Category Archives: Rants & Raves

Politics

Posted on by
Reply

Lately I’ve felt that things were going pretty well. I was reading a bit of international news and looking at the international reaction to our presence at the G20 summit, for example. Of course not everyone in the world loves us, but I couldn’t help but feel that our presence was a little different than last time. Our President helped get disagreeing parties to agree, and in general seems to have the world eager to work with us. (I don’t really mean this as a condemnation of Bush, nor is it my intention to heap praise on Obama.)

And then I read what conservatives are saying, and it almost seems like we’re looking at two vastly divergent realities. I see a statesman, they see a closet Muslim who was all too eager to bow to an Arab leader and who went out of his way to apologize for being American. I see a fiscal plan inspired by John Maynard Keynes, they see someone deliberately wasting money for his own gain. I see the first black President, they see the first illegal immigrant President. I see a President who came in after Bush’s first round of financial bailouts and pretty much continued the policy, they see a President who nationalized the banks because he’s a Socialist. Oh, and he wants to take everyone’s guns away, and destroy Christianity.

I’d gone a while without reading the “wingnut propaganda,” and in that time period, I’d come to think that things were pretty good. Obama’s approval rating is something like 70%, and the two parties have been known to work with each other a bit lately, even if it’s been far less than I’d like. (And even if it’s been largely Democrat-led, which doesn’t really make for impressive bipartisanship…) And then I realized that there’s a lunatic fringe that seriously believes he’s a Muslim or a Socialist, and became truly worried. Fiscal conservatives and social conservatives may dislike Obama, and I respect their different views. Divergent views, discussed and brought to compromise, truly leave us better off. But there are thousands, if not millions, of Americans who have literally lost touch with reality. They’re like the MIHOPs of the Democrats.

I also want to caution that when I use terms like “neocon” and “wingnut,” I mean them more literally, not as terms to refer to all Republicans. Similarly, I respect Republicans and hate the artifically-created divide between the parties. What I’m complaining about is the wingnut Republicans who use utter lies to advance their own causes. There are Democrats who do the same, surely, but with Democrats leading Congress and the White House, those people aren’t noteworthy right now.

Anyway, two things have interested me lately. Besides the thousands of dead Americans, one thing that always bothered me about the Iraq War was the exorbitant cost. If the money were spent domestically, it could have gone an amazing distance. The military takes up something like 50% of our spending. So I’m waiting to see what the wing-nut faction of Republicans says. They’ve spent weeks protesting Obama’s Socialist spending. But the Democrats have long complained that the Iraq War is too expensive, and Republicans have argued that not giving the military a blank check amounts of waving the white flag of surrender. So I’m curious where this will go, because it could leave Republicans in an awkward state either way. Hopefully it will just be passed and nasty politics will be left out of it.

But then I was reading this article about how Obama may be looking to get the ball rolling on immigration reform. And the general description of his plan seems to amount to increasing border patrol and cracking down on illegal immigration. During the campaign trail one of the things he discussed was a path to citizenship, but with a pretty steep burden: you’d have to learn English, pay back taxes for as long as you’ve been in the country, pay a fine, and only then would you “get in line, behind everyone who came here legally” to become a citizen. Of course, that was something discussed during the campaign trail. The “official” Administration hasn’t even released a plan yet, but has merely made mention of strengthening border control, and the article is little more than speculation.

Yet some Republican activists have already denounced Obama’s (currently non-existent) plan as “dangerous” and “amnesty.” Seriously.

Safety vs. Freedom

Posted on by
7

I’ve always thought that safety and freedom were somewhat incompatible goals. You can have a very safe society, but next to no rights. (A police state.) Or you can go the opposite way, and have a very free society, one in which no one can stop me from detonating nuclear bombs. But there’s a middle ground, I think, where we have a good deal of freedom, but are also pretty safe.

I’ve always thought that airports were a good example of starting to give up too much freedom to get a little safety. While I’m certainly not eager to give up safety, I could do with a slightly less-strict set of policies in airports.

But here’s an even better example. A town in Arkansas is drawing criticism for what seems to be a non-stop curfew, in which anyone on the streets is stopped and investigated. (It’s not terribly clear to me what’s meant by the curfew, though: I think of a curfew as it being illegal to be in public during a certain time, so a 24/7 curfew would basically mean you couldn’t leave your house. And they kind of suggest that, but it seems people are also going on with their daily lives?)

Is it safe? Very much so, it seems. Violence is way down, and they’ve made lots of arrests. But would you want to live there, where walking to the store was cause for the police to detain you? (The telling quote is, “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK…”)

Politicians

Posted on by
1

Have you heard about McCain’s new ad? It’s on his main page, though there seems to be no way to direct-link to it. Somewhat bizarrely, it starts off with video of throngs of cheering Obama supporters, and calls him the biggest celebrity in the world, flashing images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. (By the way, Paris Hilton apparently had no knowledge she was being used in the ad; using one’s likeness in commercials is generally illegal, though I have no clue if political campaigns are exempted.)

It then goes on to say, “But is he ready to lead?,” before attacking Obama for opposing offshore drilling (I’ll save that rant for another time), but, more significantly, talks about his plan to raise taxes on electricity. Yipes, that’s bad! Raising taxes now? On electricity?!

There’s one problem, though. It’s not at all true.

Newsweek has a good article explaining where McCain’s campaign got the quote about Obama wanting to raise taxes on electricity. In an interview, he was asked, “Have you considered other funding sources, say taxing emerging energy forms, for example, say a penny per kilowatt hour on wind energy?” You can read the quote for yourself, but his answer was essentially that taxing renewable energy was an awful idea; taxing ‘dirty’ energy would make more sense, but even that isn’t the real solution to funding education. And yet, if you quote just one sentence from the middle with no context, you can make it seem like he’s saying that we need to raise taxes on electricity. Except that he was making the exact opposite point.

When Obama’s campaign criticized the ad as baseless FUD, McCain then went on to accuse Obama of “playing the race card.”

Main Ideas

Posted on by
Reply

Do you remember standardized tests, especially in grade school and middle school, where they’d have you read a passage of text and you’d have to identify the “main idea” of the writing? Most of the choices were things that were in the passage, but only one of them was plausibly the main idea, whereas the rest were trivial details.

My takeaway from this WaPo* article? Phthalates is a really funny word, but virtually impossible to pronounce. You can make the “Ffff” sound, and the “Thhhh” sound, but there needs to be a vowel in between. The two sounds can’t be put together. It’d be like starting a word with “qb”—a bunch of valid letters strung together to form something nonsensical. (Realistically, I imagine it’s pronounced “Fih-thal-ates,” but note that the pronunciation adds in a vowel sound that’s not actually there.) If you attempt to pronounce the word, be careful that you don’t spit on anyone.

So what is the main idea of the article?

(a) Congress is considering banning phthalates, a toxic chemical in children’s toys.
(b) The move is seen as evidence of a shifting tide, swinging to the side of consumers and away from manufacturers.
(c) Phthalates is a really funny word.
(d) President Bush has said he opposes the bill banning poisonous children’s toys.

Hint: remember the old “When in doubt, guess C” adage about multiple-choice questions? They say that for a very good reason.

* I spent 5 whole days in Washington. I’m allowed to use the “WaPo” abbreviation, because I’m an insider now.

Iraq

Posted on by
3

I keep hearing people on the right reiterating that “the surge worked,” so that withdrawing from Iraq would be surrendering. To me, this is a non sequitur.

First of all, there’s the simple question of why we’re at war. We went in as a pre-emptive strike against Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. We took him out, and although we never did find evidence to support that he was building up his WMD arsenal, we did take out a cruel tryant. I’m a little unclear why we’re still there: the Iraqi threat has been neutralized, and Iraq’s got a sovereign government in place. Al Queda keeps coming to try to attack our troops, but the fact that our troops have become targets is hardly a reason to stay in Iraq.

Now here’s the thing! If the Iraqi government wants us to stay, I’m all for allowing our volunteer troops to keep helping them. But it’s being widely reported that they want us out. While I trust this was an unfortunate accident, it suggests that Iraq has wanted us to leave for some time: “It also bolstered calls from Iraqi politicians to pressure the American military to leave Iraq after this year, when a United Nations mandate expires, unless the United States agrees to permit its soldiers to be subject to criminal prosecution under Iraqi law for attacks on civilians.”

I’d ask: if we’re at war, who are we at war with? It’s the Iraq War, but we’re supposed to be helping Iraq. We’ve taken out Saddam, and most of the violence is directed at our troops: staying in Iraq isn’t going to fix anything.

It’s not “surrendering” or “giving up” to recognize that you achieved your goal a long time ago, and that all you’re doing now is making things worse. It sounds great to try to attack your opponent for that, but it’s simply not true.

Nas’ Black President

Posted on by
2

Rapper Nas has a new song, Black President [obscene lyrics, NSFW]. I don’t give it high marks musically, but it’s interesting to me for two reasons. The first is that rap music actually addressing contemporary issues is rare. (Though it’s not entirely unheard of: Changes, for example.) The seconds is that the song is about Obama.

As I said, don’t set your standards too high if you listen to it, and don’t even waste your time watching the video, which seems to just be a montage of images of Nas. Do take care to read the lyrics carefully: a lot of people seem to miss the leading “They said…” and interpret the song as being against Obama. And the “Although it seems heaven-sent, we ain’t ready to see a black President” is actually from Tupac’s Changes, not an assertion that Nas is making.

What troubles me about the song:

Whats the black pres thinking on election night,
Is it how can i protect my life? Protect my wife? Protect my rights?
…
KKK is like what the f—, loading they guns up, loading up mine too,
Ready to ride ’cause I’m riding with my crew, he dies we die too

I read an article a while ago, citing absolutely no evidence, saying that there’s a persistent belief among African-Americans that Obama would be assassinated if elected. Hillary played into it, too, if inadvertently, both when some speaker in NH at a campaign event made a comment to the effect of, “Some have compared Obama to JFK, but let’s not forget what happened to him” (which Hillary denounced), but also when she said the same thing about Bobby Kennedy to explain why she was staying the race when it was clear she couldn’t win. It’s creepy how often it comes up, and then you add in the creepy amount of parallels to Lincoln…

And I find this snippet interesting, too:

Gotta do what we gotta do,
We ain’t got no governors comin’ through to help,
Anything we need, we gotta do for self,
New improved JFK on the way…

You may recall Kanye West’s spontaneous George Bush doesn’t care about black people remark during a Red Cross fundraiser, which then led to the (highly profane, thus NSFW) video, George Bush Don’t Like Black People song. While I’m not necessarily supporting the claim that Bush was overtly racist, I think it’s historically significant: not only was the whole Katrina event horribly mismanaged (the lyrics to the song include, “If it’d had been Connecticut, he’d have been there twice as fast”), but the whole deal with shooting looters (who were inevitably black) makes it entirely understandable that African-Americans may have felt a tad bit alienated.

Again, I’m hardly in agreement with everything put forth in the song, but I think it’s culturally significant. It’s not an advertisement or a campaign song, but just his perspective on the state of affairs. And I think it was interesting to look at.

Missing the Point

Posted on by
Reply

As I research candidates, I keep coming across a past proposed (U.S.) Constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m hardly for flag desecration, and would be appalled if any American did so. But do people not see the irony that the flag represents our freedoms as Americans, especially our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, and thus freedom of expression? To protect the flag from trampling, people are trying to trample the First Amendment. And I wouldn’t vote for anyone who values the flag itself more highly than what it stands for.

Wikipedia lists the times it’s come up as a Congressional vote, which is frighteningly often. There was H.J.RES.12 (“House Joint Resolution 12”) in 2007, introduced by PA’s John Murtha, with 70 consponsors: no local politicians cosponsored it, but Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave both supported it. It had a parallel in the Senate, but with only one sponsor. Neither bill appears to have come to a vote.

In the previous (109th) Congress, House Joint Res. 10 passed 286-130; the vote rolecall is here indicating that Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley both voted for it. Its parallel, Senate Joint Res. 12, failed in the Senate, though it failed narrowly at 66-34; it’s not clear to me exactly what it needed, but it seems like it may have been one vote shy of passing with 2/3. Rollcall for that vote is here: Judd Gregg, John McCain, Harry Reid (!), and John Sununu all voted for it.

Fight the Smears

Posted on by
2

The last paper I ever wrote in college was for my Power and Propaganda course, and addressed the propaganda being hurled against Obama. One thing I addressed was that many of the criticisms of him were blatant lies. It’d be like if I started posting here that John McCain said, “Thank God for the Nazis!” and President Bush met with McCain and used “the N-word” to refer to Obama. Total fabrications as part of a smear campaign.

The problem is that they work. I’m going from memory, but if memory serves me correctly, 13% of people in a recent poll said that they thought Obama was a Muslim. Soon it was being reported that he was sworn in on the Qu’ran, too. Of course, the Muslim rumors would soon be contradicted by trying to label him racist because his pastor said some crazy things, and the fact that he was sworn in on the Qu’ran would be refuted by photographs showing him with his hand on the Bible when being sworn in.

Obama Singing the National AnthemThere was also the big row over the photograph of him “refusing to say the pledge,” with some versions of the chain letter or website alleging that he refuses to do it for religion reasons; one even said that he didn’t know the words. In actuality, Obama was singing the national anthem, as a video of the event shows.

There’s another one about him hiding his birth certificate because he’s not actually a citizen. (If you want to get technical, John McCain is the one who wasn’t born in the US… Though it’d be asinine to argue that he’s not a US citizen because he was born on a US military base.)

The Obama campaign has finally launched Fight the Smears, a page refuting the utter falsehoods against him. The latest one seems to be alleging a videotape of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey.” Frankly, I could see this being done in a non-racist manner, but it’s a moot point, because none of the <sarcasm>reputable</sarcasm> sources claiming to have seen / possessing the tape have released it, and because one person has some pointed allegations of exactly where the tape was filmed, most of which seem fabricated.

It’s totally cool with me if you’d prefer to vote for McCain. (Well, I’d still disagree, but I’d at least respect that you had a rational difference of opinion.) Obama isn’t a Muslim, terrorist, or unpatriotic. John McCain isn’t a rapist and he doesn’t eat babies for breakfast. In a time when the truth is so sorely missing, can we please try to stick to reality this election?

On Religion

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s Cold Case Files included a bit with a guy who described himself as a devout member of the “religious right.” A poor man, a comparatively wealthy farmer let him stay in his home. The poor, religious person decided that the farmer was mean and shot him in the back of the back of a head with a rifle.

He then disposed of the body, and neighbors approached him to ask what was going on. He fled–taking his Bible with him. He actually hid very well, and was found decades later. Officers said that it was hard to get him to talk about anything other than the saving power of Jesus Christ. He eventually confessed, saying that he felt no remorse for the killing. His reason? He thought the guy was mean, and he was doing the world a favor.

Although I surely remain ignorant about many complex belief systems, could I boldly propose that any time your religion seems to justify killing someone, you’re grossly misunderstanding your scripture? I know the Christian Bible does not condone shooting mean people in the back of a head with a rifle, and I’m pretty sure that blowing up abortion clinics is missing the point, albeit in a very ironic situation. And while I’m not all that familiar with it, it seems that the Qu’ran also warns against blowing up buildings.

It just boggles my mind that religions with basic tenets such as “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Thou shall not kill” (and the Qu’ran, if I understand it, is similar!) get twisted into promoting such atrocities.

Location Error vs. Time Error

Posted on by
2

This post christens my newest category, Thinking Aloud. It’s meant to house random thoughts that pop into my head, versus fully fleshed-out ideas. Thus it’s meant more as an invitation for comments than something factual or informative, and is likely full of errors…

Aside from “time geeks,” those who deal with it professionally, and those intricately familiar with the technical details, most people probably are unaware that each of the GPS satellites carries an atomic clock on board. This is necessary because the way the system works, in a nutshell, by triangulating your position from various satellites, where an integral detail is knowing precisely where the satellite is at a given time. More precise time means a more precise location, and there’s not much margin of error here. The GPS satellites are also syncronized daily to the “main” atomic clock (actually a bunch of atomic clocks based on a few different standards), so the net result is that the time from a GPS satellite is accurate down to the nano-second level: they’re within a few billionths of a second of the true time. Of course, GPS units, since they don’t cost millions of dollars, rarely output time this accurately, so even the best units seem to have “only” microsecond accuracy, or time down to a millionth of a second. Still, that’s pretty darn precise.

Thus many–in fact, most–of the stratum 1 NTP servers in the world derive their time from GPS, since it’s now pretty affordable and incredibly accurate.

The problem is that GPS isn’t perfect. Anyone with a GPS probably knows this. It’s liable to be anywhere from a foot off to something like a hundred feet off. This server (I feel bad linking, having just seen what colocation prices out there are like) keeps a scatter plot of its coordinates as reported by GPS. This basically shows the random noise (some would call it jitter) of the signal: the small inaccuracies in GPS are what result in the fixed server seemingly moving around.

We know that an error in location will also cause (or, really, is caused by) an error in time, even if it’s miniscule.

So here’s the wondering aloud part: we know that the server is not moving. (Or at least, we can reasonably assume it’s not.) So suppose we define one position as “right,” and any deviation in that as inaccurate. We could do what they did with Differential GPS and “precision-survey” the location, which would be very expensive. But we could also go for the cheap way, and just take an average. It looks like the center of that scatter graph is around -26.01255, 28.11445. (Unless I’m being dense, that graph seems ‘sideways’ from how we typically view a map, but I digress. The latitude was also stripped of its sign, which put it in Egypt… But again, I digress.)

So suppose we just defined that as the “correct” location, as it’s a good median value. Could we not write code to take the difference in reported location and translate it into a shift in time? Say that six meters East is the same as running 2 microseconds fast? (Totally arbitrary example.) I think the complicating factors wouldn’t whether it was possible, but knowing what to use as ‘true time,’ since if you picked an inaccurate assumed-accurate location, you’d essentially be introducing error, albeit a constant one. The big question, though, is whether it’s worth it: GPS is quite accurate as it is. I’m a perfectionist, so there’s no such thing as “good enough” time, but I have to wonder whether the benefit would even show up.