The Martian Cat Problem

ND Obama

2009-03-25T09:59:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine asked me what I thought about the big tizzy Notre Dame people are in over Obama speaking at commencement. I hadn't heard about it, but my first instinct was that it's probably a pro-life thing, which of course, it is. She mentioned something about him wanting to force hospitals to perform abortions, even Catholic hospitals. That just sounded ridiculous, so I had to do some research this morning and see what was up. Here's my summary for her, b/c I would contend she was only partially informed.

I assume this is the flap you're talking about. I hadn't heard anything about it until you mentioned it. I guess I'm not Catholic enough or something. ;-)

The best analysis I found at factcheck discussed a bill that has been introduced in previous years--but not yet this year--that he has expressed support for. It basically says the govt can't interfere with a woman's reproductive decisions. It doesn't say it will force hospitals or individuals--Catholic or otherwise--to perform abortions.

So I think that while some people may be referencing the freedom of choice act, which doesn't seem to mean what they are saying it means, the response is more general opposition to his views on reproductive issues, stem cell research, and rescinding some conscience rules that were greatly expanded in December by the outgoing Bush admin.

I still find it silly that people would get up in arms about a commencement speaker for not espousing every Catholic teaching. Or even the Catholic teachings they think are most important. At one level, it's simply an address from an inspiring leader. Attributing their own agenda to to it misses the point, especially in an academic institution comfortable exploring the nuances of contemporary issues. More deeply, I'm frustrated by people who shout their pro-lifeness from the rooftops as the greatest good, but fail to account for other Catholic tenets that the same pro-life people they support fail to advance: assistance for the poor, opposition to the death penalty, a living wage, a humane immigration policy, opposition to unjust wars (it's nearly impossible to have a "just" war in the way the Church defines it in the 21st century), stewardship of the environment, etc. It just seems hypocritical to me. I know there are contradictions in my own thoughts on some of this stuff, but I think the fact that I recognize them allows me to consider an issue like this more conscientiously.

Sugarbush

2009-03-24T10:03:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend west of Minneapolis with the family of a buddy whose family has some land on their place with maple trees. They tap about 700 trees to make maple syrup. The process of evaporating the sap down to syrup was fun and rewarding. It felt like we were really making something--here's some sap, and now here's some syrup, a value added product that we just made.

The process and equipment is relatively straightforward (boil sap down to syrup), but complex enough that one has to know what they are doing if the final product is going to be good and the equipment is going to be maintained. The sap has around a 1.5% to 2.5% sugar content; pure maple syrup has a 67% sugar content. That means 30 to 50 gallons of sap are needed for one gallon of syrup. We made almost 30 gallons of syrup, some from sap with 2.5% sugar and some from 1.6% that had been collected previously and stored in a refrigerated tank.

Because of the density of the syrup, one guideline for when it is finally syrup is that the temperature is 7 degrees above boiling. But that can vary from day to day depending on barometric pressure. Another way is to look at it for sheeting, which is sort of like condensing sugar in candymaking. The definitive measure is to check the density with a hydrometer that will float higher in the liquid the more dense (more sugar) it is.

The system these guys have set up is very cool. Sap is collected in a tank downhill of the trees via tubing that is connected to the taps. The tubing is also connected to a vacuum pump that creates a negative pressure in the tubing and can harvest as much as 100% more sap. Sap from the downhill tank is pumped back up to the refrigerated tank at the sugar shack for storage or evaporation. This is where it gets fun.

A fire is made and stoked in the evaporator where the sap is heated. The evaporator has two pans. The aft pan has a series of ribs in it--like an accordion--to maximize the surface area the heat can hit the water making the 4-foot pan more like 24. As the sap gets hotter and thicker, it is replaced by fresh sap and the natural change in density moves it into the forward pan where it progresses through a series of channels, where it continues to thicken until it gets to the end of the process and is ready to be drawn off at 67% sugar. Then it is filtered and stored for bottling.

I quickly felt comfortable with how the system works, but most of my contribution was in stoking the fire. We burned about a cord of wood during the day. The stack temperature was around 500 degrees, so the furnace temperature would have been significantly higher.

It was also quite a social event. Friends and neighbors stop by to talk and look at the work. Others who make syrup compare notes. All in all a very fun time. It makes me think it may be fun to have a hobby of this sort in the future. Maybe we'll have to factor the availability of such hobbies into our discussions of future places of residence.

Top 20 College Football Schools by 2008 NFL Player Salaries

2009-02-04T10:38:00.007-05:00

Today is signing day in college football. The top high school football players have spent many months trying to decide where to spend their next three to five years. For those who hope to play on Sunday, here's one more thing to consider.

I've ranked every school in the country by the total amount their players earned in the NFL in 2008. This may tell us two related things: (i) where do the guys who go pro go to school? and (ii) which schools turn their players into successful pros? Here's the top 20:

RANK - SCHOOL - 2008 NFL SALARIES - (# of Players)
1. LSU $131,780,008 (40)
2. Miami (FL) $123,972,638 (48)
3. Michigan $89,122,395 (39)
4. Florida State $82,833,470 (38)
5. Ohio State $82,427,649 (37)
6. Tennessee $82,051,202 (37)
7. Georgia $81,811,820 (38)
8. USC $80,566,340 (34)
9. Florida $76,886,000 (31)
10. Texas $71,818,360 (36)
11. Notre Dame $70,977,740 (32)
12. North Carolina $62,526,773 (22)
13. Auburn $59,955,654 (30)
14. Virginia $58,729,980 (22)
15. Purdue $54,093,060 (23)
16. Iowa $53,861,125 (22)
17. Maryland $53,058,000 (24)
18. Wisconsin $52,682,784 (22)
19. Boston College $51,433,520 (22)
20. Virginia Tech $51,356,013 (29)

The only real surprise at the top of the list is the total dominance of LSU. Both LSU and Miami outstrip the rest of the field by a wide margin, but LSU does it with 8 fewer players than Miami. Consequently, LSU has the highest average compensation per player among teams with 20 or more players in the NFL. (Eastern Illinois had the highest average overall at $12,866,600 - thanks Tony Romo!)

No real surprises in the top 10. These are all perenial powerhouses we would expect to see. Places 4-7 are remarkably close together. Florida State, Ohio State, Tennessee and Georgia all have 37 or 38 players in the pros with salaries that add up to amounts within $1,000,000 of each other.

In my opinion, the chart gets interesting after the top 10. Notre Dame has done poorly that last several years, but their players seem to be making significant contributions in the pros. North Carolina is an even bigger surprise. They haven't finished in the AP or USA Today top 25 in at least 6 years. Nonetheless, they made 12th place with only 22 players.

Source data: USA Today

UPDATE: The integrity of the USA Today salary data has been brought into question. Marcus Hamilton, a CB out of Virginia on the Bears' roster, is listed as receiving a $10 million bonus in 2008. Not so plausible considering he went undrafted. So, Virginia probably needs to be discounted by about $10 mil, knocking them out of the top 20.

Last Word on Expelled

2008-12-07T18:21:00.003-05:00

Finals are here, so naturally, it's time to start blogging again.

A while back, Ben Stein released a really bad movie about Intelligent Design called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. After long refusing to review it, we finally get Roger Ebert's thoughts on the movie.

Naturally, Ebert skillfully tears it apart. He does a particularly good job of addressing the "excluded middle" strategy routinely taken by proponents of Intelligent Design:

By his premise no secularists believe in Intelligent Design, and no people with religious beliefs subscribe to Darwin's theory. If there are people with religious beliefs who agree with Darwin (Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Mormons, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists, for example) they are mistaken...

This is one of the things the movie does quite well. They cast the debate as a struggle between all religious people and all non-religious people rather than an effort by a few religious people with one extreme belief to foist it upon everyone else.

For example, consider their interview with Eugenie Scott, Director of the National Center for Science Education,* about the organization's efforts to counter the introduction of ID into the public school classroom. They make sure to emphasize the fact that she is an atheist. When she points out that a lot of the organization's support comes from religious people (Catholics, Jews, etc.), they frame it as though these nice religious people are getting hoodwinked out of their money to support some godless cause. Never mind that the each of the last three Popes, all the way back to 1950, have directly stated that there is no conflict between Catholicism and evolution. As Pope John Paul II put it, Truth Cannot Contradict Truth.

This is why I don't get why so many religious people are scared of science: if God really did create the world, why don't religious people view the effort to objectively study and understand the natural world to be the most holy calling to which one may aspire? One intelligent commenter on Ebert's review put it more eloquently than I can:
As a devout Mormon with a PhD in genetics, I am always amazed at the anger that evolution evokes in some people or why they think that learning evolution is so dangerous to faith. Personally I think that religion that cannot handle truth gained from looking at the world around us is denying the most important works of God. The Bible is a short and incomplete book that does not attempt to explain orchids or dinosaurs or many other things.
Well said!

*I still owe the NCSE about $100 to offset the price of admission for two to Expelled, the Creation Museum, and the Creation Museum planetarium. These field trips are getting expensive.

Prediction!

2008-10-02T11:26:00.005-04:00

You heard it here first: Citing how mean and sexist Joe Biden and that Obama-loving Gwen Ifill were to her during the debate, Sarah Palin will announce tomorrow morning that she is withdrawing from the race over the protests of a shattered and disheartened John McCain. She would rather spend time caring for her family than risk dragging down the McCain campaign (and the country!) as a target for continued attacks from narrow-minded, sexist elites.

Even thought the debate is nine hours away, I'm sure the press release has already been drafted.

Any thoughts on who her replacement will be. Lieberman? Lieberman?

UPDATE 12/7/08: So that prediction was a little bit incorrect. She did a lot better than I expected, and it's hard for me to feel bad, especially considering how the election turned out. I guess I'm actually kinda glad she stuck around.

Sorry. More Palin Videos

2008-09-30T22:11:00.002-04:00

I know, you're tired of videos of Palin looking dumb. But, she is dumb (and REALLY inexperienced). So let's embrace that.

"Read? What? I like movies. And I'm, like, ready to be vice president because I watched Air Force One. And Harrison Ford is dreamy."

I hope McCain drops her. I'm offended as an American that he thinks she would be a good leader of the country. She insults my very being.

Did You Know...

2008-09-30T18:26:00.003-04:00

...the Parliamant of Canada is composed of two houses.

The House of Commons is the dominant branch. Each of its 282 seats is elected from one electoral district (or "riding") by simple plurality vote. Members retain their seats until they resign or Parliament is dissolved for a new election.

The Senate's duties, on the other hand, are largely ceremonial. It is composed entirely of the winners of the most recent NHL All-Star Game and is presided over by the reigning MVP. Members of the 2008 Canadian Senate are:

Vincent Lecavalier - Forward
Daniel Alfredsson - Forward
Scott Gomez - Forward
Evgeni Malkin - Forward
Mar Savard - Forward
Marian Hossa - Forward
Ilya Kovalchuk - Forward
Alex Ovechkin - Forward
Mike Richards - Forward
Jason Spezza - Forward
Eric Staal - Forward (MVP)
Martin St. Louis - Forward
Andrei Markov - Defense
Zdeno Chara - Defense
Brian Campbell - Defense
Sergei Gonchar - Defense
Tomas Kaberle - Defense
Kimmo Timonen - Defense
Tim Thomas - Goaltender
Rick DiPietro - Goaltender
Tomas Vokoun - Goaltender

Fun Fact: Though the Senate rules do not explicitly prohibit it, no woman has ever served in the Canadian Senate.

Tina Fey is awesome.

2008-09-29T08:06:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed this SNL bit...

Sarah Palin Interview Answers

2008-09-28T00:30:00.002-04:00

Finally, we can get answers from Sarah Palin. For some reason she seems to dodge interviews and press conferences. I bet her baby gets sick before the debate and she can't go. Oh, was that a sexist comment? Sorry about that.

Anyhow, some brilliant guy wrote a thing to create Palin interview answers from computer analysis of her speeches and statements. "The Markov chain generated answers are surprising close to her actual answers." Whatever that means. But it's great. Just the kind of incoherent babble I'd expect

Q: Why should the US elect Senator McCain?

A: John McCain has a great plan to get caught up in this terror. They need to pursue those and we have to stand for that. I see the United States, and the insurance carrier duties of AIG. But first and shoring up allies and positions and figuring out what sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads us to a position like we are at a point, here, seven years later, on the table. I think that I just gave you. But, again, we've got to remember what the bailout does is help those who are hell bent on destroying our nation.

P.S. I don't like her or her stupidly large anti-choice Republican family.

Campaign Ads after the debate

2008-09-27T23:54:00.003-04:00

I'm going to go ahead and say that McCain's post-debate ad is stupid and yet another McCain campaign distortion of the truth.

This is the ad about how Obama said "John McCain is right" several times during the debate. Way to jump on Obama for the stupidest reason possible. Attacking his competence because of his particular debate style is really disingenuous. Here's a run-down of the quoted statements:

1) "Well, I think Senator McCain's absolutely right that we need more responsibility." This followed McCain's comments that he would hold those on Wall Street accountable for this problem. Who wouldn't say that is rights? If Obama said "McCain is abolutely wrong," he would not be giving the wrong answer. Obama conceded a good point and moved on to say that his own plan would do the same thing, but more all the time.

I want a president who can look at other's statements and agree that something in what they said was useful. I don't want someone who will always stick to his own guns and never listen. That's led this country into a shithole over the last few years.

2) "Well, Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused." Who wouldn't disagree with McCain's statement that earmarks are bad. Obama then went on to criticize McCain's incessant ranting about earmarks when there are clearly bigger problems.

I want a president, again, who will listen. Obama's quoted statement shows that while McCain was speaking, Obama was listening. He took what McCain said and agreed, but then made his own case clear. This is a debate strategy. No reason to fight just to fight. Make your opponent feel good before you slap him down with your argument.

3) "Now, John mentioned the fact that business taxes on paper are high in this country, and he's absolutely right." Of course, the ad doesn't quote the next line, "Here's the problem: There are so many loopholes that have been written into the tax code, oftentimes with support of Senator McCain, that we actually see our businesses pay effectively one of the lowest tax rates in the world."

The quoted line is actually just the opening part of Obama refuting McCain's claim. Obama was agreeing with the exact fact, not agreeing with McCain's point in the least. If he had disagreed with the exact fact, he would have been wrong.

This ad is more asinine campaigning by the McCain campaign than panders to the lowest common denominator. The ignorant people in America that want to believe will see the ad and say, "Wow, Obama agrees with McCain." But those that watched the debate know that not to be true.

Of course, we all know truth is not really a priority to McCain.

And thanks for the transcript from the International Herald Tribune.

Awesome!

2008-09-24T21:36:00.002-04:00

The Merchant of Death

2008-09-22T07:26:00.002-04:00

CNN reports that the U.S. is working on extraditing the "Merchant of Death", Victor Bout.

Assuming the allegations are true, I wonder under what basis the U.S. is claiming jurisdiction over the man. He is charged with supplying weapons to a wide variety of unpleasant people: the Taliban, Charles Taylor (Liberia), the RUF of Siera Leone, and the Colombian FARC. It is this last group that got him in trouble.

The U.S. State Department includes the FARC on its list of terrorist organizations, but most of the crimes they appear to have committed include drug trafficking.

Mr. Bout attempted to sell weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles, to the FARC, which is how he got caught. U.S. DEA agents went undercover and posed as Colombian rebels to get the evidence in this case. They secretly recorded a meeting in Thailand where he offered to sell the weapons. Bout is charged with "conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to kill U.S. officers or employees, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile."

Isn't this stretching our legal system a little bit?

Looking at the charges, the first two kind of bother me: "conspiring to kill Americans and conspiring to kill U.S. officers and employees." Doesn't that imply some intent? To conspire, shouldn't he have intended that the sale would result in the killing of Americans? The FARC is a revolutionary army in Colombia, trying to change the Colombian scene. Yes, U.S. forces are there with the DEA, finding drugs, and U.S. citizens have been injured, but is that really the purpose for the FARC acquiring weapons? I doubt it. So at best, I would think we could only charge Bout with recklessly endangering American citizens.

How about "conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile." Negotiating in Thailand the sale of a Russian missile to people in Colombia doesn't sound like it should incur U.S. criminal charges. Are we saying that it is a U.S. crime to use or acquire an AA missile anywhere in the world for any purpose? That seems a little outside our jurisdiction.

And, finally, "conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization." I'll give them that one. If we are going to continue the War on Terror, the U.S. needs to be even handed in crushing terrorist groups everywhere. We can't pick and choose.

So what are the options?

We could detain him as an enemy combatant in Guantanamo. That doesn't seem to fit and imagine the questions that would raise in the international community.

We could do as we are and charge him with a U.S. crime. But nothing he did directly touched the U.S. Traditionally, foreign jurisdiction for crimes has generally rested on the 1) act occurring in the U.S., 2) the accused being a U.S. citizen, or 3) the victim being a U.S. citizen. 1 and 2 are pretty well accepted. 3 is too, especially after the many terrorist attacks on U.S. interests around the world.

I don't see the Bout case fitting any of the above categories. We are now exercising Universal jurisdiction. Any act, anywhere, that we deem a crime, the U.S. now is asserting criminal jurisdiction. That's a bold claim.

I propose that we go back to the 70s in terms of international jurisdiction. Or at least the 70s of the movies. International spies running around doing covert operations against the bad people.

It sounds so much easier that this stretching of the world's collective legal imagination.

We Need This Man in the Whitehouse

2008-09-16T23:08:00.000-04:00

Diagnosis

2008-09-11T11:38:00.002-04:00

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder:

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can occur after you have been through a traumatic event. A traumatic event is something horrible and scary that you see or that happens to you. During this type of event, you think that your life or others' lives are in danger. You may feel afraid or feel that you have no control over what is happening.
Anyone who has gone through a life-threatening event can develop PTSD. These events can include:
Combat or military exposure
Child sexual or physical abuse
Terrorist attacks
Sexual or physical assault
Serious accidents, such as a car wreck.
Natural disasters, such as a fire, tornado, hurricane, flood, or earthquake.

After the event, you may feel scared, confused, or angry. If these feelings don't go away or they get worse, you may have PTSD. These symptoms may disrupt your life, making it hard to continue with your daily activities.

The United States has had PTSD for 7 years now. It's time we sought some help for it.

Procreation? What for?

2008-09-10T20:06:00.003-04:00

So, I was helping a friend out with some high school science homework at the bar last night when in the midst of the module about asexual and sexual reproduction I encountered a surprisingly deep question. It was:

What is the purpose of reproduction?

I’m sure whoever wrote the question intended it to be pretty straight forward, but having just looked through the module on anatomical evidence supporting the theory of evolution, I couldn’t see past the mistaken premise of the question.

You see, there is no purpose for reproduction.

To see why, take a moment to follow me down the garden path.... Suppose there is a table in front of you with a bunch of objects on it. These objects do lots of things for no particular reason. Think of them as little robots. Some make noise. Some have flashing lights. Some bounce up and down. Some construct sculptures. And some make more objects like themselves.

Next, suppose that the table, though rather large, has a finite area and a very definite edge. Occasionally some of the little objects, particularly the ones that move around a lot, fall off the edge, and from time to time objects get accidentally bumped off by other objects.

In this hypothetical scenario with dumb little robots, what happens over time? Well, if you wait long enough, there is a day in the future when none of the robots you started with will be on the table. In the long run, if there is a finite risk that any particular robot will fall over the edge, then eventually any robot will fall off the edge.

So does this mean that there won’t be any robots left on the table? Not necessarily. Remember that some of those first robots made more robots. Maybe some of those newer robots will still be on the table on the day that the last of the original robots falls off.

Of course, even the little robots that were made by other little robots are subject to the cold math of the Edge, but that doesn’t imply that the table will be empty if you wait even longer. Rather, if any one of these little robots makes more robots, as long as some of those make more robots, and as long as the robots make more robots faster than they fall off the table, you may never run out of robots.

In fact, the table is bound to fill up with robots and overflow onto the floor even faster. These robots still might do all sorts of things (blink, beep, jump, etc.), but one thing is for sure, they are all descendants of robot making robots, and many of them (perhaps most or all) will be robot making robots themselves. In fact, over time, the average ability of the robots to make more robots, and the sophistication of strategies of avoiding the edge will increase exponentially.

So, what does this have to do with the purpose of reproduction? Well, which of these robots had a purpose to its actions? None - these robots are machines. They just do what they do. Is a robot that blinks any better than a robot that bounces? Is one happier? No – they don’t even know what they’re doing.

The only thing that is special about reproduction is that systems of populations tend toward populations that reproduce. This is true regardless of whether the elements of the population are capable of even intending to reproduce. Plants, animals, viruses, genes, memes, business plans all create or inspire copies of themselves without really meaning to.

People understand this, I suppose, but they also make the mistake of assigning purpose to the activity. I do it too. (I used the word “strategies” with some timidity three paragraphs ago.) Along the way, people also think of reproduction as success, even though it isn’t. It isn't failure either. Reproduction just is. It is the activity that, by definition, still is later. If a robot, descendant from a long line of reproducing robots was made so it didn’t reproduce, but did handstands instead, would it have somehow failed? No, because it had no more or less intent to make more robots (or do handstands for that matter) than its parent had to make more robots. They all just do what they do.

You might say, “People are different. We are not robots. We intend to do things. We do things for purposes.” I won’t disagree that we are different, but you must agree that the system is the same. The reason most folks think it is important to have kids is because we are all the product of that impulse, and most folks were built with that impulse. But that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean someone is any better or worse for doing something different (or doing the same, for that matter). They’re just doing what they do.

So, what’s the purpose of reproduction? Beats me. I don't know any better than a robot.

The Dems need to step it up

2008-09-10T11:29:00.005-04:00

I'm feeling ranty today. I'm getting really tired of the Democrats and Obama not fighting like they want to actually win. I love Obama. He's exactly what I think this country needs in a president: he's can speak intelligently without looking like a jackass, he is a really intelligent person, he's got international experience and awareness, and he's a great motivator and organizer.

I hate Bush's smirk. Bush's speeches always remind me of Henny Youngman , the King of the One Liners. "Take my wife, please!" *laughter and applause* "Liberals think we're not winning in Iraq!" *smirk and applause* No that was not an exact or real quote, but you get the idea. McCain has the same stupid speaking style. One liners and he's got the stupid smirk. A politician smirking makes me think two things: he's already rigged the election and he's really just pandering for applause. Obama doesn't smirk. When he speaks, he says stuff. This is great.

And it is bad. Obama doesn't create the soundbites. He doesn't have that one-liner style that forces the audience to get up and cheer for him after everything he says. When Obama speaks, you listen to the whole thing and it makes you think. He doesn't get the laughs for the one-liners, he makes you appreciate the whole thing. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans seem to have short attention spans and really can only appreciate "The horse I bet on was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of the trip."

And a brief aside on Obama's international experience. Republicans on one hand say Obama has NO foreign policy experience, then they bash him because he lived in Indonesia as a child, saying he is not American enough. You know what? Living abroad as a child helps develop a broad understanding of different cultures and a great mind for cooperation internationally. McCain's experience seems to be based on the fact that he spent a few years in the 60s bombing the shit out of Vietnamese. Then he got to enjoy the inside of a prison. Foreign policy based on blowing up foreigners and seeking revenge for years locked in a box isn't likely to be that great.

Palin has no experience other than living near Russia (that's a bullshit response). Her experience is a lot more like Bush's. Bush governed near Mexico, but had never travelled abroad before becoming president. Palin had to apply for a passport in 2007 to visit troops in Kuwait and Germany. At least Bush governed a state with a diverse population. I would love to have a president who's at least traveled a bit. Obama has done that. He hasn't performed international negotiations or anything else, but at least people around the world like him.

Back to my point.

Ok, so back to my point, if I have one. Obama and the Dems need to step it up. A lot. They've got a great candidate in Obama (and a reliable guy in Biden). They just are not fighting the way they need to. Winning candidates show that they are ready to fight for what they want. McCain's doing that. He's ready to contradict his previous statements and say what people want him to say. McCain didn't have the support of the far right conservatives, so he chose a redneck as his vice presidential candidate. She got the votes.

The latest from the McCain camp is a new ad blasting Obama for his sexist comments about Palin. McCain's campaign is claiming that Obama called Palin a Pig with Lipstick. That's a funny image...

The context of Obama's comment has nothing to do with Palin (directly): "That's not change. That's just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." But McCain's campaign wants to suck every bit of sympathy that they can out of Palin. She's a woman so Obama should be nice, and McCain wants to look like he will protect the women. Not that that concept isn't a bit paternalistic and demeaning to women, generally.

On the other hand, McCain used the same stupid pig in lipstick phrase to bash Hillary and has used it many times. But when Obama says it, it's sexist and McCain wants an apology.

Obama, two bits of advice for you. First, NEVER use this phrase. It should only ever be muttered by someone in Appalachia. McCain and Palin are working to corner the redneck market. Good for them. Use reaosnable, less creepy phrases. Second, fight back. Don't get on your speechifying stump and give one of your great speeches. Put together something that shows how sexist McCain is. I know you can find good clips. But fight back. This is the sort of stupid shit that people get worked up over.

I guess I'm just exhausted by this election already. I keep seeing McCain use low-brow campaign tactics and I keep seeing them work. Then Obama is staying above the fray, which I do appreciate, but it makes him look like he isn't fighting for it.

I would love to see Obama keep up his goodguy image and not stoop to McCain's level. If you have to give up your ethics to win, sometimes it isn't worth it. But McCain's contradictory tactics are working for him, look at the polls. I hope it backfires, but I don't think it will until Obama comes out swinging. Or maybe some independent Dem should start swiftboating the fuck out of McCain without Obama's approval. But somewhere or another, the Dems need to go on the offensive and stop assumign that Obama's intelligent discussion of the issues is going to win.

As a friend of mine recently said, "The last two elections, and this one incrasingly, have shown that you can bring up all the issues you want to, but that mudslinging works." While I would hate to promote the idea that the ends justify the means, I think some additional means should be used to prevent another Bush term.

The Bridge to Nowhere

2008-09-10T09:35:00.008-04:00

View Larger Map

So, there's all kinds of talk lately about Sarah Palin's support (or opposition) to the Bridge to Nowhere. I imagine most people don't know what or where this bridge was supposed to be and probably don't know how amazingly stupid the idea was. Ketchikan, Alaska is a beautiful little town in Southeast Alaska, a couple hours north of Seattle. The town was once predominantly a fishing community with a cannery or two and a lot of commercial vessels based there. There's still that, but the town has moved to being a tourist town. The salmon and halibut fishing is great in the area, so there's a lot of fishing tours out of Ketchikan. Additionally, many cruise ships either begin there or dock there at some point during their journey to peruse the old town area's charming shops and massive souvenir markets. Probably most important though is Ketchikan is home to an (international) airport that can land larger planes, so it is a great base point to anywhere you might need to travel in Southeast Alaska.

The "problem" with the airport is that it is based on an island seperate from the island Ketchikan is on. The news says the Bridge to Nowhere was going to connect the two, never mentioning how close they are or the infrastructure built up to get people form the airport ot where they need to go. You really have a few options. First, many people (and companies) in Ketchikan have boats and they can dock at the airport island. Second, float planes might pick you up from the island to take you directly to one of the more remote islands. Finally, and most importantly, there is a ferry that runs about every 15 (or 30) minutes from one side to the other.

The ferry costs 5 bucks or so per person and the ride is a whole 5 minutes. Look at the photo to the right there. To the road to the right of the image is the ferry at the airport. On the far shore, at the very left edge of the photo, is the ferry loading zone in Ketchikan. This is not a far distance. This ferry is very convenient, fast, and for many tourists (me) it is a charming entrance to the town.

But people want a bridge because it is easier and faster. When I'm going on vacation to a great fishing town, speed and efficiency are not really MY highest priorities. Maybe I'm just weird though.

Ok, so why would the Bridge to Nowhere be a REALLY stupid thing? And why would it cost so damned much money? Why should anyone with half a brain say it would be more trouble that it is worth? Because that little channel between Ketchikan and the airport island is a heavily traveled channel.

View Larger Map

In that map, do you see the large cruise ships docked at Ketchikan? Do you see the variety of smaller vessels moving about? I think I mentioned float planes at some point. How about the large ferries that run through there on the Alaska Marine Highway connecting other outlying islands? The point is, this is a busy channel that needs to have room for large vessels. A bridge over it would have to either be REALLY tall or a very significant drawbridge. It would hamper vessel traffic. It would be dangerous for the bazillion float planes that use the area. It would be really, really dumb. There is no reason to spend that much money to build a bridge to avoid a 5 minute ferry ride to the airport.

If Sarah Palin ever supported this stupid project then she is either:

a) a complete idiot, and/or

b) a wasteful spender who likes to throw taxpayer's money away on things she knows nothing about.

I hope this was educational in some way. I know a lot of people are talking about the Bridge, but most people don't seem to know what it is. I thought I would explain, with pictures.

Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?

2008-07-14T23:42:00.005-04:00

There are two internet arguments going on right now that really highlight the problem with the whole anonymous-intertube-speak-my-mind thing that we got going these days: not enough brakes on being inconsiderate and not enough thick skins. Consequently, we get a little good ol'fashion radicalism. WOOT!

First, the trivial. Murky Coffee, a nice place where I study with good hot chocolate, apparently has a policy that prohibits them from pouring espresso over ice for integrity of the beverage reasons. (Don't ask me, I don't know anything about coffee.)

A patron ordered one and got offended that Murky was reluctant to let him have it. He wrote a blog post about it (here) jokingly threatening arson. Unfortunately, while at Murky, he didn't notice that the place is a damned fire-trap where arson is no joke, so the owner got all upset and threatened to punch him in the dick. Thus, we have tempers flaring over coffee and how it is to be served.

This puts things into perspective, I think, as we move onto discussions of the divine. It turns out that last week at some point, some dude goes into a Catholic church, accepts the Holy Eucharist and bolts without eating it. To Catholics who believe that through transubstantiation the little bread wafer actually becomes the body of Christ, absconding with the redeemer of our sins is obviously a big deal. On the other hand, to other folks like PZ Meyers (who I must add, I totally respect and proudly link to in this general direction ===>), the practice of worrying about the well-being of a cracker is just about as silly as refusing to serve espresso on ice.

Anyway, long story short, PZ rightly mocks Bill Donohue, head of the "Catholic League" (who as far as I can tell, doesn't actually speak for any actual Catholics), but then PZ takes it a step too far and says that if someone were to get him a piece of the Eucharist he would defile it (with photos) right there on his website. This make Donohue call out PZ as a Catholic hater and push for his university to fire him. This also results in a lot of hate mail and death threats by good Christian folk, apparently. PZ posts the death threats on his website. Then PZ's people start writing hate mail in the other direction.

So where did we go wrong? Well, for starters, we got into the habit of worrying too much about what people we don't know do with their own time. We get so worried about it, that we get offended. Frankly, its ok for PZ to think it is foolish to see the son of God in a "cracker," but it is entirely another thing to encourage people to fuck with the people who do and to be insensitive to how it would make people react. For starters, it just doesn't help his cause. Donohue is a fringe blowhard, but all of a sudden he can point to someone who is willing to desecrate a cracker just to piss off total strangers. All of a sudden, Donohue, a shallow hate-monger, looks reasonable in comparison.

Anyway, PZ: back off. Catholics: what can you do for the Son of God that he can't do for himself? We should all just go out and get an iced espresso and hug it out, but apparently not at Murky.

Well, at least Louis C.K. is more bitter about coffee shops than most of us could be about anything. Somebody's gotta take it easy for all of us sinners. Am I wrong, dude?

Louis C.K. - Awesome Possumfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

(Language NSFW.)

TED: Know Thy Enemy

2008-07-10T23:17:00.003-04:00

If you do a Google(r) brand intertube search for "why they hate us," you'll get about 107,000 hits. 9/11 sparked two great arguments around this phrase. The first is an argument about the correct answer to the question, if there is one. The second argument is between those who think it is a topic worth studying and those who think asking is wrong because it somehow acknowledges some amount of our own culpability for the actions of terrorists.

Here are two very unrelated TED talks that illustrate beautifully why the folks who think we shouldn't ask "why they hate us" are so wrong. The first talk offers a new approach for our ongoing struggles against perhaps the most persistent and adaptable enemy our civilization has ever faced: germs. The second demonstrates a practical example of how to benefit from an intimate understanding of a pest (crows).

Paul Ewald: Can We Domesticate Germs?

Consider our approaches for battling infectious diseases in light of evolutionary principles. A lot of what we do pushes the evolution of infectious organisms in ways that ultimately make them more lethal. For example, our heavy reliance upon antibiotics naturally selects for drug resistant bacteria. Paul Ewald asks whether there are things we could do to make these diseases evolve in a way that selects for strains that are progressively less lethal?

He cites two examples:
1. Cholera: Diseases that spread person-to-person have an evolutionary brake on virility because strains that make people so sick they can't leave their homes can't spread to other hosts. However, water-borne illnesses are trickier to contain because even when a person with Cholera becomes bed-ridden and immobile, their waste products usually make their way back to the water supply for transmission to others. Consequently, improved drinking-water treatment systems have two affects on water-borne illnesses. First, they greatly reduce the spread of Cholera in general. Second, they completely eliminate the primary means of transmission for the most deadly strains. Consequently, even if you don't eliminate cholera, you make it manageable. To back this up, he cites a cholera outbreak in South America in the 90's and compared the severity of strains over time in two countries with strikingly different water treatment systems (Ecuador and Chile). In only five years, the severe strains disappeared in Chile but remained in Ecuador.

2. Malaria: Unlike cholera, malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes (or skeeters). Ewald points out that improvements that make housing more mosquito proof have tremendous effects in countering malaria fatalities, but not in the way you might think. Mosquito-proofing ensures that severely sick people can't spread the disease through mosquitoes while they are too weak to leave their beds. You're still just as likely to get malaria when you venture outside, but as time passes you become much less likely of catching a variety of malaria that will put you out of commission because the serious strains have failed to find new hosts. This becomes particularly valuable in places in Africa where no amount of conventional efforts can control the prevalence of mosquitoes and malaria.

Joshua Klein: The Amazing Intelligence of Crows

Crows are smart-damned-birds, and this video is worth watching simply for the examples of how well they are able to use their big bird brains to survive and prosper among humans. Despite their um... charm, lots of folks consider them pests. However, Joshua Klein accepts the challenge of harnessing their intellect toward constructive ends. His solution: crow vending machines.

Klein walks you through his process for training crows to deposit coins into a specially made machine in exchange for peanuts. The crows in his neighborhood now sweep the city for discarded change and return it to his back yard. Unfortunately, he doesn't report a return on investment.

Lesson:
By examining what makes bacteria and crows tick, have we somehow ceded the moral high ground? Of course not - the question is amoral. We're looking into the dynamics of a system to find efficient means to exploit it. (In the case of the crows, the exploit just happens to be a mutually beneficial exchange.) Terror networks are organisms. They have their own dynamics, and they evolve. It is madness to fight them without understanding them. Consequently, societies that tolerate this sort of willful blindness toward the motives of their enemies are ensuring their own demise.

TED: Thomas Barnett - The Pentagon's New Map for War and Peace

2008-07-05T21:58:00.006-04:00

Lately I've been watching a lot of the talks given at the TED conference. TED takes place each year in Monterrey, CA and shows off the ideas of some of the world's most inspired thinkers. Most of the talks and performances are now posted on YouTube, so it is a great way to spend the occasional 20 minutes or so of down time. They are all pretty thought provoking, and I'll probably be posting many of them here.

Here's one to get you started:

Thomas Barnett is a strategic planner who has been working for the Pentagon since the cold war ended. He gave an entertaining briefing at TED about how the Pentagon needs to adapt for post cold war conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan. Specifically, he outlines a procedure for processing politically bankrupt states and proposes a dedicated force of people to manage the peace before and after conflicts. He argues that we have a brilliant Secretary of War, but we also need a Secretary of Everything else.

Here's a few choice quotes. The link is embedded below.

We field a first half team in a league that insists on keeping score until the end of the game. That’s the problem. We can run the score up against anybody and then get our asses kicked in the second half.
...
What are we missing? A functioning executive to translate will into action. Because we don’t have it every time we lead one of these efforts we have to whip ourselves into this immanent threat thing. We haven’t faced an immanent threat since the Cuban missile crisis – 1962. But we use this language from a bygone era to scare ourselves into doing something because we’re a democracy and that’s what it takes. If that doesn’t work, we scream “He’s got a gun!” just as we rush in. Then we look over the body, and we find an old cigarette lighter and we say “Jesus it was dark.”
...
What we need downstream is a great power enabled Systems Administration force. We should have had 250,000 troops streaming into Iraq on the heels of that Leviathan force sweeping towards Baghdad. What you get then is no looting, no military disappearing, no ammo disappearing, no Muqtadah Al-Sadr. No insurgency. Talk to anybody who was over there in the first six months: We had six months to feel the love, get the job done, and we dicked around for six months. Then they turned on us.
...
The question is, how do we reconnect American national security with global security to make the world a lot more comfortable and to embed and contextualize our employment of force around the planet?... Let's have a Department of War and a Department of Something else. Some people say, "Hell, 9/11 did it for you. Now we got a home game: an away game." Department of Homeland Security is a strategic feel-good measure. It's going to be the Department of Agriculture for the 21st century. TSA: Thousands Standing Around. Just be grateful Robert Reed didn't shove that bomb up his ass.

Turn Off the Light and Get That Out of Your Mouth!

2008-07-05T18:17:00.006-04:00

A post entitled Top Ten WTF? US Sex Laws was getting a lot of Diggs today - understandably, I suppose. Two of the mentioned laws caught my eye because they were... um... in local jurisdictions. They are:

"2. In Virginia it is illegal to have sex with the lights on."

-and-

"5. Engaging in any sexual position other than missionary is illegal in Washington, DC."

I know there are a lot of useless laws still on the books that legislatures haven't gotten around to repealing and haven't been challenged in the courts, but I also know better than to believe everything I read on the internet. So I decided I would look into these a bit.

The DC law is easy. There is no sign of it in the DC code, and at some point DC repealed the entire section on indecency where such a provision, if it ever existed, probably resided. So, feel free to mix it up in the District.

Virginia turned out to be a little more tricky. The Code of Virginia devotes Title 18.2 Chapter 8 to "Crimes Involving Morals and Decency." Among the long list of unsavory topics covered by the chapter (including gambling, prostitution, bestiality, obscene books, and bigamy) there were three statutes that, facially, make criminals out of a whole lot of well-meaning and otherwise law-abiding folks.

They are:

§ 18.2-344. Fornication: "Any person, not being married, who voluntarily shall have sexual intercourse with any other person, shall be guilty of fornication, punishable as a Class 4 misdemeanor."

§ 18.2-345. Lewd and lascivious cohabitation: "If any persons, not married to each other, lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit together, or, whether married or not, be guilty of open and gross lewdness and lasciviousness, each of them shall be guilty of a Class 3 misdemeanor; and upon a repetition of the offense, and conviction thereof, each of them shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor."

§ 18.2-361A. Crimes against nature; penalty: "If any person... carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony..."

Shocked? Imagine how uncomfortable the floor debate over these bills must have been way back in the early 19th century. (An old version of the last one used the classy term "buggery.")

Thankfully, the courts have granted us (some) relief from the prying whims of narrow-minded legislators.

Fornication:
This statute was indeed intended to punish all sex outside of marriage, but the last conviction occurred before the civil war. However it has been invoked to support public policy arguments against sex outside of marriage. But in 2005, the law was finally ruled unconstitutional when a man who was being sued by an ex-girlfriend for knowingly giving her herpes argued in his defense that he could not be liable for damages suffered by a willing co-venturer in an illegal sexual relationship. Martin v. Ziherl, 269 Va. 35 (2005). The Virginia Supreme Court invalidated the Va. statute citing the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas: "[T]he fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice." Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 577.

So why does the statute remain on the books? The decision only invalidated the statute "as applied." Because the court found that the statute could be applied to cases lacking consent, involving minors, or involving public acts, it wasn't entirely unconstitutional. However, there are lots of other laws on the books that cover these other situations. This law is clearly intended to target the activities of consenting adults anywhere. A plain reading of it is misleading and totally uninformative about where the line is between legal and illegal conduct. Consequently, this law needs to be repealed.

Lewd and Lascivious Cohabitation:
This statute has two distinct parts. The first applies only to unmarried people and proscribes living with or routinely shacking-up with someone with whom you have a sexual relationship. The second part applies to married and unmarried folks alike and proscribes public displays of affection that cross the line into "lewd and lascivious" conduct.

This statute gets a lot more use than the fornication statute, but most charges stem from public acts outlawed by the second part. The last recorded conviction for private, consensual cohabitation was recorded in 1883.

The second part of the statute could be source of the alleged Virginia prohibition on having sex with the lights on. In one case, the defendants were acquitted when police officers saw the offenders in their home as the wind blew the drawn curtains to the side. Perhaps another case stands for the proposition that if you have the curtains open and lights on so that you are in view of the public you violate the second part of the statute.

In any case, the first part of the statute has not been challenged since the Loving decision, and it probably would not hold up. Consequently, it should be appealed along with the fornication statute.

Crimes Against Nature
This one, a prohibition on oral and anal sex, is also unconstitutional in light of Loving. Prior to Loving, the constitutionality of this statute was upheld, but it is hard to see how it might be constitutional today when applied to the private acts of consenting adults. Though I have little doubt it will stay on the books, like the fornication statute, to be piled onto charges otherwise illegal activity. But if that is all it is good for, why not clear things up with an amendment?

I'm not a fan of these long-outdated laws. Aside from the fact that they provide opportunities for selective, discriminatory enforcement against unpopular groups, they also contribute to a general lack of respect for the law by making nearly everyone a criminal at one point or another. Anyone who has ever argued against amnesty for illegal immigrants had better agree with me on this one or advocate throwing the book at slightly kinky couples everywhere.

Voodoo in a Box

2008-02-28T17:17:00.004-05:00

In Evidence Class this week, my professor shared an interesting anecdote. He described a magical device called a "Contraband Detector" which could supposedly detect concealed drugs, cash, or weapons - pretty much whatever you wanted to find that a bad guy might be hiding.

The device was a scam, of course - just a box with some wiring in it and a little randomly fluctuating needle on the front. But, according to my professor, some cops bought it some officers even used it as a basis for their testimony in court: "We didn't find any drugs on the scene but we knew there was some there because the little black box told us so."

Anyway, my friend Dan thought he'd look into it further, and - I'll be damned - there is still a company out there selling this thing. Global Security Solutions is an Ontario based supplier of security, surveillance, and anti-terror supplies who proudly markets it on their website.

According to the description, the CDS-2002i can detect concealed "weapons, narcotics, alcohol, and explosives. As the suspect object is scanned, contraband materials reflect the low-level radiation, which is measured by the very sensitive detector."

This could be read two ways depending on how much charity you wish to extend to the folds at GSC: either totally bogus or semi-bogus.

Totally Bogus: If they mean that there are specific properties of contraband that this thing detects, this is just an outright scam. Is there something about not being allowed to have something that affects its physical properties? Will it detect nudie magazines under your son's bed?

Semi-Bogus: Of course, this could simply be a device to determine whether or not an object is solid all the way through. For example, you may want to know whether there is a bag of drugs submerged in a barrel of coffee beans, and maybe solid coffee beans reflect radiation differently than drugs surrounded by beans. I'd say this sounds more plausible except for the fact that they have a different product that does this using microwaves: The Advanced Contraband Detector.

If these things do anything at all, they probably just generate probable cause for searches. For every object you wanted to scan, you would have to have to scan an identical, contraband-free target to calibrate the device. Any detectable difference between your calibration target and the scanned object would raise suspicion regardless of whether it is the result of contraband, something allowable, operator error, or a poorly selected calibration target. The only way to tell the difference would be to perform a search. Perform enough searches, you will find some contraband. As long as you aren't being scientific about it (law enforcement generally isn't), selection bias might influence you to believe that the device is helping you find contraband, when in reality are just conducting random searches.

Note that GSC isn't just selling to small time suckers. They eagerly tout the fact that they are registered in the central contractor database to sell to the Defense Department and Homeland Security. I did a quick search and found that the Air Force bought a $20k "Surface Explosive Detector" from them in 2005, a device I couldn't find on their website. That's the only contract I found, but if they are making other sales as a subcontractor (a common practice), it wouldn't appear in my search. At any rate, lets hope taxpayers haven't foot the bill for too many dubious products.

Piracy: Scapegoat for an Entire Industry

2008-01-09T21:19:00.002-05:00

Back in October, I posted, in excited anticipation, about Radiohead's newest release In Rainbows. You may recall that the band opted not to sign to a record label. Instead, they made the album available for download and allowed users to pay whatever they wanted.

Radiohead has not released their sales figures, but surveys indicate that most users paid very little for the album. However, whatever Radiohead did receive in payment likely exceeded their share of sales royalties under a conventional recording contract.

Now the physical version of the album is in stores, and (Guess What!) it went straight to #1 in sales for the week. Granted, January is a slow month for music sales, and the total US sales in the first week were about half of Radiohead's highly anticipated previous release. However, this supports the case (however strongly) that piracy is not the primary issue facing the ailing record business. Even here, where listeners were encouraged to download the album for free before it was available in stores, they are able to demonstrate sales most other artists would be jealous of, not to mention that every physical album sold is just gravy at this point.

Instead, the problem with the record industry is stubborn insistence on an outdated business model. They market one catchy song and sell it as a pricey album with 12 crappy songs. Yes, consumers are pirating the catchy songs, but they wouldn't if they were given an alternative with value, like a reasonably priced single (consider the success of iTunes) or an album of genuine quality (think Radiohead).

Don't get me wrong. As a budding Intellectual Property attorney, I firmly support the right of record labels to control the terms of distribution of their copyrighted works. But at some point, they have to consider the practical aspects of enforcement. If their marketing strategy encourages more piracy than they could possibly hope to control, it is bad business not to adapt. Examples like Radiohead's new album illustrate that record labels may be a hindrance to artists rather than an aid, and more artists may choose to exploit their copyrights on their own.

Farewell Andy Olmsted

2008-01-08T10:23:00.000-05:00

Major Andrew Olmsted, a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq and frequent blogger at Obsidian Wings, was killed in action on on January 3rd. He left behind a final post to be published in the event of his death. Here's an excerpt:

Soldiers cannot have the option of opting out of missions because they don't agree with them: that violates the social contract. The duly-elected American government decided to go to war in Iraq.... As a soldier, I have a duty to obey the orders of the President of the United States as long as they are Constitutional. I can no more opt out of missions I disagree with than I can ignore laws I think are improper. I do not consider it a violation of my individual rights to have gone to Iraq on orders because I raised my right hand and volunteered to join the army. Whether or not this mission was a good one, my participation in it was an affirmation of something I consider quite necessary to society. So if nothing else, I gave my life for a pretty important principle; I can (if you'll pardon the pun) live with that.
...
Sometimes going to war is the right idea. I think we've drawn that line too far in the direction of war rather than peace, but I'm a soldier and I know that sometimes you have to fight if you're to hold onto what you hold dear. But in making that decision, I believe we understate the costs of war; when we make the decision to fight, we make the decision to kill, and that means lives and families destroyed. Mine now falls into that category; the next time the question of war or peace comes up, if you knew me at least you can understand a bit more just what it is you're deciding to do, and whether or not those costs are worth it.

It is a very insightful and moving post from a self-effacing, fallen soldier. I hope you will read it.

Andy was killed by a sniper while attempting to convince suspected insurgents to surrender before he and his men opened fire. Andy is survived by his wife Amanda.

[Thanks to Cosmic Variance.]

Christmas Baby Talk

2007-12-29T14:19:00.001-05:00

The high pressure shock front of my last couple of finals and the cold, low-pressure negative phase that followed (concepts which I have promised to discuss), have resulted in no posts for nearly two weeks, leading to one seriously unfortunate consequence: any regular readers have been greeted with Jared Fogel's bright and saggy face for the entire period. Lesson: Negative reinforcement is not a winning strategy when you're trying to build a following.

However, I'm not sure you would have been much better off if I had posted. See, I usually spend Christmas in Arizona with my brother's family, which includes five adorable little girls ranging in age from 3 to 10. Consequently, I spend a great deal of time pretending to be an evil snow monster, alerting unsuspecting victims that according to my watch it is now "tickle time," and generally living life under a pile of over-excited little girls. Generally, after a few days of this, my ability to carry on a normal conversation with adults starts to suffer. For example, two years ago, during my first week back to work after a week in Arizona, I was walking with a colleague and pointed out to him that the color of the folder I was carrying was red. He asked me what the hell I was talking about, and I had to tactfully explain to him that I had temporarily mistaken him for a three-year-old.

Unfortunately, things may only get worse in the future. My sister gave birth to twin daughters six weeks ago, bringing the total number of adorable little girls in the family to eight. (Picture of her growing gang, inset.)

There are upsides, though. They are all getting older, so the conversations/activities are becoming more cerebral and interesting. Last year we started playing Clue, which, it turns out, I absolutely love. In addition, my sister-in-law has decided to form a girls basketball team with her daughters. So, I got to spend some time with niece J. shooting baskets on then new basketball hoop (which I assembled) and showing her how to shoot lay-ups (a necessity for any budding point guard). Great fun!

Anyway, I hope you had a Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season. I did!

Meet the New Jared Fogle

2007-12-16T23:50:00.001-05:00

Has anyone noticed that Subway's poster boy has gone from this:

to this?

Peter Griffin from Family Guy is featured in Subway's new "Feast Your Face" ad campaign. Though, Jared fans, don't fret - you can still see his smiling face on the healthy choices menu in the restaurants.

Anyway, this turn of events, along with Wendy's introduction of the new Baconator(tm), leads me to believe that this whole healthy-fast-food craze is over. It wasn't so long ago that fast food companies were worried about being the next industry, after tobacco, to get sued for generally contributing to the failure of our national health. Perhaps now that they all have introduced healthy options, like apples and milk in place of fries and pop, they feel they are better insulated from suit.

Of course, there are other possible explanations. Maybe Subway agrees with Sarah Silverman that Jared has become "too preachy." Or maybe there are going to be some changes in upcoming episodes of Family Guy...

Shocking! (In a cool way.)

2007-12-14T22:24:00.000-05:00

Via BABlog, here's a great set of photos from the SF Fleet Week airshow. My favorite (below), shows an F-18 flying LOW and FAAAAASTTT..... but how fast?

If you look underneath, you'll see a white V in the water under the plane. If you thought this was from the jet exhaust, you're a little off - it actually starts ahead of the tail. Instead, it the result of the shock wave caused by the plane as it passes through the air, perhaps at supersonic speed. Here's a closer look:

Notice the blurring in the air extending from the plane at an angle above and below. That's the shock front. It is actually a three dimensional cone extending in all directions that moves with the plane. When you hear a sonic boom, it is the effect of that wave crossing over your ears.

The author of the photo says that the plane isn't yet supersonic, but as an amateur appreciator of shock waves, I'm a bit skeptical. I'm baffled at the idea that anything would be able to create a V shaped shock front without being super sonic. Given certain assumptions and the angle of the cone, one (perhaps smarter than I) should be able to calculate just how fast this plane is going.

After I take my Patent Law exam tomorrow and my Business Associations exam Monday, I swear, the first thing I'm going to do (after maybe having a drink and a nap) is look into this thing further and report back here.

Even if I forget, which I might, trust me that it is a damn fascinating effect once you realize exactly what is happening in the air around this plane. But, like I said, for now, you'll just have to trust me (or look it up yourself).

Nerd Sniping

2007-12-14T16:00:00.000-05:00

I'm loving xkcd.

Thank God I don't even know how to begin solving that problem.

...better to be silent than remove all doubt.

2007-12-10T18:30:00.000-05:00

I'm in the middle of finals so my posts will continue to be short and mindless - but not as mindless as this. This weekend Dana Perino, White House Press Secretary, appeared on NPR's "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me" and admitted that last October a reporter referenced the Cuban Missile Crisis in a question and..... she didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was! C'mon! Really?!?!

I mean, I've always rooted for her. She seems like a genuinely nice person stuck in the worst job in the world. She's cute too, but I'm just going to pretend that doesn't factor in. But seriously, how does this happen?

I guess stuff like this shouldn't surprise me so much. I've been baffled a lot recently. I keep saying things like, "Don't they remember Watergate?" "Have they forgotten about Vietnam?" etc. Cheney and Bush were alive back then, after all. But then again, maybe they prefer to just forget and surround themselves with people who never knew.

At any rate, a quick shout-out to Marty, who for some misguided reason thinks girls with "long hair = good / short hair = not as good as long hair." I think this is a shallow oversimplification of the wonderfully nuanced subject of female beauty. Some women look better (great even!) with short hair. Take a look at this old picture of Dana Perino for an example.

Chip Reese dead at 56

2007-12-08T17:54:00.000-05:00

The poker world lost a legend this week. David "Chip" Reese was perhaps the greatest cash game player of all time. In 1974 Chip visited Vegas on his way to begin law school at Stanford, but he quickly found that the old pros were playing 7 card stud all wrong. The $400 he brought with him ballooned to $66,000, and he decided he couldn't afford not to stay.

Because Reese played in relatively few tournaments, he was rarely seen on television even during the recent poker-boom. Instead, he played the biggest cash games in Vegas with minimum stakes exceeding $100,000.

Poker draws a lot of wild personalities, but by all accounts Chip was a mild-mannered, generous, and considerate person who knew the "object of the game." An excellent, if reluctant, ambassador for professional poker.

Science. It works, Bitches.

2007-12-07T17:46:00.001-05:00

From xkcd.

Best Sequel Ever!

2007-12-06T10:58:00.001-05:00

Here is the new trailer for Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay staring Harold, Kumar, and, of course, Neil Patrick Harris as Neil Patrick Harris. Enjoy!

Due to adult language and content this video is Not Safe For Work (or Mom).

So This Is What Philosophers Do...

2007-12-04T23:17:00.000-05:00

Mary Midgley writes a great article strattling the devide in the ongoing debate over Intelligent Design and Evolution entitled: A Plague On Both Their Houses. Here's an excerpt:

Any apparent clashes between [religion and science] must... arise either from faulty religion or faulty science, or both....

It should surely be obvious that there is nothing scientific about atheism. God’s existence is not a question for the tests of physical science; it belongs to metaphysics. What is wrong with fundamentalism is not its theism – theists do not need to take this line – but its sheer irrelevance. Fundamentalism is a perverse attempt to use a particular, bronze-age Hebrew vision of God to resolve factual questions in science and history. Opponents who answer fundamentalism on its own terms by arguing against this mixed project as a package-deal merely perpetuate its characteristic confusion between the realms of fact and meaning.

She nails it. Big tip of the hat to Uncommon Descent, a shameless disingenuous ID rag. :)

I Wish I Was the Walrus

2007-12-04T11:23:00.000-05:00

"You can break 6 of the 10 commandments in America, but please, Thou Shalt not Violate the Brand." - David Brooks, No Sex Magazines Please, We're Wal-Mart Shoppers

Consider a man, we'll call him Bob. We don't need to know anything about Bob except that he has been charged with a crime. Bob spent Monday night in jail. Now it is Tuesday morning and Bob is sitting on a bench in the courthouse, wearing handcuffs and shrouded in the presumption of innocence, awaiting his hearing before a judge.

He will have to wait a little longer. Two teams of sharp-dressed lawyers have swept past him into the courtroom, jumping him in the queue. It so happens that late Sunday a phone company started running ads in prime time television that portray a talking walrus in a negative light. Unfortunately, this talking walrus looks alarmingly similar to the talking walrus another company uses to sell mops. The mop company filed for a preliminary injunction on Monday to protect the integrity of their own fictional talking walrus. To prevent any further harm to the fictional talking walrus, the court has granted the companies an immediate hearing.

Meanwhile Bob waits on the bench, in handcuffs and shrouded in the presumption in innocence. Maybe he attempts to figure out how much harm accrues to his own reputation every hour he remains charged with this crime and whether it is more or less important than the reputation of a fictional talking walrus.

Happiness is Sliding Off a Cliff

2007-11-30T18:52:00.000-05:00

A few years ago I was climbing a mountain in the Collegiate Range of Colorado with my good friend Patrick. Although the fourteeners in the area are good climbs, we wanted to trek something a little less trodden, and so chose a random peak tucked back off the state highway. The summit was probably at around 11,000 feet, and the snow was knee-deep on average, deeper in some spots. It was a beautiful day. I had never used an ice axe before, necessary here because of the steep slope, so Pat ran me through the techniques for aided climbing and self-arrest. Up we went in the cold, clear Colorado morning. Moving up a steep draw we hit a somewhat vertical rocky outcropping, and Pat attacked it first. It was probably less than a dozen feet high, and I watched him ascend and aggressively dig into the rock at the top with his axe as he pulled himself over the lip. I followed his lead, but being somewhat less physically inclined and less certain of my technique, I limped rather than powered my way over the lip. Without any momentum, I failed to clear the edge and began slipping backwards over it. I sprawled out to stop my slide, and Patrick, further up the mountain, descended towards me to help.

At this point I should note that a slip over the edge probably wouldn’t have been fatal, and the extent of any injury would have depended on what I hit on the way down, or if I starting sliding upon hitting the snow. Regardless of reality, that cliff seemed a lot higher and the fall a lot nastier as I lay sprawled on the rock with one foot hanging over the edge. As I waited for Pat, I deliberately turned my head to take in the view. Breathtaking. The sapphire sky was nearly cloudless and the mountains surrounding us were snow-covered and gleaming in the sun, with space enough between peaks to consider each on its own, this openness enhancing their enormity. The fear of falling enhanced everything: colors seemed bolder, edges and boundaries dramatically defined, and the whole scene seemed to expand and wrap around my mind the way things sometimes do when I’ve had way too much coffee. I breathed deep, exhilarated by the poignancy of it all. By that time Patrick was holding fast to a small pine tree and lowering his ice axe by the strap for me to grab, after which he hauled my sorry self away from the edge.

I miss experiences like that – not being in harm’s way, but rather the state of mind that comes from the efforts that sometimes lead us there. I have experienced similar moments while sitting firmly on solid ground and in no direct danger. For example, looking towards the distant Rockies from the rim above Salt Creek Canyon in Utah fills me with a profound peace and joy that is similarly satisfying – yet different – as the exhilaration I felt on that cliff. What is important is the struggle that brings one to a place, a wild place removed from the support of civilization. I think the solitude that these situations evoke is an important factor in all of this – an internal solitude that can be felt even in the company of others, and that purifies and isolates the essential elements of whatever one is experiencing. More intense struggles, after all, necessarily evoke more personalized reflection, as one drifts further from the bounds of common experience and therefore from common interpretations of experience. Perhaps in a similar way, scientists sometimes test extreme models of a given system to isolate and identify its properties.

Late one September my friend Julie and I climbed Pike’s Peak, a 14,000-foot mountain in Colorado’s Front Range. Along the twelve-mile hike to the summit we passed through a variety of ecosystems, including glorious stands of aspen with leaves arrayed in brilliant reds and yellows, quaking in the mild breeze, the sun shining behind them, the air brisk and pregnant with their soft and powdery perfume. The hike is fairly strenuous and took us about seven hours to complete. At the summit, we were greeted by the usual throngs of tourists who either drove up the road on the back side of the mountain or took the cog railroad, milling about a summit house complete with donut shop and souvenirs. People rightly flock to the top of this mountain for the beautiful view, and I’m glad so many appreciate it. Indeed, Katherine Lee Bates wrote America the Beautiful from that very spot!

But I saw something different than those who drove or rode to the top. I remember times past when I’ve pulled into a scenic overlook along the highway and appreciated a beautiful landscape. But that, like driving up the mountain, affords a different kind of appreciation. After ascending Pike’s Peak, I looked back and envisioned the entire trail we had just traversed: I could smell the aspen, hear the quaking leaves, feel the trail under my feet, remember Julie’s conversation, and most of all I could feel an intimacy with the mountain. Twelve miles is a good hike, especially up a slope that covers a 7,000-foot altitude gain from the trailhead. The last couple miles are especially steep and difficult in the thin air. I, trudging a few steps at a time, pausing for breath, feeling my legs and lungs burn, contemplated the exhaustion and weakness that this mountain inflicted upon me. I was humbled by it, conscious of being atop something very large that was indifferent to my well-being. This wasn’t a nice view from a car, detached, cheaply gained. This was a big damn mountain, ponderous and ancient, creaking and groaning over a fault-line, with a thin film of life clinging to its rocky mass… this was earth piled so high that the thin air and harsh environment stunted life and then choked it off, the lonely summit home only to the howling wind and to marmots scrambling among the lichen-encrusted rocks. This is what we had dared to invade with our footsteps, groping our way up its bulk. It was awesome, standing on top of this giant thing we had climbed, and feeling it. To contemplate the whole of it, to feel that awe, first required experiencing it with our feet and hands, seeing it, smelling it, tasting it, hearing it… all twelve miles and 7,000 feet of it.

For a while I didn’t really notice the car-borne people around me. Neither did I see the same scene they saw, for our frames of reference were completely different. I couldn’t relate to them, just as I couldn’t relate my thoughts at that moment to my thoughts in the past at those scenic highway overlooks. What I was experiencing was more than an appreciative gaze above the fruited plain: I had pushed myself against the mountain and it had pushed back, exposing me, and now I rejoiced at having achieved the summit. The scene I saw included a landscape that had constituted a personal trial, and that therefore had a personal dimension complimenting its innate beauty.

I miss those moments of rapture. I live in a big city now, and I am struggling to adjust. I am not a stranger to intellectual struggle, athletic struggle, even a degree of artistic struggle. These are part of the big picture, and thankfully I find them here in my urban home. But they do not satisfy the need for those profound moments that I find in the powerful and indifferent embrace of wild places. It’s all relative, I suppose: I merely dip my toe into the sea of the wild, and derive great benefit in doing so. Yet I have friends who wade much farther from shore, and know of others still who dive headlong into the deep, sometimes never resurfacing. Would my own experiences be wild enough to fulfill them? Is a hike in a local park fulfilling for those who grew up in the city?

I wonder if there is an urban equivalent of what I crave, but I have a hard time believing that there is. It’s not just the struggle, it’s the ritual act of going out there to encounter it. There is something unique about removing oneself from the support of civilization, and something primal and irreducible about the struggles and experiences in the wild that reveals primal and irreducible truths about ourselves. These experiences remind me that I’m alive and that life is precious and precarious, and that’s what I miss.

OMG! WTF!

2007-11-30T16:35:00.000-05:00

Gallup: Republicans Report Much Better Mental Health Than Others
(Relationship persists even when controlling for other variables.)

Ok. I don't have time to cut this apart right now, but if you read this and can't find the glaring issue in this survey that goes untouched in the analysis, then you were absent the day they were handing out common sense, and/or you have a job waiting for you at Gallup.

I'll post an adendum when I have time.

Here's Your Pledge and My Signing Statement.

2007-11-29T13:36:00.000-05:00

According to the Washington Post, earlier this month the Virginia Board of Elections approved a VA Republican Party plan to require all GOP primary voters to sign a pledge stating they intend to support the party's Presidential nominee in the fall, no matter who he is. No pledge, no vote.

Here in Virginia, we don't provide a party affiliation when we register to vote. Consequently, we get to choose which primary we participate in, if any. The sta- er, Commonwealth GOP is paranoid about independents and (GASP!) liberals casting ballots in the primary, so they have decided to clear up any confusion in the mind of voters. If you were a little unclear about whether the GOP is a big tent party open to a range of opinions, this ought to settle the question. May only he who votes in lockstep enter here!

Of course, there are a lot of silly things to point out about this pledge business. First, it is entirely unenforceable; the GOP can't tell who you vote for in the fall. Second, by letting independents know that they aren't welcome to voice a preference unless they would be comfortable with any nominee, the GOP is just ensuring that their nominee will appeal to fewer voters in the general election. Third, it just isn't great PR when someone drives all the way down to the polling station to participate in party politics and gets turned away over some silly pledge. Fourth, it is more of this, "Everybody is out to get us!" paranoia that I keep hearing from the right: "Golly! There's a war on Christmans, gays are trying to cheapen my marriage, athiest want to teach my kids we came from monkeys, and now the liberals want to tamper with our honest elections!?!? Thank God the party is looking out for us!"

Fifth, and most importantly, it illustrates the fact that the people who end up working for political parties (on either side) are the sort that think everyone on my team is better than anyone on the other team. Total nonsense. The dissatisfaction among Republicans with President Bush ought to be evidence enough that one Republican isn't just as good as another. If they were, why bother with a primary? They should just be fiscally conservative and draw from a hat. Nonetheless, I'd like to see these hacks eat their pledges if Ron Paul is nominated.

Anyway, the party is also pushing to put party affiliation on VA voter registration forms so they don't have to mess around with these messy loyalty pledges. I'm against that. Political parties are private organizations, not government entities. But people forget this because parties get so much official recognition from the government. I might be alone in this, but when I worked in the House of Representatives I thought it was weird that Congress provided separate Republican and Deomcratic Cloakrooms right on the House floor. That's prime real estate! If it's for private use, the party should have to pay for it. Go rent a room at the Radisson if you want to have a caucus!

Not to be over-dramatic, but whenever I see the government remember that it isn't its job to carry water for political parties, as I did when I registered to vote here in the sweet Commonwealth of Virginia, I think that maybe there might be some hope for this country yet.

But I digress back to one last point on the loyalty pledge. The leader of the national Republican Party, our dear President (a man of conscience, I might add), has had little trouble putting his signature to hundreds of laws which he has had little intention of either enforcing or abiding by. Perhaps would-be VA primary voters, who don't intend to decide who to vote for next fall until they actually know who is running, may sooth their consciences by taking a page from the the President's playbook. When the GOP puts the pledge in front of you, just add a signing statement to let them know the pledge doesn't apply to you. That way we can all feel Presidential on voting day!

Topics in Public Faith

2007-11-26T15:39:00.000-05:00

Such a pithy title deserves a dissertation, but alas, one is not forthcoming today. Or, if it does, then Project 5, which is due tomorrow, will be in rough shape.

Anyway, looking at my entries, I've noticed that I've been a bit hard on the old-tyme religion as of late, and I feel like it is high time I announced some premises/positions for future exploration in detail... later. My co-collaborators are welcome to jump in wherever they feel compelled to agree or disagree.

1. Inquiries that begin with the conclusion are doomed. Examples: Undertaking a scientific study of the world after first concluding that whatever you will find must conform to a literal interpretation of some holy text (not just looking at you Christians).

2. Neither evolution nor the big bang theory make any claims regarding the existence of supernatural deities or the creation of the universe. Those questions are beyond the scope of science. You can be a scientist who believes these things and devoutly follow any number of mainstream religions.

3. This is not a Christian nation. It is a nation of laws in which people are free to hold the beliefs that they choose without fear of coercion or harassment. Religious people set it up this way because they were sick of being coerced and harassed.

4. Faith is GREAT, for individuals. If you wish to take a position based on faith, it is your right. However, the moment you attempt to make decisions about other people's rights and property, you had better have evidence to convince them that what you propose is right. Example: Because of his religious beliefs, the owner of Chik'fil'a (sp?) closes all of his restaurants on Sundays. Good for him! They belong to him, he can do what he wants with them. However, if he were to lobby the government to force all restaurants to close on Sundays, he had better be able to make an objective case for the policy change that even folks who don't share his faith could find reasonable. "God says so," ceases to cut it.

5. Though people may have souls, the nation certainly does not. Using the state to advance a religious agenda at home or abroad saves no one. You can't get all of America into heaven by having the government force righteousness upon everyone, and the ones doing the forcing probably won't make it either. Instead, people need to focus on themselves and their families to make sure they are righteous in the eyes of their God.

6. The government is a tool we use to get along with one another, and secularism is a great approach for deciding just how it should work. We're a nation of a lot of people who believe a lot of different things. Holding debates on public policy within the domain of material facts which all parties can ascertain and share with others is the best way to come to conclusions that satisfy the most people's needs. When policy debate bears the burden of religious dogma, compromise, the original goal, becomes heresy enforced by damnation, and consequently, unpalatable to all sides concerned. What gets done?

7. Secular doesn't mean Hollywood. Secular doesn't mean relativism, either. Just because you hear these things lumped together in straw-man arguments (as I heard in this Sunday's homily), it doesn't mean they are all the same thing. It is possible to come to conclusions about right and wrong without relying on any particular group's religious views (see Philosophy in general). The alternative isn't resorting to hedonism.

That's good for now. I could go further, but I have a J.D. to get.

Pseudonyms are for Suckers

2007-11-21T02:43:00.000-05:00

This is my first original posting on a blog site. As such, in it I will wet my proverbial feet (I don’t have actual feet) by posting some feelings about the internet in general, and will follow up in the weeks to come with postings of more substance.

First: any personal information submitted on an internet site is bogus. I bet most of you didn’t know that Mark is 43 years old and heavy-set, wears a perpetual smirk, an intense rust-colored beard, and a Merlin robe (with rhinestones), and carries around a plastic pumpkin pail in which he collects unusual rocks. Browsing this site you’d think him a savvy, youngish student of law. I, on the other hand, haven’t even given you my real name, so imagine what I’m like. If it’s any consolation, the internet is weird for me, too. This dribble I’m posting could be read by anyone, including but not limited to inquisitive Homeland Security agents, militant grad students, communists, or Mark’s mom.

More substantive postings will follow. I just wanted to first establish my love-hate relationship with the internet: glorious medium for sharing ideas on the one hand, disarming privacy-devouring succubus on the other. I will initially struggle to write postings meaningful to an audience that theoretically encapsulates all of the English-reading internet-connected people of planet earth. I will then think about that for a moment, start drinking, and post whatever saucy Greek-laced nonsense comes to mind. Because that's how I roll. None of it will be personal, but all of it might just be glorious. So...

Allons! I go for the millionth time to encounter the world of cyberspace, and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated dribble of the internet! Allons!!

New Contributors

2007-11-20T19:48:00.000-05:00

If you are a diligent reader of this blog, either you have noticed that there are two new contributors, or you have noticed that you are now a new contributor. Yes, Megas Janis and Asself have decided to join the fun at Martian Cat Problem, and we (by that, I mean I) are (am) excited to have them.

However, this does raise two issues:

First, I can only assume that my new accomplices have elected to write under psuedonyms in order to remain annoymous. Either that, or in the case of Asself, he wishes to sound more dignified. Either way, I can't help but feel a little jealous. It makes me wonder whether I should also adopt a pseudonym, if only to fit in with the in-crowd.

Second, what good is a pseudonym if the domain includes my full name anyway. Maybe we should move, since this isn't soley my gig any longer. Either that or I'll just take responsibility for the content of Megas Janis' drunken, greek-laced rants. Of course, moving shouldn't be taken lightly, since we might end up confusing our most loyal readers. Of course, I could always call Mom and give her the new address.

Anyway, if you would like to weigh in on the psuedonym/domain name issue, just, you know, comment or something. Yeah.

Intelligent Design Proponents Have Cajones

2007-11-19T21:43:00.002-05:00

A quick follow-up to my post on the NOVA Judgment Day special on Evolution and Intelligent Design...

According to New Scientist, the Discovery Institute, an Intelligent Design think tank and publisher of the book Of Pandas and People which was a prominent feature of the Dover trial, has alleged that the teaching materials that accompany the NOVA special "encourage unconstitutional teaching practices."

At issue are teaching materials that state:

Q: Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion?
A: Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently anit-religious is simply false?

This is an interesting issue. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten this far in Constitutional Law yet, but I'll take a stab.

We need to ask whether these statements either promote or criticize a particular religious view. This depends on how you read the statements. Are these statements about evolution or about religion? Here is an example of two ways someone could paraphrase the statements in question.

1. "Evolution does not make any claim about the validity of religion." (about evolution)
2. "Religions that are inconsistent with evolution are false." (about religion)

If you think the Q&A boils down to statement 1, then you would think it is constitutional. If you think statement 2 is a fair assessment of the Q&A, then you should think that these statements are unconstitutional.

Obviously, I'm in the statement 1 camp. Evolution doesn't rule out God, and I think that is the point that these statements are trying to get across. However, I can see how the statement 2 folks have an argument. If you believed in a religion that didn't support evolution, you might conclude that the Q&A was speaking directly to your religion rather than religion in general.

Even if statement 1 was intended by the authors, the effect of promoting or suppressing a particular religious position is probably enough to make it unconstitutional. Though, I have to believe there is some sort of reasonableness standard that applies here.

But how do you decide whether this is a reasonable conclusion for someone to make? Imagine if the Q&A had been about "eating pork" or "engaging in premarital sex." There are some religions which strongly abhor these practices. Is it a religious statement to say, "The common view that (eating pork/engaging in premarital sex) is anti-religious is simply false"?

In thinking about this, I keep drifting back to the validity of the statements. The Q&A is unquestionably true. It could be false only if no one believed in both evolution and some religion. Since there are probably more than a hundred million Americans who hold both views, the statement certainly isn't false.

A religious statement, on the other hand, would be much harder to validate. I don't think we could say definitively whether statement 2 is true or false. However, statement 1 is verifiable like the Q&A. But does any of this matter?

At any rate, in raising this issue, the Discovery Institute has made it clear that they think there are religious implications to evolution. For an organization that worked so hard to sanitize ID so that they could pass it off as science rather than religion, this is a gutsy position.

cdesign proponentsist

2007-11-14T23:18:00.000-05:00

The title of this post is a transitional form - it is the missing link between creationism and intelligent design.

This week the PBS program NOVA aired an excellent account of the controversy resulting from the Dover, PA school board's efforts to insert Intelligent Design into the school's science curriculum. Two years ago this week the controversy culminated in a Federal District Court case brought by some Dover parents to enjoin the introduction of Intelligent Design along-side evolution. (Thanks to BABlog for letting me know it would be on the air, and I encourage everyone to watch the program either on the tube or at the PBS website.)

Intelligent Design (ID) is the belief that certain features of life as we observe them today are so complex that they could not come about through natural processes like evolution. Rather, this 'irreducible complexity' is a clear sign that these features and the creatures who possess them were designed and created whole cloth by some 'intelligent agent'. Savvy proponents of ID are careful not to equate 'intelligent agent' with a particular religious deity, but True Christians(tm) tend to view ID as an acceptable belief system because of the perceived compatibility with a literal interpretation of Genesis. True Scientists(tm), such as the science teachers in Dover, view it as a philosophical proposition that neither makes any testable predictions nor guides further inquiry. Consequently, it doesn't belong in the science classroom. If anywhere, it belongs in a Philosophy or Theology class. I first encountered it in Philo 101 where it was referred to as the Teleological Argument - not a theory, an argument.

Back to Dover: The parents' claim was that the School Board violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." The requirements of this amendment trickle down to the states and all of their subdivisions, including public school boards. To show a violation of the establishment clause, the parents needed to show that the actions of School Board were either motivated by a desire to promote a religious view or had the effect of promoting a religious view.

Their case took the form of two separate inquiries which the show cleverly presents in parallel. The first inquiry delved into the meaning of science and the theory of evolution to demonstrate to the court how ID fundamentally fails to stand up as a genuine scientific alternative to evolution. The second inquiry was an exploration of the motivations behind proponents of ID and those on the Dover School Board who wished to bring it into the science classroom. One inquiry was scientific and the other was legal, but both used similar methods to arrive at knowledge that could be presented convincingly to the court.

Inquiry 1: Evolution v. Intelligent Design

The problem with ID is that it is merely a critique of evolution. Proponents of ID point to gaps in the evolutionary understanding of life, declare that these gaps can never be explained by science, then conclude by saying that the only other alternative is that this 'intelligent agent' did it.

A difficulty for these ID proponents is that these "gaps" that can never be explained are routinely explained by new discoveries. For example, ID proponents and creationist often say, if one type of animal descends from another type, why don't we have "transitional forms," fossils of creatures somewhere between the two known animals? If you get your science from Kirk Cameron (Mike Seaver from Growing Pains) you will believe that "Science has never found a genuine transitional form..."

Somehow he overlooks Archaeopteryx, pictured above, which is considered the first known bird. It was feathered, but it had teeth and is likely a relative of the velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame. The program walks the viewer through several of these, including Tiktaalik which was discovered during the Dover trial.

Tiktaalik is a transitional species between fish and amphibians (one of the first 4 legged land creatures). Based on the fossil record, scientists knew that the first land creatures lived about 370 million years ago. So, they decided to look for rocks of that age to search for transitional fossils of the first land critters. They found some exposed rocks of that age in Northern Canada, and after three years of looking (Topeka!) they found fossils of Tiktaalik. This critter has scales like a fish, a flat head with eyes on top like an amphibian, and appendages that have fin-like webbing and the beginnings of shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints.

In short, we have a theory (evolution) that gives rise to a testable prediction (fish gave rise to amphibians ~370 mya) and a test (guys went out to rocks that old and they find evidence that the theory was correct). This happens all the time!

Suppose you are a proponent of ID. What used to be a "gap" that could never be explained by science gets explained by science. What do you do? You should just pack up and call it a day, but instead you either ignore it or pick another gap and claim that gap #2 can never be explained by science.

Inquiry 2: Intelligent Design = Creationism

Beginning with the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925, evolution and creationism had been hot topics in the courts until the Supreme Court found that Creation Science "embodies [the] particular religious tenant" that we were created by a divine creator. Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987). Consequently, the promotion of "Creation Science" was thereafter prohibited in public school classrooms.

However, the Dover School Board wasn't attempting to teach "Creation Science." They wanted to present Intelligent Design to their students as an alternative to evolution. To do so, they proposed a companion book called Of Pandas and People. According to the School Board this was neither a Creation text nor even a religious text. Instead, they argued that this is a legitimate scientific viewpoint that happens to resonate with them because of its compatibility with their own independent religious views.

Now, this is where lawyers become Archaeologists. Pandas came out in 1989 after several years of development. The Parents subpoenaed all the old drafts of the book from the publisher. This amounted to about 7000 pages. However, they had a theory to guide their search. They compared the pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas with the post-Edwards drafts. This is what they found:

Pre-Edwards: "Creation means that various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent Creator with their distinctive features already intact - fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.

Posts-Edwards: "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact..." [emphasis added]

Two words, same definition. They even found instances in the drafts where the authors were careless in their efforts to cleanse the text. For example, in one case they inserted 'design proponents' without taking out all of 'creationist' leaving "cdesign proponentsist."

In short, we have a theory (ID is merely creationism repackaged) that gives rise to a testable prediction (creationists relabeled their theory after the Supreme Court ruling) and a test (diligent lawyers look at texts from that period and find that they were right). Now that is how you win a court case!

And they did. Judge John E. Jones, III, ruled that "it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school classroom," the school was ordered to pay the parents' legal fees, the city voted out the entire school board, and Pat Robertson told them not to turn to God if a disaster strikes Dover. All is right with the world!

Anyway, this post is no spoiler. You should still watch the program. It does a great job of chronicling the turmoil and division in the town during the controversy, with many interviews with people from both sides. It was an amazing event that was not without costs.

If you would like to learn more, I recommend that you read this excerpt from the trial transcript. It is the testimony and cross examination of Kevin Padian, a paleontologist from U.C. Berkeley and expert witness for the parents. He does an amazing job of laying out the depth and breadth of evolutionary theory and contrasting it with ID.

The program mentions how the reporters who sat through the trial wondered why they didn't learn this stuff in school. The reason: evolution has been so controversial, even after 1987, that text book publishers have chosen to gloss over it so their sales won't be threatened. In the words of the Judge: "In an era when we're trying to cure cancer, where we're trying to prevent pandemics, where we're trying to keep Science and Math education on the cutting edge in the United States, to introduce and teach bad science to 9th grade students makes very little sense to me. Garbage in, garbage out. It doesn't benefit any of us."

Who's Watching You at the Table?

2007-11-05T15:24:00.000-05:00

[My, how time flies when I'm consumed by my studies! Here's a quick post on a topic near to my heart (poker) to help get me back into the swing of things. However, I recently attended a thought provoking (er, and disturbing) speech by the founder of the pro-life group Operation Rescue, so a post on that topic is in the works. But first, let there be poker!]

My mother (Hi Mom!) will be pleased to know that I haven't been playing much poker lately due to time constraints and such. However, three weeks ago I did take a jaunt out to Atlantic City with my close, personal friend Megas Janis, and there I managed to log some table time.

It got me thinking about the differences between online and live poker, and why I prefer the latter. The most obvious difference, of course, is the fact that you can't see your opponents when you play online. For people who put a lot of stock in detecting 'tells' which betray the strength of their opponents' hands, this is a pretty big issue. However, for me tells aren't a big part of my game - I don't spend a lot of time looking for them, and I think I'm good about keeping mine concealed (unless Marty would like to inform me otherwise).

Thus, it has always puzzled me why I seem to do better live. If the difference isn't in the tells, then where is it? Well, let's just say, if I handn't figured out the answer, then this would be a very short post.

In the live game, I can tell who is paying attention to the hands I play and how I play them. It turns out, this is kind of a big deal. See, the practice of establishing an expectation in the minds of your opponents and then strategically violating that expectation in the most profitable way possible is a critical component of a winning poker game. You create the expectation through your play of past hands, but you can't know whether you've succeeded unless you know whether your opponent was paying attention.

Online an opponent could be focusing intently on every move you make; he could be playing 8 tables at once; or he could be drunk, half-asleep, and watching football while he plays. You would never know.

But in a casino, I can see who is watching the table and who is watching TV. I can even engage people in conversations about the action to see what they have noticed. Heck, often, players will come out an tell you how they have assessed you. For example, in AC one guy said to the table, "[Mark] is just trying to sucker us into a big pot." At the WSOP, another guy announced, "You sure like hands like 9-7 offsuit, don't you?" These guys are doing me a favor! Not only are they telling me what they think, their educating the whole table. Once I know what everyone thinks of me, it is easy to act accordingly.

As a result of this revelation, I think I will focus more on playing in a manner that will make me the center of attention at a table - drive the action a little more. If I can make people notice, I will know what they have noticed - plus, its lots of fun.

Now, I just need to find the time to actually play poker.

BONUS for Mom: This Wall Street Journal Law Blog post is about two distinguished Harvard Law professors and their personal and professional interests in poker. Here's a great quote from Prof. Charles Nesson:

It's really the poker way of thinking that is the most deeply intriguing thing to me. The essence of poker is this business of seeing from the other person's point of view... If [law students] want to do something useful in their outside time, they should play poker.

Silly Presidents And Their Magical Thinking

2007-10-09T22:52:00.000-04:00

On June 22, 2004, President Bush said:

"The values of our country are such that torture is not part of our soul - our being."

It's funny, the way he said it made me think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia two weeks ago:

"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country - we don't have that in our country."

Both men would prefer that their statements were true, but they know, perhaps better than anyone, that they aren't. Maybe convincing us is almost as good as making it a reality.

Of course, the sad part is Ahmadinejad is busy doing all (the executions) that he can to make his fantasy a reality, while Bush would veto any attempt to make his own dream come true.

I guess our President is more of a dreamer. :)

Archimedes Knew Calculus... Almost

2007-10-08T22:14:00.000-04:00

According to this article in sciencenews.org, about 2200 years ago the Greek mathematician Archimedes was working on some of the same problems that motivated Newton and Leibniz to each invent calculus. Until recently, it was believed that his strict adherence to Aristotle's ideas about infinity held him back, but new findings show he got really darn close to nailing it - 1900 years early. Bright fellow!

Anyway, we only know of this because Archimedes wrote it on a papyrus scroll. Some time later, somebody copied it to parchment. Then, about 700 years ago a monk needed some parchment, so he grabbed some useless old Greek scroll (that happened to contain ideas that humanity wouldn't rediscover for another 400 years), scraped off the ink, and made a prayer book out of it. Dark ages, indeed!

In 1908, someone discovered that the faint Greek letters running up the pages belonged to Archimedes. The book was studied for a while, but then mysteriously disappeared. Ten years ago, it turned up in someone's closet, was auctioned to an anonymous bidder for $2.0 million, and began a long restoration and research effort. The results are starting to come out now.

Pretty cool.

Ending the War on Science

2007-10-08T12:34:00.000-04:00

For once Hillary is speaking my language...

I will end the politicization of scientific research that has marked the Bush Administration and restore a climate of scientific integrity and innovation. We will no longer place ideology ahead of evidence…

From her remarks at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

[Thanks to BABlog.com]

Don't Put This on the Troops

2007-10-07T19:21:00.001-04:00

The attitude that the general public has toward our warfighters (soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines) today seems overwhelmingly positive. You hear about spontaneous applause for them in airports, they are constantly being thanked for their service by strangers, and "Support Our Troops" stickers are ubiquitous. All of this is outstanding, particularly when you contrast it with the heat Vietnam era warfighters took from the anti-war movement in the 60's and 70's. It was as if the warfighters themselves were being blamed, irrationally, for the war and its outcome - this even though so many were drafted. Today, it seems that the vast majority of the public able to separate a warfighter's participation in a war from an administration's decision to undertake it.

That said, when I do occasionally run across some loon who finds it necessary to hold warfighters responsible for the Iraq war, my hide gets seriously chapped.

For example, here is an excerpt from a reader comment following an interview a close friend of mine did with the Huffington Post about her experience in Iraq, her return home, and her recovery from her injuries:

SCOOPDJOUR: My nephew was wounded on his second tour of Iraq. As much as I love him, he knew, his father and mother knew, IT'S A VOLUNTEER ARMY.
I did not ask you or him to volunteer, I am and was then 100% against this war. I cannot be proud of or grateful towards glory seekers coming back wounded.

Granted, comments like this are rare, but they make me seriously angry.

Yes, we have a volunteer military. So what? Even though they volunteer, we as a nation still have a responsibility to ensure that they aren't put in harm's way unnecessarily. They don't get to pick the wars they fight in. They don't get to opt out of conflicts that they think aren't worth while. Rather, warfighters voluntarily place themselves at the service of the country for whatever conflict in which they are needed. We don't get to write off an injury or fatality because someone volunteered. We are still responsible. If anything, the fact that they volunteered only increases our duty as a nation to make sure their commitment is not abused.

Here's another comment excerpt from a different interview with a different warfighter:

NORTHSHOREDUDE: If the troops would refuse to fight and unjust and illegal war - there would be no war.... So, in the meantime, if you support the troops - you are effectively supporting the war. And don't call me a traitor - just bringing up a reasonable argument.

Again, infuriating. It just shouldn't be a warfighter's job to figure out whether the war is just or not. They have enough on their plates without having to deal with a fuzzy moral/political question. Frankly, I can't imagine the experience. I can only guess that if, for example, I were trying to defend a police station that was under siege and taking fire from the outside while simultaneously trying to subdue a prison riot that was taking place inside, all the while desperately hoping that the preparations I have made for occurrences like this are enough to keep the soldiers under my command alive, then I might not want to be bothered with the question of whether or not I did the right thing by complying with my deployment orders.

We expect so much of them as it is. They put themselves at our mercy, yet someone would suggest that we should also expect them to also be martyrs - to accept a court martial when we fail to choose our wars wisely. Infuriating!

But, like I said, these comments are rare. The people to take these positions usually get put in their place pretty quickly by more reasonable folks. Thankfully, people opposed to the war have largely figured out that the warfighters aren't to blame.

Disturbingly, the folks who are for the war seem to be moving in the opposite direction. I'm starting to see instances where the hawks attempt to paint the choice to serve the country in the military as a personal adoption of administration policy.

For example, Rush Limbaugh caused a ruckus recently when he coined the term "phony soldiers" to identify warfighters who are opposed to the Iraq war. Here's an excerpt:

CALLER 2: ...what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --

CALLER 2: A lot of them -- the new kids, yeah.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.

CALLER 2: Exactly, sir.

Obviously, the "phony soldier" thing is bad, really insulting. But I'm also concerned about the view that is being pushed right after it. Supposedly, the "kids" are signing up to go to Iraq, and in Limbaugh's eyes, that means they approve of the war itself. This makes me uncomfortable because the practice of equating service with approval would seem to embolden the arguments made above about the soldiers being responsible for the conflict itself. Suppose Rush were against this war, would he feel compelled to also hold them culpable for it because they are enlisting?

In my view, the warfighters have signed up to be skilled and responsible agents of our national security, and that is enough. We can't thrust upon them the responsibilities of the President, Congress, and the public to make policy decisions. We shouldn't blame them when we think things are going wrong, and we shouldn't parade them out when we think things are going right. We should just make damned sure we're being fair to them by honoring them with a commitment equal or greater to the commitment they have given us.

Flo Control

2007-10-04T15:40:00.000-04:00

Never doubt that for any obscure problem there is someone out there with the unique expertise (and enough time!) to deal with it. Now, thanks to the internet, they can tell us all about it.

Meet Flo:

[Flo] has a habit of catching various animals, dragging them inside through the cat door, and letting them loose so they can be chased for hours. Very cruel. To put an end to this we have built a computer-controlled device that visually determines if Flo is carrying anything in her mouth when she enters, and if she does, it simply does not let her in.

Brilliant! The site gives an interesting account of how they put image-recognition algorithms to use to keep Flo's prey outside. They even have a real-time record of all the critter encounters the device has registered and how it responded. It even keeps out curious skunks too!

What Are Rainbows Worth?

2007-10-01T11:25:00.000-04:00

Radiohead's seventh album, In Rainbows, comes out this month, and the band has opted to get a little unorthodox with their business model. Physical copies of the album don't become available until early December, but the songs are available for download beginning Oct. 10. The kicker: you get to decide how much you want to pay. Really. That's right, set your own price. No kidding!

Following the release of their last album, 2003's Hail to the Theif, Radiohead satisfied the terms of their multi-album contract with Capitol/EMI. Rather than negotiate a new one, they have opted to go sans label (so to speak). Despite Radiohead's resources and die-hard following, this was a bold move in an industry dominated by monopoly powers. This pricing scheme is probably their best bet to succeed as an 'independent,' and their success will be a great thing for music lovers in general.

Radiohead has two things it needs to accomplish: 1) make money from sales of the album and 2) get their music out there so that people will come to see them play live.

They don't have the benefit of a label paying to get their songs on the radio. (Oh, did you think that was illegal? That's cute.) So they need to make it inexpensive for new fans to get access to the music. Old, die-hard, must-get-my-Radiohead-fix fans like myself are more likely to pay a fair price (I'm thinking 9 Pounds). Also, we're suckers for the hard-copy which is just tailored made for us suckers. It includes: the CD, two 12in. vinyl records, album art, lyrics, and a bonus CD with b-sides. Price: 40 Pounds Sterling! That's $82! Did I mention we were suckers?

Anyway, Radiohead is resorting to price discrimination. It sounds bad, but it isn't because this is voluntary price discrimination. Its bizarre, but it is the smartest thing they could do.

They are going to get a bunch of new fans to listen for cheap and perhaps buy concert tickets, while squeezing every dime out of us old-timers (who will also buy tickets). Plus, the fervor around this just might get their stuff on the radio without having to pay.

That last bit is the best. Record labels have had a deadlock on airplay for years now. It is the only service they actually provide to a band, that a band can't get done themselves. Hopefully Radiohead is paving the way for a lot of other bands, new and old, to cut out the middle-man and open up the marketplace of music.

I'm just so excited, I can hardly wait. Coming soon: The Martian Cat Problem Experience... From Space! We're gonna be the best band ever!

Dan Rather Stands by His Story

2007-09-27T23:38:00.000-04:00

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/27/dan_rather_suit/

This is a great article that recounts the events of "Rather-gate," Dan Rather's report on the unexplained gaps in Bush's National Guard Duty during the Vietnam War and the blow-back CBS/Viacom received from the administration.

According to this account, the documents showing Bush never showed up for duty were authentic to any reasonable journalistic standard and corroborated all the other evidence gathered in the investigation. However, CBS, still sore from the bruises and "liberal media" labels received by the Administration after being the first to run the Abu Ghraib scandal, and Viacom, hoping for a Bush victory and continued FCC deregulation, were not pleased about another controversial story so close to the election.

CBS/Viacom assembled a panel to ostensibly investigate the validity of the report, but instead they rail-roaded Rather and the producers. The panel concluded that the truth of the story was inconclusive and allegedly ignored its own evidence in support of the story.

Rather, Mapes and 3 other producers were fired.

Rather has now filed a lawsuit against CBS and refuses to settle. He intends to use subpeona power to investigate his improper firing and, in the process, demonstrate that CBS knew the story was true.

Pretty amazing stuff. As much as "liberal media" gets thrown around, all the major outlets are still run by corporations, regardless of who is in the news room. I never considered the fact that FCC deregulation could be a big carrot being held out in front of all of the networks.

If it's true, it kinda sucks for you and me. Just one more way for dishonorable people to retain power once they have it, and one more muzzle on the people whose responsibility it is to let us know how dishonorable the powerful are.

Thanks a lot guys...

2007-09-26T23:41:00.001-04:00

...why didn't any of you tell me I didn't have time to blog every day? Sheesh. I'm blaming you, Rajlich.

Tender Vitters

2007-09-23T21:39:00.000-04:00

Here I go. Three days into blogging, and I'm already cutting corners... Does this mean someone from the comments section wins a bet?

According to the Times-Picayune, Louisiana Senator David Vitter has earmarked $100,000 in federal funds for the group Louisiana Family Forum to develop "improvements" to the state education curriculum that will promote faith-based alternatives to evolution.

"…when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
- Isaac Asimov (Thanks to BABlog)

When may one tase a 'Bro'?

2007-09-21T21:34:00.000-04:00

This week the tasing of a University of Florida student at a speech by John Kerry was a big story. (You can view the incident here and here.) While looking for these I found several other examples of taser use. This video shows the tasing of a UCLA student in a campus computer cluster last November. This video shows a handcuffed woman being tasered while in the holding area of local police force in Ohio.

I don't know about you, but I found these hard to watch. Sure, the UF student was a bit of a snot and had been warned; the UCLA student refused to stand up and also had been warned; and the Ohio woman was uncooperative, but are these sufficient reasons to shock the hell out of someone?

Without question, police should be allowed to use a taser in some situations. Whenever the use of deadly force is justified and a taser would be just as successful as a gun to secure the safety of the officer and the public, the police should be given the option of a taser. Having a taser in this circumstance is pareto superior to not having a taser. That is, nobody is worse off. The tasee avoids getting shot (and likely killed) for something that, in retrospect (if he is alive enough to be reflective), he probably wouldn't decide to do again, given the outcome. Likewise, the police are at minimum, no worse off, but in all likelihood, if there is a psychological cost to killing someone or participating in an accidental shooting, the police actually benefit significantly from having a taser available. Of course, when deadly force is justified and a taser isn't adequate to protect the officer or the public, then fire away.

The hard cases come when deadly force is not justified. At UF, the student was unarmed and being held down by 6 police officers. It's hard to imagine what he would have to do to get (deservingly) shot in such a situation.

There is a lot of guidance available in a Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) report commissioned by UCLA after their own student tasing (video above). The report includes a Comparative Summary of Taser Policies from other UC campus police forces, municipal police departments, and model police policies.

The report concludes that "the UCLAPD policy stands alone in its legitimization of the Taser as a pain compliance device against passive resistors," and recommends that this be corrected. Among other jurisdictions, taser use is generally limited to violent or actively aggressive suspects. In addition, UCLAPD had the most permissive policy toward tasing handcuffed subjects. This scenario is uncontemplated by many other policies and explicitly prohibited by the vast majority of the rest.

But why not tase passive resistors? Well, because passive resistors are an inconvenience rather than a danger. I know cops have a hard and dangerous job. I'm all for anything that will make the police safer. Tasers, in some situations, can serve such a function. Any time a dangerous subject is dangerous, but not dangerous enough to kill, we make cops a little safer whenever we give them a tool to use like a nightstick or taser.

However, when we allow police to use a nightstick or taser on someone who is not dangerous, only to achieve compliance, like the three cases I linked to above, we're only making a cop's job easier at the expense of pain and risk of death to the subject. Given the cost, I'm OK with cops being inconvenienced.

Also, lets not forget that using more force than you need to can actually be dangerous to the police themselves. The cops in Ohio didn't have much to worry about because they were in their own holding area. The cops at UF had a little more to be worried about. You can hear the students respond negatively once the tasing begins. At UCLA, the students were well behaved, but curious, through the first two tasings. However, during tasings three and four it takes more cops to control the crowd than it would to carry the student out in the first place.

Of course, if you had to pick a crowd based on harmlessness and compliance with authority, a bunch of college kids is about the best you could do. Could you imagine if the UCLA or UF police had done what they did among a bunch of soccer hooligans??

Nevermind, you don't have to imagine. This ends badly.

So, unless someone is an actual danger, lets keep the tasers in their holsters.

BONUS: A quick shout-out to intellectual property. While Taser is the brand name of the products made by Taser International, it has also become a generic term for the species of product itself. Consequently, there is no trademark protection for its use. Taser could have used a good IP attorney to protect their good name. They should give me a call in a year or two. :)

Inaugural Address

2007-09-21T09:32:00.001-04:00

Today I begin blogging.

Unlike most folks, I'm not necessarily blogging to express myself here - I'm blogging for exercise.

Allow me to explain: I'm in the beginning of my second year of law school, and one thing I've noticed about the life of a law student is there is a hell of a lot more reading to do than writing. Yet when we are finally called upon to put fingers to keys (final exams, occasional major writing projects) each course grade depends entirely on our ability to clearly, comprehensively, and convincingly express ourselves as quickly as humanly possible. Not to mention that a practicing lawyer's life is spent expressing himself in memos and letters to clients, partners, and even boring old files.

So, noticing that I was getting rusty, and recognizing that all the time I spend with my nose in a book and thinking deeply about the material is for naught if I can't get it on the page efficiently, I thought: "Why not start a blog!?"

One consequence of my "exercise" mission is that I don't have any particular subject I plan to blog about. Instead, I have only two requirements: (1) each post needs to be in the form of an argument, and (2) I need to post every day.

So here we... er... I am. I'm sure you're not here yet. But if you do decide to join me, you should know a few things. First, Requirement 1 supra is going to make it difficult to talk much about myself, which is perfectly fine with me and probably you too (whoever you are). But if you had your heart set on reading about my cat, then you're out of luck (1) because there aren't a lot of arguments to be made about my cat (see Requirement 1), and (2) because, despite the name of the blog, I don't own a cat. (For cat stuff, go here. Marty has two of them. Sorry Marty.)

That brings us to Requirement 2. Because I will be posting every day, there will be plenty of opportunities for me to tell you exactly what "The Martian Cat Problem" means, though I might have to look into it myself first. In the meantime, you can expect a healthy dose of science, philosophy, political ranting, religious discourse, and yes law-stuff.

So, welcome! Feel free to comment if/when I say something absurd. It's bound to happen soon, and I don't mind being raked over the proverbial coals.