Centerfield

Open Thread: Something Worth Fearing

Forty-six years ago and a day, the biggest bomb ever exploded was tested. It was a Soviet 50-Megaton bomb.

Gerrymandering Paper Problems

A paper has been written that casts a shadow on our blog assumption that the decrease in House centrism is because of computerized gerrymandering. So I read the paper.

Though I'm glad the author's looking at the problems, I think this needs more work. I thought the paper had serious problems with facts, Maybe the worst is that the author is charmingly ignorant about when computers started to have serious horsepower.

The author believes that computers were only powerful enough to gerrymander effectively starting in the 90s; in reality, powerful minicomputers and workstations were available well beforehand, and likely to have been cheap enough for consultant purchase. I seem to remember Tully having mentioned using workstations at least for his consulting work in the past.

The error has fatal consequences, because he uses data from 1990 as a pre-computer-gerrymander baseline for comparison, when in reality it started well before then. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Indeed, one point the paper makes is that alot more partisan stiffening happened in '80.

Hat tip, Tyler Cowen.

Hey, Tully, if you see this, any thoughts on when the first serious computer-based gerrymanders did begin?

Deed Restrictions Are Evil And Should Be Banned

Yep, I've been reading some while looking for a house recently.

As I see it, a law should be passed invalidating deed restrictions after some startup period to allow for replacement by HOAs where desired. It's also evil that there are plenty of properties that change ownership without the buyer being able to find out about the restrictions, but as I see it, the fix is to eliminate them.

I'm fine with groups being allowed to set restrictions, like zoning and home-owners associations, though I'd rather not join one myself. The key difference is that people alive today can vote on the rules. You can vote out racist rules.

Jefferson was deeply concerned at spots where we, as a society, can come to be ruled by the dead. Deed restrictions are just that. To that extent, we're ruled by the dead's ethics and priorities. How many deeds, like one of Bush' houses, have wording requiring that they only go to white owners? How much legal money and court time will be spent deciding how to translate wording about cars to whatever the next popular transport device is?

As an engineer, another thing that gets my goat is that you can only add to the pile. You can't take away a deed restriction. Eventually, they'll tend to become as impractical as US law to read and understand.

MS' Facebook Deal Probably Done To Keep Goog Out

OK, well, also, MS blogs suggest a thing for Facebook, no doubt because it's the hot young thing on the block.

But the cold, hard, business reality has gotta be keeping Google from getting their toes in the door.

Why do I think that? Well, because (1) this a lotta money for a tiny amount of a company - at an amount that values the company at 100x revenue. But, now, for Google or anybody else to buy the company or even get a substantial share of the company, they also hafta pay out the nose, because companies are very reluctant to value their stock downwards.

The other reason is that that's ALL MS is getting, other than big shareholder representation. It's not a buy, and no board seats seem to be involved. It's probably all they COULD get; pre-deal Facebook statements have been very distrustful of MS. But for MS, that alone is probably a good deal for that money. They're living in fear of Goog, especially after their spectacular search engine failures.

This could create some problems finding investors for Facebook in future willing to go in at that nosebleed rate. Or not, since there's gotta be at least one investor as stupid as the linked analyst, who believes MS will double their money (snicker). For that matter, there WERE investors willing to believe in Akamai, which was just as nosebleed, and lost stunning amounts of money (I'm just bitter about Akamai because I never did get around to selling it short before the crash, even though I knew the reality).

Open Thread: Internet instead of SO?

From a Zogby poll

It won’t make you dinner or rub your feet, but nearly one in four Americans say that the Internet can serve as a substitute for a significant other for some period of time,

Of course, it's not the same thing atall, but the Internet certainly Of course, it's not the same thing atall, but the Internet certainly is a good to hang, have far-flung communities, and have groups into weird things you'd never get enough people in one room for in the real world.

Good slashdot thread here.

Fukuyama grumbling about Bush mistakes

...in an interesting Grauniad commentisfree article.

Tax Evasion: The great lie of supply-side economics

What Jimmy Surowiecki wrote

New Microsoft Vista Security System - UAC - Is Evil

I'll bet $100 that neither Gates nor Ballmer have it enabled. Either they're still on XP or have UAC specifically turned off, because I can't imagine any impatient, CEO-like personality living with UAC.

So, what does UAC do? Anytime, anytime, anytime an application does anything potentially questionable from a security POV on behalf of a user (which is surprisingly often), Vista pops up a box and asks if you really want to do that. Anytime you run Control Panel, you can expect 1-3 of these on your way to doing what you wanted to do. Sometimes exploring a filesystem will get you boxes.

It's the bondage & domination approach to security. It's not even likely to work, since users will get used to clicking Yes thoughtlessly. It only buys Microsoft spin and legal room - because now it's all the user's fault for clicking Yes. When I'm forced to run Vista, I'll disable it second thing after the usual first thing of disabling networks.

When Did The British Empire Fall?

An interesting question asked in a Guardian review of an interesting-looking book. The book is the inevitably-titled, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, by Piers Brendon.

To me, the answer's obvious: the moment it became clearly wrong to have one in the minds of most British voters. Yeah, they didn't choose to lose the United States, but they did choose to lose most of the rest of it.

You know, to me, that's the greatest moment of Britain and the Empire. No other Empire has chosen to end like that, until the batch in the last century, a movement I think Britain can reasonably be felt to have lead. They had the choice of defying the inevitable intellectual result of postracist morality to keep their power. But, in the end, after some sad, old-fashioned, British stubbornness, they passed history's test.

What Makes The Greatest Leaders?

Tyler Cowen has a post up titled Which leaders make history, noting that Richard Rhodes thinks leaders are likelier to come from the sticks. This isn't something I'd noticed, despite binging on tons of bios (those tons are getting to be a little literal for my comfort when getting books from the nonfiction piles).

Patterns I HAD noticed include early personal troubles, lots of travel, and lots of exercise.

The thread includes several good examples, to which I'll add the random great leader I thought to try and look up as a private test: Themistocles, who invented the use of seapower, and saved Greece from the Persian Empire very cleverly. He was apparently from a smallish 'burb. It does make sense to me - I think living in the sticks at some point does alot for perspective.

Another thing I see alot in great leaders is alot of travel, with a curious attitude. Themistocles was all over Greece and Persia, and paying careful attention to what he saw, probably even earlier than the records show. Lincoln travelled up and down the Mississipi alot in his early life. TR was famous for travelling at the drop of a hat. He even had a ranch out West just to see what it was like. That might be as important; I suspect that's big reason immigrants are so big in every center of American innovation.

Plenty of the greatest leaders often have faced serious personal difficulty or tragedy before doing great things. FDR had his polio, JFK his Addison's, TR childhood lung trouble, Lincoln lost five relatives and siblings living with him, including his mother.

My final connection is exercise. FDR, JFK, and TR exercised like horses to mitigate their diseases right to their deaths. Lincoln spent a third of his life in hard farming and other labor, and was often found riding and on long walks in office. In fact, I have yet to read about any American President, elected at any time, who didn't exercise alot at least at some point in his life.

A connection has recently been empirically established between exercise and neuron creation, which might explain the strength of the exercise connection.

NYT's Business Troubles

Here's a very good, but long, article about the big selloff of New York Times stock and long string of bad business decisions leading up to it.

Seems like your case study to me of the problems of big family business ownership. Daddy was up to it, Sonny-boy isn't.

Here's a previous NYT grumble.

Open Thread: Need Sleep

I hate days after not being able to sleep until late. Sigh. So what's up for you guys?

UPDATE: Saw something mebbe worth chatting about - nonpartisan elections. Canada's Nortwest Territory has them. Here's an interesting quote that sounded promising to me:

Critics of consensus government have long pointed out campaigns tend to become dominated by local issues because there are no party platforms to vote for or against. They also say discussion of overall policy is lost.

Personally, I get tired of state and local candidates running against Bush or whoever's President. After all, so far, they're running for a local office, and I'd rather hear what they have to say about local problems. And when they're in office, I want them to spend their energy on their job, not the Presidency.

Candidates for Austin munipical positions run nonpartisan, and do a pretty good job.

So, whadja think? Think nonpartisan government could help American state and national government? There's alot of evidence that a moderate political party is literally hopeless, but this seems to actually work at a state-like level.

Sigh

Here's a post labelling a Halloween decoration a hate crime

I'm not seeing how how an event involving actual violence to real people is atall the same thing as a purely imaginary invocation. There's not even any call to violence here. Nor any current pattern of violence against Wiccans.

The entire offense committed here is entirely, well, offense. But offence is a basic part of life. Every time somebody makes a decision, some people are offended. Should we stop making decisions? I'm certainly personally offended by notions we should limit our speech to avoid offenses. There is no winning.

The better a scientific paper, the more offense it gives. Should we put an end to that? When companies introduce better, safer products, their compatitors are offended; should we stop that? Should we stop Google and blogging because newspeople are offended?

Why The US Tech Lead

Last week's Economist has a graph of research spending, broken down by region.

Notice that the US is head and shoulders ahead of the pack, despite having smaller population than many of the other regions cited (the same as Europe).

It's actually worse than that, since the #2 region, Europe, spends less effectively. They don't have as effective a VC industry (industrial labs are less effective), and EU structure encourages alot of EU research funding to be spent equally in each country, regardless of whether any appropriate institutions exist. We do that, too (WVA as research center?), but to less of the money and divvying the take fewer ways.

There's also the question of why we spend more on R&D, but I don't feel like I have an answer to that.

MAXTRUE: Turkey and Genocide Grumble: Is Anyone Driving the Car?

This is Maxtrue's first Centerfield post. Welcome, Max! -Jon

Turkey prepares to invade Iraq Does anyone have any comments over the latest developments? As Rice and Gates are rebuffed by Putin over missile defense, Jimmy Carter has recently declared Sudan has not "legally" committed genocide in Darfur.

Congress declares that Bush can take no action against Iran without approval. Democrats have blasted Hillary for even encouraging tougher sanctions on Iran. To summarize, the Democrats are sending a signal that sanctions are out and another signal to Turkey that their continued friendship is not worth delaying a Congressional history lesson. Jon Stewart might think he's funny asking Republicans if it's okay to call the Holocaust a Halfacaust, but in the same uncertain breath he asks if the Congress has apologized for slavery. How many people did Saddam, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and other despots murder? Could Congress have picked a worse moment to piss off the Turks? Or is that exactly what the Democrats want to make Iraq descend into real chaos? Please note suggested Democratic policy on Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia etc. Is this the way to restore America's reputation?

At this point, I ask, is anyone driving the car? Where is the op-ed from the NYT on this Armenian issue? Do Democrats care more about making Turkey an adversary than bringing justice to Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Iran and other hotspots? Or is this another example of anything Bush is for, Democrats are against?

Bush Only Cares About Deficits When Dems Are in Power

I think this is sad and funny: Bush only care about deficits when Democrats are in power.

After six years of complete mislaying of the veto pen to keep deficits down, now, all of a sudden, now that Dems are in power, he's started issuing veto threats over deficits. That's so sadly funny.

Does he just not want patronage to go out to the Dem side? The article speculates that he's trying to get some deficit cred, but it's a little late when 3/4 of your time in office is passed with you taking no action of deficits.

This, by the way, is part of a thirty=year pattern of Republicans complaining about Democratic spending and taxes and then running big deficits when in power; the real thirty-year Democratic record is slightly lower spending (SCHIP is cheaper than military spending) and budgets much closer to balance. Well, if you think taxes are high if they're high enough to balance the budget, then Dem taxes are high, yes. I see no evidence of change from the GOP Presidential campaign rhetoric. Seeing this in my lifetime has done alot to keep me from even thinking about changing parties.

What We Shud Dou Abowt Hire Ed

A nicely tongue-in-cheek post about suggestions for higher ed.

Rather Unbound

Rosen has a long and thoughtful post about Rather's lawsuit and where his hopes lead. What he wrote. The meat to me:

I'm with those who think he is crazy. When your document examiners won't back you up, and your story is about the documents, you have no story.

I was convinced that the document's fake back when this broke by the blogpost enumerating the evidence against. I say it was put together after the coming of the word processor. The wording of the document was also pretty unlikely, more a crank or paranoid's than an office letter in a big bureaucracy.

Has Rather even read that posting and looked at the document himself?

Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting

Florida won't use its touch-screen voting machines in 2008. It's going to be selling them. This article bugs me because it's got a quote from everybody who should have a quote - except, of course, somebody who might have a window into the facts, like a computer scientist specializing in the area. There are plenty who happily and regularly give explanatory quotes to the media. That particular laziness after 2000 gave us a terrible threat to our democracy.

Since the Times could'n't be bothered to provide a quote, here's my response to one grumbling election supervisor, one Mr. Browning:

“If you were to do a very thorough study of problems with touch screens, you would probably find that 99.9 percent of them would be traced back to human error.”

Well, in fact, we have no idea how many problems these machines have, since there's no adequate provision in the design for checking how many problems we have. But he is, after all, probably right - humans make plenty of mistakes in everything, including writing software for these machines. But we have no way of telling if they've been maliciously hacked atall; I'd hardly term that human error.

Jubilant slashdot thread here

Here are two good quotes from the slashdot thread. The first one summarizes what's up pretty well:

by Kadin2048 (468275): I think we should rigorously enforce some sort of minimum standard of quality for elections. Above and beyond that, sure, states can choose what brand and type of machines they want. But we all have an interest in making sure that elections are fair, unbiased, and transparent. Auditless electronic voting systems prohibit that by design, and for that reason they ought to be illegal. Leave them for supermarket taste-tests where they belong.

by ILuvRamen (1026668): I think we should buy one for each Slashdot 10th anniversary party and smash them.

Open Thread: Coolest Internet Feature?

My favorite is easy Internet research. Arguments are regularly carried out in days on blog comment threads that previously would've taken series' of papers and conferences, and access to a research library on the part of each participant.

We're finally getting serious about house-hunting now that the kid begins to leave us enough spare time to look.

Dukin' It Out With Stubborn Facts: Habeas Corpus Is a Right, Of Course!

Pat at Stubborn Facts has been writing that Habeas corpus is a privilege, not a right.

Well, of course Habeas Corpus IS a right - it's a human right in as much good standing as free speech, the right to vote, or not to be tortured. More precisely, habeas corpus is the Common Law instantion of the following right in the UN Declaration: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile." According to Churchill, before habeas corpus, the King would tend to leave political prisoners uncharged indefinitely, in limbo and thus unable to defend themselves.

Democratic governments have a burden of due diligence in only suspending their implementation of habeas corpus and other human rights in a true crisis that truly needs that particular suspension. That's why it's only happened twice, and I think our government failed its duties of due diligence in this latter case, though, as I explain later, I do approve of the first suspension.

Under human rights doctrine, the underlying rights, of course, don't vanish even if they're being ignored, any more than they had vanished in Myanmar when Myanmar chose to shoot at, jail, and execute their protesters. Which, I guess, is why the poll he ran went so heavily in favor of my position.

I agree, in fact, that Lincoln did the right thing in suspending habeas corpus, as serious a thing as it is. As I wrote here, he was right, because he pretty suddenly had to face an unknown half of his government being traitors. There was no time to figure out which half until the war was over.

But the War On Terrorism is a much different matter. I can't see any such existential threat deriving from preservation of habeas corpus.

How would it have been impractical to grant habeas corpus rights to the tiny handful of US citizens taken without being granted the right? It's not like there's been a big mystery who they are, or any kind of threat coming from citizens that either the judicial system or foreign military action killing / taking them fighting with them can't handle.

Remember, it only applies to citizens. Why was allowing Padilla his rights a serious threat to national security, since he had been caught? What would've been hard, unobvious, or insufficient about telling the few citizens caught in Afghanistan that they were charged with aiding and abetting terrorists and giving them the usual rights?

From my point of view, Bush Administration repeated long-term imprisonment of prisoners that turned out innocent should just remind us of the importance of habeas corpus. It took two years for the first round of INNOCENT prisoners to be released from Guantanamo, and we're still seeing prisoners released that are being released by their home governments due to weakness of cases. The same performance was repeated in Iraq. One officer had to start a blog to get Iraqi prisoners released. That's what always, always happens when we entrust indefinite detention rights to the government. Always.

Take Regime Change From The CIA

If I were President, I'd take responsibility for regime change away from the CIA, since they've bungled it for half a century, possibly even to the extent of creating the circumstances for 9/11.

I believe CIA make all these strategic mistakes because they think of regime change as an extension of their wet work gathering information. It's expectable that they'd deal with alot of nasty people in the course of data-gathering. Their regime change approach is...dealing with alot of nasty people. But that's all wrong for regime changing work. Reasons are given in the two above-linked articles.

In a sense, I'd give it to the Special Forces, since they're the most successful recent exponents of democratic regime change (Afghanistan, 2002).

This goes along with my thinking about how the military is changing long-term. We're seeing the effective action being done by smaller and smaller numbers of people in quasi-covert action. Afghanistan was just a preview of this. High firepower is more and more available to support fewer and fewer people. Nanotechnology could make it literally feasible for one person to take action to defeat a country or group by depositing nano in the right spot.

I'd create a new DoD department, The Department of Special Forces, and add responsibility for regime change, Afghanistan-like applications of vast firepower to help small numbers of people, hacking, and other high-tech kinds of applications. Whenever US policy causes us to want regime change, I'd turn to them instead of CIA.

Anarchists' Cookbook Possession Illegal In UK

I think this is sadly funny. So, when it came out, it was all leet for baby boomers to have it, but now they're grown up and in power, they feel all threatened. Is somebody afraid they've been doing such a bad job that there'll be widespread rebellion? ;-)

I notice Western Civ somehow survived its existence for decades. You could make a reasonable argument that's dangerous to readers who try things out, but I believe the book ships with appropriate warnings.

CEO Fall Of The Day: Sprint Nextel Chief Gary Forsee

Forsee was ousted from the Spint Nextel top slot yesterday. His major failings were choosing a poor merger choice, with Nextel, and failing to oversee it well, and having a major shift to WiMax technology go sour on him.

An Economist article I read several years ago said 60% of mergers fail, which suggests companies should be alot more careful about them. They suggested that many mergers are done because CEOs are bored instead of carefully thinking about the possible problems.

WiMax technology seems to be having serious teething problems, because despite major demand, and the advent of several WiMax boards in alpha and beta for a year or so, you can't buy one as a consumer product. Forsee should've left any plans strictly as plans until WiMax made it past this stage. There are also rumors that early card generations are starting in the thousands of dollars. If Sprint was planning on the <$100 price point of 802.11, that might also make Sprint's plan unprofitable.

CIA Policy: Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?

Not so long ago, I wrote a post titled, Would the CIA have Funded the American Revolution? This post builds on that, explaining how 9/11 could maybe've been prevented with a more, er, democratic CIA policy.

It happens that one spot, 20 yearsish before 9/11, the CIA sponsored a revolution in a certain spot named Afghanistan. Sound familiar? It should, since that's where bin Laden was kitted out, practically running the country, and running terror camps and the global organization that made 9/11 happen.

The CIA followed precisely the strategy I outlined in the earlier post: they funneled Stinger surface-to-air missiles, trainers, and money to a handful of small groups chosen solely for their willingness to oppose the Soviets. No thought was given to what would happen if they won, which did happen. There was no broad coordination of the sort which makes any military effort most effective ('one thing at a time,' any conqueror from Alexander to Hitler will tell you). There was certainly no special support for democratic groups.

The resulting government, the Northern Alliance, was both split and corrupt. It could guarantee nothing to its citizens. The Taliban could guarantee order, and that's how they came to have control. When bin Laden came along, he got along easily with the Taliban.

Of course, Afghanistan has never been known for its democracy, but it did have a brief spell of parliamentary democracy under its last King, Zahir Shah. It also had substantial pro-democratic and pro-secular groups who enjoyed respect.

So, would it have been impossible to have had somebody secular and pro-democratic, like, say, one Hamid Karzai whom the CIA did employ, organize the rebellion and try to guide it to democracy if/when the USSR pulled out, via the kinds of qualified grants we used after 9/11?

As I see it, such a unified democratic group would've had faster success in the war, been able to impose order, and been less corrupt. It would've had little trouble with the Taliban, I think.

We could maybe've saved ourselves a couple of fine buildings that way. Or at least seriously postponed the day of reckoning with global terror.

Brave Iraqi Suffers For Corruption

Disturbing story. Especially bothersome is that Republicans are trying to discredit his testimony, just because it could be spun against them from a short-term view.

For Bush and GOP war backers not to come out on the back side of history's view, corruption must be kept in control in the new government they've created. That's not going to happen if it's kept out of sight.

Shouldn't they be trying to help him?

Open Thread: I Don't See Texas Beating OU Today

The Longhorns seem to be a mediocre team this year. The only team we've been able to put away decisvely were the 121st-placed Rice Owls. Some kinda culcha problem, because no unit is playing well.

I do anticipate a fun (if losing) game, though. So far, in all the years he's been here, I've never regretted watching a Mack Brown game. The players are always having fun.

A Rough Death For Hitch

Hitchens is distraught because a brave and smart soldier was killed in Iraq after being inspired to enlist partly by his columns.

Of course, both the kid and Hitch did the right thing. Democracy needs active and intelligent defense.

"Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences . . . for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her . . .

-- Pericles' Funeral Oration. Still rings true today, thousands of years later, doesn't it?

Texas State Dinosaur News

Yeah, I didn't know Texas had a state dinosaur, either, until I read this news.

A set of bones that had inspired the Lege to make it State Dinosaur had been misidentified by its discoverer, as a pleurocoelus. Now the discoverer thinks it's as yet unobserved species, which he's dubbing a paluxysaurus.

The Profesora said, when read about this, "Call the Lege back!"

Skeptic James Randi Takes on Cables And Stupid Reviewers

James Randi has diversified from magicians. (classic slashdot thread here).

A Thought Or Three On Obama's Mistakes and Clinton's Likeliness

Clinton has widened her lead commandingly. At this point, it'd take the proverbial dead baby in the bed to keep her from winning the nomination (and, I'd say, from winning the election as well).

That's made me think about what Obama did wrong, as at one point I was pulling for him.

Well, for one thing, he had to outperform Hillary to win this. His personality is, IMHO, suitably leaderly and charismatic to win the job, but Hillary also shares the novel minority advantage. Biggest, of course, is the name-recognition factor. The Clinton name is associated with eight pretty good years in many minds, especially as with the inevitable weight of an other-party second term right at hand in bad relief (yeah, it was the other way around eight years ago, I'm just trying to explain where we are NOW).

To win over that big name advantage, IMHO Obama would've had to do much better job on the policy front. He would've had to spend alot more time researching, talking about, and thinking about Iraq and at least one other policy area, as I see it.

I still think she's likely to win over Giuliani in the general. She suffers little if atall from the branding and corruption woes incurred by Pelosi and Reid. The GOP will be at the height of revealed corruption and bad management (like every two-term President in history). And the in-power coalition (base and moderates) is, as usual after eight years, split, while we're tired of being out of power and will unite.

Long, Thoughful Article on Muslim Scientific Woes

...published in Physics Today by a Pakistani physicist, Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Very much worth reading if you have time. He explains why people like him are rare (slashdot thread, not so good).

I've selected a couple of quotes that I found particularly interesting. And, this being a blog and all, I give my $0.02 on the matter, and why I think democratization could help.

When the 2005 earthquake struck Pakistan, killing more than 90 000 people, no major scientist in the country publicly challenged the belief, freely propagated through the mass media, that the quake was God's punishment for sinful behavior. Mullahs ridiculed the notion that science could provide an explanation; they incited their followers into smashing television sets, which had provoked Allah's anger and hence the earthquake. As several class discussions showed, an overwhelming majority of my university's science students accepted various divine-wrath explanations.

But the still deeper reasons are attitudinal, not material. At the base lies the yet unresolved tension between traditional and modern modes of thought and social behavior. . . . If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or "butterfly-collecting" activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked.

In the Western democracies, we earthquake-proof buildings instead of smashing TVs. Unlike smashing TVs, it works - democracies regularly lose a hundredth or even a thousandth as many people to big earthquakes as people elsewhere.

I still have hopes that, as Bush suggested, democracy can eventually solve this. In order to fight extremism, you need to have societies where the madrassas aren't the only real schools due to corruption, where people can write and otherwise point out that earthquake-proofing works better than smashing TVs without being stoned, shot, or hauled away by religious police. Secular monarchies and dictatorships in Egypt, Morocco, and Pakistan have hardly helped. Most radicalize opposition, and use propaganda and deals with extremists to divert their subjects' eyes from looking at reasons for their lack of progress.

Why do I think these cultures will adopt democracy? Well, I have my doubts about Afghanistan because security is inherently very hard due to mountains and the neighboring Tribal Regions and Pakistani interest in a Talebani Afghanistan. But so far, we see it being widely popular in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. Part of it is the fact that we don't shoot people over sex or alcohol (or even drugs, though we definitely aren't so reasonable there). And, the whole world knows democracy and liberalism have done pretty well for us and Europe. They have reason to hope their sons and grandsons will have the better lives that Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, or the Assads could never have delivered.

Myanmar: Canary For Chinese Aggression?

So long as Myanmar stays independent, it's pretty likely China isn't into territorial aggression. That's because Myanmar only has one friend - its neighbor China.

Higher Education Fund As New Entitlement?

My feeling is that this kind of thing could do good, but, like Mankiw, I'd like to see the see the government get its act together on debt and Medicare/Medicaid and SS before creating another potentially large entitlement. The trend in the Bush Administration has been decidedly negative so far. It's been suggested that it'd pay for itself, but we won't know that for twenty-five years; it couldn't even hope to really start paying back until well into when Medicaid/are crises have begun.

And, like other entitlements, it would tend to inflate.

Apparently, I have company. 60%ish of likely voters are also against it. Sabato is quoted in the poll report as writing,

The baby bonds proposal is one of the few mistakes Hillary Clinton has made in her campaign. Should Clinton become the Democratic nominee, she may have handed a powerful issue to the Republican candidate.

More here.

Alot of conservatives are having fun characterizing this as trying to buy the American people. Something to that, really, but I'm somehow failing to see the difference between this and then leaving a tax cut in place AND raising spending when a deficit is going.