Public Nuisance |
|
|
Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
Party Animals:
Jewish Bloggers Join >>  
|
Thursday, January 30, 2003
It's the Florida Way Florida official are seemingly still handling elections by their own very special rules(full story here; link from Maru): State prosecutors began their investigation in mid-December after a county audit documented widespread abuse of tax money and rumors began swirling at high levels of county government about missing votes. With concerns about Oliphant's ability to oversee her office growing daily, investigators stepped up their work over the past week. The attorney for the employee said the absentee ballots she saw were postmarked before the Sept. 10 primary. She told prosecutors it was significant that she saw them in the mailroom two days after the election because no one from the office picked up the mail on Election Day. Under state law, any absentee ballots received by the end of business on Election Day must be counted.... On discovering the mail trays of ballots, his client immediately notified Carol Hill, Oliphant's assistant supervisor in charge of absentee ballots. The lawyer quotes Hill as saying the ballots needed to disappear and said his client discovered later in the day that they were no longer in the mailroom. Do Androids Dream of Electric Pawns? Addenda to my earlier post on computers and chess: Oxblog's Josh Chafetz has made some similar points in a longer post: Chess is precisely not the kind of environment that makes human intelligence unique. The day is still, I think, a long way off that computers will be able competently to navigate the real world, because the real world does not have a set of easily understandable rules, and real world information is far from perfect. Real-world decision-making involves extrapolating/guessing missing information from present information. It often means having to operate in the absence of even an educated guess. It means not knowing what rules the other actors are using to guide their behavior. Indeed, it involves not knowing whether they are using rules at all.
I think Josh is mostly right here, except in his reference to humans having an advantage in being able "to operate in the absence of even an educated guess." Humans don't always have a big edge over computers in this, precisely because, like conputers, we don't do it very well. We do have a vast advantage over computers in real world situations mostly for two reasons:
The current match, like all human-computer matches, gives a perfect example. The actual moves are played by a programmer. The task that only a handful of human geniuses can perform, finding moves strong enough to compete against Kasparov, is done by the computer. The task that any person of average intelligence could be taught in a few hours, picking up and moving the pieces, has to be done by a human, because nobody knows how to program a robot that can do it.
Calpundit suggests that interest in computer chess can be traced back to legendary scientist Alan Turing, one of the founders of computer science and modern cryptography, who also had an interest in chess (and in young working class men, but that's another discussion). As a historical note, there's actually a history of chess-playing 'machines' that predates Turing. In the 19th Century, a showman named Maelzel toured Europe and America with a machine that purportedly could play chess. It was a fraud, of course, but intrigued enough people at the time to be the subject of several pamphlets and a celebrated essay by Poe. Poe got some things wrong - he oddly believed that if you could design a machine that played chess at all, it would be trivial to go ahead and design one that played perfectly - but the essay is still a model of clear reasoning from the genius who created the detective story genre.
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Ariel Sharon has two directions to go in following his election victory yesterday. His Likud party will have 37 seats in the next Knesset; he needs 61 to form a government. He can form a right-wing coalition consisting of Likud, the right wing secular party National Union (7), the settler/religious NRP (5), Sephardic religious Shas (11), and Ashkenazim religious UTJ (5), total seats 65. Another possibility is a secular coalition built on Likud, Labor (19), Shinui (15), and Am Ehad (4), total seats 75. The Yisrael b'Aliyah party(2), secular, moderately conservative, and supported mostly by Russian immigrants, could fit into either of the above coalitions, but it would be vital for the first which, without it, could be brought down by the defection of any member party. The left wing Meretz party (6) is a possibility for a secular coalition, but probably too dovish to be comfortable in a government led by Sharon. Sharon has already said he wants to avoid the narrow right wing coalition; but there are plenty of obstacles to the broader one. Shinui is determinedly secular and says it won't enter any coalition that includes the religious parties; Labor leader Mitzna has vowed to stay out of any coalition with Sharon. Sharon seemed to be appealing to Mitzna, or other Labor MKs, to reconsider in his victory speech:
"Narrow political considerations and things said in the heat of the campaign must not now turn into an obstacle in the path of national unity. Bitter things were said during the campaign, from all sides, and weighty accusations were hurled. This is the way of elections, I have already been in many election campaigns.I am used to this. "But today, nonetheless, we must put this aside. We must put the hostility of the struggle behind us. I excuse and forgive all those who tried to hurt me, slander me, and tarnish me. I excuse and forgive, because what unites us is more important that what divides us."
The best guess is that enough of Labor will be ready to go into the government for Sharon to form a majority. He may also bring in National Union. If he does form a government with Shinui but no religious parties, I believe it will be the first one in Israeli history. Historically, the religious parties have been very convenient in building coalitions; they made financial demands for the support of their yeshivot and other institutions, but few political demands. Past governments found the Knesset votes adequate compensation for buying up religious support, but fighting against such special treatment is the main raison d'etre of Shinui, which will make such compromises far harder.
Ha'Aretz has a breakdown of the various possibilities, complete with pie charts. Tuesday, January 28, 2003
The PoorMan explains everything you need to know about movies, not to mention why it's a bad idea to spin kick Carl Weathers. Less ambitious, the Volokh Conspiracy settles for explaining what the words "belittle", "indecipherable", and "vomit-grass" have in common. If you want an expert estimate of the sophistication of the talk radio audience, one way to get it, as Scoobie Davis pointed out, is to listen to the ads they run. I tuned in Limbaugh for a few minutes this morning; one of the ads his guest host was running was somebody who was selling an explanation of how you could not only stop paying taxes, but could also get the IRS to refund any past taxes you may have paid while under the misimpression that taxes were mandatory rather than optional. One of the major sponsors of their morning program, whose ads ran seemingly several times a morning every day for years, was a law firm which specialized in assisting people who were being sued by the IRS for nonpayment of past taxes. Former World Champion Garry Kasparov is now playing a match against "Deep Junior", a successor to the chess computer that defeated him in 1997. The match started out well for Kasparov, with a crushing victory in only 27 moves in the first game. I haven't found any analysis of the game yet, but you can watch the moves here. An interesting point about this program is that it is more 'intelligent' than earlier chess programs. Human masters examine relatively few possibilities in a game; they know by experience which ones are the most important to consider. Chess computers lack that judgement but, as hardware got faster, haven't really needed it, substituting the ability to examine up to 300,000,000 positions per second, about 45 bn for a typical move. Junior looks at 'only' 2 or 3 million positions per second, but, because those positions are selected relatively well, was able to beat programs which examined more positions.
Computers aren't yet up to the level of the very strongest humans. Kasparov's loss and the subsequent draw by Victor Kramnik against yet another program both came because the computer has the advantage of consistency, while human players tire and make errors. Still, computers are improving and humans aren't - only twenty years ago any highly skilled player could win against the best computers. Computers will inevitably, probably by 2010, become strong enough to consistently beat any human player. Many people find this to be disturbing, a triumph of machinery over the human mind. It's a view I don't share. Computers do not actually understand or play chess; they perform binary mathematical computations very quickly and very accurately. Humans have to solve the extremely complex problem of translating the subtle ebb and flow of a chess game into the very narrow mathematical functions that computers can perform. The first computer program strong enough to beat us at our own game will be a product and demonstration of the astonishing resources of human ingenuity.
The official site for the match sponsor is here. There will presumably be frequent updates on this chess blog. Calpundit has also posted on computer chess. Monday, January 27, 2003
Even before it is delivered, you can see the highlights of Bush's State of the Union. (Link via See the Forest.) Tuesday, January 21, 2003
I hope whoever came here via this search found what he/she was looking for. But what that might be, I confess I have no idea. Tacitus is critical of the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush administration, but denies that Democrats would be better: Even if you reject this thesis and champion the idea of Clintonian economic supercompetency, you still face the burden of showing that this is a characteristic of the Democratic party as a whole, and not just a feature of one particular administration. Given the post-2002 election backlash within the Democratic party, in which the base elected Pelosi and repudiated the DLC, I'd have a hard time buying that. Maybe the lesson here is that divided government governs best. Or maybe the lesson is that neither the current Republican nor the last Democratic presidents represented the true natures of their parties' fiscal proclivities.
He's half right. On the Democratic side, there is considerable disagreement on fiscal policy. There are those (usually including me) who support Clintonian budget surplus and limited spending, and those who support much bigger government, often without being willing to back the taxes to pay for it. There are also probably some who believe in their hearts that the Clinton positions are right, but are tired of the politically disadvantageous role of being the Daddy Party that says you can't have big government unless you're willing to pay the taxes for it.
But he's wrong about the Republicans. There is no meaningful split within the Republican party - it is now all fiscal recklessness, all the time. Out of the entire Republican US Senate, only McCain voted against the 2001 tax cuts. The Republicans who voted for those cuts knew quite well they were bringing back deficits and they didn't care - in fact, they rejected, again on a nearly straight party vote, a bill to make the cuts contingent on a continuing budget surplus.
Of course, the Republicans also talk a lot about cutting spending. But they aren't just talk; they're also doing something about spending - they're increasing it.
The Republican Party as the party of fiscal prudence is now history, like the Republicans as the party of southern blacks or the party of tariff protection. Affirmative action raises a lot of difficult arguments, pro and con. But I have to say that something like this from former U of M President Leo Bollinger fails to convince me: There are many misperceptions about how race and ethnicity are considered in college admissions. Competitive colleges and universities are always looking for a mix of students with different experiences and backgrounds—academic, geographic, international, socioeconomic, athletic, public-service oriented and, yes, racial and ethnic.
It is true that in sorting the initial rush of applications, large universities will give “points” for various factors in the selection process in order to ensure fairness as various officers review applicants. Opponents of Michigan’s undergraduate system complain that an applicant is assigned more points for being black, Hispanic or Native American than for having a perfect SAT score. This is true, but it trivializes the real issue: whether, in principle, race and ethnicity are appropriate considerations.
I can accept that policies which award or punish individuals on the basis of race can be justified in some circumstances. But it seems pretty clear that the preference is always in favor of color blind policies and to justify adoption of a race preference policy requires stronger evidence than this. Bollinger asserts that diversity is a critical element in education, but he is very vague about what diversity means and what the benefits are. For instance Michigan, like other state universities, has a preference for state residents. If diversity is so mightily important, why not a preference for students from other parts of the country or from other nations? Since undergraduates are overwhelmingly between 18 and about 24, why not award points for being over 30? Why not a policy of religious diversity?
Another unexamined assumption here is that increased numbers of minority students necessarily leads to a more 'diverse' college experience for all students. My own High School proved how false this is. Mathematically, we were almost perfectly integrated, with white and black students each being around 45% and small minorities of Asian, Philipino and hispanic students. But my college prep classes were almost entirely white students bussed in from a wealthy neighborhood. They included a handful of black students who lived in the affluent neighborhoods most of the white students did, and some white and Asian students from bad neighborhoods, but not a single black student from the poor neighborhood the school was located in. Those students were all in separate classes arranged by test scores. They included jocks like Robert 'Spider' Gaines, who was a football star at Washington and scored a Rose Bowl touchdown before washing out in the NFL. Undoubtedly, they included several alumni who now have 'tenure' at state institutions like San Quentin and Pelican Bay. Ironically, they also included the only one of my class of 400 who ever became really famous, OJ prosecutor Chris Darden. (I had Chris in only one class, when a teacher I argued with punished me by re-assigning me to be in the lower level class in 12th Grade English, where I was one of 2 white students, the other one being on the football team. Chris was on the 'slow' track all through High School.) The 'separate but equal' system in our school was so developed that we even elected two commencement speakers, one black and one white, for each class.
The argument that affirmative action is necessary to address historic inequality is also untenable. After all, Japanese-Americans were, relatively recently, subject to mass incarceration solely because of their ethnic background. The abuse of Chinese-Americans was less spectacular and is less well known, but the history of mistreatment is extensive. Both of these groups today are actually expected to meet higher standards than white students for university admission in many cases. One of the reasons that California is unwilling to adopt pure meritocratic standards for admission to UC is that it would lead to classes of overwhelmingly East Asian ancestry.
I'm also sympathetic to another argument against race-based affirmative action that I've seen made by Thomas Sowell. Sowell essentially argues that there aren't enough black students available with the academic preparations to succeed to fill the spots that the most prestigious colleges want to give to black students, so students who would otherwise attend, and be successful in, B list colleges take the extra spots. Those colleges in turn want to have a reasonable number of black students, so they recruit students who would otherwise attend, and be successful in C list colleges, but are often in over their heads in the B list schools. And so on down the line, with the result that too many black students are in more demanding academic environments than they are prepared for and many who might succeed in a more modest school flunk out of name schools. I supported myself at UCSC partly by tutoring EEOP students, and I really think that many of them would have been better off, and would have done well, in the less competitive California State University system.
Mark Kleiman has an excellent analysis of why 'race neutral' systems aren't likely to get around the problem, and a more persuasive argument for admissions policies that openly factor in racial origin. Matthew Yglesias asks an interesting question: why are libertarian bloggers generally unhappy with the Eldred decision and the extension of copyrights? After all, IP is a legitimate form of property; weakening personal property rights in favor of a somewhat nebulous defense of the public good is, in libertarian circles, generally about as popular as peeing in the punch bowl. Not being a libertarian myself, I will only venture a very tentative answer: libertarian bloggers Reynolds and Volokh are both professors, and professors are definitely a population that has been unfavorably impacted by extensions in copyright, and especially by narrowing of the Fair Use exception. The booklets of reading selections that were routinely distributed to classes or sold for a small fee when I was in college are now illegal, unless all copyrighted material has been removed or approved by the holder.
If this analysis of the Eldred ruling is correct, it may have other consequences that libertarians won't approve of. A law prof cited by Eugene Volokh says:
Basically the Court's opinion says this is constitutional because no one, especially the Framers' generation, ever thought it was The writer here only mentions issues concerning the Establishment clause, but if this principle is accepted, it has obvious ramifications on another highly politicized case the Court will be deciding in this session: whether to overturn Bowers v Hardwick, the 1986 case upholding sodomy laws. Glenn sort of predicts, and clearly hopes, that Bowers will go, and that outcome obviously would satisfy libertarians. The issues in the cases are entirely unrelated, but the reasoning described here would weaken that prospect. Sodomy laws were on the books in several states, perhaps all, when the Constitution was originally adopted, were widely adopted in new states joining the Union, and stayed in place for centuries before anybody started seriously suggesting they were unconstitutional. Friday, January 17, 2003
Several bloggers, including Eugene Volokh, have jumped on Martin Wisse for this quote in the Times profile of Glenn Reynolds: "He presents opinions of people who agree with him as facts and distorts the positions of people who disagree with him," said Martin Wisse, who runs the Progressive Gold blog. "In short, he poses as an objective journalist when he's not." It's certainly true that the critics have a valid point. Martin's criticism, as he (or possibly the Times) phrased it, really doesn't make sense. Glenn has never "posed as an objective journalist". But Glenn does make a dubious claim which may be what Martin was trying to get at. In various statements Glenn has denied being a conservative. It's true that he isn't a 'values' conservative of the type that currently dominates the GOP. He is pro-tolerance on gays and highly critical of the Drug War. And although he is presumably pro States Rights, he isn't using the phrase as a code for racism, as some southern white conservatives have. But few reasonably thoughtful people support one platform or another straight down the line. Glenn, like Sullivan, is sufficiently comfortable with the right and sufficiently hostile towards the left that the distinction has little relevance. In fact, he has even complained about the more orthodox conservative movement that it "shar[es] far more ground with the intrusive left than it wants to admit".
It is also true that Glenn does link to bloggers who disagree with him, including this one (twice). But a look at either his blogroll or his links will show that the preponderance of the right is fairly strong. (Should Glenn display the wisdom to put me on his blogroll, this complaint will naturally be withdrawn.) Okay, one more cheap shot and then I'll stop. Maybe. Q: How many Ben Shapiros does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: I'm in the dark by choice, you pinko pervert. My religion forbids changing lightbulbs on the Sabbath which, to prove I am more pious than anyone else, I have defined as the entire week. So I don't change any lightbulbs, and will not until the Messiah comes. Idiots like you who mock my preference for darkness are obviously Stalinists who get your un-American attitudes from the New York Times. Wednesday, January 15, 2003
How To Build a Losing Team The list of players cut by the Redskins who are now playing key roles on playoff teams is impressive. It starts with the quarterback: Washington waived Rich Gannon, this years MVP, and also Brad Johnson, who led Tampa Bay to success with 22 TDs against 6 ints and a strong 92.9 rating. But the top QB on the Skins's depth chart is Danny Wuerffel, who in 6 seasons has 12 TDs, 22 picks, 52.6% completions, and an anemic 56.4 rating. Ouch! Other former Skins who played big roles on playoff teams this season include James Thrash, Brian Mitchell, Shawn Barber, Frank Wycheck, Dana Stubblefield, Derek Smith, and Dave Szott. All were cut rather than traded. (Link from Ben Domenech.)
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Much has been made of the huge $35 bn budget deficit faced by California, as a symbol of the alleged excesses of its predominantly Democratic government. But there is evidence that the deficit isn't really that large. Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill says that it's really only about $21 bn. (There have been some claims that Gray Davis has exaggerated the size of the problem to reduce opposition to tax increases.) And now Charles Kuffner notes that Texas, where state officials have been busy understating the size of their problem, actually faces a deficit of $9.9 bn. And since the economic output of California is a little less than twice that of Texas, this means that, as a percentage of gross state product, California's deficit is essentially the same size as that of Texas, only about 12% larger. The difference is probably due entirely to the fact that California is much more dependent on slumping high tech companies than Texas. My own contribution to the recent efforts of the redoubtable Ted Barlow: Q: How many Joe Liebermans does it take to change a light bulb?
A: We must move beyond narrow partisanship. I am not afraid to replace a light bolb that is working or leave a burned out bulb in place.
Q: How many Bill Frists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Senator Frist saw a light bulb that needed changing and as a trained bulb-changer volunteered to change it in an act of heroism. Later, he charged Medicare $600 for the new bulb.
Mysterious Science Fiction Diplomatic Immunity is the most recent (2002) volume of the ongoing Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. The series now covers somewhere between 10 and 14 books, depending on how you're counting, and has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. In Diplomatic Immunity, Miles is taking a honeymoon with his wife Ekaterin, whom he met in Komarr and wooed in A Civil Campaign, when he recieves an urgent message from Gregor, the Barrayaran Emperor, sending him to deal with a problem on Graf station. A Komarran trade fleet with a Barrayaran military escort has had conflicts with station authorities and is now being held while several Barrayaran military personnel are under arrest. Miles is soon working with working with his hermaphroditic old friend Bel Thorne (Bel Thorne hasn't appeared in the series since it was fired by Miles as a mercenary captain in Mirror Dance, and is now working at Graf Station.) to investigate the incident that began the whole problem, the mysterious disappearance of a security officer from a Komarran ship. As often happens when there is trouble in the Vorkosigan adventures, a Cetagandan angle soon shows up, but just how Cetaganda is related to the mystery is one of the problems miles must solve.
As even this cursory description shows, Bujold has by this time worked a lot of background into her series and draws on it freely for new stories. Graf Station is named for one of the main charcters in the earlier novel Falling Free, and is controlled by quaddies, the subspecies from that novel who are genetically engineered to have four arms and no legs, and can only prosper in a zero gravity environment. Several allusions to the events of that novel are made. This story also has links, as it develops, to Cetaganda, Miles's previous encounter with the strange genetic manipulation program of the rival Cetagandan Empire, and perhaps the weakest entry in the series. And references to other prior Bujold novels are slipped in. You could probably follow Diplomatic Immunity with no prior knowledge of the Vorkosigan universe, but you would lose a lot of the details. The best place to begin reading the series is still at the beginning, with one of the early novels Shards of Honor (first in the series), Barrayar, or The Warrior's Apprentice, the first novel featuring MIles.
Early Vorkosigan books were loaded with action, space and ground battles, and narrow escapes. Since Memory, Bujold has given us a more mature Miles, less reckless and rarely in physical danger. The books often blend the genres of mystery and science fiction. Bujold is adept at such combinations - her first published novel, Shards of Honor, was a superb blend of SF and romance, and her most recent novel, A Civil Campaign, was a nearly unique combination of SF and adventure with a comedy of manners. Her novella "The Mountains of Mourning" from Borders of Infinity, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, was the finest blend of SF and mystery I have ever read. The current novel is in some ways the most successful yet. It combines the strongest elements both of Bujold's early novels and her more recent work. It works well as a mystery, and although the plot develops slowly, it ultimately builds to a conclusion as harrowing as anything Bujold has written, when Miles plays a desperate game against a resourceful bioterrorist to save himself, the population of Graf Station, and ultimately to prevent an interstellar war which could kill millions.
Diplomatic Immunity is clearly influenced by recent events, with bioterrorism as a major plot element. It's also quietly a novel about putting the past behind you. Miles and Bel unite for a final adventure much like their many earlier ones, but both are more interested in getting through it in one piece and returning to their families than in regaining the old excitement. In a conversation about old friends from Miles's Free Dendarii mercenary force, Miles asks Bel, "Haven't you heard? We're all getting to be history." "There's a deal of sanity to be saved in letting the past go, and moving on", Bel replies.
Science fiction and mystery chops are combined less successfully in another recent novel, The Consciousness Plague by Paul Levinson. This is a sequel to The Silk Code, an earlier novel which I have not read featuring detective Phil D'Amato, as well as several D'Amato stories previously published in Analog.
D'Amato is a homicide detective in contemporary New York City. In The Consciouness Plague, he is on the track of a serial killer who has dumped the bodies of several nude young women in a park. While his investigation hits false suspects, solid alibis, and the usual obstacles of a murder mystery, it also is slowed down by a less routine difficulty: D'Amato and several other characters find that their memories of certain recent events have inexplicably disappeared. D'Amato is soon searching for other possible historical instances of memory loss.
The novel is written in the traditional prose style of the police procedural, but this detective, instead of meeting fences for information in seedy Harlem bars, is flying out to UCLA to discuss the bicameral mind theories of Julian Jaynes with an anthropologist. The odd combination leads to some awkward prose:
I loved the way this guy talked and thought. It was almost poetry. But it was hard to pin down the meaning D'Amato ultimately concludes that the memory losses are caused by a popular new antibiotic, Omnin, that he speculates damages some type of organism or symbiote in the brain, thereby disrupting short term memory. For no very convincing reason, he decides that the invention of the alphabet by the Phoenicians may well have been a defense against a similar memory loss. He brings in as well as the societal amnesia that caused the trips to North America by the Vikings, and perhaps other explorers who may have included those same Phoenicians, to be forgotten for centuries.
D'Amato ultimately does solve his serial killings. The two mysteries are brought together in the end, by devices that feel more like authorial trickery than logical plot development.
Levinson has a good SF premise and creates interesting characters. But weaknesses in the writing and plotting lead to a novel that is less than the sum of its parts. Monday, January 13, 2003
Matthew Yglesias disagrees with this critique of libertarian hawks, but my own opinion is that it doesn't go far enough. Libertarians make several broad arguments against government activism in domestic problems:
Every one of these arguments applies as well to international activist government as to local activist government. In some cases they are truer - a Washington bureaucrat is more likely to have the knowledge to made a sound decision about Missouri than about Kosovo or Agfhanistan, where he probably doesn't speak the language or have any serious understanding of the local society. It would be one thing if libertarian hawks really seriously looked at how these problems applied to foreign policy - but what they seem to do quite often is to simply assume all their warnings about the dangers of government aren't applicable to the military. Friday, January 10, 2003
I never really receive any hate mail for this blog - something which I've found surprising and somehow vaguely disappointing. But if you do feel inspired to send me some, pay attention to Kevin Raybould's valuable tips. Bruce Bartlett, the conservative dimwit whom I last noticed when he put 'Having My Baby' at the top of his list of the Top 40 Conservative Songs, has now discovered blogs, a phenomenon that he somehow believes "happened last year". His article cites Sullivan, Kaus, and Drudge (but skips Reynolds). Bartlett praises blogs for, "almost instantaneously correcting themselves. By contrast, papers like the New York Times often take weeks to publish corrections of factual errors, and television news programs almost never admit error, ever." Bartlett's own article gives an opportunity to test his thesis.
Ignoring his absurd description of Howell Raines as "extremely liberal and partisan", a falsehood that conservatives repeat so habitually they've probably forgotten themselves that they're lying, Bartlett inaccurately calls Sullivan a former liberal based on his past position as editor of The New Republic. Actually, Sullivan was well known as a conservative before he took over TNR; his own bio has him working at a conservative think tank at the age of 23, 5 years before he became editor of TNR. Bartlett also states that Sullivan's conflict with Raines "cost him a job writing for the New York Times Magazine"; in fact he was a freelancer and not a regular employee. And the $79,000 that Sullivan made during his 'pledge drive' wasn't donated in $20 increments. Scoobie Davis has some discussion of the racism of hate radio talker Michael Savage. I was unfortunate enough to find out about Savage several years ago, due to the dubious taste of a car pool partner. I once tried to monitor his show and record his more disgusting comments, but it was simply impossible. Savage is such a stream of hate and filth that I really can't conceive of how anybody can listen to him. I eventually purchased a Walkman and headphones primarily to guarantee that I would no longer be subjected to his aural sewage. But before I picked the Walkman up, I heard enough on the show to be aware that Scoobie's references are comparably mild stuff. Here is some more of the wisdom of Michael Savage (anything not accompanied by a link is a statement I actually heard while listening to the show):
Of course we know that the Republican Party and the Conservative movement despise this type of bigotry and no self-respecting mainstream Republican or conservative activist would agree to appear on an extremist show like this. Here are some of the guests Savage has had in the past few years, from the list on his web site: Steve Allen, Bob Barr, Ward Connerly, Jerry Fallwell, Newt Gingrich, John McCain, Bill O'Reilly, Camille Paglia, Edward Teller, Jeffrey Toobin, Caspar Weinberger. Guests scheduled to appear within the next month include Roger Clegg (NRO Contributing Editor), R. Emmett Tyrrell, Rich Galen, Michelle Malkin, Linda Chavez, David Frum, and Phyllis Schlafly. Thursday, January 09, 2003
When Leno did some jokes about the first Israeli Arab porn film, it sounded funny. When I looked at the actual story (may require registration), it was less amusing. Seeing It Through points out a few of the obvious flaws in eliminating taxes on dividends. Here is another one, which also took only a few minutes to think up: senior executives can arrange for their compensation to be in stock of a specially-created subsidiary whose only function is to funnel out large dividends. That switches most of their income from earned income to dividends, so they now pay no income taxes. This article suggests that some of these problems may be anticipated in the structure of the Bush plan. But it also means that the plan adds more complexity to the tax code than seemed apparent at first. Wednesday, January 08, 2003
We've heard a lot about double taxation lately. I'm not an economist, or even a graduate of Harvard Business School like the deep thinker in the White House, but I am sort of confused about something. My paychecks (the ones I used to receive when Clinton was President and I had a good job) contained a deduction for FICA (Social Security). But then my federal tax was calculated on the whole amount, including the FICA which had already been handed to the government. And then I paid state taxes again on the whole amount. By my calculations, that's triple taxation. And yet George Bush doesn't seem to be troubled. I wonder why that is. Tuesday, January 07, 2003
The main problem with Dubya in Korea seems to be that this administration viewed Korean policy as it views almost everything else, as a matter of spin and domestic politics. So the initial policy of taking a tough line made good sense - it was good politics to make a contrast between Clinton's negotiations and compromises and the no-nonsense Bush stance. Adding North Korea to the 'Axis of Evil' was a demonstration to both dometic and foreign audiences that the War on Terror wasn't a religious crusade. When the crisis blew up, the policy was to blame North Korea's nuclear ambitions on Bill Clinton. That worked as well, in the sense that it was eagerly swallowed by the media. The only problem is that, beyond the blame Clinton domestic spin, there's no plan in place for dealing with those aspects of foreign policy that are actually foreign. It seems to be a revelation for the Bushies, and a shocking one, that policies intended for US domestic politics may actually carry international consequences. Given the inability of the US to use force against North Korea without unaceptable civilian casualties in South Korea, the whole policy is exposed as empty rhetoric. Bush's policies have had at least one consequence beyond escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The declared new willingness to pre-emptively intervene in nations that pose a potential threat to our interests, along with the contrast between our rush to appease Kim Jong Il after every new provocation and continuing threats against Saddam Hussein, who has allowed inspectors to enter Iraq with a sweeping mandate, not to mention permitted the establishment of a de facto American protectorate covering about 1/3 of Iraq, gives a message that no leader of a small country can miss. That message is to obtain biological, chemical, and especially nuclear weapons as quickly as possible at any cost. Only when you have a credible threat to impose non-conventional war on a significant US ally will you be taken seriously. Those countries unable to develop their own nuclear weapons will probably be able to buy them from North Korea. The Koreans are in no position presently to sell weapons, even assuming they exist, since there are only one or two and they can't afford a weakened deterrent. With plutonium in production, they can easily get their arsenal up to 15 - 20 bombs, which gives leeway to trade some to nations like Syria, Libya, and Egypt, either for cash of for chemical/biological weapons. Monday, January 06, 2003
The good news is that Media Whores Online is back and again kicking ass. The bad news is that Jeff Cooper is still on hiatus. Joe Katzman is still MIA, but did drop in today with a promise to return soon with an expanded roster. Some Very Wild Cards After Saturday's wipeouts, today's Wild Card games produced some real excitement. I confess that I had given up on the 49ers after the score went to 35 - 14, and if I hadn't checked in during commercials on a Buffy rerun, I could easily have missed the incredible ending. Coming back from a 24 point deficit to win against one of the league's hottest teams has to be one of the great victories in franchise history. Congratuations go first to Terrell Owens, a prima donna but a great player, the offensive line which (aided by Garcia's scrambling) never allowed a sack, and Jeff Garcia.
Garcia, having the misfortune to follow after by far the greatest one - two QB punch in the history of the sport, has never gotten the credit he deserves, even, in fact especially, in his home town. Even his looks go against him. Montana was a male model, with looks to match Brad Pitt or a young Robert Redford. Young is ruggedly handsome. Garcia is, sorry about this, plain ugly. But the win he engineered today was as impressive as anything Montana or Young ever did. He passed for 356 yards, averaging 8 yards per attempt, threw 3 touchdowns and 1 interception, and ran for a touchdown and several key first downs.
Not many congratulations go to the defense, which gave up 38 points although they did hold in some key late situations. Chike Okeafor came very close to making himself the goat, commiting an incredibly stupid pass interference on the final play which would have cost the team the game, if not for an offsetting ineligible downfield penalty on the Giants. Okeafor's penalty was particularly bad because the ball came down outside the 5 yard line. He could have just allowed the completion then made the tackle. An equally foolish and more fatal mistake was made by Giants holder Matt Allen, who should have spiked the poor snap to preserve another field goal opportunity instead of throwing a desperation pass.
Football players aren't really chosen for mental acuity, so dumb mistakes like the above have some sort of excuse. But coaches are supposed to be selected on smarts, so why is it that NFL coaches who have been around the game all their lives don't understand how to use the clock? In both of today's comeback victories, the team that was driving for go-ahead scores called premature time outs with a minute or more left. As a result the 49ers left 1 minute on the clock for NY, while the Steelers left 0:54 to the Browns. In essence, both teams used their time outs to benefit their opponents.
Lastly, I would like to thank Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons for the fact that I will never again have to hear an announcer say that the Packers have never lost a post-season home game.
Correction: As has now been discussed at some length, the only penalty that was called on the final play was ineligible downfield against the offense. The interference call wasn't made, either because it was just missed or because the official incorrectly believed the player being interfered with (69, normally an offensive tackle) was ineligible on the play. Had it been called, there would have been offsetting penalties, and a game or half can't end on offsetting penalties, just as they can't end on a defensive penalty. Which was what I always thought was the rule, until I incorrectly believed I had learned otherwise on Sunday.
Unfortunate for the Giants, but I remember saying last year, when the famous bad call changing a fumble to an imcomplete cost the Raiders a playoff game in Foxboro, that the Raiders' real problem wasn't the blown call but not playing well enough to overcome it. That's even more true of the Giants, who will watch from their homes this weekend because they blew a 24 point lead, not because a ref failed to throw a flag. |
