Prudence Will Dictate

TSA Security Directive SD-1544–09-06

2009-12-29T21:26:00.000-08:00

At the bottom of this post is the partial text of what has already appeared on many sites in the last few days - TSA Security Directive SD-1544–09-06, the Security Directive for airport and in-flight procedures in the aftermath of the December 25 failed bomb attempt on NW flight 253. This is a copy of the text that has been circulating; it didn't come from the TSA site. TSA's search page doesn't yield any results for a search on that directive number.

The authenticity of the directive would seem to be ensured by the fact that Chris Elliott, apparently the first to publish it, was served a subpoena by a special agent demanding to know who sent it to him. Note that our government apparently still remembers the part about "of the people, by the people" and a bunch of famous cases resulting in the conclusion that a guy who publishes leaked material is not criminal because he published it (it is the government's responsibility to keep its secrets secret; once leaked, they belong to the people). Nevertheless they obviously can subpoena him because of his knowledge of the criminal who leaked it. Fair enough, I guess.

Regardless of whether the document is real, fake, or a dead-end draft, many of the most offensive provisions of it have already been put in place in the last few days. Let's assume for discussion purposes that this is legitimate. If this text is the real thing, it shows what a giant disgrace the TSA is. Even without this alleged security directive, thinking folk have probably known that the TSA management is a bunch of boobs for quite some time. Richard Reid had a bomb in his shoe, so we all remove our shoes and run them through an xray machine that would not have detected Reid's bomb. It's hard to reach any conclusion other than that the TSA is in reactive mode and that shoe removal serves mainly to create the illusion of being in control.

It now appears that the TSA has identified certain arbitrary attributes of the last bombing attempt and has reacted to them by adding new, essentially arbitrary regulations, like the 60 minute-before-touchdown restriction on overhead luggage and the bathroom. Incompetent boobs.

Having spent a long time in the aerospace industry (and being old enough to remember when flying was fun) it causes me great pain to see this. The Federal Aviation Administration is certainly one of the best things the US government ever invented. Its regulations reflect solid principles of engineering, psychology, human anthropometry, probability and statistics.

It wasn't always that way. In the early days, the FAA existed mainly to convince the public that it was safe to fly. Fortunately, it realized that an effective way to do this was to ensure that it was safe to fly. And it is. This no doubt has a lot to do with the fact that the FAA remained fairly humble, realizing that it was a regulatory body that needed to rely on external expertise. The FAA uses a large number of industry Designated Engineering Representatives (DERs) who are working engineers in aerospace firms but also participate in the FAA. This helps eliminate the contentious relationship that emerges when experts are governed by well-intentioned but less-knowledgeable bodies. It also reminds engineers that they really do have the same goal as the FAA - safe flight. Since DERs are engineer-level employees as opposed to top management, the arrangement avoids the potential for corners to be cut for profitability reasons that might endanger lives.

I hear from engineers that the FAA has backslidden somewhat in the years since its been headed by attorneys with little technical background. But the TSA still appears to pale in comparison on the humility and pragmatic fronts. And the cronyism commonly reported there isn't going to help matters.

OK, that's my opinion. Here are some facts. On December 25th, the TSA let a homicidal fanatic (who happened to be Muslim), who paid for his one-way ticket in cash, checked no bags, and who was on the Terrorist Identities Datamart list onto an airplane with an explosive. Now, off with your shoes, grandma, and remember to pee about 75 minutes before arrival time.

On the light side, search #tsaslogans on twitter to see America at its best regarding the TSA (Thousands Standing Around). My favorite so far, from @petrillic: "TSA - Protecting you from yesterday, tomorrow."

Subject: Security DirectiveNumber: SD 1544-09-06
Date: December 25, 2009
EXPIRATION: 0200Z on December 30, 2009

[...]

2. IN FLIGHT
1. During flight, the aircraft operator must ensure that the following procedures are followed:

1. Passengers must remain in seats beginning 1 hour prior to arrival at destination.

2. Passenger access to carry-on baggage is prohibited beginning 1 hour prior to arrival at destination.

3. Disable aircraft-integrated passenger communications systems and services (phone, internet access services, live television programming, global positioning systems) prior to boarding and during all phases of flight.

4. While over U.S. airspace, flight crew may not make any announcement to passengers concerning flight path or position over cities or landmarks.

5. Passengers may not have any blankets, pillows, or personal belongings on the lap beginning 1 hour prior to arrival at destination.

AIRCRAFT OPERATOR ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The aircraft operator must immediately provide written confirmation to its assigned PSI indicating receipt of this SD.

AIRCRAFT OPERATOR dissemination required: The aircraft operator must immediately pass the information and directives set forth in this SD to all stations affected, and provide written confirmation to its PSI, indicating that all stations affected have acknowledged receipt of the information and directives set forth in this SD. The aircraft operator must disseminate this information to its senior management personnel, ground security coordinators, and supervisory security personnel at all affected locations. All aircraft operator personnel implementing this SD must be briefed by the aircraft operator on its content and the restrictions governing dissemination. No other dissemination may be made without prior approval of the Assistant Secretary for the Transportation Security Administration. Unauthorized dissemination of this document or information contained herein is prohibited by 49 CFR Part 1520 (see 69 Fed. Reg. 28066 (May 18, 2004).

[...]

Hope and the Problem with Copenhagen

2009-12-10T12:35:00.000-08:00

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place in Copenhagen this week, and is said by many to be essential for the world’s climate, because now is the best of times, the worst of times, etc.

Twenty five years ago, a friend wrote an editorial for his college newspaper called “The Trouble with Earth Day,” in which he observed that it had been a grave strategic error to closely align Earth Day with sit-ins, tie-dye and flower power. These fads and the emblems of a social movement would fade, he wrote, and they would drag Earth Day with them down into the scrapbook of quaint 70’s memorabilia. Though Earth Day has a bit of a renaissance, through much of the past few decades the astute college man was right. Is this relevant for Copenhagen?

Los Angeles makes me sick. So do Mexico City, Beijing and Tokyo. Within a day of arrival my eyes burn and I get a sore throat. My two years I spent in Long Beach (back when it stunk) brought me two cases of pneumonia – something I’d never had before, nor have had since I left. While great progress has been made in LA, the rate of asthma for adults and children is still twice the national average. The cause of problem is almost certainly air pollution.

Pollution – remember that word? It predated climate change, the concept that elevated environmental concern to global political activism. Fighting pollution, a quite worthy cause, is not as easily rolled into a whole outlook on one’s place in society as is climate change.

Recently in San Francisco I observed a “Mobilization for Climate Justice.” Its members blocked the doors of Bank of America, announcing, "We want Bank of America to know we are aware of what they do, and we won't give up until they take responsibility for their actions." Signs, transparent in their position that climate change was a convenient tool to promote a broader ideology, read "System Change, Not Climate Change." As with most San Francisco protests, the usual protest scavengers appeared with the usual causes – Israel out of Palestine, US out of Iraq, etc.

In Copenhagen, the official (“scientific”) conference seems to be dwarfed, not by sideshows, but by entire circuses of people’s and alternative Copenhagen conferences and rallies. Revival might be a better term, for there’s a lot of religion going on – hope being a core component (“faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” – Epistle to Hebrews 11:1). The Hopenhagen.org site bears the appeal to mobocracy, “When People Lead, Leaders Follow,” and asks you to join this fledgling religious movement.

I learned of the Copenhagen People’s Climate Summit from good old SocialistWorld.Net. There I found that I could head to Copenhagen to join a meeting titled “Save the planet – fight capitalism.” On Tuesday in the Red Room I could hear “Tackling Capitalism and the Climate Crisis.” Too bad my work kept me from “Climate, Trade and Development from a Gender Perspective.” I’m not making this up.

A decade or so back the phrase, “Think globally; act locally” urged people to take action in their own communities. Today’s version should perhaps read, “Think globally; act up globally” (for the end is near).

So what happens when and if such activism has been fully effective in converting the heathen – will this collective mindset somehow produce a perpetual motion machine? If you want to do something about pollution (uh, I mean climate change) try going to school and getting a degree in engineering or science. As a byproduct you might learn the lost art of analysis. Then graduate and work on a way to build a car, refrigerator, refinery or sheet of paper that uses less fuel and spews less CO2, heavy hydrocarbons or dioxin. If 100% of us chose a course of activism in parallel with Women’s Studies, African American Studies or any other social studies, we will all, at best, have great hope for change while having zero ability to effect that change.

If citizens had a bit more of a clue about how science works, we might be directing a bit more of our attention on increasing efficiency and sanely reducing fuel usage than on worship of Al Gore or Mother Gaya.

I’m for reducing pollution independent of whether man has affected the climate. Focusing on that question may ultimately be counterproductive; it implies that if we find that man hasn’t caused global warming, industry and consumption need no further attention. It is unfortunate that environmental zealots have chosen the strategy of bonding with media to evangelize that there is scientific consensus on this question, that it warrants no further study, and that anyone who questions it is evil (the Papal Bull of 1484 and the subsequent “Hammer of Witches” concluded that anyone who denied the existence of witches was a witch).

As an example of this approach I’ll cite Steven Cohen, Executive Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, writing in the Huffington Post, who authoritatively reports, “This consensus has prevailed despite the shameful emails of some deceptive climate scientists who really should know better. The fact of climate change is obvious.”

Well, actually Steve, science invites vigorous skepticism, and no real scientist would ever say that the fact of something as complex as climate change is obvious. You might know that if you’d studied something other than Political Science (social studies) for your three college degrees that led to your position at the Earth Institute. Vigorous skepticism is painfully lacking in the environmental movement, as it is in Columbia's hiring process. Its absence has led to government subsidies for corn-derived ethanol and rooftop wind turbines. We wish and we hope that such efforts will save the planet, but hope just doesn’t burn green, because it doesn’t burn at all.

Less hope, more science.

Dear Newsweek, Al Gore is not my thinking man

2009-11-13T19:17:00.000-08:00

The latest cover of Newsweek informs me that Al Gore is the thinking man's thinking man. I'll do my own thinking, thank you.

In his famous July 18, 2008 talk, Gore said, “enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year." From an engineering point of view, this statement is true but “trivial” – meaning that while true, it is useless. In other words, why not extend the solar panels that would collect this energy out into space a few thousand miles and then we can use the surplus energy to power our warp-drive vehicles.

Such concepts are useless because solar panels that occupy a significant portion of the earth’s surface have practical limitations. Not only do they require huge amounts of expensive material to build, but they have significant side-effects. Covering the earth with solar panels or building 8-mile high windmills across the central US would both have rather undesirable effects on the weather.

When proposing solutions to rally all the young activists who apparently opted out of high school physics, why stop with such environmentally flawed concepts as huge solar panels and windmills, Al? A more creative futurist would point out that there are enough free hydrogen atoms around our solar system to supply the needed energy with much less environmental impact. For a Nobel prize, I could explain how we might build a tethered Bussard ramjet that could spin around the solar system and pipe the energy home. I might enhance it with moon-sized magnetic sails and a giant electrostatic ion scoop or two – all of which are at least as feasible as extracting that wind energy that Gore correctly claims exists in the Midwest. For an explanation of why extracting all the energy from any amount of wind defies the laws of physics, see my previous post here. Like giant solar panels, my tethered hydrogen collector would work; all we need to do is build it. Ah, but doing so – for all these “solutions” - would require mining away a large part of the planet.

Of course solar panels will likely become technically feasible long before Bussard accelerators, perhaps even in the near future. But the technology is not “on the shelf” waiting to be used as Gore claims. And claiming that failure to take wind and solar power “off the shelf” is all that stands in the way of energy independence is a profoundly irresponsible (or ignorant) assertion.

I used to think Al Gore was just a crank (misinformed but well-intentioned) as opposed to a charlatan (knows better but deceives for personal gain). I’m less sure about this as time goes on. Maybe the distinction isn’t important anyway. Highly effective charlatans might succeed in deceiving themselves – at that point their conscience is clean and they become cranks. Cranks who become belligerent when presented with valid counterarguments are at that point charlatans (see his response to a challenger here).

Environmentally conscious Gore devotees should note that I’m not challenging Gore on the need to do something about pollution. This is a matter of values, and I agree with him on this. Nor am I challenging him on whether man has altered the climate; this will likely not be known with certainty in my life and probably not in yours. Gore’s science on this matter is horribly flawed, but that doesn’t impact my desire to clean up the environment. I am challenging Gore on his proposed solution to the problem and his duping the science-challenged nation with magic windmill schemes that will enrich him greatly (NY Times first carbon billionaire story) and divert precious attention from real engineering challenges.

Why I Hate Hate-Crime Laws

2009-10-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

Independent of any feel-good legislation regarding the viewpoints and mindsets of criminals, all judges have considerable leeway in adjusting the sentences of those convicted of crimes where racial or other bias of the criminal is at issue. Criminal law in the US was designed to punish acts, not thoughts underlying them. It would seem that many of those most enthusiastic about the value of hate crime laws are in fact the same citizens most opposed to the concept of thought police. How do they reconcile this?

The obvious problem with hate crime laws is that they implicitly order the value of the lives of members of various groups. If the penalty for the death of a gay man at the hands of some homophobic redneck is steeper than the penalty for the equivalent crime in the opposite direction, the law has thereby established a hierarchy of value of lives of members of various groups. San Francisco’s published crime data shows that the rich are targeted preferentially for auto theft and home burglary. So do we need a set of hate crime laws that give the rich special status as victims of such crimes. I think most citizens of San Francisco would oppose such legislation.

Now what if the perpetrators of crimes against certain of our wealthy citizens chose to attack on Yom Kippur and scrawled something nasty about Jews on the wall as they left? Does that change anything? If so I fear we face an endless task of ordering and reordering a constantly shifting hierarchy of victim statuses.

As good as it feels to know that we now have an additional legal defense against bigots, hate-crime laws, in addition to appearing unconstitutional, are merely a feel-good distraction from good government. Avoid populist legislators.

Another Rooftop Wind Turbine Defies Physics

2009-10-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

I just read about a new rooftop wind turbine invention in the October 2009 Inc. magazine. “The answer is blowing in the (very gentle) wind”, the piece starts in the magazine’s Innovation section, and describes this new gizmo that can generate electricity at wind speeds of just two miles per hour. The inventors, Windtronics of Muskegon Michigan, claim that the $5500 device could supply roughly 18% of an average household’s electricity when an average wind speed of 12.8 miles per hour is present. “We’d like to think we can put a turbine on every rooftop,” says the company’s CEO.

Inc’s reporter, Nicole Marie Richardson, notes that most homes would see far less, but ends: “Nevertheless, the machine brings wind power within reach for low-wind areas.”

It’s hard to know where to begin to address this from an engineering or laws-of-physics standpoint. I’ll start with what should be obvious - this is bullshit on quite a few counts; and Inc. should be ashamed of themselves for not hiring a science editor.

To start, let’s look at the assumptions. Chicago, “the windy city”, has an average wind speed of 10 miles per hour. I haven’t researched statistical distributions of winds speeds, but my personal experience with wind suggests wind velocity is rarely very constant. Gusts and changes in wind direction very dramatically reduce the efficiency of wind turbines for reasons I’ll explain below. But at this point we should note that Windtronics’ 12.8 mph basis is wind pie in the sky.

Now the average citizen or financial analyst at Inc. magazine might be thinking that, ok, well, half the wind velocity might yield half as much energy; and that such would still be pretty good. Unfortunately, physics rarely works like that. Before even approaching the matter of efficiency fluctuations as wind velocity varies from that for which the machine was designed, let’s look at how wind makes energy.

Kinetic energy is equal to ½ the mass of the moving matter times its velocity squared. Therefore wind energy extracted from the mass of moving air – if you could catch it all – would be proportional to the square of the wind speed. Cut the speed in half and you end up with one fourth of the energy – yes, you would cut the ideal maximum by 75 percent, assuming the turbine were equally efficient at both wind speeds – which is impossible.

Large modern wind turbines have an efficiency of about 40%, however they reach this maximum efficiency at an optimum wind speed, constrained by frictional losses at low speeds and back pressure (the “lift” that makes an aircraft fly) on the blades above the optimum speed. Above or below the optimum wind speed, efficiency drops off steeply. For example, at twice their optimum wind speed, the efficiency of commercial wind turbines drops to about 10%.

To check Windtronics’ claims, I applied Betz’ Law, a principle of hydraulics that demonstrates that the maximum energy that a turbine of any design can extract from wind (in this case) is exactly 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy of the moving fluid (wind). The Windtronics machine is six feet in diameter. Assuming its blades go to the very outer diameter of the housing, its wind area is 28 square feet. Using average air pressure, temperature and humidity and a Rayleigh distribution of wind speed, one can then calculate the energy in a 6-foot diameter tube of air moving at 12.8 miles per hour. 59.3% of that will be the maximum possible energy that the Windtronics machine could produce if it were a perfect machine. Coincidentally, that value is almost exactly 2000 kWh per year. But that value is for a machine that is the windmill equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It cannot and does not exist.

At an optimistic real efficiency of 40% and a wind velocity of 6.5 miles per hour, the calculated yearly output is 337 kWh, which is 3.0% of the average household’s electrical usage, based on the Department of Energy.

Also per the DOE, the average cost of residential electricity in the United States was 12 cents per kWh in April 2009. The average household uses 11,000 kWh per year, and therefore, pays about $1300 for all their electricity. If the rooftop turbine supplies 3% of that and costs $5500, you could amortize your purchase in a mere 138 years, assuming your installation costs are zero and the unit lasts a century without maintenance. Nicole, it might be “within reach” but I’m not sure it’s worth reaching for.

The environmentally conscious reader might say, big deal, if it reduces greenhouse gases and such, I’ll be a good citizen and eat the $5500. Not so fast, fellow new age environmentalists and investors. Such a turbine might reduce by 3% (for a reasonably windy city) your consumption of generated electricity. But that electricity probably comes from a coal-powered plant, and they typically burn very clean. Only about 1.6% of our electricity comes from petroleum. First and second destination transport of rooftop wind turbines is very reliant on petroleum however, and its manufacture may be as well. Of course its manufacture also consumes a considerable amount of electricity; metal refinement (ore to alloy) and metal forming tend to be very energy-intensive processes. All these considerations eat into that 3%. We might do better for our wallets and for the environment with a different approach to reduce our consumption of generated electricity.

By the way, the Inc. article's hook and claim of novelty for this brand was that the machine can generate electricity with wind speeds down to two mph. Applying what we learned about energy, velocity squared, and Betz’ Law, one can also calculate the power (not energy) output of a perfect turbine driven by a constant 2 mph wind at somewhat less than one watt. You might power an LED with it.

Dismay at upheld Prop 8: democrats against democracy

2009-05-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

Many of my friends in San Francisco are expressing dismay and anger that Prop 8 was upheld by the California high court. The LA Times article ends with a quote from Jon W. Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal, a gay rights organization, that sums it up well. "It leaves us to the kindness of strangers," he said. "They could take away anything."

Hey, how about that, all you progressive liberals. Liberal Democrats and the populist politicians they elect have built a sytem in California over the last several decades that encourages mob democracy, largely as a means of appropriating the money of large corporations and the wealthy. Lo and behold, an unintended consequence - religious zealots and bedroom busybodies took their tolls at the polls.

"Democrats against democracy" is a common insult tossed at democrats by disingenuous Republicans. They lob this insult every time majority rule is out of step with the liberal agenda - something that has happened rarely in the last two decades but seems likely to happen quite a bit more in the future. One possible remedy will be that liberals and Democrats will stop being such democrats. Republicans are disingenuous in their criticism of democrats being unhappy with democracy, because those Republicans (like all true republicans) don't like democracy either. Nor do I; and nor should you.

"Democracy" is what we've come to call our constitutional government. This is unfortunate. Perhaps more accurately, our government is a constitutional democratic republic. It was designed to prevent the tyranny of majorities, be those majorities races, religions, income brackets or any other kind.

Those who see this system as the backward product of rich white men like Thomas Jefferson and yearn for the wonderfully progressive system of, say France for instance, should probably read more history and less social studies. They might note that the USA never succumbed to mob-organized violence and institutionalized murder, as did France and quite a few of its neighbors.

I hope that liberals - hopefully before any more unfortunate cases of mob democracy - will ease up on democratic ideology and embrace and promote constitutional government in general, not merely as a legal technicality that can be employed to undo the Prop 8 mess.

More Innumeracy in High Places

2009-04-02T00:40:00.000-07:00

I recently posted on the matter of some gross errors in mathematics made by Robert Reich in a piece on the economy. This time the culprit is Gavin Newsome, a good man, on whose campaign I volunteered. But in a recent radio interview where he addressed the inequities of taxation, Newsome left me disappointed if not worse. "Sales tax is the most regressive form of tax there is", he announced with great passion.

Hmm, well, no Gavin, actually any kind of parcel or per-unit tax is more regressive. Sales tax is, by definition, a flat tax. The terms “progressive” and “regressive” as applied to tax do not refer to a political opinion. Liberals do indeed lavish themselves with the self-congratulatory progressive label while branding their backwoods opponents as regressive, but progressive taxation refers to a tax calculation (or tax tables) where the amount of tax increases nonlinearly with the tax basis. Sales tax is a flat tax; it is a constant percentage of the purchase price, the basis for the tax. Regressive taxes are less taxing – percentage-wise – on big purchases. Google pays the same $20 per year tax that I pay to file my annual report with the State of California. That’s regressive, independent of the fact that progressives don’t like it.

Honest people can argue over whether flat taxes such as sales tax are harder on the poor. This would be the case if poor people spend a higher percentage of their income on taxable items. Such a discussion will likely get bogged down on the effects of exemptions, tax credits and rebates. But that does not alter the fact that by definition, sales tax is a flat tax, not a regressive one. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of definition and mathematics.

That should be pretty obvious. Or so I thought. I googled the topic, and found quite a few articles explaining that sales tax is not a flat tax but a regressive one because it soaks the poor. Uhh, perhaps a good liberal education should include a course in algebra. Pat Moynihan (a great progressive) comes to mind: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” That goes for you too, Mr. Newsome.

Jane Fonda Is Not That Bad

2009-03-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

I am greatly concerned about our inability to get history right. We rewrite it to suit our needs, just as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and especially Christians did (see my other blog for more on that http://www.thoughtlikeachild.blogspot.com/). Along these lines, I see that, once again, the "Shame on Jane" emails are in circulation. The last batch I received was during the John Kerry campaign. Now they've shown up again, perhaps related to the desperate state of the flailing Republican party. The emails point out that Jane Fonda is a traitor, directly responsible for the torture and death of American soldiers who were POWs in Vietnam.

Whether Jane is a traitor can be debated. I find her Vietnam actions despicable. She really was quoted as saying that Vietnam POWs were not heroes, but hypocrites and liars. At the time she also stated emphatically that US soldiers had not been tortured or starved in Vietnamese prison camps. These points are hardly arguable, as now public records of war-era Vietnamese government attest. One might even argue that Fonda's Vietnam appearances aided and abetted the enemy, and therefore she truly is a traitor. So understand that I am not defending her.

Instead I want to point out that no good cause is helped by lies and the introduction of fiction into history. Fonda is guilty of what she did, but not of what she didn't do. The emails I've recently received repeat the claims that Jerry Driscoll, a downed F-4 pilot was tortured after spitting at Fonda, and that Fonda betrayed attempts by Larry Carrigan and three other POWs to slip her notes during her visit and that this resulted in the deaths of three of them. These stories have been forcefully and repeatedly denied by Driscoll and Carrigan, who have never met Fonda, and by the handful of POWs who actually did meet her.

Fonda should be ashamed of enriching herself by making false and ignorant claims about the state of Vietnamese prison camps. Worse yet, she deserves wrath for rewriting her past in recent times by saying that she was "merely trying to stop the war." This lie is not arguable; plenty of public record exists from those days. Fonda praised the USSR for opposing the US in Vietnam, lobbied against aid to South Vietnam, and actively supported the North Vietnamese cause. She was and still is a liar of the worst sort. But lies about her, like the stories of Driscoll and Carrigan, don't help matters.

In fact they hurt quite a bit, because they discredit the valid claims against her. They allow writers - take me for instance - to make statements like "Fonda is not that bad" that (literally) can't be argued with. After all, she is not as bad as the inflammatory emails say she is. They encourage academic, psuedo-intellectual bullshit journals like Peace and Change - A Journal of Peace Research to print stuff like Mary Hershberger's "Peace Work, War Myths: Jane Fonda and the Antiwar Movement", where she summarizes Fonda in Vietnam as, "[Fonda] travelled to Hanoi, carried family mail to imprisoned American pilots, met with some of them and returned with their antiwar message." Hershberger also reports there that the FBI and right-wing quarters spread lies about Fonda that have crept into popular memory. Well, that statement is at least half true. I don't know about the FBI part, but we unfortunately have to grant her the rest - unfortunate because Hershberger really is a disgrace to the discipline of history, but popular lies about Fonda have given her credibility.

For the sake of history, please don't repeat bullshit. Think before you hit that "Forward" button. Better yet, research.

Links:

Peace and Change: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118771047/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Snopes on Hanoi Jane: http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp . I particularly enjoy all the liberal/academic sites that quote snopes on the falsity of the Driscoll/Carrigan stories but never mention the snopes material on Fonda's false recent claims of her actions at the time.

Innumeracy in High Places

2009-03-09T21:13:00.000-07:00

We seem to be bombarded by innumeracy in publications these days. Last night I was on a short United flight, and I opened their Hemispheres magazine to a set of brain teasers by Gary Gruber, Ph.D. It contained the following question:

I toss two coins into the air and catch them on my palm. I know that one of them is heads. What is the probability that the other shows heads?

Answer:
Most people would choose ½, however the answer is 1/3, because probability is defined as the favorable number of ways divided by total number of ways.

Huh? First off, this is probably the worst definition of probability I’ve ever heard. What Gary (or his editor) probably meant to say was that the relative frequency of occurrence is the subset of the sample space defined as success divided by the number of possible outcomes. So for any fair coin toss having an equally likely outcome of heads or tails (2 outcomes), the probability of heads (subset of one outcome) equals ½.

So much for definitions, now on to his numbers. It appears that he is trying to present the famous Monty Hall problem in probability (also known as the Marilyn vos Savant problem), where Monty Hall has prior knowledge of which door (1, 2 or 3) has the lone prize behind it and always, intentionally opens a non-prize door before asking the contestant if he’d like to switch his previously chosen, unopened door for Monty’s remaining unopened door. The idea here is that Monty always owns a 2/3 chance of having the prize when a contestant is given one door, and that his opening a door he knows to have no prize does not alter any probabilities; therefore the contestant should of course accept the offer to swap.

None of this is remotely relevant in the coin toss problem in the magazine; and no wacky definition of probability can alter the relative frequency of heads and tails in a fair coin. Dr. Gary, you’re no doubt a greater scholar than I, but math challenges are not won by authority or credentials, and you need a statistics refresher.

So much for the Hemispheres magazine. I then picked up a magazine with a piece on the economy by Robert Reich. I was ready to disagree with Reich over philosophical matters and on his assertion that labor unions could cure this recession; but I was surprised at his truly abysmal command of mathematics. Reich observed that while mean (average) inflation-adjusted-income has indeed increased since the 1970s, median income (inflation-adjusted), he observed, had decreased since the 70s. And then Reich draws certain conclusions about corrective action for the wealth-poverty gap. Conservatives like Ben Stein regularly challenge the numbers used to adjust for inflation, noting that they compound, and that, over a period of three or four decades, the error can paint a very incorrect picture. But I’m not concerned with that issue here. My problem with Reich’s use of numbers is far more basic than that even. He has violated – grossly violated – a fundamental rule of statistical methods in the study of populations. Measurements of tulips in April and of corn in August reveal absolutely nothing about the differences between tulips and corn. A comparison of inflation adjusted income – mean or median – across the span of decades is only meaningful if the populations are the same, but they aren’t remotely the same. Income varies greatly with age, for example. The demographics of the US have changed radically since 1970. The issue of different populations is not a mere technicality that diminishes the value of Reich’s comparison; the comparison is utterly worthless without data to normalize the populations. I don’t know whether Reich is honestly sloppy at math, or whether he really knows better and is just another pseudo intellectual with a political agenda. In either case, his professors failed him, and should have failed him.

For a much longer discussion of bad math in politics and issues surrounding studies within/between populations see my Bad Math Alert

Turn Crisis into a Catastrophe

2009-02-06T16:38:00.000-08:00

Today is the pupil of yesterday. - Publilius Syrus

In a news piece today Charles Krauthammer challenges Obama to reconcile "a failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe" with his "we have chosen hope over fear" of two weeks ago. Sure, it's tempting to write off Krauthammer as a neocon journalist in the pockets of Bush and Cheney. However, Krauthammer has, for many years, opposed the death penalty, supported abortion rights and opposed creationism. Most of the reaction to Krauthammer's piece I've seen boils down to simple ad hominem. One can argue with Krauthammer on the extent to which the stimulus is pork; and a good rhetorician might find him guilty of blaming Obama for not meeting the expectations of his most foolish supporters. But his point on presidential fear-mongering seems a bit hard to argue, no?

A liar should have a good memory. - Quintilian

EBay's Faulty Business Model

2009-02-03T12:50:00.000-08:00

EBay’s investors have been dumping it for the past year or so. This could be due to a bad economy and less consumer spending, but I think EBay’s days are numbered for other reasons. During the dotcom era I played a Director/CTO role for Breakaway Solutions, a large firm that almost exclusively built exchanges – everything from school supplies to chemical, steel, long distance and pork bellies. My perspective on EBay stems from what I learned about the different exchange business models in those days.

EBay started as an auction broker, charging fees to the seller, and relying on a trust relationship between buyer and seller. In the case of EBay, the auction broker does not vouch for the quality of the goods or the quality of the money; it merely charges sellers to introduce them to buyers, and never holds title to goods or handles transaction cash. Given that the two parties are strangers, the trust hinges on the seller’s ability to present product information to bidders over the web and his ability to withhold shipment if the buyer fails to pay. EBay facilitates a slight increase in trust by providing a mechanism for buyer and seller feedback.

EBay’s second big effort was aimed at a virtual marketplace, where buyers could search for a product and compare fixed-price offerings of several merchants. In fact, a customer could simultaneously request that both current auction listings and offerings from merchants’ storefronts be returned for given search criteria. Thus EBay blurred the distinction between two exchange business models – auction broker and virtual marketplace. Auction options such as “Buy It Now” further blur the distinction. This definitely helped EBay’s growth. In some ways it helped its customers; they could compare prices on a new (marketplace) and used (auction) items and make a buying decision weighing the issues of product quality and transaction risk. Most buyers expect some policing of vendors by the marketplace owner, thus reducing the degree of trust in a seller that is required by a buyer. Buyers implicitly sense that dealing with a marketplace vendor involves less risk than winning an auction held by someone with no permanent marketplace presence.

EBay further blurred distinctions between exchange business models when it acquired PayPal, a transaction broker, used to settle a transaction between buyer and seller. Ebay doesn’t force settlement through PayPal (although I think they tried to do so in Australia), but it encourages it.

Unfortunately for customers, the lack of distinction between auction and virtual marketplace that helped EBay grow seems to have fostered more of a buyer-beware policy by EBay than might be present in most marketplaces or virtual malls. This probably led to a loss of customer trust in EBay in general. To make matters worse, EBay’s fee system naturally favors sellers. All fees come from sellers, so it is in EBay’s best interest to maximize the number of “good” sellers; and many EBay buyers complain that EBay’s feedback system favors sellers. For example, for years the system generally gave the seller the last word in a public feedback system: a buyer complains that he paid and didn’t receive the product, and the seller replies (publicly) with a bogus shipment tracking number. Case closed – as far as readers of feedback knew. EBay’s recent attempt to address such complaints has resulted in sellers feeling that they are now defenseless against unfair negative reviews by buyers. I’m not sure of the details, but one thing is certain; EBay hasn’t succeeded in keeping buyers and sellers happy with each other, and may have heavy-handedly driven a wedge between them.

Until recently, EBay, having the so-called “wide-shallow” advantage of a virtual exchange, also enticed traditional big-name auctioneers to have an EBay presence using their now-discontinued EBay Live. This typically applied to high value collectibles such as antiques, coins and art. The arrangement cannot have worked very well for legacy auction houses. It certainly resulted in an unwanted leveling of the playing field between traditional trusted, big auctioneers, honest individuals who accidentally misrepresent their offerings, and dishonest sellers of counterfeits and fakes – all too present on EBay. Traditional auction houses make their money on buyers' fees, and they inspect and vouch for the legitimacy of the auction items generally owned by a third party. Trusted auctioneers serve buyers by eliminating the need for a trust relationship between buyer and seller. Buyers searching for that 1909S-VDB penny may – and certainly do, based on the overwhelming positive feedback given to sellers of fakes – fail to differentiate between Sotheby’s of New York and Sleazy’s of UK with a fake New York address. EBay gives lip service to the notion of policing bad vendors/auctioneers (many vendors do both simultaneously) but the number of fake coins and antiques offered on EBay is huge, and the same vendors have been doing it for years. Sites dedicated to cataloguing fakes note that EBay’s response to their identification of bogus antique sellers has been poor. See the pattern? EBay Live also blurred the distinction between trust and non-trust relationships, resulting in both unhappy legacy auction vendors and customers ripped off by phonies.

I suspect that honest small vendors seeking a storefront have become aware that EBay is increasingly seen as FleaBay, and don’t want to ranked with unscrupulous fly-by-nights. This may have caused a flight to Amazon, which also provides a storefront service. While there is risk that Amazon’s integrity ratings could be dragged down by its hosting of marginal vendors, several factors are in its favor. Amazon’s seller review system promotes detailed review and dialog between buyers, leaving little room for sellers to discredit buyers. Amazon also has no auctions, so there is little risk of a flea-auction discrediting the storefronts.

Despite its recent mistakes – and it appears it’s made plenty of them – EBay’s original growth plan may have sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Blurring the distinction between trust and non-trust relationships didn’t help buyers or sellers in the end, nor did mixing incompatible business models.

Studs Terkel

2009-01-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

Somehow I missed the fact that Studs Terkel died late last year at age 96. I always got a kick out of Studs, following him when I was a teenager. Louis "Studs" Terkel was a rather moderate Democrat of the old style, concerned more with labor than with modern liberal ideas, despite having paid a price for standing up to Joe McCarthy. He was dedicated to recording the voice of America, most famously through his Conversations with America project. His Chicago radio show, The Studs Terkel Program, aired for 25 years.

I was never particularly interested in his viewpoints, and it seemed, at least until around the late 1980s, that he mostly suppressed his own views, allowing America's voice to be logged. His point of view was apparent, but he didn't weave it into the interview. I'm guessing this was what made him so appealing. Modern journalists shold take note.

The snippet I remember most from Studs was apparently recorded in a discussion with an ex-Marine recalling his time in service in the summer of 1945. "We were sitting on the pier, sharpening our bayonets, when Harry dropped that beautiful bomb. The greatest thing that ever happened. Anybody sitting at the pier at that time would have agreed." Whether dropping that bomb was a good idea or not will be debated forever, and is obviously just a matter of opinion. What people thought about it at the time is not a matter of opinion, however. Terkel's work limits the ability of modern historians and commentators to rewrite history, as it seems they are fond of doing.

Another interview I recall was that with C.P. Ellis, a reformed Klu Klux Klan operative. The interview, Why I Quit the Klan, is available online at http://www.bestcyrano.org/terkelEllisIntervu.htm

Terkel sought to capture the eloquence of the unknown American and achieved that goal, while usually avoiding politicians and academics, noting that their eloquence came from a script and not from the heart. "I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory", he said.

The few videos of Terkel on YouTube capture him at his worst, unfortunately, showing him rather late in life as a bit of a grandstanding activist. For a rounder view of the career of Studs Terkel, visit studsterkel.org.

The Sanctity of Bull Crap

2009-01-27T20:27:00.000-08:00

Just a few more thoughts on this matter, which actually started over on my other blog, Thought Like a Child. I'm trying to keep that one on the track of biblical analysis and criticism, however.

I might oppose the application of the term "marriage" to same-sex unoins on the purley technical and semantic grounds that marraige has always meant what some allegedly loving Christians claim it means to them - if that were true. But it isn't. Those who know history might recall times not so long ago when marriage was a property exchange in western culture and seems to have included a lot of same-sex unions in the east.

It occurred to me that the passages pulled from the Bible by the Prop 8 supporters are a rather narrow selection. I was on the verge of working up a list of embarassingly stupid passages from the Old Testament regarding various aspects of marriage that are never cited by those who wave banneres bearing the words of Leviticus 18:6, but I found that others had already done it. Here is one of my favorites, which proposes that Prop 8 didn't go quite far enough. Enjoy the read, and grab some boulders for the stoning - unless you happen to be divorced, in which case you might seek an alliance with those damned gays.

Prudence will dictate - CA Proposition 8

2009-01-14T23:55:00.000-08:00

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes..." Those words in the Declaration of Independence are consistent with many discussions in the Federalist Papers regarding the need for a constitutional government, where the powers of government are necessarily limited, in contrast, for example, they said, to the revolutionary nature of government in France.

Federalist 6 and 10 point out that faction is the great danger to the natural rights of the governed, and address the threat of tyranny of the majority. Federalist 10 holds that the tendency toward factionalism is inherent in human nature; thus the need to limit the powers of government will not diminish as civilization advances, even to the point where we believe government can be refined to the point where it need not be checked - and even when law reflects the will of the majority.

San Francisco's far left has been happy for decades to have understood "minority" to mean either ethnic groups or sexual orientations other than straight. Minorities such as the rich were deemed unworthy of protection against a majority's tyranny because wealth, say liberal attorneys, is not innate, as race and sexual orientation are. Thus there has been an undercurrent of consolidation of minorities in liberal politics to outvote California's huge redneck faction.

It seems those who know history may be doomed to be governed by those who think history is not worth studying - because things really are different this time (see previous post on Dickens), or so they say. Or because the founding fathers were just a bunch of rich white guys (never mind Alexander Hamilton's background).

Those who know history know what happens when factions that are consolidated to overthrow a common enemy then defeat that enemy. Past alliances are forgotten. In the case of Proposition 8, San Francisco's far left perceived that ethnic groups would sympathize with the minority status of gays, against homophobic conservatives hiding behind some crap about the sanctity of marriage. They didn't, and progressive liberals are to blame.

Instead of seeking to avoid tyranny of the majority by electing disintrested statesmen (including women - for those who don't respect the sanctity of the English language) seeking good government, the left has aimed to develop a consolidated majority comprised of all minorities. In doing so they have pushed the notion that the best candidate is one whose values and status are most similar to their electorate, and they ended up with a few politicians (some of San Francisco's Board of supervisors, for example) who lead by following and anticipating public opinion. This path did not watch out for the big picture, and caters to single-issue voters, something one might expect more from conservatives pandering to Christian zealots. It also allowed politically immature, aging hippies to persist in their quaint notion of that constitutional government was outmoded.

Passage of Prop 8 is a graphic demonstration of the what is wrong with pure democracy and the kind of liberal politics we have in San Francisco. Prop 8 never should have been allowed on a ballot, as has been pointed out by lawyers and scholars. This realization is good, because it might lead to a reversal. But it is in a way unfortunate, because it allows liberal voters to go on thinking that tyranny of the majority only exists when the minority is defined by some innate quality of the group's members. This is not what the founding fathers meant by minority when they opted for a democratic republic and not a pure democracy. One can easily see a future where all sorts of tyrannies by a majority ("mobochracy" or ochlocracy, to use the term Polybius coined to describe the mobile vulgus or moveable crowd) exist against non-"minority" minorities such as landlords, surfers, SUV owners, bagpipe players, or the rich, some of whom are rock stars that consider themselves to be liberal.

Prudence Will Dictate

2009-01-04T16:44:00.001-08:00

In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens describes the time of his novel as the best and worst, and "in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." He seems to have been saying that times rarely change, and, when they do, it is very difficult to evaluate the real effect of changes until they are history. He also points out that a period's leading authorities always think their time is important and different; but in fact it rarely is. Dickens is particularly clever, knowing that future readers will note that long ago Dickens wrote of a time even longer ago, when people thought their time was the most important, just as Dickens tells us people did in his time. He knew that future readers would live in a time when its leading authorities would also insist on its being referred to in the superlative, and that those readers might see in his novel a basis for a bit more humility about the urgencies of their time. Fat chance.

Prudence will dictate, said the founding fathers, that governments long established not be changed for light and transient causes. How do we know when a cause is heavy or enduring? Whatever this prudence is, it would seem Jefferson and crew thought conservatism was warranted when in doubt. But they were just a bunch of rich old white guys, right?