Apple's HQ Spaceship vs the Eye of Sauron

Anyone else notice an uncanny resemblance between the gleaming new Apple Headquarters and the Eye of Sauron?





Sure, the coming Apple HQ was digitally rendered to gleam on a beautiful, bright, sunny day while the Eye of Sauron is framed at the heart of a post-apocalyptic Hitleresque hellhole, but if you discount minor differences in weather, there are some eerie similarities.

For instance, Apple's goal of "one phone to rule them all" could not be more apparent than in its recent attempts to sue virtually every other maker of phones in the free world.

Today, the storyline continues with a team of nine brave patents arising from the recesses of Google to make the great journey to Taiwan, where they were acquired by HTC. It is said that these nine brave soldiers of freedom boast diverse origins: four were sprung from the loins of the people of Motorola, whilst three emerged from among the hobbits of the obscure land of Openwave Systems, and the final two were chosen from the elven folk of Palm.

It's hard to imagine Palm, Motorola, and Google all teaming up given all their former rivalries. This story is as much about the strange bedfellows that arise when freedom itself it threatened by an all powerful force as it is about the threat itself.

Who will help me make the trailer?

Brigham Young University Takes A Stand... Against Interracial Marriage?!

If you watch CNN today, you'll hear flattering reports of Brigham Young University's recent decision to indefinitely suspend Brandon Davies from its basketball team. BYU is contrasted with other less scrupulous schools like Seton Hall, which are known for responding to the DWI's of their star basketball players with only slap-on-the-wrist suspensions. Isn't it wonderful to see a school forgo the profits and publicity of a successful basketball team in the name of principle?

The principle in question is supposedly that BYU's students pledge not to engage in pre-marital sex (or alcohol or coffee). Brandon Davies allegedly violated this principle when he confessed to having sex with another student.

What CNN won't tell you is Brandon Davies is black, and this other student is white. Maybe this had nothing to do with the decision, but I have my doubts considering that 58% of BYU students admit to engaging in pre-marital sex. Why haven't the BYU inquisitors taken action against these students' transgressions?

Perhaps they're just trying to set an example, but to target a black student in a predominantly white state/school for such a commonplace violation should definitely raise questions. And not the obsequious ones the media has chosen to ask.

What they should be asking is whether this incident is an example of the kind of pre-civil rights era racism, according to the principles of which Obama's very birth was illegal in most states. (He was born in 1961 of interracial parents).

But that question is way too easy to answer, and the answer way too uncomfortable. The Mormon Church of Ladder Day Saints to this day discourages interracial marriage in its current priesthood manual:

“We recommend that people marry those who are of the same racial background generally, and of somewhat the same economic and social and educational background (some of those are not an absolute necessity, but preferred), and above all, the same religious background, without question” (“Marriage and Divorce,” in 1976 Devotional Speeches of the Year [Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1977], p. 144).

BYU is definitely standing on principle here, but the principle they're standing on might be the same one that led black men to be lynched for so much as looking at white women 50 years ago.

Why is it that abstinence education and racism always dove-tail so nicely?

Delay Windows: A Practical Bipartisan Way to End The Filibuster

Below, I've outlined a bipartisan way of getting rid of the filibuster, without harming any of the incumbent interest groups that would normally block such a move.

Motivation

Imagine how much better the US government would function if we could solve the filibuster problems. Not only is the filibuster anti-democratic, it also prevents the senate from getting anything done.

Even if both parties have a long-term interest in getting rid of the filibuster, in the short term, it's just a political football: The majority party wants to overturn it to pass its agenda. The minority party wants to hold on to it to block the other party's agenda. The problem never gets solved because short-term political interest always pits one party against the other.

To be sure, there are some senators, including the late Senator Robert Byrd, who will attest to the value of the filibuster. The filibuster does not have the most illustrious history, however. The Civil Rights Act of '57 and '64 were both initially blocked by filibuster. Furthermore, it's become so commonplace to filibuster in recent years that it has ground the legislative process to a halt, preventing it from solving chronic national problems.

Democrats are currently proposing various sneaky ways of overriding the filibuster with a simple majority, but not only would Republicans cry foul, it might also set a dangerous precedent of congress flippantly changing its rules of governance.

Changing the filibuster is generally assumed to require a two thirds majority in the senate, an unreachable goal without a bipartisan approach.

Proposal

I propose a solution that is simple, practical, and bipartisan: Structure a bill to overturn the filibuster so that it only takes effect after the passage of a 10 year delay window. This delay window should, in theory, eliminate both self and party-interest from the equation because

1) Current incumbents are unlikely to remain in office after the delay window has past, allowing them to look beyond their own self-interest in their voting decision.

2) Each party has a roughly 50% chance of being in the majority after the time window expires. This means neither party will win or lose from the rule change.

These two factors should allow the senate to achieve the bipartisan, two thirds majority necessary to finally overturn the antiquated, undemocratic filibuster.

Philosophy

The idea of a delay window can be seen as a practical application of the Rawlsian concept of the veil of ignorance. According to this idea, individuals should make civic decisions as if they were blind to their own status in society. Similarly, the delay window would allow congresspersons to make political decisions blind to how those decisions might affect their own and their party's political future.

Other Uses

This same delay window technique might also be useful for eliminating gerrymandering. The delay window might need to be longer though, because incumbents tend to stay in office longer, meaning a ten year window might still be seen as damaging to their self-interest. Another problem is that parties tend to stay in office indefinitely in certain states: Texas is likely to remain Republican indefinitely, just as California is likely to remain democrat. Parties which agreed to surrender gerrymandering in their own state would be at a disadvantage to those that don't. If Democratic and Republican dominated states both agree to tackle the problem at the same time, however, these inequities should cancel out.

Conclusion

The main drawback to using delay windows is that they postpone badly needed reform. If immediate reform is unrealistic anyway, as seems to be the case with with the filibuster, then nothing is lost.

Delay windows could be used to fix a range of seemingly intractable government procedural problems, including the filibuster and gerrymandering. It's a simple solution that should gain the bipartisan support necessary to reform the system.

The Important Question about Violent Republican Rhetoric

There's been a big hoopla over whether violent Republican rhetoric can be blamed for Jared Loughner's heinous attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. But I think this discussion misses the point: Even if this rhetoric didn't cause Loughner's attack, it was still highly -- shall we say -- sympathetic to it.

The important point is that Sarah Palin continued to endorse Sharron Angle, even after she repeatedly called for the use of "second amendment remedies" to solve "the Harry Reid problems", and to "take out Harry Reid". This rhetoric can only be interpreted as a literal endorsement of assassination. After all, Angle gave a long spiel about how the point of the second amendment was to give Americans the tools to overthrow their government if necessary. The only practical way citizens armed with guns could overthrow a government armed with nukes is through assassinations and terrorism, so it's pretty transparent what they mean by "second amendment remedies".

Critics might say their violent rhetoric is beside the point if it didn't directly cause the Loughner shooting, but I disagree: When it comes to terrorism, we typically condemn anyone who verbally endorses the cause, not just those directly involved in it. Granted, we can't convict someone who justifies the attack of 9/11 in a court of law, but at the very least, we can and should shame them.

In the same way, Palin, Angle, and anyone else who condones the use of "second amendment remedies" to resolve ballot box "failures" deserve a good public shaming.

You bring the tar, I'll bring the feathers.

Republican Violence "Metaphors"

US today's polling shows a majority of Americans don't think conservative inflammatory rhetoric caused the Loughner shooting, but that they're evenly split over whether heated political rhetoric in general was a major cause.

On the surface, conservatives seem to have a point: Palin's use of words like "reload", and her placement of Giffords and other democrats' names in gun sights only represented metaphorical shooting. Similarly, when Obama said “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,”, it wasn't meant to imply violence is okay.

But a deeper look at mainstream Tea Party rhetoric reveals a more frightening truth:

• Palin enthusiastically endorsed Sharon Angle, who last January suggested using "second amendment remedies" to "take out Harry Reid":
  

  Angle: You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason, and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said, it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years," Angle said. "I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you, the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."

• Palin published her democratic "hit list" right after health care reform was passed in March. At that same time, militia leaders like Mike Vanderboegh urged followers to "throw bricks through windows" of certain democratic offices, including that of Giffords. This vandalism was committed at DNC offices across the country, including the Alaska office. Despite the violence, Palin continued her charged rhetoric, and has not to this day taken down her "hit list", even after Giffords was shot. She never really spoke out against the vandalism of the offices, and only now when Giffords has been shot, has she strongly condemned this use of violence.

Everyone is focusing on this second issue, but I think the Sharron Angle situation is far more damning. If Palin was serious about preventing violence, she should have withdrawn her Angle endorsement the moment Angle spoke of using "second amendment remedies" to "take out Harry Reid" if Republicans couldn't win at the ballot box. There is nothing remotely metaphorical about this Angle's violent rhetoric. What she called for is exactly what happened to Gabrielle Giffords. America deserves an apology from both Giffords and Angle for instigating this violence.

Do Unemployment Benefits Increase Unemployment?

Arthur Laffer thinks so. In yesterday's WSJ editorial page, he makes the case. It's mostly an argument based on the commonly stated idea that unemployment benefits discourage people from working, but he also tries to provide some real data to show this phenomenon happening in some place besides his own head. That's when things really fall apart:
He uses the above graph to argue "correlation", but his argument really hinges on the idea that rises in unemployment benefits cause rises in unemployment, not the other way about. Yet in the graph, there's a considerable time lag from sharp movements in the dark line (unemployment) to sharp movements in the light line (benefits), indicating the causation is actually, if anything, the other way.

And how surprising is this? Real benefits are calculated by multiplying payment amount per recipient by average duration of benefits. During slumps, it's harder to find a job, so the length of unemployment tends to increase, end of story.

Well, maybe not. If you look at the graph again, specifically at the points where the unemployment rate reverses course downward, Arthur Laffer's argument starts to look ever more absurd. There are 5 major peaks in unemployment shown, all of which hit their peak around the time unemployment benefits spike up sharply. Might this suggest that far from causing higher unemployment, increased benefits are causing sudden drops in unemployment?

Someone call Laffer Associates. I think we a problem.

Fox News Redefines Nuclear Option

Since the health care debate began Fox News has been pushing a redefinition of the phrase 'Nuclear Option' to mean 'Reconciliation'. Now they've gone even further, actually quoting Democrat Senator Dick Durbin as saying the democrats are considering the "nuclear option", when he really said they are considering "reconciliation". Here's the language:

Headline: Top Senate Democrat Outlines 'Nuclear Option' Strategy for Health Care

"A top Senate Democrat for the first time Tuesday acknowledged that the party is prepared to deal with health care reform by using a controversial legislative tactic known as the "nuclear option" if Republican Scott Brown wins the Massachusetts Senate election"

...

"Then, Durbin said, the Senate could make changes to the bill by using the nuclear option, known formally as "reconciliation," a tactic that would allow Democrats to adjust parts of health care reform with just a 51-vote majority. "We could go to something called 'reconciliation', which is in the weeds procedurally, but would allow us to modify that health care bill by a different process that doesn't require 60 votes, only a majority," Durbin said. "So that is one possibility there."

I didn't go to journalism school, but if you say someone "outlines 'nuclear option' strategy", that someone better have utter the phrase "nuclear option". As it happened Dick Durbin didn't use that phrase at all, but instead used the word "reconciliation" that has a very different meaning. 'Nuclear Option' was a phrase invented by Trent Lott in 2005 to describe Republican Bill Frist's plan to override the democratic filibuster without using any legal or legislative precedent (thankfully it never happened). Reconciliation has existed since its procedure was passed through the legislature in 1974 as part of the Congressional Budget Act (USC 641). Both are techniques to override a filibuster, but to conflate them is like claiming that throwing someone in jail is basically the same thing whether or not you have a trial. Like society as a whole, the senate relies on legal precedent to function, and the moment we start flouting the law as Bill Frist tried to do in 2005 with judicial appointment fillibusters, we begin to descent into lawlessness (ironically Frist called it the "constitutional option"). Beyond that, reconciliation has been used regularly by both parties, for instance, by the the republican majority during the Bush Administration to pass tax cuts. How come Fox won't call that the nuclear option?

This all began in August and CNN eventually followed Fox's example. Now that we've swallowed the pill, they're taking things further by actually quoting democratic senators as saying nuclear option when they really said reconciliation.

I'm not the only one who's upset about this issue.

Steven Levitt, Geoengineering, Side-Effects, and DDT

Levitt presented an idiot-proof version of his 'Superfreakonomics' geo-engineering on his blog today.

It's hard not to find his argument compelling, but now it's him who seems to be "willfully misreading" his critics, claiming they're not trying to answer the question: "what's the cheapest way to cool our planet", but rather:

“What is the ‘right’ amount of carbon to emit?” or “Is it moral for this generation to put carbon into the air when future generations will pay the price?” or “What are the responsibilities of humankind to the planet?”

By 'moral', I'm pretty sure the Al Gore's of this world mean, 'what real effects will it have on our environment, health, and lifestyle. But Levitt has twisted the environmentalists' argument into some sort of philosophical argument over whether humanity has the 'right' to leave a footprint on earth at all, an argument that has no bearing on our actual well-being. This puts it at odds with his 'rational', 'economic' way of thinking.

But what if Geoengineering doesn't turn out to be the silver bullet he think it will be? What if it turns out like DDT, that early mosquito incesticide for which a Nobel Prize was won, but then was eventually banned due to its unforeseen harms to the food chain and to real people? DDT was later banned after humanity's brief love affair with it.

If all Levitt wants is research into geoengineering, and it's really as promising as he claims, I don't think a lot of his critics see a problem with that. But as soon as he start to say we can rely on geoengineering in lieu of cutting carbon emission, it starts to seems like he's counting our chickens before they're hatched. How do we know the side-effects of geo-engineering won't turn out to be as bad as those of DDT? Pumping millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atsmosphere in particular, seems like something you'd want to be a bit circumspect about. I understand it's already done periodically by volcanoes, but is it really a sustainable long-term solution or just a quick fix to an underlying problem that will get steadily worse if we don't focus on the underlying cause?

I don't know the answer to this question, but I don't see how Levitt's complacency on geo-engineering justifies ditching carbon emissions regulation. What's nice about emissions regulation is 1) it addresses the problem at the source, and 2) it forces polluters to internalize the costs of their pollution, rather than just spilling whatever fumes into the atmosphere they find convenient, despite their effects on everyone else. Obviously, I understand how their higher costs will raise everyone else's fuel prices, etc..., but that just reflects the fact that we're all responsible for the emissions, not just the 'evil energy companies' that we buy our fuel from.

Steven Levitt Doesn't Like Price Discrimination

Steven Levitt, the author of Freakonomics, writes about how companies use 'going green' as a cover for price discrimination here. As usual, the example is from a brothel to pique your interest (yes, some economist are not afraid to admit they've sunk this low). But mental titillation aside, I have a criticism of the substance of the post.

At first blush, the implication seems to be that price discrimination is a bad thing. But price discrimination is just a way of charging something closer to what the buyer is willing to pay, just like with first class airline seats, or wait-in-line-for-hours-for-cheap-show-tickets.

It's rational to assume that price discrimination will have the side-effect of causing some consumers to try to enter the lower price bracket by changing their behavior; for instance, in this case, biking to the brothel instead of driving. This leads to less carbon emissions. So it’s win-win, right? The brothel makes more money, and less carbon is emitted by the commuter.

Maybe Levitt isn't saying price discrimination is a bad thing per se, rather that 'going green' is just a ruse to make more profits. But even if it is, what of it? If profits happen to align with 'going green', all the better. When it comes down to it, motive doesn't matter as much as effect.

Or possibly, 'going green' can have no effect on the environment whatsoever, for instance, if they gave you a discount for wearing a green hat. There, he might have a point, but he doesn't argue this, nor does his example seem to fit this case.

Firefox and Chrome's Show Password Feature Is A Security Nightmare!

I was recently piddling around the Firefox 3.0+ preferences, when I came across something that practically made my hair stand on end:

1) Open Preferences
2) Click the Security tab
3) Click Saved Passwords...
4) Click Show Passwords
5) When it asks you if you're sure you want to do this, say Yes

Surprise! All the passwords you've ever asked Firefox to remember are displayed in plain text. Basically this means anyone who ever accesses your computer can see the passwords you typically use to log in. This is a ginormous security hole that is completely unnecessary and rarely useful.

Worse, it's a total violation of trust. When I see passwords being displayed as *** as I type, I take this to indicate that the underlying password will be kept hidden and that the authenticating password will be transmitted with encryption, so no one ever knows my password. If that's not the intention, why bother even hiding what I type on the screen? It creates a false sense of security.

One thing I find particularly scary is that this security hole is by design; it seems to have been conceived as an intentional 'feature', not a programming error. I thought there were enough security holes in software without these sorts of intentionally open backdoors.

Maybe you're lucky and you haven't been entrusting firefox with you bank password. But you're probably entrusting it with your email, social networking, and many other passwords. Maybe your bank password is a variation on your email password so as to make it easier to remember. If that's the case, then you're less important passwords could be used to hack your more important ones: They all fall like dominoes.

Even if they don't get your bank password, exposing someone's email password to anyone who sits down at their computer is a pretty egregious violation of privacy. For instance, it might enable your significant other to spy on your emails communications, or an acquaintance to impersonate you. It's one thing to leave your email open accidentally and have someone see your messages. It another thing entirely if that other person can log in at any later time. I wonder how many geeky boyfriends are using this feature to spy on their girlfriends (sorry for the chauvinism, I guess it could go the other way too).

I've read that chrome has the same vulnerability. Shame on google! I will never look at these browsers in the same way again. Time to turn to ie, safari, or opera?

Update: It doesn't even seem to be possible to turn this tool off. There's a master password, but that only asks for a password at firefox startup, not when you try to show the passwords. The only secure solution is to not have firefox remember your passwords at all.

Book Review: A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity

A friend lent me this book, and I'll admit that I sat down with a very low impression of Bill O'Reilly, that Bold Fresh Piece of Lowest Common Denominator that he so seems to be on air. Considering how low my opinion was from the start, it's only natural that I'd finish the book with a higher opinion of him. It's partly because he delivers some melodramatic stories of his trials and tribulations in the penultimate chapter; it's hard not to sympathize with a guy when he's telling a story of how when his father died, and he tried to take some time off, his rival co-workers spread rumors that he was fired. 'We shall overcome, Bill!'

But still, I find it strange how self-righteous he can be at taking the moral high ground while at the same divulging some pretty horrendous stories of his own behavior. Here are two that stuck out from the rest:

1) For a while he owned a painting company, and one time one of his employees dropped a canister of paint off his ladder, dousing a bush in white paint. Rather than telling the owner, they cut it down, went out to gather loose branches from the woods, and fashioned them in the likeness of the bush to cover up what they'd done.

Ok, it's no Auschwitz, but definitely not the kind of guy I'd trust to work on my house, or report on my country for that matter. It's a funny story, but since he's so in the habit of moralizing to his readers about taking personal responsibility (rather than depending on big government or resorting to victimhood) you'd think there'd at least be some sort of minor admission of guilt associated with the incident.

It left me wondering: if the man's ready to cover up the death of something so trivial as a bush, why should we believe he's going to be straight with us about monumental issues like whether Iraq is likely to have WMD, or universal health care will save money, or even just plain, everyday news reporting? Claiming a pile of branches is a bush is the epitome of 'spin'. Before reading this, I'd thought that there was a 10 foot ring of 'No Spin Zone' that followed the fresh guy every where he went. What happened, Bill?

2) Apparently, one time the fresh guy (as Bill O'Reilly likes to call himself) was pretty ticked off when his manager told him his performance evaluations weren't good. Being the bold fresh guy he is, Bill didn't believe the guy, so he sneaked into the building where his manager worked late at night, broke into his office using the famous credit card trick, rifled through his boss's files, and read the actual report. I'm not making this up. It's actually in the book. Breaking and entering. Again, no hint of a guilty conscience over this. Instead it's all righteous indignation about how his manager would dare lie to him about the eval.

These are the types of things I'd expect to be reading in a book by Abbie Hoffman, not this 'traditionalist', conservative, talking head, head-biter-offer, who feels compelled to profess moral values at innocent bystanders who just want to watch TV. But then again, his writing does exude the same macho that is so apparent on-air. My suspicious is that Bill feels that when engaging in 'sissy literary activities' he needs to prove he's a real man by strutting his stuff a bit. Vandalism, petty frat boy buffoonery, you know. All these things win him a seat at the table with Joe Six Pack. Except he claims not to drink, so the usual excuses don't apply.

David Brooks Laments The Decline of America

In his NY Times column today, David Brooks worries that the protestant work ethic is fading quickly from the American psyche, as evidenced by our perpetual shift from producer economy to consumer economy.

Only I wish he'd mention the great contribution open immigration policy has made to maintaining a good American work ethic over the years. Most of our professors and PhD's are immigrants, as are many of our technology entrepreneurs and workers. I think America has managed to avoid the decadence that has historically afflicted other great nations by giving each generation a shot in the arm of new immigrant blood to lead the way forward. It takes a lot of motivation to drop everything you know, leave a country, and come to America. It's precisely this motivation that propels us forward. As border policy is tightened, we'll see the decadence Brooks fears take over ever more quickly.

Unfortunately, many conservatives have a tendency to only see immigrants as a burden to America, which perhaps explains why he hasn't mentioned this.

Movie: The Departed - A Fool Proof Plan To Catch The Mole

I just saw the original Hong Kong film, Mou Gaan Dou, which Martin Scorsese knocked off to create The Departed. The Hong Kong version was much better in my humble opinion, but on a more interesting note, it got me thinking about tricks the police chief could have played to catch the gang's mole within the police force. Here's one that I think is pretty much guaranteed to work, assuming everyone follows orders properly.

Background:

In case you're not familiar with this movie, or don't remember it, the situation is basically that the gang has a mole within the police force, and the police force has a mole within the gang. Each side is trying to find out the identity of the other side's mole without revealing the identity of their own mole. Great plot line. Anyway, here's a nice solution that surreptitiously uses the gang's own mole against the gang. It can be used by either side to win the game, but for clarity's sake, I will describe how the police could do it. First let's start with a simple example to illustrate the basic idea:

Example:

Let's say the police chief has 3 reports, Peter, Paul, and Polly, and he wants to figure out which is the mole. Meanwhile, the gang leader has 4 reports, Greg, Gary, Gus, and Goliath.

The police chief tells Peter that the mole is Greg, tells Paul that the mole is Gary, and tells Polly that the mole is Gus. All of these statements are lies, because the chief already knows Goliath is the real mole inside the gang.

If Peter is the gang's mole, he will tell the gang leader that Greg is the police's mole, and the gang leader will kill Greg. Goliath will know this and report back to the police chief that Greg was killed, indicating Peter must have been the mole.

If Paul is the mole, Gary gets killed, giving away that it's Paul.

If Polly is the mole, Gus gets killed, giving away that it's Polly.

In no circumstance in the real police mole killed, but you're guaranteed to catch the gang's mole, while also seeing the gang kill off one of it's own loyal members!

Generalized Solution:

1) Assume the police chief P has p underlings P1...Pp, and the gang leader G has g underlings G1...Gg. Also, for clarity, let's assume p=g for now (ie: the police and the gang have the same number of members). Let's also label the underlings so that Px and Gy are the moles. Therefore, G knows Px is a mole, and P knows Gy is a mole. P's goal is to find Px.

2) For each policeman i, P takes Pi into his office and tells him "Gi is our mole in the gang, but you can't tell anyone else. I'm telling you this, because I'm assigning a top secret mission which requires you to communicate and cooperate with Gi." (Or some other pretext can be given for revealing this information). Note that Gi is NEVER the actual police mole. Instead it's some random other member of the gang.

3) The mole within the police Px will think he's learned the identity of the gang mole Gy, and will immediately tell gang leader G: "Gi is the mole." All other policemen Pi will not reveal their information to anyone, because they are loyal.

4) Gang leader G will immediately kill (or do something very nasty if it's the PG-13 version) Gi thinking he's the mole. The police's actual mole, Gy will note who was killed and tell police chief P, who can use this information to determine who mole Px is (because only Px was told that that the Gx who was killed was the mole, so he MUST be the source of the leaked information).

That's the basic outline. Here are some special cases that aren't covered above:

1) Multiple moles in the police force:

If there are r moles, then r people will be killed inside the gang, each of which can be trace back to the r moles who leaked the info. So the solution works for this case too.

2) g > p: (ie: more gang members than policemen)

Trivial. Just select p gang member's names to tell the p policemen.


3) p > g (ie: more policemen than gang members)

There are 2 ways to handle this:

A) Do the trick on a g-sized batch of policemen. Wait a couple days. If no one is killed, select another batch. Keep trying until someone is killed.

B) Tell each policemen that there are 2 police moles in the gang they have to work with. Pick a unique set of 2 for each policemen. This works assuming g-Combination-2 < p

Obama's Original Sin

I just noticed that when Obama was born (1961), his birth was actually illegal in 22 states.

I'm not sure whether I should be impressed by how far we've come or depressed by how far our parents hadn't.

New Yorker Caption Contest Finalism!

I am officially a new yorker caption contest finalist. Vote for me, and I will be your best friend.

Question: How much more likely is an american soldier to die serving in Iraq, that an american living in the US of the same age?

I think this is an important question to ask if we want to get an honest perspective of the real human toll of the Iraq war.

I just came across the following article by Amy Hess in the usconservative, which argues that a US soldier aged 18-35 is only slightly less than twice as likely to die at war than an average american of the same age.

But the methodology used is seriously flawed: She compared the ratio of deaths in Iraq to total troops in Iraq to the ratio of deaths in America to citizens in America. She estimated that about 1.5 million troops had served in Iraq over a 3 year period.

This estimate is fine, but using the total number of troops who served over 3 years ignores the fact that each of those troops only spent a fraction of that time in Iraq.

To be exact, the average length of a soldier's deployment is 300 days. So Amy Hess is comparing the death rate of Americans over a 3 year period in the US to the death rate of troops in Iraq over a 300 day service period. This should throw her estimate off by a factor of 3*365/300=3.65. Factoring this is, we get an estimate that American soldiers in Iraq are about 2*3.65=7.2 times more likely to die than their compatriots at home.

There are certainly some flaws in this estimate too (such as the issue of multiple deployments), but I think it's a good deal more accurate than what this author has done.

Bush Invents The Executive Filibuster (link)

I've been wondering why we've heard so little recently of Halliburton, and other companies that we're told overcharged the US government by billions for their contracts in Iraq. I think this is the answer. The Bush administration has been exploiting an obscure loophole in the law to keep any of these cases from going to trial for years. The procedure for The False Claims Act says that for any case to go to trial, the president must decide whether or not he will get on board. Past presidents have often declined such offers, but this president is the first to simply refuse to make a decision. Scores of cases against Halliburton and other alleged defrauders of taxpayer dollars have been languishing for years while the president exploits this legal loophole.

It's ironic how this administration has taken such a public stand in opposition to the idea of the filibuster, claiming it is somehow unethical for their judicial nominees not to receive an up or down vote. But when it comes to protecting Halliburton, they have no problem using the same tactice to stall the legal process, and thereby deflect criticism of how they chose to spend money in Iraq.

The reason this has made news today is that the one case that The Bush Administration did let through has just resulted in the court ordering Custer Battles LLC pay back $10 million of funds fraudulently collected from the US government. If this case is any metric of the others, then it looks like there will be quite a windfall of backpay, and scandal if the Bush Administration ever ends its filibuster on the court system.

How they get away with this without it becoming big news is beyond me. But one interesting question is how these sort of loopholes make their way into the law, whether they're intentional, and how their discovered. Apparently, the False Claims Act was initially introduced by Republican Senator Charles Grassley in 1985. Grassley is still in office, and he's still republican (and pro-Iraq war). I can't help but wonder whether he didn't intentionally embed this loophole in there, then advise the Bush Administration to use it. It wouldn't have been a bad strategy.

The Plot Thickens (link)

For those who choose to say no to Bush, this latest NYT headline at first seems too good to be true: In Court Filings, Cheney Aide Says Bush Approved Leak. Could this be grounds for an impeachment? Unfortunately, it's not at juicy as it sounds unless he specifically authorized the disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity. Bush's lawyers appear to be making a catch-22 argument of his and Cheney's innocence from the crime of disclosing classified documents: Presidential verbal authorization to disclose is effectively declassification, they say. I wonder if there is a precedent for this, or if it's just something they made up: I wouldn't be surprised if they'd just made it up considering that the opinions of those formerly on their legal defense council like Stanford Law Professor John Yoo, appear to indicate that the president basically has the authority to do whatever he wants. It's hard to find someone guilty of anything if all they have to do is authorize their own behavior before doing it, so impeachment still seems unlikely.

Darn, the combover is patented!

I was just perusing the listing for recent winners of the ig nobel prize, and learned that the hairstyle known as the "combover" was successfully patented in 1977, which means that a lot should technically be paying royalties to a certain Frank and Donald Smith of Orlando, FL. It boggles my mind that the patent office actually granted this patent. Sorry if this seems irrelevant, but it does go to show how idiotic IP law is.

Some Criticism of the 9/11 documentary Loose Change, and its more-than-cult following

Having recently begun graduate school at Columbia, I’ve had the dubious opportunity to come in contact with a number of people whose views are a bit off the deep end of the left. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising considering that Columbia’s very namesake was Columbus, the notable pioneer whom everyone was convinced was going to sail right off the deep end of the left side of the earth, but instead “discovered” a whole new world. Unfortunately, many contemporary Columbian conspiracy theorists aren’t discovering a new world so much as “revising” an existing one. And they don’t have science on their side. Instead, all they can claim is a slew of “rising documentarians” like Dylan Avery who have a lot more questions than they have answers.

It all started with a friend of mine whose bicycle happens to also be a traveling protest. He baffled me one day with the assertion that the person behind 9/11 was none other than George W. Bush. I asked him if he had voted for Lyndon Larouche. He said no, that he couldn’t stand the guy. So I inferred that he wasn’t totally nuts, and that questioning the official story behind 9/11 must be more prevalent than I had previously thought. Less than a week later, a Ph.D. in computer science whom I consider to be very intelligent made the same assertion, referring me to the documentary Loose Change. I expected him to continue with a slew of “motivational” arguments of the form “look how much political capital The Bush Administration has gained from the attack”. I have very little patience for such arguments, because they are utterly devoid of evidence, and rely on the spurious logic that if someone benefits from something they must have caused it, which, if they’re feeling pretentious enough, they might falsely attribute to some philosopher like Foucault. But this person went right into questions of evidence, arguing that no plane ever even hit the pentagon, that it was instead a tomahawk missile. (pause for a moment to digest this)

The evidence? In the photos in the video, there are no skid marks on the lawn, not very much plane wreckage is visible, and the hole in the building was supposedly not wide enough to fit a plane. I’m not going to spend a lot of time boring people with the nitty gritty details, but there are no skid marks because the plane hit the building before it hit the ground, and the hole was wide enough. Mr. Avery asserts the hole was exactly 16 feet wide, but it’s hard to see how he gets this figure from photographs taken from a great distance. And why should we believe his numbers? The documentary is full of numbers and junk forensics that no one has any compelling reason to believe, but unfortunately, we all can’t help but believe, merely because it’s on a TV screen in front of us, and we’re programmed through years of CNN-watching to trust our television set. I imagine true believers won’t be satisfied with these criticisms, so I’d encourage them to do their own research, starting on wikipedia, snopes, and other sites that are somewhat apolitical. After years of interaction with holocaust revisions, I’ve come to believe that the only person who can disabuse you of your own crackpot notions is yourself, so I won’t try too hard.

Personally, I could not live a normal life anymore, going to class, parties, applying for jobs, etc… if I had even a mild suspicion that our government had masterminded 9/11. I’d feel like I had to join a militia and begin plotting a good old-fashion banana republic-style coup. I’m flabbergasted that so many people I run into are at least partially convinced that the content of this documentary is true, yet they continue to discuss it in the same breath as conversation about exams and sexuality (two other things which shouldn’t be discussed in the same breath). Even if they aren’t ready to start a militia to overthrow our tyrannical Orwellian brainwashers in Washington, I’d at least expect them to do some minimal research into the veracity of these claims before spouting them to my innocent ears over what had seemed like an enjoyable dinner.

Let me add that I am not a robot inserted in the matrix just to make this point. I was one of the few voices in 2002 and 2003 arguing based on the reports of U.N. weapons inspectors and defector testimony that there was no hard evidence of WMD in Iraq; I am not one to toe the government line for its own sake. I, too, found Loose Change extremely convincing until I stepped back and looked at criticisms. I hope others will do the same.

Ouch

"Justices ruled even more broadly, saying that Congress could directly demand military access on campus without linking the requirement to federal money."

Isn't this a total violation of the rights of private colleges? You might as well grant military recruiters the right the come into our homes to try to convince our kids to sign away their lives to the military while they're playing GI Joe.

Hate Comes To Columbia?

This is a response to the Op-Ed "Hate Comes to Columbia" by Chris
Kulawik and Josh Lipsky, heads of the College Republicans and the
College Democrats. In this piece, they criticize the invitation of
Professor Norman Finkelstein to a speaking engagement at Columbia
by United Students of Color Council, and other like-minded student
organizations. From the tone of the piece, one would have thought
Mr. Finkelstein were Hitler's lost brother. Yet the quotes of Mr.
Finkelstein they garnered are surprisingly un-provocative. It is
not necessarily "anti-Semitic" or "terrorist sympathizing" to say
"some of the things Bin Laden says are true", or that Holocaust
denial has provoked a "level of mental hysteria" among the Jewish
community, or to criticize those who profit from the tragedy of the
holocaust. Nor do I think it is in bad taste for Mr. Finkelstein to
criticize the concept of "Jewish choseness", considering that it
has led to a segregated Israeli state in which Palestinians are
second class citizens, if citizens at all. They also accuse Mr.
Finkelstein of Holocaust revisionism, but I see the editor has
wisely issued a correction. Far from being a "holocaust denier",
Mr. Finkelstein refers to his own parents as "holocaust survivors".
If this is all the criticism they can muster against Mr.
Finkelstein, then to say that he "spews hate" or to question his
professorship is inappropriate.
They also cite an argument made in the Yale Daily News which makes
an analogy to slavery, asking: "Would the university sponsor a
speaker who criticized the African-American community for
‘exploiting’ slavery and segregation? No—of course not—and rightly
so." It's interesting they would give this example, because
conservatives who get speaking engagements at Columbia and Yale
routinely make precisely this assertion when they accuse
affirmative action advocates of having a "victimization complex".
For instance, David Horowitz, who spoke at Columbia in 2003 (and
incidentally has a cover story in yesterday’s Spectator), paid for
ads across the country just a few years before attacking slavery
reparations. Horowitz asked the questions: "What about the debt
blacks owe to America? …Where is the gratitude of black America and
its leaders for those gifts?" Horowitz was implying blacks should be
grateful for their ancestors’ enslavement, and that they were
exploiting slavery by seeking reparations. This did not stop
Columbia from inviting Horowitz to a speaking engagement in 2003.
Now there’s a man who spews hate, yet judging from yesterday’s
front page Spectator article in which Horowitz accuses three
Columbia professors of "indoctrinating" students, Columbia is ready
and willing to listen to this man, despite his history of accusing
blacks of exploiting slavery. If Horowitz is given such credibility
despite his apparent hatefulness, clearly we should give Finkelstein
the same leeway, even if his opinions are shocking and
controversial.

To those who still question Mr. Finkelstein’s professorship, I would
encourage them to do a little online research on politically neutral
sites. According to Wikipedia, Finklestein initially achieved fame
for discrediting the 1984 historical bestseller "From Time
Immemorial", by Joan Peters. At the time, Finkelstein was virtually
the only person to criticize Peters’ demographic argument that most
of the Palestinians had only immigrated to Palestine in ’48 (this
argument was used to discredit Palestinian right to statehood).
Finkelstein’s assessment is now widely accepted; even Daniel Pipes,
the ideological equivalent of Ann Coultier with respect to Israel,
now acknowledges that Peters’ book "uses statistics sloppily, and
ignores inconvenient facts". Thus Kulawik and Lipsky’s claim that
Finkelstein "makes his living off of absurd statements that garner
comfortable speaking engagements" is extremely unfair. It is
difficult to deny that Finkelstein’s eternal questioning has led to
the debunking of myths about Israel that may have otherwise
perpetuated indefinitely.

In my opinion, the best assessment of a professor’s scholarship
comes not from the heads of political organizations, but from peers
in academia. Raul Hilberg, the foremost expert on the holocaust, has
this to say about Finkelstein’s much-maligned book:
"When I read Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry, at the time
of its appearance, I was in the middle of my own investigations of
these matters, and I came to the conclusion that he was on the
right track. I refer now to the part of the book that deals with
the claims against the Swiss banks, and the other claims pertaining
to forced labor. I would now say in retrospect that he was actually
conservative, moderate and that his conclusions are trustworthy. He
is a well-trained political scientist, has the ability to do the
reserch, did it carefully, and has come up with the right results.
I am by no means the only one who, in the coming months or years,
will totally agree with Finkelstein's breakthrough."

update: here's a good response piece in the spectator

Will Bush Eventually Overturn Rowe?

Prochoice republicans in new york I talk to tend to think the abortion issue is just a decoy, and that Bush would never overturn Rowe, simply because of the backlash it would provoke. But the fight seems to have just begun in South Dakota, where a bill is about to pass that bans ALL types of abortion except when the health of the mother is threatened.

This law is obviously in direct contradiction to Rowe v Wade and Parenthood v Casey. What's interesting is that the Gov. Mike Rounds of S.D. vetoed the same bill 2 years ago despite his publically stated interest in overturning Rowe:

"I do think that this court will ultimately take apart Roe v. Wade one step at a time," Rounds said.

It is clear that his decision to veto was purely strategic, because in his view "the best way to approach the elimination of abortion is one step at a time", rather than through a "frontal attack".

But now that Alito and Roberts are on the bench, there are only "5 pro-rowe judges", one of whom (Stevens) is very close to retiring. So by Rounds's political calculus, the supreme court might actually be ripe for a frontal assault on Rowe once this case makes it through the judicial pipeline.

Another oft stated argument is that Rowe won't actually be overturned, just weakened. But as Bush implied in his speech, if Dred Scott was overturned, why not Rowe?

Pro-choice republicans who are oblivious to this threat need to either take their blinders off, or admit that abortion rights simply aren't very important to them.

Update: (link) Looks like Governor Rounds is going through with it.

America's Hamas Pickle

Looks like Hamas smashed Fatah in Palestinian parliamentary elections 76 to 43, although Abbas is still president. Does this mean it will be impossible for the U.S. to continue providing aid the Palestinian government without having to arrest itself for "funding terrorists"? By U.S. law, you can be put in jail for providing funds to Hamas. Now the question is whether the same will apply to a Hamas led government. This event dovetails with the "trends" in South America Nathan has been pointing out. Sometimes I wonder whom U.S. policy has isolated more, Bush, or Bin Laden. I was going to title this America and Israel's Hamas pickle, but I'm afraid Israel's hard right government is probably delighted with this opportunity to escalate the conflict, and return to a policy of Israeli expansionism and landgrabbing. It's kind of scary and absurd that the sidelined Sharon just may be the only hope for peace, considering his genocidal history.

US Attacks Pakistan?!

(link) (link)

If Pakistan is really an ally country, you'd think the U.S. would at least get permission before launching airstrikes on villages in Pakistan. It's possible they did get permission and Pakistan is denying it to stave off popular opposition, but it doesn't look like it. And riots too! This type of action probably creates many more terrorists than it kills. Sad.

Update: This really sounds like a cover up. (link)

So now, Pakistan and the U.S. have declared that foreign terrorists were indeed killed in this attack even though no foreign bodies have been found and no eye witnesses in the village of Damadola where the attack took place have said that foreigners were present. U.S. and Pakistani officials, who weren't even there, are claiming the bodies of four foreign terrorists were secretly dragged away from the scene of the attack by their compatriots, based on the report of their "joint investigation team". But if they had real forensic evidence of their claim, you'd think they would say so... Who should we believe?

Clearly, the U.S. and Pakistani officials have an interest in claiming foreign terrorists were killed: The U.S. because it justifies their uninvited cross border assault on a defenseless Pakistani village that killed many innocent civilians; the Pakistanis, because the huge riots this attack has sparked have damaged the government's credibility with the people. By claiming terrorists were killed, Pakistan can hope to weaken the argument made increasingly by Pakistani political hardliners that the Musharoff government is a U.S. lapdog, and should be toppled.

To be fair, the residents of Damadola have an interest in claiming no terrorists were present, as they have all claimed, because to do otherwise would make it seem as if they were willingly harboring terrorists. But still, they were clearly the witnesses and deserve a bit more credibility than the "Pakistani provincial authorities" cited in the article. We'll see how this develops.

Update 2: More unverifiable evidence (link)

Final Update: Hey look. I was right. It really was a hoax. The supposedly dead terrorists have just resurfaced. The idiots in the white house who cooked this story up should have known this would happen! (link) I can only imagine what this sort of fiasco does to Pakistani public sentiment. It should be a reality check for our media outlets, who packaged this "terrorists killed" story as a virtual fact, then came back with egg on their face, vindicating Arab media sources that were more doubtful. Our media is constantly trying to perpetuate the view that Arab media sources don't report the truth to the people. When something like this happens, it should make us stop and think whether our media sources are really much more credible than theirs. Of course, I still think they are, but I can't imagine why anyone in Pakistan should after an incident like this. I wonder if this will spark more riots... The sad part is it might take more riots for this story to make the front page of U.S. newspapers, even though the initial false tales of terrorists killed were plastered across newspapers.

Bill Frist's "See No Evil" Stance On Stem Cell Research

Today, Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist made a speech (transcript here)endorsing government funding for the stem cell research President Bush banned in 2001. This is a good sign in the clash between science and religious fundamentalism, because his endorsement will probably force to the floor the bill that allows the stem cell research that Bush has vowed to veto, isolating Bush in his increasingly unpopular stance on the issue.
In his speech, Frist says:

I am pro-life, I believe human life begins at conception... I also believe that embryonic stem cell research should be encouraged and supported...Thus, with appropriate reservations, I will support the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act.

His position is that government funding should only be used to destroy human embryos if those embryos "would otherwise be discarded or destroyed". However, the human embryo being destroyed for research is already past the stage of conception. So it is difficult to see how any pro-life individual who believes that human life begins at conception (as Frist describes himself) could possibly support this research.

Bill Frist's defense is that these embryos were already going to be destroyed anyway, but doesn't that just beg the question of whether it is ethical for them to be destroyed in the first place? The process of in vitro fertilization has existed for years, with little criticism from pro-life activists of the fact that surplus fertilized eggs are routinely discarded, in effect, aborting what the pro-life camp calls "human beings". If Bill Frist really wants to be true to his conception-stage pro-life views, then not only should he oppose all stem cell research on the grounds that it murders "human beings", but he should also oppose the very process of in vitro fertilization, and any other process that produces fertilized eggs that "will be discarded".

Obviously, it would be that much more tiresome if the Bill Frist camp began to oppose basic medical procedures that are taken for granted to be morally sound, such as in vitro fertilization. Still though, if conception stage pro-lifers are ever going to come to their senses and compromise their position a bit, they need to realize the magnitude of the stance their position requires them to take. So critics shouldn't let them take the easy way out with phrases like "will be discarded", or, for that matter, Bush's policy of supporting research only on stem cell lines that were already created by what he considers to be illegal means. Both Bush and Frist are in effect taking "see no evil" positions, allowing government research to benefit from what they consider to be murder, but not allowing them to participate in it themselves.

They might as well just spare us the pretense, and allow scientists to do whatever they want, as long as they keep their hands over their eyes.

The Half Blood Prince: Seeing Social Commentary In Harry Potter

Brilliant novel. What has impressed me most about The Half Blood Prince, is JK Rowling's unwillingness to baby her readers like so many of the great children's authors, from CS Lewis to JRR Tolkien, have done. Those past authors simply couldn't bear to confront the issue of death with the honesty Rowling has. In those other works, strong, good characters could only die of natural causes, while gruesome, premature deaths were reserved for characters like Tolkien's Boromir, who had been led astray by evil. This babying approach tends to promote the fairytailish notion that death is somehow just. Rowling's deaths, on the other hand, promote an sense of the profound unfairness of life that really rings true in a world where geopolitics have become so dominated by terrorist threats. I see Dumbledore's naive trust as a metaphor for the trust that has allowed open-societies to flourish, but is now, sadly, coming apart at the seams.

Should abortion be defended as a "Good Thing", or a necessary evil?

Nathan Newman blogs that abortion should be defended as a "good thing", and that Howard Dean's statement to the contrary is "asisine":

If abortion is never a good thing, then why should anyone have the option to have one?"

One reason progressives are not as strong on the abortion issue is that we so rarely hear abortion defended on its merits. Instead, we have the religious right denouncing it as the equivalent of murder and slavery, and progressives essentially saying "that may be, but it's really none of your business if people are committing murder and slavery, now is it?" (Nathan
Newman)

Why should anyone have the option to have one? What kind of fascistic state does Nathan Newman thing we live in? McDonald's cheeseburgers are never a good thing healthwise, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't have a right to eat them.

Nathan also says pro-choice people should trumpet Steven Levitt's argument in Freakonomics that the legalization of abortion in the 70's is correlated to the drop in crime in the 90's (less unwanted babies means less robbers 20 years later).

Steven Levitt makes a good case for this correlation, but even he admits it's an awful way to defend abortion:

Levitt: I have gotten a whole lot of hate mail on the abortion issue (as much from the left as from the right, amazingly). What I try to tell anyone who will listen -- few people will listen when the subject is abortion -- is that our findings on abortion and crime have almost nothing to say about public policy on abortion. If abortion is murder as pro-life advocates say, then a few thousand less homicides is nothing compared to abortion itself. If a woman's right to choose is sacrosanct, then utilitarian arguments are inconsequential. Mainly, I think the results on abortion imply that we should do the best we can to try to make sure kids who are born are wanted and loved. And it turns out that is something just about everyone can agree on. (Steven Levitt, interviewed on kottke.org)

Abortion is either killing, or it's not killing. If it is killing, than our government would effectively be condemning people to death for "pre-crimes" by using lower crime statistics as a justification for pro-abortion policy. If it's not killing, then the policy shouldn't require this sort of Benthamesque calculus, and by going to the extents of applying it, the pro-choice crowd will actually seem to many to be conceding that it is killing.

Arguments for abortion must remain libertarian if they are to have any hope winning over support among the right, because the right exists as a not-so-delicate balance between religious moralism and libertarianism. They have little appeal for the "great society" championed by the democrats of old. Pro-choicers should reserve this argument strictly to liberals or socialist who, like some of the Christian Right, see the state as a better arbiter of good and bad than the individual.

Newman's argument is also a slippery slope towards forced abortion and/or sterilization, which was briefly experimented with in India under Indira Gandhi, with horrendous results. If abortion is a good thing sometimes, why not force it on pregnant poor people who don't seem like they'll be able to take care of their potential child? This would be the logical conclusion of a policy that gives greater value to the "social good" argument than the women's rights argument.