Hong Kong -- views of another galaxy

MICHAEL WOLF | PHOTOGRAPHY | HONGKONG

It's been over 20 years since I flew into Hong Kong, past the riot of skyscraping housing. This site provides a pictorial update. It looks like another order of magnitude increase in density. I would like to read about what it's like to live in those buildings.

A blog at least partially made up of Iraqi (english) voices

Words From Iraq

It's a bit confusing, but it appears to include posts from various english writing Iraqis. The descriptions of everyday anarchy and violence in Iraq ring true. (via metafilter)

Evolutionary game theory: people are strategies in a "game" played by natural selection

Marginal Revolution: Are you a player or a strategy?

This is new to me, but it has face validity. In some ways humans can be thought of as "strategies" in a kind of meta-game that emerges from the fundamental properties of natural selection.

Our colleague, Dan Houser, has just published an important new paper (co-authored with Robert Kurzban) that supports the assumption of evolutionary game theory. (The paper is also featured in the Economist.)  In a public goods game, Kurzban and Houser are able to identify three systematic strategies; cooperate, free ride and reciprocate (cooperate more when others do so).  The first surprising result of their paper is that these strategies can be tied to specific individuals.  Some individuals cooperate, others free ride and others reciprocate and the strategies that these individuals 'choose' are stable.  (This doesn't mean that individuals play strategies robotically regardless of context a better analogy may be to think of strategies like personalities - even a quiet person can yell sometimes.)

Strategy choice is so stable that Kurzban and Houser can create very cooperative groups simply by weeding out the free riders.  What is even more surprising, however, is that when individuals are randomly assigned to groups each strategy type earns about the same payoff.  Even though the strategies are very different, no strategy dominates the others in a randomly assigned group - this is exactly what one would predict if individuals are strategies in an evolutionary game.

Hmm. Reminds me of this.

Is it childish to call David Brooks "Bobo"?

Crooked Timber: How To Ascribe Super-Powers To Words - David Brooks on the inaugural address

Does Bobo believe this, or what?

Hmm. It seems a big childish to call David Brooks "Bobo". On the other hand, he does inflict his inanities on us. It's a real ethical quandry.

Brooks is emblematic of the fall of the New York Times.

Where commercial copy protection will lead

Boing Boing: Debunking a DRM press-release

Cory's right:

And that is exactly what they will do: they will bring home lawfully purchased CDs and DVDs and try to do something normal, like watch it on their laptop, or move the music to their iPod, and they will discover that the media that they have bought has DRM systems in place to prevent exactly this sort of activity, because the studios and labels perceive an opportunity to sell you your media again and again -- the iPod version, the auto version, the American and UK version, the ringtone version, und zo weiter. Customers who try to buy legitimate media rather than downloading the unfettered DRM-free versions will be punished for their commitment to enriching the entertainment companies. That commitment will falter as a consequence.

I'm an unlikely pirate, but the first time I buy a CD I can't listen to on my iPod (legal use) I'll be hoisting the jolly roger.

Kaplan rips the inaugural address

Give Me Liberty or Give Me... What? - The muddle in Bush's inaugural address. By Fred Kaplan

No, it wasn't a great speech. It was a disturbing speech.

... Whatever freedom is, how do we go about spreading it? The president said in his speech that the mission "is not primarily the task of arms," though he added that sometimes it must be. If not with arms, then how do we spread freedom? With rhetorical encouragement? Bush's answer was intriguing: "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." The United States will also "encourage reform" in repressive governments "by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. … Start on this journey of progress and justice," President Bush told these rogue leaders, "and America will walk on your side."

This sort of talk raises three questions. First, does the president really know what he's saying here? In 1956, the Voice of America encouraged the rebels of Hungary to rise up against their Communist regime, and when they did so, they were mowed down; the United States did not come to their aid and had no ability to do so. In 1991, George Bush's father encouraged the Shiite rebels of southern Iraq to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein, and after the Iraqi army was expelled from Kuwait and the war declared over, Saddam mowed down the rebels; the United States did not come to their aid. If the leaders of a democratic underground in some dictatorship hear this speech and rise up tomorrow against their own tyrants, will George W. Bush "stand with" them? Really?...

When Kaplan's done, there's not much left of Bush's inaugural address.

Fox flips out

IFILM

A Fox News anchor flips out when a guest dares to question the nature of Bush's elaborate 2nd inauguration.

A delightful video clip. Heh, heh.

The world called Titan

ESA Portal - Seeing, touching and smelling the extraordinarily Earth-like world of Titan

Thus, while many of Earth's familiar geophysical processes occur on Titan, the chemistry involved is quite different. Instead of liquid water, Titan has liquid methane. Instead of silicate rocks, Titan has frozen water ice. Instead of dirt, Titan has hydrocarbon particles settling out of the atmosphere, and instead of lava, Titanian volcanoes spew very cold ice.

Titan is an extraordinary world having Earth-like geophysical processes operating on exotic materials in very alien conditions.

A fascinating press release from the ESA, but where does "smelling" come into the picture?

Update: A Guardian article clarified the "smell". It's the probe's analytic chemistry.

Did the KGB blow up those Russian apartment buildings?

This story has been all but forgotten ...

In September 1999, four apartment buildings, two in Moscow and two in other Russian cities, were blown up, killing over 300 people, wounding hundreds more.

Russians suspected Chechen terrorists. Putin, newly in power, solidified his position and launched the invasion of Chechnya. Horror followed.

I remember when this happened. At the time some Chechens claimed the Russian secret services (heirs to the KGB) had staged the attack. This claim didn't get much traction. I didn't believe it. In those days the Soviet era seemed to be ancient history -- Russia was going to rejoin the world. A few tin hat types continued the story; I linked to a representative web site above.

I've not thought much about that 1999 attack, though it was later recalled in the context of several terrorist attacks in Russia (Opera house, school, etc). I was quite surprised, then, to read this in a book review from The Economist (emphases mine):

Economist.com | Russia | Arts |Bleak house

Three books by journalists cast a gloomy light on the question. “Inside Putin's Russia”, by Andrew Jack, latterly the Financial Times correspondent there, is a fluent, detailed and balanced account of Russian power politics, with a lively emphasis on the Kremlin's onslaught against independent media and stroppy tycoons.

Mr Jack also addresses the most sensational charge made against Mr Putin—that the tower-block bombings which killed hundreds of people in 1999 were committed not by the ostensible culprits, Chechen terrorists, but by security services wanting to smooth Mr Putin's rise to power. The charge is not completely absurd, and was well outlined in "Darkness at Dawn" (2003), by David Satter, who set up the Financial Times's bureau in Moscow in 1976.

Mr Jack agrees that the official version of events is full of holes. In particular, the Russian security services have never explained an episode in which they were caught apparently planting explosives in a block of flats in the provincial city of Ryazan. But he steers clear of an all-embracing conspiracy theory—too risky for its backers, he reckons. Instead, he suggests that the Ryazan affair may have been an attempt by spooks to stage a terrorist attack in order to gain credit for foiling it.

So the bottom line seems to be that (foreign) journalists don't know, but they find it conceivable that Putin's men (KGB) staged the bombing. This does make it easier to understand why many in the middle east at one time believed the CIA/Mossad blew up the WTC. After all, if Russia/Putin could do it, why not Bush? Didn't it allow him to do to Iraq what Putin did to Chechnya?

For the record, much as I dislike GWB (I think he's now morphing into a disciple of both Yahweh and Any Rand), I am certain that he didn't stage the WTC attack. He did, however, use it to attack Iraq in much the same way Putin used the apartment explosions to attack Chechnya. The level of evidence used to justify the twin invasions was also, in retrospect, rather similar.

Why does the US media persist in comparing the Iraq invasion to Vietnam? It's really more like the Russian invasion of Chechnya.

Social security: fundamentals of privatization

The New York Times > Opinion > Krugman: The Free Lunch Bunch:

There are several ways to explain why this particular lunch isn't free, but the clearest comes from Michael Kinsley, editorial and opinion editor of The Los Angeles Times. He points out that the math of Bush-style privatization works only if you assume both that stocks are a much better investment than government bonds and that somebody out there in the private sector will nonetheless sell those private accounts lots of stocks while buying lots of government bonds.

So privatizers are in effect asserting that politicians are smart - they know that stocks are a much better investment than bonds - while private investors are stupid, and will swap their valuable stocks for much less valuable government bonds. Isn't such an assertion very peculiar coming from people who claim to trust markets?

Coronation Day reading

The BEAST: 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2004 You're on the list.

Search Bot wars: How Yahoo can attack Google's Blogger products

Blogger: Create your Blog Now -- FREE

Google owns Blogger. Yahoo does a far better job of indexing my Blogger posts than Google does. Google used to do a much better job of indexing my posts -- back when I first started the blogs! Yahoo is a Google competitor, they too offer blogs and search services.

Google and Yahoo are competitors. Hmmm.

What about this:

1. Blogger has grown very fast. It has had to redo its servers and software several times. It often has performance issues.

2. Indexing robots are a heavy burden for Blogger's servers. If the servers are in trouble, Google may want to reduce the burden to help Blogger stay up.

3. Yahoo has no such motivation. Indeed, Yahoo is incented to be particularly conscientious about keeping its Blogger indexes very current. Perhaps indexing Blogger every few hours might be a good idea ... Shame about Blogger's servers, but that's Google's problem ...

Isn't it interesting how some wars just seem inevitable?

The Yazidi/Dasin of Iraq

Yazidi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyone think Iraq is a simple place?

The Yezidi or Yazidi (Kurdish; Êzidî) are adherents of a small Middle Eastern religion with ancient origins. They are primarily ethnic Kurds, and most Yazidis live near Mosul, Iraq with smaller communities in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Georgia and Armenia, and are estimated to number ca. 500,000 individuals in total.

There are also Yazidi refugees in Europe. The Yazidi worship Malak Ta’us, apparently a pre-Islamic peacock angel who has fallen into disgrace. Malak Ta’us has links to Mithraism and, through it, to Zoroastrianism. The Yazidi maintain a well-preserved culture, rich in traditions and customs.

In the region that is now Iraq, the Yazidi have been oppressed and labeled as devil worshippers for centuries. During the reign of Saddam Hussein, however, they were considered to be Arabs and maneuvered to oppose the Kurds, in order to tilt the ethnic balance in northern Iraq. Since the 2003 occupation of Iraq, the Kurds want the Yazidi to be recognized as ethnic Kurds.

The Yazidi’s own name for themselves is Dasin. While popular etymology connects the religion to the Umayyad khalif Yazid I (680-683), the name Yazidi is actually most likely derived from the Pahlavi (Middle Persian) word 'yezd,' meaning angel, probably in reference to Malak Ta’us.

The Pehlavi (Shah of Iran) family were said by their enemies to be closet Zoroastrians.

Dyer on an African "Marshall Plan"

People talk about the need for a 'Marshall Plan' for Africa, but the original Marshall Plan, designed to help European countries recover after the devastation of the Second World War, provided around $75 billion (at today's prices) in American food and supplies over a period of three years to help Europe rebuild. It did rebuild, and has long been just as prosperous as the US. Whereas fifteen times as much money per capita, over fifteen times as long, has left most of Africa poor, chaotic, and miserable.

The basic difference is politics. Europe had a skilled labour force in 1945, but more importantly it had governments that were determined to maintain the education and health services that produced that labour force. Africa's elites simply stole the money in many cases -- both the aid money, and their own taxpayers' money -- and condemned their people to ignorance, violence, poverty and disease. Simply increasing the aid will not change this equation.

There are well-run African countries where targeted development aid can help, like South Africa and Botswana; there are spectacularly corrupt ones like Nigeria and Angola that nobody in their right minds would send development aid to; and there are basket-cases like the Congo where there is no longer any modern economy and only disaster relief has any immediate relevance.

The politics is the problem, and only Africans can fix that. But the best incentive for reform that the rest of the world can offer African countries is fair access to its markets if and when they get their own acts together. Fair trade, not 'free' aid, is the key.

Dyer is no capitalist pawn, so he's especially credible when he says the key intervention for African is to open our markets. On this one point even Bush might cooperate, though "Fair" is a tricksy word.

Africa is also a good lesson on the limits of a libertarian state.

It's over. We lost. Thanks George.

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Julia Roberts has a better chance of winning this war

Today the New York Times had a picture of a girl, the same age as my son. She was kneeling and she was crying. Blood ran off her hands and over her clothes. It was the blood of her parents. They allegedly ran a checkpoint. They were killed by US forces. We'll probably never know what happened. Did her father realize it was a US checkpoint? Did he fear SU forces would kill or torture his family and rape his daughter? Was he afraid it was an insurgent checkpoint? Did he even see it? Did he really choose to run, or did he never know he'd arrived at a checkpoint? Did the troops follow procedures? Was the checkpoint marked?

It doesn't much matter. That picture was the best summary of the war so far. I'd mail it to George Bush, but that would be a waste of a stamp; at most it would get me a call from the secret service.

On the same day as that picture came out, the Guardian had an interesting editorial by Max Hastings. I believe Hastings has been a relative supporter of the US effort. He feels the military effort is lost, but he holds out hope for Iraq. Emphases mine.

There is growing dissension and dismay in the US armed forces about their prospects of victory in Iraq. The yellow ribbons, lapel pins and yard signs expressing solidarity with the nation's soldiers are still conspicuous around army bases across America. But commanders and soldiers alike are conducting an increasingly anguished debate.

There are four reasons for this. First, many service people are shocked by the incontrovertible evidence that the justifications offered by the Bush administration for invading Iraq - WMD and a link with international terrorism - were false. Second, bitter and painful fighting, notably in the showpiece assault on Falluja, has failed to suppress insurgency. Third, there is deep scepticism about progress in recruiting Iraqis to assume the security burden. Even General David Petraeus, the US airborne general charged with organising Iraq's new forces, is said to be increasingly despondent. And finally, the army and marine corps are acutely aware that they have to sustain the occupation without sufficient troops to control the country effectively.

Having begun the campaign convinced of the justice of their cause and their ability to secure victory, many members of the US military and their families now suspect that the cause may be invalid and the battle unwinnable...

... In the minds of many US soldiers looms the spectre of Vietnam. In recent years, the US army has been forged into a motivated, effective tool for large-scale military operations overseas. But it has never been suited to combating insurgency. Guerrillas and suicide bombers can impose a deadly corrosion on conventional forces.

... The US armed forces are fighting the sort of conflict that least suits their capabilities. It would be a devastating blow to the confidence painstakingly rebuilt since Vietnam if the US, having committed enormous resources and suffered painful casualties, was obliged to quit Iraq without achieving its purposes.

... I do not think the US armed forces will achieve their military purposes in Iraq. The American soldiers who have become pessimistic about the campaign they are waging are probably right. But in a long historic view, Microsoft and DreamWorks could achieve a dominance of Baghdad and a power over Iraqi society that eludes George Bush and his armoured legions.

It's a curious proposition. The thesis is that we should hope that Iraq really is Vietnam -- where we lost the military conflict but won a sort of strategic semi-victory. Small consolation to the wounded.

I think Chechnya may be the better comparison. We'll see how things go after the retreat. Militarily, however, we have lost.