Crank Physics

After doing some additional reading about various fusion projects (as a follow up to this article on Michio Kaku's book), I've uncovered my own misunderstanding. I've always taken "cold fusion" to mean "controlled fusion"; that is, I understood "cold" to essentially mean "not a bomb". But I was wrong. "Cold fusion" actually refers to room-temperature fusion; Prof. Kaku was clearly referring to "controlled fusion at high temperatures" as being possible within a few centuries. I've made edits to my original article to rectify this.

On the other hand, I'm glad for my mis-labelling, because it seems to have attracted an actual cold-fusion crank, Jed Rothwell, which has been an interesting diversion. While I am no where near qualified (as evidence I give you the first paragraph of this post) to judge the scientific merits of the research he is propagandizing, I can still point out several characteristics that smack of quackery to me.

Despite my having said (incorrectly) that cold fusion might be possible in a century or two, Jed leapt right on and proclaimed:

"Cold fusion is not impossible. It has been replicated by over 200 world class laboratories such as Los Alamos, and these replications have been published in hundreds of peer-reviewed journal papers...experiments prove that it does exist, so any theory that says it cannot exist must be wrong."

As I pointed out in my comment-response, this seemed like a surf-by spamming, since I was able to find similar comments left by Mr. Rothwell on other blogs referencing cold fusion¹. He admits this is the case. Researchers with valid data and theories rarely have to resort to such tactics. The next hallmark of pseudo-science is a persecution complex, and we see:

"Many cold fusion researchers do feel persecuted, but this is not a complex or an imaginary feeling. They actually are persecuted. The Washington Post and many other major newspapers have regularly accused them of being lunatics and criminals, which has greatly harmed their careers. They have never been allowed to respond. Many of them have been demoted or fired. "

Yet another characteristic of pseudo-science is that criticism is very often conflated with persecution, as we see with the newspaper claims in the quote above. I have not been able to find out a primary reference for anyone being fired or demoted for their cold-fusion work. To me, this claim seems precisely the same as that made by the intelligent design idiots. They confuse their own ability to generate research and extend knowledge with persecution, and some mythical "The Man" keeping them down. As if there were a "Big Science" committee somewhere deciding what is "approved research" or not (this committee apparently covers at least biology and physics).

A third signature of quackery is also on display here. Note the internal inconsistency in the previous two quotes. Which is it? Persecution or hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and lab research? If there is so much research and publication going on, it is clearly a most ineffective persecution. I shall have to point out this failure to fully suppress this research at the next Big Science Committee Meeting.

Lastly, there is tons of real fusion research going on all over the world. Stanford (here) and UC-Berkeley (here) both have active research programs into (hot, plasma) fusion, and ITER is an international project to build a very large fusion reactor. I'd love to hear the reasoning behind why Big Science would be suppressing cold fusion while apparently embracing hot fusion. Apparently, all physicists embrace one particular form of fusion while being completely blind to (according to this crank) the most obvious form. I have no idea what the explanation for this is.

¹Mr. Rothwell claims this isn't spamming since he did it manually.

Warrantless Search and Seizure

If only the government didn't need warrants to search people's houses, we'd all be safer. I, for one, would welcome our new jack-booted overlords. If the police didn't need probable cause, or a judge to sign off on a search, they could go into anyone's home and search for anything questionable. How many murders could we stop this way? School shootings? Indecent acts carried on behind closed doors? How dare people! Government agencies and police cannot be slowed down by always needing a judge to authorize their actions and having to present hard evidence. It would dampen their effectiveness too much. Won't someone please think of the children?

If the above paragraph made sense to you, what the hell is wrong with you? If it didn't make sense, how is the above "logic" any different than the "logic" of this piece about Mukasey and warrantless wiretapping? This paragraph is particularly absent of logic:

As reported by the New York Sun, he also offered a perspective, partly personal as a former Manhattanite, on the necessity of warrantless antiterror surveillance. Before 9/11, Mr. Mukasey said, "We knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went. We've got" – here the Attorney General paused with emotion – "we've got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn't come home, to show for that."

non sequitur much? He's jumped from arguing that we need better surveillance (which is probably true, as long as it's legal), to "we need unlimited authority to conduct any antiterror operation we deem necessary". And the author continues and says this is not "fear-mongering". Riiiight.

Physics of the Impossible

I really enjoyed Michio Kaku's other books, especially Parallel Worlds, so I had very high expectations for Physics of the Impossible. To side track a bit, and to show why I appreciate books like these: I get annoyed when someone proclaims that something is "impossible" (this comes up more than I expect). I have friends either pursuing a science Ph.D. (including physics!) or already graduated with one who have argued that some things, such as faster-than-light travel, will forever be impossible. The reasoning is that we've discovered basic laws that indicate these things are impossible. It's arrogance to assume that we, in all of history, have some things figured out definitively.

This kind of reasoning is on the opposite end of the spectrum from another position that I find ridiculous -- that we can't trust any scientific conclusions because science has been wrong in the past. It's just as stupid. Isaac Asimov analyzed this kind of thinking in a book called The Relativitiy of Wrong. What we consider scientific facts or laws now may be wrong -- no scientist would say that anything is "100% proven" -- it's not how science works. But it's unlikely in the extreme that what knowledge we have now will be completely overthrown. New science that comes along is a refinement of previous theories. For example, relativity didn't discard Newtonian mechanics, it just augmented it. Relativity may be wrong, but it is more correct than clasical physics. The neo-Darwinian synthesis may be wrong, it is certainly more correct than Darwin was in 1859, and is far, far more correct than Creationism.

So, while it is arrogance to assume that we will not discover new "laws" and open new possibilities, it is facile to take the opposite view and say that science offers nothing. I love theoretical physicists that happily consider how some things might be possible even though they seem impossible now. Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, and Stephen Hawking are all good reading for this kind of thing. Back to the book at hand: amusingly, Kaku quotes many scientists from the late 19th century who thought they had defined the limits of the possible. The book was fun. Kaku divides "impossible" things into three categories: types I, II, and III. Type I impossibilities are things that are possible within the boundaries of what we know now, but we lack the technical sophistication and/or theoretical details to implement them. This includes such things as controlled fusion, AI, and, yes, even teleportation. He expects that these technologies would be developed in the one hundred to one thousand year timeframe.

Type II impossibilities "sit at the very edge of our understanding of the physical world" and might be "realized on a scale of millenia to a million years". He puts time travel and faster-than-light travel in this category. Type III are things that are in direct contradiction to the currently known laws of physics, and "surprisingly, there are very few such" things.

Aside from the overall content of the book, I think Kaku really needs a better editor and to be more precise with language. I know I'm picking nits, but I really believe that a popularization of science can be simplified, that's not a license to play fast and loose with language. Many times in the book, he's just ... terribly imprecise. In discussing the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, he states on page 142: "huge creatures are probably not possible because of the scale law, which states that the laws of physics change drastically as we increase the scale of any object". That's just absurd. I know what he means (and he does spend some time explaining it) -- you cannot scale an ant up to human size and expect it to work (he also uses King Kong as an example). But the laws of physics don't change; the laws of physics gave us the scale law! The applicability just changes.

Another example of imprecision is when Kaku is discussing perpetual motion machines (free energy, a class III impossibility for sure), and applying the second law of thermodynamics (2LOT) to biology. He writes:

Biologists tell us that the aging process is the gradual accumulation of genetic errors in our cells and genes, so that the cell's ability to function slowly deteriorates. Aging, rusting, rotting, decay, disintegration, and collapse are also examples of the Second Law.

Gah. It's not that he's said anything explicitly wrong, but he's implied several things that are wrong. Many people fall into this same trap when discussing biological systems (notably moronic Creationists). It's not that biological systems don't obey the 2LOT, it's just very hard to apply the 2LOT to living organisms. He seems to imply that immortality would violate the 2LOT, when it most certainly wouldn't. Living organisms take in far more energy than they need to overcome the 2LOT, it's just that our cellular machinery isn't perfect (not designed) at maintenence. Further, rotting and decay aren't spontaneous processes; they are the result of other living organisms eating dead ones. To reiterate, it's not that Kaku is wrong, it's just a gross oversimplification.

To quibble some more (I enjoy doing this, despite having enjoyed the book), Kaku needs a better editor. There are numerous pop culture references that are just wrong. He says that in Star Trek IV, the Enterprise crew goes back in time to the 1960's, when every geek knows that it was the 1980's. His description of Asimov's Foundation series was also laughably wrong. To wrap this up, the book is well worth reading, but I thought that Krauss' two books on this topic were better.

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Update: Minor edit. See here.

Personal Responsibility has gone where?

Clearly, the current housing crisis is due to people like this lady (and her crazy lenders). Apparently, this is supposed to be a heart-wrenching story and you're supposed to be sympathetic, since CNN is running this as a front-page panic story.

My first thought when reading this story was "Wow, she's getting what she deserved". Maybe that's harsh, and I'm cold-hearted, but here are the facts: she had an income of $70k, 2 kids, and $2500/month interest-only mortgage. What's wrong with this picture? Does anyone really think it's feasible to raise two kids and own such an expensive house on $70k/year? Fiscal responsibility has to start at home. Tough nuts.

Game Theory, Politics and Society

In what is very convenient timing, MarkCC has an introductory post about game theory here, and it looks like part of a series he's starting. Very good. I'm going to be reading a couple books on game theory and politics very soon (they are sitting on my nightstand), but I wanted to order my thoughts before being educated. What I'm interested in is how to establish both economic and political systems that encourage and reward people for acting in a globally optimal way instead of locally optimal. At the same time, I value personal liberty above almost all else. Are both of these goals possible or forever contradictory? This is a common theme for me: balancing personal freedoms against enabling long-term thinking. For this post, I'll talk about the simplest game I know of, and then apply two other games to politics and society.

Cake Cutting

One of the simplest games in GT is that of cake cutting, or fair division of resources. In this scenario, two participants (easily generalized to N) are presented with a cake (some resource) and tasked with dividing it up fairly. The fairest way to divide the cake is to have one person cut the cake, and the other person gets first choice of the pieces. There are many variations, and in fact, on the books I'm planning to read is by Steven Brams who developed an envy-free solution for this game. Which is another post. The point I want to make here is that I do not think this game is appropriate for true economic situations -- economic resources, i.e., wealth, are not a fixed quantity. This is the major flaw in socialism; one person getting richer does not necessarily make another person poorer. I may have more on this scenario later. But there are at least two easy to understand games that

Tragedy of the Commons and Prisoner's Dilemma

Anyone who is familiar with game theory probably already knows what these two are, so please feel free to skip this section. The tragedy of the commons (TotC) is an expression of how common resources are exploited and maintained (more likely not maintained). With a common resource that all parties can use, who is responsible for maintaining the resource? With no clearly designated responsible party, what usually happens is that the resource is not maintained. I'll have some concrete examples later.

Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) embodies the following situation:

Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So this dilemma poses the question: How should the prisoners act?

It's easy to see that, without communicating, it's very hard for both of the prisoners to not choose betray, which gives them a lose-lose situation. There are some interesting applications and variations which I'll get to below.

GT and Politics

How does game theory apply to politics? One of my favorite harping points is how entrenched the two-party system is in our government; PD captures this problem very well. Third-party candidates have a very hard time convincing people to vote for them because the established party candidates use the refrain "You'd be throwing your vote away." (Incidentally, this is captured exquisitely in a Simpsons episode about Kang and Kodos). Let's call the candidates X, Y, and Z, where Z represents an independent party. If a single (or, given the large numbers), a few people decide to vote for Z, they risk allowing whichever they view as the worse of X and Y being elected. In essence, unless everyone opts for 'cooperate' (voting for a candidate they like, instead of voting against candidates they dislike), the status quo is maintained. While there may be communication ahead of time -- a third party candidate can implore people to make the right choice, that communication is rendered useless without trust.

TotC can also help analyze our political landscape. Consider problems with Congress such as pork barrelling, earmarking, and special interests. In this situation, the 'commons' is our tax money. What should be done with it? Who is responsible for maintaining it, and who gets to use it? To apply TotC, assume that "maintenance" means "being fiscally responsible". Here, one would hope that each member of the Congress would be responsible for maintaining the budget, and that the budget is continually being used for various projects. Each member of Congress wants to use some portion of the budget to placate their constituents (or more likely, lobbyists representing a minor fraction of the constituency). Yet no single member is responsible for creating a balanced budget. Hence, we end up with rampant spending and no one holding the reins on it. I don't intend to lay all the blame for this tragedy at the feet of the Congress, as clearly it's the voters' fault -- people want their elected representatives to funnel money to them with no concern for the budget as a whole.

GT and Society

My favorite trivial (in the larger sense of what is important, not in a simplistic sense) application of PD is from Kim Stanley Robinson's main character in his Science in the Capital series, Frank Vanderwal. Frank points out that people face PD every day of their lives in traffic. In many cases traffic jams are exacerbated by people acting short-sightedly; cutting each other off and so forth. This makes traffic worse for everyone even though it appears to help in a local fashion. Even so, we have it good here in the U.S. -- people are much more inclined to follow the rules (which exist to make things safe and efficient). Even if it's not completely optimal, compare this to driving in a third world country where there is little respect for traffic laws. Traffic jams are much worse. In a more serious vein, the "rule of law" is often very dependent on individuals trusting that other individuals will obey the same laws and not try to cheat the system. This conscious choice of every driver shows that people are able to solve PD in some fashion.

The traffic example illustrates a problem with a common (and more generally applicable) extension to PD: iterative prisoner's dilemma. In this scenario, the game is played multiple times and the players are able to base their decision on past history of how other players have behaved. This allows for much more interesting player strategies, such as a 'tit-for-tat' strategy where a betrayal in one round is repaid in a future round. A naive analysis seems to indicate that adaptive players will end up trusting each other and never betraying, but, alas, it's not true. Truly honest players are still vulnerable to sporadic betrayers. I find this a disheartening commentary on society

Making the prognosis worse is that iterative PD isn't always applicable to real-world situations. Consider traffic again: the number of players is very large and hard to track. It's just not possible to track that kind of information and thus it defaults to a single round of PD, which engenders much worse outcomes.

Solutions

In a broader sense, our current economic and political systems suffer greatly from an inability to see beyond the short-term. The current problem of global warming is an extreme example but very informative. Most reasonable people are willing to admit we have a problem, but no one bears responsibility because doing so would lead to bearing an unfair burden while others would profit. Capitalism in general suffers from various manifestations of this; CEOs get paid millions of dollars for increasing profits in the short term with no thought for the long-range consequences.

I want to reiterate that I value personal and economic liberty. Many people who share that view are hardcore capitalists and very pro-democracy. But capitalism and democracy are not the end-all of ecopolitical systems; to paraphrase Churchill, they are the worst forms possible, except for everything else that's been tried. Let's find a better way without losing our liberty. That's probably a pipe-dream, but dreams are good; they keep me entertained and hopeful.

I freely admit I'm short on solutions to these problems. But I strongly believe that if we can create social and economic structures that either provide more upside to the "correct" choices or more downside to the wrong choices, we will be much better off as a society. These kinds of questions are very common themes in Kim Stanley Robinson's works (in addition to variations on eco-economics) and I'll be blogging more about this in the future. Encouraging long-range thinking in individuals is a hard problem; doing so without being coercive is harder.

Given that long-range thinking must come from the individual, we need to encourage people to be selfish, but to do so in an enlightened manner. It's not about altruism, it's about convincing everyone, in toto, that we'd be much better off. But how do you stop people from turning around and exploiting the system as what happens in iterative PD? Is there a just and objective way to penalize people for this? Can we change the game?

Libertarians and the Environment

Jason Kuznicki has a yet another very good post up at positiveliberty.com. This time, it's about how societies determine value. In general, I agree with the post, but I wanted to quibble about one thing (and I made a comment to this effect):

I’m skeptical of a carbon tax in particular because even if we could determine the properly discounted value of the amount of social harm that global warming will do to the largely unknowable preferences of our descendants, it hardly follows that paying money to our current government will make things any better. We might be able to inhibit the market preference for carbon-based fuels, sure. But does the government really deserve to be the beneficiary here? By my way of thinking, a larger government is likely to be a drain on our descendants, and not a help at all.

I’m not convinced that a carbon tax is quite the same as other types of Pigovian taxes. I think of it this way: A carbon tax isn’t necessarily about inhibiting certain types of behavior, but applying a cost to a resource that is being consumed.

With cigarette taxes, the government is theoretically trying to curb that behavior because some group (the majority?) has decided that behavior is dangerous (of course, I disagree strongly with this — let people go to hell in their own way). But there is no inherent harm done to other people in society by smoking cigarettes (you can quibble here and talk about health costs, etc, but in a truly free society, no one else would bear the cost of another).

Compare this to a carbon tax: sure, some people want to curb this kind of pollution because they think it’s evil and/or dangerous. But there is a resource being consumed here — the air. We pay for any other resource used as part of the price of a commodity. Why should this shared common resource be “free”?

I agree with his inherent mistrust of the government to spend the money raised with this kind of tax, and I don’t have a good solution for that. I just wanted to point out that there is a subtle difference that makes me at least somewhat in favor of a carbon tax-type solution while still opposed to other types of Pigovian taxes.

Ron Paul

I just read this article at Time.com about Ron Paul, and I'm still baffled about the mainstream media's confusion about Ron Paul and libertarianism. In the strictest sense of the word, Ron Paul is not a libertarian.

...he is an extremist — partly in the Barry Goldwater extremism-in-defense-of-liberty-is-no-vice sense of the word, but also in the wacky let's-relitigate-the-currency-debates-of-the-1820s sense of the word...

Sorry, but Ron Paul doesn't really stand for liberty, and doesn't have a "real 'freedom agenda'". He's an anti-federalist, as true libertarian commentators have pointed out multiple times (here, and here for instance). That means he's only interested in restricting the federal government; he essentially is for "states rights". He's perfectly okay with a state government infringing on personal rights, as is shown with his stances on abortion and gay marriage (wants Texas to ban both). Many of Ron Paul's supporters scare me while many are true libertarians who overlook his anti-federalist stance. Yet he does stand for many things the GOP has abandoned under Bush. Go figure.

Just to round things out...

I've recently criticized McCain and Obama, so here's something about Hillary. Ed Brayton has a video and blurb about her recent lie about her trip to Bosnia. Wow.
She'll say and do anything. I can't figure out what appeal she has at all. It's unfathomable. McCain and Obama, I understand the appeal, and I actually like both of them, in a kind of "I don't think I'm going to vote for this guy, but he seems decent enough" way. But Clinton? Really? What we really do not need in American politics right now is to tack on "Clinton" to the recent chain of presidents that already looks like this: "Bush, Clinton, Bush". The notion that we are descending into an heriditary presidency is silly, but it would be very clear that the electorate has lost it's imagination if Hillary wins. Can we please do something different?

Free Speech, anyone?

This is an appalling story of an infringement on free speech. A Dutch law maker has had his website where he intended to publish an anti-Koran movie shut down by his provider (seeminly under pressure from the Dutch government). The provider is a U.S. company, however, and it is simply appalling that they would cave in such a fashion. Their usage policy apparently contains a clause prohibiting "objectionable material of any kind or nature".

That's absurd - almost anything is objectionable to someone. Muslims who are protesting this movie and website are providing plenty of ammunition for critics of Islam. Get real, people. It's the 21st century.

Book Review: Faiths of the Founding Fathers

I just finished reading the book by David Holmes, and I thought I'd post some thoughts. From a scholarship point of view, the book was pretty good, but was quite boring at times. Definitely worth reading if you're interested in a thorough analysis of ... what the title suggests. Most of what follows is summary from the book; some of it is my thoughts. I hope it's clear which is which.

First, a quibble. Throughout the book, Holmes refers to the religion (in some cases, more broadly, belief system) of founding fathers as Deism. Yet, clearly, many of the Founders believed in a personal God (Holmes reiterates this many times), which I've always found to be contradictory to Deism. Everything I've read equates Deism with an impersonal God (see a dictionary, the wikipedia, britannica). While there were many Deists during the time (Thomas Paine was an outright Deist), the FF were more accurately general Theists. Holmes breaks down the beliefs into three categories: Deism, Christian Deism, and Christian. He generally means "real" Deism by the first, but what he calls Christian Deists would more accurately be called either rational theists (on the Deist side of the spectrum) or Unitarians (a la John Adams). Anyway, I think it's a pretty semantic issue, and maybe I'm misreading, but the other terms seem more accurate.

In the first section, Holmes analyzes the religious beliefs of the colonies as a whole. Although much of the general population was unchurched, religious belief was quite high. Coupled with this, there was a large amount of religious intolerance in much of America. Excepting for Pennsylvania most of the colonies had at least a few laws criminalizing or marginalizing some faiths (atheism was way out). So, yes, there was a lot of religiosity in early America.

What the Dominionists¹ today don't understand is that the leading intellectuals who would become the founders were exactly opposite of this. While several of founders (Adams and Washington) believed that religion was necessary for the common man to be moral, they believed that any religion was an equally valid way to find morality and that religion was good for the common man. Christians today may point to this ideal and say "Look, even these great men believed in religion itself." Yet, this doesn't make the opinion valid. At the time, many rational people still fell back on religion as an explanation for the universe -- science was yet in its infancy. We should judge these men not by the common shortcomings of their time, but by how much they transcended those shortcomings. After all, we do not reference their views on race; while Adams was a staunch abolitionist, we would (hopefully) find his thoughts on the inferiority of non-white races abhorrent today. Yet, for his time, he was far ahead of the curve.

Yet another fact that ought to have Dominionists shaking in their boots is that prior to the American Revolution, many of the colonies had state-sponsored churches, and these were dismantled in the time span around the Revolution. On what basis then do they argue that the Founders wanted a "Christian Nation"?

Next is an analysis of Deism and its roots in the Enlightenment, and the impact that Thomas Paine had on many of the founders. Holmes points out how much Deists, and the intellectuals of the time in general, valued reason over all else -- this led them to abandon much of Christian orthodoxy. Critical to his later analysis of individual Founders' beliefs is a careful examination of what language Deists of the time used to refer to God:

In place of this Hebrew God, Deists postulated a distant deity to whom they referred with terms such as "the First Cause," "the Creator of the Universe," "the Divine Artist," "the Divine Author of All Good," "the Grand Architect," "the God of Nature," "Nature's God," "Divine Providence," and (in a phrase used by Franklin) "the Author and Owner of our System." The Declaration of Independence displays precisely this kind of wording and sense of a distant deity.

Far too often I run into someone who presents a random quote from Jefferson, Franklin, or whoever, that refers to God in this way; this is offered as conclusive proof of our country's foundation in Christianity. This is a way to quickly identify someone who needs to read more American history.

... Deists despised political and religious despotism. Their fundamental belief in reason and equality drove them to embrace liberal political ideals. In the eighteenth century, many Deists advocated universal education, freedom of the press, and separation of church and state.

(emphasis mine)

The next few sections are an in-depth analysis of the religious views of Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Holmes has gone through much of these men's correspondence and compiled an excellent overview of their belief systems. Next is a look at the wives and daughters; excepting for Abigail Adams, most of the Founders' wives were far more orthodox than their husbands. In a later section, Holmes discusses why Deism failed in the U.S., and this turns out, at least in part, to be that because while Deism took hold among the men, it failed to gain traction with the women. Children were almost exclusively raised by their mothers, especially during the Revolution. Of course, there were orthodox Christians in the revolutionary movement, and Holmes takes a look at three -- Samuel Adams, Elias Boudinot, and John Jay. Holmes closes the main sections with a few pages looking at how the past is different; included in this is:

Today many Americans are concerned that their presidents be sincere men and women of faith. These founding men and women were often sincere believers. But their faith differed -- often markedly -- from that which many Americans have held in later centuries. Writers need not revise history to align the founders' beliefs with their own. Americans can tell their story unhesitatingly, warts and all.

The implication here seems to be that the Founders' religious beliefs are a wart -- something I'd take issue with. The epilogue is then a depressing illustration of recent presidents' evangelism and how much religion has played a role in presidential elections. Today, American politicians pander to the religious crowd. We've come far since the Revolution, but in the wrong direction.

I was hoping for a more direct analysis of the "Christian Nation" nutjobs, and I'm always on the lookout for a comprehensive book on the subject (instead of random snippets around the web). This book makes a strong and convincing positive argument for the U.S. being founded on secular principles, and a positive argument is critical to any position -- an opinion cannot be formed on a negative argument alone. Yet, reading a negative argument against a position you disagree with is so much more fun.

¹ I'm going to commit my own nomenclatural blunder here, and use the convenient term "Dominionists" even though there are clearly people in the U.S. today who do not necessarily want an all-out theocracy, but still believe in the "Christian Nation" concept.

You can't trust Bush with anything...

Not even to be a champion of Second Amendment rights. The case before the Supreme Court right now, District of Columbia v. Heller, on the constitutionality of D.C.'s ban on handguns, has the administration asking that the Court send it back to a lower court:

... brief filed by U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who represents the government and the Bush administration before the Supreme Court. Clement said that the court should recognize the individual right but that the lower court's ruling was so broad it could endanger federal gun-control measures, such as a ban on possession of new machine guns. Clement urged the court to send the D.C. law, the strictest in the nation, back to lower courts for further review.

If the Clinton administration had argued the same thing, the Republican party and the NRA would have leapt all over it and shouted about how the liberals want to take our guns away. What is it with people wearing blinders when it comes to the policies of people that supposedly belong to the same party? While this is clearly not the first infringement (understatement?) of civil liberties this administration has helped perpetuate, it is one I would expect the Right to be, well, up in arms about.

Follow up on Euthanasia

The woman I wrote about a few days ago has died after being denied her appeal for physician-assisted suicide (full story here). I hope some good will come of this and that the people who prolonged her suffering think back on what they made her go through.

Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright

Yes, there’s lots of talk about how Jeremiah Wright has said offensive things, and I’m not the first to point out that the religious right leaders have said similar things (see here), but I wanted to pull a bunch of these comments together into one place and do a direct comparison and talk about who is offended and why. And a bunch of other things.

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Wright vs. Prominent right-wing religious leaders

For one thing, I don't see how this is, for lack of a better term, new news. I remember some flap back in November about this, so it makes me wonder why this has come up again. But, let's review what Wright has said that's got people so up in arms.

Wright: "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." (link)

Wright: "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied." (link)

That's pretty harsh -- he wants God to damn America for treating some people very badly. I'd think God could do something better, like fix things. But anyway. He's definitely a nutcase, but is he any different from many other religious leaders? If not, why does it seem like the religious right are the ones with the bunched-up panties? Let's compare.

Jerry Falwell(speaking just after 9/11): "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen." (link)

So, unlike Wright, he's not asking God to damn America, he's saying God already did. I'm not sure which is worse. Plus, Wright, at least in the first quote, seems to think it would be punishment for treating people unjustly, while Falwell is saying it happened because we treat people justly. Wow. Let's move on.

Pat Robertson: "If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer." (link)

Do I need to comment on this? He's advocating destroying Washington, D.C. with a nuclear bomb. I don't care if he intended it to be a joke (and it doesn't seem like it), that is a statement from a whackjob. Lest you think that is an anomaly, take a look at this article (via Ed's blog) about Francis Schaeffer by his son:

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany. When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, "Wow, I'm glad something like that doesn't happen these days". *sigh*. Yeah, it does. Let's look at the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. He believes he is the second coming of Jesus, and held a coronation ceremony anointing him as such. Oh, and he was crowned by Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.)

Moon: "There is no doubt that this kingdom is one that the children of God's direct lineage can reign over by upholding the heavenly decree. In other words, it is a nation in which they rule on behalf of God's commands and kingship. Democracy and communism cannot exist in such a kingdom. Once established, it will remain as an eternal state system. Considering these things, isn't it mortifying that you have not yet become the citizens of that kingdom?" (link)
Moon wants to turn the U.S. into a theocracy. He owns the Washington Times!! Neil Bush travels with him!

This issue could doom Obama's candidacy, and, yet, Republican leaders (and a few Democrats) suffer hardly at all for arguably worse associations. Not to mention that these right-wing evangelists have much more power than Jeremiah Wright. Scared yet?

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Obama's Response

A couple of days ago, Obama gave a speech in response to the furor about Wright. It was a pretty good speech -- I thought that it was a good move politically to face this head-on.

I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Well, it's a start. I'm still unconvinced -- after all, Obama has attended Wright's church for a long time. I do not trust him on religious views -- he isn't much different from Mike Huckabee on that score (an excellent overview is here). Obama claims that his religion won't affect how he acts as president, but I don't see how that could be possible. Obama, while in favor of "civil unions", is still against gay marriage -- on religious grounds. Regardless, I find the attacks on him about Wright to be intensely ironic, especially given the next section...

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McCain and Hagee

McCain has recently accepted (and was "honored" by it) the endorsement of John Hagee, yet another right-wing televangelist. He has condemned Harry Potter as witchcraft (the ability of these people to determine fact from fiction astounds me).

Hagee: "All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that." (I cannot find a primary link for this, but it was said on NPR's Fresh Air on Sept 18, 2006)

This makes me sad -- after all, McCain had called Robertson and Falwell "agents of intolerance" during his 2000 campaign. Presumably, this would include Hagee as well. That was one of the things that raised my respect for McCain. Now? Has he recanted that statement? Does he not realize who Hagee is? Or is he simply pandering to the religious right? If the last (and let's be realistic), how much should we crucify a politician for doing what a politician does? Yet, part of his appeal (and Obama's too) is that they don't fit the traditional politician mold.

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I'd like American politicians to be far more secular, but I'd settle for a little less hypocrisy.

Dawkins

Well, my wife and I managed to get in to hear Richard Dawkins, although it didn't look like we would. We got there about 6:10 (it was scheduled for 7:00), and the line already wrapped around the building twice. It about doubled again before 7. Apparently there was a "reserve" ticket list which was not mentioned on the website, so we were pretty worried. The venue held about 1200 people, and when some of the organizers were walking around they estimated the line at about 2000. Fortunately (for us), there was some miscommunication about the tickets as a cop/security guard was walking down the line later saying all the tickets had been handed out. A lot of people left, but we stayed in line and lo and behold, there was another organizer walking down the line still handing out tickets. The talk itself was pretty entertaining; I enjoyed it, but I was somewhat disappointed. I was hoping that he would talk about the book (this was The God Delusion tour) instead of re-hashing what was in the book. That is, I was looking for him to talk about the reaction or his experiences writing it. Instead he covered (unfortunately rather superficially) most of the main topics. So, a little disappointing -- but he had some funny stuff too. Surprisingly, my wife enjoyed the talk too. I got my book signed. I'm satisfied.

Government Oversight

Ed Brayton has a short but depressing blurb about the Bush administration's lack of transparency and oversight here. I suspect there is going to be a lot of dirty laundry to be aired for whoever wins in November.

Arthur Clarke

Died today. It's sad. I wasn't a huge fan; he was definitely my least favorite of the Big Three. He was monumental in S.F. and did a lot for the genre. He will be missed.

Further thoughts on DNC re-voting

I wanted to say add a little to the previous post that I didn't have time for this morning and clarify some things. The plaintiff in this case is arguing from an equal protection standpoint -- but this only applies to how the government must treat people. On the other hand, as I pointed out originally, the First Amendment guarantees that private organizations can restrict their membership and set their own rules. Where this gets interesting is that the state primaries were funded by the state government, and government-funded entities are not allowed to discriminate. But no one was denied participation in the state primary -- they are only being denied access to the national convention, which isn't government funded. And that raises another interesting question that I am unsure of the legality of. If a state primary is funded by the state, on what basis do some state primaries have to restrict access only to party members? It seems there is a Fourteenth amendment problem there. I would be intested in hearing arguments about this. I'd like to see a case removing government funding from these elections.

DNC re-vote insanity

I've actually got a lot of beefs with our current two-party political system, and I'll be making posts on this topic in the future. Probably everyone's aware of the problems with the Democratic primary and Florida and Michigan being stripped of their delegates due to how they scheduled their primaries. Ostensibly, both the Republican and the Democratic parties are private organizations, but in reality, they are so intertwined with the government that I doubt they will ever be dislodged. That's a longer post for another day. But this seems wrong on the face of it. A lawyer is arguing that by depriving the Florida/Michigan Democrats of a say in the Democratic primary, they are being deprived of their 14th Amendment rights. That's a hopelessly wrong argument. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that private organizations have the right to set their own membership and rules, as the Boy Scouts were allowed to restrict membership to heterosexuals. The DNC lawyer has it right:

Joe Sandler, attorney for the DNC, told the three-judge panel that the committee is a private entity and "is actually exercising its own constitutional right by not seating delegates." "The point we were trying to make in court today is that it's up to the parties themselves to determine the best means of selecting delegates to the convention, and it's not really a matter for a court to resolve," he told reporters later.

On the other hand, the primary votes in both Florida and Michigan were paid for by the state governments. I'm not sure that's directly relevant to what happens on a national level with the DNC though. I don't think the government should provide funding so that an organization (that should be private) can hold an internal election. George Washington would be turning over in his grave about how much the parties are entangled in our government.

D.C. Gun Ban

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the D.C. gun ban today. I'll probably post something about the decision.

Dawkins at UT

Richard Dawkins is going to be speaking at UT on Wednesday, March 19th. My wife and I will be going. Very interested.

Macro-economics is not my strong suit...

I confess -- I'm bad at large-scale economics. I'll never understand international monetary policy; I have a hard enough time at the national level. That being said, there are at least two things that annoy me. Of recent annoyance is the subprime crisis; MarkCC has an excellent explanation from a while back. Essentially, both lenders and borrowers made bad decisions about who can afford what and the risks involved, and now much of the bank industry is teetering on collapse. Should the government help out? NPR has an analysis (also somewhat old). I agree with the sentiment there that this would be a 'subsidy for risky behavior'. The government should stay out of this -- the people and institutions involved in this should face the consequences of their short-sightedness; taxpayers should not be left holding the bag on their irresponsibility. Happily, the current resolution seems like a private solution will be implemented. We'll see. The second thing is, of course, the "recession". Economics on a national scale is really about confidence -- and I want to know how much effect does the media have by harping about the recession have on that confidence? Is there any way to quantify this effect? I'm not a media-conspiracy theorist; in general, I think the media tries to be objective and impartial. But in many ways they cannot help but be biased towards making a fuss. As an example, look at how unemployment is reported. There are two distinct metrics for the labor force - "unemployment rate" and "jobs gained/lost". Frequently these two run counter to each other. Here's an alarmist CNN article titled "Job losses worst in 5 years". Buried in there is the admission that unemployment is down. Of course, that metric is possibly deeply flawed; but you can bet that if it were reversed, they'd be reporting it the other way. Ahh, well.

Wow!

Well, the John Adams miniseries was about as good as I had hoped (at least the first two parts). I can't wait to see more of Jefferson, who was brooding and quiet, just like he should be. They did everyone well; Franklin with the wit, Washington with the quiet honor. I wish we had that new-fangled "DVR" thing though. My wife isn't American, and there were so many places where I wanted to pause and explain something. There were a lot of places where they didn't explain in detail what was going on. Hard to blame them -- already pressed for time and hopefully most viewers knew.

John Adams

HBO's John Adams miniseries starts tonight. I ordered HBO for one month so that I could watch, as this is based on the most excellent book by David McCullough. John Adams is one of my personal heroes and I hope this series does him justice.

Active Euthanasia

From Time: A woman who has a terminal and excruciatingly painful disease wishes to commit physician-assisted suicide, and she is awaiting a court ruling on whether this should be permitted. I ask: Why should any government care if an individual wants to commit suicide? What is the benefit to society in prolonging an unwanted life? Why don't articles such as this ask such an obvious question as: "What business is it of the governments?" The questions asked are "Do individuals have the right to end their own life?" instead of "Does the government have the right to restrict what an individual freely chooses?". The distinction is in the form of whether rights belong to individuals or are they granted by the government. I thought one of the main points of the Enlightenment is to establish the fact that individuals do have rights, and government's job is to protect them. So, whose rights are being protected here?

Welcome

Well, I've been meaning to create this page for a long time, and I finally got around to it. I hope to make at least one post a day, as I've got a ton of ideas. I'll use this space to rant about various things -- politics, anti-science nuts, and general principles. Those of you who know me personally probably won't find many of these ideas surprising. I don't pretend that any of my ideas are novel, but occasionally I feel a strong urge to blather on about things that matter to me.