perfidy

My response to Trish's fears in my recent big brother post was lighthearted. But when I think about the real problems of increasing surveillance, out of control federal agencies, the erosion of civil liberties and the prospect of ubiquitous law enforcement I oscillate between long periods of complacency punctuated my moments of extreme paranoia.

On the one hand, the traditions of the republic are still strong, as witnessed by the consensual freak out when poindexter revealed the TIA with its ubercreepy eye-in-the-pyramid logo. There are well funded organizations that fight the good fight in our stead, like for example the EFF.

Libertarians and others fear that the erosion of liberty is a ratchett effect, where there is an ever tightening grip of law and regulation and surveillance, and that every liberty lost is nearly impossible to regain. I have sympathy for this position - for example, the RICO statutes have proved impossible to remove, despite their manifold flaws, and their frequent abuse.
There are legitimate security considerations to be weighed - we should not ignore reasonable measures for the sake of protecting against a minor infringement. Its hard to enjoy liberty when you're dead.

I think that we should in the interest of protecting liberty use the following criteria to evaluate any new security legislation:

• How easy would it be to abuse this law/police power - to use it for purposes other than those intended? Like the RAVE act, for example, or the RICO statutes.
• Does this power actually mirror some older power? (For example, the cell phone taps in the Patriot act just extend the traditional wiretap power into the world of modern telecommunications - it allows the police to tap the person, even if he is rapidly switching phones. This is reasonable, and only technically an extension of police powers.)
• Does it effect citizens or non-citizens, and how easy would it be to blur the line? Increasing surveillance of non citizens is not a problem for me. Inspections on entry, tracking them while here, etc. Non citizens are a potential threat, and they have far less claim to privacy protections than citizens. (Sorry, Ross.)
• Does it create new enforcement agencies? I am of mixed mind about this. On the one hand, a thousand competing LE agencies would probably help us, as it would be less effective. On the other, it would be less effective. But the idea that every federal agency has its own paramilitary special forces style swat team is unnerving, and completely unnecessary. The only agencies that should have them are the Secret Service, the FBI and maybe the DEA. No one else, period.
• How much does it actually restrict our freedom, as opposed to how much does it invade our privacy? Both are bad, but the first is more important. We are not going to escape record keeping. That is out of the bag, and won't be put back. What we need to be careful of now is how that information is used, and who can use it. Problematical, I know, but a government file does not infringe my right to say what I want, believe what I want, live where I want, etc. Even if that file makes me nervous. Anyway, something to think about over your holiday weekend. 

I am an optimist though, and think that if we could repeal Prohibition, we can unpass some laws.

This article about John Carmack (developer of Doom and Castle Wolfenstein) and his efforts to get into space hits at one of the key problems we've had in space development over the last forty years:

Testing is key for Carmack, who doesn't want to work for months only to find out a rocket doesn't work. He believes the more testing done, the faster the crew can work out any kinks.

"Some people have commented that I am trying very hard to make aerospace like software, and that's the truth," he says. "If we looked at what we do in software, if we could only compile and test our program once a year, we'd never get anything done. But that's the mode of aerospace."

Only one space program since the end of Apollo has used a rapid development process, and that was the DCX. Typical NASA programs involve millions of dollars and years of testing before there is even an attempt to cut tin and actually construct a prototype. Aerospace engineering is not so cut and dried that we can make a perfect design on the computer, build it, and expect that it will fly.

Cost overruns, failed expectations and cancelled programs are the result of this design centric philosophy. The key to success is to build early, test early. Lessons are learned quicker, and applied easier through a regime of rapid prototyping and testing. Just like in software development. In a matter of months, the DCX team went from a standing start to a 1/3 scale flying prototype. And spent a fraction of the money that was ultimately spent on the X-33 which replaced it, and which never once flew.

The growing provate space industry is largely funded, if not actually run by successful software magnates. They seem to be applying the lessons they learned in developing other technologies to the problems of space. They are expending effort where it does the most good - gaining experience in building spacecraft. Even if the first, second, third attempts fail, at the end they will have a wealth of experience that NASA has lost in the days since Apollo. NASA has not designed a new working vehicle in almost thirty years. They have forgotten how it was done in the golden age, for what was the sequence of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo but a series of prototypes and testbeds to gain the practical engineering skills to reach the moon? Test early, test often.

What would have happened if NASA had spent the period between the launch of Yuri Gagarin and Apollo 8 designing, redesigning - on paper - the perfect launch vehicle? A giant explosion, most likely. And that is why I am certain that of the twenty teams now competing for the X-Prize, at least several will have successful flights by the end of next year.

Loyal Reader #0008, Trish, emails with concerns over the growth of big brother and the erosion of liberty in this nation. Perfidy is nothing if not responsive to its readers, so after some googling and random clicking on the interweb, we have found some solutions.

Here we have a counter-tips program, where we the free citizens of the republic can keep track of nosy neighbors, narcs and informants.

Here we see the efforts of RSA Labs to develop RFID blockers to keep big brother out of our undersclothes.

Enjoy Protection Services Incorporated's Hospitality Weekend, where you can learn to defend yourself with a wide range of firearms, and learn about guarding against surveillance.

The Big Brother Awards keep track of what bad people are doing to our privacy. Naturally enough, Poindexter's TIA won this year. Here is the award:

To fight back, and set up your own surveillance networks, you can go to spyville.com.

For some background on the surveillance and freedom arguments, these articles are good places to start.

For those who need more fuel for their paranoia, this story about MIT's efforts to develop a RFID tag replacement for the barcodes in current use will help. A barcode could handle different codes for different brands of rice. A 96 bit code, this new development could have a unique code for every songle grain of rice on the planet.

Finally, when nothing else seems to work, there is always the tin foil hat.

Slate is reporting that the news from California's schools isn't so good. Two-thirds of the state's public schools have just been deemed deficient under California educational standards. You might say, "California, who cares!", but in reality this is bad news to the rest of us because California's school-standards criteria closely track those of No Child Left Behind, implying that some 66% of the nation's schools could potentially receive failing grades next year when the first round of grades and sanctions hit.

I'm of the opinion that No Child Left Behind is full of holes anyway, and fails to take into account the full collateral effects and implications its policies and mandates could produce. For example, see this paper by economist David Figlio. Although the conclusions and conjectures are ultimately a bit more polemical than I might wish, Figlio uses data from Florida schools to suggest that the schools at greatest risk for year-to-year Federal sanctions are the very schools whose operating budgets most depend (in dollars and in percentage terms) on Federal funding to remain open. This means that when the Federal government withholds money from such a school, as a part of NCLB sanctions, the school sinks further into a spiral of debt and failure. Where's the justice in that?

Even if 66% of the nation's schools don't "fail" next year any number even in that neighborhood is cause for concern that the standards are badly out of whack. What good is school choice if all the other schools in the area are deemed failures too? What good are waivers if transportation is not financially feasible for districts and private schools accepting transfers?

Finally, Figlio paper listed above also observes that school reputation plays a significant role in property valuation-- if more schools are deemed failures, this could have effects on the real estate markets in many communities, reducing the property taxes and hence local-level public school funding accordingly. Again, this has its greatest impact on those communities and school districts that most need help.

Look... I know that America's public schools are in the shitter. I also know that many parties are at fault. I simply remain totally unconvinced that a national initiative which is based on withholding funding from schools is the way to do it. Especially such a sweeping initiative whose mandates will come into effect in 2004, long before a sufficient amount of data is collected to make reasonable decisions about what schools have what problems and how best to address them. 

For your health, I recommend you go read somethingawful.com's ripping-off-Conan-O'Brien Photoshop Phriday, and especially enjoy the last image on the last page. I nearly died of amusement.

Also for your health, I do not recommend using img tags to link directly to images on SA's site. That is, unless you LIKE obese transvestite pornography. Consider yourself warned.

He's so good, we stole our name from his idea. Today's bleat:

Why not nuke North Korea's nuke test? They've said they're going to have a test; I presume we know where that will be. So we nuke it the day before. There's a big explosion, a mushroom cloud; they blame us. We say what are you talking about? You said you were going to light one off. And you did. No! You did it! Right. We nuked your nuke test. And that makes sense . . .  how, exactly? It would certainly keep them off their game. And just after we nuke the test - and every subsequent test, of course - we put a call to Li'l Kim's cellphone, and someone with a Texas accent says oh, I'm sorry, wrong number. I was tryin' to reach a live man.

Via GeekPress I find this post, which raises a really damn good question.

Ya know, with all the bombings and destruction in Iraq, especially with the attacks on the infrastructure, like the oil lines, the electricity, the water...

Where the fuck are the human shields? I thought they went there to make sure this kinda crap didn't happen. Where are the granola eating turdburgers who went bravely to pre-war Iraq and placed their bodies in harm's way so that a stray incoming round would hit them, rather than the baby milk factory?

I guess they just up and left, when they all survived the war. They need to turn right around, get their collective asses back, because someone's blowing up the water pipes and people are going thirsty. The infrastructure of Iraq is being destroyed! It's killing the chilllllllldren! Hundreds of thousands of innocents are at risk! DOn't you CARE about the suffering of the Iraqi people rom indiscriminant bombing and ruthless attacks? Come back! You are needed!

Bah.

The real reason is, of course, that they stand a greater risk of getting whacked by some crazed thug than getting hit by US military fire....but they knew that going in, didn't they?

Bam! Pow! Zing!

Yeah, where the hell are all those goody-two-shoes human shields? Are they still there? Have they buggered off before they could actually do some GOOD? I tell ya... sometimes it's hard to stay a ditherer.

Via slashdot, I see that a coalition of 198 webcasters are suing the RIAA for monopolistic practices and restraint of trade. It's the latest chapter in a continuing saga of perfidy, plutocracy, and shitty, shitty business practices.

The complaint is here.

I hope they make it hurt.

Randy Barnett of the Volokh coalition has been posting some very interesting observations about the Constitution, in particular illuminating the tension between "original intent" and "original meaning, and the debate over whether the Constitution is static until expressly changed via established process.

I'm turning into a bit of a wonk for this stuff (of course I am. I have wonk nature like a dog has dog nature), but I find Barnett's work strangely gripping.

Original post on the value of a written Constitution here.

Followup is in a den-Beste sized post here.

Professor Barnett's SSRN paper arguing that judicial review IS in the Constitution, if you look at it right, is here, and speaking as a layperson it's a bit of a mind-blower.

Another SSRN paper on originalism is here.

The AP is reporting that North Korea has announced to the six nation conference that

"it has nuclear weapons and has plans to test one, a U.S. official said Thursday. However, other participants said delegates agreed on the need for a second round of talks. The remarks by North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il set a negative tone at the conference and raised questions about the success of the negotiations"

Well, no shit.

U.S. officials say they believe North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons, and experts believe it could produce five to six more in a few months.

While I have been saying on this blog that we should wait, and let them collapse - if they test a nuke we might want to step it up a little.

The psychotic regime in Pyongyang is a threat to everyone.

I have just recently read two comments on the coming lack of attention to the anniversary of one of the worst days in American history. I commented on Robert Prather's Insults Unpunished that I want to remember what happened that day. Johno's post hit me, and reminded me about why we should be remembering.

I want to be reminded of the shock of the planes hitting the towers. I want to remember the horror I felt when I realized people were jumping from the top of the towers. I want that for many reasons.

But the reason I can never forget is that for months after the Eleventh, I drove by this every day on my way to work and back: 

Every day I would turn the corner on Rt 27 and see that, and every day I'd get a knot in my throat. 

I felt anger, and one of the few bright spots in the days right after the attack was the point-counterpoint article in the Onion - should we retaliate with blind rage or measured, focused rage? It helped a little to put it in perspective.

On the day, I was in my office a block from the White House and blissfully unaware of events. I walked by the conference room and saw everyone gathered around a 3" B&W TV. The first tower had been hit. As I watched, the second plane hit.

Astonishment, disbelief. Fifty thousand people work in those buildings. Over the next hour, we heard that the Pentagon was hit, and rumors that there was a bomb at the State Department. Six planes were unaccounted for. Eventually someone did the math, and the decision to evacuate was made. Everyone was kicked out of the government offices downtown. Everyone figured that one of the missing planes was coming for the White House or for the Capitol.

The metro had already closed, and the streets were gridlocked with federal workers and cars. The cell networks had crashed - but I had managed to get a hold of my dad at the Air and Space Museum on a landline before we were told to leave.

I started walking toward the mall. Every few feet I'd see someone dial a number on their cell phone, hold it to their ear, then say, "Shit." Cars were barely moving.

Ten blocks later, I got to the mall. I was never so relieved as when I looked to my right and saw the Washington Monument, and to the left and saw the Capitol. Both were still standing. Except for the panic, it was as beautiful a day as you ever get in swampy DC.

I got to the museum, which had never opened, and sweet talked my way in. Dad and I watched the news on a small tv in the library for a couple hours. When we emerged, the city was deserted. No cars, no pedestrians. It was the eeriest thing I have ever seen. Bright, sunny, clear day in DC, and not a tourist in sight.

I finally boarded the reopened metro, and when we came above ground just before National Airport we all turned back and saw the plume of smoke from the Pentagon. It was still smoking when they reopened some of the roads around the Pentagon.

So the decision has been made: network television is going to treat September 11th, 2003 like just another day, mostly. Well, I might just be a hick, but I don't think that's a good idea. I don't particularly want to forgive or forget what happened two Septembers ago. The shock might have faded but the memory should not.

I know this is a leetle early, but forgive me. My anniversary, the goodwife's birthday, and several other happy occasions fall on or near the eleventh, so if I'm going to bicker an' argue about 'oo killed 'oo, I'll get it out of the way now.

When I lived in New York, I used to travel from Queens to Jersey City every Sunday to play music with my friends Darrell and Bruce. It was the best part of my week. When I made it to the World Trade Center subway station, I always felt a little better because fun was just a PATH ride away. The WTC station was nifty too-- the underground mall, the half-attractive artsy inlays, the rumble of the downtown A going by. The Commuter Bar, entirely decorated in beige naugahyde and aged winos. Loved it, loved it.

Oddly enough, the World Trade Center was one of my favorite places in New York. It was how I oriented myself walking around the city. It gave balance and heft to the southern end of Manhattan. You could see it for miles, driving in on the Jersey Pike or I-95. It was like a huge, ungainly guardian watching over my city.

---------

On the 108th floor of the World Trade Center's north tower, there was a little conference room/ lounge area with a baby grand piano. I discovered this by accident one night in February of 2000.

I was at the Windows On The World on the 110th floor to see a rockabilly band managed by a co-worker's boyfriend, and Samir and Bruce were kinda late, because they got lost. (Even after I moved away from New York, I'd occasionally get calls from Samir.... "Johno... I'm on Park Avenue and 25th Street. How do I get to Grand Central Station from here?")

In the midst of getting lost, Samir and Bruce managed to give the World Trade Center elevator operators the slip and got off on the wrong floor... the 108th to be exact, where they found the piano lounge.

After we had our fill of rockabilly and high-up views of Staten Island, we went back down to the 108th floor, and hung out for a couple hours, playing the piano and staring out at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from one of the darkened grottoes. It was one of the best nights I had in New York. Later, Bruce would take his future wife there on a crucial and historic date.

---------

As I sat in a bar in Massachusetts downstairs from the office, watching the television play images of the assault on New York, my mind was occupied like most people's was, trying to cut through the shock and disbelief, choking back horror and confused rage. I was a mess.

As the north tower of the World Trade Center fell impossibly slowly into its own rising cloud of dust, I started to cover my eyes, then stopped, and stared dumbly. I couldn't process what was happening. I didn't understand thousands dead. I didn't understand how the world was changing, even though I knew it had. Everyone had theories, but we were all in shock.

My mind was reeling, and the one sharp, tiny realization that stabbed me in the heart and made it all real was how much it TOTALLY SUCKED that my Secret New York Piano Lounge was gone-- I could never play the piano in the World Trade Center again.

Then I went back upstairs to see if all my friends were still alive.

Exhibit A: The US Army is seriously considering doubling up tours of duty for soldiers stationed in Iraq.

Exhibit B: Rumsfeld: Army has troops in Iraq in numbers "appropriate at the present time for the tasks that [it] has".

Oooh!! A paradox!

David Warren, after a month long absence, is back with a wonderful essay on where we stand in Iraq and the war on terrah. This article does a good job of explaining what the administration seems unable to do - why we are where we are.

It should be obvious to everyone why we are fighting the war on terror. That this is a necessary conflict should be clear to even the most blinkered of liberals. As I stated in the comments to one of Johno's earlier posts, the first steps of the war were the obvious ones. Al Qaida hits us. They are in Afghanistan. We hit Afghanistan. Straightforward.

After Afghanistan, we entered the area where reasonable people might differ on how to prosecute the war on terror. However, most of the opposition was predicated not on the basis of "Iraq is not the right target" but on "No war for oil" and similar idiocies. The protracted argument over the invasion of Iraq was fueled by the administration's lack of clarity and inability to articulate what is to be done, and why.

Part of this muddle was due to the decision to go to the United Nations. This forced the administration to lean its arguments in one direction - WMD - and slight the other arguments for moving on Iraq. This gave further ammunition to those who opposed the war on terror.

Steven den Beste has argued that the administration cannot tell us what the plan is, because revealing the plan would spoil it. This is true on the small scale, but not the large. We should not reveal the exact timetables and plans for an invasion. That is not only stupid but treasonous. But the larger plan, the geopolitical master scheme should be open and above board.

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that the administration is making a serious error in not taking the larger case to the public here in the US, and to the rest of the world. Various people, including Clueless and Trent Telenko over at Winds of Change have analyzed the minutia of reports from around the world, and concluded that see the signs of the master plan. I agree, and have talked about that plan here.

The American public can be trusted with this information. In fact, it must be. If we reveal that the heart of our strategy in the War on Terror is to remake the Middle East and transform North Korea, to set a real precedent that any nation that supports terror is responsible for it, and will suffer the consequences at the hands of the civilized world, what have we given away? Nothing. If we make the case, clearly and repeatedly that those who support terrorism will be put up against the wall, it will not allow our enemies to resist our actions any better than currently.

There would be benefits for doing this. By clearly stating the our specific aims, and in broad terms our methods, we build support domestically, and co-opt or isolate opponents. The opponents of the war on terror have two choices - argue against specific decisions on grounds of whether or not that action would advance the cause (which could only help the effort, as constructive criticism is always useful) or continue as they are, and make clear that they are against the war on terror in general.

Internationally, we would not have to make the kind of tortured arguments that many have criticized. We would not need to justify an invasion on WMD, or any other single criteria. We need merely fall back on the original justification for the war on terror - and explain how whatever nation is in our crosshairs will serve the cause of peace by ceasing to exist.

The argument for Iraq is much stronger when you add in all the other reasons besides WMD. The coherence offered by stating our strategy would reassure our allies and make clear who are opponents are, while forcing our opponents to be clearer about their motives.

But the best reason for doing so is because we are a republic, and the citizens of this republic have a right to be informed and to participate in the decision making in an informed manner. The columnists and bloggers who are speculating on America's strategy are doing their best to justify the individual decisions in the war on terror, but properly, this isn't their job - it is the job of our leadership.

The Columbia report is justly critical of NASA. Here are some interesting quotes from the report.

"The measure of NASA's success became how much costs were reduced and how efficiently the schedule was met. But the space shuttle is not now, nor has it ever been, an operational vehicle. We cannot explore space on a fixed-cost basis."

NASA's most remarkable achievement is not the moon mission, or the construction of the space station. It is the transformation of something as remarkable and romantic as exploration in space into something as boring as a discovery channel documentary on public transportation. The shuttle was never a space truck. It was not that mature a technology. In aviation terms, it was more like the Wright Flyer. Only when we have actually built, tested and flown regularly many types of advanced reusable launch vehicles will we be in a position to operate in space as we do in the air. The shuttle never was and still isn't more than an awkwardly designed experimental vehicle.

"The organizational causes of this accident are rooted in the space shuttle program's history and culture, including the original compromises that were required to gain approval for the shuttle, subsequent years of resource constraints, fluctuating priorities, schedule pressures, mischaracterization of the shuttle as operational rather than developmental, and lack of agreed national vision for human space flight."

I talked a lot about mission and goals in my last shuttle post. But we should know better than to expect operational efficiency from a government program. (Not that it's impossible... just rare.)

"Perhaps most striking is the fact that management . . . displayed no interest in understanding a problem and its implications.

Sheesh.

"It is tempting to conclude that replacing them will solve NASA's problems... However, solving NASA's problems are not quite so easily achieved. People's actions are influenced by the organizations in which they work, shaping their choices in directions that even they may not realize."

Which is why we should kill NASA. The scapegoat is not the managers, but the system. It's like the old joke about the Federal Reserve - if Jesus and the Twelve Apostles were appointed to the Board of the Fed - and not allowed to change the rules - it would still be an abomination.

"We believe another vehicle, whether to complement or replace the shuttle, is very, very high priority. We criticize the U.S. for finding ourselves in the position we are in now where we don't even have a design on the drawing board."

Thanks to indecisive lawmakers and unpredictable funding. And NASA leaders who don't seem to appreciate the need for something to replace the shuttle - which has never been as cheap to fly as promised, let alone as cheap as they claim it is now. Too much ego is invested in the shuttle, "the most sophisticated and complex artifact ever designed by man." Would you fly an airliner that had been described that way?

On these longer term recommendations, the report sounds a sobering note: "Based on NASA's history of ignoring external recommendations, or making improvements that atrophy with time, the Board has no confidence that the Space Shuttle can be safely operated for more than a few years based solely on renewed post-accident vigilance."

And even if the board's recommendations are adopted, we will likely have another catastrophic failure if we continue to use the shuttle for another ten years. Accidents will be more, not less likely as the shuttles age.

Apparently, Canadians must present a grim mien to the world in their passprot photos from now on. Smiling is now verboten. But that does not mean that Canadians have license to scowl, frown, grimmace or glower at that camera. That is forbidden as well. Passport applicants must have a neutral expression when they get their mugs photographed. Of course, we live in a world where everything that is not forbidden is compulsory. And that seems to be more true in Canada.

Everybody seems to be very proud of President Bush for how he handled 9/11/2001 and thereafter.

Let me ask you this: short of Naderite self-flagellation and naval gazing, who would have handled things any differently, or indeed, less well, had they been in his position?

(Please don't take this as an endorsement of the "illegitimate President" meme. I don't know what the hell happened in Florida, and don't care. My tinfoil hat is put away in the coat closet for the time being.)

Virginia Postrel has a well-written and pithy post up about the President and the War on Terra.

Excerpts follow (emphases are mine). I have no comments, except for "(mostly) what she said." (I'm not voting for Bush.)

Listening to President Bush's speech today, I found myself sympathizing with Josh Marshall's post on the problems of a vaguely articulated cause. The problem isn't that Bush is inarticulate, though he's no great speaker. The problem is that the administration deliberately obfuscates about who and why we are fighting. A "war on terror" is like a war on tanks--it's a war on a tactic, not an enemy. If al Qaeda had hit the Pentagon with a missile rather than a civilian airliner, that attack on a military target wouldn't have been an act of terrorism, but it would have been an act of war. And there's no reason to think al Qaeda wouldn't have used a missile if it could have.

Because the administration won't say bluntly who and why we're fighting, it tends either to step on its own strategy or to mislead the public about the reasons for U.S. actions. No, I don't think the Bush administration "lied" about weapons of mass destruction; Occam's Razor suggests that officials were in fact worried abou that threat. But I think the administration overemphasized the importance of WMD, compared to other reasons for intervening, to placate the State Department, the "international community," and the Saudis. Getting rid of Saddam reduces the chances of Islamicist terrorism on American soil, but not merely by ending his WMD programs, whatever their status.

I'm sympathetic to the diplomatic reasons for not spelling out certain goals, such as the pressures a U.S-friendly Iraq puts on the Saudis. But Bush's vagueness is maddening to people who are paying attention and confusing to people who aren't. (Unlike Josh, I'm neither a Wilsonian nor a Bush basher--I voted for him once and expect to do so again--but that doesn't mean we can't agree about this.)

In any sufficiently large group of people, one person will be the spare. To determine who the spare is, imagine that the group is in this situation

You are being chased by brain eating zombies. They are gaining on you. You have a shotgun with one shell.

The spare is the person you shoot in the leg so that the zombies stop to eat, allowing you to escape. Once consensus is reached that you are the spare, there is no appeal. If by chance your group is chased by zombies, and you sacrifice your spare, a new spare must be chosen.

Now, you can watch a simulation of this process here. 
 

Various sources report that the US budget deficit will balloon by hundreds of billions of dollars in coming years, although it is expected to not quite reach the record relative levels of the late Reagan/Bush I era. Remember how awesome the economy was back then?

*Warning: blood sugar currently low. Screed to follow*

So just how much debt is healthy? From what I can tell, the "official" Bush & co. estimates don't take into account the new perscription drug plan, millions and millions of boomer retirees, or the billyuns and billyuns of dollars it will take to build Iraq's infrastructure. In fact, Iraq money isn't even IN next year's budget.

Again, what the flipping hell? Bush isn't much of a conservative, that's for sure, and once again I begin to suspect that the eventual fiscal mess created by runaway deficit spending and even more gubmit bloat will be left for the next generation (e.g. me) to clean up. From the point of view of a dyspeptic Wednesday morning, Chim-Chim the Stunt Monkey seems like a better prospect in '04 than the current folks.

Also, in a real heartening development, economists are calling for a continuation of our "jobless recovery." Now, I'm just a stupid hick from Ohio, but please explain to me how this is particularly encouraging. A "recovery," taken empirically, means an improvement in the economy-- growth in production and revenues, etc. Obviously such a condition is positive. But the"jobless" modifier means that the job market will remain very tight despite the rising prosperity, meaning that labor will carry less value as competition for positions drives down the cost of wages. Consequently, that large class of marginal workers who live paycheck to paycheck will find it more difficult to get by. As previously noted, the minumum wage, and by extension, the poverty line, in the US is set insultingly low with respect to what it actually costs to live like an American

So the recovery benefits whom, exactly? Industry and the already economically comfortable? Those with portfolios large, diverse, and well-managed enough to take early advantage of the recovery without needing to dip savings and investments to pay the bills? Well, great. And don't give me that trickle down crap. That only applies if there's jobs around.

As for the tax cut, new research from the NBER suggests that tax cuts don't necessarily stimulate spending. Instead, extra cash in the hands of taxpayers tends to go to paying down debt and into savings rather than being spent on consumer items. At least that's what happened last time: the paper deals with the tax rebate of 2001, which was a lump sum tax advance, rather than the marginal periodic increases that the new round supposedly creates, but my Ohio Hick intuition suggests that similar principles apply now. Of course, I'm one of the Lucky Duckies who apparently didn't need a tax cut this time, so from a first-person point of view, the question is moot anyway.

Again, I'm just a stupid hick who tends to view the world in a me-me-me sort of way, but I'm hardly willing to deem the economy "recovered" until all boats rise with the tide, and hardly willing to deem Iraq "recovered" until it resembles, say, Turkey or India more than Detroit or Anacostia.

But I'm just a hick, so what do I know?

[update] Irony alert: Since consumers used their "Gub'mint play money" from 2001 to pay down debt and increase savings, they were really acting responsibly according to the conventional wisdom of home financial advisors. But this runs counter to the instructions we recieved at the time from the President, which was to "spend! spend! spend!" So which is it? Should we act for the long-term good of ourselves, and therefore ostensibly the good of the country, or for the short-term good of manufacturers and retailers, and therefore ostensibly the good of the country? I know what I did, though it was just a drop in the wide seas of my personal debt load. Thank you, music industry! I gave you three years of my life, and you gave me a net negative personal income!

The Washington Post is reporting that the Pentagon's "black" budget for next year (that's "double-secret" to us Deltas) is a near-record $23.2 billion dollars.

Observations that spring eagerly to mind like Labrador pups called to the feedbowl:

• Wow. At any price, that's a lot of hammers!
• So is that all for Total Information Awareness, or is some of that for field trips, too?
• What does this administration hope to gain from such opacity? Bush & co. have already squandered a lot of goodwill by keeping unnecessary secrets.
• Star Wars, anyone?
   

Despite the condemnation of the institutional culture at NASA, the commission nevertheless said that the shuttle could be kept in operation for ten or more years. While I wouldn't rule out the possibility altogether, this seems a bit on the optimistic side.

The commission recommended a series of changes necessary for the shuttle to resume flights in the near term. Many of these changes involve serious changes in how the agency operates. NASA will, as the commission predicts, resist these changes. It is in the nature of bureaucracy to resist changes.

I think we need to kill NASA. We do not need a space agency. We need a space program. Once these two things were the same - during the Apollo days, but not now. A space program, to my mind, is a plan that results in achievements in space. We do not have anything remotely resembling that now.

Look at the spread of activities that NASA is engaged in now. There is much research conducted at the various NASA research centers. We have the shuttle. We have the ISS. We have a number of deep space probes. But does this add up to anything? Not that I can see.

It has been more than thirty years since the last time we walked on the moon. We have a space station that is much less useful for basic research than originally promised. At the moment, we have no capability to put a man in orbit. Our two new disposable launch vehicles are lineal descendants of ICBMs designed in the fifties. Every program that might have led to a new manned launch vehicle has been cancelled. There has been talk of Mars missions, but no timetable has been established, no vehicles built. We are not doing anything in space. Unless research on how bean sprouts grow in zero-g counts as something.

So we need a space program. But we don't need a rebirth of the Cold War space program. We need a program that establishes goals, and incentives for achieving them, and then gets the hell out of the way.

The first step, and a statement of seriousness, should be the destruction of NASA. NASA, for all its past glory, is the single greatest obstacle to real space development. The NIMBY syndrome is alive and well at NASA, and NASA has actively opposed private space development on several occasions.

But we shouldn't just fire everyone. The NASA research centers should be renamed National Laboratories, like Livermore or Brookhaven. They should continue at their current funding. Hell, give 'em more money. But they should be out of the reach of NASA administrators. NASA programs currently run by the centers would become their sole responsibility.

The space launch functions of NASA would be dissolved. The shuttles would be sold outright to private industry. Licenses for manufacture of shuttle components would be offered as well, so that cargo versions of the STS could be built and launched. Anytime that any civilian government agency wished to launch a satellite, they would be required to use a private launch company. The ISS would be privatised as much as possible given the constraints of obligations to the other nations involved in the project.

The deep space exploration functions of NASA should be formed into a new, scaled down agency. Its mandate would be exploration of space beyond the Moon's orbit. It would have two goals: 1) put a team of American astronauts on Mars, and 2) to send long duration orbiters and landers to every body in the solar system. (This agency would also operate currently existing observatory satellites like COBE and Hubble, and could launch more if it so desired.) Written into the charter of this agency should be a requirement that all Earth to orbit transport be contracted to private launch companies.

For the second goal, the new agency should be granted sufficient funding to design, build, launch and operate deep space probes, and to operate a network of ground stations and mission control centers to run the missions. This funding should stay constant, and separate from funding for the manned programs, so that these missions would not be affected by fluctuations in spending for Mars or other missions.

For the Mars mission, the mini-NASA would be allowed to retain an astronaut corps and training facilities. A plan would be developed for developing the capabilities necessary for long term space missions. For each requirement, NASA should publish general specifications, and accept bids from private industry. NASA should not be doing all the research. Any solution that meets the specifications should be acceptable, regardless of whether it was designed by NASA. The manned spaceflight division have only one goal - Mars. They should not be concerned with how they get themselves or their equipment into orbit.

Once NASA is off the scene, the way would be open for private development of space transportation technologies. There are several things that the government could do to speed the process, and help the private sector develop new space vehicles.

First and most important would be to change the laws to reduce or eliminate the current obstacles to space development. New laws could require the FAA to streamline the certification process for space vehicles, and so on. Lack of bureaucratic obstructionism and a clear commitment to space development would encourage both designers and investors.

The second would be to offer to the first company that successfully tests a working Single Stage to Orbit launch vehicle that fulfills a basic set of requirements (cargo capacity, passengers, reliability, etc.) a contract to buy ten vehicles. (The military could find some use for them, I'm sure.) Once there is a guaranteed market for space vehicles, conventional finance is far more likely to support investment in space technology. In the early days of aviation, airmail contracts had a similar positive effect on airplane development.

And third, aerospace research conducted at the former NASA research centers should be made available to the public, so that they can use it to develop innovative new launch platforms. NASA's predecessor, NACA, did something similar back in the 30s. Aviation companies could go to investors and point at NACA research and say, "See, it's possible!" This smoothed the way to planes like the DC3 and the era of large scale air transport.

If our new space agency were freed from the requirement to operate its own launch system, more resources would be available for the real goal. NASA does not need to run the shipping companies that deliver materials, or the car manufacturers that allow its employees to drive to work. These functions can be better left to private industry.

If we have many solutions, our space transportation system will be far more robust - if there is a problem with Mack trucks, the entire shipping industry does not grind to a sudden halt. If private space companies are assured of a market, they will build launchers - and likely they will become more specialized, and more efficient than the one size fits all (poorly) space shuttle. Cost per pound to orbit will drop which will allow the space agency to get more Mars mission for its taxpayer dollar.

We don't need a soviet style, top down, every problem has the same solution space program. Let us take advantage of the inventiveness of our free market system. Let a hundred systems bloom.

Independent investigators have released their report assessing the causes of the crash of the shuttle Columbia earlier this year. First among the findings is that NASA's own culture led to laziness, non-redundancy, bloat, and system breakdowns which ultimately resulted in the conditions that killed seven astronauts.

The Boston Globe coverage is pretty good; I suggest you read it.

Finally, I would like to point out a key phrase that I hope becomes very, very important within NASA in the next few months: "Given the current design of the orbiter, there was no possibility for the crew to survive." Now, what's the best way to fix THAT problem, one wonders?
 

My close personal friend "Geek Lethal," who was actually IN the army [update: during]* Gulf War I: First Blood, responds to yesterday's posts (here and here) about Kalashnikovs and M-16s.

In an earlier phase of life I found myself taking a short (40 hours) course on OPFOR ("Opposing Force"... an entirely unneccessary euphemism for "Russian", since we all knew who we were talking about) small arms.

I trained on the whole Kalishnakov product line: AK47, AKM, AK74, your S (ie folding stock) variant; crummy Egyptian AKMs that nearly fell apart when disassembled; VERY nice East German AK74S', as well as other stuff: your Makarov and Tokarev pistols; your SVD sniper rifle (awesome weapon); RPK machine gun; PK machine gun; the uber-macho DSHKM crew-served machine gun, and various and sundry other lethal Rooskie tchochkes. At the end of the week, range day was a hoot.

Yes, it is true: AKs can take a remarkable beating and still function. Which is great. Yes they are simple to operate and understand.... I taught a 6 year old girl, assisted by my rudimentary German, how to diassamble, reassemble, load, sight, and unload an AKM, with a level of proficiency that she could do it all herself, in under 10 minutes.

But simply functioning is not enough. They aren't alot of use beyond about 250m, which is not great if you're doing alot of fighting in the open, and they aren't terrifically accurate within those 250m. But yes, I can see how their ubiquity and ease of maintenance (ie, none at all) make them preferable to the Colt product they sort of compete with. Now, if you want to accurately shoot at bad guys past 300m, instead of spraying randomly and hoping for a good hit, I'd go with a '16. But that's me. Shit if I had a choice give everybody the good ol' M14. Or revamp the current infantry weapon to a more robust round. Sure a 5.56 will kill you just as dead as a 7.62 round will, but combining M16 accuracy with that beefier round might be a swell thing. Consider the Bundeswehr's G3, for example, as a modern example. Mmmm, maybe not...WAY too many pins and thingies to keep track of and/or lose.

OK rambling now...moving on....

I would also ask the larger question of why dismounted tank crews are running foot patrols in urban back alleys, as in this recent CSM article. Of course they pick up AKs, because there aren't enough M4/16 in the unit TO&E for every crew; they get 9mm pistols as an afterthought because THEY ARE TANK CREWS AND SHOULD BE FIGHTING FROM TANKS! Leave foot patrols to the infantry and MPs.

* n.b. Original post had Mr. Lethal in the sand, shooting at Iraqis. This is untrue. Mr. Lethal's Gulf-War duty was restricted to cavorting with buxom German lasses and dodging half-ton mountain warthogs during the long cold European winter.

Here is Bodhi, looking pensive on the back porch:

[wik] The Future Ministry has replaced the broken image link with a picture of the same dog, with a different expression.

Johno, as for the AK-47 (and its successors, the AK-74 and AKM) it is a wonderful weapon, designed by a genius, Kalishnikov. But the vast majority of Russian products are no where near the AK in reliability or effectiveness. The thing with the Russians is, most of their military equipment is by American standards overengineered. Guns, tanks, planes are designed with the limitations of Russian industry and Russian conscript soldiers in mind.

In some instances, as with their assault rifles, a great engineer can come up with a design that performs very well, and yet is rugged and easy to manufacture. In most other circumstances, the result is shoddy design, limited capabilities and high maintenance. The problem is even worse in the civilian sector. The other example you mentioned, soviet rockets, were designed in the fifties and sixties by another genius, Korolev. The Russians are still using the Soyuz capsule created when Korolev was the Chief Designer for the Soviet space program. Their rocket technology still uses the technology developed under his watch, and slowly refined since then.

In other areas, Soviet technology is notably poor. When we got our hands on the MIG-25, which had been rumored to be an amazing fighter, American engineers were shocked by the crudity of the design. Heavy steel construction, vacuum tube electronics, and so on. Sure, it was fast. But that was about it. Any contemporary American fighter could fly circles around it. Because they didn't have the capability to make fighters out of carbon fiber composites, beryllium alloys, and so forth, they made it out of steel. Areas where computer aided design and other techniques would allow American designers to cut weight and make the design more efficient are clumsy and overengineered.

This ruggedness has advantages, but it is not everything. Better trained American mechanics can keep their more complicated fighters, helicopters and tech wizardry in the fight - and when they are in the fight, that design advantage is overpowering, as we have seen. Russian tanks can not compare to the M1, not even remotely. M1's can engage a Russkiy tank a thousand yards outside the Russian tank's range, while driving 40mph over rough ground, hit it on the first shot, and the round will go all the way through the Russian tank. A T-80 might (might) have lower maintenance requirements. But it doesn't matter if one American tank can kill ten for every one we lose.

In very specific, limited areas of technology the Russians could outclass us. Sometimes, because a genius was behind the drawing board. Other times, as with the MIG-15 in Korea, it was because the idiot labor government of Britain gave the Soviets their most advanced jet engine design. But that excellence came at a high cost - it took the Russians a lot more effort, money and time to achieve those levels of competence than it would for your average American defense contractor.

It all comes down to the system. Russians are of course no denser than we are. They have notable gifts in mathematics and other disciplines. They have as many geniuses as we do. But - the American system allows efficient teamwork, cross fertilization between different disciplines, and much greater creativity. An average American design team can approximate genius anywhere else in the world, due to our skill at organizing things. When you actually have a genius in charge of a team, you get things like the SR-71, or the Saturn rocket.

Free development in all types of technology - commercial and military - allows development to speed up in every single technology. The computer technology created in the US allowed vast improvements in aeronautical design, in targeting, control systems, stealth, etc. The result is the $200mil F-22. But that fighter is the best. These kind of interacting developments are what make us so frightfully lethal. And it's our system that allows it to happen.

Not that the result is always perfect. People have complained about the M-16 ever since it was introduced. It's twitchy, has a lightweight round, jams easily, and it doesn't look lethal or ominous. Yet we've used it for almost forty years because it's good enough. (We're right around the corner from a new standard issue weapon. The OICW will have all kinds of goodies.)

But on the average, the vastly higher overall American technology base allows us to create weapons that benefit from the capabilities of American industry, and can assume the high education and skill levels of American soldiers.

The World Trib is reporting that US Intelligence believes that the Iraqi WMD are located not in Iraq, but in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Some have suspected this before - along with suspicions that top level Iraqi gov't officials had also fled to Syria. The Bekaa Valley is in some senses the best place for the WMD to go - a lawless region home to Hizbollah, Syrian forces, and Iranian agents.

If this report is true, it makes for problems. If we have a fix on where they are, and high confidence that the reports are true, do we go get them? This could provoke further conflict with Syria, and get us enmeshed in the rat's nest of Palestinian terror groups. While there is little doubt that American forces could defeat any of these groups, the action would put further pressure on already overstretched American forces, and the diplomatic blowback of another unilateral (without the approval of France) action would be annoying at best.

Assuming that the report is true, and that we went after the WMD, certain elements would cry even louder about Bush=Hitler and all that, even if we took the smoking gun out of Iraqi intelligence forces' hands.

This could be interesting.

From Associated Press: US soldiers in Iraq have taken to using confiscated AK-47s instead of their standard-issue M16s. This is for several reasons: scarcity of M16s available, scarcity of ammo for M16s, and apparently superior performance by the Russian gun under desert conditions. Also, there's lots of them just lying around out there, and cases fulla ammo too.

The news is spinning this as "our troops have no guns!! They have to steal them!!" And I'm sure there's something to this. So far, while our troops have done an excellent job with what they have, I have been underwhelmed by the planning, support, and logistics infrastructures within which the grunts must operate. And yet, according to Don Rumsfeld, no additional troops are needed.

But there's maybe an upside to this-- Russia has always had the edge over the US in the durable equipment department. Their spacebound rockets can launch in Siberia, for chrissakes, with a support crew of a dozen, whereas ours launch from Florida and sometimes can't handle that too well, and require a support crew of hundreds. Likewise for the guns. AK's are favored all over the world not only because every tinpot 'Stan unloaded all their Red Army surpluses, but because they keep working forever. Or so I hear. I don't shoot. But maybe the US Army could build a gun that doesn't jam in a light mist.

So it occurs to me-- why can't Russia build a half-decent car? One that can do 45 mpg/city and stay under control with two tires blown out at 55? They can send a guy into space at the drop of a hat, but a car baffles them.

Buckethead, I believe this is your arena. pls advise.

Pittsburgh Steelers FB Jerome Bettis is a class-A gentleman.

Check out what he said when asked what he felt about being benched to start the season (via Balloon Juice):

"I was surprised," Bettis said, shortly after Coach Bill Cowher announced Amos Zereoue would open the season as the Steelers' starting halfback. "I wasn't mad, but I was disappointed. As a competitor, all you want is for it to be a decision on the field and it wasn't a decision on the field." Citing a "gut feeling," Cowher revealed his decision yesterday at a news conference as training camp concluded at St. Vincent College in Latrobe. It's the first time Bettis was benched to start a season with the Steelers. . . ."He just said it was a decision he came to," Bettis said. "I've been on the better side of most of Coach Cowher's gut decisions and this is the first time it has not gone in my favor. I can deal with it, having been on the better side of most of them."

Hats off to that! No grandstanding, no pouting, just acceptance that Amos Zereoue looks like lightning in the preseason. I wonder if he's come to terms with the fact that he's lost a couple steps?

As a Cleveland Browns fan, I should by rights gibber, spit, and hurl feces at the very mention of the hated Steelers, but Jerome Bettis has always been a class act, a great competitor, and a terrifying running back. I hope he gets to play in the coming season and can rack up enough yards to tie Jim Brown in the record books. Tie. Not beat. I couldn't handle that.

Hopefully Bettis will handle the end of his career in Pittsburgh better than Rod Woodson did. Both are/were beloved in that town, and Woodson did nothing to make his leaving the city easy to take. Jerk.

[update] To be fair, I should point out my particular situation.

First, I married a Pittsburgh gal and vastly prefer the Steel City over Cleveland as a place to spend time. In fact, when the Browns and Steelers are NOT playing each other, I can even root for the Steelers to win a game. Bill Cowher is the perfect coach for that city.

Second, as far as I'm concerned, the Steelers are merely ancestral rivals rather than sworn enemies. My football enemies are two: the Broncos, especially Horse-Face (John Elway to the rest of the country), and of course Art Modell. My formative years were spent watching Elway and the Broncos steal playoff after playoff from the Browns, and the images of the Fumble and the Drive are tattoed somewhere deep in my reptile brain forever, right down next to the bits that keep me breathing and my heart beating. As for Art... let's just say it's a good thing he doesn't go back to Cleveland much.

Via loyal reader and stalwart Ph.D candidate in History NDR, I see that an academic in Egypt is preparing a lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world" for stealing artifacts during the Exodus.

I'm not sure whether to file this under "Lead Pipe Cruelty" or "Darwin Award Contender."

Here's my cryptically pithy remark of the day--
Mankind: Erasing doubt daily about the origin of the species.

[update] NDR in an email tells me he is considering a "counter suit for unpaid wages due to slave labor." Ohhh yeah!!!

Various news sources have noted that we could have had power grid reform in motion TWO YEARS ago if the President and some members of Congress wouldn't insist on including Alaskan drilling priveliges in the same bill.

Alaskan drilling has been repeatedly rejected for the time being. Yet, in his effort to get a pet project through Congress, the Administration, like all the ones before it, are willing to hold up urgent and necessary changes.

Thanks, guys. Way to go.

A statement from Minister Pythagosaurus:

As a veteran of a hundred failed marketing campaigns, I know that it's important to establish a brand and stick with it if you want to have a prayer of succeeding. People need to recognize your name and learn to trust it.

Firmly casting aside those hard-earned lessons, I am discarding the no-longer-helpful "Pythagosaurus" moniker as I discarded the "Johnny Two-Cents" moniker some months ago. Though both have served a purpose, neither is mellifluous enough, or short enough, to suit my needs.

Therefore, from here forward, I shall be simply known as "Johno" or, if you wish, "Minister Johno the Aggravatingly Indecisive." Whichever you prefer. End transmission.

The Ministry supports Minister Johno in his decision, and is pleased. We extend our best wishes to him and his family, whom the Ministry shall be releasing to his custody forthwith. All hail Minister Johno, master of the pithy metaphor! 

In our continued efforts to expand our readership, we have done things of questionable morality. And certainly of questionable taste. Given that we at the Ministry believe that the ends not only justify, but in fact require the means, we have registered for N. Z. Bear's Blog Beauty Contest.

One of the rules of the Beauty contest requires that we link to three of the other contestants. Therefore, following is our links, and the reasons we admit to linking them:

• Stylishcarp is from Jefferson Parish, LA. His blog includes this, which we found memorable:

  SHERIFF
  HARRY
  LEE'S

  16th Annual
  Chinese, Cajun,
  Cowboy
  Fais-Do-Do

• Don't be a hero talks about Chinese astronauts and doesn't call them Chinkonauts, for which we admire her.
• My Completely Random Life talks about the culture wars, and asks this important question: Which band has had more cultural impact: Nirvana or New Kids on the Block? In context, it's more interesting than it sounds.

So there you have it. Now vote for us by giving us links!

[Update] Just to be clear, this blog has been in existence since July tenth. Archives prior to that date are from Johnny Two-Cents, which is now defunct.

Just took the Dante's Inferno test, and apparently I am banished to the 2nd level of hell. I thought for sure I would end up in the third, but I guess you really never do know.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

Interestingly, the score for the test don't match up with Dante's conception of the relative severity of the different categories of sin. I can see how a modern test designer would de-emphasize the damnative power of heretical thinking - but treachery, surely, is still serious. It would be interesting to see a test that more closely matches Dante's vision. Could even be useful... 
 

CNN is reporting that Gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon has dropped out of the California race. Though support for the recall has diminished somewhat, this will certainly increase Arnold's chances of taking the race. It will also increase the chances that racist Cruz Bustamante will not win. Cruz was caught saying the "N" word (nigger) at a political gathering not too far back, and has connections with MEChA, the racist Mexican group.

I see via fark that America's greatest paranoid schitzophrenic non-jazz musician Wesley Willis, has died.

I remember the first time I heard "Rock and Roll McDonald's." It was an epiphanic experience. Long may he rock.

Be a Pepper. Drink Dr. Pepper.

In the wake of all the Windows computer viruses around this week, I have a question.

Recently, the news, and therefore the public, are starting to catch on to the fact that these viruses that go around are WINDOWS viruses, and sometime soon people are going to start casually looking around for something else. What viable, practical, convenient alternatives exist for the home computer user (e.g., me) who doesn't want to use Windows as their primary OS? Given the state of affairs as they are now, who is prepared to receive these legions of marginally competent casual users with open arms? I don't know the answer to this question, and it kind of pisses me off. Anybody out there have an idea? And don't say:

• Mac. I don't have two grand.
• Linux. Be serious. See below.

Here's my problem. I'm the proud owner of a free (as in beer) white-box PC that I received as a wedding present after I cracked the motherboard on my old computer. It's a fine machine, fast enough and with ample memory, and for most things Windows XP does the job just fine.

However. Last week my PC was infected with the Blaster virus seconds after connecting to the inter-web via a 3.3Kb/s dialup connection (that's one efficient virus!). Since I run XP, Blaster crashed my computer every 60 seconds, making it impossible to locate and download new virus definitions and the OS patch. Not that I could have done anything anyway, because Windows Update chokes on my molasses-slow connection speed anyway.

Seriously. I'd be better off putting emails from home in a damn envelope.

But I digress. The point is, I had to use my work connection to download the necessary patches and applications so I could fix my ailing machine. This situation is pretty ridiculous. Moreover, although Windows XP is in my experience a friendly and useful operating system, there are some ridiculous bugs. For example, I can't play a CD and surf the internet at the same time without the sound cutting up into "o-oh-th-e-sh---ark----ba-be---ha--su---te-eeth--de-ear--a-a-a-n-d-he---sh-oo--oows--them..." and so on." Print jobs occasionally get lost or hang the computer for no reason that we or the good people at Hewlett Packard can discern. And finally, when I am burning (gasp!!) a CD, I might as well go on vacation, because due to some weird memory allocation problem I can't find or fix, my plenty-o-ram machine binds up worse than a man who's just eaten a 64 ounce steak.

Why don't I fix all this? I tried. Why don't I get rid of Windows and join the wondrous world of Open Source? Well, Here's the rub.

I am also running Red Hat Linux on the same machine via dual boot. If I could, I would GLADLY make the switch completely and use Linux for most of my needs, employing WINE when necessary for file compatibility. Trouble is, I can't. First, there's the file compatibility issue. The wife needs a Windows machine for reasons I can't go into here. Suffice to say, seamless file compatibility is paramount.

Moreover, my Frankenstein machine is made of parts I don't know the names or model numbers of, and in some cases can't find out. As a consequence, the following things do not work well or at all under Linux: print drivers; display drivers; sound card drivers; modem drivers; half the embedded applications that come with Red Hat; StarOffice; and worst of all, automount. Irritatingly, all this bullshit is being thrown at me by one of the leading commercial Linux distributions, one which is supposedly strong in the file-driver/ease-of-use department. Seriously guys, if you can't do better than this for the marginal user, give up and stick to giving hard-ons to geeks.

So, after three months of wrestling with hardware requirements, configurations, and disk partitioning, what I've got is: a Windows box that's pretty good but crashy and that can't play a CD and browse the internet at the same time; and a Linux box with a snazzy Bluecurve interface, that can't do a DAMN thing. And since my computer is a Frankenstein box and I'm not exactly a Unix wonk with time on my hands, I can't do much to fix it. Right now, I need the computer to be a tool, not a project.

Furthermore, as I said, I don't have $1700 to $3000 to drop on a Macintosh, besides which I don't like the interface so there.

So, speaking as a well-informed and competent computer user on behalf of all the lesser-informed computer users out there, including those average users who don't even know what a process is, much less how to kill one, what serious alternatives exist to Microsoft Windows?

According to spacedaily.com, the Chinese could become the third nation with a manned space program as early as October 10th of this year. The Shenzhou-5 could carry two, but more likely one Chinkonaut into orbit. The mission could be as long as a week, which would be far longer than the first orbital missions of the USSR and America, each of which lasted only hours.

Maybe, maybe, this will light a fire under someone's ass. 
 

...well, that's not exactly true.

Congratulations to the Saugus, MA little league team, who have made it to the US Championship game in the Little League World Series.

Despite the perhaps-deserved long-view theorizing and cranky little-league bashing that one hears, it's awesome, just awesome, to see a bunch of kids from up the road play so well under so much pressure. The crying, joyous parents is just icing on the cake.

Good luck, kids. (I'd like to say,) If you win the series, dinner's on me at Kowloon out on Route 1*, (but I can't.)

*Disclaimer. If you win the series, dinner is NOT on me, but I'll sure be happy for you.

By way of Winds of Change comes this fascinating First Things article by Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik.

At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick weighs in on the Establishment Clause. Interestingly, she comes to the same basic conclusions as Buckethead, though from a different line of argument and with a different conclusion.

My defense of the TC was part of my view that there is a larger animus against Christianity. Which is why I mentioned the Catholic issue with the federal judicial appointments. The left likes to think that those with religious beliefs, sincerely held, are the far right wing. They are not, not by far.

In the comments to a prior post, Bridgit said this case involved one "southern white protestant" view. That is disingenuous, because how many black southern protestants, or Korean DC area protestants, or Martian Jews for that matter would agree with the views expressed by the TC? Again, this is (a very mild version of) the contempt that is generally cast on Christianity. Christianity is not the quaint and curious folk ways of backwoods crackers.

The Judicial appointments debate involved a Roman Catholic view under the microscope, but I think that the motivations were similar. The left would not merely like to exclude religion from the public arena, they have it in for Christianity and pretty much everything traditional. Everytime some 99.44% Christian community somewhere in the midwest puts up a nativity scene, someone, of a certain political group, sues the city. Kwanzaa decorations and the whole panarama of other faith's symbols do not get the same attention.

Now, I am a conservative. Not in the European sense, which is reactionary and monarchist, etc. I love and look forward to technological change. I feel that reform is possible, and given sufficient forethought, desirable. The beliefs that I feel are worthy of conserving are the revolutionary ideals of the founding generation, as amended by the Union's position in the civil war. But there are other things worthy of conserving. We should not throw out religion because a small fraction of our population is anticlerical, and feels that Christianity is the opiate of the masses, ie, the stupid.

The founding fathers felt that religion was essential for the survival of the republic. They were right about so many things that I am wary of saying, "Oh they were just kidding about that one." Whitaker Chambers (and for that matter Solzhenitsyn) felt that religion was in opposition to modernity. They felt that Communism (which I think we can all agree was very, very bad) was not something different from the liberal west, but rather the purification of it, the assumptions of modernity taken to their logical extremes. Chambers feared that the liberal west would lose to the powerful faith of Communism, or that it would lose its soul in the process of winning.

We should not be so quick to exclude religion from the public arena. Tolerance does not require that we banish all representations of the majority faith of this nation. It should not require the cultural cover of a picture of Confucius to have a picture of Moses. The founders feared the tyranny of the majority, and guarded against it. But Toqueville was right to fear the tyranny of the minority. And that is what I see growing in this country. 

Somehow, I imagined that our cybernetic future wouldn't begin with powered armor for the elderly.

My position against Alabama Chief Justice Moore unfortunately means that I am ostensibly in the same camp with dookie derby John Kelso of the Austin-American Statesman.

Buckethead has discussed the rube-factor in the current round of discussions on Alabama, writing "that this is happening in Alabama merely gives people an extra frisson of joy, because they can safely conflate religion with backwardness. It's Alabama, right?" Kelso adds weight to Buckethead's point by publishing a set of sub-Foxworthy, totally unfunny, "Alabama Commandments." G'hyuk!

When I said earlier that fat people and Catholics may be the last two acceptable bigotries in "polite" America, I forgot to include hicks, also encompassing the subclasses hillbillies, rednecks, trailer-trash, and briar-hoppers. So there are really THREE acceptable bigotries. As a sop to Buckethead, you may also include Norwegians for a total of four. (I mean, seriously, "trailer trash?" You hear "trailer park" used as code for poor and white the way you often hear "inner city" used as code for poor and black.)

If Kelso and I are in fact in the same camp opposing Judge Moore, this born and bred Ohio briar-hopper and damn proud of it is gonna walk right over and pee on his campfire. Read on to see why.
Kelso sez:

Where I differ with Justice Moore is that I think his monument has the wrong set of commandments etched on it. Moses had nothing to do with the gathering of the Alabama commandments. It was Moses' cousin, Elroy, who got them. By the way, when Elroy saw the burning bush, he lighted his cigarette with it.

With that in mind, here are the Alabama commandments as told to Elroy:

Thou shalt honor thy daddy and thy mama, as soon as you can figure out who they are.

Thou shalt not marry thy 13-year-old cousin Thelma Jean.

Thou shalt not fish with dynamite, nor hunt with a rocket launcher.

Thou shalt exclaim "Roll, Tide," at least 12 times a day during football season.

Thou shalt not remove the wheels from thy neighbor's home.

Thou shalt repeat fifth grade at the age of 19.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's front-row tickets to the Merle Haggard concert.

Thou shalt not pawn thy teeth so thou can purchase a 12-pack.

Thou shalt not wear thine halter top and hot pants in the front row in church.

Haw, haw, haw. Oh, how my sides do split at your razor-sharp social commentary. THIS guy can get a weekly column, and I languish in the blog-world?

If there is any justice, his next assignment will be covering NASCAR down among the hoi polloi.

Skipping through the blogosphere, I see that I am nearly alone in defending the ten commandments in Alabama. Which I find odd, given that I am not particularly religious. It just seems to me that Christianity is given little respect from the left, and from the chattering classes. Whenever the faith dares poke its head above ground, it is roundly condemned for the Inquisition, the crusades, being pro-life, out of step with the modern world, or having members who are intolerant superstitious rubes.

Robert Prather's blog is undergoing a rebranding effort. What was once the Mind of Man is now Unpunished Insults. While he should have gone for a Simpson's quote rather than another boring Jefferson quote, the material there is as good as ever. Joe Bob says, "Check it out!"

Over in the comments for this post, there's been some additional discussion of the whole Ten Commandments controversy.

My beloved comrade in blogging seems to feel strongly that the Judge is a fool, and furthermore a damned fool for insisting that the Commandments be displayed in his courthouse in defiance of a higher court order. I agree. He does undermine the rule of law by defying the ruling of the higher court. It could be grounds for impeachment.

But all of this is beside the point. The issue is that people are offended that the Ten Commandments are displayed in a court of law. That this is happening in Alabama merely gives people an extra frisson of joy, because they can safely conflate religion with backwardness. It's Alabama, right? All of the stubborness we see in this judge, and the contempt of the press is window dressing for the central image - the screaming of the offended.

Why are they offended? It cannot be because of the actual text of the Decalogue: 

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Okay, we'll let that one slide. But the "graven image" bit in the protestant translation could be a useful admonishment.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Taken generally, foul language isn't nice.
3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day. As long as I get Saturday off, too.
4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother. No problem here.
5. Thou shalt not kill. No problem here.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery. No problem here.
7. Thou shalt not steal. No problem here.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Again, no problem here, though it is curious that it doesn't prohibit lying in a more general sense.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife. Fair enough, and good advice.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods. And likewise here.

These are sensible precepts for living. No one, be they Jewish, Buddhist, Agnostic or Martian could honestly complain that these rules are offensive.

They are offensive because they are Christian. We are encouraged to believe that Islam is a religion of peace, despite much evidence that it is not. We are to tolerate all faiths, all creeds. Except one. Curiously this is the one faith that the majority of Americans embrace. Does the presence in a courthouse of the Ten Commandments amount to a tacit promotion of Christian doctrine as the fount of jurisprudence? Yes. Because they are. We live under a Christian law. This is unsurprising.

What should we do, adopt Bushido or Sharia? Why is this an issue? Those commandments are the center of our law. Do we make murder legal because killing is forbidden in the Commandments?

The Bill of Rights forbids the establishment of a state religion. It does not forbid the government, or officials of our government from having religious beliefs or expressing them. It does not prevent us from acknowledging that the root of our law is Judeo Christian. The founders believed that religious faith was not merely compatible with liberty and the health of the republic, they thought it essential. We should not be so quick to banish it from our sight because the usual suspects are offended by it, as they are offended by so many other things that are good.

By way of the The Spoons Experience, this enchanting fantasy story.

TROGDOR!

Gov. Davis is accusing the Republican Party of a "Right-Wing Power Grab." Technically, he is correct. The Republicans do want to take the governorship away from Davis. However, in any larger sense, he is wrong. Representative Issa, who sponsored the recall drive, was making use of existing California law to effect a change in the occupant of the Governor's seat. This is not a power grab in the sense that we normally mean it - like when General, later President Musharraf made a power grab in Pakistan.

In general, I do not approve of recalls. I think changing the result of an election before the next scheduled election is corrosive to republican virtues. By that I mean the virtues that sustain our republic, and the rule of law. Recalls are democratic. But undiluted democracy is not necessarily a good thing. Recalls reinforce the idea of the permanent campaign, reinforce the politics of grievance and revenge, and are generally just a bad idea. Politicians should be removed from office for two reasons only - criminal misconduct and by being voted out of office in a regular election. Ok, and if they die in office.

That being said, Gray Davis is a fecal fez, and I'll be happy to see the end of him. He is now considering apologizing for the damage he has done to our largest state, months after everyone else in the world realized that he had completely screwed the pooch. If the Republicans win the gubernatorial election that is in my view a good thing, and could help ensure other things I think are good - like continued Republican dominance in the federal government.

And the spectacle! Pornographers, celebrities big and small, punk rockers, the Terminator, Bill "I can lose to the most hated man in CA" Simon, Ariana by god Huffington. This will be the most entertaining election in years. People are already mocking the recall election. But many are mocking it for the wrong reasons. When I hear ridicule of the broad spread of candidates, I think, this is what it should be like. Every one should be involved. Politics should not be reserved to the ranks of cloned, hairsprayed, button down minds of the professional political class. This republic is for us, we should be involved in it at the highest and lowest levels. This kind of freedom is what makes us what we are, good and bad.

But far, far more good than bad. And if Arnold scares the Europeans now, wait til we amend the constitution to allow him to run for President. I would give anything to see them crap their pants when he sits down across the negotiating table.

Rap music is rotting society! So sayeth that guy!

Excuse my while I go prepare a righteous fisking. In the meanwhile, enjoy the article.