Centerfield

Some People Have Short Memories

The Republicans have forgotten that just seven years ago, we Dems tried that party of NO thing and got squashed at the polls the midterm after. I'm thinking it'll be worse for the GOP, because at least we had a political coalition.

Too many of us dems are bad for forgetting after just one year in the majority how useful those filibuster thingies were back when George II was President and seriously NEEDED blocking. In fact, some of us took only three months to forget.

A Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year!

I seem to've been a bad kid, because I got a lump of coal in the form of some bad sickness.

People Have Been Vanished From The Streets Here In The United States

The George II Administration created an entire system for vanishing people. There is an excuse - they SAY these are all imprisoned immigrants, but we peasants have no way of checking. Somebody in the White House was way into breaking habeas corpus and stomping on the pieces - this time vanishing immigrants, just like an authoritarian government, NOT a democracy. Britons developed habeas corpus "body must be present" - a requirement that prisoners must be charged and presented when asked for - to keep their Kings like our George II from vanishing the inconvenient.

Of course, Bush also brought us travel checkpoints, reduced financial and call privacy, and did I mention checkpoints?

But, then, the Bush Administration WAS an authoritarian government. Even Clinton was authoritarian also, albeit within more limits. He looks good in comparison today, but his cipher escrow, media companies' beloved DMCA, and tries at banning Internet porn certainly can't be called free. He believed in and continued the drug wars' authoritarian bits.

Legal, Fast Interstellar Travel?

There's a way making interstellar jumps that wouldn't violate our current knowledge of physics. We don't (yet?) know begin to know how to make it happen yet, though.

Most of you've surely seen on screen, or read in stories, about some spacecraft entering a wormhole - you can tell because they have accretion disks around them, matter waiting to be digested by a black hole.

Kip Thorne published a famous Physics Review Letter short article in 1988 that suggested that wormhole singularity pairs, between white and black holes, can also do both fast interstellar and time travel. The fact that it's still-unrebutted after 20 years of scrutiny by alot of smart guys is a good sign.

Well, of course, that wouldn't work - nothing in Hollywood ever works the way it does in life. Wormhole travel is strictly linear - the thing traveling get smashed to single atoms going through. You could get around that by doing an MRI scan as you jump, put one wormhole per atom traveling next to each atom, and wait long enough for it get through, or maybe pass the wormhole through the traveling atoms instead. Here's an alternative possibility of how wide wormholes might be accomplished.

We don't even begin to know how to make wormhole pairs where one partner of the pair is usefully faraway or farawhen. You could, probably, take enough ends to be useful by slow starship to another star, albeit with difficulty - they're likely to be heavy and annoying to deal with.

We might also be able to save energy and trouble using virtual wormholes, like virtual particles, that'd only exist just long enough for the trip. They might also solve the problem of making fara[way|when] ends if we could learn a way of specifying target locations in their creation.

This'd almost have to take a ton more energy than is available to us now. Singularities aren't cheap to make, even virtual ones that don't last long. One thing that'll help the energy math is that the wormhole is between two eneretically balanced pairs - a black hole and a white hole. Still, thinking about powering this device reminds of a a line from a Vinge novel about an insterstellar communication device. "Oh, and he said it dims your sun by a hundredth of a percent per second, so we don't want to spend too much time chatting.

The National GOP Political Coalition Is Broken

To elect people, you need to be able to get more people to vote for you than anybody else. The way politicians do that is by deliberately and carefully building political coalitions. The Bush coalition included people wanting to be bribed by an unpaid-for tax cut, national security conservatives, business conservatives wanting to be unregulated, people tired of Clinton's corruption (little did they know how much worse the other guy could be), and juuust enough socially conservative Latinos to push him over the edge. It broke in '06. Along with Dean's bringing of the 50-state coalition, it brought us Dems to power in Congress.

It's historically pretty unusual for political coalitions to break this thoroughly - it only happened twice in the 20th century - once to each party. It's normal for national coalitions and popularities to fray around the edges by the time Presidents leave office (see Gore's loss), but the GOP's been largely tribalized. It's been 160 years since coalitions burst for today's reason - Presidents being so bad at their jobs - IMHO, you have to look to Democrats just before the Civil War to find Presidents so bad, all in ignoring their Constitutions, such uncaringness about how the world outside DC works, and letting evil roll in their administrations. Of course, President Buchanan had more opportunity - be COULD bring a Civil War as a response, and he did.

The Dem coalition last broke, by contrast, because LBJ was GOOD at his job, and deliberately made an investment, albeit under pressure. He exchanged racists for anti-racists and more progressives. Obama's election shows us LBJ was right. Thanks, LBJ!

With an occasional exception like Gingrich, that I don't see available in today's Congressional GOP, coalitions are only rebuilt by presidential candidates, when they're running. Sometimes they aren't up to the job; Kerry and McCain only shrank their coalitions (Kerry by giving up on red states, and McCain losing moderates via Palin). The very soonest the GOP can rebuild, then, is 2012; and maybe not even 'til 2016, depending on how good they are. Without a coalition, they'll keep losing seats the way they did in '08 and NY-21 just recently, though in '10, we may lose enough seats to counterbalance; I'm guessing we'll keep about the same situation of general dominance, but not enough to easily cloture.

Wrong Way Polanski

So, if you're young, black, poor (as a huge proportion of young are) and get caught selling drugs, you can count on getting put away half your lifetime.

But, if you're a rich, old film maker, who commits an IMHO WORSE crime, and who's rich enough to shoot a propaganda flick on your case, , despite your infamous past flight history, so you can shelter in your nice chateau, as you deserve, of course.

There's a certain pattern here - Bushie boy was similarly energetic in protecting his buddies who wanted in under the till and whom wanted to go on crusade in Iraq. But hunting Muslims is minor stuff if you're an ol' buddy, Iguess.

That's aristocracy, not the egalitarianism we expect in democratic politicians.

Why Do We Plant So Many Trees That Lose Their Leaves?

Sunday was a big leaf bag production day for the whole 'hood, because Monday was a leaf pickup day. And, well, most of the trees had lost most of their leaves in the last few weeks.

I'm feeling sorry for the garbage guys, because they'll have 3xish the normal pickup load....

If You Want Accountability, Vote Dem

Most of us Dems were unhappy with Clinton's love life and the Rich scandal at the end. We even nominated a man whom, ISTR, wanted him censured as Veep. Most Dems are unhappy with the unusually corrupt Congress of our day. By contrast, only a pretty small minority of Republicans care about what Bush and Cheney did wrong, mostly GOP IR scholars Bush alienated by talking neocon after 9/11. That's quite a contrast.

Here's Instapundit's approving link to How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History Hardly critical self-examination, is it, instadude? No, it's just propagandistic straw men.

Really, we Dems don't even think Bushie-boy was so important as to be the worst; no, we leave that honor to our party's own Buchanan, whom had a ton more opportunity. No, we just think he was really, really, bad. And there's alot facts on our side that most righties, including you, instadude, are sadly ignoring.

Why? Denial at having done so much harm by voting for Bush? Party loyalty? Do they think being corrupt, authoritarian, and wrong is good? Do they want to have the same corrupt, authoritarian party if/when they reach high office? It's no doubt a pretty wide mix.

The Peasants Don't Deserve to Know How They're Misruled

Three GOP legislators asked for action against wikileaks. It's a good thing it's the party out of power's asking for this.

I'd be confident SCOTUS'd laugh it out of court in any case, except recently much of SCOTUS' taken a distinctly authoritarian view of the Constitution.

Early AI Was Bad Because Humans Weren't As Stupid as Expected

Early AI pioneers expected quick results because they believed those slow, early computers were probably up to matching human brain speeds That's probably in part because specialization gave false confidence; computers are generally better than we are at calculation, what they were put to first. But, really, one mainframe might've been able to emulate at the rate of just a few of our 100 trillion neurons.

Here's an article about much more promising current and new research. Now we have a much better idea of the measure of man's brain, and are able to simulate a big enough fraction of a brain to make research sense, though we're still nowhere close to reaching human-brain-level computers. And, there's still a strong speeding/cheapening trend for parallel computers like our brains.

There was also alot of charming naivete, incidentally, on how much the ultraslow computers of the day could be used for political, strategic, and economic planning (real answer: hardly atall). Asimov wrote a series of short stories in which a centralized computer named Multivac assumes more and more planning responsibility until it came to have godlike powers. I think that overoptimism about central planning also contributed to some added democratic support for Communism and technocracy that we can now see was misguided. Now I'd say it'll be more like a century at least before we see that kind of computing power; it might easily never happen, as human life is always growing more complicated and and effective, and so, harder to model in such a deterministic way. Still, simulations are playing more and more of a role, albeit to improve what people can do, not so much for planning.

A Day That Will Live in Infamy

I learned from my new FDR book, H.W. Brands' A Traitor to His Class, that FDR did do something that seems wrong to me with Japan that had a real bad impact on the start of the war. Of course, it wasn't ignoring warnings of Pearl Harbor.

Following rising Japanese aggression in China and Vietnam, FDR declined a Japanese offer to talk with the democratic Prime Minister of Japan, just because he had a bad feeling, justifying it by wondering if he had any power over the army. Imagine if Clinton'd refused to meet with Pakistani PMs because they were threatened by military coups. No, FDR's work there looks like racism to me, just like his cousin's work conquering the the new Philippine democracy because inferior Filipinos must need paternal help with that hard democracy stuff.

Of course, following FDR's refusal, the PM had to resign, and a coup followed in short order, bringing the third of the troika of Fascist dictators to power, Tojo. There's a good chance there would've been war anyway, but talking to leaders there's tension with was clearly part of his responsidbility as President.

During the political kerfuffle over the Iraq War, I read a new set of libels against FDR. Bush' behavior of effective lies on Iraq were projected backward onto FDR, which' pretty unfair. FDR certainly lied on the war, but his lies postdated certain other far more basic lies, from Franco, Hitler, and Japan. FDR's lies also postdated certainly nasty truths about war and conquest in Spain, China, Vietnam, and Czechoslovakia.

December 7th fell on a Sunday in 1941, which was usually one of FDR's lazier days. He passed his brunch still at peace, and then talked at lunch about massive radar sightings at Pearl. By dinnertime, most of the big Pacific fleet he'd done alot personally to build was sunk or otherwise out of commission.

Why Let An Expired Game Clock Stop Us?

This was a hard one for us fans to watch, no doubt on both sides. For the first three quarters, neither team seemed to be there to play. Both sides' Ds were ticking over nicely, but it still felt like a wierd 'tude going down even on the D-side until the last quarter, when they had to come out and play. The score was baseball-like the whole game.

The game ended with the kicker warming up and Nebraska 2 points ahead. Coach Brown pointed out to a coach that he'd been a second slow calling the stoppage after McCoy threw out of bounds, and he gave us the second back. The kicker got the ball in, and we were up a point with clock expired.

I feel like I'm drunk now, though I didn't drink during the game.

'Horns BCS Thunksifications

This year, though the 'Horns are a pretty good team, and we've gone undefeated, Texas' strength of schedule has been about as strong as milk, because the Big 12's been more like the Small 12 this year. OTOH, other conferences have their problems, too - PAC's very best team, the OU Ducks, have lost two. But the SEC's pretty strong - we're just lucky one of the two BCS contenders ahead of us will take itself out by losing tomorrow, since they're contending for the SEC championship tomorrow.

Dubai Blues

Two things come to my mind when considering Dubai's problems and bizplans.

The first is that alot of Dubai's plans strike my funny bone as aristocratic more than capitalistic business planning. Yeah, you do get a boost from having the newest, coolest, biggest thing, and you will fill some of those rooms. But will you fill enough, and what sort of ROI will you get compared to other possibilities?

The second thing comes from a book of advice for entrepreneurs I once read. It said to never build big, or you'd see a huge drag on the bottom line. Really big buildings, it said, tend to finally make a profit around the THIRD owner.

Oh, and I lied - I just thought of a third thing, which is that Microsoft and Dell don't have big buildings. They have campi full of sprawling, medium-size buildings, mostly the most efficient size to build.

Afghanistan Link

Here's an Obsidian Wings post and thread I like. Though I think he doesn't give enugh credit to McChrystal and Petraeus.

I've been having router AND tummy problems - sorry aBout the slow posting rate. Yesterday I found that the router I'd gotten to replace a dead one on Tuesday was losing far too many of the packets it's its job to route.