Guns vs. Butter, or Children vs. Seniors.

So we're gonna hand $400 freakin' BILLION dollars of cash to drug companies, as a freebie to seniors.  Is this really and truly the best way that we could be spending our health dollars?  Is this the single most effective place, in terms of return on investment?  Let's rephrase the question: Exactly how far would $400 freakin' BILLION go when it comes to insuring the uninsured children of this country?  As hard as I might, I just can't seem to find a scenario under which I'm more sympathetic to a senior citizen, living in his own home, driving his cadillac to the doctor four times a week because of aching back, than I am sympathetic to the child of a poor single mom somewhere in an inner city...where a tiny fraction of that drug money can save a life or provide the regular medical care that is so important in a young life.

Where does the AARP get off, exactly?  Let's call this what it is: A gigantic giveaway to the drug companies.  We're just going to take out a huge debt and hand the slip to them.  We'll say to them, "Come up with the most expensive drugs you possibly can!  Do it now!". 

You can BET on the fact that drugs are going to get more expensive.  Why?  Because as these drugs are directly marketed to senior citizens through the airwaves, they'll be going to their doctors and demanding these medications, which will now be covered under these stupid programs; drugs companies know this, and will raise prices, knowing they're gonna get paid.  And as the population continues to age, this voting block gets stronger and stronger, wants more and more under these programs, and will finally succeed in burying a younger generation under the weight of their parents' greed.

For the record, I'm a 35 year old guy.  I don't have kids (yet).  I have nieces, and I think what the controlling generation is doing to them is disgusting.  Where do people think all of this kind of debt ends up going?  Look all over the world friends -- look at how well the average banana republic out there is doing.  Look at what has happened in history when debts spiral out of control.  Collapse, devastation, you name it.  Unlike an economic recession, the debt loads never just "disappear"...they cause a severe systemic collapse.  I'm worried about that.  And I'm worried that the fat cat generation will continue to use their demographics to vote themselves another bottle of the world's most expensive pills, to be enjoyed in the healing waters of a hot tub, in their fully paid-for home, while struggling single mothers pay absurd payroll tax rates into a system that is handing their futures to the past.

3:03:08 PM    comment []

Leave No Child Free Of Debt.

For all his talk of compassionate conservatism and his educational goals, El Busho falls squarely in the camp of those who are arranging the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history.  He is creating huge new entitlement programs, and shifting the burden of paying for them from the current generations to future generations.  Be warned, Boomers: Some day people like me will be in charge. When that happens, all this cushy shit that you have voted for yourself is going to be gone.  Get used to the fucking idea.  You expect a social security benefit?  It'll be gone, unless you really, truly cannot pay for things yourself.  All this prescription crap?  That'll just be gone.  Someday we'll realize that when we're faced with being able to pay for drugs for ourselves, and our children, or pay for drugs for old folks who just didn't feel like paying for them, we'll pick our kids.  I hope that our generation has the strength that the Boomers haven't exhibited.  I hope we can make the choice that our younger generation is going to get a better deal.  Be ashamed.

5:40:29 PM    comment []

Sorry!  Wrong Target!

From the don't-let-it-near-me department: The new F-22 is being demoed, according to this article. As a technical boy, what caught my eye was this discussion:

But what really sets the F/A-22 apart is its ability to process data on air and ground targets using its own onboard radars and sensors, as well as those on other aircraft. The airplane is, essentially, an extremely advanced carriage loaded with computers running 2 million lines of software code.

This explains why Pearson and two Air Force brigadier generals, Mark A. Welsh III and Richard B.H. "Rick" Lewis, spent the better part of an hour explaining dramatic progress made in the area of "avionics stability," which has plagued the Raptor program and produced cost overruns and scheduling delays.

To the layman, avionics stability means computers that don't crash during flight. As recently as February, test pilots were spending an average of 14 minutes per flight rebooting mission critical computer systems, such as those processing data from onboard radar. Now, reboot time is down to an average of just 36 seconds per flight.

"What we're in the process of doing right now is integrating the last 7 percent of that software," said Welsh, the director of global power programs for the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions. "Now, admittedly, it's critical software. This is the 'let's go kill people' software. It's the mission essential portion of the airplane. It's the sensor fusion, the integration of data from on board sensors and external sources, it's the stuff that's going to allow you to be successful in combat."

Holy crap.  There's 2 million lines of code in this thing, and as recently as February, it was rebooting itself for 14 minutes every flight.  Now they're down to a mere 36 seconds of rebooting per flight?  And as if that wasn't bad enough...the problems are in the last 7% of the software; the "let's go kill people" part.  Isn't that what this beast is all about?  I've got news for you, buddy...that last 7% is where all of the fun is going to be. 

Let's hope to god that those 2 million lines are across a large number of discrete systems within the plane.  Let's hope that there are very small communications paths between them, with minimal intercoupling. 

What's more is, I wonder how much of this was really necessary.  The basic physical capabilities of the airplane probably didn't need all this horsepower.  Integrating together a data net composed of local and remote sources is probably where a lot of the complexity comes from.  I am also forced to wonder exactly who this fighter is intended to go after?  There really aren't any serious air forces out there in the world that we would need such a thing to fight.  But since I really don't know all that much about air combat, I'll stay quiet on that point.

It's been said that the military dropped dramatically under Clinton in terms of manpower.  Has it grown in cost, though?  Are we taking the money we used to spend on soldiers and spending it on high-tech equipment instead?  We dropped thousands of bombs pointlessly on Iraq.  It seems now that a lot of that money would have been better spent on manpower.

5:30:34 PM    comment []

Other People Don't Exist.

Kevin complains that, despite paying lipservice to the complexity of the problems, hawks often backslide into these kinds of kill-em-all policy proposals. Having grown up in Ireland, I can sympathise with the “Scorch the Earth and Salt the Fields” reaction. It’s a natural expression of justifiable anger and frustration. But the hawks never seem to pause to think how they might react if they and their kin were the targets of the kind of policy Totten advocates.

[Crooked Timber]

When it comes to freedom, war and the justice system, for a lot of people other people just don't really seem to exist. It's perfectly OK to hold Jose Padilla, an American citizen (remember him?  if you don't you should be ashamed of yourself) in jail indefinitely, on the very loose say-so of one intelligence analyst.  It's perfectly OK by most Americans because they're not the person being held.

It's a kind of reverse lottery mentality: Yeah, shitty things can happen, but there's so many people out there, it probably won't happen to me!  And because I am such a brave American, I will go ahead and say that it's just the price we have to pay to live in freedom and all that.

The same people were clamoring for us to bomb the shit out of Iraq in the war, as if real people weren't on the receiving end of those bombs.  And as far as Israel goes, there seem to be two types of Israelis: Those who cannot understand and cannot comprehend that Israel has done anything wrong, and those who have some faint inkling that perhaps the Israeli people are in danger of turning into everything they should hate.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  On the collective level, this is what we have seen in Israel.  Individual Israelies have been killed, as have far more numerous Palestinians.  Collectively Israel's power is absolute.

We are ever so eager to give up other people's freedoms.

1:26:31 AM    comment []

Google and the Semantic Web.

Mark Watson made me think a bit about this.  He describes writing a spider that goes looking for RDF, and was disappointed that there's so little out there.  The thing is, manually generating all that stuff is just pretty much not going to happen.

On the other hand, we have the GoogleGod out there, with the web's biggest pile of data.  That data has already been sliced up by word count, which is...you guessed it...exactly one half of a Bayesian classification system.  Yup, the same kind used to fight spam.  What if we applied the same technique to the entire web, via Google's tech?  Pretty cool, I think.  You be able to construct any number of classifications of information.  Each of those classifications can be described with RDF. 

It can even be automated.  Pass a web page through some kind of google-based application, and what spits out is tagged with RDF, ready for the semantic web. 

Companies could even be formed around providing this service.

Ah, late nights. 

1:18:26 AM    comment []

Anti-Catholic Litmus Test.

The normally interesting Volokh Conspiracy numbers this bit of disconnected reasoning about the supposed anti-catholic litmus test.  Juan Non-Volokh tells us that in his opinion the behavior of the democratic committee members does in fact amount to anti-catholicism, and hence religious discrimination.

What he utterly fails to do is pull back and think about the natural conflict between secular law and religious dogma.  I deliberately use the word dogma, not belief, but that's just my personal spin.  The thing is, there are all kinds of people in this world who believe all kinds of crazy things, and all kinds of not-so-crazy things.  Those beliefs can, will, and have come in direct conflict with laws that are set up to keep society on something of a sane keel.

If I am a participant in some religion that demands that I, as a member, violently affirm in every way shape or form, without exception, the right of a parent to determine all matters related to that parent's child, am I qualified to sit on the bench?  The answer is -- it depends.

It depends on what I'm going to do with my belief.  The settled law of the land is that parents have certain obligations when it comes to their children.  If they do not meet these minimal obligations, they can lose their rights as parents, and even be guilty of criminal charges.  Society has engaged a consensus around this issue -- one for which participation is mandatory, even for non-believers.

Now -- as a member of my church of "I'll do what I want when I want to my children", I am facing a nomination for the federal bench.  If my belief in the principles of my church is so strong that it will alter my decisions and cause me to interpret the law differently, then I am not qualified for the bench.  In particular, if my religious beliefs cause me to actively seek ways to interpret the law differently, then I am not qualified.

This is what activist judges do -- they try to find a way to compress their politics into their administration of the law.  The Supreme Court is incredibly guilty of this...witness the 2000 election.  I don't have much of a problem with the fact that the SC found in favor of Bush.  I have a huge problem with the fact that they split completely along political lines.  It was the most naked abdication of judicial responsibility I have ever seen, and has damaged my view of the SC pretty much irreparably.  Yes, they're only human, but they're supposed to be split on tough questions, not questions that they should have been able to work out.

Back to Pryor: This is a guy who will undoubtedly use his powers as a judge to attempt to shift the law's interpretation in a manner which pleases him.  He has already demonstrated through other actions that he favors a stronger role of religion in government and in the judiciary.  Most Americans are pretty wary of such an effort.  It is entirely appropriate to reject him for the cavalier way in which he does this. 

Judges are supposed to leave their politics behind them.  We know that they don't.  Pryor certainly won't.  But we can at least try to draw the line somewhere, and keep some of the very worst people out.

4:54:15 PM    comment []

Downloadable Books.

Would someone please explain to me why downloadable books on Amazon can actually cost more than ordering a physical book?  For example, Greg Bear's Eon sells as a download for $9.99, and the paperback version of the same book costs (on Amazon) $7.99.  It costs nothing to send me the download.  It probably costs very little print the book, too, but wouldn't you expect it to be limited by the price of the paperback edition? 

What's really going on here is that book publishers have never liked electronic formats.  Their profits have the potential of being eroded; the primary reason is that with the internet as a presence and solid electronic delivery channels in place, their utility as middlemen is greatly diminished.  They're cut out, in other words.

Obviously they don't want this to happen.  So how do you fight it?  You fight it by proving to the rest of the world that electronic distribution is a medium that doesn't really work.  The evidence you need is a small volume of downloads, so you can say that the volume is insignificant.  From this you can propose that it is simple to conclude that consumers don't really want downloads.  To ensure that volumes stay low, you manipulate the prices of electronic books to be quite high, so that consumers are discouraged.  This is also a hedge policy against future laws, which might set limits on profits that electronic publishers can take from authors. 

Of course, as a consumer, I'm not going to pay $9.99 for an electronic version of a book I can buy in physical form for $7.99.  Does this mean that I don't want electronic books?  No.  It just means that they should be reasonably priced. 

Authors currently make very tiny sums for each book sown.  This is justified in the physical world because of the expense of promotion, printing, shipping, sales, and so forth.  In the electronic world, most of those costs go away.  And yet, the prices stay roughly the same.  Ditto for the electronic music world, where all these arguments apply equally.

Remember, it's a two part strategy.  Make the price of electronic media pretty much the same as physical forms, even though the true cost structure (author to consumer) is dramatically lower.  Then promote the idea that because of minimal usage, consumers don't really want it.

4:27:20 PM    comment []

Quick Genetic Algorithm.

Every once in a while you realize that you've hit the sweet spot with a language.  Tonight it wasn't really in terms of speed...it was how fast I got a genetic algorithm implemented.  I haven't written on in a long time, but for a project I'm working on I wanted a layout engine.  As I started working with the generated layouts, I realized that I just didn't really have any idea what the best layout would look like.  When you don't really know anything about the best solution, it's time to pull out an evolutionary algorithm.  Two hours later I have a pretty nicely encapsulated GA, and it seems to be functioning well in the tests I've run.  I wrote a couple of encodings (bit and float) for it, and the encoding mechanism is extensible.

Time to write a cost function for my layout (minimize overlaps and overall size), and see what happens...note that this isn't a general graph layout.  It's for a more specific structure.  I am pretty sure that GAs don't do a good job on general graph layout.

And did I mention I love Eclipse? 

9:37:04 PM    comment []

Piccolo and Size.

As my prototype starts to come together, I have been putting more and more detail into my Piccolo views.  Right now I am playing with a few hundred PTexts within a larger structure.  Each PText can have anywhere from a few dozen words to a few hundred words.  Now that I'm pushing this amount of information around, I've finally gotten Piccolo to slow down.  When I zoom in closely, the frame rate is great.  When I pull back, the frame rate drops to unacceptable levels.  Of course, it's doing a lot of work, and there isn't any optimization of the view, as yet.

We know that Piccolo can easily handle the display of a few hundred simple shapes.  Reading the pattern document, I am instructed to use the semantic zooming capability.  Specifically, I can create a paint method that chooses what to paint by checking the scale of the paint context.  With something like this I could modify PText to begin check to see if the text I would write onto the screen would be legible (check against pixel size, like 6 or 8 pixels).  If the text is below that threshold, I can choose not to draw it.  This will result in some speedup.  We could also modify PText to check each line to see if it should be drawn (intersection versus the paint context's dirty area).

This is all fairly primitive, though.  I am struck by the similarities between a flight simulator's terrain display (see the ROAM algorithm) and what we do in general with 2.5d interfaces.  What we want to do is provide as much visually accurate detail as possible where the viewer needs it, and remove or reduce detail where we don't need it.  A flight simulator usually has a huge database of terrain information.  It calculates an error factor that represents the difference between what is on the screen and what truest representation of the data would be (usually using a pixel metric).  Additional detail from the database is then displayed where necessary.  The best algorithms evaluate this information frame by frame, doing as much work as possible in each frame without violation frame rate display limits, to increase detail level where it is visually appropriate and reduce it where it is not needed.  Viewpoints are also taken into account -- the eye is good at detecting what's going on along the horizon, so more detail is added there, and less to open spaces.

Simply creating a very large scene graph and displaying it isn't really possible in the large.  We need some kind of mechanism for managing level of detail with Piccolo, or within its extensions.  If you have thousands of objects and those objects can be expensive to compute, in one form or another, you cannot create them all in advance.

PCamera understands what it is looking at in terms of rectangle, scale, and so forth, but doesn't help us with the level of detail problem.  We really want to be able to find out what PNodes are _in_ the view.  We want to know the zoom factor for those PNodes.  We want to be able to dynamically create more structure in the scene graph for visible nodes, or for those nodes that could soon become visible.  We want to be able to discard structure when detail is no longer necessary.

The event bus within Piccolo does a great job of giving us keyboard and mouse events, but doesn't provide this level-of-detail information.  For example, I would like to get "close to visible", "is visible", "not visible", and so forth, as events.  As I receive these on PNodes, I can then elect, based on zoom factors and workload, to load in more information and generate more PNode detail in the scene graph, or remove that detail.  PCamera can maintain a list of nodes that are visible and essentially report on additions to or removals from that list.  A "penumbra" list could maintain that set of nodes that are "near visible". 

PNodes will also need to have some state management: low detail state, high detail state, generating detail state, etc...and be able to emit some events in this area.  It can be useful for an application to have a standardized mechanism that can be notified when additional detail is ready.

I'd like to open a discussion in this area.  The point of libraries like Piccolo is to be able to seamlessly navigate large expanses of detail.  To do this effectively we must have LOD mechanisms at our disposal.  We also need to have well-demonstrated patterns that show the best techniques for doing so.  I recognize that the goal of Piccolo is to have a small, concise library...but I am starting to feel that without the LOD support, Piccolo's full potential will be difficult to realize.

11:12:51 AM    comment []

Freaky Cool Illusions.

Snagged the link from Critical Section...this comes from somewhere in Japan.

Freaky Illusions.

12:05:49 AM    comment []

23 Days.

It was pretty icky and low budget.  Decent reviews, and I guess I don't really see why.  It is clearly time to start lowering my expectations in the movie area.  It's all crap!

12:03:16 AM    comment []

Online Music.

Good article here -- one point: All the online music services sell you low quality compressed versions of the tracks.  When I buy a CD, I can rip tracks off of it and compress them any way I'd like.  I can create a lower quality, high compression version for my portable MP3 player; I can create a higher quality version that gets stored on my computer or pushed to CD for the car.

What I'd like to see is some kind of study that looks at these online services and figures out exactly how much of the cash is going to artists.  After all, the mantra of the RIAA is that they "saving artists", and paying them.  Fine -- let's see the numbers.  The RIAA wants laws and courts to back their positions.  That costs society a lot of money, to pay for all that enforcement.  Is this really going to help artists, or is it just solidifying in law the middleman posistion of the RIAA...

11:27:23 PM    comment []

Now Those Are Predictions!

From Israpundit:

 On July 23rd,I attended a lecture delivered by John Loftus, one of the most knowledgeable intelligence people in the world. What he had to say will astound you. Here it is in numbered form as well as I can remember it.

1. Israel had a significant role in the Iraq war.

2. US delivered Apachi helicopters to Israel prior to the war ostensibly for Israel’s own needs. Israeli pilots flew these Apachis to a base in eastern Jordan where there flew many missions at night with US special units.

3. Israeli drones were used extensively in Iraq because they looked like US missiles on Iraqi radar. When the radar honed in the US was able to locate every radar installation and then knock them out. This was huge help in war. One drone was shot down but Iraq never figured out how US knew the location of the radar.

4. Russia told Hussein one month before the war to remove all WMD to Syria and told Hussein to make many tapes to be played after. Iraq transported all the WMDs to Syria to be buried in Beka Valley in Lebanon. They did it at night so as not to be detected by Israeli or US satellites. It didn’t help. The satellites were able to detect where soil had been disturbed and put back so the exact location is know. It will come out during elections in the US. Debka first called it.

5. Syria has been given their marching orders. Syria has withdrawn all troops from Lebanon except for the Beka Valley where they have been ordered by the US to protect the WMD. Later they will be taken back to Iraq where they will be destroyed in the appropriate way.

6. Hezbollah has been ordered to withdraw from the Israel border and to get in line. They are complying for the same reason Syria is, namely, the jig is up.

7. In Iran there will be a revolution in the fall when the students come back to school. The US is beaming in all kinds of radio and television to Iranians in their own language and telling them the truth. The Mullahs are on the run. They overreacted with the Canadian Reporter.

8. Europe and Russia are now coming down on Iran and are expected to levy a trade embargo in the fall, which will start the revolution. We see signs of that starting now.

9. No US troops will be involved until the presidential elections are over.

10. Now that Hussein’s sons are dead, it is all over. This source says that Hussein is also dead.

11. Ben Laden is also dead or at least very sick and Al Qaeda is mostly finished.

12. The Roadmap is not expected to lead anywhere. Even now it is not being followed. Mainly, it is a diversion while all these other things are going on. Most Palestinians over 30 long for the days before Oslo when they had it better than ever. Over time they will shift to the policies of Mazen away from Arafat.

13. The fence will soon be finished. The Palestinians are very worried about it because they know to survive economically they must work in Israel. The fence prevents that.

14. The final settlement is very unclear at the moment.

15. It may be that Jordan will merge with Iraq and King Hussein will reign. This is good because the Palestinians in Jordan will no longer be in majority and both Iraq and Jordan will be stable with the fall of Iran and with Syria changing its stripes.

16. The territories may go over to this new entity so that it will be self-sufficient with Iraqi oil supporting Jordan, the territories and Iraq.

17. Iraq will greatly increase oil production, which will lower the price of oil to $16.00 per barrel. This will bankrupt Saudi Arabia. Surprised?

18. The US is planning on buying more oil from West Africa thereby lessening their dependence on Saudi oil. That’s why Africa is now of interest to the US.

19. The report that is being released on Thursday July 24th on 9/11 will blow the lid off Saudi support for terror even with the key parts are blacked out. The full story will slowly come out. The Saudis are the biggest backers of terrorism in the world and the US knows it. Many influential people are in bed with the Saudis starting with Bush Sr.. The State Department is corrupted and continually protects the Saudis but all that will change over the next year. This is a huge story, which will spawn many books.

20. The Saudis are now being sued for one trillion dollars and the Saudi royal family is very worried about the lawsuit because the plaintiff has enough facts to sink them. The State Department is try to protect them.

21. And Israel is sitting pretty.

22. And one more thing, Loftus is sticking by his version of the bombing of the USS Liberty. Israel knew what it doing and did it for good reason.

I guess we'll all have to just wait and see!!!  Pretty fascinating stuff.  Of course, we have absolutely no way of knowing how much of it is true, if any.  But it's still interesting to consider.

10:44:58 AM    comment []

Flying without ID.

Up until 1995, you didn't need to show any form of identification when you got on a plane.  You could just step up, hand your ticket over, and hop right on the plane.  That seems almost inconceivable now -- where is the security in that?  Doesn't that mean that just about anybody can get on a plane?  Clearly we can't have that.

Today I was thinking about it, as I am sure many other people have.  And my conclusion is this: I cannot for the life of me figure out how showing identification before boarding a plane generates any additional security.  Before I get into the details, I want to note that I felt distinctly uncomfortable as I thought this.  My immediate thought was, no way would I get on that plane!  At least, that's how I felt for the first 30 seconds.  But people did this all the time, for 40 years, without any trouble.  Yes, the occasional plane was hijacked, but I doubt identification had anything to do with it.

Showing identification helps with only two problems -- the detection of a difference between the person the ticket is issued for and the person who actually shows up, and watchlists.  Virtually everyone on the planet has a valid identification of some kind.  Bad people (truly bad people) are almost certainly going to have fake identification of one sort or another.  To deny that this is true is foolish.  Or, as in the case of the 9/11 hijackers, they just use their own names.  It is quite certain that the 9/11 perpetrators showed their identification as they boarded the plane.

A watchlist can help in some ways, but once again it's so easily defeated by a fake id that there is little point.  Let's keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of teenagers across this country with fake IDs.  Do you really believe that a serious international terrorist would be unable to obtain one?

At some point we need to grow tired of "showing our papers" each time we wish to live our lives.  It is doubly important in that we gain nothing by showing them.

11:55:53 PM    comment []

Creeping Fascism.

Steve says: " Libertarians talk about the ratchet effect, where once an invasion of our liberty is in place, it never goes away. In this manner, we slowly stagger towards totalitarian oblivion. I don't think this is really true. In many cases, repressive laws have been removed - especially after both world wars. The experience of the civil rights movement flies in the face of this. For every patriot act, there is a EFF and a hundred other organizations fighting against it. In the society we have, it is so easy to organize to oppose the actions of our government. These two forces will oppose each other, and I think in the end will cancel each other out. "

Ultimately it's all about the balance.  It's the same thing as an ecosystem -- each part serves to counteract the other.  Somehow the whole thing holds together.  The question is, can the system come apart?  In the environment and in our political system I believe we are truly faced with the systemic question.  Will the system survive the stresses we place upon it?

On the environmental front, we have a hundred years of progressive desicration, and the pace is accelerating.  There are so many people, so many needs, so many desires...they cannot all be satisfied, they will not all be satisfied.  The collective attitude is ostrich and sand.  No disaster has yet befallen us, and therefore none ever will.  The earth is resilient.  Hey -- one volcano crams more greenhouse gases into the air than what we emit from our unnecessary tailpipes.  And I can't even deny that's true.  It is.

In politics, the system is beginning to break apart.  Our politicians are becoming more and more disconnected from reality, approving budgets and laws that make no sense.  There is no sense of higher purpose, and truly none is to be found.  As a nation we approach the brink.

Our glorious leaders tell us not to worry.  The deficit is manageable.  The environment is manageable.  World opinion is manageable. 

That may be so.  But it may also not be so.  In this black and white world we leave the leadership no room to move.  We demand they choose sides, like kids lined up in a playground.  Shirts or skins.  The real question that we do not wish to face is, what chance do we want to take?

On the environment: Let's say there's an 85% chance the conservatives are right, and a 15% chance the environmentalists are right.  The downside if the conservatives are right is that we have a small reduction in economic growth.  The downside is the environmentalists are right is the heat death of the whole fucking planet.

On the deficit: Tax cuts may or may not produce a small increase in the GDP, and the resulting higher taxes might allow us to continue the services we're accustomed to.  Give'em 85% again.  The downside on that is pretty intense -- the collapse of the entire US economy as the currency and government converge in a death spiral.  We already know exactly how this works -- just have a look at any number of banana republic governments whose leadership has deficit-spent their country into oblivion. 

Do you really believe that we can just muddle along on these issues?  Do you really believe that there just can't be a downside, that nothing can and ever will befall this country?  After all, nothing ever has.

Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, massive deficits, a declining economy, the decay of the political system -- all of these elements are creating the perfect storm.  Start looking for shelter.

11:40:52 PM    comment []

Currently Cool.

It's my point form list of stuff I think you should know about.  Mostly because this is stuff I know about, or think that I do.

• Rule-driven, pattern-driven systems
• Flyweight object storage in Java
• Distributed value spaces
• Piccolo and 2.5d UI
• Hibernate

Get busy. 

11:10:07 PM    comment []

Silence.

We fill the silence with our insecurities.

Sometimes I drive
To run from all my demons
Sometimes I drive
So I can be alone
Sometimes I drive
To see the world in a different light
Sometimes I drive
For no reason at all

Assemblage 23.

10:59:46 PM    comment []

Consider the Negative.

Bill Kristol: " Are we not even a little safer now that the Taliban and Hussein are gone, many al Qaeda operatives have been captured or killed, governments such as Pakistan's and Saudi Arabia's are at least partly hampering al Qaeda's efforts instead of blithely colluding with them, the opposition in Iran is stronger, our defense and intelligence budgets are up and, for that matter, Milosevic is gone and the Balkans are at peace (to mention something for which the Clinton administration deserves credit but that had not happened by July 1999)? "

Taliban gone -- good (as long as they actually are gone).  Hussein gone -- is he, yet?  What I know is that we just killed his two sons.  I'd say that means the gloves are off.  If the guy has any means left, he's going to use them.

The thing is, Bill isn't considering the negative effects of Bush's policies.  The rest of the world has a serious problem with the way the US is behaving.  Kyoto, Iraq, trade -- you name it.  We have squandered any goodwill we got because of 9/11.  Bush's steps have polarize an us vs. them mentality here in America, and brought together forces against us in the wider world.

There has to be a better way.  The Bush line is essentially that you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.  They've broken a crapload of eggs, and we better see some results.

1:36:12 PM    comment []

Now We're Up to 42 Words.

Bush:  "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."

Today's report on 9/11:  The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida, United Press International has learned.

Let's see.  That's 16 words from on the uranium mess, and 26 here.  That makes 42 words that shouldn't have been there!

No evidence connecting Hussein to 9/11 or terrorists.  Hmm...so where did this line in the SOTU come from?  Was it...POLICY DRIVEN?  Heaven forbid!  I wonder what we're going to find out next.

9:41:02 AM    comment []

Spam: Bayesian Throttling.

The thing about spam classifiers is, they make mistakes some times.  The good ones, like SpamBayes, don't make all that many mistakes.  But when you're making a back-end spam solution, you really can't afford to have any rejected emails.  You have to let everything through.  It has to let the user make the final decision.

So where can the mostly accurate nature of a Bayesian classifier help us out? We can use it to throttle back spam from a given source.

Most emails come routed to us through servers, but increasingly, we are receiving emails directly from the servers that are the culprits.  It's pretty straightforward to use Bayesian classification on the emails that are coming in; when we see the spam percentage is getting high from a given server, we throttle back substantially on what we'll allow that server to send us.  That way we can make it inefficient to be a target.

If the big services could do this, then we could make pretty good headway against spam.  It should be relatively simple to bind it into the various server environments.

7:57:37 PM    comment []

Containment Strategy.

Wake up...it's not about the 16 words.  You will note that the administration has gone fairly nuts over them -- what they're doing (and what is working) is trying to shift attention from everything else that was said about WMD.  It's funny though -- I don't really know what I have available to me that would show the timeline of what administration officials have really been saying over the past year. 

Without a doubt, Bush and his team stressed and sought to create a substantial link between Iraq and WMD.  Without a doubt, they also attempted to create the same link with regards to terrorism.  There is little question that they did this to advance their policies in the area, and did it with the intention of gaining the support of the congress.

That means there are a couple of questions.  First, is it legal?  The answer there is, probably.  I think they were very careful not to lie about anything.  So we really don't have much that's illegal going on.  It is possible that the President truly did believe that Iraq represented an imminent danger to the US.  It's highly unlikely that the personnel surrounding the Prez truly thought so.  Iraq was invaded to further policy goals.  That is not necessarily a bad thing to do, in and of itself.  Making use of the military to achieve effects in the Middle East is a legitimate use of force.  The constitution does require that the Congress assent, and in a back-handed, puzzled sort of way, it did.

If we pull back from the strict focus of legality, we get into a grayer area.  Did the Administration deliberately mislead the Congress, and hence the American people?  It's hard to say.  The problem is that we don't truly know what they were thinking, in the year after 9/11.  It's clear that from day one, after 9/11, there were those who wanted to use it as an opportunity to move against Iraq, and perhaps they truly believed that Iraq was the root of evil. 

As a civilized society we need to have more than supposition, though.  Breaking the covenant of pre-emption needs to be done for the right reasons, every time.  You can't screw around with that kind of thing and still consider yourself to be the good guy.

And that's what this is ultimately about.  We need to be damn sure that whenever we use force, we're doing it for the right reasons, and that we truly are the "good guy".  Invading Iraq was probably the right thing to do, on some levels.  Setting it up via the mechanism of a lie or an exaggeration was definitely not. 

Our credibility in front of the world is substantially lessened.  A good showing in the conversion of Iraq to a modern democracy isn't going to rebuild that credibility.  The short attention span possessed by the American Public doesn't seem to be shared by the rest of world, who put this episode squarely into the category of "what's wrong with America".  We'll pay a price eventually.

7:47:34 PM    comment []

And The Band Played On.

Have I mentioned that Pfc. Lynch is a Hot Chick?  It seems that the Army has found a sympathetic, photogenic symbol! Because I am a mean old man I will mention that her fourth grade reading of her prepared speech didn't really do her local school system any favors.  But who cares.  Who's listening?  Let's hope the prettiest, most famous-est Army Chick in America gets real better, real soon!

10:43:17 PM    comment []

Goodbye, F@*&ers.

I can't say that I'm particularly sad to see that Hussein's sons are dead.  Dead of an apparent overdose of lead!  Ha!  I am sure Steve will correct me and note the true alloyed nature of the bullets use kill these bastards.  But I forced to note the following:

1. Saddam Hussein is still alive. 
2. Sons are usually "close" to their fathers.
3. How about we keep them alive long enough to figure out if they know where dear old Dad is?
4. Bush is still a dumbass.
5. Hmm....TOW missile or knockout gas?  Hey, Colonel, they're holed up in that house!  Let's feed in tear gas and knockout gas until they stop kickin' out lead.
6. We oughta feel at least a little sad that a 14 year old bought it in there, according to the reports I heard, even if he was one of the Sons son.

At the same time as I was hearing the reports, there was a tornado warning broadcast over the radio in Dauphin County PA.  Everybody take cover.  Blissfully, repeated tornado warnings did mask the crap-ass reverberations through our electromagnetic universe that PA purports to be a public radio broadcast.  Pray that the aliens do not listen to their transmissions first.

7:54:30 PM    comment []

Northern Pennsylvania is Radio Wasteland.

You try flipping mindlessly from one station to the next, hoping to God that somehow the next three hours of driving are going to magically disappear.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Of course, I hate PA on general principales, on account of them giving me a speeding ticket a few years back.  Spend no money there.  They are evil people, and all they listen to is crap rock from the early 80's!!!  You won't find the heart-shaped bed you are looking for.  This is not the vacation you are looking for.  Move along.

7:45:40 PM    comment []

ZoomUI.

I'm tired.  It's one of those pick-your-friend-up-downtown-and-drive-her-home nights.  And I have to drive to Canada tomorrow.  Dammit!  I am such a good friend to have. 

Part of the pre-drive was getting my tires rotated and balanced.  The ole BMW is handlin' sweetly again, just in time to have the crap beaten out of it by the general lack of maintenance on the interstate system.  Or should I say, the lack of competent maintenance.  I have little doubt that there will simply be construction delay after construction delay tomorrow, as the men in orange seek to further distort our fair highway system, in as many dimensions as they can.

While I was waiting I read through Jeff Raskin's chapter in Humane Interfaces on zoomable UIs.  Seems pretty bang-on to me -- his basic point is that you really have to put your thinking cap on.  Don't just replicate what you can do with a new user interface -- put your user's brain to work.  Use the stuff his brain is good at, like pattern and feature recognition. 

I'll be taking some code with me to Canada.  We'll see what comes out of it.

Back in five (days).

1:10:41 AM    comment []

Minor Perfidy Seeking Major Perfidy.

They moved.  Read'em and weep!

1:06:32 AM    comment []

Unintentional Revisionism.

"We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." -- George Bush, referring to Saddam Hussein, July 14, 2003.

So now we're faced with a choice:

1. Slip of the tongue.  Entirely probable, Occam's Razor.
2. A feeble attempt at revisionism.
3. An indicator of a mind that doesn't dwell on specifics, or isn't really sure what a specific is.
4. US Intelligence sources reliably informed Bush that the inspectors never actually went into Iraq.

You decide!

5:23:10 PM    comment []

Marriage != Children.

I think the focus on "marriage equals children" as society's primary interest is dumb.  The main good thing about marriage, from society's standpoint, is the creation of bonds that can substitute for government.  If a person has no connections to other persons, then the government ends up picking up the tab for whatever happens.  If there are strong bonds between persons (of whatever gender mix), then there are solid mechanisms in place to do the heavy lifting of responsibility.

Marriage is really about creating bonds of duty and caring, between the two people, backwards and forwards through generations, and across families.  Plain ole hetero marriages don't need to be the only way to do this.

5:04:26 PM    comment []

Kata 6.

Joey did it too, and I just couldn't resist.  Here's Dave's Kata (Dave Thomas is a prof of mine from umpteen years ago).  I was more interested in how fast I could get it to go under Java, since Java doesn't have a great reputation as a "cruncher" language.

I haven't done all the tricks yet, but I think that this is pretty acceptable:

1. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 416 ms in 45425 words.
2. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 139 ms in 45425 words.
3. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 293 ms in 45425 words.
4. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 170 ms in 45425 words.
5. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 123 ms in 45425 words.
6. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 123 ms in 45425 words.
7. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 123 ms in 45425 words.
8. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 123 ms in 45425 words.
9. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 123 ms in 45425 words.
10. Discovered 2534 anagrams in 123 ms in 45425 words.

You can see the VM heats up after the first run...gets going nicely.  Curiously, Dave says that there are 2530 there.  I guess I found four more.  Or maybe there's a criteria I'm not aware of.  Pretty fast!  Each of those runs also includes reading in the entire file -- I didn't optimize out the read. 

My machine is an AMD 2.5Ghz.  Those times are using JDK 1.4.2.

When you consider that this is also doing full character translation (byte-->char), it's pretty impressive. 

Here's my slightly scrambled answer, in case you want to do it for yourself first.  Just format this in your favorite editor and you can read it.

4:59:03 PM    comment []

The War on Criticism.

That is freakin' funny.  Read and die laughing.

3:10:32 PM    comment []

Don't Go!

Mike: What you perceive as your own "bone shaking" the rest of us perceive as vigorous argument.  I think you are applying far too rigid of a standard to yourself.  A vehement discourse is fine and proper, if accompanied by an open mind.  You seem to come complete with open mind.  Therefore: No problem.

The Right has had its day/year, since January of 2000 -- dictating what they felt was the truth, disparaging what they thought they should.  The timeline is starting to catch up to them.  It's becoming easier and easier to apply the scientific method...what did they say?  Were they right?  What were the consequences?  This is a good level of discourse.

A properly functioning opposition in government works that way.  In this society, YOU are the properly functioning opposition.  There is dignity and responsibility within that role. 

2:16:40 PM    comment []

Just4Log.

I need to agree with the BileBlog.  All this class modification crap is going on because there's some basic stuff that's just missing from the Java VM.

In the case of Just4log, it's all about the fact that the VM doesn't do lazy evaluation of what's passed in.  The VM certainly could do this, although that might break the Java spec.  Is the VM allowed to NOT evaluate an argument to a function if it can prove that it is not needed?  Does the spec require that the side effects occur?

Languages like Haskell explicity make every expression lazy.  The compiler and runtime are free to avoid evaluation of just about anything they want to.  Of course, you can force evaluation.
This is where the key difference between procedures and functions occur.  A procedure creates a side effect, and must always be evaluated.  A function generates a result, but often has side effects too (which it shouldn't).  Languages need to differentiate between the two.

2:03:23 PM    comment []

Short Term Memory.

Thanks to Calpundit for the link to Walter Pincus' timeline of Bush Administration statements on Iraq's nuclear capabilities.  It's become more and more apparent to me that developing some kind of longer term attention span is critical to the functioning of this democracy.  What Bush and company say really matters.  When they say it matters too.

We need more timelines like Walter's.  This isn't about a game of "gotcha".  It's about figuring out in more detail who's spinning, making it obvious, and pointing it out when it happens.  It's about creating a little noise when distortions are occurring.  The reason we want to do this is obvious: If distortions of the past become more obvious and more embarrassing, then they'll happen with less frequency.  We'll have more honesty from our politicians.

Right now these folks have been counting on short term memories to do their dirty work.  Blogging is one mechanism for routing around that problem -- the larger analysis and memory of the blogging community is doing wonders.  I believe that more direct methods may be important.

Not coincidentally, some of my own research work is oriented in this direction.  I am very interested in interlocking timelines and dependencies.  How do we manipulate this kind of information effectively?  How do we visualize it?  Stay tuned. 

1:58:54 PM    comment []

Overclocking.

There are two conventional barriers that apply to overclocking mainboards.  First, the circuits usually have timing limits that prevent them from being used beyond certain boundaries.  Errors often increase as these boundaries are approached.  Second, there is the heat dissipation problem -- as chipsets are run faster and faster, they lose their ability to discard all the heat being generated.

I was just thinking that what we need is a "continuous" overclocking feature, as a standard part of the motherboard.  Rather than operate at just one speed, set in the BIOS, the OS monitors the usage state.  When the system is idle, processor and bus speed can be "idled down", to save power and reduce heat.  My laptop computer already does this with processor speed; why can't it be applied to the bus speeds as well?

If heat starts to become a problem, the system can automatically reduce the speeds and dissipate heat faster.

The advantage here is that when the system is under heavy load, we can deliver a "burst" of extra power right when it's needed, perhaps speeding up the CPU and bus by a significant percentage.  At the conclusion of the activity or when measured conditions merit, both are retarded.

Most computers spend most of their time idling.  During idling we could potentially dramatically reduce bus speed and processor speed.

Let's hope that a motherboard manufacturer tries this!

The only question is, what parts of the OS need to be aware of a continuously variable timing on the bus?  Most should already be largely immune to changing processor speeds, because laptops have been doing that forever.

1:16:16 PM    comment []

Above the Law.

Seems like Paul Bremer is about to establish military tribunals in Iraq, the purpose of which is to prosecute war criminals. I recognize that some sort of justice system is going to have to be imposed here, and that it's very hard to avoid it being a messy affair. At the same time, it's something of a minefield.

First, military tribunals are something that a civilized nation should really try to stay away from. This administration has moved swiftly to use them, because they're more convenient. It's something of an affront to justice, though, and to my mind really needs to be a last resort.

Second, the Bush administration refuses to participate in any agreement on war crimes that might put US officers at risk for trial. How can the US government talk out of one side of its mouth, declaring its intent to put Iraqis on trial for "war crimes", and out of the other side of its mouth, proclaim that no US citizen can be prosecuted in a similar manner.

If the US is going to opt out of war crimes, it ought to opt out of prosecuting them as well.

What this all points to is the fact that the Bush administration is not particularly interested in the letter or spirit of the constitution. They're interested in what they (probably honestly) see to be the best available path. They truly cannot understand why the entire country just doesn't "trust them" to do the right thing. They don't intend to trample of freedoms; it just happens from time to time.

A skeptical observer notes that just about all the broad strokes of the Bush administration are based on the notion that we must do counter-intuitive things to achieve good results. We must provide extensive tax cuts to the rich in order to get economic growth. We must defy and anger the world to achieve success in the war on terror. We must ignore the concerns of the world on environmental issues to create a cleaner environment.

The problem is that this "faith-based" political movement is beginning to break down. We take the President's word that his programs will create jobs; he has a right to try them. We take the President's word on a lot of things. What we're finding is that there is a significant probability that they're just plain wrong.

They've been wrong on the economy. None of the job gains predicted have materialized. The recession is as bad as ever. Unemployment is at a 20 year high. Much of the world distrusts the US, an astonishing change from only two years ago. We have spiralling deficits, that are predicted to go ever larger. We have an ascending cost of occupation in Iraq.

Looks like they're wrong about a lot of things, and maybe it's time to start treating Presidential pronouncements with an appropriate level of doubt.

11:23:29 AM    comment []

Selecting Facts.

Yes, SUVs now have defenders (http://www.suvoa.com)! These are people who can't really think of anything much better to do than declare their allegiance to vehicles that are wildly inappropriate for most of the tasks that they're put to, and directly contribute to a whole host of problems that we face today.

I will grant that absolute tailpipe emissions and absolutely mileage really do make a difference -- if someone produces an SUV that acts essentially like a car in this regard, I don't really have too much of a problem with it.

Let's examine some of their "facts":

"Federal government and insurance industry safety data show SUVs are considerably more protective of their occupants than the average passenger car in the most common types of crashes" -- sure they are. They're big steel cages. What they're NOT saying is that those same federal studies show an overall INCREASE in highway deaths...because SUVs do a much better job of killing the OTHER guy in an accident. Yes, a single man in a Ford Expedition can very easily kill off an entire family with a lower income, who couldn't play in the safety arms race.

"Americans enjoy the fruits of their labor with almost 24 million boats, ATVs, horse trailers, towed RVs, snowmobiles and off-road motorcycles" -- sure, and a very small number of these same vehicles actually require any sort of large towing capacity. Most small vehicles are easily capable of towing smaller recreational vehicles. What we would really like to know here is how many SUV owners actually use their SUV to tow anything. I personally can't think of one person I know who uses the SUV for anything other than a trip to the mall.

"About half of the respondents in a recent poll use their SUV regularly to haul tools, appliances and other bulky items that just won’t fit into cars." Without defining "regularly", we know nothing. The fact is that somehow people got along for fifty years without having SUVs, and somehow their tools and toys got to where they needed to be.

"hospitals often put out the call for volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles" -- This is a reason that we should have everybody driving SUVs? Please. This is such bottom-feeding. The vast majority of SUVs on the road are pieces of crap and don't handle in snow significantly better than an AWD car. Why? They're all running on all-weather tires. I'll take a car with snow tires over an SUV anyday, if I'm driving in the snow.

"Since the mid-1970s, the fuel economy of SUVs and light trucks has improved by nearly 60 percent". Super fantastic. So they've improved nowhere near as well as other segments of the fleet of vehicles. Do we really want to be benchmarking ourselves on 1970s vehicles?

"Replacing all of the SUVs to be sold in 2003 with passenger cars would save one day’s worth of oil in this country. But because SUVs are more protective of their occupants in the vast majority of crashes compared to cars, the death rate on our nation’s highways would unquestionably increase" - Bullpucky. It has been well established that SUVs do a better job of protecting their occupants, at the expense of killing other people. With smaller cars on the road, we'd save oil AND have fewer highway deaths, overall.

"A 2004 Ford Explorer or Chevy Trailblazer, two of the most popular SUVs, will pollute less driven from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles and back to Washington, D.C. than a 1967 station wagon driven one-way from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore" -- The stupidest statistic on the site. How does that same SUV do in terms of emissions and pollution when compared to, say, a Toyota wagon, or a Jetta wagon? Like crap, of course.

As with just about everything, it's what ISN'T said that's important. Most people don't really have all that much of a problem with the little SUVs...they suck for gas mileage compared to their car counterparts, but they really don't go around killing people. What pisses a lot of people off are the idiots driving to the mall in Ford Expeditions, for no reason. Those things get around 7mpg, kill people all over the place, and have to be PAID FOR WITH MY TAX DOLLARS BECAUSE WE HAVE TO INVADE STUPID MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES TO KEEP THE GODDAMN OIL COMING. Do you get that?

11:23:02 AM    comment []

Bright, but Different.

Time to pile on the meme bandwagon for "bright".  The Times op-ed piece says something along the lines of not believing in elves, easter bunnies, and god.  While I personally do subscribe to a naturalist viewpoint, I don't think it's a conflict to believe in god.  There are two separate questions, for me: Is there a god, and are there supernatural events?  I think you can very readily believe in a god, and at the same time believe that for all practical purposes there are no supernatural events.

The basic reason that I believe in god is this: Just look at the Universe!  We have one tiny primal atom erupting in a big bang, and this is what results from it? The incredible complexity and diversity that we see all around us?  I don't think there's much more proof necessary than that!  It's Occam's razor at its finest.  God really is the simplest solution to the problem of why the universe exists.

But then let's move on.  Are there supernatural events?  No.  God set things up this way for a reason.  The magic's done.  The clockwork is running.  We are within the system.  As we work within the system, we are continually running into things that seem like magic, but then turn out not to be, as we gain further understanding.  The real question is, just how deep does this thing go?  How much more is there for us to learn?  And the big one: Is there a limit to what we can know? 

Seems right now like God built this thing (the universe) to be deep and interesting. 

I have a problem with people who ascribe human characteristics to god, and then want to run my life or other people's lives on that basis.  That's Easter Bunny stuff.  God isn't about a cracker and wine, facing Mecca fives times a day, or televised preachery.  God is about scale, universes, and wonder.

11:51:24 AM    comment []

It's not really working out, is it?

What a shoebox of puppy crap.  My semi-literate response: How exactly does the absolute squandering of American credibility for the purposes of reaping the emaciated, dusty, low-hanging fruit of Iraq in any way help overall American strategic interests?  "Remake the Middle East"?  Will we be doing that by stick or carrot?  It doesn't seem that the carrot is a particularly viable strategy, given that Bush seems to be utterly unable to understand why much of the world considers him the greatest current threat to peace.  If we're doing it by stick, you can count on this administration to play bull-in-china-shop, then move on to the next target. 

I find it amusing that so many GOP standards-bearers are resorting to the parsing of wordplay to justify statements made prior to the war. 

11:36:41 AM    comment []

Bullet Points.

Let's just summarize why we ended up in Iraq:

• Saddam Hussein was directly connected to and supporting Al Qaeda
• Hussein/Iraq was an imminent threat to the US and the region
• The Iraqis would love us
• Weapons of mass destruction
• We can do this for $60 Billion

Did I miss anything?  I think those are the primary ones.  Seems like El Busho is zero for four on the publicly stated reasons for going in.  Back then, I and many others felt that the publicly available evidence absolutely did not support going into Iraq, in a pre-emptive manner, at that time.  We therefore assumed, in good faith, that the Bush Administration had evidence that they could not reveal, primarily concerning WMD.  When Bush asked for the trust of the American people, he was given it.  After disrupting and disbanding the Iraqi regime, we assumed that WMD would be found.

They haven't.  If they are found at this point, they will be in very small quantities.  Now we're spending $4 Billion a month to keep 150,000 troops in Iraq, indefinitely.  Plenty of conservatives are blaming Clinton for downsizing the military, which makes this operational tempo difficult to sustain.  There are statistics that would show how much the military downsizing contributed to this, and I don't know where to find them.  I'll try.

The thing is, it's always easier to defend than it is to attack.  You can do it with less manpower.  If your military is oriented around defending the homeland, the op tempo is easy to maintain.  If you want to get into nation-building, your expenditures are going to be much higher.

Wasn't Bush against nation-building?  Did 9/11 really change everything?  I really, truly think that it did not.  The actions of the Bush adminstration were effectively predetermined before he took office.  What they're doing, they planned to do all along.

9/11 was an excuse to accelerate the war effort against Iraq, which was always in the plan.  Afghanistan wasn't -- that was an aberration.  Of course, the US government has utterly failed to follow through there, and has left the country in a state of decay and destruction.

Bush reminds me of a kid who is trying to repair a clock.  He's pretty much got the thing pulled apart, but didn't keep track of where the parts came from.  And it just won't go back together. 

11:24:03 AM    comment []

2+1=1:30.

So it's a little late, and I'm a little tired.  This evening I learned that I am like the only damn person on this planet who can make a sidecar properly, for god's sake.  If you're a freakin' bartender, don't act like you can make one if you can't.  Jesus. 

1 crap-ass sidecar + 2 vodka martinis later, and the walk home had me thinking about the future, and what it holds.  If you know me you know all about my past, and you're pretty damn sick of hearing about it.

Tomorrow on the train I am fairly determined to get a good head start on Iain Banks Look To Windward.  I have some clever morning thinking to do.  I have a future to plan!  Onward, upward.

1:36:05 AM    comment []

Four Books.

Yes, I just got my four books about living on boats from Amazon.  This causes me to note a few things.  First, I do not want to be 40 and living on a boat by myself.  But it'll probably happen anyway.  Second, sometimes the USPS kicks ass.  Amazon's super-saver delivered these four books to me via the USPS in less than two days, from Delaware.  That is damn fast.  My $59 shipped Wednesday night and is here already.

On the other hand, Sporty's Pilot Shop charged me $15 for shipping via UPS.  It's been two days, and my order still isn't here yet!  Dammit!  I want my private-pilot-on-DVD course.  I'm planning on wrapping up my pilot's license, and I seriously need to get in some review before I start this puppy back up again.

It's a warm night here.  I'm heading out for a drink.  I'll confuse another bartender, who won't know how to make a sidecar.  But I do.  I am secret.

10:05:37 PM    comment []

Where the Money Goes.

Keep this as a handy reference in your back pocket! In billions:

• social security $480
• medicare $245
• veteran's benefits $58
• grade school, high school $34
• highways $30
• health research and training $28
• nondefense homeland security $27
• food stamps $25
• financial aid to college students $20
• farm subsidies $16
• NASA $15
• foreign aid $9
• pollution control $8
• FBI $5
• national cancer institute $5
• operation of national parks $2

So let's see: The Bushies are going to spend around $40 Billion just in the next NINE MONTHS, on Iraq. Best estimates are that we're going to be sustaining this level for around 3 or 4 years. Grand total: Let's say around $160 Billion. Of course, that does not include many of the other military costs, but it's a useful place to start.

Looking at our list of yearly entries, it's fairly clear that we could have saved a LOT more American lives by dedicating some of these resources to cancer research, for example, or pollution control. Both of those things kill way more Americans each year than any weapon of mass destruction could ever hope to.

The farm subsidies piss me off. That's $16 Billion we really shouldn't be spending. It benefits mostly corporations and a vanishingly small number of farmers. Guess what -- corporate agriculture is just flat out more efficient, and works better on the big scale. But we should no longer be subsidizing those corporations.

8:44:57 PM    comment []

George Will is Losing It.

See his piece today.  He asks us, " Once the court has said that some such acts are constitutional rights, by what principle are any of the myriad possible permutations of consensual adult sexual activities denied the same standing?", then goes on to list " Bigamy? Polygamy? Prostitution? Incest? Even -- if we assume animals can consent, or that their consent does not matter -- bestiality?".

If George Will cannot tell the difference between these acts and a standard gay relationship, he need to focus in on whatever event in his childhood has lead to such brain trauma and get help.  Bigamy and Polygamy are the same thing -- the reason the state may wish to intervene here and not grant a civil union status has several parts.  First, a one-to-one relationship is something that is easily handled in a legal sense.  With a union, you are granting certain rights and responsibilities, each person unto the other.  There simply isn't any way to spread this notion across more than one person.  Second, certain polyamorous marriages have less than complete consent by the participants. 

Prostitution is a commercial act.  For that reason a state may have the right to intrude, for commercial reasons. 

Incest has long-standing genetic reasoning behind it.  This is no mere act of consent -- there are very real genetic consequences to it, the costs of which are borne by society. 

And bestiality?  Why is it that certain Republicans seem to be utterly unable to see the difference between a dog and a man?  Methinks Mr. Will doth protest too much.

The bottom line is that he's searching for a reason to justify his personal morality, to explain why a state should have the right to invade the privacy of two consenting adults under whatever circumstances they choose. 

If we take his argument at face value, the state may insert these kinds of laws into any zone of privacy it chooses.  In George Will's world, a state should have the right to regulate and interracial affair, for example.  I do not imply that Mr. Will would agree with such a law; only that if a state has an unlimited right to regulate private sexual conduct, why should it stop with anti-gay laws?

The bottom line on this one is that there is a single reason that Will and other columnists keep trotting out this "end of the world" crap.  They are desperately trying to find a legal way to continue to harass gays.  There is no grand principal here that is being lost.  The lines describing what is moral and what is not are not being massively redrawn. 

You either perceive the Supreme Court decision as a slight shift, or you perceive it as the end of the world.  It's not the end of the world, and the right needs to back down on their absolutist message.

12:21:24 PM    comment []

George Will's Misdirection.

The frequently interesting George Will put together a little piece on Stephanopolous' show this AM...and I have to say that I wasn't impressed.  His point was that Vermont's just a wee little weird state, and there's a fairly long list of wacky things for conservatives to hate about them.  So you shouldn't take them seriously.  And if you're a democrat, well, they're way left over there, and you don't want to be associated with that, do you?

He's trying to relegate Vermont to social-lab status.  Of course, the conservatives already have their very own bio-lab -- it's called Washington, DC, where Republicans have been absolutely determined to prevent the population from getting a vote in the congress, for one reason and one reason only: They know that vote will go to the democrats.  Right/wrong, be damned.  Pathetic.  Maybe they should be asking themselves why their majority is so razor thin it is pretty much non-existent.

Will's basically firing a tame little first shot in the first skirmish.  There's something about Dean's message that worries the GOP...if he can tap into enough voter resentment, he might start making some significant numbers.  The only way the Dems can get something going against Bush is with an angry man who's right about enough simple stuff that people start to question what they're doing.  Dean's fundraising may help, too.  The thing about Democratic fundraising is that there's a fairly big sum of money between all of the candidates.  What they ought to be doing is getting together and agreeing that $0.50 of every dollar collected should, at a minimum, be directed towards the federal campaign, with the losers giving their excess to the winner.  That might help balance things out a bit.

5:52:39 PM    comment []

Sidecar.

This old drink is fast becoming my new favorite.  Simple recipe: 2 ounces Brandy, 1 ounce Cointreau, 1/2 ounce lemon juice.  Shake through ice, strain and serve in a chilled, sugared glass.  And make it with fresh lemon juice.  Don't have a fruit press?  Get one.  What are you waiting for? 

5:23:48 PM    comment []

Redo the Mall.

From Boing boing.  I think it'd be great if they'd take all that mall crap, pave it all over, and develop a new integration work-live-shop environment...something with parking hidden, the ability to walk, and little stores scattered around.  God knows these mall environments are big enough...

2:32:55 PM    comment []

Effective Mix for a Beautiful Day.

Here's my playlist.  It should be yours too.  Or maybe I know you, and you already have it.  :)

• Requiem - Sasha
• Halcyon - Orbital
• Funny Car - Morel
• Sunshine - Finitribe
• Matjora is Still Alive - Johannes Schmoelling
• Satellite - BT
• Mad As We Are - Erasure
• Java - Kenny Larkin
• Map of the Warm Night - Tim Story
• The Gathering - David Parsons
• Hayling - FC Kahuna

2:14:16 PM    comment []

Howard Dean on MTP.

Interesting tidbits from KOS.  I watched Howard Dean on MTP, and everybody seems to be participating in the consensus that he screwed up.  Were they watching the same interview that I was?  I thought he was good and honest in his answers.  Yes, the military question was a bit of a screwup, and I bet he won't be repeating that mistake -- this man is gonna memorize a whole bunch of things about the military now, and be ready with answers. 

The thing is, a lot of topics were covered, and even though he was pressed pretty hard by Russert, he did a good job and gave real answers to questions, rather than just spout platitudes.  I respect that. 

Dean seems to just get some of the stuff that's important.  More and more of America is going to figure out that they don't want to live in W's secure, gated community homeland, and that a life devoid of anything except aspiring to live behind zoolike bars is a life wasted.  National health care?  Makes friggin' sense, if you ask me.  Dean proposes an opt-in system.  You can pay and participate in the national health care system if you want to.  That health care system can then engage in some pretty serious negotiations with health care providers, and even begin to provide certain kinds of health care (wellness, etc) itself.  One of the most important things about a national health care system is the freedom it brings!  Lose your job, or want to take another one?  You can just go.  Want to start your own business?  You're still covered.  I remain totally dumbfounded by the fact that Americans think that having your health insurance provided for you by your job is in some way a good idea.  It totally sucks, and it totally limits your personal mobility/freedom. 

For the people who don't want to participate: You want to do your own thing?  Fantastic!  Keep your own plan.  Pay your own way.  Participate in the plan provided by your office.  Have at it!

11:02:26 AM    comment []

An Engineer's Viewpoint.

Just love this one.  I need them too!

Barbara Bund, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, tells the story of a group of engineers at Quaker State who were invited to observe consumer focus groups discussing the company's motor oil. "This one engineer was sitting in the backroom watching a group in which not one single person understood the difference between synthetic oil and nonsynthetic oil," Bund says. "He walked out of there and said, ‘We've got to get smarter focus groups.'"

3:00:10 PM    comment []

Playing Defense.

The simple beauty of not attacking other countries is that you don't have to occupy them afterwards.  You don't have to impose your ways on them.  You don't have to suppress their populations to get at a rebellious minority.  Just ask the Israelis how well the whole "occupation thing" is going for them -- I'm sure they're ecstatic about it.

El Busho has managed to put the US into the position of occupier in two countries in as many years.  We're stuck there now.  Those soldiers are going to be there for a long time, and resentment is just going to build and build. 

In Iraq we've destroyed their infrastructure, directly and indirectly.  Modern peoples (us and the Iraqis) are generally more concerned about their day to day comforts (electricity, running water) than they are about their political leadership.  Just look at where the lack of interest in politicial leadership has landed us in this country!  Because we have taken away their day to day comforts, we are the enemy.  Add to that the always-wonderful presence of fanatical Islam, and you have a recipe for harsh pain.

I keep staying away from the Q word, but it's going to sneak out eventually.  The latest figures I've seen show the US maintaining a presence in Iraq for five years.  Those are going to be some pretty pissed off reservists.

Bush may have wanted to reshape the middle east, and he may yet succeed.  The true cost of doing that was never explained, and probably will be avoided at all costs.  The dual wars may yet be the biggest error of Bush's presidency. 

12:54:29 PM    comment []

Quick GOP Homophobe Test.

It's so simple!  Just ask yourself these little questions.  See how you do.

1. Gay men should go to jail if they have gay sex.  (Yes/No).
2. States should be able to decide if they want gay men to go to jail for having gay sex.  (Yes/No).
3. Women should go to jail for having gay sex.  (Yes/No).
4. Straight men should go to jail for having "bad" sex with their wives.  (Yes/No).
5. The government should monitor people to determine if they are having "bad" sex. (Yes/No).
6. Throwing gay men in jail is better than permitting Civil Unions (Yes/No).

If you're six for six, run right over and start donating to George Bush.  Better check to see that you're the same denomination of Christian that he is, though, because before long that'll be the only "American" denomination left! 

6:06:06 PM    comment []

Improving Dean Campaign Contributions.

I believe that you can enhance donations, encouraging people to encourage people!  The way to do this is to assign each donor a donor number or code.  Then, when they recruit a friend to donate to the campaign, that friend can enter the referrer's donor number.  This builds the referrer's "karma" with respect to helping the campaign.  In effect we create a tree of donors, and an individual donor can see just what their donation and referrals and hard work have led to!

It will also lead to competition to see whose "tree of donations" is the biggest!  Dr. Dean might want to call a few of the best tree-builders...

2:07:32 PM    comment []

The Elephant in the Room.

Bush: "Less than two years ago, determined enemies of America entered our country, committed acts of murder against our people, and made clear their intentions to strike again," he said. "As long as terrorists and their allies plot to harm America, America is at war."

Maybe Bush hasn't been reading his talking points. Or maybe he has, and for some reason his advisors continue to think that Americans are stupid enough to buy this crap. Haven't any of them been reading the newspapers lately? The previously tenuous connections between Iraq and terrorism have pretty much become vaporous. Let's just go ahead and admit the truth at this point, shall we? We didn't invade Iraq because of terrorism -- Wolfowitz has said as much.

We're in Iraq because Bush and his advisors want to remake the Middle East. I'm not going to use the Q word, because I'm not sure that we're there yet. America is not at war. Somebody needs to pull out a dictionary and jam it in front of the politicians...yes, it's a nice little soundbite, but it's not factually correct. Serious politicians and serious observers will use the words correctly, because war and the constitution demand rigor. Rigor and ethics are notably lacking at the highest political levels today, as the speed of television democracy and the dumbing-down of the populace have driven the debate down into the gutter.

If WMD are present in Iraq, they're in marginal or irrelevant quantities at most. We've got a hugely expensive occupation force sitting there, and an Iraqi population taking potshots at them. We seriously underestimated the capabilities of the Islamic political wing, who have been able to foment substantial resistance to American occupation and efforts. Maybe with more rigor, with more control over the population, we can forcibly cement some kind of democracy in place. The fundamentalists will continue to tear away at a democracy from the inside, though. As long as Arabs perceive themselves in religious terms first, and political/human terms second, we will have great difficulty defeating this.

Let's not forget that 49% of Americans are fairly religious themselves, and have elected a majority government that favors altering the constitution to reflect Christian preferences and dogma. The middle easterners are not the only ones suffering from the intersection of state and religion.

1:44:15 PM    comment []

Canada Day!

Loved this article in the Post, on how Canada is the new Berkley...legalized MJ, gay marriage...wow, we're getting all progressive up there.  The Canadian economy has been largely impervious to the woes of the American economy, too -- wonder if all that social freedom up there is paying off somehow?

10:34:46 AM    comment []

Donnie Darko.

Great film.  Don't want to say much more about it than that, because I don't want to spoil it.  Best thing I've seen in quite a while.  Pick it up on DVD and check it out.

12:02:16 AM    comment []