The Fallacy (?) of "Personally Opposed, But..."

The Fallacy of "Personally Opposed, But..." - The American Spectator

Daniel Allott thinks the "Personally opposed, but..." stance is fallacious. He is wrong about that.

He starts out with a quote.

"I'm in the same position now that I was 12 years ago, when I ran for mayor, or as mayor, which is personally opposed to abortion, don't like it, hate it, would advise that woman have an adoption, rather than an abortion. And I will help you find the money for it. ...But it's your choice. It's an individual right. You get to make that choice."
-- Rudy Giuliani, CNN interview, April 5, 2007

Sounds reasonable to me. Sounds respectful of other people's views.

Back in 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry insisted he was "personally opposed" to abortion; Hillary Clinton has called it "a sad, tragic choice"; and Barack Obama has described it as a "personal tragedy."

So what? Though I'm not personally opposed to abortion, even I would just as soon it didn't happen. I'd much prefer that people took care to avoid a generally avoidable medical procedure. Even I don't think abortion is a good means of birth control.

If he didn't consider the unborn child a human being and/or didn't think that abortion hurt women, there would be little reason for him to oppose it, especially with words like "wrong," "hate" and "tragedy."

In other words, if the child in utero were merely a "cluster of cells" and if the effects of abortion on women were "mainly positive," as Planned Parenthood insists, why would anyone oppose it on a personal, or any, level?

No one would, of course, which is what makes the "personally opposed, but..." position so dishonest (and why it is in a very real sense a more deplorable position than that of the abortion advocate who fails to recognize the essence of abortion).

What?? That no one would oppose abortion if pro-choice views were correct makes the "personally opposed, but..." stance dishonest? Come on, that doesn't follow. Coming from someone claiming to point out a fallacy it borders on being dishonest itself.

To acknowledge the grave injustice of abortion yet still promote its perpetuation is like saying: "I'm opposed to slavery but...

No, it is not. Slavery involves the criminal denial of another autonomous person's human rights.

But, Mr. Allott is likely to protest, the "cluster of cells" IS a person.

No, it is not. It might become a person, but it is not a person. A person is not defined by the DNA in his cells, nor by the stage of development of cells containing DNA. The "cluster of cells" is no more a person than it is a chimp or a tumor. Or a slave.

In the end, the "personally opposed, but..." position on abortion cloaks itself in reason and compassion; but, it is merely a rhetorical device that shields the politician who refuses to follow through on in public what he purports to believe in private.

In some cases, "personally opposed, but..." is simply pragmatic, something it is necessary to do, rather like going to church in this country. I'm sure that there are good and honest people of faith involved in politics. There are also good and honest people of NO faith involved in politics, but to be there they have to indulge Nature's little while lie.

In other cases, "personally opposed, but..." reflects respect for the views of others, and a sense of freedom lacking in those who would impose their implausible beliefs on others.

Different strokes for different folks.

President Bush Infuriates Me Sometimes

I have no illusions about the informative value of television news, but for some silly reason I still check it out in the evenings, though less and less as time goes by. Cervantes' rant is right on the money.

Last night the tube brought us a rambling discourse from the President about Iraq war funding legislation that he's about to receive, and which he will veto due to inclusion of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. As he yammered and stammered, Mr. Bush accused the Congress of a sin along the lines of making military decisions for the military.

That was a bit much for me, and I'm not particularly happy about having yelled "ASSHOLE!" at the image on the screen in the presence of my son. If Mr. Bush's administration hadn't been so guilty of precisely that sin, maybe Iraq wouldn't be the hopeless tar pit it is today.

Black Sabbath returns to tour with '80s lineup

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Guess where I'm going tonight?

Black Sabbath returns to tour with '80s lineup

Hey, I know of at least a few people in that building that'll be as old or older than yours truly. ;>)

Ozzy is off doing another gig. That's Ronnie James Dio on vocals tonight.

"Heaven and Hell". It should be fun.

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Tardy update:

This will be the last show I attend at the Dodge Theater in Phoenix. It's a nice enough venue, but I am completely incompatible with the acoustics there. On top of not caring for the first band, and not being much of a fan of the second, both played so loud that my clothing was fluttering in the sound pressure waves, vocals were unintelligible, and frequencies higher than about 500 Hz all mixed into a deafening hiss. I found myself wishing for a sound level meter to satisfy curiosity, and when I walked out to the entryway to get away from it, it wasn't enough. I had to go outside the building for a while. Crazy. It reminded me of being on the turbine deck, or even the compressor area, of a large power plant (where you'd get in trouble for not having your earplugs in place) without earplugs.

When I came back in during the break before Sabbath and was asked where I'd been, my "It was too goddamn loud!" was met with two or three incredulous "No!"s, and one guy in the row in front of us said, "That's an old guy talking." Well, that's true enough, but I've been to a lot of shows and this was bad.

For some reason Black Sabbath sounded better than the two preceding bands (Machinehead and Megadeth). Sabbath was loud, too, but somehow I was able to make out Dio's lyrics and the higher frequencies weren't as muddled. Maybe they played a bit lower, maybe they played a bit better, maybe they played with better equipment, I don't know.

In any event, no more rock shows at Dodge Theater for me.

"You're going to leave her dead."

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Diario La Hora. Deporte.

Somehow, I don't think this ad would cut it in the sports section of, oh, say, the New York Times.

Translated, it reads:

You're going to leave her dead.
Actra-RX - Sexual Power

• Superior to all the others
• Free delivery throughout the republic
• Telephone...

Hmmm...

Of course, "dead" is actually a, what, metaphor?, for "absolutely satiated".

Whatever...

Supernatural Superstition

Al Jazeera English - News:

'We don't want to expose Muslims to supernatural and superstitious beliefs,' the Berita Harian newspaper quoted [Abdul Shukor Husin, National Fatwa Council chair,] as saying.

Oh My ...

Growing In Grace

Well, since I think an omnipotent God is perfectly within His rights and capabilities to be anything to anyone, this guy could actually be for real.

Naaaa...

Moustache, La (2005)

Moustache, La (2005)

La Moustache is quite a good movie. Some reviewers seem to have interpreted it differently, but I thought it portrayed a man, from his own perspective, falling into schizophrenia.

I probably just revealed my ignorance of schizophrenia, but there you have it. Good flick. Well acted, well filmed, generally nice characters, good story.

French with English subtitles.

BBC NEWS | Americas | BC cartoonist dies while drawing

BBC NEWS | Americas | BC cartoonist dies while drawing

I like that he died at his storyboard. If you've gotta go, what better way than quickly while doing what you love.

BC and The Wizard of Id are two of my favorite cartoons.

Long live Johnny Hart.

Guatemalan Indian Child by Valerius

I guess it was back in the early 60's that my Mother had a painter friend who went by the name Valerius. He was European, if memory serves, but he wasn't the Belgian Valerius who died in 1946, or the Russian Valerius who was born in 1969.

My wife and I have had this painting since I don't know when. Today I was playing around with a new cellphone that incorporates a camera, and was looking for things to take pictures of, and so here it is.

Actually, no. The one in this post I took with my more suitable Olympus Stylus 300 Digital camera. The cellphone version is here, but it's not a fair comparison. I took the cellphone version while the picture was on the wall in a fairly dark hallway, whereas for the Olympus version, I took the painting outside into full daylight and used the flash (not to mention a few more pixels with greater color depth, and a better lens). Just for grins, I think I'll give the cellphone camera another shot at a fairer comparison.

I've always liked this painting. I think Valerius caught the child's tears just about right. Her hand, nervously at her mouth, adds a little something I don't think I've seen in any other painting.

I remember meeting this Valerius, but I don't remember anything else about him. I think my Mother met him in her capacity as number two in the Guatemalan tourist commission, where she was, naturally enough, heavily involved in promoting tourism to Guatemala (something she loved doing, and carried on by establishing a travel agency with a couple of partners when she left the tourist office).

I'm glad I got that silly cellphone camera. Now I appreciate this painting a little bit more.

Leaving Las Vegas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leaving Las Vegas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Why did I watch this movie? I saw that it was playing on one of the cable movie channels, and that Elizabeth Shue and Nicholas Cage were in it, and I recognized the title, so I told the DVR to record it without knowing what it was about.

The acting was great, and the story was compelling, but what a bummer of a movie! I don't know whether Cage's acting the drunk was good or not. I've been around drunks before, even been drunk myself, but I've never been around anyone quite that far gone. I've heard of DT's but never seen them. If they are anything like what Cage portrayed, that's some scary shit.

According to the Wikipedia article, the movie got very good reviews. Cage got an Oscar for Best Actor and Shue a nomination for Best Actress. It was very well done, but why did I watch this movie? Why did they make it? Why not make another movie about drawn-out suicide, or even painful death by cancer, say? I'm sure someone in the industry could create an Oscar-worthy film along those lines, but why?

On the other hand, why do Blackhawk Down, Hotel Rwanda or Reservoir Dogs? Straw Dogs? Deliverance?

Never mind.

Common Grace

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WARREN: The truth is, religion is mutually exclusive. The person who says, "Oh, I just believe them all," is an idiot because the religions flat-out contradict each other. You cannot believe in reincarnation and heaven at the same time.

Why the hell not? Who is this pastor to question the capabilities of a being he claims is omnipotent? Why is God's mystery stopped by this pastor's church's dogma?

I've never heard a person say anything like, "Oh, I just believe them all." Maybe what's really being said to this pastor is a more polite version of, "I don't care. Just stop preaching at me."

I'm amazed that Harris has the energy to keep plugging away. I wouldn't. More power to Sam Harris.

Vista (and iTunes video playback)

About three weeks ago I bought a Windows laptop computer at Costco (sorry Apple, I would have preferred a Mac but I could not afford the one I'd have been satisfied with). Nowadays these things all come with Windows Vista, which, being new to me, made Costco's generous return policy especially important. The machine I bought is an "HP Pavilion dv6253cl Entertainment Notebook PC".

So far so good. Pretty much. A couple of things have bothered me, though.

I've not been partial to Symantec security products for some time, but that's what's bundled with the machine so I'm using it for now. Along the way, something prompted me to run Microsoft's free online "Windows Live OneCare Safety Scan for Windows Vista" (beta). Son of a gun if it didn't report several instances of something called "Trojan:HTML/Bankfraud.M" buried in some gzip files in my Firefox cache. I don't know why Norton didn't notice these things on the way in, nor am I all that confident it wasn't a false positive by OneCare. What I know is that, for reasons rational or not, I have more confidence in Kaspersky and will buy a second license to put on my laptop.

The other thing that bothered me was the incompatibility with iTunes. I read all I could find about the incompatibility that's widely known and figured it would be no big deal. It hasn't been a big deal and iTunes is working well on my new computer. With one exception, that is: video playback. Watching videos with iTunes on Vista was only possible if a slow slide show would have been acceptable. The video playback remedies on Apple's website had no effect. Scratch videos on iTunes.

Now it turns out there's an issue with iTunes on Vista with SATA hard drives, and that's what's been bothering me all along. A post on the iTunes support forum said the poster had been able to get videos to play properly by copying them to a flash drive to avoid the SATA hard drive. Sure enough, when I tried my thumb drive the video played beautifully.

I suppose Apple or Microsoft will have this problem fixed before too long. When they do, I'll be about as satisfied with this new computer and this new operating system as I expected to be.

As I type I'm reminded that the keyboard seems to be defective, failing to register spacebar strokes rather frequently. Maybe it's just some stickiness that'll clear up with usage. In fact, I think I just cleared it up by forcefully striking the right side of the spacebar a few times. It's OK as I type now.

If I had to do it over again, I would. I think Vista is solid enough, and will get better as issues are discovered and patches issued.

The art of fooling around

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BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The art of fooling around

I was a little young to have noticed the BBC spaghetti hoax, but one of the best April Fool hoaxes I've seen was, if memory serves, an NBC News piece by John Chancelor 30 years or so ago. It was a report on the state of the pickle crop, complete with footage of the pickle orchard, workers and all.

Scientific American has had some memorable April Fool pieces, too. One I remember was about how you could increase the mass of a block of gold by simply cutting it up in a certain way, and then put it back together again in a different form. The article started out by showing how you could increase the area of a piece of paper by cutting it into a certain pattern and then put the pieces back together differently. They then extrapolated to three dimensions to increase the volume of the block of gold.

I'm happy to say I didn't fall for it, but I didn't spot the trick right away, either.

Another Scientific American April Fool piece was about a method for connecting one end of a wire to a stationary base, and the other end to a rotating platform, in such a way that the wire would not be twisted when the rotating platform rotated. The piece was complete with detailed drawings of a lab device with a conduit passing through the axis of the rotating platform with a geared mechanism to change the relationship of the wire conduit to the rotating platform as it rotated. Something like that. This may be my favorite April Fool joke of all time.

April Fool?

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

What Pete said.

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus" is a very sticky meme.

It will be interesting, and revealing, to see what the Supremes do in this case.

Then and Now

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I wonder where Tony Auth was about four years ago when this version of his cartoon should have been published?

Cliff Kincaid is full of shit

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This guy Cliff Kincaid is, at best, overly self-assured.

But the dangers associated with marijuana go far beyond mental confusion and acting like a buffoon. It destroys a person’s productive capacity and can help make people either wards of the state, unable to take care of themselves, or criminals.

Oh, no!! Not only that, but Richard Allen Davis murdered Polly Klass while he was high!

Cliff Kincaid is full of shit.

Along with the Independent, maybe Cliff ought to read from the Guardian across the street:

Alcohol is ranked almost as harmful as heroin in a controversial new drug classification system proposed by a team of leading scientists. ...

Cannabis, recently downgraded to class C, occupies a middle position. It is rated more dangerous than Ecstasy, LSD and the dance floor drug GHB, but less harmful than tobacco [and much less harmful than alcohol].

The table, published in The Lancet medical journal, was drawn up by a team of highly respected scientists led by Professor David Nutt, from the University of Bristol, and Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council.

Cliff should have read the Forbes piece:

Heroin and cocaine were ranked most dangerous, followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was the fifth-most harmful drug and tobacco the ninth most harmful. Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was Ecstasy.

Hey Cliff, since you're such a conservative, I bet you support the Court's decision approving Interstate Commerce Clause application in the Raich case (about legal medical marijuana, "commerce" involving no money, and "interstate" crossing no state lines). You must think civil forfeiture is the best thing since flush toilets. As a good conservative, you must think $60B down the drain, every year, is a good use of your tax money.

I think I'll stop before I type something impolite.

Optimistic Pessimism or Pessimistic Optimism?

Iraqis: life is getting better

The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.

Pessimism 'growing among Iraqis'

A new survey paints a pessimistic picture of Iraqis' confidence in their own government and in coalition forces.

Oh. OK.

Voting for Catholics

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Catholic politicians get strict orders from pope - International Herald Tribune

BOLOGNA: Pope Benedict XVI strongly reasserted Tuesday the church's opposition to abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage, saying that Catholic politicians were "especially" obligated to defend the church's stance in their public duties.

"These values are non-negotiable," the pope wrote in a 130-page "apostolic exhortation" issued in Rome, forming a distillation of opinion from a worldwide meeting of bishops at the Vatican in 2005.

"Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce laws inspired by values grounded in human nature."

So, if a politician is a good Catholic, he's got to vote against three positions I hold:

• that gay and lesbian people are people entitled to all the rights I enjoy
• that euthanasia can be the most humane option in certain circumstances
• that every woman has the right of abortion

If the politician is not a good Catholic, why is he or she a Catholic at all? Such a person ought to bolt the Church in favor of another. The Unitarians would let them enjoy the sorts of social benefits attributed to churchgoing while indulging particular spiritual needs.

I happen to think the honest politician would acknowledge his or her non-theism, politically suicidal though it might be (I'm pretty sure many, maybe most, US politicians are closet non-theists).

"Non-negotiable". Right.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Morocco's war on cannabis

BBC NEWS | Africa | Morocco's war on cannabis

The Moroccan government says it plans to completely eradicate cannabis by 2008.

And I will be elected President of the United States that very same year! Imagine that.

The UNODC [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] says the biggest challenge is finding other ways farmers like Mohammed can survive.

"There have been lots of past attempts to find alternative crops, but they haven't always worked, because cannabis is a crop that commands such an inflated price," explained Abdeslam Dahmane from development agency Targa which works closely with the UNODC.

"There have been attempts at introducing apples, vines and things like that but they haven't really addressed the problem.

"It's not a question of replacing cannabis with apples, vines or avocados. The question is replacing the incredibly dynamic economy of cannabis, with an equally dynamic economy - that is also legal."

Alternative crops "haven't always worked", eh? Alternative crops "haven't really addressed the problem"?

Alternative crops haven't "addressed the problem"? What is the problem, anyway? What's the problem really? It starts with a "P". Come on, UNODC, you can do it if you try. Just say it. Come on...

Ah... I give up.

One more time, UNODC, you're almost there: "It's not a question of replacing cannabis with apples, vines or avocados. The question is replacing the incredibly dynamic economy of cannabis, with an equally dynamic economy - that is also legal."

"... that is also legal." Come on, you're so close! Say it! "P". "R". "O". "H". ...

Damn! They're either stubborn or corrupt.

OK, once more: "... the incredibly dynamic economy of cannabis". Please! Just try. Think about it. Why is there an "incredibly dynamic economy of cannabis"?

Try! "P". "R". ...

Khalid Zerouali from the Moroccan Interior Ministry says Europe's seemingly insatiable demand for cannabis is still the main obstacle to eradicating it completely.

No shit, Sherlock.

"I think in Europe there has to be an awareness of how to tackle that demand."

Please, exactly what awareness is that? Police the crap out of them? Seal their borders? Spread the incredibly powerful meme of "Just say no"?

It is thought that the urgency with which they are now acting stems from international pressure to address the drug problem.

Some intelligence experts believe the militant group which bombed trains in Madrid in 2004 was largely funded by cannabis trafficking.

And why were they able to be largely funded by cannabis trafficking (assuming, as unlikely as it may be, that such is not just a bunch of drug warrior bullshit)? Why would these terrorists have been able to fund themselves through cannabis trafficking as opposed to, say, trafficking in lettuce or squash?

Cheap Compact Fluorescent Lamps

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I've been using compact fluorescent lamps almost exclusively for ten years or more. I pay the extra price in the name of the energy efficiency that everyone claims for them. Even so, I've always been skeptical about claims of energy efficiency, especially when I start to think about the energy embedded in CFL lamps. Just looking at the two types of lamps (CFL and incandescent) I have to conclude that the energy it takes to assemble a CFL is many times greater than what it takes to make a standard incandescent bulb.

One of the reasons I've been skeptical about all this is because CFL's, in my experience, never seem to deliver the hours of service claimed by the manufacturers. I don't care how efficient a lamp may be, energy return on energy investment is compromised by poor durability (and greatly so, I think). I rather suspect that, all things considered, in the aggregate I've been using more, not less, energy by using CFLs. Who knows, though? In the summertime my air conditioner would work even harder if it had to deal with extra heat from incandescents. Maybe it's all a wash.

In the past couple of years I've taken to marking each CFL with the date it entered service in order to get a better sense of this. It's stupid, but when a CFL I've marked has failed, I generally just glanced at the date, bolstering my suspicion, and screwed in a replacement CFL.

This morning, though, I took the time to think about this a little bit.

A 26 watt (100 watt equivalent (yeah yeah, I know)) CFL that I had installed on November 9 2005 (480 days ago) failed in the bathroom. The bathroom has to be one of the more severe environments for a light bulb because of the number of on/off cycles as well as total running time. I thought about the usage pattern in that bathroom and figured that the lamp probably experienced about 15 on/off cycles per day, averaging 20 minutes or so of on time per cycle, which came to about 6 hours on per day. Over its cumulative service life of about 2880 hours, this bulb would have gone through about 75 kilowatt hours of energy, costing about $6 at 8 cents per kilowatt hour. It would have gone through about 7200 on/off cycles in the process.

Now, 2880 hours in nowhere near the lifetime claimed by CFL manufacturers. According to the EPA's Energy Star website, these things ought to last 6,000 hours or more.

Well, after a bit of looking around I found a document about durability testing of CFLs. The part that caught my eye was about stress testing, where they cycled CFLs on and off for the lamp's lifetime (five minutes on, five minutes off). What they found was that two manufacturers' lamps failed "very prematurely". Here's the relevant figure (click it for a bigger view):



I generally buy whatever CFLs Costco, Home Depot or Walmart are selling, which I assume are the cheapest things they can find. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the lamps I buy are from the two sub-par manufacturers. I know the test cycle pattern doesn't match the usage of CFLs installed in my bathroom, but from the results of the test and my own experience, it seems reasonable to look for higher quality lamps. I'll see what the people at Lights of America have to say, and otherwise try to identify higher quality CFLs to buy. If I'm still here in a few years maybe I'll remember to post how the better lamps perform. On the other hand, maybe I'll revert to lower-wattage halogen incandescent bulbs for the bathroom. Apparently moisture can affect CFL's, so maybe I'll go with a higher-quality weatherproof CFL for the bathroom.

Should government ban incandescent bulbs, as is being done in Australia and as California is considering? Well, it seems to me highly likely that if we ban incandescents without, at the same time, banning sub-par CFLs like those in the graph above (presumably what I've been buying), it seems that such a ban would be worse, from a global perspective and considering embedded energy, than doing nothing.

What he said.

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Online Sportsbooks, Sportsbook Reviews, Sports Forums at MajorWager:

'It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.' - 16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln

Well, I don't know about that, but it sounds good.

Bill Maher remarked that marijuana is one of the only vices where we base public policy on the worst segment of the population. Online gambling is another. Sure, online gambling will have some addicts. But it already does, and those addicts are certainly not going to call it quits just because it is a little harder to get money out to the Caribbean. They will find a way to get it there, and, if not, they will find another way to get that same gambling fix, whether it be horseracing down the street, lottery at the corner bar, or feeding a few 20's into an Indian casino the next county over.

If prohibition is designed to protect the small fraction of people who will harm themselves, then there should be a lot more bans forthcoming. Alcohol (almost 17,000 DUI deaths in 2005 alone) and tobacco (kills about 1200 people per day) should be first on the ban list, far ahead of marijuana and gambling. Then of course we have to ban spray paint and gasoline (someone might "huff" them), cold medications (might be used to make methamphetamines), and, of course, the real killer, trans-fat. Fortunately, New York City is well ahead of the rest of the country on solving that problem.

The fact is, it is downright silly to assume that you can get rid of our vices through prohibition.

I don't gamble because I'm not good at it, I always lose, and I don't enjoy it. When I go to Vegas I drop a couple of dollars in the slots and that's it. I very rarely buy a lottery ticket. I've never been in an Indian casino, and I've never visited a gambling website. State sanctioned lotteries strike me as the height of hypocrisy.

But this column's thrust is correct (though I think the author should have avoided mentioning medical marijuana because I can't conceive of any gambling analogue). He's right, though: Prohibition is the problem.

Shelbyville Times-Gazette: Story: Readers respond to global warming issue

Shelbyville Times-Gazette: Story: Readers respond to global warming issue:

...evolutionary ecologist Eric Pianka told a Texas audience that 90 percent of the world's population should be eliminated by an airborne Ebola virus.

He received a standing ovation for his 'humane' remarks.

That is not true. What's it called when you repeat an untruth? A lie? Yes, that's it. A lie. It's a lie that Pianka advocates genocide by ebola, and it's a lie that his standing ovation was for any such suggestion.

People like Reid say they care about the future of humanity, but their ideas are usually at the expense of individual humans.

Well, of course! It's the mass of individual humans that is the source of the problem, so how could it be otherwise?

Four Innocents Murdered in Mistaken Drug Hit

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Update:
Well, well, well... The four killer policemen have been killed.
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Or so the story goes went.

Three El Salvadoran delegates to the Central American Congress were traveling by car in neighboring Guatemala (to or from some official function), with a driver. They were ambushed and all four were killed.

Now four Guatemalan police officers have been arrested for the crime. They were supposed to be off investigating theft from cargo containers, but instead, the GPS tracking device in their vehicle placed them at the scene of the crime at the time of the crime.

Guatemalan authorities have implicated at least one Salvadoran in the crime. This Salvadoran apparently had phone conversations with the chief of an organized crime police unit, and with one of the arrested officers, before, during and after the crime. Now, according to the Guatemalan paper, Prensa Libre:

Los policías capturados comentaron que fueron contratados para cometer el crimen por un grupo de narcotraficantes de Jalpatagua, Jutiapa, que tiene nexos con una organización en El Salvador.

The captured policemen said they were contracted to commit the crime by a group of drug traffickers from Jalpatagua, [a city in the department (state) of Jutiapa, Guatemala] which has ties with an organization in El Salvador.

When I read crap like this it causes my contempt for United States drug policy and the War on Some Drugs to surface for a while. Stupid stupid stupid! We breed corruption, finance terror, diminish our own supposedly precious freedoms, waste some $60 billion (with a "b") yearly, and foster disrespect and hatred with our idiotic policies. And for what?

The thing is, for all I know (and it's not too outlandish a possibility) it was a "legitimate" hit. As in, the delegates to the Central American Congress "deserved" to be hit by a rival syndicate.

Whatever.

How can we be so dumb? Or is it that our corrupt are good at keeping us that way?

Other coverage here.
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Robert Randolph and The Family Band

I happened to catch PBS's Austin City Limits last night on TV. Though I had missed about half of it, thanks to the magic of the DVR, when I pushed the record button it snagged the whole thing, which I watched this morning.

Outstanding! The band was joined by a few of Randolph's mentors, so this may be a special show worth keeping an eye out for. Local listings can be linked from here.

I wasn't familiar with Robert Randolph and The Family Band, but now I am. If I get a chance to see them in concert, I probably will.

Here's a sample from YouTube. The Wikipedia article links to Archive.org, which has a collection that's probably worthwhile (though I have not checked it out).

The Authoritarians

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The Authoritarians

Professor Bob Altemeyer, University of Manitoba, Department of Psychology, brought to some prominence by former Nixon lawyer John Dean, has apparently spent most of his life studying authoritarianism. He's releasing his new book, The Authoritarians, on the internet, he says,

...partly because this book would never have rung up big sales. I did make one attempt to place it with a trade publisher, but when their editor said no I stopped acting out of habit and started reflecting. I think what I have found is rather important to the survival of American democracy. As such, it should be made available to everyone, and be essentially free. The “www” makes this possible...

In Chapter 1, which is as far as I've gotten, there is the RWA Scale. "This survey is part of an investigation of general public opinion concerning a variety of social issues." He gives three reasons why one should take a personal score with some salt, and says his presentation of the survey in the book is to have the reader "experience for yourself the instrument used to identify and study authoritarian followers." And so on. It's pretty interesting so far.

I guess I'm a salty anti-authoritarian (I scored 34 on the survey), but I have mixed emotions about the issue. I worry that a preponderance of my mindset within the superorganism I inhabit may be suicidal (to my superorganism, that is). If there's to be a clash of memeplexes, and it seems likely that there is at least one serious clash in its early stages, it seems likely that the more cohesive memeplex (which I think implies "the most authoritarian memeplex" under present circumstances) may be the stronger. Is this self-evident or stupid?

Is it conceivable that an anti-authoritarian society could possess a ruthlessness sufficient to deal with this sort of clash? Is such ruthlessness conceivably compatible with a liberal society? Is such ruthlessness even necessary in such a clash?

I think the answer to the last question is probably "Yes". What, beside ruthlessness, will enable an anti-authoritarian society to survive in the face of conflict with a highly authoritarian and otherwise highly incompatible one, especially as the latter acquires the means, through various technologies and asymmetries, to threaten great or even terminal harm to the former?

Dunno. Given the trajectories of various other trends, it may not even matter. Sorry.

Hat tip to Pete Guither.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Que Sera composer Ray Evans dies

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Que Sera composer Ray Evans dies

What a great song. It's probably the most pleasurable earworm I get from time to time, and probably the song that's been burned into my memory longer than any other. I'm glad the authors had such long lives, and I hope they were good lives up until the very end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6WDdZ6xaPg
or

Beliefnet.com: Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan

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Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan on Faith, Religious Tolerance, Moderates, Islam, Atheism, Letter to a Christian Nation -- Beliefnet.com

The other day my wife mistakenly deleted from the Tivo a program I was in the middle of watching, a back and forth involving Sam Harris (The End of Faith) and Reza Aslan (No god but God), moderated by Jonathan Kirsch (A History of the End of the World). I'm not prone to reading such books, but being somewhat familiar with Sam Harris I thought it would be interesting to see how he would do.

The program was gone from the Tivo, but BookTV sometimes makes their programs available over the internet, so I queried Google (which way I frequently find what I'm looking for more readily than by directly searching at the website of interest).

Book TV was only the second among Google's hits. The first hit turned out to be to the blog of Brian Flemming, the filmmaker who did the documentary, The God Who Wasn't There. A few posts down Flemming's blog was a link to the subject exchange between Harris and Sullivan on Beliefnet. That looked interesting so I followed the link.

I still haven't finished watching the Book TV segment, but I've read the exchange between Harris and Sullivan on Beliefnet. It's a civil exchange, and Sullivan seems to be a reasonable guy, but I thought he did a lot of eloquent sidestepping and arm waving. Shermer's bit about smart people being good at rationalizing came to mind.

To the meager extent I think any of this matters, I remain firmly sympathetic to Harris' position.

BBC NEWS | Health | Legal battle over 'right to die'

BBC NEWS | Health | Legal battle over 'right to die':

Dr Peter Saunders, campaign director for the Care Not Killing Alliance said: 'This is a very sad case but what is really needed is not a change in the law to allow lethal injections but access to the highest quality of palliative care to those who need it.'

And when that "highest quality of palliative care" doesn't work, it's ethical to deny the suffering patient autonomy?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Branson launches $25m climate bid

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Branson launches $25m climate bid:

They are looking for a method that will remove at least one billion tonnes of carbon per year from the atmosphere.

I wonder how large a pile of diamonds that would be?

Other scientists are also looking at schemes that might "scrub" the air of CO2, collecting the gas for safe storage; but many critics say the energy required to achieve this would make such an approach self-defeating.

Nonsense. It depends entirely on the source of that energy. This criticism assumes a fossil source, but there are others.

Red Flags

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Stern assumptions 'implausible':

Some climate scientists were predicting 'another ice age' in the next 100 years, Lord Lawson added...

That's a big red flag. Once a person has repeated the canard about supposed past projections of an impending ice age I read no further. Where there's bullshit there's probably more bullshit.

Other red flags include inability to model climate given weather forecasting difficulties and derision of global warming based on cold weather here and there. There are others.

A week or so ago Larry King had an economist on who said, essentially, that we ought not burden the economy with carbon concerns because by 2050 the expanding economy would raise the average Bangla Deshi to a $30,000 standard of living, making them better able to adapt to the consequences of global warming like the flooding of their sea-level country.

Lord Lawson said Britain would see "great benefits" from climate change over the next 100 years.

Oh, OK then.

Ice Halo Pics

Here are the ice halo pictures I took in Minneapolis last Friday. I should have tried for a shot including the sun, but I was in a hurry.



The shot below was taken through a tinted third floor window a little while after the one above.



Pretty day. I started to write something about wishing I could have spent it outside instead of in a classroom, but then I remembered how cold it was. I think it was around 6 degrees at the time. Later on it warmed up a bit, to the mid-teens or so, but there was enough wind to make flags unfurl completely. Going to and from the car was more than enough outside time for me.

Unity08: Select & Elect a Unity Ticket in the 2008 Presidential Race |

Unity08: Select & Elect a Unity Ticket in the 2008 Presidential Race

Yes, I am inclined to vote for a bipartisan ticket in 2008, as long as they don't do something stupid like nominate operators like Carville/Matalin.

Some people are against this effort because they see another spoiler. I don't care about that. As long as this thing turns out to be what it seems now to be, I say more power to them.

Here's what I'm looking for, in no particular order:

• Pro-nuclear energy and pro- other atmospherically benign energy sources with significant positive net energy. (If they promote corn ethanol I'll know they're not serious.)
  
• Effective administration of the death penalty
• End that massive stupidity of a drug war
• End earmarks
• Establish independent ethics watchdogs. None of this business of We won't go after yours if you don't go after ours.
• Modernize the nuclear arsenal. Have the best military, able to prevail in two simultaneous wars. DO NOT engage the military in police work or building democracy. If there's a need for military intervention, be bloody-minded, get the job done as quickly as possible, then get out
• Direct the country's (and the countries') attention to the need for sustainability.
  
• Promote family planning
• Immigration reform
• and so on

Brrr2

Looks like I got out of there just in time!



No, seriously...

I didn't get to see much of Minneapolis, spending most of my time in a classroom, hotel or restaurant out in the Plymouth area, but I left with a favorable impression of the place. The weather was quite cold, low 20's and below, with a couple of inches of crunchy snow on the ground. I very much prefer that to 35 degrees and slushy.

I hadn't been in weather like that since leaving northern Idaho 21 years ago. I seem to remember winters in Idaho that didn't see temperatures above about 25 for weeks and months on end. The most beautiful day I've ever experienced was during very cold weather like that. I wish I had a picture of one particular morning during which the temperature must have been -25 or so, ice crystals in the air sparkled all over a cloudless sky, wood smoke from every chimney rose in ruler-straight lines until encountering a layer of moving air quite a distance above our town, and the silence was complete. As cold as it was, I was perfectly comfortable outside in shirtsleeves. For a while. Gorgeous day.

I got some pictures of an ice halo (kind of like this) that turned out OK. This picture from the archives of NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day page is better, of course, but I'll put mine here when I get it off the camera. There's a good explanation of the ice halo linked from the NASA page.

If I had to chose, I'd prefer to live where the weather gets really cold, like Minneapolis, than where it just gets sloppy, wet cold. Given my druthers, though, I'd stay here in Phoenix where we don't have to shovel the heat. Yes, it gets hotter than blazes for a while during the summer, but the other nine months are excellent payback. That you can probably survive more easily without air conditioning in Arizona than without heat in Minneapolis is a factor in my energy-worried mind, too.

It's good to be home.

Brrr...

Guess where I get to spend this week.

Amazing Interactive Infoporn

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I'm blown away by Gapminder, an amazing presentation of various world stats from the folks at Google.

I don't know about the stats themselves (I assume they're OK), but the presentation is mind-blowing. SciAm said

Finally, and Not To Be Missed Under Any Circumstances: The Gapminder World, which is only the world's most fantastic and amazing piece of interactive infoporn you have ever laid eyes on. Really.

Well, that's certainly true for me.

The West and Islam: "Hurray! We're Capitulating!" - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

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The West and Islam: "Hurray! We're Capitulating!" - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

Good piece.

Why didn't we see the handwriting on the wall when there was still time?

Some did. Some do. Doesn't matter.

For those facing a hopeless situation and powerless to change it, self-deception offers at least some succor.

So, what can be done? Were I dictator I'd have a policy of "assimilate or out". When in Rome, do as the Romans or else.

Were I dictator we'd be ... Never mind. That would be evil.

I don't believe in preordination, but a fatalistic outlook seems justified.

Technology Review: Battery Breakthrough?

Technology Review: Battery Breakthrough?
Well, that's certainly interesting.

... dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals ...

And

... specific energy of about 280 watt hours per kilogram, compared with around 120 watt hours per kilogram for lithium-ion and 32 watt hours per kilogram for lead-acid gel batteries.

As for a first production run,

a 15-kilowatt-hour energy-storage system for a small electric car weighing less than 100 pounds, and with a 200-mile driving range. The vehicle, the company says, will be able to recharge in less than 10 minutes.

If my numbers are right that's a 90 kilowatt charge rate, several times the maximum my house uses at summer peak. Home plug-in charging will have to be throttled considerably, or dedicated charging stations will be required. The range and energy numbers imply something like 5 kilowatt drain, which may be reasonable for a small, aerodynamic car.

Should this thing take off in the automotive sector it will have significant implications for the electricity grid. That's no biggie, as the electricity grid already faces significant issues. This'll just be one more challenge, and not the biggest one.

Even if the thing doesn't work out in the automotive arena, and if this isn't a bunch of hype (such as I've become accustomed to with flywheels over the years), and if self-discharge isn't an issue, this could be a big deal. In any event it's worth watching.

My biggest problem with the article is the final part of this sentence:

Such a breakthrough has the potential to radically transform a transportation sector already flirting with an electric renaissance, improve the performance of intermittent energy sources such as wind and sun, and increase the efficiency and stability of power grids--all while fulfilling an oil-addicted America's quest for energy security.

It's a battery, not an energy source, and it's not going to fulfill any quest for energy security. Maybe I'm nitpicking.

Google Manhart

Apparently I was hasty. JJ was right about time lag.

This one was funny.

Unconfirmed Sources.

The Motorcycle Diaries (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Motorcycle Diaries (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I was never one to wear a Che t-shirt or anything like that, but I enjoyed this movie about a road trip he took in his younger years. I had to rely on the subtitles, though, because even though I'm fluent in Spanish, between my bad ears, the accent and the wide dynamic range typical of movie and TV audio, I couldn't make out much of the dialog.

I was a kid in Guatemala when Che was killed. The father of one of my friends down there was a CIA guy who occasionally had guys with guns in his house (which happened to be the location of the school I attended during third or fourth grade some years prior). My friend had huge stacks of worthless Bolivian money from having been stationed there prior to Guatemala. His father was supposed to have been involved in the operations leading to Che's capture and execution.

Another little tidbit about Che was that he was supposed to have been in my Grandfather's employ for a short time in Guatemala. I guess that would have been while my Grandfather was the president of the power company down there. Anyway, there was some story about how my Grandfather's life was spared by chance while Che was in his office one day. Something fell off my Grandfather's desk, and at the moment he bent over to pick it up a bullet came flying through the window.

Something like that. It's been a long time...

Political Ponerology

The majority who are healthy have a difficult time understanding that some people are not — they can not fathom being a psychopath or acting like one.
...
For example, Lobaczewski discovered that dealing with psychopathic systems made healthy people neurotic. However, they could heal very quickly when he gave them a scientific framework for understanding what had happened and why.

Hmmm... This sounds interesting.

The Cold Within

I've had this poem cached in several places for a long time. I never knew who wrote it. Just "Author Unknown".

It still shows up "Author Unknown", but the widow of a fellow named James Patrick Kinney claimed her husband wrote it back in the 70's. I guess that's good enough for me.

The Cold Within

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In dark and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood--
Or so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
But the first one held hers back,
For, of the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.

The next one looked cross the way
Saw one not of his church,
And could not bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of wealth he had in store,
And keeping all that he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man's face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For he saw in his stick of wood
A chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain,
Giving just to those who gave
Was how he played the game,

Their sticks held tight in death's stilled hands
Was proof enough of sin;
They did not die from cold without--
They died from cold within.

-- James Patrick Kinney

Fox News: Former Narcs Say Drug War is Futile

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I am, not unjustifiably I think, prejudiced against Fox News, so I started to pass this Google News Alert item by. Instead, I took a look and thought it was a good look at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, deserving of a wide audience. Here's the printer friendly version (or in comments).

I can get my point across in 30 seconds in an elevator, a few minutes in a restaurant, or full-blown speech at a Rotary Club.

Cool. That's Howard Wooldridge of LEAP.

The drug war stops real cops from doing real police work.

Coming from the former chief of a major metropolitan police force, that's pretty powerful stuff.

For several years now, LEAP has been looking for a debate with the country's top drug policymakers – anyone from DEA Administrator Karen Tandy to Drug Czar John Walters to powerful prohibition politicians like Indiana Rep. Mark Souder.

So far, they've had little luck. That's too bad. If the drug war is still as important and necessary as our leaders in government say it is, it's champions should be able to defend it--especially against the law enforcement officers they've asked to fight it.

O'Riley must be fuming.

McCarthy's Optimism

Picking up from last night, I read and reflected on John McCarthy's response to the Edge Question for 2007, which is: What are you optimistic about? Why?

John McCarthy is known for his optimism about the sustainability of human development, so he decided instead to respond about world peace and politics.

McCarthy says that what we have is world peace, that there are only minor wars, and that only Africa and the Arab world are in bad shape. He contrasts this with the period between 1914 and 1989 when there were serious attempts at world domination and three (presumably the Armenian, Jewish and Cambodian) genocides .

He knows that something bad and surprising could happen. He thinks that Arab jihadism will soon be outgrown as a function of a younger generation questioning their parents' slogans, but if not we'll kick their ass in war. McCarthy isn't that plain about it, though. What he does is write, “If not” and then inserts an 1898 line from Hilaire Belloc,

Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.

McCarthy takes heart in the fact that virulent, militaristic nationalism with one-man rule doesn't exist in major countries today, but concludes by agreeing with Stephen Hawking about mankind's chances being increased by migration from Earth.

-

I'm sorry to say I did not find McCarthy's response persuasive. I didn't think it was an expression of optimism as much as a nod at hope. At least McCarthy's response wasn't framed in terms of his technical field, in which I'm sure there is much reason for optimism.

I think McCarthy is wrong about Arab jihadism. It's not Arab jihadism, it's islamic jihadism, which implies a much wider, and faster-growing, demographic and geographic scope.

He takes heart in developments in “major” countries, but I wonder if he's thought about what constitutes “major” in this new era of asymmetrical conflict, bathtub nerve agents, bioengineering, nuclear proliferation and loose radioactives, resource depletion and globalism (not that there's anything inherently wrong with bioengineering or globalism).

That the former-Yugoslavian and Rwandan genocides, and the ongoing catastrophe in Sudan and Chad, have occurred since 1989 may mean something.

I certainly don't mean to be disrespectful of McCarthy. I just disagree. Your mileage may vary, and I hope he's right.

Maybe something good and surprising will happen.

Edge Question 2007

Edge.org's annual question for 2007 is

What are you optimistic about? Why?

I am very much looking forward to reading all the responses, to see what all these brilliant people are optimistic about.

As usual, they didn't ask me, but it's just as well because I'm not particularly optimistic about anything.

Oh, sure, I'm optimistic about a number of things in isolation, such as about advances in various scientific and technical fields, which is how I suspect the majority of responses will be framed (we'll see).

One of the likely respondents is Stanford's John McCarthy. Last year (or was it the year before?) his response to the Edge Question sent me on a very entertaining exploration of mind-expanding math that I thought I followed at the time, but didn't retain. (Actually, I think it was during that exploration that I learned how infinities could have different sizes, and I did retain a bit of that notion.) McCarthy is optimistic about sustainability of human progress, so it'll be interesting to see what topic he responds with.

I jumped ahead. McCarthy mentioned his above optimism, but since he's known for it he opted to respond about world peace and politics. His will be the first response I'll read. Maybe he can change my mind in that regard.

Tomorrow. It's way past my bedtime.

Exxon cuts ties to warming skeptics - Environment - MSNBC.com

Exxon cuts ties to warming skeptics - Environment - MSNBC.com

Well, this certainly seems like good news.

In a report last year on how oil majors are addressing global warming emissions, Ceres gave Exxon a 35 — the worst of any company. Oil majors BP and Royal Dutch Shell got 90 and 79, respectively.

“Given how large and influential Exxon is and that they are basically the last big industry climate skeptic standing, even small moves can have a very big impact,” said Logan.

But he said it was too early to tell the substance of the change [by Exxon with respect to dropping funding of climate change denying stink tanks]. “The devil is in the details,” he said.

Yes, in the details, as with those surrounding Exxon Valdez compensation payments and fines. Still, this sounds encouraging.

My only quarrel with the MSNBC report is where they write:

Last year, CEI [Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the stink tanks] ran advertisements, featuring a little girl playing with a dandelion, that downplayed the risks of carbon dioxide emissions.

I think MSNBC ought to have included the downplay line, "CO2: they call it pollution, we call it Life!"

See RealClimate's post on the subject.

--
Thanks Cervantes , I'd missed that.

Oh, come on...

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Flipping through the BBC News links we read that Michelle Manhart is a US Air Force sergeant involved in training recruits, that she's 30 years old, married, and a mother of two.

We see that she's reasonably attractive:


We read that she's now in trouble with the Air Force for becoming a Playboy model, and that the AP quotes her as saying, "Of what I did, nothing is wrong, so I didn't anticipate anything, of course."

Of course.

She's been in the US Air Force, the same US Air Force infested with proselytizing fundies, part of the don't-ask-don't-tell military, since 1994, but she didn't anticipate anything. Right.

Whatever.

What really caught my eye, though, and what prompts this post, is this:



What does it mean that Google's image search service doesn't turn up a single image of Michelle Manhart? Not one. The pictures are definitely out there - you can find them if you look.

Maybe it's just a glitch in Google's service, but I don't think so. Google is too good for that.

It seems highly likely that the lack of Michelle Manhart images is deliberate. That's the troubling part.

I gave Google some slack for cooperating with the Chinese, but this is supposed to be a free country. I hope that's not the issue.

Good move: Skeptic Revamps $1M Psychic Prize

"We can't waste the hundreds of hours that we spend every year on the nutcases out there -- people who say they can fly by flapping their arms," says Randi. "We have three file drawers jam-packed with those collections.... There are over 300 claims that we have handled in detail."

...

In 10 years, though, nobody's passed the preliminary exam. The most recent one was administered in Stockholm in October, when Swedish medium Carina Landin tried to identify the gender of the authors of 20 diaries by touching the covers. She got 12 right; 16 was the agreed-upon threshold for success. (The foundation plans to re-administer Landin's test following revelations that several of the diaries were older than stipulated in the protocol.)

I hope there was a stipulation about repeatability. I would never be convinced, and would never pay off, on a single test with these odds.

Before that, the last preliminary test was in July 2005, when a Hawaiian psychic named Achau Nguyen traveled to Los Angeles to demonstrate he could mentally transmit his thoughts to a friend in another room. Under the watchful eyes of paranormal investigators, a video camera and a small audience, Nguyen selected 20 index cards from a deck of 30 and focused on the words written on each of them in turn -- while one floor below his "receiver" wrote down the wrong word, 20 out of 20 times.

These tests, however unsuccessful, represent the cream of the crop for the Million Dollar Challenge -- polite, sincere applicants able to agree to a reasonable testing protocol. The vast majority of the people applying for the money don't get that far.

A Nevada man legally named "The Prophet Yahweh" planned to seize the prize for charity by summoning two spaceships to a Las Vegas park last year, but negotiations broke down when he announced he was bringing several armed guards to the demonstration in case any "negative personalities" showed up. An inventor who claimed to have built a device that could sense the psychic distress of an egg about to be dropped into a pot of boiling water recently abandoned his application when the foundation suggested the egg be threatened by a hammer instead, in case the invention was really just detecting steam.

"One a week gets as far as a protocol negotiation, and then drops off," says Jeff Wagg, who administers the challenge.

...

Those are the easy ones. In some of the applications, perhaps most of them, the foundation has to deal with the thorny dilemma of where to draw the line between upholding its commitment, and potentially exploiting or feeding someone's mental illness. The demarcation is inherently tricky, since the entire theatre of paranormal testing is located in the realm of extra-rational belief.

...

The media's lightweight treatment of professional psychics is a deadly serious matter to Randi.

The media's lightweight treatment of professional psychics ought to be a serious matter to everyone, especially educators everywhere. It's revolting to see these frauds treated with kid gloves by the likes of Larry King.

More power to James Randi!

NYT - Yet Another Worry for Those Who Believe the Glass Is Half-Empty - New York Times

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Oh, no! I'm gonna die!

A Dutch study followed about 950 65-85-year-olds and concluded that

people who are temperamentally pessimistic are more likely to die of heart disease and other causes than those who are by nature optimistic.

The article's (comments) author, Dr. Richard Friedman of Cornell, is a bit worried.

This is the kind of study that worries me. Not personally, though — I’m as optimistic as they come. No, I’m worried about my pessimistic friends and patients who will get hold of this article. After all, if the findings are valid, how much can anyone really do about a gloomy disposition?

Drugs!! No, seriously...

So am I gonna die, pessimistic nihilist that I am? Of course I am. Sooner rather than later? There's no way to know. I think one thing pessimists could do if this article bothers them is to think. Divide the things they're pessimistic about into those they can do something about and those they can't. If the things that bother them are not things they can act on, maybe that simple realization can be helpful. Don't worry about things you can't do anything about. It seems elementary, but maybe it's not.

Maybe there's nothing one can do. There was another interesting article in the NYT a few days ago, Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don't (comments). Is free will an illusion or not? I've long felt that free will is largely illusory, but does it matter?

Other studies apparently show that religion confers benefits similar to the benefits of optimism shown in this study. Could I decide to acquire faith and thereby derive those benefits? Could I decide to become optimistic about the pressing global issues that cause me gloom? Seems bloody unlikely, but maybe that's the pessimist in me talking.

I remember an acquaintance I had a few years ago. This man was brilliant, but he was suffering great mental anguish over something that had happened to his family, a great injustice that had forever damaged his entire family's physical health and ruined him financially. This man had done everything in his power to deal with the situation, but he was unable to avoid ruin. Things had reached the stage where I was actually worried that he might resort to violence. He was under tremendous strain and entertaining murderous thoughts.

In one discussion we had I stupidly tried to bring up the idea of addressing his psychic suffering via counseling or introspection. His immediate response was, "I've never been a navel gazer." End of story.

Maybe navel gazing is a learnable attribute of optimism. Whatever...

Sony RF914R and RF920R wireless headphones- Avoid these products

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I have one set each of Sony's RF914R and RF920R wireless radio frequency headphones, but I really wish I'd purchased something else.

The biggest annoyance with the RF914R is the ear pads, which fall apart pretty quickly, long before the headset quits working. That wouldn't be so bad if you could replace the pads at Radio Shack or at any of the other usual electronics outlets, but no. You have to get these directly from Sony (which I already did once but now they've worn out again). You can probably have someone else's parts department order them for you.

These chintzy ear pads cost $7.33. EACH! Shipping adds another $7 or $8.

Another annoyance is that the batteries are not consumer-replaceable. Not handily, anyway. You can't just slide open a hatch and replace standard batteries. Oh, no. I don't know how much the batteries cost, or how much trouble they are to replace, because when these quit I'm throwing the headset away.

The RF920R headset, on the other hand, is the type that surrounds the ear. The ear pads are much more substantial than on the RF914R above. However, the two annoyances with the RF920R are that:

1. While you can replace the the batteries yourself, if you do so with standard batteries you won't be able to use rechargeables (unless you take them out and recharge them externally, of course). Sony's rechargeable batteries are standard AAA size, but they've got a square part glued on at both ends that, if missing (as on standard batteries), disables the recharge function. How annoying! Once again, I don't know how much these batteries cost because I won't be replacing them.
2. The second annoyance with the RF920R headset is the volume limiting circuit, over which you have no control. I use these headphones for TV listening, and despite what the broadcasters say, the volume goes up and down a lot. When Sony's volume control kicks in it's really annoying! It seems to be built into the transmitter unit so, as a workaround I've just tuned this headset to the frequency being used by the other set, which lacks the volume control.

I probably won't be looking to Sony for my next set of wireless headphones.

Nuke

A couple of nuclear items in the news caught my eye this morning. The Times reported that Israel is planning an attack on Iran's enrichment facilities (which Israel denies, of course). Meanwhile, the US administration has apparently decided to blend two designs for modernized bombs competitively recommended by the two American nuclear weapons labs.

I would be shocked to find out that Israeli leadership had been so negligent as to not study options for attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. Of course they have such plans, which is entirely different from saying that Israel has such intentions, or even that they think they could succeed. This "news" about Israel planning to attack is just part of the game.

The new American hybrid weapon design is supposedly based on one lab's design that was actually tested way back when, but with certain untested safety and security innovations from the other lab. That's not much information, but I tend to think it would be dumb to forgo modernization of the American nuclear arsenal. I'm afraid, though, that that's exactly what we'll do as a result of senselessly "surging" in Iraq, leading to the Democrats retaining control of both houses of congress and winning the executive in a couple of years. Bye bye new and improved nukes.

But what do I know? One of the few things I feel confident about is that geopolitics, like the climate, is growing more chaotic and extreme.

Public Prayer Power

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These catholics and muslims supposedly worship the same god. Haggling over permissions for muslims to worship in a church, or catholics to worship in a mosque, is the same sort of bullshit involved in the school prayer issue here in the USA.

It's not about prayer. It's about power.

Logo

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The picture below is what I've been using as an online avatar for several years. It is the fundamental plus the first two odd harmonics of a Fourier series (the bold line is the sum of those three terms).



I'm just trying to get the thing reloaded into my Blogger profile directly from a Blogger URL in the hopes that the distortion it displays on my blog page will somehow be corrected. (The more conceptually obvious solution, modifying the image dimensions in the template, eludes me so far.)

Coheed & Cambria sounds pretty good on iTunes as I fiddle with Blogger. I'd never heard of these guys until my friend Chris recommended I check them out. I'm glad he did. Their Good Apollo album has been a good use for the iTunes pre-paid card Santa left in my stocking.

Update: I guess I'll have to either find a way to reduce my avatar to 80 X 80 pixels without the distortion, or find out how to modify the profile to allow the slightly larger image. How to do that is not obvious to me, and Blogger's new template modification features apparently don't allow for that particular modification.

Update again:
I used the Snag-It preview editor to resize (below) the 95x95 pixel jpg to 80x80. Let's see how that looks.



Update yet again:
That didn't work either. Looks like Blogger won't use an internal URL for the profile picture. I wound up posting the properly sized picture to my Flickr account and using that URL for my Blogger profile picture.

Why did I bother? Who cared? Same reason I blog, I guess.

In any event, it does look a little bit better, I suppose.

Before and After:

Principles of Policy Analysis: Final Exam

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Well, I'm just a dumb engineer barely able to spell "policy analyst", but for some reason I thought Mark Kleiman's post - a public policy final exam - was very interesting. He didn't provide an answer key, but I found myself thinking up answers anyway, wondering what conceptual blocks he might be trying to expose and so on.

Clearly, Kleiman knows a great deal, and I know next to nothing, about public policy analysis.

Kleiman is a prohibitionist with respect to drugs, whereas I think our national drug policy is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever seen.

Should I defer to Kleiman with respect to drug policy on the basis that he knows a great deal about public policy analysis while I know next to nothing?

Naa... Interesting test though. Probably has something to do with the fact that Kleiman's blog remains on my read list while my collection of unclicked links grows and grows.

Futureal

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"It's tough to make a forecast, especially about the future."
-- Yogi Berra (presumably)

I have no forecast. The one I started to post met the delete key. I deleted it not because I thought it was wrong, but because I hope it is wrong.

Certain things seem more likely than others, though. I think Martin Rees is a bit of an optimist. Eric Pianka is probably right. Albert Bartlett is probably right.

Time will tell. Que sera sera.

Noise Pollution Clearinghouse

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I wonder if anything can be done about loud motorcycles? What is it that compels some people with big Harleys and custom bikes to be so loud? The claim that it's for safety is pure hogwash, so what is it, really?

All I know is that having the peace and quiet shattered for a mile around by some selfish bastard riding a deliberately thunderous motorcycle is enough to raise murderous thoughts in me.

There's entirely too much ambient noise in most public places. Deliberately adding to the din, clearly the intent of many bikers, is especially galling.

Recurring interests, (useful?) obsessions

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Several times, over the years, I've become interested in computer security. Each time, I eventually wound up getting tired of the subject and consciously decided to drop it. Security being just an illusion anyway, why not move on to something more entertaining?

For example, seven or eight years ago it occurred to me that computer security at work was lacking because senior management and employees generally didn't place much importance on it. Everyone thought things were fine because we had a perimeter firewall and Norton anti-virus. I did what I thought I should do to raise awareness, but wound up pissing off the poor security manager (at that time it was just a grunt position with no authority) so I backed off.

A few years later I had a run-in with a scamming fraudster. During this episode I again became interested in computer and network security. I learned a little about packet sniffing, port scanning, protocols and so on (emphasis on a little). Eventually, after failing to resolve multiple signs of unwelcome guests in my computer, I simply nuked it and all backups, adopted a new paradigm and left my sniffers and scanners behind. I still tried to practice safe computing, but paranoia gets tiresome.

My most recent interest in cyber security was sparked by a little toy I bought a few months ago, DU Meter. One night I decided to start DU Meter's stopwatch before going to bed. The next day I was surprised to see that there had been a lot of outbound traffic overnight. (I might have mis-read DU Meter. I've not seen such a thing again.) I could understand occasional inbound peaks from automatic updates to this or that, but an unattended outbound peak seemed, well, interesting.

Now I've got a few new toys and interests. I replaced my router with an old 600 MHz PIII computer running the Smoothwall firewall. I've learned how to run the tcpdump sniffer on the firewall machine, how to transfer the capture file to a PC, and how to analyze it with Wireshark. I've learned how to compare what's captured on the firewall machine with what's captured on the PC using Port Explorer, and now I'm assisted by the macro functions of my new text editor, EditPad Pro. Along the way I became interested in "regular expressions" and now I've started doing the tutorials to learn a little Python programming.

I've also upgraded my internal network to gigabit, and converted another old computer into a network file server using NASLite+. It's just the main PC and the NASLite box that are running gigabit so far, but the cabling and switches have been changed out.

When I set up the Smoothwall box, I included the unprotected DMZ option. I keep thinking about getting another old PC to set up a honeypot in the DMZ, but I don't think I'll go there (at least not yet). Any script kiddie can run circles around me, and while a honeypot might be interesting, so are matches and gasoline.

I won't go into the books I've started reading but not finished, or the various things I should be doing but am neglecting. Hey, I'm getting old, OK? I'll do whatever the hell I want, responsibility be damned. (I can't believe my KMA day (Kiss My Ass day - early retirement eligibility) is less than four weeks away!)

OK, now for an hour or so of Python tutorials, and maybe some paying attention to the world. Bye!