Centerfield

Kerry/Edwards

As a political junkie, I find this article fascinating. There is lots of dirt, followed by this conclusion:

Kerry said that he wished he'd never picked Edwards, that he should have gone with his gut.

Immigration Jockeying Continues

'Amnesty' tag rouses foes of immigration bill

...despite arguments by supporters that the bill involves fines, waiting lists, and background checks, and despite polls showing most Americans favor some form of legalization, the specter of amnesty has persistently haunted the debate -- and could jeopardize the bill's chances for passage.

"Anything that allows illegal immigrants to stay and become legal is amnesty," said Jessica Echard, executive director of the Eagle Forum, a conservative group based in Alton, Ill. "We're not saying they should deport everyone. We are saying let's turn off the spigot, start enforcing laws on the border and in the workplace. Then we will see the illegal population shrink on its own."

Opponents are able to successfully invoke amnesty in part because of the historical record: The US government has offered seven amnesties to various categories of illegal immigrants in the past 20 years, benefiting 5 million people. In some cases, the amnesties were linked to political debates in the United States or conflicts in the immigrants' home countries.

**sigh.** It troubles me that such rhetorical framing consistently gets in the way of having a debate on the grounds of what is fair, what is best for our country, what is practical, and what is realistic to hope we can do. It matters not a single whit whether the reform is or is not amnesty. Let's move past "tastes great, less filling," and talk about what we want to achieve and what we can achieve. I don't want to simply reward folks who ignored our laws to come here. That incentivizes the kind of behavior Americans want to forestall. But to the extent that such immgrants are productive members of our society, I don't think we'll be especially well served by forcing them all to leave. That's too difficult, too expensive, too draconian, and is likely to have at least some undesirable economic side effects.

Obviously we need to meet somewhere in the middle. When many folks on one side call any suggestion they don't like amnesty, that's not very helpful. But unless reformers can convince these anti-amnesty folks that this time things will be different, then they'll keep it up, and who can really blame them? This time we need to actually take border security seriously and strongly discourage the employment of illegal immigrants, or the uproar will just grow louder.

McCain Urges Immigration Overhaul

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday urged Congress to adopt a sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration laws and challenged critics to offer a better alternative.

The Arizona senator criticized his leading rivals, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, when a reporter asked about their opposition to a Senate compromise brokered earlier this month.

"Anyone who says we shouldn't pass this legislation, I would ask for their proposal," McCain said. "I have not heard their recommendation."

I'm not convinced the proposed reform is stern enough or sweeping enough. While it's not amnesty, it sounds awfully generous, and IMO more generous than what the majority of everyday Americans is looking for.

QUESTION:Do "most Americans" favor "some form" of legalization, as the first article suggests?

ANSWER: Sure. But what the heck does that mean? Does it mean we favor a very generous legalization path with only token penalties which are riddled with enough loopholes to be meaningless? Probably not. My guess is that many Americans look relatively favorably upon immigrants who yearn to be free and who come here and work hard, so long as their presence doesn't have an adverse effect on America and Americans. HUGE caveat right there. I think most folks look at America like a lifeboat with a limited capacity, and as a lifeboat whose rules ought to favor those already on board legally as official citizens.

But IMO anti-amnesty folks do not deserve to be taken especially seriously unless they can move past rhetoric and come up with a reasonable and specific alternative proposal that's more practical than the simplistic preaching to the anti-amnesty choir that folks like Romney and Guiliani seeem to be engaging in. They're enjoying the luxury of those not currently in office...they can just pander, because they don't have to actually lead or legislate.

I'd like to see us all get around some sort of rigorous "path" to legalization for productive immigrants who want to be Americans. Then the discussion can move to how steep this path ought to be, how many checkpoints it ought to have, and who and how many deserve to be on this path.

Too Much Congratulating?

Are we becoming addicted to ceremony? How much congratulating and commemorating can we all stomach. Can we go to the bathroom and tie our shoes without expecting a pat on the back? Allison Ijams Sargent wonders.

I fear that our children will wonder where their congratulatory pre-printed certificate is when they get their first job. Who will feed them cupcakes when they finish painting their apartment? Having a childhood spent watching adults tick off every tiny step forward with equal reverence is a dangerous business. It sets up kids to see everything as equally important. And when everything is important, nothing is important.

I'm not one to say this a huge deal. It's not. Most young adults are self-straightening when the bills hit the fan. But I think it's pretty fair to wonder whether some of the folks in charge of overpraising and ceremoniously overcongratulating kids are in fact kidding themselves, and maybe wasting time. Kids develop oppositional internal voices and their own culture of understanding the world that is independent of the gushing and unrealistic reports of adults in positions of authority. I wonder how many kids put up with the sheer volume of this stuff for the sake of their parents versus how many of them buy into incessant back-patting?

Maybe it's just me. I'm not a big believer in ceremony. It's most worthwhile when kept to a bare minimum, so as to signal, as the author above points out, those things which truly matter.

Density Is Inefficient, Part III (*outside metropoli)

This is the third in a series sparked by my discovery that condos cost more than houses. This is the first in the series, this the second. I keep reading that density is more efficient, resourcewise, but it's the other way around for the very expensive and resource-intensive real estate.

This post adds the fact that tall apts cost more to construct than short ones with same sq footage. Here's what a real estate apartment construction calculator has to say about average costs of building an aparment building with 50,000 ft^2, at various heights:

The overhead for tall construction over shortest depends on the size of the project, starting about half for a really big building, and more like 3x for 10,000 ft^2. Of course, Austin is cheap because it's near the Southern border, but the overhead is still high, relatively.

Building denser creates a result here in Austin that things just get more expensive, because the newer and denser housing

In fact, I'd say we have some overbuilding going on here in Austin, but, paradoxically, it's NOT GOING TO LOWER PRICES. All the overbuilding is of apartments and condos, so, except for a handful of cases where the developers go bankrupt and you get a below-market fire sale, mean prices will go up anyway.

UPDATE: WHOOPS! Scott pointed out that I made the wrong kind of comparison. I'd be right if people built wide, big-box-factor low apartment buildings, but that's not what's happening - you really get a bunch of small apartment buildings. It should, as you point out, be more like multiple 5k sq ft vs a smaller number of medium sqft, vs 1 big, tall project. Overall, I now believe apartment building height is a wash in terms of cost. See the thread for details. Good eye, Scott! Thanks! I'm glad I was wrong.

A Series of Unfortunate Events: WW1 Begets WW2: WWI Mythology Part 2 of 3(LONG)

This post is about how mythology and overreaction arising from WW1 caused WWII. It's the second of a three-part series on WWI ( part 1 here). There were two important phases: the anti-German phase that resulted in the punitive bits of the Treaty of Versailles that let Hitler come to power and the anti-militaristic phase that resulted in appeasement policies that let the Axis grow strong.

In the first post, I talked about how Allied military was so stupid as cause widespread rebellion, like the Communists in Russia, Fascists in Italy, and way too many of both (but not majorities) in the Western democracies. The Western Allies sent millions of soldiers to die in charges of entrenched machine gun positions, a thing they had ample evidence to know was likely to lose those millions for little. And that's what happened. But not everybody rebelled. Let's go back for a bit to the majority response. My bit on the subject from the last post:

. . . To be sure, for most, the response was like Eric Maria Remarque's, jotted down for the generations in All Quiet on the Western Front, bitterness and distrust of all things military. . . .

This embittered majority will soon have its necessary place in the sun of events in the democratic Allies. Not quite yet, though.

Treaty of Versailles

First, we have a moment of vengeance. In Europe, vast majorities are elected on retributive platforms. Despite plenty of statesmanlike conduct to try and lessen the result, Versailles was an instrument of vengeance as well as peace and progress.

The Treaty had two kinds of severe terms that led to problems. One set made Germany out to be a permanent second class citizen, with annoying borders and prescription of 15 years before Allied occupation was due to end. Worse trouble came from the huge reparations assigned Germany to pay for some of the vast Allied war damage. While Germany had, in fact, arguably taken action resulting in vast damage, they had also suffered vast damage and wouldn't've been able to pay the reparations for many years. It just lingered as a vast shadow, perfect for demagogic politicians to play on.

On top of the Treaty, when Germany had the predictable trouble paying the harsh reparations, Prime Minister Poincare of France occupied the German Ruhr, a center of industry.

All this bad treatment was music to Hitler's and other extremists' ears. Though, another thing that helped them was that Germany had gone democratic of itself. The deal had left in place many judges and generals who monarchist and otherwise authoritarian in sympathy. Judges couldn't be bothered to give rightie traitors long sentences; many generals were far too ready to listen when Hitler took power. And, as is all too usual for new democracies, the first constitution was buggy.

Let's pause for a second and talk about the Treaty's upsides. Because President Wilson and the other signatories also advanced far in some ways. After almost exactly two millenia of subjection and Empire, the Treaty drew boundaries in ways not too far from how majorities in the various territories involved would've drawn them. He also worked hard to encourage democracies in much of Eastern Europe. Conservatives loved to titter about that when the Iron Curtain was in place, but Woodie got the last laugh, because now they're back just about in those same spots in Eastern Europe, and not so much elsewhere in the ex-Soviet-Union.

Now let's talk League of Nations. The League was what I'd call the Alpha test of the United Nations. That is, it was the start of a cool idea, but having serious problems that we didn't know about because it hadn't been tried. The worst problem was enforcement. Wilson sold WWI as the "War To End Wars," because, he said, his Fourteen Points, which included the League of Nations, would end war forever. He clearly thought the League of Nations really would end war, permanently.

Reality's gone down rather differently, of course. Reality includes WWII and the reality of plenty of small wars, even today. Every once in a while, an evil dictator decides that all these big, rich, peaceful democracies have been at peace so long they've lost the stomach for war. So, they attack another nation to try to expand, even if's a long-standing friend of a powerful democracy or strategically important. This will never stop. However, we can prevent evil dictators from hanging onto their ill-won gains so they don't get big enough to be dangerous, and free a friend or two. Other reasons for war in the last few decades have included well-funded rebellions and terrorists, and ethnic cleansing.

What has worked is that we haven't had any really big wars like WWI and WWII, though that's as much because of Mutually Assured Destruction as because of UN-style police actions.

Rise of Appeasement

A few years later, things had turned around. By that time, the harsh Versailles terms, particularly the reparations that could then be seen to be excessive, and perhaps more than the Central Powers could afford, were creating wide sympathy, especially for the Germans. When German ultra-high inflation had the side effect of all but wiping out the debt (it was valued in end-of-war amounts), there was probably quiet relief among most citizens of Allied democratic states. Later, when Hitler cmae to power, that sympathy helped him gain vast Allied concessions.

Another wide sentiment also bore its fruit for Hitler as well. The anti-militarism also became mature as a political sentiment around the same time. The first effect was that the Allies found it increasingly politically hard to maintain the various garrisons called for by Versailles and in spots where arrangements were slower to mature.

All the democratic Allies started reducing their militaries.

If you think about it, the kind of big military we have, and that Britain and France used to keep, reflects a popular trust in the military. Most of us listen to the generals when they remind us that evil men will take advantage if we fail to keep a big military, and mostly trust them to the vaguely right thing, with appropriate democratic supervision.

At this point, a majority of democratic citizens had lost faith in even listening to any voices associated with the military. People stopped believing that bad guys would come without constant deterrence and occasional military action. They were right, for a while. The ideological underpinnings for Appeasement had come, electing and returning with big majorities the politicians who later responded to Fascism with Appeasement.

Rise of Fascism

Fascism seems to've rarely commanded a majority anywhere. It didn't when it came into power in Germany, Italy, Japan, or Spain. Or, I'd argue, in Putin's Russia today before our eyes. They can only win elections unfairly. There probably was a majority in Germany after France fell, and in the times after Allied civilian bombing brought people together but before the defeats had started coming fast.

The Fascists of that era came to power undemocratically. All of them. Mussolini (Italy) and Tojo (Japan) were appointed by their monarchs. Hitler (Germany) hacked a buggy democratic Constitution. Franco (Spain) won a civil war. Now, notice that for these ways to power to work, each of the rulers had already had to work hard and long at getting lots of the existing elites on their sides.

Germany and Italy appear to have gone Fascist partially as results of unhappiness with WWI. Germany, of course, was unhappy about the loss - Hitler famously loved to propagate a "stabbed in the back" notion. Italy's less clear, because all we do know is that the King handed power to Mussolini with the excuse of keeping the Communists from taking over; was that an excuse or a reality? It does seem to've been true that Italy was as at least as unhappy about their fighting of the war as the rest of the Democractic Allies in WWI (maybe worse, because they never got the tank). Radicalism on both sides really does seem to've increased greatly in Italy after WWI.

The Great Depression also helped tip Germany into fascism. Though it didn't make the Nazis a majority party, it did make it one of the bigger ones, and thus a good coalition partner.

Fascist Japan does seem to've been different in an important way from the other hostile Axis nations - they weren't unhappy with WWI. The war had mostly been far away, and they'd lost one destroyer in the Med, but gained some German turf in the Far East. All the Axis Powers were historically recently emerged Great Powers that consequentially, had many elites who felt that their ownings under colonialism did not befit their realistic military ranking. Mussolini felt the same way, but notions of conquest were backed by much less public opinion in Italy, which explains the widespread WWII Italian military failures.

Taking Advantage of Appeasement

There is nothing unusual at all in history about the rise of groups of aggressive dictatorial states. What's not so usual is the level of irresolution in surrounding states against them. Part of this was because Hitler was a democratic politician for awhile and understood about appealing to parties and coalitions in democracies. Part of ancient Macedonia's rise was made possible by Alexander's being tutored by Aristotle to understand at least some democratic politics. Alexander successfully split opinion in several powerful states that might otherwise have united as against Cyrus.

Hitler kept the West off-guard by often talking publically about how he wanted nothing but peace. Well, there's some truth to that, actually, it wasn't ALL a big lie. He wanted a Pax Germanica, with all the most important bits of the world under his control. But he DID lie about how he didn't want to conquer his various neighbors, to many people and in many places. Before he invaded, he often invented a crisis about German minorities in the target country. Many people believed him.

But this time, there was also the wide military distrust serving appeasement. First, states in the new League of Nations failed to confront Italy when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, and then Hitler took that to be a good sign that he could invade places without being confronted; he was right for a good, long time.

Churchill has pointed out that Hitler could've been stopped far, far more easily if it had been done earlier. Hitler's first steps were to reoccupy the German Ruhr and Rhineland, in defiance of treaty. At that point, the German Army was utterly tiny, just a skeleton, and a confrontation would've been trivial.

Hitler followed those unopposed successes up by annexing Austria and then Czechoslovakia. Nobody stopped him. In fact, France had mutual defense treaties with Czechoslovakia, and Britain with France, so that should've started WWII. There was an infamous meeting in Berlin over Czechoslovakia, in which Hitler persuaded France and Britain that there would be peace if they failed to help Czechoslovakia.

Czechoslovakia was the first spot where the German Army was big enough to noticeably slow a Western invasion. But even there, the Allies would've been in a much better situation than when they actually went to war, because the correlation of forces would've allowed immediate French invaaion. Most of the much-smaller Wehrmacht was off invading Czechoslovakia instead of defending German defensive works. When Poland was invaded, Germany had enough forces to do both, meaning France didn't have enough force to invade. That put off the day of reckoning until Germany built its army enough to conquer France. Churchill pointed out that Czechoslovakia had a good-size army in good strategic position to give Germany plenty of headaches that would've been on the Allied side.

Thus, without that distrust of the military from WWI, I'd guess that, at the very latest, the West would've confronted Hitler over Czechoslovakia, and at worst, the war would've been alot shorter.

WWII Begins

Britain and France finally decided to confront Hitler over Poland, after their armed forces were inferior, especially when the effects of the western Siegfried Line with France on any considered invasion. They had to lay passive until Hitler could build up his forces enough to take over France.

Summary

There would be no WWII without the absolutely amazing number of myths and overreactions from WWI. First came the determination to squeeze Germany to the last Deutchmark and submit it to retributive treaty limitations.

Then came the determination on the Allied side to distrust any idea of using the military - normally a grim necessity in the world, as it was in those decades as well, coupled by the rise of the aggressive and militaristic Fascist regimes similarly propelled by the political rebounds of WWI.

What would WWII have been like without Hitler or Mussolini in power, or if the West had taken early action against their aggression? It's hard to guess. Would Japan have declared war alone? Would it instead have involved confronting Stalin on his aggression? Would the axis have been of the USSR and Japan instead?

ConEd and Homeland Security Sold a Superconductor Bridge to Brooklyn

ConEd and DHS have decided to pay American Superconductor Corporation $50M to install a trial superconducting cable as a proof of concept for a superconducting power grib

You'd think that officials in a city with no shortage of sellers playing fast and loose would be more skeptical. It's billed as being able to hold more power/wire, giving security from surges, and being more secure from attack.

So, what's the problem here? Well, that superconductors must be chilled pretty far - in this case, to -230C, we're told, to work as superconductors. With that in mind, let's take a look at the claims of improvement.

Memorial Day Weekend Open Thread

I'm starting early.

Density Is Expensive, Part II (*outside metropoli)

I live next to an empty lot. It's nice, and I don't have to worry about it going anywhere. We've been here a few years, and three attempts to build condos in that lot have fallen through. The tape and little pile from construction of the third try vanished quietly sometime in the last few weeks. The website's still there, but that means nothing.

At first, I thought it was because of the bad local economy. Computers are by far Austin's best-paying industry, so it was especially bad here. But when I started looking for a condo to move into, I understood. If you remember, in Part I, I blogged that the cheapest condos are 40% more expensive than the cheapest houses in Austin. Well, I live in one of the cheaper parts of the city - houses are so much more cost-effective, they'll have a hard time selling condos. Eventually, of course, somebody will figure out that they have to do something a little different (a strip mall, apartments, or a handful of houses).

Here, there've been alot of worrying and calls for increases in housing subsidies because it looks like the high density that Austin's just starting to really get in to in more than a handful of places will cause another jump in prices.

Gas Prices Mucho Painful

In recent years, complaints about high gas prices have run head onto into "it's not even a high when adjusted for inflation" meme. Well, another meme bites the dust:

Gas now at highest level, even adjusted for inflation

Gasoline prices soared to levels never seen before as even the inflation-adjusted price for a gallon of unleaded topped the 1981 record spike in price that had stood for 26 years. And higher prices could be on the way as Americans get ready to hit the road for the Memorial Day holiday and the start of the summer driving season.

The Lundberg Survey, a bi-weekly gas price tracking service, put the price of a gallon of unleaded at $3.18 in its latest reading released late Sunday, up more than 11 cents from its reading of two weeks ago.

Now, I noticed a week or two ago that the "not a high when inflation-adjusted" meme was on its last legs. The telltale sign? The apologists have had a fallback position ready. A new meme using "purchasing power" to explain that we're still better off because a lower percent of average income goes for gas than it used to.... Maybe so, and worth noting. But after this duly noting, let's notice that these high prices are extremely painful. More and more folks are noticing that gas is adding up to a worryingly substantial monthly expense. It's much harder to ignore paying $300 or $400 per month for gas than $150. Ripples? You betcha.

So for all the economics folks out there who are ready to explain why we're better off, my advice is to give it a rest. $3 a gallon and rising makes for a lot of unhappy campers. And while it may be interesting to note that strictly speaking gaswise, Americans may be better off than they were in 1981 for whatever reason, we're most of us smart enough to know that the wallet is emptying out a lot faster at $3 per gallon than at the $1.50 per gallon of just a few years ago. So please don't don't try to explain to us why it doesn't suck. Just don't do it.

The Globalization Of American Sports

Interesting post by Dan Drezner here.

Friday open thread

What is on your mind?

Does Military Discipline Really Help?

OK, it's clear that lots of practice fighting as part of a big unit, in an assigned role, including all the activities you're likely to engage in, is very important. Nor do I have any question that unit cohesiveness is also very important.

But how important is the 'spit and polish?' Are spotless uniform and uniform regs important? Are units really better off generally for living under perpetual speech and action discipline? Does it help for soldiers have to obey and 'sir' superiors outside duty hours and emergency situations?

I've just read suggestions in Churchill that spit and polish is needed to maintain cohesiveness, but you know, Google, Dell Computer, and other private sector employers maintain their esprit de corps without them. I mean, to me, what makes the difference is good leadership. When you're lead well, you'll care about the unit and act in its interests easily, otherwise you won't (Vietnam comes to mind).

Let's face it - there are some disadvantages to high discipline. Some services like to talk a big game about innovation, but it's really only seen when The Plan breaks down. Otherwise it's Conservatism City. Innovation during peacetime can bring career-holding investigations, or even court-martials (see Billy Mitchell's and Hyman Rickover's healthy careers). Relaxing speech rules, for example, could help with innovation. It might've improved both their careers.

I think the milblogs were helping transmit ideas and let troops and people back home understand more than the manual will ever tell them. But it anybody surprised they're under threat? After all, they're hardly responsive to centralized discipline.

The high discipline also kept me from even thinking about volunteering. I doubt I'm the only one.

I've never served in the Armed Services, just the Civil Service. So I really don't KNOW. I'm just curious what people think.

Somewhere in the last few thousand years, surely somebody must've tried running a minimally disciplined army. Did they get wiped out?

I was inspired to this post by a combination of Big Insta's post about this Atlantic article and reading Churchill coming out in favor of spit and polish in a letter (vol 3 appendices somewhere).

Bloomberg

Link.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is prepared to spend an unprecedented $1 billion of his own $5.5 billion personal fortune for a third-party presidential campaign, personal friends of the mayor tell The Washington Times. . .

"He has set aside $1 billion to go for it," confided a long-time business adviser to the Republican mayor. "The thinking about where it will come from and do we have it is over, and the answer is yes, we can do it."

Another personal friend and fellow Republican said in recent days that Mr. Bloomberg, who is a social liberal and fiscal conservative, has "lowered the bar" and upped the ante for a final decision on making a run. . .

"Bloomberg is H. Ross Perot on steroids," said former Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner. "

The way I see it, this is good news for Hillary. Her odds in a 3-way race with 2 Republicans (and, yes, I understand that Bloomberg is a RINO among the true believers) rise dramatically. 2008 is going to be a very interesting year.

Why Microsoft Won't List Claimed Patent Violations

Microsoft has been claiming that the Linux is infringing on a whomping huge 236 patents (gasp!), except they refuse to say WHICH ones.

Wake me when there's a there there.

My guess is this is solely intended to make people like MS' buddy Dell nervous. Dell's recently been considering adding Ubuntu Linux as an option in consumer machines (Red Hat Linux has long been an option for big commercial shipments). I wonder if we'll ever see the list.

Probably, of them, they know 229 are obviously weak and challengeable, and the remaining seven are so minor they can be coded around in a month. If MS thought they had a good case, we'd be seeing the patent numbers already and legal filings against a few major Linux vendors.

After all, one of these violations is probably a patent on the linked list, a computer programming technique. The linked list has been in use for at least 40 years before the patent was applied for. Linux does use them alot. I think that code can probably stay.

There's a good thread on slashdot about this.

UPDATE: We'd be seeing Cease and Desist Letters gone to selected Linux vendors, not legal filings, yet. And, more at Groklaw, here. Interestingly, there is a suggestion in that Groklaw post that a deal MS did with Novell earlier to try and divide the Linux community on this very issue may make MS legally liable if they do go after Linux for patent infringement.

UPDATE 2: What Linus Torvalds has to say about the patent threat. It included the following bit:

Don't you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they'd just tell us and go, 'nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!'"

Post-2006 Iraq Occupation Management Mistakes - e.g., Right Now

Things look ugly right now at the top in DC. Neither side is leading or interested in what's happening in Iraq. All but a few are pointing fingers. Congress' are pointed at Bush, Bush' are pointed at al'Qaeda.

When Bush started the war, he had a more-or-less coordinated campaign to bring the public on his side. He and other administration hawks came out with a number of reasonbly, at least occasionally factually based reasons for the war. Even if you had your doubts about today's WMD as a threat, there were plenty of other good reasons voiced, repeatedly. He was careful not to cast those on the fences into rhetorical pits. Thus, there was a slim majority for the war when it happened.

Bush' campaign for the Surge has been a caricature of the original war campaign. If he'd gone about it this badly, I question if he would've had the votes to start the war. Public opinion would've been solidly agaist it. First, he's barely been willing to talk about our mistakes. Second, he's been trying to blame the mistakes on al'Qaeda, ("public enemy No. 1 in Iraq"), after admitting things were going wrong and firing Rumsfeld for some reason; that looks bad to alot of people. He's been using mostly polarizing language. Maybe the worst problem is that he's barely addressed a supremely vital issue: why to believe there's still hope. I mean, if it'll do no good, why stay?

While we're talking light and cheer, check out this IMHO largely true article on Congressional disinterest in facts in Iraq. Of course, it's not helping that the Administration has been uninterested in understanding or explaining things, either. He's backing the Surge so clumsily, he's making it both rhetorically and politically hard for many centrists in Congress to be on his side. That's how he got Clinton on the side of distrust. By earning it.

I think it's his duty to continue to lead well even through his mistakes. He should be getting some raw blog data to understand what's happening, like he did for terror threat info. He should be get a good campaign for the Surge, just as he did for the war.

Note: I, personally, am pro-war and pro-Surge. But I've been strongly irritated by the Administration' Surge sales effort, and I wanted to explain why. Especially since I can see that this is a little invisible to many Republicans and conservatives. Far fewer righties get squicked if you talk about "Public Enemy #1." Or are inclined to distrust the Administration view of things if it's not clearly backed by facts.

Threaded Friday

Thread. Open.

(Not an invitation to disrobe, but that's your option.)

Iraq Postwar Management Mistakes Blog

There's been some discussion of this recently, and I've been wanting to blog on this myself. There's an interesting article here.

I read the last book of Churchill's WWII book a little out of order to see what he does to plan for occupations. He expected to put serious numbers of troops on the ground even after the war was over, and to have to stay there awhile, even in the friendly Netherlands, because, of course, there would be no magic tokens against opportunistic disorder cropping up.

He expected himself and his staff to have increasingly detailed plans on how many troops, where they'd come from, implications of who would provide them (e.g., bad results of Soviet occupations of Eastern Europe), transport implications, etc.. He expected plans to be well thought out, in detail, before they were executed, preferably with preparation for problems.

I'd say Rumsfeld's war plan lived up pretty well. To me, as war plans and executions go, it was pretty good. The utter lack of postwar plans, for politics or to stop disorder, are where I and many others hand him an 'F.'

OK, let's take a digression into management style. Churchill's management style in WWII, which seems to've served him well, was to ask lots of questions about details to many people, and consult widely, but mostly only issue orders on a few big things, and on schedules. In WWI, he more kept his orders and questions to big topics and a smaller circle, and, though he did alot of good at his post as First Lord of the Admiralty (coal->oil, gun size increment raised), he also served up the famous disaster of Gallipoli. ISTR also a failure to prevent a bad design mistake that led to the Hood and several other nasty warship explosions.

Rumsfeld appears to've been a micromanager. A good micromanager can be of some use (e.g., Jobs' Apple Computer), but can really only deal with one problem or product at a time (Apple II, iMac, iPhone). I still think the war plan was pretty good, as they go, for the war part. But wars are more complicated than Jobs' products. You have to plan for EVERYTHING, not just the interesting bit, or people die.

Bush appears to be a big-question-manager. He was pretty persistent at dealing with getting a usable occupation political system going. By my count, he went to Plan D (A: let Iraqis instantly self-organize in a shout, B: Garner, C: Bremer, D: Allawi) to Iraqi constitution and self-rule). According to Fiasco, Rumsfeld urged plans A, B, and C. Instant democratic self-organization has only worked where an elected leader was tossed out of power in under ten years. Absent that, that kind of plan has never worked anyplace, anywhere, and, as Fiasco put it, it's clear that neither Garner nor Bremer were up to the job. They were people Rumsfeld was comfortable with rather than capable men.

Bush' fatal error, shared by Rumsfeld and many others, is that he let security get fatally bad. BIG mistake. He should've assigned somebody to read Iraqi blogs, do surveys, check mortality levels, or otherwise check that security plans were working out. There was no shortage of evidence. The White House has been known to read blogs at least occasionally. Are readers of Iraqi blogs out of the loop there?

The problem, also documented persuasively in Fiasco, is that Rumsfeld insisted no occupation would be needed, the Iraqi people could take care of themselves. Tribes could protect themselves with their militias until a police force was formed. The huge US force would confine itself to fighting back against those who fired at / delivered bombs against us.

That's yet another thing that's never worked anyplace, anywhere, because gangsters/opportunists like Al'Sadr show up. That's why Churchill was even planning to garrison the Netherlands. If this sort of innovation is tried, you have to have watch carefully that it really works and have a Plan B. Neither was provided for.

You'd think that the changes in viceroyship ideas would've given a chance to think about if the security self-organization was actually working (clarly only for the gangs, even then).

You know, it's scary how many people STILL don't understand the security failures. Most conservatives still buy Bush' pinning of it all on Al'Qaeda. Even many military people don't see what's up, thinking it's about a failure in anti-insurgency plans. But no. Al'Qaeda is not so much a big to threat to Iraqis on the street or to the government. Or even to our soldiers, despite the heavy news coverage of it.

I fear terribly for when Petraeus moves on. Unless Gates chooses somebody similarly smart for Iraq, who can look at events on the street and form the right conclusions, Iraq is in trouble. And maybe even then, becase there's vanishingly little political support for the facts in DC. In the White House or outside. On either side of the aisle. More on that soon. I'm also fearful that politics will make Petraeus move on early.

I want my immigration reform NOW

Disclaimer first: I'm a Republican centrist but I'm enthusiastic about immigration. I believe it strengthens the US and generally should be encouraged.

So when the Dems took over Congress I was eager to see a meaningful immigration reform bill. I mean "getting tough on immigration" is a hard-right Republican stance, right? Well this report on a UPI/Zogby survey has me frustrated.

Sixty-seven percent of those who considered themselves moderate -- as opposed to conservative, libertarian, progressive or liberal -- said a wall would not make the country safer from terrorism; as did 57 percent of those who said they were registered independents. Fifty-one percent of moderates and 53 percent of independents said the same about a guest-worker program. ..Widespread opposition to both security and reform-oriented approaches to immigration has lawmakers looking over their shoulders as they consider the looming question of legislation, said Bob Dolibois, executive vice president of the American Nursery and Landscaping Association, a trade association that is lobbying for reform.

Maybe I'm like most voters: I'm convinved my direction (similar to the McCain-Kennedy bill) is the right direction and I don't understand why others don't see it my way.

The idealist in me will latch on to this

There is a silent majority of lawmakers that will vote for (comprehensive immigration reform)

On the other hand, the cynic in me wonders if this is the core obstacle:

Some Democrats would rather have the issue than the policy," he (Victor Cerda, former general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) said, saying they believed that the smart move would be to use the issue at the election and get better legislation when they controlled the White House

What if?

Listening to NPR on Friday regarding the the Clinton/Byrd proposal to revoke the war authorization got me playing the "what if?" game. Byrd noted:

No weapons fo mass destruction were found in Iraq...no weapons of mass destructions of any description

So imagine four years ago, the early months after the Mission Accomplished moment. Imagine finding a cache of old mustard gas or other such chemical weapons. If you like, imagine finding real evidence of early development of a nuclear capability.

And then imagine the rest of of the events as they have been. Would the finding of WMD's make any difference now? Is our desire to get out of Iraq driven by how we got there in the first place? Or it driven by how its ended up now? And if the latter, what does that say about our's or any other nation's ability to "regime change" and/or "nation build"?

Open Thread

Tell us whatcha got.

Why I Believe Turing's Conjecture - Human Brains Are Just Faster Computers

This arises from a question of Max' on my last post. I believe human-level intelligence and consciousness are achievable in material objects. I think personality simulators are conscious, albeit with limited backing intelligence so far, just like cats or dogs.

There was a very clever chap named Turing who cofounded computer science. He invented a few kinds of machine whose sole purpose was use in discussion about what can and cannot be done, and how long a particular computation would take. The best-known of these, the Turing Machine, was basically a computer, albeit slower (its memory model is an old tape drive instead of modern memory). Turing noticed that he couldn't find any basic mathematical or logic operation that people could do that the Turing Machine couldn't.

Turing theorized that the computer and people would turn out to be able to do the same things. Although never able to prove or disprove it, his conjecture stands still undisproven, half a century later. He was hoping it would be clear by now, but the gap in effective speed is wider than both he or early AI researchers expected. Still, the writing on the wall is there for me.

Let me explain the bit about speed gap. Suppose you had a Model 'A' Ford, updated to up to modern road regulations. Its top speed was something like 20-25MPH. Now, a modern Honda Civic has a top speed of something like 90-110 MPH, but it does the same kinds of things, really. One'll get you home alot faster, but it's still the same kind of machine. Now, a train really works differently; it's alot more restricted in operation, and takes alot more investment. Early computers, as constructed by Turing, and the PC you buy today are the same kind of beast; one's just a billionX faster. Thus, he conjectured that the relationship between computer and human also is just speed.

There is evidence that computer performance will pass human performance by halfway through the century. I've been able to see computers get smarter - they were severely limited when I started; now they beat champions are hard games like chess, and do highly sophisticated parts of intellectual occupations like medicine, poetry, and, er, programming. We'll soon see up-to-speed, full simulations of pets in about ten years, I think.

Obama Critical of Black Community

This, IMO, is another reason why Barack Obama should be the next President of the United States:

"In Chicago, sometimes when I talk to the black chambers of commerce, I say, 'You know what would be a good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren't throwing their garbage out of their cars."

Oh yeah, I haven't been around much lately. I no longer ride the 2008 fence. I am on board the hope express. This centrist is voting for and proudly supporting Barack Obama. This article is an example of how he is the only candidate to go where only those like Dan Quayle have gone in the past. However, and unlike Quayle, he is also the only candidate that has the intellect, political will, and communication skills to actually do something about it.

I fully intend to make the centrist case for Obama's candidacy in the coming months. And Simon, I'm coming for you.

A Non-Review of "God Is Not Great"

Once again, I'm gonna write about something I probably won't read. Why not?

From somebody who does claims to've read it:

Christopher Hitchens is an essayist and pundit who loves a good fight and is never afraid to pick on someone his own size; but this time he's outdone himself. He's picked on God. . . .

Hitchens is, if he will forgive the religious reference, preaching to the choir.

Being an atheist, I'm sometimes tempted along those lines. For example, my wife and I were watching an IMAX flick about India the other day. It followed the life of a clever Hindi mystic named Neelkanth, who spends the whole movie walking around India during the time India was conquered. My reaction was, shoudn't he be off inventing something to help his people or keep the British out instead of wasting his time with this stuff?

And let's not get into my thoughts about Catholic and Aztec priests in Mexico.

But I think I'm much less inclined to push atheism per se, though, than informed skepticism. It's that which has propelled science and so many of the good things in our lives today to the fore and will continue to drive scientific and social advancement long after we die.

And it's hopeless - we all have our shibboleths, even Mr. Hitchens.

Vonage Shoulda Chellenged the Patents, and Other Patent Grumbles

Reading Stubborn Facts this morning reminded me that I wanted to check the Vonage patents for purposes of my own. It looks to me like the patents are highly uninnovative and subject to challenge.

It looks to me like one patent covers a protocol standard - the VoIP Session Initiation Protocol - issued three months before it was filed for. The standard work, in IETF RFC2543, was done by a group that did NOT include the patenter. The other patent (filed even later) covers a database obviously needed to implement the protocol. The word 'database' even appears in the standard document.

Why didn't Vonage and their lawyers actually take a look at challenge possibilities?

It seems to me the USPTO is negligent in their patent processes. This is only one of many uninnovative patents that they've allowed through.

Another patent problem the software industry faces is that they last ten times as long as the industry innovation cycle. There are patents in force today that come from work before the Web was invented, when computers were 1000th the speed and stored 1000th as much stuff; only hobbyists use software and hardware from back then. Computer-related patents should only last two years. Maybe patents should be tagged for length by industry.