Tue, 25 October 2005 11:44 pm Comments (2)

Telemarketers, crackpots, political sensibility, Saturn satellites

  • From Eric’s links comes this gem of ananti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript. Almost tempting to drop off the Do-Not Call List to try it out. Almost…but not really.
  • Here’s a nice crackpot index to help weed the good physics from the bad. Maybe we should generalize and start applying the same analysis to the nonsense spewing from the mouths of politicians, CEOs, etc.
  • Senate Rule XIV Procedures for Placing Measures Directly on the Senate Calendar
    Septemter 19, 2005:
    Mr. FRIST. Now I ask for its second reading and in order to place the bill on the calendar under rule XIV, I object to my own request.
    Okay, legislative bodies are often where common sense goes to die but…wow.
  • Kansas Law on Gay Sex by Teenagers Is Overturned
    Kansas has been in the crosshairs of ridicule for recent intelligent design silliness, but the state’s Supreme Court showed some wisdom in a ruling against a horribly discriminatory gay-sex law. From the unanimous (!) opinion:
    The moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest.
    That statement needs to be engraved on the desk of every legislator, prosecutor, and judge in every jurisdiction in this country.
  • Via Kos came this set of excerpts of Brent Scrowcroft critiquing Dubya and the neocons. In reading I came to the intriguing, if somewhat disturbing, realization that the neocon ethos espoused by Paul Wolfowitz and others is less an imperialist, modern-day manifest-destiny idea than it is simply an extreme form of a mentality that most U.S. politicians–and many citizens–posess. Two of its essential concepts are that everyone loves freedom and democracy. What American could possibly argue with those points, huh? Except…well, to many people, including right here at home, the most important freedom they desire is the freedom to ensure that no one else–at least no one else they’ll ever have the need or opportunity to deal with–thinks and acts in ways of which they disapprove. Moreover, democracy isn’t necessariliy the ideal form of government, perhaps just the least bad. Arguably public affairs could be better handled philosopher-kings of proper temperment and training than by those chosen by the whims of the public at large, but in a stable, balanced society democracy has the advantage that extreme views tend to be voted out of office before they have a chance to do permanent damage. However, it works out this way because our society has long had the sense of balance and desire for consensus, not the other way around. In a society with a strong bent towards allocation of authority based on pure power or the absoute moral superiority of one group over another, democracy by itself has no mechanism to prevent tyranny of the majority. Where one group claims divine mandate to subjugate another, or multiple ethnic-religious factions have enmity dating back centuries, the introduction of a formally democractic system and the belief that the vast majority are just yearning for the freedom to live in an open, laissez-faire society are hardly guaranteed to suddenly result in well-behaved, friendly nations. We really could use less Pollyanna and more realpolitick in our foreign policy.
  • More Saturnian visual goodness, courtesy Cassini-Huygens:

Categories: astronomy, physics, politics, humor, society
Fri, 21 October 2005 4:37 pm Comments (0)

Flock, DH, simple rules vs. reality, useful maps, sundry American policies

Gah! I’m way overdue for some quick swipes at stuff that’s caught my eye over the last couple of weeks…
  • I started playing with Flock last night. Still needs a little work, but the potential is there for this to become a great tool. I’m especially looking forwad to the ability to consolidate tags across multiple tools. I believe that the critical mass is now present in tools like blogs, Flickr, del.icio.us, Google, and widespread broadband so that a tool like Flock can now get closer to the ‘network is the computer’ ideal Sun and others have been promising for a generation now. That it’s not coming from one of the Big Guys shouldn’t be a surprise.
  • Fans polled support umpires, dislike DH rule
    Good to know I’m not in the minority. Quoth Frank Thomas on the DH:
    It’s extended many careers. I think it should be universal; it would mean more jobs in baseball. Who wants to see pitchers hit? Nobody.
    Actually, I do like to see pitchers hit. A number are decent, plenty lay down good bunts, and watching an inept pitcher flail badly at curveball or a big guy (say, Carlos Zambrano) lumber around second for a freak triple is quite entertaining. However, while Thomas’s concern for job security is understandable, it should be considered irrelevant here. The decision to enact or drop a playing rule should be judged only by its effect on the balance of gameplay; how shifts in that balance affect the interest of fans is the only business effect really worth considering.
  • What do current controversies like the validity of Intelligent Design, political intransigence and incompetence, the effects of global warming, and others have in common? I think an important thread is the desire by very many people to believe that the world functions accoring to a set of simple, easily knowable rules, and furthermore their insistence not only that those rules are already known but also that there must be something amiss with observations of the world that would seem to conflict with those rules. These types of people often have trouble with the proper interpretation of observations and tend to ignore the limitations or quirks of the mind; what’s worse, even people who do (or should) have the training to know better are susceptible to falling into such modes of thought when it suits them. Myself, I like the philosophy of the Bad Astronomer–”I like reality the way it is, and I aims to keep it that way”–but if others prefer a different mode of thought that is of course their prerogative. However, their views present a serious problem when used to select public officials and set public policy; if nothing else, we all end up wasting time in pointless debates over topics that should be considered settled.
  • Mapping Where You Think You Live
    Ah, the power of the internet being harness for good: elucidating where the true boundaries lie between civic and sports loyalties, and all to be nicely mapped. Isn’t this info in some marketroid database at a big consumer-products corporation somewhere? Well, at least soon we’ll also be able to easily locate which locale officials deserve our scorn, and then marshal forces for the upcoming pop vs. soda war that we all know is inevitable.
  • Oink Oink; For a Senate Foe of Pork Barrel Spending, Two Bridges Too Far
    The growth in pork spending over the last decade is truly astounding, especially since it coincides with Republican control of the House–and accelerated after they got the White House. They used to deride the the Democrats as the ‘tax-and-spend’ party, but that ethos is at least more honest in my view than the GOP’s ‘borrow-and-spend’ methods. I suppose the latter better corresponds to most Americans’ fiscal habits, though.
  • Cheap Gas Is a Bad Habit; Sierra Club Gets Behind the Wheel
    Hybrid vehicles are still luxury items, purchases that have more feel-good effects than actual significant environmental impact, but it certainly seems that the technology is rapidly improving in terms of both efficiency and price. Perhaps these continuing improvments, combined with the lessons of Katrina and Rita, the rising demand of the Chinese economy, and the security quagmires caused by our Middle-East entanglements will finally give the proper impetus to move on from the petroleum enconomy that has dominated for the last century or so.
  • Using Our Leverage: The Troops
    A little reverse psychology to nudge the Iraqis? Actually, we should make this a more general policy in the places around the world–and there are many–where locals simultaneously desire and detest American help. During our inteventions in the Balkans during the 1990s I always thought that the better approach in such situations–where various groups have been warring on and off for centuries over perceived slights, religous differences, and other such pettiness–would simply be to stay out and to use our resources to prevent spillover into neighboring regions that prefer to remain uninvolved. That’s somewhat callous given that many true innocents can be caught in the crossfire, but no amount of military power, American or otherwise, can fix broken societies. We can only offer to help if they sincerely want to change, otherwise we should simply strive to ensure an imploding society doesn’t take its neighbors down with it.
  • Kathleen Sulivan, Dick Thornburgh, Ron Klain, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, and Jean Edward Smith published twenty-five questions for Supreme Court nominees in the New York Times. Many of the specifics will soon be dated (if they aren’t already), but I think these cover a number of important topics that Americans should continually ask themselves–and their public officials–regarding the responsibilities and powers of the judiciary in our government and society. John Tierney also posed some more flippant ones that are amusing but also oddly point to good techniques for any sort of important interview.
Categories: baseball, politics, science, sports, technology, USA, web, society, rants, law
Thu, 6 October 2005 9:37 pm Comments (0)

Sydney, $2 rides, wine driving, Field’s, Hyperion

My gripes and swipes return after a long Oz-induced absence! Reports of my trip Down Under start here, or if those are too much reading you can just go look at the pictures.
  • The rumblings began again today about the CTA’s desire to raise the standard fare to $2. Anyone surprised? Anyone not see this coming last May, or January, or last fall? Just raise the damn fare like should have been done last year and be done with it so we can at least have a couple years of peace before the CTA faces its next budget catastrophe! At least that way there may be some time to actually put some clueful management (and government officials) in place.
  • A Wine of Character, but How Many Miles to a Gallon?
    This wouldn’t be much of a story except for the mental picture of the French getting all tied in a knot over sandbagging some wine (and of course blaming it, at least in part, on those damn Americans). How is it that a bottle of cote-du-rhone goes for $1.40 there and $9 here? Anyway, I also found it amusing–althought slightly exasperating–to read descriptions of putting chardonnay, champagne, and pinot noir into the fuel tank, nevermind that all the good tasty bits that make any of them wine are completely removed by the time the ethanol comes out.
  • A Time For McCain?
    So the small-government right and the big-government left are equally exhausted. The only appealing political platform is good government.
    A great idea to rally behind. Unfortunately, between the legions of what’s-in-it-for-me voters and those who aren’t savvy enough to differentiate good public officials from bad (whether by analysis of rhetoric or performance), I fear that there won’t be enough collective gumption to vote proper people into office and accept the necessary sacrifices to move us from current state to ‘good government’.
  • ArchitectureChicago Plus Blog Overrun - The Death of Marshall Field’s and the Dissolution of the Sense of Place
    What saddened and irritated me about the Field’s decision was the absolute triumph of cold corporate mentality over any sense of cultural goodwill. The management decided that the intangible specialness felt by generations of Chicagoans simply couldn’t compete with the possiblity of the masses of non-Chicago management and shareholders could save a fraction of a penny per share in advertising costs. Instead, they absolutely know that I would rather save $1 per year with a much more nationally homogenized set of offerings. Wow, in the face of such amazing consideration of the wants and desires of the Chicago consumer…why would I want to give these people my business again?
  • An idea doesn’t have to be right to be important, so long as it gets people thinking in a new way.
    – Michael S. Turner on Alan Guth’s original inflation theory, S&T, November 2005
  • Cassini-Huygens flyby of Tethys and Hyperion
    Once again, Cassini provides us fantastic imagery!
Categories: astronomy, Chicago, politics, wine, rants, transit, quotes, imagery, business