tsujigiri

The editorial comments of Chris and James, covering the news, science, religion, politics and culture.

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." -Douglas Adams

Saturday, February 15, 2003

Judea Perl, a UCLA professor, devised an algorithm called Beleif Propagation which is the basis of the powerful error-control decoding algorithms that go into the chips that I design. I found a mention of this algorithm on a blog called Due Diligence, which discusses the application of belief propagation to email spam filters. The blog author mentioned that Judea Perl is the father of Daniel Perl, and that Daniel Perl copy edited the book which introduced belief propagation. I've often fallen into a perception that science and academia are ivory tower disciplines, far removed from the shaky events of the real world. Obviously that isn't true. But it is somehow more surprising and unnerving when the theater of terrorism encroaches on my academic reading than when I just see it on CNN. It's as though they cheated, somehow bypassed the TV and barged directly into real life.

From BoingBoing: Listen to Bill O'Reilley be an ass hole. See a great cartoon from Reason magazine about how protest movements marginalize themselves by mingling with radical causes, insane people, and hippies who are far removed from the mainstream aspects of their rallying issue, the potential war in Iraq. Read the heroically convoluted sentece used by Chris to describe said cartoon.

Thursday, February 13, 2003

Mormons everywhere: the other day I was searching info on Jewish and Arab names, and one of my searches floated this lovely page to the top of Google's list: Book of Mormon Evidences. Somebody named Jeff Lindsay put a lot of time and effort into this site. I've scanned over it, and noted that many scholarly Mormon publications are cited, along with numerous Mormon archaology experts such as Hugh Nibley. It is truly amazing the volume of evidence you can come up with when you start with a forgone conclusion. I'm sold! Where's the next baptism? One link on this site contains a survey of evidence for horses and cattle in the pre-Columbian Americas. The page presents a number of photos of prehistoric pictographs, and quotations from old archaeology journals. Keeping true to the form of religious arguments, the page implies that because anthropologists lack complete and detailed explanations for all images and artifacts, the Book of Mormon must be the correct account. The page also notes that paleontologists believe animals related to horses existed in the Americas until they became extinct in 10,000 BC. The page does not explain how any of the "evidence" contradicts the extinction claim. I found another article on this subject in National Geographic which I think clears up the issue:
Prehistoric horses, which were much smaller than today's horses, standing about 4.5 feet (1.5 meters) high at the shoulder, became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Scientists considered it likely that hunting by humans was a factor in their extinction, but until now there was no hard proof. The first conclusive evidence comes from spearheads tainted with the residue of horse protein. They were found along with other animal remains on the river plain of St. Mary's Reservoir in southern Alberta, Canada. "In the past, we could really only attribute the demise of these ancient horses to climate and environmental changes," said Brian Kooyman, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary and the lead scientist at the dig. "There has been suggestive evidence at other sites—Lubbock Lake in Texas, for instance—that early peoples were utilizing horses," he said. "But this discovery raises the very real possibility that overhunting by the Clovis people played a significant role in the extinction." European explorers reintroduced horses to the New World several thousand years after the ancient ones died out.
'Nuff said.

Once again, Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay demonstrate why they're such clear-headed and prescient legislators: Some U.S. lawmakers want to ban French water, wine and move troops from Germany.

"France and Germany are losing credibility by the day and they are, I think, losing status in the world," the Post quoted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as saying. "They are walking a fine line that is very dangerous."

They forget to mention that when DeLay says "the world", he actually means "my office". I'm most concerned that my Democratic congresswoman wasn't mentioned by name in this article. I'm going to do my civic duty and call her right now. My district here in San Diego needs to be a leader, not a follower, on this issue. In fact, I'm going to suggest further steps, such as higher tariffs on French imports of re-issued Maurice Chevalier CDs and, of course, an outright ban on German Lederhosen.

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

This article tells the strange story of a Valentine's Day card for children which the word "Jihad" on it. Evidently "Jihad" appeared as the name of a child in some artwork which was used on the card. (I looked it up -- Jihad is not an uncommon Arab name). The presence of "Jihad" alarmed parents, so they removed the name in subsequent printings and replaced it with the Jewish name "Jared." I can understand the decision to remove "Jihad," but why not pick a name that has no relationship to the middle east at all -- like "Bjorn," or better yet, another Arab name with less stigma, like "Usama."

Student loans: I owe a bunch. While alone, in dark private places, I've often cursed the American system of virtual debt-slavery through student loans. I owe a lot. Too much. And salaries in my field are dropping. This editorial is right on the money: "The pre-bankrupting of America's best and brightest, the young men and women who attend private colleges and public universities, is one of our nation's enduring, quiet scandals." It goes on:
Average tuition and fees at a private college or university is $18,000 and rising at twice the inflation rate. Meanwhile, what students call "real" financial aid--grants and scholarships, not loans--keeps falling. The result is two-fold. The Rand Corporation estimates that 6 million Americans will be "priced out of the system" over the next two decades. And for those who bite the bullet, more students than ever (46 percent in 1990, 70 percent in 2000) end up taking out college loans.... College tuition is free or nominal in most industrialized, and many Third World, countries [look at Canada, for example]. The United States' insistence that students assume huge debts to pay for their college education is unusual enough that the Chinese government included it in its 2001 report of American human rights violations. Eliminating the debt racket wouldn't be difficult. Calling off the invasion of Iraq, for instance, would save an estimated $200 billion---that's six years of fiscally emancipated youth right there. Eliminating last year's $1.5 trillion tax cut--money that would have gone to rich people who won't miss it--would pay off everyone's student loans for the next 50 years.
There is a disease in the American system: an attitude that students are merely leeches who derive profit from their educations and hence must pay through the nose for what they walk away with. Not so in most other places. Here in Canada there is an absurd amount of money for students. And the tuition is cheap to begin with. And there's a huge social movement to make it lower! Grad students in Germany get paid like real engineers. It's staggering. The author of the above editorial might also have noted that Canadian education is shooting up in the ratings while US schools are plummetting. On one day I've never heard of the University of Alberta, and then the next day I read that its ranked #11 in North America. I think they might know what they're doing here with education.

James on the Statistics thread: Hendrik Hertzberg rules. This article, from The New Yorker about a month ago, demonstrates why. It was immediately seized upon by anti-Bush people and has shown up several places since, so you might have read it already. Apropos the statistics thing is this quote:

"'These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans,' Bush said in Chicago. 'Ninety-two million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money.' The first of these claims, as the Financial Times editorialized the day after the speech, is 'obviously bogus.' The second is true, but only in the sense that it is also true that if Bill Gates happened to drop by a homeless shelter where a couple of nuns were serving soup to sixty down-and-outers dressed in rags, the average person in the room would have a net worth of a billion dollars. Average, yes; typical, no. A typical taxpayer—one right smack in the middle of the income range—will get a couple of hundred dollars. And a worker in the bottom twenty per cent will get next to nothing—at most, a dime or a quarter a week."

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, yada yada yada. Politically, the smartest thing for Bush to do in the face of such damning evidence is the thing that he's doing: ignore it. It's similar to what Nixon advised Reagan to do in the Iran-Contra scandal: say nothing. People are stupid. If you act like you know what you're doing, people will assume you do. The entirety of mainstream society has effectively forgotten that George W. Bush was not elected to the Presidency. And now the Republicans control all aspects of the federal government. Perhaps it's not a mistake of categorization that The Prince is as popular as the B&N top-selling political books list says it is.

Statistics: According to Bush Inc, the average benefit from his tax cut is $1100 per household. There is subtle semantics here: the average benefit is $1100 per household, but the average household gets less than $100 in benefit. Similarly, the US census reports that Americans own an average of three horses per household. The average household, of course, does not own any horses. There's an old book called How to Lie With Statistics. While mathematical knowledge of probability and statistics has skyrocketted since that book was first published, little has changed in the rhetorical use of statistics by politicians to mislead the public.

Yes, we as Americans owe almost all we have to the evil, malicious, conspiring, secretive death cult known as the Freemasons, but check out what we owe to the Anti-Masonic Party:

Anti-Masonic Party. A short lived minor party which came into existence in western New York in the early 1830's in opposition to the Masonic order, of which President Jackson and many Democratic leaders were members. It held the first national convention in 1831 in which William Wirt was nominated for the presidency. Its anti-Jackson program attacked Catholics, foreigners, and secret societies. The national convention method of nominating presidential and vice-presidential candidates was subsequently adopted by the major political parties and is today a permanent political institution. [Martin, Michael and Leonard Gelber, Dictionary of American History, Littlefield Adams, Maryland: 1978, Page 25]

I love third parties, and not just for the camp value. Third parties usually either originate the ideas that slowly become accepted and institutionalized, or act as a catalyst for change. In the same book, the next entry is for something called the Anti-Monopoly Party, organized in Chicago in 1884. They wanted a graduated income tax, a national Department of Labor, the direct election of Senators, actual payment of the national debt, assistance to farmers, federal regulation of monopolies in interstate commerce, and economy in government expenditures. They weren't too keen on tariff protectionism and the granting of land to corporations, either. All of these planks can be located among the platforms of current major parties. My favorite contemporary minor party is The Prohibition Party. It doesn't look like they've updated their site for a while, but it has some great stuff, like this article called "Alcohol and the Bible". It teaches us, among other things, about old Christ-o's turning of water into wine at the marriage feast and instructs that "...we can be sure that the beverage Jesus made was a refreshing, nonalcoholic grape drink." Phew. So the Bible really will allow me to be a bigoted teetotaller. I was worried there for a minute.

Monday, February 10, 2003

Holy Shit! Canada may issue biometric i.d. cards!

Through the righteous vehicle of the Patriot Act, the US government has managed to push invasive ID policies on other countries that would not fly domestically:
Under the USA Patriot Act, passed by the U.S. Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, all Canadian citizens and landed immigrants will need ID with either a fingerprint or an eye scan to get into the U.S.
This kind of international intimidation couldn't possibly be part of the reason why so many people in other countries hate America and want to blow us up. I don't think the ID cards are inherently a bad idea. I've never really bought ultra-libertarian fears about ID cards. I do, however, think this action was extremely arrogant and hypocritical on the part of the US congress. But suppose Canada didn't go along with it: I think it would put such a dent in commerce across the border that the US would have no choice but to adopt lax or selective enforcement. I smell a can of worms. Thanks for the link, Jim.

Sunday, February 09, 2003

Interesting: These are the top-ten best-selling political books at BarnesandNoble.com:
  • The Savage Nation
  • Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism
  • Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right
  • War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
  • The Prince
  • The Prince (a different edition)
  • Letters to a Young Conservative
  • Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative
  • What Color is a Conservative
  • Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism
What a fascinating list. I'm especially intrigued by the double-occurence of Machiavelli's The Prince. I'm also little disturbed that this one classic title appears among current literature. Are Americans uniquely attracted to cynical governing philosophies right now, or is this just an anomoly at Brnes and Noble, perhaps due to a quirk of classification? Evan more disturbing, this was a reader review for Sean Hannity's Let Freedom Ring:
Sean Hannity sounds the call to return to the values that made America great in his first book "Let Freedom Ring". Hannity gives his perscriptions for combating liberalism at home and terrorism abroad, giving more freedom to individuals by curtailing the growth of government, returning taxes to the overtaxed (everybody), and instituting free market policies in our social programs. A great present for anyone interested in politics.
Fighting liberalism goes next to fighting terrorism? [mind boggles and head explodes again]. It is interesting to see so many comments in conservative literature about the sinister force of liberalism, as though it is some subversive force deliberately threatening to destroy the country. This is particularly disturbing given that the country seems almost completely split between conservatives and "liberals," (by liberals I mean people who can be called "liberal" in one way or another). A recent LA Times poll indicates that the support for Bush among voters is still hovering around 50%:
Just 45% of registered voters said they are now likely to support Bush for reelection, while 40% said they were inclined to back the Democratic nominee, the survey found. Fifteen percent said they don't now lean in either direction.
It is a little scary to see an increasing frequency of statements which label "liberals" -- apparently a good 40% of the population -- as no better than terrorists. The liberals are also said to "hate America." But I don't recall seeing statements by liberals that "conservatives are no better than bin Laden or Hitler" (with the notable exception of my opinion toward Ann Coulter). That sort of statement seems to me like a pretty hateful thing to say, and too often directed at the half of the population which is called "liberal."

While I'm on the subject of Ebooks.com, I'm starting to wonder whether the site has some political bent of its own. I saw this in the description of Communism: A History: "There is no more dramatic story in modern history, nor one more crucial to master, than that of how the writing and agitation of two mid-nineteenth-century European thinkers named Marx and Engels led to a great and terrible world religion that brought down a mighty empire, consumed the world in conflict, and left in its wake a devastation whose full costs can only now be tabulated." This is a very loaded description, and I'm left wondering whether the book will give me an objective history lesson, or whether it's a long editorial about how evil the Communists really were. What ever happened to history as objective reflection and analysis of past events? The Ebooks.com description sounds like it could have been written by the Young Republicans for Nixon.

I was just browsing over to the Ebooks.com, and I noticed that the number 5 best-selling ebook is the New International Version of The Bible. I'm not sure what to think about that... Most versions of The Bible can be downloaded free from hundreds of other sites. Yet people still choose to pay money for an electronic copy of the NIV Bible... [Chris' head scrambles and explodes]