Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

• No matter how Scooter Libby’s trial turns out, that enough evidence exists for one indictment (if not more) shows that the administration either intentionally misued information with national-security ramifications or else was insufficiently careful in safeguarding it. This should be worrisome, especially given all the other indications that it was an example of a pattern rather than an anomaly. Yet the media, despite their self-proclaimed role to reveal such problems in support of the public good, haven’t made much of this, instead focusing on what every political side might be able to gain or lose. What’s worse is that I forsee missing the more important point in favor of the spectacle of a public scandal. Sad.
• From FEMA to the FAA and TSA, conflicting agendas and an appalling lack of comprehensive analysis continually subject us to ever-more burdensome security and disaster-management practices that don’t really improve anything.
• The release of classified information regaring possible secret CIA prisons prompted Congressional leaders to call for an investigation of the leakers before one into the more objectively serious issue.
• The administration has now taken to insisting that their Iraq war decision is beyond reproach because plenty of people believed the justifications given at the time, utterly ignoring not only the flaws in the war-making process, how easily intelligence can be manipulated or distorted (even somewhat innocently) but also everything we’ve learned since then.
• The spectacle of Dubya saying that we do not use torture while Darth Cheney is simultaneously lobbying to exempt the CIA from anti-torture legislation working its way through Congress would make Orwell proud. Among the many things they’re not getting here are:
  • Torture’s an unreliable method for getting good information. (Hell, Iraqi instigators like Ahmed Chalabi fed the neocons what they wanted to hear while under no duress whatsoever.)
  • Personal conscience and assessement of the facts guides behavior, not laws. (Think of how much would could save on police and armies if we could simply legislate away bad behavior.) An anti-torture law will not stop an interrogator who is absolutely convinced that a bit more roughing up will provide information that will save lives, and if he turns out to be right he’d probably consider sacrificing his career (or some prison term) for crossing the line an acceptable trade. But the very presence of a law will reduce people from playing bad hunches.
  • Ultimately as Senator McCain said, it’s not about who they are, and whether they deserve good treatment, but about who we are, about saying that there are some things we simply will not do even when they might be to our benefit. As Micheal Kinsley puts it
    

    It could be that all these developments are constitutional […b]ut the Constitution is not supposed to be just an obstacle course for officials who are trying to get around it. It ought to inspire policy even when it doesn’t impose policy. Ditto the Geneva Conventions. Why would you even want to be clever about reasons it might not apply here or there?

Now President Bush must do something that for him, it seems, is the most difficult task: admit a mistake. […]More important, President Bush should follow the ultimate rule of White House damage control: the buck stops here. He should admit that this entire mess could have been avoided had the White House, including the vice president, criticized Ambassador Joseph Wilson openly and directly, rather than whispering “on background” into the ears of certain reporters…The best result of this latest scandal, and the hypocrisy and finger-pointing exhibited on both sides, would be for voters to say, “A pox on both your houses,” reject the scandal culture and gotcha politics of both parties and seek new politics of common cause, collegiality and the public interest. The alternative is that most people will conclude that in American politics today the only standard is the double standard, and the cycles of conflict and rancor will continue.

• 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:
  
  

• 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.

• 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!
  

My post-lunch news check gave me deja vu: Judge Backs Case Seeking End of School Pledge. Didn’t we just do this? Do we really need to go there again? To be honest, I’m sympathetic with the plaintiff’s aims. Being a non-believer, I remember feeling uncomfortable as a child being expected to mutter something about God every morning, and then being more perplexed about this verbiage once they started teaching us about things like the Constitution, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, etc. You know what though? Eventually I learned to omit that part, then just stand in silence altogether, and I got over it none the worse for wear. (Perhaps that bit of early disillusionment helped me down the healthy path of cynicism. :-) The last few weeks have shown there are far, far better things to fight over.

Nothing good can come of this, I fear. A loss may embolden the religious crowd to push for more publicly sanctioned religious expression (almost certainly of that old-time Protestant bent, which will be oh-so-helpful in that global campaign on terror or extremists or whatever they call it this week). Yet a win might be even worse, as it would probably rally the various conservative campaigns pushing their view of what it means to be a Real American and might end up with an uber-amendment to enshrine the Pledge, ban flag burning, and prolly through in a gay-marriage ban and a couple other conservative bugaboos to boot.

Anyway, as for the ongoing debate about the Pledge, a pox on both their houses for completely pathetic thinking and argumentation:

• Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justices sez-
  

  The pledge clearly acknowledges the fact that our freedoms in this country come from God, not government

  Umm, looks like Mr. Sekulow must have flunked reading comprehension, ‘cause the Pledge says nothing of the sort; yes, it says ‘one nation, under God’, but that’s more clearly a statement of geography than anything about social or legal causality; besides, even the Declaration of Independence and various state constitutions that explicitly mention a Creator still clearly indicate that liberties, rights, and powers emanate from the people, i.e. democracy not theocracy, so Mr. Sekulow is 0-for-2 in the space of 17 words. Moreover, if ensuring God is part of our civic rituals is so vital, why aren’t these people fighting to update the Pledge accordingly? Aren’t they bothered by the fact that the allusion is buried deep in the middle of it? Secondary to the nation? Tertiary to a statement of idolatry? And put there by a Cold-War-era political ploy rather than any sort of genuine sense of piety?
• What, exactly, do the anti-Pledgers think they will accomplish with this? Does the scorn of the flag-waving crowd give them a sense of superiority (or social/legal martyrdom)? Why do they insist on being provocative by throwing out the whole Pledge, rather than just the 1954 Congressional resolution that added ‘under God’? (Remove that, or make other modifications, and you’ve likely got a Constitutionally inoffensive incantation.) Why don’t they get worked up about the very first clause, which implies that allegiance to a piece of cloth (or particular arrangement of shapes and colors) is more important than fealty to the people and principles of the U.S.? Woudn’t it be more productive to provoke a debate about whether coercing children (make no mistake, peer pressure and the imprimatur of teachers are coercive even without any formal penalty for a child’s silence) to mumble a banal sentence by rote is leading to better citizenship?

• The Uses of ‘Activism’ ;   Teaching of Creationism Is Endorsed in New Survey
  A subtlety in the definition of democracy that is often overlooked is that majoritarianism is not required. Indeed, it should be imperative of any government to have mechanisms that can ignore or overrule the prevailing ‘will of the people’ when required, lest minorities or posterity be oppressed by political whims that arise from citizenry who may not be fully informed or enlightened enough to appreciate the full impact of their sentiments. When various options (or candidates, or whatever) are all essentially equivalent, then majority-rule is an appropriate way to make a decision. However, when proper analysis of facts and logic can show one to be superior, whether or not a majority of the populace actually like that result shouldn’t be a major factor; conversely, majority support for something provably fallacious shouldn’t matter, especially when few in that majority really have the knowledge and training to assess the concepts properly.
• Most scientific papers are probably wrong
  I think an important difference between those with proper training in science and other forms of reasoning is that they won’t find this conclusion surprising–or, importantly, bothersome.
• PowerPoint: Killer App?
  Of course the problem isn’t with PowerPoint per se, or even that it makes taking a set of too-sparse notes and expand them to a thirty-page deck complete with flashy graphics that obscures the fluffiness of the content ridiculously easy. No, the issue it’s used in situations where neither the presenter has the chops to make the content compelling nor the audience has the analytical skills to notice the weak argumentation. Ever notice that the horror stories come out of places like corporate boardrooms, the Pentagon, and high-level NASA managerial meetings rather than, say, university colloquia?
• The Public Domain: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
  While I respect Lessig’s opinions, this one seems a bit Cassandra-like. I’m sure there will come a point when the threat to the existence of a public domain will be obvious and critical enough for its protection to be in the interest of forces powerful enough to fight back vigorously. Still, it does make one think how the very existence of a distinction between copyrighted and public works is merely a legal construct and not one to be taken for granted.