Skating Vid

Neither him nor I will soon recover from that fall!

It's YouTube's Fault

Over at The Corner, Peter Suderman makes a good point: the VT shootings appear to be at least in part a product of the era of Internet self-glorification; in short, the age of YouTube. Perhaps they are a reaction to the fact we've gotten 90% of the way to Andy Warhol's prediction but not entirely: everyone can have his 15 minutes of fame but he needs to do something radical to achieve it. That may involve skating off a roof or killing a bunch of people. Same idea...

The Laws Didn't Help Here

Matt -

I'm actually very surprised that you're taking a position in alignment with the gun control advocates. I think you're being logically inconsistent. With respect to drug control laws, you recognize that it's impossible to affect in even the slightest degree the availability of drugs via criminal enforcement; and so the right thing to do is to accept that reality and work towards prevention, treatment, etc.

You need to break out of the leftist box for a second and realize that gun control laws are the same. You are not ever going to affect the availability of guns. People sometimes ludicrously point to Britain as an example; Britain is a little bitty island. What's the evidence? Well, it's illegal, for example, for a felon to possess a gun; and yet felons seem to get guns in great numbers.

Here's much more direct evidence: it's illegal for students to have guns at VT. And yet... well obviously. So given that you can't affect the availability of guns, what do you do? You make the legal ones available and tightly regulated (again, as we should be doing with guns).

And Matt, it's certainly a fact that if students who were so inclined were carrying for self-defense, this wouldn't have happened. The lunatic truly was able to dispatching 32 people with little bitty handguns because the sheep he was slaughtering didn't have even the most basic ability to fight back.

More Guns Is the Answer?

This is so outrageous! Gun advocates will yield to any rationale in an effort to protect their ability to possess lethal weapons.

From the NYT:

"In Virginia and on gun-rights blogs, some critics were challenging Virginia Tech rules that prohibit gun owners from carrying their weapons on campus. A committee of the State House of Delegates has considered legislation to override the ban, which is common at many other colleges.

No one can say for sure if allowing students and faculty members to carry arms would have prevented the rampage on Monday, said Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. “But they wouldn’t die like sheep, at least, but more like a wolf with some fangs, able to fight back.”

But Blaine Rummel, a board member of Virginians for Public Safety, an anti-gun group, disputed the notion that arming more people would reduce violence. “Virginia is second in the nation in the ease of getting handguns,” Mr. Rummel said. “If easy availability was a solution, Virginia Tech wouldn’t be in mourning today.”

Rutgers Hos, British Pansies, and God

Matt -

You say, wisely, with regard to the Rutgers "women's" basketball team:

I'm always amazed at how somebody you don't know, who is in many regards reckless and salacious on purpose, could hurt your feelings? How fucking sensitive must you be? How week is your self esteem?

Indeed. Allow me to tie that into the despicable, pathetic behavior of the captured British "sailors." Why do I put "women" and "sailors" in sarcasm-quotes? Because as you point out, only a little child cares so much about what someone - who, by the way, she's never met who's paid to be offensive - says about her that she goes on national television to talk about how hurt she's feeling. And likewise, what the fuck has happened to the pride of the British Navy? The legendary British Navy that projected British power and hegemony around the world? One of the sailors revealed that he was terrified because a guard flicked his neck with his thumb. So the whole stinking crew got so scared that they sucked dick for the mullahs on world television and disgraced themselves. WTF are they teaching these people? WTF happened to discipline?

John McCain was imprisioned in a Vietnamese prison camp for over 5 years and tortured. Not once in those long years of suffering did he defame his country 1/10th as much as these British sailors. And to tie it back to the disgraceful Rutgers team - have some goddamn backbone and act like an adult! The entire world does not, in fact, revolve around your feelings nor anyone else's.

Which, in fact, leads me to another point. 90% of Americans believe in God. Why? Well obviously everyone comes to that decision in their own way, and many don't come to it at all, really, instead just carrying on as they've been taught; but often when I ask people why, they say they're afraid of there being nothing after death. I've always found this a bizarre reason to believe in anything, but maybe the Rutgers/British Navy displays have a common connection with this belief. If you think that your feelings are all-important, then your desperate desire for an afterlife may, in your mind, somehow prove the very existence of that afterlife. A generation taught to believe that they deserve everything their hearts desire may extend that thinking even unto the Infinite.

All About the Definition

I absolutely agree with Slate's analysis, Matt. Here's another good one, although written in an unpleasantly partisan tone. (As a wise man said once, just because a Republican believes something doesn't mean it isn't true).

Reasonable people can disagree on how healthy the economy is right now, but as soon as you hear someone saying that some economic statistic is worse that it's been since the Great Depression, you've gotta assume something is terribly wrong - not with the economy, but with this guy's "statistic." In this case, we're using an early-20th-century definition of "savings" and assuming it means the same thing it did a hundred years ago.

It doesn't, of course. There's many reasons why it doesn't, but a useful one on which to focus is the issue of 401(k) accounts. There's over 3 trillion dollars invested in such accounts and they don't count as savings. Huh?

Moreover, I also agree with the other conclusion of the Slate article, which is that "savings" as defined in the saving rate is for dumbasses or very old people or a combination. Why on earth would you put your long-term money in a bank? The rates are ridiculous and the tax implications are grim. There has famously been no 30-year period ever when stocks did not outperform other asset classes. And these days it's easier than ever. There's these fantastic retirement mutual funds that have a target date and automatically adjust themselves into less-risky classes as the date arrives; there's index ETFs which give excellent diversification and very low costs; and of course there's employer matching which means that if you're preferentially "saving" instead of 401(k)-ing, you're giving away free money.

Is Negative Savings a Positive Decision?

What do you make of Slate's analysis?

Imus - Man, Martyr, Idiot

So Don Imus is sacked. I have to admit I listened to him but little and cared less. Why, then, do I bother to write?

Just the other week Newt Gingrich lampooned Hispanics as speaking "the language of the Ghetto" - a comment that is profoundly worse than calling the Rutgers NCAA Women's Basketball team "nappy headed ho's."

Imus insulted a dozen black women. Gingrich insulted a whole race. Imus is, by definition (shock jock), supposed to offend. Gingrich is supposed to govern with wisdom and empathy. Imus is a disc jockey. Gingrich is one of the most powerful Republicans on the planet, a potential Presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House. Imus was sacked because he represents corporations of modest intelligence and integrity. Gingrich, as a Republican, is held to no standard and is expected to have no integrity. He did, after all, try to impeach Clinton for lying about his BJ, in the meantime he was cheating on his own wife.

I'm always amazed at how somebody you don't know, who is in many regards reckless and salacious on purpose, could hurt your feelings? How fucking sensitive must you be? How week is your self esteem? Why even dignify him with a face-sucking meeting at the Governor's House? What do you care?

I don't even want to go into the obvious racial overtones here. Blacks can rail against Whites in the most offensive language possible but when Whites say "you people"...watch out!

Can't Control for Systemic Failure

You can control for a systemic error - i.e., if you know that "while cell-only voters were more supportive of John Kerry than voters overall," you can do the math to adjust a landline poll correctly.

But I certainly don't have your confidence about correcting for systemic failure. The landline poll is the pollster's principal means - other than exit polling, see below - of getting data. But a failure of landline polling - which I don't think has happened yet but will very soon - means that the pollsters won' t have the necessary numbers about relative biases among the cell-phone crowd to correct their data. Not only that, but as I said earlier it's not just about cell-phone only users. It's about people like me who routinely hang up on all pollsters, too.

And exit polling is very troubled in other ways. The reason is that people walk out of a polling booth in very different moods. Working voters are impatient, frustrated at the old volunteers who assisted them, and need to get back to work. It's the old, or college students, who'll have the time to approach the exit pollsters. And moreover they'll approach CERTAIN exit pollsters - it's been shown that college men will approach attractive young female exit pollsters in predicatably huge numbers while they'll blow past the earnest middle-aged collectors from a different agency. Those two pollsters will generally be asking different questions etc etc etc.

Bottom line being that polling has become a huge part of our governing process, and maybe it shouldn't be. It doesn't need to be at all; we have highly accurate polls every two years and we have mechanisms for people to lobby and contact their representatives. Why not ban public polling? I mean seriously? 1st-amendment concerns? HA! If people cared about the first amendment they'd have never allowed the monstrous McCain-Feingold law to be passed.

Polling

Your concerns are well-founded. Major demographic shifts are accompanied by underlying psychographic nuance, unfortunately the implications of these nuances as they pertain to polling are vague. It does seem that certain types of political polling skew Democrat, perhaps because Democrats are capable of articulating a position and are therefore eager to do so, IMHO. But seriously, there does seem to be considerable literature available at libraries on these matters. and it is a matter of considerable debate after the massive exit polling lapses appurtenant to the 2004 election scandal.

I do think you should be careful about rationalizing the behavior of the general public on your own behalf - for instance while 20% of our demographic uses cell phones as a primary point of contact (like you ad I), the pollsters are very capable of controlling for it: "While cell-only voters were more supportive of John Kerry than voters overall, they were similar to other voters within their own age cohort. Because of this, preelection telephone surveys that weighted their data appropriately by age were not significantly biased by the absence of the cell-only voters."

Then again, this doesn't help account for the massive polling lapse of '04, does it? Maybe there result is that our confidence intervals keep narrowing and the margin of error keeps climbing?

Bleg: Polls Statistically Justifiable?

I have a bleg for a good article on whether cell phones and aggressive telemarketing and the culture of generation X+ (X, Y, etc) together will make polls statistically useless.

Here's my premise. Whenever I get a call on my house phone, and I hear the words "I'm calling from National Research Associates" or whatever, I hang up. I know I can't make them stop calling since it's not a sales pitch, so there's no point in even complaining. I just hang up.

Behind the scenes, that removes me from the poll's sample. If that pollster called 100 people that day, and 50 of them hung up on him, and 30 of them told him that they like Obama, for example, then for the purposes of their calculations 60% of people like Obama. The problem is that if people who like Obama are less likely to hang up then you can't conclude that at all!

So here's the factors involved. Many people my age don't even have land lines. Others, like me, have them for 911 and making local / 1-800 calls, and generally don't ever receive legitimate calls on them. Even among people who have and use land lines, they're inured to sales calls and push polls. And even if they aren't specifically upset at telemarketing, it's so NOT Gen-X to tell a phone pollster how you're feeling.

This article has a little bit on the cell-phone angle but I think it goes deeper than that. Given that politicians generally, and your beloved Dems especially, follow polls like they were God's received Word, won't this distort the governing of our country? Possibly catastrophically? Crappy decrepit old people already run politics; what happens when not only are they disproportionately voting and contributing, but also disproportionately just answering a landline phone???

This is an official formal bleg for a good article about that.

Do Not Click This Button

Don't follow this link

Bush's Baselessness

Matt -

You missed the point of what I was saying about a "baseless drive to war." My impression was that you and Rony were arguing that's what was going to happen again, as it did in Iraq; and I was arguing it wasn't. So you're right - if there's an actual provocation, and war happens, then clearly that's not in the realm of what I was advocating.

Am I arguing that there will be no war absent an Iranian provocation before 2009? Yes.

Do Sex Offenders Have A Place In Church?

Funny. Statistically speaking, the clergy is more likely to be sex offenders than the general public...Perhaps this debate is misdirected?

Our Wager on War With Iran - Part II

Elaborately argued. Your points detailing war scenarios are well laid out but a bit obvious, as you admit in your "positions" section. Your principal contention that "Bush [is] going to perform another no-holds-barred predetermined baseless drive to war: fabricating and distorting evidence, pounding doubters into submission, manipulating Powell (even easier now that it's Rice), etc." is, I think, an exaggeration of the issue. You might agree with this since you go on to say that the drivers of war are clear, NOT "baseless fabrications." How can war conditions be clear yet the case for war be comprised of hearsay? I would argue that the numerous Iranian diplomatic forays into Iraq supporting Sadr and his militia make for a very easy war argument in and of themselves, especially compared to the Iraq abomination.

On the other hand, I find your argument for Iranian containment to that if the USSR during the Cold War extremely compelling. We must play the passive and thoughtful protagonist to the compulsive antagonist of the Iranian administration. Perhaps that does lead us to a prolonged stand-off. I would argue that a principal difference is that the international community (for what it's worth) did not exist to thwart the Soviet Union as it does Iran today. We couldn't say "stop enriching/stop installing nuclear infrastructure etc.)"

I think the administration has learned a thing or two since its most recent debacles in the Middle East. It will proceed cautiously and, as much as Cheney is doubling over with the desire to blow the hell out of the Iranians, it is the tremendous reality of world affairs that will keep him drooling like a Mastiff instead.

So:

The timing is within the end of this administration.
The protagonist is us or anyone of our allies
The prize is a hefty dinner

You have until February 1st 2009...

By the way, stop sourcing bizarre Israeli sympathizing publications for evidence. Forgiven this time as your last name is Schumann."

Letter vs. Spirit of Our Bet

My memory on the wager regarding war with Iran is hazy. Key details that have evaded me are:

1. Timing
2. Identity of technical aggressor (but see below)
3. Stakes ;-)

But I do remember that the spirit of the thing was that Rony was claiming, "Bush is going after Iran next," i.e., Iran's gonna get the Iraq treatment. The notion that we're going to play Chamberlain (or, how many times worse, Turney) to Ahmedinijad and be passive in the face of any insult is obviously ludicrous. My impression was that we were debating whether Bush was going to perform another no-holds-barred predetermined baseless drive to war: fabricating and distorting evidence, pounding doubters into submission, manipulating Powell (even easier now that it's Rice), etc.

So let's be more precise about my position. What will happen if Iran seizes any American personnel as it seized the British sailors? War. What will happen if any Iranian missile, conventional or otherwise, explodes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the Gulf? War. What will happen if a dispute along the Iran/Iraq border gets hot? War.

That's obvious and always has been; so let's explore the more interesting scenarios. What will happen if Iran becomes an officially declared nuclear weapons power? Hmm. Note that it's already an officially declared nuclear power; and yet the drums of war beat not. The fact is that I think that this administration, and this country, have had realpolitik beaten into them with a blunt instrument in the Centcom theater. For decades on end, we tolerated an "evil empire" in Russia with a huge nuclear stockpile, and fought them by containment. For the entirety of this decade, we have done the same with a far more evil empire in North Korea, despite the relative puniness of their capability. The Chinese have a handful of devices, too.

So let's outline two possible outcomes if Iran gets a nuke or is really truly on the verge.

• We get a strong, explicit authorization of force from the Security Council along with at least a fig-leaf's-worth of military allies. Probability? Non-zero but certainly very low. I think that Bush certainly, and the next President almost certainly, will take the opportunity to wipe Lil' Squinty off the map.
• We don't. We get some wussy little resolution, again (remember how the Council couldn't even "condemn" the seizure of the British sailors??). What will happen? I'll wager a top-shelf drink - no, that's boring, a top-shelf bottle - that we'll go into containment mode and there will be no hot shooting war.

Our Wager on War With Iran

A list of US/UN grievances with Iran might make this post more compelling but I trust that you know the context well. This latest, inspiringly stupid, announcement makes me all the more certain that someone is going to blow the hell out of Ahmadinejad's administration and end up taking down a portion of Iran's good people with it. (Funny that many Iranians may think and feel the same way about us). I would be mortified if the Iranians actually get nukes because of our (and the UN's) administrative incompetency. Grow a backbone or risk playing 1930's Western Europe!

Had that idiot Bush not gone into Iraq we might be able to deal with Iran who actually IS dangerous and growing more so. Coming on the heels of that insulting British catastrophe, it looks more dangerou than ever!

That said, I would like to reiterate Rony and I's position that we will blow the hell out of these guys, even if it falls to another administration to do it. A nuclear Iran is incomprehensible on so may levels. I will continue to track the progress on this front for my eventual vindication, at which point you will owe me dinner and wine at a location of my choosing.

Pot & Potted Pot - The Electricty Leakage Must Have Been Terrrible!

Well, Dave, we've certainly been busy!

I found the British study to be underwhelming too. Consider this from a 1968 report from the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence: "we think that the dangers of its [marijuana's] use as commonly accepted in the past and the risk of progression to opiates have been overstated, and that the existing criminal sanctions intended to curb its use are unjustifiably severe." I'm sure with little effort I could turn up equally old and salient assessments for other scourges on the Lancet list. Thank god for the Dutch!

I'm afraid I stand in opposition to you on Sydney's decision to "go dark." I feel that no matter how "overstated" the goal is the cause justifies any amount of alarmism. Elecricity leakage is a serious issue simply because, in the aggregate it amounts to considerable. A huge amount of waste? No, not relatively speaking, but:

"The average U.S. home has about 50 watts of standby. This corresponds to 5% of the home's total electric bill.
There are over 100 million homes in the U.S., so standby consumes roughly 5GW. After accounting for transmission and distribution losses and generation reserves, standby is responsible for about 8 GW. This corresponds to the output of 8 large power plants. The true consumption is probably closer to twice this number because the commercial and industrial sectors also have equal amounts of equipment with standby."

Besides, the US is far more guilty than Sydney when it comes to to governments imposing energy saving measures - just think of the new Daylight savings legislation, one of who's main justifications is the conservation of energy...

On a final note, the story of the Encinitas guy is AWESOME! The thing that strikes me is how industrious he must be to build such a complex. Obviously he could not have had too much help because of the illicit (non-permitted) nature of his project (no construction company installed that elevator. Why didn't he use stairs?) and, as a result, must have profound technical and carpentry skills to pull off such a massive project. This guy should be working for a construction company, not rotting in jail. Then again, if he wanted to work for a construction company he probably wouldn't have decided to erect a house with a hidden elevator to harvest pot in massive underground chambers. Cool! By the way, did you catch the fact that Andrews and his accomplices pleaded not guilty!

Incredible Underground Grow Tunnel

A San Diego (sort-of) area man builds a vast underground weed-growing facility under his log cabin. The money graf:

Authorities said the 34-year-old Encinitas man purchased 39 acres in Santa Ysabel, near Julian, and built a two-story luxury log cabin and detached garage without permits. According to court records, he built an elevator, concealed in a walk-in closet in the garage, which descends about 10 feet below ground and connects to a tunnel that is 65 feet long and 4 feet wide.
The tunnel leads to two rooms measuring 20-by-20 feet, with 8-and 12-foot ceilings. Both rooms were outfitted with irrigation, lighting, electrical and ventilation systems and steel I-beams to reinforce the roof.