Starving Children in Plain Sight: A letter to the NY Times

Starving Children in Plain Sight

Obviously, far more scrutiny is needed of caseworkers, of the lack of auditing of adoption subsidies and of the failure to mandate annual medical checkups for adopted children. The cause of abused youngsters needs far more from New Jersey than more emaciated poster children.

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The NY Times editorial page responds to a horrific story of child neglect by advocating annual medical exams for adoptive children, presumably to detect abuse. A reasonable proposal, but inconsistent. The call should be for annual state sponsored exams of all children to detect abuse, neglect, and poor parenting. Certainly NYT editorial writers are very busy parents, and may be prone to leave the children with sitters. They may deserve particular attention. If one wishes to conserve resources, perhaps the exams should be limited to children at a higher risk of abuse or neglect. Poverty, poor character (politicians), two income families -- all possible leading indicators for neglected children. Let us brook no delay in implementing this proposal.

--
John Faughnan MD, MS
parent of three adoptive children

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I rather doubt the NY Times will print my emailed letter, they never have before.

DeLong on Health Care Economic Policy

Semi-Daily Journal

My two years spent working part time on health while at the Treasury convinced me that being a health economics policy guru was like being trapped in the 11th circle of Dante's hell. The problems are just too complex. The uncertainties just too great. And I do not have any of the answers.

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Now that's honesty. There's been a recent jump in payor (insurance) company mergers recently, allegedly because the pool of insured people continues to shrink. As the pool shrinks, costs and risk sharing push mergers. Somewhere the train jumps the tracks, but I don't know what year it will be.

In a somewhat related vein, Dr. Lagace had this to say about a shortlived double residency in psychiatry and family practice: "It's like playing Russian Roulette with two bullets". Dr. Lagace is a family physician (so am I). As physicians respond to economic incentives by bailing out of both family practice and psychiatry, look for the next event to be a "crisis" of health care delivery in primary care and mental health. (Actually mental health services have been in the dumps for years, but Republicans figure the madhouses will handle those problems.)
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Bush Nazi Connection: Irrelevant and distracting

Conason on "Bush-Nazi" story

There are many unflattering terms that can and should be used to describe George W. Bush. He is, among other things, a truly bad President. But neither his offenses, nor the Republican Party's politics of personal destruction, can justify using such tactics against him. Imputing Nazi sympathies to the President or his family ought to be beneath his adversaries.

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Odd that this has gotten traction. There's nothing here -- GWB's grandfather made some dirty money and was a good senator later on. Makes The Shrub seem more Kennedy like I suppose.

My dark suspicion is that Karl Rove wants to keep this story alive because it's silly, and it lets Bush act aggrieved. Time to forget it and talk about Bush's real failings.

Tribal engineering in Iraq: NYT

Victory in Iraq, One Tribe at a Time

There are about 10 large tribal federations in central Iraq, but there are hundreds of subgroups, each with its own sheik. He is the leader of the people, and in return for his services -- mediation, arbitration, attracting government services to the tribal area -- he is respected and obeyed.

New efforts ought to be made to persuade the sheiks to assert their influence and help keep the peace. The easiest would simply be to hire the sheiks and their tribesmen -- putting them on salaries and allowing them to spread the wealth among their people. In addition, sheiks in areas where coalition soldiers and oil pipelines are coming under frequent attacks should be told that the only way their tribes can receive luxuries -- extra government services, construction aid, easy access to senior officials in Baghdad %u2014 is by making sure that there are no attacks against coalition soldiers in their domain.

If a sheik refused to cooperate, not only could his perks be withheld, they could be given to a neighboring sheik. This would eventually pit the uncooperative sheik against his own tribesmen, who would see that he was not serving their interests. If this weren't enough to get the sheik into line, it wouldn't be too difficult for the coalition to enact 'regime change' on a small scale: almost every tribal leader has rivals within the group who covet his position.

... Amatzia Baram is professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Haifa in Israel and a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.

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I doubt tribes are quite so easy to manipulate, but this is a concrete suggestion. It sounds very British, and somewhat reminescent of US Special Forces activities in Afghanistan.

Cybercrime in Brazil and Beyond: A deeper significance

Brazil Becomes a Cybercrime Lab

The country is becoming a laboratory for cybercrime, with hackers - able to collaborate with relative impunity - specializing in identity and data theft, credit card fraud and piracy, as well as online vandalism.

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Education + access to knowledge + lack of alternative opportunities + intellect + youth = cybercrime. In Russia add in "organized crime" for a slightly different spin.

That equation means that youthful (re: "developing") nations with dysfunctional economic systems will be fountains of cybercrime.

Wait until they become fountains of biohacking.

Maybe we need to rethink our approach to the world?

Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives

Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives

America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. Ivo H. Daalder, James M. Lindsay. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2003, 238 $22.95

Days before the United States launched Operation Iraqi Freedom this past March, a well-known intellectual close to the White House walked me through the necessity and promise of the coming invasion. Whatever rancor it caused in the short term, he said, would pale in comparison to the payoff that would follow. In the months and years to come, Iraqis who had suffered under Saddam Hussein's tyranny would write books and testify to the brutality of the regime, the bankruptcy of the Arab nationalism that stood idly by while they suffered, and the improvement of their lives. That testimony and the reality of an Iraqi state where basic human rights were respected would shatter the anti-Americanism that fills the Muslim Middle East and start a wave of change that would sweep over the region.

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A terrific overview of the Bush ideology, taken from a review published in Foreign Affairs and reprinted in the New York Times. There is no doubt that our foreign policy reflects GWB's vision, and his unwavering course. History will tell if his course is more like that of Churchill or more like that of the captain of the Titanic.

BBC NEWS | Technology | IP addresses are set to run out in 2005

Tackling the net's numbers shortage

In the early days of the internet, it seemed improbable that all of the four billion available IP addresses would be used, but that is exactly what is happening.

Every mobile phone, PC and server has an address which, like a phone number, needs to be dialled when it is accessed over the web.

But as more people log on around the globe, the available number of IP addresses is dwindling.

A taskforce of experts hope to solve the problem by creating what is called IPv6 and would provide 64 billion extra IP addresses.

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I suspect the journalist did the math correctly, but an editor made the mistake. The number is 64 billion billion billion. More significantly, IPv6 was created years ago and has been implemented in several test cases. I think both OS X 10.3 and XP SP1 include IPv6 support.

This is the personal ID number of science fiction fame. At birth one will be assigned an IP address -- certainly appearing on one's hospital id bracelet. That number replaces SSN, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. Names are merely a changeable label, the number persists. Never reused, it most likely goes to the grave with the person. Post-mortal derivative avatars may apply to inherit the number, but they'll probably have to make do with their own. Pre-mortal avatars will certainly have to get their own numbers.

Bush: the clueless president

On High-Speed Trip, Bush Glimpses a Perception Gap

CANBERRA, Australia, Oct. 23 Minutes after President Bush finished an hourlong meeting with moderate Islamic leaders on the island of Bali on Wednesday, he approached his staff with something of a puzzled look on his face.

'Do they really believe that we think all Muslims are terrorists?' he asked, shaking his head. He was equally distressed, he told them, to hear that the United States was so pro-Israel that it was uninterested in the creation of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel, despite his frequent declarations calling for exactly that.

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It's been pointed out that Bush doesn't read very much and never has. Evidently no-one tells him very much either.

It pays to be pretty and telegenic: The stories of Lynch and Johnson

Ex-POW's Family Accuses Army Of Double Standard on Benefit (washingtonpost.com)

AUSTIN, Oct. 23 -- Shot through both legs and held prisoner in Iraq for 22 days, Army Spec. Shoshana Johnson returned home in the spring to a difficult convalescence that lacked the media fury and official hype that attended her friend and comrade in arms, Jessica Lynch.

Depressed, scarred, haunted by the trauma of her captivity and at times unable to sleep, Johnson walks with a limp and has difficulty standing for long, according to her parents.
And now that Johnson is on the verge of her discharge from the Army, insult is being added to her injury, they say. While Lynch was discharged as a private first class in August with an 80 percent disability benefit, Johnson, set to leave in the coming days, learned last week that she will receive a 30 percent disability benefit from the Army for her injuries.

The difference, which amounts to $600 or $700 a month in payments, has infuriated Johnson and her family. They have enlisted Jesse L. Jackson's help to make their case to the news media, accusing the Army of a double standard, insensitivity and racism. Lynch is white; Johnson is black.

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It certainly pays to be telegenic and pretty, being white probably helps some too. The story illustrates the interaction between our government, our institutions, and the political machine. If only there were a sense of shame in our modern culture ...

FOXNews.com - Exclusive Access -- I wonder why?

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - U.S. Forces Find Major Weapons Cache

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Nice work by US forces and Iraqi helpers. Interesting angle though is Fox's exclusive access. I've been wondering if Fox has signed on to Rumsfeld's propaganda project ...

Rumsfeld seems unfazed by leaking of his memo ...

With a Smile and a Joke, Rumsfeld Defends Iraq Memo

Pressed about the leak of a memo in which he questioned progress in the war on terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld brushed aside questions today with a wry smile, saying that defense secretaries were not instructed, upon taking office, to 'cage your brain and stop thinking.'

This week newspapers published the memo, which Mr. Rumsfeld had sent to senior staff members. In it, the defense secretary, known for his relentless focus on positive achievements in the war on terror, used tough and unsparing language.

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It is noteworthy that there is little speculation on who leaked the memo. I suspect the topic is avoided because Rumsfeld himself leaked the memo, or at least auhtorized the leak. It smells like a lateral move in his internecine warfare.

The last days of privacy: CAPPS II

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

Assuming that the airline is able to gather all 39 data points, under CAPPS-II they will be automatically reported to the TSA, which one might assume would compare the data to a terrorist profile. But before that happens, CAPPS-II uses the 39 data points to gather even more information about you from commercial and government databases. Some of this is confirming for accuracy the data already provided in the idea that a real terrorist would probably lie. Some of it is to dramatically expand the TSA's profile of you and me. To do this, they'll look at our credit reports, our credit cards and bank accounts. Using data from the Internal Revenue Service, if available, they'll confirm our employment and income. They'll check immigration and look for outstanding warrants through Interpol and the FBI. And they'll compare this information to that of our traveling companions and to the information for all other passengers on that plane in the assumption that we might be working together while appearing to travel separately. Eventually, we'll be rated on a red, yellow, green scale, and those of us lucky enough to get the green light will find it remarkably easy to get on an airplane. This rating and perhaps other information about us, will be held not just at the TSA but also in the computers of the four major reservations systems.

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Predictable and inevitable. If it has to be done, there should a lot of resources bugeted for correcting errors, protecting use, setting up appeals, punishing misuse, etc. etc.

Does ANYONE imagine that Bush will handle this well? Does anyone trust them not to misuse this data? Will criticism of the Administration move one from a "green" to a "yellow" or "red" rating?

Better not get any traffic tickets ... if you want to fly ...

This is one of Cringely's best. He goes beyond the ugliness of CAPPS II and provides a concise outline of one approach to the new age of high tech terrorism. This approach assumes that terrorists will succeed, but that it's possible to mitigate the consequences of their success. So we really can't prevent people from getting weapons on a plane (or at least we don't want to pay what it would cost to prevent it), but we can prevent them from using the plane as a weapon -- by fortifying the cockpit door. (If one understands that much of our aviation security screening is really to reassure passengers rather than to increase security, then a lot of things make more sense.)

The US economy could boom again?

Ricardo Caballero of MIT believes that the U.S. was in the middle of a generation-long shift to a richer, higher capital-intensity growth path when the NASDAQ crash occurred--and that there is no reason to think that the United States cannot grow in this decade at the same boom-time rates at which it grew in the late 1990s:

FT.com Home US: ...the correct comparison instead is between the current capital-output ratio and the long-run equilibrium ratio under plausible conditions. If we follow the latter strategy, and assume that private saving remains at its (recent) historical levels, the conclusion is very different from that of the pessimists: the new equilibrium capital-output ratio should be about 1.6, well above the current 1.36. In other words, the 1990s boom still had energy when it was interrupted. What lies behind this jump in the long-run capital-output ratio? The accelerating decline in machinery prices, which is a consequence of technological progress in machinery-producing sectors. (Here I conservatively assume that the decrease returns to its historical trend, slower than that of the 1990s.)

But not everything looks so favourable. In the calculations above I assume that the sources of funding available during the 1990s remain in place. In particular, I assume that fiscal saving does not disappear and that external saving decreases only gradually. Are these assumptions warranted? If all goes well, the external side is less complicated than is generally thought. The $500bn in external financing that the US requires each year is a huge amount - but we are talking about the US at a time when the global alternatives are not very exciting or are too small to make a difference. Of course, the dollar may suffer turbulence in the medium run. This could happen if, for political reasons, the US keeps pressing China and other Asian economies to revalue their currencies; this would entail a fall in those countries' reserve accumulation, most of which is being invested in US government securities.

However, the real danger lies in the other source of funds: public savings. If the fiscal accounts - particularly for the medium and long term - are not improved, the whole benign equilibrium may collapse. In the capital output calculations above, I assumed balanced fiscal accounts. If we assume sustained fiscal deficits of 4-5 per cent of gross domestic product that are not compensated for by a one-for-one increase in private savings (which seldom happens), the new equilibrium capital-output ratio falls as low as 1.1. In this scenario, the pessimists are correct and the US has a large excess- capacity problem; the obvious corollary of this is a huge increase in the long-run interest rate.

The US economy is indeed a "tightly coiled spring", with plenty of growth potential - definitely enough for a very good second half of this year and beginning of next year, but also way beyond that. However, this opportunity will be squandered unless a much sounder fiscal path is credibly outlined soon.

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I actually thought this was a positive article when I first posted it; I thought I'd say something good for a change. It was only on rereading and editing that I noticed the mathematics assume Clintonomics. Instead, we have Dubyanomics -- massive deficits extending forever.

So even though Dubya didn't cause the collapse of the 90s boom, he may be responsible for a decade of meager growth. Sigh.

General Boykin: Leading the New Crusade?

The general and his divine mission - www.theage.com.au (LA Times)

...The Pentagon has given the task of tracking down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets to an evangelical army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.

Lieutenant-General William "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence ...

... the former commander and 13-year veteran of the US Army's top-secret Delta Force is an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in uniform before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hate the US "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. And the enemy is a guy named Satan."

... Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, General Boykin told another audience: "I knew my god was bigger than his. I knew that my god was a real god and his was an idol."

General Boykin has said of President George Bush: "He's in the White House because God put him there."

... General Boykin has also said radical Muslims who resorted to terror were not representative of Islam. He has compared Islamic extremists to hooded Christians who terrorised blacks, Catholics, Jews and others from beneath the robes of the Ku Klux Klan.

...President Bush often uses religious language in his speeches, but he keeps references to God non-sectarian.

At one point, immediately after the September 11 attacks, Mr Bush said he wanted to lead a crusade against terrorism. But he quickly retracted the word when told that, to Muslim ears, it recalled the medieval Christian crusaders' brutal invasions of Islamic nations.

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The radical left has said the Iraq invastion was about oil, and Al Qaeda have (confusingly) said their war is against materialism and /or the Crusaders.

While I still don't think either group is quite correct, I'm forced to admit they seem to have a point. The huge investment in war fighting, combined with a perverse antagonism to energy conservation, is most compatible with the thesis that oil has a special place in Bush's heart. Point for the radical left. As for Al Qaeda ...

Last comments:

1. Bush does NOT keep references to God non-sectarian. There are other gods than those of Abraham (Hindu, native American, etc) and other religions than those of Abraham -- such as Buddhism, Hinduism, native American beliefs, etc. Bush has never said anything to indicate any particular respect or tolerance for the non-Abramic faiths, nor, for that matter, for agnostics, secular humanists, and atheists.

2. Boykin may legitimately separate Muslims into those who follow Osama and those follow Muhammed. If Satan is out there, one could make a case that Osama is in his camp. I'd love to learn more about what he says to evangelical groups.

3. I wonder if Boykin is a big reader of the "Left Behind" series. The influence of that series on a particular sort of susceptible mind has, I think, been underestimated.

Does a missing posting suggest Apple will deploy a multiuser GUI? (And overturn the computing world?)

Apple - Discussions - Welcome

I recently learned that a posting I'd just made to Apple's Discussions forum is gone. It wasn't a rude posting, indeed it wasn't even a critical posting. It was an advocacy posting, asking when Apple would make the big move towards a multiuser GUI and thin client wireless deployment.

Now it's possible some technical glitch took my message. However, I naturally prefer the more intriguing possibility. I prefer to to think my posting was deleted. Since it was (honestly) a quite polite posting (my iPhoto postings are far more critical and they persist), I wonder if it touched a nerve. Is something afoot?

Anyone who's used Microsoft's remote desktop client on a wireless iBook has to come away very impressed. Every copy of XP includes Microsoft's SINGLE user remote desktop server (a limited version of their Citrix-derived multiuser remote desktop), and there are free clients for every version of Windows and for the Mac. It works terribly well. Rather than buy the clumsy Mac version of Quicken to do my bookeeping on my iBook, I can use my upstairs XP box remotely. There's a bit of keystroke lag, due in part to the relatively slow iBook CPU, but it's far better than VNC.

For me, it's the best thing in my mixed OS home LAN since Gopher.

Microsoft could have made XP a multiuser GUI server; they've done it for years in their server platform. They were on the verge of deploying the next phase with the Mira project. They didn't. I can only guess the thought of demolishing Intel and Dell chastened even Microsoft. Their existing Citrix-derived multiuser GUI is good enough that many homes and small businesses would buy only one multimedia server, and then deploy thin clients using ARM or another embedded CPU Microsoft also, for very good reason, must have feared the impact on Office licenses. So they passed.

Apple could pull the trigger. They are stealthily making their X-Windows client more and more a part of OS X (it's needed for OpenOffice). They have Quartz, a beautiful framework for distributing video. The underlying OS is, of course, BSD Unix -- multiuser by nature. They have the perfect server in the dual CPU G5. They have the iBook, a great thin client that can also be used outside the home in detached mode. They have 802.11G working across the product line. Their sync technology is a very good fit, allowing local CPU to complement the server CPU in interesting ways. They bundle so much software they can manage the licensing hit, they have a mechanism for renting software (.Mac) that's already been shown to work (Apple Backup). They even have their old Remote Desktop code, though I suspect that may be of little value. They don't care if Dell and Intel both crater.

With a great solution for server and thin client already in hand, with the Apple slates rumored to be in development, with the multimedia genes to use the server for video and music distribution to the clients, with the .Mac platform, with little to lose and an empire to gain, the equation looks irresistible. Apple can't resist. They've got to make the jump Microsoft turned back from.

When Apple jumps, they will fly. Less than 5% of households can keep one Windows machine running smoothly, much less a network of Windows machines serving parents and schoolchildren alike. The value of a thin client approach is overwhelming. Microsoft has been teetering on the edge, but they're too big to make this kind of jump. Apple can do it.

john faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com/

meta: jfaughnan, jgfaughnan, Apple, OS X, X-Windows, multi-user GUI, remote desktop, home, wireless LAN, 802.11G, project Mira, thin client, iBook, slate, palmtop