June 19th - celebrating the end of institutional American slavery

The New York Times > National > An Obscure Texas Celebration Makes Its Way Across the U.S.

With events including a small rap contest in Anchorage and a huge festival of African-American heritage in Baltimore, hundreds of thousands of Americans will celebrate Juneteenth, the day slavery in the United States effectively ended. With the arrival of an Army ship in Galveston on June 19, 1865, Texas was the last state to learn that the South had surrendered two months earlier. More than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, the 250,000 slaves in Texas were finally freed.

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A national holiday celebrating the end of slavery is way overdue. Maybe it would be the first step in America facing its history. National aboriginal genocide day is still in the future.

A serious article on where Microsoft is losing ...

Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War

However, there is a less understood phenomenon which is going largely unnoticed: Microsoft's crown strategic jewel, the Windows API, is lost. The cornerstone of Microsoft's monopoly power and incredibly profitable Windows and Office franchises, which account for virtually all of Microsoft's income and covers up a huge array of unprofitable or marginally profitable product lines, the Windows API is no longer of much interest to developers. The goose that lays the golden eggs is not quite dead, but it does have a terminal disease, one that nobody noticed yet.

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Spossky is taking a rather unusual position. Fascinating reading. It has implications for Google's IPO.

As someone who spent hard years building a complex and responsive web based application, I'm very sensitive to latency and UI issues. Spossky has a good point that Microsoft had a good solution set that they abandoned (I remember when they lost interest!) -- but that those solutions are slowly emerging. I think he underestimates Microsoft's ability to use IE to destroy the web, however.

Leadership of the Iraqi terrorists and failure of targeted air strikes (0 for 50)

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Errors Are Seen in Early Attacks on Iraqi Leaders

There's more interesting material in this NYT article than the title suggests.

June 13, 2004
Errors Are Seen in Early Attacks on Iraqi Leaders
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

...The strikes, carried out against so-called high-value targets during a one-month period that began on March 19, 2003, used precision-guided munitions against at least 13 Iraqi leaders, including Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, Iraq's No. 2 official, the officials said.

General Ibrahim is still at large, along with at least one other top official who was a target of the failed raids. That official, Maj. Gen. Rafi Abd al-Latif Tilfah, the former head of the Directorate of General Security, and General Ibrahim are playing a leadership role in the anti-American insurgency, according to a briefing document prepared last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

... A report in December by Human Rights Watch, based on a review of four strikes, concluded that the singling out of Iraqi leadership had "resulted in dozens of civilian casualties that the United States could have prevented if it had taken additional precautions."

... In retrospect, the failures were an early warning sign about the thinness of American intelligence on Iraq and on Mr. Hussein's inner circle. Some of the officials who survived the raids, including General Ibrahim, have become leaders of what the Defense Intelligence Agency now believes has been a planned anti-American insurgency, several intelligence officials said.

... An explicit account of the zero for 50 record in strikes on high-value targets was provided by Marc Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who headed the joint staff's high-value targeting cell during the war. Mr. Garlasco is now a senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, and he was a primary author of the December report, "Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq."...

... An unclassified analysis prepared last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency and obtained by The New York Times describes Mr. Ibrahim as having "assumed Saddam's duties" as the titular head of the insurgency after Mr. Hussein's capture. It lists General Tilfah, a cousin of Mr. Hussein's, as one of the leaders of former government leaders involved in the insurgency.

General Moseley, the top Air Force commander during the war who is now the Air Force vice chief of staff, said in the interview last summer that commanders were required to obtain advance approval from Mr. Rumsfeld if any planned airstrike was likely to result in the deaths of 30 more civilians. More than 50 such raids were proposed, and all were approved, General Moseley said.

But raids considered time-sensitive, which included all of those on the high-value targets, were not subject to that constraint, according to current and former military officials. In part for that reason, the report by Human Rights Watch concluded, "attacks on leadership likely resulted in the largest number of civilian deaths from the air war."...

There were conflicting accounts about whether another Iraqi leader who is still at large, Col. Hani Abd al-Latif al-Tilfah, the director of the special security organization under Qusay Hussein, had been a target in the raids. The colonel, the brother of General Tilfah and another maternal cousin of Mr. Hussein, is listed by the D.I.A. as among the leaders of the insurgency.

...Another Iraqi leader from the top 55 list who is still at large and is identified in the D.I.A. report as a leader of the insurgency is Abd al-Baqi Abd al-Karim al Abdallah al-Sadun, chairman of the Baath Party regional command for Diyala...

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A few interesting notes from this article.

1. Zero for 50 is a crummy record for leadership-target air strikes. I think the article is confused, however, as to whether the total includes all the leadership targets. The article seems to contradict itself.

2. Rumsfeld never declined when asked to authorize a raid that would likely kill over 30 civilians. Many would have been family members.

3. If Human Rights watch says only "dozens" of innocent civilians were killed then the air force did very well -- considering. Fifty times 30 is 1500.

4. The list of former government officials still at large and now running the insurgency is quite impressive. Are they in Falluja? Syria? One day we may know more. Ibrahim, General Tilfah, Colonel Tilfah, al-Sadun ...

5. The NYT is still calling the Iraqi bombers an "insurgency". I guess that's technically correct, but since terrorizing the Iraqi population is their primary modus operandi I'd say "terrorists" works too.

Why we can't extend the retirement age ...

BBC NEWS | Health | Gene loss linked to Alzheimer's

Compared with the gene patterns of young brains, those of people aged from 40 to 70 were much more variable.

Some middle-aged individuals had 'young' genes while others were old before their time.

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By age 40 some brains are aging quickly. This aging process is disabling for many professions. For workers who's job requires ongoing learning and analysis the aging of their brains means they're struggling long before retirement. Unless we figure a way to slow this process, delaying retirement means years spent bagging groceries -- not working in their original positions.

Yeah, it was only a few bad apples ...

General Granted Latitude At Prison (washingtonpost.com)

A photograph of the pyramid of naked Iraqi detainees -- one of the most notorious portraits of abuse -- was used as a screen saver on a computer in the isolation area where intelligence officers worked, according to Spencer's statement.

If Bush had had ANY credibility left, it would have been vaporized when he claimed the Abu Ghraib abuses were the indepenent work of a few low ranking soldiers.

He didn't though and never will again.

General Sanchez may walk the plank. Why? Because some senior army officials are furious about the degradation of the US army. It is they who are going to push this to the bitter end. The bitter end is the desk of GWB.

Peak Oil goes mainstream?

The New York Times > Business > An Oil Enigma: Production Falls Even as Reserves Rise

Combined with a survey from the International Energy Agency that shows rising demand, the drop in production at the supermajors offers more evidence that energy prices may stay high for the foreseeable future, said Steven Pfeifer, senior oil analyst at Merrill Lynch.

"The data is starting to say that underlying all this, the supply-demand balance is tighter than we thought," Mr. Pfeifer said. "The maturing geological base is starting to rear its ugly head.

This is an impressively researched article. I wonder how long it took the author to put all the data together, and whether there's a book to follow.

The writing is cautious, even tentative. Berenson builds his case in a lawyerly fashion; each time returning to a core theme. We can measure production, we can't really measure reserves. Nations and companies who estimate reserves have immense short term incentives to exaggerate. Production and reserves used to track one another, now they don't.

He's conservative in part because he's getting into "Peak Oil" territory. A google search will show that "Peak Oil" is a bit of lunatic fringe topic; but as is often the case the lunatics have a point. One of my former Caltech profs has written a book on this topic.

Sometime in the next 5-25 years we'll reach "peak oil production". After that demand must fall to track declining production. Barring world catastrophe or technological revolution, demand will be forced down by price increases. Again, barring technological transformation or world catastrophe, we will move into the post-petroleum world. Time to build those bicycle paths. Not, perhaps, a good time to live in a part of the US where water supplies are limited and air conditioning is a necessity.

This article is a sober accounting of a trend that might be the first preliminary signs of "Peak Oil". I'd expect that this will be a passing warning, that production will rise and reserves will be corrected to again track production. Not Peak Oil yet, but rather the first hint of what will come years from now. The Lunatic Frings is again going mainstream.

Legalizing Torture: Bush must go

Legalizing Torture (washingtonpost.com)

...In a paper prepared last year under the direction of the Defense Department's chief counsel, and first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, the president of the United States was declared empowered to disregard U.S. and international law and order the torture of foreign prisoners. Moreover, interrogators following the president's orders were declared immune from punishment. Torture itself was narrowly redefined, so that techniques that inflict pain and mental suffering could be deemed legal. All this was done as a prelude to the designation of 24 interrogation methods for foreign prisoners -- the same techniques, now in use, that President Bush says are humane but refuses to disclose.

There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush's political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes, of dictatorships around the world that sanction torture on grounds of "national security."...

... Before the Bush administration took office, the Army's interrogation procedures -- which were unclassified -- established this simple and sensible test: No technique should be used that, if used by an enemy on an American, would be regarded as a violation of U.S. or international law. Now, imagine that a hostile government were to force an American to take drugs or endure severe mental stress that fell just short of producing irreversible damage; or pain a little milder than that of "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." What if the foreign interrogator of an American "knows that severe pain will result from his actions" but proceeds because causing such pain is not his main objective? What if a foreign leader were to decide that the torture of an American was needed to protect his country's security? Would Americans regard that as legal, or morally acceptable? According to the Bush administration, they should.

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Emphases mine.

If oral sex in the white house inspired outrage, what ought this to inspire?

Bush is guilty of dishonoring and disgracing America.

On dogs and children

Good Dog, Better Man - How your pet can improve your morals. By Jon Katz

In theory, I understand that the proper training response to Orson's poop-eating is to ignore it. It's perfectly natural for a dog, especially a working breed with predatory instincts, to eat animal feces. To a dog, feces are aromatic and tasty and often stuffed with nutrients. Anyway, the more I yell, the more I reinforce the behavior, so the longer it continues. Dogs don't really differentiate between good attention and bad attention; they just like attention, perhaps more than anything except food. So I know—again in theory—that if I ignore Orson and move onto something else—like actually herding sheep—he will eventually lose interest and find some other way to annoy me and draw my notice. Yet I continued to yell.

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And so true of some children ...

A future John Kerry? A convincing tale from a veteran returned from Iraq

The Agonist || thoughtful, global, timely

I am not angry with our President, but I am disappointed.

I don't expect an easy solution to the situation in Iraq, I do expect an admission that there are serious problems that need serious solutions.

I don't expect our leaders to be free of mistakes, I expect our leaders to own up to them.

In Iraq, I was responsible for the lives of 38 other Americans. We laughed together, we cried together, we won together, and we fought together. And when we failed, it was my job as their leader to take responsibility for the decisions I made -- no matter what the outcome.

My question for President Bush -- who led the planning of this war so long ago -- is this: When will you take responsibility for the decisions you've made in Iraq and realize that something is wrong with the way things are going?

Mr. President, our mission is not accomplished.

Our troops can accomplish it. We can build a stable Iraq, but we need some help. The soldiers I served with are men and women of extraordinary courage and incredible capability. But it's time we had leadership in Washington to match that courage and match that capability.

I worry for the future of Iraq and for my Iraqi friends. I worry for my fellow soldiers still fighting this battle. I worry for their families, and I worry for those families who will not be able to share another summer or another baseball game with the loved ones they've lost. And I pledge that I will do everything I can to make sure they have not died in vain and that the truth is heard.

Thank you for listening.

The making of a non-scandal, Kerry and the intern

The Agonist || thoughtful, global, timely

I started out as an ambitious young woman inspired by politics and the media. I have ended up disenchanted with both. I don't mean to dredge up old news by writing this, and I am not trying to create any now; I don't intend to discuss it again in public. But for me, this painful experience will be hard to forget. It may be only a minor footnote to the campaign, but it has changed my life completely.

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The Kerry-intern fake scandal -- not a true conspiracy, more of an emergent phenomena. It was plausible -- Polier notes Kerry's flirtatious nature and Bostonians often intimate that's not a new thing. It was exciting. It was untrue.

Polier traces the roots of the story to a misquote of her father, an old friend who made a mistake, a sleazy UK Sun journalist, and the need to feed the news/entertainment machine.

War and youth

The New York Times > Books > Sparing No One, a Journalist's Account of War

... "The story in this war is: it's really ugly and chaotic, it's being fought by 18- to 24-year-olds who would otherwise be at some frat party hazing people," Mr. Wright said during a visit to this town (beside Camp Pendleton) that he arranged. He was interviewed with two marines with whom he had witnessed the war.

"Our country is so divided," he continued. "We swung after 9/11 from `those military guys are idiots' to `those guys are heroes.' Either way, you're not examining them as people. The fundamental thing I've tried to write about these guys is I was fascinated by what they thought of the world when they weren't shooting their guns."

His observations draw a complex portrait of able young men raised on video games and trained as killers...

...Mr. Wright's admiration for the marines runs deep. "I really did fall in love them when I first met them," he said. "I didn't want to be friends during the writing process. A reporter's motto is `charm and betray.' But I didn't hide any of the warts. I was hard on them in the writing process. And I'm glad, because I like them."

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Special forces warriors are usually in their late twenties to late thirties. These guys are young, teenagers sometimes. Young men are not known for their judgment, if they were then car insurance would be cheaper.

Reining in the Reagan Madness

The New York Times > Opinion > Krugman: An Economic Legend: "In the late 1970's most economists believed that eliminating the high inflation then prevailing in the United States would require inflicting a lot of pain: the economy would have to go through an extended period of high unemployment and depressed output. Once the inflation had been wrung out of the system, the unemployment rate could go back down. And that's exactly what happened. In fact, it's instructive to put a graph showing the actual track of unemployment and inflation during the 1980's next to a figure from a 1978-vintage textbook showing a hypothetical disinflation scenario; the two look almost identical.

Ronald Reagan didn't decide to inflict that pain. The architect of America's great disinflation was Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman. In fact, Mr. Volcker began the process in 1979, when he adopted the tight monetary policy that caused that record unemployment rate. He was also mainly responsible for the recovery that followed: it was his decision to loosen up on the money supply in the summer of 1982 that set the stage for the rebound a few months later.

There was, in short, nothing magical about the Reagan economy. The United States did, eventually, experience an economic miracle — but not until Bill Clinton's second term. Only then did the economy achieve a combination of rapid growth, low unemployment and quiescent inflation that confounded the conventional economic wisdom. (I'm aware, by the way, that this plain statement of fact will generate an avalanche of angry mail. Irrational Clinton hatred remains a powerful force in American life.)

It's a measure of how desperate the faithful are to believe in the Reagan legend that one often reads conservative commentators claiming that the Clinton-era miracle was the result of Mr. Reagan's policies, and indeed vindicated them. Think about it: Mr. Reagan passed his big tax cut right at the beginning of his presidency, and mainly raised taxes thereafter. So we're supposed to believe that a tax cut passed in 1981 was somehow responsible for an economic miracle that didn't materialize until around 1997. Apply the same timing to the good things that happened on Mr. Reagan's watch, and you'll discover that Lyndon Johnson deserves the credit for 'Morning in America.'

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Emphases mine. "Faithful" is the right word, Reaganism has many of the features of a cult.

Yesterday I wrote about Reagan as Chaunce the Gardener; enabling Gorbachev was a real acheivement, albeit completely alien to the ways of the Reagan faithful. Reagan also somewhat simplified the tax code, though his successors destroyed those simplifications (I think that was pure Reagan and reflected well upon him.) Deregulation was important in America, and I think that had far reaching consequences both good and bad. (Perhaps, despite Krugman's words, even in the 1990s.)

But Reagan was no deity. It's too early to tell if he was even an above average president. Clinton may end up ahead a hundred years from now -- if the entities of that future care to study our entrails.

The stigma of lung cancer and the nature of human reason

BBC NEWS | Health | Lung cancer carries severe stigma

The stigma attached to lung cancer can have far reaching consequences for patients, research suggests.

Oxford University researchers found many patients felt people blamed them for their illness because it is so strongly associated with smoking.

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Any campaign claiming a particular outcome is sometimes the consequence of a undesired behavior will cause most humans to reason that the converse is true -- that the outcome very strongly implies the undesired behavior. Humans do not understand correlation.

Lung cancer and smoking. HIV infection and unprotected anal intercourse. Adolescent misbehavior and neglectful parenting.

Having made this inference, humans will further infer that the person, having "caused" the bad outcome, is themself bad. Not only are they unworthy of comfort, they are deserving of shame.

This is how human cognition works. As noted in a prior post, our cognition is not so different from that of our fellow mammals (dogs). It evolved, it "suffices", it is profoundly imperfect. Logic and reason can adapt or modify our intuitive thinking, but that takes training and education. Reason and logic are often uncomfortable precisely because they contradict common human cognitive structures. Hence the strong preference for evangelical conservatives for teaching obedience, discipline, doctrine and memorization rather than reason and logic.

Dogs again -- not so far behind?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Collie dog's word power impresses

A very smart collie dog named Rico has stunned German researchers by learning words with the apparent flare of a young child, Science magazine reports.

Rico understands more than 200 words and can work out the meaning of new ones, by a process of elimination.

What is more, Rico can often remember new words after a whole month - even though he has only heard them once before, the scientists claim.

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This article quotes some who deprecate Rico's capabilities. They are unconvincing. Canine genius or not, he teaches us some fascinating things about the evolution of language and cognition.

A bit of breeding for puberty, longevity and language capabilities and we might produce a quite different dog. I wonder if the dog would thank us or not.

DeLong on Seymour Hersh's U Chicago speech

Torture and Rumors of Torture: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

...If what it reports is true, then once again it looks like the Bush administration is worse than I had imagined--even though I thought I had taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is always worse than one imagines. Either Seymour Hersh is insane, or we have an administration that needs to be removed from office not later than the close of business today. The scariest part: "[Hersh] said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened.

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I think Hersh is quoting from another blogger, but forgot to link to the author. It's worth going to DeLong's site to read this.