McFreedom

Farewell to McFreedom, Hello to Baz!

2007-04-05T15:51:00.000-07:00

I've decided that, rather than trying to get this old blog going, again, I'm going to move to a new one. It's my new Brett Thomas' baz.com blog, which will be much farther ranging (and hopefully more frequently updated).

Evolution News & Views: What if Darwinism Were True?

2007-04-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

The Discovery Institute, a ~~creationism~~ Intelligent Design think tank has generated a list of "scientists" who have "doubts about the adequacy of Darwin's theory of evolution." They now have "over 700", with the most recent press release adding another hundred. Quoted notably in the release is Dr. Michael Egnor, an "award-winning brain surgeon named one of New York's best doctors."

Scientists have rightly responded to this with humor. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has created Project Steve, which seeks to find scientists who believe that "...there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution ocurred..." who are named Steve. As of the end of March, they had 795.

On the Institute's blog, today, Dr. Egnor wonders, "What if Darwinism Were True?" Presuming this is not an April Fool's joke - and certainly Dr. Egnor has seemed little if not overly serious - it is an astonishing admission for someone we're supposed to respect as a "scientist." Dr. Egnor wonders:

What if experimental evidence demonstrated that we could account for biological information (or whatever we call the astonishing complexity of living things) without inferring design? Would I lose my faith?
No, I wouldn’t.

First, if this is in fact the misunderstanding that has driven Dr. Egnor to the welcoming arms of the Discovery Institute, it's truly amazing. Evolution doesn't eschew design - merely a designer. The misunderstanding that natural selection is random is common amongst creationists, but that second word - selection - shows that it is, in fact, not random.

Regardless, Dr. Egnor then goes on to speculate on what would happen if

intelligent design were shown to be right, by scientific evidence? Most atheists would feel their faith in materialism greatly endangered, if not untenable. I suspect that is the cause for all their vitriol. Is Darwinism true? I’ll believe it if I see it. Is intelligent design true? Atheists won’t see it, because they won’t believe it.

So, to summarize: Dr. Egnor's position is that he believes in God, and that he believes evolution by natural selection is incorrect. If he's wrong, he will not change his position on God. However, scientists who are atheists (he speculates) might continue to be atheists even if evolution by natural selection is wrong, therefore they are the ones who are unscientific.

I mean, really, you can't make this up. "I'm right, no matter what the evidence is, but you won't accept the real evidence because you can't accept what would happen if you're wrong."

Further Reiteration

2006-10-30T09:37:00.000-08:00

I'm going to go out on a limb, and oppose the conventional wisdom, and reiterate my previous assertion that the Republicans will definitely hold the House, and probably the Senate. I base this prediction not upon what I desire to see; I'm reasonably ambivalent on the topic. Convincing arguments can be made that a Republican win or loss would be the better outcome, and I personally haven't been able to decide between them.

The first factor in this prediction has been the recent unreliability of polls. In 2000 and 2004, polls predicted Democratic victory and were wrong. I see no reason to think that whatever systemic issue was in play in those elections is not going to cause a similar outcome in this one.

The second is my previously mentioned concern about gerrymandering. These districts were very carefully carved up to apportion the votes by party. I don't believe this country has moved so much since 2004.

Frankly, I will be very happy about the health of The Republic if the Republicans lose the House. Simply because I've felt for many years that gerrymandering has been our greatest internal threat, and a Republican loss would refute that concern. But, I'm too cynical to expect that to happen, so I predict that the Republicans will maintain their control.

An old favorite quote

2006-10-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

Robert A. Heinlein, in the "Notebooks of Lazarus Long," said a lot of memorable one-liners. I read this one when I was a teenager and I think it made a bit of an impression on me:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.

I can't say I can do all of 'em - and hope I never get to find out on the ultimate one. It's amusing how many of these have changed in relative commonality, at least for men. When Robert Heinlein was a young man, probably a lot more guys knew how to "pitch manure" or "build a wall" than "change a diaper" or "cook a tasty meal." Now, the reverse would be true.

Does being fat kill you?

2006-10-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

Via Jane Galt, I note that FuturePundit is commenting on two recent studies that show that "being overweight shortens life expectancy." While that may not sound new, the interesting point of these studies that BMI (body mass index, the rough-and-ready approximation of how heavy you are relative to your height) outside the normal ranges - both high and low - has long been known to increase early mortality. There's a number of reasons for this, but part of the issue is that if you have something really wrong with you (like cancer), you often lose a lot of weight right before you die. So, presumably, in some of the people with a low BMI, that BMI is really a symptom and not a cause.

He quotes Dr. Meir Stampfer, in the New York Times as concluding the case is closed. Being overweight or obese "raise[s] the risk of mortality...It really should be the final word...as to whether [being] overweight is actually bad for you or not." And, yet, the author of another recent study, Dr. David M. Mannino, says that "diabetes is really the driving factor among early death from criticial illness among people who are overwieght or obese." In this study, he controlled for diabetes among the overweight and obese, and discovered that having a high BMI is not in an of itself risky, if you don't get diabetes.

The trick, of course, is that having a high BMI is a major risk factor for diabetes. There's no question that, if you change your diet and exercise, and that drops your BMI, you'll reduce your risk for adult onset diabetes substantially. There's a study from 2001 that showed that, among those high-risk for diabetes, doing 150 minutes a week of light exercise (walking) and losing 5-7% of body weight cut risk of the disease by 58%.

To sum up what we know so far: Having a high BMI is bad because it's correlated with getting diabetes. Regular excercise and diet control are correlated with a normal BMI. The conclusion coming from these correlations is "you can substantially reduce your risk of dying early by lowering your BMI." One question I've had after reading these studies is, "Does being fat in and of itself increase your risk for diabetes? Or is it that excercise protects you, and since regular excercise is correlated with lower BMI, the BMI correlation is a red herring?" To a certain extent, this is an academic question, as "fat but fit" individuals are fairly uncommon. Most people, if they excercise regularly, trim out (I have no study to back this assertion up; it's just my own personal observation).

Interestingly, a study in 2004 set out "to examine the relative contributions and joint association of physical activity and BMI with diabetes." This study only included women, and defined "active" as "expending more than 1000 kcal on recreational activities per week," which, I'll note, isn't much. Their conclusion was that, although both BMI and activity level are "independent predictors," "the magnitude of the association with BMI was greater than with physical activity." In other words, exercising is good for preventing diabetes, having a normal BMI is better, and best is to do both.

Me to Imams: "Drop Dead!"

2006-09-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

The AP reports that "About 1,000 Muslim clerics and religious scholars" issued a statement about the recent flap about Pope Benedict's statements. I don't care the slightest about either the Pope, or their opinion of him. However, they note, "[A]ll infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet (Muhammad). ... If the West does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences.""

I recognize that it is unlikely any "Muslim clerics and religious scholars" read this blog, but I thought I'd go ahead and lay out my message to them, as well. As an infidel, my opinion is, "screw you and your prophet. If you don't change your stance regarding religious freedom of speech, you will face severe consequences." No doubt my pronouncement will have precisely as much effect on them as theirs did on me (in other words, "none") but I just thought I'd get that out there.

Search Confusion

2006-09-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

Betsy over at Betsy's Page notes a case in North Carolina about whether consent can be revoked for a search by a police officer. The basic facts of the case appear to be that Timothy Stone was asked by an officer if the officer could search him; Mr. Stone agreed. However, when the officer began shining a flashlight down the searchee's pants, Mr. Stone attempted to revoke his consent to the search. The officer continued, anyway, and discovered a pill bottle with crack in it.

The court found that the search wasn't reasonable because "a reasonable person in defendant's circumstances would not have understood that he would be subjected to an inspection of his genitals," and, as is the normal remedy in cases where police overstep their search authority, threw the evidence out from consideration. Betsy then ends with the non sequitor, "It's as if the criminal can consent to a search, but then know that he's safe as long as he hides the targeted goods (so to speak) in his groin area. This will leave criminals with a safe zone where they can hide stuff and not be searched unless the police get a new warrant."

The questions here, I think, are interesting, and I'm not sure I have a strong opinion on them. But, it is clear to me that Betsy doesn't have a clear understanding of search law, because there's no warrant involved in consensual searches, by definition. Searches with warrants have nothing to do with whether you conesnt to them, and, if your consent is important to the search, there's no warrant involved.

The police may search you for three reasons. The first is that they went to a judge and convinced him to issue a warrant searching for specific things in specific places. In order to this, they must show probable cause before hand that you have the thing they're searching for, or were involved in a specific crime. It does not matter whether you consent to this search, or not, or, in a lot of cases, even if you're present. The second is that the officer on the scene has "probable cause" to believe you've been involved in a specific crime. The classic example given is if an officer is walking past a house, hears a scream, knocks on the door, and a man comes to the door covered in blood holding a knife. The officer has probable cause to search the house for evidence of a crime, with or without the homeowner's consent. A probable cause search is a little risky for the officer, because he has to be able to back up, after the fact, why specifically he thought a crime had been comitted, and "he looked like a drug dealer" generally doesn't cut it. In cases where the officer performs such a search and fails to turn up any evidence, it's possible (especially in racially-charged cases) for the officer to get in a lot of trouble, civil lawsuits to be filed, etc. In the present case, I believe probable cause could've been established, say, if the officer had seen Mr. Stone trying to sell crack, and had then searched him. In that case, Mr. Stone's consent would not matter, either.

The third reason police can search you ends up being the cause of most of the searches that are conducted. And, once you understand the rules about when the police may or may not search you (or enter your home to conduct a search), it's actually pretty mind boggling that they occur much, at all: The police simply ask you if they can search. "Sir, would you mind if I take a look around?" "Ma'am, could you please pop your trunk?" "Sir, could I step inside for a moment?" "Sir, would you mind if I searched you for drugs?" Most people respond to these questions in the affirmative, because they think the police have the authority to back up these simple requests. Under the US constitution, they do not. Many criminals are caught simply because the police ask if they may, or state that they are being, searched. People don't want to annoy the police (arguably especially criminials) so, they go along, and the police catch them.

If the police officer does not have a warrant, he generally has no right to search you, enter your house, or detain you, unless he has specific probable cause that you have been involved in a crime. The reason I know as much as I do about this is that I am a gun owner in California, and the laws are so confusing that most peace officers don't know them as well as I do. I've done the research to know what I need to know if I'm pulled over with my (utterly and perfectly legal) rifles on the way back from the range. My fear is that, the law is so vague that a police officer, if he becomes aware of my rifles, may confiscate them and arrest me. Knowing that I don't have to tell him I have a gun in the car (which, ridiculously, establishes probable cause in California), and that, if he asks me if he can open the trunk, I can say, politely, "no," may help me avoid an expensive and inconvenient legal battle.

So, the real questions, here are: "Once a citizen has consented to a search, may he withdraw that consent?" Generally speaking I believe that the answer to this is "no," but I don't know the case law and I suppose it's not inconceivable that this is an undecided question. The impression I get from the article that the question the judges thought more relevant was, "When a reasonable person consents to a search of his body, should he expect that the police are going to shine a flashlight in his pants?" Bearing in mind, of course, that prior precedents have established that, when a reasonable person agrees to a search of his body, he is not agreeing to a strip search. The question really before the court is, "Is shining a flashlight down someone's pants more like a strip search or more like a pat-down?" I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but I don't think it matters too much. If the type of people who get busted for crack this way could know "all you have to do it hide it in your pants," they'd already know that, when the police ask you, "May I search you?" the answer is "no."

The Republicans Will Hold Onto The House in '06

2006-09-06T19:35:00.000-07:00

Many pundits of both stripes are predicting that the Republicans will lose the House of Representatives in 2006. They cite numerous polls showing voter anger, unhappiness with the war, etc.

Mark my words: none of this matters. The reason it does not matter is that the House Republicans (and Democrats, too, for that matter) have gerrymandered themselves so completely that it's going to be hard for any incumbent (or incumbent party) to lose a seat, much less that many. All analysis of "close races" and the like don't matter. The Republicans are at greater risk of losing the Senate (and everyone agrees that's not much risk) as, thus far, no one has figured out how to gerrymander Senate districts.

RedState Says Stevens

2006-08-30T03:01:00.000-07:00

According to them, he's the only Senator whose office says "he does not comment on holds."

My guess on the Mystery Holder

2006-08-29T02:54:00.000-07:00

By the way, my guess on the Holder is Senator Stevens (R) from Alaska. He's got a personal grudge against the Porkbusters folks from that whole Bridge To Nowhere thing, and he's about to retire, so he's expendable.

Why Are We Playing By Their Rules?

2006-08-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

New legislation to shine some sunshine into Washington has had a "secret hold" placed on it. People are now running around trying to expose the holder.

As best as I can tell, the way this works is, some Senator asks his party leader (either Mr. Frist for the Republicans or Mr. Reid for the Democrats) to hold the legislation. Many stories report that "Senate rules" "prohibit" these leaders from disclosing who the holder is. Many stories compare it to "classified" information.

WHICH rules? What are the sanctions? Senator Frist has said he "is a co-sponsor of the legislation, attempted to bring the legislation up for the vote it deserves before the August recess, and will continue to press for a vote as soon as the Senate reconvenes." He's also "vowed to get into the act, promising to try to pass the bill again when Congress returns from its break next month." So, Reid and Frist - both sponsors of the bill. One of them, by definition, has to know who the holder is (unless it was Jim Jeffords, I suppose). Can't we ask either of them, "Was it a member of your party?"

Beyond which, Frist has been most vocal on this issue. Why doesn't he tell us? I'm sure the official censure from the Senate has to be minor. He could probably even avoid that limited penalty by some vagueness. If it's truly a Democrat who's behind it, why not say something like "I'm sure no Republican would be stupid enough to block such an important bill." I can think of two reasons he won't deny it - either it's a Republican behind it, or he's engaging in quid pro quo with his colleagues across the ailse. Either way, we should in no way tolerate his suggestion that this is an important issue to him.

Pressure should be applied to Mr. Frist, if he wants so badly to "get into the act." Either he knows who it is, or he knows it's a Democrat. Either way, bloggers (and the press) should be putting a lot of pressure on him to either let us know who it is or eliminate 55% of the suspects. Allowing him to get away with being outraged but not actually helping us shows that either he's stupid, or we are.

Unintentional Slashdot Demographics

2006-08-22T13:26:00.000-07:00

This is, of course, not scientific - but then, most audience surveys are voluntary and have self-selection problems, anyway. Geek news site Slashdot is currently running a poll, "What is Your Least Favorite Acronym?" It offers as choice the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Record Industry Association of Americ (RIAA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB, the video game adult-content ratings agency) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA, the primary anti-software-piracy group).

As of this writing, there are 46,629 total votes. Anti-piracy groups (MPAA, RIAA and BSA) have an incredible 75% of the vote, with the RIAA taking 58% on its own. The IRS is only 16%. If you hate anti-piracy groups more than the IRS, it must be because you don't make any money and must pirate your entertainment rather than paying for it. Put another way, as a grownup with a job, if I wished I could get more music the easiest and most satisfying way to do so would be for the IRS to let me keep my money and buy more CDs with it.

Interestingly, 3% said the FBI, setting an upper barrier on the number of true-hardcore civil libertarians and wannabe crackers reading Slasdhot. Finally, 3% also said the ESRB, which means that there is a noticable demographic of Slashdot users who don't pirate significant amounts of anything and don't pay a significant number of taxes, but are annoyed at the ratings the video games they buy are assigned. Either that, or the margin of error on the poll is greater than +/- 3% (which seems likely).

Open Source Cola!

2006-07-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

This Guardian article about a cinema in Bristol that decided to make its own Coke. The story's a bit needlessly breathless, but I found two things interesting about it. First, when describing how the gum arabic they were using as an emulsifier broke their equipment, the article says "After the fourth mixer went west..." Is that the common Britishism, I wonder? Here in the US things "go south" when they break. I wonder if there are different geographically traveling euphemisms the world over?

Secondly, the article republishes the recipe they use (uncritically including their production notes, such as "1 ml cassia oil (nb. reduce cassia content for next production)" and the last line is "This cola recipe is released under the GNU general public license."

It frankly looks to be a lot of work to make your own coke, although I prefer Coke to Pepsi because the former is less sweet. If I ever end up with more time than I know what to do with, I've always wondered if a half-sugar Coke would taste any good. I guess if I want to, I could give it a shot...

Warner Independent Pictures' A Scanner Darkly -- The Official Film site

2006-06-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

The trailer is out for A Scanner Darkly, one of my favorite Philip K. Dick novels. It doesn't look like they're being totally faithful to the original, but I am optimistic they'll keep the classic Dick essence of spending 3/4 of the plot going "What in the WORLD is going on, here?" Anyway, I thought the trailer was pretty interesting. Interesting enough to post again. :)

Legality of Gay Marriage Law in California

2005-09-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks as though it's not quite as cut and dried as I'd thought on the legality of the legislature passing a law that conflicts with Prop 22. Prof. Volokh notes that the California constitution provides that "The Legislature . . . may amend or repeal an initiative statute by another statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electors unless the initiative statute permits amendment or repeal without their approval." Which would seem to pretty clearly indicate that the legislature can't simply pass a new law.

In this case, though, things are a little more complicated than that. Prop 22 created Section 308.5, which says, in its entirety, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Which would seem to be pretty clear. Except California Family Code is in heirachical sections. The whole marriage section is pretty approachable, but we'll concentrate here on the parts that are germane:

CALIFORNIA FAMILY CODE 300. Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman, to which the consent of the parties capable of making that contract is necessary. Consent alone does not constitute marriage. Consent must be followed by the issuance of a license and solemnization as authorized by this division, except as provided by Section 425 and Part 4 (commencing with Section 500).
301. An unmarried male of the age of 18 years or older, and an unmarried female of the age of 18 years or older, and not otherwise disqualified, are capable of consenting to and consummating marriage.

It then continues in that vein for quite a while, discussing things like ages of consent, how people too young to marry can marry anyway with the correct permissions, and a bunch of details of licenses. It then reaches section 308:

308. A marriage contracted outside this state that would be valid by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the marriage was contracted is valid in this state. 308.5 Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

It seems pretty clear to me that section 300 defines who may get married in California while sections 308 and 308.5 defines which out-of-state marriages are recognized in California. The legislature just voted to change section 300 (which was not touched by Proposition 22) and to leave alone section 308.5 Unfortunately, this does result in the somewhat nonsensical distinction that gays may marry in California and have their marriages recognized here, but not marry in another state, move here and have their marriages recognized (presumably they'd have to remarry here).

While it is a rare occurrence for me to disagree with Prof. Volokh - especially on legal matters, since he knows so much more than I do - it doesn't seem to me that the legislature did anything at all improper in changing section 300 to change "a civil contract between a man and a woman" into "a civil contract between two persons."

All of this, I suppose, is moot, since the Governor appears to agree with the Professor and is going to veto it. I don't for a moment believe his Constitutional justification - that's a much too abstract basis for his action given his personality. If he thought it was politically expedient, I have no doubt he'd happily sign any bill that was guaranteed to be overturned by the courts. But I'm quite dismayed he didn't use this opportunity to reach out the opposition and cement his popular appeal. To say nothing of his failure to do what's right.

Legal Underpinnings for New Orleans Forced Evacuations

2005-09-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

The Mayor of New Orleans has finally ordered the police "to compel the evacuation of all persons ... regardless of whether such persons are on private property or do not desire to leave". To say nothing of the PR nightmare this could cause, I'm curious about the legal underpinnings of the order. By what authority does the Mayor remove people from their own private property who have comitted no crime against their will? I'm not categorically saying this is the wrong decision, but I am curious where he gets this authority from. I know Louisiana's Parish Law is different from the rest of the states, but, even so, I'd be surprised if he really has the power to just order people removed from their own private property at his discretion. Is the thinking, perhaps, that by the time courts tell him he can't do that it'll be long over? None of the news stories I've read had any coverage whatsoever of the legal issues.

Gay Marriage (Maybe) Legal In California

2005-09-07T04:34:00.000-07:00

So, the legislature voted to change marriage to be between "two persons" instead of a man and a woman. It's still to be seen whether the Governor will sign it. I hope he will, and I think it'd be pretty surprising if he didn't. The Washington Post article linked to above casts his decision in terms of not angering his base before the anti-Gerrymandering legislation this November, but I think that misses the point. Republicans have wanted that measure for a long time, and they'll vote for it even if Schwarzenegger marries a gay man himself between now and then. I suspect the Governor personally would like to see gay marriage (his spokesman's assertion that he supports domestic partnership but not gay marriage not withstanding). But, I think that, politically, this is a great way for him to reach across the aisle and play to his category-smashing strengths. Signing this bill would get a lot of Democrats who currently detest him has a shallow, knee-jerk conservative to honestly reconsider their opinions. The people who voted for Proposition 22 (The Defense of Marriage Act) are going to vote for Arnie anyway, because the leftist alternative (i.e., Democrat) will be someone who wants to make gay marriage subsidized.

One topic that's not been well addressed in the press is: "Given that the people of California passed Proposition 22 in 2000 that stated 'Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,' how does the legislature have the power to do this?" The answer is that Prop 22 didn't alter the state constitution - it merely altered the state Family Code at the time, adding section 308.5 whose entire content was as stated in the preceding sentence. Marriage itself was already defined elsewhere (in section 300 of the same Code) as being "a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman". The purpose of section 308.5 was to prevent "stealth" gay marriage, where California would recognize inadvertently recognize gay marriages legally enacted in other states when the couples moved here.

As all Proposition 22 was change the Family Code, the legislature has ample power to change it back, so there's no state constitutional issue, here. Not that it'll stop the right-wingers from suing - but it seems pretty obvious they'll lose that battle (and expose their own hypocrisy in complaining that they just "don't want the courts to settle the issue"). It'll be interesting to see what the governor decides to do, in the next week. I, for one, am keeping my fingers crossed that he'll do the right thing and sign this bill into law.

LA Times Editorial About Video Game Violence

2005-07-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

Excellent editiorial in the LA Times today pointing out that real violence among kids has declined in real life as it has increased in video games:

On to the issue of aggression, and what causes it in kids, especially teenage boys. Congress should be interested in the facts: The last 10 years have seen the release of many popular violent games, including "Quake" and "Grand Theft Auto"; that period has also seen the most dramatic drop in violent crime in recent memory. According to Duke University's Child Well-Being Index, today's kids are less violent than kids have been at any time since the study began in 1975. Perhaps, Sen. Clinton, your investigation should explore the theory that violent games function as a safety valve, letting children explore their natural aggression without acting it out in the real world. Many juvenile crimes — such as the carjacking that is so central to "Grand Theft Auto" — are conventionally described as "thrill-seeking" crimes. Isn't it possible that kids no longer need real-world environments to get those thrills, now that the games simulate them so vividly? The national carjacking rate has dropped substantially since "Grand Theft Auto" came out. Isn't it conceivable that the would-be carjackers are now getting their thrills on the screen instead of the street?

I especially like his point that any analysis of video games and kids should also ask "as compared to what?" He notes that "it's not as though kids have been reading Henry James for 100 years and then suddenly dropped him for Pokemon. " Another point he drives home - the thesis of the recent book Everything Bad is Good For You - is that today's games are terribly complicated, requiring players to "earn complex rule systems, master challenging new interfaces, follow dozens of shifting variables in real time and prioritize between multiple objectives" - all real life world skills that are actually useful outside of video games, too.

How The British Government Has Screwed Up Its Subjects

2005-07-21T16:03:00.000-07:00

So, after decades of being taught not to defend themselves on a personal level - to "let the authorities handle it" - this morning four suicide bombers set off bombs in London mass transit. Two weeks after they did this and killed dozens. The bombs, thankfully, didn't go completely off. Thus, the suicide bombers weren't killed.

But, they got away. It's difficult to imagine that happening in this country - our problem is that they'd all be dead anyway from passersby before they could be interrogated. It's really stunning to me that no one is coming forward with tales of how ordinary citizens wrestled with and overcame determined terrorists after their bombs failed to go off. One report does state that "Some people tried to stop [a bomber]," but apparrently this consisted of simply asking "What's all this then?" because the conclusion is "...but he ran out."

Video Game Regulations

2005-07-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

So, [he said, as though anyone was listening after the prolonged silence], it seems that Rockstar Games has admitted that "is there is sex content in" Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Which is technically true - it's on the disc - but wouldn't matter in any kind of practical world.

Without any sex scenes, GTA (barely) qualifies for the ESRB's second-most-restrictive rating, M (17+). The ESRB ratings are vaguely analogous to the MPAA's ratings of movies, with one big exception we'll get to in a moment. When you produce a game, you give it to the ESRB, they look at the content of it (and the style of it), and assign it a rating. Many states have at least nominal legal restrictions on the abilities of minors to purchase games they're not supposed to. However, much like movie ratings, vendors often don't enforce the restrictions too strenuously. As well, many parents don't consider these games to be harmful and purchase them for their children in cases where clerks refuse to sell. This leaves the industry open to attacks that they are profiting from the sale of violent and/or sexually themed video games to children.

Prior to the recent admission, Hillary Clinton complained about "...the simulation of lewd sexual acts in an interactive format with highly realistic graphics..." Anyone who has played an of the GTA series can testify that its graphics are not "highly realistic." While very pretty at a distance, the game focuses on making a very large world available to explore, not at making the individual parts of that world look great on close inspection. The people look particularly cartoonish, and I suspect this is not just a technological decision - the violence in the game seems a lot more like that in a cartoon then that in a slasher flick.

In the game in question (I, unlike most of the people involved in this case, have actually played it), one of the many minor things you can do in the game is to date girlfriends. At the end of a date, a girl will ask you to take her home. If you've dated her for a number of dates, and she likes you, she may invite you in "for coffee." The game then gets a little strange - the outside of her house is shown. You hear her and the main character talking, but what they say doesn't match the subtitles. You then hear what sounds like two people having sex, and the subtitles admonish you "Remember! Nice Guys Finish Last!" The main character then comes out of the house.

In the game, this sequence is jarring. It just seems "rushed" in some sense, and I'd noticed that before this recent episode came out in the media. Some of what follows is speculation based on my knowledge of how computer programs are written, but I'm pretty sure this is basically what happened. In the original version of the game, Rockstar included a "minigame." They include a lot of minigames in GTA - it's one of its hallmarks. You can, for example, gamble in half a dozen ways, play video games, fly remote-control planes, drive remote control cars, shoot in a target range, play something like Dance, Dance Revolution and many others. The "sex" minigame involved you dating a woman until she would have sex with you. Then, if you go in her house, it would display a video as cartoonish as the rest of GTA displaying the two of you having sex. You have to move your joystick back and forth in rhythm so that the main character climaxes after she does (remember "Nice Guys Finish Last," above). I am unclear what benefits, if any, you get in the game from this performance.

Video games are rated, much like moves. The maximum rating most retailers will sell is "M," for "Mature (17+)". Rockstar was informed that they couldn't release GTA as an M game with the sex game included. They then changed the game so that, while the content of the game was on the disc, the sex game wasn't available in the game - there is no way within the game to get to it. It would be as if the old video game Pac Man had included a picture of a naked woman on the chip that the game was distributed on. Technically, there was a picture of a naked woman on the chip, but no way to get the game to display it - no pellet you could eat or place you could move to get it to appear on the screen. This didn't matter much on the PS2 and the XBOX because they are pretty much closed systems (with one exception I'll get to in a moment). But, when the PC version came out, someone wrote a program that altered GTA to make the sex game a part of the game, again. It was now possible to download a small, free program that would make GTA a game that could not pass the M rating, anymore.

The PS2 exception is that, once it became obvious this was possible, someone else figured out how to use a console "cheater adapter" to make a similar modification to the PS2 version. But, this change requires the purchase of separate hardware as well.

The root cause of this scandal is the fact that, in order to remain "kid friendly," the ESRB actually doesn't have a rating equivalent to the movie "R". The content restrictions on "M" games are much more analogous to those on PG-13 movies. Video games analogous to "R" rated movies must be sold as "AO," which stands for "Adults Only." Much as with the movies' "X" rating - which technically could be used to explore, say, emotionally difficult themes that are not for younger viewers - tainting by association with purely sexual titles has caused most mainstream distributors to view its stamp on a title as pure commercial poison. It's not hard to imagine a world in which movies had no "R" rating, and had to choose between PG-13's lesser sex, violence, language and emotional intensity or X's anything goes without widespread distribution. Studios would push PG-13 absolutely as far as they could and back off the line only when forced. In the world in which we do live - in which retailers like Wal-Mart absolutely refuse to stock "AO" games - video game companies have instead decided to push "M" absolutely as far as they can.

It seems unlikely that the legislators in our great nation - who apparently have the war so completely under control that their main concerns are flag burning and video game regulation - will keep their noses where they belong. A new rating between "M" and "AO" could go a long way to encouraging the growth of actual titles for adults. The standard we have now encourages video game producers to try to cram as much as possible into PG-13 - and then forces everyone to look the other way when actual thirteen year olds try to buy it. It's a disservice to video game consumers old and young alike. But I don't expect this recent debacle to move us any further in the proper direction.

A Modest Proposal

2005-04-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

When sites are taken down by Slashdot, we say they were "Slashdotted." When taken down by Fark, we say they were "Farked." My suggestion? When a site goes down by being linked to by Sploid - something that is apparently already possible, that or New Scientist had a weirdly coincidental crash, this afternoon - may I humbly propose that they were "Exsploided?"

SCOOT Loses

2005-03-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

Well, the election is over, and SCOOT lost, 55% No, 45% Yes. They didn't even get a simple majority, much less the 2/3 needed for the tax increase. Hopefully the city council will recognize this as a vote for fiscal responsibility. SCOOT might've been a neat idea in '99 - but in '05, with a half million dollar deficit in the city, we don't need to be blowing millions on free rides.

Some Thoughts on SCOOT Ridership

2005-02-16T06:19:00.000-08:00

This analysis will be of little interest to anyone outside of San Carlos, CA. I need to figure it out myself in order to decide how to vote in the March 8, 2005 special election for Measure "T".

SCOOT is San Carlos' community-operated bus line. It runs routes early in the morning and in the afternoon, and does on-call door-to-door service other times. It's an interesting idea, and unquestionably a boon to people unable to drive. It's also used as a kind of "school bus" for the local kids. The problem is, it's expensive, and there's an upcoming election to implement a $59 "parcel tax" (paid annualy by each landowner in the city). That comes to $3.25 million dollars a year to operate this service (compared to an '03-'04 budget of $21.8 million, which was itself $4 million in the red).

The SCOOT website provides some ridership data from 2004. It shows a few interesting thing. First of all, they run no routes at all in July and August, only door-to-door. The "door-to-door" and "Caltrain commuter" numbers don't go up when the routes stop, which says pretty clearly that all the route riders are school kids. October was their peak total ridership month, and there's no partial month for school (as in September or June) and no major holidays (as in November or December). So it's probably a good, representative month of what SCOOT can do at its best.

In October they ran 3,623 "Door to Door" runs, 1,120 "Caltrain Commuters" and 12,160 Route riders for a total ridership of 16,903. A few thoughts on all of these: Especially the route riders you'd expect to be mostly round-trip excursions; two "rides" should map pretty well to one rider, going there and coming back. As well, on the routes, I think we should expect the vast majority of the traffic to be regular, weekday traffic - the same people riding the same routes, somewhere and back, Monday through Friday. These thoughts are useful to try to get at the number of people who actually benefit from SCOOT. If we assume that 80% of the route ridership fits this profile (and that's probably conservative), we find that there were about 232 kids who take SCOOT to school and back every day, providing 9,744 (58%) of the 16,903 total rides for October. It's likely that the other classes suffer from similar patterns of use.

If we charge these rides with 58% of the cost ($1.89 million), we see that we're paying $8,125 per pupil who rides the bus, anually. We could buy them all cars for that! Every year, a new one! America Bikes - an advocacy group trying to get people to bike more - claims national per-pupil busing costs were $521 per pupil in 2000. Presumably it's in their interest to make this number as large as possible, but it's utterly dwarfed by what we're paying.

The axiom behind SCOOT was that a fleet of small busses would be cheaper than setting up actual school bus service, and we'd get the added bonus of letting our less-fortunate residents use the busses when schools weren't. But this seems an awfully high cost.

You Lose

2005-02-14T08:49:00.000-08:00

You may have read a year ago about the controversy surrounding the global warming "hockey stick" graph. This graph purports to show the "temperature anomaly" from about 1100 AD to the present, with a sharp spike in the past hundred years. This clearly shows sudden global warming, presumably from man's polluting activities:

It's the product of one Dr. Mann, climatologist at the University of Virginia. Its production was no doubt a complex enterprise, but it was peer-reviewed and published in Nature, so it clearly isn't just the work of a lone crackpot. As we read two Decembers ago, a nonscientist (i.e., someone who isn't employed by a Univeristy) questioned Dr. Mann's methods. He'd been trying to get at the original data, and trying to reproduce the Doctor's results. Dr. Mann, while initially cooperative, had stopped helping not far into the enterprise.

Unfortunately, I didn't pay much more attention. The math both of these gentlemen were slinging around was far more than I was willing to devote the time necessary to understand (if I'm capable of understanding it at all). It was a classic case where one person says one thing, another says something else, and the layman has no way to choose between competing claims.

In these cases, my tendency is to side with the scientist. At least 90% of the people who attack mainstream science are, after all, wrong. I've spent time debating evolution with creationists and I can certainly attest that there are a lot of people out there who think they know something about a field while really just not getting it. I thought Dr. Mann's critic - Mr. McIntyre - had what seemed like interesting points, but, let's face it, Dr. Mann is peer-reviewed and Mr. McIntyre isn't. That's not a guarantee of rightness, but it's a good rule of thumb for following disciplines you don't personally understand - relying on the professionalism of those in the discipline to root out those who are wrong. That's how science works.

In the intervening time, they've set up dueling websites to explain their positions. Dr. Mann's is at RealClimate, Mr. McIntyre's is at Climate Audit. I know of these new developments because the Wall Street Journal had a front-page article (sadly, subscription only) this morning on the topic. It's lengthy, and mostly provides an overview of the controversy, but makes no assertions about who is right. I thus read most of it, thinking, "it'll be really interesting to see who's right here," because there just isn't enough information for a layman to make a decision. We just have to wait for the people who understand this stuff to come to a consensus.

Then, I got to the paragraph describing Mr. McIntyre's continuing relationship with Dr. Mann:

Mr. McIntyre thinks there are more errors but says his audit is limited because he still doesn't know the exact computer code Dr. Mann used to generate the graph. Dr. Mann refuses to release it. "Giving them the algorithm would be giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in," he says.

What!? Dr. Mann, you lose. "My critics are intimidating me and I refuse to release my methodology" is never the refuge of good science. If Dr. Mann refuses to make public the way he makes his graphs, his graphs should be rejected out of hand by the scientific community until they're reproducible. In science, the way you shut people up is by proving them wrong, not by withholding your method so that they can't reproduce your results. Frankly, it calls into question not just Dr. Mann but the entire field of climate research that he can say this in public and not be hounded until he releases his methodology. This should increase our skepticism not just of Dr. Mann but any expert in the field that doesn't call for him to release his data.

As of now, I'm no longer predisposed to think Dr. Mann correct. He's not behaving like a scientist and does not deserve the benefit of the doubt I'd been giving him under the assumption that he was working out in the open. Kudos to Mr. McIntyre for continuing his fight. Even if he's wrong, we shouldn't be making society-reworking changes based upon secret research methodologies. Dr. Mann should open-source his product and let the sun shine in.

Ants and Grasshoppers

2005-02-07T09:53:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting editorial this morning titled "Ants and Grasshoppers," by Kevin A. Hassett, Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. It's subscription-only, unfortunately, but it lamets the fact that the current Social Security debate is focused on when the system becomes insolvant, as if it wouln't be worth replacing if only it were sustainable.

He clearly makes the point that, if a private entity offered a retirement plan with the same features as Social Security, you'd be a fool to buy it: For the princely sum of 12.5% of your earnings per year, you receive a very small annuity from money invested in a single security (low-interest government bonds). If you and your spouse die before retirement, you only get any of the money back if you have school-age kids. You can't use any of the money you've saved to buy a house or to cover emergencies. You have to pay in at the same 12.5% rate whether you're 27 or 57, desipite the fact that 12.5% of your salaray is a lot more painful to cough up when you're young, underemployed and trying to get your life started.

He notes that, with these features, Social Security is clearly not designed to make people better off than they could make themselves: "It forces irresponsible 'grasshopper' individuals to save for their retirement along with responsible 'ants.'" But, he argues, it's poorly designed for that goal, too. "[T]oday's system forces the vast [rationally-saving-for-retirement] majority to endure a straight-jacketed program that reduces their lifetime welfare significantly, all for the benefit of a small minority" who wouldn't otherwise save. Mr. Hassett's solution is to endow private savings accounts, forcing people to perform the diversified investment that is in their own best interest, rather than depending on the long-outdated economic theory underpinning a system designed in 1935.

This piece is quite correct - it's a real shame that the current debate is framed in terms of the date of insolvency. As he concludes, "It does not matter if the current program runs out of funds in 2042, 2075 or never. Social Security should be reformed because a better policy exists today that will significantly enhance Americans' welfare."