Don't Bury Me, Cause I'm Not Dead Yet

Been away for the last week and am just getting over the being away. More boring and ill informed post asap.

How The World Ends

I am sure, of course, that there is nothing to this:

The Lingodroid research project lets robots generate random sounds for the places they visit in both simulations and a real office.
The "words" are shared and the robots play games to establish which sound represents which location.
The lexicon has proved so sophisticated that it can be used to help robots find places other robots direct them to.

When machines finally do gain the upperish hand will it be our friends and collaborators in the creation of a new Eden or our overlords. I'm voting overlords.

How Soon He Forgets

Remember when Andrew Sullivan was all a twitter about the "Arab 1848" that his misunderstanding of the past and the use of historical analogy was on a nearly hourly display? Despite the continuation of the tumult his interest, if judged by posting, has dropped to zero. I have no real idea why this is but I would suggest that it is that fact that what is there going on is so complicated and the triumph of the masses, if that's what happen in Tunisia and Egypt and might yet happen elsewhere, so long in coming that he just plain lost interest or, more precisely, he wasn't much interested in the events on the ground as he pretended to be.

In the same way, outside of TPM or TPM-like outlets, despite information concerning the continuing and increasing foolishness and counterproductive nature of the anti-human policies of Scott Walker and his fellow travelers is difficult to find in the national news. Indeed, in TPM and its fellows, we mostly read of popularity versus unpopularity. Why? Again, I have no real idea but would suggest that the groundswell of support for traditional American remedies for the excesses of capitalism embarrasses  excess's most recent defenders: the Neoliberals left right and center wings.

In other words, once the reality underlying some phenomenon or another becomes complicated or runs counter to interests into the memory hole it goes.

How Not To Criticize Bad Policy

Think Progress on Pawlenty and the destruction of Medicare:

GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty said yesterday that he would sign the Medicare-ending Republican budget into law if elected president. “If that was the only bill that came to my desk, and I wasn’t able to pass my own plan, I would sign it,” he said of the hugely unpopular plan.

The plan is, it's true, hugely unpopular, but that really isn't the most salient point. It is wasteful, destructive, counter-productive, and generally anti-human. Think Progress has, I think, mentioned all of those points in other articles etc; however, it needs to make the most important point every single time.  The debate isn't on popularity, which might make sense if we were electing the prom king and queen, but rather on the outcome. Tax cuts are "popular," in the sense that people like them but actually hate the policy outcome: reduced service. Let's make an attempt to stick to the important stuff.

What's a Picture Worth

This sums things up:

via

Ah, No.

Matthew Yglesias doesn't like regulation. I agree with at least part of his point, it's silly to lock convicted felons out of jobs. There, for example, no reason why a murderer can't be perfectly good barber or lawyer. On the other hand, there is no reason why a convicted Ponzi Scheme operator ought be allowed to manage a hedge fund. The key to intelligent regulation is understanding if the danger outweighs the damage done to the pool of felons or other miscreants seeking employment in this or that field. Keeping people convicted of sexualized violence against children away from children, for example,  strikes me as a perfectly reasonable regulation. It isn't, obviously, going to end sexualized violence against children and, given the Neoliberal commitment to undermining the state's ability to protect its citizens from predators, it wont be perfect. Still, it's difficult to see how this kind of regulation is an example of a slippery slope. Indeed, I would worry more about the various housing rules that make all but impossible for some convicted of sexualized violence against children to find a place to live.

Relatedly, he observes that younger Americans and some other subgroups of Americans aren't graduating college in the same percentages of older Americans. He concludes:

No huge policy insight from me for now, but it’s a reminder that more high-skill immigration would be in our interest.

If we take his "our" to mean Americans, it is unclear why importing already educated people would benefit "us," at least some of whom are those of "us" who didn't graduate. The benefit to "us" comes from figuring out why these groups aren't graduate at the same rate as older Americans and then ameliorating those conditions.Yglesias seems not to understand that suggesting a change in policy is, in fact, a policy "insight."  Furthermore, there is right now a fierce competition for jobs among all categories of workers. The focus needs to be on the creation of decent paying jobs even if it violates on or another of the limitless Neoliberal nonsense based on economized language.

Sentence I Wish I'd Written

From the Balloon Juice collective:

Over at his blog, Bobo continues to fling links to random bits of other people’s sociological research in the vain hope that people will assume “The Social Animal” also contains actual science-like stuff, rather than being 350 pages of David whimpering about how Gail Collins won’t sleep with him.

How to Spot a Neoliberal in Any Clothing

Obviously, there's the market fundamentalism; but also there's this:

She is smart. (That’s why she’s so rich.)

That's just not true. Mitt Romney is rich and he is an idiot. Donald Trump was/is rich and he is worse than an idiot. And so on. People are rich for lots of reasons few to none of which are smarts.

Error Prone

This morning I read about Chrysler's return of a bunch of the money the State gave it during the dark days of yesteryore. And, I thought, that ought to be one more counter on the side of those who think that this Administration is doing at least somethings more or less right and, consequently, as more evidence that the Neoliberal lock on policy-making ought loosen.

First up is Mitt Romney. He denounced Obama's Administration's bailout plan as the worst kind of socialism and so on. Now he claims that he invented Obama's Administration's bailout plan. The Republican majority in the House are so dedicated to deregulation that they are behaving like cads and bounders in their "grilling" of Elizabeth Warren. The House Minority Leader wants spending cuts to offset any aid to Joplin MO. And so on.

How long do we have to put up with this nonsense? The Neoliberals are wrong and events have shown them to be wrong. It's time to try something else.

Years Not Months

So, the mission creep built into the UN mandate to bomb for peace and tranquility has crept.  Whilst the Bush/Yoo doctrine of obscuring reality and expanding presidential powers continues on apace.  David Brooks can now be wrong about more than one political system and use that wrongness to write pro-authoritarian political system op-eds. Matthew Yglesias cannot distinguish underemployment combined with stagnant and declining wages from work sharing schemes designed to reduce profits by increasing people with decent wages.

On the plus side, it's burgers and tater tots for supper.

Why Journalist Don't Matter

Did Lance Armstrong take EPO and other PES? I don't know. Right now I do know that all the allegations that have been adjudicated were found to untrue, or at least insufficient to establish Armstrong's guilt. Tyler Hamilton's recent denunciation isn't and doesn't contain anything new. Should the state prove that Armstrong was a drug cheat, well sucks to him.

However, not content to wait for actual evidence of any wrong doing and seemingly unaware that Hamilton's allegations are not new, Andy Baggot of the the Wisconsin State JOurnal's sports page provides more evidence, should it be needed, of essential foolishness of the press here in America. After praising Armstrong's cancer work and thinking that the lying and cheating were fundamentally necessary for the cancer work and deciding that he would do the same thing, Baggot writes:

This is how I choose to reconcile the now overwhelming perception that Armstrong isn’t who he says he is — that he isn’t the person whose incredible story prompted me to buy his books and admire him in this space. 

That's right, he decided on Armstrong's guilt because of an "overwhelming perception," sort of like opposing the end of slavery or the emancipation of women because of the overwhelming perception of their intellectual inferiority.

This is exactly like the rounds of fibbing and lionizing of Ryan following on in the wake of his idiotic budget. An overwhelming perception, although it's unclear about who Baggot his small circle of friends and professional colleagues seems most likely, emerges and then people who really don't not know what they are talking about decided to accept the version offered by whatever spokes model stands in front of the cameras.

It's a small wonder that yesterday's WSJ editorial was a song of praise for old Ryan's dishonest plan to stop paying for health care instead of controlling its cost.

Schooling Superman

Diana Ravitch dismantles, yet again, the Charter School Myth.

Books Are Forever

For a while now, I've been worried that the book, the physical printed book, was going to disappear. I use kindle and its perfectly adequate, but books are the bee's knees. I am, therefore, heartened by this from Megan McArdle:

I'm pretty sure the print book's days are numbered for anything except specialty applications.  The die-hards will cling for a while, but ultimately, book buyers are already an extremely affluent group, and the convenience in acquiring, porting, and storing your library simply overwhelms the drawbacks, especially as Amazon has introduced innovations like eBook lending.

Inasmuch as she is wrong about everything it follows that she is wrong about this. For my money, if you want to know, the book's future lies in ondemand printing services like the Espresso ondeman book making machine.

Corporations Treated Better Than People: Example 11tybillion

Some poor slob in Michigan wins 2 million in the lottery but because he took it all in a lump sum he has no income and therefore continues to get foodstamps. For obvious reasons, the state is going to develop a new set of regulations to deal with this problem. Would that we could deal with wealthy corporations and their welfare payments with such alacrity.

David Brooks Uses Words As Weapons

Against reality and meaning, that is. Here is a paragraph from his op-ed thingy today:

Here in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is trying to foster that sort of society. Until Cameron, Britain — like the U.S. — had one party that spoke on behalf of the market (the Conservatives) and one party that spoke on behalf of the state (Labour). But Cameron is initiating a series of policies, under the rubric “Big Society,” that seek to nurture community bonds, civic activism and social capital.

Labour spoke for, you know, laboring men and women and tried to use the state to overcome the unfair advantaged enjoyed by the monied classes and their dependents, like Brooks.  The "Big Society" seeks to privatize and individualize all positive state functions, positive in the sense of making life better for working men and women and the various kiddiewinks and seniors. So, in other words, after Blair the UK, like the US, has two parties dedicated to market fundamentalism with a basic disagreement about how much the state ought to protect its citizens from the rapacity and cupidity of capitalists.

Crises Management

When I think about a crisis, I think of a discrete moment during which the normal means of dealing with one or another of life's problems fails and the problem metastasizes and fundamentally alters the problems scale threatening lives, homes, and etc. During a crisis those actually dedicating to solving it pursue multiple paths, attacking immediate and underlying causes, and jettison those methods that fail. The same, it seems to me, is true of forest fires, floods, and the Berlin Air Lift. There is an underlying intractable problem that grows into a life threatening something or another, previous measures fail and therefore something new and dramatic must be done.

So, for example, contagious disease is a recurring problem for humanity in a social state, the flu pandemic of 1918-1920 was a crisis. The state operating through a variety of humanitarian and other organizations, sought to deal effectively with the dead, provide palliative care for the ill, inhibit its spread, and find a cure. San Francisco order everyone to wear a mask as means of stopping the dread disease's spread. When they figured out that the gauze masks were of little use, the stop enforcing the rule.

Lots of ideologically driven nimrods are insisting that the American educational system is in crisis. How can this be? Educating children, young adults, and adults, has always been a difficult task. But no one is going to die, lots of homes are being built, books written, and so on. The evidence is that the choice and accountablility don't work and, in fact, that whole dealio is a scam. Rather than abandoning choice and accountablity the people are pursuing it with greater vigor or moving the goalposts and generally denying that improvement has anything to do with it.

This isn't a crisis, it's an opportunity for people who hate people trying to rob us of yet another social good in favor of market fundamentalism, which is just another way of saying let's let the rich rule.

Socially Liberal But Economically Conservative

There is a post over to Crooked Timber concerning the split between cultural and economic leftists and liberals or, at least, that's how I read it. In the comments the notion of nominal Liberals who are Socially/Culturally Liberal but Economically Conservative comes up. I think they mean people like Heath Shuler. I would argue that eh s/cl ec wing of the Democratic or Republican parties mean that they are in favor of rich people running the country and don't particularly care one way or the other about anything else. When the "New Left" denounced big labor for protecting white male privilege it wasn't just an attempt to win for marginalized groups the right to be and to enjoy legal equality it was also an attempt to restructure the economy around the idea of justice as equality in all available meanings. What we got was limited, incremental improvement in the condition of women and minorities, which is now being destroyed by the Republicans, by Neoliberals like Clinton on the condition that the rich get to get richer and the poor ever more screwed.

She Turned Me Into a Newt

Newt Gingrich has been a boil on the body politic for a long time. He latest attempt to be interesting has blown up in his face. All his attempted backtracking and related eel like twisting and turning point to an important change in Republican politics. The only rogue going allowed is further into crazy land. Gingrich is now the victim of the climate of hate he created in his years of irresponsible pandering to the 27 percenters who make life miserable for the rest of us. Fortunately, this time they seem to be devouring Newtie; unfortunately, the next Republican candidate for president will make Rand Paul look sane.

No Ride Zone

Sen Schumer's notion of a no ride list is beyond silly. The last thing train travel needs is to make the getting  on and off trains more like the getting on of planes. Especially as the idea is based on the ravings of Osama's journal.

Jonah Goldberg: Still Dumb

Jonah Goldberg complains that Obama was too quick to tell the world of Osama's death because by so doing he ruined the "actionable" intelligence. He compares the information that the Navy Seals gathered to a stolen NFL playbook and suggests that by admitting to Osama's death Obama alerted our opponents to the fact that we have the playbook. The analogy holds true only if we add that Green Bay stole the Jets' playbook by flying into Rex Ryan's back yard and shooting him in the head in front of family and associates and then dumping the body in the sea.

I mean really, does Goldberg actually think that Osama's associates, on hearing that he had been assassinated, didn't know that whatever information Osama had on any pending or other operations was compromised? I understand, as of course, that Goldberg and the rest of the Conservative punditocracy cannot allow Obama even so much as a smidgen of credit for Osama's murder but still this is the weakest of weak and lamest of lame attempts. It is, in other words, a nearly perfect encapsulation of Jonah Goldberg's continuing argument against nepotism.

This Does Not Bode Well

During the Roman Republic there was the office of dictator, who -- in a time of great crisis -- was granted all political and military powers for a period of 6 months. One example is Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who  saved Rome and resigned his powers as he ought, or so we are told. George Washington is often depicted as Cincinnatus because he voluntarily gave up the presidency. Right this moment, the maniacs in the Republican party want to create

new language [for the AUMF that] eschews references to September 11, and instead centers the authorization on "armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces," though "associated forces" is not defined. It replaces the authority to target "organizations" and "persons" domestically with the power to target "all entities that continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens, both domestically and abroad."

Call me a pessimist if you will, but I cannot think of a moment in the history of the world since there was a USofA in which there was not someone who posed some kind of a threat to the USofA.

Why do Republicans hate democracy, freedom, and people? I ask you.

History Matters

For a very interesting discussion of why few historians take originalism serious see here. A key point

Historians devote their lives to understanding the past, so one would surmise that they, above all others, would be drawn to the theory of originalism. One might attribute the resolute anti-originalism of most historians to the fact that they are generally more liberal than the population at large and thus oppose originalism for political reasons. Although political orientation may account for some of this animus, their hostility to originalism has less to do with politics and more to do with questions of historical interpretation and method. When most historians look closely at originalist arguments, what they usually find is bad history shaped to fit an ideological agenda—what historians derisively call “law office history.”

The author does a really fine job of destroying Yoo, of which activity there ought to be more. 

Crises

Let's say you're on a boat and the boat springs a leak. You face a crisis: too much water and the boat will sink. One group wants to plug the leak another wants to start the bilge pumps and a third wants to do both. Suddenly a dim bulb shows up and says: No, let's fire the deck hands. If you decide that the dim bulb is correct, you really have no place talking about this crisis and it's solutions.

As we all know, Detroit is a failed city and its school system reflects that. The "learning outcomes" of its students are reflection of the corruption, poverty, and so on. Yet Matthew Yglesias views this particular engine room slowing filling with water and insists that the deck hands did it. Moron.

Tortured Logic

As I mentioned lots of peoples are discussing torture in lots of unhelpful ways. Over to Crooked Timber a commentator makes this argument

I think it’s just obvious that torture can be effective, at least in the case where the information you’re trying to extract is immediately verifiable, like, say, the password for a document that is right here, in front of you. I think people understands this, and they probably take the line “we shouldn’t torture because torture doesn’t work” as an insult to their intelligence.

Much like the ticking time nonsense, this hypothetical assumes perfectly imperfect knowledge. The torturer is has perfect that the only missing piece of information is the password and that this person right here has it. Consequently torture is okay. How does the torturer know this? Because if he or she didn't the hypothetical falls apart.

Wrong In Both Directions

To repeat myself, the humanist argument, which is the correct one, is that "we" oppose torture on the grounds that it doesn't work and it degrades everyone involved, in different ways obviously. Mistermix, over to Balloon Juice, apparently thinks that being serious means distorting reality.

See also for evidence that the torture led to wrong information, which is always the case -- except in movies and the perverted imaginings of serious people who get most of the information from movies.