Outrage

I received a missive from a long-time friend this afternoon. I've known that she's moved toward the Republican side for some time, asked her not to send me stuff a while ago, so this was something of a surprise.

It was pretty much incoherent, although the outrage was clear. Something about a crotch salute, which (I googled) has to do with the position of President Obama's hands in military circumstances. By the standards of the Right, Presidents (particularly this President) must do certain things at certain times, particularly saluting the flag, whether it is by the hand over heart or the pseudo-military handflick from head that President Bush enjoyed. I'm recalling that Mitt Romney failed in this gesture at least once, but I'm not outraged enough to google that.

I also won't google something I saw recently that said that this saluting thing (along with the flag pin on lapel is fairly recent, particularly the pseudo-military variety, which seems to go back only two presidents or so.

But OUTRAGE! NOT AN AMERICAN! (caps from the source)

It's that outrage that I'm wondering about. What function does it serve?

I'm in a listserv in which one of the members seems to need to provide an OUTRAGE first thing every morning. It may be that this is his substitute for, or supplement to, his morning caffeine. I'm one of those lucky people who don't seem to need caffeine or OUTRAGE in the morning. So I can just delete early-morning e-mails from that person. Much better.

Or another listserv on which this OUTRAGE was posted. To be fair, it wasn't posted with quite the same outrage as my other two examples. A touch of fear, though, it seemed to me.

It does seem that the authors of that one are outraged in a polite academic way or perhaps are trying to develop some outrage in their readers. So many illicit radiological incidents! (And let's throw the word smuggling in for emphasis!)

But a careful look at the list shows that many of the incidents are simply "reports", which probably mean nothing, or if they were something, may be replicated by real reports on the list. Others are of detectors set off by natural materials like granite and vermiculite. Not quite bomb material.

So are these authors dishonest or ignorant? And the reviewers and the editors and the people they work for...?

David Kaiser writes a worthy post once a week. This week's is on

dau tranh, or struggle, the philosophy behind the Vietnamese Communist revolution. Dau tranh, Pike explains, had two forms: military and political. Of the two, the political was far more important, and indeed, the Viet Cong always had several times as many active political workers as soldiers during the Vietnam War. Their mission was to rally their own troops and sow confusion among the enemy, doing whatever they could, in particular, to make the South Vietnamese government unable to function effectively.

He goes on to speculate that the Republicans are using dau tranh, have been using it for a decade or more.

It seems to me that far too much of this OUTRAGE is dau tranh. It confuses us and keeps us in a perpetual state of caffeine jitters. Kaiser thinks there may be no counter to it.

I wrote back to my friend in a friendly tone, suggesting that not everything one reads is to be believed, mentioned the lovely spring day and hoped that it was as beautiful where she is. I'm hoping that's part of a counter.

This Is Important

What I like about this news item is that it shows that nature just keeps on doing what it's doing, even when it might not seem that way.

And that it's helpful to us humans, who, after all, are part of nature.

Just Wondering

I flew to Wisconsin over the weekend. Leaving Milwaukee on Monday morning, my airplane was a smallish Embraer, three seats across, eighteen rows. That's a total of 54 people, a few less for the one-seat rows near the front.

The temperature was in the low to mid seventies. Milwaukee's altitude is 581.2 feet, pretty close to sea level.

As the temperature goes up, the air thins and it becomes more difficult for a plane to take off. This is called density altitude: warmer air makes the plane perform as though it were at a higher altitude, and it can't carry as much cargo (bodies, luggage).

While we were still in the terminal, the airline personnel were asking two people to volunteer to take a later flight for $400 in vouchers. On the plane, they asked for another volunteer: $500 in vouchers. Plus they were rearranging the luggage in the forward and rear compartments to get a satisfactory weight and balance, the distribution that can cause flight problems. Two of us in the front seats were asked to volunteer to go to the back to help with the weight and balance. I volunteered to get the flight off the ground, and so did a man.

What I'm wondering is what will happen when it gets really warm. If they can't fly with all the seats full in seventy-degree weather, they will have to fly with many fewer when summer comes to Milwaukee. Not to mention Denver and Albuquerque, which are 5000 feet or so altitude.

So why did they cram so many seats in? What is the cost when they have to give vouchers to get people off the plane? Taking out one or two rows of seats might give the others a reasonable amount of room. But then people would be able to contrast that with the much less limited capability to squash people into sardine-like compartments in the larger jets. And we couldn't have that.

Bits and Pieces - Rainbow Edition

Seems like there are a number of good posts on various equality themes today. And some others.

The business about "first gay president" has seemed silly to me. Bill Clinton as "first black president" seemed silly too, although there was more basis that he had shared some of the culture. Simply coming out in favor of one group or another doesn't confer that group's experience and characteristics on anyone. Michelangelo Signorile agrees.

Juan Cole with some history and observations on what makes up "white people."

I guess that now that this initiative has been outed, the GOP won't be able to play the race card in exactly this way. But I'm sure that Joe Ricketts and his money will find a way. Repudiated today by Mitt Romney in public, but who knows what kind of horse-trading is going on behind the scenes.

This political changing of people's minds must often be a long-term project. This article makes that point about Germany and Greece.

Hawaii bans plastic bags. When I was traveling across the Texas high plains in March, they were blowing everywhere. Even as I write this, one is smothering one of the cactuses in my yard.

Finally, some frightening claims about Fukushima Unit 4's spent fuel pool got a lot of play over the past couple of weeks. They were nonsense, but believed by many people. Some better information here and here.

Added later: Wealthy venture capitalist tells TED that economics says the wealthy need to pay more taxes. TED cans the video. Text of talk here.

Progress report on the great blue heron nest: All five eggs hatched successfully, and the babies are looking good. Feeding time is a hoot.

Western Wallflower

Erisymum capitatum.

John Boehner Puts On The Full Crazy Suit

Remember last summer's suspenseful adventures of the New Republican Tea Party? When they threatened to do something that even Greece hasn't quite done yet - default on the country's debt? When American bonds were downgraded?

Well, they love the country so much that they want to do it again. John Boehner said so yesterday.

It seems to me that deliberately sabotaging the country's financial standing verges on (is?) treason. It's like when a couple divorces and one of them manages to pull all the money from their joint bank accounts.

Except we're not so lucky to have the Republicans getting out of our lives with their addictions to racism and failed economics.

It looks like Ezra Klein will be following this. That's good, because it makes me sick.

Update: Stan Collender confirms my headline.

More from Ezra.

Update (5/17/12): Ezra: OTOH,...

A Fat Cat We're Sad To Lose

Meow, the 39-pound cat died over the weekend of respiratory failure. He seems to have been a sweet cat, although allowed to eat far too much.

The other fat cats, who were allowed far too much latitude in financial derivatives, sadly, are still with us.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf - Updated 5/8/12

My Twitter stream, about the middle of the afternoon, started telling me that the CIA had acquired an improved underwear bomb. The various reports were that a plot had been thwarted, but the person with the bomb hadn't been found, and a number of other confusing details. That's par for the course on Twitter. The early news reports didn't have much information. It's the CIA, and if the reporters printed any information, they'd have to kill them, haha.

Almost immediately, the questions began pouring in with no answers. No sources, no country identified, no information about how the bomb was acquired or why it was an improved model (improved detonator was mentioned). Would it be detectable by the naked scanners, which, after all, were brought in to detect precisely such things? Which airline?

And, along with the questions, the snark. Was this an FBI plot disrupted by the CIA?

@dougsaunders: Just when underwear was beginning to recover its respect and credibility, it gets caught up in another bomb plot.

@stevehynd: New HuffPo/Yahoo! "sex sells" photogallery: "10 celebrity underwear choices you couldn't fit a bomb into" in 3...2...

@joshuafoust: Anonymous officials allege plot by unknown people broken up using unclear methods. Natsec reporting in a sad nutshell

@mattduss: Maybe bin Laden's directive to "keep trying to blow up your underwear" will be in the next batch of docs

@lrozen: Maybe CIA can enlist underwear manufacturer/distributors to Yemen to add some more flame retardant? #likelockingcockpitdoors

There have been a number of "terrorist plots" here at home that have depended on FBI informants for ideas and materials. Reports of TSA being missing hazardous materials while harassing four-year-old girls and grandmothers in wheelchairs continue. And we are regularly treated to alarums and excursions about how terrible a cyberattack would be if there were an attacker and if it were possible to damage physical things with code. So much hype, so little content.

Please look at the title of this post. It is a reference to a folk tale, which, if you haven't heard it as a child, you can probably find through Google.

A more modern version is that people turn off alarms that go off too readily. The snark on my Tweetfeed is the same thing. The counter to it was anticipated by one of my follows, something about a pool for which outfit, probably rightwing, would be the first to declare this a victory for the terrorists. That doesn't seem to have happened yet, but it probably will, a partial corrective to the snark in keeping us vigilant and the manufacturers of bodyscanners and whatever new gadget is in the pipeline wealthy.

Convincing people that governmental announcements of danger can be ignored seems like a bad idea to me. Yes, get the news out, but make it matter of fact.

Ah, more coming in:
@will_mccants: now reports of more undi-bombs on the loose. unsubtle junk scratching on planes next few days may lead 2 passenger beat down

Update (5/8/12): Well, it looks like a CIA informant delivered the bomb. It's not clear whether this means that the CIA is doing much better in infiltrating al-Qaeda or that it's another law-enforcement-enabled bunch of screwups. It does explain why the CIA announced they had the bomb but not the bomber.

Meanwhile, the TSA is breaking insulin pumps for diabetics.

Further Update: It looks like maybe they got it right this time. NYT, WaPo.

Legacies of the Manhattan Project - May 12-13

Next weekend, May 12-13, at the Santa Fe Institute, a hand-picked group of physicists, historians, social scientists, systems theorists, and writers will examine the long-term legacies of the Manhattan Project in a timely discussion of an important event in world history that still influences science and society today. Harold Agnew, who was part of the historic effort to develop the first atomic bomb, will participate in the discussion.

SFI is collaborating with Nuclear Diner to bring the discussion to you live on Twitter. You can participate before, during, and after by searching for the hashtag #bomblegacy or following @nucleardiner. Before the event, you can also leave questions at Nuclear Diner and the Facebook event page. If you "like" the Facebook page, you will get updates throughout the week and continuing information after the workshop.

The group will discuss new information, review original records, and mine the memories of project participants to present a case study in conflict from an important period in scientific history.

More about the Santa Fe Institute working group, including biographies of the participants and discussion topics, here.

Many of SFI’s founders were senior fellows at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As the Institute has emerged as a leader in complexity science, particularly in working toward a theory of conflict in human and animal societies, the Manhattan Project has become an important case study for understanding conflict. The project’s history also illustrates the occasional tension between pure theoretical research and applied science.

Chen Guancheng: No Easy Choices - Updated 5/5/12

A blind activist shows up at the US Embassy in Beijing. He and his family are being threatened. The movie version is that the brave diplomats spirit him out in the dark of night, lying on the floor of the back seat of the limousine, and fly him to safety.

The reality is otherwise. Embassies represent an agreement with the host country not to mess with internal issues. This is an especially sensitive consideration when there are big differences between the countries' internal policies. An embassy can't set up as dissident central, in open opposition to the host country's policies.

That means that when someone like Chen Guancheng comes to the US Embassy, it's a problem for all concerned. The details of his arrival, while not all available, make for even more of a problem. His human rights are clearly being threatened, and his life and family may be in danger. What any person would want is for that danger to be removed. The problem is how to do it.

The movie version is not available. Sorry, it just isn't under international law and the conventions that apply to embassies. And, in any case, Chen didn't bring his family with him, so they would be left to face the authorities, probably in more danger than they are now.

So, no, Mitt Romney, and no, hardline leftist human rights activists, it's not that President Obama and/or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are miserable people, suborning human rights to the financial ties to China. I suspect that the best people in the State Department and White House are trying to figure out the path to the best outcome. The incident isn't over. Stay tuned.

I'm not at all a China expert, so I can't speak to the politics involved. Here's some commentary that takes the realities into account from people who know more about China than I do.


Debacle in Beijing

Blame China, not the U.S., for the Plight of Chen Guangcheng

the Ai precedent

Update (5/5/12): The situation seems to be in the process of resolution, and there seems to be a good chance that the Chen family will be allowed to go to the United States. James Joyner links some articles worth reading in full, and I particularly emphasize the article by Max Fischer, which says, in effect, that Chen seems to have believed the movie version.

And it's not over yet.

Bits and Pieces - April 30, 2012

Perhaps the New Yorker could share its surplus of dots-over-letters with the New York Times, which doesn't seem to believe in them.

If we want electricity, the generating plants have to be put somewhere.

For those of us who have been struggling with the problem like, forever, this is a duh moment. But Foreign Policy is trying to make up to us for its horrible misjudgement on its latest SEX ISSUE cover.

Where did Los Alamos staff get their Ph.D.s?

As the days go on and North Korea doesn't do another nuclear test, I will go out on a limb and say they won't do one any time soon. I'm also wondering where the idea that they will use uranium came from. Facts? A leak? Or just out of, um, the thin air?

Good for China. Now that they've said this, it would be a good idea for the United States and/or Russia to engage them and invite them to the ongoing talks leading up to the next round of nuclear weapons reductions. And encourage them to be more forthcoming about exactly how many nuclear weapons they have. This statement took place at the regular conference of nations in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, checking up on progress. If you're up for it, here's a longish article on another result that would be good coming from this meeting but probably won't. Wonkish.

Bits and Pieces - April 26, 2012

Today is the twenty-sixth anniversary of the reactor explosion at Chernobyl.

I love the Norwegians. I wish we had more coverage of the Breivik trial in the US, so we could see how stupid our security fixation and propensities to hate are.

Another story we're not hearing enough about. Or that Murdoch owns Fox. And the Wall Street Journal. The Guardian is doing a good job. The Agonist, where I sometimes also post, has more on this than a lot of places.

I've always enjoyed the movie Red Dawn (the 1984 version). A lot of the scenery is from around here, and the irony of justifying boobytrapping bodies, which had been seen as a manifestation of evil when the Viet Cong did it, was intriguing. And now the Russians are coming to Colorado. But it's the Front Range, not the valleys.

Republicans are backing cuts in the nuclear weapons budget. We'll see how long that lasts.

Some good background reading on nuclear nonproliferation in the Middle East and North Korea.

Added later: Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein (the second from the American Enterprise Institute) say it: The Republicans are the Problem.

Charli Carpenter Gets It Right on Foreign Policy's Sex Issue

Blake Hounshell, currently the managing editor of Foreign Policy, and once upon a time the blogger known as Praktike, has been all over the twitter machine the past few days hawking FP's SEX ISSUE!

Yes, sex sells, and yes, I read some of the articles. I was particularly disgusted at the illustrations of a nude woman with a burkha painted on her body. Yes, FP was selling articles about the sexploitation of women with, um, a woman's body. Whatta concept!

I thought about griping about it, but I've got beta lot on my plate right now, and, although that kind of blind and unthinking sexism continues to irritate me, decided not to take the time.

Which was just as well, because Charli Carpenter nails it. Required reading for the Foreign Policy editorial staff.

And I particularly like the graphic!


Many thanks to @dandrezner and @BulletinAtomic for tweeting and retweeting Carpenter's article.

Rocky Mountain Penstemon

Penstemon strictus.

Oddly, this is the only penstemon blooming in the neighborhood. It's in a sunny place that probably got a little more moisture during the winter than others, but there are literally thousands of penstemon plants around, and I haven't seen another one that looks like it's getting ready to bloom.

If you look very carefully at the enlarged photo, you can see a bee hovering to the right of the plant.

We Need Some Disruptive Thinking Here

It’s hard to break out of a mindset. It’s harder whan you don’t have a simple substitute.

So Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, who spent the heights of their careers in the Cold War, need some disruptive thinking. Let’s see if I can provide it.

At least six of their eight key facts depend heavily on Cold-War assumptions, the major one being that the United States and the Sov...er...Russia are enemies. Is that true?

The Soviet Union died in 1991. Fourteen republics, most of which were unhappy about their forcible integration into the Union, became independent, along with Russia. Two years earlier, Mikhail Gorbachev gave up Soviet puppetry in the satellite nations. Some of those nations have become members of the European Union and NATO.

But it’s Russia that inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons. Its capitol continues at Moscow, and it inherited the Red Army. What it did not inherit, explicitly disavowed by Gorbachev was the Soviet policy of exporting class warfare. In fact, after 1991, that policy made no sense in a newly capitalistic Russia.

The nuclear arms race, slowed before then, was ended. America sent help to Russia in converting its nuclear security system to an inventory basis. Americans worked with Russians on other nuclear-related issues, and Russian scientists moved to America.

The two nations do not face each other militarily anywhere, directly or through proxies, and they have worked together in Central Asia.

So what is to be done about those nuclear arsenals? They seem to have a life of their own, with missiles still targeted across the northern hemisphere. Under what circumstances might they be launched? It’s possible to imagine a number of Cold-War-type scenarios, but they seem highly unlikely. The most likely scenario would seem to be accidental. So there is a motivation for eliminating those arsenals as quickly as possible.

Kissinger and Scowcroft’s first three points are straight out of Herman Kahn: strategic stability, and second strike. Strategic stability is a concern, in the credibility of reductions. Their fourth point almost addresses this, but it is in the Kahnian mode. Verification is the basis for this credibility, but, rather than the uncertainty associated with the measurements, the methods are the primary concern. Credibility now lies in the status of warheads taken out of service. That means counting warheads and access to storage and decommissioning facilities, unthinkable in Kahn’s time.

Their point five would apply Kahnian logic to the up-and-coming nuclear powers: China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea. But until the United States and Russia come down to several hundred nuclear weapons, this is simply not an issue. The analysis may be worth doing, but it is hard to see how being in the same range of nuclear numbers would damage strategic stability. In any case, none of those countries poses a serious threat to the United States. And joining up together? Please.

Which brings us to point six, which, like point four, has been addressed both in the New START Treaty and the recent Nuclear Posture Review. Bringing in other countries as the US and Russian numbers approach theirs will indeed be necessary. Britain is already addressing its numbers, and, IIRC, the US is beginning informal talks with China.

Point seven is a rehash of point one, strategic stability. People who do that sort of thing do indeed consider missiles, both defensive and offensive. And, again, tactical nuclear weapons are on the New START to-do list. Point eight is being addressed in an ongoing way, as our allies and we work out what defenses are necessary in the post-Cold-War world.

It’s tempting to look for enemies, particularly when that is what one’s career was based on. But the sort of enmity that characterized the Cold War is gone, most likely never to return. What could make it return is refusing to believe that things have changed. The Republican presidential candidates seemed to want to see Russia in the Cold War Soviet mold. I was at a lecture last week where one of the questioners kept referring to the Soviets when he meant the current-day Russians. And now Kissinger and Scowcroft come back to Herman Kahn.

Having one big enemy simplifies a lot of strategy. The world today isn’t offering one up, just a lot of little headaches that could grow bigger.

More disruptive thinking, please!

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner and The Agonist.

Bits and Pieces - April 23, 2012

Politics with Socrates:

He felt it was vitally important to admit that the human condition is one of profound uncertainty, deep doubt. We are in between creatures. On the one hand, we are not ignorant and un-self-aware like most other animals. We can learn much. But on the other hand, we are not omniscient and all-seeing like the gods.

This is why the lust for certainty is a sin, as a former Archbishop of York put it, because certainty demands the eradication of doubts and imagining you are a god. Forget that life is enveloped not just by known unknowns but unknown unknowns and you will fall like Icarus from the sky.

Hero Lady Cop Will Probably Be Fired For Stopping Police Beatdown, Because Duh

Young men's dropping out of pretty much everything continues to puzzle me. I am tempted to say that it is a result of the incomplete transformation begun in the sixties to gender equity, but I can't prove that.

A Nation of Spoiled Brats. A view from Britain.

Scandinavian Airports Reject Shin Bet Racial Profiling Security Screening Procedures.

Bits and Pieces - Iran Edition

And now we face the rushing wave of op-ed pieces on what's next in the negotiations with Iran. Just before last week's meeting, there was such a wave, much of which was highly repetitive and a somewhat smaller portion was wrong. If I had a spare week or so, I would go over all that and show which writers you needn't read any more on the subject because they were so far off on that first meeting.

But I don't have a spare week or so. Instead, I'll pick up some of the better commentary from this week. Subsequent pieces are likely to repeat some of this or go off on hobbyhorses.

If you want to follow only one commenter on negotiating with Iran, Gary Sick is the one. He was involved in the 1979 negotiations over the hostage crisis. He has a tumblr to which he posts his own work and articles that he finds worth reading.

Sick recommends an article by John Limbert and another in which Sick looks at what the history of Iran's nuclear program might tell us about the present.

BTW, Al Monitor is a good source of information and commentary about the Iran negotiations. Laura Rozen has some inside stuff there from last week's negotiations. Looks like the Iranians are really concerned about the sanctions.

Michael Brzoska, Oliver Meier, and Götz Neuneck gives their seven steps toward an agreement. Look for a lot of articles like this over the next month. This is likely among the better of them, but I don't have time to work through it today.

And, finally, Max Fischer provides some polling data that says that Americans are more afraid of Iran now than we were of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. I would be less generous to the media than he is.

Just Wondering

if the fetishizing of law-enforcement personnel after 9/11, the assault vehicles for ordinary police departments, the Darth Vader protective gear, the chemical weapons, the excessive force that police are allowed, the humiliating TSA procedures, if all those things might just have gone to the elite Secret Service cops' heads to convince them they're above petty rules.

David Ignatius Gets It Right

I'm not a fan of David Ignatius, but this is pretty close to what I would write if I were writing a post like this today.

I think that Ignatius has the broad outlines of the negotiations right:

“Step-by-step” and “reciprocity” are the two guideposts for this exercise. They mark a dignified process for making concessions, much like the formula that President Obama used in his January 2009 inaugural address when he first signaled his outreach to Iran: “We seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

The Russians first suggested the step-by-step approach, and I hope they'll eventually get credit for that. Now is not the time, however; we need a success first.

Ignatius's reading of the shape of the deal is vague and will allow him to claim he predicted whatever happens later:

The Iranians seem to be preparing their public for a deal that limits enrichment while preserving the right to enrich. In an interview Monday with the Iranian student news agency, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi explained that “making 20 percent fuel is our right,” but that “if they guarantee that they will provide us with the different levels of enriched fuel that we need, then that would be another issue.” Salehi seemed to be reviving a 2009 Turkish plan to export Iran’s low-enriched uranium abroad, and receive back 20 percent fuel for its Tehran research reactor, supposedly to make the isotopes. That earlier deal collapsed because of opposition from Khamenei, who apparently is now ready to bargain.

There's more worth reading.

Pet Peeves - Language and Ethnicity

For a short while, it looked like Rosetta Stone was going to include both halves of the human race in its language program. But they've gone back to men as the only species that needs to learn other languages.

Proud fathers with graduating sons who will become successes. Learn a language to impress hot babes! And then, for a short time, a family, with dog, to show us how the system works. But then back to brave muscled explorers climbing a sheer cliff in a veldt-like landscape. And, most recently, a hypertestosteroned guy dancing on his desk because he beat out the competition to get the assignment in Japan.

I guess I was primed by the historical excerpts in Scientific American: John Glenn and the future of man in space (1962) and another one about men, I think designing ships that will be more successful than the Titanic from 1912.

So why do I care about Rosetta Stone? It looks like a method that could help me learn Estonian. Reviews are mixed on the existing languages, though. And they don't have Estonian. I guess none of the guys that the guy owners of Rosetta Stone know are interested in Estonian babes.

Daniel Little has a nice article on ethnicity today. For me, this is less a pet peeve than a continuing question, although louts like the Rosetta Stone guys can make it into a pet peeve.

I have loved expressions of various kinds of ethnicity since I was a child. My best friend and I would pretend to be Russian or a sort of generic Eastern/Central European that we found in relatives' stories and fairy tales, plus our own imagination. We picked up kitsch in second-hand stores when we could afford it. And I loved encountering the real thing. I bought a number of things in my first enthusiasms, things made for people living in those places. Do they become kitsch when I bring them home?

I've thought about writing more about my adventures in other countries. But it's very, very hard to write things like that through an American viewpoint that don't condescend to the people and their traditions. Some of it seems worth sharing. But I haven't found a way to do it that I'm comfortable with.

And yeah, I hate most travel writing.