You are a robot

A Gene for Romance? So It Seems (Ask the Vole) - New York Times

Yes, you are a robot. Perhaps not even conscious in the simplistic way some think of consciousness. This NYT article provides a good update on the way behaviors are coded and executed in fruit flies and voles; an execution as structured and predictable as that of your desktop computer -- including a sort of modular software architecture.

It's extremely likely the same mechanisms program us. To me the most extraordinary finding, however, was how early life experience can alter temperament through persistent changes in gene expression:

A remarkable instance of genome-environment interaction has been discovered in the maternal behavior of rats. Pups that receive lots of licking and grooming from their mothers during the first week of life are less fearful in adulthood and more phlegmatic in response to stress than are pups that get less personal care. Last year, Michael J. Meaney and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal reported that a gene in the brain of the well-groomed pups is chemically modified during the grooming period and remains so throughout life. The modification makes the gene produce more of a product that damps down the brain's stress response.

So a gene can be modified such that it permanently alters temperament, eh? Hmm. What possibilities does that suggest? How about a gene bearing virus that renders a population permanently ... cooperative ...

Terrorism: no more profiling

Salon.com News | The enemy is closer than we think:

This is fascinating. I didn't know that years ago the Israelis had written off profiling as useless:

It raises a key point: As the Israelis have already said in the context of suicide terrorism there, it's essentially impossible to profile. Keep in mind, this isn't the first evidence of this. There was the time when two British Muslims went to Israel in 2003 and carried out a suicide attack on Mike's Place, a bar on the Tel Aviv waterfront. They appeared to be similarly assimilated and well-adjusted; one was a graduate of the London School of Economics and was married and had children. So on the one hand you have people like Richard Reid [the convicted 'shoe bomber'], a juvenile delinquent who spent much of his young adult life in prison, where he converted to Islam; and on the other you have a graduate of a leading British university.

With these four suicide bombers, what I find both striking and alarming is that it isn't a matter of one size fits all. You've got an 18-year-old, you've got somebody who was a teacher; you have three of Pakistani origin, but also someone from the Caribbean. This is a particular problem in the United Kingdom; when you talk about rounding up the usual suspects, the short list is pretty long. There are the various immigrant communities, but also the phenomenon of British converts to Islam -- people of color, but also not.

This comes out the same day that Homeland Security announces they'll use more profiling when checking airline passengers. Sigh. It's fortunate that airline security is far less important than rugged cockpit doors. All the same, Homeland Security's decision will make air travel somewhat less safe in the US.

During WW II we had terribly smart people working on the Manhattan project and in communications and security. Where are those people now? Perhaps they would find the Bush administration to be unwelcoming.

This is a good article.

Stephen Roach: Inflation is outside the control of the Federal Reserve?

Morgan Stanley

Another of those famous Stephen Roach columns: "Is inflation global or local? That is a key aspect of the macro debate, which is now moving to center stage in financial markets. Generations of economists, policymakers, and investors are trained to look at inflation as a closed-economy phenomenon, driven by the “cost mark-up” models of yesteryear. However, as an unmistakably powerful convergence of inflation rates around the world suggests, globalization argues for a different approach. Country-specific inflation calls are increasingly becoming global inflation calls."

If inflation is global, then who's the World's Banker? Probably the US Federal Reserve for now.

Frank Rich: Sure Rove did it, but that's a distraction

Follow the Uranium - New York Times

Frank Rick is the best political writer in America today.

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.

Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players...

... So put aside Mr. Wilson's February 2002 trip to Africa. The plot that matters starts a month later, in March, and its omniscient author is Dick Cheney. It was Mr. Cheney (on CNN) who planted the idea that Saddam was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." The vice president went on to repeat this charge in May on "Meet the Press," in three speeches in August and on "Meet the Press" yet again in September. Along the way the frightening word "uranium" was thrown into the mix.

By September the president was bandying about the u-word too at the United Nations and elsewhere, speaking of how Saddam needed only a softball-size helping of uranium to wreak Armageddon on America. But hardly had Mr. Bush done so than, offstage, out of view of us civilian spectators, the whole premise of this propaganda campaign was being challenged by forces with more official weight than Joseph Wilson. In October, the National Intelligence Estimate, distributed to Congress as it deliberated authorizing war, included the State Department's caveat that "claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa," made public in a British dossier, were "highly dubious." A C.I.A. assessment, sent to the White House that month, determined that "the evidence is weak" and "the Africa story is overblown."...

... the administration knows how guilty it is. That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.

... by overreacting in panic to his single Op-Ed piece of two years ago, the White House has opened a Pandora's box it can't slam shut. Seasoned audiences of presidential scandal know that there's only one certainty ahead: the timing of a Karl Rove resignation. As always in this genre, the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it's essential to protect the king.

Krugman is very good, but Rich is a better writer. He's come a long way from his career as a theater critic. I thought his aside on Novak showed his heritage in theater ...

Another bogus subplot, long popular on the left, has it that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, gave Mr. Novak a free pass out of ideological comradeship. But Mr. Fitzgerald, both young (44) and ambitious, has no record of Starr- or Ashcroft-style partisanship (his contempt for the press notwithstanding) or known proclivity for committing career suicide. What's most likely is that Mr. Novak, more of a common coward than the prince of darkness he fashions himself to be, found a way to spill some beans and avoid Judy Miller's fate. That the investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.

Common coward. Those words come from someone who understands the power of words, and can wield them with cruelty and precision.

Would Rove's defenders also have defended Jonathan Randel?

CNN.com - It doesn't look good for Karl Rove - Jul 15, 2005

John Dean (yes, that John Dean) writes of a precedent that will be discussed in any prosecution of Karl Rove:

I am referring to the prosecution and conviction of Jonathan Randel. Randel was a Drug Enforcement Agency analyst, a Ph.D. in history, working in the Atlanta office of the DEA. Randel was convinced that British Lord Michael Ashcroft (a major contributor to Britain's Conservative Party, as well as American conservative causes) was being ignored by DEA and its investigation of money laundering. (Lord Ashcroft is based in South Florida and the off-shore tax haven of Belize.)

Randel leaked the fact that Lord Ashcroft's name was in the DEA files, and this fact soon surfaced in the London news media. Ashcroft sued, and learned the source of the information was Randel. Using his clout, soon Ashcroft had the U.S. attorney in pursuit of Randel for his leak.By late February 2002, the Department of Justice indicted Randel for his leaking of Lord Ashcroft's name. It was an eighteen count 'kitchen sink' indictment; they threw everything they could think of at Randel.

Most relevant for Karl Rove's situation, count one of Randel's indictment alleged a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 641. This is a law that prohibits theft (or conversion for one's own use) of government records and information for non-governmental purposes. But its broad language covers leaks, and it has now been used to cover just such actions.

Randel, faced with a life sentence (actually 500 years) if convicted on all counts, on the advice of his attorney, pleaded guilty to violating Section 641. On January 9, 2003, Randel was sentenced to a year in a federal prison, followed by three years probation. This sentence prompted the U.S. attorney to boast that the conviction of Randel made a good example of how the Bush administration would handle leakers.

The last sentence of course, is irrelevant to the Bush administration. They are utterly ruthless and wouldn't recognize the truth if they ran into it. The legal precedent, however, is interesting. Bush needs to get the right people on the Supreme Court as quickly as possible -- though you'd think he could rely on the team that stole Gore's presidency.

Coleman: just slimy

Coleman takes on new challenge: CIA leak

Coleman is the senator we get because Wellstone's plane went down. He's the Republicans designated defender of Karl Rove:

Within hours, Coleman was tapped to lead the Republican rebuttal, joining a broad GOP attack on Wilson and fending off an effort by Democrats to revoke Rove's security clearances.

The guy makes my skin itch.

SchwarzeneggerL slimy, but not cheap

Schwarzenegger says he will stop taking payments from magazines

The latest and biggest in a line of corrupt "journalists" -- the Gubernator:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will end his financial relationship with two fitness magazines that rely heavily on advertising from nutritional supplement companies, he said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press.

He said he will relinquish his title as executive editor of Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines and will not take further compensation...

...The governor was forced to defend his contract with the magazines after a securities disclosure filed this week showed he would be paid at least $1 million a year for five years to act as a consultant.

Last year, Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have regulated the use of performance-enhancing substances in high school sports. That led some lawmakers to accuse the governor of having a conflict of interest: acting on legislation that could hurt business in the nutritional supplements industry while at the same taking millions from magazines that rely on the same industry for most of their profits.

I admire a man who, once bought, delivers for his owners.

The programmed man

FuturePundit: Nanowires Could Be Run Up All Brain Capillaries For Neural Interface

First we're programmed by natural selection. Next by wire. Yay.

Terrorism and a failure of imagination: Poisoning Milk

FuturePundit: Bioterrorism Attack On Food Supply Modelled By Stanford Researchers

We put SWAT teams on the subway. I guess it helps calm people. On the other hand, there's this article, which could be illegal in the UK fairly soon.

A mere 4 grams of botulinum toxin dropped into a milk production facility could cause serious illness and even death for 400,000 people in the United States. Investments that would cost the public only 1 cent more per half-gallon of milk could prevent this nightmare scenario, according to Lawrence M. Wein of the Stanford Graduate School of Business...

...In the case of milk, says Wein, all it would take is for someone to obtain a suitable strain of botulinum toxin—the most poisonous substance known to humans—from an overseas black market lab, grow it in culture, and pour it into an unlocked milk tank or milk truck. From there, the contaminated milk would make its way into large processing silos, where it would poison at least 100,000 additional gallons. Only a fraction of the toxin would remain active after pasteurization, but according to Wein's mathematical model, that could be enough to infect the approximately 400,000 people who would drink the milk. "Only 1 millionth of a gram is enough to poison an adult," says Wein, "and there would be more than that per person remaining in the distributed milk to do the job.

Ok, from now on the kids drink rainwater. No wonder Homeland Security has had trouble retaining staff. Anyone who's any good gets fed up with George "Flame Plame" Bush and heads for the hills.

Peak Oil: not in the near future, and then a controlled transition

Econbrowser: How to talk to an economist about peak oil

An economist talks about Peak Oil. He is persuasive. His thesis is that there are vast profits related to anticipating the proximity of Peak Oil; profits so enormous that greed will ensure we have good warning of true Peak Oil, and a gradual price increase beforehand.

He does not say whether the current $60 price is a sign that we are in fact on the glide path towards Peak Oil. If I interpet his reasoning correctly, a price of $75 next year would be a reasonable sign that we are entering the end game of the Oil Era -- but we will have much time to respond to the price increases.

Of course manias and madness are yet possible ...

Cringely jumps the shark? iTunes HD, retinal scans and video iPods?

PBS | I, Cringely . July 14, 2005 - More Shoes

Well, Cringely isn't playing it safe with this one. He claims the Intel/Apple deal is all about Apple delivering an Intel 'home entertainment system' very soon. Not to mention retinal scan iPod VR headsets.

If he's right, he deserves some kind of prize. Certainly a bold set of predictions.

SARS and pulmonary angiotensin receptors: Nobel prize work?

With New Clue to How SARS Kills, Scientists Work on Treatment - New York Times

Incredible. SARS causes ARDS by binding to pulmonary angiotensin receptors; in mice administration of angiontensin converting enzyme 2 reverses this toxicity. Until last year this receptor had not been identified in lung tissue.

This has so many implications. Nobel prize work?

I still don't feel I know why the epidemic waned. My guess has been that there was a simultaneously circulating mild strain of the SARS virus that caused a conventional cold, and acted like a natural immunization program. Clinicians got sick in some SARS centers because they were so scrupulous at infection control they missed out on the benign virus.

A Hawk Questions Himself as His Son Goes to War

This is why we liberals ought to reconsider our opposition to a fully inclusive military draft. We would not be in the mess we are today if the children of the ruling class were on the ground in Iraq. Those with power would not then remain silent at the incompetence of our government and military leadership.

Here a certified neo-conservative goes public with his observations, an event not unrelated to his son's pending service. Would he have spoken so clearly against his putative allies if he were not placing his son into their care? (via Shrillblog and others)

A Hawk Questions Himself as His Son Goes to War
washingtonpost.com, Sunday, July 10, 2005; B01
Eliot Cohen is Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

War forces us, or should force us, to ask hard questions of ourselves. As a military historian, a commentator on current events and the father of a young Army officer, these are mine.

You supported the Iraq war when it was launched in 2003. If you had known then what you know now, would you still have been in favor of it?

As I watched President Bush give his speech at Fort Bragg to rally support for the war the other week, I contemplated this question from a different vantage than my usual professorial perch. Our oldest son now dresses like the impassive soldiers who served as stage props for that event; he too wears crossed rifles, jump wings and a Ranger tab. Before long he will fight in the war that I advocated, and that the president was defending.

So it is not an academic matter when I say that what I took to be the basic rationale for the war still strikes me as sound. Iraq was a policy problem that we could evade in words but not escape in reality. But what I did not know then that I do know now is just how incompetent we would be at carrying out that task. And that's what prevents me from answering this question with an unhesitating yes.

The Bush administration did itself a disservice by resting much of its case for war on Iraq's actual possession of weapons of mass destruction. The true arguments for war reached deeper than that. Long before 2003, weapons inspections in Iraq had broken down, and sanctions, thanks to countries like Russia, China and France, were failing. The regime's character and ambitions, including its desire to resume suspended weapons programs, had not changed. In the meanwhile, the policy of isolation had brought suffering to the Iraqi people and had not stabilized the Gulf. Read Osama bin Laden's fatwas in the late 1990s and see how the massive American presence in Saudi Arabia -- a presence born of the need to keep Saddam Hussein in his cage -- fed the outrage of the jihadis with whom we are in a war that will last a generation or more.

More than this: Decades of American policy had hoped to achieve stability in the Middle East by relying on accommodating thugs and kleptocrats to maintain order. That policy, too, had failed; it was the well-educated children of our client regimes who leveled the Twin Towers, after all...

... But a pundit should not recommend a policy without adequate regard for the ability of those in charge to execute it, and here I stumbled. I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat "Phase IV" -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the "real" war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks's blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq -- brave, honorable and committed though they were -- would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country's borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs.

... Conceivably, the Iraqi insurgency could collapse in a year or so, but that would be highly unusual. More likely Iraq will suffer from chronic violence, which need not prevent the country as a whole from progressing. If the insurgencies in Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Sri Lanka and Kashmir continue, what reason do we have to expect this one to end so soon? Most insurgencies do, however, fail. Moreover, most insurgencies consist of a collection of guerrilla microclimates in which local conditions -- charismatic leaders (or their absence), ethnographic peculiarities, concrete grievances -- determine how much violence will occur and with what effect...

Your son is an infantry officer, shipping out soon for Iraq. How do you feel about that?

Pride, of course -- great pride. And fear. And an occasional burning in the gut, a flare of anger at empty pieties and lame excuses, at flip answers and a lack of urgency, at a failure to hold those at the top to the standards of accountability that the military system rightly imposes on subalterns...

Iraq and Vietnam: a comparison

Iraq Is Not Vietnam by Jim Cox

Fifteen ways in which Iraq is rather like Vietnam. It's amusing in a dark fashion. Obviously Vietnam and Iraq do have quite a few things in common, it's possible however that Iraq is much more internally divided and combative than Vietnam ever was. That is a significant difference.

IQ is up, IQ/EnvIQ is way, way down

I was thinking a bit about complexity in the modern world, and a post I'm working on about the increasing "invisibility" of innovation. It reminded me of the perfectly silly thesis that video games and complex TV dramas account for the apparent rise in measured IQ: Gordon's Notes: Bogus science: television and video games improve IQ.

Any cognitive burden imposed by watching TV dramas is dwarfed by the mental strain of juggling cell phone, BlackBerry, TV remote, iPod, laptop, PC, wireless phone, pager, etc. Not to mention trying to remember the current postal rate. That's what's forcing us to "up" our IQ game -- not TV.

But is our "IQ" really keeping up? I think not. Maybe our IQ has risen 10%, but our environment is not 10% more complex than it was 40 years ago. I'd guess it's 200 to 300% more complex -- as measured by the variables we track and balance.

There's a denominator in the "IQ" equation. The denominator is the "Environmental IQ" or EnvIQ -- the IQ required to stay "on top" of our rockworld/cyberworld environment. Perhaps the numerator (average IQ) is rising, but the ratio of IQ to EnvIQ is plummeting like a rock.

We are working very hard simply to tread water in this new, immensely complex, world. (see also: "Fast Times at Fairmont High").