My Hurricane Ramble

Some semi-random thoughts I've had while reading about the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

I've started to lose hope about humanity's ability to really plan for the worst. It was said that the failure to anticipate a 9/11 style attack was a failure of imagination. The preparations for a hurricane hitting New Orleans seems to be much the same:

Army Corps personnel, in charge of maintaining the levees in New Orleans, started to secure the locks, floodgates and other equipment, said Greg Breerwood, deputy district engineer for project management at the Army Corps of Engineers.

"We knew if it was going to be a Category 5, some levees and some flood walls would be overtopped," he said. "We never did think they would actually be breached." The uncertainty of the storm's course affected Pentagon planning.

Complaints about the pace of aid getting into the city are missing a major aspect of the problem. It doesn't matter how much are waiting to get in, which is mind-boggling yet not enough, but the means of getting it in have been destroyed. Between debris and water, there are no roads. We know where the aid is and where it needs to go, but right now, you can't get there from here. If you compare the geography of the places, swamp and bayou vs. desert, it would be easier to get those supplies to Falluja than New Orleans. Distance isn't the issue, the problems are the obstacles.

It is beyond just a physical breakdown occurring in New Orleans. There is also a social breakdown occurring. I don't have much to say here, other than the bastards who are shooting at hospital evacuations should go to hell and the sooner the better.

Further rumination: Perhaps good old-fashioned denial had hampered the planning. When you have an evacuation plan, announced in advance of the city getting hit, that did not include mobilizing hundreds of school busses, it becomes clear that the screw-ups started at the very bottom of the line.

Give Him What He Deserves

A new invention for women who wish to take their defence into their own, umm, hands.

Warning to guys: be sure to ask your girlfriends if they are wearing one of these. Just another precaution in the practice of safe sex.

Ripped off wholly from Infamy or Praise

Holy Hell

Before and after satellite photos of New Orleans.

Enough said.

Release the Hounds!

Nothing can get people on your case quicker than speaking your mind. Prof. Reynolds has pulled an avalanche upon his head by admitting to having worked with the ACLU in the past and might in the future. Not only have some people pledged to stop reading him, others have organized de-linkings.

Of course, I doubt there is anybody that doesn't read Instapundit before coming here.

The whole idea that someone would become a pariah due to mere association is not a good sign for a political majority. It is clear that conservatives are starting to fall into the pattern of hunting down heretics that had eviscerated liberals during the Clinton years. What this reaction through Stop the ACLU indicates is that opposing the ACLU is of higher priority than any other principle. Let me make this clear: people can work together in some instances without agreeing in whole to each other's agendas. I disagree with the ACLU's vehemence in purging nativity scenes from public property, but I am all with them in opposing the abuses resulting from the drug wars.

To those who solely oppose: Its called nuance, look it up.

Okay, Now I'm Depressed

Scientific illiteracy is one of my big buttons. So imagine my chagrin when I read this article about the pathetic results on a survey of scientific knowledge. I can tolerate, barely, that people don't know about cells or Strontium 90 as a component of nuclear fallout. But this just takes the cake:

Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll have another go at teaching. Somebody has to step up and do something about this.

And I don't mean government, they've done enough damage already.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Was This Headline Necessary?

The body of the story is almost entirely about Wal-Mart and other retailers pledging aid and extablishing drives at their stores. You know, corporate america acting as members of their communities and showing that they care about their customers beyond sales.

Hard to tell from the headline:
Wal-Mart closes 123 stores from storm

Of course, its Wal-Mart, so you just know there are only base motivations involved.

Not All Emergencies Are Created Equal

In the terms implied in this post, I am just one step away from being an extreme libertarian. Do you smoke and drink? I'll drink a toast to your health as I enjoy my cigar. Want to jump off a cliff? Try to hit some public property and spare a private landowner the cost of cleaning the splat. Not evacuating from New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina closes in? If you are not in the Superdome, I'll put your name in for a Darwin Award.

I'm not really sure if I don't qualify as an extreme libertarian, because in the example he gives, I my rational for being OK with compulsory quarantining comes from an important libertarian principle. I phrase it as: Go ahead and kill yourself, but thou shalt not take others with you. Jumping off a cliff: OK; Jumping in front of a bus: not OK. If a person is ignoring a quarantive order, then he is putting many others at risk, and that is just not tolerable.

In Relentless Pursuit of Principled Consistency

Question: What do these two articles have in common?

Bush supporters create opposing camp
-and-
U.S. gravestone guidelines changed

Answer: People tend to take offense at using memorials of war dead to make political statements without permission. Both should just stop exploiting the dead.

I Don't Want to Call it Dishonesty

As part of my quest to remind people that words have meanings beyond rhetoric, I try to save words for situations that deserve them. To call this CNN report, and the video linked from that page, dishonest would mean that I have evidence that there was deliberate effort to be inaccurate. I'm using honest in the sense of making a good faith effort to provide all pertinent information regarding both sides. Since the report excludes a few pertinant points rather than including clear inaccuracies, I can't say that for certain that it has the deliberateness to make it truly dishonest. However, there is clear indication that the definition of "pertinent" is variable with respect to the different sides of the issue.

In the video report the "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" caravan is described as "supposedly grass-roots" but actually backed by a "conservative" organization, Move America Forward. Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan's backers are described as "a PR firm and a non-profit organization founded by Ben Cohen. That is, Ben from Ben&Jerry's." (Note: this is a quick and dirty personal transcription from the video, I apologize if I got the precise wording wrong) The word "liberal" is not mentioned in the same manner and implied agenda-setting as "conservative". Nor are other backers of Cindy Sheehan mentioned, such as MoveOn.org, International ANSWER, and Code Pink. While they may not have started Mrs. Sheehan's protest, they have certainly been right at the forefront of driving the publicity.

The report then is attacking the counter-protest for not being grassroots because a group with an agenda was aiding and organizing it. What the report fails to convey is that the pro-Cindy side, while it may have started grass-roots, has been subsumed into the anti-war establishment.

Another point: I was at first a little torqued over how the video report was very clear in stating that Deborah Johns, the leader of the "You Don't Speak For Me, Cindy" caravan, had a son who returned home alive after two tours in Iraq. My first reaction was that the statement was intended to devalue Mrs. John's opinions by showing that she does not have the "moral authority" that Mrs. Sheehan has in having lost her son. On further reflection, to have not stated that would have implied an equivalence between Deborah and Cindy that would not have been accurate.

Forget the Robots

There is a far more pressing (no pun intended) application for this new tactile sensory material. Merge this technology with the advances in using sensory feedback methods in prosthetic devices and the degree of functionality of replacement limbs will be increased greatly.

No Patience for the Piecemeal

I've noticed a running theme in criticism of the status quo in both science and politics. Namely that matters are not perfect now, therefore the methods used now are insufficient. Iraq doesn't yet have a constitution and the opposition has not been silenced? Then it must be a complete quagmire and Bush should be impeached for getting us in there in the first place. Evolution can't explain all of the mechanisms of nature? Then evolution is completely useless and the guiding hand of Intelligence is necessary to explain the gaps. A very good post here on the Evolution/ID matter.

In science, the fact that there are questions is taken as evidence that science is insufficient for the task. I like to say that science is more about the questions it asks than the answers it finds. An old story goes that it is aerodynamically impossible for bublebees to fly. That such an obvious contradiction existed did not mean that the known laws of aerodynamics had to be discarded. Instead, further research was done and a deeper understanding of the mechanisms was realized.

In war, there are strategy and tactics. Strategy is the large, sweeping goals of a campaign. Strategy does not just leap from plan to reality with no intervening steps. Those steps happen where the plan meets reality, the realm of tactics, and tactics take time. Trying to predict how long that will take is like predicting the weather, we have some theories about general trends, but the particulars always throw in complications. Making a quantum analogy, predictions change the system. Name a deadline, and the circumstances under which the deadline was set has changed and the other side takes that into account and changes their plans.

In the end, my point is that plans and theories are not static, nor are they necessarily, if ever, perfect. Fundamental to methods of dealing with and explaining reality is that it must continue to conform to new information from reality. And it is not reasonable to claim that generals and scientists should have known from the beginning. If I had that type of knowledge I'd be the one doing the designing on my own.

Find Wall, Apply Head

I've been re-reading Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Professor Stephen Hicks. Simply reading through the philosophical roots of postmodernism brings much illumination to the way the farthest left elements of society "debate". Between the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger we get the following conclusions (from Explaining Postmodernism, pp 65,66):

1. Conflict and contradiction are the deepest truths of reality.
2. Reason is subjective and impotent to reach truths about reality
3. Reason's elements - words and concepts - are obstacles that must be un-crusted, subjected to Destruktion, or otherwise unmasked.
4. Logical contradiction is neither a sign of failure nor of anything particularly significant at all.
5. Feelings, especially morbid feelings of anxiety and dread, are a deeper guide than reason.
6. The entire Western tradition of philosophy - whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Lockean, or Cartesian - based as it is on the law of non-contradiction and the subject/object distinction, is the enemy to be overcome.

People who are familiar with the deep blue portion of the blogosphere can testify to the proliferation of this type of thinking.

The result, for those who prescribe to this methodology, is that no matter how much evidence you lay out that things are one way, if they feel that matters are the other way then they refuse to accept the logic. After all, logic and reason have no use in determining reality. In fact, the more one feels correct, the more correct the position. Hence the strong reliance on volume, obnoxiousness, and profanity.

Another result is the vitriolic response to criticism. If views of reality derive from feelings, then criticism can not be anything other than personal. In fact, it can be taken as an attempt to completely negate the validity of the individual. The flip side of the coin is that if a person believes something that one considers wrong, then the person must be either stupid or evil. Yet more reason for obnoxiousness and profanity.

I don't really need to be limiting this discussion to the leftist elements of society. The far right tends to be just as guilty (see: Intelligent design). If anything, the religious right is more in keeping with the philosophical tradition of Kant and Hegel. Those two gentlemen attacked reason with the explicit intent of bolstering religion. Say what you will about ID supporters, they muster on and don't take evidence as an answer.

Edited to replace the numerical list with a more comprehensive list found in the book. I should have highlighted better the first time through.

Just Don't Get Specific

How about this one? A doctor tells a patient that she is obese and he is now facing disciplinary action. One would think that the doctor would have been negligent had he not told his patient the unpleasant truth. This just in time for the regular report of how America is getting ever fatter.

So let this be a lesson to everyone, not just doctors. One may say "people are too fat", but never say "you are too fat". Rememer, just because you have numbers and evidence does not give you permission to hurt someone's feelings.

Gag me

Sadly, They Feel Proud of Themselves

You know, deep down, people are animals. It's just a matter of simple biology. In the case of these animal "rights" protestors their taxonomy should be changed from Homo sapiens to Canis mesomelas. Digging up a woman's remains in order to ransom (extort?) her guinea-pig raising descendants is simply beyond the pale. Unfortunately, the family has announced that they will shut down the operation that supllied guinea pigs for medical experimentation.

I have one thing to say to this spokesman of the group responsible for this outrage

A spokesman for Stop the Newchurch Guinea Pigs, who gave his name as Johnny and would not reveal his surname, said:

"This is the most fantastic day of my life.

"It's a victory for the animals and it's a fundamental victory for the animal rights movement. I feel so unbelievably proud to be part of the movement."

Johnny, I can not voice any support for your opinion unless you are willing to volunteer for medical experimentation in place of the noble guinea pig. Otherwise, I remain unconvinced that you truly value the life of a guinea pig as much as you do your own.

Link via Samizdata

Parsing Cindy Sheehan's Rhetoric

Hopefully this will be the only post I will make on the whole Cindy Sheehan circus. Then again, I never intended to post as much as I did about Teri Schiavo, so we'll see how this goes.

First, Cindy Sheehan is fairly well known, at least in the Blogosphere, for having called President Bush the biggest terrorist in the world. I'm certain that she has never followed the reasoning that proceeds from such a statement, but I offer to fill in the gap. No one can argue that Osama bin Ladin would have to rank in the top three for that honorific. And it would follow that Mohammed Atta and all those who choose to serve him are also terrorists, if not moreso because they are the ones who are hands-on in perpetrating the atrocities. Then it would follow that the United States military would be Bush's answer to the al Qaeda network. Therefore she has indirectly implicated her own son as a terrorist.

A more serious analysis of Cindy's words will reveal her thoughts regarding her son. All of her statements regarding Casey's life have been passive. He was the victim of Bush's sending him to war. Nowhere does she acknowledge his responsibility for his own choices. That responsibility is the whole point of a person being an adult. In her words, Casey is her child and never his own man. It would seem that those who oppose Cindy's position are showing her son more respect than she does.

A Dissection of the Release Valve

Neptunus Lex, one of the gentlemen I had the pleasure of meeting last night, offers a post contemplating the nebulous notion of the Arab Mind I wish to toss in my two bits (two cents repeatedly with one half-baked idea) with respect to several points he made.

First, the idea we are, or shall soon conduct, an experiment in democracy as applied to an Arab culture is spot on. It has been said that America is an experiment in democracy and the Soviet Union was an experiment in socialism. Given the tenses that have to be used, you can tell how those experiments turned out. The study of these experiments are even referred to as Political Science, so let’s please apply a little rigor here and not assume the results before the experiment.

Second, Lex directs our attention to a point/counterpoint regarding the “release valve” theory. The counterpoint argument, elucidated by Michael Kraig writing at Democracy Arsenal is that there is a real dimension to the outward tuned anger that leads to terror.

Unfortunately, it's wrong -- or at least, half-wrong. There is of course an "escape valve" factor at work here. But after traveling to the Near East and the Persian Gulf for a combined total of two months this year (in a cross-country outreach tour for a Stanley product translated into Arabic), what I found was nearly everyone saying that "democracy" is not just about internal practices -- there is also an international dimension to justice, development, and democracy. And this is where anger toward perceived neo-colonialist aggression, not too different from the British mandate in Egypt and the French mandate in Lebanon and Syria, comes in. The truth is that people feel oppressed at one in and the same time by their own governments (internally) AND by perceived anti-Islamic, anti-Arab forces at the international or global level (externally), and neither of these exists in a vacuum apart from the other. The truth is that people feel oppressed at one in and the same time by their own governments (internally) AND by perceived anti-Islamic, anti-Arab forces at the international or global level (externally), and neither of these exists in a vacuum apart from the other.

The problem with this formulation is that it does not address the issue at the appropriate level. The release valve concept is about why people come to believe what they do. Talking to the man on the street about what he thinks is to look at the effect rather than the cause. Mr. Kraig’s vocabulary works against him: “And this is where anger toward perceived neo-colonialist aggression, not too different from the British mandate in Egypt and the French mandate in Lebanon and Syria, comes in.” The release valve concept is that the perception, or misperception, has been encouraged in order to draw attention away from the internal causes. To merely say that there is the perception is to beg the question as to whether the perception is justified.

The need for the release valve is necessary in Arab society with respect to two different realms, namely the political and the religious. The political is to cover the classic misdirection. The governments are failing to provide, and in many cases is outright stealing, prosperity for the people. To misdirect the anger at that, a scapegoat is created in the form of outside aggressors. The religious realm uses the release valve to answer the ages old question faced by all religions: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” If Muslims are acting in a good and moral way (I’ll leave the irony with respect to the bin Ladin minority unaddressed for now), then why has Allah not blessed them with the rewards due a good people?

I will interject one whole argument of my own that Lex gave a nod to regarding the danger of speaking of a whole people can come dangerously close to racism. Namely, I refer to the seeming belief that the Islamic culture, indeed any non-Western culture, can act only in reaction to the action of the West. I believe that this formulation is in itself racist in that it denies to entire societies a faculty that is supposedly only available to the West: the ability to formulate goals and act proactively upon them without reference to outside forces. The most pressing example of this ability in the Arab world has been bin Ladin’s repeatedly stated desire to establish a world-wide Caliphate. This stems from a radical reading of the Koran, and in truth can not be wholly directed at the actions of the West, but instead follows peripherally from the very existence of the West.

Milblogger Bar-B-Q

Just got back from San Diego where I attended Doc-in-th-Box's first Milblogger Bar-B-Q. OK, so technically speaking I'm not a Milblogger, yet somehow I still ended up with an invitation. Sean (Doc In The Box) said it had something to do with my writing ability. Anyway, a good time was had by all. Except for the chicken, they didn't seem to last all that long, but they gave their lives for a good cause.

The one issue I do have to make about the preliminary recap at Sean's is that Team America did not actually induce the mentioned shutting up. There were the sing-alongs and rude comments and applause at various points of the film. I leave it to you to guess which ones. Hint: "Why did Alec Baldwin's head getting blown off get three showings and Janine Garofolo's head only get the one?"

There are a few photos taken by Sean at the above link, but expect more from Da Goddess and She Who Will Be Obeyed!!

By the way, in case any of you ever wondered, I'm the dude with the dark beard.

Put Your Money Where Your Theory Is

I have gone on and on about what science is and is not in the past few weeks. One thing I forgot to mention is that it can be a way of pulling in a little extra green. I don't mean getting paid to find the "right" answers, but I do mean to make side bets on the outcome of the contests between competing theories.

The tradition of these wagers is that it is the proposers of the theories that make the wagers, although just because I haven't heard about third party wagers doesn't mean they don't happen. The first time I heard about such a wager was when Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne bet against John Preskill about whether information became irrecoverable when it falls into a black hole. Certainly a bit more arcane than the next Super Bowl. The website doesn't list the prizes of the wager, but I recall something to the effect of bottles of Scotch.

Strategies of the Pull-out

Many people have been speculating as to what Ariel Sharon's reasoning behind the pull-out of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip. There are already claims from both sides that this is a victory for terrorists or that this will only encourage more terrorism. That last point is rather ironic in that terrorists are going to be encouraged whether the Israelis stay or go, so the threat is neutralized beyond consideration of how many net terrorists result.

Israeli blogger Gloria Salt considers what Sharon's strategy is.

Simple military strategy. Clear your own soft targets out of the way and then do what’s necessary.

Sounds about right to me.

Sharon strikes me as more of a soldier and less of a politician. That said, there are some points of reasoned discussion (what little there is in this whole matter) that bear examination. By removing the settlers, Sharon has not only removed physical cover for the enemy operating out of Gaza, but also a good deal of rhetorical cover. Should the intifada continue unabated despite this huge concession, then the pretense of negotiation goes out the window. In return for such a prize, an honorable opponent that desires peace would be bound to take some steps in reciprocation. From here, the Palestinians (Hammas included) must now either put up or shut up with any overtures that they want anything less than Palestine from the river to the sea. That goes as well with those who side with the Palestinians and see Israel as the terrorist state.

Please, note, that I shall not be holding my breath in the meantime.

Via Instapundit

Incomprehensible Numbers

$253 Million. Roll that around in your mind. Try to picture that in dollar bills. Imagine that as almost $1 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Whatever image you get is going to be too small. The human mind just can not comprehend that number as it really is.

In this case, there is no way that the jury that awarded that judgement had a true appreciation of that number. How does that number compare to the allegedly concealed additional risk of heart attack associated with Vioxx? How does the number 253 millions of dollars compare to the entirety of the Merck corporation. There is really no conceptual difference once the number hits about 10 million. Beyond that point its like comparing falling 100 ft or 1000 ft, the result is no different.

If civil penalties are to have any real meaning any more, I would recommend the change that penalties be expressed as a percent of a company's profits or cash reserves or some other number that is publicly available. A percentage is easily pictured, and it will force jurors to face whether or not the damage incurred is worth destroying the corporation, which the raw number just does not communicate.