First the CIA, then Mossad

The CIA never was very good at its job (the more important the prediction, the more likely the CIA is to get it wrong)--but, I always thought Mossad knew what "clandestine" meant and that they could even execute clandestine missions. Maybe not. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704479404575087621440351704.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hpp_sections_lifestyle

Pro-Union Economic Micro-Management

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/business/26procure.html?hpw This policy is a terrible idea: an invitation to corruption, inefficiency, inflation, union growth, preferences for big business over small business--basically, a massive incursion of populist-socialist government tyranny.

The Fourth Rail: Public Sector Unions

This is something people need to be educated about: public sector employment, especially when it involves unions, can develop into a self-reinforcing cycle of ever larger government workforces and ever lower efficiency. But, these public sector unions are powerful special interests. And, like all special interests, they benefit from a political dynamic whereby their advocacy produces major direct benefits for themselves and inflicts a diffusem mostly concealed burden on the rest of the country. Consequently, they are always more motivated and organized than their opponents--and both their numbers and their wages keep growing. 

A Restatement

This is an argument I have made repeatedly. It is one of the most important concepts, maybe the most important, to understand in regard to climate change. It is also made by Judge Posner, a conservative jurist on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and one of the nation's most influential legal thinkers and public intellectuals (he helped found the law and economics approach to judicial decision-making). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21view.html?8dpc

The Pied Piper's Song

If we really wished to induce the young to pursue science and engineering, we would more effectively convey its seductions. Instead of merely grinding them through the fundaments, we would also introduce some of the grand challenges and possibilities.   Here, for example, is a concept I just learned about--one which may be absolutely vital within the next 20-30 years--an attractive time horizon for current students: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing Many other possibilities lurk on near or far horizons: the promise of nuclear fusion, of discovering the "god particle" in a particle accelerator, of building a space ladder with nanotechnology, of computational neural interfaces, autonomous vehicles, gene therapy, tissue engineering.   If we had a pied piper who knew how to sing this song...

How Loopholes Create Monsters

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/us/politics/14cbc.html?hp

Everyone in Washington has known for years that the Black Caucus is a morally bankrupt laughingstock. The black elite is only interested in the black elite? Really? The NY Times is not only the paper of record, but the paper of revelation too! But, to be fair to the black elite, they are still sufficiently conscious of the "other" Black America to religiously support the socialist agenda of keeping the "other" Black America a ward of the state--and treating them as just such dependents and incapables as the Left-Wing elite has always assumed them to be.

Another Country

The first article is a bit long, but exceptionally well told and the basis of the follow-on pieces.

The problem with the death penalty: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=1

The morally bankrupt prosecutor attempts (rather ineffectually) to respond to the evidence against him:

http://corsicanadailysun.com/thewillinghamfiles/x46870434/-08-28-09-JACKSON-Guest-Commentary-Willingham-guilt-never-in-doubt

Response to the prosecutor's defense: 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/09/david-grann-response-to-jackson.html

The guilty, negligent Governor (Rick Perry) engages in corrupt practices to cover up his malfeasance:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/10/david-grann-a-sudden-dismissal.html

Now, tell me, what was the underlying cause of this result? I would call it lack of accountability among the prosecutorial class and their allies. We ought to consider a murder trial in which they stand as defendants.

 

 

I support the death penalty. To justify it, though, the trial process must be clean, competent, transparent, and imbued with legal mechanisms that hold legal officers accountable for maintaining this high quality. Having achieved this level of fairness, and so reduced the odds of erroneous conviction, I am willing to accept the inevitable, yet rare, instance in which an innocent is executed. Anyone who supports the death penalty must confess that such a miscarriage of justice is an unavoidable, yet acceptable, risk.

An Exemplary Study

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15391226 I consider this news both good and bad, but quite unsurprising. There are 100,000 chemicals in use today in America. Their impact on human health is not known, with a few exceptions. Do you know what it would cost to determine their impact? Hundreds of billions--plus which, these tests, to be thorough, would have continue for decades for each chemical, and new chemicals are invented every year. Also, these tests would not measure the interactions of exogenous chemicals in the human body--leaving a huge area of ignorance even if all this time and money were to be expended. For this case, the good side is reduced fertility in an overpopulated world--I've suddenly realized that Haiti and Africa and the Muslim world are in desperate need of flame-retardant lifestyles. The bad side is that this is the tip of the iceberg in a great many senses--this chemical has more nasty effects yet to be discovered, there are 100,000 other contaminants and essentially infinite possible interactions between them, and our life becomes more inescapably chemicalized every day.

The Nature of Thought

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_geary_metaphorically_speaking.html A clean, concise, and colorful reminder that metaphor is the foundation of human thought and creativity. It came to me in college that the first and most decisive sign of genius is facility in metaphorical thinking--I always look for this characteristic when I encounter a new writer.

Tyrants of the Soul

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/bc0129ll.html The suggestion that we treat Sharia as a "dangerous totalitarian ideology" just as we did communism in the Cold War is one I support. Unfortunately, I do not see much progress in the work of liberating the Muslim mind from the Koran's medieval mindset.

A Tale of Contrasts

http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15453166 A nice compare and contrast of two bills to address greenhouse gas emissions: the one Democrats are trying to pass vs. the one they should try to pass. The former is 1200 pages, the latter 40 pages--the difference is accounted for by vast doses of pork and the impossible thicket of new regulations stuffed into the former.

Another Shameless Retreat

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-445979/Teachers-drop-Holocaust-avoid-offending-Muslims.html But, doesn't this policy offend everyone else? Oh, that's right, only the opinions of those who explicitly threaten violence when they are offended count. If the Muslims in the West ever became competent at terrorism (so far it has been a consistent case of ad hoc amateurism with far more failures than successes), the West would finally be forced to undertake a rational response to the threat--it would export all the conspirators and their sympathizers back to their home countries. This should be done now, but without a strong spur it will not happen. And this spur may never come--they may fail to achieve competence as a result of their infatuation with irrationality (otherwise known as their worship of Mohammed's dreams).

Another Bush Legacy of Incompetence

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?ref=world 20 different, incompatible police training programs operate in Afghanistan. Bush had the responsibility to rationalize this system and he did not. This incompetence costs lives (including American lives) and money. The former Moron in Chief is culpable. Obama has now required standardization to fix another of the Bush disasters.