perfidy

Yahoo is showing a report that the economy is surprising the economic powers that be with its health.

US economic growth shot to an annual pace of 2.4 percent in the second quarter, shattering sluggish expectations.

Defying forecasts for growth closer to 1.5 percent, the US economy gave the clearest sign yet it is shaking off Iraq (news - web sites) war-inspired shock and gathering speed, with business investment finally back.

The return in business investment, a 52-year record surge in defense spending, robust consumer spending, and a red-hot housing market powered growth, early Commerce Department (news - web sites) estimates showed.

Other good news included:

Gross domestic product, which had grown at a sickly 1.4-percent pace in the first quarter, appeared to be responding to a double dose of tax cuts and 45-year record low interest rates.

Businesses, long cowed by the Iraq war uncertainties, lifted non-residential fixed investment by 6.9 percent, with spending on structures such as factories up by a 43-year high of 4.8 percent and equipment/software expenditure up 7.5 percent. "The economy truly does look to be on the mend," said Naroff Economic Advisors president Joel Naroff, noting that investment in buildings had climbed for the first time since 2001.

Consumers stepped up spending 3.3 percent despite lingering agony in the labor market.

On the jobless front, although the jobless rate is still high, at 6.4% (still far lower than most of Europe) new jobless benefits claims dropped by 5,000.

Good news all around. 
 

Reuters is reporting that Poindexter, in charge of the DARPA department that brought us the aborted Total Information Awareness Agency and the recently deceased Policy Analysis Market, is on the way out, according to anonymous sources.

This over here made me spurt Diet Dr. Pepper (pH 3) out my nose:

Took Mosquito to the Savannah Mall so we could mock the Windows losers obviously out of their league in the Apple Store. Showed her how to get free porn on the game sites. This was my old routine, even though the BC got her ass fired, and that sweet salary went south, along with my easy living. I know the bitch did it on purpose because she's about to leave me for that Phoenician shithead at her office and wants to glom onto MY salary at the divorce. I told Mosquito not to grow up into a twat like that.

Which reminds me that I haven't seen SeaLab 2001 or Aqua Teen Hunger Force for months. Months! My second favorite SeaLab episode was the one where the Bizarro crew took over. And a weird creature with the voice of Shake from ATHF kept saying, "Bizarro, bizarro, bizarro, bizarro" for fifteen minutes. Exquisitely painful and hilarious even though I wasn't high.

(My favorite episode is where the captain and Erik Estrada get locked in the closet, and the Captain punches everyone. Humor pared down its basics. A formula that can't help but win. I laughed, I cried.)

While I'm babbling, (58 oz of Diet DP and a cup a joe so far today, in case you want to know. Actually, regardless of whether you want to know.) My favorite episode of ATHF was the one where Shake sells meatball to the circus for a buck-two-ninetyfive. The leader of the circus is actually the son of the King of Jupiter, of course, and in a moment of weekness, tells meatball of his original plan to invade the Earth and steal all our women. Meatball's response after this long soliloquy:

Meatball: "Did you do it?"

Prince of Jupiter: "What?"

Meatball: "You know, invade the Earth."

Classic. You may now return to more productive activities.
 

Instapundit has a quite interesting post from InstaPundit's Afghanistan correspondent, Boston University Professor John Robert Kelly. It's a good read, but he had me at Beer and Loafing.

Over the last several days, I have conducted a rigorous scientific study of the effects of what I call humor on people I come in contact with. My methodology is brutally effective and simple. Whenever I say something, I closely observe the effects. A smile, and I incise a small cut on the inside of my left forearm. Laughter, a small cut on my left palm. A frown or other show of unhappiness or displeasure, a scratch on my right forearm. No reaction, a nick goes on my right palm.

After three days, my arms were a bloody mess, but I emerged from my trauma clutching close to my breast the dearly won knowledge that I am really, really funny.

In measuring the response of others to various statements of mine, I used the following criteria:

• Like with the famous purity test, technicalities count. So, a contemptuous smirk counts as a smile. Similarly, an embarrassed giggle counts as laughter.
• I have discounted all responses from my son, because he is not qualified to judge me and would be biased in any event.
• Finally, if someone says something like, "Shut the Hell up" while laughing counts as laughter, not displeasure.

The results:

In three days, I interacted personally with 39 people and one retard. In the course of conversation with these 39.5 people, I made 1204 distinct utterances. The breakdown of reactions is as follows:

• Laughter: 9.8%
• Smile: 47.7%
• Displeasure: 4.2%
• Stunned silence: 38.4%

(percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding)

As you can clearly see, significantly more than half of the things that I say cause smiles or laughter. I am doing more than my share in bringing joy to the world. However, one must be careful not to read to much into the results of this study, as it was not designed to measure the mechanisms that cause the humor reaction in others, merely that they reacted.

Some interesting results from deeper analysis of the data:

My interactions with the retard skewed the results somewhat, as he laughed at every thing I said. However, only seven of the 1204 utterances were directed at him.

Male coworkers are significantly more likely to laugh at intentional attempts at humor than others.

Wives are significantly (drastically) less likely to laugh at intentional attempts at humor, but much more likely to laugh at utterances that were not meant to be humorous. Further study will be needed on this topic, because women often report in Cosmo surveys that sense of humor is an important factor in mate selection. This apparent discrepancy cries out for resolution.

Streetbums, though an admittedly small part of the sample, show displeasure at the least provocation, and were responsible for almost a third of the "displeasure" reactions. This may have something to do with monetary factors involved in our interaction, but this supposition is not fully supported by the data at hand.

Conclusions:

1. I am funny
2. Retards are easily amused
3. Bums need to lighten up when I don't give them a quarter
4. I need more neosporin

Steven den Beste has a long post on biological and cultural evolution today. Most of this I have no problem with, as it's a quite well written summary of the general state of the art. Toward the end though, he gets into talking about evangelistic and xenophilic cultures, and says that they are generally exclusive:

But in general, what you find is that some cultures tend to be dominated by evangelism and they don't tend to be as open to outside ideas. Others tend to be quite xenophilic and don't tend to be quite so evangelistic. You can also get some which don't tend to either, which are smug and self-absorbed and are so contemptuous of outsiders that they feel little need to spread their ideas to anyone else

I would argue that Western culture to a certain extent, and American culture to a much larger extent is both evangelistic and xenophilic. And the reason that we can be both is that we willing embrace new methods, techniques, knowledge (and people) from anywhere, and roll it into the constantly evolving culture that we then evangelize. It is a point of pride in American culture that we absorb any good thing without worrying where it came from - and the rest of the world certainly complains often enough that we are ramming the result down their throats.

[Update:] Got an email from Clueless, who said that the part two of the series already written, "went into exactly that."

I'm smart. (3300 words, and its only part one. Sheesh.) 

No, we need not fear the invasion of North Korean troops disguised as insurance salesmen that the Weekly World News predicted a couple months ago. A recent article has noted that the US Congress is preparing to dramatically increase the number of North Korean refugees allowed to enter the country.

Some US officials are concerned that North Korean advocate groups are pushing the change as a way of "imploding" Kim Jong-il's regime. The advocate groups draw parallels with the fall of communist Europeafter huge refugee movements out of eastern bloc countries destablised the regimes there.

As far as I'm concerned, that's not a bug, it's a feature. Other concerns included the responses of China and especially South Korea; legally, North Koreans are considered citizens of South Korea and not entitled to refugee status in the US, though the article did not say whose laws made that illegal.

If we can get the Martians in charge of North Korea out of power, the world will be a far better place. And we can welcome the North Koreans as well - their southern cousins have been very successful here in the states. And Korean women are very, very cute in my experience. (Did I say that on the outside?)
 

This article, from the LA Times, shares some thoughts on America's role of Global Cop. In it, Mr. Spencer makes a useful distinction between the big peace, and little peace in individual countries around the world. America's position in the world dictates that it will be a, if not the, major player in assuring the peace of the world.

This big peace means keeping the seal lanes open for trade, deterring large scale aggression or territorial aggrandizement, and ending major threats. Assuring the peace inside any given country is at best optional unless the meltdown of that country has major repercussions outside its borders.

This to me sounds like a reasonable criterion for judging foriegn intervention. If we assume that the war in Iraq was part of a larger war on terror, it clearly fits into the big peace category. Our actions there were part of deterring or ending the threat fundamentalist or islamic terror represents to the peace of the world.

Liberia, on the other hand, is small peacekeeping. For all the horrific character of Liberia's civil war, the utter collapse of Liberia will have little effect on the rest of the world. National interest must come into play in order to set a lower bound to what makes us commit troops. Otherwise, we will become fatally overstretched.

Currently, the United States has exactly three uncommitted combat brigades. (for reference, a brigade is a third of a division, of which the United States Army has ten.) Approximately ten thousand troops are available for new missions, the rest are either in tasked to S. Korea, Europe, or are in refit/retraining on their way to being available once more. This means that if some great threat were to emerge that isn't the paranoid raving lunatics of North Korea, we're screwed. And we're even more screwed if a third of our available unallocated military strength is sent to Liberia.

At the end of the first Gulf War, the Army had 18 active duty divisions along with a number of independent brigades, and any number of support and logistics units. During the Clinton administration, with the acquiescence of the Republican congress, that was nearly cut in half. The Navy and Air Force suffered similar, though not quite so deep, cuts in their forces. Only the Marines, smallest of the four branches, survived nearly untouched.

The recent unpleasantness in Iraq has stretched our downsized military almost to the breaking point. During the conflict, we heard of the Carrier task forces that were on station for more than a year. The Army's third division just had its deployment in Iraq extended indefinitely. The reason that these forces were so overused is for one simple reason - there was nothing to replace them with.

While many have commented on the facts I just mentioned, few realize that overdeploying units have far reaching effects beyond the immediate morale of the troops in those units. The extension of the Third division's deployment basically was a decision to sacrifice one tenth of our army for immediate needs. Sure, we can use the 3rd now, but when the division eventually comes home, huge percentages of its soldiers will not reenlist. When these soldiers leave, they are not available to train the new soldiers who are assigned to the unit. It will be most of a decade if at all, before the 3rd is as effective as it was when it entered Iraq.

The civilian leadership of the DoD have spoken of reorganization as a possible solution, saying that by contracting out more logistical and administrative functions we can assign more uniformed personnel to combat units. This is probably true. But it cannot actually solve the problem.

There are only two solutions. Reduce the number and scale of military deployments by a) cutting back on peacekeeping and commitments to other nations and b) fighting far fewer wars; or increasing the size of the military to something close to what it was in 1991. (Alright, there's a third solution that is an average of the first two.)

For a variety of reasons, the first option can't solve all our problems. We can cut back on deployments by nibbling around the edges - the Sinai, cutting back in the Balkans and Central Europe, etc.; but there are certain core needs that must continue to be met. In most cases, American troops already in place are there for a good reason. Further, for all that you've heard me say that unilateralism is not necessarily a bad thing, I also feel that multilateralism is not necessarily a bad thing either. Cuttign back drastically on our military commitmentst to other nations will have deleterious diplomatic consequences, and possibly encourage aggression that is now deterred by the presence of American forces.

So, we need to not merely increase defense spending, we need to increase the number of combat troops that can be sent to the sharp end - so that we can meet the threats that the next couple decades may offer. If we burn up all of our combat strength now by overdeployment, we might have very little left by the end of the decade. Right now, we spend a little over 3% of GNP on defense. This is somewhat more than many other nations spend. Of course, the sheer size of the American economy makes that number seem very large when compared to others.

At the height of the cold war, we were spending double the percentage that we are now. Given our role of first team peacekeeper, spending say, 5% of GNP does not sound that unreasonable. Especially when that would give us six more army divisions, a couple carrier battle groups and several Air Force bomber and fighter wings. Which might even give us the real leeway to lower the bar for humanitarian interventions.

I hereby notify all and sundry that I am gloating over the fact that reality forced Johno to admit that conservatism is the new hip, cool, rebellious thing for those wacky kids to be doing. As a side note, I find it ironic that whenever a limousine liberal hollywood gashead tries to parody the right, it ends up being adopted by (at least some) as a badge of honor - because they didn't really understand the right to begin with. Examples include the Tim Robbins entire movie Bob Roberts, and the "Greed is good" speech from Stone's Wall Street.

Bloomberg is reporting that DARPA is creating a online futures market for ideas.

Traders could bet on the likelihood of events ranging from the overthrow of a government to the collapse of an economy or the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

This is the Delphi boards from John Brunner's clasic book Shockwave Rider come to life. (On my top five sf novels list.) I have been trying for years to get someone who knows more about programming than I do to help me create this idea. One of my goals for finally getting webspace was to finally do it. Now the goddamn defense department has gone ahead and created it. (You can see the Policy Analysis Market here.)

[Update:] The NYT now has a story, and is claiming that "the White House also altered the Web site so that the potential events ... that were visible earlier in the day ... could no longer be seen." However, you can still see the images here, here, and here. A general article on Ideas Futures Markets can be seen here.

The purpose of the site is to leverage knowledge that many individuals each have about one area into knowledge of a whole area or sequence of events. DARPA says, "Prices and spreads signal probabilities and confidence. Since markets provide incentives for good judgment and self-selection, the market will effectively aggregate information among knowledgeable participants.'' It continued, "This approach has proven successful in predictions concerning elections, monetary policy decisions and movie box office receipts -- DARPA is investigating its success in defense- related areas."

The mechanism is to set up mutually opposing outcomes - each of which represents a futures contract that pays $1. For example, the question, "Will terrorists attack Israel with bio-weapons in the next year?" has only two possible outcomes. You can bet (purchase a contract on one side or the other.

The interesting thing is that it doesn't stop there. There are derivatives and hedge contracts as well, that serve to combine information. The example given on the PAM website is historical - two contracts, one on the likelihood of the collapse of the Jordanian monarchy, and the other on the likelihood of Saddam's regime lasting a month once the US began hostilities. In a matrix, there are four possible combinations of outcomes, and each of these represents a derivative. The price on each is in effect an aggregate prediction. Further there are hedge bets - for example, you could bet that if Saddam lasts longer than one month, then the Jordanian monarchy will collapse. If the first part of the prediction doesn't come true, you don't lose money, but you would gain significantly if the whole thing did.

In all, this is very similar in concept to the idea of the Delphi boards in Brunner's novel. The boards were organized more on the model of racetrack betting, but they did involve speculation of future events. And the underlying assumption was identical: if you ask enough people, even if they are unaware of the complete body of information regarding the question, the average of their answers will approximate the actual result. If anything, the DARPA concept is potentially more powerful than the Delphi boards, because it seems to allow combinations of predictions in infinite variety. In this manner, new questions conveniently packaged with answers can be discovered, rather than merely answers to questions explicitly asked. Further, the price mechanism could allow more responsive and informative predictions than artificially moving the odds in response to betting on the part of participants.

Needlessly to say, I think this is very cool. I am very upset that they got their first. However, currently the site is only aimed at the middle east. This could be expanded. I am now on a crusade to convince those with the knowledge I need that they must help me. Ross, you're first on my list.

As a side note, some Democrats were upset in completely predictable ways. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota called it, "the most Byzantine thing I have ever seen proposed by a federal agency.'' But more to the point, he was worried about people's feelings:

How would you feel if you were the king of Jordan and learned that the U.S. Department of Defense was creating a futures market in whether you're going to be overthrown?

Well, seeing as I am always going on about the power of markets, I kind of have to be behind this idea. I am going to try to sign on when the site begins registration on Aug 1. Should be interesting.

My father suggests that I change my nom de net to "Buickhead." I guess it wasn't enough for me to wear a buick tshirt to his party last weekend.

Small Times is reporting that advances in rapid prototyping are bringing the idea of desktop manufacturing to reality.

Imagine your kitchen blender conks out the day you’re hosting a large cocktail party. You search an online catalog, decide on a model, and click the “buy” button. But instead of waiting three days for the appliance to be shipped to your door, a new kind of printer on your desk springs into action. Layer by layer, the miraculous machine squirts out various materials to form the chassis, the electronics, the motors – literally building the blender for you from the bottom up in a matter of hours.

This will revolutionize the most profitable sector of the internet economy: online pornography

For the Ministry's inaugural assault, I choose as our target this bunch of blinkered racist nozzleheads:

Parents: White Teacher Should Not Teach Black History Group Of Parents Protest District's Decision OBERLIN, Ohio -- A group of parents said they will fight a possible decision to allow a white teacher to lead classes in black history at Oberlin High School.

In this brief article from News Channel 5 in my hometown of Cleveland, we learn that civilization is dead.

"the parents said using a white teacher would send the wrong message to black students"

What good is civilization if we cannot all learn from the knowledge that our civilization has accumulated? Am I not permitted to study and ponder the life of Martin Luther King, because he was black and I am white? Will I be consigned to the outer darkness if I ever mention anything I learned to someone who is black?

This is complete and unremediated bullshit. One of my strongest memories from a black period of my life - the year that I dated Margaret, the psycho hosebeast - is the two day long argument I had with her over how much people of different backgrounds can actually communicate and understand each other. Margaret took the position that it is in fact impossible for a white male of privilege (subtext: me) could understand the inner life of a oppressed minority. (subtext: her.) This of course ignored the fact that she grew up in a house five times the size of mine, and her father was one of the five richest accountants in California. It also ignored the fact that she did not look in the least bit hispanic, and in fact got upset that summer because someone whose ancestors came from Finland could get a better tan than she could. But why bother writing books, explaining your life in print, studying the past if the end result is that no one except those who share your upbringing can understand what you say? This is parochialism of the most severe kind.

Of course, my mind was an open book. She could understand and benefit from my culture. She could criticize my history, beliefs and culture with impunity. And the great thing was, she was immune from any kind fo response I might make. If I offered some comment on her culture, well I just wasn't qualified to say anything. I could not judge her, or anyone like her, or anyone in fact who shared her political beliefs.

I hate being reminded of Margaret. Which is one more reason to hate these idiots in Oberlin. These parents have abandoned civilization. They are saying that black history is meaningful only when taught by black teachers. Is it meaningless otherwise? Does it hurt the self esteem of fragile black minds to hear the stories of Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington and all the rest from white lips? It would send the wrong message, they say.

What message do they want sent? Clearly, not a message that Martin Luther King would have endorsed. If the message is racial amity and togetherness, this action certainly isn't sending it. If we wanted to send a message of racial harmony and set a positive example, a white (or asian or hispanic or jewish or martian) teacher teaching black history would be ideal. And throw in a black teacher teaching Shakespeare for good measure.

The message that these parents want sent is a message of racial apartheid, only we're not allowed to call it that. It's only bad when white people do it. It is supreme irony that race conscious blacks and liberals are doing everything in their power to recreate the segregation and hatred that the civil rights movement labored and sacrificed to end.

In this interview with John Gibson of Fox News, Hitchens discusses his recent trip to Iraq. In general, he belives that things are going well:

The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.

And so if no one is willing to take the gamble, as they see it, of saying actually that it's going a lot better than it is, but it is. It's quite extraordinary to see the way that American soldiers are welcomed. To see the work that they're doing and not just rolling up these filthy networks of Baathists and Jihaddists, but building schools, opening soccer stadiums, helping people connect to the Internet, there is a really intelligent political program as well as a very tough military one...

I felt a sense of annoyance that I had to go there myself to find any of that out.

More balanced mainstream reporting on Iraq and on the democracy movement in Iran would be welcome.

Michael Novak has a thought provoking three part ((#1), (#2), and (#3)) piece on the root of the recent arguments between American and Europe. Me, ahm jus a simple rednek consuhvativ, I uhsly jus say them all You-Ro-Pe-Uns purely suck, and we all kicks ass.

Mr. Novak has a much more thoughtful commentary. His conclusion is worth pondering, "Despite their particular origin, furthermore, our common values have important meaning for all cultures universally, as many in other cultures have long been testifying. Others may not accept these common values wholesale, or in the same way that we do, but nothing in these common values belongs solely to us. Like all things human, they both have a particular historical origin, and also they are part of the common heritage of humankind." 
 

Pythagosaurus has pointed out that correctly, "thingie" is only used as a euphamistic term for the human male wang. Therefore, when referring to events in the wide world, the only correct usage is "thingy."

Don't let people tell you I never admit when I'm wrong.

"thingie" is dead, long live "thingy!"

Ross, over at spiral dive, is the only one who showed any interest in my police state post. (Scroll down to the second entry. Unreconstructed luddite Ross doesn't have permalinks for individual entries.) (Wah. Not that he bothered to tell me. I actually had to go read his blog, the bastard.) While I posted a version of this in his comments, I found it sufficiently interesting to post over here. (And remember, I do this for my amusement, not yours.)

Ross says:

The question is, can the system come apart? In the environment and in our political system I believe we are truly faced with the systemic question. Will the system survive the stresses we place upon it?

He then mentions the environment and the brittleness of our political system, as examples that we are skating on the edge of disaster. He continues:

Do you really believe that we can just muddle along on these issues? Do you really believe that there just can't be a downside, that nothing can and ever will befall this country? After all, nothing ever has.

(Read the whole post to get a sense of where he was coming from.)

Not normally one to kick at long term consequences, I have to say that sticking a knife in our economy now on the chance that we may prevent a 1 degree increase in the average world temperature over a century seems a little too forward looking.

In my post, I was talking about the ultimate collapse of government. But to answer your question, yes, I think we will muddle along. Every issue has its downside, every decision has its consequence. This is the core of conservative thinking - the law of unintended consequences. We need to defend the country, that costs money. The boomers want their entire existence subsidized. That will cost a lot of money. The government decrees that cars must be fuel efficient, so people by minivans and SUVs which are classified as light trucks. You can't have a solution just by wishing it so, or because it would be fair, or just, or whatever.

While political systems are not in general fast reacting - dedicated as they are to the status quo - the US has a government whose reaction times have been reduced to a world record generation or less. If something starts going wrong, we can take advantage of our adaptable system to put in a correction. The openness of the system allows people to organize to achieve this.

Over the last two centuries, history shows us that people have always felt that we were on the brink. Somehow we never went over, or maybe we weren't really on the brink after all.

There are problems. Likely, someone has a solution or at least a start on one. None of these problems are catastophic, at least that I can see. So unless we get hit by an asteroid, I think we'll be alright for the time being.

Unless we go to war with China

In the Pulpit, Cringely comes up with a new model for music sharing. But first, the money quote:

Technology has already changed the economics of music creation and distribution, but the record companies are resisting with every weapon they have. I would too if I was in their position, which is fat, rich, and having everything to lose.

His idea is insidious. Create a company which will buy many cds. Then, sell shares. Each shareholder is a co-owner of the large pool of cds. Under fair use laws, they may copy them. There is even a business model - each shareholder would pay a small fee to the company for each download.

Aside from the business benefits, what this would do to the mental equilibrium of the recording industry is just delicious.

In a move certain to generate sympathy for the embattled recording industry, the RIAA has decided to persecute not only those who download music, but their grandmothers, parents and roommates. As the AP reports:

The president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the largest music labels, said lawyers will pursue downloaders regardless of personal circumstances because it would deter other Internet users.

"The idea really is not to be selective, to let people know that if they're offering a substantial number of files for others to copy, they are at risk," Cary Sherman said. "It doesn't matter who they are."

This kind of judiciousness has always won the RIAA praise. "pour l'encouragement des autres." What a great idea.

In this article, Charles Krauthammer offers a good prespective on what we've accomplished so far in the war on terror. The part I found most interesting was this, on the recent hooforah over the uranium thingie. (Thingie!):

The fact that the Democrats and the media can't seem to let go of it, however, is testimony to their need (and ability) to change the subject. From what? From the moral and strategic realities of Iraq. The moral reality finally burst through the yellowcake fog with the death of the Hussein brothers, psychopathic torturers who would be running Iraq if not for the policy enunciated by President Bush in that very same State of the Union address.

That moral reality is a little hard for the left to explain, considering the fact that it parades as the guardian of human rights and all-around general decency, and rallied millions to prevent the policy that liberated Iraq from Uday and Qusay's reign of terror.

This has amazed me for some time. The left is the champion of the downtrodden masses, the oppressed and suffering. Why did they try so hard to keep these particularly downtrodden, oppressed and suffering masses from being helped? Even if they believe that Bush is satan incarnate, an alliance of convenience to help the oppressed might have been a good idea, then go back to trying to overthrow the evil republicans.