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Might as well throw in this review of "The Myth of the Rational Voter" from the last New Yorker magazine:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/0 7/09/070709crbo_books_menand

Another book covering a similar topic is: The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900, by David Edgerton http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/0 5/14/070514crbo_books_shapin?currentPage=all From the article one of the main ideas of the book is that tech. historians and the media focus too much on inventors and highly innovative ideas, while older technology and small changes made by their users are the ones that succeed and play the larger role in history.

How or what does a district really do? Perhaps I'm naive but isn't a vote a vote? What matters what district you're in? If 100 people vote, 51 for x and 49 for y. It shouldn't matter who voted where.

I'm struggling to understand the point of your post. You admit to not being well-informed about the Darfur conflict, so we got that out of the way.

Are you saying that a different standard of human rights applies to Sudanese villagers? Why? Are they not civilized enough for you? They don't have credit cards and eat TV dinners? It's a slippery slope to use different ethical standards to people on the basis of race or nationality; we know where it can lead. If I see an atrocity, I'm going to call it an "atrocity", wherever it takes place.

The Darfur conflict has been going on for a long time between semi-nomadic Arab tribes, and pastoral African tribes. Lately it's gotten a lot worse, for among other reasons, the scarcity of water and the competition that creates between the groups. I first learned about Darfur from this 3 year old article (still informative): http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/30/040830 fa_fact1 What makes this different from a run-of-the-mill tribe vs. tribe conflict is that the Sudanese government is taking sides, providing arms logistics and maybe manpower to the janjaweed. Consequently the African tribes have suffered disproportionately. It's estimated that 400,000 have died violently in the last 5 years. Tens of thousands are currently hiding out in squalid refugee camps.

The atrocities are well documented. These aren't just satellite photos.

I respectfully have to agree with another poster who recommended that you read up on a topic before posting. I didn't get much from your post (except slightly angry).

ape

"Actually I'll go ahead and say just that: that people are damn good at picking what's good for _them_."

Unfortunately, current research is showing just the opposite. As written by James Surowiecki, "The Financial Page: Feature Presentation", The New Yorker, May 28, 2007:

"As numerous studies have shown, people are not, in general, good at predicting what will make them happy in the future...

A new study by Katherine A. Burson, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, shows that, when we buy things like golf balls and digital cameras, we generally do a poor job of evaluating our skills, and so get stuck with unsuitable products. We're also willing to pay for extra options because we feel shortchanged if we don't have them. But, once we actually have a product, our patience with all those features runs out very quickly. Elke Den Ouden found, for instance, that Americans who returned a product that was too complicated for them had spent, on average, just twenty minutes with it before giving up."

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/05/28 /070528ta_talk_surowiecki

GM et. al were saddled with pension costs

This is not accurate. The pension plans were created voluntarily by the car companies, who feared that union-controlled plans was a threat to the autonomy of business owners. From Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker:

The labor movement believed that the safest and most efficient way to provide insurance against ill health or old age was to spread the costs and risks of benefits over the biggest and most diverse group possible. . . . Charlie Wilson [then president of GM] . . . felt the way the business leaders of Toledo did: that collectivization was a threat to the free market and to the autonomy of business owners. In his view, companies themselves ought to assume the risks of providing insurance.

Unions certainly have their faults, but in this case the car companies have only themselves to blame. What is really scary is the way the story that the unions forced the automakers into a bad deal has become accepted as fact.

I'm a fan of Apple products and am about to buy one, but can't resist pointing out that whoever did this is engaged in very tiny-scale fraud compared to what Steve Jobs and the rest of upper management have already admitted doing.

They have admitted:

* Inventing on paper a fake Board of Directors Committee meeting that never took place (source)

* Using this fake meeting to backdate options at a total benefit to Jobs of $20 million (contrary to Jobs' false spin) (same source)

* Backdating a total of 6,400 stock options grants over five years, including two to Jobs (source)

Those facts are agreed by all parties. All that's being fought about now is WHICH senior executives and board members were at fault. Since obviously Jobs rules Apple so loosely that this kind of thing can go on under his nose (cough) and just HAPPENS to have also happened at Pixar.

The crazy part is that backdating itself is totally legally, and doesn't even affect how you accont for the options, as the New Yorker has pointed out in an excellent short essay. You just have to disclose what you did, and that, it seems, threatens the pride of a lot of Silicon Valley execs who like to pretend that stock options are a performance motivator (when in the case of backdated options they are not).

Anyway, so some guy breeched Apple security and sent out a fake email, and probably made some cash on the stock dip. He'll probably be hunted down and prosecuted and do some time, which is kind of sad, considering far more money has been fraudulently obtained by some of the top people at Apple (again, that is not in dispute) and top people at tech companies all over the Valley.

Not going to keep me from buying a Mac, but sad nevertheless.

It's a funny coincidence, but the may 14th issue of the New Yorker also had an article on the LHC.

It's much much much lighter on the details, but I found it to be a much more interesting read -- in particular because the author appears to have tried to talk to a number of people there and get a general feel for what people think about experimental physics these days.

You can read the whole text legally and for free (no reg) here:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/14/0705 14fa_fact_kolbert

This stuff is pretty cool, but The New Yorker's incredible science writer (who basically told the rest of the world about global warming) had a more in-your-face profile of the LHC last week, and Popular Mechanics has officially dubbed it "The World's Biggest Science Project." Sweet.

I recently read an article on the New Yorker discussing how the United States strong-arms other countries into adopting our own stringent Intellectual Property laws. It just goes to show the continued stance of our government in this area of policy, a stance that is not going to change any time soon. ::sigh::

I think you have a distorted view of geriatric care. Geriatrics is the most underpaid of all medical professions and is nearly extinguished because of it. Yet they can make the difference between someone dying at 60 and debilitated and someone making it to 90 and self sufficient. If anything why don't you point your criticisms at orthopedic surgeons or radiologists? You know, the kind of doctors that rake in over $1,000,000 USD per year. Or heck, cosmetic surgeons or dermatologists easily clear top salaries while doctors that can make a huge difference on longevity are just the joke of their Porshe-driving former classmates.

I"m not saying any doctors are really better off being telephone cleaners or hair dressers. But there are bigger drains on health care than geriatrics! Or maybe you are thinking of pharmacuticals preposterous drug prices? Yes, the pharma industry is disgusting in its marketing directly to consumers (up? down? hurt? bored? ask your doctor about XYZ treatment today!). Or its criminal bribery of doctors and hospital staff.

PS. A good recent article on geriatrics was recently published in the New Yorker.

A company called Navteq does a lot of it, and contracts out data and software.

The New Yorker had a great profile on E-mapping and route finding including a ride-along with a "Ground Truth" team that heads out with their GPS-linked laptop and drives... pretty much everywhere. One key part of ground-truthing (and good directions) is knowing the signage on the route:

Singh bought a Red Bull and took the wheel. Arcari sat in back with the laptop, ready to note any changes in what they called the "geometry" of the roads.

"Whenever you're ready, Shovie," he said.

The first thing the men noticed was a "No Left Turn" sign out of the gas station. "That doesn't go in the database," Arcari said. "That's unofficial geometry, since it pertains to a private enterprise."

As long as their core standard remains "high overall achievement". The quality of an ivy leage undergraduate degree sharply declined when they moved away from this standard (aka. "the jew crisis").

That said, while I'm inclined not to like the change I do wonder how the field would change with a greater female presence / high performers with broad experiences. I think we'd see the industry mature to be less death-march prone and be more family friendly, rather than see greater innovative.

The real problem is that when the story first broke, Jimbo refused to believe that the problem was serious. It isn't EssJay that appaled me so much (while I believe it to be completely wrong), but Jimbo's arrogance in thinking it was minor. It's about Jimbo that the issue lies, not EssJay. Read the editoiral note (especially the last paragraph) at the end of the New Yorker article that percipitated all this and judge for yourself. Note that the New Yorker talks about the persona, but Jimbo states he has no problems with it, regarding a whole fake persona on the level of a psuedonym.

THAT is the real issue. EssJay claimed that he was someone that he wasn't, got busted by New York post, and Jimbo didn't even think he did anything wrong. Larry Sanger argues the point more coherently than I can.

EssJay's lies were strong enough for the New York Post to print a correction (that he wasn't who he said he was)

The major thing to remember about Wikipedia is that it *isn't* the ideal, 'everyone is equal and qualifications don't matter' playground that it claims to be. It is a dictatorship, and everyone that participates in Wikipedia is at his pleasure and descretion. (It reminds me of real-world communism.) These days, it's rather quiet (used to be brushed under the rug) that Bomis.com (Jimbo's original company) originally sold online soft-core porn. Or the edits that he did to the page about him, no matter HOW minor. (Something that Wil Wheaton rightly refrained from doing - to the extent of asking someone else to make a minor factual correction on the article's talk page).

For the record, when directly asked about the New Yorker article, the following interchange took place on a now deleted talk page: (as best as I can still find online, anyway.)
-------
Your New Yorker bio
(Removed post from banned user. Essjay (Talk) 05:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC))

It's in the archive but he explained that it was disinformation. My question is how the New Yorker hasn't gotten its butt kicked for publishing it as fact without the slightest fact-checking. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I did six hours of interviews with the reporter, and two with a fact checker, but I was really surprised that they were willing to do an interview with someone who they couldn't confirm; I can only assume that it is proof I was doing a good job playing the part. Essjay (Talk) 05:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
--------------

Who am I? I'm an Anonymous Coward. I'm not misleading you about my identity, as I'm not claiming to have degrees, qualifications or charateristics that I do or do not have in real life. EssJay, whoever he was, did.

I've edited Wikipedia articles for going on three years now, and have always found it an impressive accomplishment. I've done more than my share (for one who isn't a basement-dwelling 21-year old who has way, way, way too much free time; Wikipedia, like many open-source projects, relies on an army of such fanatics to do much of the day-to-day work) of editing and copyediting articles and sometimes reverting vandalism when I catch it. The bottom line is that I like Wikipedia quite a bit.

Two things bother me about Essjay's case, though:

* As others have noted here, Wales is confusing--unintentionally or intentionally--a pseudonym with a falsified CV (I remember it impressing me when I read that The New Yorker article last year). If Essjay was concerned about Internet stalkers he simply didn't have to say anything at all on his User page, or simply say that he lived in British Columbia or Japan or Oregon instead of Kentucky. Instead, he came up with an entire, completely-plausible but completely-fake academic background in theology. It'd be one thing if he had stuck to edits on astronomy or Germany or Legos but, in fact, he specialized (go way, way, way back in the history) in articles on theology. Of course people would take edits by someone with those kinds of credentials more seriously.
* Beyond the pseudonym/fake-background issue. Essjay and some other admins don't like talking about this issue in public, and almost instantly threaten to ban those who do. I don't know if Purples is a sockpuppet for some otherwise-banned Wikipedia user, but he doesn't come across that way to me, and look what he gets in response to what I thought were pretty-legitimate questions.

It would be nice if the submitter actually gave a source for that quote; I couldn't find it in any of the articles.

Marine barracks, Beirut, 1983.

Holy crap, Hezbollah has time machines now! They're bombing things before they even existed!

And I believe you've mistaken 'attacked' for 'fought'. I didn't say Iran had never 'fought' the US. Just a few weeks ago, the US captured Iranian diplomats in Iraq and they fought back, IIRC. I said Iran hadn't attacked the US, or anyone in fact.

Even if you can attribute that bombing to the group that eventually formed into Hezbollah, and even if that group was being funded and directed by Iran at that time, neither of which is certain, the US was helping Israel occupy Lebanon at that time. (Hence the, you know, US military barracks in Lebanon.) Israel and Palestine started that war, which they decided to hold in Lebanon for some reason. (Lebanon was already holding their own war, so perhaps 'The more the merrier' was the thinking.)

We, and a lot of the international community, stupidly decided to join on the side of Israel, and Iran joined on the side of Lebanon. (Not Palestine. Palestine=Sunni, Hezbollah=Shi'ite. Very recently, Hamas and Hezbollah have made some peace, but not back then.) Lebanon, being quite rightly pissed about other people holding a war inside of them, especially as they were trying to hold their own civil war, was fighting everyone. Interpeting Iran supporting a group in a civil war as 'attacking' the US is somewhat stretching things. Hezbollah, or, at least, a group that might have eventually turned into Hezbollah, had a hell of a lot more right to be there than the US.

I blame Hezbolla for the Israeli civilian deaths since they INTENTIONALLY TARGETED CIVILIANS, which is something Israel never did.

Hehehe. You bring up, at least indirectly, the 1981 invasion of Lebanon by Israel, and then you have the gall to claim that Israel doesn't deliberately target civilians. Oh, man, you should do stand up. Two words: Sabra and Shatila.

Were those soldiers ever released? It's funny how Israel will decide that the cost in civilian casualties and world-wide condemnation had grown too much to continue the attacks. Hesbolla still has not released those soldiers to the best of my knowledge, which tells me that the costs to their own civilians is minuscule to the benefit of holding those soldiers.

Hezbollah was expecting the same thing to happen that had happened every other time it had kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Namely, that Israel would sputter and yell and then, quietly, negotiate a prisoner exchange for the Hezbollah soldiers it had kidnapped. (Which it had already agreed to return, but was not actually doing.) I quote the leader of Hezbollah's apology to Lebanon: "Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it."

Israel, however, had been working on an invasion plan of Lebanon for a few years, thanks in parts of our government thinking of it as a sort of trial run for the invasion of Iran. So Israel was actually just waiting for an excuse.

But, hey, we're not talking about Hezbollah, we're talking about Iran. You really don't want to drag puppet states into this discussion, because our puppet state actually attacked Iran in full force for 8 damn years, with direct military support from the US.

And I like how you just dropped all the other stuff I brought up. To repeat:

Iran is not killing US soldiers in Iraq. Iran is diplomatically 'meddling' in Iraq with the full knowledge and consent of the Iraqi government. If Iran is supplying weapons to Iraq, it is supplying them to 'our guys'. (Yes, we call them 'Iraqi troops', but their night job is the militia. It's often exactly the same people!) We may not like this, but tough shit, we are not in charge of the Iraqi government or who they choose to let influence them. Iran is a regional superpower and they can cuddle

Of course, all the evil acts committed by the people driving the terrorism do confuse the issue.

An interesting take that minimizes religion as a driver:

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/061218fa_ fact2

What is this library you speak of?

Perhaps you mean http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060 731fa_fact.

Here's the article to which you refer;
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060731fa_ fact

However, I think the inaccuracy of the information about Essjay might be placed at the feet of Ms. Schiff, who apparently failed to do any fact-checking.

I agree with your points about measured response and malice. I think I am a good deal more ambivalent about the 'war on terrorism'. This rather long article:

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/061218fa_ fact2

Talks about how the Taliban thinks about their strategy in terms of influence; it is much more a political organization than it is a military organization. It also talks about how jihadism is very much a social phenomenon, with friends and associates being more key to conversion than religion. People become disaffected, feeling that they have no place in the world, and they see this exciting thing they can do to become 'players' in shaping the world.

The conclusion I draw from that is that the fight is about creating stability; people need to think that there life is going to absolutely be worse if they commit crimes designed to incite terror. That makes the key tool in preventing terrorism making other peoples lives better, and shaping things such that people react to things in proportion to the actual severity of an event.

I would argue that your Iraqi example supports my side; they face these threats on a regular basis, and life still goes on, people still go to the pet store. Even when things are very, very bad, life goes on. I don't want to live in a world of daily shootings and bombings, but I am confident that if I had to, I would simply do my best, and do my best to make that world better too. I *will* adapt, either way, so any concession made in the name of security must be held to a very high standard; it must be effective, and further, cost effective.

The article also makes the very interesting point that treating 'terrorism' as one global threat may tend to reinforce it(individual acts become more significant) and that one important measure for countering it is to treat it as 1000 local problems. The sane reaction for the signs in Boston would have been for an officer to go look at it, get closer and closer, and then realize what it was; if that means an officer dies every 10,000 suspicious objects(the current 'danger' rate in the US is bound to be lower than that), so be it, and react more severely if it becomes more likely that the object is actually dangerous.

I am also very curious how much information about the volume of a device and the danger posed by that device has actually been pushed down to patrolmen. They are likely to deal with more such things that anybody else, they might as well be informed.

Here's a great article that explains some of the hypocrisy concerning Senator Arlen Spector and habeas corpus.

• "John Ashcroft is not a patriot." -- Howard Dean
• "I don't think it's patriotic to put on a flight suit and prance around on the deck of an aircraft carrier looking for a photo op." -- Wes Clark
• "We hear them in the cries of the false patriots who bully dissenters into silence and submission. These are familiar fights. We've fought and won them before. And with John Kerry and John Edwards leading us, we will win them again" -- Ted Kennedy
• "The policy that the administration is following in Iraq is ... anti-patriotic at the core..." -- Sen. Graham
• "we deserve a president who stands up for patriotism and its real definition, which is doing what makes our country stronger and safer and more secure." -- John Kerry
• "a group of people around the President whose main allegiance is to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States." -- Howard Dean

Can't control things in Iraq and Afganistan so start a new war?

It certainly looks like so, unfortunately. They're stepping up rhetoric. The arresting of the Iranian diplomats was pretty rough. The US troops almost engaged with Kurdish security forces in the process.

You need only a some kind of border incident, retaliation and counter-retaliation and you are in a war with Iran. No need to consult the Congress.

That could easily escalate into regional conflight. The whole region between Israel and Pakistan could flame up. That would lead to huge number of casualties and wreck our economies.

Somebody shut Kissenger up or stop people listening to that corrupt old idiot - this didn't work last time either.

Good idea. It however doesn't look like he's behind this--Bush &co. are following William Kristol's "advice" (he is one of the leading neocons and staunch supporter of a regional war).

According to Seymour Hersh, Bush & Cheney were actually dead serious about using nukes against Iran's nuclear facilities. Fortunately the Joint Chiefs of Staff had enough sense to make them scrub the plan. Now it appears that Israel is planning a similar strike.

Hard to believe they could be that mad, though. "Pre-emptive" nuclear strike would mean that everyone would start to build their own for deterrence.

I hope the new winds of change don't just turn into a draft.

The supply lines to Baghdad go through southern Iraq--the heart area of Shi'ites. Now imagine that the war starts and the Shi'ites turn against the American (and other) troops. In addition to Sunni resistance, you would have to fight against Shi'ites, who are much more numerous. And now Iran could help them in earnest. You could run out of fuel and other supplies really quickly. Iraqi government nor police could help you, since they're mostly pro-Iranians. The worst-case scenario would mean that you could lose the army.

So, isn't it an appropriate time to move the clock ahead?

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060 828fa_fact2

As for Yau, Perelman said, "I can't say I'm outraged. Other people do worse. Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest." The prospect of being awarded a Fields Medal had forced him to make a complete break with his profession. "As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice," Perelman explained. "Either to make some ugly thing"--a fuss about the math community's lack of integrity--"or, if I didn't do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit." We asked Perelman whether, by refusing the Fields and withdrawing from his profession, he was eliminating any possibility of influencing the discipline. "I am not a politician!" he replied, angrily. Perelman would not say whether his objection to awards extended to the Clay Institute's million-dollar prize. "I'm not going to decide whether to accept the prize until it is offered," he said. Mikhail Gromov, the Russian geometer, said that he understood Perelman's logic: "To do great work, you have to have a pure mind. You can think only about the mathematics. Everything else is human weakness. Accepting prizes is showing weakness." Others might view Perelman's refusal to accept a Fields as arrogant, Gromov said, but his principles are admirable. "The ideal scientist does science and cares about nothing else," he said. "He wants to live this ideal. Now, I don't think he really lives on this ideal plane. But he wants to."

Crow T. Trollbot

>See you lose credibility when you complain Bush condoned use of torture. College fraternities do worse

I suppose I should be thankful that he spelled "lose" correctly...

'The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging" '.
'When the men lowered Jamadi to the floor, Frost told investigators, "blood came gushing out of his nose and mouth, as if a faucet had been turned on." .

Yes, it's officially condoned: "...the decision to deport Arar was made at the highest levels of the U.S. justice department, with a special removal order signed by John Ashcroft's former deputy, Larry Thompson." "Deported", you see, to Syria. The Syrian torture the US knowingly sent him to made him say later "I forgot every moment that I enjoyed in my life".

The Canadian authorities have acknowledged that Arar had no connection to any terrorist group or activity.

That jumped out at me, too, but I can't decide whether to s/is/are/. I suppose "What the world needs" is indeed singular.

Speaking of Lynne Truss, have you read this delightful review of her book?

    http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/04 0628crbo_books1?040628crbo_books1

-David

Sony and Microsoft are desperate to be the biggest players in a market that, in their vision, will encompass not just video games but "interactive entertainment" generally. That's why the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 are all-in-one machines, which allow users not just to play video games but also to do things like watch high-definition DVDs and stream digital music. Sony and Microsoft's quest to "control the living room" has locked them in a classic arms race; they have invested billions of dollars in an attempt to surpass each other technologically, building ever-bigger, ever-better, and ever-more-expensive machines.

Nintendo has dropped out of this race. The Wii has few bells and whistles and much less processing power than its "competitors," and it features less impressive graphics. It's really well suited for just one thing: playing games. But this turns out to be an asset. The Wii's simplicity means that Nintendo can make money selling consoles, while Sony is reportedly losing more than two hundred and forty dollars on each PlayStation 3 it sells--even though they are selling for almost six hundred dollars.

It has publicly come out that they are wiretapping domestic calls.

From the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy article article at wikipedia:

"On May 22, 2006, it was reported by Seymour Hersh and Wired News that under this authority, the NSA had installed monitoring and interception supercomputers within the routing hubs of almost all major US telecoms companies capable of intercepting and monitoring a large proportion of all domestic and international telephone and Internet connections, and had used this to perform mass eavesdropping and order police investigations of tens of thousands of ordinary Americans without judicial warrants. " [Emphasis mine]

Here is the link to the Hersh article, and here is the link to the Wired article.

Please, wake up.

The Republiscums like Bush use the term "Democrat Party". It is incorrect.
The majority of Americans support and elected the Democratic Party.
More here:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060 807ta_talk_hertzberg

Rumsfeld has been one of the worst SecDef's of all time. Read Cobra II, the definitive history of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Rumsfeld micromanaged the deployment of troops to Iraq to such an extent that personnel arrived without their equipment and troops were assigned to tasks they had no training for. Rumsfeld discounted the experience of his generals, and thought that he knew more about warfighting, logistics, etc. than the people who spent their whole career training and preparing for it. He expressly forbade planning for the postwar environment. How stupid is that?! Here's an article on the web to get you started: Offense and Defense: The Battle Between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon Or you can google "Rumsfeld" and "TPFDL".

Before spouting off on this thread, you may want to read this article from The New Yorker about what political scientists think about voting behavior.

The definition of dictator is a : a person granted absolute emergency power; b : one holding complete autocratic control; c : one ruling absolutely and often oppressively.

While you could argue whether Bush, technically, meets the definition, there is plenty of evidence that he is trying to evade Congressional oversight, elimination of habeas corpus for detainees and immunity for torture, the use of signing statements to effectively nullify legislation, NSA spying on U.S. citizens and so forth that are clearly moves in that direction.

Further, he is definitely claiming power and using it based on a framework of emergency that goes by the label of the "war on terror". He, and especially people under him like Cheney, believe that that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries. That's pretty close to an understanding that believes itself to have absolute emergency power, i.e., a dictatorship - given certain conditions (which in this case are vague).

Two this section of this new act simply amends an already extant section of U.S. Law called the Insurrection Act, which has been in force since 1807, and which has been amended several times since.

See its current version here

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode10/us c_sec_10_00000333----000-.html
and here
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode10/us c_sec_10_00000334----000-.html

The Insurrection Act was used to suppress the Bonus Marchers in 1932, the suppress a railroad strike in 1946, the suppress a Native American insurgency in 1973, to quell race riots in Los Angeles in 1992, and to enforce civil rights laws in 1957, and 1963.

Why has this law been passed? Hurricane Katrina. Pres. Bush expected Gov. Blanco to ask for federal help. She refused. Some discussion about why is in this article in The New Yorker from 2005 by New Orleans native Nicholas Lemann.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050 926ta_talk_lemann

Here's an excerpt: "The Insurrection Act of 1807 outlines the script that the Administration evidently wanted Governor Blanco to follow: a governor asks the President to federalize local law enforcement in order to suppress an insurrection; the President issues a proclamation ordering the "insurgents to disperse"; they don't; the cavalry rides to the rescue.

"But the President has the option of sending in troops without being asked when the law isn't being enforced or the rights of a class of people are being denied--which was clearly the case in New Orleans, not just because crime was rampant but because so many people were trapped in hellish conditions."

What this law does is more clearly describes the conditions under which a president can call in federal military forces to impose order, specifically when the state and local authorities cannot, or interestingly, enough, will not do exactly that.

Also it imposes a 14-day period during after which the President must consult with Congress before extending the deployment another 14 days.

Back during the 2004 debates, President Bush was hit with the question to name 3 mistakes he had made. He offered up only a vague answer that he might have picked different people for some of his appointments.

More than anything, this Washington Post rambling chronology (story?) screams very loudly at one of George Bushs's largest mistakes - letting George Tenet (and Richard Clarke) stay on from the Clinton administration. At least in part, I believe the reason Condoleeza and Rumsfeld did not do what they wanted was because she didn't trust their judgement. Colin Powell and his buddy Richard Armitage are surely on that list now, too.

For those who skipped reading the article, here are some of the "on one hand, and then on the other hand" qualifiers to the central assertion:

"Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser"

Note that in July, 2001, Condoleeza Rice was the "Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs" - which while it is an important position, did not make her part of the Cabinet. The National Security advisor is just that - a staff advisor to the President heading the national security council. The Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are "statutory advisors", but -not- members of that council . Just to remind you that now she is the Secretary of State - and not to confuse those two roles.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm
(that is the order where Ms Rice reforms the NSC under her management)

"For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden."

Unless I wasn't listening clearly, former President Clinton has stated that he did *sign* a finding specifically authorizing the CIA to kill (not just capture) Bin Laden. When? Is there any proof of that? Why wasn't it carried out? Is Bob Woodward fact checking this for his next book deal?

Well, ask Richard Clarke, the now authority on all such matters:

From that right-wing propoganda machine, the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/030 804fa_fact

"Clarke told me that in the mid-nineties "the C.I.A. was authorized to mount operations to go into Afghanistan and apprehend bin Laden." President Clinton, Clarke said, "was really gung-ho" about the scenario. "He had no hesitations," he said. "But the C.I.A. had hesitations. They didn't want their own people killed. And they didn't want their shortcomings exposed. They really didn't have the paramilitary capability to do it; they could not stage a snatch operation." Instead of trying to mount the operation themselves, Clarke said, "the C.I.A. basically paid a bunch of local Afghans, who went in and did nothing."

Continuing with the Post story...

"Two weeks earlier, he [George Tenet] had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

In writing? Any recording? Any proof? What did he mean by "it"?

"On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real.""

Hmmm... "top secret"? That has a specific meaning in government circles - beyond comic book characters. Should we look for the NY Times to be leaking this document before the upcoming election?

"Tenet [...] had two main points when they met with her [Rice]. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself."

-possibly-

This is not news. Everyone agreed that he probably was going to do something somewhere at some time.

"Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the prob

"While it is in their interests to eventually carry over into alternative fuel markets, taxing the crap out of them to force it defeats the free market and ultimately ends up punishing the consumer.

Exactly what part of the domestic oil business is a free market? Only a small number of companies (which overtly work together) supply oil. These companies then receive rather large tax exemptions and federal subsidies to release gas at a lowered price. So much so that the CEOs of the major oil companies recently testified in congress that they don't even want these subsidies anymore. Then all of the distributers price gasoline (regardless of how cheaply they get it) such that gas station owners only make a few cents per gallon sold, which has the effect of preventing REAL competition at the consumer-level where it would make the largest impact.

My definition of a free and healthy market would not include: 1.)Collusion 2.) Price-fixing 3.) Heavy government subsidies. How does yours?

-Grym

(1) In Ms. Nasar's article with Mr. Gruber, she labeled both Professors Shing-Tung Yau and Shiing-Shen Chern as "the Chinese mathematician". In fact, both are U.S. citizens born in China. It is important to note that only mathematicians of Chinese heritage were labeled this way in the article. This labeling is in contrary to the common practice of using the term "Chinese American mathematician" in the mainstream news media in both the U.S. and China. (In Chinese media, Yau and Chern are called "mei ji hua ren"-U.S. citizen of Chinese heritage.) Ms. Nasar went to length to describe the contributions of Yau and Chern to the scientific development in China but neglected to mention that both were awarded this nation's highest scientific honor, the National Medal of Science. The subliminal message is that both Yau and Chern work only to advance the Chinese interest. Such bigotry is nothing new in this country: Jewish people have been subject to such stereotype for a long time. (2) While there were extensive discussions on original ideas in mathematics in this 14-page long article, not a single sentence, as far as I know, associated mathematicians of Chinese heritage to originality. Even the originality of Yau's Fields Medal work was downplayed. This article promotes the false and harmful stereotypes that mathematicians of Chinese heritage are "technical" but not "original". (See an open letter to Ms. Nasar for more detail on this point.) (3) Seven mathematicians of Chinese heritage were named in the article: Yau, Chern, Gang Tian, Huai-Dong Cao, Xi-Ping Zhu, Kefeng Liu, Bong H. Lian (implicitly, as the coauthor of Liu and Yau). While there was only minimal coverage on Chern, all six others were alleged, one way or another, to involve in plagiary and/or claiming undeserved credits. More importantly, in the article, no other mathematicians but only those of Chinese heritage were alleged to involve of such unethical practices. This is biased, prejudiced, and, in fact, racist. To illustrate this point, substitute all Chinese names by Jewish names, China by Israel, and Chinese by Jewish. This article would then have been easily recognized as anti-Semitic. (4) This is not the first time Ms. Nasar spews anti-Chinese venom. In her article Best Business Book 2003: Globalization, she promoted the book World on Fire by Amy Chua. Here is what Ms. Nasar wrote:

Chua compares the wealthy Chinese, like her aunt, who dominate the markets of many Asian countries to the successful Jews of Europe in the 1920s. "In the Philippines, millions of Filipinos work for Chinese; almost no Chinese work for Filipinos. The Chinese dominate industry and society at every level.... When foreign investors do business in the Philippines they deal almost exclusively with Chinese." When she was 8 years old, she recalls, she stumbled into the servant quarters in her aunt's villa: "My family's houseboys, gardeners, and chauffeurs ... were sleeping on mats on a dirt floor. The place smelled of sweat and urine. I was horrified."

Yau is not a thief. If he were, he would have had his name on the Cao-Zhu paper as a co-author, and the paper would have claimed to give the first proof of the Poincare Conjecture. He did not. The New Yorker article if offensive to many Chinese mathematicians, not just Yau. See this comment for details.

Mathematician Grigory Perelman just doesn't give a damn about public recognition. In the internet era you can make your research know by everybody without the need to be published. This story is more about politics but also how you can find more ways to make public your work:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060 828fa_fact2

See The New Yorker for a good article on Perelman and his proof.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060 828fa_fact2

I have received word that the New Yorker will make article available online today or tomorrow. The article gives a bit of background on the story, and attempts to get a deeper look into the reason's for Perelman's actions.

Well, if there's not enough value to sustain it, then there's just not enough value. Maybe some people will miss it, but apparently they won't miss it enough to put in the effort and money to save it.

Yeah, that tends to be the case with a lot of things. It amazes me how many people gripe about say, Wal-Mart putting local stores out of business but still shop there.

Of course, that's assuming it tries to stay a "physical record store." I imagine if this were to happen a lot of these shops would change and survive. For example, I can imagine them specializing in vinyl, or selling memorabilia, or even becoming a coffee house/performance venue or something. There might be fewer shiny discs, but the community would still survive.

It's a possibility. In fact it's a strong possibility that some would go that way. People would probably still complain about "how it used to be" but myself, I'd actually like a coffee shop/record store better than what most of them are now.

No, it's not hard. But it's hard to deliver high-quality content reliably. It takes a lot of money to pay for the infrastructure to do that even if you yourself aren't shipping every bit.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the business side of it. For this issue, I have only one word: BitTorrent.

BitTorrent won't solve all bandwidth problems. Even if you're no longer bottlenecked by a single site as the origin of the data, there are still bottlenecks like the ISP's head end for most people (even with massive networks like Sprint or AT&T, there are peering points and local NOCs to consider). The Internet as it exists today is not ready to carry music, TV and movies to every single household -- the reason it works for a few people is that it's still a relatively tiny few who do that kind of stuff. No matter where the data is coming from, the fundamental issue is still the volume of data. This is a solvable problem, but one that will still take a significant amount of physical deployment to solve.

...the existence of these other "good" things like indie artists touring and indie record shops selling those artists' work and yes, even online services selling those indie artists' work is totally predicated on the existence of this gigantic flow of mainstream crap...

Wow, what economic theory is this? I've never heard about it, and I'm very skeptical of it, but if you've got some evidence that this is the case I'd be very interested in reading it.

I'm not sure what kind of formal treatment it may have in economics, but it's a pretty well-known effect. The classic example in modern times is Starbucks vs. smaller chains and independent coffee houses. Until Starbucks came along with some slick marketing and made fancy espresso drinks a part of yuppie culture, the coffeehouse business was about dead and coffee itself was an also-ran drink. Along came Starbucks and created demand where none previously existed, and in the process the entire industry underwent a business renaissance. At the same time Starbucks has very much an adversarial relationship with those independents and smaller chains that its creation of increased demand allows to exist. Sometimes it manages to kill them with clustering tactics, sometimes local sensibilities win out.

I can't find the original article I read about this, which had quotes from coffeeshop owners about their love-hate relationship with the Green Straw, but there's this article in the New Yorker that touches on it in terms of the decline and re-establishment of the coffee industry. If Starbucks goes away tomorrow, it potentially throws the entire coffee industry into a tailspin (especially since coffee prices have been a bit unstable in recent years).

There was another very good story written about Wikipedia in the Jul 31, 2006 issue of the New Yorker. It's titled 'Know it All' and is written by Stacy Schiff. You can find it here. The history of Wikipedia is delved into at depth. Many epistemological questions are raised. The main point Stacy made was that perhaps the dynamic, self-correcting nature of Wikipedia, notwithstanding all of its deficiences, is the best encyclopedia for the dynamic nature of the modern world we live in.

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

I've read articles that claimed the opposite: THE HEIGHT GAP - Why Europeans are getting taller and taller and Americans aren't.
And yes, they factored asian and mexican immigration out. Immigrants catch up to the "native" american standard over time. But the standard itself didn't change since the revolutionary war, according to the article.

I wonder if our society will ever feel that way about gay marriage...

One particularly striking CBS News/New York Times poll, taken last year, asked respondents if they would favor or oppose "a law that would allow homosexual couples to marry, giving them the same legal rights as other married couples." Among adults under age thirty, 61 per cent said they would favor such a law and 35 per cent said they would oppose it; among sixty-five-year-olds and up, 18 per cent were in favor and 73 per cent opposed. The numbers vary from poll to poll, but the huge age gap is always there.

Q: In your article, you describe Soufan's interrogation techniques. He engaged the suspects; he won their respect; he debated them on theological issues. In interrogations he carried out just after 9/11, these techniques worked very well; he got crucial information about the hijackers and their connections. His methods were very different from the "extreme measures" that we've been hearing about--waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation--and that are being justified on the grounds that they're the only way to get this kind of information. Have we been given a false choice between abusing prisoners or letting something terrible happen?

A: Ali Soufan has shown that intelligent and careful interrogation can achieve real results. And it helps immensely, obviously, to have the language and cultural skills that he does. There are very few people in the American intelligence community that have his set of talents. The U.S. is known to have used these sorts of tactics. You mention the C.I.A.'s impulse has been to deliver Al Qaeda suspects to foreign intelligence agencies that could torture them and extract information the C.I.A. thought it couldn't otherwise obtain. However, what this abuse has yielded from the top Al Qaeda lieutenants is questionable. And I think that's because it's untrustworthy information obtained under torture.

Q: So the problem with torture isn't just that it's torture-- that it compromises America ethically, morally--but that torture doesn't always work.

A: It doesn't work. It often is misleading, as in the case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda lieutenant who was tortured into saying that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. That was the information that the U.S. was trying to get out of him, and he gave it to the interrogators under torture, and that became part of the rationale for the U.S. going to war with Iraq--a disastrous consequence of choosing an unethical approach to gaining information.

It's also important to remember that the brain is not ALL just undifferentiated mush, but has all sort of specialized areas that cannot be replaced by other specialized areas.

Actually small children can have at least half of their brain removed and still function normally in later life. It's pretty amazing! I once read about a man who had had to take a brain scan. The scan revealed that the only brain tissue he had, only covered the inner surface of his skull, apparently he was born like that, and he functioned normally. Of course I cannot find any documentation about it now, but the link I've provided describes a "normal" procedure. It can cure rare epeleptic disorders and other things.
Mind boggling ;)

... in 1907, Andrew McNally II, the grandson of the co-founder of Rand McNally & Company, chose to spend his honeymoon in Milwaukee ... Andrew McNally II had a sense that the automobile might enhance the way-finding side of the business, and so, on this honeymoon trip, he strapped a camera onto the front fender of his car and, at every junction--every right or left turn--stopped and snapped a photograph. He and his bride did the same on the return trip. Back in Chicago, McNally compiled the photographs into a booklet, with a little arrow in each photograph indicating the proper direction to take. The booklet was called a Photo-Auto Guide and was essentially a driver's-eye view of the way to Milwaukee, at least as it looked that spring. (Obsolescence loomed; a new barn or a fallen oak could alter the appearance of the road.) ...