Diverting Funds.

This post on Riverbend's blog caught my eye:

Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!

So which American company is rebuilding this bridge?  I'd sure like to see an American news organization or two follow up on this, and figure out if it's real, and if so, why an Iraqi company couldn't be doing the job?  I found a damage assessment of the bridge.

Let's hope that campaign contributions and connections are not involved.  Let's hope that the bridge is not being rebuilt by a sub of a sub of a subcontractor, where the money trickles downward.

1:27:53 PM    comment []

The Other Bush Murders People Too.

From the its-amazing-what-people-will-do department: Florida's just passed a law limiting prisoner's access to DNA information.  The Times has a story which covers this; in part, a guy named Wilton Dedge was convicted on four pieces of evidence:

1. Pubic hair on the victim was said to "microscopically match" his.
2. The victim initially described her assailant as 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, receding hairline.  Dedge is 145, 5' 6", and has full hair.
3. A prison informant testified that Dedge said he did it.  The informant received a 120 year reduction in his sentence, and the informant's wife got an impounded truck back.
4. An expert witness testified that his dog sniffed sheets that belonged to Dedge and the victim, and apparently the dog thought they smelled the same.

It's reasonably obvious that the jury probably ignored 2-4, and convicted mostly on #1.  Dedge has now got DNA testing that shows conclusively that the pubic hairs aren't his.  You'd think that would lead to a new trial, or something like that.  Not in Florida!  Apparently prosecutors there don't give a shit about whether somebody is actually innocent or guilty. 

The prosecutor in this case claims that the state has an interest in finality.  Well, in a perfect world -- yes, we would like for there to be finality.  My basic belief is this: Whenever there is significant new evidence, the state must grant a new trial.  DNA evidence really does cast massive doubt on these types of crimes.  The state has a far greater interest in getting the right person!  Just making sure we put someone in jail for a crime is something we'd expect from some crazy-ass country, not this one!  I mean, what the hell are these people thinking?  Why do they think it's better to just close to case? 

I just don't understand it.

Jeb Bush needs to stop this travesty in his state.  Other states should stop it too.  Finality should be commensurate with accuracy in the justice system.  When somebody proves it doesn't make mistakes, we can start to examine finality. 

10:02:05 AM    comment []

Pain Bands are Real?

From the I-had-no-idea department: Check this Post article on "Stun Belts".  If you're anything like me you've watched plenty of crap-ass sci-fi movies with really, really bad guys and their little remote controls.  When they pushed the button (or turned the dial), Kirk and Spock would writhe in pain, heroically.  I guess they never urinated on themselves, like the real thing does.

I think these devices are essentially inhumane.  They shouldn't be there.  We are better than this.  On the other hand, I'm not a prison guard trying to control someone unruly. Maybe I shouldn't have anything to say about it.  It's just that it's sort of creepy, you know?  Where, exactly, does the slippery slope start?

12:53:50 PM    comment []

Public Commentary on Patents.

Yeesh.  These guys, bless their hearts, are out there attempting to patent LISP! Well, not exactly -- they're trying to patent the use of XML as a LISP machine.  Essentially what they've done is dumb down s-expressions into an XML form.  It's amazing sometimes that when you navigate your way through a problem you end up right back where you started.  At each step of the game you found something new, something incredible -- an excellent new thought or path.  And then it all led back to the beginning.

Thus it is with LISP.  Now there are things I don't like about LISP.  It's syntax, while incredibly clean, simply doesn't excite too many pattern recognizers in the brain.  Everything is a parenthesis, and that's tough when you're reading.  I wrote a while back on cognitive signposts in computer languages, and boy could LISP ever stand to have a few more of them.  A sort of "pretty LISP" if you will.

There's another way to solve that, of course -- instead of doing our editing with fixed column width editors that just colorize what we're looking at, do actually desktop-publishing style layout, on the fly, on the LISP code.  That would be cool.  It would be a kind of literate programming...more like art programming.  But I digress.

The point of the patent post is this: The patent office has already managed to put pretty much everything online, so the public can at least view these stupid patents.  Why not go the extra step and allow the public to comment on what they see?  Why shouldn't the public be able to point out prior art, make commentary on the patent, and basically try to thoroughly invalidate these things early in the process?

We should be able to get involved.  Companies lie about their patents all the time, during the application process.  The patent process presumes the honesty of the applicant, and that is simply not the case, much of the time.  A company will deliberately hide the origin of the patent, fail to point out prior art to the examiner, and other such shenanigans.  We've got to start using the internet to put things back in balance.

9:07:44 PM    comment []

Anders Hejlsberg is Wrong on Checked Exceptions.

Boy, I can't believe I just wrote that. He's got the quote of the day on Cafe au Lait, from something called "The Trouble with Checked Exceptions". He gives two arguments on why checked exceptions are a bad idea. Versioning is first -- he says that if you need to throw a new exception from your library, it has to go into the signature, making it incompatible. Second, when combining together multiple libraries, you end up with a kind of cross-product situation for catching exceptions. If your librarty calls another, you need to add the other library's exceptions to your own throws list.

He's wrong on both points. First, most libraries will declare a general exception class, like LibraryException, and build all their more specific exceptions using subclassing. Most methods will throw a LibraryException, and specialize from there if necessary. Problem solved. You can pay attention to the messages and concrete subclasses if you want to, but you don't have to.

Second, chained exceptions are an effective way of dealing with the library combination issue. You capture a sub-library's exception, then wrap it with one of your own. As a library, your use of a sub-library is something that should be transparent to the calling system. Chained exceptions allow you to convey the right information back in a general form.

Java provides good tools for handling exceptions. Languages that don't check them (which is basically everything else out there) just kind of scare me right now. How do you know you've got everything handled? The answer is...you don't.

And centralized error handling in a server-based application isn't necessarily practical.

8:58:58 PM    comment []

Refugee Status for Iraqi Women?

See River's blog -- written by a 24 year-old Iraqi woman, a comp sci person...of course, as with all, we never really know if it's real or not.  I hope that it is.

So if she's right about how the fundamentalists are making life difficult (to say the least) for women, are we now going to declare refugee status for Iraqi women? When fundamentalists execute a woman in her home for the crime of being female, things aren't working out quite right.

Gotta figure out if it's real.

Canada was good, again. 

6:54:00 PM    comment []

Oops.

Hey, it's somebody else's mistake, instead of mine!  Sweet!  Check out this email I just got from Evite:

Dear Evite Newsletter Subscriber,

Yesterday we mailed a newsletter to our subscribers with incorrect dates for three important Holidays. Please accept our sincerest apologies for these errors and note the following corrections:

Labor Day, September 1st
Rosh Hashanah, September 27th
Yom Kippur, October 6th

In addition, we also wish to apologize for having listed Yom Kippur as one of our "Reasons To Party". We understand and respect that Yom Kippur is a Day of Atonement, a day to be taken seriously to reflect and fast, and as such, one of the most important Jewish Holidays in the year.

Again we deeply apologize for the error and thank you for allowing us to make this correction.

Very Best,
The Evite Team

Yeah baby -- it's REMEMBRANCE DAY -- let's P - A - R - T - Y!!!

Bet they're gonna have an official "check the f'ing calendar three times" position over there now...

10:52:10 PM    comment []

Better Left Unsaid.

I dropped this on Crooked Timber's comments on this Chris Bertram post:

I wonder which side, Palestinian or Israeli, has killed more children.

I think the fundamental question being addressed is, if there are no means of expression or resistance other than suicide bombing, is suicide bombing justifiable?

I don’t think that bombing is the only option open to the Palestinians at this point. It is possible that some form of passive resistance to Israeli occupation is possible. Unfortunately the IDF seems to shoot first and ask questions later, which means only the very bravest might ever attempt such passive resistance.

I note that an innocent 16 year old Palestinian boy was shot by IDF accidentally, as they were chasing down Hamas members, in response to the bombing two days ago. Four others in the area were also shot. Should the mother of that boy swallow her grief? Does anyone in Israel care?

The international community has made its preferences known on settlements and the green line. Israel ignores this, and has for decades. The Palestinian community has plead for international involvement, and Israel has fought the idea.

Implicit in Chris’ article (and Brumlik’s outrage) is this assumption: That the murder of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces is justified.

The occupation and situation are so clearly driven by forces within Israeli culture that run counter to notions of civility. Commentator after commentator in Haaretz, for example, note that the main barriers to peace are the settlements and the occupation. But those two things cannot be abandoned without denying the Right its promised land. The solution to peace lies in healing the divide within Israel’s body politic. It does not lie waiting in the barrels of guns pointed at the heads of 15 year old boys.

I haven’t read Honderich’s book, so my ability to comment is limited. I will however, say that a reasonable person can believe that Israel is in the wrong, and Palestine in the right. A reasonable person can also believe the opposite.

To take the violence represented by terrorism and place it in a separate category does not make much sense to me. I see little difference between an IDF officer ordering a soldier to shoot anyone who gets in his way, and a Hamas operative directing a suicide bomber. They are both sides of the same coin. Each believes they are doing the “right” thing, and each believes they have no choice.

If a bomber blows up a bus that has nothing but military personnel on it, is that terrorism? If the bus has mostly military personnel on it, but a couple of civilians, is that terrorism? And then, obviously, if the bus is all civilians, we do recognize that it is terrorism. The collateral damage in the second case is how most innocent Palestinians have ended up dead, shot while IDF were trying to accomplish a different death.

This has all rambled a bit — I don’t really know what the right answers are. But I do know that the questions should at least be open to debate. And I also know that I live in another country, with only certain information made available to me, and that my opinion means little or nothing in this context.

Chris Responds:

Since this site began I’ve successfully resisted the temptation to delete comments on grounds of offensiveness. I’ve been sorely tempted today. Ross writes:

Implicit in Chris’ article (and Brumlik’s outrage) is this assumption: That the murder of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces is justified.

How, exactly, is that implicit in anything I’ve written? It isn’t. It is just an outrageous calumny which you ought to withdraw.

The thing is, one of my hot buttons is this notion that something can't even be discussed.  I do think I went too far in implying that he felt IDF actions were justified.  The connection isn't really there directly; I just find it to be present in much of what I read on that area.  In an A/B argument, by not even acknowledging one side, do you take the other?

I probably just picked the wrong day to do this.  Hopefully my followup comments are a little less...argumentative:

It is only fair that I answer…by asserting, as Brumlik does (and you, in a tentative, uncertain way), that even the discussion or exploration of a Palestinian viewpoint is anti-semitic and “odious”, you are implicitly agreeing with the tenet that there is no possible reasoned Palestinian response. When you declare the cessation of dialogue, you collapse the possibility of compromise and assume an extreme. You effectively pick a side.

I really don’t know much about your personal feelings on the matter. I suspect that you do not, in your heart, feel that the death of Palestinian civilians is justified. I don’t think it is either. We are probably in substantial agreement that we wish for no innocent Israeli deaths either. My point is that when you write in opposition to discourse, to dialogue, it carries a heavy burden; that the underlying points of contention are in fact not contentious, and that their logical basis need not be reviewed or criticized, and that those truths are self-evident.

I find nothing about the situation in Palestine self-evident.

My apologies if my prior post was harsher than intended. It was an imperfect exploration of a theme.

So remember, kids -- think before you post.  Or at least edit out some of your harshness. 

1:48:32 PM    comment []

The Arms Race.

You can see it on many levels.  I read this log of an IM session on Right Wing News, and thought about this little excerpt:

Lagwolf: What do have against people defending themselves? You seem to ally yourself with abusive bully? I am not talking wedgies I am talking actual physical abuse. Beating the sh*t out of someone.

John Hawkins: You seem to be advocating Columbine massacres in every high school in America...

Lagwolf: No I am not. I am advocating that anyone who is facing overwhelming odds in abuse can counter with a weapon.

John Hawkins: There are bullies in ALMOST EVERY American high school who systematically pummel kids. You're saying it's fine for those victims to walk in one day and waste their bullies with a gun. Hence, you're advocating thousands and thousands of murders.

Here's the thing -- aren't there parallels here between gun rights in general and what happened at Columbine?  The Right feels that you have a right to self-defense, and that to achieve that you have a right to a gun.  If someone walks into your home and tries to rob it, or beat you up, you have a right to shoot that guy.  So exactly why do we think it is different somehow for a kid in high school to react the same way?  If bad guy X walks up to you on the street and either beats you up or makes it known to you that he's going to put a world of hurt on you, I am pretty sure that most pro-gun people would say, fire away. 

The reason is that we don't consider bullying to be a "serious" problem.  It isn't from the perspective of anyone but the kid who's having the crap beaten out of him, and maybe his parents. 

So -- if it's OK to shoot the bad guy on the street, is it OK for a kid to shoot the bully beating him up?  If it's not OK for the kid to shoot the bully, is it also verboten to shoot the guy on the street?  I think the sense of the problem is that hey, there's nothing really bad that can happen to that kid, so he's just going to have to sit there and take it.  The thing is, that's not true.  We know that there are some pretty bad things that happen to these kids, and it lasts for a lifetime.  Kind of like a rape, or something like that.  It doesn't go away.

I don't know what the answer is.

1:17:22 PM    comment []

The Right Hates America.

They hate the prospect that gay people might get married.  They hate dissent.  They hate any form of criticism of their ruling party.  They hate the separation between church and state.  They hate a woman's right to choose.  They hate being forced to choose between a clean environment and corporate welfare.  They hate the prospect of losing their guns.  They hate being asked to sacrifice anything past racism has given them.  They hate the idea that market forces might not be uber alles, because that invalidates a great deal.  They hate people who demand some form of proof that their policies work, people who don't share their faith.  They hate people who commit crimes but also hate people who don't commit them, by supporting the death penalty for innocent people.  They hate people who are committed to principals, instead of probability-driven lives (as in, I probably won't get falsely arrested and, well, if someone does, they probably did something else wrong, or it's just their tough luck).

Yes, these are just a bunch of accusations.  Thusly I amuse myself.  I am a little sick of reading conblogs that declare the hatred of America by the Left.  I perceive quite the opposite.  I think a goodly number of people on the Right stand for the destruction of the freedoms that make America great.  They need to be fought.

5:21:16 PM    comment []

Why is Gasoline So Energy-Dense?

We keep running up against the "problem" of gasoline being so darn good at being a fuel.  I really need to gain a better understanding of exactly why this is...it's been driving me nuts.  I am quite sure there are some very good reaons, in the chemical/physical sense, why gasoline has so much energy locked up inside of it.  My basic (and probably faulty) understanding is that the chemical process by which petroleum is produced involves a lot of time and energy from the sun, which gets locked up somehow, in the crude.

When we burn it we're basically combining it with oxygen in the air and the resulting by-product needs a lot less energy to maintain its molecular state.  Said energy is released as heat and motion, which we harness to get various effects (in the case of cars, mechanical effects like rolling).

God I hope that's marginally accurate.  I can't believe that I don't know exactly how petroleum is formed.  I think the reason it's bugging me is that I'm ten or so chapters into "A Short History of Nearly Everything", by Bill Bryson.  So far it's a fascinating look at exactly how we know a whole bunch of things.  What we know is important, but modern cynics are interested in how as well. 

Ultimately that's what politics are about, in a way -- you want to know how someone know political fact X, or takes position Y.  What truly lies underneath?

I thought that by gaining this understanding about the world of science, I might gain insight into the political world as well.  The jury is still out -- I have a book to finish first.

4:30:40 PM    comment []

The Disconnection Theory.

Every once in a while it's a good idea to pick an extreme position and see what arguments you can come up with for it.  For the sake of argument, let's say that invading Iraq was a bad idea, and that the best course of action for America is simply to detach itself from the Middle East.  Many will argue that we created a lot of the problems over there, but...well, let's push a few suppositions:

1. We disconnect ourselves in the military sense.  This means we pull the Army out, plain and simple.  It also means that we pull support from Israel, which has created an artificial imbalance of power.
2. We offer financial assistance to the UN, for humanitarian aid only, paid for with some of that withdrawl money (see 1).  We could probably offer massive aid for a tiny fraction of what we're currently spending.
3. We make it plain to the entire world that any future government involvement in terrorism, either through direct support or through "looking the other way" that results in any terrorism directed at America, will result in severe economic sanctions, followed by a graduated, predictable set of military activities.  Such activities would start with relatively mild effects, such as destruction of particular civilian buildings (announced in advance), escalate to destruction of civilian infrastructure (power, water), escalate again to political infrastructure (commons houses, castles, and other government institutions).  This military campaign will be conducted from the air, when necessary.  No government on the earth can stop American air power, at the moment.
4. We focus our efforts (and therefore cash) on becoming "the good guys", period.  We massively increase spending on humanitarian aid.  We engage the rest of the world, by inviting hundreds of thousands of students and political leaders from all over the world to study, free of charge, at new Universities created expressly for this purpose.  These Universities cover a wide range of disciplines, but have a special focus on international relations.  Each is encouraged to become a microcosm similar in intent to the UN.

I guess this isn't really a disconnection theory.  It's a "military disconnection" theory.  Anyway, it's a rambling afternoon...

4:25:51 PM    comment []

The Freakin' Unbelievable Department.

Check out this Security Focus article.  This guy emails a bunch of customers of an ISP, letting them know that they're vulnerable to a certain exploit, and that they should check his site for more information.  He's arrested, tried, and convicted for doing so.  According to the prosecutors, merely informing customers that they are vulnerable to a particular problem means that he impaired the network.  That is just freakin' unbelievable.  Talk about chilling effects.  This is exactly what the constitution is supposed to help us with.

In this country, the only things you're supposed to not talk about are classified things.  That's fair, and makes lots of sense.  Since when is the security state of a civilian network something that has become classified? 

I'll tell you exactly what happened.  This poor guy got buried by the company going after him, a SHITTY, UNETHICAL prosecutor, and a judge who should have set aside the case almost immediately.  With any luck the EFF or some other big gun will take a look at his case, and the appellate judges will do something reasonable, including throwing the FUCKING JUDGE who convicted him out of his job, or censuring him, or something.

Unbelievable.

6:53:42 PM    comment []

Aviation Vulnerability.

General Aviation is the part of aviation that you, the average citizen, don't really know about.  Little planes, and little airports, all over the country.  There are tens of thousands of them.  In rural communities they're extremely important -- they're the fastest way to get around, to handle medical emergencies, and for personal transportation they're pretty hard to beat.

General Aviation has been under a real assault for the last ten years or so...rising costs of insurance and the value of land have been shuttering airports all over the place.  Our President carries a roving no-fly zone with him everywhere he goes, which throws areas all over the country into an aviation chaos, every time he goes somewhere to raise money for his re-election.

There are a lot of legislators who want to "do something" about the security of general aviation.  Let's think this through: Big planes cause big damage. Little planes cause little damage.  Why on earth do we want more big planes, then?  Why do we want more congestion, in the air? Why do we want to cram more money into money-losing airlines, and have them bailed out by the taxpayer?

When you're providing a system, it makes tremendously more sense to have your points of failure within that system be as minimal in their failed effect as possible.  If we are able to shift traffic away from large planes and high volume airports, we are able to significantly reduce our vulnerability overall.  A small plane is utterly useless as a terrorism device; a minivan is far more effective.  Big jets, on the other hand, can do some pretty substantial damage.

I think the country should be shifting its usage patterns to reduce our vulnerability, not increase it.  Unless, of course, you're an airline, and have a bunch of congresscritters in your back pocket.  If that's the case, you want to eliminate General Aviation, which forces all those formerly free individuals to play your crazy pricing games, and support you through both lack of choice and through tax dollars.  Sounds like a great deal!

Small points of vulnerability, and many of them.  That's the right approach.  It makes terrorism kind of pointless, doesn't it?  What self-respecting terrorist is going to commandeer a Piper?  None. 

12:54:31 PM    comment []

Poindexter's Markets.

[a letter to Amir Oren of Haaretz]

These futures markets are used in many situations to attempt to harness general expertise that may exist, in an attempt to assign probabilities to potential events.  Universities have been working with these kinds of devices for a number of purposes.  They have been shown, for example, to do a very good job of predicting the results of elections.

12:02:21 PM    comment []

Everybody Farts.

I am sure there will be a Japanese kids book about this shortly, if there isn't one already!  Yes, the very first Whale Fart has been capture on film.  Brave researchers were suprised by this one.  Perhaps they will be less brave next time.

I predict a renewed upswing of interest in underwater farting photography.

12:28:58 PM    comment []

Our Chickenshit President.

Well, maybe that's going a little far, but here's the thing: Every time El Busho goes anyplace, his security boys go wild.  In particular, the new thing they love to do is declare a massive temporary flight restriction around any place they predict Bush will be.  There are a whole series of these roving 60 mile-diameter zones that have occurred all over the country.  In some cases they have given pilots in the area less than 12 hours notice! 

Keep in mind that the penalty for violating one of these things is often the loss of your pilot's license.

There is an official mechanism for learning about these things: They're called NOTAMs (Notice to AirMen).  Before each flight you're supposed to find out the latest ones.  The catch -- NOTAMs are written in obscure language; they're hard to figure out.  Various services provide graphical views of NOTAMs, which makes it relatively easy to figure out where they are and where they're popping up.

If you don't have access to that kind of service (like, say, when you're in the middle of a flight), you will often call up Flight Services and request a briefing over the phone.  This is another official path for NOTAM information.  So what happens when the briefer doesn't tell you that there's a Chickshit President TFR somewhere along your flight path?  The answer is -- you lose your pilot's license.  It matters not that you had no way of knowing that it was there.  It was, you violated it, and you lose your license.  Now that's a bit extreme -- it's true that the FAA might look at the facts in this case and give you a break, but the starting position is loss of license.

The bottom line is that there are substantial economic effects (closing of hundreds of airports, job losses, other economic losses) that are associated with this Presidential TFR activity.  No other President has done this.  It is not justified.  There are no overriding security concerns.  It is simply CYA over-reaction on the part of security folks.  At some point it has to stop.

Bush has the power to stop it, but chooses not to.  Maybe he likes it when mechanics lose their jobs, and flight instructors can't buy their kids a birthday present because TFRs stopped Daddy from working.  I think he just plain doesn't give a shit.  I think that is quite representative of his personality in general.

11:45:12 AM    comment []

Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference.

Let's not start with the fallacy that all conservatives are anti-environment.  It just ain't so.  I'd prefer to believe that they're operating in something of a void of information.  The thing is, we all are.  What do we really believe?  Who do we believe?

In an increasingly cynical age, we just decide not to trust anything.  So we end up just trusting ourselves, our own judgements, instead.  That's where we run into some serious problems.  When it comes to things like the environment, you and I know nothing.  I think I know, you think you do, and neither one of us does.

There are people who've done a lot of studying.  These climate reports are a good place to start, I suppose.  You can read the executive summaries, and they're fairly scary.

The thing is, we are more driven by our sense of "team" than we are by facts on the ground.  And when the facts available to us don't match with our team sense, we start attacking the facts, and attacking the sources. 

I think that "sticking to your guns" can show a real lack of character, not strength.  It seems to me that our current administration values their guns above all else. 

This environment thing is really troubling to me, because the down side is enormous.  All the politicial issues in the world aren't really all that troubling (although I suppose ultimately everything is political).  If we have a currency collapse in this country, 50 years from now everything will be fine again.  There are a whole host of things that can go wrong and will be repaired by history.  Bloodshed, yes.  Permanence, no.

The environment is different.  Right now we're betting that nothing permanent is happening.  We betting that there's nothing we can do that will have an effect on the environment.  We're betting that we're smarter than nature; that we understand a great deal about it.  We are also terrified of a supposed horrible economic destruction that will occur, if we take on environmental issues squarely.

I think that the fundamentals of the general right-wing position on these issues are driven by faith and a sense of team, more than facts on the ground.  The general left-wing position is driven by fear, and perceived facts on the ground. 

The correct position should be driven by risk assessment.  How much do we really know about how our global climate works?  How much effect are we having on it?  What is an acceptable risk level? What are the real economic consequences of fixing up some of our environmental impact?

We don't know.  We don't know who to trust.  We are self-indulgent cynics, sticking to our own guns.  We're not interested in being informed; we'd rather just not be subject to peer pressure, and we'd rather fit in. 

Go team.

1:51:42 PM    comment []

Why Do You Believe What You Do?

Let's start with the assumption that for most of us, right and left, our political opinions stem from some kind of conviction that we're actually right about it. As I review my own beliefs, I've been wondering why I believe those things. For each opinion, do I have some sort of evidence or fact to back it up? Do I just feel like it's the right thing to do?

Somewhere out there is a set of questions that we can answer, where we prod ourselves to reveal why we believe what we do, and then we can start being honest with ourselves. It's a structuring of the unstructured debate we all engage in. I envision some kind of multiple choice, but here's the thing -- me writing the choices just doesn't do any good. I need to find a good conservative who can help me with the choices for the conservative side. They have to be real, and represent true choices and beliefs that conservatives have.

Fortunately, I know one such conservative.  This promises to be an interesting matrix of ideas.  The problem is avoiding the "what he said" factor...you don't want to provide someone with predetermined answers that they might not have been otherwise aware of. 

The question list is being developed.

10:02:01 AM    comment []

Automated Barratry.

Interesting post here:  A site had a file named INFMapPacks123FULL-MAN.zip.  Some sort of bot was running at the ESA, and it picked out "Pac" and "MAN" from that filename.  They fired off a letter to the ISP, and requested under pain of death that they remove PacMan from their servers.

Clearly, in this case, even an ESA employee would not have sent the letter.  It's obvious that the filename has nothing to do with, well, anything.  Here's the thing -- in a fully automated fashion, they've made a legal threat against another organization.

This is the socio-legal equivalent of junk mail.  Can I just write filtering software that goes and looks for any usage of the word "Soletta" on the internet, and automatically writes and mails threatening letters?  I can request damages. 

I think the ESA should be liable for damages.  If they're not going to even take the time to verify that their accusations are true, they should be paying costs, in this case. 

Threats of legal action that are unsubstantiated by the truth are a serious problem.  Most states have laws on the books that prohibit barratry, which is the term for repetition of frivolous/unsubstantiated suits.  Lawyers guilty of barratry are subject to some fairly severe penalties. 

Issuing legal threats based on keywords searches is automated barratry.

1:47:42 PM    comment []

The Pencil Box Transgression.

My friend and her nine year old daughter ran afould of the TSA this morning.  Well, they didn't really "run afoul", but the TSA dorkbots did manage to make a nine year old upset and cry.  Well done, men! 

Since they look so much like terrorists (34 year old New York designer-wearing Filipino mom + cute daughter in tow), the TSA decided to rifle through all of their stuff.  Yeah, I love random searches.  They're mathematically stupid.

Uneducated hands pawed through a little girls belongings, pulling everything out, dirty fingernails cramming things back in, all her neat little folds and preparation for her big trip messed up.  A Hello Kitty pencil box full of colors was knocked aside and fell on the concrete floor, contents everywhere.  Our security heros laughed as an upset little girl held back her tears and picked up her pencils and markers, while they watched.  Her mother couldn't do much, as the TSA were busy making sure that whatever private things she might have had in her bag no longer retained that private status.  And as we all know, criticizing the TSA is probably the stupidest thing you can possibly do in an airport, if you actually want to get where you're going. 

I want to see the testing that proves that these people do an effective job.  If we're going to make children cry and suffer the indignities they visit upon people, there better be a damn good reason, and somebody better be doing some research proving it.

Sooner or later a nine year old is going to punch one of these idiots.  It almost happened today.

1:39:38 PM    comment []

I Demand That You Be Interesting.

If this Universe does truly exist for my sole enjoyment, then I regret to inform you that you're fucking up.  At this point in time I am bored.  So get busy.  If I am the entity at the center, that means you're not, and you have a job to do.  My current grade for your progress: D.  That's right, D.  That D is going to follow you, too.  It'll be on your record.  I put it there.

I Demand That You Be Interesting.

12:22:16 PM    comment []

What They Really Want.

Wired has an article on RFID tags.  These are basically little radio tags that allow product handlers (manufacturers, distributors, retailers) to identify particular packages and track them.  They're arguing to the Fatherland Security Department that these little tags are the best things since sliced bread for stopping soup-can oriented terrorism, which we all know is endemic. 

What they really want is a government subsidy.  They want the commercial benefits of RFID tags (optimized inventory and so forth), but they don't want to pay for the little buggers, or for the R+D.  Under the guise of "terrorism", they figure they'll get the government to pay for it.  After all, that head of lettuce could be dangerous.  You don't know where it's been.

12:02:57 PM    comment []

Building a Better Rule System.

Jess is way cool.  I love what Ernest has built, and working with it can be a lot of fun.  The thing is, everything can be improved upon!  I do wonder how different his algorithms are from the classic Rete algorithm...it appears that he's put a lot of optimization into it. 

Optimizing the engine isn't the only thing, though.  When programs get bigger and bigger, you need a more effective environment.  Here's what I'd do if I was building a rule-based system in Java, from something a little closer to scratch.

First, I'd start with SISC as my interpeter.  It's a fast, full Scheme interpreter. CLIPS is great and all that, but you can simulate the rule stuff pretty closely with Scheme macros, and then, well, you have the entire Scheme language at your disposal. There's far more general purpose programming power there, and lots of libraries and other good stuff.

Second, I'd start with CLIPS, but based on my experience I'd continue the modifications that Jess makes.  Specifically, when writing larger rule systems, you need to use inheritance and combination across rules, as well as across fact types.  I want to be able to make one rule inherit from another (specialize it further), or include one rule definition in another.  This provides for an extremely good means of tightening up and parameterizing rule definitions.  Substantial portions of my rule systems would disappear if I had this facility.

Third, I'd generalize from Rete to Gator, but have a Rete network builder as the default.  Open the language up so that the network can be directly specified in the rules and source code -- you can target where you want your nodes, where you want your memories, and so forth.  Nodes become elements that can be manipulated.

Fourth, provide a comprehensive graphical framework for visualizing the network and its state, based on the Piccolo framework.

Fifth, provide complete support for multiple networks, but permit the sharing of facts between them, to optimize storage.  This provides the capability to run multiple logical systems in parallel on the same knowledge base.

Sixth, ensure that facts don't have to be present in the system -- create a virtualization that permits extremely large knowledge bases to play.

Seventh, ensure that there is a complete Java API for constructing and executing all of the above.

That's how I'd go about it.  The end result would be pretty badass.

10:05:06 PM    comment []

ENFP.

So it turns out I'm one of these, in terms of personality profile.  At least according to a little web survey...and we all know that we can trust everything on the web, right?  Of course you can!  Trust, trust!  Trust in me.

Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving

by Joe Butt

ENFPs are friendly folks. Most are really enjoyable people. Some of the most soft-hearted people are ENFPs.

ENFPs have what some call a "silly switch." They can be intellectual, serious, all business for a while, but whenever they get the chance, they flip that switch and become CAPTAIN WILDCHILD, the scourge of the swimming pool, ticklers par excellence. Som etimes they may even appear intoxicated when the "switch" is flipped.

One study has shown that ENFPs are significantly overrepresented in psychodrama. Most have a natural propensity for role-playing and acting.

ENFPs like to tell funny stories, especially about their friends. This penchant may be why many are attracted to journalism. I kid one of my ENFP friends that if I want the sixth fleet to know something, I'll just tell him.

ENFPs are global learners. Close enough is satisfactory to the ENFP, which may unnerve more precise thinking types, especially with such things as piano practice ("three quarter notes or four ... what's the difference?") Amazingly, some ENFPs are adept at exacting disciplines such as mathematics.

Friends are what life is about to ENFPs, moreso even than the other NFs. They hold up their end of the relationship, sometimes being victimized by less caring individuals. ENFPs are energized by being around people. Some have real difficulty being alone , especially on a regular basis.

One ENFP colleague, a social worker, had such tremendous interpersonal skills that she put her interviewers at ease during her own job interview. She had the ability to make strangers feel like old friends.

ENFPs sometimes can be blindsided by their secondary Feeling function. Hasty decisions based on deeply felt values may boil over with unpredictable results. More than one ENFP has abruptly quit a job in such a moment.

4:12:22 PM    comment []

Your Stupid Total Recall Joke.

Now that Ahnuld is in the race in California, please, for the love of god, resist the urge to make jokes containing the phrase "Total Recall".  Repeat after me.

• You are not the first person to think of it.
• Everybody thought it, right away.
• It's not all that funny.

Give in. 

10:40:01 AM    comment []

Sicko.

I am sick.  And while I am sick I think sick.  Stair Dismount falls into that category.  hahaha!

It's a "fall down the stairs" simulator.

10:08:24 AM    comment []

Lofty Goals.

These guys are trying to fly a model airplane across the Atlantic.  The guy who built the models is retired, legally blind, and just about deaf too.  I really, truly hope one of these things makes it across the Atlantic, against all odds.  I wish they had a PayPal address; the attention deficit generation (that's me) needs it to help pay for things.

10:34:50 PM    comment []

George Will Back On Rocker.

The Ministry points out this Will article.  It's a fairly astonishing read.  One of the terrible effects of our pull-back-and-pan-to-see-the-universe journalism system is that we miss all of these kinds of small stories.  Fifty states times fifty crazy things...and we really don't see them.

On the Texas redistricting: Yes, the GOP is right that they're not breaking any laws.  Is the GOP saying they want a society in which every interaction between human beings is subject to, and guided by, laws?  I think that there could be nothing further from the thoughts of the Founding Fathers.

"What can we legally do here" should be the last question these politicians ask themselves.  A good man told me some time ago that all you need to do to succeed in life is do the right thing.  You'll either get rich doing it, or you'll feel like you were on the high road.  Either way, you win.

The Texas GOP is cutting away at the foundations, now.  Will is absolutely correct, noting that the floodgates are now open.  Every election is a maybe, and if we're not careful we're going to end up in a permanent state of litigation and campaigning, until an inevitable collapse.

6:38:03 PM    comment []

Fixing Medicine.

So basically Steve is saying "Blame Government".  The current system keeps armies of people at work in doctor's offices whose only job is to chase down insurance companies for payment.  A similar army exists on the other side, working at the insurance companies.  Their raison-d'etre is to find some way, any way, to avoid paying doctors for as long as possible.
The problem with the free market approach to medicine is that THERE'S NO STABILIZING MARKET FORCES AT WORK.  On one hand you're spouting that $12,000 is too much for a busted arm, and on the other hand you're saying that privatization is good!  The problem is that no-one in the system makes decisions based on prices.  No one except insurance companies, who are in an after the fact situation.

Because medicine is a life or death matter, we should just face facts and recognize that our system as it stands simply does not work.

I advocate the following (and I am completely, unassailably right).  First, end health insurance programs as we know them.  Gone.  Catastrophic insurance is then extended to all citizens, by the government.  Use accounting rules to fix the profit percentage for this, giving them a fair margin, and rewarding them for comparative fiscal efficiency.  Day to day visits are now the responsibility of individual citizens.  For low income earners, graduated assistance programs are available to help with wellness care.

Vast amouts of cash are spent within the current system on extremely expensive drug therapies and machinery.  Those will become the domain of the private medicine system.  If, on a cost-benefit basis, a given therapy does not yield sufficient benefit (lives saved), those dollars can and will be redirected to where they'll do the most good.  Society can then argue about what percentage of GDP they'd like to spend on health care, and be reasonably assured that it is going to the right places.

3:05:20 PM    comment []

A Little on LOD.

Responding to Ben Bederman: Thanks for the additional information on Piccolo's approach to LOD. Here are my thoughts.

I think it's useful to make a separation between macro- and micro-LOD. I view micro-LOD as being at the primitive rendering level, and macro as the application level. You are absolutely correct in that every application needs and benefits from micro-level LOD, and that we have _some_ support in the Java2D platform to help us out here (ellipse line segment generation, for example).

For any 2.5d UI, though, you pretty much need to know when you get "close" to a node, so you can create additional detail. Creating additional detail can mean populating the scene graph with additional nodes, or it can mean drawing an existing node differently. It can also mean both of those activities. You might also want have more than one gradiation, depending on how complex the node is.

Most metrics for the "switch" between levels of detail will involve a pixel-based metric. That is, when a node becomes sufficiently discernible by the viewer, something happens. Working from zoom factors is an indirect way of accomplishing the same thing, and I think it clouds the waters. Ultimately we're dealing in pixels, pushed to the screen (well, if Piccolo were rendering to a vector-based display system that wouldn't be true, but we'll discount that uncommon case for now, unless anybody has an old asteroids machine around they've modified to run Java). So it makes sense to be able to declare a series of thresholds, measured in pixels.

The zoom factor is essentially pixels per unit length, so it can perhaps be used the same way.

I think if the goal of Piccolo is to make applications as simple as possible to write, then as a writer I want to be able to do something when my node grows to 10x10 visible pixels, then do something again when it grows to 100x100. This is a retreat from the notions of continuous level of detail that are largely prevalent in the 3D world. We do not need such sophistication; I am in complete agreement with you there.

To create our simplified thresholding system, I would modify the event handling system to have an additional LODEvent, where that event contains the visibility, distance from the center point of the camera, current zoom factor of a node and the pixel size of that node. One or more pixel/zoom/distance thresholds could be registered with the camera, and/or for nodes. As the node is painted/zoom in upon, appropriate LODEvents are issued.

This single mechanism could accomodate a pretty large number of cases. We don't attack the continuous LOD problem, but we do provide a simple mechanism (with a couple of modes) that can be used to achieve the very common cases. In addition, strategies for deferred loading and so forth could be added in the future. The Piccolo core can also be judicious in its issuance of LODEvents, in order to maintain frame rates.

The real question, is the added complexity of a system like this worth it, in terms of the base library. I can't really answer that question. I can say that based on my observations, many (if not most) ZUI apps that deal with larger data sets will greatly benefit from not having to recreate such a framework.

I am playing with a couple of different domains right now; the first is display of time-based information in a timeline form. The second is financial data set display. I anticipate needing LOD support for the first, but not necessarily for the second (although as the data sets climb in size, it might become necessary).

It's entirely appropriate for the interested parties here to come up with this kind of functionality. If something sufficiently good is developed, I think we can make a case for it becoming part of the core. I say "core" because I think some of the events that we need to generate are best handled there, and might be difficult to add as extensions.

12:19:43 AM    comment []

Vicious Little People.

There are two kinds of gay-bashers.  There are those who do it on autopilot, because of tradition/upbringing/culture/religion, and there are those who use hate as an outlet for their anger and dissatisfaction.

There are no legitimate, logical reasons to be anti-gay.  If you are anti-gay, it is for one of the reasons noted above.  You can argue about "anti-nature" and all that kind of crap until you're blue in the face, but for any contrived example you care to give, there are a thousand counter-examples. 

The well-meaning amongst the "auto-piloters" are trying to find a way to shoehorn some grain of logic into their mindset.  I have yet to see a single argument that makes any sense.

It's all a matter of license versus liberty.  Unless you have a really good reason for it, you're not allowed to mess with your neighbor's life.  Gay people are the neighbors.  All they want is to be left alone, and to be able to participate in the basics of our society.  You want to exclude gays from your church?  Go right ahead.  I don't care.  When you want to exclude them from being able to designate their life partner as legally such, or deny them the ability to inherit from a partner, or to be able to see that person in a hospital or sign for medical treatment, you've gone too far.  It's a matter of liberty. 

Doesn't it strike anyone as ludicrously ironic that the Catholic Church is making pronouncements decrying homosexuality when it is clearly at the most painful crossroads of its life cycle, based in part on failing to acknowledge the repressed homosexuality of a goodly number of its clergymen?  I must caveat this with the note that there's nothing that connects abuse with a priest being gay.  Sexual abuse comes from heteros too.

12:02:01 PM    comment []

Air Security and the TSA.

There are exactly three useful things that the TSA does.  First, they are in charge of making sure that the cockpit doors on planes are reinforced.  That's an excellent start.  Second, they put Air Marshals on random flights.  I think that is an excellent step as well -- every hijacker needs to be wondering if there's an armed "passenger" hidden somewhere on a flight.  There might be, there might not be.  Hijackings are so rare that, well, I think it's quite effective as a deterrent.  Third, the TSA ensures that there is matching of fully scanned bags to passengers, ensuring that any bomb attempt must be accompanied by a suicide, and it has to get past scanning.

All the shoe checking, passenger screening, identification, and other crap is just plain useless.  And they're spending a mountain of money to do it.

Funny.  I feel like I used to support the TSA, in the aftermath of 9/11.  I thought it was a good idea to get serious about the problem.  Now I'm not so sure that we've really gotten anywhere.

Here's my list of what works:

• Pilots with guns.  Special training, plastic bullets.  Makes total sense.
• Reinforced doors with redundant cams displaying the passenger cabins.
• Baggage matching.
• Baggage scanning.

Will every arab-looking passenger have to remove their shoes from now until the end of time?

11:47:32 AM    comment []

Stupid Garbage Collection.

For the love of God, if you're a library writer, never call System.gc().  If you call it, you don't have any fucking clue what you are doing.  I mean it.  Say, when you call that function, how long is it going to take?  The answer is...YOU DON'T KNOW.  Are you running in a big app?  A little app?  One that's had its garbage collection finely tuned?  Are there millions of objects or just a few thousand?

YOU DON'T KNOW. So don't call it.  Ever.  Want your finalizers to run?  Tough shit.  Don't call System.gc().  Maybe your finalizers will never run.  Too bad.  If they must run, put the cleanup operation on a proper queue, set up a thread to check it, and do the work explicitly. 

There is precisely one place to make this kind of decision -- at deployment time.  In certain very limited circumstances, an application deployer might decide that in a given situation, it is sensible to run System.gc() at certain times.  This can usually be done with scripting or some other kind of facility that is built into the app.

I am tired of being bitten by "libraries" that think they need to make deployment decisions.

11:39:52 AM    comment []

I Don't Want To Be Right.

Paul Krugman has an opinion piece in the NY Times today...he's saying basically the same thing that I've said too.  Yes, it's some pretty serious doom and gloom.  The lesson here is that there's gravity in this country too.  What goes up must come down.  In 1999, did anybody think the stock market was going to crash?  Yes, some people did.  The system reaches an unstable point, and will violently correct itself.  The real question is, how will that correction happen?

In the case of the stock market, it is a dramatic repricing of just about everything (an adjustment).  What we really don't know is what happens when the superpower of the world needs to undergo a massive adjustment.  What mechanism would be used?  What happens if the whole thing just grinds to a halt, deficits are spiralling out of control?  Where is the safety valve?

I really don't know much about the economics of meltdown.  My guess is that the currency markets will be the first to gyrate...as the US $ starts to drop precipitously.  But that will have something of a balancing effect, as US exports get cheaper for the rest of the world and US imports get more expensive.  Since so much of US consumerism is based on cheap crap (in both senses) from other places, anything that makes imports more expensive is going to result in a real inflationary push.

Hell, I don't know.  I think we need to start worrying about this.  I think we need to find a way to keep capital moving around, encourage new business, encourage productivity.  I just wish that more things were made here in North America, things that people want.

11:32:01 AM    comment []