First off, if you go blog-trawling, here's one I find very cogent, by my friend Russ Daggatt, former owner of the Seattle Sonics, on the financial crisis.
This list of “factoids” is especially devastating, such as the clear conclusion that Obama’s fiscal plan would result in 1.2$Trillions less debt than McCain’s. Or that US Troops overseas donated 6x more to Obama; our troops and prefer his Iraq plan by 30 pts.
But Senator McCain is good at distilling his philosophy to simple one-liners. Last month “We must eradicate evil.” Last week: “We must eliminate greed!” Dang. The man is ambitious. Will he alter human nature with gene-splicing? Or wires in the skull?
But it gets better. McCain’s plan for the health care industry: ”Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
Banking deregulation as a model for health care reform. Now that’s a winning campaign theme.
And better, still. Last week, the neocons became the biggest socialists in U.S. history, far and away surpassing FDR. As economics expert Daggatt puts it: “The US has performed the greatest nationalization in the history of humanity. By nationalizing Fannie and Freddie the US has increased its public assets by almost $6 trillion and has increased its public debt/liabilities by another $6 trillion.
“The US has also turned itself into the largest government-owned hedge fund in the world. By injecting a likely $200 billion of capital into Fannie and Freddie and taking on almost $6 trillion of liabilities from them, the US has also undertaken the biggest and most levered leveraged buy-out in human history, having a debt to equity ratio of 30 ($6,000 billion of debt against $200 billion of equity). This is the biggest and most socialist government intervention in economic affairs since the formation of the Soviet Union and Communist China.
“So foreign investors are now welcome to the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America) where they can earn fat spreads relative to Treasuries on agency debt and never face any credit risks (not even the subordinated debt holders who made a fortune yesterday as those claims were also made whole).
Only it turns out, that was nothing! Today, Paulsen & Bernanke have announced plans to effectively create a National Mortgage Agency, assuming the bad debts accrued by a hundred thousand crazed gamblers, thieves and CEO-jerks who ought to be on a big chain gang, right now.
*** Only, by emphasizing buying the securities from banks, this bailout primarily benefits Wall Street. An alternative - lending directly to stressed homeowners, so that they won’t default at all - would help Main Street. It would stop the wave of foreclosures, keep homes off the market, and keep the federal government out of the business of managing millions of empty houses. Yet, somehow, that would be more socialistic. ***
But let’s reiterate the key point here, because it is time to rub it in the faces of your conservative friends, who refuse to lift their heads, when their country needs them to wake up! Not only has 95% of our national debt been squandered under Republicans, who always favor monopolists and let small business languish. Not only do the stock market, the economy, investment, production and business startups always do better under democrats. But the GOP has now led us into the biggest act of nationalization of business and outright socialism in American history, ever, making FDR look like a Adam Smith.
---
Oh, but who will they pick as scapegoat? It appears that McCain has zeroed in on one man -- albeit a deeply culpable one, Christopher Cox, head of the Security and Exchange Commission, whose principal job it has been to ensure that the skilled civil servants under him did nothing to impeded the greed festival. Well, before we have his head on a platter, let’s learn a little about this fellow.
My friend Joe Carroll offers this timely bit:
"Remember that the head of the SEC for the last 3 years has been Chris Cox, the former Orange County Republican congressman who instigated the famous 96 investigation of Gore (that led to larger penalties being recommended against the Republicans than the Democrats), and also the famous "Cox Report" (which was as full of innuendo and unproven charges as most claims by Joe McCarthy). I think that the Cox Report was the main factor that led to the 1999 redefinition of ALL spacecraft and support systems as munitions requiring State Department export control. My strong suspicion is that he did that to get at Bernie Schwartz of Loral, who was more dependent on Long March launches than anybody else in the US, and was on the board of governors of the Democratic party. That change has hurt far more than Loral. Cox's trademark is a naive single-minded focus on one issue, which leads to serious "friendly fire" damage to his friends and/or the rest of the country."Possibly Cox has learned from his experiences, and has been a good SEC chief. But I suspect not. In fact, I suspect that the melt-down is occurring now rather than after the election largely because fixes engineered next year would not be as generous as fixes engineered now."Fortunately, there may be time for some serious investigative reporting between now and election day."
Sure, he’s culpable. But the key fact is that he’s no isolated case. Was Cox ever even remotely qualified? Remember “Brownie” - whose qualification to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency was having run a few horse shows? What this typifies is the way major positions in the Bushadmin were selected entirely for the basest possible political reasons.
(Side bet! Has Bush promised to pardon Cox, in exchange for stoic silence? Someone tell him that Henry Waxman can offer a much better and more reliable deal, if he’ll squeal right now! In fact, the Wax-man may be one of the most important men in America, because of his power to offer immunity to singing henchmen.)
But far more telling is John McCain’s eagerness to let one human sacrifice suffice! Plus some vague arm-wavings about “reforming the mess in Washington.” But, again, this is not an isolated pustule! Look at the swarm of advisors surrounding McCain. Throw a rock in any direction and you’ll likely hit somebody just as culpable as Cox. And that is the thing that really should concern us.
----
All right. We’ve spoken of Senator McCain’s domestic policy advisory staff -- filled with lobbyists, aristocratic socialists and the same gang of thieves that brought us to this noxious state of affairs. But what about foreign policy? What about Senator Foreign Affairs’s War Cabinet?
OMG any group of “advisors” that includes John Bolton and Bill Kristol.... there are ten thousand implications, including the clear fact that the same Washington insiders that McCain rails against will stay in charge of foreign policy. But there is one fact, above all, that even neocons will have to admit. If John Bolton and Bill Kristol have anything to do with US foreign policy, their “up yours, foreigners!” attitude will finish off any alliances we had left. (Alliances? Neocons don’t need no stinking alliances!). Yup. we’ll start any McCain administration right off without a single reliable friend on the planet other than Albania.
Of course, the most prominent – (McCain’s top foreign policy advisor) – is probably the most radical of the bunch. Randy Scheunemann was a core participant in the lobbying, plotting and organized campaigns of deception that led America to war in Iraq. He was a close collaborator with Ahmad Chalabi through the 1990s. He helped draft the Iraq Liberation Act, which created the new funding stream for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. At the start of the Bush administration he signed on as Don Rumsfeld's 'consultant' on Iraq at the Pentagon. And then when the administration started cranking up the machinery for the propaganda campaign in favor of war he went back on the outside to form and lead the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, to lead the press and lobbying campaign to make sure the war got started on schedule.
Remember, US intelligence later found evidence that Chalabi, in addition to foisting a bunch of bogus intelligence and lying informers on the US and pocketing a lot of US taxpayer dollars, had provided highly classified US intelligence to Iran. Scheunemann worked closely with Chalabi for years in his efforts to get the US into war with Iraq. He was also a go-between between Chalabi and McCain.
Again, this has to be pulled back from the arm-waving incantations, at which the neocons are masters. They mesmerize fear-drenched Red America with smoke and mirrors about how we've "won" in Iraq (as that country rapidly becomes a satrapy of the Iranians. (Indeed, I'm glad we'll leave Iraq a bit improved) No, the issue is simple: winners and losers.
Hammer home the obvious. Which four nations are vastly better-off after eight years of Republican US leadership?
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Russia
China.
Which once-dominant world power has plummeted in power, strength, influence and by every conceivable measure?
The United States of America.
Oh, here’s a final, disturbing thought. Of the cabal of outright crazy foreign policy monsters surrounding John McCain -- nearly all of whom are deeply loathed by the foreign service professionals, by our military officers and by our allies -- by far the most rational is Joe Lieberman. Brrrrrrr.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Nonpolitical (!) News, Wonders and Marvels...
Announcing my latest short story, now available for your pleasure at Baen’s Universe Magazine. The first half is up free. To read the rest (of part one), you need to subscribe to the magazine... which is well worth it! (There’s more content than in any print zine, and you can’t beat the convenience.) Indeed, you’ll be able to fish back and read Parts 1-4 of my hilarious serialized sf-spoof comedy, “The Ancient Ones.” And, coming this spring, another funny one in a much more broad comedic style: “Gorilla My Dreams.”
Membership/subscriptions are on a sliding scale. If you get a premium membership now, you can see the other half of part I of my new story right away. Or wait until 1 Oct, and you can get a regular subscription for $30. And now, just for you folks, an added bonus! Type in coupon code EE329517B2 - which is good for $5 off any subscription!
And, moving on from fiction to nonfiction... A reminder to get your hands on Through Stranger Eyes, a collection of cantankerously unusual and interesting (!) reviews, essays, and fun, presented by Nimble Books. (So far, orders originating from bloggers have been... well... disappointing? (hint!)
And from literary analysis to speculation... Ever wish for some television for adults? I mean grownups interested in stringing thoughts together at the high end of the spectrum? Closer to Truth is a terrific series, based upon conversations held by Robert Lawrence Kuhn with luminaries as diverse as Francisco Ayala, Gregory Benford, Paul Davies, Freeman Dyson, Roger Penrose and so on.
The Closer To Truth Website - will feature about 1400 videos from 128 experts, each 8 – 20 minutes in length. The site recently went live though it will take ~6 months to upload all videos. In addition, the first three CTT episodes, one each on Cosmos, Consciousness, God, are now available (in low resolution). See also a listing of stations that will air the show. Robert Kuhn discusses his groundbreaking television on the Science & Religion Today website.
See especially episodes: 110 Could Our Universe Be a Fake? [Cosmos], and 303 Where are They, All Those Aliens? [Consciousness] wherein yours truly joins the putative eggheads at work! Doing what eggheads do best.
And, continuing with more recent brin-blather....
While visiting IBM Research, I did a brief, ten-minute oral-essay about how science fiction can change the world. IBM has podcast it. This is separate from my hour-long (and detailed) talk about Third Millennium Problem-Solving: Can New Visualization and Collaboration Tools Make a Difference? That much longer talk ought to be be available online, at some point. I’ll let you all know.
Reminder to join my Facebook fan page!
------ A Timely Survey for Blog Community Members! -----
I’ve received a request from Daniel Milamed Prendergast of the Psychology Department at New York University, in the hopes that some of you folks might be able to help them with timely and important NSF-funded research about the cognitive bases of electoral decision-making. ”We would be very grateful if you’d help us recruit politically inclined respondents to our survey by posting to your blog the link to the online survey we are conducting as part....ground-breaking scientific research in the hopes of better understanding voting behavior from a psychological perspective. The survey we are conducting is not aimed at changing respondents' opinions in any way. This stage of the study focuses on the information people use to inform evaluations during the last few weeks before the election. They seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world) to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which will be completely anonymous.”
I find myself personally with too little time to participate. Nor do I know these folks personally. But it has the appearance of a worthy undertaking. People who report back should remain vague about the process and questions, in order not to bias others -- till the last questionnaire is finished. There are some $100 “raffle” prizes for participating. Here is the link to the survey:
------ Other matters of timely interest ---
See: THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb... An Edge Original Essay... "When Nassim Taleb talks about the limits of statistics, he becomes outraged. "My outrage," he says, "is aimed at the scientist-charlatan putting society at risk using statistical methods. This is similar to iatrogenics, the study of the doctor putting the patient at risk." As a researcher in probability, he has some credibility. In 2006, using FNMA and bank risk managers as his prime perpetrators, he wrote the following: "The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events 'unlikely.' " Taleb continues his examination of Black Swans, the highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact.
--- Small Indie Movies Take Flight ---
First off -- the Postman legend continues!
Also... I have to tell you I was really surprised by the innovative first episode of this Indie group. Have a lookStranger Things is the first dramatic science-fiction anthology series shot in high definition and digitally-syndicated through the Internet, predating even the larger-budgeted Sanctuary. Stranger Things depicts a world of ordinary people stumbling into the secret lives of the paranormal, the metaphysical, the unnatural, and the strange. The stories expose the bizarre and the extraordinary things happening all around us everyday, hidden behind the veil of the "real world.".
--- Energy Matters ---
Could this be true???? Ever heard of the Bakken Formation? GOOGLE it or follow this link. It will blow your mind.
”The U.S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oilmen knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana .... The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.” And there is talk of an even bigger find in the rockies. These ought to be tracked.
Of course, global warming still means we have to get moving hard in other directions. But anything that removes the r’oil grip from around our throats.
More important: Companies will build two solar plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale. The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant. The power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010.
==== Misc. Stuff! ====
Watch Professor (and former Clinton White House Privacy Maven) Peter Swire talk about “The Federal Role in Privacy Protection.”
Yipes! What creepy fun by my collaborator Jeff Carlson!
See a fascinating comparison of Chinese vs. Western attitudes toward education. “Wealthy Chinese parents who worry that their kids cannot face the pressures of the country’s education are finding ways for their children to go to North America for their primary education. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post recently reported on South Koreans paying for U.S. couples to adopt their children so that they can gain access to Western education.” and http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5265
Help crack the Russian Hacker Mystery. (Vernor Vinge makes the important point is that the nation that most lives by the silicon chip might be the one that dies by it. At least, its enemies will work hard to make it so. Buy metal storage sheds! Use them as faraday cages to store important backup equipment. Keep an old fashioned corded phone. If we had a real president, he’d have urged this long ago.)
A spurt in human intelligence about 150,000 years ago was caused by eating (mostly) cooked meals, which would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, thereby freeing up calories for our brains
University of Geneva scientists sent pairs of entangled photons to labs 18 kilometers apart, showing that if superluminal signals are responsible for entanglement, they must travel at more than 10,000 times the speed of light.
I can’t buy or read every info-age/transparency related book that comes along. Has anyone seen (or care to review for us) Inescapable Data by Chris Statutis?
A cool fun “Large Hadron Rap.”
Reminder to sign up as a “follower” to this blog... and to RSS subscribe to the more formal Salon source (I’ve abandoned Kos). And to be sure and join that Facebook page. Subscribe to UNIVERSE!
Membership/subscriptions are on a sliding scale. If you get a premium membership now, you can see the other half of part I of my new story right away. Or wait until 1 Oct, and you can get a regular subscription for $30. And now, just for you folks, an added bonus! Type in coupon code EE329517B2 - which is good for $5 off any subscription!
And, moving on from fiction to nonfiction... A reminder to get your hands on Through Stranger Eyes, a collection of cantankerously unusual and interesting (!) reviews, essays, and fun, presented by Nimble Books. (So far, orders originating from bloggers have been... well... disappointing? (hint!)
And from literary analysis to speculation... Ever wish for some television for adults? I mean grownups interested in stringing thoughts together at the high end of the spectrum? Closer to Truth is a terrific series, based upon conversations held by Robert Lawrence Kuhn with luminaries as diverse as Francisco Ayala, Gregory Benford, Paul Davies, Freeman Dyson, Roger Penrose and so on.
The Closer To Truth Website - will feature about 1400 videos from 128 experts, each 8 – 20 minutes in length. The site recently went live though it will take ~6 months to upload all videos. In addition, the first three CTT episodes, one each on Cosmos, Consciousness, God, are now available (in low resolution). See also a listing of stations that will air the show. Robert Kuhn discusses his groundbreaking television on the Science & Religion Today website.
See especially episodes: 110 Could Our Universe Be a Fake? [Cosmos], and 303 Where are They, All Those Aliens? [Consciousness] wherein yours truly joins the putative eggheads at work! Doing what eggheads do best.
And, continuing with more recent brin-blather....
While visiting IBM Research, I did a brief, ten-minute oral-essay about how science fiction can change the world. IBM has podcast it. This is separate from my hour-long (and detailed) talk about Third Millennium Problem-Solving: Can New Visualization and Collaboration Tools Make a Difference? That much longer talk ought to be be available online, at some point. I’ll let you all know.
Reminder to join my Facebook fan page!
------ A Timely Survey for Blog Community Members! -----
I’ve received a request from Daniel Milamed Prendergast of the Psychology Department at New York University, in the hopes that some of you folks might be able to help them with timely and important NSF-funded research about the cognitive bases of electoral decision-making. ”We would be very grateful if you’d help us recruit politically inclined respondents to our survey by posting to your blog the link to the online survey we are conducting as part....ground-breaking scientific research in the hopes of better understanding voting behavior from a psychological perspective. The survey we are conducting is not aimed at changing respondents' opinions in any way. This stage of the study focuses on the information people use to inform evaluations during the last few weeks before the election. They seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world) to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which will be completely anonymous.”
I find myself personally with too little time to participate. Nor do I know these folks personally. But it has the appearance of a worthy undertaking. People who report back should remain vague about the process and questions, in order not to bias others -- till the last questionnaire is finished. There are some $100 “raffle” prizes for participating. Here is the link to the survey:
------ Other matters of timely interest ---
See: THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb... An Edge Original Essay... "When Nassim Taleb talks about the limits of statistics, he becomes outraged. "My outrage," he says, "is aimed at the scientist-charlatan putting society at risk using statistical methods. This is similar to iatrogenics, the study of the doctor putting the patient at risk." As a researcher in probability, he has some credibility. In 2006, using FNMA and bank risk managers as his prime perpetrators, he wrote the following: "The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events 'unlikely.' " Taleb continues his examination of Black Swans, the highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact.
--- Small Indie Movies Take Flight ---
First off -- the Postman legend continues!
Also... I have to tell you I was really surprised by the innovative first episode of this Indie group. Have a lookStranger Things is the first dramatic science-fiction anthology series shot in high definition and digitally-syndicated through the Internet, predating even the larger-budgeted Sanctuary. Stranger Things depicts a world of ordinary people stumbling into the secret lives of the paranormal, the metaphysical, the unnatural, and the strange. The stories expose the bizarre and the extraordinary things happening all around us everyday, hidden behind the veil of the "real world.".
--- Energy Matters ---
Could this be true???? Ever heard of the Bakken Formation? GOOGLE it or follow this link. It will blow your mind.
”The U.S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oilmen knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana .... The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.” And there is talk of an even bigger find in the rockies. These ought to be tracked.
Of course, global warming still means we have to get moving hard in other directions. But anything that removes the r’oil grip from around our throats.
More important: Companies will build two solar plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale. The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant. The power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010.
==== Misc. Stuff! ====
Watch Professor (and former Clinton White House Privacy Maven) Peter Swire talk about “The Federal Role in Privacy Protection.”
Yipes! What creepy fun by my collaborator Jeff Carlson!
See a fascinating comparison of Chinese vs. Western attitudes toward education. “Wealthy Chinese parents who worry that their kids cannot face the pressures of the country’s education are finding ways for their children to go to North America for their primary education. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post recently reported on South Koreans paying for U.S. couples to adopt their children so that they can gain access to Western education.” and http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5265
Help crack the Russian Hacker Mystery. (Vernor Vinge makes the important point is that the nation that most lives by the silicon chip might be the one that dies by it. At least, its enemies will work hard to make it so. Buy metal storage sheds! Use them as faraday cages to store important backup equipment. Keep an old fashioned corded phone. If we had a real president, he’d have urged this long ago.)
A spurt in human intelligence about 150,000 years ago was caused by eating (mostly) cooked meals, which would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, thereby freeing up calories for our brains
University of Geneva scientists sent pairs of entangled photons to labs 18 kilometers apart, showing that if superluminal signals are responsible for entanglement, they must travel at more than 10,000 times the speed of light.
I can’t buy or read every info-age/transparency related book that comes along. Has anyone seen (or care to review for us) Inescapable Data by Chris Statutis?
A cool fun “Large Hadron Rap.”
Reminder to sign up as a “follower” to this blog... and to RSS subscribe to the more formal Salon source (I’ve abandoned Kos). And to be sure and join that Facebook page. Subscribe to UNIVERSE!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
The Under-Appreciated Issues that Nobody Talks About
Once upon a time, I was an engineer and a scientist... till I realized this civilization will pay me more to be interesting, than to be right. Ever since, I’ve made a living by poking at things people take for granted -- through novels or nonfiction or punditry about the future. My aim: to offer a skewed or unusual angle on things, knowing that some of these perspectives will seem “crackpot.” No matter, if fraction also prove useful. Anyway, at least they don’t burn guys like me at the stake, anymore!
Not yet.
So, in that spirit -- poking away at assumptions -- let’s begin examining some under-appreciated issues of our current political season. Matters that might make a small difference if someone paid attention. We’ll start with a simple action item. Not the most urgent, but one where time is running especially short.
----- Under-appreciated Issue #1: Students and absentee ballots.
Millions of young Americans are more involved than ever. Voter registration in the under-25 age demographic has risen sharply. It also tilts heavily democratic. Yet, if history is any candidate Barack Obama will be lucky if 40% of these people vote.
Another factor: disproportionate numbers of politically active young people -- university students -- cluster either in states that are already blue, or in college towns that have been gerrymandered to limit their effect upon state offices and Congressional representation.
Are there ways for Democrats might help mobilize this friendly, but marginalized age group? Surely they have activists busy on many campuses. One can hope they’re also busy near military bases and urban zones young people cluster. These areas should get heavy get-out-the-vote action, come election day. (And volunteers are needed.)
Far more useful would be to press hard, right now, for young people to get absentee ballots, vote early, and mail them in. Early and relentless nagging may be more effective than a flurry of effort at the last minute.
Even better? Students in already-liberal college towns might register instead in their home districts and vote absentee there. Especially if home lies in a battleground state, like Ohio, Michigan or Florida. And even more so, if it has competitive races for Congress or State Assembly.
Yes, this adds a level of complication, so it should be urged only upon those who are reliable -- those who care enough to maximize their voting impact, and who will follow through without nagging. Still, doesn’t that describe a lot of Generation Next? Anyway, how many of us get this option? To pick between two residence areas and vote where it might have the greatest impact?
Drawback: There’s little time to act on this. Contact the young people you know! Extort that vow to register and vote. Then follow up. Even better, contact your local university political club and ask what help they need. And if none of these things seem practical, well, there’s always money. Send some.
----- Under-appreciated Issue #2: The “Ostriches.”
It is a matter I’ve raised extensively elsewhere. Each of us knows republicans of the sane/decent type, whose conservatism is sincere and worthy of respect, the way most people admired Barry Goldwater for his principled adherence to prudence, sobriety, constitutionalism, international caution and love of country. Some of these decent conservatives have awakened - or partly-wakened - to the way that their movement has been hijacked, for a generation, by forces that Barry Goldwater angrily denounced, just before he died. Forces that have transformed a commitment from:
* prudence to recklessness
* accountability to secrecy
* fiscal discretion to spendthrift profligacy
* consistency to hypocrisy
* civility to nastiness
* international restraint to recklessness
* efficiency to no-tomorrow wastrelness
* dedicated cleanliness to filthy habits
* logic to unreason.
Is it worthwhile trying to rouse that decent, sweet uncle of yours, out of his state of “ostrich” denial? Or your gracious but delusional aunt to finally concede that her beloved party has been hijacked by a gang of thieves? Yes, it will be a hard sell. We’ve seen that long lists of facts are useless against thick-skinned rationalizations.
Still, remember, one converted ostrich can sometimes become ten. A seed-crystal, catalyzing others. In any event, I have created a couple of sites. See The Ostrich Papers: How it will take ALL Decent Americans to Restore Decency to America.
For more “ammo” that anyone can use, in relentlessly yanking on their favorite, beloved deniers, hoping to eventually get their heads out of the sand, see A Cheat Sheet for Ostrich Hunters: What would you have said if Bill Clinton....
Enough for now. This is just part one in a lengthy series that will briefly touch on issues that seem to be under-examined. You thoughts and comments are welcome.
PS... folks on this blog, please also visit the new/occasional one at OpenSalon and help boost the numbers there!
Not yet.
----- Under-appreciated Issue #1: Students and absentee ballots.
Millions of young Americans are more involved than ever. Voter registration in the under-25 age demographic has risen sharply. It also tilts heavily democratic. Yet, if history is any candidate Barack Obama will be lucky if 40% of these people vote.
Another factor: disproportionate numbers of politically active young people -- university students -- cluster either in states that are already blue, or in college towns that have been gerrymandered to limit their effect upon state offices and Congressional representation.
Far more useful would be to press hard, right now, for young people to get absentee ballots, vote early, and mail them in. Early and relentless nagging may be more effective than a flurry of effort at the last minute.
Even better? Students in already-liberal college towns might register instead in their home districts and vote absentee there. Especially if home lies in a battleground state, like Ohio, Michigan or Florida. And even more so, if it has competitive races for Congress or State Assembly.
Yes, this adds a level of complication, so it should be urged only upon those who are reliable -- those who care enough to maximize their voting impact, and who will follow through without nagging. Still, doesn’t that describe a lot of Generation Next? Anyway, how many of us get this option? To pick between two residence areas and vote where it might have the greatest impact?
Drawback: There’s little time to act on this. Contact the young people you know! Extort that vow to register and vote. Then follow up. Even better, contact your local university political club and ask what help they need. And if none of these things seem practical, well, there’s always money. Send some.
----- Under-appreciated Issue #2: The “Ostriches.”
It is a matter I’ve raised extensively elsewhere. Each of us knows republicans of the sane/decent type, whose conservatism is sincere and worthy of respect, the way most people admired Barry Goldwater for his principled adherence to prudence, sobriety, constitutionalism, international caution and love of country. Some of these decent conservatives have awakened - or partly-wakened - to the way that their movement has been hijacked, for a generation, by forces that Barry Goldwater angrily denounced, just before he died. Forces that have transformed a commitment from:
* prudence to recklessness
* accountability to secrecy
* fiscal discretion to spendthrift profligacy
* consistency to hypocrisy
* civility to nastiness
* international restraint to recklessness
* efficiency to no-tomorrow wastrelness
* dedicated cleanliness to filthy habits
* logic to unreason.
Is it worthwhile trying to rouse that decent, sweet uncle of yours, out of his state of “ostrich” denial? Or your gracious but delusional aunt to finally concede that her beloved party has been hijacked by a gang of thieves? Yes, it will be a hard sell. We’ve seen that long lists of facts are useless against thick-skinned rationalizations.
Still, remember, one converted ostrich can sometimes become ten. A seed-crystal, catalyzing others. In any event, I have created a couple of sites. See The Ostrich Papers: How it will take ALL Decent Americans to Restore Decency to America.For more “ammo” that anyone can use, in relentlessly yanking on their favorite, beloved deniers, hoping to eventually get their heads out of the sand, see A Cheat Sheet for Ostrich Hunters: What would you have said if Bill Clinton....
Enough for now. This is just part one in a lengthy series that will briefly touch on issues that seem to be under-examined. You thoughts and comments are welcome.
PS... folks on this blog, please also visit the new/occasional one at OpenSalon and help boost the numbers there!
Friday, September 05, 2008
Some Things Palin Comparison
What to say about the Republican Convention? So many levels. So many narratives and messages.
-- There’s the Chutzpah Prize winning theme: “help us mavericks throw dem Washington bums out!”
-- Dizzying promises to balance budgets, help small businesses, listen to allies, push energy independence, engage diplomacy, bring transparency/accountability to government, and so on -- without any specifics -- leaving one boggled speechless by irony.
-- Several keen observers expected John McCain to “prove his maverick chops” by openly challenging the delegates to alter one or two basic GOP planks. Odds suggested a nod to climate change, or “stewardship” or a turn away from the culture of secrecy. It might have been impressive to the country (and he may yet do so, before a picked audience). But he clearly felt it unwise to try at the RNC. What if they booed? Ah, courage.
-- The “Dr. Jekyl” side of this man, still worthy of some respect, reminded me of Robert Dole, all the way to the stiff arm, injured in service to his country. And, though often calculated and self-serving, McC’s rhetoric also merited a nod, for moments of passion, pathos and apparent sincerity.
-- But alas, for the topics never mentioned. Such as science. The environment. Or the demolished Army and National Guard, leaving us more defenseless than before. What? Not even science? But some in that crowd would have booed.
Each topic merits lengthy analysis. But there are pundits-a-plenty, already covering the obvious stuff. So let me focus on more-quirky aspects. Stories less spoken. Or not at all.
The underlying meaning of the “Experience Gap”
Oh, it’s been awe-inspiring to watch the rovean spinners, still deft, argue that GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin has “more executive experience,” after 23 months running the 47th largest state, than any of the three male senators in our fall lineup -- including John McCain. And, well, it’s arguable... though with Alaska wallowing in gushers of free oil money, budget-balancing is kind-of a snap.
In fact, the Experience Gap only highlights how desperately McCain, Obama, Biden or Palin would need expertise from others -- from dozens, hundreds, thousands and whole-agencies of others. Instead of filling an imperial White House with nodding yes-men, any of this quartet should emulate a great president who surrounded himself with the ferment of smart people in dynamic disagreement, as historian Doris Kearns Goodwin describes in Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Indeed, all the present candidates claim to have this goal in mind. But there’s a surefire test of whether they mean it -- and two of them have already failed.
You see, we aren’t only choosing between Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin, nor between starkly polarized philosophies of right and left. Even if nothing happened re: health care and not a single new law passed, our national destiny would veer up or down, based on something far simpler. Whether public servants competently govern according to the law, as it already stands.
All four candidates speak of bipartisanship and honest competence overriding special interest. But, while he distances himself from Bush and the Republican brand, John McCain stays immersed in the same general swarm of ten thousand Republican appointees, lobbyists and political operatives, most of whom would simply slide from jobs in Bush’s administration to McCain’s. A whole political caste who - with some shifted chairs - would follow his old-boy top advisors into cabinet departments, agencies, and bureaus.
These aren’t the days of Eisenhower, or Clinton, or even Ronald Reagan, when political loyalty was only one of many criteria for these appointments. Today’s GOP operatives have been carefully vetted, culled, groomed and organized to turn all systems of government into Party tools. With a consistency and disciplined focus that resembles another party -- the Communist Party. In a latter-day version of the Spoils System, they have hewed closely to a core program -- to intimidate and repress the real public servants, the ones we depend upon. The fourth branch of government.
The men and women of the United States Civil Service.
There can be no greater polar contrast between two groups. Those with the expertise to administer our laws -- advancing through merit, hard work, training and performance -- versus a mob of venial hacks appointed by Bush-Cheney to quash the scientists and military officers, the accountants and FBI agents, the deputy U.S. Attorneys and deputy Marshals, the dam inspectors and CIA agents. The drug chemists and CDC disease monitors. The SEC examiners who might have protected us against fraudulent speculators and thieves. The researchers who might have settled the case on global warming, or found fresh energy solutions by now.
For better or worse, we citizens own and rely upon these agencies, to defend us, to maintain fair and open markets, to encourage startups and discourage monopoly, to catch criminality even in high places, to give truthful intelligence, to peer ahead for threats and opportunities in complex times. We pay their salaries and half a million or so civil servants used to work hard to give us value back. Most would do so, again, if they were allowed.
However one feels about whether government should perform this or that function - until the laws are changed, should it not perform those functions well? The answer, given by the Republican political operative caste, has been in no uncertain terms, “no.”
(Why have the professionals been deliberately stymied? That’s another question. Perhaps out of dogmatic belief that government should fail. Or because that failure made it easier to steal. There are even darker scenarios. Anyway, government has grown, vastly, under the GOP. And though they complain, Republicans have a lousy record at deregulation. Of ten major deregulations, they crafted just three, that later proved to be vehicles for graft.)
Sure, it sounds like a boring “process issue.” No advisor will let Obama speak of something so dry. Still, I have to say that the Bushite assault upon the Civil Service has to be its number one crime. Because, without that first, enabling crime, so many others would have been caught or prevented by skilled men and women at the FBI, Justice, SEC, and so many other agencies duty-bound top protect us, that is, except for interference from above.
This is my biggest reason to oppose John McCain, and notice that it ought to cross all lines of ideology or policy. Because, despite some good traits (among some bad) and and noble-sounding words, McCain remains surrounded by all the “usual suspects” ranging from lobbyists who wrote Bush energy policies to personnel experts borrowed directly from the White House. The same coterie of fatcats supplies "free labor" and advice. He even hired into his circle the expert political hatchetman responsible for smearing him during the 2000 primaries, South Carolina political consultant Tucker Eskew. He will be their cats paw and shows no sign of even knowing it.
So much for “shaking up Washington.”
Top priority must go to ending the reign ten thousand political thugs. All else, even your favorite policy initiative, comes second. If Barack Obama simply does as he has promised, and releases the good men and women of the civil service to do their jobs to go back to enforcing the duly-deliberated law as-is -- then at least the Republic can function on a basic level.
Only then will it make sense to argue how to make it better.
================
Which brings us to the ghost at the banquet.
The High Road: The Dog that Did Not Bark in The Night
All right, forget the Civil Service. Let’s drop the Experience Issue as a distraction. What could candidate Obama and the Democrats really zero in-on, from the GOP convention? Already, Obama has pointed out that the Republicans made no mention of the economy. That’s a good start.
Indeed, among the speeches that I listened to there was something startling in its absence. A near complete lack of statistics! Yes, stats are boring, still, candidates and parties do hurl them back and forth like shuttlecocks and I expected at least a few volleys from the Republicans. The closest came when Laura Bush pointed overseas, (rightfully) bragging that the (bipartisan) African Aids Initiative has helped 50 million people over there.
Otherwise - though I missed a lot of speeches - I heard no stats at all.
Really? They could find nothing to brag about? Not one metric that's better now than it was eight years ago? I felt stunned. It was the ghost at the banquet. The dog that didn't bark in the night. Not one pundit will mention it, but it is staggering to me.
Obama and Biden have to speak clearly. “Stop pretending that you haven’t been governing us! You cannot evade that central fact by nominating a couple of different faces from the same team picture. We have a right to ask if you have governed well. And there are no measures... none at all... by which you have.”
The Low Road - some basic Palin Points:
By “low road” I do not include the really nasty sewer-stuff. Rumors of extramarital affairs and spotlights on her family -- soap opera tales of baby switcheroos and paranoid whatifs of more switches in the works. These are grist for the National Enquirer, not adults. Oh, Fox & CNN “journalists” are hypocrites to decry the public’s understandable curiosity as “sexism.” But Obama is correct to quash any involvement by the Democratic Party or its friends. These are not matters for either politics or journalism.
No, by “low road” I mean stuff that’s well-above sewer level, but still dicey. Like zeroing-in on a candidate’s actual views on life, destiny and religion -- shining light on how they’d govern. Prickly topics, riddled with minefield potential for back splatter. But relevant.
Some of these will come out via normal media-frenzy, like Sarah Palin’s long-close association with the Alaska Independence Party, whose rhetoric can make Rev. Wright look like Teddy Roosevelt. Other contradictions will be avoided by the Obama camp. But can we trust anyone in the media to raise them?
* Sarah Palin rails against standard sex education and teens learning about contraception. Without alluding to her family situation, someone must hammer home the blatant statistical fact that Blue America - despite including the poorest and most disadvantaged - has lower rates of teen sex, teen or unwed pregnancy, STDs, divorce and domestic violence than Red America. Till now, such comparisons were avoided by liberals, as divisive and playing up to Culture War. But somebody with enough cash and anger could lay it out.
Oh, but hold onto your seats. Now we get into really dicey territory.
* Sarah Palin believes (or let’s demand that she disavow) that more than half of her fellow citizens are damned either by nature or because of their beliefs, if not to Hell then to eternal exclusion from God’s grace.
Sure, holding to that tenet is her Constitutionally protected privilege. But since she declared that her decisions will be guided by those beliefs, we have a perfect right to see them in bare light. And people who she considers damned may legitimately ponder that, when deciding whether to vote for her.
Moreover --
* Sarah Palin craves, yearns-for and actively prays-for (or let’s demand that she disavow) the coming of a day, quite soon, when most of the world’s people will suffer torment, death and damnation, amid flame and other agonies, amid tumult that will include the end of the United States of America.
(See Palin getting very intense about mixing church & state.)
Now, of course, she would attempt to moderate these beliefs and fervent wishes, by claiming that the death and agony and damnation parts aren’t what she yearns for, but rather, the subsequent arrival of a Sanctified Kingdom on Earth that will be paradisiacal - that is, for the remaining elect. All the other vengeful-torment stuff is regrettable, but Heaven’s unalterable will. Anyway, those people (well, some of them) may yet avoid that dark fate by abandoning all of their own beliefs and adopting hers.
No doubt she - and her supporters - would indignantly denounce anyone asking about these views, as they are a matter of private conscience. But are they?
Strip away unctuous reassurances and we have someone asking to be trusted as potential master of America’s nuclear arsenal and defender of its Constitution, who openly avows to wanting - eagerly - the quick arrival of a day when fire will scorch the sky and flame sear land. When a majority of her fellow citizens will perish and tumble into torment, and when a closing curtain will fall for the nation and democracy she claims to love.
Of course, I may have imputed and extrapolated far too much. My interpretation may be unfair. In a spirit of enlightenment curiosity, I stand ready to be corrected. Still, we have a right to be concerned. Let Sarah Palin publicly explain how this interpretation is mistaken, so we might breathe easier.
---And finally ...from the Road of Silly Walks... ---
Palin for President!
-- There’s the Chutzpah Prize winning theme: “help us mavericks throw dem Washington bums out!”
-- Dizzying promises to balance budgets, help small businesses, listen to allies, push energy independence, engage diplomacy, bring transparency/accountability to government, and so on -- without any specifics -- leaving one boggled speechless by irony.
-- Several keen observers expected John McCain to “prove his maverick chops” by openly challenging the delegates to alter one or two basic GOP planks. Odds suggested a nod to climate change, or “stewardship” or a turn away from the culture of secrecy. It might have been impressive to the country (and he may yet do so, before a picked audience). But he clearly felt it unwise to try at the RNC. What if they booed? Ah, courage.
-- The “Dr. Jekyl” side of this man, still worthy of some respect, reminded me of Robert Dole, all the way to the stiff arm, injured in service to his country. And, though often calculated and self-serving, McC’s rhetoric also merited a nod, for moments of passion, pathos and apparent sincerity.
-- But alas, for the topics never mentioned. Such as science. The environment. Or the demolished Army and National Guard, leaving us more defenseless than before. What? Not even science? But some in that crowd would have booed.
Each topic merits lengthy analysis. But there are pundits-a-plenty, already covering the obvious stuff. So let me focus on more-quirky aspects. Stories less spoken. Or not at all.
The underlying meaning of the “Experience Gap”
Oh, it’s been awe-inspiring to watch the rovean spinners, still deft, argue that GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin has “more executive experience,” after 23 months running the 47th largest state, than any of the three male senators in our fall lineup -- including John McCain. And, well, it’s arguable... though with Alaska wallowing in gushers of free oil money, budget-balancing is kind-of a snap.
In fact, the Experience Gap only highlights how desperately McCain, Obama, Biden or Palin would need expertise from others -- from dozens, hundreds, thousands and whole-agencies of others. Instead of filling an imperial White House with nodding yes-men, any of this quartet should emulate a great president who surrounded himself with the ferment of smart people in dynamic disagreement, as historian Doris Kearns Goodwin describes in Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Indeed, all the present candidates claim to have this goal in mind. But there’s a surefire test of whether they mean it -- and two of them have already failed.
You see, we aren’t only choosing between Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin, nor between starkly polarized philosophies of right and left. Even if nothing happened re: health care and not a single new law passed, our national destiny would veer up or down, based on something far simpler. Whether public servants competently govern according to the law, as it already stands.
All four candidates speak of bipartisanship and honest competence overriding special interest. But, while he distances himself from Bush and the Republican brand, John McCain stays immersed in the same general swarm of ten thousand Republican appointees, lobbyists and political operatives, most of whom would simply slide from jobs in Bush’s administration to McCain’s. A whole political caste who - with some shifted chairs - would follow his old-boy top advisors into cabinet departments, agencies, and bureaus.
These aren’t the days of Eisenhower, or Clinton, or even Ronald Reagan, when political loyalty was only one of many criteria for these appointments. Today’s GOP operatives have been carefully vetted, culled, groomed and organized to turn all systems of government into Party tools. With a consistency and disciplined focus that resembles another party -- the Communist Party. In a latter-day version of the Spoils System, they have hewed closely to a core program -- to intimidate and repress the real public servants, the ones we depend upon. The fourth branch of government.
The men and women of the United States Civil Service.
There can be no greater polar contrast between two groups. Those with the expertise to administer our laws -- advancing through merit, hard work, training and performance -- versus a mob of venial hacks appointed by Bush-Cheney to quash the scientists and military officers, the accountants and FBI agents, the deputy U.S. Attorneys and deputy Marshals, the dam inspectors and CIA agents. The drug chemists and CDC disease monitors. The SEC examiners who might have protected us against fraudulent speculators and thieves. The researchers who might have settled the case on global warming, or found fresh energy solutions by now.
For better or worse, we citizens own and rely upon these agencies, to defend us, to maintain fair and open markets, to encourage startups and discourage monopoly, to catch criminality even in high places, to give truthful intelligence, to peer ahead for threats and opportunities in complex times. We pay their salaries and half a million or so civil servants used to work hard to give us value back. Most would do so, again, if they were allowed.
However one feels about whether government should perform this or that function - until the laws are changed, should it not perform those functions well? The answer, given by the Republican political operative caste, has been in no uncertain terms, “no.”
(Why have the professionals been deliberately stymied? That’s another question. Perhaps out of dogmatic belief that government should fail. Or because that failure made it easier to steal. There are even darker scenarios. Anyway, government has grown, vastly, under the GOP. And though they complain, Republicans have a lousy record at deregulation. Of ten major deregulations, they crafted just three, that later proved to be vehicles for graft.)
Sure, it sounds like a boring “process issue.” No advisor will let Obama speak of something so dry. Still, I have to say that the Bushite assault upon the Civil Service has to be its number one crime. Because, without that first, enabling crime, so many others would have been caught or prevented by skilled men and women at the FBI, Justice, SEC, and so many other agencies duty-bound top protect us, that is, except for interference from above.
This is my biggest reason to oppose John McCain, and notice that it ought to cross all lines of ideology or policy. Because, despite some good traits (among some bad) and and noble-sounding words, McCain remains surrounded by all the “usual suspects” ranging from lobbyists who wrote Bush energy policies to personnel experts borrowed directly from the White House. The same coterie of fatcats supplies "free labor" and advice. He even hired into his circle the expert political hatchetman responsible for smearing him during the 2000 primaries, South Carolina political consultant Tucker Eskew. He will be their cats paw and shows no sign of even knowing it.
So much for “shaking up Washington.”
Top priority must go to ending the reign ten thousand political thugs. All else, even your favorite policy initiative, comes second. If Barack Obama simply does as he has promised, and releases the good men and women of the civil service to do their jobs to go back to enforcing the duly-deliberated law as-is -- then at least the Republic can function on a basic level.
Only then will it make sense to argue how to make it better.
================
Which brings us to the ghost at the banquet.
The High Road: The Dog that Did Not Bark in The Night
All right, forget the Civil Service. Let’s drop the Experience Issue as a distraction. What could candidate Obama and the Democrats really zero in-on, from the GOP convention? Already, Obama has pointed out that the Republicans made no mention of the economy. That’s a good start.
Indeed, among the speeches that I listened to there was something startling in its absence. A near complete lack of statistics! Yes, stats are boring, still, candidates and parties do hurl them back and forth like shuttlecocks and I expected at least a few volleys from the Republicans. The closest came when Laura Bush pointed overseas, (rightfully) bragging that the (bipartisan) African Aids Initiative has helped 50 million people over there.
Otherwise - though I missed a lot of speeches - I heard no stats at all.
Really? They could find nothing to brag about? Not one metric that's better now than it was eight years ago? I felt stunned. It was the ghost at the banquet. The dog that didn't bark in the night. Not one pundit will mention it, but it is staggering to me.
Obama and Biden have to speak clearly. “Stop pretending that you haven’t been governing us! You cannot evade that central fact by nominating a couple of different faces from the same team picture. We have a right to ask if you have governed well. And there are no measures... none at all... by which you have.”
The Low Road - some basic Palin Points:
By “low road” I do not include the really nasty sewer-stuff. Rumors of extramarital affairs and spotlights on her family -- soap opera tales of baby switcheroos and paranoid whatifs of more switches in the works. These are grist for the National Enquirer, not adults. Oh, Fox & CNN “journalists” are hypocrites to decry the public’s understandable curiosity as “sexism.” But Obama is correct to quash any involvement by the Democratic Party or its friends. These are not matters for either politics or journalism.
No, by “low road” I mean stuff that’s well-above sewer level, but still dicey. Like zeroing-in on a candidate’s actual views on life, destiny and religion -- shining light on how they’d govern. Prickly topics, riddled with minefield potential for back splatter. But relevant.
Some of these will come out via normal media-frenzy, like Sarah Palin’s long-close association with the Alaska Independence Party, whose rhetoric can make Rev. Wright look like Teddy Roosevelt. Other contradictions will be avoided by the Obama camp. But can we trust anyone in the media to raise them?
* Sarah Palin rails against standard sex education and teens learning about contraception. Without alluding to her family situation, someone must hammer home the blatant statistical fact that Blue America - despite including the poorest and most disadvantaged - has lower rates of teen sex, teen or unwed pregnancy, STDs, divorce and domestic violence than Red America. Till now, such comparisons were avoided by liberals, as divisive and playing up to Culture War. But somebody with enough cash and anger could lay it out.
Oh, but hold onto your seats. Now we get into really dicey territory.
* Sarah Palin believes (or let’s demand that she disavow) that more than half of her fellow citizens are damned either by nature or because of their beliefs, if not to Hell then to eternal exclusion from God’s grace.
Sure, holding to that tenet is her Constitutionally protected privilege. But since she declared that her decisions will be guided by those beliefs, we have a perfect right to see them in bare light. And people who she considers damned may legitimately ponder that, when deciding whether to vote for her.
Moreover --
* Sarah Palin craves, yearns-for and actively prays-for (or let’s demand that she disavow) the coming of a day, quite soon, when most of the world’s people will suffer torment, death and damnation, amid flame and other agonies, amid tumult that will include the end of the United States of America.
(See Palin getting very intense about mixing church & state.)
Now, of course, she would attempt to moderate these beliefs and fervent wishes, by claiming that the death and agony and damnation parts aren’t what she yearns for, but rather, the subsequent arrival of a Sanctified Kingdom on Earth that will be paradisiacal - that is, for the remaining elect. All the other vengeful-torment stuff is regrettable, but Heaven’s unalterable will. Anyway, those people (well, some of them) may yet avoid that dark fate by abandoning all of their own beliefs and adopting hers.
No doubt she - and her supporters - would indignantly denounce anyone asking about these views, as they are a matter of private conscience. But are they?
Strip away unctuous reassurances and we have someone asking to be trusted as potential master of America’s nuclear arsenal and defender of its Constitution, who openly avows to wanting - eagerly - the quick arrival of a day when fire will scorch the sky and flame sear land. When a majority of her fellow citizens will perish and tumble into torment, and when a closing curtain will fall for the nation and democracy she claims to love.
Of course, I may have imputed and extrapolated far too much. My interpretation may be unfair. In a spirit of enlightenment curiosity, I stand ready to be corrected. Still, we have a right to be concerned. Let Sarah Palin publicly explain how this interpretation is mistaken, so we might breathe easier.
---And finally ...from the Road of Silly Walks... ---
Palin for President!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Speech... and our prospects... from many angles
Well, all right. If it takes a political genius to defeat the politics of manipulation and cynicism in this country, isn’t it nice that America can still produce genius?
As an experienced public speaker, I watched Barack Obama’s acceptance address at many levels. Of course it was inspirational, well-targeted and powerful -- a masterful example of polemical strategy, tactics and manifest sincerity of purpose. I also watched a fellow who was able to both memorize and extemporaneously wing it, as he (to my trained eye) re-adjusted to a few stumbles and even shifted some phrases, in mid-stride. Obama’s speech was not rote-delivered, but steered by a man who was thinking the words while speaking them. That vastly increased the sense of conversation with us, a trait that FDR mastered, Bill Clinton studied, and JFK -- for all his brilliance -- never understood.
It truly was a pivotal moment in American politics. About half of my (minor) reservations about BHO were settled by this speech -- and by the way he handled the entire convention. For example, I counted six times that he referred to science and technology as pressing national needs. Once, my friends, is perfunctory. Twice is policy. Six times is a call to action. That wasn’t for political impact -- (what fraction of the TV audience cared?) -- but an expression of perceived importance.
My remaining quibbles are mere motes that I can wave aside for other times, after the republic is saved and conditions return for normal argument. What matters is that I know this fellow will do the basic things that I want and need, simply by ejecting knaves and traitors and thieves from their grip over our throats and wallets, and allowing civil servants and officers to do the jobs we hired them to do.
That, alone, would expose most of our wounds to cleansing air and light. Even just that would save us. (And why wouldn’t he unleash professionals from the oppression of political hacks? One aspect of Obama that no pundit has mentioned: he has probably the shortest list of political IOUs in the history of the nation. I mean, whom does he owe? However long a list you make, any other pol will have one many dozens of times as long.)
All the rest -- the policy corrections, the return to international sanity and resumed faith in negotiation (international and domestic), a soothing of division and a return to ambition for new endeavors -- all of that is just frosting to me.
Still, the prospect of a genius -- without JFK’s or Clinton’s flaws -- might be an alluring one. If I let myself believe...
By the way, if you missed Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic Convention, here it is. Brilliant, of course. He did at least mention the Republican war against science, something rare for politicians to note or notice. I wish he - or someone - would mention the devastation wrought upon the US Army and military readiness, in general. But it is clear that this fellow knows us, probably better than anybody.
--- OTHER POLITICAL / POLICY-RELATED MATTERS ---
Get your hands on AMERICA'S SECRET WAR, by my friend, international security expert George Friedman. I found much of his book fascinating, cogent and smart. Well, the first half or so. All the way from pre 9/11 to the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan. You’ll learn a lot!
Unfortunately, George from that point forward weaves some astonishing just-so stories. First, continuing the party line that we are in a life-or-death “war” against Jihadist forces. (In fact, I was the first to predict such a “war” back in 1987 -- though I meant it in subtler ways, dealing with a clash of cultures, and not some 90% mythological Al Qaeda bogeyman)...
...only then George goes on to create a wholly original theory that I had not seen before -- that the Iraq War’s secret rationale -- excusing the deliberate lies about WMDs and such -- was to intimidate the Saudi government, cornering and forcing it to cooperate and provide intelligence to help corner Al Qaeda.
I’ll leave that remarkable theory for folks to pursue in “discussion” below. Just let me say that the book is very worthwhile on two levels. The first half is filled with fascinating facts, woven together well. And... well... the second half merits a Hugo Award.
As for my own explanation of this “war”... that it was perpetrated in order to achieve exactly what HAS been achieved -- the demolition of our alliances, our reputation, our status in the world, our finances, our military readiness and so on... exactly as Vietnam did to us... well...
------ Are we being commanded, from above, to lose this war? -----
The bounty offered by the U.S. government for the capture of Al Qaeda leader Abu Ayyub al Masri:
2006 - $5 million
2007 - $1 million
2008 - $100,000
Add to this the disbanding of entire intelligence units that had been assigned to trace the money flow to terror-related organizations and a seemingly endless list of other odoriferous (smelly) circumstances.
--- Meanwhile, as we sleep.... ---
Scary stuff from the Lifeboat Foundation site. See the 2008 report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States From Electromagnetic Pulese (EMP) Attack (April 2008.) The House Armed Services Committee held hearings July 10th, 2008. http://www.empcommission.org/reports.php
Nice buzzword/terminology : Graceful degradation
Facts and "realistic" assessments mixed in, shared:
1. Estimation of approximately 90% death toll is possible "within parameters"
2. Estimation of a year and a half to order replacement equipment to key systems, from abroad
3. Tested, estimation of 10% of cars to stop working, most (not all) to restart regularly
4. Launch over Caspian sea and tests of Shahab 3 to detonate in orbit show EMP intentions, no others come to mind
5. Explicit Iranian doctrine including EMP
6. It doesn't take advanced or large-yield nuclear weapons
7. China and Russia have been developing such EMP devices, as opposed to their Cold War strategies
8. With a Scud B you could cover one of the coasts
9. Estimated we'd have three days supply of food
"The impact of EMP is asymmetric in relation to potential adversaries who are not as dependent on modern electronics as we are." -- Dr. William R. Graham,
---- And finally ---
An interesting essay on the Chinese rationalization for having the rule of law without democracy.
Oh, the next president will have his hands full, all right. And that is just the beginning.
You heard it here first. Prepare for the rise of ten thousand Timothy McVeighs. Demographically, that’s not very many, actually. We are getting better. But those few... they’ve been dormant... but they will make Al Qaeda look like pissant amateurs....
It truly was a pivotal moment in American politics. About half of my (minor) reservations about BHO were settled by this speech -- and by the way he handled the entire convention. For example, I counted six times that he referred to science and technology as pressing national needs. Once, my friends, is perfunctory. Twice is policy. Six times is a call to action. That wasn’t for political impact -- (what fraction of the TV audience cared?) -- but an expression of perceived importance.
My remaining quibbles are mere motes that I can wave aside for other times, after the republic is saved and conditions return for normal argument. What matters is that I know this fellow will do the basic things that I want and need, simply by ejecting knaves and traitors and thieves from their grip over our throats and wallets, and allowing civil servants and officers to do the jobs we hired them to do.
That, alone, would expose most of our wounds to cleansing air and light. Even just that would save us. (And why wouldn’t he unleash professionals from the oppression of political hacks? One aspect of Obama that no pundit has mentioned: he has probably the shortest list of political IOUs in the history of the nation. I mean, whom does he owe? However long a list you make, any other pol will have one many dozens of times as long.)
All the rest -- the policy corrections, the return to international sanity and resumed faith in negotiation (international and domestic), a soothing of division and a return to ambition for new endeavors -- all of that is just frosting to me.
Still, the prospect of a genius -- without JFK’s or Clinton’s flaws -- might be an alluring one. If I let myself believe...
By the way, if you missed Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic Convention, here it is. Brilliant, of course. He did at least mention the Republican war against science, something rare for politicians to note or notice. I wish he - or someone - would mention the devastation wrought upon the US Army and military readiness, in general. But it is clear that this fellow knows us, probably better than anybody.
--- OTHER POLITICAL / POLICY-RELATED MATTERS ---
Get your hands on AMERICA'S SECRET WAR, by my friend, international security expert George Friedman. I found much of his book fascinating, cogent and smart. Well, the first half or so. All the way from pre 9/11 to the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan. You’ll learn a lot! Unfortunately, George from that point forward weaves some astonishing just-so stories. First, continuing the party line that we are in a life-or-death “war” against Jihadist forces. (In fact, I was the first to predict such a “war” back in 1987 -- though I meant it in subtler ways, dealing with a clash of cultures, and not some 90% mythological Al Qaeda bogeyman)...
...only then George goes on to create a wholly original theory that I had not seen before -- that the Iraq War’s secret rationale -- excusing the deliberate lies about WMDs and such -- was to intimidate the Saudi government, cornering and forcing it to cooperate and provide intelligence to help corner Al Qaeda.
I’ll leave that remarkable theory for folks to pursue in “discussion” below. Just let me say that the book is very worthwhile on two levels. The first half is filled with fascinating facts, woven together well. And... well... the second half merits a Hugo Award.
As for my own explanation of this “war”... that it was perpetrated in order to achieve exactly what HAS been achieved -- the demolition of our alliances, our reputation, our status in the world, our finances, our military readiness and so on... exactly as Vietnam did to us... well...
------ Are we being commanded, from above, to lose this war? -----
The bounty offered by the U.S. government for the capture of Al Qaeda leader Abu Ayyub al Masri:
2006 - $5 million
2007 - $1 million
2008 - $100,000
Add to this the disbanding of entire intelligence units that had been assigned to trace the money flow to terror-related organizations and a seemingly endless list of other odoriferous (smelly) circumstances.
--- Meanwhile, as we sleep.... ---
Scary stuff from the Lifeboat Foundation site. See the 2008 report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States From Electromagnetic Pulese (EMP) Attack (April 2008.) The House Armed Services Committee held hearings July 10th, 2008. http://www.empcommission.org/reports.php
Nice buzzword/terminology : Graceful degradation
Facts and "realistic" assessments mixed in, shared:
1. Estimation of approximately 90% death toll is possible "within parameters"
2. Estimation of a year and a half to order replacement equipment to key systems, from abroad
3. Tested, estimation of 10% of cars to stop working, most (not all) to restart regularly
4. Launch over Caspian sea and tests of Shahab 3 to detonate in orbit show EMP intentions, no others come to mind
5. Explicit Iranian doctrine including EMP
6. It doesn't take advanced or large-yield nuclear weapons
7. China and Russia have been developing such EMP devices, as opposed to their Cold War strategies
8. With a Scud B you could cover one of the coasts
9. Estimated we'd have three days supply of food
"The impact of EMP is asymmetric in relation to potential adversaries who are not as dependent on modern electronics as we are." -- Dr. William R. Graham,
---- And finally ---
An interesting essay on the Chinese rationalization for having the rule of law without democracy.
Oh, the next president will have his hands full, all right. And that is just the beginning.
You heard it here first. Prepare for the rise of ten thousand Timothy McVeighs. Demographically, that’s not very many, actually. We are getting better. But those few... they’ve been dormant... but they will make Al Qaeda look like pissant amateurs....
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Unusual Perspectives... Uplifting Dogs... and science stuff
Announcing a new David Brin “fan page” on Facebook! for news and updates. See also a site for people who think “The Postman is the best movie ever.” Of course, then, there is the rumor that both the book and the movie are iconic rallying symbols for the pro-democracy movement in Kazakhstan... or so I’ve been told.
--- A Brin-terview ---
While visting IBM Research, I did a brief, ten-minute oral-essay about how science fiction can change the world. IBM has podcast it. This is separate from my hour-long (and detailed) talk about Third Millennium Problem-Solving: Can New Visualization and Collaboration Tools Make a Difference? That much longer talk is available online.
--- Unusual Perspectives ---
See the ever-brilliant and entertaining Kevin Kelly talk about how far the web has come in its 5,000 days of existence... and where it may go in the next 5,000. He points out that the number of transistors currently linking online has reached about the same number as the neurons in a human brain. (A papallel I made in EARTH, published just before the web arrived.)
Another site worth a visit: the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. A great guy, Robert D. Atkinson, is president and has interesting things to say about rediscovering our role as a scientific and technologically innovative civilization.
---- Unusual Worries ---
For its 60th Anniversary, the Rand Corporation invited its staff around the world to propose “important policy issues not currently receiving the attention they deserve in the public debate” — issues, in other words, that might be on the back burner today but will likely become front burner issues within the next five years. The listed eleven top responses are fascinating. (Though I can think of a dozen even bigger items they left out, of course.) See especially “a new Anti-American coalition” and “From Nation-State to Nexus-State.”
----- Betting on Tomorrow ----
I’ve long pushed for better ways to track those in society who seek credibility, influence or power by bandying confident forecasts about future events.
Now, Nigel Eccles talks about Hubdub.com, a site that tries to generate a lot of fun while encouraging folks to stick their necks out, betting on matters like the VP sweepstakes or the Dow Jones or potential Olympic flag bearers, with credibility scores rising or falling with outcomes. “At the moment you can tell a user’s historic accuracy by their net worth. In the next week we are going to introduce star levels which will translate those amounts into something that it is easy for a casual reader to understand (e.g. I might be a 5-star technology predictor but only 1-star on politics). We are also going to give users the ability to post their credibility to their blogs and profiles on social media sites.”
It’s a worthy effort, applying some of the methods developed recently for Prediction Markets, but also suffering from some of the faults of PMs. Above all, it remains just a game because people come to Hubdub in order to play, or when they are confident. My Predictions Registry concept goes a bit farther. It would actually “out” the hundreds of thousands of people in our society who practice the art of predictive sleight-of-hand -- demanding influence based upon forecasts, but hedging and evading accountability when things turn out differently Still, go ahead and try out Hubdub.
------ Some Quandaries Just Need a Little Imagination ---
When Leona Helmsley died in August 2007, she left all but a few million dollars of her perhaps $8 billion estate to the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, making it easily one of America's largest foundations. She also left a brief document indicating that the entire trust be used for the care and welfare of dogs. "The trustees recently hired a philanthropic advisory service to help them figure out a way to remain true to Mrs. Helmsley's intentions while at the same time pursuing broader charitable goals with her foundation," reported the *New York Times*("Helmsley Left Dogs Billions in Her Will," July 2). Rather than pay estate taxes of $3.6 billion to the government, Helmsley has stipulated that the money be held in trust for perpetuity. Madoff argues in her op-ed that "the law should not encourage people to tie up their resources – and ours – for all time."
Indiana University professor of public affairs and philanthropic studies Leslie Lenkowsky suggests that Helmsley may have been trying to support animal welfare as a heretofore neglected charitable cause compared to, say, child welfare – and that Congress and the American people give her that right.
I have a completely different take on how to re-interpret the Leona Helmsley bequest of many billions to "benefit dogs." While intellectuals squirm in order to find ways to evade or re-interpret her clear (if perhaps addled) intent and apply the funds to "animal welfare" or to the environment or to children, I believe there is another interpretation that might both broaden the use of her trust and keep direct faith with her wishes.
The money might be applied, to some extent, to the detailed genetic analysis of dogs (a first-draft genome already exists), in unprecedented detail, down to the cellular and molecular level, their neuronal and behavior qualities, etc. The resulting perfect map of an animal species would:
1) serve to benefit dogs - perhaps eliminating or palliating every canine disease - exactly as the donor wished.
2) have profound side-benefits for the understanding of all mammalian life processes, as well as exploring new methods for analysis that can be applied beyond dogs, thus benefiting humanity... and ecology, for that matter.
3) have another effect that is utterly pro-dog, while benefiting us all. It could be a prelude to commencing the "uplift" of dogs, continuing a process we have been engaged-in together for at least the last 10,000 years of human-canine interaction -- arguably our longest-lasting and most extensive project of all. By applying these funds to such dog centered research, humanity might - for example - increase canine intelligence and abilities, gaining fresh insights into intelligence itself, while helping this most cooperative of all friendly species to partner with human beings in ever more meaningful ways.
If overall canine “happiness” were included as an essential parameter, would not, say, a doubling of canine intelligence be a "benefit" under Mrs. Helmsley's wishes? While enabling the foundation to expand upon her dictate, without bending or breaking it?
My argument is simple. Instead of trying to waffle reasons to broaden the Helmsley bequest, it might be possible to dive into it, in profound and enthusiastic detail, and achieve great things for humanity and the world, while remaining true to the original (albeit somewhat silly) concept.
--- And Now the Misc-tery Data Dump! ---
InnoCentive is a company that links organizations (seekers) with problems (challenges) to people all over the world (solvers) who win cash prizes for resolving them. The company gets a posting fee and, if the problem is solved, a “finders fee” equal to about 40 percent of the prize. The process, according to John Seely Brown, a theorist of information technology and former director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, reflects “a huge shift in popular culture, from consuming to participating” enabled by the interactivity so characteristic of the Internet.
The prevailing theory of aging is being challenged by Stanford University Medical School researchers. Their discovery contradicts the generally held hyopothesis that aging is a buildup of tissue damage similar to rust. The Stanford findings suggest specific genetic instructions drive the process. If they are right, science might one day find ways of switching the signals off and halting or even reversing aging. (But, accident or not, it would not have been reinforced if it did not offer an evolutionary advantage... and thus be hard to turn off. Some people simply do not thinks things through.)
Adding lime to seawater increases alkalinity, boosting seawater's ability to absorb CO2 from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again. The process of making lime generates CO2, but adding the lime to seawater absorbs almost twice as much CO2. The overall process is therefore 'carbon negative'. However, the idea, which has been bandied about for years, was thought unworkable because of the expense of obtaining lime from limestone and the amount of CO2 released in the process. Shell is so impressed with a newly developed approach that it is funding an investigation into its economic feasibility. (Note an added benefit. Increased alkalinity would also compensate for potential acidification if iron is added to seawater to boost plankton and foodchain productivity in “desert” sea areas, pulling out even more CO2.)
The Highlands Forum has released its late summer reading list. Blogmembers are welcome to report back on any of these!: ”Among the six books are one novel and five works of timely nonfiction. On the nonfiction side are important books that tell us much about our world, where we may be going, and what we might do to make things better. They range in theme from the failure of states and the plight of the people in those states (The Bottom Billion, Fixing Failed States) to the rise of alternative forces to states (Terror and Consent), to the process of creating effective, cohesive groups that might affect the outcomes of elections, resulting in stronger states (Here Comes Everybody, Millennial Makeover). On the other side is a novel regarding the science of complexity as well as the people and organization from which the deep insights on complexity arise (The Edge of Chaos)“
Solar system travel posters.
Miniaturized DNA Sewing Machines "Japanese researchers have found a way to build long threads of DNA using miniaturized hooks and bobbins. In fact, they've demonstrated how to manipulate delicate DNA chains without breaking them. They've designed these laser-directed microdevices to pick up and manipulate individual molecules of DNA.
MIT researchers turn everyday windows into solar panels. The technology could soup up traditional panels by 50%. To create the concentrator system, researchers mix multiple dyes that they basically paint onto a pane of glass or plastic. The dyes absorb light across a range of wavelengths. The energy then is pushed out to the edges of the pane, where it's stored in solar cells there.
Somebody try out http://dermundo.com/ and report back about how this new multilingual publishing tool powered by the Worldwide Lexicon project works! Let by Brian McConnell.
---
And a final quotation I saw while taking the Family, recently, to some big stone faces...
“I think that we can perhaps meditate a little on those Americans ten thousand years from now, when the weathering on the faces of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln shall have proceeded to perhaps the depth of a tenth of an inch, and wonder what our descendants—and I think they will still be here will think about us. Let us hope that at least they will give us the benefit of the doubt, that they will believe we have honestly striven every day and generation to preserve for our descendants a decent land to live in and a decent form of government to operate under.” -- Franklin Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore, 1936.
--- A Brin-terview ---
While visting IBM Research, I did a brief, ten-minute oral-essay about how science fiction can change the world. IBM has podcast it. This is separate from my hour-long (and detailed) talk about Third Millennium Problem-Solving: Can New Visualization and Collaboration Tools Make a Difference? That much longer talk is available online.
--- Unusual Perspectives ---
See the ever-brilliant and entertaining Kevin Kelly talk about how far the web has come in its 5,000 days of existence... and where it may go in the next 5,000. He points out that the number of transistors currently linking online has reached about the same number as the neurons in a human brain. (A papallel I made in EARTH, published just before the web arrived.)
Another site worth a visit: the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. A great guy, Robert D. Atkinson, is president and has interesting things to say about rediscovering our role as a scientific and technologically innovative civilization.
---- Unusual Worries ---
For its 60th Anniversary, the Rand Corporation invited its staff around the world to propose “important policy issues not currently receiving the attention they deserve in the public debate” — issues, in other words, that might be on the back burner today but will likely become front burner issues within the next five years. The listed eleven top responses are fascinating. (Though I can think of a dozen even bigger items they left out, of course.) See especially “a new Anti-American coalition” and “From Nation-State to Nexus-State.”
----- Betting on Tomorrow ----
I’ve long pushed for better ways to track those in society who seek credibility, influence or power by bandying confident forecasts about future events.
Now, Nigel Eccles talks about Hubdub.com, a site that tries to generate a lot of fun while encouraging folks to stick their necks out, betting on matters like the VP sweepstakes or the Dow Jones or potential Olympic flag bearers, with credibility scores rising or falling with outcomes. “At the moment you can tell a user’s historic accuracy by their net worth. In the next week we are going to introduce star levels which will translate those amounts into something that it is easy for a casual reader to understand (e.g. I might be a 5-star technology predictor but only 1-star on politics). We are also going to give users the ability to post their credibility to their blogs and profiles on social media sites.”
It’s a worthy effort, applying some of the methods developed recently for Prediction Markets, but also suffering from some of the faults of PMs. Above all, it remains just a game because people come to Hubdub in order to play, or when they are confident. My Predictions Registry concept goes a bit farther. It would actually “out” the hundreds of thousands of people in our society who practice the art of predictive sleight-of-hand -- demanding influence based upon forecasts, but hedging and evading accountability when things turn out differently Still, go ahead and try out Hubdub.
------ Some Quandaries Just Need a Little Imagination ---
When Leona Helmsley died in August 2007, she left all but a few million dollars of her perhaps $8 billion estate to the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, making it easily one of America's largest foundations. She also left a brief document indicating that the entire trust be used for the care and welfare of dogs. "The trustees recently hired a philanthropic advisory service to help them figure out a way to remain true to Mrs. Helmsley's intentions while at the same time pursuing broader charitable goals with her foundation," reported the *New York Times*("Helmsley Left Dogs Billions in Her Will," July 2). Rather than pay estate taxes of $3.6 billion to the government, Helmsley has stipulated that the money be held in trust for perpetuity. Madoff argues in her op-ed that "the law should not encourage people to tie up their resources – and ours – for all time."
Indiana University professor of public affairs and philanthropic studies Leslie Lenkowsky suggests that Helmsley may have been trying to support animal welfare as a heretofore neglected charitable cause compared to, say, child welfare – and that Congress and the American people give her that right.
I have a completely different take on how to re-interpret the Leona Helmsley bequest of many billions to "benefit dogs." While intellectuals squirm in order to find ways to evade or re-interpret her clear (if perhaps addled) intent and apply the funds to "animal welfare" or to the environment or to children, I believe there is another interpretation that might both broaden the use of her trust and keep direct faith with her wishes.
The money might be applied, to some extent, to the detailed genetic analysis of dogs (a first-draft genome already exists), in unprecedented detail, down to the cellular and molecular level, their neuronal and behavior qualities, etc. The resulting perfect map of an animal species would:
1) serve to benefit dogs - perhaps eliminating or palliating every canine disease - exactly as the donor wished.
2) have profound side-benefits for the understanding of all mammalian life processes, as well as exploring new methods for analysis that can be applied beyond dogs, thus benefiting humanity... and ecology, for that matter.
3) have another effect that is utterly pro-dog, while benefiting us all. It could be a prelude to commencing the "uplift" of dogs, continuing a process we have been engaged-in together for at least the last 10,000 years of human-canine interaction -- arguably our longest-lasting and most extensive project of all. By applying these funds to such dog centered research, humanity might - for example - increase canine intelligence and abilities, gaining fresh insights into intelligence itself, while helping this most cooperative of all friendly species to partner with human beings in ever more meaningful ways.
If overall canine “happiness” were included as an essential parameter, would not, say, a doubling of canine intelligence be a "benefit" under Mrs. Helmsley's wishes? While enabling the foundation to expand upon her dictate, without bending or breaking it?
My argument is simple. Instead of trying to waffle reasons to broaden the Helmsley bequest, it might be possible to dive into it, in profound and enthusiastic detail, and achieve great things for humanity and the world, while remaining true to the original (albeit somewhat silly) concept.
--- And Now the Misc-tery Data Dump! ---
InnoCentive is a company that links organizations (seekers) with problems (challenges) to people all over the world (solvers) who win cash prizes for resolving them. The company gets a posting fee and, if the problem is solved, a “finders fee” equal to about 40 percent of the prize. The process, according to John Seely Brown, a theorist of information technology and former director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, reflects “a huge shift in popular culture, from consuming to participating” enabled by the interactivity so characteristic of the Internet.
The prevailing theory of aging is being challenged by Stanford University Medical School researchers. Their discovery contradicts the generally held hyopothesis that aging is a buildup of tissue damage similar to rust. The Stanford findings suggest specific genetic instructions drive the process. If they are right, science might one day find ways of switching the signals off and halting or even reversing aging. (But, accident or not, it would not have been reinforced if it did not offer an evolutionary advantage... and thus be hard to turn off. Some people simply do not thinks things through.)
Adding lime to seawater increases alkalinity, boosting seawater's ability to absorb CO2 from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again. The process of making lime generates CO2, but adding the lime to seawater absorbs almost twice as much CO2. The overall process is therefore 'carbon negative'. However, the idea, which has been bandied about for years, was thought unworkable because of the expense of obtaining lime from limestone and the amount of CO2 released in the process. Shell is so impressed with a newly developed approach that it is funding an investigation into its economic feasibility. (Note an added benefit. Increased alkalinity would also compensate for potential acidification if iron is added to seawater to boost plankton and foodchain productivity in “desert” sea areas, pulling out even more CO2.)
The Highlands Forum has released its late summer reading list. Blogmembers are welcome to report back on any of these!: ”Among the six books are one novel and five works of timely nonfiction. On the nonfiction side are important books that tell us much about our world, where we may be going, and what we might do to make things better. They range in theme from the failure of states and the plight of the people in those states (The Bottom Billion, Fixing Failed States) to the rise of alternative forces to states (Terror and Consent), to the process of creating effective, cohesive groups that might affect the outcomes of elections, resulting in stronger states (Here Comes Everybody, Millennial Makeover). On the other side is a novel regarding the science of complexity as well as the people and organization from which the deep insights on complexity arise (The Edge of Chaos)“
Solar system travel posters.
Miniaturized DNA Sewing Machines "Japanese researchers have found a way to build long threads of DNA using miniaturized hooks and bobbins. In fact, they've demonstrated how to manipulate delicate DNA chains without breaking them. They've designed these laser-directed microdevices to pick up and manipulate individual molecules of DNA.
MIT researchers turn everyday windows into solar panels. The technology could soup up traditional panels by 50%. To create the concentrator system, researchers mix multiple dyes that they basically paint onto a pane of glass or plastic. The dyes absorb light across a range of wavelengths. The energy then is pushed out to the edges of the pane, where it's stored in solar cells there.
Somebody try out http://dermundo.com/ and report back about how this new multilingual publishing tool powered by the Worldwide Lexicon project works! Let by Brian McConnell.
---
And a final quotation I saw while taking the Family, recently, to some big stone faces...
“I think that we can perhaps meditate a little on those Americans ten thousand years from now, when the weathering on the faces of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln shall have proceeded to perhaps the depth of a tenth of an inch, and wonder what our descendants—and I think they will still be here will think about us. Let us hope that at least they will give us the benefit of the doubt, that they will believe we have honestly striven every day and generation to preserve for our descendants a decent land to live in and a decent form of government to operate under.” -- Franklin Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore, 1936.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
An important new blog... and news from Worldcon and the high plains...
First off... we've all just returned from a high plains family odyssey -- from Denver (the World Science Fiction convention) to Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Devil's Monument and several cool caves (a family interest of ours.)
The Denver World Science Fiction Convention was a bit small (they are steadily getting smaller) but charming, friendly and one of the sweetest I ever attended. (My first worldcon ever was Denvention II in 1981.) Among the highlights:
1- SKY HORIZON received the Hal Clement Award for best science fiction novel for Young Adults.
2- I got a chance to do this fabulous panel with much-talented artists Frank Wu and Teddy Harvia, in which I essentially did stand-up storytelling improv with images or elements shouted from the audience while Frank and Teddy sketched. It got rather rollicking and manic, with Frank & I standing on the tables doing surfer moves, then leading the audience in chants and songs, then getting REALLY silly. There must be a dozen blog entries and youTube postings about that one event.
Now, on to important matters...
-----
An important announcement: Russ Daggatt has finally started a blog. A truly insightful fellow, Russ is a great source of collated political data and common-sense "ostrich-bait." It’s about time that his compilations became available to a wider audience. (Thus saving me the chore of frequently re-posting them!)Catch his entries at: http://daggatt.blogspot.com/ and do spread the word.
Oh, and an (apolitical/philosophical) aside: John Brockman’s THE EDGE site has posted my appraisal of Mark Pesce’s latest speech, siddling toward elitist cynicism and renunciationism. I think you’ll find both sides interesting.
*** A GENERAL/POLITICAL POTPOURRI ***
Here’s a good “ostrich” article on Salon.
Fearing I would go crazy and shoot the TV.
Oh, the June-July Armageddon Buffet is online! http://signsandportentsofarmageddon.blogspot.com/
The Bush Administration has ignited a furor with a proposed definition of pregnancy that has the effect of classifying some of the most widely used methods of contraception as abortion.
-------
One angry investment specialist and champion of transparency is Michael Lewitt of Hegemony Capital Management (http://www.hegcap.com/). Via John Mauldin, I’ve been reading Lewitt’s cogent comments on the continuing efforts by those in authority to bail out the system (especially their cronies), along with insights on the deal by Merrill and the woes at GM. Lewitt is scathing about how the rules have been tweaked and the civil servants distracted, allowing the development of... ”...beggar-the poor, boost-the-rich policies... or a capitalism-for-the-poor, socialism-for-the-rich economic model that American financial authorities have adopted over the past two decades.”
All of which reinforces my belief that our problem in recent years is not so much that we have had bad shifts in “law.”Rather, what we’ve seen is a near abandonment of law, with a civil service that has been crushed, cowed, suborned, distracted, or bullied into not doing the jobs that they were hired to do. Indeed, I’d be interested in a comparison of regulatory enforcement actions that were taken by New York State vs the SEC, on a yearly basis since 2001. My impression is that New York State engaged in far more supervision, auditing, accountability and law enforcement than the federal agencies that are supposedly our main line of defense.
---
This is pretty big. In May this year, the multibillion-dollar oil giant Exxon-Mobil acknowledged that it had been doing something similar [to the tobacco lobby]. It announced that it would cease funding nine groups that had fuelled a global campaign to deny climate change. Exxon's decision comes after a shareholder revolt by members of the Rockefeller family and big superannuation funds to get the oil giant to take climate change more seriously...
...and that's enough for now. Just keeping my hand in. Do look for a local tight race to help with. That's where the real action is.
db
The Denver World Science Fiction Convention was a bit small (they are steadily getting smaller) but charming, friendly and one of the sweetest I ever attended. (My first worldcon ever was Denvention II in 1981.) Among the highlights:
2- I got a chance to do this fabulous panel with much-talented artists Frank Wu and Teddy Harvia, in which I essentially did stand-up storytelling improv with images or elements shouted from the audience while Frank and Teddy sketched. It got rather rollicking and manic, with Frank & I standing on the tables doing surfer moves, then leading the audience in chants and songs, then getting REALLY silly. There must be a dozen blog entries and youTube postings about that one event.
Now, on to important matters...
-----
An important announcement: Russ Daggatt has finally started a blog. A truly insightful fellow, Russ is a great source of collated political data and common-sense "ostrich-bait." It’s about time that his compilations became available to a wider audience. (Thus saving me the chore of frequently re-posting them!)Catch his entries at: http://daggatt.blogspot.com/ and do spread the word.
Oh, and an (apolitical/philosophical) aside: John Brockman’s THE EDGE site has posted my appraisal of Mark Pesce’s latest speech, siddling toward elitist cynicism and renunciationism. I think you’ll find both sides interesting.
*** A GENERAL/POLITICAL POTPOURRI ***
Here’s a good “ostrich” article on Salon.
Fearing I would go crazy and shoot the TV.
Oh, the June-July Armageddon Buffet is online! http://signsandportentsofarmageddon.blogspot.com/
The Bush Administration has ignited a furor with a proposed definition of pregnancy that has the effect of classifying some of the most widely used methods of contraception as abortion.
-------
One angry investment specialist and champion of transparency is Michael Lewitt of Hegemony Capital Management (http://www.hegcap.com/). Via John Mauldin, I’ve been reading Lewitt’s cogent comments on the continuing efforts by those in authority to bail out the system (especially their cronies), along with insights on the deal by Merrill and the woes at GM. Lewitt is scathing about how the rules have been tweaked and the civil servants distracted, allowing the development of... ”...beggar-the poor, boost-the-rich policies... or a capitalism-for-the-poor, socialism-for-the-rich economic model that American financial authorities have adopted over the past two decades.”
All of which reinforces my belief that our problem in recent years is not so much that we have had bad shifts in “law.”Rather, what we’ve seen is a near abandonment of law, with a civil service that has been crushed, cowed, suborned, distracted, or bullied into not doing the jobs that they were hired to do. Indeed, I’d be interested in a comparison of regulatory enforcement actions that were taken by New York State vs the SEC, on a yearly basis since 2001. My impression is that New York State engaged in far more supervision, auditing, accountability and law enforcement than the federal agencies that are supposedly our main line of defense.
---
This is pretty big. In May this year, the multibillion-dollar oil giant Exxon-Mobil acknowledged that it had been doing something similar [to the tobacco lobby]. It announced that it would cease funding nine groups that had fuelled a global campaign to deny climate change. Exxon's decision comes after a shareholder revolt by members of the Rockefeller family and big superannuation funds to get the oil giant to take climate change more seriously...
...and that's enough for now. Just keeping my hand in. Do look for a local tight race to help with. That's where the real action is.
db
Thursday, August 07, 2008
A (completely!) non-political potpourri!
I’m mostly going offline for a little bit, so I figure I’ll toss out a few random jumbles of flotsam and jetsam, in order to keep the sharks fed in the meantime. (I may check in, under comments... or maybe not!) Have fun.
(Oh, and lack of time or a sane interface means I’ll not be hot-linking much. Sorry.)
------------
At last, a stab in the direction of a predictions registry. ”Think you've got the gift of foresight? The Washington Post has partnered with Predictify , an online polling service, to create a "Prediction Center" that allows readers to vote on possible outcomes for selected stories. Users will be able to leave their predictions and discuss their beliefs on an integrated comment thread.
Predictify, which launched in 2007, goes beyond basic polling systems by integrating discussion features and monitoring a users' accuracy score across the entire service. While there isn't currently a way to weight one question more than another, the site's algorithm does take into account the type of question and the accuracy rate of participants. To offer an incentive for users to take part in the polls, the site has also implemented a premium program that allows companies to sponsor a poll and reward the most accurate participants with cash. In return, these sponsors are entitled to the demographics data that the service asks for with each vote. “
Note, this lacks most of the added features that could turn something like Predictify into a truly useful tool for accomplishing what society really needs:
-
systematic ways to appraise predictive success/failure.
-
ways to overcome natural human feigning, backdating and retro-disavowal.
-
sufficient attractiveness to draw in a large critical mass of participants.
-
a widely-accepted way to “out” those who claim predictive acumen, but refuse appraisal or accountability.
-
discovery of “3-sigma” forecasters so attention can be given to their methods.
-
rewarding “2-sigma” people with greater access to those in power.
Predictify appears to take some baby steps toward a few of these desiderata -- baby steps that could be so much more.
In contrast, for all of the hype that has recently been given to “prediction markets,” they in fact make almost no efforts toward achieving these goals. Indeed, their entire drive is in other directions.
-----
See an interesting - if shallow - New York Times Magazine essay about “The Trolls Among Us” - profiling some of the “types” who choose to bushwack other people on the Net, the way their ancestors would lurk behind bushes (if they were poor) or simply grab victims openly (if they were lords). Oh, we’ve had a few troll problems here. But that’s not the segue. It is about so many things we’ve discussed here. Transparency & accountability. Self-righteous indignation (google exactly those words.) And about “getting” what this civilization is about.
-----
I have had issues with Bill Moyers, especially his disappointing sycophancy toward that infamous plagiarist and propagandist for oppressive, feudal-romantic, storytelling-uniformity, Joseph Campbell. Still, Moyers does care and has loads of passion, reminding me a lot of my late “crusading-journalist” father. Hence, I feel it’s worth referring folks -- during an era when Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave -- to Moyers’s latest offering. A Hippocratic Oath for Journalists. (Thanks Mel.)
----
One of my casual mini-essays -- written in response to a debate on John Brockman’s site THE EDGE, has raised some ripples. Based on Nicholas Carr’s cover story in the Atlantic: “Is Google making us Stoopid?” Have a look at responses by Danny Hillis, Clay Shirky, Larry Sanger and yours truly.
And see my new EDGE posting, taking issue with another cyber grough. Mark Pesce.
----
Oh, I have a few of these (Extraterrestrial Civilizations) in stock. Maybe I can retire!
---
From the Transparency Front: Last month, PeopleFinders, a 20-year-old company based in Sacramento, introduced http://CriminalSearches.com/, a free service to satisfy those common impulses. The site, which is supported by ads, lets people search by name through criminal archives of all 50 states and 3,500 counties in the United States.... A quick check of the database confirms that it is indeed imperfect. Some records are incomplete, and there is often no way to distinguish between people with the same names if you don’t know their birthdays (and even that date is often missing)....
---
A cool academic conference that may actually show a few sparks, next year, is the Ninth History of Astronomy Workshop, at Notre Dame, Indiana, July 8 - 12, 2009. Eminent SETI scholar Michael Crowe is among the organizers.
-----
Misc science alert: Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new study says. For true?
----
Catch this promising vertical algae reactor!
----
And the violinist spoof in the subway. You’ve heard of it. Still, ponder it again. We need to lift our heads more and be open to the unusual.
-----
And now an example of how many ways that even smart people misunderstand the Enlightenment. Even its defenders!
The New Scientist Magazine lists - Seven Reasons Why People Hate Reason. “From religious fundamentalism to pseudoscience, it seems that forces are attacking the Enlightenment world view – characterized by rational, scientific thinking – from all sides. The debate seems black and white: you’re either with reason, or you’re against it. But is it so simple? In a series of special essays, our contributors look more carefully at some of the most provocative charges against reason.”
See: Why people hate reason.
Alas, even in the very first paragraph, the New Scientist team illustrates the fault of accepting false definitions and thus creating a lose-lose situation for your side, from the very start. Because, in fact, it is flat-out wrongheaded to claim that “reason” is the fundamental premise of the Enlightenment!
Indeed, by basing a defense of the Enlightenment on a defense of reason, we expose it to justified doubt, and possibly even great harm.
Oh, certainly , “reason” played a role in the long fight against feudal and theocratic bullying. When the first universities of Europe rediscovered the Greek classics, via Arabic translators, in the 13th Century, the socratic logic espoused by Plato became a rallying point for the first great western Youth Movement, pushing back against dark, ecclesiastical mysticism. And yet, of course, Plato was no friend of democratic values. Indeed, his so-called “reason” has always been dubious, elitist, tendentious and easy to poke full-of-holes. Amounting to a ritualistic pattern of incantations, platonism has proved a powerfully seductive force for rationalization and subjective self-fulfillment. An underpinning for “philosophical” calamities like Hegel.
Sometimes logic -- and especially its cousin, mathematics -- can suggest useful directions of interest, pointing science, philosophy and political thought toward new doors, new thresholds. It can be especially useful as a negative tool, to pillory and demolish really awful positions. Still, through hard experience, we have learned that logic and reason can only suggest, propose, refute, perhaps stimulate, but it is far more limited than its greatest adherents suggest. Because no model built out of words can truly describe, let alone predict, the complex behavior of physical systems, let alone those made up of intricately-interacting human beings. Outside of math itself, logic and reason cannot be relied upon to prove anything.
Alas, a large part of the Enlightenment movement -- the branch led by continental scholars of France and Germany -- bought into the notion of pure reason. From Descartes to Sartre, they focused on logical incantations that always just happened to “prove” preconceived beliefs. Marxism, Nazissm and dozens of other tragedies emerged out of this fundamental mistake -- the notion that you can prove things with words.
(And don’t I often try to do exactly that? O, it is seductive, all right!)
Fortunately, the movement had its own version of the Protestant Reformation, a rift that saved it, when the Anglo-Scottish-Dutch wing branched off, declaring fealty instead to Pragmatism. To empiricism and the preeminence of experiment over theory. Oh, this wing had its own desperate follies -- like Radical Behaviorism and Logical Positivism. Still, the chief overall result was a system or zeitgeist that could adapt to new developments, quickly discover mistakes, subject earlier assumptions to criticism, and negotiate new solutions to problems.
Hence, I find it tragic and disappointing that the editors of The New Scientist -- a British based publication -- should fall for the rhetorical trap of defending reason as the core element of the modern Enlightenment. All it does is set things up so that all of the legitimate complaints against reason can be used as weapons against something much bigger and more important. Against the far greater and more important Pragmatic Enlightenment that has brought us so very far, and let us earn so very much.
-----
And now, a micro-essay-rant! (That I had tucked in a corner, meaning to spiff it up. Well, maybe not...)
THE RETURN OF THE UNCONSCIOUS....
One hundred years ago, the world was obsessed with the notion of the unconscious mind. Sigmund Freud was only the most prominent of a veritable wave of intellectuals, sages and scientists promoting the notion that we - each of us - consist of multiple layers, components or sub-selves, many of them in conflict with each other. Or keeping secrets from each other. The notion influenced both capitalists and Marxists. It propelled the social movements of the Roaring Twenties and gave millions an explanation for the Madness of the Great War.
At one level, this was a clear and epochal breakthrough. In his original INTRODUCTORY LECTURES, Freud spent many pages leading medical students through a series of simple experiments designed to demonstrate to each of them the existence of their own unconscious minds. This was Freud at his best, before he spun off, down paths of fantasy, self-delusion, sex obsession and downright, domineering guru-dom -- all displayed vividly in his later NEW INTRODUCTORY LECTURES. (Thus, unintentionally demonstrating some of the pitfalls that await any human who is lured by adulation away from the collegial criticism of science.) Today, you have only to see the wild ways that people leap to misinterpret each other -- in an argument or when skimming blogs or emails -- to witness the old unconscious in action. Or, ever notice how -- at a party -- the buzz of conversation fades into background... until somebody mentions your name? Clearly, much is going on, beneath the surface. Only part of your mental process is accessible to the melange that you blithely call “me.”
So why do we discuss the unconscious so little, nowadays? For one thing, there seemed to be no clear model of why the inner self would be secretive, concealing itself and even playing nasty tricks upon the upper-outer personality. A myriad sub-theories suggested different fundamental motivators for this, from Freud’s inherent sexual conflict to Adler’s power theory to Jung’s mystical archetypes, to traumatization of immortal cosmic souls by mind-warping technologies used by the evil Lord Xenu. In their rush to find a universal, general process or cause, the authors of these explanations reflexively avoided anything even remotely resembling falsifiability, scientific testing, or any reference to the Darwinian evolution that made us.
And then, along came psychopharmacology. At first, new drugs seemed to replicate the effects of psychotherapy, while therapy seemed to elicit changes in brain chemistry -- a chicken and egg situation that was bemusing... till newer drugs seemed to win the argument, hands down. In part because of better fine tuning, but also because therapy -- and especially psychoanalysis -- were so time consuming, expensive, and based upon a domineering style that was out of tune with a more liberated, individualistic era.
Finally, somebody seems to get it! ON DEEP HISTORY AND THE BRAIN, by Daniel Lord Smail, suggests that we constantly trigger altered mental states, simply because they are self-reinforcing... or possibly addictive. Excerpted from a review: ”By snorting -- suddenly creating a sound -- the slack-minded horse elicits an automatic “startle response” — flooding its brain with chemicals, delivering a jolt of excitement and relieving, at least for a moment, the monotony of a long day in an empty field. If horses can alter their own brain chemistries at will (and have good reasons to do so), what about human beings? In “On Deep History and the Brain,” Daniel Lord Smail suggests that human history can be understood as a long, unbroken sequence of snorts and sighs and other self-modifications of our mental states. We want to alter our own moods and feelings, and the rise of man from hunter-gatherer and farmer to office worker and video-game adept is the story of the ever proliferating devices — from coffee and tobacco to religious rites and romance novels — we’ve acquired to do so. Humans, Smail writes, have invented “a dizzying array of practices that stimulate the production and circulation of our own chemical messengers,” and those devices have become more plentiful with time. We make our own history, albeit with neurotransmitters not of our choosing.”
All of which is deeply connected to my longstanding assertion that such inner states give an entirely different perspective on addiction in human beings. (Anybody know how to contact this Harvard professor?)
-----
Okay, that’s a whole bunch or raw meat, tossed into the pool. I may check in, under comments, once or twice. But otherwise, I’ll be taking a break for a week or two. You folks keep the community fizzing, yes? I’m sure there will be lively discussions.
Oh! Some time it a few months, I think it really will be time to ditch Blogger and get a really good blog client onto http://www.davidbrin.com. We can discuss it in the fall.
Now go yank-awake some ostriches... nicely.... ;-)
(Oh, and lack of time or a sane interface means I’ll not be hot-linking much. Sorry.)
------------
At last, a stab in the direction of a predictions registry. ”Think you've got the gift of foresight? The Washington Post
Predictify, which launched in 2007, goes beyond basic polling systems by integrating discussion features and monitoring a users' accuracy score across the entire service. While there isn't currently a way to weight one question more than another, the site's algorithm does take into account the type of question and the accuracy rate of participants. To offer an incentive for users to take part in the polls, the site has also implemented a premium program that allows companies to sponsor a poll and reward the most accurate participants with cash. In return, these sponsors are entitled to the demographics data that the service asks for with each vote. “
Note, this lacks most of the added features that could turn something like Predictify into a truly useful tool for accomplishing what society really needs:
-
systematic ways to appraise predictive success/failure.
-
ways to overcome natural human feigning, backdating and retro-disavowal.
-
sufficient attractiveness to draw in a large critical mass of participants.
-
a widely-accepted way to “out” those who claim predictive acumen, but refuse appraisal or accountability.
-
discovery of “3-sigma” forecasters so attention can be given to their methods.
-
rewarding “2-sigma” people with greater access to those in power.
Predictify appears to take some baby steps toward a few of these desiderata -- baby steps that could be so much more.
In contrast, for all of the hype that has recently been given to “prediction markets,” they in fact make almost no efforts toward achieving these goals. Indeed, their entire drive is in other directions.
-----
See an interesting - if shallow - New York Times Magazine essay about “The Trolls Among Us” - profiling some of the “types” who choose to bushwack other people on the Net, the way their ancestors would lurk behind bushes (if they were poor) or simply grab victims openly (if they were lords). Oh, we’ve had a few troll problems here. But that’s not the segue. It is about so many things we’ve discussed here. Transparency & accountability. Self-righteous indignation (google exactly those words.) And about “getting” what this civilization is about.
-----
I have had issues with Bill Moyers, especially his disappointing sycophancy toward that infamous plagiarist and propagandist for oppressive, feudal-romantic, storytelling-uniformity, Joseph Campbell. Still, Moyers does care and has loads of passion, reminding me a lot of my late “crusading-journalist” father. Hence, I feel it’s worth referring folks -- during an era when Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave -- to Moyers’s latest offering. A Hippocratic Oath for Journalists. (Thanks Mel.)
----
One of my casual mini-essays -- written in response to a debate on John Brockman’s site THE EDGE, has raised some ripples. Based on Nicholas Carr’s cover story in the Atlantic: “Is Google making us Stoopid?” Have a look at responses by Danny Hillis, Clay Shirky, Larry Sanger and yours truly.
And see my new EDGE posting, taking issue with another cyber grough. Mark Pesce.
----
Oh, I have a few of these (Extraterrestrial Civilizations) in stock. Maybe I can retire!
---
From the Transparency Front: Last month, PeopleFinders, a 20-year-old company based in Sacramento, introduced http://CriminalSearches.com/, a free service to satisfy those common impulses. The site, which is supported by ads, lets people search by name through criminal archives of all 50 states and 3,500 counties in the United States.... A quick check of the database confirms that it is indeed imperfect. Some records are incomplete, and there is often no way to distinguish between people with the same names if you don’t know their birthdays (and even that date is often missing)....
---
A cool academic conference that may actually show a few sparks, next year, is the Ninth History of Astronomy Workshop, at Notre Dame, Indiana, July 8 - 12, 2009. Eminent SETI scholar Michael Crowe is among the organizers.
-----
Misc science alert: Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new study says. For true?
----
Catch this promising vertical algae reactor!
----
And the violinist spoof in the subway. You’ve heard of it. Still, ponder it again. We need to lift our heads more and be open to the unusual.
-----
And now an example of how many ways that even smart people misunderstand the Enlightenment. Even its defenders!
The New Scientist Magazine lists - Seven Reasons Why People Hate Reason. “From religious fundamentalism to pseudoscience, it seems that forces are attacking the Enlightenment world view – characterized by rational, scientific thinking – from all sides. The debate seems black and white: you’re either with reason, or you’re against it. But is it so simple? In a series of special essays, our contributors look more carefully at some of the most provocative charges against reason.”
See: Why people hate reason.
Alas, even in the very first paragraph, the New Scientist team illustrates the fault of accepting false definitions and thus creating a lose-lose situation for your side, from the very start. Because, in fact, it is flat-out wrongheaded to claim that “reason” is the fundamental premise of the Enlightenment!
Indeed, by basing a defense of the Enlightenment on a defense of reason, we expose it to justified doubt, and possibly even great harm.
Oh, certainly , “reason” played a role in the long fight against feudal and theocratic bullying. When the first universities of Europe rediscovered the Greek classics, via Arabic translators, in the 13th Century, the socratic logic espoused by Plato became a rallying point for the first great western Youth Movement, pushing back against dark, ecclesiastical mysticism. And yet, of course, Plato was no friend of democratic values. Indeed, his so-called “reason” has always been dubious, elitist, tendentious and easy to poke full-of-holes. Amounting to a ritualistic pattern of incantations, platonism has proved a powerfully seductive force for rationalization and subjective self-fulfillment. An underpinning for “philosophical” calamities like Hegel.
Sometimes logic -- and especially its cousin, mathematics -- can suggest useful directions of interest, pointing science, philosophy and political thought toward new doors, new thresholds. It can be especially useful as a negative tool, to pillory and demolish really awful positions. Still, through hard experience, we have learned that logic and reason can only suggest, propose, refute, perhaps stimulate, but it is far more limited than its greatest adherents suggest. Because no model built out of words can truly describe, let alone predict, the complex behavior of physical systems, let alone those made up of intricately-interacting human beings. Outside of math itself, logic and reason cannot be relied upon to prove anything.
Alas, a large part of the Enlightenment movement -- the branch led by continental scholars of France and Germany -- bought into the notion of pure reason. From Descartes to Sartre, they focused on logical incantations that always just happened to “prove” preconceived beliefs. Marxism, Nazissm and dozens of other tragedies emerged out of this fundamental mistake -- the notion that you can prove things with words.
(And don’t I often try to do exactly that? O, it is seductive, all right!)
Fortunately, the movement had its own version of the Protestant Reformation, a rift that saved it, when the Anglo-Scottish-Dutch wing branched off, declaring fealty instead to Pragmatism. To empiricism and the preeminence of experiment over theory. Oh, this wing had its own desperate follies -- like Radical Behaviorism and Logical Positivism. Still, the chief overall result was a system or zeitgeist that could adapt to new developments, quickly discover mistakes, subject earlier assumptions to criticism, and negotiate new solutions to problems.
Hence, I find it tragic and disappointing that the editors of The New Scientist -- a British based publication -- should fall for the rhetorical trap of defending reason as the core element of the modern Enlightenment. All it does is set things up so that all of the legitimate complaints against reason can be used as weapons against something much bigger and more important. Against the far greater and more important Pragmatic Enlightenment that has brought us so very far, and let us earn so very much.
-----
And now, a micro-essay-rant! (That I had tucked in a corner, meaning to spiff it up. Well, maybe not...)
THE RETURN OF THE UNCONSCIOUS....
One hundred years ago, the world was obsessed with the notion of the unconscious mind. Sigmund Freud was only the most prominent of a veritable wave of intellectuals, sages and scientists promoting the notion that we - each of us - consist of multiple layers, components or sub-selves, many of them in conflict with each other. Or keeping secrets from each other. The notion influenced both capitalists and Marxists. It propelled the social movements of the Roaring Twenties and gave millions an explanation for the Madness of the Great War.
At one level, this was a clear and epochal breakthrough. In his original INTRODUCTORY LECTURES, Freud spent many pages leading medical students through a series of simple experiments designed to demonstrate to each of them the existence of their own unconscious minds. This was Freud at his best, before he spun off, down paths of fantasy, self-delusion, sex obsession and downright, domineering guru-dom -- all displayed vividly in his later NEW INTRODUCTORY LECTURES. (Thus, unintentionally demonstrating some of the pitfalls that await any human who is lured by adulation away from the collegial criticism of science.) Today, you have only to see the wild ways that people leap to misinterpret each other -- in an argument or when skimming blogs or emails -- to witness the old unconscious in action. Or, ever notice how -- at a party -- the buzz of conversation fades into background... until somebody mentions your name? Clearly, much is going on, beneath the surface. Only part of your mental process is accessible to the melange that you blithely call “me.”
So why do we discuss the unconscious so little, nowadays? For one thing, there seemed to be no clear model of why the inner self would be secretive, concealing itself and even playing nasty tricks upon the upper-outer personality. A myriad sub-theories suggested different fundamental motivators for this, from Freud’s inherent sexual conflict to Adler’s power theory to Jung’s mystical archetypes, to traumatization of immortal cosmic souls by mind-warping technologies used by the evil Lord Xenu. In their rush to find a universal, general process or cause, the authors of these explanations reflexively avoided anything even remotely resembling falsifiability, scientific testing, or any reference to the Darwinian evolution that made us.
And then, along came psychopharmacology. At first, new drugs seemed to replicate the effects of psychotherapy, while therapy seemed to elicit changes in brain chemistry -- a chicken and egg situation that was bemusing... till newer drugs seemed to win the argument, hands down. In part because of better fine tuning, but also because therapy -- and especially psychoanalysis -- were so time consuming, expensive, and based upon a domineering style that was out of tune with a more liberated, individualistic era.
Finally, somebody seems to get it! ON DEEP HISTORY AND THE BRAIN, by Daniel Lord Smail, suggests that we constantly trigger altered mental states, simply because they are self-reinforcing... or possibly addictive. Excerpted from a review: ”By snorting -- suddenly creating a sound -- the slack-minded horse elicits an automatic “startle response” — flooding its brain with chemicals, delivering a jolt of excitement and relieving, at least for a moment, the monotony of a long day in an empty field. If horses can alter their own brain chemistries at will (and have good reasons to do so), what about human beings? In “On Deep History and the Brain,” Daniel Lord Smail suggests that human history can be understood as a long, unbroken sequence of snorts and sighs and other self-modifications of our mental states. We want to alter our own moods and feelings, and the rise of man from hunter-gatherer and farmer to office worker and video-game adept is the story of the ever proliferating devices — from coffee and tobacco to religious rites and romance novels — we’ve acquired to do so. Humans, Smail writes, have invented “a dizzying array of practices that stimulate the production and circulation of our own chemical messengers,” and those devices have become more plentiful with time. We make our own history, albeit with neurotransmitters not of our choosing.”
All of which is deeply connected to my longstanding assertion that such inner states give an entirely different perspective on addiction in human beings. (Anybody know how to contact this Harvard professor?)
-----
Okay, that’s a whole bunch or raw meat, tossed into the pool. I may check in, under comments, once or twice. But otherwise, I’ll be taking a break for a week or two. You folks keep the community fizzing, yes? I’m sure there will be lively discussions.
Oh! Some time it a few months, I think it really will be time to ditch Blogger and get a really good blog client onto http://www.davidbrin.com. We can discuss it in the fall.
Now go yank-awake some ostriches... nicely.... ;-)
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Some coolstuff... then Daggatt Compares the Tax and Economics Plans!
I’ve just returned from giving speeches and conultations for IBM, back east. No time for much of a detailed weekly missive. But I will offer something in two parts.
First, some interesting non-political items well worth a link or a look. And second, a guest editorial by one of the finest bloggers who never bloggeed -- Russ Daggatt -- concerning a close comparison of the tax and economic plans of McCain and Obama.
1) Cool stuff:
Movie trailers for novels? Wow. Suddenly, they’re all over the place! See a pretty cool one by my friend and part-time collaborator, Jeff Carlson, for his new novel PLAGUE WAR!
And see Greg Bear’s new book City At The End Of Time.
And while we’re at it! Author Mark Raynor ran a cool contest -- apparently on his own -- for photoshopped images based upon classic sci fi stories/novels. There are two Postman references (first and last images). But some of the Bradbury, Van Vogt and other references are choice!
See a worthwhile video about space-based solar power. Some of the numbers are obviously cooked (their extrapolation of year 2100 energy needs pretty clearly leave out expected benefits of efficiency and conservation.) But the overall concept is sound, over the long run.
...and more...
Want to start a petition?
See http://www.gopetition.com/
Citizenship is about a lot more than just voting! In addition to joining my local CERT team and helping in the San Diego fires (http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/) I've also helped a friend who has been leading an effort to create Project-KID... a systematic approach to bringing in basic child-care into disaster areas and utilizing local volunteers to handle this urgent need in skilled ways. Please have a look at these two web sites (only turn your audio volume down first!) http://holdsafe.pbwiki.com/ and http://www.project-kid.org/
We saw that in San Diego's fire crisis, a rich region with undamaged infrastructure was able to pour vast amounts of goods and volunteers into the evacuation centers. Even so, the child-care situation was mixed, at best. (Turns out the best places put healthy kids to work! e.g. taking care of animals. They were far happier and less bored.) Now, lessons learned here and in New Orleans etc are being applied to creating a turn-key set of kits and guides that can help manage childrens' needs in crises, from ideal cases (San Diego) to really rough situations.
Lenore says: "One of the key leading edge applications for this, we believe, is to make provision for dependent care for first responders and other essential personnel, who can't show up to do the work they are trained to do if they can't find child care for their own kids. Turns out this is particularly challenging in public health emergencies, where they utilize a lot of nurses, but we know fire and police also face these needs. We have had more than one emergency responder say that this could be a good mission for some CERT team members."
...and now...
2) Re-lighting the political lamp with some sharp insight... sharper than I can offer in a rush... this time we’ll substitute a guest presentation by Russ Daggatt, who shares these gems with just a few dozen friends online, instead of writing the editorials and blogs that his wisdom deserves.
=== The Economic and Tax Plans of Obama and McCain ===
Just for the record -- and before diving into the plans offered by Obama and McCain -- here is an update in our comparison of eight years under Clinton versus nearly eight years under Bush:
Job growth under Clinton : 22.7 million jobs – 237,000 per month.
Job growth under Bush: 5.8 million jobs – 72,000 per month (and going DOWN).
There has been a net loss of jobs every month so far in 2008. Bush will have the distinction as the first president since World War II to preside over an economy in which federal government employment rose more rapidly than employment in the private sector (civilian federal government employment went DOWN substantially under Clinton).
The earnings of the average American family (or "real median household income" in economic parlance) peaked in 1999 at $49,222 and has fallen since. This is the first economic expansion in this country's history when household income failed to set a new record. It will certainly decline further this year.
And how did investors do under Clinton vs. Bush? The Dow Jones Industrial Average went up from 3253 to 10,587 under Clinton (325%). It has gone up to 11,503 under Bush (8.7%). The S&P 500 went up from 447 to 1342 under Clinton (300%). It has gone DOWN to 1279 under Bush ( 4.7%). The NASDAQ went up from 700 to 2770 under Clinton (395%). It has gone DOWN to 2347 under Bush (-15.3%)
When Bush took office oil was $31/barrel. Now it is roughly $125/barrel. (That’s what happens when you put oil men in the White House.)
When Bush took office it took 93 cents to buy a Euro. Now it takes $1.56 to buy a Euro.
When Bush took office gold was around $250 an ounce. Now it is $915 an ounce.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The US economy did MUCH better under the fiscally-responsible “high tax” policies of Clinton than under the irresponsible “borrow and squander” policies of Bush.
So what do Obama and McCain plan to do about our fiscal mess?
Every day on the campaign trail, McCain and other Republicans claim Obama will increase taxes while they will cut taxes. Unfortunately, this is not true. (I say “unfortunately” because we need to get serious about our budget deficit.) Obama will also cut taxes … but by less than McCain. First, an explanation. When talking about proposed fiscal policies, it is important to distinguish between “current law” and “current policy.” Under a “current law” baseline, all of Bush's tax cuts are assumed to expire on schedule and the Alternative Minimum Tax is expected to balloon unobstructed. This means that if nothing at all happens, the default event will be that federal revenues will jump significantly, causing both the Obama and McCain tax plans to look like massive tax cuts.
Under the “current policy” baseline, it is assumed that Congress continues to "patch" the AMT and decides to continue the Bush tax cuts indefinitely. The only credible scoring of the proposed tax policies of the two campaigns is by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center . According to their analysis (), compared with current law, McCain would cut taxes by $4.2 trillion over 10 years, while Obama would cut taxes by $2.8 trillion. Compared with current policy, McCain’s policies would result in a $600 billion loss in revenue over ten years, while Obama would increase revenue by $800 billion over the same period.
The two candidates’ tax plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain’s tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. Many fewer households at the bottom of the income distribution would get tax cuts and those tax cuts would be small as a share of after-tax income.
In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers. The largest tax cuts, as a share of income, would go to those at the bottom of the income distribution, while taxpayers with the highest income would see their taxes rise significantly.
Now check this out: The report notes that McCain has been describing his tax plans on the campaign stump differently than the formal plans that his campaign gave to the Tax Policy Center for evaluation. If you use the tax plans McCain himself describes, he would reduce revenue by nearly $7 trillion over 10 years. In other words, they believe the “official” McCain plans understates the revenue loss by $2.8 trillion. The Tax Policy Center also believes the “official” Obama plans are unrealistic, but working in the other direction. They assume his plans will cut taxes by $367 billion less than the plans described by his advisors – they believe the actual 10 year revenue loss from Obama’s plans will only be $2.4 trillion.
One final point: The Tax Policy Center report makes a preliminary attempt at comparing the cost of the health care plans proposed by the two candidates (as both would result in a loss of revenue): [I]mportant details of both plans are not known, so we made assumptions that might or might not be consistent with the final plans proposed by each campaign. Under our assumptions, if the plans took effect in 2009, the McCain plan would cost about $1.3 trillion over ten years and the Obama plan would cost about $1.6 trillion.
Both campaigns propose measures that they believe will reduce the rate of growth of health insurance premiums, which would reduce the cost of their new subsidies and existing public programs. We did not evaluate the effectiveness of those measures and did not include savings from health care cost efficiencies in our estimates. Under our assumptions, Senator Obama’s plan would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by about 18 million in 2009, and 34 million in 2018. Almost all children would have coverage because the law would require it, but nearly 33 million adults would still lack coverage in 2018.
Senator McCain’s plan would have far more modest effects, reducing the number of uninsured by just over 1 million in 2009, rising to a maximum of almost 5 million in 2013, after which the number of uninsured would creep upward because the tax credits grow more slowly than premiums. Both plans are highly progressive, although Senator Obama’s plan targets subsidies more toward low- and middle-income households and is thus significantly more progressive than Senator McCain’s proposal.
The Obama health care plan would include about over 10 years. If you include those tax cuts along with his other tax proposals, he is proposing tax cuts under both current law and under current policy. Under current law (i.e., Bush tax cuts lapse), he would be cutting taxes by around $3.4 trillion. Under current policy (i.e., Bush tax cuts continue), he would be cutting taxes by around $200 billion. In neither case, is he proposing a tax increase, let alone “the largest tax increase in history” or any of the other nonsense McCain and other Republicans are saying.
Fascinating stuff. Thanks Russ.
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First, some interesting non-political items well worth a link or a look. And second, a guest editorial by one of the finest bloggers who never bloggeed -- Russ Daggatt -- concerning a close comparison of the tax and economic plans of McCain and Obama.
1) Cool stuff:
Movie trailers for novels? Wow. Suddenly, they’re all over the place! See a pretty cool one by my friend and part-time collaborator, Jeff Carlson, for his new novel PLAGUE WAR!
And see Greg Bear’s new book City At The End Of Time.
And while we’re at it! Author Mark Raynor ran a cool contest -- apparently on his own -- for photoshopped images based upon classic sci fi stories/novels. There are two Postman references (first and last images). But some of the Bradbury, Van Vogt and other references are choice!
See a worthwhile video about space-based solar power. Some of the numbers are obviously cooked (their extrapolation of year 2100 energy needs pretty clearly leave out expected benefits of efficiency and conservation.) But the overall concept is sound, over the long run.
...and more...
Want to start a petition?
See http://www.gopetition.com/
Citizenship is about a lot more than just voting! In addition to joining my local CERT team and helping in the San Diego fires (http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/) I've also helped a friend who has been leading an effort to create Project-KID... a systematic approach to bringing in basic child-care into disaster areas and utilizing local volunteers to handle this urgent need in skilled ways. Please have a look at these two web sites (only turn your audio volume down first!) http://holdsafe.pbwiki.com/ and http://www.project-kid.org/
We saw that in San Diego's fire crisis, a rich region with undamaged infrastructure was able to pour vast amounts of goods and volunteers into the evacuation centers. Even so, the child-care situation was mixed, at best. (Turns out the best places put healthy kids to work! e.g. taking care of animals. They were far happier and less bored.) Now, lessons learned here and in New Orleans etc are being applied to creating a turn-key set of kits and guides that can help manage childrens' needs in crises, from ideal cases (San Diego) to really rough situations.
Lenore says: "One of the key leading edge applications for this, we believe, is to make provision for dependent care for first responders and other essential personnel, who can't show up to do the work they are trained to do if they can't find child care for their own kids. Turns out this is particularly challenging in public health emergencies, where they utilize a lot of nurses, but we know fire and police also face these needs. We have had more than one emergency responder say that this could be a good mission for some CERT team members."
...and now...
2) Re-lighting the political lamp with some sharp insight... sharper than I can offer in a rush... this time we’ll substitute a guest presentation by Russ Daggatt, who shares these gems with just a few dozen friends online, instead of writing the editorials and blogs that his wisdom deserves.
=== The Economic and Tax Plans of Obama and McCain ===
Just for the record -- and before diving into the plans offered by Obama and McCain -- here is an update in our comparison of eight years under Clinton versus nearly eight years under Bush:
Job growth under Clinton : 22.7 million jobs – 237,000 per month.
Job growth under Bush: 5.8 million jobs – 72,000 per month (and going DOWN).
There has been a net loss of jobs every month so far in 2008. Bush will have the distinction as the first president since World War II to preside over an economy in which federal government employment rose more rapidly than employment in the private sector (civilian federal government employment went DOWN substantially under Clinton).
The earnings of the average American family (or "real median household income" in economic parlance) peaked in 1999 at $49,222 and has fallen since. This is the first economic expansion in this country's history when household income failed to set a new record. It will certainly decline further this year.
And how did investors do under Clinton vs. Bush? The Dow Jones Industrial Average went up from 3253 to 10,587 under Clinton (325%). It has gone up to 11,503 under Bush (8.7%). The S&P 500 went up from 447 to 1342 under Clinton (300%). It has gone DOWN to 1279 under Bush ( 4.7%). The NASDAQ went up from 700 to 2770 under Clinton (395%). It has gone DOWN to 2347 under Bush (-15.3%)
When Bush took office oil was $31/barrel. Now it is roughly $125/barrel. (That’s what happens when you put oil men in the White House.)
When Bush took office it took 93 cents to buy a Euro. Now it takes $1.56 to buy a Euro.
When Bush took office gold was around $250 an ounce. Now it is $915 an ounce.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The US economy did MUCH better under the fiscally-responsible “high tax” policies of Clinton than under the irresponsible “borrow and squander” policies of Bush.
So what do Obama and McCain plan to do about our fiscal mess?
Every day on the campaign trail, McCain and other Republicans claim Obama will increase taxes while they will cut taxes. Unfortunately, this is not true. (I say “unfortunately” because we need to get serious about our budget deficit.) Obama will also cut taxes … but by less than McCain. First, an explanation. When talking about proposed fiscal policies, it is important to distinguish between “current law” and “current policy.” Under a “current law” baseline, all of Bush's tax cuts are assumed to expire on schedule and the Alternative Minimum Tax is expected to balloon unobstructed. This means that if nothing at all happens, the default event will be that federal revenues will jump significantly, causing both the Obama and McCain tax plans to look like massive tax cuts.
Under the “current policy” baseline, it is assumed that Congress continues to "patch" the AMT and decides to continue the Bush tax cuts indefinitely. The only credible scoring of the proposed tax policies of the two campaigns is by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center . According to their analysis (), compared with current law, McCain would cut taxes by $4.2 trillion over 10 years, while Obama would cut taxes by $2.8 trillion. Compared with current policy, McCain’s policies would result in a $600 billion loss in revenue over ten years, while Obama would increase revenue by $800 billion over the same period.
The two candidates’ tax plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain’s tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. Many fewer households at the bottom of the income distribution would get tax cuts and those tax cuts would be small as a share of after-tax income.
In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers. The largest tax cuts, as a share of income, would go to those at the bottom of the income distribution, while taxpayers with the highest income would see their taxes rise significantly.
Now check this out: The report notes that McCain has been describing his tax plans on the campaign stump differently than the formal plans that his campaign gave to the Tax Policy Center for evaluation. If you use the tax plans McCain himself describes, he would reduce revenue by nearly $7 trillion over 10 years. In other words, they believe the “official” McCain plans understates the revenue loss by $2.8 trillion. The Tax Policy Center also believes the “official” Obama plans are unrealistic, but working in the other direction. They assume his plans will cut taxes by $367 billion less than the plans described by his advisors – they believe the actual 10 year revenue loss from Obama’s plans will only be $2.4 trillion.
One final point: The Tax Policy Center report makes a preliminary attempt at comparing the cost of the health care plans proposed by the two candidates (as both would result in a loss of revenue): [I]mportant details of both plans are not known, so we made assumptions that might or might not be consistent with the final plans proposed by each campaign. Under our assumptions, if the plans took effect in 2009, the McCain plan would cost about $1.3 trillion over ten years and the Obama plan would cost about $1.6 trillion.
Both campaigns propose measures that they believe will reduce the rate of growth of health insurance premiums, which would reduce the cost of their new subsidies and existing public programs. We did not evaluate the effectiveness of those measures and did not include savings from health care cost efficiencies in our estimates. Under our assumptions, Senator Obama’s plan would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by about 18 million in 2009, and 34 million in 2018. Almost all children would have coverage because the law would require it, but nearly 33 million adults would still lack coverage in 2018.
Senator McCain’s plan would have far more modest effects, reducing the number of uninsured by just over 1 million in 2009, rising to a maximum of almost 5 million in 2013, after which the number of uninsured would creep upward because the tax credits grow more slowly than premiums. Both plans are highly progressive, although Senator Obama’s plan targets subsidies more toward low- and middle-income households and is thus significantly more progressive than Senator McCain’s proposal.
The Obama health care plan would include about over 10 years. If you include those tax cuts along with his other tax proposals, he is proposing tax cuts under both current law and under current policy. Under current law (i.e., Bush tax cuts lapse), he would be cutting taxes by around $3.4 trillion. Under current policy (i.e., Bush tax cuts continue), he would be cutting taxes by around $200 billion. In neither case, is he proposing a tax increase, let alone “the largest tax increase in history” or any of the other nonsense McCain and other Republicans are saying.
Fascinating stuff. Thanks Russ.
.
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