The right declares in favor of torture - responding to the ticking clock

The GOP has smoothly moved from "we don't torture" to "yeah, we torture, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do". Their method is to first premise conditions under which the "good of the many" is so vast that any crime seems justified. Then, once the precedent is established, they move on to institutionalizing torture as "a last resort".

This honesty is a risky form of progress. On the one hand it fully exposes what they do in our name, on the other hand it moves American another step closer to Pol Pot. (I think we're close enough now to make out his smug expression.)

I figured it was time to refute this position, but today I found Clive Crook has already stated my position fairly well (emphases mine):

FT.com | Clive Crook's blog: Update: It depends what you mean by torture

...Whether the law leaves room for doubt about whether waterboarding is torture is one thing; whether the law ought to leave room for doubt on that point is quite another. In my view, the law should be clear: waterboarding is torture, and all torture is illegal.

Stuart is sympathetic to the view that ruling out a technique like waterboarding under any and all circumstances would be a mistake. Would it still be wrong, he asks, if the information elicited saved hundreds or thousands or millions of lives? It is a fair question, and one that most commentators on this issue are reluctant to confront. But one could ask the same question of any kind of torture, however vile. Would it be immoral to roast somebody over a slow fire, if the information elicited saved hundreds or thousands or millions of lives? I dare say that nobody, not even Alberto Gonzales, will argue that roasting somebody over a slow fire is not torture....

...One can conceive of rare circumstances in which waterboarding or any other kind of torture might be ethically justified. To say that torture is always and necessarily immoral seems to me to betray a lack of imagination. But a wise government would not allow for that contingency by making the practice legal. In those very rare cases, the interrogators would have to expose themselves to prosecution, and a jury would decide whether or not to convict, weighing what they did against their reasons for doing it. To make torture legal, even under rare circumstances, is to institutionalise it. That is both immoral, and for the reasons just cited, deeply unproductive in the war on terror.

Bush is putting millions of men and women in harms way. He asks them to risk their lives and health for America. In the unprecedented theoretical circumstance that torture is justified, he should take the responsibility and be willing to face the legal consequences -- including life in prison. If he can't take that responsibility he's a coward and should resign immediately.

Laws exist for a reason. I can imagine circumstances where I'd torture someone to save my children, but I'd expect to forfeit my own life for having made that choice.

That's the sacrifice civilization demands. If we can't do that, we don't deserve democracy, and we don't deserve civilization.

Breastfeeding and IQ: A stunning result

Ok, I'm stunned. I didn't see this one coming:

BBC NEWS | Health | Gene 'links breastfeeding to IQ': "

Children with one version of the FADS2 gene scored seven points higher in IQ tests if they were breastfed.

But the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study found breastfeeding had no effect on the IQ of children with a different version.

The gene in question helps break down fatty acids from the diet, which have been linked with brain development.

Seven points difference is enough to put the child in the top third of the class, the researchers said.

Some 90% of people carry the version of the gene which was associated with better IQ scores in breastfed children.

The study was done on infants in Britain and New Zealand, we aren't given any ethnicity data. I'm assuming these numbers apply only to "euros" for now.

It's such an extraordinary result, with so many implications, we need to be cautious. It would be interesting to read the PNAS letter page next month.

It is worth noting that most children adopted as infants, or placed in orphanages, are not breastfed.

Shared family calendars, PDAs and Google Android

A few months ago I tried creating a shared family calendar solution on Google. It didn't work, because I couldn't get come up with a satisfactory Outlook sync solution.

I figured Calendar Swamp and I are the only people in the world trying to implement a shared family calendar solution (including work calendars), but it turns out the "Gphone" company is thinking about this too ...

Calendar Swamp: If my phone could do anything

... About 1:43 into this new video, Nick Sears, the co-founder of Android, the company Google bought to build its mobile phone platform, has this to say: "If my phone could do anything, it would be that we would have a shared family calendar.

Ten years or more ago Palm briefly sold a small device that was supposed to create a family calendar based on individual Palm devices. Shortly after that Palm died.

It's been a long wait and it's not over yet.

Fidelity vs. Vanguard: For want of a form a customer was lost

We have investment accounts with both Fidelity and Vanguard. It's not some sort of odd diversification strategy, it's mostly historic. We started with Fidelity and while I prefer Vanguard's policies and stinginess there's a lot of inertia in my life.

Which is why it was unwise of Fidelity Investments to be stupidly annoying.

I wanted to deposit a check in a treasury fund. Simple act, but the days when I could find deposit forms are sadly gone. (No, I don't balance my accounts either. You have time to do that?)

No problem, I figured I'd have Fidelity print one out.

Hah!

After ten minutes of increasing frustration I finally found a page that would print a generic deposit form -- which I had to complete by editing the pdf.

Huh?

I tried Vanguard. It took seconds to find the right page, and Vanguard generated a custom PDF for me with all the information entered -- and a transaction number.

Smart.

Good-bye Fidelity.

Regions of rapidly evolving genes: evidence of genetic control of the rate of adaptation and disorders of evolution

About four weeks ago I wrote about the possibility that "autism" and "schizophrenia" might be "disorders of evolution". If the genes that code for brain function are experiencing very high variation levels, and thus rapid adaptation and differentiation (evolution), it's plausible that we'd see a range of disorders related to maladaptive variations.

Back then I thought the post was a bit daring, the sort of thing that might cause some in my vast readership to think I was being a bit eccentric.

Nowadays though, that post seems pretty mainstream:

Mouse study finds hotspots of genome instability (John Timmer)

[Nature 10/28/07] ... The data suggest that certain parts of the genomes are "hotspots" that both undergo change frequently, and produce changes that are well-tolerated by the organism. These hotspots undergo changes up to 10,000 times more frequently than quiet areas of the genome, and can undergo multiple, successive changes. The fact that the organism appears to tolerate these changes isn't due to an absence of genes in the CNVs. In the 18 mentioned above, there were a total of 43 genes, including some involved with reproduction, immunity, and brain function.

There's been an idea floating around for a while that suggests that genomes evolve to the point where they work well with evolution. A genome that, by chance, winds up with genes that are sensitive to dose effects in a region that's stable is more likely to be be inherited. In the opposite case, where different doses of a gene might help an organism adapt to different environments, having that gene located in an unstable area might be selected for. The new data doesn't directly address this proposal. But it does find that there unstable areas of the genome that are likely to undergo major changes within the span of less than 100 years, which seems to be a prerequisite for the proposal to be taken seriously.

It turns out Timmer has at least one other post relating these types of gene rearrangements to autism.

I'm ready to be that within six years medical students will consider a wide variety of neuropsychiatric disorders to be "disorders of evolution". You'll have a jump on those whippersnappers ...

How to Hyperlink: advice and some hypertexual history

Coding Horror has done a nice job summarizing the art of the hyperlink -- and he provides historical context:

Coding Horror: Don't Click Here: The Art of Hyperlinking

...I distinctly remember reading this 1995 Wired article on Ted Nelson and Xanadu when it was published. It had a profound impact on me. I've always remembered it, long after that initial read. I know it's novella long, but it's arguably the best single article I've ever read in Wired; I encourage you to read it in its entirety when you have time. It speaks volumes about the souls of computers-- and the software developers who love them.

Xanadu was vaporware long before the term even existed. You might think that Ted Nelson would be pleased that HTML and the world wide web have delivered much of the Xanadu dream, almost 40 years later...

I recommend the article, though every rule should be broken on occasion. Sometimes I do resort to "click here", for example.

The historical context led me to dredge up old links, and in honor of Ted Nelson, I've created a "hypertextual thread" (tag) called "xanadu".

As CH tells us, Nelson was in fact quite unhappy with how the Web developed. In 1988 (yes, that long ago) Ted Nelson delivered the keynote address to the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) on "Project Xanadu" -- and it was clear he wanted the web to go away.

That was the most fun and interesting keynote I've ever heard at AMIA, but half the audience thought Nelson had gone off the deep end long ago. AMIA has since been careful not to invite anyone particularly novel to speak.

Nelson wasn't the only hypertext pioneer to be unhappy with the unidirectional hyperlink. Berners-Lee, the "father" of the web, used to be very unhappy with our fragile hyperlinks. I recall he'd wanted a directory service and an indirection layer for the hyperlink, his CERN experiments simply escaped prematurely. Nowadays, of course, Google is beginning to offer suggested redirects when one enters a failed link into the search engine -- an unimaginably brute force solution to the problem. I'm sure there are some interesting lessons in how this has evolved!

For a bit more on the topic over the past few years (I used to write about this pre-blog):

• Computers and thinking (shades of Vannevar Bush)


• Jakob Nielsen on reviving advanced hyperterext - Nielsen wrote a book on hypertext @ 1995 -- it's a great guide to a lot of forgotten innovations


• Hyperscope: a failed experiment by Doug Engelbart, who sometimes calls himself the inventor of hypertext (with some legitimacy)
  


• The NYT Magazine on "the universal library", the post mentions Dickson's hypertext science-fiction classic "The Final Encyclopedia". Dickson pretty much pegged wikipedia.

The scandal that created the army and executive privilege

I can see why this story is generally omitted from this history books:

Making Light: Retreat Along the Wabash

It was the worst defeat under arms ever suffered by the US Army. Out of some 1,100 men who answered muster on the night of November 3rd, 1791, only 27 were unwounded at sunset on the 4th. 90% were dead. The camp followers, the artillery, all were lost.

In just over three hours on that bloody morning St. Clair lost 60% of all the men then under arms in the service of the United States...

...And that, my friends, is why Fort Wayne, Indiana, is called “Fort Wayne” rather than “Fort St. Clair.”

That too is where we got a standing army, and where the doctrine of “Executive Privilege” comes from.

Among other things, we discover Washington was quite human.

Ground zero in Pakistan: Informed Comment blog

Talking Points suggests Informed Comment: Global Affairs: Barnett Rubin as a source for understanding the global crisis of the week (month? year? decade?) -- Pakistan's crisis of governance.

I glanced at the most recent post and it felt good. Consistent with what I'd already understood, plausible details that extend what I've read in known reliable sources, a measured tone.

I'll be tracking it.

This is also an opportunity to thank the gods that Rumsfeld is gone and, though Cheney and Bush remain, the rest of America's military and political governance is in far saner hands than it was a year ago.

Karen Hughes: another Bush loyalist quits

I missed this one: Bush loyalist Karen Hughes has quit. She was on a bizarre mission to improve America's image abroad. That's a bit of a tough job while the President works to make waterboarding a competitive sport.

Surprisingly, from what we all remember of the bizarre debut of her mission, Kaplan tells us she was actually doing a good job resurrecting the corpse of America's cultural outreach. He doesn't really have any good explanation for why she abruptly quit.

Did she finally give up on George Bush Jr?

Wives for China: yet another crisis

Dyer on China's demographics: "...Girls are in such short supply that it is estimated that by 2010 there will be 37 million young Chinese men with no prospect of ever finding a wife."

A Chinese wife, specifically.

The usual solution to an excess of young males is to go to war. That doesn't scale in today's world.

The alternatives are either polyandry, finding a nation with an excess number of females, or an innovative technological solution.

In the meantime China should start cash subsidies and guaranteed free education and healthcare for all female children. China needs to make girls dramatically more attractive to parents.

I like Bob Herbert

Why Is Bob Herbert Boring? is an impressively mean and obnoxious article in the Washington Monthly. I suspect Mr. Herbert is more likely to read that column than to read this blog post, but the essay was so nasty I'm obliged to say that I like Mr. Herbert's columns and I read every one he writes.

Maybe it's my dour Scots nature, but I don't mind that Mr. Herbert belongs to the evidence-based community. Heck, I read Paul Krugman religiously (including his blog) and he's no flaming ball of cheer.

There are snappier writers, but it's all relative. Mr. Herbert writes in an elite field -- it's no shame to be "very good" rather than "great" in that crowd. His special value comes from his clear vision and his dogged determination to talk about people most readers of the NYT may prefer to forget.

So Mr. Herbert -- don't be discouraged. Maureen Down is disposable, you are not. Keep writing.

How long is your to do list?

This Google gadget appears at the top of their iGoogle Gadget Directory: "ToDo Gadget, easily manage and track your daily to-do list. ToDo gadget lets you add up to 7 tasks, the average amount of concurrent tasks the human brain can handle effectively".

Seven.

I clearly do not belong in the same world. I think I'm running at about 300 between home and work ... [1]

[1] I don't manage my work by my inbox. I use tasks.

NYT's new ads: drive me to Adblock Plus

Advertisers are their own worst enemies. The NYT has introduced a new set of obnoxious interstitial ads that float around the screen then settle in place hiding text. They have to be manually dismissed.

Which means I've installed Adblock Plus.

I was ok with old style ads, but the new ones have pushed me over the edge. Now I won't see either.

A stupid move by advertisers - and the NYT.

Williams College: a word of praise

A combination of unearned good fortune and inspiration born of desperation allowed me to spend a half-year at Williams College playing liberal arts student. The academics were much less work than what I was accustomed to, and the teaching was superb. Best of all, my real undergrad institution paid the whole thing -- room, board, travel and tuition. (Actually the best est part was a I got academic credit for having fun. [1])

I have a soft spot for Williams, but it's fantastically expensive for people who have to pay. So I credit them for enabling some students who are very smart, and perhaps only somewhat poor, to go there ...

I am very pleased to announce that, in consultation with the Board of Trustees, the College has decided to eliminate loans from all financial aid packages and replace them with grants....

This move is the latest in a series of steps the College has taken in recent years to ensure that a Williams education is affordable...

Previous steps had reduced the amount of loans we expected financial aid students to take. For students from families with the lowest incomes that expectation has in recent years been zero. But other financial aid students had been expected, depending on income, to borrow cumulatively over their four years $3,800, $7,800, or 13,800.

This move also comes at a time when the College has succeeded in increasing the socio-economic diversity of entering classes. In fact, the Class of 2011 is the first in history to have more than half its members qualify for Williams-based aid. Even more have won scholarships outside the College..

I don't think this would help much kids like mine though -- it's state school for them. (They've got their share of advantages anyway.)

If you're on the edge of middle class or below, however, and a good student, I would encourage a look at Williams. Even back in the day there were enough non-rich students there to offset the weird experience of studying next to the ultra-rich.

[1] Of course for me learning is fun, so it's not like I wasn't goofing off completely.

Perfect commentary on the million terrorist watch list

Last week more stories appeared about the dysfunctional "watch list" maintained by the FBI's unchecked civilian contractors.

I've written about this many times. Anyone who's ever sat through a med school course on positive predictive value knows what this sucker is worth.

The good news is that the list has gotten so large that even the world's dimmest investigative agency must be starting to suspect something has gone wrong.

The bad news is that when we get rid of it, the Bush administration will replace it with something at least equally stupid.

The other good news is that the situation is perfect for Morford's patented "over the top" prose:

Behold! The Bliss Watch List / To hell with the FBI's million-strong Terrorist Watch List. Here is your killer alternative

.... In fact, if my rough estimates are accurate, at the current ridiculous rate of growth, the terrorist watch list will hold roughly 87 billion names by, say, your next birthday. It will soon list every single person on the face of the planet, along with all dead people, the unborn three generations out, and (strangely) many plants. It is just that insidious. It is just that absurd and obscene and just that much of a hint of the nasty surveillance state we are quietly, viciously becoming.

Great read. Humor is good.