I’ve been reading Hendrik Hertzberg’s “Politics: Observations and Arguments” (“Powells”:http://www.powells.com/partner/29956/s?kw=Hendrik%20Hertzberg%20Politics , “Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=henryfarrell-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0143035533%2Fqid%3D1136742549%2Fsr%3D8-3%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_3%3Fn%3D507846%2526s%3Dbooks%2526v%3Dglance ) over the last couple of days, and I’m greatly taken by it – witty and intelligent political journalism. I was particularly taken with his coined term, the “expectorate,” which refers to those “journalists, consultants and spin doctors,” (and today, one would presume, bloggers) who manipulate or present expectations about who is winning or losing in American politics. It deserves to be more widely known. Are there other coinages out there deserve wider circulation? Off the top of my head, I can think of Kim Stanley Robinson’s term ‘mallsprawl’ – much catchier and more evocative than the anodyne and uninformative “Edge City”, but “scarcely known”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22mallsprawl%22&btnG=Google+Search to the wider public. Philip K. Dick’s ‘kipple,’ junk that seems to reproduce itself, has done somewhat better (it has a “Wikipedia entry”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kipple), but not as well . Any others?

There’s been much discussion in both the mainstream media “and the blogosphere”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_25-2005_12_31.shtml#1135724598 about the possibility of an attack on Iran by either or both the Israel and the United States in order pre-emptively to destroy any Iranian nuclear weapons capacity. As is well-known, the “United States National Security Strategy”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html contains the following doctrine:

bq. The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction — and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.

Given the more or less open preparation for an attack on Iran, it is hard to see how such a doctrine could not now be invoked by Iran to justify a pre-emptive strike against Israel (or, indeed, against the United States). I wonder how far the bloggers who are advocating (or pre-emptively justifying) an Israeli attack on Iran would be willing to concede the legitimacy of such anticipatory self-defence by Iran? My own view is that such an attack on Israel would be criminal, but I’m not sure that the hawks could consistently agree with me about that. Indeed, given the supposed _imminence_ of an Israeli/US attack on Iran — as compared to the more long-term and speculative threat Israel faces from Iran — Iranian pre-emption looks more justifiable ( at least, _by traditional just-war criteria_ ) than an Israeli attack on Iran.

Microsoft showcased the new features of “Windows Vista”:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx (due for release late 2006) at “CES”:http://www.cesweb.org/. Some people got a sense of “deja vu”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/, so they took the Microsoft keynote speech and matched the audio demoing the new features to video from elsewhere. So now Windows users can see what exciting, innovative, ground-breaking features are coming in the areas of “the user interface”:http://maclive.net/sid/134, and “smart search technologies”:http://maclive.net/sid/135.

David Moles has found something funny – in an ‘if a lion could speak the language of topology, we would not able to catch him’ vein:

* We place a spherical cage in the desert and enter it. We then perform an inverse operation with respect to the cage. The lion is then inside the cage and we are outside.

* The set theoretic method: We observe that the desert is a separable space. It therefore contains an enumerable dense set of points from which can be extracted a sequence having the lion as the limit. We then approach the lion stealthily along this sequence bearing with us suitable equipment.

* In the usual way construct a curve containing every point in the desert. It has been proven that such a curve can be traversed in arbitrarily short time. Now we traverse the curve, carrying a spear, in a time less than what it takes the lion to move a distance equal to its own length.

* The lion has the homotopy type of a one-dimensional complex and hence he is a K(Pi, 1) space. If Pi is noncommutative then the lion is not a member of the international commutist conspiracy and hence he must be friendly. If Pi is commutative then the lion has the homotopy type of the space of loops on a K(Pi, 2) space. We hire a stunt pilot to loop the loops, thereby hopelessly entangling the lion and rendering him helpless.

Reminds me of an old Steve Martin piece which I find here:

Soup Folding.

First prepare the soup of your choice and pour it into a bowl. Then, take the bowl and quickly turn it upside down on a cookie tray. Lift the bowl ever so gently so that the soup retains the shape of the bowl. Gently is the key word here. Then, with a knife cut the soup down the middle into halves, then quarters, and gently reassemble the soup into a cube. Some of the soup will have run off onto the cookie tray. Lift this soup up by the corners and fold slowly into a cylindrical soup staff. Square off the cube by stuffing the cracks with this cylindrical soup staff. Place the little packet in your purse or inside coat pocket, and pack off to work. When that lunch bell chimes, impress your friends by forming the soup back into a bowl shape, and enjoy! Enjoy it until the day when the lunchpail comes back into vogue and we won’t need soup folding or cornstalks up the leg.

I’m deeply disappointed in Daniel, Tom and Chris (especially Daniel, our house monitor of GG’s career) because this is the kind of news I expect to hear from them, not to have to provide by myself. Aren’t you all devotees?

BTW, do all the really unlikely contestants have the initials GG? Gary Glitter next, no doubt.

Lots of people have already commented on the announcement that the Bush Administration plans to cease funding reconstruction programs in Iraq when the existing allocation of $18.5 billion is exhausted. Some comments, here, here and here. Coming late, there’s not much for me to do but survey the field and toss in some numbers.

[click to continue…]

I just followed a link in our comments to a fascinating post from theorajones at True Blue. She wrote this back in September:

Every middle-class mother hears “immediate evacuation” and “5 days in the Superdome” and thinks, “Jesus Christ, I have no idea how much water I would bring for 5 days. Is it 5 gallons? Ohmigod, where are our passports? Do I have to bring the kids’ birth certificates? What about the deed to the house? Would I have time to get my mother’s jewelery out of the safe deposit, or is that selfishness that’s going to kill my children?”

Tell her that she’s got to evacuate without a car, and she’ll start shaking her head. Tell her she’s gotta do it in 18 hours, Grayhound and Amtrak are shut down, it’s 250 miles to get out of the hurricane’s path, and she’s got $200 bucks in her pocket, and every soccer mom will know with certainty what every soccer dad doesn’t get–that it’s impossible. Flat out impossible.

Matt Welch was the first journalist that I saw questioning some of the Katrina-related rumors about “dysfunctional urbanites too depraved to be saved.” He recently received an email from a contractor who was sent in to help rebuild. Take it with a grain of salt, but do go read it:

The one thing that haunts me the most is that when they finally started door to door search and rescue they would spray paint the front of the building, and it would contain the date of the search, who performed the search, how many were found dead, and how many were found living. As you probably know the flood waters came in on August 29-30. I can’t even begin to count how many homes that we saw that were not checked for survivors for the first time until the 24-26 of September. I would just like to know why it took almost a month to check these homes for survivors? There were people who starved to death because they could not escape their attics, and the resources were there to help them. THEY LET PEOPLE DIE!

Technorati’s “List of Popular Books”:http://www.technorati.com/pop/books/ introduces me to “There is Eternal Life for Animals”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0972030107/kieranhealysw-20, which argues that

bq. All animals go to heaven. How do we know? We look in the book that God left us, the Bible. This book takes you through the Bible and proves through the scriptures that there is life after death for all the animals. It covers: — God’s relationship with the animals; — The current life of the animal kingdom; — The future life of the animals and its restoration; — What animals are currently in heaven; — Whether animals have souls and spirits; — Praying for animals. There Is Eternal Life For Animals includes numerous Bible scriptures, opinions and commentaries from Bible Theologians, visions, stories, near-death experiences of children, and personal experiences. It also reviews many of the original Greek and Hebrew words and their translations.

I am tempted to buy the book and have it sent to “P.Z. Myers”:http://pharyngula.org/ as a gift. It’s true that if the book’s argument is right the downside for P.Z. is, of course, that there is a benevolent God filling up Heaven with our beloved cats and dogs. On the other hand, maybe the “beloved giant squid”:http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/squid_sighting_in_the_deep_dark/ are up there, too, in the deep-sea regions of heaven.

I’m interested to read the “What animals are currently in heaven” section. Does the author mean what _kinds_ of animals, or particular _individual_ animals? If the former, do Deer Ticks make it? Or Liver Fluke? If the latter, “Phar Lap”:http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/pharlap/ is surely there (despite also being scattered around Australia), but what about Garfield?

[click to continue…]

Law professor Glenn Reynolds quotes law professor Ann Althouse:

I wonder if those who screamed loudest about the Plame leak and national security are equally outraged about this new leak?

Pointing out this vile hypocrisy must be the zingiest zinger that ever zinged a zingee. They’re right, in way. Few of us who are upset about the outing of Valerie Plame are viscerally upset about the NSA leak, which we tend to see as a classic whistleblower scenario. As a dedicated Plame screamer, let me try to reply. (NOTE: Update below the fold.)

[click to continue…]

The news that 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded in Australia comes at the end of a year in which, to the extent that facts can settle anything, the debate over human-caused global warming has been settled. Worldwide, 2005 was equal (to within the margin of error of the stats) with 1998 as the warmest year in at least the past millennium.

More significantly, perhaps, 2005 saw the final nail hammered into the arguments climate change contrarians have been pushing for years. The few remaining legitimate sceptics (such as John Christy), along with some of the smarter ideological contrarians (like Ron Bailey), have looked at the evidence and conceded the reality of human-caused global warming.

[click to continue…]

Dwight Meredith:

Perhaps FISA is unduly restrictive. If so, let’s pass a better law. If, instead, we just let the President break the law anytime he decides to do so, we should not be surprised when some President decides to use that power in ways we find abhorrent. At that point, it will be nearly impossible to fix. No statute will be able to bind the President and both impeachment and constitutional amendment are very blunt instruments with long time lags. It is far better to decide what checks are needed before the fact.

Boy howdy. Other folks have used up most of the good points on the warantless wiretaps, but this point is absolutely vital. The White House has aggressively promoted the theory that the President can ignore the letter of the law if, in his judgement, national security would be better served by a different law permitting warrantless wiretaps, torture, etc. If the other branches of government give up the ability to constrain the President, they will likely never get it back again. Presidential campaigns don’t produce very many Cincinnatuses.

I’ve been a little surprised at the number of self-proclaimed small-government conservatives and libertarians who have stepped up to bat for Bush on this. The chasm between “Republicans” and “conservatives” continues to widen. I don’t see any way to reconcile the two. This country has had a pretty good run without subscribing to the theory of Presidential untouchability. The division of powers and rule of law seem to have paid some significant dividends. Letting them slip, even with the best of intentions, seems deeply, tragically unconservative. And yet the Pajamasphere seems intent on sneering at the press and cheerleading as the President jumps the rails.

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve $3.5 million in venture capital“, apparently.

Retrievr is an interesting experiment in matching up people’s sketches with photos on the photo-sharing site Flickr (granted, for now limited to a small segment of images on the service based on interestingness). There is definitely room for improvement, but it’s an interesting idea even if a bit off the mark regarding the matches for now.

I tried the service by creating some sketches of Christmas trees thinking there should be plenty in the recent Flickr pool.

Of these four, only the last one yielded any Christmas trees as results (only one of which was not itself just a drawing). The other hits were pretty random both in terms of shape and color depicting anything from cats and birds to close-up shots of flowers. One architecture image did make sense since it really does look like a tree (as noted by its creator in the photo’s title as well).

I played around with the system a bit more and realized that it may be most interesting for retrieving pictures based on color distribution. A blue-orange square yielded photos dominated by related colors.

It’s easy to find photos on Flickr based on topic (e.g. using tags or groups), but less obvious to find images based on color combination (there are exceptions, but these modes are less widespread). It is perhaps in that realm that Retrievr holds the most promise for now.

Mark Schmitt “provides some historical context”:http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2006/01/our_long_nation.html for the current wiretapping scandal, and reminds us of the main practical reasons why allowing the President to circumvent the law is a bad idea:

Roughly speaking, there have been four great showdowns over abuse of executive power in modern U.S. history. … These episodes have certain themes in common. Yes, one of them is that they were all hatched in the first term of Republican presidencies and revealed only after reelection, but that’s not the answer I’m looking for. … First, all of them produced a backlash. … The lesson seems clear: In a constititutional system, those who want executive power to be protected and respected, should be especially wary of presidents who take it too far. … Second, all of them involved creating a zone of extreme secrecy in which decisions, and even the processes leading to those decisions, were kept secret not just from Congress and the Courts, but _within the executive branch itself_. … Third, in these zones of extreme secrecy, in which nothing ever has to be justified to anyone outside of the closed circle, all sorts of insanity flourishes. Personal obsessions take hold and are pursued unchecked. Ideas that would be too embarassing to explain to anyone seem to make sense and are carried out. This was true in every example, from the nutball Castro assassination schemes hatched in the CIA to the idea of firebombing the Brookings Institution in the Nixon White House, to the bizarre excesses of Iran-Contra, such as delivering a cake shaped like a key and a Bible signed by Reagan to the Iranian clerics. … Given what we know about these previous episodes in which the executive branch created zones of extreme secrecy, I think it’s quite likely that we will soon learn that the NSA domestic surveillance program involved much more than just tracking people who received calls from known _al Qaeda_ suspects, something that I certainly wouldn’t object to. I don’t know what it will be — some have speculated that it involved monitoring journalists — but whatever it is, it was something that couldn’t be justified even within the administration.

This is a good counterpoint to the detailed legal readings provided by people like Orin Kerr: the fine-grain of the legal issues is very important, of course, but the political sociology of executive/judicial relations is a much broader topic than the proper reading of particular statutes. Mark reminds us that we have historical cases to remind us what tends to happen to the institutions of American government when its officials want to throw the cloak of secrecy over substantial parts of it — not just to keep things from the public but, as Mark says, to hide things from other parts of the executive.

After viewing an episode of “Fraggle Rock”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009RQSSW/kieranhealysw-20/ with my daughter, I am led to wonder whether the Emperor Gorg (shown here on the left) bears rather more than a passing resemblance to L. Ron Hubbard (on the right). In the matter of bearing, demeanor and possession of the notion that they rule the universe, they are of course indistinguishable.