The invisible war -- when the peasants die, who notices?

Blood Runs Red, Not Blue - New York Times

Bob Herbert just won't let the go of the invisible war.

... College kids in the U.S. are playing video games and looking forward to frat parties while their less fortunate peers are rattling around like moving targets in Baghdad and Mosul, trying to dodge improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades.

There is something very, very wrong with this picture.

If the war in Iraq is worth fighting - if it's a noble venture, as the hawks insist it is - then it's worth fighting with the children of the privileged classes. They should be added to the combat mix. If it's not worth their blood, then we should bring the other troops home.

If Mr. Bush's war in Iraq is worth dying for, then the children of the privileged should be doing some of the dying.

Would George be vacationing if Jenna were drafted to drive a truck in Iraq?

This is a war of old Europe, where the "peasants" fight and the nobles hunt. If we'd had a national service, we would have invaded Afghanistan, but we would have thought very hard and long before invading Iraq. If we had a national service, Bush would not have been re-elected. If we had a national service, Rumsfeld would have been happy to avoid prison.

Mac serial number analyzer: see if your Mac is in a recall or exchange program

Apple has finally announced a repair program for iMac's with the notorious capacitor, power supply, heat problems. It includes machines sold as recently as May 2005.

Klantenservice: Serienummers will check your serial number for qualification to a number of these programs:

[Harald van Arkel] We updated our serial number analyzer. It is now aware of the iMac G5 Exchange Program. If you enter the serial number of an iMac, it will warn you that it is part of an Exchange Program. The analyser takes the serial number of any Mac (or other piece of Apple hardware) and tells you what exact model it is and when it was produced.

Tales of the Piraha -- how flexible is man?

Just when one is inclined to think biology is everything, come stories of the Piraha:

George Monbiot � A Life With No Purpose

...Two days ago, I would have claimed that the demand for more was universal – that every society has or had its creation story and, as Joseph Campbell put it, “it will always be the one, shape-shifting yet marvellously constant story that we find”.(11) But yesterday I read a study by the anthropologist Daniel Everett of the language of the Piraha people of the Brazilian Amazon, published in the latest edition of Current Anthropology.(12) Its findings could scarcely be more disturbing, or more profound.

The Piraha, Everett reveals, possess “the most complex verbal morphology I am aware of [and] are some of the brightest, pleasantest, most fun-loving people that I know.” Yet they have no numbers of any kind, no terms for quantification (such as all, each, every, most and some), no colour terms and no perfect tense. They appear to have borrowed their pronouns from another language, having previously possessed none. They have no “individual or collective memory of more than two generations past”, no drawing or other art, no fiction and “no creation stories or myths.”

All this, Everett believes, can be explained by a single characteristic: “Piraha culture constrains communication to non-abstract subjects which fall within the immediate experience of [the speaker]”. What can be discussed, in other words, is what has been seen. When it can no longer be perceived, it ceases, in this realm at least, to exist. After struggling with one grammatical curiosity, he realised that the Piraha were “talking about liminality – situations in which an item goes in and out of the boundaries of their experience. [Their] excitement at seeing a canoe go around a river bend is hard to describe; they see this almost as travelling into another dimension.” The Piraha, still living, watch the sparrow flit in and out of the banqueting hall.(13)

Similar anthropologic stories have evaporated on closer inspection (the Inuit have only a handful of names for snow, Margaret Mead's cultures were very violent ...). It will be interesting to see if this one survives. Will our memes infect the Piraha? The course of that infection should be watched closely, even as it destroys all that they once were.

Death squads in Baghdad -- over 1100 dead in July?

Recirculated from 'The Independent'. The article is quite badly written. It sounds like these are largely revenge killings, possibly by Shia and Baathist hit squads, but the author confuses this mayhem with blast victims and occopation force victims.

Secrets of the morgue: Baghdad's body count

... July was the bloodiest month in Baghdad’s modern history - in all, 1,100 bodies were brought to the city’s mortuary; executed for the most part, eviscerated, stabbed, bludgeoned, tortured to death. The figure is secret.

We are not supposed to know that the Iraqi capital’s death toll last month was only 700 short of the total American fatalities in Iraq since April of 2003. Of the dead, 963 were men - many with their hands bound, their eyes taped and bullets in their heads - and 137 women.

... in just 36 hours - from dawn on Sunday to midday on Monday, 62 Baghdad civilians had been killed. No Western official, no Iraqi government minister, no civil servant, no press release from the authorities, no newspaper, mentioned this terrible statistic...

... Mortuary officials have been appalled at the sadism visited on the victims. "We have many who have obviously been tortured - mostly men," one said. "They have terrible burn marks on hands and feet and other parts of their bodies. Many have their hands fastened behind their backs with handcuffs and their eyes have been bound with Sellotape. Then they have been shot in the head - in the back of the head, the face, the eyes. These are executions."...

... It is clear that death squads are roaming the streets of a city which is supposed to be under the control of the US military and the American-supported, elected government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari...

I would like to see some other validation of these numbers. Baghdad is a very populous city however, and there is a lot of revenge to be sated. It's not immediately clear what to do about this; I don't think more military force would help.

Fermi Questions: quantitative games of meaning

I need to update my Fermi Paradox page with this link:

Fermi Questions / Fermi Problems: '... the estimation of rough but quantitative answers to unexpected questions about many aspects of the natural world. The method was the common and frequently amusing practice of Enrico Fermi, perhaps the most widely creative physicist of our times. Fermi delighted to think up and at once to discuss and to answer questions which drew upon deep understanding of the world, upon everyday experience, and upon the ability to make rough approximations, inspired guesses, and statistical estimates from very little data.' [Philip Morrison [1]]

Incidentally, I've corresponded with Stanlislaw (Stanlislav) Lem, a brilliant author, about the Fermi Pardox. Turns out he doesn't think much of it:

I am afraid Mr. Lem does not consider the Fermi Paradox an important (and particularly serious) issue.

Sincerely yours,

Wojciech Zemek, Mr. Lem's secretary

Hmm. That does give me pause ... I wish he'd say more, but I think that may be his last words on this particular topic ...

Junk science: $100 billion wasted on a pointless "missile defense" system

I'm sure something good came of the $100 billion we've spent on our worthless missile defense program -- there must be at least $1 billion of goodness there. Sigh. Creationism is not necessarily the worst form of junk science...

Kung Fu Monkey: I Miss Republicans.

TEST OF U.S. MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD FAILS

An attempt to launch an interceptor missile as part of the U.S. missile defence shield failed early Wednesday in the first test of the system in nearly two years ...

...This test, by the way, was cancelled a few days ago [previously] because of rain. Because. Of. Rain. And please note that the previous few successes were because the target missle had homing beacons in them, tuned to the exact frequency of the intercepting rockets. Now, you may mock this, but even now, we are negotiating with Iran and North Korea to have all their missiles emit this radio frequency. So joke's on you.

This is what we get for about $100 billion up to now, with about another $100 billion more spent in the next 5 years ... for these test results.

You understand, I'm not against defense spending. I'm not going to rant about how many school lunches this could buy. I'm ranting about junk science.

$100 billion dollars against an attack mode which is literally the most inconvenient, least likely way for bad guys to kill Yanks. Terrorists don't have missiles. Terrorists have VANS. A white-panel-truck defense shield, THAT would be worth our money. Tie the INS database into the Ryder rental computer. Now we're talking science.

Lots of smart people campaigned for that missile defense program. I'm sure they had their reasons, but I suspect the smart ones believed it would cost trillions and take fifty years to develop. Or maybe they were smart but deluded.

By the time these systems actually work:

1. the AI systems required to run them will have their own interests, and they hopefully won't involve us.
2. terrorists will be able to drop hydrogen bombs out of the back of freighters and detonate them offshore.

Teaching the controversy - gravitation and the law of unintended consequences

The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

We need to teach the all the controversies.

.... The ECFR [Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning], in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue 'so they can make an informed decision.'

'We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids,' Burdett said.

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.

When I was a child, I was taught a bizarre alternate world history where the 'Children's Crusade' was a good thing. That's what the state schools (almost all Catholic) taught in Quebec in the 1960s until the mid 1970s.

As a strategy this was not overly successful. Within 10 years the Catholic church had been swept from power (Quebec had been a quasi-theocratic state) and church attendance plummeted.

Evangelicals should worry a bit about their successes in teaching religion in science classes. They may discover the law of unintended consequences.

DeLong on the business of oil

How oil companies make money, and some other aspects of a most important enterprise: Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: John McGowan Seeks a Guide for the Perplexed.

But that's not the best part of the essay. DeLong continues on to discuss how American business shifted from a paternatlistic management style in the 1910-1980 period to an ownership coopetition mode in 1980 and beyond.

Comparative immunology: crocodiles make your immune system look wimpy

Eons ago, when I was a young medical student, I was really interested in comparative immunology and in the evolutionary history of the immune system. I figured there had to be gold in comparing how different organisms evolved different solutions to the pathogen problem. Of course I had a zillion interests, so that one came and went.

It's nice to know that research in comparative immunology has since borne fruit. It turns out crocodiles have one heck of an immune system...

Science News Article | Reuters.com

... The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights which often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.

"They tear limbs off each other and despite the fact that they live in this environment with all these microbes, they heal up very rapidly and normally almost always without infection," said U.S. scientist Mark Merchant, who has been taking crocodile blood samples in the Northern Territory.

... "If you take a test tube of HIV and add crocodile serum it will have a greater effect than human serum. It can kill a much greater number of HIV viral organisms," Britton said from Darwin's Crocodylus Park, a tourism park and research center.

Britton said the crocodile immune system worked differently from the human system by directly attacking bacteria immediately an infection occurred in the body.

"The crocodile has an immune system which attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and it explodes. It's like putting a gun to the head of the bacteria and pulling the trigger," he said...

So what's the downside of that sort of immune system? Do crocs get nasty auto-immune disorders? It's odd that this is a press release now; the HIV work was done in 1998. I doubt there will be many practical implications; but this is great basic scienc work.

The day of the American engineer has passed

Race for engineering edge to be won, lost in colleges -DenverPost.com - BUSINESS

The US is graduating fewer engineers every year, and fewer native Americans are attending US engineering schools:

Pacific Rim nations are graduating great numbers of engineers and are threatening to seize the mantle of industrial innovation that was pivotal to making the U.S. economy globally dominant. Last year, foreign nationals also won almost 60 percent of U.S. engineering doctorates.

Experts warn that the U.S. lead is slipping away.

'We are being outproduced in engineering graduates - both undergraduate and graduate level - by Pacific Rim countries, and the comparison will be more extreme as the years go by,' said Richard Heckel, founder of Engineering Trends, a research consultancy. 'From an engineering standpoint, the future leaders of the world are going to come from the Pacific Rim.

I'd read this in a local Knight-Ridder paper and decided I'd comment on it, but I had to use Google News to find a citeable source. That search also turned up a similar complaint from Australia. Bottom line, this isn't something unique to the US. It's likely also true in Canada, Germany, France, the UK, etc. I bet it's even true in Japan.

Engineering is a hard discipline and it's not very financially rewarding in wealthy nations. Engineers work in cubicles, MBAs get offices. Getting an MBA takes some focus and a bit of work, getting an engineering degree takes substantially more work and some serious math ability. Why be an underpaid mechanical engineer when with less effort one can be an overpaid finance officer?

The day of engineering has passed in the wealthy nations. There's nothing anyone can do to bring it back. Don't let your daughters be engineers.

Qwest: good employees, awful company

It must be awful to work for Qwest Communications, my DSL service provider. The Qwest employees I've spoken with have been patient and personable, but they're embedded in an awfully dysfunctional company. That can't be much fun.

In our prior home Qwest provided my DSL connection, and VISI (excellent company) was my ISP [1]. The prior residents of our new home used Qwest as well. We moved across the alley and kept our phone number. How hard can that be?

Hard, evidently.

Qwest has so far slipped installation dates twice (most recently after my wife stayed home waiting), messed up the ISP access (switching me to MSN) and misassigned the service level (to their overpriced video-delivery wannabe option).

When you call Qwest you're also enrolled in a diabolical experiment without any evidence of informed consent. They've invested millions in creating the most insanely infuriating voicebot. The voice misrecognition system responds to even the most polite and careful speech with a carefully calibrated sarcastic urbanity designed to crush any spirit. I can only guess Qwest is testing out some new instrument of torture. Fortunately hitting 0 repeatedly bypasses it.

Sigh. If only I could force George Bush to be an anonymous Qwest customer...

Update 8/16/05: Just to accentuate the theme of good employees, bad company our installer went way beyond the call of duty today. If Qwest's management were the equal of their front line employees their voice recognition system would die an ugly death. Indeed, were I to learn that a Qwest exec had publicly executed their voice recognition system (and corresponding vendor) I'd be tempted to buy stock in them.

[1] Sadly VISI's residential ISP services are probably doomed since our scum-infested government has sold us out again.

Criminalizing the defective

Be the Best You can Be: There are parts of the UK which are yet 19th century -- criminalizing the defective

In one area, at least, the US is even vaguely progressive.

The intelligent design fight introduces some interesting thoughts

Evolution vs. Religion - Quit pretending they're compatible. By Jacob Weisberg

At least Bush's attack on biology is producing some interesting discussions. Weisberg tosses aside the commonplace convention that one can be both a traditional christian and a 'believer' in natural selection:

That evolution erodes religious belief seems almost too obvious to require argument. It destroyed the faith of Darwin himself, who moved from Christianity to agnosticism as a result of his discoveries and was immediately recognized as a huge threat by his reverent contemporaries. In reviewing The Origin of Species in 1860, Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford, wrote that the religious view of man as a creature with free will was 'utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of the brute origin of him who was created in the image of God.'

For Weisberg the truce between science and religion is a built on a 'white lie' and it's time for the old battle to rage anew.

Weisberg clearly has a point, and the catholic church agrees with him. The basic tenets of most of the world's religion are in conflict with the idea of humans as a random and possibly transient and superficial event in the history of the world.

It's not impossible to reconcile deity with natural selection. Personally, I find it easier to imagine a deity that fires up universe and waits to see what develops; creating entities in one's 'own image' seems to me rather dull and vain. I like to hope a deity is a bit beyond that.

Or one could always invoke the 'incomprensibility of God' clause, or assume that God creates Man by choosing to inhabit the one of a trillion, trillion universes in which Man by chance evolves. Still, these ideas are a bit of a stretch for most religions.

Religion places Man at the center of things. Natural selection makes him just another miraculous species. That's a genuine conflict.

New to Google: very focal searches (single slot value)

Google Blog: Fill in the blanks

Sometimes one wants to use a search engine to find a very specific piece of information rather than to learn about a topic. If search engines were truly intelligent, you could just pose a question the same way you would ask a person. An alternative is to get the search engine to 'fill in the blank.' So instead of asking [who invented the parachute?], you can enter the query [the parachute was invented by *]. (The blank, or wildcard, search is marked by * - an asterisk.)

There is so much text on the web that this method often works well, but to make it more effective, we've improved the way results are found in response to queries containing such blanks. This includes allowing softer pattern matching, if necessary, and promoting results in which the blank filler is relatively more frequent in the context of the query.

The tibia is a part of the *.

This is exceptionally interesting.

Humor at the NSA: your van is ready now

Wired News: Router Flaw Is a Ticking Bomb

Lynn: Air Force (Office of Special Investigations). NSA, is what I'm told, but he wouldn't show me his credentials. There were a lot of flashy badges around from lots of three-letter agencies. So they take me to a maintenance area and I'm surrounded by people ... and one of them says (to another guy), 'You've got the van ready?' I'm going, 'Oh my god.' And they go, 'Just kidding!... Oh, man, you rock! We can't thank you enough.' And I'm just sitting there, like still pale white. They all shook my hand.

I get the feeling that they were in the audience because they were told that there was a good chance that I was about to do something that would cause a serious problem. And when they realized that I was actually there to pretty much clue them in on ... the storm that's coming ... they just couldn't say enough nice things about me...