As a transplanted New Mexican, I've often wondered why New Mexico and Arizona are so different. Climatically, a difference in altitudes accounts for Arizona's saguaro cactuses and New Mexico's lack thereof. The attitudes, however, have been more puzzling. These are two states that entered the Union together, in 1912, the last before Hawaii and Alaska.
Here's some Arizona history I wasn't aware of that explains some of it. Now I'm wondering why New Mexico didn't have to prove its white bona fides when it entered the Union.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
The BP/Halliburton Oil Spill
No end of opportunities for outrage here. Outrage at BP for its terrible safety record. Outrage at the executives of all the companies involved because of their finger-pointing in Congressional hearings. Outrage at the dreadful job the government has done in regulating drilling. Outrage at not having an energy policy that moves us into the 21st century; this one has to include outrage at everyone, including the voters (us!) who want cheap gasoline above all, but that's not so popular.
So let me address just one particular outrage: Why hasn't President Obama taken charge?
I'm wondering exactly what the people expressing this outrage want President Obama to do. They haven't been specific beyond "taking charge."
It's pretty clear to me that nobody has a definitive way to stop the well. I know a little about drilling, probably enough to get me a response from a reader who can find something wrong in what I'm going to say. But here is what I've gleaned from the coverage of the situation.
The well is in deeper water than has customarily been drilled for oil. BP has a bit of experience in these deep waters, but nobody else does, and BP's experience amounts to a few wells. That means everything is more difficult. The pressures are enormous, and getting equipment down to the well is more complicated. No runaway well has been capped under these circumstances before. There is a lot that is not known about the well, even by BP. If they had known, the blowout would not have occurred. What is not known is the condition of the well and possibly the situation in the reservoir.
We don't know how much oil is coming out of the well. BP probably is genuinely confused and trying to put all its resources on a solution and probably, as well, would like to control information to its advantage. The government is putting together a team to evaluate the data. This team has a somewhat better chance of coming up with useful results than the team charged with getting solutions.
However, all that water between them and the well is going to make that hard. It's possible to come up with ideas like this one, but they will take time and lots of money to implement.
We clearly can't trust BP to make decisions that are in the country's best interests, although maybe the libertarians are right and the spotlight on them and the prospect of all those lawsuits will concentrate their minds.
But back to the outrage.
The scientists don't know how to stop the well. From what I know, BP's current plan to plug the well and then cap it sounds like the best available. BP has the equipment to do that; I doubt that the government does, and, if it did, mobilization and staffing takes time.
So if Obama "took charge," what exactly would he do? Order up some different regulations? That would depend partly on Congress and partly on the agencies. And it wouldn't stop the oil. That needs to be done later.
Get some injunctions against the companies involved? Put people in jail? This is procedural, too; would take time and doesn't stop the oil. It would also distract people from focusing on dealing with the well.
What he might do is find ways (and he wouldn't do this himself, staff would) to pull the data out of BP. Data on the geology around the well, flow measurements, proportions of gas and liquid, records from the well drilling and completion. These would be useful to the teams working on figuring out what is going on and possible solutions, but working through the data will take time, people, and money. So BP might as well go ahead with what they're doing while others do some analysis. There probably would have to be legal action to get the data, or vigorous jawboning of BP.
So what do these outraged people want Obama to do in "taking charge?"
Update: These are the guys who put out the fires in Iraq and will most likely kill the BP well.
And I didn't mention the political problem.
5/24/10: More from the WaPo. Nobody they've talked to has any better ideas than BP does. The biggest gripe against the administration is coming from Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who is understandably upset. And just possibly has partisan motives.
So let me address just one particular outrage: Why hasn't President Obama taken charge?
I'm wondering exactly what the people expressing this outrage want President Obama to do. They haven't been specific beyond "taking charge."
It's pretty clear to me that nobody has a definitive way to stop the well. I know a little about drilling, probably enough to get me a response from a reader who can find something wrong in what I'm going to say. But here is what I've gleaned from the coverage of the situation.
The well is in deeper water than has customarily been drilled for oil. BP has a bit of experience in these deep waters, but nobody else does, and BP's experience amounts to a few wells. That means everything is more difficult. The pressures are enormous, and getting equipment down to the well is more complicated. No runaway well has been capped under these circumstances before. There is a lot that is not known about the well, even by BP. If they had known, the blowout would not have occurred. What is not known is the condition of the well and possibly the situation in the reservoir.
We don't know how much oil is coming out of the well. BP probably is genuinely confused and trying to put all its resources on a solution and probably, as well, would like to control information to its advantage. The government is putting together a team to evaluate the data. This team has a somewhat better chance of coming up with useful results than the team charged with getting solutions.
However, all that water between them and the well is going to make that hard. It's possible to come up with ideas like this one, but they will take time and lots of money to implement.
In an article published in the British journal Nature this week, UC Santa Barbara geochemist David Valentine said that dragging gas sensors through the waters near the spill could provide data on how much methane was lurking in the ocean. From that figure, the volume of oil could be derived, he said.There seem to be a number of assumptions here, the biggest of which is that we know the ratio of methane to liquid petroleum. And when an academic says that "the idea has been floated," that suggests to me that he hasn't provided the kind of proposal that would be needed for a decision.
We clearly can't trust BP to make decisions that are in the country's best interests, although maybe the libertarians are right and the spotlight on them and the prospect of all those lawsuits will concentrate their minds.
But back to the outrage.
The scientists don't know how to stop the well. From what I know, BP's current plan to plug the well and then cap it sounds like the best available. BP has the equipment to do that; I doubt that the government does, and, if it did, mobilization and staffing takes time.
So if Obama "took charge," what exactly would he do? Order up some different regulations? That would depend partly on Congress and partly on the agencies. And it wouldn't stop the oil. That needs to be done later.
Get some injunctions against the companies involved? Put people in jail? This is procedural, too; would take time and doesn't stop the oil. It would also distract people from focusing on dealing with the well.
What he might do is find ways (and he wouldn't do this himself, staff would) to pull the data out of BP. Data on the geology around the well, flow measurements, proportions of gas and liquid, records from the well drilling and completion. These would be useful to the teams working on figuring out what is going on and possible solutions, but working through the data will take time, people, and money. So BP might as well go ahead with what they're doing while others do some analysis. There probably would have to be legal action to get the data, or vigorous jawboning of BP.
So what do these outraged people want Obama to do in "taking charge?"
Update: These are the guys who put out the fires in Iraq and will most likely kill the BP well.
And I didn't mention the political problem.
5/24/10: More from the WaPo. Nobody they've talked to has any better ideas than BP does. The biggest gripe against the administration is coming from Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who is understandably upset. And just possibly has partisan motives.
Israel and South Africa
Let's take the easiest situation first: documents have surfaced that show that Israel was talking to South Africa about nuclear weapons in 1975. It's the easiest because the least information is available.
In 1975. That was a different time, and if we choose our facts selectively, we may focus on the fact that South Africa was an apartheid nation at the time. Ugly, but arms sales are arms sales. Anti-apartheid sanctions were imposed on South Africa by the United States in 1986, more than a decade later. And hey, arms sales are arms sales. How many other nations were selling arms to South Africa in 1975?
We now know that South Africa was seeking nuclear weapons around that time. I was working in the laser isotope separation project then, and at one division meeting, for a light diversion, we were told that South Africa, on stationary with gold leaf letterhead, had offered to send a couple of postdocs to the project, all expenses paid. And South Africa has since given up its nuclear weapons and granted full access to the IAEA.
Avner Cohen, who knows more about Israel's nuclear program than anyone else who is talking, parses the documents closely. They are not an offer of nuclear weapons, but the sort of discussion that precedes an offer.
The nonproliferation world of 1975 was far from what we take for granted today. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty had come into force in 1970, and about 90 countries had ratified it, if you include all those (a dozen or so) who ratified in 1975. It was far from the whole world, and major countries like Brazil and Argentina remained outside.
So the significance of the documents is that they show that Israel did have nuclear weapons in 1975. If we want to be picky, we could consider that perhaps Israel was scamming South Africa in the absence of nuclear weapons, but the probability of that seems low.
Outrage points:
* Israel was willing to sell the most destructive kinds of weapons to the apartheid regime, which likely would have used them against South Africans.
* Israel has not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
* Israel's lack of transparency means that stuff like this could still be going on.
Even if these points were fully legitimate, countries hardly ever move because they've been pushed into a corner. The NPT Review Conference is discussing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, and Israel would be part of that. The United States has made some of its nuclear numbers available, and that should be a spur to other countries to do the same.
Although it would make exciting news to report on, it's unlikely that the Review Conference will break up over this or that Israel will come fully clean. Whatever happens will more likely happen in small steps like those that are going on now.
In 1975. That was a different time, and if we choose our facts selectively, we may focus on the fact that South Africa was an apartheid nation at the time. Ugly, but arms sales are arms sales. Anti-apartheid sanctions were imposed on South Africa by the United States in 1986, more than a decade later. And hey, arms sales are arms sales. How many other nations were selling arms to South Africa in 1975?
We now know that South Africa was seeking nuclear weapons around that time. I was working in the laser isotope separation project then, and at one division meeting, for a light diversion, we were told that South Africa, on stationary with gold leaf letterhead, had offered to send a couple of postdocs to the project, all expenses paid. And South Africa has since given up its nuclear weapons and granted full access to the IAEA.
Avner Cohen, who knows more about Israel's nuclear program than anyone else who is talking, parses the documents closely. They are not an offer of nuclear weapons, but the sort of discussion that precedes an offer.
The nonproliferation world of 1975 was far from what we take for granted today. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty had come into force in 1970, and about 90 countries had ratified it, if you include all those (a dozen or so) who ratified in 1975. It was far from the whole world, and major countries like Brazil and Argentina remained outside.
So the significance of the documents is that they show that Israel did have nuclear weapons in 1975. If we want to be picky, we could consider that perhaps Israel was scamming South Africa in the absence of nuclear weapons, but the probability of that seems low.
Outrage points:
* Israel was willing to sell the most destructive kinds of weapons to the apartheid regime, which likely would have used them against South Africans.
* Israel has not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
* Israel's lack of transparency means that stuff like this could still be going on.
Even if these points were fully legitimate, countries hardly ever move because they've been pushed into a corner. The NPT Review Conference is discussing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, and Israel would be part of that. The United States has made some of its nuclear numbers available, and that should be a spur to other countries to do the same.
Although it would make exciting news to report on, it's unlikely that the Review Conference will break up over this or that Israel will come fully clean. Whatever happens will more likely happen in small steps like those that are going on now.
Outrage Fatigue
Helmut has said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm better on analysis than I am on outrage. There's plenty that I might display outrage about: the BP/Halliburton oil spill, the latest revelation that Israel negotiated with South Africa in 1975 on nuclear weapons, the fact that there are too many nuclear weapons in the world. You can take your pick of outrage targets for last week's developments on Iran: Turkey and Brazil for having the temerity to negotiate, the United States for not immediately accepting the deal, or Iran for gaming the system.
I suppose a certain amount of outrage is useful to encourage action, but when every development is met with outrage, it is as devalued as any oversupplied currency and, very likely, a call to apathy rather than action.
Outrage does get clicks on the internet, though, so it's a favorite of columnists and bloggers.
I am concerned that I may sometimes appear to be defending the indefensible (the object of outrage, naturally). But I think that someone needs to be expanding on contexts. My intention is not to defend, but to understand the problem. I'll post on those three subjects, I hope today, and will try to be explicit about analysis and outrage.
I suppose a certain amount of outrage is useful to encourage action, but when every development is met with outrage, it is as devalued as any oversupplied currency and, very likely, a call to apathy rather than action.
Outrage does get clicks on the internet, though, so it's a favorite of columnists and bloggers.
I am concerned that I may sometimes appear to be defending the indefensible (the object of outrage, naturally). But I think that someone needs to be expanding on contexts. My intention is not to defend, but to understand the problem. I'll post on those three subjects, I hope today, and will try to be explicit about analysis and outrage.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
A Bit of Advice for the Washington Post on How To Appeal To Women
Andrew Alexander, the Washington Post's ombudsman, today takes on the challenging question of what do women want - um, does the WaPo's language turn off women?
Just the other night, I was reading the chapter in Gail Collins's When Everything Changed about the 1970s revisions to newspaper stylebooks relating to language to be used when describing women. Alexander's column is remarkably similar. So it's been thirty (forty?) years now, and the WaPo still hasn't caught up to its own stylebook?
Perhaps the problem goes beyond mere words. How many times has the WaPo's lineup of columnists been scrutinized for the presence of women? Or the subject matter. Today we have a rich mix of old men urging the rest of us to get off their lawns. I count at least three: David Broder, David Ignatius, and the president of the American Enterprise Institute. Robert Bennett's op-ed is borderline informative. (Note to WaPo editors: the president of AEI saying that his version of free enterprise is best and morally superior is not news, certainly not worth lots more words than the usual op-ed.)
Or perhaps the purpose of having all those old white men opine was to ingratiate the Post and AEI with the Tea Partiers, although the demographics of that movement hardly recommend it as a way to increase circulation.
Over the years I've been blogging, the occasional female editor has surfaced at the Post to claim an openness to female opinion. When they've posted an e-mail address, I've responded and gotten various brushoffs. It's entirely possible that my style or competence isn't up to Post standards, but it's hard to believe that I was the only one responding.
So the "next greatest columnist" turns out to be a male with connections to the Washington establishment and not very original opinions. Another recent addition is a male with a strong love of torture but not much in the way of substantive experience.
Consider that absence of substance. Burton Richter, who knows something about science, was eliminated early from that competition, and perhaps it is my leaning toward that subject that eliminated me. A woman writing about science? Isn't there something about dogs standing on their hind legs? Or we might consider Olivia Judson's excellent columns at the New York Times.
Gail Collins is a Times columnist, too. This is not to say that the Times has everything right in this area, just that the Post seems hopelessly male in its lack of women columnists.
That lack of substance is a problem, too. Maybe smart readers are getting tired of the "get off my lawn" columns. Maybe they are tired of Republican speechwriters. Maybe they would like to read some real news.
And at least half of those smart readers are women.
Update: Also, too.
Just the other night, I was reading the chapter in Gail Collins's When Everything Changed about the 1970s revisions to newspaper stylebooks relating to language to be used when describing women. Alexander's column is remarkably similar. So it's been thirty (forty?) years now, and the WaPo still hasn't caught up to its own stylebook?
Perhaps the problem goes beyond mere words. How many times has the WaPo's lineup of columnists been scrutinized for the presence of women? Or the subject matter. Today we have a rich mix of old men urging the rest of us to get off their lawns. I count at least three: David Broder, David Ignatius, and the president of the American Enterprise Institute. Robert Bennett's op-ed is borderline informative. (Note to WaPo editors: the president of AEI saying that his version of free enterprise is best and morally superior is not news, certainly not worth lots more words than the usual op-ed.)
Or perhaps the purpose of having all those old white men opine was to ingratiate the Post and AEI with the Tea Partiers, although the demographics of that movement hardly recommend it as a way to increase circulation.
Over the years I've been blogging, the occasional female editor has surfaced at the Post to claim an openness to female opinion. When they've posted an e-mail address, I've responded and gotten various brushoffs. It's entirely possible that my style or competence isn't up to Post standards, but it's hard to believe that I was the only one responding.
So the "next greatest columnist" turns out to be a male with connections to the Washington establishment and not very original opinions. Another recent addition is a male with a strong love of torture but not much in the way of substantive experience.
Consider that absence of substance. Burton Richter, who knows something about science, was eliminated early from that competition, and perhaps it is my leaning toward that subject that eliminated me. A woman writing about science? Isn't there something about dogs standing on their hind legs? Or we might consider Olivia Judson's excellent columns at the New York Times.
Gail Collins is a Times columnist, too. This is not to say that the Times has everything right in this area, just that the Post seems hopelessly male in its lack of women columnists.
That lack of substance is a problem, too. Maybe smart readers are getting tired of the "get off my lawn" columns. Maybe they are tired of Republican speechwriters. Maybe they would like to read some real news.
And at least half of those smart readers are women.
Update: Also, too.
Martin Gardner, 1914 - 2010
It's clear that I am not the only one for whom Martin Gardner provided important parts of growing up.
In my case, it was hexaflexagons. I happened on that copy of Scientific American with that column in it, and I was hooked on both Scientific American and hexaflexagons. I have subscribed continuously since then. I see that the article itself is so far back in the mists of time that Google provides it via one of Gardner's collections of his Scientific American columns.
I was at an age where I was fascinated by cootie catchers and other kinds of paper folding. The tetraflexagons had some resemblance to a cootie catcher, but they were much better. I never mastered the slight of hand necessary to convincingly change the no-cooties state to the cooties state, and, in any case, I liked more mathematical sorts of thing better. The hexaflexagons were extensible to numbers of configurations limited only by the thickness of paper and accuracy of construction. I think I got up to 24 faces on the biggest one I built.
I had been adept at mathematics from early on. I kept a notebook in which, during duller times in fourth grade, I would double numbers. I didn't know at the time that if I started with 1, I was enumerating the powers of 2. I did know that they were pretty. I was fortunate to live in an old house and to have tolerant parents who felt that writing on my bedroom walls and stapling, pasting, and taping my mathematical constructs to the walls and ceiling was a useful activity. I was also branching out from cootie catchers to the Platonic solids, via a number of library books, including W. W. Rouse Ball's Mathematical Recreations and Essays, a forerunner of Gardner's column and compilations, and Cundy and Rollett's Mathematical Models.
My family did not have a long academic pedigree; my mother was the first in her family to attend college and had a Master's in Library Science; my father was a high-school dropout. So I mostly had to find my own way into academia. Mathematics was satisfyingly lovely, but as I got into adolescence, I wanted to find The Meaning Of It All, which led me down the standard academic rabbit hole toward physics and philosophy.
Organic chemistry provided my conversion experience. It was the experiment, early in the course, on recrystallization. The quick formation of beautiful crystals hooked me as surely as hexaflexagons did earlier. As well as the nice little hexagons that I learned to draw quickly and neatly, as a chemist must.
It was that balance of the physical and the theoretical, geometry in the real world, that I really love, that my mind works well with. And Martin Gardner's article on hexaflexagons was the first time all that came together for me.
Good websites on flexagons and their construction can be found here and here. The image is from the first of those.
In my case, it was hexaflexagons. I happened on that copy of Scientific American with that column in it, and I was hooked on both Scientific American and hexaflexagons. I have subscribed continuously since then. I see that the article itself is so far back in the mists of time that Google provides it via one of Gardner's collections of his Scientific American columns.
I was at an age where I was fascinated by cootie catchers and other kinds of paper folding. The tetraflexagons had some resemblance to a cootie catcher, but they were much better. I never mastered the slight of hand necessary to convincingly change the no-cooties state to the cooties state, and, in any case, I liked more mathematical sorts of thing better. The hexaflexagons were extensible to numbers of configurations limited only by the thickness of paper and accuracy of construction. I think I got up to 24 faces on the biggest one I built.
I had been adept at mathematics from early on. I kept a notebook in which, during duller times in fourth grade, I would double numbers. I didn't know at the time that if I started with 1, I was enumerating the powers of 2. I did know that they were pretty. I was fortunate to live in an old house and to have tolerant parents who felt that writing on my bedroom walls and stapling, pasting, and taping my mathematical constructs to the walls and ceiling was a useful activity. I was also branching out from cootie catchers to the Platonic solids, via a number of library books, including W. W. Rouse Ball's Mathematical Recreations and Essays, a forerunner of Gardner's column and compilations, and Cundy and Rollett's Mathematical Models.
My family did not have a long academic pedigree; my mother was the first in her family to attend college and had a Master's in Library Science; my father was a high-school dropout. So I mostly had to find my own way into academia. Mathematics was satisfyingly lovely, but as I got into adolescence, I wanted to find The Meaning Of It All, which led me down the standard academic rabbit hole toward physics and philosophy.
Organic chemistry provided my conversion experience. It was the experiment, early in the course, on recrystallization. The quick formation of beautiful crystals hooked me as surely as hexaflexagons did earlier. As well as the nice little hexagons that I learned to draw quickly and neatly, as a chemist must.
It was that balance of the physical and the theoretical, geometry in the real world, that I really love, that my mind works well with. And Martin Gardner's article on hexaflexagons was the first time all that came together for me.
Good websites on flexagons and their construction can be found here and here. The image is from the first of those.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Bits and Pieces - May 22, 2010
I don't understand why teabaggers are angry with Scott Brown for voting to bring the banksters into line. I thought that their depredations were one of the things the teabaggers were upset about.
Gary Sick makes some excellent points about the commentary on Iran. And here's some of the history to back him up.
Canada looks longingly at Brazil and Turkey's diplomacy.
And a bigger context for international leadership.
It's always better to know as much as you can about what's going on. I hope someone is keeping a close record of BP's actions throughout the spill for both legal action and an expose book later on.
If you're going to be in Santa Fe June 11 and 12, consider this. And the New York Times gets some other things right. But 10:00 for the Farmers' Market??? The tiny strawberries and asparagus that were there at 7:00 this morning were long gone by then.
Gary Sick makes some excellent points about the commentary on Iran. And here's some of the history to back him up.
Canada looks longingly at Brazil and Turkey's diplomacy.
And a bigger context for international leadership.
It's always better to know as much as you can about what's going on. I hope someone is keeping a close record of BP's actions throughout the spill for both legal action and an expose book later on.
If you're going to be in Santa Fe June 11 and 12, consider this. And the New York Times gets some other things right. But 10:00 for the Farmers' Market??? The tiny strawberries and asparagus that were there at 7:00 this morning were long gone by then.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Loony Tunes
Taking another unconventional stand, Kentucky's Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul criticized President Barack Obama's handling of the Gulf oil spill Friday as anti-business and sounding "really un-American." (here)That's an American president and British Petroleum, not to mention devastation for the residents and wildlife of the coastal states and an ongoing flood of oil BP just can't seem to stop.
"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP... I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Bits and Pieces - May 20, 2010
More Iran from David Ignatius and Peter Crail of the Arms Control Association. Both tend to agree that what we are seeing is some tough negotiating by all sides.
Turkey's role in the deal.
That other diplomatic conundrum: North Korea.
What is the future of Britain's Trident nuclear force and its opponents?
A few besides me still remember (and even use!) typewriters. But they are being ostracized.
The best takedown of Rand Paul's statement about the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
How scientists might help with nuclear disarmament.
Russia wonders what to do about Kyrgyzstan.
Turkey's role in the deal.
That other diplomatic conundrum: North Korea.
What is the future of Britain's Trident nuclear force and its opponents?
A few besides me still remember (and even use!) typewriters. But they are being ostracized.
The best takedown of Rand Paul's statement about the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
How scientists might help with nuclear disarmament.
Russia wonders what to do about Kyrgyzstan.
Iran continued...
Some clarification through the mists: the Obama administration doesn't see the move toward sanctions as an end of negotiations with Iran, although many commentators have taken it that way. Susan Rice, US Permanent Representative to the United Nations:
If the Iranian move was indeed intended to head off sanctions, there may be some noses out of joint in Tehran. It remains to be seen whether that pique will stand in the way of negotiations.
Update: Farideh Farhi.
[h/t to Steve for the Haaretz link.]
First of all we need to be clear that the Tehran Research Reactor proposal as tabled in October had nothing to do with Iran’s sanctioned activities to date and its international nuclear obligations. Iran has remained in violation of previous Security Council resolutions, it is in violation of its IAEA obligations, and that is why we are here today, making manifest and real the dual track approach that we have pursued. We continue to believe that this ought to be resolved through negotiation and dialogue, engagement remains on the table, but the dual track to be viable has to have a pressure component as well.And Russia believes that the Brazil-Turkey deal can move forward despite the move toward sanctions:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday he hoped a consensus could be reached on a draft United Nations sanctions resolution against Iran, Interfax news agency said.At the same time, Lavrov assured Iran that work on the Bushehr reactor would continue. Meanwhile, President Obama has spoken to President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Lavrov also called on Iran to send details of its proposed uranium swap to the United Nation's nuclear agency, the IAEA, as soon as possible.
If the Iranian move was indeed intended to head off sanctions, there may be some noses out of joint in Tehran. It remains to be seen whether that pique will stand in the way of negotiations.
Update: Farideh Farhi.
[h/t to Steve for the Haaretz link.]
Visitors
I've had an unusually wonderful mixture of birds visiting my feeders lately. This week the black-headed grosbeaks and western tanagers arrived. They seem to be in family groups; the scruffy feathers and the amount of white on this grosbeak suggest a young male. A couple who nested nearby last year produced a male, but I think I've seen two other adults as well. The tanagers include at least two females, maybe three. Either last year's progeny, or that male is some guy!
Two or three starlings have stuck around from the winter, and there have been as many as ten mourning doves in the yard at a time. They seem to be in groups of three, so I am wondering if some are already this year's children. We had quite a few Asian collared doves over the winter, and white-winged doves, but now it is almost exclusively the mourning.
In the same color range as the grosbeaks are the rufous-sided towhees; a Say's phoebe calls but doesn't often show, and there were three chipping sparrows the other night on the ground, as the grosbeaks and tanagers hogged the tree.
Add in various hummingbirds, pine siskins, and, just this week, lesser goldfinches, and the yard is very colorful.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Trying To Figure Out Who Said What When
The more news stories I see about this latest deal with Iran by Turkey and Brazil, the less I feel I understand about what actually happened.
Brazil and Turkey negotiated a deal with Iran. That deal was similar, but not identical, to deal(s) negotiated earlier with Iran that failed in some way. The United States responded by saying that the IAEA would have to review the agreement first. It also announced that the five veto-bearing members of the United Nations Security Council had agreed on another round of sanctions against Iran. The deal still must be reviewed, as well, by Iran's powers that be, who have undone previous deals.
I think that is accurate so far.
It is not clear to me that the announcement of support for a vote on sanctions is the same as rejecting the Iranian offer. Many are taking it that way. One argument is that Iran cannot negotiate under the threat of sanctions. I'm not sure why this is the case. Iran has been negotiating, and sanctions are in effect, which seems worse than simply a threat of sanctions.
The Iranian offer would deposit 1200 kilograms of its 3.5% enriched uranium with Turkey, and within a year would get in return fabricated fuel rods for its Teheran Research Reactor. It is also reported that Iran would continue to enrich uranium to 20%, which would no longer be necessary if it is getting fuel for the TRR. So Iran has given a bit on the timing and location of the swap, but it is holding onto a step toward weapons-grade enrichment. Iran also has about twice as much low-enriched uranium now as it did when the offer of a swap was first made. This goes back to that idea of getting the low-enriched uranium out of Iran's hands, which has clouded the negotiations from the first and provided a provocation to Iranian hard-liners.
Turkey and Brazil may or may not feel betrayed; this is one issue that I simply can't decipher from what is reported in the media. Did President Obama personally ask for or encourage their negotiations? Was there constant communication between them and the United States?
It is hard to believe that there were no communications between Brazil, Turkey, and the United States. Some large part of such communications would have been secret, however, and we are unlikely to hear that full story any time soon.
The deal, as presented by Brazil and Turkey, seems not to have been fully approved by Iran, whatever that may take. It appears that there are factions in Iran who will not accept any deal that is acceptable to the United States, and that they sometimes have veto power. So would it make sense for the United States to accept and then have the deal slapped down again?
Here's the text of the sanctions resolution. And here are several pieces that lean more toward opinion than reporting. They contain some good points, but mostly jump much further ahead than I think is justified on the basis of the information I've seen.
New York Times editorial
Trita Parsi
Barbara Slavin
M. J. Rosenberg
Massimo Calibresi
Brazil and Turkey negotiated a deal with Iran. That deal was similar, but not identical, to deal(s) negotiated earlier with Iran that failed in some way. The United States responded by saying that the IAEA would have to review the agreement first. It also announced that the five veto-bearing members of the United Nations Security Council had agreed on another round of sanctions against Iran. The deal still must be reviewed, as well, by Iran's powers that be, who have undone previous deals.
I think that is accurate so far.
It is not clear to me that the announcement of support for a vote on sanctions is the same as rejecting the Iranian offer. Many are taking it that way. One argument is that Iran cannot negotiate under the threat of sanctions. I'm not sure why this is the case. Iran has been negotiating, and sanctions are in effect, which seems worse than simply a threat of sanctions.
The Iranian offer would deposit 1200 kilograms of its 3.5% enriched uranium with Turkey, and within a year would get in return fabricated fuel rods for its Teheran Research Reactor. It is also reported that Iran would continue to enrich uranium to 20%, which would no longer be necessary if it is getting fuel for the TRR. So Iran has given a bit on the timing and location of the swap, but it is holding onto a step toward weapons-grade enrichment. Iran also has about twice as much low-enriched uranium now as it did when the offer of a swap was first made. This goes back to that idea of getting the low-enriched uranium out of Iran's hands, which has clouded the negotiations from the first and provided a provocation to Iranian hard-liners.
Turkey and Brazil may or may not feel betrayed; this is one issue that I simply can't decipher from what is reported in the media. Did President Obama personally ask for or encourage their negotiations? Was there constant communication between them and the United States?
“What they wanted us to do was give the confidence to Iran to do the swap. We have done our duty,” said Davutoglu, calling the deal an important step for regional and global peace. “We were told that if Iran gives 1,200 kg without conditions, then the required atmosphere of trust would be created [to avoid sanctions]. So if we do all these things, and they still talk about sanctions … [it] will damage the psychological trust that has been created.” (source)Note that "without conditions." The Turks clearly are aware of that stipulation, which seems not to have been met.
It is hard to believe that there were no communications between Brazil, Turkey, and the United States. Some large part of such communications would have been secret, however, and we are unlikely to hear that full story any time soon.
The deal, as presented by Brazil and Turkey, seems not to have been fully approved by Iran, whatever that may take. It appears that there are factions in Iran who will not accept any deal that is acceptable to the United States, and that they sometimes have veto power. So would it make sense for the United States to accept and then have the deal slapped down again?
Here's the text of the sanctions resolution. And here are several pieces that lean more toward opinion than reporting. They contain some good points, but mostly jump much further ahead than I think is justified on the basis of the information I've seen.
New York Times editorial
Trita Parsi
Barbara Slavin
M. J. Rosenberg
Massimo Calibresi
Bits and Pieces - Science Edition
It's the thirtieth anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens eruption. Photos here.
In addition to its other charming qualities, kudzu creates ozone.
Life-form of the month: Archaea, neither bacteria nor like the rest of us.
In addition to its other charming qualities, kudzu creates ozone.
Life-form of the month: Archaea, neither bacteria nor like the rest of us.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Continuing the Negotiation...
The Obama administration announced Tuesday morning that it had struck a deal with other major powers, including Russia and China, to impose new sanctions on Iran, a sharp repudiation of the deal Tehran offered just a day before to ship its nuclear fuel out of the country.The first part of that sentence is news. The second part is...Peter Baker? The Times editorial board? David Sanger?
It's too bad that the Times chose to frame this story that way. Or perhaps it makes the negotiation more effective.
Brazil and Turkey persuaded Iran to agree to a modification of the deal that has been on the table for some time, and now a sanctions agreement is announced? There are other interpretations beyond repudiation of the deal. It's not clear to me from the quotes that this is not a continuation of the negotiations; unfortunately, the Times quotes from Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton are fragmentary enough that it's hard to tell what she actually said. We also do not know what Brazil and Turkey are being told behind the scenes.
So let's say that this is another step in the negotiation. The message is that Iran's Perils of Pauline strategy - poor little Iran on the railroad track, sanctions train stopped just in time - has been used too many times. As I agreed yesterday with Geoffrey Forden, the United States is being played. But so are China and Russia, who may just be getting tired of that.
Negotiations on sanctions have been ongoing, and yes, we have an agreement. There was no reason to end those negotiations just because Iran had (maybe) agreed to a deal that isn't that different from deals it could have agreed to a year ago. And, when Iran has had agreement offered to it, it has slipped away with disagreements (maybe genuine) within its own government. So enough already. Let us know you're serious, because we're serious about the sanctions.
The United States has bought time by asking that the IAEA review the agreement; it has neither rejected nor accepted it.
The ball is now in Iran's court.
Hank Jones, 1918-2010
He played with damn near everyone who was essential to 20th century jazz on some of the greatest records in the history of jazz, gently, modestly, superbly. The gentleman of jazz died on Sunday at the age of 91.
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Latest "Deal" With Iran
Let me disagree with Geoffrey Forden on the Iran deal. Yes, we’ve heard this over and over again. Yes, Iran is playing the United States and others. Yes, we’ve set ourselves up for this. But I think in a different way than Geoffrey is saying.
When the deal was first interpreted, back in the Bush administration, as being directed at getting Iran’s enriched uranium out of the country, it seemed to me to be a stupid thing to say in public, if that was indeed the goal. Everyone could figure it out, of course, but saying it was sticking a finger in Iran’s eye.
And, of course, that was under the larger goal of ending Iran’s enrichment program, which I also thought was a dumb goal. Dumb goals lead to dumb behavior.
I would have made the goal to bring Iran into full conformity with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the norms of behavior exhibited by other non nuclear weapon signatories of that treaty. That would have allowed enrichment under careful IAEA supervision. It would have insisted on explanations that Iran has still not provided for previous documents and, perhaps, actions. It would have made the basis for those allegations available to all, as Iran would be expected to make their information.
But that didn’t happen.
So the Obama administration inherited some dumb goals. Changing those goals would entail renouncing a lot of work done by our European allies and taking a lot of flack from the US right wing, which hates treaties and wants a war with Iran. There would also be beating of war drums and perhaps more in Israel.
So that business about getting the enriched uranium out of the country had to continue. It seems to be a favorite of the news media, providing conflict and something to focus on that has yes-no sorts of answers instead of that icky science stuff that the IAEA focuses on. I don’t believe the administration has actually said, we want to get that stuff out of Iran, although this
The question of where and when the enriched uranium goes is a sideshow. What we need is for Iran to act like a responsible party to the NPT. And, um, agreeing to a deal (although have all parties in Teheran agreed?) just as sanctions are being considered isn’t the most credible position to take.
There are some good aspects to this deal. Brazil and Turkey negotiated it; part of the message of President Obama’s security summit a few weeks back was that all NPT signatories have a stake in others’ behavior, and, in general, involvement of more nations is a good thing. At the very least, it encourages them to set good examples, and Brazil and Turkey are nations that might be willing to consider nuclear weapons of their own.
The Wall Street Journal may be correct about the best move for the US to make: declare victory and accept the deal. That would make it possible to move on to more productive goals.
Update: Stephen Walt's take.
When the deal was first interpreted, back in the Bush administration, as being directed at getting Iran’s enriched uranium out of the country, it seemed to me to be a stupid thing to say in public, if that was indeed the goal. Everyone could figure it out, of course, but saying it was sticking a finger in Iran’s eye.
And, of course, that was under the larger goal of ending Iran’s enrichment program, which I also thought was a dumb goal. Dumb goals lead to dumb behavior.
I would have made the goal to bring Iran into full conformity with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the norms of behavior exhibited by other non nuclear weapon signatories of that treaty. That would have allowed enrichment under careful IAEA supervision. It would have insisted on explanations that Iran has still not provided for previous documents and, perhaps, actions. It would have made the basis for those allegations available to all, as Iran would be expected to make their information.
But that didn’t happen.
So the Obama administration inherited some dumb goals. Changing those goals would entail renouncing a lot of work done by our European allies and taking a lot of flack from the US right wing, which hates treaties and wants a war with Iran. There would also be beating of war drums and perhaps more in Israel.
So that business about getting the enriched uranium out of the country had to continue. It seems to be a favorite of the news media, providing conflict and something to focus on that has yes-no sorts of answers instead of that icky science stuff that the IAEA focuses on. I don’t believe the administration has actually said, we want to get that stuff out of Iran, although this
While it would be a positive step for Iran to transfer low-enriched uranium off of its soil as it agreed to do last October…could be interpreted that way, and so we will continue to hear about that. (NYT, WaPo, ISIS)
The question of where and when the enriched uranium goes is a sideshow. What we need is for Iran to act like a responsible party to the NPT. And, um, agreeing to a deal (although have all parties in Teheran agreed?) just as sanctions are being considered isn’t the most credible position to take.
There are some good aspects to this deal. Brazil and Turkey negotiated it; part of the message of President Obama’s security summit a few weeks back was that all NPT signatories have a stake in others’ behavior, and, in general, involvement of more nations is a good thing. At the very least, it encourages them to set good examples, and Brazil and Turkey are nations that might be willing to consider nuclear weapons of their own.
The Wall Street Journal may be correct about the best move for the US to make: declare victory and accept the deal. That would make it possible to move on to more productive goals.
Update: Stephen Walt's take.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Creativity and Knowing Something About The Problem
I've been tossing this question around this week in another venue. Innovation requires seeing things with new eyes, which can mean that people who haven't looked at a problem may be able to propose solutions the experts haven't thought of. However, if you don't know enough about a problem, the solutions you propose may be boneheaded, even if you're quite a bright person. It may be something someone else has already tried and found inadequate, or it may be that you've left out an important variable.
With its openness and desire to address problems that have been swept under the rug for some long time, the Obama administration is raising the issue in numerous places. It's going to provide solutions in some places and not in others; I suspect that the ratio will be heavily tilted toward the latter.
So I am not as sanguine as Steve Benen about the panel of scientists that Energy Secretary Steven Chu is bringing to Houston to look at BP's problem with that uncontrolled deepwater oil well.
It was obvious to me from the beginning, having done some calculations of amounts of stuff coming out of the wells and amounts of force and other stuff needed to respond, that my technology wouldn't work. The discussions mainly involved people (men) throwing ideas from the tops of their heads - no calculations, no background - that they thought might work. I mostly kept my mouth shut, having noted in earlier such discussions that the king seemed to be developing goosebumps and having been quickly corrected in that misapprehension.
The oil well fires in Kuwait were extinguished by crews from Texas and elsewhere who were experienced in extinguishing oil well fires. None of the stuff the physicists had proposed.
There are a lot of things that aren't well known about BP's current problem, so maybe this group will be able to contribute. There is a balance between knowing something about the problem and knowing so much that you're stuck in the box. But I don't know where it is.
For another example, here are some bright ideas that didn't quite make it.
Update: Oh yeah, here's a new idea: let's nuke the slick. Or more accurately, let's use an underground nuclear blast to crimp the pipe to stop the flow. The Russians claim that they've done it successfully; I would like to see the evidence of that. And they say they placed the nukes 1.5 kilometers underground. So all we'd have to do is drill a hole 1.5 kilometers down, alongside the well that is leaking, emplace a nuke, and set it off. More underwater drilling. Lowering the nuke through water and downhole. Wires attached for detonation. And why not just use conventional explosives?
In contrast, here's a situation where long, detailed, sometimes boring work led to the solution. Plus politics.
With its openness and desire to address problems that have been swept under the rug for some long time, the Obama administration is raising the issue in numerous places. It's going to provide solutions in some places and not in others; I suspect that the ratio will be heavily tilted toward the latter.
So I am not as sanguine as Steve Benen about the panel of scientists that Energy Secretary Steven Chu is bringing to Houston to look at BP's problem with that uncontrolled deepwater oil well.
[Richard] Garwin, 82, held a 1991 symposium of academic scientists, explosives experts, firefighters and oilmen to grapple with how to stem oil flows from hundreds of wells Iraq set on fire in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War, according to a summary of the event.I'm not sure about the others' expertise, but everybody and his brother (did anyone else notice that all five are male? still in that box) back in the day was trying to find an innovative solution to those oil well fires. I was involved in one of those efforts because I was working on a possibly relevant technology.
It was obvious to me from the beginning, having done some calculations of amounts of stuff coming out of the wells and amounts of force and other stuff needed to respond, that my technology wouldn't work. The discussions mainly involved people (men) throwing ideas from the tops of their heads - no calculations, no background - that they thought might work. I mostly kept my mouth shut, having noted in earlier such discussions that the king seemed to be developing goosebumps and having been quickly corrected in that misapprehension.
The oil well fires in Kuwait were extinguished by crews from Texas and elsewhere who were experienced in extinguishing oil well fires. None of the stuff the physicists had proposed.
There are a lot of things that aren't well known about BP's current problem, so maybe this group will be able to contribute. There is a balance between knowing something about the problem and knowing so much that you're stuck in the box. But I don't know where it is.
For another example, here are some bright ideas that didn't quite make it.
Update: Oh yeah, here's a new idea: let's nuke the slick. Or more accurately, let's use an underground nuclear blast to crimp the pipe to stop the flow. The Russians claim that they've done it successfully; I would like to see the evidence of that. And they say they placed the nukes 1.5 kilometers underground. So all we'd have to do is drill a hole 1.5 kilometers down, alongside the well that is leaking, emplace a nuke, and set it off. More underwater drilling. Lowering the nuke through water and downhole. Wires attached for detonation. And why not just use conventional explosives?
In contrast, here's a situation where long, detailed, sometimes boring work led to the solution. Plus politics.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Women's Work Is Never Done
I'm reading Gail Collins's When Everything Changed, which is bringing back memories of the bad old days, when everyone knew that women were the biologically weaker sex. But that's all change now.
Not.
Amazing that a doctor in 2010 can sound so much like the common wisdom of 1960.
Not.
It is the matter of exposure to radiation that is most unsettling to me. It is the genetically sensitive tissue in women that is intimately involved in the process of childbearing that needs to be addressed, researched and commented on by our Navy's leaders before they change the policy.Um, guy, those frequently changing sperm are generated by cells that reside in the man for his whole life, more or less. Presumably damage to them means defective sperm for the life of the man.
While sperm from men are frequently changing and thereby present a reduced vulnerability to radiation consequences, women have ovaries that contain radiation-sensitive tissue fixed for the life of the woman.
Amazing that a doctor in 2010 can sound so much like the common wisdom of 1960.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Bits and Pieces - May 12, 2010
Cheers for New Mexico's Senators Bingaman and Udall in the hearings on the oil spill!
The European Commission recommended that Estonia join the Eurozone on January 1, 2011. Guess I'd better get over there and spend the kroons I've got stashed!
The Wall Street Journal confirms my suspicions that Russia is moving towards the West. (Suspicions here, here, here, and here.) Chuck Thornton provides the Russian text of the document, with a promise of an English translation soon.
Russia is considering telling us how many nukes they've got, now that the Obama administration has released the US numbers. I guess that won't end the argument that US actions on stuff like transparency have no effect on other countries.
The European Commission recommended that Estonia join the Eurozone on January 1, 2011. Guess I'd better get over there and spend the kroons I've got stashed!
The Wall Street Journal confirms my suspicions that Russia is moving towards the West. (Suspicions here, here, here, and here.) Chuck Thornton provides the Russian text of the document, with a promise of an English translation soon.
Russia is considering telling us how many nukes they've got, now that the Obama administration has released the US numbers. I guess that won't end the argument that US actions on stuff like transparency have no effect on other countries.
What Taxes Do
While I was in New Jersey, I visited my grammar and high schools. Both are doing very well, rated high in the state. They've added lots of rooms since I attended them, the older parts look as good as they did back in the day, and they seem to be well-supplied with all the stuff that teaching kids requires.
Former acquaintances that I talked to complained, mildly, about taxes, which are indeed fairly high in New Jersey. But overall, personal taxes are lower today in the United States than they have been for some time.
It's those taxes that are keeping those schools looking good. More tax-averse states have been cutting such things for some time now. It hardly seems worth it.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Losing Biodiversity
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the CBD, released its Global Biodiversity Outlook 3 report yesterday (downloadable in full here). The news is not good, the GBO essentially saying that countries have largely ignored the accelerating loss of biodiversity. Here's an idea:
"The abundance of vertebrate species, based on assessed populations, fell by nearly a third on average between 1970 and 2006 and continues to fall globally," says the report, issued ahead of a top-level meeting of the Commission on Sustainable Development this week in New York. [editor: Figures from a WWF report available here].
"The five principal pressures directly driving biodiversity loss (habitat change, overexploitation, pollution, invasive alien species and climate change) are either constant or increasing in intensity."
The report does see progress in the creation of preserves, in particular in the number of protected marine areas announced in recent months, but the overall assessment of the treaty by its Montreal-based secretariat paints a grim picture, saying habitat losses have offset gains. Wetlands, salt marshes and habitats for shellfish seem to be suffering the most damage.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Profit, Loss, and Proliferation
Defense, Inc., Russian Style
Molly Cernicek and Cheryl Rofer
The Armchair Generalist drew attention last week to the Rocket-In-A-Box missile system marketed by a joint stock company of Russian defense firms at the Defense Services Asia exhibition in Malaysia. Called the Club K Container Missile System by the Russians, this system of missiles can be boxed up in a 40-ft standard shipping container and installed on coastal positions, surface ships and vessels of different classes, railway and automobile platforms. Price tag: $15 million. The mobility of this product has worried some that it could become a weapon system of choice for a terrorist organization. What should be watched closely is not so much whether a terrorist group will buy or acquire this system as whether Russia’s recently privatized defense industry can compete with the rest of the world for the biggest spending customers in the conventional weapons market. Because if it cannot, then there are more reasons to worry about Russian weaponry ending up in the wrong hands.
The Club K Container Missile System is a product of a thick web of companies whose shares are owned by both the Russian government and private entities. A joint stock company called Concern Morinformsystem-AGAT that makes the Club K includes ten additional joint stock companies and three Federal State Unitary Enterprises (FSUEs). (Concern in Russian means a group of companies.) A FSUE is a legal entity created by the Russian government that allows government enterprises to undertake commercial activities but that does not sell shares. Eleven of these participating organizations with Concern Morinformsystem-AGAT are Soviet-established military and scientific institutes dedicated for decades to shipbuilding and associated technologies; one has roots in Czarist times, and one was created post-Communism. State Corporation Rostekhnologii oversees Concern Morinformsystem-AGAT.
A state corporation is a state holding company that unites the largest enterprises of the military-industrial complex and associated civil industries. Its subsidiaries can carry out any market operations, including IPOs. It is not directly controlled by the government, its head is appointed by the president personally, profits of the corporations may not be distributed, and rules for disclosing information for such entities are less stringent than for open joint-stock companies. It’s a shadow ministry of industry.
In a massive effort to control and manage both the vertical and horizontal networks of the Soviet military-industrial complex, Putin’s government established a new management model for its defense industry. First it created the Rosoboronexport State Corporation (ROE) in 2000. ROE’s objectives included the restructuring of the military and technical system of coordination between foreign states and the Russian Federation, establishing and enhancing long term relationships with foreign customers, and to advance Russia’s standing in the international arms market. Sergei Chemzov was first deputy chief of Rosoboronexport from its creation in 2000 until he became CEO in 2004. In an earlier career, Chemzov was a KGB operative who served in the 1980s in Dresden, East Germany, with Putin. In 2005, he started to lobby for a new entity that would have more responsibility and reach than ROE.
In late 2007, Rostekhnologii was established to facilitate development, production and export of hi-tech industrial products for civilian and military purposes. It is a supercorporation that controls the production and supply chain from research and development as well as the supply of special equipment from abroad. Some of its assets include Russia’s biggest car-making company, Avtovaz; one of the world’s main producers of titanium, VSMPO-Avisma; Vertolyoti Rossia, which produces civilian and military helicopters; Oboronitelnye Systemi, which manufactures anti-aircraft and electronic equipment; steel producer RusSpetsStal, and multiple other properties.
So how is this model working so far for Russia? A quick glance looks positive as Russia’s defense products pulled in a record $7.4 billion in 2009, up 10 percent from 2008. ROE accounted for 80 percent of those sales with the remaining 20 percent coming from Russian defense companies that trade in spare parts, maintenance, and repair services. But $7.4 B is probably .2-.3% of the overall global market. And $7.4 billion is probably not enough to support the thousands of employees within ROE and Rostekhnologii. Though numbers are elusive, it is very likely that US top defense contractor Lockheed Martin has far fewer employees than these Russian state corporations. In 2009 Lockheed brought in $45.45 billion.
Presidents Yeltsin and Putin did not have the stomach to force many defense institutes out of business. Instead, they allowed them to hold on in a quasi-existence for years with no investment into research, people or infrastructure. Putin has created the public-private model where the toughest will survive and the others will go bankrupt. Soviet institutes now are joint ventures and sell shares. Many of their leaders have borrowed money against these shares to keep the old institutes on life support and then borrowed more money to pay off earlier loans at higher interest rates. Last year Chemzov, now CEO of Rostekhnologii, announced that that 30 percent of the nearly 400 firms under Rostekhnologii management were facing bankruptcy proceedings. Rostekhnologii owns up to 100 percent of these joint ventures.
There are destabilizing factors not just to Russia’s national security but to global security if Russia’s defense industry cannot maintain a competitive position in the global weapons market. In order to be competitive globally, Russia has to be competitive domestically, and that is a problem that so far has not been solved. The Russian government can no longer afford to give loans to other governments to buy Russian weapons…only to promise to forgive these loans down the road. This behavior takes the “business” out of “business model”. ROE and Rostekhnologii are also victim to entities and people within their massive organization who are selling products on their own terms, some of them violating international arms embargos and undermining the corporations’ operations and goals.
The jury will be out for a while before any clear conclusions can be drawn from Russia’s “modernized” defense industry. Thankfully, its nuclear complex is not part of a state corporation.
Molly Cernicek and Cheryl Rofer
The Armchair Generalist drew attention last week to the Rocket-In-A-Box missile system marketed by a joint stock company of Russian defense firms at the Defense Services Asia exhibition in Malaysia. Called the Club K Container Missile System by the Russians, this system of missiles can be boxed up in a 40-ft standard shipping container and installed on coastal positions, surface ships and vessels of different classes, railway and automobile platforms. Price tag: $15 million. The mobility of this product has worried some that it could become a weapon system of choice for a terrorist organization. What should be watched closely is not so much whether a terrorist group will buy or acquire this system as whether Russia’s recently privatized defense industry can compete with the rest of the world for the biggest spending customers in the conventional weapons market. Because if it cannot, then there are more reasons to worry about Russian weaponry ending up in the wrong hands.
The Club K Container Missile System is a product of a thick web of companies whose shares are owned by both the Russian government and private entities. A joint stock company called Concern Morinformsystem-AGAT that makes the Club K includes ten additional joint stock companies and three Federal State Unitary Enterprises (FSUEs). (Concern in Russian means a group of companies.) A FSUE is a legal entity created by the Russian government that allows government enterprises to undertake commercial activities but that does not sell shares. Eleven of these participating organizations with Concern Morinformsystem-AGAT are Soviet-established military and scientific institutes dedicated for decades to shipbuilding and associated technologies; one has roots in Czarist times, and one was created post-Communism. State Corporation Rostekhnologii oversees Concern Morinformsystem-AGAT.
A state corporation is a state holding company that unites the largest enterprises of the military-industrial complex and associated civil industries. Its subsidiaries can carry out any market operations, including IPOs. It is not directly controlled by the government, its head is appointed by the president personally, profits of the corporations may not be distributed, and rules for disclosing information for such entities are less stringent than for open joint-stock companies. It’s a shadow ministry of industry.
In a massive effort to control and manage both the vertical and horizontal networks of the Soviet military-industrial complex, Putin’s government established a new management model for its defense industry. First it created the Rosoboronexport State Corporation (ROE) in 2000. ROE’s objectives included the restructuring of the military and technical system of coordination between foreign states and the Russian Federation, establishing and enhancing long term relationships with foreign customers, and to advance Russia’s standing in the international arms market. Sergei Chemzov was first deputy chief of Rosoboronexport from its creation in 2000 until he became CEO in 2004. In an earlier career, Chemzov was a KGB operative who served in the 1980s in Dresden, East Germany, with Putin. In 2005, he started to lobby for a new entity that would have more responsibility and reach than ROE.
In late 2007, Rostekhnologii was established to facilitate development, production and export of hi-tech industrial products for civilian and military purposes. It is a supercorporation that controls the production and supply chain from research and development as well as the supply of special equipment from abroad. Some of its assets include Russia’s biggest car-making company, Avtovaz; one of the world’s main producers of titanium, VSMPO-Avisma; Vertolyoti Rossia, which produces civilian and military helicopters; Oboronitelnye Systemi, which manufactures anti-aircraft and electronic equipment; steel producer RusSpetsStal, and multiple other properties.
So how is this model working so far for Russia? A quick glance looks positive as Russia’s defense products pulled in a record $7.4 billion in 2009, up 10 percent from 2008. ROE accounted for 80 percent of those sales with the remaining 20 percent coming from Russian defense companies that trade in spare parts, maintenance, and repair services. But $7.4 B is probably .2-.3% of the overall global market. And $7.4 billion is probably not enough to support the thousands of employees within ROE and Rostekhnologii. Though numbers are elusive, it is very likely that US top defense contractor Lockheed Martin has far fewer employees than these Russian state corporations. In 2009 Lockheed brought in $45.45 billion.
Presidents Yeltsin and Putin did not have the stomach to force many defense institutes out of business. Instead, they allowed them to hold on in a quasi-existence for years with no investment into research, people or infrastructure. Putin has created the public-private model where the toughest will survive and the others will go bankrupt. Soviet institutes now are joint ventures and sell shares. Many of their leaders have borrowed money against these shares to keep the old institutes on life support and then borrowed more money to pay off earlier loans at higher interest rates. Last year Chemzov, now CEO of Rostekhnologii, announced that that 30 percent of the nearly 400 firms under Rostekhnologii management were facing bankruptcy proceedings. Rostekhnologii owns up to 100 percent of these joint ventures.
There are destabilizing factors not just to Russia’s national security but to global security if Russia’s defense industry cannot maintain a competitive position in the global weapons market. In order to be competitive globally, Russia has to be competitive domestically, and that is a problem that so far has not been solved. The Russian government can no longer afford to give loans to other governments to buy Russian weapons…only to promise to forgive these loans down the road. This behavior takes the “business” out of “business model”. ROE and Rostekhnologii are also victim to entities and people within their massive organization who are selling products on their own terms, some of them violating international arms embargos and undermining the corporations’ operations and goals.
The jury will be out for a while before any clear conclusions can be drawn from Russia’s “modernized” defense industry. Thankfully, its nuclear complex is not part of a state corporation.
Progress Report on Organizing the Community
Issues to be addressed (a brief summary): At the start of our project, the community was fragmented and apathetic. Many serious problems had gone unaddressed for years, with the predicatable result that citizens felt disempowered and unable to address those same problems in a downward spiral of morale and effort. This feeling of disempowerment had led to a sense that only a “strong leader” could make a difference, and that leader would make that difference by issuing orders which would magically lead to the lost unity of purpose and direction. This is, of course, the definition of the “man on the white horse,” the desire for which has led in so many situations to the popular election of dictators, to whom power is given willingly.
Dysfunctional “solutions” to the problems abounded: many amounted to ignoring a problem so that it would go away, as in climate change and decaying infrastructure. In the case of the economy, responses were actively contradictory to reasonable solutions: encouragement of the same sorts of activities that led to the Enron and Long-Term Capital Management disasters; continuation of discredited “supply-side economics”; and the utter refusal of a positive role for government. The approach to economics was sufficiently delusional that a collapse on the scale of the 1930s disaster was in progress when we began our role in the project.
Internal dysfunctionality was reflected in external relations. Projection of one’s own problems on others was far advanced, and, in return, external confidence was much reduced and decreasing.
Initial goals: The first goal had to be preventing an economic disaster. Restoring external confidence (and therefore ending projection) would reinforce and support that goal. Also to be addressed immediately was empowering the people; reversing the downward morale and effort spiral was essential. This empowerment, of course, is also a long-term goal and is expected to progress gradually. As empowerment proceeds, the willingness to address problems and the quality of proposed solutions can be expected to improve. In some cases, all that can be expected initially is improved understanding of the problems. In a democracy, participation in generating and executing solutions is essential; improved understanding contributes to both a desire to participate and improved solutions.
Specific instances of progress toward goals
The economy: Although it is too soon for a full evaluation, the worst of the economic collapse seems to be over, and a number of indicators have turned around significantly. We must continue to monitor the situation carefully and act as necessary. Congress is working on regulations; the present bill may be insufficient, but it moves in the right direction, and changes can be made after it passes.
Empowering the people: Public discourse has improved greatly. While there remains a significant residue of desire for the magical leader, rationality is beginning to emerge. A caution is necessary here: as empowerment proceeds, an increasing number of voices will emerge, as will conflicts among those voices. Given the transition from the one-way media of newspapers and broadcast media to the multi-voiced internet, we can expect that those who are invested in the one-way model, along with those who are invested in the idea of a magical leader, will be extremely threatened by the emergence of new voices and new thinking. It will not be possible to discuss this dynamic fully in this progress report; we will include indicators of emerging rationality and new approaches and will discuss the threatened resisters separately.
Attitudes toward terror attacks: We are beginning to bring down the level of hysteria associated with attempted terror attacks. It was helpful that New Yorkers pride themselves on their coolness toward danger in responding to the Times Square attempt. It is also helpful that the last two attempts have been carried out incompetently while law enforcement rapidly mitigated what threat there was and arrested the perpetrator in a few hours more than two days. Richard Clarke provides a much more measured perspective today than he did a few years ago. The Washington Post editoral board explicitly distances itself from the cries for eliminating Miranda protections.
Tenor of political discussion: There are two aspects to this at our current stage of organizing. In one, there is a movement toward greater rationality and a willingness to call out obvious absurdities. Small examples can be found in the media almost every day. Paul Rademacher provides a way of visualizing the size of the BP/Halliburton oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and James Fallows expounds on it. Both parts of that observation are relevant; Rademacher develops a utility that others can use, and Fallows, a member of the old media, jumps on the bandwagon. The Boston Globe editorial board suggests that negative campaign ads be squarely set on their beneficiaries, whatever slim excuse those beneficiaries may muster.
In the second aspect, voices of dissent and opposition have grown, making the marketplace of ideas more contentious. Expanding the range of discussion is part of the near-term goals, so we may consider this a type of success.
The threatened resisters. A vibrant and thoughtful range of opinions, of course, is a feature of all healthy communities. However, when we began the project, a pathological Manichaeism had set in. Separating the world into good and evil prevented serious consideration of realistic policy options. So the improving tenor of political discussion is one measure of recovery from that pathology.
But as recovery proceeds, the threatened resisters will find it unacceptable for a variety of reasons. Some will, with time, come to see that open discussion in a less simplistic framework is necessary to their projects and prospects as well. As discussion opens up, however, the most threatened are likely to be the most vocal. Expression of opposing views should be welcomed, as is being done in the moves toward bipartisanship. People must feel accepted as they are if they are to participate.
Resisters to the opening up of discussion are likely either to form a more thoughtful opposition, or to become more estranged from the process. Formation of a thoughtful opposition is a positive step; a full discussion of possible actions will improve decisions. Estrangement is more difficult to deal with. Separation from the community will result in extreme beliefs and, potentially, actions. The political world has the corrective of elections. A group that becomes too far estranged will be unacceptable to the great majority and will lose power, and, losing power, will eventually disappear.
We are, however, in the middle of the process, when the estrangement seems more important and effective than it is likely to be in the long term. Some relevant examples follow.
The more extreme demands of insurance companies are being discredited, now that the health care reform bill is law.
The Republican Party is being strongly influenced by those who see separation from the larger community as their only way forward. Thus, they are jettisoning moderate candidates like Senator Robert Bennett of Utah in favor of separatist “Tea Party” candidates. A copycat attempt to call the BP/Halliburton oil spill “Obama’s Katrina” is not catching on with the media; in fact, the AP refuted the charge. An important point to be noted is that various arms of the media, including the MSM, are critiquing the actions of the threatened resisters, which helps to marginalize them.
External relations. To some degree, the community organizing process extends to the rest of the world, because America has been the leader in so many global initiatives and is expected to continue to lead. Some of the internal pathologies have spread to the rest of the world as well. However, we will include only three indicative actions in this report. A number of countries have stepped up to provide mediation and, potentially, nuclear services to Iran in attempting to defuse that situation, most recently, Brazil. Egypt is expected to play a major role in the NPT Review Conference and raise some delicate issues. Indonesia is about to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty without waiting for US ratification.
Improved relations with other communities was essential in dealing with the financial crisis. The clear delineation from previous policies and personalities was a first step, but introducing new policies designed for better external relations must continue. Negotiations for a follow-on treaty to START advanced the stated nuclear decrease agenda, gave Russia some of the recognition sought, and laid an explicit basis for bringing other countries into the negotiations. Although Russia retains significantly undemocratic internal policies and some apparent need to continue old behaviors, a large number of small actions indicate improving relations.
A number of former government officials, most recently Warren Christopher, Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, have written op-eds approving current foreign policy.
Summary
We are very much in the middle of the organizing process. Although the immediate dangers of the economy seem to have been mitigated, not all the deleterious effects, like the high unemployment rate, have been corrected. Political communication, news coverage, and external relations have all improved but also have some distance to go before our democracy can be considered healthy.
This is the most unstable part of the process, as changes begin to take hold. Opposition can be expected, but, if we continue to apply tested techniques of community organization, it can be expected to become more responsible or fade away.
Dysfunctional “solutions” to the problems abounded: many amounted to ignoring a problem so that it would go away, as in climate change and decaying infrastructure. In the case of the economy, responses were actively contradictory to reasonable solutions: encouragement of the same sorts of activities that led to the Enron and Long-Term Capital Management disasters; continuation of discredited “supply-side economics”; and the utter refusal of a positive role for government. The approach to economics was sufficiently delusional that a collapse on the scale of the 1930s disaster was in progress when we began our role in the project.
Internal dysfunctionality was reflected in external relations. Projection of one’s own problems on others was far advanced, and, in return, external confidence was much reduced and decreasing.
Initial goals: The first goal had to be preventing an economic disaster. Restoring external confidence (and therefore ending projection) would reinforce and support that goal. Also to be addressed immediately was empowering the people; reversing the downward morale and effort spiral was essential. This empowerment, of course, is also a long-term goal and is expected to progress gradually. As empowerment proceeds, the willingness to address problems and the quality of proposed solutions can be expected to improve. In some cases, all that can be expected initially is improved understanding of the problems. In a democracy, participation in generating and executing solutions is essential; improved understanding contributes to both a desire to participate and improved solutions.
Specific instances of progress toward goals
The economy: Although it is too soon for a full evaluation, the worst of the economic collapse seems to be over, and a number of indicators have turned around significantly. We must continue to monitor the situation carefully and act as necessary. Congress is working on regulations; the present bill may be insufficient, but it moves in the right direction, and changes can be made after it passes.
Empowering the people: Public discourse has improved greatly. While there remains a significant residue of desire for the magical leader, rationality is beginning to emerge. A caution is necessary here: as empowerment proceeds, an increasing number of voices will emerge, as will conflicts among those voices. Given the transition from the one-way media of newspapers and broadcast media to the multi-voiced internet, we can expect that those who are invested in the one-way model, along with those who are invested in the idea of a magical leader, will be extremely threatened by the emergence of new voices and new thinking. It will not be possible to discuss this dynamic fully in this progress report; we will include indicators of emerging rationality and new approaches and will discuss the threatened resisters separately.
Attitudes toward terror attacks: We are beginning to bring down the level of hysteria associated with attempted terror attacks. It was helpful that New Yorkers pride themselves on their coolness toward danger in responding to the Times Square attempt. It is also helpful that the last two attempts have been carried out incompetently while law enforcement rapidly mitigated what threat there was and arrested the perpetrator in a few hours more than two days. Richard Clarke provides a much more measured perspective today than he did a few years ago. The Washington Post editoral board explicitly distances itself from the cries for eliminating Miranda protections.
Tenor of political discussion: There are two aspects to this at our current stage of organizing. In one, there is a movement toward greater rationality and a willingness to call out obvious absurdities. Small examples can be found in the media almost every day. Paul Rademacher provides a way of visualizing the size of the BP/Halliburton oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and James Fallows expounds on it. Both parts of that observation are relevant; Rademacher develops a utility that others can use, and Fallows, a member of the old media, jumps on the bandwagon. The Boston Globe editorial board suggests that negative campaign ads be squarely set on their beneficiaries, whatever slim excuse those beneficiaries may muster.
In the second aspect, voices of dissent and opposition have grown, making the marketplace of ideas more contentious. Expanding the range of discussion is part of the near-term goals, so we may consider this a type of success.
The threatened resisters. A vibrant and thoughtful range of opinions, of course, is a feature of all healthy communities. However, when we began the project, a pathological Manichaeism had set in. Separating the world into good and evil prevented serious consideration of realistic policy options. So the improving tenor of political discussion is one measure of recovery from that pathology.
But as recovery proceeds, the threatened resisters will find it unacceptable for a variety of reasons. Some will, with time, come to see that open discussion in a less simplistic framework is necessary to their projects and prospects as well. As discussion opens up, however, the most threatened are likely to be the most vocal. Expression of opposing views should be welcomed, as is being done in the moves toward bipartisanship. People must feel accepted as they are if they are to participate.
Resisters to the opening up of discussion are likely either to form a more thoughtful opposition, or to become more estranged from the process. Formation of a thoughtful opposition is a positive step; a full discussion of possible actions will improve decisions. Estrangement is more difficult to deal with. Separation from the community will result in extreme beliefs and, potentially, actions. The political world has the corrective of elections. A group that becomes too far estranged will be unacceptable to the great majority and will lose power, and, losing power, will eventually disappear.
We are, however, in the middle of the process, when the estrangement seems more important and effective than it is likely to be in the long term. Some relevant examples follow.
The more extreme demands of insurance companies are being discredited, now that the health care reform bill is law.
The Republican Party is being strongly influenced by those who see separation from the larger community as their only way forward. Thus, they are jettisoning moderate candidates like Senator Robert Bennett of Utah in favor of separatist “Tea Party” candidates. A copycat attempt to call the BP/Halliburton oil spill “Obama’s Katrina” is not catching on with the media; in fact, the AP refuted the charge. An important point to be noted is that various arms of the media, including the MSM, are critiquing the actions of the threatened resisters, which helps to marginalize them.
External relations. To some degree, the community organizing process extends to the rest of the world, because America has been the leader in so many global initiatives and is expected to continue to lead. Some of the internal pathologies have spread to the rest of the world as well. However, we will include only three indicative actions in this report. A number of countries have stepped up to provide mediation and, potentially, nuclear services to Iran in attempting to defuse that situation, most recently, Brazil. Egypt is expected to play a major role in the NPT Review Conference and raise some delicate issues. Indonesia is about to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty without waiting for US ratification.
Improved relations with other communities was essential in dealing with the financial crisis. The clear delineation from previous policies and personalities was a first step, but introducing new policies designed for better external relations must continue. Negotiations for a follow-on treaty to START advanced the stated nuclear decrease agenda, gave Russia some of the recognition sought, and laid an explicit basis for bringing other countries into the negotiations. Although Russia retains significantly undemocratic internal policies and some apparent need to continue old behaviors, a large number of small actions indicate improving relations.
A number of former government officials, most recently Warren Christopher, Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, have written op-eds approving current foreign policy.
Summary
We are very much in the middle of the organizing process. Although the immediate dangers of the economy seem to have been mitigated, not all the deleterious effects, like the high unemployment rate, have been corrected. Political communication, news coverage, and external relations have all improved but also have some distance to go before our democracy can be considered healthy.
This is the most unstable part of the process, as changes begin to take hold. Opposition can be expected, but, if we continue to apply tested techniques of community organization, it can be expected to become more responsible or fade away.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
The Airlines' Death Spiral
On my recent trip, I was taken aback by what looks like the beginning of the end of air travel. I hadn't traveled by air since last fall, and the vacant gates as my airplane taxied out and in, the boarded-up gates on the interiors, the much smaller numbers of people than I recalled from past trips were quite remarkable.
The airlines are trying to run their planes fuller, so they are using fewer planes, which partly accounts for the vacant gates, and presumably the recession has put a crimp in some trip plans, both business and personal. But I'm wondering if the airlines might not be dying.
Delta has absorbed Northwest, except for a few not-yet-repainted planes wandering around the Minneapolis airport. But they no longer send out e-mail check-in, and the agents themselves had a hard time making the computer check-ins work. My own observation was that they've made the sequence too complicated and non-intuitive. And when the system didn't spit out a baggage tag, the fix took a full five minutes of two agents' time.
But they are providing pretzels, peanuts, and cookies, sometimes even a choice among them, on board, although it seemed to me that the extra inches Delta advertised some years ago have disappeared, and then some.
The New York Times editorial board wonders why the airlines are merging, as do I. I guess it's what you do when your business model is no longer working and you can't come up with another one. The Times editorial lists the usual airline woes: legacy costs and customers who seem to respond only to lower prices.
Has the degree of unpleasantness of air travel, the coffin-like space allowed to each passenger, the surly attendants, the indignities and inanities of TSA scrutiny, finally convinced people that other means of travel, or none at all, is the best plan? Is improved teleconferencing is taking the place of more business travel? I know that I am no longer as eager as I once was to travel because of these things.
The mergers are a sign that airline executives see no reason to rethink their business model. So they offer a service that is not unlike a public utility, neither delighting nor exciting the customer, and then accuse the customer of wanting only lower prices. Perhaps the cycle will end when the old behemoths finally merge into a single airline that dies, with newer airlines coming up. But it's not clear that airlines like Southwest are much more innovative in their business models; they merely take advantage of not having the legacy costs and are more explicit that they offer nothing beyond a utility.
The airlines are trying to run their planes fuller, so they are using fewer planes, which partly accounts for the vacant gates, and presumably the recession has put a crimp in some trip plans, both business and personal. But I'm wondering if the airlines might not be dying.
Delta has absorbed Northwest, except for a few not-yet-repainted planes wandering around the Minneapolis airport. But they no longer send out e-mail check-in, and the agents themselves had a hard time making the computer check-ins work. My own observation was that they've made the sequence too complicated and non-intuitive. And when the system didn't spit out a baggage tag, the fix took a full five minutes of two agents' time.
But they are providing pretzels, peanuts, and cookies, sometimes even a choice among them, on board, although it seemed to me that the extra inches Delta advertised some years ago have disappeared, and then some.
The New York Times editorial board wonders why the airlines are merging, as do I. I guess it's what you do when your business model is no longer working and you can't come up with another one. The Times editorial lists the usual airline woes: legacy costs and customers who seem to respond only to lower prices.
Has the degree of unpleasantness of air travel, the coffin-like space allowed to each passenger, the surly attendants, the indignities and inanities of TSA scrutiny, finally convinced people that other means of travel, or none at all, is the best plan? Is improved teleconferencing is taking the place of more business travel? I know that I am no longer as eager as I once was to travel because of these things.
The mergers are a sign that airline executives see no reason to rethink their business model. So they offer a service that is not unlike a public utility, neither delighting nor exciting the customer, and then accuse the customer of wanting only lower prices. Perhaps the cycle will end when the old behemoths finally merge into a single airline that dies, with newer airlines coming up. But it's not clear that airlines like Southwest are much more innovative in their business models; they merely take advantage of not having the legacy costs and are more explicit that they offer nothing beyond a utility.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Nobody Knows
why the stock market took that sudden dive yesterday. Kevin Drum now supports my suspicion that it was an artifact of the system - the computerized trading, the fast rates at which it is done. Felix Salmon has more, and links to still more. I'm not going to dig into it - something in my brain just gives up at the levels of abstraction above futures contracts - but it's there if you want to.
I'll agree with the two of them that what the financial geniuses are doing with computers is probably beyond their ken as well and that something needs to be done to stop the crazy. The transaction tax sounds like a reasonable idea to slow things down.
I'll agree with the two of them that what the financial geniuses are doing with computers is probably beyond their ken as well and that something needs to be done to stop the crazy. The transaction tax sounds like a reasonable idea to slow things down.
China Steps Up Arctic Research
China says it's going to get more involved in research on Arctic warming, weather, and, er, oil. They don't have any coastlines in the Arctic, but eastern Siberia is beginning to look mighty empty of Russians.
Neandertals Found: Inside Our Genome!
Yes, indeedy. We Sapiens-Sapiens, we get around.
By comparing Neanderthal DNA with that of living humans from around the world, the scientists have found evidence that--sometime between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago--modern humans and Neanderthals interbred.
...
...the new research shows that modern humans in Africa have a lower percentage of the Neanderthal genome than non-Africans do--implying that the founder group that left Africa interbred with Neanderthals before moving on to populate the other continents. "Likely, it took place somewhere in the Middle East or in northern Africa, perhaps at the gateway as they were migrating out for the first time," says Harvard University geneticist David Reich, who performed the population genetics analyses.
More Good News From Russia
This weekend is the celebration of Germany's surrender in World War II. It's a big holiday in Russia. The Nazis reached the outskirts of Moscow, so beating them back and eventually overpowering them was a big deal. A lot of people died in the process.
So it's quite a time for the Russian president to repudiate Stalin and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the victors in the Great Patriotic War.
To some extent, repudiation of Stalin is not new. In 1956, Khrushchev spoke of Stalin's crimes to a Communist Party Congress. But there has recently been some nostalgia in Russia for the old days, expressed as admiration for Stalin. Medvedev's repudiation includes the Soviet Union as well, as "a regime where elementary rights and freedoms were suppressed."
And, for the first time, active-duty American army troops, the 170th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, will march in Moscow's Victory Day parade. The Soviet Union used to show off their missiles in those parades.
So it's quite a time for the Russian president to repudiate Stalin and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the victors in the Great Patriotic War.
To some extent, repudiation of Stalin is not new. In 1956, Khrushchev spoke of Stalin's crimes to a Communist Party Congress. But there has recently been some nostalgia in Russia for the old days, expressed as admiration for Stalin. Medvedev's repudiation includes the Soviet Union as well, as "a regime where elementary rights and freedoms were suppressed."
And, for the first time, active-duty American army troops, the 170th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, will march in Moscow's Victory Day parade. The Soviet Union used to show off their missiles in those parades.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Bits and Pieces - May 6, 2010
I got back last night from a week in northern New Jersey. More on that later, perhaps, along with some photos.
I needed a bit of time away from the interwebs. It was quite a week, of course. Seems like we're having a lot of those lately. I think I have some new ideas for posts, but it can be amazing how many of my ideas for posts never become posts.
I don't watch television at home, but I check it out when I'm traveling. It's clear that cable news does not have enough material to fill 24/7. The rate of repetition can be amazing, but that's not the worst thing about it. I've been bothered for some time by the desire to anticipate the news in the blogosphere, and it's worse on cable news.
Back when I was writing progress reports regularly, the pressure to anticipate results was strong. It's an easy mindset to fall into, and the pressure in the blogosphere to be the first to say something is part of the pressure, along with a general societal desire to be the smartest guy on the block.
But you get a lot of things wrong that way. That's not the worst thing in a world that expects all this fortune-telling, but it's wasted effort. When cable news does it, it confuses people as to what has actually happened.
There's been a lot of worst-casing over the oil spill in the Gulf, both on cable and the interwebs. But we're not going to know what has happened until it happens. Here are some numbers for comparison.
And then there's the issue of home-grown oil. It turns out that nearly half of Gulf oil is exported, but, as they say, oil is fungible, and more oil is more oil, wherever it goes.
In keeping with not being too far ahead of the story, I'll offer my opinion that we need a national energy policy. I've said it before, so maybe that counts. But even without a policy, it appears that we are decreasing our emissions of carbon dioxide! And fairly quickly, too. So maybe I have been wrong. Whatever; I've got some fodder to say more about that.
Then there was the Times Square guy with fireworks and other potentially flammable stuff in his car. People in the New York City area, where I was, learn to be tough and unflappable. Or to look that way, which is pretty much the same thing. We also like to seem competent, so this guy was just a bad joke, and Times Square was pretty much back to normal in a day, and competent law-enforcement personnel caught the bungler in two days. President Obama's comments reinforced the message that fear is not part of the American character, and the TSA people were no more obnoxious on my return than they were on my departure.
I was wondering, though, if that anticipatory news, usually of the worst possible thing anyone can imagine, doesn't feed into the aura of fear. Plus not knowing how much of all that is true. Certainly cable provided anticipatory news on this story as well as the oil spill.
It seemed to me that what I've called President Obama's community organizer strategy is working. That will be a much longer post, posting time to be determined.
I needed a bit of time away from the interwebs. It was quite a week, of course. Seems like we're having a lot of those lately. I think I have some new ideas for posts, but it can be amazing how many of my ideas for posts never become posts.
I don't watch television at home, but I check it out when I'm traveling. It's clear that cable news does not have enough material to fill 24/7. The rate of repetition can be amazing, but that's not the worst thing about it. I've been bothered for some time by the desire to anticipate the news in the blogosphere, and it's worse on cable news.
Back when I was writing progress reports regularly, the pressure to anticipate results was strong. It's an easy mindset to fall into, and the pressure in the blogosphere to be the first to say something is part of the pressure, along with a general societal desire to be the smartest guy on the block.
But you get a lot of things wrong that way. That's not the worst thing in a world that expects all this fortune-telling, but it's wasted effort. When cable news does it, it confuses people as to what has actually happened.
There's been a lot of worst-casing over the oil spill in the Gulf, both on cable and the interwebs. But we're not going to know what has happened until it happens. Here are some numbers for comparison.
And then there's the issue of home-grown oil. It turns out that nearly half of Gulf oil is exported, but, as they say, oil is fungible, and more oil is more oil, wherever it goes.
In keeping with not being too far ahead of the story, I'll offer my opinion that we need a national energy policy. I've said it before, so maybe that counts. But even without a policy, it appears that we are decreasing our emissions of carbon dioxide! And fairly quickly, too. So maybe I have been wrong. Whatever; I've got some fodder to say more about that.
Then there was the Times Square guy with fireworks and other potentially flammable stuff in his car. People in the New York City area, where I was, learn to be tough and unflappable. Or to look that way, which is pretty much the same thing. We also like to seem competent, so this guy was just a bad joke, and Times Square was pretty much back to normal in a day, and competent law-enforcement personnel caught the bungler in two days. President Obama's comments reinforced the message that fear is not part of the American character, and the TSA people were no more obnoxious on my return than they were on my departure.
I was wondering, though, if that anticipatory news, usually of the worst possible thing anyone can imagine, doesn't feed into the aura of fear. Plus not knowing how much of all that is true. Certainly cable provided anticipatory news on this story as well as the oil spill.
It seemed to me that what I've called President Obama's community organizer strategy is working. That will be a much longer post, posting time to be determined.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Miranda
Yglesias:
...Joe Lieberman mentioned the idea of not mirandizing US citizen terrorism suspects because they should be stripped of citizenship...
...while I suppose there’s a case for saying that convicted terrorists should be stripped of their citizenship this would be part of the punishment that follows a conviction. You can’t have a system where a cop comes up to me and says “you’re a terrorist, therefore you have no citizenship rights, therefore I’m putting you under arrest and you don’t get any due process and now it’s off to jail with you—no rights, no warning.” You would need to arrest the citizen for something, mirandize him, and only then initiate some citizenship-stripping process. It seems to me there’s a case for doing this, but it’s totally irrelevant to the trumped-up Miranda issue.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
It's All Connected
Jon Ballard gets upset today about the MSDSs for the dispersants being used to deal with the oil spill. I've commented over there, but it occurred to me I'd like to write a bigger post. But Ezra Klein has used some of the links I would have used and makes a point I would have made.
I don't have time to research the numbers, but it appears that this spill is not the worst ever, and we don't know that all the potentially bad things that might happen will happen. If they do, I'll write about them later.
At this point, as I said over at Newshoggers, the choice is not between oil pollution and no oil pollution, but what is done about the oil that is coming out of that well. I also haven't had time to research the effects of the dispersants on marine life, but what those dispersants can do is dilute the effects of the oil and whatever effects they carry along with them. If the sum total of this is less than the sum total of not treating the oil, then we have a relative win.
Why don't we have better prevention and mitigation? Part of that is the anti-regulatory movement of the past thirty years or so. Part of it is money. Your gasoline will cost more as we add these things in. Part of it is the infrequency of these events, which puts the development of mitigation schemes, like those skimmer boats I described in a comment here, at a low priority for government and lower for industry spending. And it's possible that if the government tried to develop such things, someone in industry would holler that the government was unfairly competing with private industry and would get his congressman on it.
So that's why we don't have better prevention and mitigation.
As to the MSDSs, we have to look at concentrations of stuff and relative risks. I've said some about this over at Newshoggers, but I think that much of this caution is overdone. I decided that at the very beginning of the movement toward MSDSs when I read the label of a bottle of potassium chloride intended for laboratory use. It listed all sorts of dreadful outcomes, up to and including death, if you ate teaspoonfuls of the stuff. It was being used as a diluent for salt ("light salt") at the time, to reduce the amount of sodium people ingest with their food. One of the first things you learn in chemistry lab is don't eat anything. Don't bring your lunch or drinks into the lab. Don't eat the chemicals.
So here is a label that assumes someone is going to eat teaspoonfuls of potassium chloride. Heck, we don't eat teaspoonfuls of salt, which is likely to have similar effects. Safety labels no longer tell me anything, I thought.
It's not just a matter of dispersants being bad for marine life in the lab. It's a tradeoff. And if we're going to use gasoline and want to pay the lowest price for it, then BP isn't wrong to cut costs where they can. This is the reason we need a strong and rational regulatory apparatus, to weigh the risks and costs as objectively as possible.
I don't have time to research the numbers, but it appears that this spill is not the worst ever, and we don't know that all the potentially bad things that might happen will happen. If they do, I'll write about them later.
At this point, as I said over at Newshoggers, the choice is not between oil pollution and no oil pollution, but what is done about the oil that is coming out of that well. I also haven't had time to research the effects of the dispersants on marine life, but what those dispersants can do is dilute the effects of the oil and whatever effects they carry along with them. If the sum total of this is less than the sum total of not treating the oil, then we have a relative win.
Why don't we have better prevention and mitigation? Part of that is the anti-regulatory movement of the past thirty years or so. Part of it is money. Your gasoline will cost more as we add these things in. Part of it is the infrequency of these events, which puts the development of mitigation schemes, like those skimmer boats I described in a comment here, at a low priority for government and lower for industry spending. And it's possible that if the government tried to develop such things, someone in industry would holler that the government was unfairly competing with private industry and would get his congressman on it.
So that's why we don't have better prevention and mitigation.
As to the MSDSs, we have to look at concentrations of stuff and relative risks. I've said some about this over at Newshoggers, but I think that much of this caution is overdone. I decided that at the very beginning of the movement toward MSDSs when I read the label of a bottle of potassium chloride intended for laboratory use. It listed all sorts of dreadful outcomes, up to and including death, if you ate teaspoonfuls of the stuff. It was being used as a diluent for salt ("light salt") at the time, to reduce the amount of sodium people ingest with their food. One of the first things you learn in chemistry lab is don't eat anything. Don't bring your lunch or drinks into the lab. Don't eat the chemicals.
So here is a label that assumes someone is going to eat teaspoonfuls of potassium chloride. Heck, we don't eat teaspoonfuls of salt, which is likely to have similar effects. Safety labels no longer tell me anything, I thought.
It's not just a matter of dispersants being bad for marine life in the lab. It's a tradeoff. And if we're going to use gasoline and want to pay the lowest price for it, then BP isn't wrong to cut costs where they can. This is the reason we need a strong and rational regulatory apparatus, to weigh the risks and costs as objectively as possible.
Monday, May 03, 2010
How to Increase Crime Through Anti-Immigration Law
In Arizona, one of the central arguments for the new immigration law SB 1070 is that illegal immigrants commit more crimes in the state than other residents.
I guess proponents can believe that targeting illegal immigrants in Arizona might do something about violence in the state. Believing does not make something so, of course, despite the current trend in some sectors of US politics to craft an alternative to this 2500 year-old epistemological truism. But violent crime in general has decreased in the state at a rate higher than the decrease in the national average during a period in which the rate of illegal immigration is thought to have increased; statistical data reveal that "foreign born" residents commit fewer crimes than other residents; and a policy that largely ignores the roots of human trafficking and the broader drug trade is unlikely to get very far in decreasing the small percentage of violent crime actually committed by illegal immigrants.
Opponents of the law contend, of course, that further criminalizing undocumented residents will lead them to avoid contacting authorities about crime that is committed. This echoes the root of violence in the drug trade. Because of the absence of official mediators - police, a judicial system, a regulatory system, some trade dispute entity - in any criminalized activity but most importantly in the drug trade, drug traders resort to violence to resolve disputes. It's almost a cliche to use Prohibition of the 1920s as the representative case, but this is precisely what happened then. Criminalization gave rise to gangs trading in alcohol. Violence rose quickly because there was no other way to resolve disputes. It died down after repeal.
Or is concern about criminality the real reason behind the law?
State Rep. John Kavanagh, a co-sponsor of the law, said of illegal immigrants, "They bring a lot of crime with them."As proof, proponents of the law point to a few cases of violent crimes committed most likely by drug smugglers (who, by the nature of their trade, are unlikely to be permanent "immigrants"). The level of violence associated with Mexico-US drug trade is mind-boggling. The increase in violence in northern Mexico has on several occasions spilled over into the US. If one wishes to stem that violence, however, it has to be understood in the complex context of poverty and of the global drug trade, Mexico as producer and transit country, the US as mass drug consumer, and the failed War on Drugs policy.
I guess proponents can believe that targeting illegal immigrants in Arizona might do something about violence in the state. Believing does not make something so, of course, despite the current trend in some sectors of US politics to craft an alternative to this 2500 year-old epistemological truism. But violent crime in general has decreased in the state at a rate higher than the decrease in the national average during a period in which the rate of illegal immigration is thought to have increased; statistical data reveal that "foreign born" residents commit fewer crimes than other residents; and a policy that largely ignores the roots of human trafficking and the broader drug trade is unlikely to get very far in decreasing the small percentage of violent crime actually committed by illegal immigrants.
Opponents of the law contend, of course, that further criminalizing undocumented residents will lead them to avoid contacting authorities about crime that is committed. This echoes the root of violence in the drug trade. Because of the absence of official mediators - police, a judicial system, a regulatory system, some trade dispute entity - in any criminalized activity but most importantly in the drug trade, drug traders resort to violence to resolve disputes. It's almost a cliche to use Prohibition of the 1920s as the representative case, but this is precisely what happened then. Criminalization gave rise to gangs trading in alcohol. Violence rose quickly because there was no other way to resolve disputes. It died down after repeal.
Further, however, SB 1070 proponents point to the relatively higher incarceration rate of illegal immigrants to legal residents as an indicator that illegal immigrants commit more crimes on average. This is the point I really want to address here because it most clearly exposes the fundamental incoherence of this law.What most in law enforcement here do agree on is that the victims of crime by illegal immigrants tend to be other immigrants. Community activists argue that the new law will make it worse for law-abiding immigrants because few immigrants, whether documented or not, will want to deal with police.
"No one's going to call the cops," said Alfredo Gutierrez, a former state Senate majority leader who opposed the bill. He said law-abiding immigrants of all types were fleeing the state out of fear of being subjected to racial profiling.
"They're getting rid of the folks who would report the crooks," Gutierrez said. "The crooks are staying. This is like heaven for them."
In other words, as a key defense in their arguments, proponents point to the incarceration rate as a supposed indicator of a relatively high crime rate among illegal immigrants. A decreasing incarceration rate is thus implicit in this argument as an indicator of successful policy because this would entail reduced crime, right? By further criminalizing a larger portion of the state population, however, the incarceration rate of illegal immigrants will only increase. The law is thus unsuccessful by its own logic.In 2006, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio interpreted a state law making human smuggling a felony as also making it a crime to be smuggled, and he began prosecuting truckloads of illegal immigrants being transported through the state. Arpaio has made catching illegal immigrants a priority.
Gutierrez said he was not surprised to find a greater proportion of illegal immigrants committing crimes. "There's a greater mix of bad folks coming up who don't care if they're caught," he said. And as more law-abiding immigrants fear talking to authorities, the state will become more welcoming to criminals, he said.
Of the lawmakers who warn of illegal immigrants committing more and more crimes, Gutierrez said, "They're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Or is concern about criminality the real reason behind the law?
Quantum Money
Eh? A Monday morning something I at least knew nothing about...
More.The challenge is to create a quantum state that can work as a form of money. Just like ordinary cash, quantum cash would be exchanged in lieu of goods. It would be sent and received over the internet without the need to involve third party parties such as banks and credit card companies. That would make transactions anonymous and difficult to trace, unlike today's online transactions which always leave an electronic paper trail. That's one big advantage over today's money.
Another is that quantum states cannot be copied so quantum cash cannot be forged.
But quantum cash must have another property: anybody needs to be able to check that the money is authentic. That turns out to be hard because measurements on quantum states tend to destroy them. It's like testing classical bills by seeing whether they burn.
But there is a way round this based on the ideas behind public-key encryption....
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Disaster
Photo: AP Photo/The Sun Herald, William Colgin
Photo: AP Photo/Patrick SemanskyPhotos from The Big Picture. The latest on the spill from NOAA.
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Prevention Over Response
The news coverage of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico seems to be narrowing in on blame and response.
But anyone responsible for planning industrial or field operations is supposed to know that engineering safety in is the best way to go. Once upon a time, machines were regularly designed with belts to transfer power. It was too easy to get fingers and clothing caught in those belts, so belt guards were added, and now, for the most part, other methods are used.
The out-of-control oil well, for a time, was emblematic of the industry. But that was a waste of oil, of the pressure that drove the oil, and, oh yes, sometimes killed people as the equipment used to drill the well blew out along with the oil. Or the associated gas exploded. Definitely the kind of thing, like losing a hand in a belt, that might get someone thinking there was a better way to do it.
And there is. There are mechanisms called blowout preventers that can be installed, and methods of drilling that prevent those spectacular oil fountains. So where was BP's blowout preventer? They claim it was installed and failed to work. Was it installed properly? Was it engineered for this application? Did the people at work at the time know how it operated?
It's impossible, as we have seen time and again, to clean up a spill in water. As the videos of this latest spill show, choppy seas have rapidly cut up the oil into ribbons. The ships deploying booms are pathetically small in comparison.
Apparently there are questions about another operation that was done just before the rig's explosion.
If it's necessary to fix blame, as it will be at some point, it should go to those who failed to engineer safety into their operations, or those who failed to enforce the regulations that require that safety. That's where the media should be looking.
But anyone responsible for planning industrial or field operations is supposed to know that engineering safety in is the best way to go. Once upon a time, machines were regularly designed with belts to transfer power. It was too easy to get fingers and clothing caught in those belts, so belt guards were added, and now, for the most part, other methods are used.
The out-of-control oil well, for a time, was emblematic of the industry. But that was a waste of oil, of the pressure that drove the oil, and, oh yes, sometimes killed people as the equipment used to drill the well blew out along with the oil. Or the associated gas exploded. Definitely the kind of thing, like losing a hand in a belt, that might get someone thinking there was a better way to do it.And there is. There are mechanisms called blowout preventers that can be installed, and methods of drilling that prevent those spectacular oil fountains. So where was BP's blowout preventer? They claim it was installed and failed to work. Was it installed properly? Was it engineered for this application? Did the people at work at the time know how it operated?
It's impossible, as we have seen time and again, to clean up a spill in water. As the videos of this latest spill show, choppy seas have rapidly cut up the oil into ribbons. The ships deploying booms are pathetically small in comparison.
Apparently there are questions about another operation that was done just before the rig's explosion.
If it's necessary to fix blame, as it will be at some point, it should go to those who failed to engineer safety into their operations, or those who failed to enforce the regulations that require that safety. That's where the media should be looking.
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