Take a look at who really benefits from this policy. Presumably, passengers are safer, but since it seems to be extremely difficult to implement an airline attack using liquid explosives (see TSA blog point #4), we are probably wasting resources by focusing on this threat. However, airport vendors and airlines directly benefit by preventing you from bringing your own snacks and drinks and then charging you $6 for a bottle of water. There is a post on the TSA blog about a woman whose egg salad sandwich was confiscated because it was deemed a "consumable liquid". And at many airports I can't even find a water fountain anymore.
Also note that any politician who would support weakening security measures faces the small but very considerable political risk of being blamed for an attack after restrictions might be loosened - on top of whatever "weak-on-terror" mud-slinging the politician would have to face anyway. Since the measures have strong airline support and it's difficult to find someone principled enough to take the passenger's side, we all face a painful travel experience.
I'm equally resentful about the ID-checking requirement since all the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID and it still wouldn't be hard to get a fake ID past the TSA. That requirement has a similar history of having nothing to do with security and a lot with not being able to sell your ticket to someone else and reducing the pricing power of airlines.
In these instant-gratification times, I think we've lost our ability to struggle for things that don't provide immediate results. If something doesn't work out quickly enough, we get frustrated and move on. I barely have the patience to make a sandwich anymore. But reform and social change happen slowly. We have to be thinking about the welfare of our children, not necessarily our own. Even if I don't see a brighter day, it's worth enduring so that my children might not live in the Hell I didn't try to stop.
People are easiest to control when they have no hope. They don't struggle. They just close their eyes and pray for the best. Don't let the obnoxious arrogance of one president make you a sheep.
Republicans are having a difficult time finding issues to campaign on. For example, from this op-ed argues:
"They can't run on the war. They can't run on the economy, where the positive numbers on growth are offset by the largely stagnant numbers on median incomes and the public's growing dread of outsourcing. Immigration may play in various congressional districts, but it's too dicey an issue to nationalize. Even social conservatives may be growing weary of outlawing gay marriage every other November. Nobody's buying the ownership society. Competence? Ethics? You kidding?"
But wiretapping could be a solid issue to run on. If the Democrats harp on it, they will drive away moderate Republicans who think the administration is just doing what it needs to do to win the "war on terror." So the administration should be trying to feed the fire and focus attention on the issue - for example, by resisting investigation to drag out discussion, and by slowly allowing controversial new details about the program to surface.
Has anyone noticed that we've gone several years without a terrorist attack on US soil even though many significant attacks would be easy to accomplish even without suicide? Set off a cheap bomb in a bus somewhere in Kentucky and the media will stir up a nationwide panic. In addition, Katrina shows us that we aren't even prepared to deal with larger attacks.
Given the resentment aroused by recent US foreign policy, the motivation for attacks and their frequency should be increasing. Also given the glaring ineptitude evident in other federal agencies and the challenges involved in restructuring agencies built for the Cold War, I doubt that it's the magnificent accomplishments of behind-the-scenes CIA and FBI operations that are protecting us.
Maybe there just aren't that many people out to get us and we're spending a lot of money on defense trying to prevent disasters that are better prevented with more thoughtful foreign policy (like nonproliferation efforts)? Maybe we're not spending enough money to protect ourselves from dangers that are more likely to affect more of us like levee failure and electrical grid malfunctions? Maybe the evil genius of terrorism is that it causes the victim to seek safety from the terrorists at the expense of protection from more realistically harmful dangers?
Musical aptitude is often correlated with mathematical skills that require auditory memory, mental problem solving and deductive reasoning. Part of the ability to respond to music, like mathematical aptitude, is expressed in the form of skill at uncovering the (sometimes very subtle) patterns within a piece of music. This ability is influenced by learning - which increases awareness of the patterns - and by mathematical aptitude.
There's also lots of anectodal evidence of famous musicians with mathematical ability and vice versa, but I can't find any rigorous studies. Check out The Psychology of Musical Ability by Shuter.
Taking a speculative evolutionary psychology perspective, I'd wager we evolved our higher-level musical aptitudes because of their usefulness in communicating and understanding complex emotions and social interactions - and a couple of the musical aptitudes just happened to be useful for mathematical reasoning.
Public school teachers have a wide variety of religious beliefs, so what would be the guarantee that they would represent the Christian belief? I rather not even go there.
Ideally, you should oppose religious instruction in public schools because you don't want citizens with different religious beliefs paying taxes that fund schools teaching your religious doctrine.
I think many of us in the blue states miss the point that there are many people in the red states who feel their culture is being threatened, and their religious ardor emerges from their desire to protect their beliefs. As the parent post indicated, they feel like the underdog in a cultural battle that has a long and complicated history.
Don't waste time arguing about whether evolution is true. [If you do, know that facts aren't really useful for any argument outside of academia anyway.] We are really just seeing the symptoms of a culture that feels threatened and is trying to protect itself, and us blue-staters would do better to realize that, relax a little, and remember that scientific thought hasn't been around very long so it will take time to spread.
The majority of Americans believe that we were created by a god in 6 days 10,000 years ago
Actually, the majority of Americans say that they believe that. We should be careful what we infer from polling data. For example, if I grow up in a very religious community, have little exposure to evolutionary theory, and have not really thought much about evolution because it doesn't really impact my daily life, I am likely to say I believe in creation. It saves me the emotional discomfort of taking a belief in conflict with my community, and it's the safe bet if I'm not completely sure there's a god but I wouldn't want to anger him if he exists.
I agree and I think one of the big reasons we work to accumulate "stuff" is to keep pace with our society - to keep up with the Jones's. For example, look at how many industries - from apparel to automobiles - are so obviously driven by "fashion".
The things and entertainment we buy have come to define the experience of being a part of our culture, and in order to feel connected with that culture, we have to buy the same experiences that everyone else is buying. And in addition to making us feel connected, we keep up with the newest fashions to show our friends that we're connected and successful. I want to get a new car - or a new iPod Shuffle - not just because it's a fun toy, but because if I'm the first kid on my block with one, I'll be the coolest kid.
In some sense, maintaining societal position and a feeling of connectedness are human needs as fundamental as food and water, but they're needs that we continue to work hard for because they're always defined relative to everyone else.
If you're lucky enough to live in a rich country like the US, you probably don't have to work full-time just to survive. But if you didn't, you might not get to buy a new suit (or plastic surgery) and that girl (or guy) down the street might not go out with you. So if everyone were immortal, we'd still have to work hard.
I am writing today with news of an exciting new project within the Harvard libraries. As all of us know, Harvard's is the world's preeminent university library. Its holdings of over 15 million volumes are the result of nearly four centuries of thoughtful and comprehensive collecting. While those holdings are of primary importance to Harvard students and faculty, we have, for several years, been considering ways to make the collections more useful and accessible to scholars around the world. Now we are about to begin a project that can further that global goal-and, at the same time, can greatly enhance access to Harvard's vast library resources for our students and faculty.
We have agreed to a pilot project that will result in the digitization of a substantial number of volumes from the Harvard libraries. The pilot will give the University a great deal of important data on a possible future large-scale digitization program for most of the books in the Harvard collections. The pilot is a small but extremely significant first step that can ultimately provide both the Harvard community and the larger public with a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries.
The pilot project will be done in collaboration with Google. The project will link Harvard's library collections with Google's resources and its cutting-edge technology. The pilot project, which will be announced officially tomorrow, is the result of more than a year of careful consultation at many levels of the University. We could not have achieved a meaningful pilot project without the efforts of the Harvard Corporation; the President, Provost, Chief Information Officer, and Office of General Counsel; the University Library Council; and senior managers within the College Library and the University Library.
A full description of the pilot program follows here, with further materials available on the Harvard home page tomorrow.
With best regards,
Sidney Verba
Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library
Project Description:
Harvard's Pilot Project with Google
Harvard University is embarking on a collaboration with Google that could harness Google's search technology to provide to both the Harvard community and the larger public a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries. In the coming months, Google will collaborate with Harvard's libraries on a pilot project to digitize a substantial number of the 15 million volumes held in the University's extensive library system. Google will provide online access to the full text of those works that are in the public domain. In related agreements, Google will launch similar projects with Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. As of 9 am on December 14, an FAQ detailing the Harvard pilot program with Google will be available at http://hul.harvard.edu.
The Harvard pilot will provide the information and experience on which the University can base a decision to launch a large-scale digitization program. Any such decision will reflect the fact that Harvard's library holdings are among the University's core assets, that the magnitude of those holdings is unique among university libraries anywhere in the world, and that the stewardship of these holdings is of paramount importance. If the pilot is deemed successful, Harvard will explore a long-term program with Google through which the vast majority of the University's library books would be digitized and included in Google's searchable database. Google will bear the direct costs of digitization in the pilot project.
By combining the skills and library collections of Harvard University with the innovative search skills and capacity of Google, a long-term program has the potential to create an important public good. According to Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, "Harvard has the greate
Slashdot Mirror
Also note that any politician who would support weakening security measures faces the small but very considerable political risk of being blamed for an attack after restrictions might be loosened - on top of whatever "weak-on-terror" mud-slinging the politician would have to face anyway. Since the measures have strong airline support and it's difficult to find someone principled enough to take the passenger's side, we all face a painful travel experience.
I'm equally resentful about the ID-checking requirement since all the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID and it still wouldn't be hard to get a fake ID past the TSA. That requirement has a similar history of having nothing to do with security and a lot with not being able to sell your ticket to someone else and reducing the pricing power of airlines.
In these instant-gratification times, I think we've lost our ability to struggle for things that don't provide immediate results. If something doesn't work out quickly enough, we get frustrated and move on. I barely have the patience to make a sandwich anymore. But reform and social change happen slowly. We have to be thinking about the welfare of our children, not necessarily our own. Even if I don't see a brighter day, it's worth enduring so that my children might not live in the Hell I didn't try to stop.
People are easiest to control when they have no hope. They don't struggle. They just close their eyes and pray for the best. Don't let the obnoxious arrogance of one president make you a sheep.
"They can't run on the war. They can't run on the economy, where the positive numbers on growth are offset by the largely stagnant numbers on median incomes and the public's growing dread of outsourcing. Immigration may play in various congressional districts, but it's too dicey an issue to nationalize. Even social conservatives may be growing weary of outlawing gay marriage every other November. Nobody's buying the ownership society. Competence? Ethics? You kidding?"
But wiretapping could be a solid issue to run on. If the Democrats harp on it, they will drive away moderate Republicans who think the administration is just doing what it needs to do to win the "war on terror." So the administration should be trying to feed the fire and focus attention on the issue - for example, by resisting investigation to drag out discussion, and by slowly allowing controversial new details about the program to surface.
Has anyone noticed that we've gone several years without a terrorist attack on US soil even though many significant attacks would be easy to accomplish even without suicide? Set off a cheap bomb in a bus somewhere in Kentucky and the media will stir up a nationwide panic. In addition, Katrina shows us that we aren't even prepared to deal with larger attacks.
Given the resentment aroused by recent US foreign policy, the motivation for attacks and their frequency should be increasing. Also given the glaring ineptitude evident in other federal agencies and the challenges involved in restructuring agencies built for the Cold War, I doubt that it's the magnificent accomplishments of behind-the-scenes CIA and FBI operations that are protecting us.
Maybe there just aren't that many people out to get us and we're spending a lot of money on defense trying to prevent disasters that are better prevented with more thoughtful foreign policy (like nonproliferation efforts)? Maybe we're not spending enough money to protect ourselves from dangers that are more likely to affect more of us like levee failure and electrical grid malfunctions? Maybe the evil genius of terrorism is that it causes the victim to seek safety from the terrorists at the expense of protection from more realistically harmful dangers?
Maybe we're letting the terrorists win?
There's also lots of anectodal evidence of famous musicians with mathematical ability and vice versa, but I can't find any rigorous studies. Check out The Psychology of Musical Ability by Shuter.
Taking a speculative evolutionary psychology perspective, I'd wager we evolved our higher-level musical aptitudes because of their usefulness in communicating and understanding complex emotions and social interactions - and a couple of the musical aptitudes just happened to be useful for mathematical reasoning.
Ideally, you should oppose religious instruction in public schools because you don't want citizens with different religious beliefs paying taxes that fund schools teaching your religious doctrine.
I think many of us in the blue states miss the point that there are many people in the red states who feel their culture is being threatened, and their religious ardor emerges from their desire to protect their beliefs. As the parent post indicated, they feel like the underdog in a cultural battle that has a long and complicated history.
Don't waste time arguing about whether evolution is true. [If you do, know that facts aren't really useful for any argument outside of academia anyway.] We are really just seeing the symptoms of a culture that feels threatened and is trying to protect itself, and us blue-staters would do better to realize that, relax a little, and remember that scientific thought hasn't been around very long so it will take time to spread.
Actually, the majority of Americans say that they believe that. We should be careful what we infer from polling data. For example, if I grow up in a very religious community, have little exposure to evolutionary theory, and have not really thought much about evolution because it doesn't really impact my daily life, I am likely to say I believe in creation. It saves me the emotional discomfort of taking a belief in conflict with my community, and it's the safe bet if I'm not completely sure there's a god but I wouldn't want to anger him if he exists.
Do not eat Wi-Fi Detector Ring
The things and entertainment we buy have come to define the experience of being a part of our culture, and in order to feel connected with that culture, we have to buy the same experiences that everyone else is buying. And in addition to making us feel connected, we keep up with the newest fashions to show our friends that we're connected and successful. I want to get a new car - or a new iPod Shuffle - not just because it's a fun toy, but because if I'm the first kid on my block with one, I'll be the coolest kid.
In some sense, maintaining societal position and a feeling of connectedness are human needs as fundamental as food and water, but they're needs that we continue to work hard for because they're always defined relative to everyone else.
If you're lucky enough to live in a rich country like the US, you probably don't have to work full-time just to survive. But if you didn't, you might not get to buy a new suit (or plastic surgery) and that girl (or guy) down the street might not go out with you. So if everyone were immortal, we'd still have to work hard.
December 13, 2004
Dear Colleague,
I am writing today with news of an exciting new project within the Harvard libraries. As all of us know, Harvard's is the world's preeminent university library. Its holdings of over 15 million volumes are the result of nearly four centuries of thoughtful and comprehensive collecting. While those holdings are of primary importance to Harvard students and faculty, we have, for several years, been considering ways to make the collections more useful and accessible to scholars around the world. Now we are about to begin a project that can further that global goal-and, at the same time, can greatly enhance access to Harvard's vast library resources for our students and faculty.
We have agreed to a pilot project that will result in the digitization of a substantial number of volumes from the Harvard libraries. The pilot will give the University a great deal of important data on a possible future large-scale digitization program for most of the books in the Harvard collections. The pilot is a small but extremely significant first step that can ultimately provide both the Harvard community and the larger public with a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries.
The pilot project will be done in collaboration with Google. The project will link Harvard's library collections with Google's resources and its cutting-edge technology. The pilot project, which will be announced officially tomorrow, is the result of more than a year of careful consultation at many levels of the University. We could not have achieved a meaningful pilot project without the efforts of the Harvard Corporation; the President, Provost, Chief Information Officer, and Office of General Counsel; the University Library Council; and senior managers within the College Library and the University Library.
A full description of the pilot program follows here, with further materials available on the Harvard home page tomorrow.
With best regards,
Sidney Verba
Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and
Director of the University Library
Project Description:
Harvard's Pilot Project with Google
Harvard University is embarking on a collaboration with Google that could harness Google's search technology to provide to both the Harvard community and the larger public a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries. In the coming months, Google will collaborate with Harvard's libraries on a pilot project to digitize a substantial number of the 15 million volumes held in the University's extensive library system. Google will provide online access to the full text of those works that are in the public domain. In related agreements, Google will launch similar projects with Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. As of 9 am on December 14, an FAQ detailing the Harvard pilot program with Google will be available at http://hul.harvard.edu.
The Harvard pilot will provide the information and experience on which the University can base a decision to launch a large-scale digitization program. Any such decision will reflect the fact that Harvard's library holdings are among the University's core assets, that the magnitude of those holdings is unique among university libraries anywhere in the world, and that the stewardship of these holdings is of paramount importance. If the pilot is deemed successful, Harvard will explore a long-term program with Google through which the vast majority of the University's library books would be digitized and included in Google's searchable database. Google will bear the direct costs of digitization in the pilot project.
By combining the skills and library collections of Harvard University with the innovative search skills and capacity of Google, a long-term program has the potential to create an important public good. According to Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, "Harvard has the greate