Antidisestablishmentarianismesque

More NYT Nonsense

2006-08-23T09:55:00.000-04:00

The New York Times health section is making it too easy today. Let's start with the final paragraph of this article to lay out the conclusion:

“They show quite convincingly, yet again, that overweight and, in particular, obesity, raise the risk of mortality,’’ Dr. Stampfer said. “It really should be the final word on this issue that’s arisen as to whether overweight is actually bad for you or not.”

Strong words, eh? Too bad he can't back them up. Here's the main claim being made regarding the modestly overweight:

The researchers said the more telling analysis arose when they focused on 186,000 healthy men and women who had never smoked. Among men and women, being overweight raised the risk of death 20 percent to 40 percent compared with normal-weight people, the researchers said.

Sounds scary. Let's examine some of the methodological issues so that we can aspire to the correct level of scared-ness. First, the population is drawn from those in the AARP. As the article acknowledges:

Because all the participants were recruited from AARP, they are not exactly representative of the population as a whole, and the participants reported their weight themselves, which contributes to some uncertainty in the results.

Kudos for the honesty.

Dr. Leitzmann said neither factor would probably skew the results considerably because “it’s a very large sample of people.”

Statistically the word skew has a specific meaning and the more correct term would be bias. Also, the good doctor is full of it. A large, non-representative sample is still non-representative. One possible advantage is that with a large enough sample you could select a random subsample that is representative of whatever population you're trying to capture (in this case the whole US). The article does not say whether they did this or not.

Secondly, the size of the sample reduces uncertainty but it does not reduce bias. In this case it means that peoples self-reported weight has been measured very accurately. It does not mean that their actual weight has been measured accurately at all.

Errors in reporting weights — people sometimes say they weigh less than they actually do — would also not produce a large effect, he added.

At least he acknowledges the potential bias, but, as I said above, it is not possible to know if the results are truely accurate or not.

Additionally, the mechanism for categorizing people as overweight is the body-mass index (BMI). The BMI was invented over 150 years ago. Its purpose is to categorize those with average body composition. Anyone with abnormal body composition, will not be categorized correctly. As an example, I am just below the overweight cut-off with my BMI, even though I am in excellent health. The disparity is due to my lifting weights and the subsequently higher muscular composition of my body.

“No single study is able to solve a controversy of this magnitude,” Dr. Leitzmann said, but he recommended that anyone overweight “should be looking to lose weight.”

I have to respect his honesty in his conclusion here. He may be reaching a bit, but he at least acknowledges that his study is not the end-all be-all of all research. Unlike Dr. Stampfer, who was not involved in the study, but throws out the concluding quote found above. This study suggests the possibility that being slighly overweight increases mortality, but it does not even come close to being the "final word" on the subject.

The study is an example of an observational study, in which a sample of existing data is analyzed for correlations. These types of studies are far inferior to randomly selecting the sample and assigning people to one category or the other. Obviously this is not possible to examine this problem; it is not realistic to randomly assign certain people to be overweight or normal weight. That means that there will be no single study, no matter how large, that will definitively answer the question.

Somatization Some of THIS

2006-08-23T09:40:00.000-04:00

I found this New York Times article deeply offensive. Here's the lede:

People with a long history of medically unexplained symptoms — aches, pains, fatigue, dizziness and other complaints for which doctors can find no physical cause — might finally find relief.

Literal meaning: Hey, all you who people who modern medicine can't help, we might be able to help you.

Sounds pretty promising, right? Unfortunately the next paragraph blows that out of the water:

Two new studies by researchers who specialize in the baffling condition called somatization syndrome, estimated to affect up to 3 percent of adults, suggest that the quest for a physical explanation may take on a destructive life of its own. Instead, those with the syndrome should focus on practical strategies to regain normal function and relieve symptoms, the researchers say.

Wow. That is poorly written. Let's dissect that nonsense. First, they make up a name, somatization syndrome, as a catch-all for everything that doctor's can't seem to diagnose. That's unhelpful.

Then the article obliquely says that nothing is wrong with these people; it's all in their head. Well, golly-gee, if doctor's can't figure out what's wrong with you what does that leave? Nothing. You must be fine; you're just crazy. It can't possibly be the doctor or modern medicine that's at fault. No sir-ee, if doctor's can't diagnose it that means it doesn't exist.

Of course, they can't be honest and just tell you that they think you're crazy right to your face. That wouldn't be very effective. So instead, later in the article, they introduce "cognitive behavioral therapy" to, as the second paragraph says, "focus on practical strategies to regain normal function and relieve symptoms". RIIIIIIIIIGHT. They couldn't send people to psychologists because that would imply they were crazy, so let's make up a pseudoscientific therapy to go along with our pseudoscientific syndrome. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I'm sure that there are some subset of people with unexplained symptoms that are mildly hypochondriatic, but piling everyone with vague symptoms but no diagnosis in the same category is absolutely ridiculous. The arrogance is astonishing. To think that EVERYONE that doctor's can't diagnose is a whack-job is breathtakingly vile and condescending.

I've been looking for the following headline: "God Dead: Doctors/Lawyers Take Over", but I have to say I haven't seen it quite yet. Why don't they just admit that doctors are people too, and maybe, just maybe, they don't know everything.

Full disclosure: I have twice had many months-long illnesses that doctors could not diagnose. Both times I had to self-diagnose and treat. I now have a healthy skepticism about modern medicines' ability to do anything beyond antibiotics and trauma.

Women

2006-08-01T11:00:00.000-04:00

Just want to point out two articles claiming to explain women. They seem remarkably similar. I'm not going to make any pronouncement as to how accurate the picture they portray is, except to say that I sincerely hope they are far from universal.

The first, from Michael Williams, points to a translated article about how women (allegedly) view the world.

The second, is an old article by Spengler at the Asia Times, that is referring to the possibility of women priests. He uses that as a launching point to discuss the general psychology of women.

Read at your own risk.

The Tower of Babel and Jargon

2006-08-01T08:12:00.000-04:00

In Genesis, there is a story in which man tries to build a tower high enough to reach God. In punishment for such hubris, the Lord creates a proliferation of language among the peoples of Earth, such that they are divided and unable to muster such organizational capacity again (see wikipedia entry). I don't know if the story is literally true or intended allegorically, but it doesn't affect what I have to say.

Every professional field has their own language, consisting of various acronyms and words used with sometimes vastly different meanings than the norm. Economists talk of "declining marginal utility", the military has FUBAR and "five-by-five", businessman have "core competencies" and "shareholder value", engineering has "system-of-systems" and "modeling and simulation environment". Take each individual word from these terms, find its meaning, and you will find that it is at best tangentially related to the underlying meaning of the relevant term. Why is this? Why do these obscure terms exist? What drives the need to create technical jargon that often obfuscates as much as it elucidates? Why did I just use such big words?

I submit that it all goes back, conceptually, to the Tower of Babel. Apocryphal or not, it cannot be denied that there exists an enormous number of languages. Communication, and therefore cooperation, would be much easier for disparate peoples if all spoke a single language. With such manifest advantages, there must be a good reason why different tongues exist, beyond mere accident.

Language serves two purposes beyond its primary one of communication. The first is as a means of inclusion. Language is an identifier of what group an individual is a member. The second is the converse, as a means of exclusion. To define a group, there must be both members and outsiders, or else the distinction is meaningless. This directly relates to the biblical story, in that the abundance of languages is presented as a means of division and disorganization.

In every field, the use of jargon has two purposes. The first of these is communication. The use of specialized language allows often complicated ideas to be more efficiently presented than if each nuance was perfectly explained. This is the ostensible reason for jargon usage; because it facilitates communication among those who understand the terms. The problem with this is that often the meaning of technical jargon is at best imperfectly understood. There often don't exist clear, well-established meanings for technical terms. This can cause often painful miscommunication when two parties disagree on a terms meaning, especially when the difference is not explicitly addressed.

The second purpose, which I've been alluding to since the introduction, is to define membership in some group. Membership in some group helps to establish credibility to reinforce the trust of the hearer in the speaker's argument (see this column by Arnold Kling on trust cues). So while technical jargon can often seem to be irritating and unnecessary, it actually has an important role to play in both stating a position and in getting another person to believe in that position.

In defense of pessimism

2005-11-09T13:33:00.000-05:00

Varifrank has an excellent piece referring to all the doom and gloom predictions that have been made pretty much since Thomas Malthus, two hundred years ago. He doesn't explicitly reference Malthus, but I think the blame for much of the apocalyptic we're-going-to-run-out-of-X-resource nonsense can be dated to him.

Varifrank refers to Hal Lindsey as the "king of silly predictions". I've never heard of him, but I do remember Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute. I participated in high school debate, and ten years ago the topic was U.S. foreign policy towards China. I'm not going to assume familiarity with high school debate rules; basically there were two teams of two who would face off in each round. One team would present some sort of plan addressing the topic for that year, including whatever evidence they could muster, and the other would try to poke holes in their case.

My partner and I that year built a case that we needed to take land from the Conservation Reserve Program (basically, a program that pays farmers NOT to farm a portion of their land) to grow food for the Chinese. Why would the Chinese need this food? Because they waz gonna starve! At least, that's what Lester "the Molester" Brown said (Note: not his actual nickname, just an unfunny play on his name). In retrospect, the idea is laughable. The Chinese economy had posted double digit growth rates since the late '70s, and they were going to starve? Even at the time I didn't really believe it, but high school debate is about winning, not the truth.

Obviously Mr. Brown was incorrect. But a quick Google search reveals that he is still making paranoid prognostications. He now works for the Earth Policy Institute (biography here), where he continues to fear-monger regarding world population and resources. The lack (rather than the surplus) of the former is fast becoming a problem (at least for the developed world), and the latter is, after decades of predictions to the contrary, more plentiful than ever.

After a comparison of our lives today and those a hundred years ago, Varifrank has this to say:

"We are all the descendants of those who came before us, who in each of their lives saw and experienced things daily that would make each of us wet our pants in fear. We face none of those horrible things in our lives today, yet we are more in fear of life itself than any of those people were in theirs while they faced very real threats and not the imagined ones of that we face in ours."

My response is that humans have a deep-seated need to fear. And furthermore, this isn't a bad thing. Fear is a powerful motivator, as Machiavelli realized when he famously argued it was better for a ruler to be feared than loved.

None of the apocalyptic predictions regarding the future have come true, and I believe it is at least in part because the predictions were made. Instead of self-fulfilling prophecies they became self-defeating prophecies. By loudly proclaiming that the sky is falling, these oft-foolish predictions are taken seriously by a few who perhaps help put policies in place to pre-empt their impacts.

Do I have any real evidence for this? Nope. I'll just point to the fact the world hasn't ended as evidence that apocalyptic predictions (no matter how ridiculous) are no threat.

They are also extremely fun to ridicule.

Quick hits

2005-11-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

Two quick items:

First, this item from Ravenwood, about one poor would-be anti-war protesters dilemma.

"Sometimes I just get so mad that my country is committing mass murder. What power have I to stop it?

I am going to start reading up on Ghandi. This is the breaking point. I have to do something drastic, like go on a hunger strike chained to a light pole next to the NBC building in Chicago. But it's starting to get cold and I have my thesis to work on and classes to finish up this semester." (Emphasis mine.)

Now, that's funny. I would try to make a political point by suffering through a hunger strike, but it's just too cold and I'm busy.

On a slightly less humorous note, there's this article from National Review Online concerning divorce.

"As recently seen on The Today Show and Good Morning America, "divorce parties" are all the rage. Was your marriage on the rocks? Well, the divorce papers are signed and it's now time to play "pin the blame on the ex" and "throw the wedding ring in the toilet" games — or so it is if you talk to the likes of the author of The Woman's Book of Divorce: 101 Ways to Make Him Suffer Forever and Ever."

I have suggestion. If you are the type of woman to buy a book subtitled 101 Ways to Make Him Suffer Forever and Ever, then the most effective way to "make him suffer" would be to stay with him.

2005-10-02T13:06:00.000-04:00

You are a
Social Moderate
(43% permissive)

and an...
Economic Conservative
(88% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Capitalist

Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Engineering Education

2005-09-22T13:13:00.000-04:00

Go read this article from Tech Central Station from an engineering drop-out.

Have you read it?

Okay, here are my comments. The author makes many good points, but isn't quite in a position to make complete recommendations (not that I am either, but combined...).

In my experience the following qualities are required to succeed in obtaining an engineering degree:

1. above-average intelligence
2. the ability to learn on your own
3. the ability to self-motivate
4. willingness to give up an extensive social-life

Douglas Kern was found lacking in 2. This ties into his recognition that engineering teaching is generally poor. This is true and should be changed but won't. Why? Because university engineering programs are not about education they are about research, and the skill-sets required of professors for the two often conflict. It's not about how well you can teach the students, it's about how well you can pull in the research dollars for the school.

Meanwhile, my friends majoring in the liberal arts pulled dandy grades while studying little. "You just wait," I thought, gazing upon them like the ant regarding the grasshopper in the summer. "You party and blow off homework now, but in ten years, you'll be making merely wonderful money as investment bankers and consultants, while I'll be getting laid off from a great job at General Electric."

Here is the second problem with engineering education. Oddly, it has little to do with the engineering part of it. The problem is that liberal arts degrees are so easy to get as to be worthless (except from a hoop-jumping perspective). None of the liberal arts classes I took taught any sort of useful skill. We (my fellow engineering students and I) had a simple formula to relate the difficulty (and hence the usefulness) of engineering classes to liberal arts ones: one engineering class = four liberal arts classes. This should give you an idea of the relative difficulty. The problem is not with the left-hand side of the equation, but with the right. If liberal arts classes actually taught something and required effort, then engineering classes would not look so bad in comparison.

To a certain extent, engineering classes are difficult because they have to be. Future engineers need to learn the required skill-set to do their job without getting anyone killed. No liberal arts program prepares students for a life-or-death environment and they have thus relaxed their requirements to worthlessness. The fault here lies with liberal arts education programs, not engineering.

Here are Kern's prescriptions for improvement:

If you want more engineers in the United States, you must find a way for America's engineering programs to retain students like, well, me: people smart enough to do the math and motivated enough to at least take a bite at the engineering apple, but turned off by the overwhelming coursework, low grades, and abysmal teaching. Find a way to teach engineering to verbally oriented students who can't learn math by sense of smell. Demand from (and give to) students an actual mastery of the material, rather than relying on bogus on-the-curve pseudo-grades that hinge upon the amount of partial credit that bored T.A.s choose to dole out. Write textbooks that are more than just glorified problem set manuals. Give grades that will make engineering majors competitive in a grade-inflated environment. Don't let T.A.s teach unless they can actually teach.

Fair enough. But, as stated above, the "overwhelming coursework" exists for a reason. Those are the skills needed to make an engineer competent enough not to kill people. You can't really reduce that. This is especially true of upper-level classes which the author would have never been experienced due to his dropping out.

Another problem with his comments is that the skills required to succeed in getting an engineering education are basically the same as those required for being an engineer. You can't just dumb things down and serve everything on a platter because that would not create good engineers. What he calls "weeding out undesirables with absurd boot-camp courses" is not always a bad thing. Many people are simply not cut-out to be engineers and the goal should not be to keep those people; it should be to keep those who have the skills but are struggling due to inadequate teaching.

Note that the boot-camp style of engineering education serves to create strong bonds between students. Engineering students (justifiably [IMAO]) look-down on those who take the easier liberal arts path. But if you've read this far, you know that:).

Carolina on my mind

2005-07-29T12:41:00.000-04:00

For reasons I do not care to explain I was driving through the Carolinas yesterday, and I saw some interesting things.

First, in North Carolina, there was a billboard for a housing development called "The Challenge." Huh? Do people really want to live in a challenging environment?

Second, in South Carolina, there was sign for a mobile home place named "Spartan Homes." Admittedly it was near Spartanburg, but still, do they not know what Spartan means? Seriously, people.

How American am I?

2005-07-27T15:07:00.000-04:00

You Are 82% American

You're as American as red meat and shooting ranges.
Tough and independent, you think big.
You love everything about the US, wrong or right.
And anyone who criticizes your home better not do it in front of you!

How American Are You?

Mmmmmm. Red meat.
Mmmmmm. Shooting ranges.

Lack of Discipline

2005-07-27T13:18:00.000-04:00

Read this Weekly Standard article talking about our societies views toward commitment. Here's a sample of some of the new marriage vows replacing "'til death do us part."

Noble: "For as long as our marriage may serve the greater good."
Poetic: "For as long as our love shall last."
Prosaic: "For as long as we continue to love each other."
Clock watchers: "Until our time together is over."

Note the vacuous nature of each of these. The article ties the idea back into our lack of commitment to prosecuting the war on terror (or, as it was recently re-named, the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" as this Slate article explains). I've said for a long time, that most of our societies problems stems from a lack of discipline (to which I'm certainly not immune [Exhibit A: the eleventh month period in which this was not updated]).

The Plame Conspiracy Revealed

2005-07-27T12:51:00.000-04:00

It seems that everyone, certainly on the left side of the political aisle, is having fits about the whole Valerie Plame thing. This has to be the most boring, pointless political scandal, ever. Fortunately, IMAO is here to break everything down in an easy-to-read FAQ format. Click here and be enlightened.

I would also like to encourage both of my readers to listen to the highly amusing weekly IMAO podcast.

The Economist on Pain

2005-07-25T13:03:00.000-04:00

Here is an interesting article I found on people's perception of pain. The money quote:

Many researchers are therefore concluding that genetics underpins at least some of the difference, and that females really do feel pain more than males.

In my experience a lot of women seem to think that female pain tolerance is higher than males'. That has now been scientifically disproven. Take that.

Another section that was personally interesting to me because I suffer from migraines:

The latest example of such a difference is in migraine, a condition that is three times more common in women than in men. In 2004, a group of researchers led by Michel Ferrari of Leiden University in the Netherlands reported that they had created what they believed to be the first mouse model of migraine. Since some researchers argue that migraine is associated with heightened sensitivity to pain, they sent their creation to Dr Mogil for testing. He stresses that his data are preliminary. However, he does find a lowered pain threshold in the mouse migraine model compared with healthy mice—but only in females.

Since I suffer from migraines does that mean I have a low pain threshold and feel pain like a girl? (And in this case I do mean that in the pejorative sense.) Anyway, read the whole thing, but keep in mind there will be a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo (like mu and kappa-opioid agonist).

NASA and omelet making

2005-07-16T20:51:00.000-04:00

To prove my own laziness, I will now give y'all an excerpt from an e-mail I sent a friend:

It seems to me that the Shuttle is a clear case of over-engineering
and the managers are being entirely too cautious. Apparently only one
fuel sensor failed, but there are four of them and only two need to
work to avoid a problem. So the design builds in this huge degree of
redundancy, which negates the consequences of a single failure but
greatly increases the chance that something will fail, and then scraps
the launch because of the almost inevitable failure. No wonder it
costs billions of dollars for a single launch. Exploration requires a
little more testicular fortitude than they are willing to expend.

That was from a couple days ago. Now in the New York Times there is an article saying that NASA might actually grow a pair and send the Shuttle off with *gasp* only three of four sensors working.

The ultimate goal is to make space travel as cheap and common-place as air travel. After being in space almost fifty years we're alot further behind than we were at a comparable point in aeronautical history. At this point in time in aeronautical history we were on the verge of the 707 and cheap, safe, ubiquitous trans-continental travel. If we were near the same track when it came to space we would regularly be sending people to Mars without a second thought. But we're not. So the big question is why?

There are several answers. First, there just wasn't the same precursors for space-travel as there was and is for air travel. Before aircraft came along people were able to travel long distancesm, it just took longer because they had to travel by train or by sea. Airplanes were an incremental advance in transportation technology. The ability to travel to different planets has never before existed, so it's a much bigger jump. We had to crawl before we could run, so to speak. We're still in the crawling stage when it comes to space. But that doesn't fully answer the why.

That brings up the second reason: which is that there is no imperative to be in space. Traveling long distances on this planet makes sense for alot of reasons. It facilitates business, it makes more interesting vacations possible, there is a clear demand for intra-planet travel. There is no such demand to go to Mars. There are no businesses on Mars. There are no people on Mars (that we know of). That makes kind of a conundrum: in order for there to be demand to go to Mars we must already have some kind of presence there to make it worth it. It's easy to imagine a day in which space travel is common-place. When we've colonized other planets there will obviously be every incentive to have the ability to travel between planets. But it's a chicken or the egg thing. Before you can have a chicken you must have an egg (unless God just creates a chicken out of mid-air, but it's not a good idea to count on that).

The last reason we're so early in our inter-planetary travel capabilities is that we're developing them with two arms and a leg tied behind our back. When aviation was beginning the state-of-the-art was advanced by people taking risks to try out new things. Now, nobody takes any risks, least of all the entrenched bureaucracy of NASA. It costs billions of dollars to send the Shuttle into space and the reason it costs so much is, at least partly, because NASA spares no expense in creating redundant and safe systems on the shuttle. Which is all well and good, except that a price is paid for any level of safety. By placing the primary emphasis on safety (and for political reasons, I might add) the advancement of our understanding is retarded. So don't hold your breath waiting for NASA to lead the way to space. A much more promising route is to let risk-taking private entrepreneurs like Burt Rutan lead the way. As the saying goes, to make an omelet you've got to break a few eggs.

I didn't re-read this post due to laziness so I apologize for any typos, though I doubt I made any.

I'm Back (maybe)

2005-07-16T20:47:00.000-04:00

My apologies for my almost year-long absence from here. My health hasn't exactly been ideal. In fact, I am currently in the throes of a migraine, even now. But maybe pounding on a keyboard will help. Anyway, I don't what direction I'll be taking this but be assured that it will not be ambitious. Ok then, onto something with something resembling substance. Maybe.

Kerry's One-Point Plan

2004-08-12T10:49:00.000-04:00

Read this Onion piece (courtesy of Ace). It's hilarious.

(I give no excuse for the inactivity. Though I am considering taking a different tack with this blog as I can't seem to find a good niche.)

Four More Wars

2004-07-19T13:26:00.000-04:00

Was reading the moonbat comments to this Kevin Drum post, and came upon this gem:

"Four More Wars
Bush Cheney 04

And we can pay for them with four more tax cuts for the rich."

I know he was attempting sarcasm but I think that sounds about right (maybe a little fast). After all, there are still two members of the Axis of Evil left, right? And don't forget about Syria, and maybe Saudia Arabia, Sudan, Lebanon, or China (trying to take advantage of our being distracted) as number five.

We would have to pick up the pace a little but compared to the past four years (only two wars: Afghanistan and Iraq), but I think it could be done. It's also a nice, catchy slogan.

Note: Four more wars is a perfectly defendable idea, but it would probably take ten years instead of four to get it done.

Why are we the world's policeman?

2004-07-13T15:14:00.000-04:00

Jane Galt has a question today: Why did we become the world's policeman?

This is a question I have some insights into not already offered in the comments to her post.

After the Second World War the United States was ascendant. Our secure base across the ocean had in no way been devastated by the conflict, unlike Europe, Japan and the Soviet Union. At the time, the United States economy was approximately half of the entire world economy. To repeat: HALF of the ENTIRE WORLD's economy was U.S. This was clearly a temporary situation resulting from the massive destruction caused in Europe and Japan and didn't last, but clearly the U.S. was the most powerful nation in the world.

With this much power, it was virtually impossible for the United States to return to its isolationist roots. This was made all the more evident by the emergence of the Soviet Union as a rival ideological and political force. The Soviet Union was a clear threat to the U.S. directly (through nuclear weapons) and indirectly (by threatening to unite Europe under its iron fist, in which case it would have the productive capability to match the U.S.).

The traditional security guarantor of last resort was the United Kingdom, which attained this role as a result of its expansive colonial conquests and leading role in naval power projection capability since the defeat of Napoleon. As a result of the threat from the Soviet Union and Communism, the United States replaced the UK in this role, starting by replacing the UK's security guarantee to Greece as it was under attack by Communist partisans in 1946. The UK handed the torch of "world's policeman" to the United States from this point on.

We currently guarantee the security of Europe through NATO, Japan through bilateral agreements, Australia and New Zealand through the ANZUS treaty, Southeast Asia through ASEAN, and the Middle East through agreements with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and Jordan. We ARE the world's policeman, whether we like it or not, and it is a result of historical factors as well as the military weakness of our (sometimes) allies. It can certainly be argued that this weakness is often caused by our role as policemen, and that our role incurs a great deal of resentment. But, above and beyond our not insubstantial humanitarian foreign aid, our contribution to the well-being of everyone on Earth is made by securing trade routes on which much of the world's economy depends and greatly reducing political conflict throughout the globe, even if we don't go around reshaping governments or becoming involved in every catastrophe. That is our role, though it is little acknowledged, the U.S. plays a key role in ensuring that civilization as we know it does not fall apart.

Ignorance is Strength

2004-07-13T13:59:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the sparse updates lately. I've been remarkably lazy. Today I want to share some thoughts that have been percolating for a while now. It's kind of a technical discussion in that I use big words, but I think anyone can understand the concepts.

The main idea is this: we live in a world that is inherently probabilistic (i.e. many things depend on chance) but we're stuck with minds that work in an inherently deterministic fashion. By deterministic I mean that we think of things as having clear cause and effect relationships. The world doesn't work that way (at least, not from our admittedly limited point of view).

Because of the way our minds work we have a difficult time assessing risks. We easily fall prey to anecdotal evidence, we are misled by historical evidence (in a totally random environment, events in the past do not effect events in the future). We're bombarded with spurious medical evidence about how this-or-that causes a 25% increase in the risk of cancer. This is, by itself, meaningless. A 25% increase relative to what? If the initial rate of cancer was 0.001%, then the "higher" risk is just 0.00125%. For the information to be useful it needs to be placed in context.

For example, yesterday I learned that I have a 0.014% chance of dying this here, according to the government (I'm not going to bother to look up the link, use Google if you're interested). If I were female, however, that chance is only one-third of that (presumably due to the increased risk of violent death and higher auto accident rates). Does that I mean I should be worried that I'm not a woman? I am three times more likely to die after all. Taken by itself it sounds pretty scary.

The way most people cope with risk is to ignore it. Which is perhaps the best possible way. After all, it is impossible for any of us to have a good understanding of the true magnitude of the risks we face, so any worrying at the individual level will be for naught.

On the public policy level the story is different. Risk can be assessed over large groups of people for certain things. And here the tendency towards ignorance is a liability, with the occasional anecdote swaying things in the all-too-often wrong direction.

Hmmm, I was hoping that as I wrote this some sort of point would develop. Oops.

2004-06-30T13:56:00.000-04:00

Go read this Ralph Peters article on the lessons learned from the Iraq war and occupation. The key quote:

"And there will be a next time." (Emphasis in original)

I found it heartening. Take your bets now on who's next, Iran or Persia? (Note: they are the same)

Documentary or Schlockumentary?

2004-06-30T13:29:00.000-04:00

Film critics behavior toward the schlockumentary/mockumentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been deliciously hypocritical. Just see this article (link via Pejman). It compares the reviews of Passion of the Christ to those for Michael "experiment gone wrong" Moore's latest. They don't even bother to feign objectivity.

One in particular disturbed me. The film reviewer for the "Christian" Science Monitor (aren't scare quotes fun?) said:

"Is the label "documentary" appropriate for this openly activist movie? Of course it is, unless you cling to some idealized notion of "objective" film."

Ummm, OK. I have to agree with Imao, who compares it, unfavorably, to Jackass: the movie. If the film reviewer for CSM is unable to look up "documentary" in a dictionary to see that part of the definition is to be "objective" then I think it fair to say that he is a jackass (and I mean that in the nicest way possible [not that there is a nice way to take it]).

I'm tempted to go see 9/11, though. Why? I think it would be great fun to laugh and clap at inappropriate times, with the express purpose of irritating the crap out of the Moore-o-philes. For example, after the scene that's been in the commercials where Bush says "we will hunt down the terrorist killers, now watch this drive" I would cheer and clap. The problem with this is that some of my money would go to making that fat bastard even fatter, and I don't know if I could live with that. But it would be great to heckle his supporters.

Hitler = ?

2004-06-29T14:09:00.000-04:00

The Bush campaign has new ad (which can be seen here and is entitled "Coalition of the Wild-eyed") in which scenes from a TV ad created by Kerry supporters at MoveOn.org are spliced with images of Al "he betrayed this country" Gore, Dick "miserable failure" Gephardt, Michael "experiment gone wrong" Moore, and John F'n Kerry. Slate and Citizen Smash seem to think these ads are suggesting that Kerry is somehow equal to Hitler.

Have these people actually watched the ad? The purpose of the ad is to show just how wacky many of Kerry's supporters are. Listening to these clips, you can't help but marvel at how stark, raving mad with Bush-hatred these people are. The Hitler images are showing mainstream America that it is the LEFT that thinks "Bushitler" is the same Hitler (Kerry is waaaay too boring an orator to compare). Many of Kerry's supporters are loons of the first degree, and if Bush's crazed supporters were half as vocal I can guarantee the media would never let go of it. Turn-around is fair-play; Kerry should pay a price for having these wackos on his side. Clinton certainly took advantage of lumping the people who thought he killed Vince Foster in with the rest of his opponents. Apparently Democrats can dish it, but not take it.

And have no doubt that people compare Bush and not Kerry to Hitler. A simple google search, revealed over 500,000 hits for Bush and Hitler and only 156,000 for Kerry and Hitler (all of which on the first page were discussing the aforementioned ad). To give you some idea of the craziness of the Bushitler crowd, just visit here, for a list of wild conspiracy theories that are even crazier than the Vince Foster murder stories (which were made semi-plausible by the general sleaziness of "because I could" Clinton).

Nee Moore no badda. Me chaade su goodie.

2004-06-29T11:14:00.000-04:00

Drop whatever you're doing and go read the new In My World, over at IMAO. He has Michael Moore as Jabba the Hut, it's hilarious. Here's a teaser:

"Who the hell is Michael Moore?" Bush asked.

"An experiment gone bad," Clancy said ominously, "The liberals were always trying to create their own Rush Limbaugh since Limbaugh first became a success. To this end, they got some Limbaugh DNA from a discarded cigar. The genes were incomplete, though, and they finished the chromosomes with genes from warthog, gorilla, and skunk DNA. Thus came about the hideous creation known as Michael Moore."

Balloons in Space?

2004-06-25T14:44:00.000-04:00

DefenseTech links to an article about a "near-space" balloon that was badly damaged by 20-25 knot (23-26 mph) wind. This balloon is meant to go the 100,000 ft and hover over a battlefield to collect intelligence or serve as a communications hub. Which brings up a simple question: if the balloon can't handle a pidly ~25 mph wind, how exactly is it supposed to stay together on the way to 100,000 ft?

There is a very good reason that there have been very few balloons or airships since the 1930s. They just aren't very robust in bad weather. The idea for this particular one is that at 100,000 ft the conditions are pretty calm, but the damn thing still has to be tough enough to make it that high. So that's a little questionable, but apparently the company is working on the idea of eventually building up to the point of having a BALLOON GO TO SPACE!?!?!!!

----- This is Earth calling JP Aerospace, where are you? Over. -------
----- Could you repeat, Houston. We seem to have our heads in a place where the sun does not shine. ------

The guy from JP explains how it would work like this:

"What if you flatten it out and give it a little bit of aerodynamic shape, and point it up a little bit so you have some of that thrust turned into lift?" Powell asked. "As you climb up, your drag is dropping, and now you're accelerating. The question comes, can you get aerodynamically clean enough, while still supporting the lift enough to slowly get faster and faster ... to get all the way to orbit? Is there a drag-power combination to do that? We think there is. It looks like there's a wide margin."

Wow, let's go over a few of the problems with this concept. First and foremost, what do you make the thing out of? It has to be able to be strong enough to handle the aerodynamic loads, plus any gust conditions, on ascent. Light as possible to accelerate the vehicle. And it must be able to handle the thermal loads from going very fast. Even at high altitude, where the air is thin and cold, at high speeds the friction makes things hot enough to melt most materials (drag increases with the square of velocity). Unless these guys have access to the stuff that UFO's are made of, it will be a bit of a problem.

Next you can't count on purely the buoyant force to make it to space, as beyond a certain altitude, what's inside the vehicle will become more dense than what is outside, reversing the acceleration. The propulsion system would have to be light, and it would have to be attached to structure that could handle the thrust loads.

The placement of the payload for the vehicle would have a similar problem. Wherever it is attached will have to be strong enough, which will make the vehicle heavy and impair its performance again.

As an orbital vehicle, the idea of a frickin' balloon is fundamentally unserious. It might be a concept worth exploring only to determine where the biggest problem areas are such that they could be worked on, but it will not be technically feasible in the foreseeable future.

Opportunities Not Rights

2004-06-25T13:49:00.000-04:00

The past couple of days at the Volokh Conspiracy there has been a series of articles about FDR's proposal for a second Bill or Rights. These are the rights listed in the first link:

"The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education."

Following the links will take you to a discussion on so-called "constitutive commitments" that FDR is supposedly naming. None of the conspirators has directly commented on the rights themselves but something about them strikes me as horribly wrong, and I'm shocked that no one else (at the Conspiracy) has pointed it out. There is no Constitutional basis for ANY of these, with the possible exception of the anti-monopoly "right" being an outgrowth of the interstate commerce clause. I'm no Constitutional scholar, but the only possible justification of these is meeting the "provide for the common welfare" part of the big C (and that would be a HUGE stretch).

Reading the list, it is clear that FDR is proposing Socialism in the Swedish sense (a hop and a skip [but no jump] from Communism). The anti-monopoly one is the only one I have no objection to, the rest do not qualify as "rights". This is not Europe, people have the OPPORTUNITY for a job, a nice home, good medical care, education and so on. No citizen has the "right" to even eat if they are unwilling to work for it (in my opinion, with the obvious exemption of children, the elderly, and sick people [who may be willing but unable]). This is America and these supposed "rights" sound way too much like the EU Constitution. See the following as examples from the EU Constitution that sound just like FDR's proposals:

"Article II-14: Right to education
1. Everyone has the right to education and to have access to vocational and continuing training.
2. This right includes the possibility to receive free compulsory education.

Article II-34: Social security and social assistance
(...)
3. In order to combat social exclusion and poverty, the Union recognises and respects the right
to social and housing assistance so as to ensure a decent existence for all those who lack
sufficient resources, in accordance with the rules laid down by Union law and national laws
and practices.

Article II-35: Health care
Everyone has the right of access to preventive health care and the right to benefit from medical
treatment under the conditions established by national laws and practices. A high level of human
health protection shall be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union policies and
activities."

This list would be a recipe for disaster. First, it would bankrupt the country as the government would have to vastly increase in size, raising taxes and/or the national debt. Second, it sets-up all kinds of powerful dis-incentives to improve your lot in life, as the big G would have to give you everything you needed to live (and live well). Socialism has NEVER and will never work, let's kick it to the dust-bin of history and move-on.

What did we expect?

2004-06-25T13:37:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about all the supposed bad war news, and how pretty much everyone seems to think that things are going poorly in Iraq and I was thinking: what the heck did we expect? Obviously things are not all hunky-dory; the Iraqis aren't holding hands with Americans singing Kumbaya around a campfire in the desert making smores, but has anything particularly horrible and unexpected happened? I can't come up with anything. Perhaps our ass-kicking of Saddam's army was too complete and it set-up unrealistic expectations in peoples minds for the following occupation.

It should be no surprise that there has been a low-level insurgency. We just put 130,000+ targets right in the middle of terrorist country, OF COURSE we were going to attract some fire. But the level of casualties has been miniscule when compared with essentially any other conflict in history. In World War I more people would die in an hour than we have lost over the past year. In a roughly similar situation in Chechnya, the Russkies have lost many times more people (they have been less than forthcoming with actual numbers). I'm not saying our casualties have been insignificant, but our troops have been performing very, very well. Even when Sadr and his thugs tried to rise up, we kicked his butt, killing thousands of his militamen.

The problem is truly one of perception not reality. The media have been pounding in every shred of bad news and reporting very little of the good. And it's all in pursuit of the selfish aim of undermining Bush. I was not a fan of Clinton, but there was no way in hell that I would have rooted for Serbia to beat us in the Kosovo war. Craven political calculation seems to be driving reportage on this war, and it's disgusting. The only hope of our enemies is for us to shoot ourselves in the head and surrender, and the Chomsky-ites and Michael Moore's among us are only too happy to comply.

My biggest complaint with the Bush administration is the spectacularly poor job they have done of communicating our goals and progress in the war in Iraq. Even with a hostile media there is much more they could do to aid in their own cause. There's been plenty of negative propaganda and an extreme lack of positive propaganda. This is something that blogs do a good job of correcting, the problem being that blogs have limited readership and thus influence. Especially when you average eight hits a day like me ;).

Finding the Right Troop Levels

2004-06-25T11:16:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the dearth of posts. I haven't been lacking in ideas or motivation, only in time, as I've been writing a paper for a conference (basically done) and I had a big meeting Wednesday for my research project. But while I was thinking of work-related material yesterday I saw this Slate article entitled "The Pentagon's Fuzzy Math."

Note: I'm an engineer coming from the standpoint that if you can't quantify it, it doesn't exist. Fortunately you can quantify almost anything. The following is mildly technical, but the concepts should be understandable for smart people of any background. [Note to the Note: I may not be the best judge of who will understand this, so if you don't, it doesn't mean you're an idiot.]

The problem of determining optimal troop levels is obviously difficult due to all the uncertainties involved in what wars/peacekeeping/nation-building/insurgent-crushing/war-mongering/et-cetera will happen in the future. But there are techniques for managing uncertainty and risk in these situations that aren't that complicated. How so?

First, assume that the Pentagon has some kind of model that can determine the troop levels required for a wide-range of scenarios. If they don't, heads should roll and some quick assumptions can be made to create a rough one based on past experience and war-gaming results.

Then the intelligence people should develop a list of possible scenarios and provide a range of values capturing the probability of that scenario happening over some specified period of time. For example, suppose they say there is a 0-40% chance of war with Iran over the next five years, that would be one input.

The last step is to integrate these into a combined model that will randomly determine, based off the distributions provided by the intel folks, what scenarios will occur and calculate the required troop levels for that. This model should be run many, many times (tens of thousands, the process is called Monte Carlo simulation) and the results can be analyzed to show what the chance of any troop level being insufficient will be (based on the assumptions made by the troop-required model and the intel scenarios). This gives some idea of the risk associated with any given troop level. See, not so hard. It can be made much more complicated, but this kind of technique is not that difficult to apply, and I'd be surprised if somebody in the Pentagon hasn't done it. I would be tempted to make my own BS assumptions and troop-model for illustrative purposes but since I can't post pictures here I wouldn't be able to share it (oh yeah, and I'm lazy).

The problem is that people aren't interested in getting a real answer; this being politics they are mainly concerned with scoring points at Bush's expense and/or burnishing their tough-on-defense credentials, not that I'm cynical or anything (*cough* *cough*).

What Does International Law Really Say?

2004-06-17T17:34:00.000-04:00

I'm tired of hearing about how the U.S. is violating the Geneva Conventions and other "international law" (see this link to see why I believe this term requires scare quotes). So I looked up the Geneva conventions and the UN Convention against Torture to see what they REALLY say.

First a little background information on the documents. The Third Geneva Convention describes the treatment of prisoners-of-war, including who is a POW and endless regulations on how they are to be treated. The Fourth Geneva Convention describes how civilians are to be treated. And the UN Convention on Torture defines torture and explains how torturers are to be punished and torture is to be prevented. The last is a more recent document which was only ratified by the U.S. ten years ago, the others date from ~1950.

Third Geneva Convention (Prisoners-of-War)

Article 4 defines who qualifies as a POW and hence is protected under this treaty as follows:

"Article 4

A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.

5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.

6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war."

Terrorists clearly do not qualify under any of these six categories. The closest would be the second one; however, terrorists do not generally "a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance" or "carry arms openly" and they most certainly do NOT "the laws and customs of war." Therefore, the Third Geneva Convention grants NO rights to terrorists.

Fourth Geneva Convention (Civilians)

Protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention are defined as:

"Art. 4. Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.

Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are."

This one is a bit more tricky. Terrorists would qualify under the first paragraph. The second paragraph brings up the question: do terrorists count as Nationals of their original state or do they sacrifice that by affiliating with state-less terrorist groups? Let's assume that they qualify as Nationals of whatever state they are citizens of. Even if this is the case the last sentence in the above quote excludes them from protection as protected persons, as the countries they are from generally "have normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are." Even assuming they would be protected persons there is another loophole by which they could be excluded:

"Art. 5 Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State.

Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention."

Under the most generous interpretation possible, even if terrorists would have been protected, they are no longer if they are "definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State [i.e. U.S.]" if that is "prejudicial to the security of [the U.S.]."

This explains why the secret detention
of some prisoners in Iraq is not in contravention to the Geneva Conventions.

Geneva Convention Conclusions

Terrorists are not protected under any part of the Geneva Convention (feel free to read the References at the bottom of this post to see for yourself). Journalists who claim the Geneva Convention rules "unquestionably apply" to prisoners in Iraq are either lying or inexcusably ill-informed. Only members of Saddam's military who were captured in uniform, carrying arms openly, and haven't committed any war crimes are eligible for Geneva's generous rights and privileges. Others need not apply. Does this mean that the U.S. has not violated "international law" in its treatment of prisoner and detainees? Not necessarily, there's more.

UN Convention on Torture

The UN Convention defines torture as:

"the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."

There are two unclear portions of this definition: how is "severe pain or suffering" defined (i.e. how severe is severe), and the last sentence, which opens a loophole if it arises as part of "lawful sanctions." A clue is perhaps provided in the following section:

"Article 2
1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture."

This makes it pretty clear that there are no exceptions to the provisions of the treaty. There is still the question of what "severe" means but less us presume that our behavior of detainees in Iraq qualifies, does that mean the U.S. has violated "international law"? We can now answer with a firm maybe.

My Opinion

I would define "severe" as "causing permanent harm." Anything short of this threshold does not constitute torture in my eyes. Therefore only a very small number of the "torture" allegations made against the U.S. actually qualify as such. Interrogation techniques like using dogs for intimidation, depriving prisoners of sleep, and "mild non-injurious physical contact" (to quote the Pentagon) do not qualify as torture.

References:

Third Geneva Convention
Fourth Geneva Convention
UN Convention on Torture

Color Me Confused (the 737 ?!?)

2004-06-17T10:53:00.000-04:00

Color me confused. I've seen several articles on how the Navy has selected the Boeing 737 to be its replacement for the Lockheed P-3 Orion as a submarine hunting vehicle (the best of which is here). The 737 does not compare favorably to the existing P-3 for this mission.

The P-3 originated from the Lockheed Constellation airliner back at the beginning of the jet age in the 1950's. The Constellation was eclipsed by the Boeing 707 and its ilk which were capable of much better performance. It found a niche use in the Navy as sub-hunter and maritime reconnaisance vehicle, for which its slow speed was an advantage, not an impediment. The 737 has been one of the most successful passenger jets of all time, with Boeing having sold many thousands. It was designed for much higher speeds, though its size and range are roughly comparable to the P-3.

Submarine hunting requires the ability for long endurance, low and slow flying. The P-3 handles this mission beautifully. According to this site, it has an endurance of 16 hours at 203 knots (233 mph) and an altitude of 1,000 ft. In contrast, this site lists the 737 specifications. It has a much higher cruise speed (533 mph, and presumably at a much higher altitude, though that's not listed), and a much reduced loiter capability. The site does not list its loiter ability but calculating based off the given cruise speed (938 km/hr) and the cruise range (6,038 km) yields an endurance of 6.4 hours. It is possible that flying slower could improve this, but not by enough to match the P-3. And this is also at a higher altitude at which the vehicle will not likely be operating.

The P-3 is able to loiter more effectively because it is a turbo-prop powered vehicle (see this old post of mine on propulsion systems). Turbo-props are more efficient at moderate subsonic flight speeds (about half the speed of sound). It does not make sense to use a turbo-fan powered vehicle like the 737 for this mission. It makes even less sense to use a vehicle with only two engines (note that the P-3 has four). A submarine hunter will spend much time over the water (obviously) and, even with today's much more reliable jet engines, it still makes sense to have some redundancy for this type of mission.

The only explanation I can come up with for how this vehicle won is that the decision was taken for purely political reasons. The Strategy Page article I link to above hints at this, saying the decision may have been influenced by Boeing's losing the Joint Strike Fighter contract. The contract is also a cost-plus contract, where Boeing's profits increase the more expensive the vehicle is, creating all kinds of dis-incentives for efficiency.

Victor Davis Hanson's Secret Victory Plan

2004-06-14T23:20:00.000-04:00

Victor Hanson makes a somewhat questionable claim in his latest column:

"Nearly three years after 9/11 we are in the strangest of all paradoxes: a war against fascists that we can easily win but are clearly not ready to fully wage. We have the best 500,000 soldiers in the history of civilization, a resolute president, and an informed citizenry that has already received a terrible preemptive blow that killed thousands."

If Hanson has some secret victory plan perhaps it is time he shared it with the rest of us. We're not at a point in history where we can go about the world conquering other countries (I'm speculating on this point). The proliferation of small arms is such that we would have to be incredibly ruthless to succeed. That's just not politically feasible for any democracy. Which is unfortunate, because it might be the only way to truly defeat them without destroying the Middle East (which itself would only become tenable after a particularly horrific attack on us). The optimum solution (not requiring divine intervention [hopefully]) is the path we are on, transforming the Middle East such that the terrorist fishes have no sea in which to swim.

In the article I think Hanson gives the terrorists entirely too much credit in creating a strategery with which to "defeat" us. He says:

"I think Islamofascism is brilliant in its reading of the postmodern West and precisely for that reason it is dangerous beyond all description..."

Bin Laden and his ilk are not nearly that brilliant. They are fortunate that the West has become so decadent as to contain a Fifth Column of Leftists who control the media and are desirous of the West's humiliation and destruction for irrational reasons (as it would also mean their own death). Most Leftists are not so idiotic as to voice this goal, but there are some who are; such as the environmentalist wackos who believe killing all human life is necessary to preserve "Mother Earth."

Our terrorist enemies are far from a monolithic foe. Theirs is a behavior that has emerged from many different sources. There are dozens of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and of course Al Qaeda, that do not (and indeed cannot, for fear of being found and destroyed) communicate to the point of creating a grand strategy. Any global strategy that appears is an emergent behavior analogous to an ant colony developing a "hive mind." (The comparison of terrorists to ants is quite fitting, as they are truly on that level) Let us not give our enemies too much credit, for they clearly have not thought their course of action to its only logical end: they all die premature deaths (hopefully at our hand). I would flesh this out more, but it's late and I'm lazy. B-bye.

An Intellectual Basis for Conservatism

2004-06-14T22:16:00.000-04:00

Wanted to share this quote from Hayek (from this article in Reason about gay marriage):

"It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depends. Historically this has been achieved by the influence of the various religious creeds and by traditions and superstitions which made man submit to those forces by an appeal to his emotions rather than to his reason. The most dangerous stage in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them. This may well prove a hurdle which man will repeatedly reach, only to be thrown back into barbarism."

Much truth is contained in this, the primary point being: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The glue of civilization is the things we do (or don't do) without thinking about them. Things like waiting in line, where everyone is equal (most of the time, obviously rich people aren't as affected). One of those things used to be the definition of marriage, until recently. People have difficulty coming up with a reasoned objection to gay marriage because the definition of marriage is something that has been taken for granted for...ever, basically.

Unfortunately this is a logical extension of the path we have placed ourselves on a long time ago, with shortsighted policies like no-fault divorce. Even the Reason author (who later in the article comes down on the side of gay marriage) says:

"But when modern societies abolished the stigmas on illegitimacy, divorce, and all the rest, whole portions of the social structure just caved in."

Foolish dabbling with social policy has gotten us to this point. Change should not be pursued for change's sake. That's the point of conservatism.

Not In My Vacation BackYard (NIMVBY)

2004-06-11T13:30:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine, has post on her blog type-thing and I thought I'd comment. It's about how city folk in New Zealand are going out to the country and then complaining about the noise the farmers create.

First of all, does New Zealand have big enough cities that people need to escape the "stresses of the city"?

Second, it's not really that surprising. If I've learned anything as an adult it's that adults sure act like children a lot. If, as a kid, I whined about how my mom's vacuuming was disturbing me playing with GI Joe's it's a sure bet that I'd be in trouble. Maybe adults that act like children should be treated like children. For example, these people complaining about the farmers could be sent to their rooms to think about what they did.

How is it that people maintain this child-like sense of privilege into adulthood? I'm thinking it has something to do with the current anti-spanking mindset. Instead of having laws to outlaw spanking, maybe we should have laws that outlaw not-spanking children. Because ALL children deserve to be spanked at some point. I know if my mom didn't spank me I'd be a mess.

The attitude displayed by these people is the same type of attitude that is responsible for higher airline ticket prices. How? Because people who chose to live near airports complained about how noisy airplanes are, there are now regulations limiting the noise levels for aircraft. This constrains the engine such that it is less efficient as well as incurring additional design and maintenace costs, making ticket prices higher. I have a simple solution:

If you don't like the sound of airplanes, don't live near a frelling airport!

Problem solved. No one's forcing anybody to live near an airport. Move, and/or quit yer bitchin'. Same to the New Zealander pansies.

"Everything cool winds up looking like Darth Vader's helmet"

2004-06-11T13:08:00.000-04:00

The title is a quote from this post by new blogroll member Ace of Spades. The other new blogroll member, Bastard Sword, has a post
with a picture of a new Swedish stealth destroyer that illustrates his point.

Note in the second article that the Swedes say the key to stealth is angles and that they used a "secret angle." Unless I'm mistaken, we've been stuck with the same angles since Euclid formalized geometry over 2,000 years ago. Perhaps the Swedes have found a dreaded "imaginary" angle.

Also note that the Swedish destroyer "controlled by state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system." Two points, first Windows NT is not state-of-the-art. Second, WINDOWS? You're placing the defense of your country in the hands of a Microsoft product. Thank God I don't live in Sweden (for more reasons than just that, though).

The Paradox of Political Compromise

2004-06-10T14:10:00.000-04:00

I was reading this article on how Reagan won the Cold War and it got me thinking about how and why it is that only those who previously held views on one extreme can implement policies on the other extreme (another way of saying this is that a politician on one side of the political spectrum is better able to implement the policies of the other side). Reagan is a good example of this.

He came into office the consummate Cold Warrior, spending money on defense like a drunken sailor and spouting very hawkish rhetoric about the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union. But in his second term he negotiated myriad arms control agreements with the Soviets, even offering to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely. If someone like Carter or Mondale (who has the unique distinction of being the only politician to lose an election in all 50 states [losing 49 states to Reagan and recently losing a Senate race in his home state]) had tried to follow this policy of detente, he would have been eaten alive by conservatives. Because Reagan had already established his bona fides as a hawk, he was able to act like a dove.

This can be very irritating for those on the same side as the perpetrator, like when liberals got angry at Clinton for signing the welfare reform bill. So the paradox is that sometimes the only way to get something relatively extreme enacted is for the other side to do it. Sad but true.

Maybe Osama bin Laden Was Right, Maybe We Are A Nation of Pansies

2004-06-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

Sorry I've been away. I took a vacation, and I haven't really felt like posting since. I'm getting weary of it all and haven't thought I had much of an original contribution to make. So I'll talk about that and hopefully I'll bring myself around. Or not, let's see.

Osama bin Laden clearly misjudged the United States short-term response to the 9/11 attacks, thinking he could draw us into an extended guerrilla war in Afghanistan (a la Soviet Union). We kicked terrorist butt by matching their asymmetric attack with our own brand of asymmetry (Special Forces and JDAMs). But Osama may have been correct in thinking us to be a weak, impatient society ready to crumble.

In any war there will be times when victory seems an eternity away and the temptation to give up is great. We are in one of those times now in Iraq. While things are clearly getting better the security situation is still poor and the poor performance of the Iraqi police and security forces make it unlikely that it will change in the near future. Things seem pretty bad.

Once one steps back from the distressing media reports from major media outlets the negativity of the situation seems much more suspect. Many of the links on my blogroll to your right have letters from servicemen who have first-hand knowledge of the situation in Iraq and say that the media greatly exaggerates all negatives while ignoring positive developments. This is unfortunate in that it provides normal people with a distorted view of the true situation.

And yet, even with the media's excessively negative portrayal of Iraq there is no excuse for the lack of resolve displayed by many in the formerly pro-war category (the anti-war people have the excuse of being idiots [or at least woefully misinformed]). Support for the war has fallen significantly and now may be below the .500 level. Are we to give up this easily? Was Osama correct in calling us weak and impatient fools?

I hope not, but it is beginning to look that way. By any rational measure our post-9/11 course has been a resounding success. Al Qaeda has been weakened and splintered, its ability to pull-off massive coordinated attacks destroyed. Saddam Hussein ... rotting in jail. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan ... more free than ever. Attacks on U.S. soil ... ZERO. American military dead ... fewer than a thousand. And yet still we prevaricate and navel-gaze with the 9/11 hearings and the Abu Ghraib prisoner crap.

Hello people, we are winning! Merely because we aren't hearing an unending stream of only good news does not mean we face defeat. If the U.S. had given up after the first six months of WWII when the news was unendingly bad, where would we be? We must have the same level of resolve in facing our own battle. It's time for people to buckle up for the long haul. This will be a "long, hard slog" to quote Rumsfeld. It would be better if we could just snap our fingers and change terrorists to law-abiding citizens, but that's not the way the world works. It's time to pull yourself together and quit yer bitchin'.

Bush Leads to Communism?

2004-05-10T20:31:00.000-04:00

Was perusing this Slate article and was amazed by the appalling overstatement of his case. I will therefore give the article two Fisks and call him in the morning. Let us begin.

"While neoconservatives in the Bush administration remake American foreign policy, another cadre of ideologues—call them the neoconomists—is busy attempting to transform American society."

I hate to be the one to break it to ya pal but foreign policy has been remade, only the degree remains to be determined. If we are successful, Iraq may become the model for more forays into democracy production. The follow-on work should be easier as our enemies will have already given our defeat their best shot, but that's another story.

"The revolution in economic policy is not being televised. There was no big speech by President Bush to mark its birth, no "Axis of Evil" catchphrase designed to capture headlines. Yet it is every bit as dramatic and risky a change."

It seems to me that Bush's economic policy has been the cause of much consternation, with its large tax cuts and like-he-has-a-rich-uncle spending.

"The neoconomists have one goal: to increase the rate at which the economy grows by changing how the nation uses its resources. It is a worthy goal, too. Following such as path could lead to a period of untold prosperity, with living standards rising faster than ever before. Or it might not. But even if the plan works, it might just lead to the collapse of the capitalist system."

Sounds like a pretty good goal to me. But whoa, nelly. Don't you think that it leading "to the collapse of the capitalist system" is a little eensy weensy tiny little bit over-the-top? Especially since cutting taxes seems more conducive to capitalism. Let's see if you can back that kind of talk up.

Removed a couple of paragraphs describing Bush's advisor and their super-cool plan to maximize our economic long-term potential. Good times

"With George W. Bush's cooperation, the first steps have already been taken. So far, the president has signed bills eliminating the estate tax, lowering the tax rates on dividends and capital gains, and helping companies to reduce the tax they pay on their profits. In addition, by cutting rates for "ordinary" income, the Bush administration has lowered taxes on interest payments, rental income and income from mutual funds, and pensions and retirement accounts. (Though slated to be temporary, the Bush administration is campaigning to make its tax breaks permanent.) All of these changes make it relatively more attractive to accumulate wealth than to spend money."

Mmmmmm lower taxes. Doh! More money good.

"In addition, the White House is pushing for an initiative that would almost single-handedly accomplish Hubbard and Lindsey's goal: a huge expansion of tax-free savings accounts. And the growth of these tax-free savings accounts would dovetail well with the White House's plan for reforming Social Security, which calls for the creation of another type of tax-free investment account for every working American."

I seem to recall economists and pundits complaining about the lack of savings in the U.S. over the past ten years since I started following this kind of stuff. Shouldn't people be happy that we're encouraging savings?

"Hubbard and Lindsey's agenda is long-term, but it has already incurred some substantial costs. In the short term, their focus on savings has offered relatively little stimulus to the economy. Had the White House directed more incentives toward spending, the lag between recession and recovery might have been shorter."

OK, so it's possible that by changing the tax cuts the recession would have been shorter. So what? The economic policy should try to maximize growth and growth potential over the long-term. You can't win: target short-term growth and be accuse of ignoring economic long-term health for political gain and target long-term growth and people complain that they're not getting everything right now.

"In the long term, the cost of the Bush administration's policy has been forgone opportunities. The combination of the weak economy and the White House's decadelong schedule of tax cuts has left future administrations with little room to maneuver. Forecasts for budget balances from 2002 to 2011 have dropped from $5.6 trillion in surpluses to $2.9 trillion in deficits in the past three years. In the coming years, the federal government will have little money to invest in economic growth directly, by spending money on education, worker training, or basic research, which generate reliably high returns to society in the long run."

Perhaps the whole lack of flexibility is the point. Makes it more difficult for the Droopy-man to screw things up just in case the electorate has a temporary bout of insanity. And long-term economic forecasts based off short-term trends are ALWAYS wrong; meaning those numbers count for jack squat.

"This latter cost is particularly germane, since there is no assurance that the positive chain-reaction the neoconomists envision will actually occur. Hubbard and Lindsey's strategy has never been tried in a large, wealthy economy. One flaw in the theory is that American savings do not always stay in America for use by American companies. In the past two decades, the share of savings sent abroad appears to have risen from about 10 percent to at least 40 percent. And when the Treasury borrows to make up for large deficits, more American savings will end up in the hands of government and less in investments by businesses."

Beep beep, be-be-be-beep, beep. Newsflash: This just in "The future is uncertain!" Uh, thank you very much Captain Obvious. There is no guarantee of anything. The logic is sound and all the economic models predict more growth, what more do want? Someone to come back from the future and tell you everything will be OK?

"The speedy growth of the economy in the last three quarters—averaging more than 5 percent at an annual rate—could signal impressive things to come. And the experience of the Clinton administration proved that even the biggest deficits can disappear given a broad enough expansion in the economy. But even if the Bush administration succeeds, its policies could create two problems that could undo all their positive effects: rising inequality and a drastic change in incentives."

Right now everythings great, but... and there's always a but ... "rising inequality and a drastic change in incentives" will cause the end of the world. We'll talk about inequality later but the whole drastic change in incentives thing is the whole point. That's what's supposed to cause the frickin growth!

"Wealthier people derive more of their income from returns on saving—both in dollar terms and as a proportion of income—than poor people do. When taxes on the return from savings suddenly disappear, the wealthy benefit the most. It may be that people who depend on their jobs for income will benefit, too, in the long run, thanks to an expanding economy and rising wages. But for several years, in all likelihood, the income gap will continue to widen."

So what? (I seem to be saying that alot lately, maybe I need to change the name of my blog?) The income gap is a chimera. No one gives a crap unless their situation is declining, which it shouldn't.

"That income gap poses some real dangers to the economy and even to the earnings of the wealthy. With rising inequality, it's harder for poor people to obtain economic opportunities, because chances to get education and training, or to bring ideas to market, depend on money as well as talent, and because the number of these opportunities is limited."

Rising inequality only makes it harder for poor people if the inequality is resulting from them being worse-off. That shoudn't be the case; the rich will just be more better-off. It will be easier for rich people to donate to charities to help these people get more opportunities or to invest their money to bring more jobs to help these people. And let's remember that we're not stealing from poor people to give to the rich, we're letting the rich keep more of their money.

"The Bush administration has done little to alleviate either of these conditions. So, when income gaps widen, more of the potential of poor people—even the smartest and most innovative poor people—will inevitably be wasted. The wealthier people who own America's companies won't have as skilled a workforce, or as fast a flow of new ideas, as they might have had otherwise."

See above. Why is that some people think the government should solve every problem? There are many opportunities; the people who are "wasted" choose to be that way.

"Perhaps more important, abolishing taxes on saving would give people every incentive to receive all their income from financial assets rather than wages and salaries. For some, spending all day adjusting one's portfolio might make more sense than taking a job. Even people who work will seek ways to avoid taxes, for example by being paid solely in stock options or high-interest bonds."

The number of people who could afford to spend "all day adjusting one's portfolio" is not going to be a big loss; others will fill their shoes. And isn't it possible that these people would actually contribute to the economy by investing in more productive areas to maximize their return on investment? Isn't that the whole point?

"Of course, those people would probably be chief executives and other financial sophisticates, rather than home health workers, call-center operators, and short-order cooks. Eventually, the new incentives could lead to a whole new way of classifying people: working and upper-class would be replaced by taxpayer and free-rider. Titans of industry, heirs and heiresses, and wizards of Wall Street wouldn't pay for national defense, cancer research, or President Bush's trip to Mars. All those costs would be borne by America's breadwinners."

Yawn. Let's take a trend and extrapolate to some point way in the distance and point how horrible it will be. For example, if we continue on our present path we will have invaded every country in the world by the year 2500, and then everyone will be extra-special mad at us. Just as worthless.

"It sounds like a recipe for the kind of social unrest that can make an economy stagger, stagnate, or worse. A political backlash would seem almost inevitable. And something worse—like a riotous manifestation of anticapitalist sentiment—would become a real possibility for the first time in decades. And that's what could happen if the theory works."

And now he reveals his true colors: RED. Looks like contrary to the last 150 years of history Karl Marx was right and capitalism will implode. Don't hold your breath. That's about as over-the-top as it gets. Let's follow his logic:

1. Bush tax cut (Yay!)
2. People save more
3. Rich stop working (if you don't count finding productive places to invest work)
4. Poor people see rich, lazy bastards (and don't make the connection that these rich, lazy bastards are the ones providing them with jobs)
5. Poor people get mad
6. Proletariat revolution (viva la Marx!)

Here's another timeline:

1. Bush tax cut (Yay!)
2. People save more
3. Everyone gets richer
4. We all live happily ever after

OK not counting that last point, which do you think is more likely?

Reality Check

2004-05-10T14:33:00.000-04:00

I am sick and tired of hearing about this torture crap. If permanent physical harm was done then they should be punished, otherwise shut the hell up already. What planet do these people think we are on? Let's stop bitching and be realistic here. Let me say it again: Psychological manipulation in pursuit of information (i.e. interrogation) is OK. Do not lump this in with real physical torture. Stripping prisoners naked and standing them in pyramids is NOT A BIG DEAL. Does it look bad? Yes, but so frelling what? Are we adults or are we boy scouts here? Give me a break.

It may be time to initiate some turnabout is fair play action. I'm sure our intelligence agencies have amassed a stockpile of pictures, videos, and testimony of torture and abuse done by governments throughout the world. We should flood the media with pictures from every nation that is condemning us and ask them when the trial date for those torturers will be. I know that would not help people realize the difference between us and them but it would at least be a good start. And maybe, just maybe, it would deflect the useless criticism being tossed like so much dren by the "media."

A Study in Contrasts

2004-05-10T11:45:00.000-04:00

Read this Time article and this Wired article, about jet contrails causing warming.

If you just read the Time article you would have only heard one side of the story and you might have believed this crap:

"The only way to prove the point is to keep the jets on the tarmac and see what happens. That's exactly what occurred in 2001, between Sept. 11 and 14, when U.S. air travel was shut down following the terrorist attacks. During that period, the swing between daytime highs and nighttime lows sometimes measured more than twice as much as usual, perhaps owing to a reduction in cirrus clouds that allowed collected solar heat to radiate away."

Anyone who has any kind of science background would laugh at this excerpt. You cannot possibly make a valid conclusion about climate change by examining three days. This example exemplifies the worst kind of science reporting. The Wired article, on the other hand, is actually balanced. It includes the dissenting voice of a professor of atmospheric sciences who says:

"'So many processes affect the temperature of the Earth that contrails could easily be acting to cool the Earth, and yet the overall temperature trend could be increasing,' Detwiler said."

The Tree is on Fire

2004-05-10T11:21:00.000-04:00

Being busy I wasn't able to comment on this den Beste article. He receives a lot of critical e-mails over minute details of his post that don't affect his main point. This annoys the crap out of him; I think he misunderstands the meaning of their criticism (or at least some of it).

Some of us (i.e. me) have no difficulty distinguishing the forest from the trees, but become distracted when we see errors. I had one teacher in undergrad, for example, who had atrocius grammar and spelling. It was irritating to get handouts with obvious errors, and made it difficult for me to concentrate on the material. Den Beste is obviously nowhere near this bad, and blog posts should be held to a lower standard than most writing. But to some of us, when we see what we perceive as an error it jumps out of the page and slaps us in the face. It's sort of like looking at a forest and seeing one of the trees on fire. You want to put it out before it burns down the whole forest.

Well, I think that metaphor has been beaten to death now. But to some subset of people, when they see errors they almost cannot help but try to correct them. This does not mean that they don't understand the point; it's almost like an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder type thing. But I can only speak for myself and I've only sent Mr. den Beste one e-mail (and made one blog post). While some people may feel this way, it's a good bet that at least as many people are just jackasses trying to show him up and boost their egos.

I'm back... with comments

2004-05-10T11:09:00.000-04:00

As some you may already know, Blogger had a big update in my absence and have added comments. So now everyone out there can whine and moan about what a terrible person I am for condoning torture. Yippee.

I should also be updating more frequently now. I finished some big projects recently and actually have some free time. I didn't post over the weekend because I wanted to be lazy, but it's time to crack the whip again.

So what?

2004-05-03T20:01:00.000-04:00

It's been big in the news so I'm going to give my take on the Iraqi prisoner abuse story. I would have done it sooner but I'm still much busy.

I guess my response is:

So what?

To quote Spaceballs: "Welcome to real life." [It's my industrial-strength hair-dryer. And I can't live without it!]

Some of what the soldiers did is unacceptable; the physical abuse should be punished. But some of the stuff sounds just fine to me. Few quotes from this article:

"Frederick, the most senior of the six soldiers charged, wrote of inmates being shot with non-lethal bullets, forced to sleep in 3-by-3-foot closets, handcuffed for long periods to the doors of their cells and made to go naked or wear women's underpants."

I would say that all of this is A-OK except maybe for the shooting. And this:

"Prisoners were interrogated using physical coercion, Frederick wrote. One prisoner with a broken arm was choked, he wrote, and dogs were used as tools of intimidation. Prisoners were made to remain for as long as three days in damp isolation cells without a toilet or running water"

Choking bad, rest fine by me.

Why? It works.

"We have had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break," the soldier, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, wrote in a Dec. 18 e-mail released by Frederick's uncle. "They usually end up breaking within hours."

I think that it's bullshit to treat prisoners with kid gloves. These are the bad guys for crying out loud. What else are we going to do? Put them in a country club? What a load of crap. There should be a price to trying to kill our people. We're merciful for not killing them outright.

These are what the interrogation rules should be:
1. No permanent physical harm.
2. See above.

So it's not ok to kill anybody or permanently harm them but everything else is fair game. You almost never hear people bitching about how almost the entire rest of the world does this stuff to their own people.

I think the worst part of the deal is not what happened, but that pictures were taken. The soldiers should be punished for that alone; no sense giving them a recruiting tool. It's a propaganda coup for the other side, and now people on our side (allegedly) will be whining about it for months. Blaa blaa blaa. So what.

Update:

I believe that most people in the U.S. share my view. This story is non-starter. Except for self-righteous condemnation by people who are already anti-war, which will be eaten up by people who are already anti-war and ignored by most of us. The only real effect will be to give the enemy some especially effective propaganda.

But deliver us from Friedman

2004-05-02T03:14:00.000-04:00

I'm back from my trip. But still working. No sleep for me. Sorry to force my late night ramblings onto you but I was reading this Friedman article in the NYT and came across this gem:

"Dear Heavenly Father, please keep the leader of China, President Hu Jintao, healthy and on an even keel. Please see to it that he moves steadily and carefully toward restructuring the Chinese banking system and ridding it of its huge overhang of bad loans and corruption, before there is a real meltdown that would be felt around the world. Give him the wisdom to cool the overheated Chinese economy without creating a recession that would prompt China to stop importing like crazy and start just exporting like crazy. And Father, forgive us for all the bad words we used in recent years to describe China's leaders — terms like `Butchers of Beijing.' We did not mean it. We meant to say `Bankers of Beijing,' because their economy is now fueling growth all over Asia, bolstering Japan and sucking up imports from everywhere. May China's leaders live to 120, and may they enjoy 9 percent G.D.P. growth every year of their lives. Thank you, Father. Amen."

Which brings up the obvious question: What is Tom Friedman smoking, and where can I get some? Cuz it must be pretty powerful stuff for him to come up with this crap. Here's a little secret: It is not in our best interest for China to become an economic powerhouse. This should be monstrously manifest. China is NOT our friend; if they become economically powerful they will gain the means to become militarily powerful and THIS WOULD BE A BAD THING. In caveman-speak: China strong bad; China weak good. On the other hand if China were to become powerful we would be back in Cold War mode, with a well-defined, autocratic, nuclear-armed, commie enemy.

Even if a Chinese economic melt-down negatively affected the U.S. economy if it affected the Chinese worser it would still be preferable to the alternative (i.e. super-fast Chinese growth). This sounds harsh. And it is. Welcome to the real world. Some things in life really are zero-sum.

Nota Bene: All misspellings and poor grammar are intentional, even if I am much sleepy.

Nukes are Cool

2004-04-28T16:10:00.000-04:00

Much busy... won't be posting until next week. Go read this from Bastard Sword about Chernobyl. Here's a teaser:

Death from radiation, aside of those who fought to contain the reactor -- about 3.
Number of amphibious zombie children – 0.
Death from hype, paranoia, and fear-mongering -- 200,000.

Kill 'em All

2004-04-27T17:20:00.000-04:00

Came across this article today. Two comments:

1. Tomorrow is Saddam's birthday. So be sure to think of him while you're sittin' on the toilet tomorrow.

2. This paragraph:

"U.S. commanders have said they will not move against the shrines in order to capture al-Sadr, whose armed supporters have launched attacks against the U.S.-led forces. Under the Geneva Conventions (search), firing upon mosques or other holy sites is prohibited unless the structures are being used in battle."

Grrrrrrrrr. Part of me is frustrated that we are returning to the Vietnam-era policy of telling our enemies where we will and will not kill them (unbelievably dumb). And part of me thinks this is necessary to keep from pissing off more people.

Right now the first part is winning the argument. Osama himself said that Arabs look to see who is the strong horse for who they follow. He thought he was in that position. By acting like such pansies and letting our enemies take advantage of us like this, we look like a pretty weak horse. I think we should mount up, grab a lance and go medieval on them.

(As a snide side note, I noticed the author uses the phrase "in order" which adds nothing and shouldn't be there. Tsk. Tsk.)

Note:
The title is referring only those who oppose us, of course, so don't get your knickers in a twist.

Update: Also see this related One Hand Clapping post.

You know you're crazy when

2004-04-27T16:52:00.000-04:00

...you tell yourself, out loud, to stop talking to yourself.

...you talk to your computer, again out loud, and expect it to do something. (I feel bad for the guy who I share a cubicle with)

...you growl (audibly) at inanimate objects (including your computer of course).

Classic Joke

2004-04-26T18:30:00.000-04:00

I'm bored so I'm going to pass along a dorky math joke proving that girls are evil.

Step one is that girls require time and money or...

Girls = Time * Money

But, as the saying goes, time is equal to money so substituting...

Girls = Money * Money = Money^2

The Bible says that money is the root of all evil so...

sqrt(Money^2) = Evil

therefore

Girls = Evil

I have more bad math jokes, but without equation editor I don't think I can get them on this blog. Oh well.

International Law

2004-04-25T17:41:00.000-04:00

International Law has no meaning without international law enforcement. This is a hard reality that too many people refuse to face, but there is no law with no law enforcement.

If A enters into a contract with B, promising to trade ten thousand bucks in exchange for a car, and B accepts his ten thousand but does not hand over the car, B can go to the authorities who will, by force if necessary, fulfill their contract. If there is no authority to go to B's only recourse is to enforce the contract by whatever means are available to him (or just cut his losses).

In the international system there is no authority to enforce contracts (international law) between nations (and the UN definitely does NOT count) and therefore they are in the same boat as B in the example above. The quote from this post is particularly relevant:

"for you know as well as we that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

It matters not who is correct in the legal sense unless the two parties are equal (that is why the phrase "all people are equal before the law" is so important). So whenever someone invokes international law they are spouting out their ass not their mouth, because international law is meaningless without enforcement.

[I thought of a better excuse for creating a post out of that quote.. Yippee]

Military Reorganization

2004-04-24T23:20:00.000-04:00

With a name like "Antidisestablishmentarianismesque" I feel some obligation to be negative (anti-,dis-). But as I mentioned here I also want to include some positive articles where I lay out what I think we should be doing. So in this article I'm going to make some suggestions on how the U.S. can alter its military policies to adapt to the ongoing struggle against Islamo-thugs.

First it is important to recognize some of the realities. The war in Iraq is expensive, in both men and material (I'm using men in the human sense, and I'm not talking about large numbers of death but that many are tied down there). It is causing an immense strain to keep ~130,000 people stationed in Iraq out of a total force of over a million. That should not be; it clearly implies that the basic organization of our forces is out of balance. What can be done?

In the short-term it would be advisable for Bush to make this reality clear to all Americans. We are in a state of war and it will require some sacrifices. As a temporary measure and one of these sacrifices I believe that we should mobilize or adequately equip to mobilize a large portion of our Reserve and National Guard forces. This would send a signal that we are in a serious war that we intend on winning. As a corollary to this the defense budget should be vastly increased to replenish our stocks of equipment and ammunition and ensure there is sufficient funds to allow the high-level of training that is our military's greatest strength.

In a more medium or long-term sense, it appears likely that we will be engaged in this type of low-level, manpower-intensive conflict on a fairly regular basis. We should re-structure our forces to be better prepared for this type of conflict. We should keep a smaller, mechanized force capable of the type of maneuver warfare practiced in Iraq, capable of defeating any possible threat from a threat countries armed forces. But we should also have a large cadre of light infantry troops trained for guerrilla warfare, peacekeeping, reconstruction, counter-insurgency type operations. This would allow us to handle future threats with whichever force is most suited to that threat. Currently we compromise our ability to handle these types of conflicts by primarily training to fight other armies. By maintaining two parallel force structures we could handle either type of conflict equally well. That is my theory anyway. I do not expect it to come about but that is what I think we should do about that.

A Big Bite of Stupid

2004-04-24T20:39:00.000-04:00

I'm bored with writing a report on multi-discplinary optimization strategies so I'm going to go all snarky on Oliver Willis, who prominently claims that his blog is "Like Kryptonite to Stupid." That kind of arrogance is just begging for a response. I found the following all on his front page (as of today).

First Monsieur Willis discusses the calls for John Kerry to be more forthcoming on his war records (after explicitly saying that he would open his records up [which Willis conveniently fails to mention]).

The man got injured saving the lives of his fellow soldiers, fighting for his country -- and for that they have the nerve to question his patriotism? No shame.

I, for one, do not understand how asking for some records (which is being done by journalists and not just Republicans) constitutes questioning his patriotism. That charge sounds, well, STUPID. Though I would like it to be noted that it is hard to say that Kerry's Vietnam service qualifies him as a patriot, considering the vitriolic hooey that he spewed upon his return (and those are just examples from the National Review).

Next there's this response to a Denbeste article (link in his post).

Steven Den Beste has an email exchange with a French journalist in which he makes it pretty clear he'd like every journalistic enterprise to act as a stenographer for the Bushes rather than reporting... the news. Thanks, Fox, for lowering the standards!

That would be untrue. It is one thing to talk to vicious, nasty people; it is a very different thing to stand idly by while they do vicious, nasty things to people who you are supposedly allied to. Failing to recognize this clear, simple distinction qualifies as STUPID in my book.

Lastly is this little gem about Bush's comments last night or the night before.

I would like Bush to show a little humility, admit that the government wasn't 100% on point before 9/11 but there wasn't a whole lot he could do to prevent it (something I believe to a point). But I could do a little less with the "America Is Now Open For Terrorism" signs.

"Our intelligence is good -- it's just never perfect, is the problem," Bush said. "We are disrupting some cells here in America. We're chasing people down. But it is . . . a big country."

Bush added: "Have a good night's sleep, now I'm off to my lead-lined bunker!"

Bush is being realistic. It would be STUPID to say that there is no chance of another terrorist attack on our soil. He is trying to make the point that the government is doing what it can but that perfection is not achievable. And, I hate to say it, but true perfection is NEVER achievable in anything, and certainly not anything the government is involved in. This should be obvious, but apparently not for someone who is STUPID.

The Nature of Criticism

2004-04-24T13:16:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking that perhaps in my Fiskings I have been too strident and over-the-top. It's more fun the more extreme I take it, but it may not be particularly effective. It's too easy to criticize. As I was commenting to a classmate of mine the other day, I could find something to criticize in ANYTHING (including, no especially, my own work). Focusing purely on negative (i.e. critical) commentary is too easy; it amounts to more of a self-congratulatory intellectual masturbation than any sort of critical thinking. But it is alot of fun, so I'll continue to do it. I will try to accompany my criticism, however, with what I think should be done. Anyone can come up with reasons why something is a bad idea; it's much more difficult to generate a real alternative. This seems to be the problem with John Kerry's campaign; he's running on the not-Bush platform, with no real ideas of his own. And it's clearly not working.

Higher Education

2004-04-23T17:12:00.000-04:00

There is an excellent article at Techcentral Station today entitled "The Professoriate and the Truth."

Here's a few choice excerpts with comments:

Most relativists, however, are not consistent. Their actions are at odds with what they claim to believe because no sane person could seriously hold the pernicious and absurd beliefs to which relativists are committed. This is shown every time relativists consult a physician, not a faith healer; call a plumber to unclog a sink, not a magician; want rapists prosecuted, not held up as role-models; and send their children to school, not to a shopping mall.

True enough, these type of absurdist beliefs seem to abound. I find it irritating.

In discussing students, Kekes says:

Doing well is severed from intelligence and hard work. Students see this, it makes them cynical, saps their motivation, and, since learning is often hard, it makes them flock to what are known as "gut courses," that is, courses in which they can count on getting high grades without much effort.

I can certainly relate to this. Even in a field as demanding as Aerospace engineering (which I chose at least in part because it IS difficult) there are certain teachers and classes that are quite easy and a waste of time.

Professors tend to be intelligent and analytical, consequently it is most unlikely that the deplorable state of higher education I have been describing would be news to them.

I think that Kekes is underestimating the power of self-delusion. These people have convinced themselves of something that is manifestly wrong; the only way to do that is to lie to yourself. The problem with that is before long you can't tell the difference between lies and truth (which does make them good little relativists). I think that many don't think that higher education is in a "deplorable state." This type of relativistic self-delusion is a big part of the problem. I have no idea how to burst this kind of idiot bubble, because it's obvious the truth isn't enough.

Rock on

2004-04-22T21:39:00.000-04:00

The Creator of the Universe links to this picture from the Droopareeno's web site (yes, it is real, and not an [intentional] parody). Just thought I'd pass that along.

Blaa blaa blaa

2004-04-22T20:52:00.000-04:00

I've decided to post an e-mail address for people to contact me, see below and in the sidebar. Partly because I'm too lazy to figure out how to get comments added to my blog and partly because I've signed up for a new (and very cool) Google G-mail account and now that I have four (yes, four) e-mail accounts I figure I need some reason to check my hotmail account. This gives me a little motivation to check that account more often. That's all, hopefully I'll have something more substantial to say later.

E-mail Me (if you must)

2004-04-22T20:21:00.000-04:00

<----We interrupt this blogging to bring you this public service announcement.---->

It's kind of cheap for me to be taking pot shots left and right without leaving a way for people to shoot back. So if someone really feels the need to talk back send mail to ccj96 -at- hotmail.com. I've got it set-up so everything starts out in the junk mail folder so please put "YOU'RE MY HERO" (in all caps, too) in the subject line so I know not to just delete it.

<----We now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Thank you.---->

It's not convincing, if it's written like poo

2004-04-22T18:08:00.000-04:00

WARNING: SUPER-LONG POST AHEAD

Sweet. Another idiot makes historically uninformed analogies and ridiculously unsupported arguments about Iraq, in an article entitled "It's Not Nam, But It'll Do." Time to pull out the Fisk stick and beat him in the head with it. Here goes...

I tried making a little fridge list of Iraq options. I came up with one: "nukes?" The nukes aren't much use now, with no Russia to do High Noon with. So dust off a Fallujah-sized neutron bomb, and let it do its thing.

This list of options seems somehow... incomplete. Perhaps the "War Nerd" (scare quotes deliberate) is suffering from a lack of imagination? Oh, and Russia still exists (last time I checked), it's ye olde Soviet Union that is in the dust bin of history... and the Russkies still have nukes, as well as the Chinese, so if we really felt like getting into a nuclear conflagration there are plenty of other possibilities. And if this guy thinks Vietnam was bad, just imagine how pissed the world would be if we nuked Iraq (much better to just Nuke the Moon:)). Before the situation got so bad we needed to pull out nukes we could just pull some of Saddam's methods out because we all know how much the Iraqis loved that.

It'd make more sense that what we're doing now, fighting the enemy's war. It's real simple: when we're fighting a combined-arms, mobile, armored war, we're fighting our war. When we're hunkered down in somebody's backyard trading potshots over the adobe fence, we're fighting their war all the way. At that point it's just rifleman vs. rifleman, and the enemy has the advantage, because he knows the neighborhood.

Wait just a dental-flossing minute here. Who is fighting who's war? If we were fighting the enemy's war we'd still be issuing warrants for terrorists arrest and the Taliban and Saddam would still be in power. We have seized the strategic initiative from the bastards. It is important to not lose that initiative in Iraq, but we ain't lost it yet. We have proved capable of fighting almost any type of war. Obviously we can kick some serious ass in combined arms force-on-force type war, but we haven't exactly been getting our asses handed back to us in Iraq. Take this quote from a recent Belmont Club post,

...the Americans are demonstrating two new countervailing capacities of their own. They have shown that US forces can take any urban area at casualty rates less than 1 to 50. Second, they have begun to wage joint political warfare in cooperation with the Iraqi governing council.

Fifty casualties to one doesn't exactly sound like the "enemy's war." It sounds like an old fashioned ass whoopin'. Our superior training gives us the advantage in any type of battle. The army is not composed of a bunch of Russian conscripts; we give much more than we take.

I just saw video of the Marines in Fallujah sniping by nightscope. They fire over the wall, some Ahmed fires back, it goes on all night and you've got just as good a chance of killing Ahmed's donkey or his two-year-old daughter as getting him.

See above, nothing new here. Our Marines are going to be a much better shot than your average Muhammed. Much more likely that Ahmed will accidently shoot his own two-year-old daughter and then show her to Al Jazeera and claim it was us.

There's another way. You do it the way we were starting to do in Nam, when Colby came up with the Phoenix program. You find out who's shooting at you, and then you send somebody quiet to kill him and anybody who works with him.

Do you honestly think that the military is telling the media the whole story on how we're fighting? If you're that gullible then I've got this website with traffic through-the-roof that I'd be happy to sell you. I can guarantee you that more is happening than you see on the news. I thought nerds were smart.

But to do that you have to have this little thing called intelligence, and we ain't got none, because if we did we'd have to admit the Iraqis are the enemy, and these crazymen, Bush and Wolfowitz, won't admit that. So all we can do when they get unfriendly is fire blind into those mud huts.

You frelling idiot. Have you ever studied Vietnam? Categorizing everyone as the enemy is the surest possible way to turn everybody into an enemy. That would be the dumbest thing possible (other than that nuke suggestion [War Nerd seems to be making a very different list of things to do about Iraq]).

I heard a Marine officer complaining that the insurgents in Fallujah use the locals for human shields. Don't they teach you anything about guerrilla war in the service? The whole idea of guerrilla warfare is to hide in the civilian population. You snipe from the mosque or the kindergarten till finally the occupiers get mad enough to start firing blind at the mosque, the kindergarten, whatever. The people blame the occupiers, not the guerrilla. You're doing the guerrillas' recruiting for them.

Of course the Marines are going to complain about the use of human shields; it's cowardly, and illegal according to the Geneva Convention. What should he do, give the terrorist a medal? With 50:1 exchange ratios it sounds like we're thinning their ranks, not filling them. It'd take a hell of a lot of recruits to replace those kind of losses.

It's a little weird, if you ask me, how nobody in charge seems to know all that. After all, we just went through a whole century of guerrilla warfare. Take a world map, point at random and you'll find a country that probably had a guerrilla war in the past 100 years.

But we're acting like it's a shock, like the Iraqis are breaking the rules. That's like calling a personal foul in a bar brawl.

I'd just like to re-reiterate my point about the 50:1 casualty ratio, because it sure seems to me that we've learned how to handle guerrila war's militarily. Another quote from the Belmont Club article linked above...

Lost in the frenetic headlines of the last week was an unnoticed military revolution. Never in history have 1,200 men stormed a city of 230,000 in urban combat without extensively using heavy weapons before the US Marines did in Fallujah. This is nothing short of amazing because the 90% of the combat power of an infantry unit is embodied in their heavy weapons. And they were stopped only by a truce, not by enemy resistance.

The only thing that is shocking is how thoroughly outclassed the Islamo-thugs are. 'Nuff said.

Well, don't ask me, I just work here. If you want to know the truth, what's pissing me off most is I think the mess in Iraq is getting to me. I had to go to the doctor last week because my back's gone out again, and I was expecting just the usual lecture about losing weight, exercise, buying a bike and wheeling around in green lycra like some Italian or something. You know, painful but short.

Instead he puts the cuff on my arm and inflates it, then grunts and does it again, grunts again, does it for the third time and waves me over to sit down. In other words, we're going to have a serious talk. Turns out it's my blood pressure, and some other blood thing called "purines"--sounds like a dog chow to me, but apparently it's a blood count, and mine is through the roof.

Sounds like someone has serious psychological issues if they're letting events thousands of miles away that only indirectly affect them cause them physical suffering. Perhaps it's time to seek the help of a professional. My sister has a degree in social welfare and some counseling experience, maybe she could help.

I told the guy maybe we could try again after Iraq settles down. He looked at me like I was crazy.

Maybe that's because you ARE crazy.

So then there was another ten minutes of serious lectures about how I need to take care of myself and so on. I was thinking, all I need is for us to get out of this Iraq mess, but I decided it was better not to try explaining that to him again. I took the brochures and the prescriptions and got out.

See above Mr. Crazy Man, I mean War Nerd.

Now I'm on three medications, one for blood pressure, one for these purines, and one for my back disc. Like an old man. I just turned 38 and I've got little brown bottles all over the sink like my grandma did.

Judging from the picture at the top of your post maybe you should exercise. It might help reduce some of the anger issues you seem to have.

The other thing that's driving me nuts about the war is this stupid question, "Is Iraq actually Vietnam?" Answer: no, Vietnam is this place about 5,000 miles east of Fallujah.

Every time I hear that I want to ask them why? Isn't Iraq bad enough for you?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Same old, same old. Iraq ain't even close to Vietnam.

It's dumb, the Iraq = Nam talk. No war ever repeats exactly, because the technology is changing so fast. And if you had to pick two countries in the world that have nothing in common, it'd be Iraq and Vietnam. The Vietnamese were the most dedicated, disciplined army since Prussia disappeared. If you want to know how dedicated the VC were, read this book, The Tunnels of Cu Chi, about the VC who lived in this huge tunnel network around Saigon. (Back when it was Saigon.) Men and women spent months down there with the spiders and scorpions, no fresh air for weeks, shitting into a bag. They had hospitals down there where they amputated hands with no anaesthetic. This VC doctor said, "Half would die of shock, but half would live."

To paraphrase Colonel John Boyd: the three most important things for a military are the people, ideas and hardware (technology) in that order. Technology is A difference between Vietnam and Iraq; but the biggest change (for our military) is our people and our strategy (ideas). The highly-trained all volunteer force is definitely better than the Vietnam-era conscipt army and we have learned much about how to fight so-called asymmetric warfare like we're doing in Iraq.

To quibble, Prussia never really disappeared. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Germany was formed under Prussian leadership. The vaunted Prussian General Staff was inherited by Germany as well. This was why World War I and II both almost ended in German/Prussian victories. When they put their mind to it, the Krauts know how to fight.

Iraqis aren't like that. They're noisy where the VC were quiet. They're flighty where the VC were coldblooded. They mob up and get each other excited, where the VC could just coldbloodedly do it.

If the Iraqis (errr, not really, many of the people we're fighting are foreign to Iraq) are such pansies you'd think killing a few thousand of them would end it. Sadly this is not the case. Our enemies are not the herd of chickens War Nerd seems to be describing.

But the thing is, Vietnam isn't the only way you can lose a war. Look at what happened to the Israelis in Lebanon. Iraq is a hell of a lot more like Lebanon than Nam.

22 years ago the man in charge of Israel was Menachem Begin, a real weirdo. He and Ariel Sharon were sick of taking mortar rounds from PLO in south Lebanaon. They decided they'd invade Lebanon, push the PLO into the sea.

It went fine, as long as the Israelis were heading north, attacking via combined arms. Their airforce destroyed the opposition. The Syrians lost 82 planes; Israel lost...zero. The IDF zoomed all the way to Beirut in record time, bombarded the PLO district and pushed Arafat into exile in Africa. They lost only about 400 men, but killed thousands of PLO. They kicked ass.

Then came phase two, the occupation. And that was the biggest military disaster Israel ever had. Sound familiar?

Let me get this straight. We're killing our enemies 50:1 and it's like "the biggest military disaster Israel ever had"? That sounds like a compliment... to the Israelis. Moving on from this hyperbole...

The big difference between Iraq and Lebanon is that we're not trying to set-up a minority group as our proxies in Iraq like the Israelis did with the Arab Christians in Lebanon. That's old school empire-building, not a game we play anymore. We're trying to turn Iraq into a real country, not a smoking hole in the ground.

What happened to them is exactly what's happening to us: they woke up the Shiites, who turned out to be way, way scarier than the PLO. In Lebanon, just like in Iraq, the Shiites were the lowest of the low, basically terrorized into keeping quiet and doing all the crummy jobs the Sunni didn't want. And just like in Iraq, the Lebanese Shiites lived either in urban slums or in villages in the South.When the invasion came, the Shiites went from welcoming the invaders to warning them to leave, then to open warfare. Exactly the same script, 20 years apart, Lebanon and Iraq. Once the Shiites started to fight, they showed why it's better not to mess with them.

Sure, whatever you say Chicken Little. The big, bad Shiites (how was that Saddam ever ruled if the Shiites are so terrorfying?) are ticked off because we shut down some criminal crackpot's newspaper (Sadr). He has little support and it isn't growing. Not as big a problem as your making it out to be dumbass.

Shiites are big on martyrdom, and guerrilla wars make a lot of martyrs. Just last week, two Shiites purposely jumped in front of American tanks and got turned into catfood under the tracks. A lot of this Arab bragging about loving death and craving martyrdom is bullshit, but some of it isn't, especially when it's Shiites saying it. After all, their hero is a guy who charged at the Caliph's whole army with 30 men.

I hate to sound like a broken record but 50:1 makes for "a lot of martyrs." The enemies stupidity is NOT a reason to think we're losing.

It was the Shiites in Lebanon who taught the Palestinians to fight. It was Shiite kids, even some girls, who started driving cars full of explosive at Israeli patrols in Lebanon. Pretty soon there were Shiite militias like Hizbollah attacking harder than those softies in the PLO ever had. Israelis and their local proxies, the South Lebanon Army, were getting picked off at a slow steady rate until the Israelis finally gave up and went home a couple of years ago.

The bad guys in Iraq have nowhere near this kind of broad-based support or we'd be taking a lot more casualties. Wake-up. As the article continues you seem to be descending further and further into madness. I may have to end this soon so I don't join your sorry ass.

Wow, the rest of the article good old War Nerd continues with his condescending attitude towards Arabs. Calling the Sunnis "hotheads" and saying " [the Shiites are] always getting worked up about something horrible that happened to their ancestors 500 years ago." He also includes this supposed British quote: "The Arab is either at your feet or at your throat." So apparently Arabs are like a combination of children and animal, but it doesn't sound like he considers them human. That's helpful.

I could continue but I have other stuff to blog about and War Nerd has more than proven his own idiocy. Time to move on, and put this Fisk out of its misery.

How to fix Social Security

2004-04-22T17:14:00.000-04:00

This website [hat tip: kausfiles] has a cool on-line game that helps you figure out potential ways to make Social Security solvent. Turns out it's not that hard. It can be done pretty easily by reducing benefits to or increasing revenues from people who are relatively rich. Seems to me that would be a more or less politically painless way to do it. Why all the hand-wringing and portents of doom about Social Security if it's this easy to fix? I think some people feel the need to play modern-day Cassandra's. Just think about all the predictions of doom coming from environmentalists; if they were even 10% right the Earth would have died long ago, yet it stubbornly refuses to do so. I think some people have some psychological malady that compels them to predict doom (think crazy homeless person preaching about Armageddon, without the smell [errr, maybe WITH the smell when it comes to hippy environmentalists {I seem to be really good at interrupting myself, I'm almost out of bracket types (oops, I did run out of brackets and had to switch back to parenthesis [ha, ha, prepare to be inundated, I'm stuck at work writing reports; time to flood the zone])}]). <-- Now THAT'S the way to end a sentence.

Frayed Ends of Sanity

2004-04-20T19:24:00.000-04:00

You'll note that I've written quite a few posts the last few days. I've been staying pretty late at work and I take "breaks" by searching the 'Net; when something piques my interest, I writes me a little post. And today this article piqued me off. I'm concerned with the authors overall point but he gets so much wrong in the middle that I am forced to unleash the Fisk 'o Fury on him. Here is paragraph numero uno:

In the twelve-course meal that is the war in Iraq, America has just been served the first entree. The fight with IraqÂs state armed forces was merely the amuse-bouche. The subsequent guerilla war with the Baath, as distasteful as we found it, was still just the appetizer. Over the past two weeks, we have been presented with the first of the main courses, Fourth Generation war waged for religion. If, as is traditional, this is the fish course, our reaction suggests it is flounder.

Huh? Easy on the French, buddy. Part of writing is making a point; this first paragraph has one, but it's deeply buried. Clearly we swept the Iraqi army like so many fleas, but this Baath "guerilla war" thing has been on a pretty low-level, so the "appetizer" analogy isn't so bad. The "past two weeks" is referring to the recent Shiite thuggery commited at the behest of Al-Sadr. I believe when Lind refers to the course as "flounder" he is referring to us; it would be far more appropriate to apply it to Sadr's goons. They captured many government buildings, but were quickly thrown out; Sadr himself found a mosque to hole himself up in, but then got scared that the mosque wasn't enough to protect him and has moved; he's currently negotiating his own surrender so that he can face the murder charge awaiting him as a result of his ordering a cleric's murder. Go see here and here and here and here and here. The Belmont Club did an excellent job covering this. This is a lot to read so to summarize: Sadr is really an Iranian proxy trying (unsuccessfully) to destabilize the situation because Iran is fearful of having a free Iraq as a neighbor.

Frankly, I was surprised how quickly this dish arrived. It seems MohammedÂs kitchen is working rather more speedily than usual. While a broadening and intensifying of the anti-American resistance was inevitable, I did not think it would reach its present intensity until this summer. The fact that is has erupted so early has political as well as military implications. The full scope of our disaster in Syracuse err er, sorry, Iraq Â may be evident before the party conventions, as well as prior to the fall election. Might Bush do an LBJ and choose not to run? Will a Kerry who voted for the war be a credible nominee? Military disaster can displace all sorts of certainties.

It's obvious that most Iraqis would prefer that we weren't there, but they also recognize the need for us to create a secure situation before we depart. It was and is far from "inevitable" that the "resistance" would broaden. Sadr's rebellion was a flash in the pan; a last gasp power grab by a weak leader and his gullible band. Then Mr. Lind makes a horrible analogy, by name-dropping Syracuse, he is implying that we are like the Athenians, in overstretching ourselves and biting off more than we can chew, resulting in our ultimate demise. Bullshit. We're not trying to conquer Iraq, for starters. And it's difficult to argue that Iraq is truly stretching our nations resources; on a short-term basis our existing military forces are stretched but if the political will existed we could pay for a much larger military. Moving on, Lind speculates that Bush might not seek his party's nomination a la LBJ. Again, bullshit. The security situation is helping Bush by demonstrating that national security is still a big issue (and people recognize Kerry is weak on this issue).

It is not yet a disaster, some may say. On the tactical level, that is true, although it may not be true much longer. But on the strategic level it is not just one disaster, it is four:

It is still a potential disaster at worst, even on the strategic level. And the only sure way it will be a disaster is to turn tail and run as Lind is implicitly suggesting.

The pretense that we came to ÂliberateÂ the Iraqi people and not as conquerors is no longer credible. Faced with a popular uprising, we effectively declared war on the people of Iraq. The overall American commander, General Abizaid, Âgave a stark warning for the Iraqi fighters, from the minority Sunni as well as the majority Shiite populations,Â according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. ÂÂFirst, we are going to win,Â Abizaid said, seated at a table in a marbled palace hallÂÂSecondly, everyone needs to understand that there is no more powerful force assembled on Earth than this military force in this countryÂÂÂ That is the language of conquest, not liberation, and it destroys the legitimacy of AmericaÂs presence in Iraq, both locally and around the world.

What the frell is this guy talking about? He needs to read something other than Paul Krugman columns. There was and is no "popular uprising." If there were, we would be in some deep dren, but it ain't happened yet. And we have handled ourselves with incredible restraint in minimizing civilian casualties; we declared war on those who are trying to kill us, that's it. General Abizaid's comments are true. We ARE the world's most powerful force and anyone dumb enough to fight us directly will die in short order. And having a strong military force in country does not imply a particular purpose (i.e. conquest), as Lind suggests.

We have now picked a fight with the Shiites, who control our lines of communication and who make up a majority of the Iraqi population. I thought that even the Valley of the Blind that is the CPA would have better sense than to make this final, fatal strategic blunder, but it seems they can always find a new ditch to stumble into. We did it over the utterly trivial matter of Muqtada al-SadrÂs newspaper printing lies Â this from an American administration that long ago won the Order of Pinocchio, First Class, with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. While many Iraqi Shiites donÂt much like al-Sadr, they like seeing Americans kill fellow Shiites even less.

Ummm, no. Sadr (who does not represent all or even many Shiites) picked a fight with us. It would have been foolish to allow him to spew his violence-inciting invective without response. The Shiites understand that if we leave, they will be stuck with people like Sadr in charge. That would be bad, for them and us. We are doing now what we should have done when we first invaded Iraq: eliminate those who cannot accept a free Iraq.

The Marines threw away the opportunity to de-escalate the fighting with the Sunnis in Fallujah and instead have raised the intensity of anti-Americanism there. For months, the Marines trained for de-escalation. But because of one minor incident of barely tactical importance, the killing of four American contractors, the de-escalation strategy was thrown out the window and replaced by an all-out assault on an Iraqi city. The Marines may have been given no choice by the White House, but it also looks as if their own training did not go very deep; the Plain Dealer quoted a Marine battalion commander in Fallujah as saying, ÂWhat is coming is the destruction of anti-coalition forces in Fallujah. They have two choices: Submit or die.Â That is hardly the language of de-escalation.

Methinks it was the Sunnis who escalated the fighting, not the Marines. The killing of the contractors was a gauntlet thrown by the wolves inhabiting Fallujah; if we had not responded we would be seen as weak and ineffectual. Once again we're doing something that should have been done earlier: draining the Fallujah swamp of criminals and thugs opposed to any non-kleptocratic government.

Finally, our whole Âsay good-bye at the end of JuneÂ strategy depends on the reliability of the Iraqi security forces we have been busy creating. But when faced with fighting their own people on behalf of Christian foreigners, most of them went over or went home. This was utterly predictable, but its effect is to leave us without any exit strategy at all.

The June hand-over date is primarily a symbolic move. We won't be leaving, and we're developing strategies to enhance the reliability of Iraqi security forces (like stiffening their ranks with Special Forces personnel).

So what comes next? The current violence may follow a sine wave, ebbing and then flowing again, with the whole curve gradually trending up. Or, it may rise in a linear, accelerating curve, in which case we will soon be driven out of Iraq, possibly in a full-scale sauve que peut rout. The former appears more likely, but it still leads to the same ending, if taking a bit more time to get there.

Undoubtedly the violence will ebb and flow. It seems more likely that the violence will follow more of a lightly damped sine wave than an unstable one (i.e. the violence will gradually decrease over time as the Iraqis start to take charge of their own affairs though there will be some spikes in violence). The Iraqis are faced with a clear choice: the American way, or the Iranian way. And the many protests and widespread discontent in Iran pretty clearly show which is the way of the future.

Unlike traditional twelve-course dinners, this one does not finish with a dessert or a savoury. It ends, to borrow one of John BoydÂs favorite phrases, with the ÂcoalitionÂ getting the whole enchilada right up the p--- chute. You cannot get anything you want at MohammedÂs restaurant.

Whatever. Mr. Lind's primary point, that we may have bitten off more than we can chew, is a matter of concern. But clearly he has swallowed the mainstream media's negatively exaggerated version of events hook, line and sinker. Interpreting everything in the worst possible way is rarely going to be correct (and that's coming from an admitted pessimist [errr, actually realist, but usually realism=pessimism]).

Democratic Referendum in Iraq

2004-04-20T18:07:00.000-04:00

Most polls I've seen of the Iraqi people show that most of them want us to be there, helping them form a democratic governemnt, despite the violently vocal minority's intransigence. Perhaps one way the U.S. could silence its critics is to hold a referendum on whether the Iraqi people want us to stay and help them rebuild their society or not. It could be as simple as a single question:

Do you

a) want the Coalition to continue helping Iraq rebuild, to create the first free, secular and democratic Arab government.

or

b) want the Coalition to leave Iraq.

A fair referendum on such a question would demonstrate our level of support in Iraq, showing how few Iraqis truly oppose us. Even if, somehow, the referendum failed it would provide a good opportunity for us to leave, without suffering additional casualties for an ungrateful people. Either way, we would be better off than the current situation.

Moon Nuking

2004-04-20T18:02:00.000-04:00

The Frankster over at imao, has brought back the Nuke the Moon shirt. I mentioned the concept back in
this post. Get yours today and be like me.

All that remains is the proper application of overwhelming ignorance

2004-04-19T23:29:00.000-04:00

An article in Slate talks about the recent proliferation of Vietnam analogies. Most of the article is decent, but then as an aside the author loses connection with reality. He says:

"(What does genuinely echo Vietnam, however, is the barrage of scurrilous attacks against those who question the occupation. Richard Nixon used to argue, in a textbook case of black-is-white newspeak, that protesters who demanded an immediate end to the war were actually prolonging it—rather like saying that Martin Luther King Jr. was prolonging segregation. Now, sadly, that twisted logic is being revived to try to disparage administration critics.)"

It's "twisted logic" to say that demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces DOESN'T play into our enemies hands. That doesn't necessarily make it wrong (it's important to examine whether or not what we're doing is worth it), but no thinking person can deny that the terrorists want us to leave. This was also true for Nixon in Vietnam, it was part of Vietnamese strategy to try and convince the American public that it was not worth it, and it wasn't until Nixon made it clear by intensifying the bombing in the Linebacker I and II campaigns in 1972 despite protests, that the Vietnamese were willing to make a deal (even if it didn't end up being the best deal in the world for us, we did leave). The author might want to look up the word "paradox" in the dictionary. For the record, the first definition over at dictionary.com is:

"A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true"

It seems contradictory to say that working to shorten the war only lengthens it, but IT IS TRUE.

Fight Fire with Fire

2004-04-19T23:21:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to share this article from the folks over at Winds of Change who share my hardest of the hardlinersestness. Read it all to see why we should invade Iran and probably will. Mwaa ha ha. It's all part of the vast Nazi/Jewish (i.e. Bush/Sharon) conspiracy to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. Beware!

Rocket Science is Easy

2004-04-19T19:31:00.000-04:00

Mr. Denbeste has the first two parts up for a series speculating on characteristics of future space warfare based off the past. I have a comment on a particular off-hand comment he makes. Poor Denbeste gets deluged with letters about such tangential issues, so I'm posting it here instead.

"When the Harrier goes into 'hover' mode, the engine has to be overcranked and water is injected into the input air stream to keep the engine from blowing up. A Harrier usually carries enough water to hover for 90 seconds."

I can't say for 100%, but I believe his rationale for the water injection system is incorrect.

The Harrier is a peculiar aircraft, being able to land and takeoff vertically;these types of aircraft are called VSTOL or Vertical and Short TakeOff and Landing vehicles. VSTOL is obviously a desirable characteristic, because you don't need a huge runway from which to fly an aircraft. The airplane could be based almost anywhere; it could function like a helicopter. But there have been relatively few VSTOL aircraft; not counting helicopters, there are basically only the Harrier and Russian Yak-141 that have been built in significant numbers. There is a reason for this, and its part of why the Harrier has a water injection system, but I want to talk about some other things first.

There are several ways to achieve VSTOL ability. The engines can be tilted to provide lift, the thrust can be redirected down to provide lift or some combination of the two. The V-22 Osprey uses the first method by tilting its engines such that it is a de-facto helicopter on takeoff and landing. The Harrier uses the second method, having ducts that direct the exhaust to movable nozzles to direct the thrust down on takeoff. The Joint Strike Fighter uses something of a combination of the two. It directs part of its thrust downward by tilting to the nozzle and uses the rest of the power it generates to turn a fan at the front of the engine. This has many advantages and is a much more efficient system and part of why the Lockheed version won the JSF contract. But I'm going on a tangent to my tangent.

The Harriers direct lift system imposes some constraints on its design. It obviously has to generate enough thrust to lift its weight at takeoff, when it will weigh the most. This means it needs a large engine. The airplane also has to be controllable when taking off and landing, which forces the engine to be centrally located such that the thrust will balance the airplane. This can cause maintenance problems; the Harrier has to have its wing removed to replace the engine, for example. There is a cost associated with making an airplane VSTOL, which is why not every plane is.

Getting to my main point real soon, be patient. For any airplane you want to make the engine as small in thrust as you can get away with because it has a big effect on the cost of the engine and on how expensive it is to operate. However, as mentioned earlier, the engine must be capable of lifting the airplane at its heaviest. Like people, airplanes have a tendency to gain weight as they age, as newer, and heavier, equipment is added. If the engine was not initially designed to allow for this weight gain, then some compromise has to made (reduced payload or fuel). The other option is to increase the thrust of the engine. I'm going to give away some secrets of aerospace now.

Turns out that rocket science is pretty easy (errr at least thrust calculations). The thrust for a rocket is equal to the mass flow rate coming out the end times the exit velocity of what's coming out. That's it (though it does make numerous assumptions and ignores the chemistry involved). The basic equation for a jet engine is pretty similar; the mass flow rate coming out of the engine times the exit velocity minus the mass flow rate coming in times the velocity of the gas coming in. So there are two ways to increase the thrust of an engine, increase the exit velocity or increase the mass flow rate. Increasing the exit velocity makes the engine much noisier, the exhaust hotter, and the engine less efficient, plus it would require major changes in the engine itself. But by injecting something like say, water, into the exhaust the mass flow rate (and hence thrust) can be increased without causing other deleterious effects or forcing the engine to be changed. The disadvantage of this is that the water that is injected wastes volume and increases the weight of the vehicle, slightly decreasing performance. I'm pretty sure this is how and why the Harrier has a water injection system. It needed more thrust, but only for short periods of time, so it was cost-effective to just tack on a water injection system instead of redesigning the engine. A pretty small part, to be sure, but I thought the accompanying explanations could be helpful. And now you can tell people that you know rocket science!

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Terrorism for Dummies

2004-04-18T17:42:00.000-04:00

Is it just me, or are terrorists exceedingly retarded? There are THOUSANDS of terrorists controlling MILLIONS of dollars in money. With access to these kind of resources they should be making alot more than three major attacks over the past three years (9/11, Bali, Madrid), and a bunch of piddly attacks in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. If I had access to 1000 useful idiots and 10 million bucks (and I lost my conscience) i feel confident I could wreak much havoc.

So, for your amusement and because I don't think any terrorists will read this (ha ha almost no one will read this), I hereby provide "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Terrorism for Dummies."

Habit 1: Make your attacks work for you

You can never have too much money. It's important that attacks serve multiple purposes. For example, before the 9/11 attacks I would have taken as much extra money as possible and used it to sell short on airline and insurance stocks. If Osama had done this, he could have inlaid his cave with gold he would have made so much money. Before any attack, I'd figure out which companies or industries it would help or hurt and make money off it. If I was going to attack nuclear power plants or cause some blackouts I would sell short on energy companies, for instance. More money means more attacks, and it's always good strategy to kill two birds with one stone. In Pentagon-speak this would be called "leveraging resources."

Habit 2: Randomate

Part of what makes terrorism so terrorfying is that it's supposed to be random. But Osama and Friends haven't been that random. They hit the same place twice (WTC) and made an attack on the 2.5 anniversary of 9/11 (the Madrid bombing happened on 3/11). Patterns and predictable start with the same letter for a reason (or something). I would use a random number generator to decide dates for attacks and also to pick targets, after making a large database of potential ones that included a wide variety of types and locations. The other side (i.e. us) can't protect everywhere and if terrorists were truly random a good defence would be virtually impossible without taking a large toll.

Habit 3: Bluster bad, bombing good

Osama has been regularly releasing audio tapes (because he's either dead or so sick that it would be embarrassing to be seen) with threats. At this point, it's a little counterproductive to make threats. If you're going to threaten somebody then follow up on it. Nothing makes you look weaker than bluster you can't back up. If you're going to make empty threats the least you can do is attack someone other than who you threatened, just to keep people off guard.

Habit 4: Even the little ones count

Even if you can only make fairly small-scale attacks, ones on U.S. soil are worth more, psychologically. Osama should have taken notes when a homeless crazy person and a young boy made most of the Northeast terrorfied for weeks. It doesn't even take that much resource-wise, just a few crackpots with marksman training, to have a real psychological effect. If I was in charge there would be a new sniper in a different area (chosen with a random number generator of course) every few months. That would keep those Americans on their toes. And the resources could come by having the jihadis stop their stupid frontal attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Habit 5: Preserve resources

Obviously wacko extremists willing to die for no good reason are going to be in fairly short supply. Make 'em count. Don't waste them against highly-trained U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Habit 6: Follow the leader

The whole Blackhawk Down thing was a nice try in Iraq, but clearly it ain't gonna work. Read up on some Vietnam war history if you want to see some good strategy. The Vietnamese had no hope of beating the U.S. on the battlefield so they let dumbass Americans (cough) do their work for them. Encourage this sort of foolishness in your enemy; lie and say that if only the "root causes of terrorism" (ie globalization, poverty and whatever other crap leftists always cite) really ARE the reason you want to kill. It might even work, but it would be sure to muddy the waters enough to confuse the heck out of Americans lacking in the abililty to think.

Habit 7: No state sponsorship

It's tempting as a terrorist to align yourself with like-minded states like Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan back in the day. Bad news. States are too good a targets and have no chance of standing up to the U.S. If terrorists are like fish, a friendly state is like a barrel, not the place to be when the shark (U.S.) comes knocking. Stay in Western countries that are too politically correct to screen people based on race. The closer you are to your enemies the more difficult it is for them to find you.

If Osama would take the above advice he might even live long enough to die of kidney failure (if he's even still alive of course).

Mind-read some of this

2004-04-18T17:30:00.000-04:00

Reading this article at the Weekly Standard when I come across this:

"Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is campaigning for Kerry while secretly hoping he loses so as to clear the way for her own presidential bid in 2008, says" ...

What? Give me a break. When exactly did Mr. Stelzer gain the ability to read minds? This was an entirely unnecessary aside; the least he could do is qualify it with a "probably" so he doesn't sound like such a jack-ass. This comment had basically nothing to do with the rest of the article. Mr. Editor should have cut it, it makes the author sound like a jerk and adds nothing.

In the completely unrelated department, I had previously mentioned the fact that the z on my keyboard stopped working after I spilled some water on my keyboard. Well, yesterday I was demonstrating to someone at work that it didn't work and it suddenly started working again. yay.

The hardest of the hard-liners

2004-04-13T18:42:00.000-04:00

Read an article in Slate about how Bush is distorting Kerry's views on the War on Terror (blaa blaa blaa, same old), and came upon this quote:

"Not even the hardest of the hard-liners today proposes additional land invasions as part of the war on terror."

Ummmm. I do. I think we should militarily depose the mullahs in Iran, hopefully before they get nukes. Because Iran has elements of democracy already (the mullahs have a parallel government that has veto power) we could take out the mullahs without having to occupy the country. There would be a government all but in place; though it would require much assistance.

And on top of this, I think we need to do a little housecleaning in the Bekaa Valley region of Lebanon where the Iranian-backed Hebollah calls home, though it is also infested (with all implications use of this word entails) with other terrorist groups.

So apparently I am the hardest of the hard-liners. Maybe I should add that quote to my sidebar.

UFO's and the Soviet Union

2004-04-13T16:48:00.000-04:00

I saw this at One Hand Clapping, which linked to this, leading me to this original article (a convoluted path to be sure). I never thought about how the Soviet Union would handle UFO's before. Their response, try to shoot them down, is unsurprising; it's amusing to see how often they tried and failed to get them, however. I wonder if they thought they were part of some capitalist conspiracy?

"All that remains is the proper application of overwhelming force"

2004-04-13T11:04:00.000-04:00

The title is a quote from a jubilant Churchill after hearing that the U.S. was joining WWII after Pearl Harbor. Many thought Churchill was being over-the-top, after all, it was 1941; Germany had conquered almost all of continental Europe and was at the gates of Moscow, and the Japanese had taken much of China and were about to go on a rampage throughout the Pacific. But the quote was correct; the size and strength of the United States virtually assured an Allied victory. It would have taken ineptitude of the first-order (or a Nazi nuclear bomb) for us to have lost WWII; our strength in men and material dwarfed that of the Axis powers. The only way we could have lost is if we beat ourselves.

Unfortunately we have something of a history of doing so. Obviously we had to beat ourselves in the Civil War (by definition). And more recently we defeated ourselves in Vietnam. It is the conventional wisdom that the Vietnam War was fundamentally unwinnable, at least politically. I've always believed that the political limitations placed on our forces caused our defeat. Not entirely true, according to an article in NRO today. In it, the author argues that in the period 1968-72 we switched tactics and virtually defeated North Vietnam, and if we had continued to help them they might be in the same position as South Korea, prosperous and free. But what we won on the battlefield we gave up on the negotiating table.

Recently many have compared our current situation in Iraq to Vietnam (including a certain senator from Taxachusetts with a propensity for missing bridges, ahem). This is perhaps not that far from the truth. In Vietnam we won militarily but lost politically. We are in danger of the same in Iraq, if we persist in making foreign policy a bitterly partisan issue. We are the only ones who can defeat us. That is the political lesson of Vietnam. Let's not do it again; let's keep Vietnam as the only mark on our otherwise perfect record in war. Recent polls show a drop in support for the war. Our ultimate victory cannot be in question, it merely requires us to stay the course.

Militarily, it is clear that we've learned the lesson of Vietnam. We aren't suffering large numbers of casualties; we've figured out how to use our superior technology to our advantage. We are much more powerful than any of our enemies. For us to win, all we have to do properly apply our power; which is, of course, more difficult than it sounds.

Plane Crazy Article

2004-04-05T17:06:00.000-04:00

Saw an interesting article in the WaPo (Washington Post) today. Some of the points he makes are good, but much is crap. I will therefore unleash the Fisk of Fury to enlighten you.

The subject of the article is the F-22 Raptor; the Air Forces newest and most expensive fighter. The article begins:

Imagine paying $300 million for just one fighter plane. That's enough to build a 300-bed hospital or 10 new high schools, or pay for the national school lunch programs in the District, Maryland and Virginia for more than a year. Yet, the way things are going, now $300 million is what one Air Force F-22 fighter plane is going to cost us taxpayers.

Yawn. Thanks for the meaningless comparison. It is trivially easy to take some high dollar item, like a fighter jet or an aircraft carrier, and try to point out what else could be done for this money. It's not the federal government's job to build hospitals or schools, but it is up to the Government (with a capital G) to provide for defense. It would be valid to point out how many thousands of infantry could be paid for and sent to help in Iraq with $300 million, but the examples he provides are crap. It is a different question to say that this money could be used for non-defense needs; we've already decided that this money will go towards defense.

The Pentagon's figures show that it intends to buy 278 F-22 fighters for $72 billion, or $258 million a plane, counting research and development costs already spent to bring it into being. But the General Accounting Office has just told Congress this will not be enough. The GAO says it will take an additional $8 billion-plus to finance the planned upgrades to make the F-22 a high-tech ground attack aircraft as well as air superiority fighter. This improvement would push the F-22's price tag up to $300 million.

The reason the thing is so damn expensive is in the first line of this paragraph. At one point, we were planning on building 442 F-22's, and so Lockheed-Martin (who's building it) planned for 442 aircraft and chose the manufacturing methods and materials to match. When you cut the number built in half, of COURSE the cost is going to go up. Not only would they potentially be using different methods, but the development costs would be amortized over fewer vehicles. This is what happened to the B-2 and why it cost $1.2 billion (yes BILLION), because they only built 22 when they (Northrop-Grumman in this case) had been planning on hundreds. It's elementary economics but unmentioned in the article.

The $80 billion to buy a fleet of F-22's is one-third higher than this year's Education Department budget and about eight times as much as the State Department's current annual budget. The top priority the F-22 is getting as the president and Congress apportion tax dollars suggests this is a must-have airplane. But in fact changes in the world and other developments argue against buying this plane in the numbers being contemplated. President Bush is scheduled to decide whether to put the F-22 in full-scale production this December. Here are some reasons he should say no:

Welcome back to meaningless comparison land. Having the world's best military, by far, is expensive. If we're already going to be spending this money on defense then comparing it to other spending is ridiculous. If you look here you'll see that the U.S. spends ~3.2% of GDP on defense, or number 47 in the world in this index. This is still smaller than was spent during most of the Cold War (about 5% of GDP). To reiterate again, don't compare spending money on ONE defense program to non-defense related items; it is meaningless. After this first point the author digs himself a deeper hole. He says that we shouldn't build "this plane in the numbers being contemplated". That's a good idea. Let's build less of them so that they'll cost more per plane and he can write another article about how the costs have grown (see above). Maybe he's thinking of his job security. Let's go through some of his reasons the plane shouldn't be built.

The threat that the plane was designed to combat no longer exists. Back in 1986, when the F-22's gestation began, the Cold War was on. Air Force leaders successfully argued that they needed a super fighter plane that could down, at long range, the swarms of warplanes the Soviets were expected to put over Europe in a shooting war. The Pentagon is not worried about that kind of war today.

By this guy's logic after the Cold War we should have scrapped the whole military because it was designed for a threat that no longer existed. The military is flexible, as was proved in Iraq and Afghanistan it is capable of using vehicles in ways to counter whatever particular threat exists. And what's this about not expecting swarms of warplanes? Has he not heard of China? They have hordes of obsolete aircraft, and a significant number of Su-27s equal to the best of what we currently have, that we may someday have to fight. Much better to be prepared than caught with your pants down, especially when it takes such a long time to develop a new aircraft.

The United States has less expensive fighter bombers flying and others in development that could shoot down any enemy's warplanes. For example, the updated F-16 fighter bomber, which is still in production, remains a deadly killing machine. One thing I learned in auditing the Navy's 11-month test pilot training course at Patuxent River was that today's air battles are usually won by the side that has the best "systems" -- the high-tech radar, communications and missiles -- and crews. The metal airplane itself, the platform, has become so secondary that pilots often complain they have been reduced to office managers running the systems. The United States has a huge lead in systems and air crews.

"Others in development" must be referring to the Joint Strike Fighter (the F-22's little brother), which is the only other fighter aircraft in development. The JSF is a great airplane but not nearly as capable as the F-22; it is designed to replace a wide variety of aircraft in a wide variety of missions and is therefore a compromise design when it comes to air-to-air combat. The F-22 is the point of the sword and the JSF is the edge of the sword, so to speak, to be most effective you need both. Also the F-16 is no longer in production for the U.S.; Lockheed is building them for Israel and Singapore, I believe. And when these orders are done the manufacturing facility will be converted for use in building JSF's, so it is unrealistic to build more of these. Finally, the author talks about how the airframe is so much less important than the innards of an airplane in making it more effective. This is true, but the stealthiness of the F-22 is still a big edge. Also, the systems on the F-22 are more advanced than anything we have, so it would be, by his own logic, more effective. The clincher is that the systems are also the most expensive part of an airplane. So his bitching about the cost of the F-22 would apply to upgrading any other aircraft, except that the maintenance costs for the F-22 would be much less for a new aircraft compared to our current '70s era fleet.

The Navy has to worry about the same threats that have driven the Air Force to keep building the F-22 even though the Cold War is long over. Former defense secretary and now vice president Dick Cheney decided that Navy pilots could safely go to war in a lesser and cheaper plane than the F-22. He canceled the A-12 flying wing fighter, which had many of the same expensive stealth characteristics as the F-22 and which the Navy had planned to base on aircraft carriers. Cheney said the A-12 was costing too much. The Navy settled for the $92 million-a-copy F/A-18 E and F to combat enemy planes and penetrate air defenses on the ground. If this Chevrolet is good enough for the Navy, why do we need to buy almost 300 of the Air Force's F-22 Cadillacs?

Let's repeat, it is primarily the internal systems (more specifically the software to run the thing, not stealth) that make it so expensive. The author also clearly does not understand why the F-18E/F was developed. The F-18E/F is supposedly just an upgrade to the existing F-18s but is in fact essentially a completely new design. Why did the Navy try to pass it off as an upgrade? Because it was an easier sell to Congress, a lesson learned from the A-12 program. This is not a good example.

For the threats beyond what the F-16 and F/A-18 E and F can handle, the Pentagon is already far along in building a new fighter bomber, the Joint Strike Fighter. It is expected to cost less than a third of what the F-22 does, $80 million vs. $300 million. Some of the Joint Strike Fighters will be able to do something the F-22 cannot: take off and land from a short runway or carrier deck. This is a highly desired capability in many global hot spots where long runways are scarce.

As mentioned above, the JSF was built for a different reason. It is a smaller, cheaper airplane because it is less capable. The Air Force philosophy is to have a high-quality aircraft in fewer numbers (currently the F-15) to do the primary air-to-air and a lower-quality aircraft in higher numbers (currently the F-16) to be primarily air-to-ground. It is unrealistic to expect the JSF to be able to replace the F-22; it will not be as capable for air-to-air. Period. And when he says the JSF can take over vertically he's only half telling the truth. The vast majority of JSF's will be built for the Air Force and Navy and will NOT be able to take off vertically. A small number will be built for the Marines and the British that can (at a cost in performance), but it is not an advantage shared by the whole fleet.

Although the F-22's ability to foil enemy ground defenses is indeed impressive, there is a bloodless way to destroy them in the works. It takes the form of unmanned bombers that can fly low and hit antiaircraft sites while manned aircraft direct the drones from a safe distance above.

Here he shifts gears in his attack to something completely new. This two sentence throw-away paragaph suggests that manned aircraft period are obsolete. If he seriously wants to present this as an alternative he needs to back it up. But I'll consider it anyway. The Air Force is envisioning the use of unmanned vehicles to take out anti-aircraft sites, but this is not the mission the F-22 would be used for anyway. It is an air-to-air vehicle that will have a secondary role as a bomber after the enemy defenses are swept away. This is a related mission, but significantly different; an unmanned vehicle could take out the enemy's air defenses while the F-22 destroyed its air defenses. They are complimentary, not contradictory, which could be why this is barely mentioned.

Buying the expensive F-22 would worsen the Pentagon's death spiral in procurement. Even within today's huge Pentagon budget there isn't the money to buy enough expensive planes to modernize the military's aging air fleets. Only a few flying Cadillacs can be purchased in any one year. Yet the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps need to keep hundreds of aircraft flying to patrol their global police beats. So the armed services spend billions to keep old crates flying to cover the hot spots. These gigantic maintenance costs eat up money needed to buy new planes, meaning our aircraft fleets keep getting older and more dangerous to fly despite the billions being spent on them.

To repeat myself, the defense budget is large in absolute terms, but not that big in relative terms. The reason it is so much bigger in absolute terms is because our economy has grown so much since the Cold War. After this first line, this guy proceeds to destroy his own argument. He says that we spend massive amounts to keep our ancient airfleet flying. OK. Doesn't this make the argument for buying new aircraft stronger? We need to build new planes to replace our old and expensive-to-maintain current ones, not cancel one of our very few airplane development programs.

We don't need the F-22 no matter what it costs. President Bush and Congress owe it to the taxpayers to ask themselves whether this trip into the wild blue yonder is necessary.

Wait a minute. In the previous paragraph did he not say that we need to replace our current aircraft. Now he's saying "we don't need the F-22 no matter what it costs." Well, which is it? Do we need to replace our aircraft or don't we? A little consistency please. I say we need to replace our airplanes (though in the interests of full disclosure some of the paid research I'm working on is for Lockheed on the JSF program, so I AM biased).

A Simple Question

2004-04-05T14:21:00.000-04:00

If every terrorist the U.S. kills is a shahid (martyr) and will go to heaven, then aren't we doing them a favor by sending them there sooner? By killing terrorists aren't we just respecting their culture? They have defined us as the enemy, so aren't we just playing the part they want us to? Shouldn't the multiculturalists be FOR killing more terrorists?

Linkagery

2004-04-05T13:28:00.000-04:00

I don't want to turn this into a link blog as there are plenty of those out there (see sidebar), but there are a few things I want to point out today. This will not be a frequent feature, I've just got some free time while running some aerodynamic analysis in the background.

First, in National Review there was a funny article with some satirical commercials for the NCAA tournament. I think the Chevy Obliviator commercial would make a good real commercial since that's the whole point of getting a gigantoid SUV.

Second, Jason Van Steenwyk of IraqNow, has a possible explanation for why I tend towards the realpolitik school of thought, since I've enjoyed European history since I was kid.

Third, the NY Times reports that an arrest warrant has been issued for Moktada al-Sadr, whose followers have been clashing with our troops recently. According to Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) [warning: some profanity] Sadr has NO clerical training and is basically an Iranian stooge. Let's be rid of him.

Fourth, the military is evidently having no problems reaching its recruiting goals. Turns out that Iraq is not causing an exodus of soldiers out of the millitary, contrary to much speculation by anti-war pansies.

Fifth, here's some motivation for me to add comments or my e-mail address. Frank J has had on ongoing conversation with a wacky leftist he calls The Limey. This is the latest chapter, with links to the previous ones. If you need some humor just start at the beginning and enjoy Frank at his best.

And lastly, from Frankie J's archives, is this essay about how to achieve world peace. You have to love any paper that has "Peace can only be achieved through excessive acts of seemingly mindless violence" in its first paragraph.

My aero code is almost done so now I must depart. That should keep y'all busy.

The X-43, Hypersonic flight, and Scramjets

2004-04-03T14:57:00.000-05:00

Recently, NASA's X-43 research plane flew successfully. I have noticed some misconceptions regarding the significance of the flight and I want to clear some of them up.

The X-43 was the first airbreathing vehicle to fly at hypersonic speeds. The transition from supersonic to hypersonic flight speed is not nearly as well-defined as from subsonic to supersonic; there is no hypersonic barrier. The hypersonic flight regime is typically regarded as speeds beyond Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound. By this definition the Mach 3.2 achieved by the SR-71 (first flown in the '60s!!!) qualifies, but just barely. The X-43 on the other hand, flew at Mach 7, undeniably hypersonic.

The propulsion system used by the X-43 to achieve this speed was two-staged. First a booster rocket accelerated the vehicle to high-speed and then something called a scramjet was used. This was the first time a scramjet was operated generating enough thrust to accelerate the vehicle (the Aussies have got one to work, but it didn't actually accelerate the vehicle).

The most important element of any transportation vehicle is its propulsion system. For flying vehicles there are numerous engine types that are particularly well-suited to certain flight regimes. I'll talk about the following six types:

1. Internal combustion
2. Turbo-prop
3. Turbofan
4. Turbojet
5. Ramjet
6. Scramjet

The order of these is important. There are listed in order from slowest to fastest.

The internal combustion engine (like a car engine) is the most efficient system to use for very low speed flight but becomes less efficient the faster you fly. So low-speed general aviation aircraft use this engine.

The turbo-prop uses a jet engine to generate power to turn a propeller like the internal combustion engine, but it is more efficient for moderately fast flight. These are generally on commuter type airplane which fly short distances and hence don't need to be very fast.

The turbofan has a jet engine which develops thrust and also provides power to turn a fan at the front of the engine. The fan acts like a propeller in that it accelerates the air and provides thrust. This is the most efficient engine for high-subsonic flight and even for moderate supersonic flight, although an engine designed for supersonic flight will be different than for subsonic in that it will rely less on the fan to provide thrust and more on the turbojet portion.

The turbojet is what is typically called a jet engine. It provides thrust by burning fuel to add energy to the airflow and expels it out the back. The turbofan was developed as a derivative of this engine to be more efficient. For supersonic flight this is generally the most efficient, though it drops off as the Mach number increases.

The ramjet is basically the same as the jet engine, but more simple. It uses the inlet design to compress the incoming air before adding fuel and burning it for thrust. The jet engine uses a compressor, which is a highly complicated fan to increase the pressure so that the fuel can be burned more efficiently. By getting rid of the compressor the ramjet is more simple and more efficient for higher Mach numbers. The ramjet, however, cannot operate subsonically because it needs to be flying fast such that the inlet can compress the air. So a ramjet-powered vehicle needs another system, be it a rocket or turbojet or whatever, to accelerate it fast enough that it can operate. A big disadvantage.

The scramjet is almost identical to the ramjet except that combustion occurs inside the engine with the air moving at supersonic speeds (scramjet means supersonic combustion ramjet). The ramjet uses the inlet to compress the air and slow it to about Mach 0.5 so that it can ignite the fuel, but the scramjet burns its fuel at supersonic speeds. This has been compared to lighting a candle in the middle of a hurricane; it's a difficult engineering problem, but it allows higher speeds. Like the ramjet it needs something else to bring it up to speed.

The last type is the rocket, which most people are familiar with. It burns its fuel and pushes it out the back to generate thrust. Rockets can go almost any speed but they are horribly inefficient.

It is hoped that a scramjet, combined with a rocket or turbojet or something else for low speeds, could be used to replace rockets to get to space and be much more efficient (and hence cheaper). This technology is a long way for being ready for something like that, but the flight of the X-43 is a step in that direction.

From what I hear, NASA's hypersonics research program is being lost in the shuffle of the reorganization following Bush's space plan announcement. NASA is being organized into a space group working on getting to the moon and Mars and an aeronautics group. Hypersonics doesn't clearly belong in either, but it was assigned to the aeronautics group without any funding. And the aero guys don't want to pay for it so it sounds like hypersonics will go back the backburner.

Democracy = No War

2004-04-01T16:51:00.000-05:00

This post is just a good excuse for the following quote:

"for you know as well as we that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

Who do you think said this?

Stalin?
Nope.

Machiavelli?
Nope.

Julius Caesar?
Nope.

I'll give you a hint: they're Greek.

Alexander the Great?
Nope.

Someone from Sparta perhaps?
Wrong again.

Then who?
That paradigm of bloodthirstiness and warmongering: Athens, during the Pelopennisian War.

Wha-wha-what? But they were a democracy and democracy is all about peace and justice and love and no war, man.

Umm, no. The Athenians were speaking to the island of Melos, which they pre-emptively conquered to threaten a minor power on the coast of modern-day Turkey to keep them from allying with the Spartans (during a lull in the War). Those good-old democratic Athenians lost the war because of the hubris so eminently displayed in the above quotation. Their big mistake was an expedition to Syracuse to conquer the island of Sicily that was virtually annihilated. This started the long, slow slide to defeat.

Just goes to show that it's just a big honking pile of horse manure that democracies only engage in defensive wars. And it's a cool quote.

Lazy

2004-04-01T16:42:00.000-05:00

I've been more than a tad delinquet in updating for the past week. I've been busy with school and wasting time in other ways. For example, I've finished Civilization and Its Enemies and it's very different than what I expected. It will take a little more time to organize a cogent critique. In the meantime, might I suggest perusing these two chapters by Bill Whittle of Eject Eject Eject (link also in the sidebar). Good stuff. I would also recommend reading all his essays linked in the main page. They are long but interesting reads. Whittle almost has me believing that most people aren't complete morons, pretty impressive.

Civilization and Its Enemies

2004-03-26T13:15:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I got my copy of Lee Harris new book: Civilization and Its Enemies. I started reading it last night and am already impressed. He talks about the real reason the hate us (Hint: it's not because of our support for Israel or our troop presence in Saudia Arabia or any of the other claptrap that has been proffered by leftists). Expect a summary and commentary on it when I'm finished.

Lee Harris is an occasional contributor here. I would recommend reading his columns.

Guaranteed Source of Posts

2004-03-25T14:15:00.000-05:00

I've lucked out. If I ever can't think of something to post about I can now just go here to Noam Chomsky's new blog, take any post of his and pick apart the inaccuracies and inconsistencies (Hat tip: Drezner). For those who don't know, Chomsky is a linguist and MIT professor, legendary for anti-Americanism and hard-core leftism. Everything he says sounds good and true until you start checking up on it and find he's lying.

So even though I have plenty to post about (I'm working on my power measurements gathering data) I'm going to go ahead and fisk Chomsky's first real post, titled Bush's Economics (link currently not working).

First paragraph:
Whether Bush believes, or even understands, the economic policies of his administration I have no idea, and it really doesn't matter much. What's important are the policies, not whether Bush understands what his handlers instruct him to say.

Ok, so he pulls out the tired old line about Bush being a moron with his advisers pulling the strings. False. While it seems that Bush disdains the minutae of policy he exerts clear control over the basic direction. Strike one.

Second paragraph:
The current policies are an extreme version of what has been going on since the late Carter years. According to Congressional Budget office economists, real income of the bottom 90% of taxpayers fell by 7% from the mid-1970s through the Clinton boomlet (largely a bubble), while the income of the top .01% rose 600%. And mobility sharply declined as well. Bush's policies are much more extreme, but one should have no illusions about what preceded. Robert Pollin's recent Contours of Descent is one of several excellent and quite readable studies carrying the matter through the Clinton years.

I appreciate how Chomsky helpfully tells us exactly what policies he disagrees with (Sarcasm Alert). Even worse, he fails to provide links to the sources of his data. That's a key strength of blogging; your readers can check up on you and make sure you're telling the truth. Of course, Chomsky would rather you accept everything he says as Gospel truth. To refute his points, in a 30-second search of Drezner's site, I found this post from about a year ago, which makes some key points. First, real wages increased for everyone over the period Chomsky highlight. Second, income mobility did NOT sharply decline. Third, "Americans don't begrudge the rich getting richer." Strike two.

Third paragraph:
Whether the economy can survive with such radical inequality, not to speak of the huge and growing double deficit, no one knows. But it's surely a success for the planners and the very narrow interests of wealth and power they represent. And planning is not for the longer term, part of the lunacy of semi-market systems.

As mentioned above, there is no danger of political collapse due to income inequality. There is no enslaved proletariat to rise up in anger over income equality a la Marx. And what the heck is a "double deficit"? As for the lack of long-term planning in a market economy, it is at least partially made up for by the responsiveness of markets. Planned economies, like the Soviet Union, have been shown to be complete disasters. So whose policies have been proven to be a failure? Strike three and Chomsky quits while he's behind.

These things write themselves, it really makes my job easy. I now have a good back-up plan. Thanks Chomsky.

Terrorists as Pests

2004-03-24T19:18:00.000-05:00

Read an article today in the Weekly Standard and was struck by the following quote:

'According to John Diamond in USA Today, Zapatero told El Pais, Spain's leading daily newspaper, that "the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a 'great error' that has aggravated the terrorist threat."

Well, sure it has. And knocking down a giant wasp's nest in your back yard aggravates the wasps, too, but eventually it has to be done. Unless you're okay with your wife and children getting stung and screaming in pain. Again, and again, and again, and again. Or trying to reason with the wasps. Or just pretending they don't exist. Or giving up your back yard and moving.'

I think this is the perfect analogy for our war on terror. The terrorists are wasps who are capable of hurting but not killing us. Yes they are a threat, but not on the same level as say a bear. So terrorists are a concern but not as much of a threat as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.

(Not much posting today due to serious allergy problems. Sorry.)

The Space Shuttle and Risk

2004-03-23T12:56:00.000-05:00

Saw an interesting article in the New York Times today about a problem they found with the Space Shuttle. Twenty years ago a contractor installed the gears wrong on the actuator for the rudder/speed-brake. Skip the following paragraph if you know what a rudder/speed-brake is.

The rudder is the control surface on the vertical tail of airplane. It controls the yaw motion; to visualize this, if your head was an airplane the yaw motion would be like shaking it no; it's a side-to-side motion. The rudder is primarily used to keep the airplane flying straight if there is a cross-wind. On the Shuttle, however, this surface performs double-duty and is also a speed-brake. In this instance, the rudder would split into two parts like the opening of a clam-shell, increasing the drag and slowing the vehicle.

Fortunately the improper installation did not cause any accidents because the part was never stressed to its limits. This is an example of a good design. It is important in designing an aerospace vehicle in particular to prepare for the worst-case situation that could be encountered. In structural design there are safety factors that are put on everything to account for the unexpected as well. In this instance it is likely that the additional margin provided by the safety factor kept the part from failing and killing everyone in the Shuttle. It's also a failure of design because it was possible to install the gears in reverse in the first place. If it had been designed such that the gears would only fit one-way the problem would have been avoided entirely.

I also noticed one of the NASA guys said that the misinstallation "could have resulted in a catastrophe if there had been unusual stress, like a launching problem that called for an emergency landing" which made me snort a little bit. If something goes wrong in the launch, the crew is essentially dead. Even if they are not blown up the volatile fuel surrounding them, the NASA plan for an aborted launch is to flip the Shuttle such that it is flying backwards and then fire the engines to head back to Florida for a landing. The chance of this maneuver being conducted successfully is virtually nil. Astronauts know this but fly anyway because they view the risk as acceptable.

People have unrealistic expectations of safety and generally misunderstand risk. All activities in life have a certain level of risk associated with them. One of the riskiest things you do almost everyday is drive a car. But there is a risk in taking a shower in the morning because you may slip and fall and die. There is risk involved in doing, or not doing, anything. You cannot completely eliminate the chance that something bad will happen, but it is important to consider risk. Everyone has a risk management strategy, even if it is just to ignore risk.

Everyone has their own risk threshold and it tends to get lower as we age. Consider the teenager who likes to race his friends, compared to Grandpa in his tank of a Cadillac. The perception of risk is also tainted by what we see in the news. This is why people think (or at least feel) that driving a car is safer than riding in an airplane. It may be that flying in the Shuttle is too risky for the vast majority of people, but if there still remains a cadre of people willing to fly despite the risk it is foolish to burden the Shuttle with expectations of a perfect flying record.

The level of risk must also be balanced against the cost it takes to reduced that risk. It might be possible to build a vehicle with a risk of essentially zero, but it would be so heavy and expensive as to be useless. Part of deciding where to place the line in deciding acceptable risk is in placing a value, however callous that sounds, on a human life. Incidentally this value is usually calculated to be about $1.5 million.

Does this mean that I support the Space Shuttle? No, I think it's an ancient piece of crap that is long over-due for replacement but hasn't yet been replaced because of a lack of political will. I also think it's foolish for us to expect that our space exploration will be without risk, or at least that nothing will actually happen. Perhaps someday the risk of going to space will be no more than flying a plane, but that day is far off into the future.

All bow to the NationMaster

2004-03-22T17:35:00.000-05:00

I found this sweet website while doing research for my ongoing series on internation power trends (introduced here. It's got a boatload of statistics and allows you to create your own graphs. I'll be using it plenty in my article.

To whet your appetite, however, consider this (Note that it refers to external [i.e. foreign-owned] debt). Many people bitch about how large our national debt is and how scary it is that we owe so much to foreigners, and in absolute terms it is scary (~800 billion buckaroos). BUT in per capita terms it suddenly doesn't look so bad. The U.S. is #25, with countries like Australia, Sweden and Denmark in front of us. It's a neat new toy. (Yes I know I'm a nerd)

Why the "War on Terror" is not that important (in world-historical terms)

2004-03-22T15:53:00.000-05:00

I know that statement is very much against the conventional wisdom, but it's also true. To prove it I'll look at what the worst-case scenario is and explain why even in this case the course of history is not ended.

The Islamo-fascists have thus far not seriously threatened our interests. None of their attacks have caused significant casualties or economic damage. 3000 people dead from 9/11 are significant from a psychological perspective but it would take many, many 9/11's to defeat us, and they haven't even managed to duplicate their feat over the past three years. The economic effects of 9/11 ended up being relatively minor as well, unsurprising for an economy as large and varied as the United States. The terrorists cannot possibly hope to defeat us materially using their current methods (other methods will be considered later). The only hope that they have is that their attacks would do enough damage psychologically for us to defeat ourselves. While many on the Left have tried to bring this about, there is no indication that we are in danger. Fortunately a majority of the American public has no desire to pull a Frenchie (i.e. surrender).

If the Islamo-fascists were able to get a "weapon of mass destruction" (i.e. nuclear, chemical or biological) then they would become much more of a threat. It would take a large amount of resources for them to actually defeat us even with these weapons. The destruction of even a city or two and a million people, as horrifying as that is, would not be enough; it would take a massive sustained campaign of terror. There also remain a number of tools that we have refrained from using in our fight. If we had to we could be much more aggressive, see the end of this article. The United States will NOT be defeated by terrorists, even if it requires the annihilation of all Muslims (though no one wants it to come to that). For all the hype about asymmetric threats, they do not change the fact that our overwhelming military superiority will protect us, even in the worst-case scenario.

If several U.S. cities were destroyed along with the Muslim world, history will still continue. Even a battered U.S. would remain the world's most powerful nation. Obviously there would be much more psychological damage, but we would not be defeated.

The bigger threat to our power is that another nation would become more powerful than us or at least powerful enough to challenge us (a la Soviet Union). That is why my examination of the trends in the relative power of the most important nations (started here) is still important. Even if our current "war on terror" goes spectacularly poorly it will not be our biggest ultimate threat.

Note: Because many say that the nation-state is becoming obsolete due to globalization (and thus the relative power of nations is unimportant) I will next discuss why the nation-state ain't goin' anywhere (at least for the foreseeable future).

Hypocrisy Shmypocrisy

2004-03-22T13:25:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum, in his new Washington Monthly blog, comments on the Kelley scandal. (Brief summary: Pulitzer-nominated Jack Kelley, who writes for USA Today, apparently completely fabricated a bunch of stories Jayson Blair-style [Blair was a reporter for the New York Times who made up a bunch of stories without getting caught because of his favor with chief editor Howell Raines who was fired over the affair]). He says:

"I really don't think it's unfair to ask Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan when they're planning to start their 24/7 coverage of this affair. Surely, at the very least, they should start baying for editor Karen Jurgensen's resignation, shouldn't they?"

Previous to this he comments: "But, er, um, Kelley is white, isn't he?" (Jayson Blair is black)

Implicitly Drum is accusing Kaus and Sullivan of racism and hypocrisy. Perhaps he should have thought things through before posting. Kelley writes for USA Today, at the low end of the totem pole as far as respectable newspapers go. USA Today (like Time and US News and World Report) is something targeted for people who don't want to strain their brains. It is at the tabloid end of serious journalism. I only read USA Today if I don't have internet access and I can't find anything else.

The New York Times on the other hand is much more respected. The Raines tenure at the NYT was tarnishing its reputation, which is why Kaus and Sullivan pushed so hard to get rid of him. The charge of racism and hypocrisy is a major stretch. There is more than sufficient reason for them not to have started 24-7 coverage of the scandal.

Hayworth has nothing to say worth listening to

2004-03-22T12:27:00.000-05:00

Bad pun, I know, but I have to put something into the title spot or it looks too lonely.

I read an article in National Review this morning, written by Rep. Hayworth (R-Arizona), that was completely worthless. I find myself in the unenviable position of defending the Droopster. Hayworth begins by quoting John Kerry attacking the Reagan defense build-up. All well and good, clearly Mr. Droopy is opposed to having a large military, or using it. Understandable given his experience in Vietnam but not the best attitude in the world for our commander-in-chief (see Bill Clinton).

Hayworth then repeats the charge that Kerry voted to eliminate this laundry list of weapons systems. This charge has been debunked already. Kerry voted against the entire defense bill because he thought it too large, not to specifically eliminate these weapons. So there is a legitimate charge here, that Kerry is not in favor of a large military, but it's not the one Hayworth makes.

The next attack is that Kerry is being hypocritical criticizing the administration for not providing enough body armor for the troops in Iraq. But Kerry's charge is true, sort of. There haven't been enough of the new life-saving Interceptor body armor sets to go around, but this was due to an Army screw-up in not having ordered enough of them, something that would be no different in a Kerry administration. And since Feb. 1, there have been sufficient numbers of the vests, as the army got five more companies to build them until there were enough (from Strategy Page, couldn't find permalink). So this charge basically stands, although it is very weakly argued, with no supporting evidence.

These are the only two arguments he makes in the partisan puff piece. Only one of them is legitimate and he does a horrible job of making it. This type of hackneyed preaching-to-the-choir type of article adds nothing. I find it disappointing that the "Honorable J. D. Hayworth" seems so incapable of forming a coherent argument.

Future International Power-Political Trends Part I: Introduction

2004-03-20T22:50:00.000-05:00

Purpose:

This is the first in a series of posts in which I examine the trends in national power over the near and long term. In this post I will explain why this is important and set-up the structure in which I will present the material.

Conventional news sources, like newspapers, present an enormous amount of information but provide little context. This series intends to present a framework through which international news can be interpretated. A thorough understanding of where the world is currently at and where it is generally headed from a power-political perspective is important in understanding all other international news. Focusing only on short-term news also obscures the long-term trends and can lead people to incorrect positions.

Elements of Power:

National power is difficult to measure, and it only has meaning in a relative sense (i.e. country A compared to country B). But the following elements merit inclusion and will be considered in this series:

1. Economic Power
2. Military Power
3. Population
4. Geography and Threats
5. Political and Cultural

The above elements will each be briefly described.

Economic Power:
The economic power of a country is perhaps the most important element, in that it is useful in its own right and can easily translate into military power. Important economic indicators are national product (GDP), GDP per capita, national debt, trade, and technological level. GDP is important because it is a measure of the overall wealth of a nation, and hence its ability to pay for its military and influence other nations economically. GDP per capita is measure of the productivity and technological level (which must be measured indirectly through other indices) of a nation. The national debt allows a comparison of the fiscal position of a given nations goverment. The trade of a nation indicates how vulnerable that nation is to economic coercement and trade disruptions. And the technological level of a country is important because of its relation to the ability of that country to develop economically and militarily.

Military Power:
The military power of a nation is one of the biggest indicators of how influential a country is. Even though North Korea has a tiny country, its gigantic military translates into influence disproportionate to its position economically. Military power is a result of the size and quality of its forces. A large, but low quality military is much less useful than a smaller, higher-quality one. Quality of a countries military is a function of its equipment and personnel. Newer more advanced equipment is obviously a plus, but its importance is perhaps less than that of its personnel. A highly-trained force will perform much better than a poorly trained one and take much fewer casualties. Numbers and equipment are much more easy to gauge than the personnel quality of a nation's military.

Update: Obviously nuclear weapons are important here too.

Population:
The population of a given country is important because it is the base upon which its economic and military power is built. The growth rate of its population has a large effect upon its future position because of its direct effect on the wealth of that nation and its indirect effect on the age structure. A nation composed almost exclusively of old people will clearly be in a less powerful position than one with a balanced age structure.

Geography and Threats:
The geographic position of a country affects its ability to influence other nations and also its vulnerability to attack. If a nation is facing threats just across the border (like India vis-a-vis Pakistan) that will also have an effect on its relative position. Clearly in the age of international terrorism and globalization this effect is reduced but it is not eliminated.

Political and Cultural:
The political stability and political environment has an affect on a nations freedom of action and its ability to sustain a military effort. The cultural appeal of a nation will also affect its ability to influence other nations.

Plan of Action
The plan of action at this point is to go through nation-by-nation a list of potential and current powers. Because of the relative nature of the measurement of power it might prove difficult to keep them separate and there may be some overlap. I will then give a concluding section in which I summarize what I believe will be the most important trends. A discussion relating this to the current war against Islamo-fascists is also in the works as many of you may be asking how that affects this calculus of power. The nations I plan on discussing are as follows:

1. United States
2. European Union (not a true nation but close enough)
3. China
4. Japan
5. India
6. Others if I feel motivated enough after the first five

References
Clearly I did not come up with the idea to do this completely on my own. Influences on my thinking are here, here, and here. Other references used will be linked in upcoming posts.

Breakin' the law, breakin' the law

2004-03-19T12:00:00.000-05:00

Found out today that I am in violation of Georgia state law. Why? Because I own a Swiss army knife with a blade longer than two inches, and I live on a University campus. If you look up Georgia here, you'll see that it is against Georgia law to have any kind of weapon (including any "knife having a blade of two or more inches") within 1000 feet of a school, including Universities. What a crock. It should be noted that the law does have a bunch of exceptions written into it for things like teachers and if you're over 21 and picking someone up from school, but it allows no exception for those who live in a dorm on-campus. The law makes sense for elementary and high schools but is a stinkin load of crap when applied to the University level. I'm a 23 year old graduate student, not a child. I believe I should be able to have any legal weapon I want, even if I live on-campus. I don't feel in any danger of being prosecuted under this law, but it's irritating that it even exists.

It's a conspiracy

2004-03-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I came across an article mentioning the fact that the French were going to have joint naval exercises with the Chinese on Tuesday, near Taiwan. I thought this was outrageous; a democracy (France, at least nominally) engaging in naval exercises with a communist country (China) trying to intimidate a democracy (Taiwan). This only makes sense if the French are purposefully doing the opposite of what the U.S. would do just to be spiteful. In retrospect perhaps not that big a surprise that the surrender-monkeys would act like rebellious teenagers. Now I read that the president of Taiwan was shot and the waters become murkier. Now it seems like perhaps the Chinese are playing a dangerous game of electoral manipulation (in an Al Qaeda-esque fashion with intimidation and terrorism). It's probably just a coincidence, with the attempted assassination being conducted by some commie fruitcake, but it makes me wonder.

Me vs I

2004-03-18T22:39:00.000-05:00

I started a post a while ago and it had a really great intro. But then I got bogged down. Didn't know how to say what I wanted. I guess I'm too used to arguing with myself; it's much more difficult to structure an argument for other people. When I debate myself (and I do, nothing wrong with that) I don't have to flesh out each point so it goes much faster. Trying to write, I get too far ahead of myself and have a difficult time filling in the blanks for other people. It's irritating but also part of why I'm doing this blog. If you have to write about something it forces you to think it through much more deeply than just for yourself. I've got some great ideas spinning around for future posts, but I need to get them more organized beforfe putting them in front of the world (or something). Stay tuned.

What is up with that title?

2004-03-18T17:47:00.000-05:00

The title basically derives from me being a smart-ass. In high school English class, someone was trying to come up with the longest word (non-scientific, of course, because they cheat by mashing everything together German style) and my teacher said that Antidisestablishmentarianism was the longest word. As the top of my sidebar says, the word refers to those who were against those who were against the establishment of the Church of England under Henry VIII. So they weren't FOR the Church of England, they were just against those who opposed it. My original (or at least independently arrived at) contribution is to add the -esque to the end of it (making it 33 letters long). I think this version makes more sense to use because no one actually believes in Antidisestablishmentarianism, but someone could remind you of that group.

An additional advantage is that I now have the blog with the longest one word name. I am King of the One-Word Name Blogs or KOWNB, for short. I hereby declare that all blogs shall link to me! All those not obeying this command will sentenced to death (sentence to be carried out between now and forever). That is all. For now. [evil cackle in the background]

un-Reason-able

2004-03-18T14:47:00.000-05:00

The libertarian magazine Reason has a new article on-line (see here) about the 3/11 bombings in Spain. In it the author decries the punditocracy's condemnation of the results of the election as "appeasement." He talks about how the result of the election was not due to a surrender to terrorist demands and desires, but a result primarily of the increased turn-out due to the attacks and Aznar's transparently political attempts to pin the blame on Basque separatists in the ETA. My thoughts on this were: so what? It doesn't matter why the Spanish voted for the Socialists, it matters if Al Qaeda views it as a victory and will try it again.

The author later makes exactly this same point and then adds "By insisting that the election results constituted capitulation to terror, the hand-wringers are perversely, irresponsibly bringing about the very result they pretend to decry. Why?" This is absurd. Apparently pundits in the U.S. have enormous influence on what Al Qaeda thinks. There can be no doubt that the Islamists view the results of the Spanish election as a victory, and the current War is a zero-sum game so it follows that we lose. The election will hopefully do no lasting harm, but it would be foolish to not realize it for the defeat that it is.

Bomb the cheese-eating surrender monkeys!!

2004-03-18T14:34:00.000-05:00

The title of this post refers to France, of course. I'm going to explain why it might be a good thing if the Islamists target France, which they are apparently threatening to do.

The French, and the rest of Old Europe (after 3/11 including Spain), are still locked in a pre-9/11 mindset of appeasement and viewing terrorism as a law enforcement problem (see Droopy for an American example). This mindset was in retrospect a disaster for the U.S., as we had opportunities to nip Al Qaeda in the bud but wimped out. The key point, however, is that it took a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil for us to take the problem seriously. If France were similarly attacked, it would force their hand. They would have to once and for all choose between appeasement and joining us in going after terrorists.

It's possible they would choose to continue in their EUroweeny ways. Even if this is the case, however, it would expose their policy as weak and ineffective and encourage others to join us. I think that the French people would view this as unacceptable, and bring in new leadership if they did not respond to an attack. The French government elites can spew and sputter about the cowboys in America, but if they were in our position they might be forced to take action because of popular opinion. The French currently see humbling the U.S. as more important than protecting their people; an attack might change this.

Test-Taking Strategery

2004-03-18T14:25:00.000-05:00

I had a test today in my optimization class; it was one of those tests where they give you 3 hours of work to do in 1.5 hours. My strategy for this time-constrained type of test is simple: don't go to the bathroom beforehand. It sounds strange but it works, at least for me. Why does it work? The need to pee gives me an artificially high sense of urgency, forcing me to focus on the task at hand and how to achieve it in the minimum time possible. I'm a pretty smart fellow, and I have a tough time making myself worried about any test because I pretty much always do well, but I also work better and more quickly under pressure. So I use my natural body functions to manipulate myself into the desired state of mind. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but for me it works quite well.

Genetic Algorithm Optimizers

2004-03-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

For one of my classes we have to write a genetic algorithm to optimize several problems and it's very interesting. The inherent randomness means that the answer and how long it takes to get the answer varies greatly for different runs of the same problem. This means that you can never really trust that the answer you get will be the best. The standard genetic algorithm also seems horribly inefficient to me. Because you know the characteristics of each population so it seems to me that you should ensure that you use this information as much as possible, and I don't think the standard algorithm does that. The biggest problem with a genetic algorithm is the inefficiency, and I think it could be made more efficient. I'm going to try out some of my ideas and see if they make it more efficient. I'll report.

New Format and Sidebar Links

2004-03-17T14:55:00.000-05:00

Well I've got everything in a format that is acceptable for now. Before today I knew nothing about html, so I think I'm doing well. The links to the right are not yet in final order or complete, but that can be saved for another time. Hopefully tonight I'll have my first real non-self-referential post.

2004-03-16T20:51:00.000-05:00

Yippee skippee. My first post. I've been reading blogs for the past two years and have thought about starting my own for a while, but I've been too lazy. Argh. The z on my keyboard doesn't work because I spilled my drink a couple weeks ago and now I have to copy a z from something else to type it, at least it's a key that I don't use often. This blog is for me, right now; if anyone else reads it, great, but if not it won't bother me. I'm a decent writer, but my perfectionism makes me agonize (another z!!) over everything much more than I should; so I'm hoping this will help me become a better and faster writer, and maybe even more organized. We'll see.