Opinionator Synchronicity

Yesterday, Stanley Fish, on a stupid initiative at Texas A&M to apply a conventional 'customer service' model to student evaluations of instructors.

The day before, Errol Morris, on the 'Dunning-Kruger Effect — [how] our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence.'

Bits and Pieces - Solstice Edition

I always find solstice mixed. It's the start of real summer and almost the start of our monsoons that cool things down and provide much of our precipitation. But it's also the end of lengthening days.

A shakedown from another time and another disaster.

The politics of the energy bill and the President's role.

Plutonium Page (Page van der Linden) has left Daily Kos to blog independently.

Is Louisiana's Senator Mary Landrieu changing her mind on oil?

What really caused the housing boom? (Hint: not what the Republicans like to claim.)

Utility-only cap and trade?

A dialog between Tony Judt and his son on politics.

Added later: Some Manhattan Project history I wasn't acquainted with.

Fritz Hollings: what fundraising is doing to the Senate.

Let Me Count The Ways

the MSM can get science wrong. I've been feeling fairly crabby lately because of the technical subjects in the news that reporters can't be bothered to understand. This one is so egregious, I have to work it over in detail.

Abnormal radiation was detected near the inter-Korean border days after North Korea claimed last month to have achieved a nuclear technology breakthrough, South Korea's Science Ministry said Monday.

The article, as happens so often in the MSM, treats radiation as a thing, somehow separate from the matter that must be present to emit the radiation.

The ministry said it failed to find the cause of the radiation but ruled out a possible underground nuclear test by North Korea. It cited no evidence of a strong earthquake that must follow an atomic explosion.

Actually, the cause of the radiation appears to have been found. Three paragraphs down:

On May 15, however, the atmospheric concentration of xenon - an inert gas released after a nuclear explosion or radioactive leakage from a nuclear power plant - on the South Korean side of the inter-Korean border was found to be eight times higher than normal, according to South Korea's Science Ministry.

Presumably this xenon was one of its radioactive isotopes, which are formed by fission. I say "presumably" because nowhere in the article is the connection between the xenon and the radiation it emits made explicit. However, the connection between North Korea's highly ambiguous claim of achieving nuclear fusion is made explicit in the article. The problem with this is that radioactive xenon isotopes are not a product of nuclear fusion. The one way they might be connected would be through a test of a boosted fission device. But the article says that no earthquake was detected, so no underground explosive test was done.

In somewhat better news, the New York Times today has a shockingly competent article on the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig. The Washington Post continues its metanarrative (and easier reporting target) of the lobbyists that the various companies involved in that disaster are acquiring.

I'm working on a longer post on the subject of science illiteracy, but it may not see the light of day. Even I have a limit to the crabbiness I am willing to inflict on our readers.

Update: Here's part of the problem. The reporters and editors don't know that they don't know.

Manute Bol, 1962-2010

"You know, a lot of people feel sorry for him, because he's so tall and awkward," Charles Barkley, a former 76ers teammate, once said. "But I'll tell you this -- if everyone in the world was a Manute Bol, it's a world I'd want to live in." (WaPo)

Bits and Pieces - June 19, 2010

I was wondering if women are going to be expected to take this to keep up with men's meds. Would men then have to take more meds, and so on?

Some of the sillier things you may read about the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico will mention abiotic oil. Here's an explanation. Mentioning abiotic oil, IMHO, is a declaration of ignorance or political spin that probably infects the entire article. It is to the advantage of the "Drill, baby, drill" crowd to believe that oil is inexhaustible. Too bad they have no science to support that idea.

Ideas for solutions to the blowout that won't work.

Is it too much to ask Congress to listen to the economists or look at the history of the Great Depression? Yes, I guess so.

Possibly good news from Turkey, China, and North Korea.

Bits and Pieces - June 17, 2010

Recapitulating the Gilded Age - in a good way.

More about Afghanistan's minerals from McClatchy, who beat James Risen to the story.

Ezra Klein is putting his intern through his research paces, and good information is coming out. Would be nice to see these tax rates evened up. Keep that in mind when politicians start griping about taxing the rich. And what's a dollar of stimulus worth?

Show us the mudlogs from that BP well! Although I'd prefer the three-dimensional models that BP must have of the reservoir and well. And a caution: this author is pushing a model of oil generation that can't be sustained, but that doesn't show up explicitly in this article.

Update: Reasons to doubt those estimates of Afghan mineral deposits.

The MSM Finds Some News

Fred Hiatt notices today something Paul Goble and I wrote about back in April (here too): Russia is becoming a friendlier neighbor to the Baltic States.

And, speaking of that part of the world, it's seventy years (seitsekümmend aastat) since Estonia became part of the Soviet Union. Giustino provides some history. I'll add that Marju Lauristin, the daughter of Johannes Lauristin, played a significant part as a member of the Estonian Supreme Soviet in getting Estonia out of the Soviet Union. You just never know how your kids are going to turn out.

Bits and Pieces - June 16, 2010

Happy Bloomsday!

Russia and the United States are cooperating on Kyrgyzstan.

Russia launches a nuclear submarine (photos). Notice that the propellor is covered. Very classified shape.

A longish article on what might be behind the Tea Partiers' emotions.

It ain't gonna be easy to mine Afghanistan for all that mineral wealth. No wonder we didn't hear from Paul Wolfowitz.

We are releasing, in carbon dioxide, the equivalent of 5000 BP Blowouts every day.

Michael Tomasky on the long political slog and liberal despair.

Obama's Oval Office Speech

I've got a bunch of tabs up to write a post, but MMonides at Balloon Juice says most of what I might have said.

IM less than HO, POTUS addressed every issue he needed to last night. He discussed the past, how we got in this situation, his own mistake in believing the safety technology was sufficient, the government response, and BP’s “recklessness.” He went on to commit to the Gulf’s recovery and to accountability, and presented a blue print for our government’s next steps. He tied the situation to our energy policy specifically, but without pushing any hot-button issues. He acknowledged MMS corruption, and his Administration’s plans to address it. He even pointed out how our addiction to fossil fuels has led us to us to risky deep water drilling, and how the environmental costs of fossil fuels far outweighs any energy tax. He continued to be the mature one in the room, asking his opposition for ideas instead of attacks.

I'd have added how this fits in with my unified theory of Obama's trying to organize this unruly community known as the United States of America and might even do some of that later.

Read the whole thing and the comments, which are always good at Balloon Juice.

Also see Steve Benen and Juan Cole.

The Puzzling Story of Afghanistan's Mineral Wealth

I didn't write about James Risen's "news" in the NYT yesterday because it seemed that everyone in the blogosphere and maybe even a few MSMs were, and I didn't really have much more to say. If I did, it would have been something like

If you've ever taken the "Rocks for Jocks" course, you should be able to recognize that mountainous terrain means mineral deposits.

In any case, many of the critics found previous articles saying that Afghanistan had deposits of many minerals. (I might have added that Afghanistan's neighbors also have lots of minerals in their mountains, and they've all been subjected to the same plate-tectonic processes.)

The Soviet Union did some mineral surveys when they had closer relations to Afghanistan, since their geologists could recognize mountains and what they mean. Those surveys were duly published.

So I had to wonder why Risen and the Times thought this was news. It might have been something to do with fighting the ongoing war in Afghanistan, but Paul Wolfowitz was nowhere to be seen claiming that the mineral wealth would pay for the war. Was it possible that Times editors and Risen don't understand the function of Google?

Or, it seems, the blogosphere. Risen appears to be fairly ticked off that questions were raised about news value. I would have thought he would have discussed that in a soul-searching way with his editor, but he used Twitter instead, so he does know about some of those intertubes thingies.

The level of his anger underlines the question of why this story was published now. It could be bad judgement on Risen's and an editor's part, or it could be something nefarious in support of the war. My problem is that I can't come up with a plausible scenario for the nefarious possibility. It could be ego damage that a Serious Reporter for a Serious Newspaper was outed by bloggers, too.

Update: Steve Hynd has a theory. With reporting.

Oily Bits and Pieces - June 14, 2010

The Land that Bleeds Oil.

From NOAA, an interactive map with information about the oil spill’s trajectory, the position of NOAA’s research ships, spilled oil’s coastal location and the areas closed to shipping and more.

BP Blowout Worst Case Rethought

Emptywheel and Zero Hedge pick up on the possibility that the BP well is damaged below the sea floor. Emptywheel's source is primarily Florida's Senator Bill Nelson, whose staff presumably is providing the information to him. Zero Hedge quotes MSM sources, Nelson, and petroleum experts, one of whom is Matt Simmons. Commenters at The Oil Drum seem to be discounting Simmons.

I'm rethinking yesterday's post on the worst case and find it less alarming. Fast flow, particularly of supercritical fluids flashing to gases, which may be happening in the formation, is as likely to deposit dissolved matter and plug up the formation as it is to erode it. I also suspect that the relief wells are designed to intersect the existing well below any casing damage that may exist.

Polio and Civil Unrest in Central Asia

Interethnic fighting continues in Kyrgyzstan. Meanwhile, there is a polio outbreak in next-door Tajikistan. Movement of people and lessened public hygiene contribute to spreading disease. These two could combine into even worse news.

Natsugumi

Can't Get It Back

The thing is, we're already operating in those circumstances in a thousand different ways -- it's just that the risks and the damages tend to be distributed and obscured from view. They're not thrust in our face like they are in the Gulf. We don't get back the land we destroy by mining. We don't get back the species lost from deforestation and development. We don't get back islands lost to rising seas. We don't get back the coral lost to bleaching or the marine food chains lost to nitrogen runoff. Once we lose the climatic conditions in which our species evolved, we won't get them back either. (Grist)

The BP Blowout: Worst Case

I've been following The Oil Drum for the best discussions and speculations about the BP Blowout. Overnight there were a couple of especially good speculations. I am not watching cable news or reading much of the MSM coverage, so some of this might have appeared there. I'm going to try to explain the comments in less technical language and will make some comments of my own.

From dougr:

OK let's get real about the GOM oil flow. There doesn't really seem to be much info on TOD that furthers more complete understanding of what's really happening in the GOM.

As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don't feel bad, there is much that doesn't make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there...

First of all...set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc....forget that, it won't be happening..it's done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.

So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?...there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It's really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do...you will see the "sense" behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:

The well bore structure is compromised "Down hole".

That is something which is a "Worst nightmare" conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have "said" a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place...

Dougr then discusses "top kill" and "junk shot" and concludes that BP learned from these operations that the casing of the well, the piping intended to contain the petroleum, is badly broken. Several commentators at The Oil Drum have speculated that the mud from top kill and perhaps stuff in the junk shot were lost to the formation, which means they went into the rock downhole, which means that the casing is broken. As the petroleum gushes out of its formation, it is eroding the rock around it and the structure of the well. It carries sand along for sandblasting, and the liquids and expanding gases do their damage as well.

What is likely to happen now?

Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.

Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.

All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.

It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.

There's a lot more, with links. I'll emphasize that this is speculation, but it's plausible and not obviously contradicted by any of the information we have.

That's another problem; BP seems to be stingy with the data it's making available to the public. It's not clear whether the situation is better for the various groups of experts assembled to try to figure out what can be done. One piece of information that would be very helpful is the geology of the reservoir they've drilled into and the formations above it.

R2-3D comments in more detail on the structure and possible breach of the casing. He argues that dougr's scenario is too pessimistic.

Both posts are fairly technical, but I suspect have long stretches that can be understood by the layperson who's willing to spend some time thinking about them.

Update: BP has some explanations here. You can expect them to put their best spin on them, but the descriptions and graphics are informative.

And yet more diagrams and dimensions here(pdf).

Anne Harrington to NNSA

Anne Harrington has been nominated as Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the part of the Department of Energy that is responsible for nuclear weapons. This is a really good appointment.

Harrington developed and maintained the programs aimed at keeping nuclear scientists in the former Soviet Union busy during the 1990s so that they wouldn't need to find employment in countries that were looking for nuclear weapons programs. Her programs were effective; very few, if any, of those scientists have turned up in other countries.

I was a beneficiary of one of those programs; I worked with members of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Alatau, Kazakhstan, on evaluating the radiological hazards at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site. I didn't get any money out of it, just the opportunity to work with a group of highly-motivated and conscientious people on an important project. At a meeting where Harrington was giving a talk, I was only one of several people offering her our thanks for the programs she had developed.

The Innovation Council

I looked for a way to highlight that title and infuse it with irony, but Blogger doesn't provide that click.

Ronald Brownstein, in the serious National Journal, seriously reports to us on the serious deliberations of the Innovation Council, which seriously recommends that the government do something about innovation in energy.

[A] group of technology-focused business leaders -- including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, and the current or former chief executives of General Electric, DuPont, Lockheed Martin, and Xerox -- issued a mayday manifesto urging a massive public-private effort to accelerate research into clean-energy innovations.

That means that they want the government to give them money to do the research they should have been doing all along, if the free market actually worked. These same serious industrialists and their brothers have screamed bloody murder over the past several decades if the government laboratories were found to be doing anything that might look like clean-energy innovations, and they haven't bothered to fund such things, although the basis for their screams would have been that the government laboratories were competing unfairly with their doing nothing.

Brownstein makes one good point, though.

But the substantial support that Murkowski's proposal attracted highlights the political obstacles looming in front of any policy that aims to seriously advance alternatives to the carbon-intensive fossil fuels that now dominate the United States' energy mix.

Polls show that the public wants more action to address anthropogenic global warming. Polls show that the Tea Partiers and the now-insane Republican Party garner little support. But our national legislature pays little attention.

After a full day away from the internets, I'm seeing contradictions like this all over. More to come.

Kyrgyzstan

Unrest continues in Kyrgyzstan.

Sean Paul Kelly provides some of the atmosphere of Central Asia.

A Sketch of a Post on Blogging

I have had a desire which has not been able to rise to an ambition to write a few longer and more thoughtful posts than I've been able to for the past month or so. That desire has not risen to an ambition for a number of reasons that have been touched on lately in posts written by others who are scanning different parts of the internet than I am. So here are some thoughts that might, perhaps, stoke that ambition.

Zenpundit notes that Bernard Finel is rethinking his blogging. It seems to me that many of us are these days and that there are many reasons for that. Blogging is a lot of work, and a blogger must decide on what will reward that work. The blogosphere has changed greatly since some of us started, and some of the fun has gone out of it, as is always the case in a maturing enterprise. Part of that change is that the big guys, aka MSM, have landed in the middle, splashing stuff all over and trying to co-opt individual bloggers, confuse the consumer with something they call blogging but usually isn't, and simply stealing material, all the time vilifying those partisan and probably evil computer scriveners.

Once upon a time, the blogosphere was a sort of talent night, a talent 24/7, with entertainment for all. Much of that is still there, but some of the talent has gone pro; Kevin Drum, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias and others have joined the MSM or think tanks and link only to each other. Some days there is almost a perfect linking circle of Drum quoting Klein quoting Yglesias quoting Drum. Drum got linked from The Economist blog the other day, moving up one more notch. Stratification.

The MSM, meanwhile, still doesn't understand the idea of hyperlinks but provides something they call blogs at their sites. Some of these are actually blogs, like Ezra Klein's at the WaPo. Some are more like newspaper columns with more depth or specialization, like Olivia Judson's at the NYT. Some are sui generis, like the Gail and David show at the NYT. Others are clearly from reporters who have been told that they will produce a blog, probably not much more instruction provided.

And then there's the problem of the MSM simply stealing bloggers' material (or those somewhere below them on the food chain) and not crediting it. I've seen this pretty unambiguously many times over the almost six years I've been blogging. And then there are situations where it's not quite clear that material has been cribbed, but someone in the MSM says something that looks an awful lot like something I read days before in a blog. As a blogger friend said, "I think they call it research." Or they don't take it seriously enough. Today someone on The Oil Drum asked if the MSM was reading their threads, which have much more good information than anything I've seen on the BP Blowout in the MSM. Of course, it's mixed, and there are some just plain dumb comments, but hey! that's what the reporters get the big bucks to filter, right?

The last few weeks have been insanely busy for me, so this isn't a coherent argument on the state of the blogosphere. After Saturday, it appears that my calendar clears a bit, but we all know how deceptive that can be, that light at the end of the tunnel. I'd like to think that more thoughtful days are ahead.

WC2010 OMG!!!

The day is upon us!

For an innovative graphic on the teams and matches, see here. Catching up online is best done at the official FIFA World Cup site, The Guardian (though a bit slow thus far), L'Equipe (French), and ESPN seems to have come to the full conclusion that soccer is a sport. A floater is the interesting TNR World Cup blog. More as I happen upon it....

Today: opening match of host country South Africa vs. Mexico and then France vs. Uruguay. Spot of good news for Ivory Coast - Drogba is training and should play in the first match vs. Portugal, one of the best first-round matches to watch coming up on Tuesday. England vs. US tomorrow.

Allez Les Bleus de France et Les Elephants of Côte d'Ivoire et Les États-Unis (we need a nickname)!!

Bits and Pieces - June 9, 2010

Another blog on the oil spill. It's one point of view; they don't get everything right, in my opinion, but mostly worth reading from people on the ground.

Business as usual in the oil patch.

Not clear when or whether this commission will have anything to say about passenger mistreatment, but maybe figuring out the economics of air travel will help.

Some good words for the month-long Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. We forget all too soon the destruction the Bush administration wrought and that Obama needs to turn it back, which was the major achievement of the conference.

The sanctions on Iran passed today by the United Nations Security Council should be used as a basis for more diplomacy.

And, finally, Juan Cole tries to put a good face on this, but I can't help but think that it's an Islamic theological equivalent of the cycles upon cycles that kept being added to the Ptolemaic view of the solar system; a system of logic gone bad. Plus being sexually bizarre.

Godless DC Has Now Seen God

His name turns out to be Mr. Strasburg.

Bits and Pieces - June 8, 2010

A long and meaty article on BP's safety record. (Spoiler: It isn't pretty.)

BP wants you to know that you are responsible for any spill.

Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) is for sale.

Sometimes the bad guys win.

It Never Ends

John Tierney, whose claim to being a science writer seems to consist of one-third ego and two-thirds gonads, once again takes on the burning question of whether women should be allowed to be scientists.

I am sure that he would object to that characterization. But that's what it comes down to. The quibbling over the very ends of the distributions for one kind of test. Ignoring all the other characteristics that might go into success. And ignoring the social difficulties laid on women who are talented in science, although John promises us that he will consider such things in another article.

The tone and words are the same that have appeared in such articles since I was a girl. They've left out the objection that we will get married and have children, which clearly will destroy our brains, but all the rest is there.

Dana makes a number of good points, and LizardBreath is succinct, but let me add one more consideration, or maybe two.

There is a great deal of educational literature that shows that encouragement (or discouragement) by teachers has an enormous effect on students' achievement, as does their expectations of the students' capabilities. Those tiny tails, so important to the ego of male professors at Harvard (and male science writers at the NYT?), have nothing to do with how teachers should teach, but repeating over and over again that men will always be better than women at science and mathematics is bound to influence them. The statistics that Tierney cites, that women are achieving outlier status on tests more often, would seem to indicate that improved encouragement of girls in "men's" fields is making a difference. But not enough difference for Tierney!

And, just a simple question. Would Tierney write an article like this about differentials in scores between ethnic groups?

Bits and Pieces - June 7, 2010

Stephen Walt: How to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Comparing the BP oil gusher to natural oil seeps.

Obama needs more oilmen. (Or women, I would add, although the oil patch is pretty exclusive.)

Page van der Linden points out that using a nuke in the Gulf would violate some treaties.

Giving India More Nuclear Weapons

During the Bush administration, an agreement was negotiated with India on trade in nuclear materials, including uranium. India has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and does not intend to; it has an arsenal of 75-100 nuclear weapons.

It would have been a good idea to negotiate an agreement with India that put India's nuclear industry under tighter IAEA scrutiny. However, the Bush administration was eager for a deal, and the negotiation amounted to "whatever." India accepted a very small increased IAEA presence in return for a big opening in nuclear trade, which has been forbidden to nations outside the NPT.

Now we hear that India may be expanding its enrichment capacity. It will have more uranium than before. India has few indigenous uranium deposits, and the lack of uranium has held back both its civil and military programs. Pakistan has been beefing up its plutonium production capability. If US negotiators ask about the purpose of this expansion, they will most likely be told that it is for power reactors.

Surfing Crocodiles

Duuuuude....

Marula

Palestine and Palestine

I didn't even know about the Helen Thomas hysteria until this morning. It seems pretty obvious to me both that she said something that offended some people and that she is now being publicly lynched (and in some absolutely crazy ways - see here and here, for example - "hatred of God"? c'mon, get a grip). It's possible to have both views, you know. It's at least important to get the language right, particularly because she is being selectively quoted depending on the politics of the commentators. Subtle, but with a significant difference in meaning. Helen Thomas said,

Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. Not Germany. Not Poland... They go home. Poland. Germany. And America and everywhere else.

The answer comes in response to a question about Israel, not Jews. No one says "Jews," including the questioner. Thomas says Israel should get out of Palestine. She doesn't say Israel should get out of Israel. The "go home" part implies either Jews or Israelis.

Palestine could mean, historically, the entire eastern Mediterranean lands. It could also mean the Occupied Territories, and unless I'm unaware of some sort of dog-whistle anti-Semitic language this is it's colloquial contemporary use.

Punditland seems to have decided she meant, "Jews should leave Israel." If that's what she meant, then she's taking a view that's not terribly defensible. But if she meant that, "Israel should leave Palestine," as in the Occupied Territories, that is a legitimate policy position that can refer to Israel's policy of colonization of that Palestine. One might not agree with it, but if that's the meaning of her statement it's a far cry from what's putatively the basis for her public lynching.

Breaking News - A Good Idea From An Airline!

I took a short trip to Wisconsin over the weekend, and coming back through Chicago's O'Hare Airport, was amazed to find a speck of rationality in American Airlines' loading procedures.

After the call for "pre-boarding" of the elite sitting in the front of the plane and others with a claim to American's attention, those with no baggage to force into the overhead spaces were asked to board. This made for a much smoother boarding procedure, leaving the heavy lifting, grunting, and pounding of suitcases into the compartments to the very last, while those of us with stuff we could easily fit under the seats tried to stay out of the way of falling suitcases. And got a bit of better treatment for that $25 we paid not to have to participate in all that.

Deepwater Horizon and Government

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the Deepwater Horizon disaster and what the Obama administration should be doing.

There is a reason why the right, including Sarah Palin, is calling for Obama to "take charge" of the BP disaster, including fixing the leaking pipe. This is a problem that cannot be solved, and probably will not be for many months.

They want Obama to directly own it so they can reinforce their message that government does not work. Why should liberals, stupidly, be pushing for this? I cannot figure out what the left and many liberal pundits think they are doing in all this.

When a huge private corporation makes a mess and cannot fix it, it is sheer lunacy to take direct charge of that mess unless you can fix it right away.

Obama and the government can (a) hold BP accountable in criminal and financial terms; and (b) orchestrate the mitigation, restitution, and financial help for the regions affected. They are doing this and should be as visible as possible about steps in both areas. The last thing they should do is take charge of fixing the leak itself when they cannot.

It also helps give the lie to the less-government crowd. Their political philosophy really boils down to more government when they're in charge and less when they're not.

Luo Han Guo

Compare and Contrast

From the NYT: China Bars Court Evidence Gained Through Torture

In a rare admission of the problem, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, which carries out investigations and prosecutions, issued a report in 2003 acknowledging that what it characterized as forced confessions had led to the deaths of 460 people and serious injuries for 117 others.

On PubMed.gov: An article by Indian scientists on the effective use of ultrasound in torture.

The discernible aim of torture as everyone believes--and rightly so--is to destroy the personality of an individual in a way that would render his compliance in future. But to destroy a personality is easier said than done.

That's the appetizing opening of the abstract.

I've been living in India for one year, today. Among the things I've learned is to avoid the subject of China, which generally elicits a very elementary, fairly patronizing explanation of the fundamental differences between 'free, democratic' India and 'totalitarian, repressive' China. The whole topic is a little manichean for my tastes, and so I've figured out how to talk about cricket.

Oh, man, did the Indian side blow it at the Windies World Cup? Or what? What the hell was Dhoni thinking, choosing to bowl every time? It was all the partying during the IPL! Ha ha ha!

Bits and Pieces - June 1, 2010

There's plenty being written about the Israeli attack on that Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza, but I'll choose just two.

Juan Cole points out that the United Nations Security Council resolution goes much further in condemning Israel than the United States has allowed resolutions to in the past.

Haaretz blasts the Israeli government.

On the lighter side,

What your e-mail address says about you.

A photoessay on the last of the typewriter repairmen. This is what my father did for a living. He started with IBM as a "customer engineer," which meant a repairman who went to the customer's place of business to repair typewriters. In true IBM style, he had to wear a suit and tie. He later built his own typewriter repair, rental, and reconditioning business. I was his chief reconditioning mechanic. I disassembled IBM standard typewriters so that their mechanisms could be soaked in solvent to be cleaned (all rubber removed) and their cases painted. Then I reassembled them with new rubber and repainted cases. My father did the last adjustments. He paid me minimum wage (at that time, $1 an hour, not bad for an eleven-year-old).

Profit, Loss, and Proliferation

Khodorkovsky: Corruption Is Going To Stop the Development of Humanity

by Molly Cernicek and Cheryl Rofer

Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, former chairman of Yukos Oil who has been in a Russian prison since 2000, writes in an op-ed for the Washington Post that “it is incumbent upon world leaders to address a root cause of new risks of nuclear proliferation: the corruption that has spread across the globe.” He highlights the risks of civilian and military officials selling nuclear secrets to whoever is willing to buy, including terrorist groups that “seek bloodshed for the sake of bloodshed.”

Khodorkovsky lists some examples of corruption in Russia and rightly states that one of Russia’s exports is “corruption, fueled by a host of eager importers, most notably developed countries in the West.” And ends his piece urging that the Group of 20 make battling corruption as important as nuclear disarmament, otherwise “corruption is going to stop the development of humanity.”

That’s a big claim – corruption is going to stop the development of humanity. From one perspective, one can argue that corruption has always been part of micro and macro economies from the beginning of human time as the rich or those intent on being rich are driven to make money any way they can and either make or break the rules to ensure their expectations become reality. Economies adjust and accept some level of corruption as a natural part of operation.

Rules and regulations set up to go after certain types of corruption and ebb and flow over time. In the United States currently, the testimonies and actions of Wall Street bankers and US government officials bear close similarities to the 1930s following the Great Depression.

Russia has always had corruption even when isolated from the global economy, though some Russians believe differently. Certainly in the Soviet barter economy, some people had access to products while most did not. In those days the risks were high; any Russian citizen could be an informant, which limited the ability (outside of the Politburo) to create too big a business and network. The Soviet black market was a bunch of young men operating in ones and twos selling western goods and shaking down tourists for currency conversion.

Today corruption is common practice inside and outside the government. Russia is home to some of the biggest global crime syndicates in the world. Some have referred to it as the “verticalization of corruption” since the corruption is not about manipulating the state but instead about the state capturing business. Those in power during Communism got top governmental positions in new Russia and continued to control the money. The young had market ideas, but no capital. That started governmental-controlled business alliances, illegal and legal alike, that benefitted individuals but not the country.

From a perspective of a Russian, that corruption can stopp the development of humanity is not far-fetched. Russia has little economic development to show despite two decades of prosperous oil sales. Their men are dying at an average age of 57. They are not reproducing enough to maintain their population. Outside the business and tourist attractions of Moscow and St. Petersburg, infrastructure and living standards drop substantially. Their environment has suffered dramatically. What has been dumped into streams, buried, and burned continues to impact health and nature. And the list goes on.

Khordorkovsky is right that every country should be worried about corruption and how it impacts nuclear proliferation. He could have taken it a step further though and asked who in their right mind would produce and maintain nuclear weapons knowing that the risks of corruption within the ranks hired to develop, maintain and protect these weapons will increase? One of the reasons that a nuclear war never started between 1948 and 1991 is that scientists, engineers and government officials overseeing both the US and Russian stockpiles were devoted to protecting not just their own countries from nuclear attack, but protecting the world as well. Most Russian and American nuclear weapons stewards spent their entire careers working to make the world a safer place in spite of nuclear weapons – many with the objective of massive reduction. They advised their government officials in tense and difficult situations. They were patriotic and they knew why and how to keep secrets. To them, this responsibility was about country, flag and apple pie/piroshky.

The world has changed substantially since 1991. Endemic and increasing corruption within the nuclear complexes and its potential for proliferation can be met only by decreasing the numbers of nuclear weapons.

BP Now Cutting Pipe

Here's the live feed.

Also some good graphics here and here. These finally gave me a good idea of what we're seeing in the live feed. The first has a good explanation and photos as well.

More on That Israeli Attack

Contributions from

Stephen Walt

Andrew Exum

Daniel Drezner

But Flying Rodent says it all.

Bits and Pieces - Good News Edition

We could use some good, or at least pleasant, news. I noted yesterday that US-Russia relations seem to be continuing to improve.

During the Cambrian Era (500 million years ago and more), a wild variety of living things came into being. Some were so strange that their fossils are difficult to interpret. Apparently some of those strange things continued on into the Ordovician Era, when plants appeared and some of our ancestors came out of the ocean and onto land. Chris Nedin tells us more.

A festival of science is being held in New York. Unfortunately, the AP news article doesn't give any dates. It sounds like it will be sometime soon, though.

Ohio is adding jobs at the fastest rate in 22 years.

The Economist gets tired of MoDo and other commentators calling for their daddies in the midst of the oil spill. I include this because it's refreshing to see a voice in the MSM that isn't saying that President Obama will lose his job because he's not comforter-in-chief.

Israel's Memorial Day Attack on Humanitarian Aid

The most self-destructive actions of a regime determined to keep people down are attacks on nonviolent actions. So we remember the fire hoses and dogs turned on demonstrators in the American South during the 1960s as a turning point.

Today Israeli special forces attacked and killed people attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. One can only wonder what made the government think that sending armed military forces, ready for battle, against unarmed aid ships was a good idea. We feel so strongly that Gaza must be made into a concentration camp, or punished for the existence of Hamas, that we must keep food and medical supplies out at all costs? Stop the boats and search them for weapons, perhaps.

The reports are conflicting and undoubtedly spun for the greatest effect. Marc Lynch is a good person to follow, and TPM Cafe also provides background and commentary. And an Israeli gives some insight.