Sunday, May 26, 2002- - -
The Fat Guy promised boobs if only I'd read File 13. He wasn't joking: According to CNN.com, National Guard troops guarding airports in Pennsylvania and New York weren't allowed to load their weapons. I rather suspected that this would be the SOP and further suspect that it's not limited to Pennsylvania and New York, despite protests to the contrary. The possibility that terrorists will try to storm on-board a plane is remote. The possibility of accidental discharges, given the number of folks and weapons involved, was almost a certainty.
Says CNN: Phil Anderson, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the use of unloaded guns raises the question of whether the National Guard is the appropriate military force to be deployed at airports.
But Lawrence Korb of the Council on Foreign Relations said the National Guard had achieved its mission by "calming people down and giving them the assurance that we were doing something."
Now those are boobs! I've only got to ask whether this is giving people the assurance of action, or the illusion of action, and if these guys recognize a distinction?
Update: I don't mean this as a put-down of the National Guard. They're following orders and doing what they're told, as they should be. It does chap my butt that they're being used for such charades.
@10:15 PM
Via Bill Quick comes this rather odd article by Physicist James Gordon Prather. He's probably correct in his description of the sorts of radiologically dirty bombs that would most likely be used by terrorists - they're not nuclear weapons - they do not contain a critical mass of fissile material, but rather rely on conventional explosives. Thus, they do not have anywhere near the destructive effect that a nuclear weapon has and perhaps shouldn't be considered weapons of mass destruction.
However, Dr. Prather is quite incorrect to state that a "dirty" nuke isn't a nuke at all. Put a Cobalt jacket on a bomb containing a critical mass of fissile material and you have a very dirty nuke. It's just that, at least at present, we can hope that no terrorist organization has dirty nukes, and the sorts of radiologically dirty bombs they might have aren't nukes, dirty or otherwise.
Prather is also probably correct to state that the danger of such devices is grossly overblown - he is a physicist. Besides, I think that the danger of such devices is grossly overblown, so he's confirming my ill-informed prejudices - why would I argue? But he seems to draw the conclusion that the government is wrong to be on the lookout for radiation in the aftermath of terrorist attacks:
That brings us back to the post-Sept. 11 growth industry. Congress is in the process of spending billions and billions of your tax dollars to train and equip hundreds of thousands of policemen, firemen, doctors, nurses, school teachers and crossing-guards to rush to the scene of a suspected terrorist event and start looking for evidence of every imaginable chemical, biological and radiological contamination.
School teachers and crossing guards must not figure high on his scale of competence. Whatever. But he had just made this statement a couple of 'graphs before:
.. Intense gamma-ray sources are used to treat cancer, but continuous whole-body exposure to gamma-ray radiation levels several orders of magnitude above normal is not good for you.
Fortunately, gamma-ray emissions per unit time of man-made radiological materials tend to diminish fairly rapidly with time. So, if you detect unhealthy gamma-ray levels in some part of your mall, put a rope around the area, and don't spend much time inside the rope for the next 100 years or so. ..
So what is Dr. Prather trying to say here? This is why I say the article is a little odd. Apparently the good Dr. would agree that gamma radiation is bad for you - he said so. But apparently he would suggest that we'd be better off not knowing that gamma emitters have been scattered about? In the short-term I might agree, as I believe the danger from panic caused by such non-WMDs is greater than the danger posed by the weapons themselves. But then that's why they call it terrorism.
@5:19 PM
Dave Barry has some recommendations for your family vacation this summer. Says he: There are plenty of overlooked destinations right here in the United States. North Dakota, for example, is one of the most overlooked destinations on the planet.
Now I was born and raised in North Dakota, so I'm probably a bit partial, but I'll admit that the place is a bit hurting for tourist attractions, witness the many "world's largest" concrete critters that dot the landscape. Unless they've been recently outdone by South Dakota or Minnesota in any of these categories, they have the largest Holstein, prairie dog, buffalo, gorilla (a gorilla?), and probably quite a few more. Needless to say, you can see these things for miles!
After watching Fargo, if you were wondering, yes, they really do talk like that. Fifteen minutes on the phone with my dad and I talk like that. Can't help it, it's infectious - and delightful. So do visit North Dakota. It's on the way to Wyoming.
@9:09 AM
Fun with hammers and saws!
Friends of ours have bought a 'new' house a ways out of town. The view from their living room window is worth a few hundred grand anywhere else on earth, and the place comes with several acres of lovely grounds, complete with fish pond and a wood lot with resident deer herd, and a flock of nesting orioles, but the house is a wreck. So six of us got together yesterday and tore everything out of his kitchen, dining room, and living room, down to the sub-floor. Then we laid 600 square feet of Hardibacker in thin set in the kitchen and dining area, ready for the tilers - that's us - next weekend.
This was going to be one of those do-it-yourself jobs that the big box lumberyards encourage, but it's not as easy as it sounds to set ceramic tile, especially if you want it to look good and last a long while. When the resident tile contractor got wind of the plan he rounded up the rest of the crew to do a "Number Six." Ala Blazing Saddles, that's when we come in a whoopin' & a hollerin', and tearing out or nailing down or gluing up everything in sight. Just like we used to do when we were kids and worked construction. Sigh. Except that for some odd reason I'm a lot more sore and tired today than I would have been 25 years ago.
@8:44 AM
Friday, May 24, 2002- - -
I've read Virginia Postrel's, Will Wilkinson's, and Eugene Volokh's posts on 'rational ignorance' and it strikes me that there are some folks out there who count on our rational ignorance.
Take organically grown cotton as an example. It's marketed as an environmentally friendly alternative to cotton grown with pesticides and herbicides and chemical fertilizers. But there's a reason that farmers use pesticides and herbicides and chemical fertilizers - it maximizes their yield per acre of land. Without all the ag chemicals it takes more land to produce the same amount of crops. More land for crops is less land for wildlife, and indeed loss of habitat is most often the reason that species become threatened and endangered. On top of that, more land under cultivation requires more cultivation, which requires more fuel for those big tractors. More land under cultivation means more tilled land surface exposed to the wind and more dust in the air. Also consider that they're using animal waste rather than chemical fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer can be applied in precisely the correct quantity so that most all of it is taken up by the crops. Animal waste can not be applied so carefully and the excess runs off into our streams and rivers.
I can understand why folks might be a bit concerned about pesticides and herbicides in their food, and might be willing to pay a bit more for organically grown foods. It's their money and they're welcome to spend it as they choose. But don't try to convince me that organically grown cotton is environmentally friendly. It is not. It only sounds environmentally friendly to those rationally ignorant of agricultural practices.
@4:30 PM
Via the InstaPundit, Charles Oliver has a couple of interesting posts on teen sex that bring to mind one of my pet peeves: Trying someone as an adult because they are 18 to 20, for 'minor in possession' of alcohol. Somehow there seems to be a logic lapse there.
@4:29 PM
Megan McArdle has an article in Salon on the potential for tobacco lawsuit-style liability litigation in the fast food biz. It made me hungry just reading it.
@1:59 PM
On your way to Yellowstone, don't miss Yellowstone Drug in Shoshoni. They claim the best malts and shakes in the world and they're not exaggerating much. And it's for sale, for all you aspiring retailers.
Stop in Meeteetse and have a sourdough burger and a beer at the historic Cowboy Bar. It was one of Butch Cassidy's favorite hangouts and he was a man of [cough] expensive tastes. While you're there, go across the street to the museum and get belly up to Little Wahb, the 700-pound cattle-killing grizzly they finally caught up with a couple of years ago a few miles out of town - the whole story is on the menu at the Cowboy. Look real close. Then ask yourself if you want to wrestle Big Wahb in the wild - he's still out there somewhere, so do be careful hiking and camping in the backcountry.
Finally, don't miss the Buffalo Bill Historic Center in Cody. It's a truly world-class series of five museums on everything western. My favorite, of course, is the Cody Firearms Museum, which they bill as 'the world's most comprehensive assemblage of American arms.' If it's not the best museum of firearms in the world it's sure close. Plan on spending an entire day at the museum to even begin to see all the stuff.
And if you get hungry again, try a meal at Buffalo Bill's Erma Hotel (named for his daughter) in Cody. The food is very good and very cheap. Then wander through the rest of the hotel, it's all original and was very very plush in its day. While you're there, keep your eyes open for the Lady in the White Dress - one of our better known haunts.
And wherever you travel in Wyoming, keep your eyes peeled for jackalope.
@12:51 PM
If you're wondering what to do for vacation this year and you're not too excited about flying anywhere, might I suggest visiting Wyoming? We've got wide open spaces, low low prices, and friendly folks.
Of course, if you do visit, you must see Yellowstone. Plan on spending at least two days in Yellowstone to see the major sights and make reservations for lodging well in advance. Don't miss Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, and the Mudpots (my favorites). And don't forget the camera and binoculars. Mammoth Hot Springs in particular is utterly surreal and the scenery everywhere is outrageously photogenic.
Throughout Yellowstone do stay on the trails and paths and keep a close eye on the kids. All that boiling water really is boiling water, but every year some dummy puts on his bathing suit and dives in! Many of the scenic overlooks are at the top of cliffs and every year someone just has to climb over the guard rail for a better photo - don't do that. And stay well away from the bison. They may look like cows but they are wild, temperamental, and unpredictable. They're as big as a barnyard bull, and as fast and agile as a deer. Same goes for bears, elk, and any other wildlife bigger than you are. They're wild. Don't find out the hard way just how wild they are. I make it sound dangerous, but it's really not. Just heed the warning signs, stay on the paths, and stay well away from the big critters.
@10:51 AM
Thanks to reader George Byrd, who sent a mild harruuumpphh! at my comment on Arkansas and a bunch of links! I knew Arkansawyers were good folks, but I was amazed at how hospitable they are to tourists. Don't get out of line if you visit though, even the garden club packs heat. In fact, for everything you ever wanted to know about Arkansas, browse this site. And don't miss Chicken Henge. Chicken Henge?
@9:36 AM
Thursday, May 23, 2002- - -
It sounds like Wyoming and Tennessee have more in common than a love of firearms and fireworks - lunatic drivers who cruise along half asleep until you try to pass.
There's an interesting story behind all those dam dams. Not only do they have a lot of world-class fishing today, a lot of them were built during the '30s with WPA, CCC, and other work relief labor by the Tennessee Valley Authority. They gave rise to the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnography, River Basin Surveys, the first active effort by the US government to consider the effects of their undertakings on historic and archaeological resources under their protection and/or ownership. For better or worse [and I debate that with myself] this has led to the current system that keeps my sorry butt employed.
I can't believe the good Sergeant didn't stop at Dixie Gun Works in Union City. My wife has dragged me out of that place by the ear more than once.
There's an apocryphal story about the next leg of Sarge's trip too. During the great westward expansion there was a sign on the west side of the Ohio River on the main road west. It said 'Arkansas straight ahead, Louisiana and Texas to the left.' Supposedly, all the people who could read turned left..
@5:14 PM
While we have come a long way from the view of archaic peoples as 'chronically starving nomads' (Mulloy 1958:59) we have a long way yet to go in shedding our own value-laden perceptions of prehistoric lifeways. We must constantly be aware that our own eurocentric values color our perceptions. Consider the semantic content of our view of 'cultural development' - the shift from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled horticulturists is 'progress'. Technologies are 'primitive' or 'advanced'. We classify cultures as 'formative', 'classic', and 'decadent'. Big game hunting is prestigious (the bigger the better), small game hunting is not, and gathering plant food is nearly beneath contempt. From my work, in progress.
If this sounds like I'm advocating the sort of cultural relativism a lot of us have been railing against of late, it's because I am. But only in this context, in the interest of dispassionate academic study of other cultures. Being aware that we are not and cannot be entirely objective, being conscious of how our values cloud our judgment, and avoiding such value judgments as much as possible are useful attitudes in that context. Unfortunately, as is becoming all too apparent, this 'academic objectivity' can be taken much too far into the realm of moral relativism.
Consider this though: Replace 'culture' with 'politics' as the subject of this discussion and 'these primitive people' becomes 'these right-wing fringe groups,' a sort of semantic loading that we see too often and to which we continue to object. So, is it rational to demand objectivity in one sphere and subjectivity in another?
My gut says 'Yes,' but I'm hard put to provide a formula for distinguishing between those spheres where objectivity v. subjectivity is demanded, short of arguing that there exists some baseline moral code by which all may be judged.
@12:09 PM
Good Job!
Via Bill Quick comes this report from New Orleans:
A man wounded two people with a shotgun at the New Orleans airport Wednesday, telling investigators that he fired because people made fun of his turban.
``That's his story. We don't know what really happened,'' Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee said.
The shotgun blast wounded an airline customer in the stomach and an airline employee in the hand, the sheriff said. The gunman was tackled by bystanders in the ticket lobby of Louis Armstrong International Airport. [emphasis added]
Regardless of what this guy was actually attempting, it appears that we owe another debt of gratitude to the folks on Flight 93. Not only will we have no more successful hijackings, it's unlikely we'll have another mass shooting in which one guy systematically slaughters a bunch of sheeple.
I nominate these bystanders for an "In the Spirit of Flight 93" heroes award. We've all learned a valuable lesson here that should not be forgotten.
@10:40 AM
I've been getting a little behind* in my reading and just now read Virginia Postrel's recent series of posts on blogging [the last on May 22nd], in which she questions the influence that blogging has on the general discourse. An excellent analysis for anyone who's been shopping for hats in a larger size of late.
Ms. Postrel points to a post by John Scalzi that strongly questions the influence of blogs:
There's just one minor problem with this "'blog reaching critical mass" story: It's a lie. Or more accurately, any representation by the 'blog nation (or its compatriots) as being a threat to the conventional media or even an "irritation," as Vincent describes them, is wildly overstated. 'Blogs may be growing in numbers and readership, but that is because they are effectively starting from zero; there's nowhere else to go but up. How far up, and how much of an impact they will ultimately make, well, that's the real question -- and I suspect the answer will be: Much less than 'bloggers currently think. I'm not against 'blogging or writing online on one's personal Web site -- check my archives to see how long I've been writing here -- but I think before anyone goes trying to claim themselves the next wave of media, a perspective check is probably in order.
Scalzi makes the very good point that hit counts don't really reflect numbers of actual readers and that the hit count can be greatly inflated. Just to be contrary, I'd argue that number of hits per se shouldn't be the ultimate measure of blogs' influence on the general discourse and mainstream journalism.
I'm obviously not alone in the observation that much of the mainstream media have tended to be both biased and insular, both in their coverage of the news and in their choice of what to cover. I would argue that the blogs should be having a salubrious effect on this problem that goes far beyond some competition for readership numbers.
On the issue of news coverage, it becomes apparent that a good deal of legitimate news that would tend to embarrass one's favored politics or raise questions about one's sensitive issues has been selectively ignored by the mainstream news, who seem to have taken an 'I don't want to hear it, so it's not news' attitude on many occasions. That's human nature, but it's also human nature not to want to be one-upped, or scooped in the journalism world. At the least, the greater breadth of voices in blog coverage, and really of the internet in general, offers readers alternative views. To the degree that those views are sound [Ok, and some that aren't so great] they do become widely spread, hopefully too widely spread to be so easily ignored in future. Faced with the alternative of being scooped by some obscure Whig in Tennessee, I can see where the mainstream media would at least consider addressing an issue that might have been ignored or downplayed in past. It only takes one child to point out that the 'Emperor has no clothes.'
Likewise, the meme of news bias isn't one that takes a lot of hits to spread around. I don't remember where I first read about analyses of the terminology employed to shape the relative weight given to those cited in the mainstream news; the 'distinguished statesman' v. 'member of the ultra-right wing cabal' descriptors so frequently employed. But I only had to read it once to change the way I read anyone's reportage. It would seem to stand to reason that a mainstream journalist doesn't need to hear this meme too many times [assuming he's listening at all] before he realizes that such fluorescent rhetoric casts a serious shadow on one's objectivity. It might not make them any less biased, but it should be having the effect of at least making them aware that we are aware of their biases.
I would suggest that the way to measure the influence of blogs and the internet in general, is through their effects, acknowledged or not, on the level and breadth of discourse in main stream media, rather than on a contest of readership numbers. This parallels the argument that the true effect of the libertarian movement is measured by its affect on mainstream political rhetoric, rather than numbers of libertarians elected.
*No, not that kind, although I have been getting a lot of obnoxious spams.
@7:28 AM
Wednesday, May 22, 2002- - -
Via Jonathan Harrington, who's apparently a fellow Dead fan, two outbreaks of bubonic plague have been reported this week in the Denver area, both associated with prairie dogs. According to 9news.com, The last fatal case of plague in a human in Colorado was in 1999. That's not nearly long enough ago or far enough away for my tastes.
@5:26 PM
Via the InstaPundit, here's another example of why I think the donkeys are doomed. It's becoming apparent to any who care to watch that they've convinced themselves that all us proles are a pack of fools. Even in Wyoming they're not demanding - or even suggesting - that the Democratic Party change its platform vis gun control, they're only attempting to 'de-emphasize the issue of gun control in this year’s midterm elections.'
@5:25 PM
There's another way to look at this. 'Less lethal' birdshot fired from a .38 at close range can still be lethal. A current doctrine on self defense argues against 'shooting to wound' because a) that takes a very skillful shot, particularly under stress and, b) if the guy dies from your wounding shot - which is entirely possible - you leave yourself open to the argument that you were not truly in fear for our life if you only thought it necessary to wound the guy. You might well leave yourself open to the same charge by using birdshot or rubber bullets, or any such less lethal ammunition.
The doctrine argues that, if it becomes necessary to shoot at all, you should shoot to stop the attack, never 'shoot to wound,' never 'shoot to kill.' I would never trust any 'less lethal' ammunition to stop an attack. And although I can't recall having been told or reading this, it seems to me that the safest ammunition to choose, from a legal defensibility standpoint, is whatever is commonly chosen by law enforcement for that caliber. What's legally defensible for them should be legally defensible for you. Then again, I'm not a lawyer..
@1:56 PM
Another issue to consider here is the number of suicides that are listed as 'accidental shootings.' Hard to figure out what was on someone's mind just before they spread it across the ceiling and once someone's dead there's no real point in adding to his family's anguish by trying to prove the death was a suicide. Regardless, I can't see how banning handguns would have any effect on the incidence of this sort of 'accident,' other than to make them more frequently lethal, as Eugene Volokh maintains.
@12:01 PM
Incidentally, the situation is getting very tense on the India/Pakistan border. Suman Palit has been blogging extensively on this, with too many good posts of late to point to any particular one. Go take a look, but I warn you, this is ultra-scary stuff.
@12:00 PM
The Dirt Band had a song with the line ".. don't get your little nitty gritty .." an interesting bit of etymology, but I don't think that offensive practice had anything to do with racism either.
@12:00 PM
I've got to ask whether this is a defeatist attitude, or only a realistic alternative to the Pollyannaish 'it can't happen here' mentality that we labored under prior to September 11th?
My thoughts: No defense can ever be perfect; no matter how many attacks are thwarted, some will succeed. Yes, I think we should expect further attacks, but I do not think they will achieve their ultimate goal - they will not defeat us. Rather, any further terrorist attacks on the US will only harden us, further harden our hearts to the attackers, and hasten their demise.
@11:06 AM
Brian Micklethwait has an interesting observation on the situation in Europe: .. There is, as Fortuyn insisted, a clash of civilisations going on within Europe, never mind between Europe and other places. Muslims now make up forty per cent of the population of the big cities of Holland, and will soon be in a majority in them, or so the Dutch journalist said. If some Muslims then start taking the idea of majority rule seriously, the bad times could begin. At that point democracy may stop working, and become the justification of and provocation of major conflict instead of the means of avoiding it.
Hmmm, yes. We are conditioned to think that democracy is an unmitigated good. But there is that 'bread and circuses' mentality on our own left coast, and a considerable number who would vote for the Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything [BANANA] contingent. I'm sure other examples abound.
@11:05 AM
Well, Blogger is being cranky again this morning. I wonder if this isn't growing pains from the recently promised upgrades?
@8:33 AM
Here's a horrible thought: uranium occurs naturally in many places all over the world. If all you want to do is make a mess with a radioactively dirty conventional bomb, it could be done with unrefined ore, which could be mined by hand in some places. The actual health risk posed by the material might not be great, but we've been conditioned to think that any amount of radiation is very, very BAD. The panic that could be caused by any release of any amount of radioactive material is not to be discounted. If such a release were to occur anywhere near me, I'd consider sitting tight and taking a bit of radiation for awhile - go in the basement or whatever - rather than getting caught up in a panicked stampede.
@8:16 AM
Megan McArdle has an interesting piece on the possibility of terrorists targeting nuclear waste in transport to Yucca Mountain. I agree that the waste is probably just as vulnerable where it is now, and further agree that stealing any would be extremely difficult. But why would they want to steal it? It's my understanding that this stuff is mostly pretty low-level nuclear reactor waste. It isn't weapons-grade material and no amount of it could be used to make a nuclear device.
Those huge casks are designed to contain radioactivity and withstand any conceivable accident, derailment, or whatever. However, I doubt they're designed to withstand deliberate demolition. The only use a terrorist might make of this material is to make a dirty bomb, or otherwise strew it about to make a radioactive mess. Given that, all they need is a big enough shaped charge to open the cask, with a slight delay on a second charge that would spread the exposed radioactive material around the area. They wouldn't need to steal the casks, they could blow them right on the railcar or truck while they pass through some populous area. Anti-tank mines would probably do the trick. The only question is how much actual radiation would be released, and that would be dependent on the contents of the particular cask.
But what all we out here in the hinterlands want to know is this: If this stuff is stored in such indestructible containers and it's so perfectly safe, why is there such a push to ship it out here to the middle of nowhere? Hmmm? Why not just leave it right where it is?
Certainly the issue is long-term storage, but in the long-term Yucca Mountain isn't particularly stable seismically - it's not all that great a choice of a place for truly long-term storage. A while back it was proposed that a 'temporary' storage facility be created somewhere here in Wyoming. Perfectly safe, and it would only be in operation for 40-50 years, or some such. But still, another location out in the middle of nowhere, which begs the question of how safe the stuff truly is, as currently contained, in the real long-term.
Bear in mind that the half-life of some of this stuff is thousands of years. How wise is it to allow it to be put somewhere out of sight and out of mind, out in flyover country?
@8:14 AM
Speaking of SUVs, my feeling on them is much like the Colonel's feelings about .25 automatics - they're fine four-wheel-drives for all those times when you don't really need a 4WD.
@7:11 AM
Steve Den Beste makes an interesting point. Personally, I don't think I've ever seen such a high percentage of humongous motorhomes and overgrown SUVs as I saw in the parking lot at the Sierra Club convention they had a few years ago in Jackson. And they're all inside railing about conspicuous consumption..
@7:08 AM
It's time to re-learn sand casting. A couple of weeks ago I found a company that markets Damascus steel knife blades, and ordered one of their Damascus Scottish dirk blades. It arrived yesterday and I was actually quite surprised by the quality of the piece. As I've pointed out before, these are made of uncertain materials and I wouldn't recommend Damascus steel for any sort of working blade regardless, but it sure is beautiful. Judging from the faint irregularities in the surface the blade appears to be hand-forged and, if so, it is indeed a lot of blade for the price. Jimping on the spine is cleanly cut, deep, and regular, and the blade is straight and true. The etched Damascus exhibits a very consistent and intricate pattern of 'bird's-eyes' that is very fetching. In short, it calls for something more than a piece of mop-handle for a grip.
I've searched my catalogs and can't find hilts or pommel cast in traditional Scottish dirk patterns. I'd cut hilts from a piece of sheet brass, but this blade is large enough to demand fairly heavy hilts and pommel to balance the blade and I have no ready source of sheet brass more than ¨û-inch thick - not nearly thick enough. So it appears that it's time to re-learn metal casting. I used to cast a lot of lead bullets and eat a lot of paint chips, as you may have guessed [just joking!], but acquiring good bullet-casting alloy became more difficult and nearly as expensive as buying the bullets pre-cast, so I haven't bothered in a long time. I did a few sand castings in an art class I took many moons ago, but I've never pursued that any further. However, I have access to a good supply of cast bronze scrap, and torches and kilns and crucibles are no problem. So today I'll be searching the web for sources of sand casting supplies - principally the sand itself.
I've been heading this direction for a long time and hope to try casting actual bronze blades at some point. The whole process is very much different than forging and grinding iron or steel. For one, during the European copper and bronze ages all shaping of the metal after the actual casting appears to have been done by hot or cold hammering of the metal, with little or no grinding - this is how the blade of the Iceman's copper axe was made - cast and then hammered to final shape. It's thought that grinding was avoided in shaping and sharpening the blade because grinding would have removed some of the very valuable metal.
To resharpen one of these blades, the sides of the blade just behind the edge were gently peened. This produced the broadened blade with faintly flaired 'spurs,' exhibited by the blade of the Iceman's axe. Fascinating stuff.
@6:55 AM
Tuesday, May 21, 2002- - -
MSNBC/Newsweek has a remarkably balanced (for MSNBC) article in their May 27th issue, asking "What Went Wrong?" They even manage to admit that this problem didn't appear full-blown on the scene after the last elections.
What Americans should be asking is why the Bush administration in its first eight months, like the Clinton administration for much of its eight years, did not demand the intelligence cooperation that was needed. At issue is not whom to blame for the past, but how to learn from it to safeguard our future.
They make one observation that I'll expand on: The fact is, in a nation that prides itself on its mastery of the Information Age, almost no one in the U.S. government seemed to know what anyone else was doing. What a surprise. I've covered the problems the DOI is having with its computer systems - most notably pulling the plug on themselves - at considerable length over the last few months and Wired has a new article on the topic today. The IRS has had all manner of problems with its computer systems over the years. I would guess that these aren't the only government agencies with computer problems and I'll further speculate at what at least a part of the problem is.
In the late 1980s, I worked for the State of Wyoming developing database systems for tracking cultural resources throughout the state. Through this, I became involved in early exploratory efforts to develop Geographic Information Systems for the State of Wyoming and the University of Wyoming. Of course, in the late '80s most private businesses were going to personal computers and PC-based LANs, and in fact, the data sets I was working with had been maintained on the University's antique mainframe until I transferred the files to PCs. Mainframe and mini-computer manufacturers were floundering and many of them went out of business about that time. But not before they tried to unload the remaining stocks of hardware in their warehouses.
We entertained salesmen from just about every soon-to-fail mainframe and mini manufacturer, all of them extolling the virtues of their antiquated junk. We're talking 10 meg hard drives and RAM measured in Kbytes here - mini computers that couldn't begin to match the capabilities of the newer PC-based LAN servers that were available at the time, and often priced at ten times the cost of a state of the art LAN. I can not imagine any private company laying out a quarter million bucks on a computer system without having a knowledgeable computer hand on-board, and anyone who knew much about the capabilities and potential of the state of the art hardware would not have been much impressed with some of the antiques these guys were trying to peddle. I suspect that this is why they were targeting government agencies: They have lots of money, often coupled with very little expertise, and very little downside for the guy who flushes a few hundred thousand on computer systems that don't work.
As the MSNBC/Newsweek story points out, the problem with identifying potential terrorist threats was a problem of too much information to assimilate, as well as a lack of interdepartmental cooperation. One wonders if this was not at least partially exacerbated by antiquated, incompatible, and non-interconnected computer and communications systems. Could they have assimilated all the information on potential acts of terrorism and shared it between departments, even if they tried? Or are the FBI and CIA buying their computer and communications systems from the same vendors as the DOI and IRS?
@4:36 PM
It seems WalMart is exploring the possibility of selling inexpensive wines under their own label. As the marketing dynamo they've become, the realize that the name is everything. They're testing several ideas, but I like my neighbor's variation best:
Chateau Traileur Parc
A built-in eight-day timer will eliminate the need to puzzle over vintages and the handy square shape of the container will keep it from rolling off the dinette. And of course, it would always be made of the finest Petty Sarah grapes. If they go ahead with this, I'll never need to shop anywhere else.
@7:20 AM
Cool. As if you haven't already, check out the InstaPundit's new look! Very nice.
@6:52 AM
...
"Maister," than sayde Lytil John,
"And we our borde shal sprede,
Tel us wheder that we shal go,
And what life that we shall lede.
"Where we shall take, where we shall leve,
Where we shall abide behynde;
Where we shall robbe, where we shal reve,
Where we shal bete and bynde."
"Thereof no force," than sayde Robyn;
"We shall do well inowe;
But loke ye do no husbonde harme,
That tilleth with his ploughe.
"No more ye shall no gode yeman
That walketh by grenë-wode shawe;
Ne no knyght ne no squyer
That wol be a gode felawe.
"These bishoppes and these archebishoppes,
Ye shall them bete and bynde;
The hyë sherif of Notyngham,
Hym holde ye in your mynde."
...
A taste of Middle English from the traditional ballad A Gest of Robyn Hode. The spelling is whimsical, but the pronunciation probably hasn't changed a great deal.
@6:48 AM
Monday, May 20, 2002- - -
Via Kathy Kinsley, Stephen Jay Gould has just died at his home in NYC, of cancer. He was 60.
@4:26 PM
Eugene Volokh has a couple of excellent posts on gun rights today, responding to Mary McGrory's scary Washington Post OpEd. Very well worth the read.
And incidentally, when Volokh says "I actually know quite a bit about gun control policy.. " he's making a huge understatement. I'd be very inclined to believe anything he has to say on the topic.
@3:27 PM
My curiousity could bear it no longer and I've finally gotten my act together to put up a hit counter. So come back often or you'll crush my little ego.
But seriously folks, thanks for visiting and thanks for all your support!
@2:32 PM
"If you think you're too small to make a difference, you've obviously never been in bed with a mosquito."
Michelle Walker
@8:24 AM
The story of Richard Reid .. is about more than one failed terrorist attempt. An investigation of Reid's case by Time has underlined a truth that experts on terrorism know very well, even if you rarely hear it mentioned by officials in the Bush Administration*. As the fighting in Afghanistan winds down, the Administration seems ready to prosecute the war against terrorism and its state supporters elsewhere—in the Philippines, Somalia or even Iraq. But the heartland of Islamic extremist terrorism is now western Europe, where U.S. military power has less to offer by way of a solution. That's why understanding Richard Reid's world is so important.
Analysis Lite from Time.com, but it succinctly explains why the EUnuchs are. As silly and short-sighted as the security apparatus in the US has been, they have some excuse - you can't drive here from there. As horrible as it might sound, my greatest fear is that Al Qaeda, or some similar organization, will visit their next attacks on Europe rather than continuing to focus on the US. We at least have a fighting chance. Europe, I think, would be helpless against any determined series of terrorist attacks, and logistically speaking, attacking in Europe is a devil of a lot easier than attacking us. In a war of terror I can't really blame them for being terrified.
*As if..
Update: This entire situation boldly underscores the enormous courage of the Brits, who stand by us despite being nearly as vulnerable as the continent.
@7:30 AM
WASHINGTON — The chance of more Al Qaeda attacks against U.S. targets is "almost a certainty," and Americans must stay vigilant, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Fox News Sunday.
"It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared," Cheney said.
Only thing I'd change is to delete the "almost." These folks really do hate us, right down to the bottoms of their black little hearts. All the alphabet agencies on earth can't stop them all, and of course we sometimes wonder if they can stop any of them other than by accident, given past (and present) performance.
One thing's almost a sure bet - the next attack won't start with a hijacking and if it does it will stop as quickly as it started. We didn't use up all our heroes with Flight 93. Yet, the only really visible security effort that September 11th has produced has devolved into the occasional [or maybe not so occasional?] groping at an airport. Of course, these sorts of reactive measures are necessary, and I can hardly fault the proactive efforts of our armed services, but internal security efforts - at least to the extent that they are visible at all - have been pathetic in the extreme and politicized to boot.
@6:23 AM
Matt Welch's 'are you afraid to speak your mind' piece is very interesting. I'd just point out that there can be real consequences to speaking one's mind, beyond some fear of social ostracism or ridicule. Want to pursue a career in the 'social sciences'? Want to graduate and get good recommendations to graduate school? Then I'd advise you not to challenge the most deeply held notions of the Chomsky-worshiping bliss-ninnies that seem to comprise the majority of the faculty of most social sciences departments. In some situations, holding your tongue isn't so much a product of fear as of common sense. As Eugene Volokh points out, that's life.
Incidentally, read the comments on Welch's piece, they're truly outstanding. Particularly informative, including some ways he probably didn't intend, are those comments of godlesscapitalist, who says he uses a pseudonym because he doesn't have tenure. One is left to wonder how civil the discourse can be with some demanding measured and respectful response to their bold statements. Sure makes me want to invest more of my life in academe.
@12:45 AM
Deep sigh. Things got hectic this afternoon and it finally became apparent that if we were going to have dinner before 9pm it was going to be a drive-by dining. So we hit one of the local burger joints. Two burgers and an order of fries cost $5.51, so I gave the kid at the register $20.51. He entered $20.51 cash tendered into the register and it came back with $15 change. But he was new and trying to be dilligent, and $15 didn't sound right to him, so he tried to figure it out by hand. He couldn't do it until I showed him how to set up a simple subtraction problem. Once I'd explained that it was simple subtraction he had no problem doing the math - I don't think he was 'learning impaired' in any way, and I'd guess that he's close to high school graduation, age-wise. Another fine example of our tax dollars at work.
@12:44 AM
Sunday, May 19, 2002- - -
Via the DailyPundit, Gary Farber has a very good point. Is there anything so important to the welfare of this country that some won't find an excuse to turn it into a partisan political issue? CBS' little faux pas pointed out by Glenn Reynolds is an excellent case in point.
Likewise, it's probably a good idea to take all this 'FBI screwed up' and 'CIA screwed up' business with a tsp of salt - there's been a turf war there since before I was born and one should consider the source of these accusations. Unfortunately, while I think the Bush Administration has a perfectly defensible position here - they can't possibly be expected to supervise the daily activities of every FBI and CIA investigation - their response so far has been the very lame 'we couldn't do anything because who could have guessed they'd fly planes into the WTC?' My question: Who cares WHY they wanted to hijack planes? Are there any condoned, acceptable reasons for a hijacking?
It seems to me that the real problem here isn't with this administration, or the Clinton administration, the Reagan administration, or even the Carter administration (a tempting candidate for least effectual administration in dealing with terrorists). The problem lies in placing our trust in sclerotic bureaucracies that see protecting you from the evils of pot as a higher budget priority than protecting this country from the evils of terrorism. The problem is with bureaucrats who put more effort into their turf wars and budget battles, and covering their butts, than they do into this 'war on terrorism.'
It's apparent that these jokers damn well knew that there were several plots afoot that involved Arab nationals in American flight schools. If they'd had a hint that this involved drug smuggling I'd bet they'd have done more investigation. And it's a sad comment on the Bush administration that they've immediately gone into political CYA mode rather than taking this as an opportunity to examine the underlying problem - the dismal lack of intelligent priorities within our national security bureaucracy.
I agree very thoroughly with the InstaPundit - we're past the early crisis. There should be an investigation, and prominent heads should roll. But there's got to be more to it than recriminations over past failure. Nothing will change until there is a serious reexamination of priorities among our law makers. Given the nature of bureaucracy and partisan politics, I won't hold my breath until that happens.
@9:25 PM
Deep sigh. Things got hectic this afternoon and it finally became apparent that if we were going to have dinner before 9pm it was going to be a drive-by dining. So we hit one of the local burger joints. Two burgers and an order of fries cost $5.51, so I gave the kid at the register $20.51. He entered $20.51 cash tendered into the register and it came back with $15 change. But he was new and trying to be dilligent, and $15 didn't sound right to him, so he tried to figure it out by hand. He couldn't do it until I showed him how to set up a simple subtraction problem. Once I'd explained that it was simple subtraction he had no problem doing the math - I don't think he was 'learning impaired' in any way, and I'd guess that he's close to high school graduation, age-wise. Another fine example of our tax dollars at work.
@9:23 PM
Hmmm. Looks like the Instapundit is leaving BlogSpot.
@8:02 PM
I was wrong. We finally got over to an area that has some more freshly cut trees that still retain needles, and these poor scraggly stunted things really are Lodgepole pines. Judging from the rings, they are also 30-40 years old, even though a lot of them are barely 30 feet tall. All I can think is that the growing conditions must be very marginal at that location, to produce such stunted trees. But we finally scrounged enough of the biggest ones we could find, de-limbed and peeled them, and yesterday we put up Cal's new tipi. Twice.
I'm sure the spirits of all the Indian women who ever lived in this area had a good laugh at us. I've pitched a tipi a few times, but never with new poles. The trick is to figure out exactly where to tie the three tripod poles together at the top, to produce a conical frame that matches the shape of the tipi cover. Tie them together too low and it will be baggy at the top as our first attempt proved. Tie all three the same length and the frame will be perfectly conical*, which the cover apparently is not, it drags on the ground in front. For the third attempt we'll try lengthening the front tripod pole a bit to get the bottom of the cover even with the ground all around. And all this is after carefully measuring everything and laying out the poles on the cover which is supposed to be a sure-fire method of getting it right 'the first time.' Sure.
It's much easier after the tipi has been erected properly the first time. Smoke from the fire marks the poles where they're tied together and marks the proper location of each pole on the inside of the cover, making it much easier to get everything back together correctly after that. At any rate, it's a gorgeous tipi. It will be great fun, and I can hardly wait for bow season.
Update: All three tripod poles the same length was in the instructions, but seemed odd to me from the start because tipis are rarely perfectly conical. well this one isn't either, despite the instructions provided.
@12:05 PM
Eggs Benedict with fresh-picked wild asparagus for breakfast! Life is good.
@12:03 PM
Saturday, May 18, 2002- - -
Yeah! Pope Incorrigible I is back.
And his Incorrigibility comes naturally, it would appear.
@8:20 AM
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I'd suggest that knowingly bringing a knife onboard a commercial aircraft is probably illegal. That these folks didn't get caught in the act probably doesn't preclude prosecution and our bureaucratic overlords are undoubtedly a bit sensitive to this sort of 'in your eye' right now. While this certainly points up the idiocy of airport security, I don't think I'd try any such informal tests of the system, nor would I make any written confessions of my findings.
Of course this might be a good place to invoke the 'don't believe everything you read' defense..
@8:19 AM
Via Jeff Goldstein, think of the potential of this technology for television news! I might argue that no emotion would be an improvement over the simulated sincerity and camera mugging of the present batch of talking heads.
Here's an interesting point: ''This is really groundbreaking work,'' said Demetri Terzopoulos, a leading specialist in facial animation who is a professor of computer science and mathematics at New York University. But ''we are on a collision course with ethics. If you can make people say things they didn't say, then potentially all hell breaks loose.''
I'd guess professor Terzopoulos hasn't given many interviews to the dead tree press, if he thinks putting words in people's mouths is anything new.
@6:29 AM
So you want to be a mountain man?
Here's a little excerpt from the journals of James Clyman, telling of an incident that happened in 1823 or 1824, in the Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming. He was traveling with a group of fur trappers led by the legendary Jedediah Smith, on their way to the Green River country of southwest Wyoming:
.. while passing through a Brushy bottom a large Grssely came down the valley we being in single file men on foot leding pack horses he struck us about the center then turning ran paralel to our line Capt. Smith being in the advanc he ran to the open ground and as he immerged from the thicket he and the bear met face to face Grissly did not hesitate a moment but sprung on the capt taking him by the head first pitching sprawling on the earth he gave him a grab by the middle fortunately catching by the ball pouch and Butcher Knife which he broke but breaking several of his ribs and cutting his head badly none of us having any sugical Knowledge what was to be done one Said come take hold and he wuld say why not you so it went around I asked Capt what was best he said one or 2 go for water and if you have a needle and thread git it out and sew up my head which was bleeding freely I got a pair of scissors and cut off his hair and then begun my first Job of dressing wounds upon examination I found the bear had taken nearly all his head in his capcious mouth close to his left eye on one side and clos to his right ear on the other and laid the skull bare to near the crown of the head leaving a white streak whare his teeth passed one of his ears was torn from his head out to the outer rim after stitching all the other wounds in the best way I was capabl and according to the captains directions the ear being the last I told him I could do nothing for his Eare O you must try to stich up some way or other said he then I put in my needle stiching it through and through and over and over laying the lacerated parts togather as nice as I could with my hands water was found in about a mile when we all moved down and encamped the captain being able to mount his horse and ride to camp whare we pitched a tent the onley one we had and made him as comfortable as circumstances would permit this gave us a lisson on the charcter of the grissly Baare which we did not forget
Not only did Smith survive with no complications, he continued to lead the trapping expedition west.
@5:36 AM
Thursday, May 16, 2002- - -
Via Cornfield Commentary comes this gem. Notice that none of these folks are actually asking that the Democratic Party change it's plank on gun control. Like the donkeys here in Wyoming, they just want to avoid discussing the issue too close to elections. It's obvious that they're aware of the feelings of their constituents, but of course, they know better.
@8:43 AM
Incidentally, David Hogberg does a good idiotarian take-down too. Interesting that he's pegged Charlie Reese as a liberal - Reese is one of the more conservative voices featured at the Red Star Tribune.
@8:25 AM
Sadly, this is nothing new. Try being an openly conservative student in a social sciences department and you may well get the same treatment from your own faculty. Not as overtly, but just as hissingly vicious. It's time to recognize political correctness for what it often is - narrow-minded bigotry with a thin sugar coating. Sometimes very thin.
Update: Incidentally, the InstaPundit has bit more to say on the topic here. Un-surprising that he points to sexual harassment rules - they're a great example of the underlying problem. Is there anyone here who's been through the whole university experience and didn't run into a few sex-for-grades professors? Ever wonder how they get away with this for years and years? Hmmm? At present, every university I've been associated with should fly it's flag on a double standard.
@6:52 AM
I've discovered another good new blog, Cornfield Commentary, through the simple, if shameless expedient of proprietor David Hogberg emailing to say 'hey, how about taking a look at my new blog?' Oddly enough, this usually works with me. Plus, you got to love a guy who heads his info and links column with "Hi Mom!"
Cornfield Commentary is focusing on politics and media issues in Corn Cam Country. This might not sound too entertaining until you realize that Steve Sukup and Doug Gross are two of Iowa's current GOP gubernatorial wannabes. Two more likely candidates for a name change and better grist for comic bloggery I haven't seen lately.
David also has some choice comments on the University of Iowa, where several of my friends have attended and taught. When I was in the service I used to escape from Ft. Knox by visiting those friends of a weekend, and I have many good memories of Iowa City from those times, as well as a few memory holes created by too many hours in the Rathskeller.
Finally, it never hurts to let people know that there are still a few people out here in flyover country, so David's blog is a welcome addition. Go give him a look. And stand by for some Gross Sukup political commentary.
@6:21 AM
My Bête Noire
"The time has come," the hairy man said,
"To talk about that fat cat, Fred."
(Too little, too late!
"So what?" he said.)
If I ever get around to incorporating Fred will be the VP in Charge of Quality Time. I can always count on him not to let me work too hard, or for too long at a stretch. In fact, he's being such a pest right now that I can hardly write this.
We named him Fred because I found him the day that River Phoenix died. All evening we were treated to the River Phoenix Story - all 15 minutes of it, over and over. Then, about the time I was tottering off to bed, one of the news readers mentioned in passing that Federico Fellini had also died that day [a great web site, especially if you ever wondered how to say "Home Page" in Italian]. So Fred is formally known as Federico Felline.
Fred is a road cat. Some filthy cretin put him and his little siblings in a box and tossed them out on the highway. It was a cold night, but the asphalt was warm from the sun. By the time I got there Fred was the only survivor. That he survived was a miracle. It was the middle of the 'beet campaign' - fall harvest - and 10-ton farm trucks ruled the road. It was pitch black dark, and Fred is indeed a bête noire. I saw two little eyes in the middle of the road and slowed down to see what it was, expecting some sort of wildlife. Instead, I found Fred. Huddled right on the centerline with trucks roaring either direction, so cold he was stiff. I dashed to the center of the road and scooped him up, sticking him inside my coat while I searched for more survivors. There were none.
Don't blame the farmers, you neither stop nor swerve a 10-ton truck when it's fully loaded and rolling, and it was dark out there, the end of a very long day for those folks. But I do wonder at the people who 'free' their pets in the country - we do have a Humane Society shelter, just like civilized places. I wonder even more if any of Fred's ancestors were anything like him.
I've written in passing on the nature of intelligence and Fred is an interesting study. He's talkative and joins every conversation, including phone conversations. His enunciation is a bit difficult to follow, so he's developed sign language. I kid you not. Of course, if you know an animal you learn that various postures and actions convey meaning, but these are normally natural behaviors such as tail-wagging. Fred has taught himself a three-part multi-modal phrase and he employs it consistently. He gives one meow to get your attention. Then he extends one forepaw with claws fully extended and makes a raking motion two or three times. Then he offers his head. If he just meowed and offered his head I'd say it was normal cat behavior, begging for a good head skritch. But he simulates a petting motion! I can only guess that he's imitating a human hand by extending his claws, but his request couldn't be more clear. And this isn't anything we've taught him, at least not intentionally.
I've debated trying to teach him more, but haven't tried, if only because the conventional wisdom says it's not possible. Besides, he initiated the behavior without prompting, so I've decided to wait and see what he comes up with next.
@6:14 AM
Wednesday, May 15, 2002- - -
Yes! The wild asparagus is sprouting. It's suffering from the drought and the only good stands I could find were immediately along the banks of the Big Horn and along the irrigation ditches. Low areas that are usually swampy enough to support asparagus are bone dry and there probably won't be any fresh sprouts coming up there.
If you've never tasted wild asparagus I don't know how to describe it, except to say that the flavor is intense. One warning though: a good part of that flavor is due to purine and my doctor tells me that if I don't stop eating so much of it I'm going to get gout. Personally, I'll accept the risk.
@8:55 PM
My work provides base data for environmental impact statements all the time, but I'm afraid that in this case the field investigation would be a bit spendy.. But wouldn't it be a hoot if I found something?
@8:54 PM
Yes, I'm heavily back into on-the-job writing and the blogging does take a backseat to more remunerative activities. I'd like to disabuse anyone who might have thought that the absence of a tip jar, wish list, etc., hereon indicated my eschewal of crass commercialism. On the contrary, I've only assumed that with his readership and the effort he puts in, if the InstaPundit has only made enough from his blog to buy a new laptop, that I'd probably get about enough to cover a cup of cheap coffee. As I can't stand bad coffee I don't see the point. Of course, I'm being a bit facetious, it's just that I already have enough weird little sources of income that pay $1.29 and cause me hours of bookkeeping headaches and pages and pages extra on my tax forms.
I am very intrigued by Jeff Jarvis' idea of a weblog foundation, although his proposal seems a bit elaborate for a first effort. I'd be happy with a relatively simple host/agent arrangement - someone to handle the tech and financial details that I simply don't have any interest in dealing with - like hit counters for instance. Whatever the details, I'm a little surprised that there aren't already enterprising individuals lining up 'stables' of the best bloggers, although it sounds like Jarvis is about to take a stab at something along these lines.
Regardless of the form such arrangements take - and I would expect to see a variety of competing business plans - I heartily agree that injecting a little cash into the equation would be nice. Of course, for those who object to a for-profit business model, I see no reason why similar not-for-profit organizations could not be set up*, and I imagine that there would still be plenty of room for independent and/or unpaid efforts.
It occurs to me that there could be good reasons to join an association of some sort, even for those who do not wish to become involved in a for-profit venture. At the least, being in a good cooperative bloggroup might well increase traffic on all the sites involved, although I can see a downside if the bloggroup becomes too incestuous in their linking or too similar in their views. However, I don't see this happening in the group blogs such as Samizdata and see no reason why it would necessarily become a problem here.
*Update: Is this a double negative? A good writing coach/editor would also be an asset to such an association, although I note that most blogs are already at least as literate as the dead tree press.
@8:15 PM
Via Bill Quick, who beat me to this editorial at the Denver Post, we have the latest on zero tolerance from the People's Republic of Colorado:
Only a doofus or a true bureaucrat - sorry, we didn't mean to repeat ourselves - would regard an extended index finger as a deadly weapon. Only a doofus would ignore the lesson of history - that when fingers are outlawed, only outlaws will have fingers.
We wonder if the zero common sense policy at Dry Creek bans all index fingers or metes out stonger punishment for assault fingers. Are fully automatic fingers a federal case? What about semi-automatic fingers? And will Dry Creek students be forbidden from wearing gloves on a cold day on the grounds that encasing their fingers would amount to carrying a concealed weapon?
Harsh words from the usually staunchly liberal DP, and it only gets better.
@3:23 PM
Tuesday, May 14, 2002- - -
Thanks to a passing comment on blacksmithing, I've received an email from the Cranky Professor, Assistant Professor of Art at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Michael Tinkler. He just started his blog a week ago and has concentrated his posts on the trials and tribulations of academe and the sad state of affairs in our education system. I sympathize, as this sort of thing makes me pretty cranky too:
Says he: My life and teaching style is living testimony to the anti-Europeanist victory. My students, who are a mix of the products of good suburban government schools and elite private schools, know nothing about European history, culture, or languages. Students taking my classes have self-selected for some interest in ‘culture,’ but they are starting from scratch. They often can’t tell the nationality of artists from last names – I am sometimes reduced to telling them that artists whose names end in vowels may be Italian.
Keep an eye on the Cranky Professor. He studied at Emory University and is currently preparing a post on that other [in]famous Emory Prof, Michael Bellesiles. That ought to be very interesting, but it's taking him a while to get it written, as he thinks he should read Bellesiles' work before criticizing it. What a concept.
@5:05 PM
Oops! I was so entertained by my email today that I've forgotten to blog this:
Eric Olsen at Tres Producers has an interesting post in which he opines that ".. at some point in the future .. we might develop the capability to step outside of our current constraints of time and space and actually measure the reliability of our senses and the consistency of our logic.
On the contrary, I would argue that we need not wait for the future; we measure the reliability of our perceptions, logic, and reasoning all the time, in numerous ways, and with varying results. I find such epistemological questions fascinating.
Consider the case of someone who's profoundly red-green color blind. Although he has no way of perceiving red himself, he's been told frequently that it exists. Is this person reduced to accepting the existence of red 'on faith?' Certainly we can explain that light of a certain wavelength is perceived as red. We could show him a chart of the spectrum and point out the location of red. We might even employ a red-colored light or filter that would allow the color blind person to see red as gray and green as black. But none of this can actually allow this profoundly color blind person to perceive the color red. What if he doesn't believe it? Can we objectively demonstrate to this person that we perceive colors he can not, and convince him that it's not a parlor trick? Or, at some deep level must he rely on polling other people's perceptions and accept that he's outvoted on the existence of the color red?
Certainly this is a simplistic case. Color blindness is uncontroversial and well documented, the tests for detecting color blindness are simple, and a red filter should allow a color blind person to perceive a difference between red and green simply by shifting the colors to those he can see. But it highlights the fact that we do test our perceptions in quantifiable ways.
@3:55 PM
Monday, May 13, 2002- - -
Hmmm. Anyone who thinks trolls are creatures from Norwegian mythology hasn't met any of my relatives.. Or looked under many bridges lately.
@9:34 AM
Here's an interesting twist. The blogs provide grist and format for a dead-tree OpEd: Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz discusses lying in ponds' recent ranking of most partisan pundits. Kurtz goes on from there to provide links and short commentaries on a variety of topics in a decidedly blog-like format.
Among his 'posts' are a few interesting comments about Democratic presidential wannabe and North Carolina Senator John Edwards. Kurtz cites Republican pollster Frank Luntz' opinion that Edwards can't be elected president because "America hates trial lawyers." Essentially viewing them as despicable ambulance chasers who get rich suing people.
Lawyer jokes aside, I've got to wonder how accurate this assessment is. Personally, I think I would give most Americans credit for a more nuanced view. At the least, everybody loves their attorney, it's the other guy's lawyer that's a schmuck. And as Kurtz points out, trying to paint Edwards as an ambulance chaser could well backfire badly, as he has a record of advocating for injured children.
@9:12 AM
It appears that we Geminis are positively beside ourselves with anticipation of upcoming birthdays. Mine's on the 27th, but I've already filled my wish list. Sighted it in too.
@9:12 AM
The new, kinder gentler Sgt. Stryker. This could be interesting.
@9:11 AM
Sunday, May 12, 2002- - -
Anton Sherwood has an advertising spoof that pretty much sums up much of the '90s marketing attitude. My favorite were the flashy dot com ads that left you wondering what it was you were supposed to buy. And don't forget the beer commercial that depicted beer drinkers as pale and pasty folk who amuse themselves by pulling out the refrigerator to see what's behind it. As entertainment some of these ads were quite good, but I wonder if the producers didn't sometimes lost sight of the fact that they were supposed to be selling something.
@4:57 AM
Not to put to much of a point to it, but there was probably a time when a Toledo Blade was considered a pretty sharp item, so perhaps they allude to their rapier-like wit?
@4:23 AM
Saturday, May 11, 2002- - -
Eugene Volokh argues that the interpretation of the Second Amendment as an individual right is consistent with the wisdom of the founders. This is a sentiment I heartily endorse as well. However, I do take issue with part of Volokh's conclusion:
And the [individual's] right [to bear arms], if firmly accepted by the courts, may actually facilitate the enactment of modest gun controls. Today, many proposals, such as gun registration, are opposed largely because of a quite reasonable fear that they'll lead to D.C.-like gun prohibition.
But if the courts can make clear that the Constitution takes such a prohibition off the table, this slippery slope concern may become less serious. ..
Except that any prohibition taken off the table by this court can be put back on the table, with extra trimmings, by the next court, or the next Congress. If one of the extra trimmings is confiscation of some vilified subset of firearms or confiscation of firearms from some vilified subset of the population, then registration certainly facilitates that effort.
Rand Simberg takes issue with the same phrases of Volokh's conclusion, sharing my general abhorrence of all 'modest gun controls,' but he glosses over what I see as the central weakness of Volokh's argument: It is all well and good that the current court shows a renewed respect for the Constitution. However, this has not always been the case, as Volokh acknowledges. Thus, regardless of this court's attitude, how realistic is it to expect that attitude to hold for all future courts? Granted that the rulings of the present court set precedent, such precedents have been ignored in the past.
Likewise, I'm not sure of the wisdom of trusting that future Congresses will not come up with some modest and reasonable law that passes Constitutional muster and involves the confiscation of some class of now-legal firearms. This is very much a case where today's good intentions could breed horrendous, if unintended, future consequences.
Volokh responds to Simberg, again acknowledging the slippery slope argument and adding this: Nonetheless, I stand by my prediction, a claim about what will happen rather than about what should happen: I think that if an individual right to own guns is firmly recognized, this will substantially diminish (though not eliminate) the opposition to intermediate proposals, such as registration.
I certainly may be wrong on this. Still, my sense is that there are quite a few people out there who are worried about lawfully implemented gun bans, but not really that worried, at this stage in American history, about massive governmental lawlessness. And if I'm right, those people might (wisely or foolishly) prove to be a swing vote in support of various proposals like gun registration, if the acceptance of an individual right to bear arms can reassure them that the chances of confiscation are rather remote. Recall that even in many relatively pro-gun states, there's considerable support for quite a few modest gun restrictions; bringing around even a moderate-sized swing group of voters can make a difference (again, for good or for ill).
I suppose the key to this whole argument is what constitutes a firmly acknowledged individual right to bear arms. I would argue that at the point that an individual right to bear arms is indeed firmly acknowledged, further gun controls such as firearms registration will become moot, as there is no legitimate purpose that further firearm regulation would fulfill. Further, I would continue to argue strongly that, regardless of how firmly acknowledged the individual right to bear arms might be at a given time, any waver or infringement of constitutional rights based on the argument that there's nothing to worry about 'at this stage in American history' clearly ignores that very history. I think I am far from alone in this sentiment. Thus, I would argue that Eugene Volokh's prediction is incorrect, as it gives far to little credit to the memory of the average American regarding the promises of politicians.
@2:19 PM
Friday, May 10, 2002- - -
Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb jailed!
As reported by Indian Country Tomorrow, Cecil Timberline of Native America Calling reports:
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth handed down his decision today, the show reported. Each faced five charges for lying to the court, withholding information from the court and failing to tell 300,000 Indian account holders how much they are owed, rumored to be just $10, according to a latest report.
Norton was enraged by being brought in to a BIA holding cell. But she calmed down after being placed in handcuffs.
"I think she kind of liked that." he said.
Timberline then said shredded documents, money and old treaties were found in Norton's possession.
@8:20 AM
Nicholas D. Kristof expresses his frustration with the progress of our war on terror:
The upshot is that we lose our fingernail clippers when we board planes, but somebody could still detonate a dirty bomb in New York City and devastate the nation's economy, or send out 100 anthrax letters around the country and close down the nation's postal system.
Americans seem lulled by the calm since 9/11, by the new security measures in place. But remember that Al Qaeda typically spaces its attacks a year or more apart.
And as for the effectiveness of new security measures, I was sobered on my last major trip. My hotel in Sudan gave me a farewell gift of a pocket knife, and since I had only carry-on bags I assumed someone would find it and confiscate it. I stowed the knife with some care, and although I went through three international airports and my carry-on bag was X-rayed each time, no one found the knife.
@8:07 AM
The InstaPundit has pointed to three very interesting articles he's written on gun control. The three are much too long to summarize here and they're all well worth the read.
@7:18 AM
Wednesday, May 08, 2002- - -
An exiled Iraqi went back
To his home with a ewe in his pack.
He said people all knew
Every Q needs a U
So he put the ewe back in Iraqu.
Ogden Nash
@9:42 AM
When I can no longer bear to stare at this computer screen and the snow is piling up against the door, I've been amusing myself in my workshop making various gadgets, gewgaws and gimcracks. Early-on I blogged about making a big letter opener with a blade from an old bayonet. The project turned out very well - the blade is certainly an honest piece of steel and I've put solid hilts on it. It makes a good paper weight - long enough and heavy enough to hold even big reference books flat - and quite the conversation piece. With its white bone grip, brass pommel and cross-hilts, and wickedly long stainless dagger blade, it's just plain pretty. I've toyed with the idea of sharpening it, but it would make a poor utility knife and it's about 500 years out-moded as a weapon, being all point with only a poor edge. As such, I've left it a blunt conversation piece.
I've always wanted to have the space and time to set up the tools and beat out the blades and various other implements myself - and I had better get on with that project while there are still living blacksmiths to show me how it's done, as even laying and starting the forge fire is a complicated process. However, in the mean time I amuse myself putting functional and decorative handles on salvaged and commercially available blades, experimenting with various finishes for the blades and with various grip materials, and making and trying different styles of sheathes. This is really only a small step from painting on my shoes, but it passes the time in the cold dark winter.
I've found new inspiration in a couple items from these guys. I've made a couple of knives from their '512 layer' Damascus steel and they are very nice. Understand that the blade is made in foreign lands of unknown substances and I wouldn't choose one for any serious use. However, I've discovered that if you brown the blade, the successive applications of browning solution and steel-wooling the textured blade produces a very beautiful and unusual finish, especially when set off by nickel fittings. Put one in a hand-tooled sheath and it's just the thing for the well-healed* tourist - and it beats assembling rubber tomahawks..
Update: *Our minds do indeed work in strange ways. I know how to spell 'well-heeled' but for some odd reason my fingers are haunted by homophones. The spell checker doesn't catch them, and I didn't see that my fingers had run away from my brain. Most odd.
@8:32 AM
Incidentally, what Paul Orwin is undertaking in his discussion of the nature of intelligence and consciousness, is an excellent example of the educational promise of this new medium.
@8:32 AM
I'm of two minds on this. I'd block the siding and credit card salesmen in a heartbeat, but I actually get calls from more business-related sales people that are occasionally welcome. I'm also a bit uneasy at the idea of someone else making up a list of the things that will be censored from my in-coming phone traffic.
@6:02 AM
Watch out for copycats if this gets much coverage.
@5:55 AM
Colorado's CCW legislation has been defeated. Probably about equal parts the continued colonization of the People's Republic of Colorado; bad timing - Columbine is still pretty fresh on people's minds on the Front Range; and folks on the west slope saying 'you want me to get a permit? Get out!'
I have mixed feelings about licensing rights - fear and loathing - but I know a lot of people will be disappointed. And given the influx of people from the coasts, this may have been the last chance for such a measure to pass. The politics is turning decidedly 'blue' down in VodkaPundit Land.
@5:52 AM
The Nebraska-Iowa Joint Terrorism Task Force? My we take ourselves seriously, don't we? He's been caught, by the way.
@5:31 AM
Tuesday, May 07, 2002- - -
If the data variables are to be analyzed as linear combinations of factors which are themselves, in turn, defined as composites of the data variables, aren't we just going in circles? Well yes - in a way we are, but sometimes the view from one point on a circle is more interesting than from another. William W. Rozeboom Foundations of the Theory of Prediction
@3:09 AM
Monday, May 06, 2002- - -
Steve Den Beste has an excellent dissection of the 'CO2 is causing global warming' issue. Facts and figures. My kind of argument.
@9:26 AM
An interesting weekend. Saturday morning we played with the big boy's Erector Set, 'scalding' a few pieces of iron pipe and tubing into a proper over-cab rack for Calvin's old blue pickup. Then we spent the afternoon searching for tipi poles. Unfortunately, the dipshit forester who issued the pole-cutting permit issued it for an area where there were no Lodgepole pines, only dog hair-thick Douglas fir. [He's a Forester!?] We scrounged through them anyway - I suppose that the Indians also took what they could get - and found half a dozen poles that would be usable in a pinch, but they're much more tapered and gnarly and knotty and limber than Lodgepole pines.
The day was a terrible waste. We drove all the way from Worland, over the candy-striped Eocene Willwood Formation badlands, through the devastation of the stark white, gray, and black shales of the Paleocene and Cretaceous formations into the red-oxidized Jurassic, Pennsylvanian, and Permian hogbacks, and finally drove up a horribly steep jeep trail through the wildly wind-carved Ten Sleep Sandstone. All for nothing. God, I hated every minute of it.
Sunday I spaded the garden over again, tilling all of last-year's mulch into the mix, picking out the weed roots, and admiring my worms. When we bought this place the garden was a little patch of hard gray earth with some scraggly weeds and a lot of ugly-looking bugs. It was so hard and dry that I almost despaired doing anything with it, but I finally tilled it up and started dumping all the grass cuttings into it - and I added a gross of nightcrawlers. Ten years later I'm spading mostly worm-castings and I've got no bugs - but I do have some Dune-looking worms. And tomatoes I eat for dessert.
@9:03 AM
Doh! I wonder if there's any more of them? Maybe we should Investigate - it is our middle name after all!
@8:18 AM
Andrew Sullivan says that these guys may have been a bit misled. A few days later they are sticking to their rhetoric of wide-spread destruction, but if you read between the lines you get a very different picture.
The fight put up by the Palestinians shocked the soldiers. Eight days after entering, the Israeli army finally prevailed, but at a heavy price. Twenty-three soldiers were killed, 13 of them wiped out by an ambush, and an unknown number of Palestinians died. And a large residential area – 400m by 500m – lay utterly devastated; scenes that the Israeli authorities knew at once would outrage the world as soon as they hit the TV screens. ..
An alarming picture has emerged of what took place. So far, 50 of the dead have been identified.
Let's see. In eight days of fighting, in which the Israelis encountered heavy resistance and lost 23 of their own soldiers, they confined the destruction to an area of only 3 x 4 city blocks and caused 50-odd Palestinian deaths? Considering the weaponry they're employing, that sounds like remarkable restraint to me. While the Israeli government probably isn't sharing all their motives or intelligence info, it also sounds like the Israelis targeted a very specific area for some serious wrath. However, had I lost 23 of my troops in the process, I might have lost my temper for a minute and caused much more widespread destruction.
Reading between the lines even here, I get the impression more of surgical precision than of some rampage of destruction in the Jenin operation. Of course, that's not the picture these Independent reporters would like to portray and you can be sure that if there were more casualties they could count, identity wouldn't be an issue. As hard as they try to spin the second story they're backing off the 'hundreds and hundreds killed in wide-spread devastation' of the first, surely an embarrassment for anyone priding themselves in accurate reportage. But I suppose that's what they get for believing everything some Kamal Anis told them.
Update: Via the InstaPundit, If the same writers from the Independent were covering the weather, it would probably sound much like this.
@8:03 AM
Saturday, May 04, 2002- - -
Unconscionable, adj. The FBI was monitoring a group of Middle Eastern men at a Prescott, Ariz., aviation school for two months before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, concerned the men were planning to infiltrate airport security or recruit others to aid them in a hijacking or bombing plot, officials said yesterday.
Washington Post Yes, our confidence in government grows by leaps and bounds.
@8:48 AM
We're filling in the data set. Plants are very sensitive to annual changes in received precipitation, particularly at those times of year when they are actually doing something - pollinating at present - I love this time of year. My nose disagrees. But I digress, so my nose loses.
I've noticed that, for whatever reason, tulips don't bloom if you plant them in one of our front beds, but daffodils like that same bed. Go figure.
Well guess what? This spring the daffodils didn't bloom, but the silly tulips are blooming their little heads off. This is in ten years of observing the plants in that patch. Did it take three years of spring drought to stimulate the tulips? Were they simply 'late bloomers,' so to speak? How many little plants are popping out of the ground, or actually completing the full annual cycle of reproduction this year, that I've never seen before? I need to go walk in the desert - stop and smell the Opuntia. Although they do a pretty good job of blooming every year. Still, keep your eye out for them.
I put my nose off long as I could, but there's also something very peculiar blowing in the air. It's got to be pollen of some sort, judging from my eyes, but my head isn't stuffed up and I'm always attacked in the sinuses worst. Yes, this is shaping up to be a most interesting year.
You see, it's not quite so important how much precipitation we get, as when we get it. If the spring rains come at the right time you can sprout the barley around here without irrigation. If it doesn't rain at the right time, you can't. Measuring the economic effect of tiny changes in the climate would seem to depend on charting a myriad of such tiny details, many of them not immediately obvious, some known only to people with specialized knowledge, and a lot we probably don't know about.
Yet, some would have us take drastic action on the basis of their projections of such factors.
Ok, Ok, I promised I'd quit it. For now.
@8:34 AM
I've been told that the dealer margin on gasoline here is around 8-10%. That's why every station is turning into a C-store - they don't make any money on the gas but when you stop to top off, you drop $5 on 25¢ worth of sugary goop and make up the difference. Recently, one of the stations here* took out their pumps entirely, as they were in the way of their C-store traffic.
I suppose the market is very different here, where we make the stuff, than in Hawaii, but I wonder what they'll do if our producers just decide not to ship the product at their set price??
Update: *That's remarkably kind of me. Actually, the place was a gas station, C-store, and bar. No one ran into the gas pumps during the day. Come to think of it, when I moved here they hadn't put in the C-store and it was that greatest of Wyoming traditions, the gas station and bar. Or to be more accurate, the gas station, bar, and post office. Everything you need, under one roof*. Now that they've added C-stores [and video rentals] to most places, I don't have to live on beer nuts any more.
Update: *Yes, everything you need to shoot, move, and communicate.
@7:50 AM
I get some of the darnedest junk mail. Now I've got a catalog from BUDK. They do have the Worlds Best Knife Prices (tm, [seriously]) and their quality is (cough) very consistent.
Most everything the aspiring Walter Mitty could ask for, including Caltrops. Don't you think we're a bit OverLawyered when you can't ship caltrops to CA, MA, and NY? What next, bent nails?
They're little twisted pieces of metal, guys. Of course they're aimed at nefarious deeds, but anything can be put to a bad use.
Update: Incidentally, I really like commercial web sites that try to sell you something, but lecture you sternly about copywrites if you accidentally back-click* on one of their pictures trying to leave the site. I seldom buy anything from snotty salespeople, in person or electronically. And somehow it seems worse to have a computer subroutine being snotty to the customers.
Update: *Especially when their web designer has left nowhere else on the page to back-click. The most 'irritable' website I've ever seen. Think postal worker with a toothache.
@7:50 AM
(Editor's note: BTW guys, I see that Ev is advertising XXL T-shirts. Perhaps it is time to get away from the computer a little more often.)
@7:14 AM
David Rostcheck of the Pink Pistols has pointed out to the InstaPundit that not all gun rights advocates are entirely thrilled with the NRA [actually something the Prolific One has discussed in the past]. Numbers mean revenues of course, and money is necessary to speak loudly on Capitol Hill, but in their rush to build a following they've forgotten what you find in the middle of the road: dead skunks and yellow stripes.
@7:09 AM
And in the process of adding Paul Orwin to my rogue's gallery I've discovered that I've lost and or omitted Will Warren. Sorry Will, it's fixed now.
@6:57 AM
By the way, as part of his discussion of consciousness and basic neurophysiology, Paul Orwin discussed the "Gardner model" of intelligence, which 'posits 7 different types of intelligence.' This wouldn't be unusual in a discussion of the topic, except that Paul manages to work in an analogy to N-dimensional space, a concept from matrix algebra and multivariate statistics.
Watch out Steve, this guy's after your niche! I'm afraid I rotate my mental matrix around oblique axes, however...
@6:45 AM
Friday, May 03, 2002- - -
In case anyone was wondering, I chose the colors of my blog to match the rest of the decor in my office. My mom was a Rosemaler, and I've decorated the room with selected Rosemaling, very much like these. The colors are traditional and the work is very stylized. Those I've selected run the gamut from some of the earliest, crudest work mom did, through the period when she had mastered the traditional technique and was producing precisely done, exactly correct work, to the last, when she had gone beyond the precise copying of patterns to the beginnings of her own style. In this very stylized folk art form the individual flourishes are very subtle and in those last I believe I could recognize her work from any copy.
It's an interesting art, in that most was meant as embellishment on utilitarian objects. Thus, I've got chairs, benches, mail boxes, platters, lunch boxes, bread boxes, and even wooden shoes painted in this style. One thing for sure, you had a lot of time on your hands in a long cold winter when you started painting on your shoes.. My mom was particularly proud to have some of her work displayed in a folk art museum in Oslo. Doing it well enough to be acceptable back in the homeland was important.
@11:03 PM
Our minds do work strangely. I'd read a post by Anton Sherwood, discussing Stephen Jay Gould and the nature of intelligence. 'Cognitive anthropology' has been a great interest of mine for many years, although I don't have much time to study the literature, so this inspired me to toss off a piece about IQ testing and the difficulty of testing intelligence.
Later, I became embroiled in the whole global warming controversy - which is guaranteed to put a bump in your email in-basket - and I've been having a chat on the side with Paul Orwin, who has added several good points to my thinking on that subject. As it turns out, Paul is also the proprietor of Turned up to eleven. So I finally got around to visiting him, and what do you know? He's blogging on fundamental issues of consciousness.
I'd like to say that great minds think alike, but Paul actually sounds like he knows something about the issue while I'm strictly an interested bysitter. Folks who discuss difficult topics in an intelligent fashion should be better read, so please go give him a look.
The best part was, he never mentioned my embarrassing attempt to discuss the topic of intelligence. What a gentleman.
@8:58 PM
James Lileks' piece today on art for children reminds me that I missed my chance to be a 'real reporter.' Or maybe I'm just a little late:
The Artrain was here! This year's theme is 'Art of Space: The NASA Art Program' and the works were truly spectacular. Although I know nothing about art, I do recognize the name Andy Warhol. He doesn't come to Worland very often. The rest of the artists are equally well-known. They had 78 pieces - mostly paintings, sketches, and prints - from really first-rate modern-day artists, most of which figured NASA activities, space vehicles, & such. An ultra-colorful subject and some of the works were very powerful.
Considering the cramped space of train cars, the presentation was very well done, although it was short on sculpture. I don't know how they could have wiggled anything very big in, though. I was interested to see how very carefully they monitored the temperature and humidity. It's understandable, of course, but it was interesting to see how they did it. They managed to be very protective of the works without putting them behind bulletproof glass or any such silliness that would obscure the view of the art. They did appear to be covered with Plexiglas or such, but with people jostling by so very close, they had to protect them from people stumbling into them, and the covering was very unobtrusive.
The Artrain travels throughout the country focusing on small towns in the hinterlands, so they came to the right place. And despite the NASA-oriented artwork, the train itself is privately sponsored. They also work closely with the local artists in each community and the train's stay was really an art festival with a bunch of other activities featuring local artists, who had a ball doing quick draws and art exhibitions of all kinds.
It's well worth the visit if it comes by anywhere near you.
@6:35 PM
Whew! And now I'd like to apologize to my loyal readers for venting in such fashion, and particularly to Andrew Sullivan, as this global warming controversy is supposed to be his gig and I've stunk up the room before he could get started.
Update: Incidentally, Sullivan will be starting his discussion group May 6th. I just got my copy of Lomborg's book yesterday (it had been backordered forever), so I'll be busy reading for a bit.
Cheers!
@4:40 PM
Welcome to the All Global Warming All The Time network!
Whoa Nellie! TM It's a missive from the moon! I didn't want to get into this anymore right now, but although I've plowed most of this ground once or twice already, this was too good to let you miss. I know that I threaten to post anything anyone sends me, but in this case I think I'll leave off the surname, although this argument is actually the best I've received from the Pro Warmers.
We have a real problem with the quality of discourse on global climate and this is a great example of the problem. It got a bit long, so here it is, in three parts.
Part I
Bruce writes:
Come on. First, most of those dramatic natural climate changes occurred over much longer periods -- hundreds or even thousands of years. The danger this time is that the change will occur so fast -- decades -- that human society will have great trouble adapting to it. Second, the fact that the human race can SURVIVE such changes -- as, of course, the overwhelming majority of it will survive even the worst conceivable anthropogenic warming episode -- doesn't mean that it won't be a huge disaster. World War II killed only about 2% of the human race; does that mean it wasn't a disaster?
Thanks for lecturing me on that. Did you notice what I do for a living? WWII doesn't compare by orders of magnitude with the devastation of a major meteor impact. It is by no means given that humans could survive another big cosmic whack. Luckily, we have Clint Eastwood to take care of those for us. But Dr. Strangelove pretty well illustrated a very conceivable and very much worse sort of anthropogenic global warming, didn't it?
You miss my point entirely: Anthropogenic global warming is peanuts, Dude. Think Ice Age. Think 1000-year drought (no that's not a typo). Both are within the geologically known normal range of climatic variation of the last 20,000 years. Don't like the weather? Hang around. It will change. Whether some small contributor to that change is anthropogenic is a pretty silly argument under the circumstances. We still need to figure out what to do when it stops raining for a couple hundred years - or it starts snowing in Buffalo so much in the winter that it doesn't all melt the next summer, or the next major volcano blows off, or whatever comes along next. Suggesting that we just shoot ourselves and be done with it is not an acceptable solution.
Incidentally, the vast, vast majority of normal climatic variation is thought to be attributable to changes in received solar radiation - come up with a plan to deal with a change in solar output, or stop a major volcanic event, and I'll be impressed.
We do know that these climate changes have occurred, are occurring, and will continue to occur on many scales - large and small, fast and slow. We do not know* how quickly those changes in the past occurred, or really, much about what caused them to occur, except in the obvious case of cosmic love pats and volcanic cataclysms, neither of which take decades to notice, or give us decades to prepare for.
*We had better find out. And it would be nice if folks would stop stinking up the argument in the mean time.
@11:39 AM
Part II
Bruce writes:
Regarding the question of how likely climatologists and atmospheric scientists consider it to be, you might take a look at Gallup's Feb. 1992 poll of 400 members of the American Geophysical Union and/or the American Meteorological Society. (The Gallup people will be happy to mail it to you, along with an indignant letter on how National Review and the group that commissioned the poll have outrageously distorted its findings.) The two key questions:
(1) In your opinion, is human-induced greenhouse warming now occurring? "Yes": 66-10.
(2) What do you think is the probability that human-induced global warming will raise the global average temperature 2 deg C. or more during the next 50 to 100 years [enough in itself to produce serious problems]?" Average estimate: 46%.
Science is not a democratic process. We don't vote to decide what's valid. Every mainstream scientific thought started out as a minority opinion. Those that have reached ascendancy did so because they seem to work, not because that was the idea everyone liked best, or lobbied hardest for.
Since then, scientific belief in this possibility has only gone up, probably by quite a lot (although I haven't seen any recent polls).
One more time.. A 'belief' is something you are asked to accept on 'faith.' Both are metaphysical concepts, and I would argue that they do not and should not have any referent in science. It is a grave mental error to use such terminology and it is a big part of the problem we have with the discussion of global climate. I don't care what you 'believe' I only care about what you 'know.' You already know what I think about polls as a means of hypothesis testing.
As for that group which claims that 6000 science Ph.Ds signed their petition pooh-poohing the idea, the April 16, 1998 "Nature" (pg. 639) exposed the fact that they mailed it to approximately half a million scientists. And, yes, I'm well aware that every correct scientific theory stared out as a minority belief. I'm also well aware that the vast majority of minority scientific beliefs really do turn out to be wrong.
So do most all of the 'majority beliefs,' eventually. So what? And you really do need to find a higher level of reading material - something that will explain that there's no such thing as a 'correct scientific theory.'
The question, of course, is: "If serious global warming does turn out to be a serious possibility, what course of action do we follow to minimize the total pain the human race will go through?"
By Jove! I think you've finally got it! Or at least a part of it. If we look beyond our own selfish little lives to the greater world and longer term, global warming isn't a 'serious possibility.' It is inevitable. So are ice ages, droughts, floods, volcanoes, meteor impacts, and all that which has come before - and probably a few surprises we don't even know about as yet. As far as I am aware, no one suggests that the earth's climate has entered into a state of stasis.
@11:37 AM
Part III
Bruce writes:
Most obvious answer: massively increase research spending (either through direct government spending or tax incentives) on non-fossil fuel-based energy production and energy-conservation technologies, so that the human race can minimize its production of CO2 and other greenhouse gases without impoverishing itself in the process (and preferably while minimizing worldwide use of nuclear fission, given its own nasty side effects). That technology, by the way, would also allow us to adjust the greenhouse effect up or down from now on to cope with genuine major natural climate changes of the "Little Ice Age" variety.
Thanks for pointing out the inevitable 'obvious answer.' Of course, where the money comes from doesn't necessarily have to be linked to where it goes. I'd advocate a tax on idiots myself, except I don't much like taxes of any kind. Doesn't that massive increase in government spending bit give you some clue as to the agenda of much of this propaganda?
Query Steven Den Beste for the facts, but I'd guess that a lot of those non-fossil fuel-based energy production and energy-conservation technologies - such as wind power - are relatively mature technology-wise, they're just more expensive than extractive energy sources at present, and we're working on that, thank you. And you'll have to check with Megan McArdle on this one, but I'd suggest that, all else being equal, when renewables can be accomplished less expensively than recoverables they should begin to dominate.
Now don't you think it would be a good idea to figure out what we're doing before we go off shooting the people who are trying to bring you cheap energy? I agree that we need to spend a great deal of time and energy studying the climate and specifically, the mechanisms that drive climate changes and cause periods of stability such as we have enjoyed for the last 5000 years or so - like about the time 'civilization ' began, Hmm?
We do need to keep looking for new sources of energy and trying to clean up the old ones. But I'd much rather see good science being done by serious scientists, than see the money go to the folks with the most alarmist model, who test their hypotheses with opinion polls, and whose PC hypotheses get their butts published in popular science rags.
Incidentally, the 'Little Ice Age' was just that. A genuine major climatic change will be the next Big Ice Age.
Are we doing this? Not that I can see. If Paul Krugman's Feb. 15 NY Times column is correct, the Bush Administration now calls for spending less than a penny per day per American on the entire issue.
Sure, and that's too much, given the quality of the argument. Rather than study climate, the money gets spent on polls to confirm our prejudices. Why pay for more of that?
I'm sorry, Bruce. I didn't mean to single you out, and please understand that I'm not ridiculing you personally - only the sorry, silly argument you've been fed. If it makes you feel any better, at least yours was the best written pro-warming letter I received, and you certainly are safely in the center of the herd.
@11:35 AM
Thursday, May 02, 2002- - -
About all these arguments produce at this point is the realization that there's a whole lot of unexplored territory between our ears.
Test writing of any kind is tricky work and designing a test of intelligence has its own unique pitfalls - for instance, it helps if you're smarter than the people you're trying to test. When I was in high school some academic testing company came to school to test calibrate several [6?] new IQ tests they'd designed. I thought it would be fun, so I volunteered to be a test subject. I've always been good at doping tests and never so proud that I couldn't eschew the correct answer in favor of the tester's favored answer*.
I don't remember who those folks were or know whatever became of that set of tests, but they were so obvious that they'd as well have had little arrows pointing to the 'correct' answer. If I had to guess I'd give the test designers a 'low normal' because when I scored 200/200 [which is obviously absurd] on the first test, I got booted from the group for cheating - they didn't know how I'd done it, since they hadn't even brought the answers with them, but by god they were going to find out!
It was not a pleasant scene and the last thing they wanted to hear was that I'd doped their moronic test. Then the rest of the test results came rolling in and several of my friends also scored 'perfect,' or nearly so. That really brought out the white lights and rubber hoses as it convinced them that I'd passed the answers all around, although their only evidence was that they'd scored my test first. Luckily the principal arrived to find out what all the hubbub was about, listened sagely for a few minutes, and then sent them all packing! That's when I learned that as cynical as I might be, sometimes the system does work.
*An example I recall from the GREs:
If there are two lines, line a-b and line c-d, such that those two lines intersect at a 90° angle, they will intersect at:
a) one point
b) any number of points
c) no points
d) none of the above
(Ok, all you math professors, get ready to cringe because it's been awhile since I had to explain something like this and I'm to lazy to look it up)
In Euclidean geometry the answer is 'a.' However, in some non-Euclidean geometries the answer is 'b,' and I imagine that it could also be 'c,' or even 'any of the above.' It's part of the definition of Euclidian geometry that two points can't occupy the same space, thus two lines can not coincide and intersect at one point and one point only. Bottom line, it's an arbitrary operational definition, not some natural law. As there's no 'a or b or c' or correct answer 'e) It depends, Dude,' I've got to figure that the guy who formulated this question wasn't a student of obscure math systems and was looking for the most commonly accepted definitional answer, 'a.' Or perhaps they were testing my ability to dope a test, but I don't give them that much credit.
The moral of the story, if there is one, is that 'intelligence' is definitional, just like geometry. Design the test properly and you, like Discovery the other night, could prove that an octopus is smarter than a dog. After all, can the dog change color to match its environment? Of course, they failed to note that by that definition an octopus is smarter than a human..
Here's another good one:
a) blue is blue
b) blue is green
c) depends on the time of day
d) depends on your definition
e) get a life
I'd answer 'e,' but only because I know I should.
@8:37 AM
Pillory, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction - prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues and blameless lives.
Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary
Hmmm. Bear in mind that Bierce was a newspaperman.
@5:41 AM
Darn! A few minutes earlier and I could have dated my first post at 0205020502.
@5:41 AM
Wednesday, May 01, 2002- - -
Shocked? Yes, I'm shocked to learn that The Angel Stern has a heart.
Oh, and what was it I said about hats and jackets?
@10:46 PM
Somehow I don't think the good professor gets it here, at all. This is like comparing apples and hand grenades. Law professors can't be jailed for showing insufficient respect to their department chair, and when the teaching gets to be too much they can always quit. Likewise, they don't have to put up with some greenhorn butter bar bracing them against the wall for having grease on their uniform at the end of the day. And let's not forget about the strain involved in being rousted in the middle of the night to be flown halfway around the world to be shot at by people you don't even know. And for all that, a lot of those NCOs probably qualify for food stamps if they have a family to support.
@8:40 PM
Via Mindles Dreck I've found this Matt Welch article* on blogging. A very interesting perspective and it sounds like the chances of getting a job in dead tree journalism are about equal to landing a tenure track position at a major university - somewhat less than being struck by lightning. Go read the whole article, but don't miss this tiny bit:
.. there's a delightful meta-phenomenon of suddenly discovering all these new voices, whether ‘professional’ or ‘amateur’ -- I didn't really know established writers like Virginia Postrel or James Lileks or Glenn Reynolds, and getting to know them as a reader & fan & now friend has been really fun. Same goes for ‘non-professionals’ like the terrific Steven Den Beste, or Andrew Hofer.
Even in that crowd there's one guy who stands out as terrific, eh? I guess I'm not the only one who's come to that conclusion.
*Tough to say who actually wrote the article. There's no specific by-line. The title is "The Welch Report - Go Publish Yourself," and the subhead reads: Reporter and media commentator Matt Welch explains what journalists and editors can learn from the weblog phenomenon., yet the rest of the report reads as if it were an interview of Welch. One wonders if the interviewer isn't the mouse in his pocket, which would be an interesting twist. A good read, regardless.
@6:58 PM
Whoa! Samizdata just stole the IRS' motto.
@1:16 PM
Oh yeah! It is poetry Wednesday, isn't it?
@11:54 AM
How could I have forgotten this?
The scientists keep saying that it’s true beyond a doubt;
Their models are so perfect, if you question them they pout.
Their posture seems to harden as their data seem to melt.
Is this the kind of science that’s not thought as much as felt?
Go re-read the rest, it's great.
@11:51 AM
Here! Here! Children should be obscene and not heard. ..or something like that.
And no, you shouldn't store guns under the bed. The dirt and dust bunnies are bad for them. Make your kids keep their guns in the gun safe where they belong.
But seriously folks, there's another good reason to introduce children to guns and hunting. As John D. McDonald so aptly put it, you can't truly understand the guns - death relationship until you've killed your blackbird. I think that if every kid could shoot one deer - and watch it die up close and personal - there'd be a hell of a lot less gratuitous gunplay in this world.
@9:41 AM
Sleeping in Owen Wister's Bed?
I know a lady, name of Blanche,
Who roughed it smoothly on a ranch,
Digesting in her cowpoke garb
Flapjacks and beans without bicarb,
And urging in raucous campfire song
the little dogie to git along.
She spoke a blend of gin and vamoose,
Confusing coyote with cayuse,
But never her buxom self entrusted
Save to a bronco thoroughly busted.
"Though The Virginian I have read,
I'm just a tenderloin," she said.
Ogden Nash One Western, To Go
@7:38 AM
Ok. One more post and then I must get off this topic before I burst a vessel:
I maintain that climatic processes aren't unique to the earth, nor do they occur solely as a product of earth-bound processes. We should look beyond the earth and perhaps before the earth, to understand the earth's past, present, and future climate.
I would take exception to one bit of terminology that's being badly abused throughout this discourse [in fact I already have in my post from yesterday]. That is use of the term 'belief.' Scientists don't (or shouldn't) do 'belief', although we do have fundamental assumptions that some obviously hold with religious fervor. A 'belief' is something you accept on 'faith' - both are metaphysical concepts that have no referent in the philosophy of science, any more than the term 'agnostic'. It is a mental error to employ such terms in scientific discourse.
Yet, we are often asked to accept the anthropogenic hypothesis of global warming as if 'on faith' - I think that is why so much of the discourse in SciAm has been of the 'who you gonna believe, all our credentialed experts?' sort. Trust me, I can go to universities not very far away and find credentialed experts in my field who will look you in the eye and tell you that the earth is 6600 years old - so much for credentialed experts, Ok? They're human too, jobs are scarce, and prostitution is only hard the first time you do it..
While I don't 'believe' in Uniformitarianism, I do 'think' that science depends on the assumption of some version of it. Thus, I think that the natural cycles of solar radiation, fluctuations in the earth's spin and orbit, changes in atmospheric gases and particulates, changes in the ocean's currents, all the other phenomena that can be demonstrated to effect climate in the present and can be demonstrated to have occurred in the past, and probably many factors of which we are currently unaware, will continue to occur in the future - I do not think that the cosmos has entered a period of stasis.
My long term weather prediction? Periods of intense warming punctuated by glaciers, with droughts and deluges - in other words, continuing normal climate for this region of the cosmos for the foreseeable future. If you're visiting, pack your coat, your suntan lotion, and your meteor umbrella.
I think that the effect humans may have, and what control we may yet exert on these forces of nature remains to be seen. I think it is incumbent on those who espouse the anthropogenic warming theory* to support their theory with data and reasoned argument - not with subtle indoctrination and quasi-religious rhetoric.
*Update: Being something of a tenderloin myself I've misspoken here. I'll give them 'hypothesis' but I've yet to see anything approaching a coherent theory.
@6:59 AM
Tuesday, April 30, 2002- - -
These unintended consequences I can vouch for. I was living in downtown DC - in the Harrington on 11th and E - when they opened the doors of the state mental hospitals there in 1983. According to the Post it was all Reagan's fault and entirely a cost-cutting move. I don't know about that one way or the other, but I'll never forget seeing the newly homeless sleeping on the steam grates surrounding the Treasury Building.
@9:14 PM
Bill Quick has something special to say that's well worth reading.
@9:13 PM
Amid all this controversy there is some bright light. Scientists have discovered why one leg of the V of flying geese is longer than the other. .. There's more geese in that leg.
@6:37 PM
Is it just my imagination, or does it seem that there's scarcely a field of the academe that has not been co-opted to some extent by some group with an agenda? Whether it's phony history ala Michael Bellesiles, phony public health issues, phony environmental issues, or what have you, it seems there are plenty who would rather be politically correct than scientifically accurate.
To be fair, this view is probably skewed considerably by selective reportage - unpopular science probably doesn't get much ink - and there certainly is some fine work being done, but it seems that for too many it's not about science - it's all about politics and money, power, prestige, and careers, all those things your average superhuman scientist isn't supposed to care about.
@6:21 PM
I hope there was a prize!
@6:19 PM
Steve Den Beste has posted a thought-provoking series of articles in which he explains the conceptual link between the Cambrian fossils of the Burgess Shale and World War III.
He draws an apt analogy between competition for survival at the species level and competition for markets and between ideas that serves as an interesting heuristic device for understanding our current geopolitical situation.
Any competitive system goes through a major change which, barring a major perturbation of the system by external events, is permanent. This pattern applies to the history of life, to the development of markets, and to the competition of political forms, and it's the deep source of the current war.
Stephen Jay Gould refers to it as "experimentation followed by standardization" but he's describing the effect, not the cause. I consider it to be caused by a transformation from nonzero-sum to zero-sum competition due to saturation. ..
Which finally leads up to the key insight I had a couple of days ago: during the non-zero-sum expansion stage, it is the virtues of each competitor which decide how well they prosper. But after the switch to zero-sum competition, it is their faults which decide who will die. An uneven competitor, with both virtues and faults, may prosper in the early stages but will in the long run be destroyed by a competitor which is uniformly mediocre.
Great stuff.
Alas, among the less optimistic predictions that might be drawn from Steve's analysis is that mediocrity is an almost inevitable characteristic of today's successful politician or bureaucracy*.
*Update: While we're checking our assumptions, my big assumption here is that we're through with the non-zero-sum expansion stage of government. I sincerely hope we are, but I've got to wonder.
@8:53 AM
Monday, April 29, 2002- - -
Is climate change real?
I watch much of the current global warming debate with considerable amusement. During the late Pleistocene, between about 15,000-25,000 years ago, much of the earth north of the 40th parallel was under continental glaciers up to a mile thick. During the early Holocene between about 6000-7000 years ago the Killpecker Dune Field in present-day Wyoming was open blowing sand covering an area roughly equivalent to the modern Sahara. The geological evidence of these and many other major climatic events is compelling. There is no question in my mind that the earth's climate is a dynamic system that changes constantly. It always has changed and some of the changes have been radical. There is every reason to believe that the climate will continue to change just as radically.
Yet, you'll often read, as we do here, that someone or other's climate model suggests that ".. severe climate changes are strong possibilities .." Sigh. No. Severe climate changes are a geological fact. You just don't hear much about past changes due to the additional and very inconvenient fact that humans weren't available to be blamed for all this past environmental degradation, climatic deterioration, and .. well, pick your own semantically loaded terminology, the 'environmental scientists' certainly have.
Any group is very suspect to me when they routinely ignore 13 billion years worth of the earth's history* while pointing at computer models that 'strongly suggest' this or that, based on, at best, a few hundred years of weather data that doesn't begin to encompass the range of climatic change we know to have occurred in the past. Any group that routinely uses the semantically loaded language you see coming from 'environmental scientists' is very suspect as well. And finally, any group that so viciously rounds on anyone who questions them is terribly suspect. Such behavior suggests to me that the global warmers aren't all that secure in their beliefs and confirms that global warming is indeed a 'belief,' propounded with religious fervor and often defended with remarkably similar sorts of arguments.
The recent, hideous hatchet job pointed out by the InstaPundit, in which John Rennie, Scientific American's editor in chief, questions Bjørn Lomborg's credentials while knowingly and repeatedly misrepresenting those credentials and simultaneously talking holier than thou about whose ad hominems have been worse, is an excellent example of the level of discourse I've come to expect from global warmers. In this case, it's also a good thing they call themselves Scientific American, not Literate American. At the least Rennie desperately needs an editor.. a criticism as fully to the point as most of Rennie's.
This was just too delicious: The very first sentence of Rennie's article reads: Many critics of Bjørn Lomborg's book refer to Mark Twain's comment about "lies, damn lies and statistics," but I am more reminded of H. L. Mencken's remark, "For every problem, there is a neat, simple solution, and it is always wrong." Later Rennie says: He [Lomborg] particularly seems to enjoy quoting a statement that Schneider made in an interview in 1989 about the "double ethical bind" researchers can find themselves in, to the effect that sometimes they might need to "offer up scary scenarios" to build public support. Lomborg does not overtly accuse Schneider of lying about global warming forecasts but his innuendo is clear.
Of course, in this context Lomborg wasn't accusing Schneider of anything - he simply quotes Schneider acknowledging what should be obvious; that scientists are human, science costs money, and some scientists value money, prestige, and position more than they value science. This should be no great revelation to anyone. But somehow in Rennie's eyes it becomes a damning example of selective quotation that Lomborg left off Schneider's plaintive last sentences at the end of the quote. According to Rennie, the damning missing citation is this: Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. I hope so too. But what a world view this implies. To even suggest that there exists a balance to be struck between honesty and effectiveness certainly might be taken to imply that to be more effective one must be less honest. This strikes me as the world view of a Machiavellian politician, not that of one committed to science. The whole point of this juvenile rant appears to be that Lomborg has enjoyed a little innuendo, so Rennie's continuous innuendos are OK too, right?
And then there are the constant, even quasi-religious appeals to authority. Someone really should explain to Mr. Rennie that Science isn't a democratic process. We don't vote on what's valid. When most people hold a similar view it certainly makes that view the dominant paradigm, but to imply that the dominance of a paradigm somehow proves it's correctness, as Rennie repeatedly does, reveals an abysmal ignorance, not only of how science works, but of human nature in general. Not to mention it's just plain silly - most every commonly accepted scientific thought started out as a minority opinion.
Me thinks thou doth protest too much.
*Update: Yes, I meant to say 13 Billion, although I certainly could have phrased this better. If there is any 'beginning' to natural history that's probably it. Bear in mind that I was referring to the 'history' of the earth, not the 'age' of the earth, which is, as several sharp-eyed readers have pointed out, more like 4.5 to 5 Billion years. I was thinking that the natural history of the earth starts with the history of the cosmos and should have burned another sentence or two to make that more clear.
@4:41 PM
A few weeks ago the Casper Star Tribune changed ownership. All the same old crew are still there, but the new owners seem to be making some changes. First, although their web site has been online for several years, they've always run the online news a couple days behind the print edition. Running a news website seemed to be a grudging acknowledgement that the internet existed, while running all the news two days late insured that it would never be a threat - or a compliment - to their dead tree operation. Now they've finally wised up and have most of the news online simultaneous to the print edition. It's not pretty, but it's finally available.
While the same old crew still sit at the same desks, it's also apparent that the editorial policy has changed, at least as far as selection of OpEds goes. Instead of the constant 'in your face' commie commentator of the day OpEds offset by the occasional loopy screed from Cal Thomas or Charlie Reese to show how balanced and objective they were, they've now gone to using more bigger name writers - perhaps the new owners have more money - and seem to be trying to add more balance to the OpEds. For today, we have an all star selection of OpEds, with Nat Hentoff, Nicholas Kristof, and Paul Krugman. Perhaps not entirely balanced, but not the sort of second-string leftwing loonies we usually see featured.
No, now we have a certifiable first string loony leftie. I'm sure that Megan McArdle will have something interesting to say when she does her next Krugmanwatch, but in the mean time I couldn't resist pointing out that Paul Krugman is making the effort to maintain the spirit of the old 'don't confuse me with the facts' Red Star Tribune.
Says Krugman: "Second, the Bush plan still allows twice as much pollution as experts at the Environmental Protection Agency privately think appropriate. The cost of an additional 50 percent reduction in pollution, according to internal E.P.A. documents, would be pretty small. But the administration apparently prefers not to ask industry to bear even those small costs.
The cost of a 50% reduction in pollution "would be pretty small," eh? Did I read somewhere that this guy used to be an economist?
@8:02 AM
Surely tourist season is almost over down there?
@8:02 AM
What? There are people struggling along out there with only one gun?
@8:01 AM
None, of course.
@8:01 AM
Sunday, April 28, 2002- - -
Via Jim Henley, another great splash in the blogosphere©! Bruce Baugh, author of about a jillion role-playing games, has started a blog.
@2:24 PM
Well, I for one refuse to link to this.
@2:24 PM
Bill Quick says the Israeli-Arab "problem" is insoluble at this point:
For the west to live in peace, the entire [Islamic] culture must be changed, and I suspect that this is not possible without first defeating it so thoroughly that even its religion is discredited.
Andrea Harris responds in a comment that underlines the fundamental problem - no amount of appeasement, no social programs, no economic development will help, as long as a stated goal of fundamental Islam is the destruction of the west.
@8:13 AM
There's been some movement in the Cobell v. Norton Indian Trust case while I was off loafing in the woods. According to the Washington Post, Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and Sens. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced legislation Friday [4/19] to create an Interior Department position of deputy secretary for trust management and reform to handle all trust fund duties, and to make it easier for tribes to directly manage or co-manage their own trust funds, which few tribes do now.
This won't be the first time Congress has tried to fix the Indian Trust. Accounting firm Arthur Andersen was paid $20 million in the early 1990s to reconcile tribal accounts and failed. The Interior Department, which oversees the BIA, has tried to fix the system and failed. Despite repeated failure, the DOI still wants to create another agency to overhaul the trust fund -- the Bureau of Indian Trust Asset Management (BITAM), although the past seven years of Congressionally mandated reforms have had no effect.
According to John Miller, deputy in charge of policy for the Office of the Special Trustee, a department-level office charged with oversight of the $3.1 billion Indian Trust system, the federal government is no closer to fixing the broken Indian trust than it was seven years ago. Even if the balances of accounts belonging to 300,000 American Indians and more than 300 tribes were correct today, there is no way to ensure their accuracy in the future. Says Miller, "The major problem is, we do not have a system that can fulfill the fiduciary responsibility now or in the future much less account for the past. There is no system in place to accurately maintain the records. .. In other words, the 'bleeding' would continue. .. The DOI has no awareness of its fiduciary responsibility either on a legal or moral basis .. Decisions are not based on what is best for the beneficiary but what best serves DOI and its decision makers."
Despite years of legal wrangling, the fundamental issue - the government's paternalistic management of Indian assets - has not been shaken, or even questioned in some venues. Therefore, Daschle, Johnson, and McCain's move to make it easier for the tribes to manage their own affairs is encouraging.
@6:59 AM
Actually, the hat and jacket aren't nearly as important as the whip..
@6:59 AM
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