NYT Op Ed piece: The very late beginning of a focus on the root causes shared by al Qaeda and their Iraqi emulators?

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: One Hearing, Two Worlds

This article amplifies my 9/22/01 theme that modern technologies, including information technologies, have been a critical part of the transformation of terrorism. The cost of havoc has fallen sharply over the past 100 years.

The amplification of hatred through modern communication channels is, for me, a new theme. In retrospect it was also seen in the right wing Clinton-jihad. I may add this to my "root causes" model.

The author also breaks an unspoken rule -- he warns of the risk of a "fifth column" within the US. This has been very obvious since 9/11, but is rarely mentioned. The Bush administration seems hellbent on creating an American al Qaeda offshoot.

This is a thought provoking essay. Besides my unread web page on the topic, similar sentiments have been expressed in Wired magazine, Salon, and several similar not-quite-mainstream publications. Friedman has hinted at these themes in various NYT pieces.

One Hearing, Two Worlds
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Robert Wright is the author of "The Moral Animal" and "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny."
Published: April 9, 2004

... The polar opposite of a preoccupation with state support of terrorism is the view that, in the modern world, intense hatred is self-organizing and self-empowering. Information technologies make it easy for hateful people to coalesce and execute attacks — and those same technologies can also help spread the hatred. That's why opponents of the Iraq war so feared its effect on Muslim sentiment.

If Ms. Rice didn't appreciate that fear before the war, she should now. The current insurgency seems to have spread from city to city in part by TV-abetted contagion. And insurgents are handing out DVD's with deftly edited videos featuring carnage caused by the war.

But Ms. Rice is unfazed. Yesterday she said the decision to invade Iraq was one of several key choices President Bush made — "the only choices that can ensure the safety of our nation for decades to come." Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the screen: "IRAQIS SAY AIRSTRIKE KILLED DOZENS GATHERED FOR PRAYERS." Do headlines like that make us safer?

... Yesterday even Bob Kerrey, a committee member who stoutly favored the war in Iraq, said that it is now helping terrorist recruitment through televised images of "largely a Christian army in a Muslim nation." He didn't pose the observation as a question, and Ms. Rice offered no comment.

... Once you understand how easily hatred morphs into terrorism in the modern world, new concerns arise. What about the feelings of American Muslims, who needn't cross a border to do damage? If they're alienated — by the Iraq war or just by the sense that they're viewed with suspicion and hostility — that could be a problem.

Nobody mentioned American Muslims yesterday, but the bottom of the screen featured this news: "SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, POLICE CHIEF SAYS SERIES OF ARSON FIRES TARGETING BUSINESSES RUN BY MUSLIMS WERE PROBABLY HATE CRIMES."

... many of the things that have brought the trouble — electronically contagious sentiment, elusively fluid terrorist networks, widely available recipes for homemade weapons — will similarly haunt a heavy-handed approach anywhere else in the world. Iraq is a microcosm of the administration's larger war or terrorism, and the verdict is coming in.

All the technological trends that are making hatred more lethal (not just in communications, but in biotechnology and other realms) will continue for a long time. A sound strategy for fighting terrorism in this environment will require extreme creativity — more than President Bush or his presumptive opponent, Senator John Kerry, has shown.

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Similar themes have also emerged in retrospective analysis of the Rwandan genocide. Machetes were the primary instrument of mass murder, but communication and information technologies played a key role in planning and in the amplification of hatred.

A shared lesson of the Rwandan genocide and the 911 attack is that we in the west severely underestimate the capacity of other cultures to use modern technologies and ancient techniques to develop and successfully execute truly evil plans of significant complexity. Our mistake is a form or variant of ethnocentric racism. The Rwandan genocide, for example, was intricately plotted over a period of years. The plotters succeeded, in part, because those who learned of their schemes considered them ridiculous.

We are also prone to think that those who claim to hate modernity will avoid modern technologies. Hypocrisy is not a uniquely American vice.

Maybe we're finally going to start discussing the real problems. I've spent 3 years thinking about solutions every day. I've come up with a few, but solving this problem requires active thinking by a lot of people. We should have been working on this as a community, starting 9/14/01 -- if not much sooner. It is getting very late in the day.

Notes from the battlefront ...

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004): a Weblog

The Alamo is over-rated as a tourist attraction, dammit: We just got back on base. For a while there, I didn't think that would happen. We got ambushed yesterday, except it was a twenty-one hour ambush.

At about four AM the other day, the coalition force rode out the gate and took back the town. At nine thirty we rolled out, arrived at our usual destination, and by ten thirty, we were under fire. We were in a compound of five or six major buildings, large enough to be hotels, not quite large enough to be palaces, that had once been owned by Chemical Ali...

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This soldier's blog was quoted by DeLong. It proved one thing to me -- we've no idea about what's going on in Iraq except that a lot of it is bad. This reads just like the invasion -- only more so.

Despite most of the Iraqi police and soldiers deserting, two did remain -- despite facing almost certain death.

Things are so much more complex than our media can express. But now we have these back door blogs ...

Plan B for Iraq | csmonitor.com

US options in dealing with a widening war | csmonitor.com

... If US forces respond too weakly, they will embolden both sets of insurgents,' says military analyst Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. 'If they respond muscularly - [which is] the US military's, particularly the Army's, natural response and the goal of the insurgents - they risk inflaming the entire population.'

...Dr. Eland's suggestion is to partition the country along ethnic and factional lines -- Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish - and withdraw in an orderly but deliberate fashion.

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When Bush invaded without Turkey, without the UN, with stupid rhetoric, and with 1/3 of the required force, I assumed the plan was to partition Iraq. It was the only scheme that fit Bush's actions. I guess that wasn't Bush's plan after all; I still think it was, and is, Rumsfeld's plan.

So who gets the oil? Turkey will fight for northern oil with the Sunnis and Kurds. Iran will seize a chunk of the south. Kuwait will take a portion. Baghdad will fester and boil with nothing.

I guess Syria gets a few licks in too -- maybe they assimilate the neighboring portion of Iraq.

Basically, this is Yugoslavia on steroids -- same problem, much nastier neighbors.

If only it were possible to post Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, Rice et al closer to the front.

DeLong extends the traditional trade model of comparative advantage to cover outsourcing

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004): a Weblog

... Let's try a finger exercise to evaluate the effects of expanded international trade via 'outsourcing' on an economy. We'll set up a simple model--not a realistic model, an unrealistic model, a model that has only the features we absolutely need to understand the principal impacts of expanded trade on an economy...

...Now we can evaluate this change in four ways:

(1) Let's look at the worst-off--the workers. Their real incomes have risen by 4,000 thalers a year. That's a good thing.

(2) Let's look at total national product. The 75% of the population of the workers have seen their incomes rise by $4,000 thalers a year; the 25% of the population who are yuppies have seen their real incomes fall by $10,000 thalers a year. That means that the average person's real income has risen by $500 thalers a year. That's a good thing.

(3) Let's assert the psychological law that no matter how rich or poor you are that equal percentage increments to your income have equal effects on your material well-being. 75% of the population has seen their real incomes rise by 10%. 25% of the population has seen their real incomes fall by 8.3%. The average proportional increase is 5.4%. That's a good thing.

(4) Let's look just at the rich yuppies, because they are the people we see on TV and who give big campaign contributions. Their incomes have fallen by 10%. Bummer.

David Ricardo is the justly famed 19th century theorist who demonstrated the power of comparative advantage -- the true underpinnings of trade liberalism. Here DeLong extends the classic simplified model to cover outsourcing.

It's a good essay. I'm persuaded -- and I was skeptical. I see what he means. DeLong argues for interventions to ease the pain of transition -- as have I.

Huffington loves blogs

Salon.com | A mash note to the blogosphere

... When bloggers decide that something matters, they chomp down hard and refuse to let go. They're the true pit bulls of reporting. The only way to get them off a story is to cut off their heads (and even then you'll need to pry their jaws open). They almost all work alone, but, ironically, it's their collective effort that makes them so effective. They share their work freely, feed off one another's work, argue with each other, and add to the story dialectically.

And because blogs are ongoing and daily, indeed sometimes hourly, bloggers will often start with a small story, or a piece of one -- a contradictory quote, an unearthed document, a detail that doesn't add up -- that the big outlets would deem too minor. But it's only minor until, well, it's not. Big media can't see the forest for the trees. Until it's assembled for them by the bloggers.

I also love the open nature of the form -- the links, the research made visible, the democratic back and forth, the open archives, the big professorial messiness of it all. It reminds me of my schoolgirl days when providing the right answer wasn't enough for our teachers -- they demanded that we 'show our work.' Bloggers definitely show their work. It's why you don't just read blogs -- you experience them.

All of which has made the blogosphere such a vital news source in our country -- and has made me besotted with blogs. It's a crush that I'm betting will quickly progress to going steady.

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Many of the authors of well read blogs are themselves writers and journalists. They're not completely amateurs, more like pros playing in an amateur game. They can't do the in depth analysis and long term research major news outlets can do, but they are a new form of communication. The interactivity and loosely-coupled collaboration, interacting and consolidating data from traditional and new media produces a new kind of emergent analysis. The world-mind's IQ jumps another notch.

At the very least, an optimistic counterpoint to the News Corp/ClearChannel omniverse.

Salon is angry ...

Salon.com | What the 9/11 commission won't ask

... The story of the Middle East debacle, like that of the pre-9/11 terrorism fiasco, reveals the inner workings of Bush's White House: The president, aggressive and manipulated, ignorant of his own policies and their consequences, negligent; the secretary of state, prideful, a man of misplaced gratitude, constantly in retreat; the vice president as Richelieu, secretive, conniving, at the head of a neoconservative cabal, the power behind the throne; the national security advisor, seemingly open and even vulnerable, posing as the honest broker, but deceitful and derelict, an underhanded lightweight.

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This is only one of series of recent Salon slash-and-burn essays. They are convincing.

Faughnan-Lagace Herald: RSS Feeds and Bloglines changes the line-up

Faughnan-Lagace Herald: Local and International News

I've maintained a family news page for over five years. It's the main newspaper for my wife and I. The BBC has remained at the top left for years, even when their Afghanistan/Iraq coverage made me grit my teeth. [1]. The New York Times has kept pride of place, while a few others have come and gone -- sometimes to return again. Turnover has been low -- maybe an item every few months.

Until now.

Bloglines is a web RSS client. It's not as fast or as elegant as NetNewsWire (OS X), but it's accessible from any machine anywhere. It keeps data on feeds I subscribe to (blogs I read, etc) on the net where it belongs; and it updates my site-specific history in the same place. It's a near-perfect solution [3] -- even though I fear its exploding popularity is degrading performance. (Time for Google to acquire them and make the founders happy?)

Blogines, using RSS feeds, is changing the way I use the net. There are about 82 subscriptions in my subscription list, covering hundreds of articles a day. I scan a read a subset of them, and I do it quickly. It's taken my data acquisition/monitoring capabilities up a notch. I'm finding almost everything I read on the net now has an RSS feed -- even though they don't advertise it. [2]

Many of the sites I would read intermittently have moved off our news page, the Faughnan-Lagace Herald, onto my (publicly accessible) bloglines page. Sites I always read thoroughly (BBC, NY Times, Washington Post, Salon, Slate, Slashdot, Macintouch, etc) are staying on the FL Page, but other sites that I'd often visit but then exit are moving to blogines. A few more magazine-like sites (BYTE, now much improved, Shutterbug, etc) are moving in.

I'm picking up the rhythm of this. I can get my data-fix more efficiently, and explore other heftier forms of learning. The Blogines implementation of an RSS client is providing Tivo-like control over my news/info monitoring process. The FL-Herald remains very useful to me, but it's nature is changing. It's not going away, but the lighther weight stuff has moved to Bloglines.

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[1] I thought Bush did a poor job waging war in Afghanistan and a much worse job waging war in Iraq, but even so some of the BBC coverage was pretty hard to take.

[2] Go to Bloglines, enter the site URL in the subscription box. Most of the time an RSS feed displays.

[3] Why don't they allow me to define an automatic alpha sort?!

[4] What else is new? SmugMug lets me email images to them and offers a quick way to embed them in blogs. I think I might use that feature!

An essay on liberalism (American Prospect)

American Prospect Online - ViewPrint: "Democrats used to thrive on Hollywood endings. Today, liberalism is more like a dark, complicated novel. It's time to go back to making movies."

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This is a fascinating essay. More later.

Brad DeLong: we lack an adequate theory of market failure

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004): a Weblog

And if in modern American politics immigration is unrelated to social insurance, then even a small amount of belief in diminishing marginal utility of wealth leads to the conclusion that the government ought to put its thumb on the scale on the side of a more middle-class and a less Second-Gilded-Age economy and income distribution. How the government should do this, however, is an extremely hard problem--a problem that it is even hard to think about because we lack an adequate theory of market failure.

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"...we lack an adequate theory of market failure". I read those words last week, they percolated to the top of my consciousness today.

We just spent $17 (w/ shipping) an a clock timer we ordered from a vendor of laboratory equipment. Five years ago one could spend $9 at the grocery store on a perfectly adequate mechanical timer that worked well and lasted for years. Now one can spend $5 on a nice-loooking mechanical timer that's absolute garbage and breaks within a few weeks of use. (Yes, it's made in China, but that's not the real point.)

The $17 timers we ordered don't feel any more robust or reliable than the ones now sold in the hardware store.

Then there's tax preparation software. I've used TurboTax and TaxCut. If only I could invoice them for the time they cost me.

For me, these are market failures. I run into these market failures every day, all over the place. The things the market is providing aren't the things I want or need, they aren't the things my family wants or needs. The only toys we can find that are any good are made in Germany -- and they are getting harder to find. Sure -- the price is right. But it's not the right stuff even if it were free.

Yes, we need an economic theory of market failures. My gut sense is that they're getting more and more common. My suspicion is that the complexity of the modern economy, and modern products, has outstripped the capacity of human beings to make informed decisions. We need to upgrade humanity to deal with the 21st century marketplace. But if the market is not serving us, then who (or what), is it serving ...?

smugmug review: full res image sharing and photo printing

smugmug - easy photo sharing with the world's best online photo albums

I've signed up ($25/yr w/ referrer code, $30 otherwise) with SmugMug, after previously using iPhoto's bundled photo service and Shutterfly, and experimenting with several different approaches to sharing images on the web (including use of the excellent iPhoto BetterHTMLExport app with my own pages).

SmugMug combines the usual online photo sharing and printing with remote full image storage (unlimited number of less than 8MB images, supposedly). It's the full res capability that's their real strength and that's how they justify their $30 fee.

They have a referrer program. If you use my coupon code (or click on the link) you get $5 off and I get $10 off my renewal. Here's the coupon code: sTHk2jeMi228c.

A few nice things:

1. They have a nice little OS X application that works with iPhoto albums to semi-automate uploading.
2. They publish their ICC settings for better printing results with embedded color profiles (I use sRGB).
3. They allow viewing in multiple resolutions with integrated print ordering.
4. You can mail images in.
6. Images have resolution-specific persistent URLS and can be included in blogs and other pages by reference.
7. Albums have a range of security features and some community features. (Some of the latter make me wonder about their customer base, the terms of service do formally exclude porn images.)

A few issues with the OS X Uploader:

1. No true synchronization - the uploader appends images to existing albums.
2. No upload of titles and comments.
3. No creation of albums; you must create albums via the web interface first. The paltry documentation/UI doesn't tell you this.
4. Bug: If you close the upload window, there's no way to reopen it. You have to quit and restart.

Other issues:

1. Their album UI and organization isn't as good as Shutterfly's.

2. This is not a replacement for off-site backup. I don't see how one can download an entire album en masse. If the house burned down, one would have to recruit friends and family to tediously download the full images one at a time. Of course if SmugMug goes out of business ...

3. As with ANY ASP-type service, if they go away or become miserable, all the work you've done (captions, organization etc) is gone. Not surprisingly, they encourage you do to a lot of this onsite work. That's what's known in the industry as "lock-in" [1]. When you get locked-in, you can't switch -- even if there's a much better choice. Most of digital life nowadays is about choosing how much lock-in is acceptable and how to mitigate it.

I'd like them to:

1. Open the source for the iPhoto uploader so the OS X community can enhance it.

2. If they use web services, open them for the entrepreneurial OS X community to produce uploader solutions.

3. Provide an option for a GRANDMA interface that would have

a. Larger text
b. Fewer controls
c. Sizing controls at the top of the photo.
d. Back button from the single photo view.

In terms of overall site functionality I want:

1. One click ordering by grandma with no login and all charges paid out of my account. (So what if someone finds the hidden URL? They can send $20 worth of photos to grandma??) See also for more details:

http://googlefaughnan.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_googlefaughnan_archive.html#107755978781161374

Conclusion:

1. Decent service for image sharing, I've not tested their print ordering service yet.
2. Shutterfly is still my preferred service -- I hope the competition will incent them to do full image sharing.
3. SmugMug has the potential to be great - if they survive.
4. Remember the lock-in effect.

[1] Lock-in by file format control was the core feature of Microsoft's rise to vast monopoly.

Update 5/25/06: Still use them, still like them. I use PictureSync to upload images and their new Java uploader.

The Economist is out of love with GWB

Better ways to attack George Bush

Floor Statement of Sen. Daschle on the Abuse of Government Power

Floor Statement of Sen. Daschle on the Abuse of Government Power

We're now in range of the McCarthy era. Not there yet, but getting closer. Beyond the McCarthy era is the bit about "then they came for me". Here's what Daschle said, emphases mine. A while back I quoted McCain. One good thing about living under our current regime is we find out who the heroes are. (This posting comes via Doctorow/BoingBoing and Sterling -- science fiction writers of America seem to be oddly alarmed ...)

Mr. President, last week I spoke about the White House's reaction to Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9-11 Commission. I am compelled to rise again today, because the people around the President are systematically abusing the powers and prerogatives of government.

We all need to reflect seriously on what's going on. Not in anger and not in partisanship, but in keeping with our responsibilities as Senators and with an abiding respect for the fundamental values of our democracy.

Richard Clarke did something extraordinary when he testified before the 9-11 Commission last week. He didn't try to escape blame, as so many routinely do. Instead, he accepted his share of responsibility and offered his perceptions about what happened in the months and years leading up to September 11.

We can and should debate the facts and interpretations Clarke has offered. But there can be no doubt that he has risked enormous damage to his reputation and professional future to hold both himself and our government accountable.

The retaliation from those around the President has been fierce. Mr. Clarke's personal motives have been questioned and his honesty challenged. He has even been accused, right here on the Senate floor, of perjury. Not one shred of proof was given, but that wasn't the point. The point was to have the perjury accusation on television and in the newspapers. The point was to damage Mr. Clarke in any way possible.

This is wrong–and it's not the first time it's happened.

When Senator McCain ran for President, the Bush campaign smeared him and his family with vicious, false attacks. When Max Cleland ran for reelection to this Senate, his patriotism was attacked. He was accused of not caring about protecting our nation -- a man who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, accused of being indifferent to America's national security. That was such an ugly lie, it's still hard to fathom almost two years later.

There are some things that simply ought not be done – even in politics. Too many people around the President seem not to understand that, and that line has been crossed. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration's misleading claims about Iraq, Niger, and uranium, the people around the President didn't respond with facts. Instead, they publicly disclosed that Ambassador Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. In doing so, they undermined America's national security and put politics first. They also may well have put the lives of Ambassador Wilson's wife, and her sources, in danger.

When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that the White House was thinking about an Iraq War in its first weeks in office, his former colleagues in the Bush Administration ridiculed him from morning to night, and even subjected him to a fruitless federal investigation.

When Larry Lindsay, one of President Bush's former top economic advisors, and General Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff, spoke honestly about the amount of money and the number of troops the war would demand, they learned the hard way that the White House doesn't tolerate candor.

This is not "politics as usual." In nearly all of these cases, it's not Democrats who are being attacked.

Senator McCain and Secretary O'Neill are prominent Republicans, and Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay, Joe Wilson, and Eric Shinseki all worked for Republican Administrations.

The common denominator is that these government officials said things the White House didn't want said.

The response from those around the President was retribution and character assassination -- a 21st Century twist to the strategy of "shooting the messenger."

If it takes intimidation to keep inconvenient facts from the American people, the people around the President don't hesitate. Richard Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare, found that out. He was told he'd be fired if he told the truth about the cost of the Administration's prescription drug plan.

This is no way to run a government.

The White House and its supporters should not be using the power of government to try to conceal facts from the American people or to reshape history in an effort to portray themselves in the best light.

They should not be threatening the reputations and livelihoods of people simply for asking – or answering – questions. They should seek to put all information about past decisions on the table for evaluation so that the best possible decisions can be made for the nation's future.

In Mr. Clarke's case, clear and troubling double standards are being applied.

Last year, when the Administration was being criticized for the President's misleading statement about Niger and uranium, the White House unexpectedly declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate. When the Administration wants to bolster its public case, there is little that appears too sensitive to be declassified.

Now, people around the President want to release parts of Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony in 2002. According to news reports, the CIA is already working on declassifying that testimony – at the Administration's request.

And last week several documents were declassified literally overnight, not in an effort to provide information on a pressing policy matter to the American people, but in an apparent effort to discredit a public servant who gave 30 years of service to his American government.

I'll support declassifying Mr. Clarke's testimony before the Joint Inquiry, but the Administration shouldn't be selective. Consistent with our need to protect sources and methods, we should declassify his entire testimony.

And to make sure that the American people have access to the full record as they consider this question, we should also declassify his January 25 memo to Dr. Rice, the September 4, 2001 National Security Directive dealing with terrorism, Dr. Rice's testimony to the 9-11 Commission, the still-classified 28 pages from the House-Senate inquiry relating to Saudi Arabia, and a list of the dates and topics of all National Security Council meetings before September 4, 2001.

I hope this new interest in openness will also include the Vice President's Energy and Terrorism Task Forces. While much, if not all, of what these task forces discussed was unclassified, their proceedings have not been shared with the public.

There also seems to be a double standard when it comes to investigations.

In recent days leading congressional Republicans are now calling for an investigation into Mr. Clarke. As I mentioned earlier, Secretary O'Neill was also subjected to an investigation. Clarke and O'Neill sought legal and classification review of any information in their books before they were published.

Nonetheless, our colleagues tell us these two should be investigated, at the same time there has been no Senate investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a deep cover CIA agent; no thorough investigation into whether leading Administration officials misrepresented the intelligence regarding threats posed by Iraq; no Senate hearings into the threat the chief Medicare Actuary faced for trying to do his job; and no Senate investigation into the reports of continued overcharging by Halliburton for its work in Iraq.

There is a clear double standard when it comes to investigating or releasing information, and that's just is not right. The American people deserve more from their leaders.

We're seeing it again now in the shifting reasons the White House has given for Dr. Rice's refusal to testify under oath and publicly before the 9-11 Commission.

The people around the President first said it would be unprecedented for Dr. Rice to testify. But thanks to the Congressional Research Service, we now know that previous sitting National Security Advisors have testified before Congress.

Now the people around the President are saying that Dr. Rice can't testify because it would violate an important constitutional principle: the separation of powers.

We will soon face this debate again when it comes time for President Bush and Vice President Cheney to meet with the 9-11 Commission. I believe they should lift the limitations they have placed on their cooperation with the Commission and be willing to appear before the entire Commission for as much time as the Commission deems productive.

The all-out assault on Richard Clarke has gone on for more than a week now. Mr. Clarke has been accused of "profiteering" and possible perjury. It is time for this to stop.

The Commission should declassify Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony. All of it. Not just the parts the White House wants. And Dr. Rice should testify before the 9-11 Commission, and she should be under oath and in public.

The American people deserve to know the truth -- the full truth -- about what happened in the years and months leading up to September 11.

Senator McCain, Senator Cleland, Secretary O'Neill, Ambassador Wilson, General Shinseki, Richard Foster, Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay ... when will the character assassination, retribution, and intimidation end?

When will we say enough is enough?

The September 11 families – and our entire country – deserve better. Our democracy depends on it. And our nation's future security depends on it.

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Somewhere the shade of Joseph Welch is applauding.

Fury.com: Google Gmail is real

Fury.com: Gmail is real

In truth, as guessed by a few of the more circumspect bloggers, it was both and neither. A double-April-fools joke. Metapranking, if you will. Google-style fun with a big pot of gold at the end.

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I was right that this was a double-April-Fool's joke and that the service existed. I thought RSS would play a large role, but I don't see that just yet. I also thought that the 1GB allotment was not going to be free, but it sounds like it might be. Now that's astounding.

Still, I didn't do too badly.

Chimps and humans: Gene activity vs. Coding Differences

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | New light shed on chimp genome

... The human and chimpanzee genomes differ by just 1.2% between the coding genes...

... "What we have now done is systematically looked at gene activity in the brain of chimpanzees, humans, orang-utans and macaques and when we compare them the surprising finding is that we actually find quite a lot of differences.

"And in any particular part of the brain about 10% of our gene activity differs from those of chimpanzees," said Dr Paabo.

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We expected large differences between chimp and human brains. How can that occur given almost identical genomes? The trick is modulation of gene expression; an eightfold amplification of coding distinctions. I doubt this answer suprises any geneticist, but the research is fascinating.

Since individual people are very similar (more than 99% identical genes), and yet individual genetically determined abilities are quite different, gene amplification perhaps accounts for much of the phenotypic (gene activity) distinctions between humans.

It may also be much easier to manipulate the expression of existing genes rather than inserting or altering individual genes. Fodder for future manipulation of the human as we come to understand what makes a genius.

DeLong Rethinks Outsourcing

Thinking About Outsourcing: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

... As Paul Krugman puts it, free trade is a salable policy only if accompanied by a well-built social safety net and confidence in full employment. Our safety net is full of holes, and confidence right now that employment will be full is shaky. Preserving free trade in the 1970s and 1980s was a near-run thing, even though the magnitude of imports was not that great and the shock to America's distribution of income and employment not that large.

This is worth thinking hard about, for when "outsourcing" truly arrives--whether in one or two or three decades--it is likely to deliver a shock an order of magnitude larger to the American economy.

Consider: the income gaps in the case of "outsourcing" will be much greater than in the case of trade in manufactured goods. The income gap between Japan in and America in the 1970s was a matter of one-to-two. The income gap between India and America tomorrow will be one-to-ten. On the one hand, economists will say that the gains from trade will thereby be that much greater for the economy as a whole. On the other hand, the potential downward pressure on loser workers in rich countries will be that much greater as well.

Consider: trade in services potentially affects a much larger proportion of the labor force. Sectoral trade deficits in manufactured goods have rarely, rarely exceeded 3% of GDP. But what is the upper limit to the sectoral trade deficit in long-distance document-image pushing?

Consider: the assault by manufactured imports on American mass-production manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s was something done to American workers and firms standing together. The process of outsourcing will look very different: it will be something done by internationalized American firms to American workers. The politics of GM, Ford, and UAW asking for help together to deal with foreign competition will be very different from the politics produced by workers vs. CEOs.

And, conversely, consider India. Put 10 million people in India to work at $26,000 a year providing white-collar services to the industrial core, and you have boosted India's standard of living by 50%. And you have displaced only 4% of the potential target industries, for there are 240 million service-sector workers in the First World today.

Because this is an economic transformation that is going to hit not in one shot next year but over the course of the next generation, we have plenty of time: time to build the social safety net, the education and retraining programs, the social and economic institutions needed to turn the coming of trade in white-collar services from a win-lose to a win-win affair for America and Americans; time to rebuild confidence that employment will be full and the duration of unemployment spells short. But we will need all this time, because the magnitude of the approaching economic trade shock will be much larger than anything in our historical memory.

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DeLong wrote a silly and quick blog entry on outsourcing. He was justly berated in the comments. This reads like a thoughtful response to his reader's comments.

He believes the impact from cognitive outsourcing will be relatively small over the next 1-3 years, but quite large 10 years from now. That's interesting, because on that timescale the great boomer die off will be starting, and there will be a great vacuum "at the top". He didn't consider the demographic trends, but I wonder if he's right about the timescale they may be a countervailing force.