The brilliant Hilter/Coulter quiz

The Hitler - Coulter quote quiz is brilliant. I did assign 11/14 correctly, but I relied on writing style, reference to Americans, etc. If not for those tricks I'd have been guessing randomly.

Coulter's language, like so much of American hate radio, really is eerily similar to Hitler's.

It's useful to try the quotes while substituting "Jew" or "Bourgeois" or "Intellectual" or "Intelligentsia" for "Liberal". Works well with any of those.

Stross on imagining 2016

Charlie Stross is a talented science fiction writer. Here he writes about what it's like to to imagine the world of 2016 - merely 10 years ahead. Emphases mine.

Charlie's Diary: Thoughts from the coal face

... The near future is frustratingly like the present, only different. I'm surrounded by electronics and media today that would have been bizarre and exotic back in 1986, never mind 1976 — but I'm still basically sitting in an office chair at a desk, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, typing away with some rock'n'roll on the stereo. Difference from 1996: there's a download going, the progress bar is ticking away tens of megabytes instead of tens of kilobytes, and the music's playing via streaming MP3s rather than CDs. Difference from 1996: back then, the word processor had a green screen and a 10Mb hard disk, and the music was playing on cassette tape. But the organizing parameters were the same — this is a writer in his study writing. How do you signal that the story is set ten years in the future, without succumbing to spurious futurism?

6. History inserts itself into our lives, seamlessly. When did you last get through a day without hearing some kind of off-hand reference to 9/11 or the Iraq war? Kids these days are learning about Margaret Thatcher in history lessons at school. In ten years time there'll be some other iceberg-like intrusion of History into the zeitgeist: the question is, what? (My money's on something energy or environment related, and big.)

7. Trying to get into the head of a 28-year-old British professional circa 2016 — the people this novel is about — is an interesting exercise, even though people of this generation are easy enough to track down right now: the trouble is, if I ask them questions now, I'm asking a bunch of 18 year olds. Whereas what I'm interested in is what they'll be thinking when they're 28 ...

You were one year old when the Cold War ended. You were thirteen when the war on terror broke out, and eighteen or nineteen when Tony Blair was forced to resign as Prime Minister. You graduated university owing £35,000 in student loans, at a time when the price of entry into the housing market in the UK was over £150,000 (about 4-5 times annual income; the typical age of first time buyers was 35 and rising by more than 12 months per year). Unless you picked the right career (and a high-earning one at that) you can't expect to ever own your own home unless your parents die and leave you one. On the other hand, you can reasonably expect to work until you're 70-75, because the pension system is a broken mess. The one ray of hope was that your health and life expectancy are superior to any previous generation — you can reasonably expect to live to over a hundred years, if you manage to avoid succumbing to diseases of affluence.

For comparison, when I graduated university in 1986, I had no student loans, first homes cost £30,000— or about 2-2.5 times annual income — and the retirement age was 60-65. So it should be no surprise if the generation of 1988 has very different expectations of their future life from the generation of 1964.

8. Agatha Christie once said, "when I was young I never expected to be so poor that I couldn't afford a servant, or so rich that I could afford a motor car." Yet these were the prevailing parameters from 1945 to the present. I might equally well say that when I was eighteen I never expected to be so poor I couldn't afford a four bedroom house, or so rich that I could afford a computer. What terms of reference will these people use to define their relative affluence and poverty? Motor cars and domestic robots? (Too facile.) Children and immortality treatment? (Too crudely obvious.) Privacy and ubiquity? (Too abstract.) ...

Noblesse Oblige and the Problem of the Weak: Buffett and Gates

Noblesse Oblige was a good thing once. Now that we are entering neo-feudal world of Lords and Servants we need it again. Warren Buffett is a believer:

A $31 Billion Gift Between Friends - New York Times

... more than anything, what Mr. Buffett's $31 billion gift to the foundation that Mr. Gates runs with his wife, Melinda, shows is a common disdain for inherited wealth and a shared view that the capitalist system that has enriched them so handsomely is not capable alone of addressing the root causes of poverty.

'A market system has not worked in terms of poor people,' Mr. Buffett said yesterday, in an interview taped earlier in the day for 'The Charlie Rose Show' on PBS.

As for any thought he might have had in giving the bulk of his billions to his three children, Mr. Buffett was characteristically blunt. 'I don't believe in dynastic wealth,' he said, calling those who grow up in wealthy circumstances 'members of the lucky sperm club.'

I am not happy with the software Bill Gates brought us; I remember too well the excellent alternatives of the 1980s to think that Microsoft's monopoly has been a good thing. He earned his fortune ruthlessly and dishonestly. He has a lot to make up for.

I can believe, however, that he is lonely. He is intensely clever, notoriously harsh, and unfathomably rich. All of those things bring loneliness. Given Gates wealth and power it is fortunate for all of us that Warren Buffett, a more balanced man, beame his friend and mentor. Gates has time to balance the scale.

I wish the New York Times had explored Buffett's sentiments in more detail. I suspect he's thinking about the "Problem of the Weak". This is good.

Cosmologic roundup: meaning and nothingness

Jim Holt, one of my favorite science writers, has written a pretty introduction to modern cosmology. He makes the rounds of the famous, and even introduces a bit of Bayesian cosmology via the Copernican principle.

He has a light touch with the biggest possible topics. It's a fun read, don't resist.

The BBC's new blog: something different?

The BBC is launching a new blog -- of course I'll subscribe. They've have an amusing and intriguing story about about how they're approaching this:

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Down with blogs... so here's another

...the editors across BBC News have got together to start their own blog. Called 'The Editors', it launches on Monday. The hope is that it will become a discussion forum for all sorts of issues and dilemmas surrounding our news programmes.

The BBC is becoming a major force in new media -- rather under the radar of much of the US. They're quiet little (big) radicals over therer ...

The Bush timetable for leaving Iraq

The good news is that the Bush plan is rather similar to what I and a zillion others write -- it's time to leave Iraq.

U.S. General in Iraq Outlines Troop Cuts - New York Times

... after criticizing Democratic lawmakers for trying to legislate a timeline for withdrawing troops, skeptics say, the Bush administration seems to have its own private schedule, albeit one that can be adjusted as events unfold.

If executed, the plan could have considerable political significance. The first reductions would take place before this falls Congressional elections, while even bigger cuts might come before the 2008 presidential election.

Of course Bush says something different ("stay the course" blah, blah), but if Bush says it's sunny an umbrella is obligatory. Follow the body, not the puck.

The cynical electoral timing is a nice touch, also predictable. On balance the plan is a good thing.

Greenland's day after tomorrow

If Greenland's galciers melted all at once, sea level would rise 21 feet. That won't happen, but the glaciers are melting faster than climate models predicted.

Computer simulations always start out with large assumptions -- like treating a glacier as a homogeneous block of ice. If the data doesn't fit the model's predictions, scientists study what's really happening and refine the models. It sounds like glaciers have complex internal structures that can cause non-linear responses to external warming.

It will be interesting to see what the next generation of models look like. We cannot assume they will show things getting warmer everywhere. Even if all of Greenland's glaciers don't melt, a large melt will introduce a new and large chaotic element to global climate change. Currents shift, precipitation varies, contintents rise ...

We'll have to wait for the simulations. Ohh, and a carbon tax might be a good idea too ....

Bank record spying: why I didn't read about it.

Another story about domestic spying. Another Cheney attack on the media.

Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data - New York Times

Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday vigorously defended a secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database, and harshly criticized the news media for disclosing an operation he said was legal and "absolutely essential" to fighting terrorism.

I can't force myself to read about this.

I assume that any and all laws, regulations and practices that "protect" our privacy have been swept aside. I assume that the data will be used for other purposes than fighting terrorism. I assume there are no effective protections or regulations. I assume the people doing this don't understand sensitivity, specificity, response curves or positive predictive value. I assume their laptops will be stolen. I assume their data mining is no better than Google's -- and Google's spam and splog detection is very bad. I assume that Americans don't understand any of this and don't care. I've read that it's extremely unlikely that either house of Congress will switch hands this November.

Things will have to get much worse before they get better. So there's not much point in reading this ...

DeLong does cosmology: The anthropic principle

DeLong has a readable and amusing defense of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Now if he'd only bring in Bayes' theory.

Doing evil with Google stuff

I can't improve on the original posting or the title. Educational, amusing and inevitably prophetic:

The Devil's Guide to Google

Here’s how to become a totally evil, worm-like creature with Google’s array of services in under a month ...

I know a smart young developer who's traveled this dark road. It's hard for some to resist the combination of the technical challenge and the money.

On a different note, I've posted elsewhere about the 21st century employment opportunities for the outsiders and for the "weak", I couldn't help but notice that 'click jockey' is a position that could be filled by someoneone with fairly severe cognitive and physical disabilities. An oddly positive feature of an otherwise dark world.

bin Laden's ratings collapse

Pascal Riche has pulled together five bits of encouraging news from a recent poll:

Finally Some Good News | TPMCafe

... 1) Support for Osama bin Laden is declining around the Muslim world. This is especially the case in Jordan, where just 24% express at least some confidence in bin Laden now, compared with 60% a year ago.

... 3) By lopsided margins (91% among Muslims in France; 82% in Spain; 71% in Great Britain; and 69% in Germany) Muslims in Western Europe express favorable opinions of Christians.

5) ... 86% of the French have a “favorable opinion” of Jews (77% among Americans, 45% in Spain, 1% in Jordan). And 71% of the french Muslims have a favorable opinion of Jews as well.

It would be good to know why bin Laden's support has plummeted in Jordan, but I'm guessing it was bin Laden's support for Zarqawi that did him in (rather than, for example, his lack of operational effectiveness). Zarqawi's insane hatred of the Shia, and his bombing of a Jordanian wedding party, did bin Laden no favors.

Of course it's not clear how serious or long-lived bin Laden's support for Zarqawi really was. My guess is that bin Laden did make a mistake, and the US amplified the connection. Not all propaganda is a bad thing, even if it may have been as much "emergent" as planned.

This poll is very encouraging. I was particularly struck by the universal anti-semitism among Jordanians vs. the far lower prevalence among french Muslims.

The aesthetics of execution

This is stone simple. Why did the this NYT journalist have such trouble getting to the point?

Doctors See Way to Cut Suffering in Executions - New York Times:

... because drugs like Pavulon can mask suffering, many states outlaw them for animal euthanasia.

Execution by barbiturate alone would take longer than the current method, Dr. Dershwitz said. Although prisoners would quickly lose consciousness and stop breathing, they could not be pronounced dead until electrical activity in the heart had stopped. That could take as long as 45 minutes.

Pavulon is a famously effective paralytic agent. It doesn't reduce pain or diminish consciousness, it simply makes movement impossible. It's used in executions to make the experience less unpleasant for witnesses.

Depending on who the witnesses are, the victim may care more or less about their discomfort. One approach would be to give the condemned a menu of options, from explosive attached to the skull to pure barbiturate to a mix of drugs. With informed consent, of course.

Or we could decide that this is really a very stupid business. As I've noted before, if we're going to execute people we need, at an absolute minimum, to assign lawyers randomly to rich and poor alike.

Gender gap in academic performance and the age of menarche

We know the age of menarche has decreased in Korea from age 17 to age 12.7 between 1920 and 1986. I think 12.7 is the average age in wealthy nations.

Between 1982 and 2000 Canadian medical school admissions, which are largely grade based, shifted from 50% female to 75% female. The gap in academic performance among median high school students may be even greater. At age 19 boys are far behind girls.

I wonder if the two trends are related.

Homeland security and the Great LA Quake of 2008

If LA had Magnitude 8 quake next month, would we be ready?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Quake fears for south California

...If all the strain was released at once, it would have enough energy to unleash a magnitude-8 earthquake - roughly the size of the devastating 1906 quake in San Francisco.

...Quakes are predicted to occur on the southern part of the fault every 200-300 years. And according to Professor Fialko, the observed movement on the fault is on a par with the maximum amount of shift the fault has ever experienced between quakes.

I put the "IF" in bold because it sounds like a Magnitude 8 quake is a worse case scenario. It might be more likely that only a part of the slippage would occur. All the same, it would be good to know if LA is ready. It could be tomorrow, it could be 2008, but it sounds like sooner than 2016. I wonder if they've published a probability curve ...

The road to hell: General Formica's version

We all know that the road to hell is gradual. A little bit here, a little bit there. In time the unthinkable becomes commonplace, even acceptable. When that happens, you have arrived. General Formica has arrived.

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Him Now

[The New York Times wrote ...]

.... General Formica found that in the third case at a Special Operations outpost, near Tikrit, in April and May 2004, three detainees were held in cells 4 feet high, 4 feet long and 20 inches wide, except to use the bathroom, to be washed or to be interrogated. He concluded that two days in such confinement "would be reasonable; five to seven days would not." Two of the detainees were held for seven days; one for two days, General Formica concluded.

[Spencer Ackerman responds:]

... Here are two such questions you can puzzle over from your home or office. Take all the shelving out of a typical filing cabinet. (My own office cabinet happens to be slightly smaller than the cell described here.) Now lock yourself in it for two days. You may notice you can neither stand up straight nor lie down, and crouching gets really uncomfortable extremely fast. Remember that as an Iraqi detainee, the Geneva Conventions apply to you. Now ask yourself: Why would Formica consider such treatment "reasonable" for two days? And if someone put an American soldier in such conditions for two days--or authorized doing so--what should happen to that person?

This is what's known as torture. If anyone doubts that, I urge them to try the filing cabinet experiment. I particularly urge Ann Coulter to try the filing cabinet.

General Formica feels that two days of this would be quite reasonable. General Formica has finished his journey. America is well down the same road.