to try to play the Chinese Communists off against the Soviet Communists. Now, unlike in 1972, America is the world's sole superpower. So there's much less reason for us to be "engaging" -- Times-talk for appeasing -- brutal regimes like those in Red China or North Korea. They need us more now, and we need them less.
A propos of yesterday's post on foreign policy with Israel, I make the (hardly original) observation that the Times seems to have forgotten that diplomacy is not an end, but a means. The best means, to be sure, but not the only one. I am not eager to fight (especially since it's not my ass that will be shipped to some freezing/boiling nowhere to get shot at); I think we should exhaust every possible avenue of negotiation before we take up arms. But I think too that the belief, which reached its full flower in the 90's, that we could win by negotiation what we were not willing to fight for should have been dismissed as obviously stupid, rather than embraced as the finest flower of idealism.
Andrew Sullivan has written quite a bit about the nasty effects of the anti-AIDS regimen that keeps him alive; now it looks as if there may be some hope in the form new meds with fewer side effects. It looks like we're slowly building an armory against the drug that will allow infected people to live out a normal, or more normal, lifespan. But we can't get excited just yet -- they're in early trials, about which DLowe has some interesting, if slightly dispiriting, information. Question for the scientists out there -- does any of this research have application to other diseases?
Just came across this item from the extremely interesting Lagniappe, written by a pharma researcher who's definitely can't be accused of writing about the same things as everyone else (safe to say, the first blog I've come across with a definite position on X-Ray crystallography). Anyway, Lowe says that the rate of pharma research may be slowing, but no one knows why. Smack me in the head if everyone blogged this already and I've just forgotten.
There are very good military reasons why Israel can not give up any territory beyond a few token gestures. All of the reasons have to do with artillery. The 155mm howitzer is the most prevalent peice of artillery in the world today. Although there are larger peices and aircraft can deliver more ordinance with more precision, nothing is cheaper, more reliable or able to do more damage in a given day . . . Open an encyclopedia and look at a map of Israel. Imagine a line of cheap, highly mobile ultra-lightweight howitzers parked along the border. Considering that the maximum range from standard rounds is 14 miles (19 miles from rocket-assist or base-bleed rounds), and you have to ask what WOULDN'T be at risk. Also notice the West Bank. It's just wide enough to deny small artillery from shooting into Isreal.
Another thing that people don't realize is that, when it comes to artillery, height is distance. If you're on a hill and you shoot off a cannon the shell will travel farther before finally hitting the ground. One of the bumps in the road to Palestinian/Isreali peace is the Golan Heights. It's just a rocky patch of not-very-impressive mountains and hills but Isreal refuses to give it back. So what's the problem?
Take a look at a map of Syria and consider that the Heights rise up 6,500 feet or so. This will add about 6 miles to the range of a 155mm projectile. Most of northern Israel is at risk from even the smallest towed artillery if it's on the Heights. The capital of Syria is Damascus, and it's readily visible from the Heights even with the naked eye. Since 1967 Isreal has fortified the area and hauled guns that are much larger than 155mm up there. They really don't have much to fear from Syria as long as they keep it, but giving it back will be a really bad idea.
What's entirely false is that professors "believe in affirmative action at every level of the academy" but their own department. In fact, the vast majority of professors -- at least in the humanities -- are steadfast, unquestioning (read: unthinking), and non-hypocritical supporters of affirmative action. This is true even at institutions that are bound by law not to practice affirmative action (the UC schools, for instance). Whatever glass ceilings and more subtle forms of discrimination there may be in the outside world, you're at a distinct disadvantage if you're a white male looking for a job in academia, at any level.
But there is a kernel of truth to your friend's claim. Cornel West is a good example, as the Harvard philosophy department would never have hired him. (Though they would, and did, give a joint appointment to his colleague, Anthony Appiah, who is a legitimate scholar and philosopher. West claims to do philosophy as well as everything else; at any rate, he has a degree in it.) However, the Harvard philosophy department certainly does practice affirmative action -- it's just that they try to do it the Harvard way: by poaching the best women, blacks, etc. from everywhere else. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that most Harvard faculty don't respect West, or the Afro-American Studies department, but that's not because of hypocrisy...at least not with regard to affirmative action.
I would argue that Harvard is in fact demonstrating that hypocrisy -- by advocating that others lower their standards, while Harvard steals all the best qualified AA hires for itself. Does it not matter whether students of less august institutions are exposed to rigorous scholarship?
Your observation is more to the point here. One unforeseen side-effect of the Balkanization of academia (into Women's Studies, Afro-American Studies, Latino Studies, etc. departments) is that it formed a radicalized and empowered class. When these programs were housed within other departments, there was some institutional control over their hires and promotions. Now there's nothing but the administration overseeing them -- and there's nothing the administration wants less than to get into a battle with a putatively victimized and certainly radicalized group. (Cf. Larry Summers.) As a result, they never critically examine any of their presuppositions; and, as you note, that leads to sloppy thinking and low standards.
So the result is that these departments, even more so than literature, history, and many other humanities departments, have become politicized in all the worst ways. Which is to say: there's no *political* diversity, evaluation of scholarship is done largely on ideological grounds, and any questioning of their scholarship is met with the charge of racism.
I think that's really important. While I think that the lack of political diversity leads to sloppier thought than would otherwise be the case, nonetheless academics do, by and large, excercise a level of rigor in their work that I feel is absent in a lot of the ethnic/gender enclaves. I think that this can absolutely be directly attributed to the fact that, as the writer says, the only oversight is the administration, and the administration's more afraid of bad publicity than bad scholarship.
My new motto: Blogging -- learn something new every day!
This article from Newsweek seems to suggest that there is a groundswell of support for withdrawing from the territories. Which is odd, because everything else I've been reading indicates that the Israelis think the current government is too soft.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a leading index of business investment is still way down, though off its lows, indicating that the recession may be a longer haul than we thought.
I tend to agree. Consumer confidence may be up, but so are their debt levels, which means we aren't going to see a big rise in spending from that sector. Inventories aside, I think that we've still got a big glut of 90's overinvestment to work out of the system before the economy really turns around. When Cisco has to fake up some earnings by lowering its provision for uncollectable accounts, we're not out of the woods yet.
Stephen Green has a post on Israel that goes beyond asking what will settle the issue, to asking how Israel can convince an Arab street that is medieval in mindset, and what price America will pay for all this?
With global acceptance of Israel damn near zero outside the US, how far up can Israel crank the heat before the whole planet demands another halt to the "cycle" of violence?
We don’t have to listen to the whining, but the US will pay an increasingly higher political price the closer Israel gets to forcing an equitable settlement. That’s right -- the better the chances for peace, the more support we’ll lose for our War on Terror.
Well, I think that the Arab street will recognize futility; medievals were keenly alive to their own self interest. But I wonder if they'll be given the data to do so, with no free media.
This plan is really a joke. It rewinds the whole conflict back to 1967, ignoring everything that has happened since, including the agreement turned down by Arafat at Camp David. If Israel were to withdraw to the '67 borders, it would be simple suicide; the '67 border was less than 10 miles wide at some points, putting most of Israel within easy range of Palestinian/Arab artillery. Many in Israel call the 67 borders the "Auschwitz borders."
Penny says
Like it or not, things are never going to improve as long as the Israelis are in the West Bank and Gaza - however valid their reasons for occupying the territories, the Palestinians simply do not want to live under Israeli rule, and they're not going to stop fighting it. Similarly, Israel is not going to leave until it knows it is safe from its Arab neighbours. There are steps which must be taken on both sides. Israel has to realize it can't stay in Palestinian territory forever, while Arabs have to accept that the Israelis ain't going away anytime soon.
Which is true but hardly sufficient. Israel is not now, or in any conceivable time in the next few years, going to accept the word of any Arab leader that they've come to terms with the fact that Israel isn't going away. Israel is going to want to guarantee its own security, which does not include indefensible borders that could leave the country cut in half with one lightning strike. Israel, like everyone else, is realizing something that we had forgotten in the long decline of the cold war: diplomacy is only possible when the alternative is worse for both sides. Those who urge Israel to accomodate are arguing that Israel should leave the credible threat all on one side, because no Palestinian leader has the power to prevent his people from becoming suicide bombers, even if he wanted to. Asking Israel to "just accept" this is asking America to understand that for some nations, harboring terrorists who kill its citizens is part of their vibrant native culture.
I think that we forgot this, especially our friends in Europe who haven't had to take any responsibility for their own security for thirty years. We came to believe that anything could be negotiated. But a system is not a system if one bad actor can singlehandedly bring it down; diplomacy without a military threat behind it leaves its practicioners open to the first strongman who comes along. So while it is all very well to ask Israel to understand how the Palestinians feel, I think that Israel understandably believes that maintaining its security is more important.
For years, when bad guys have acted up in their own countries, attacking their own citizens, threatening the security of their neighbors, and attempted to arm themselves with the national equivalent of suicide bombs, our foreign policy experts have tried talk therapy. When this failed, the prevailing attitude has been that there isn't anything you can do when a Kim Jong Il starves his people into cannibalism, or a Sadaam openly flouts weapons inspections. Well, actually, there is, isn't there? You can invade. And while that shouldn't be our first response, taking the option off the table guaranteed that talking would do no good. We have rediscovered what Israel never forgot; they will not allow another genocide.
I begin to believe that no solution is possible; that only unilateral expulsion of one side or another will satisfy things. And I think that if things don't improve soon, that's what we'll see.
Tim Blair has a hilariously ungrammatical letter from a reader who refers to the Fox News Network as "who" but his own aunt as "it". Somebody get this guy 300 mgs of lithium and a copy of Strunk & White.
Hypothetical Question of the Day: It's morbid. A friend last night posed the following question to the women at the bar: if you were Daniel Pearl's widow, would you want to view the tape?
How could you? But if you didn't wouldn't the nightmares be even worse than if you did?
I went to a mostly Jewish high school, and so the holocaust was very much with many of my classmates. One time, at the birthday party of I-can't-remember-which-friend, her perfectly normal looking grandmother, who had been chatting gaily about life in Warsaw when she was a girl, suddenly said "They killed my mother in front of me. An officer pulled her out of line and took out his gun and shot her in the head."
I wish I had had soem good response, but I was sheltered and young, and I can't even remember what inanity I muttered. But later. . .
Picture your mother. Your mother, looking much as she always does, standing in line with you. Your own, personal mother pulled out of line and before she can say anything, shot. Your mother afraid and panicked, and then quite suddenly dead.
How could you ever be normal for even one second of your life again?
Dr. Manhattan brings us my favorite headline of the day: "IF YOU RUN SOMEONE OVER, YOU DON'T UNDO YOUR MISTAKE BY BACKING THE CAR UP". Close second runs his title line: "Politics, the Yankees, religion, public policy...and have I mentioned the Yankees?" Right on, brother!
Steven Den Beste has an interesting post on Black Studies courses. I can't speak for Black Studies, but I suspect that all of those groups mirror (the apparently highly regarded in its field) Penn Women's Studies Department, which is a joke.
I actually think that Women's Studies classes ask some interesting questions about gender relations: are they oppressive? Are there subtle, unnoticed forms of discrimination as well as overt ones? Can we transcend biology? The problem is, that you are never allowed to answer these questions "no". Women's Studies teachers rejected scientific inquiry, as it was so eloquently defined by Richard Feynman:
the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school -- we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty -- a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid -- not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked -- to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can -- if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong -- to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.
Women's Studies professors already know what the answers are supposed to be. Their job is to validate those answers with their research, to imbue students with the "right" beliefs in their teaching. Whether or not their answers are true, this hostility to "patriarchal" science that might give you the wrong answer turns their classrooms from intellectual space to therapy session.
I sense that ethnic studies works the same way. Interestingly, an unnamed friend connected with academia indicates that Black Studies is often where they stash affirmative action tenures/hires that are violently fought by departments in their field. He was actually giving this as an example of the hypocrisy of professors who believe in affirmative action at every level of the academy but the professoriate, in every industry except their own. But as an aside, he mentioned that this is why Cornel West has (something I didn't know and can't vouch for) little support among the faculty at Harvard -- because the unspoken feeling in other departments is that Black Studies scholarship isn't on the same level as theirs. It certainly wouldn't surprise me; as I've said elsewhere, the more likely everyone in a department is to agree on all the same basic propositions, the less likely their scholarship is to be any good. One of the great effects of blogging, for me, is that I am well aware that if I get it wrong, someone's going to jump on it and correct me. It makes me more cautious in my statements, and it makes me think through things I've believed for years as I struggle to support them with facts and logic.
McLaughlin group cites the following poll: Will you vote for a Democrat or Republican in November?
Republicans 50% Democrats 43%
They say even Democratic polls are showing that marginal districts are in danger. This is insane -- who's ever heard of midterm elections favoring the incumbent?
Have you ever had that dream where you're suddenly told you have to take an exam -- but you weren't expecting the exam, and don't even remember registering for the class? Where you go in, sweating, and they hand you a paper on some topic you haven't seen since your freshman year in college, and everyone else in the exam room is busy writing away, but you can't even remember what "Cross-Elasticity of Demand" is, much less calculate it from that blurry little photocopied chart. . .
That's how I felt when the University of Chicago called me and told me that they couldn't find the take home exam papers from one of my last classes.
There I was, sitting at work, unable to check whether I had the paper. Eight months ago is a long time, and I began to doubt myself. Was it possible that, in my hectic rush to graduate and move at the same time, I had somehow missed an exam? Just -- forgotten about it? It's certainly not impossible; I've forgotten so many things I can't remember them all. I once forgot to eat for three days.
It was 10:00 in the morning, and that was a long day. With all my course packets packed away and my memory dim, how the hell was I going to write out another exam for Human Resources Management (not as dull as it sounds) -- to hell with that, how the hell was I going to explain that I couldn't remember whether or not I'd done the exam? I can tell you, I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Watching me fidget on the subway ride home was like a private screening of Rain Man without the white suit. When the train pulled into my station, I knocked over children and old ladies in my anxiety to get out of the train, run upstairs, turn on my computer, and . . . sigh in blissful relief. The paper was still there.
Well, I just heard back from them, and I got a good grade in the class, and all is well in the world of Meg. I'm not sure what this illustrates -- that virtue is its own reward, or that it isn't, or that bodychecking innocent geriatrics doesn't have the immediate bad consequences you might think. I'll have to draw out a punchy moral another time.
Next Right has a post on reparations for slavery that's quite interesting, partly because I haven't seen many African-Americans make these arguments. He's certainly right that the long term economics effects of slavery are dubiously positive, while the logistics and morality of establishing who gets what would be impossible. (Example: a friend who is descended from American slaves on one side, Caribbeans on the other. Does she get half? All? Nothing? ANd how do you choose?)
However, he makes one statement I have to challenge: that the short term economic effects of slavery weren't good. As it happens, one of my professors did some pretty exhaustive work on this very subject, which indicated that slavery was not the economic disaster we often imagine it to have been (wow -- even Megan thinks there are some things in this world that are good or bad quite independant of their economic effects!). He won a nobel prize for it. The link there provides a basic review of some pretty startling ideas about slavery; I highly recommend it.
An interesting challenge to reparations that he doesn't bring up, which I just heard recently, is that the Civil War destroyed whatever latent economic value slavery had built up. Sherman's march to the sea, war production and destruction, taxation and confiscation of Confederate property -- all destroyed the wealth of the South so completely that it was an economic backwater for another hundred years. The only remaining "capital built on the backs of slaves", my interlocutor argued, was locked up in the croporate descendants of the cotton mills of England. Any wealth that came that way in America had long been spent on the war that made the slaves free.
