« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »
August 31, 2006
War with your buddies
Of late multilateral war, or what I like to call going to war with your buddies has been very popular in the US, even if you don't count Iraq war as multilateral. In The High Price of Friendship, suggests that doing this is a bad idea. The basic criticism is that for too many of our partners, we end up financing their participation, and since their troops are less competent, we'd be better off just using that money for our own forces.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:53 PM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2006
Markets in wierd stuff
You own your own home, but it is becomming too dangerous for those of your ethnicity to to live there. You don't have money to buy a new place to live, so what do you do? You do a swap with someone is a similar situation but a different ethnic group. And that's just what is happening in Iraq:
Mohammed al-Taie's family had lived in Haswa on Baghdad's outskirts for 50 years, but then two months ago, after months of dismissing death threats, al-Taie's brother was kidnapped, and the Shiite Muslim family's 34 members decided it was time to leave their beloved, but mostly Sunni, neighborhood.So, with the help of a neighbor, they found a Sunni family living in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula and agreed to swap houses.
Such swaps are becoming increasingly common as Iraqis find themselves searching for ways to avoid becoming victim to Baghdad's increasingly vicious cycle of sectarian violence.
There are no hard statistics on how many people have swapped houses in Baghdad. Isam Abu Ali, 35, a representative in al-Sadr's Shula office, said al-Sadr supporters have provided food, blankets, gas, money and even furniture to 2,200 families arriving in Shula alone.Officials at the Ministry of Immigrants and Displacement, which is led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's independent slate, said they condemned house swapping and had no numbers on it.
Which is interesting to me, because Iraq would be far more stable
if the Sunni's and Shiites lived apart.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:51 PM | Comments (1)
August 24, 2006
A brave new world
Forget the Soma. Soon they'll just flip genes on the deltas to make them happy as they clean the sewers.
A new breed of permanently 'cheerful' mouse is providing hope of a new treatment for clinical depression. TREK-1 is a gene that can affect transmission of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is known to play an important role in mood, sleep and sexuality. By breeding mice with an absence of TREK-1, researchers were able create a depression-resistant strain. The details of this research, which involved an international collaboration with scientists from the University of Nice, France, are published in Nature Neuroscience this week.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:24 PM | Comments (1)
August 23, 2006
Getting set up in California
It has been a very complicated few days. It started Friday by getting up at 3:30 to drug the cat and get everyone to the airport for our 5:30 flight. Friday afternoon and Saturday were a haze of giant stores, Ikea, Walmart, Pet Co, Vons, Raphs, and more to equip the new place. Sunday was devoted to buying a car. I'm the proud owner of a Honda Civic. Monday we looked at couches and dust ruffles. All very boing, domestic, and exausting. It turns out that buying a red fabric couch is much harder than buying a lether one. I wonder why.
I brought 2 sets of cutlery, a knife, a pot and cutting board, and that combined with my leather man to open cans was enough to make a few meals. Other than that, we built furniture, swam in the pool, soaked in the hot tub, took walks in the park and tried to do anything but deal with the fact that Mrs OneEyedMan was leaving Tuesday night. Sometimes, we even suceeded. But she left last night and it was horrible. Today was better, but still horrible.
Come visit.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:36 PM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2006
Belligerati on Hiatus
Due to my move move out West I will have limited computer access for the next week. Expect fewer than normal postings.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:41 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2006
A neat infographic
All you ever wanted to know about who hates whom in the middle east.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:49 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2006
Billy, eat your chemicals
Jim Leff, over at Chowhounds, has a spirited defense of artificial food additives.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)
August 9, 2006
A death in the family
My grandfather died this morning at 3.05 AM from complications from his Parkinson's and Lyme disease. He was almost 83 years old. My grandmother was at his side, and I had a chance to visit with him a few hours before.
He was a humble man of private emotions. His actions spoke of his true joys. He had a public and private sector career as a lawyer and accountant. Outside of work, he was an upstanding member of the Jewish community, a world traveler, a lover of the arts, active in Democratic politics (an early gender egalitarian and racial intergrationalist), a loving husband, and a committed and serious parent and grandparent.
It can be difficult to have a relationship with grandparents outside of their roles. To really know them as people instead of institutions, takes an effort and the right grandparent. But my grandfather and I worked at it. When my parents had to work he took me to take the Hunter High School exam. He and my grandmother visited me at college. We had lunch together on many a summer day during my college internships and into my first few years of work. He took great pride in Jewish ritual, and made efforts to include us in them, as long as we made an effort to be patient and respectful. Oddly enough, the subject of belief never arose, and like me, he saw much value there regardless.
The funeral is tomorrow, as is our custom.
On an odd "circle of life:" note, today was also the bris of my new nephew from the BlueEyedGirl's sister. He did a good job and much brunch was eaten. It was such a strange counterpoint to the sadness rippling though my own family.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:37 AM | Comments (0)
August 8, 2006
Watch your fenders!
Because I just got my license!
Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:06 AM | Comments (3)
August 7, 2006
Signed photographs means less fraud
You may have heard that Reuters, providing global news feeds since 1851 was shamed into pulling a photograph of burning buildings in Beirut yesterday because little green footballs figured out that the photograph was doctored. LGF is being crushed under the resulting slashdoting. I haven't seen anyone discuss how this could have easily been avoided.
The Nikon D2X, has built in functionality to digitally sign a photograph to establish which camera took it and if it has been altered. Is news buyers would simply demand signed images from reporters in the field, stuff like this would be a reduced to situations of malice by the buyers.
What an age to live in though, where savvy people can not only see up to the minute news in great quantities and find people to discuss it with, but with technology to distribute their thoughts essentially for free.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:11 PM | Comments (0)
August 5, 2006
Anti-Israel or just Anti Semite?
Attitudes Toward Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Conflict in 10 European Countries from April 2004.
5,000 people in 10 European countries were asked the 11 questions about their perceptions of the Jews. Those respondents who agreed with six or more of these statements were considered to harbor anti-Semitic views.
1) Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind.
2) Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want.
3) Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country.
4) Jews have too much power in the business world.
5) Jews have lots of irritating faults.
6) Jews stick together more than other Italians (Spanish, Dutch, Swiss, Austrians etc.)
7) Jews always like to be at the head of things.
8) Jews have too much power in international financial markets.
9) Jews have too much power in our country today.
10) Jewish business people are so shrewd that others do not have a fair chance to compete.
11) Jews are just as honest as other business people. (Considered prejudiced if answered "probably false" to this statement.)
Participants were also asked the following questions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
1. Thinking generally about Israel, would you say that your views are very favorable, fairly favorable, neither favorable nor unfavorable, fairly unfavorable, or very unfavorable?
2. Thinking specifically about the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?
3. Please tell me whether you agree a lot, agree a little, disagree a little or disagree a lot with the following statement: "Israel truly wants to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians."
4. Please tell me whether you agree a lot, agree a little, disagree a little or disagree a lot with the following statement: "The Palestinian Authority truly wants to reach a peace agreement with Israel."
The findings?
Unsurprisingly, being rated as an anti-semite made you signifigantly more likely to take a pro-Palestinians perspective on the conflict. Among those who held the most negative views of Israel, some 60% also believed that Jews engaged in shady financial practices, and more than 70% thought that Jews had too much business power. Whatever the respondents' religion, nationality, sex or income level, the more intense their dislike of Israel, the likelier they were to be anti-Semitic. Altogether, 56% of those harboring strong anti-Israel feelings were also anti-Semitic. (For the record, the survey found that Spain was the most anti-Semitic country in Europe, with 22% of respondents qualifying as anti-Semites, while Denmark and the Netherlands, at 8%, were the least.)
So there you go, not all anti-Israeli's are anti-semites, but let's not pretend they are unrelated.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:14 PM | Comments (1)
August 4, 2006
What did he mean?
When I was a freshman the dean of the engineering school said that the most successful professional engineers were the ones with B averages. I've thought a lot about what we can really learn from that fact. When I was a freshman the dean of the engineering school said that the most successful professional engineers were the ones with B averages. I've thought a lot about what we can really learn from that fact. The story in Self control is learnable and Giblfiz's comment made me revise my ideas on it again.
Imagine a world in which IQ is normally distributed within the general population. Sitzfleish, or discipline in study also has a normal distribution, which is uncorrelated with the IQ. Finally, measurement of academic success is related to the product of IQ and Sitzfleish, but is measured with some unknown error. Now let's return to the class of engineers.
Who is in the class?
1) Those who have neither the IQ (<110) nor the sitzfleish to be there but measurement error got them accepted. The people are generally bad students and often fail out.
2) Those who lack the IQ to be there but have the sitzfleish. My experience is that these people generally switch to other majors, but some eek it out as C level engineers.
3)Those who have the IQ (>120 but <150) and some sitzfleish. They are typified by better SAT scores than high school GPA, but that GPA wasn't terrible. In my experience these either learn some better sitzfleish or fail out. However, good habits being hard to learn on short notice, these folk have grades that improve as they
move through school. They start with C's and finish with A's. That usually means a B average.
4) Those who have the IQ (>120 but <150) and no sitzfleish. Perhaps they were the smartest kids in their rural high school, and so never had to work hard, but they aren't geniuses. Their first contact with hard work usually kicks their butt. Thos is this category usually switch to an easier major or fail out. Sometimes they pull it all together and develop study skills, eking it out as C students.
5) The geniuses. They have big IQs (>150) and minimal sitzfleish because it never takes them long to do anything. These people's grades are all over the place. Though often found at the A level and eliminated from the sample by dropping out or switching to math.
6) Those that barely make it with IQ (>110,<120) but with great study skills. These students study like crazy, make flash cards, meet with professors, do all their reading and homework. They are often very quiet in class. I find these students almost always get A's.
7) The right IQ (120+) and great study skills. A very rare category, because most students like this end up going to a better school, so that they end up as a member of category 6, but at a better school. These guys get great grades but again, are rare.
My intuition, therefore, is that the low grades are dominated by those who can't study, and the high by those that can, but that the middle is where the smartest people reside, at least on average.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:29 AM | Comments (2)
The right of return to Germany?
The Law of Return is the law of Israel that states that if you haven't converted to another religion and you have one Jewish grandparent then you can easily become a citizen of Israel. I learned on Volokh today that many other countries have rules like this, some are even more generous, and few offer justification (say past or current oppression) for their discriminatory policies.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:18 AM | Comments (0)
August 3, 2006
Self control is learnable
It seems that not only is self control more important that IQ in determining grades, it is also improvable with practice.
So if Bush had better grades as a Yale undergrad than Al Gore and as measured by military intelligence tests, he had a higher IQ than John Kerry, does that mean that he was smarter or just had self control? Pretty amazing for a man accused of being a cocaine user and certainly an alcoholic.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:36 AM | Comments (1)
August 2, 2006
Fun old comics
For an amazing archive of really old (circa 1900) comics check out Beyond Belief. It gives tons of indirect insight into the language, humor, politics, and daily life of an age not that long ago.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)
A just war or just a war?
The economist has a short piece on understanding the moral philosophy of war, especially as it relates to Israel. It starts off talking about proportionality, rightfully dismisses it as a rather irrelevant concepts and moves onto other, more interesting matters.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:15 AM | Comments (1)
August 1, 2006
From the annuls of hypocrisy and irony
Bank workers in India are striking over the outsourcing of their jobs to other companies in India!
Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)