Month: October 2004

Fear Strikes Austin’s Lefty Blogger

Holden at First Draft writes:

An anonymous commenter tipped me to a rumor that my hometown paper, the Austin American-Statesman, is planning to endorse Bush this weekend.

Frankly, I’m shocked. The Statesman‘s editorial page has been quite critical of Bush lately, and they’ve been endorsing several democrats in local races such as Mark Strama and Kelly White for state representatives over DeLay-whores Jack Stick and Todd Baxter. But this is no time to take anything for granted.

Make your views known. Anon suggests contacting publisher Mike Laosa: mlaosa@statesman.com or calling the paper at (512) 445-3500.

You might also try editorial page editor Arnold Garcia (512)445-3667 or sending an e-mail to editors@statesman.com.

Act now, espicially those of you in the Austin area.

Gee whiz! Can lefties be so deluded as to think that a newspaper’s endorsement makes a dime’s worth of difference to voters? Bush will take the electoral votes of Texas regardless of anything the Statesman or any other Texas newspaper has to say about the election.

My advice to First Draft fans: Don’t waste your time by calling or writing the Statesman. In fact, don’t waste your time by going to the polls on Nov. 2.

In the "So What?" Department

UPDATED

Eschaton is atwitter (scandalized? horrified?) at the possibility that the NRA is funding Stolen Honor, the anti-Kerry film about to be aired by Sinclair Broadcasting. I guess that makes Stolen Honor especially unworthy of consideration. Anything associated with the NRA must, by definition, be EVIL!!!

To top it off, Sinclair Broadcasting is exercising its First Amendment right in airing Stolen Honor, and the chairman of the FCC has said that the FCC won’t intervene to stifle Sinclair.

Frustrating days for the left.

UPDATE

Sinclair has backed down, in the face of legal and political pressure. Another example of legislation by litigation. It stinks.

But remember this, lefties, what goes around comes around.

Getting It All Wrong about the Risk of Terrorism

UPDATED



Gene Healy points approvingly to an article in Cato’s Regulation magazine about the risks of terrorism. According to Healy, the author of the article (one John Mueller)

collects the known knowns and the known unknowns about how much sleep we ought to be losing about dying in a terrorist attack. Mueller’s answer: not much. And we ought to spend more time worrying about the risks of overreaction.

Healy then quotes Mueller:

Until 2001, far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning, and almost none of those terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts….

Although there have been many deadly terrorist incidents in the world since 2001, all (thus far, at least) have relied on conventional methods and have not remotely challenged September 11 quantitatively. If, as some purported experts repeatedly claim, chemical and biological attacks are so easy and attractive to terrorists, it is impressive that none have so far been used in Israel (where four times as many people die from automobile accidents as from terrorism)….

Accordingly, it would seem to be reasonable for those in charge of our safety to inform the public about how many airliners would have to crash before flying becomes as dangerous as driving the same distance in an automobile. It turns out that someone has made that calculation: University of Michigan transportation researchers Michael Sivak and Michael Flannagan, in an article last year in American Scientist, wrote that they determined there would have to be one set of September 11 crashes a month for the risks to balance out. More generally, they calculate that an American’s chance of being killed in one nonstop airline flight is about one in 13 million (even taking the September 11 crashes into account). To reach that same level of risk when driving on America’s safest roads–rural interstate highways–one would have to travel a mere 11.2 miles….

Why do we “seem” to be relatively safe from terrorism? Might it have something to do with diligent counter-terrorist activities since 9/11 — both here and abroad — such as rounding up a lot of illegal aliens and holding them indefinitely?

Does the record of domestic safety from terrorism since 9/11 mean that we’re out of the woods? By no means. Eight years elapsed between the first and second attacks on the World Trade Center. We made the mistake of letting down our guard after the first attack, which is why the second attack was successful — and catastrophic. Who knows what will happen next? Recent history proves that it’s idiotic to say that something is unlikely to happen because it hasn’t happened yet — which is precisely what Mueller is trying to say.

It’s similarly idiotic to compare the risk of terrorism to such activities as driving a car or flying on a schedule airlines. Terrorism isn’t a substitute for those activities — it’s an independent, unrelated act. Terrorism isn’t an accident with a fairly predictable probability of occurring. It’s a deliberate act committed by implacable enemies, against whom we must be on guard at all times. Being on guard isn’t hysteria — as Mueller would have it — it’s prudence.

If I were still the managing editor of Regulation, I would have resigned rather than abet the publication of Mueller’s fatuous analysis.

UPDATE:

Tom W. Bell at Agoraphilia has more to say; for example:

…Suppose that because devastating tornados strike your hometown only rarely, your $500,000 house faces a 1/5,000,000 chance of destruction by high winds each year. Although you could prevent that threat by extraordinary measures, such as building a concrete box around your house, you rationally calculate that you should spend no more than a dime a year on tornado protection ($500,000/5,000,000). Suppose further that your hometown faces a 1/5,000,000 chance each year of being devastated by a nomadic warrior tribe. Unlike tornados, however, nomads respond to incentives. Following one such raid, you might happily pay more than a dime towards your town’s Marauding Hoard Smackdown fund. You calculate that the temporary expense of chasing down and punishing the nomads will teach them a hard lesson, convincing them to take your town off their “to sack” list. The risk of further such attacks will thereafter drop, repaying your defense investment with future security….

I’m truly surprised that Peter VanDoren, the editor of Regulation, let Mueller’s shoddy analysis slip into the pages of his journal.

Save the Environment…

…by killing some trees? That might be the implication of this post by FuturePundit:

A number of factors have combined to increase volatile organic compounds (VOCs) air pollution from trees faster than VOC pollution from humans has declined….

The three major contributing factors are the natural reversion of abandoned farm land to forested land, the invasion of sweetgum trees, and the growth of large forests of pine trees for lumber….

What to do? Technology can provide the answer: plants used for biomass and trees grown for lumber need to be genetically reengineered to be less polluting. If better engineering designs can make cars less polluting then why can’t better engineering clean up trees and other natural polluters as well?…

There’s lots more, with links to the scientific sources.

The End of a Curse

The Red Sox have done something no other baseball team has ever done. By beating the Yankees last night, the Red Sox erased a 3-0 deficit to win a post-season series. More importantly for the Sox, by advancing to the World Series for the first time since 1986 they have broken the Curse of Bill Buckner.

Now, can the Sox win the Series and break the Curse of the Bambino? Stay tuned to your TV — but do it with the sound muted. The annoying Tim McCarver and the inane Al Leiter make for unbearable listening.

P.S. I’m a Yankees fan, but that comes second to being a baseball fan. I rejoice in the Red Sox’ display of skill and tenacity. Their unprecedented rally to win the American League Championship Series of 2004 ranks among the few greatest baseball “miracles” of all time.

Spinning at The Volokh Conspiracy?

Stuart Benjamin, writing at The Volokh Conspiracy, endorses Kerry: “The bottom line, in my view, is that people who believe in the old Republican credo of limited government had better vote for John Kerry.” The problem is that he cites Doug Bandow, whose “conservative” credentials I’ve discussed here and here, and some Cato Institute papers about spending patterns under various administrations, which I’ve debunked here and here. The bottom line: Benjamin’s argument rests on weak foundations.

Maimon Schwarzschild at The Right Coast sees through Benjamin:

…Stuart Benjamin, over at the Volokh conspiracy, posts that he is “disenchanted” by the Bush administration, and urges believers in “limited government” to vote for Kerry. Stuart’s post implies throughout that he is a small-government conservative disappointed, no, shocked at Bush profligacy.

As someone who knows and loves Stuart — he is one of those people that, if you know him, you are fond of him — I never, ever, for a moment doubted that he would support the Democratic nominee. Stuart is well within the academic political orthodoxy when the chips are anywhere near down. He would no more endorse Bush than most of his academic colleagues would. Stuart is very smart and a very good writer, and very good company too, and he was no doubt recruited to the Volokh Conspiracy in large part for those reasons, but he also provides leftish balance at an otherwise mostly rightward-leaning blog. The idea that Stuart is a typical Republican who, after sleepless nights and agonising reappraisal, has decided that supporting Kerry is the conservative thing do — and, therefore, that patriotic and reflective conservatives should join him and do likewise: well, how shall I put this? there is a spin element here….

Something Controversial

Just a bit of bomb-throwing for a quiet evening:

1. When it comes to intelligence, people aren’t created equal.

2. People of lower intelligence tend to pursue instant gratification in favor of long-term rewards.

3. Therefore, democracy undermines liberty because:

a. Those who seek instant gratification have inordinate influence over the outcome of elections.

b. Those who seek political power can gain it by appealing to those who seek instant gratification.

c. This confluence of interests eats away the constraints on government that are the bulwark of liberty.

Bad News for Politically Correct Science

REVISED

Richard Muller, writes at MIT’s Technology Review about developments in the pseudo-science of climatology:

Global Warming Bombshell
A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.

…In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the “hockey stick,” the famous plot (shown below), published by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. This plot purports to show that we are now experiencing the warmest climate in a millennium, and that the earth, after remaining cool for centuries during the medieval era, suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago–just at the time that the burning of coal and oil led to an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide….

Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick….

This improper normalization procedure [used in the computer program] tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not….

Some people may complain that McIntyre and McKitrick did not publish their results in a refereed journal. That is true–but not for lack of trying. Moreover, the paper was refereed–and even better, the referee reports are there for us to read. McIntyre and McKitrick’s only failure was in not convincing Nature that the paper was important enough to publish….

Then there’s the down-to-earth threat posed by “environmental tobacco smoke” (ETS). Mick Hume at London’s Times Online has this:

You’ve got to stub out that irritating fact

…Yes, of course it is true that smoking tobacco can cause cancer and terrible illnesses. But the scientific case against passive smoking is far cloudier. Just about the only thing we know for certain is that inhaling other people’s second-hand smoke can cause some irritation and the odd argument.

If you are wondering why the well-founded doubts about passive smoking are rarely aired, look at the extraordinary episode reported in The Times this week. The Royal Institution in London, a famous centre for scientific research and debate, has hired out its rooms to the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, for a one-day event entitled “The Science of Environmental Tobacco Smoke”. As a result, the Royal Institution finds itself under heavy fire from anti-smoking crusaders and senior medics for whom any debate about the effects of passive smoking must be stubbed out before it starts….

Not content with demanding a ban on smoking in public, it seems that the anti-ETS lobby wants a ban on talking about smoking in public too. Stub that fact out and extinguish that opinion immediately, my lad! This affair is a symptom of the spreading epidemic of tobacco intolerance — not a medical condition, but a new moral orthodoxy. It may soon be easier to smoke a joint than a cigarette on the street….

Worst of all, I cannot stand the way that passive smoking has been turned into a metaphor for that mantra of modern miserabilism: “Other people are ruining my life!” This was the spirit of morbid self-pity that Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, tried to tap into, arguing that restrictions on public smoking would ensure that “nobody will be bullied into a lifestyle they do not wish to join.”…

The unhealthy assumption behind all this is that smokers are helpless addicts in need of drugs and psychotherapy to save them from themselves, while the rest of us are hapless victims in need of state protection from other people’s putrid lifestyles. Never mind about passive smoking, how about launching a war against the cancer of passive living?

The more I learn about the misuses of science by those with a leftish political agenda, the more admiration I have for Bush’s refusal to be cowed by those who claim that he’s anti-scientific. I think he’s got a good B.S. detector, and he’s not afraid to use it.

Then there’s this, from William Kininmonth at Tech Central Station:

The Chimera of Carbon Dioxide Increase

It never fails to amaze how the media gullibly makes every piece of greenhouse gas trivia into a feeding frenzy about global warming. A claim currently making the international media rounds is that for the past two years carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been increasing at an annual rate greater than two parts per million (ppm). This is to be compared with previous rates of about 1.5 ppm, and described as a cause of concern….

The sad fact of the matter is that…[s]ome relevant numbers have been collated and interpreted for the media as something alarming. The truth is much more prosaic….

[T]here are six well-distributed sites extending from the Arctic to the Antarctic with long and nearly complete records of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration…..

[T]he increase in concentration from 2001 to 2002 exceeded 2.0 ppm at only two of the six stations. The average of all stations exceeded 2.0 ppm but only because of an unexplained large increase at the South Pole site, far from centres of industrialisation.

It is widely acknowledged, and borne out by data, that the year-to-year increase in concentration is greater during El Niño events, when tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures are unusually warm. This factor explains the larger than normal increase from 2002 to 2003. However, it should also be recognised that the annual increase to 2003 was significantly less than during the major El Niño event of 1997-98, a point lost in the media hype….

For more about pseudo-science and the misuses of science, read this and follow the links.

A New Curse for the Red Sox

UPDATED, BELOW

All baseball fans and many non-fans know that the Boston Red Sox have failed to win a World Series since 1918, having appeared vainly in the Series of 1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986. That failure has been attributed to the Curse of the Bambino — Bambino being a nickname for Babe Ruth. Ruth played for Boston from 1914-19, first as an excellent pitcher and then as a slugging outfielder. The Sox won three American League pennants during Ruth’s tenure (in 1915, 1916, and 1918), and each time went on to win the World Series. But Ruth was traded to the Yankees after the 1919 season. The rest is history: post-season futility for the Red Sox and dominance for the Yankees — a mediocre team until Ruth’s arrival.

To make matters worse for Red Sox fans, a new curse has descended on the franchise. I trace the new curse to pivotal play in the 1986 Series. Here’s what happened, according to the New York Mets:

In Game Six of the World Series, the Mets complete a miracle, two-out comeback from 2 runs down in the bottom of the 10th, when Mookie Wilson dribbles a ground ball through Boston first baseman Bill Buckner‘s legs to score Ray Knight for a 6-5 victory.

The Mets then went on to win the win the seventh game, and the World Series. Now look at the Red Sox post-season record since 1986:

1988 AL Championship Series Oakland Athletics Lost 0-4

1990 AL Championship Series Oakland Athletics Lost 0-4

1995 AL Division Series Cleveland Indians Lost 0-3

1998 AL Division Series Cleveland Indians Lost 1-3

1999 AL Division Series Cleveland Indians Won 3-2
1999 AL Championship Series New York Yankees Lost 1-4

2003 AL Division Series Oakland Athletics Won 3-2
2003 AL Championship Series New York Yankees Lost 3-4

The sharp-eyed reader will have noted that the Red Sox have failed to advance to the World Series since the year of Buckner’s boot. That’s because the Red Sox are now suffering the Curse of Bill Buckner. Not only can’t the Red Sox win a World Series, they can’t even get into the World Series.

Will the Sox break the spell this year? At this point — with the Yankees leading the American League Championship Series 3 games to 1 — it would take something of a miracle. I expect the Curse of Bill Buckner to prevail.

HERE, I BEGIN TO EAT CROW (10/29/07)

The Red Sox performed the miracle and won the ALCS in 2004. They went on to win that year’s World Series, and encored in 2007.

The Yankees, in the three postseasons since 2004, have failed to advance beyond the first round of playoffs. And this year (2007) the Yankees failed to win the AL Eastern Division title for the first time since 1997.

It has now been seven years since the Yankees won a World Series (in 2000, over the New York Mets). Had the Yankees not folded in the 2004 ALCS, the story might be an entirely different one.

It is evident that the Yankees now suffer under a curse, which I hereby name “The Curse of 2004.”

Just As Effective as Peace Negotiations

From an AP story:

Despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have returned to terrorism, at times with deadly consequences.

Why waste the paper on “pledges”? We should know by now what they’re worth — especially peace pledges extracted by Jimmy (the Dupe) Carter.

War Can Be the Answer

“Israel proves there is a military solution to terrorism.” That’s the subhead on a piece at OpinionJournal by Bret Stephens (easy registration required). Some excerpts:

…[F]or most Israelis, and for many Palestinians too, the violence of the intifada–which entered its fifth year this month–seems to be in recession. Anyone who visits Jerusalem today will not see the ghost town it was in 2002, when Israel was absorbing an average of one suicide bombing a week. And anyone who visits Ramallah will find what is, by (non-Gulf state) Arab standards, a calm and economically prospering city, where the only Israeli-made ruin is the Palestinian Authority headquarters, deliberately kept that way as a monument of Arafatian agitprop.

How did things improve so dramatically, and so quickly, for Palestinians and Israelis alike? Begin by recalling Israel’s assassination, in late March, of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. At the time, the action was all but universally condemned as reckless and counterproductive. “By granting Yassin the martyrdom he craved, the Israelis have provided a motive for new suicide attacks,” went an editorial in the normally pro-Israel Daily Telegraph of London. “More young Palestinians will fall in love with death, and more Israeli civilians will die with them.”

Yet what followed for Israel were nearly six consecutive terror-free months. This wasn’t because the Palestinian terror groups lacked for motivation to carry out attacks. It was because they lacked for means. The leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Yasser Arafat’s own al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades had to spend their time figuring out how to survive, not on planning fresh attacks. The Israeli army incarcerated terror suspects in record numbers–some 6,000 now sit in Israeli prisons–which in turn helped yield information for future arrests. Most importantly, the security fence has begun to make the Israeli heartland nearly impenetrable to Palestinian infiltrators. (August’s double suicide bombing in Beersheba happened precisely because there is still no security fence separating that town from the Palestinian city of Hebron, from where the bombers were dispatched.)

Taken together, these measures prove what a legion of diplomats, pundits and reporters have striven to deny: that there is a military solution to the conflict….

As for Israel, these past four years have also brought its share of lessons. Tactically, Israeli security forces learned, after a shaky start, how to suppress a massive terrorist-guerrilla insurgency, a remarkable accomplishment U.S. military planners would do well to study. Strategically, a majority of Israelis concluded that while peace with this generation of Palestinian leaders is impossible, separation from them is essential. And morally, Israel learned that even the most fractious democracy can stand up to a prolonged terrorist assault, and choose not to yield.

It’s a choice made easier when you know there is no alternative.

We have no alternative, either. Let us hope that Americans — who feel more secure than Israelis — can grasp the lessons that flow from Israel’s experience.

The Washington Post’s Idea of Balance

From a WashPost story about 527s:

…Named after a section of the tax code, the 527 groups are doing much of the advertising and field work traditionally left to party organizations….

Until recently, virtually all the money going to 527s went to Democratic groups. But in the last few months, Republicans have balanced the equation, collecting $1 out of every $3 raised….

So, Republican-oriented groups are collecting one-third of the money going to 527s and that’s balanced? I guess that’s as much balance as the Post can stand.

Of course, whoever’s money it is doesn’t matter to me. The real issue is freedom of speech, and 527s are a convenient way of ensuring that it’s not completely quashed when it comes to elections. But the incumbents in Washington will keep trying to find a way to quash it completely. “Money in politics” scares them because it can be used against them.

None Dare Call It Terrorism?

Why do the media — and even the military in Iraq — insist on dignifying terrorism by calling it insurgency. Latest case in point, from the Times:

We’ve Seen the Enemy and They Are … Who, Exactly?

By EDWARD WONG

Published: October 17, 2004

BAGHDAD — To hear the American commanders in Iraq tell it, William Butler Yeats could well be the poet laureate of Iraq’s insurgency. If the guerrillas were to win this war with their suicide car bombs and televised beheadings, what would come next? Nothing, the commanders say, but a widening gyre, and things falling apart, and, finally, mere anarchy being loosed in the cradle of civilization.

“This is a negative insurgency,” Brig. Gen. Erwin Lessel, deputy director of operations for the multinational forces, said in an interview inside the fortified American headquarters here, near where two powerful bombs killed five people on Thursday and left the Americans bracing for more mayhem at the start of the holy month of Ramadan. “Unlike a classical insurgency, these groups don’t offer anything.”

“They’ve got differing goals, competing ideologies,” he continued, “and don’t offer anything positive for the government.”…

That’s because they’re g**d***** terrorists — nothing more. Let’s start calling a hand-held excavating tool a spade.

This Is Disturbing News from Iraq

What I don’t know is whether it’s disturbing news about the chain of command or about the unit that refused to conduct a mission:

Unit That Refused Iraq Duty Said Released

Sat Oct 16, 7:46 PM ET

By REBECCA YONKER, Associated Press Writer

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The grandfather of an Army Reserve soldier whose platoon refused to deliver supplies in Iraq said his grandson told him Saturday that he and other soldiers had been detained by military authorities but were later released. Meanwhile, military officials said commanders reassigned five members of the unit.

Some in the platoon had told relatives they refused to deliver tainted helicopter fuel in poorly maintained vehicles by traveling a dangerous supply route without an armed escort.

The Army is investigating up to 19 members of the platoon, which is part of the 343rd Quartermaster Company based in Rock Hill, S.C. The unit delivers food, water and fuel on trucks in combat zones. A criminal inquiry was expected….

A coalition spokesman in Baghdad said “a small number of the soldiers involved chose to express their concerns in an inappropriate manner, causing a temporary breakdown in discipline.”…

On Wednesday, 19 members of the platoon did not show up for a scheduled 7 a.m. meeting in Tallil, in southeastern Iraq, to prepare for the fuel convoy’s departure a few hours later, a military statement said.

The mission was carried out by other soldiers from the 343rd, which has at least 120 soldiers, the military said….

Stay tuned. This one is going to be demagogued, left and right, regardless of the truth of the matter.

But I do wonder how the mission could be carried out be other soldiers if it was a suicide mission.

I Know What Some of You Are Thinking…

…about this story:

Court: Terror Fears Can’t Curb ‘Liberty’

Sat Oct 16, 7:06 PM ET

By C.G. WALLACE, Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA – Fear of a terrorist attack is not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest, a federal appeals court has ruled, saying Sept. 11 “cannot be the day liberty perished.”

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news – web sites) ruled unanimously Friday that protesters may not be required to pass through metal detectors when they gather next month for a rally against a U.S. training academy for Latin American soldiers.

Authorities began using the metal detectors at the annual School of the Americas protest after the 2001 terrorist attacks, but the court found that practice to be unconstitutional….

But it’s not nice to say it in a blog. Curb your enthusiasm.

"Red Sox Fear"?

Susan Estrich, in a pre-emptive complaint about “disenfranchisement”, says,

Red Sox fear animates the Kerry campaign, and Democratic activists across the country.

What’s that all about? Is she off her meds? Is she hallucinating?

“Red Sox fear” — what a great slogan. I can see the T-shirts.

The only thing the Red Sox have to fear is themselves.

Irrational Risk Aversion at Work

Daniel Drezner is listing heavily toward Kerry. Here’s a telling remark:

Given the foreign policy stakes in this election, I prefer a leader who has a good decision-making process, even if his foreign policy instincts are skewed in a direction I don’t like, over a leader who has a bad decision-making process, even if his foreign policy instincts are skewed in a direction I do like.

In other words, because Drezner is afraid of the small probability that he will be killed in a traffic accident he would rather walk to the corner store, and be ripped off, than get in his car and drive to Wal-Mart. When did the oyster replace the eagle as America’s symbol?

To change the metaphor, think of Kerry’s foreign policy as a zero. Kerry is a whiz at multiplication, but no matter how well he multiplies, the result is always zero. Bush, on the other hand, has a foreign policy with a value of, say, 10. According to Drezner, Bush may sometimes multiply that foreign policy by zero and get an answer of zero — but not always. Bush’s answer will usually be closer to 10 than zero.

Anyway, who says Kerry has a better decision-making process than Bush? That’s all hype. Kerry keeps asking questions because he’s searching for his principles and can’t find them. There’s more about Kerry’s vaunted decision-making style here.

Trying to Overcome Our Past

Daniel Henninger, writing at OpinionJournal, explains why “Change Is Inevitably Not Popular.” Here’s his key point:

…After three presidential debates, it is clear that George Bush is asking the American people to make[an] abrupt break with the comforts of the political past. Proposals such as Social Security privatization or individually run health-savings accounts are not being offered as just an intriguing “policy” alternative. These ideas are an historic necessity to surviving in the world economy as it exists today.

Intellectually, the case for making the leap is compelling. Emotionally, the way forward is less obvious. Most Americans have already adjusted to the disturbing realities of Iraq and of waging–and leading–a war on global terror. But it’s quite a lot to ask them in the same election to step away from 50 or more years of federally guaranteed social protection. That would have been large without Iraq and terror.

The Kerry campaign is riding on the belief that the American electorate, at the margins in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, isn’t ready to make the break. And they may be right. That to me is the meaning of the relentlessly close poll results that persist in this election. John Kerry is a fundamentally weak presidential candidate, but about half the electorate is uncertain whether it is able to sign up for all the risk and uncertainty implicit in the next Bush presidency.

That’s what 100 years of regulation and 70 years of welfare dependency will do to you. As Henninger says,

Back in the 1920s, Republicans won presidential elections with whopping 60% majorities. Calvin Coolidge presided over an economy growing at nearly 5% annually. A nation tied to business success was working. The Depression changed everything.

Very few Americans can remember the 1920s. Too many can remember the Depression and its legacy of misplaced faith in the regulatory-welfare state. It’s not clear that we can overcome that dependency. Hang on for a bumpy ride.

Due Process of Law

Jeff Jarvis asks “Would you go to jail for your weblog?” It’s a long post about the case of Judith Miller of The New York Times, who’s been jailed for contempt in her refusal to name sources in the Valerie Plame case. Jarvis wants to make Miller’s plight into a First Amendment case. It’s not that at all, as I said in my comment to Jarvis’s post:

There’s no freedom of speech or freedom of the press issue here. What’s at stake is due process of law, and that’s what Miller and her ilk are trying to subvert.

Someone — presumably a government official — may have committed a crime. The press has no right to thwart the investigation of a crime.

The Remarkable Mind of Roger Penrose

It’s been a while since I read Roger Penrose’s Shadows of the Mind, an exploration of consciousness and the possibility of replicating it in computers. Penrose is a scientist with his head screwed on right, as I am reminded by an article by Martin Gardner in The New Criterion, “Theory of everything.” There, Gardner reviews Penrose’s new book, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe.

First, Gardner summarizes Penrose’s views on the replicability of consciousness:

…Penrose’s two best sellers, The Emperor’s New Mind and its sequel, Shadows of the Mind, were slashing attacks on the opinions of a few artificial intelligence mavens that in just a few decades computers made with wires and switches will be able to do everything a human mind can do. Advanced computers, it was said, will some day replace the human race and colonize the cosmos! Penrose disagrees. Not until we know more about laws below the level of quantum mechanics, he argues, can computers cross that mysterious threshold separating our self-awareness from the unconscious networks of computers. Maybe the threshold will never be crossed. Computers of the sort we know how to build obviously are no more aware of what they do than a typewriter knows it is typing….

Amen.

Now, on to physics:

Penrose is frank in admitting that he has “prejudices” which other physicists reject. For another instance, he is not impressed by the “many-worlds interpretation” of quantum phenomena. According to this eccentric view, every time a quantum event takes place the entire universe splits into two or more parallel universes, each containing a possible outcome of the event!

Take the notorious case known as “Schrödinger’s cat.” Imagine a cat inside a closed box along with a Geiger counter that emits random clicks. The first click triggers a device that kills the cat. Some quantum experts, notably Eugene Wigner, believed that no quantum event is real until it is observed by a conscious mind. Until someone opens the box and looks, the poor cat is a “superposition” of two quantum states, dead and alive. In the many-worlds interpretation the cat remains alive in one world, dies in the other. This proliferation of new universes, like the forking branches of a rapidly growing tree, naturally must include duplicates of you and me!

If these billions upon billions of sprouting universes are not “real” in the same way our universe is real, but only imaginary artifacts, then the many-worlds interpretation is just another way of talking about quantum events. Yes, the talk erases some of the bizarre concepts of quantum theory, but with such an enormous violation of Occam’s razor….

And that’s just a taste of the nuggets to be mined in Gardner’s review. Makes me want to buy the book.