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August 31, 2005
ID vs Neo-Darwinian
I came across an article on the ongoing discussion of ID vs. Neo-Darwinian ideas. It is the usual condescending combination of polemic and factual discussion, but one quote stood out:
But here is something the intelligent design community is reluctant to discuss: no other intelligent-design hypothesis has anything more going for it. In fact, my far-fetched hypothesis has the advantage of being testable in principle: we could compare the human and chimpanzee genomes, looking for unmistakable signs of tampering by these genetic engineers from another galaxy. Finding some sort of user's manual neatly embedded in the apparently function less "junk DNA" that makes up most of the human genome would be a Nobel Prize-winning coup for the intelligent design gang, but if they are looking at all, they haven't come up with anything to report.
He is wrong about that. The ID vs. Neo-Darwinian debate has a lot more to do with ideology (of both the secular and religious varieties) than it does about science. The origins of cilium are argued back and forth with just so stories of chemical coincidence and the miraculous. So too, would the debate go on about how by accident and evolution a junk DNA database arose in our genes.
There is no proof to the closed mind.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 1:11 PM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2005
A cold front moves through hell
Did anyone else notice that the Op-Ed in The New York Times, "The Road to Hell Is Clogged With Righteous Hybrids", is essentially an restatement, in editorial form, of the libertarian think tank Cato Institute? They even linked to the Cato position paper below the article.
That is great. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:39 PM | Comments (2)
Well, he'd better be
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey.has an Op-Ed in today's WSJ, "Turkey Is Committed to the New Iraq".
Which makes sense, despite the disgraceful posturing that Turkey performed before the invasion of Iraq. You see. Turkey has about 14 million Kurds. That is a greater population than the roughly 5 million Kurds who live in Iraq. The Kurds have been making noise about getting their own country (Kurdistan) since about WWI. If the democratization project in Iraq falls apart, Kurdistan is expected to emerge from the wreckage, perhaps with American help. Further expect most of Turkey's Kurds to try to join them, and Turkey to shudder with civil war. So no wonder they are cheering for Iraqi success.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:18 PM | Comments (0)
Skiing in the desert?
Treehuger reports on a new project in Dubai to build an indoor skiing park. Let me play the devil's advocate on this.In the middle of the Arabian Desert, it seems insane to make a big block of ice and maintain it year-round. But not all is as it seems.
First, snow is a good insulator. Since energy costs major Dirham, they have the incentives to heavily insulate the walls. The closed environment also allows the recycling the water. Maybe they could even think of something clever to do with that waste heat. Maybe it could be less expensive run that keeping a block of ice solid in the desert.
Second, grant for a movement that many wealthy middle easterners are going to ski anyway. Keeping them local avoids all the energy costs associated with transporting those skiers.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:47 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2005
Reasons to invade Iraq
..."You said there were WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire." I have had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to intone the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus, the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million bribe in a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz...Yes, it must be admitted that Bush and Blair made a hash of a good case, largely because they preferred to scare people rather than enlighten them or reason with them. Still, the only real strategy of deception has come from those who believe, or pretend, that Saddam Hussein was no problem.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:04 PM | Comments (0)
"I'm sorry" instead of "I'm suing"
Back in July I wrote about how helpful an apology from a doctor is in healing patients and preventing lawsuits. Today, the national review reports on several successes of the apology movement. It seems the movement is gaining momentum and a group, "The Sorry Works! Coalition" is already formed. For all our sakes, let's hope it succeeds.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
Rude people, even in the good old days
Take a look at the fascinating exploits of Everett True. I'm amazed at how many common rudenesses persist from a hundred years ago.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
Not as easy to detect as Ice-9
Did you know that in the US, people who have spent more than 3 months total (since 1980) in the UK or 6 months total (since 1980) in Europe are banned from donating because of mad cow disease?
It seems they are working on a test of mad cow disease in for living people and cows. Read all about it on Canada.com.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:19 AM | Comments (2)
August 25, 2005
But when do we get those liberties back?
Michael Lind at Prospect Magazine takes a look at the trade offs of security and privacy that terrorism forces us to reevaluate. He makes some interesting points about the danger of terror as he downplays the libertarian worry at the power of the state. Essentially, he says that our greatest threats are from individuals. However, he doesn't have the appropriate respect the evil wrought by the state. Sure the state allows many more to live, but all the terror, and murders in history probably don't amount to just hose killed by their own state in the 20th century, let alone those killed in war. The state is the leading murderer in human history and must be watched carefully. A lot of his argument rests on the exponential growth in terror technology, especially biological terror. This is a rather amateurish position, given that chemical and biological weapons were abandoned mostly because they don't work nearly as well as conventional ones do. but he does make the interesting point that "It is illogical to point, as some libertarians do, to terrorist plots that succeeded as evidence that security measures are ineffective. The relevant fact is ...the many others that were deterred ...Metal detectors at airports did not turn the US, Britain and similar liberal societies into police states. Neither will foolproof national identity cards and police cameras on every street corner. Technologies are not tyrannical; states are."
Again, this is an amateurish position, what he really means is that policies (which give technology bite) are reflection of of the quality of the state. I'm not so sure. Superficially, this argument allows the unlimited conversion of rights into more controlled privileges in the name that the state is trustworthy today. More deeply, it assumes that the quality of the states is exogenous to the policies and technologies it employs. That is definitely wrong. Reward police that deliver "results" over fair treatment and they get promoted to positions of power. Keep dossier on every citizen and some will abuse them to accumulate power, wealth and fame.
He makes a great point that the power of terror goes far beyond the body count.
On 9/11, every plane in the air above or approaching the US was compelled to land by the government. This being the case, it is misleading to compare the chances of being killed by terrorists with the odds of being killed in a car accident or by a lightning strike. A car accident, like a lightning strike, does not shut down an entire city.
He is right that "The argument that we should show our contempt for terrorists by refusing to adopt reasonable precautions is bravado." However, with so much of what passes as security advice ineffective, expensive, and insulting, I'll remain jaundiced, rather than rolling over for purported experts from the security community.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:50 AM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2005
Europe sucks at least as much as the states
Everyone has a friend that spend a few months or perhaps a year in Europe and returned enamored. Perhaps they annoyingly regaled you with how international, how progressive, and how sophisticated everyone was. Or maybe they sadly relayed the depth and breadth of anti-Americanism and sheepishly conceded that those Europeans have a point. At the Hudson Review, an American, long time resident of Europe, critiques this wide-eyed Europhilia and replaces it with a more nuanced position.
A choice morsel:
Poverty? An American at the poverty level has about the same standard of living as the average citizen of Greece or Portugal. (Indeed, according to a recent study by the Swedish Trade Research Institute, Swedes have a slightly lower standard of living than black Americans--a devastating statistic for Scandinavians, for whom both the unparalleled success of their own welfare economies and the pitiable poverty of blacks in the racist U.S. are articles of faith.) Crime? America has grown safer, while the French ignore their own rising crime levels, a consequence of "permanent street warfare" by Muslim immigrants “who don’t consider themselves subject to the laws of the land" and of authorities with "anti-law-and-order ideologies."
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:54 PM | Comments (0)
Never compete in a field where people do it for the love of it
Let's say that you have the ability to be moderately successful in a variety of professions. You are graduating high school in about a year and you want to make a nice living and not work like an animal. Any advice? Avoid professions where most people are doing it for the love of the job. You know what I mean, the chiefs, architects, English professors, and actors where people feel "called" to do them. CNN reports on a bunch of jobs that might be fun, might be prestigious, but have bad pay for the hours and education required. They include Clergy on the list, but I'd leave it off. Since many clergy take a vow of poverty, the pay hardly seems relevant.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)
Copyrights are long lasting
The law firm Bromberg & Sunstein posted a neat flowchart that helps to understand when a work is out of copyright. It seems complicated, but most stuff fixed (written or recorded) before 1950 isn't copyrighted and little afterwards is or will be for a long time.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2005
Jokes made flesh
There is an old joke about a diagnostic at the drug store. Medgadget reports on a new tool for detecting cancers and heart transplant rejection based on patient's breath. Simply Amazing.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:42 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2005
Funny etymology
I was reading a funny guide to building your own alcohol distillery (a still) where I learned that the word alcohol is actually an Arabic word. It means, roughly, the distilled. Which, given the Islamic prohibitions against imbibing, is like using the word treif or chaziyr to mean pork.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:58 PM | Comments (0)
Converting bisexuals
Do homosexuals try to get others to engage in homosexual behavior?
Volokh takes a look at the issue and finds that they do. Essentially, they find that 4% to 7% percent of the population has at least some attraction to the opposite sex, but only about 1.5% are exclusively homosexual. By framing the issue as encouraging others to experiment in homosexual behavior, others frame their behavior as encouraging homosexuality.
Most advocates for greater diversity in sexual practices believe strongly that homosexuality is an unchangeable attribute of personality. However, if true that same sex attraction is rare (<1 in 100), but 4 times as many could engage in homosexual and heterosexual behaviors, than that answers a longstanding question of mine, why homosexuality seems to simmer in most societies, but becomes common in only a few. It also starts to sound a lot more like a choice, at least for many. If so, it becomes subject to discussions of desirability, because if it is optional for some, and can (but is not inevitable to) spread, then we can ask if we want it to do so.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 1:59 PM | Comments (0)
See the Mayflower sail in version 2.0
Map your ancestors is a website that combines a family tree with google maps to create a map of the movements of your ancestors. Very cool.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
Psychology of suicide bombing
Front Page Magazine has a forum discussion seeking to understand the psychology of suicide bombing. Mostly it isn't one of those annoying left wing blame the west-festivals, but a look at the theology of death in militant Islam, racism, cultural inferiority, and male chauvinism that feeds Islamic suicide bombing.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2005
Do we really need a declared war?
14 years ago, Major John L. Bacon, USMC wrote about how declarations of war are "...in reality, a seldom-used concept that will
become increasingly difficult to enact with the passage of
the War Powers Resolution (WPR) and our recent success in
Southwest Asia." We are currently in our second longest period without a declared war, but the last 60 years could hardly be described as peaceful.
The United States had made a declaration of war (using the word war and not authorization of force) five times. They were the War of 1812, The Mexican War, The Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. When the United States was contemplated resuming the hostilities with Iraq that eventually led to the United States disposing the Bathaist regime, and when we put troops in Afghanistan, none of the proposed use of force motions actually were declarations of war. Many people, myself included wondered if this had any bearing on the rights and powers of the government.
It seems not. Volok reports that "I keep hearing arguments ...that various war-time powers --for instance, the power to punish people for treasonously aiding our enemies -- are applicable only if the war is declared.
No no no...I canvassed the caselaw (SIC) on this here, but the short answer is that U.S. law has not treated our undeclared wars (e.g., the Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War) differently from declared wars ...I realize that some people might argue that the law should distinguish declared wars from undeclared wars. But they should acknowledge that this is a change from longstanding American legal understanding, and they should also discuss how this would apply in situations where wars have generally not been declared (e.g., civil wars, wars in which we're attacked and conduct takes place before we have time to declare war, and so on)...But beyond this, the war against Iraq is a declared war. A declaration of war doesn't require magic words: A Congressional authorization to the President to use military force suffices."
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:26 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2005
Viability
Size Population Economy Location
5,640 sq km 2,385,615 people 1.8 billion West Bank
360 sq km 1,376,289 people 768 million Gaza
160 sq km 33,717 people $825 million Liechtenstein
692.7 sq km 4,425,720 people $120.9 billion Singapore
How big your country is doesn't determine how rich you are, how peaceful your country is, or anything else about how viable your state is. There are 31 countries smaller than Gaza and 64 smaller than the West Bank. Remember all that next time someone tells you that Palestine is too small to be viable.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:45 PM | Comments (0)
What makes a man like girls who like girls?
We've discussed here . A recent article in the Boston Globe explores conditions. It seems there is a growing consensus in the gay rights community that proving that attraction is caused by something other than nurture. They should be careful what they wish for.
Much of the sympathy generated for gay rights flow from the hidden (or quiet) homosexual in many moderate and conservative families. Discovering the biological causes of homosexuality is going to put pressure on developing a prevention. Conservative families will want to buy it, as will countries facing demographic problems from aging populations as "gay men are estimated to produce 80 percent fewer offspring". I hesitate to use the word cure that some would use here. But some people or societies would use a pill that prevented you from having gay children. Then families, even entire societies would be depopulated of homosexuals. Appetite for tolerance could decline precipitously, when no one you know is gay. A cure summons the genie of choice that many hoped buried forever. It would be far better for the causes of homosexuality to end up as those of race have, a combination of genetic leanings, but nevertheless largely socially determined. That mixture seems the perfect combination of innate enough to not be a choice, but constructed enough to be unchangeable by means of nature (few people would eliminate the trait from their children) to ensure protection of the special group's rights.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:23 PM | Comments (3)
Safari in Iowa?
If the Africans can't seem to protect their wildlife from poaching and shrinking habitat, maybe we could help them out by letting a bunch loose in American national parks. CNN reports on just such a proposal to introduce massive African land animals into parks in the US. All hysteria of Jurassic Park aside, this could be a wonderful way to protect these animals. Further, we would get Americans excited about the environment while providing a much cheaper version of Safari. One day, when they become sufficiently abundant, we might even allow legal, recreation hunting of those animals. Hell, I bet Disney, Anheuser Busch, and Six Flags would pay top dollar to run a park like that.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 1:22 PM | Comments (0)
Stupid drug war
Peter Bagge, my favorite libertarian cartoonist, takes on the war on marijuana.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2005
We haven't found all the good, cheap ideas yet
Just imagine the tremendous good that a $2 water filter that lasted a year could do.. Not only is saving lives good in and of itself, but lowering mortality can be a powerful tool against extreme poverty. longer life expectancy means that the return of education is higher. It also means that families can have far fewer children, but still prosper. Since fewer children means more educational opportunities for women, this too unleashes more of a society's potential.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:50 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2005
Amazon good for more than low prices
Amazon is often touted as the murder of the book store. More rarely, you hear about how their reselling of used books and low prices hurts authors. But you have to be a successful writer to get published by a major publisher to begin to be harmed by Amazon. Surely some writers would rather be published on any terms. An article on CNN discusses how Amazon's forthright treatment of small publishers allows them to support more unusual authors.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
Why leave Gaza?
The Op-Ed page of the times has a brief and well written summary of why Sharon is willing to withdraw from Gaza.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:40 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
Born among the poor, but made to soar through the heavens?
The Register reports on a new battery technology that allows batteries to run on human urinee. Designed to bring cheap portable energy to to the world's poor, imagine if we could combine this technology with NASA's new urine purification system. With water in orbit costing $40,000 a gallon, purifying it makes great economic sense. Now if reusable, cheap, and light batteries could squeeze a little extra out of them, maybe you could use the energy from the solar cells for something else.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
Lord have mercy
Damn, is that an ugly dog.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
I find a lot of things interesting
I have a great love of serious discussion of a ridiculous topic. Some would call it a streak of pedantry, but I see it as just a sign of my natural curiosity.
The American Scientist has a bizarre article by a kindred spirit. See, in glorious detail, the art of mattress flipping transformed into set theory. You can learn why there isn't a good rule to follow on mattress flipping that ensures proper rotating without remembering what you did the last time.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2005
Global warming
Reason reports that global warming is:
1) Real
2) but well below the realm of calamitous climate change
This builds on an earlier article by the same author where he says that "global warming is not a "hoax," but the danger it poses to humanity and to nature is being exaggerated by activists. There is indeed a small amount of man-made global warming, but the scientific evidence is growing stronger that it's not much of a crisis."
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:42 PM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2005
Making our food better for us
The times reports on a new batch of food chemistry that allows more fiber, less fat, and more nutrients with minimal change in taste or texture. This is the other side of the scary preservatives, transfats, leveners, refined sugars and grains, and other things that make our food cheap, tasty and last far longer than it should. As a lover of diet coke, a user of iodized salt, and born at a healthy weight due (in part) to foliate in my mother's bread, I'm inclined to give this new batch of mad scientist food the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, Americans have made so much progress in eating better, that it would be sad to see them avoiding healthy and wholesome food to eat more garbage. But to the extent that may people's habits won't be changing, it is good that they'll at least get a little extra nutrition to go with it.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
Angry for the wrong reasons
Judith Miller is a The New York Times reporter in federal prison for refusing to testify on a source before a federal grand jury. That has a lot of people hopping mad. The protection of sources is a delicate issue, balancing needs for justice against needs for protection to ensure whistle blowing. That protection is only going to get worse as the Internet allows millions more people to claim to be journalists. I'm not entirely sympathetic with Ms Miller's position.
But Reason magazine found a reason for me to get angry about it. She is in jail based on secret testimony, and that must be addressed.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)
Faith and economics
The National Review has an interesting little article on the role of clergy and religious lay figures in establishing economics as a discipline in the United States and Europe.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2005
First a chicken pox vaccine, and now an end to scarring?
Scarring "evolved not to heal big wounds more quickly, but to take care of smaller wounds such as bites and scrapes that were likely to be dirty and to cause life-threatening infection. For instance, the response to a thorn is to wall it off using scar tissue and then liquify tissue around it, forming pus which helps to expel the thorn.
Modern “clean” injuries inflicted by surgery, glass, or mechanical equipment are being healed by a primitive response intended for dirty wounds, says Ferguson."
It seems a few new drugs may bring an end to scarring in the rich world.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:25 PM | Comments (0)
August 8, 2005
That's why they taste like red sand
I can't stand Red Delicious apples, but my lady loves them. They always taste mealy and have a skin like leather. I'd take nearly any other variety in their place, but she swears by them. It seems I am not alone. Marginal Revolution reports on the race to the bottom on price that led Red Delicious apples to look great and taste horrible.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:16 PM | Comments (1)
Google can give it but can't take it
In an example of clever reporting for CNET, they used Google to search for Google's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, personal information. Google PR got so pissed off over this that they said they won't speak with CNET for the next year.
That Google, which has made it far easier to stalk, spy and otherwise bother people of all stripes, would be pissed off that some plain vanilla personal information was assembled into an article, is just childish. If it really bothers them maybe they should come up with some interesting tools to help users protect their privacy. Until then, they seem like bullies uneager to take some of their own medicine.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:35 PM | Comments (0)
While my buble slowly leaks
PAUL KRUGMAN, in his op-ed, That Hissing Sound explores why the bubble will slowly burst and why it formed in the first place. Essentially, he argues that limited land and difficult land use rules have translated small changes in demand to big changes in price. It seems that while demand for housing is inelastic (we have to live somewhere), how much space and luxury we have in our houses is a luxury good, meaning that our appetite to spend on housing grows faster than our income does. That means small differences in the ability to afford housing (say lower interest rates, more creative mortgages, or innovations in finance)translate into big changes in the housing demanded. Since housing is hard to build on the coasts for the reasons mentioned above, that translates into big price differences.
And while I agree that this is the right way to think about the bubble, I didn't like one detail of his analysis.
Take this for example:
Nobody would pay San Diego prices without believing that prices will continue to rise. Rents rose much more slowly than prices: the Bureau of Labor Statistics index of "owners' equivalent rent" rose only 27 percent from late 1999 to late 2004. Business Week reports that by 2004 the cost of renting a house in San Diego was only 40 percent of the cost of owning a similar house - even taking into account low interest rates on mortgages. So it makes sense to buy in San Diego only if you believe that prices will keep rising rapidly, generating big capital gains.
If you thought that rents were going to rise to reflect the higher value of property, it would make sense to buy, even if you capital gains were going to be non-existent.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:05 PM | Comments (0)
Rabbi Josh Simon
My teacher and spiritual leader Rabbi Josh Simon died yesterday NYU medical center. He lost a battle with brain cancer he thought he'd won, and is survived by his sons Marley and Dylan and his wife Miriam.
Joshua served as the rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in Winsted, Connecticut before I met him as the Rabbi of the Actors' Temple, where I belong. Before that, he was a reporter for Life, Self and Elle magazines for 15 years and a rock musician for most of his adult life.
I met Josh when a friend invited me to his rocking Friday night Shabbat service. I was looking for a place to read Torah and learn about my tradition and he welcomed me with his wisdom, flexibility and love. He edited his own payerbooks, wrote his own music, experimented with the service format to welcome Jews of all sorts and otherwise made much of his position and pulpit, all without being bossy or political. As I studied and prayed with Josh over the last few years, he became my friend.
In a classic sense, Josh wasn't much of a believer, but he took tremendous strength and happiness from prayer and ritual. He insisted that religion serve our happiness, our community and the future, not merely be the refuge of the sick, the grieving, and the dead. But his agnosticism be damned, I hope I see him again, be it in this world or the next. I miss him.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:59 PM | Comments (4)
What is going on in that head of yours?
The New York Times, in an article "The Male Condition", that explores how testosterone, genetics, autism and persistent aptitude differences between the sexes are interrelated.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:36 AM | Comments (0)
August 5, 2005
Pointless security harassment
A tourist walks in front of my office, but standing solidly on the sidewalk and tries to take a picture of the entrance. I would describe the fellow as an Indian (the sub-continental kind) The security guard out front tells him he isn't allowed to take pictures, and sadly he puts away his camera and moves on to explore Time Square.
1) This isn't true. You do not need permission to be photograph a building from a public street. You don't need permission to photograph a public building from inside the building either. There are special rules for public infrastructure like tunnels and bridges, but that doesn't apply to buildings like mine.
2) This does nothing for our safety. The building isn't patrolled 24/365 5, and they are vantages to photograph the building beyond their patrols anyway. Evil doers could easily photograph the building if they wanted to, all this does is make everyone feel like a potential crook.
This is more proof that "best-practices" in the security business is more about proving the sense of security through draconian inconvenience than it is about actually making us safe in a cost effective manner.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:09 PM | Comments (1)
Your symetry and why being attractive matters
The Wilson Quarterly has a fascinating look at how much and why we love beautiful people.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
August 4, 2005
Can Catholics be fair judges?
If judge John Roberts is appoint to the Supreme Court, then the court with have a Catholic plurality for the first time. Since catholics have a religious hierarchy and in some sense alliance to a foreign power (one not that different from the relationship of the Jews with Israel) it seems a reasonable question if the tenants of Catholicism preclude fair implementation of the laws of the United States.
Professor Bainbridge has a deep and insightful look at this issue at his blog.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:48 PM | Comments (0)
Video taping and reading email to protect freedom
Choosing between the ideal balance of privacy and surveillance in public seems endogenous to the security situation in that society. Striking the optimal balance if difficult, and so it wasn't a surprise when I had a heated conversation on Monday night with my girlfriend's sister and brother-in-law about the legality and morality of the government video taping us in a public place. We came up with a compromise I liked, which is that they should only archive the video, not actively watch it. They should destroy it a month after it is recorded unless someone asks for it for a criminal or security purpose. Not only would that save money. but it would also reduce the likelihood that the system would be abused for the enforcement of petty rules or the entertainment of the watchers.
But much of the justification we could produce for surveillance was that you were in a public space and so therefore had no presumption of privacy. That made me think about two things. Masks and the Internet. Should we allow citizens wanting to protect their identity to wear a mask everywhere in public? The Internet is a very public place. Web traffic and email are unencrypted, so the government or anyone else could spy on much of you what you read and write without too much trouble. But are we comfortable with the idea that the government doing so?
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:04 PM | Comments (0)
August 3, 2005
20 ways to say "no"
Most of my readers know that I don't have enough interesting work to do. I beg for more, but I have to be careful lest I fill my time with drudgery. To control my pipeline of work, sometimes I have to decline the worst sort of work. Escaping tactfully is difficult, and sometimes I just don't know what to say. Ramona Creel at online organizing has 20 ways to say no to doing things you can't or don't want to do.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:51 PM | Comments (0)
August 2, 2005
Forget the 80s, these these are the days of miracle and wonder
The WSJ has an article on using your cell phone to identify songs you hear on TV or the radio. Alas, password required. I gasped when saw the quote below, taken aback by just how incredible it was that such things were not just possible, but cheap and common.
Ms. Gharbi was recently watching an episode of "Sex and the City" and recognized an old rock ballad she liked, but she couldn't place the name. She dialed 1-866-411-Song, held the phone next to her television, and within seconds had received a text message telling her that the song was "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago. Later, Ms. Gharbi logged on to a Web site that listed all the music she had identified using the service. By clicking on a link, she downloaded the Chicago song to her computer for 99 cents through Microsoft Corp.'s MSN music store. NMK received a cut of the sale, but the company declined to say how much.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
Visual Explanations
Ingo Gunther is a German artist who alters globes (the spherical maps of the earth) to highlight aesthetic, economic and political ideas. You can see examples of work at world processor.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:31 AM | Comments (0)
August 1, 2005
Compensation for profiling
Getting profiled sucks.
One summer in high school, I took a calculus class at Columbia. I had a part time job in the afternoon, but I had a few hours off after class to go to the gym and grab lunch. The Columbia gym is this massive underground complex, and deep within it is a swimming pool. If I got to the pool too soon after class, on some days there would still be a bunch of summer camp kids playing in the pool. I would bring a book with me to the pool and read while I waited for them to finish. On the second day this happened, a young woman started telling me that it was time to go get changed. I looked up and there was the camper's cute teenage counselor. She got very embarrassed, seeing that I was not one of her counselors, she apologized and ran for the locker room.
As you all know, I am a weird guy, so you will not be surprised that I thought it would be fun to ask this girl out. Hmm, asking out a total stranger that I had met at a pool who had briefly mistaken me for a child, that seems like a good idea. So a couple of days later I went to the office of the gym and asked when the camp would be back to use the pool. The gym manager would not tell me. I was convinced he thought I was some creepy stalking predator from the look he gave me, all because I am some 17 white guy wanting to know where a summer camp meets. It was the first time in my life that I was obviously being treated different because of how I looked. I imagine if the situations were reversed and this girl was looking for me, that she had been told things right away.
However, I would not be foiled easily. Let us say that I picked up a bit of a swimming bug. I went to the pool a few days in a row. A few days later there she was again. So I walked up to her, said hey, I am the guy from the pool from the other day, would you want to hang out some time. And she did. We had dinner and went to see a movie. Over the course of the evening, we hit it off, but then she lets me know that she has a 6'2" athlete boyfriend at sports camp for the summer. I cut the evening short and we did not make plans again. I do not think I swam at Columbia again either.
All of which to tell the story of one mild and annoying experience with profiling. Nevertheless, maybe it was for the best. Perhaps profiling like the one I experienced prevents many monsters from acting out their deviancy. However, if all of society benefit from profiling, why must I alone pay for it?
The war on terror a presents a more forceful restatement of this problem. The terrorists in London, Spain and NYC have all looked a certain way and been from certain countries. Of course, hundreds of thousands of those fitting the profile are good people who've done nothing wrong. Of them, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, have suffered because of their demographic similarities to the terrorists. Indeed, if profiling were legal, even more would be troubled. Therefore I have a simple idea, pay them for the inconvenience.
The police, the TSA, the airlines, and whoever else involved in the public safety could detain, search, and interrogate while disproportionately targeting certain groups. The catch is they have to say why, record the ethic group of each person they with which they do so, and they have to compensate them if the reason for the investigation was profiling. You can enforce this rule by checking if they compensated the groups disproportionately affected. Say $20 per incident minimum, $50 an hour for the first two hours, plus paying for your travel changes if needed and if you checked in an hour before. Then $20 per hour there after. You could stop there. Alternatively, you could use this compensation to effect assimilation. Pay it in savings bonds redeemable after 5 years. Make the payment as shares in a mutual fund account invested in the S&P 500 index. We could even allow payments to be doubled if spent on educational expenses or English training.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:28 AM | Comments (4)