edumacation

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/05/21/2008-05-21_bronx_8thgraders_boycott_practice_exam_b-1.html

Why was this not a bigger story. I'd like to also know what the outcome of it has been, should anyone be following it. When I have more time, I will look into the particulars.

While the story makes it sound like the protest was organized or suggested by a corrupting teacher, that to me actually seems like a good idea. Teaching to standardized tests has no basis on how people learn nor is it an effective method of education. People can very easily learn techniques to cram information into their short term memories and then "forget" what they learned a few minutes after. I've seen people try to cram vocabulary words for SATs for example. What's the point? What the tests were originally designed for is to measure the relative academic meritocracy of individuals who have some academic aptitude (as determined by college admissions boards that is). Not to enforce upon people a standardized means of education.

In any case, this silly notion has actually gained credibility in BOTH political parties. Meaning our education system is probably good and fucked for the foreseeable future. I realize there is importance in defining a 'bad' school district or 'bad' teachers and some reason to hold such things accountable. However, in the absence of meaningful educational choices for parents (and their children), such accountability is worthless. We have such choices in some level for college, made more flexible by the awarding of scholarships or financial aid.

Somehow this meritocracy system for college has not translated downward. Instead we are infected socially with the ideas that 1) all children are inherently capable of being academically valuable. and 2) all schools are/should be equally capable of creating this in a uniform and standardized way. The first notion is quite obviously idiotic. People are naturally different in their skills and developmental abilities, and of course, our social system is set up to repress actual academia (despite parental wishes for future Nobel laureates). And the second problem is that schools should not be uniform. It should be rather easy to compare to one another, yes. But there are methods to compare universities to one another without them using the same basic means of imparting knowledge and experience to their respective student bodies (namely that some schools are known for specific strains of academic thought). Why can't we somehow adopt a similar notion for primary education beyond the basic necessities (which ought to be done by elementary school anyway, certainly by middle school).

the drug war continues

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_re_us/drug_abuse

There's several key points that are easy to mock.

"The earlier you use drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, the more likely you are to have a lifelong problem," Walters said.

Since I have a doctor parent, I've long since known this is incorrect, at least slightly. The actual likelihood for having a lifelong problem is typically inherent to your person and genetics. It has nothing to do with when you pick up a drug habit, whether it is at 12 or 47. If you pick it up at a young age, you are more likely to continue, but not because you were young when you started. It's simply a matter of whether you are the type of person that becomes addicted to substance(s). Usually this is easily determined from family histories. It does mean that if you start as a child and are this type of person you will have a difficult lifelong problem to deal with. There are vast, overwhelming numbers of experimental teens and young adults who never again try these substances. I think that suggests there's something else that makes a drug habit appear other than when one experiments with it. The fact that someone who is in charge of the administration's drug policy (Walters) thinks otherwise bothers me, because it isn't consistent with the facts.

"A World Health Organization survey of 17 countries this year showed that people in the U.S. were more likely than people elsewhere to have tried illicit drugs. The U.S. tied New Zealand for the highest rate of marijuana use and far outpaced other countries on cocaine use, the survey found."
-- Duh. I'm not sure if the survey included England or Holland (presumably). But my own studies of those countries found that their progressive treatment/distribution attitudes actually resulted in far lower drug abuse levels than we have here and, more importantly, less crime as a result of drug abuse and drug trafficking. England and Switzerland give out methadone or even heroin to addicts (and in far greater personal quantities than we do) and have far less heroin users than we do. More importantly, they're usually functional people capable of having jobs or conducting daily affairs because their addiction is being monitored and more or less under control.

"higher levels of alcohol...a higher minimum legal alcohol drinking age than many comparable developed countries" -- I still don't understand why alcohol is considered a separate agent from narcotics. It has distinct physiological effects, yes, but the sociological ones are roughly similar (if one considers what happens when say alcohol distribution is banned or restricted). More importantly, the fact that alcohol consumption is illegal at those younger ages puts a higher contact rate with other illicit activities (such as those illegal narcotics). As I've put forth previously, it would be a far wiser course to bring up children with a sense of moderation as it pertains to substances. If they don't like them, so be it. If you (as a parent or concerned citizen) don't want them to partake, you are welcome to that opinion and are free to express the reasons for such restraint. I'm not sure that it's always necessary to totally abstain. I personally find drunk/stoned people annoying, but there are other anti-social factors involved in my determination, meaning there are probably times where it can be an exercise of relatively harmless fun for other people (and not around me). There are similar social problems as far as human sexuality. A topic for other times.

"More than half the people who tried drugs for the first time in 2007 used marijuana"
The only reason alcohol or marijuana is at all a 'gateway' drug is because it creates market connections with people who sell other varieties of mind-altering substances. If not directly, then certainly by proxy (such as wandering through the neighbourhood to find the pot contact). The type of people willing to experiment with harder substances would have done so anyway (see addiction studies). One would expect a much higher number of variations of drug use if marijuana was somehow 'not good enough' for the average drug user as the gateway theory implies. The average drug addict, perhaps. In the average drug experimenter, it seems to work just fine.

There are reasons to be relatively concerned with the amount of narcotics and alcohol individuals consume. There are plenty of social problems which I see cause for alarm or disdain (not least of which is because I don't participate in such things). That doesn't mean our first line of defence should be interdiction and distributive bans. Or that our defensive tactics should ignore basic medical knowledge about drugs/drug addiction and the extended social consequences of our policies. There is greater danger in asserting that abstaining from such substances, even by force, is the correct method of living. Not everyone feels/thinks that way, for reasons which are too numerous to elaborate on.

Why I am an Infidel

I realize Bertrand Russell wrote one of these a few decades ago, but this is basically my own story.

At some point I had logically concluded that there was not any basis for belief. There was no evidence. There was no reason in it. This wasn't something I needed to put a ton of thought into. Those who have somehow read my lengthy treatise on moral reasoning will probably recognize the difference between me thinking a lot on a subject and me concluding from limited consideration of facts. The actual final decision was probably reached around 8 or 9, though obviously there's some scholarship since. There are perhaps those who would argue there is reason in faith (I will address this point some other time), but this does depend on critical personal factors. Personally I found no reason in it. The simple explanation I had available to answer people who asked (and there were some throughout my lower education), was that there was no evidence. That this was in fact a sufficient explanation does not seem to occur to others, but in most cases this was politely accepted.
There were however significant exceptions. The first was a discussion in which a friend (who shall remain unnamed) made the claim that my belief was ridiculous because 95% of people believe in some sort of god (it might have been 99%, it was outrageously high either way). His conclusion was that if I held my opinions, it must mean everyone else is wrong which was a horribly arrogant opinion to make. Now, considering my general persona is disdain for automatic conformity, this wasn't a terribly useful argument. But it did spur some research into the topic. The first and most obvious conclusion was the percentage of 'unbelievers' is considerably higher than 5% of the world. It's much higher than that even in America. The percentage is somewhere between 15% and 25% (and roughly the same in America itself), depending on how one accounts for religious persecution in places like China or the Middle East. Using a distorted figure to make secular findings seem obscure or against impossible odds is intellectually dishonest. And of course, breeds exactly the type of automatic conformity that I'm not a big fan of. I was not pleased to discover this, but I do not feel that the deception was intentional on the part of my friend (rather whoever fed him the line, whatever pastor/minister he had). I don't hold it against him, but we have had less and less contact from the migration of time and life anyway. On occasion this is unfortunate.

Christianity makes up the lion's share of religions with over 2 billion served. Many Christians will be both surprised and reassured to know this based on previous conversations often expecting, of all things, Hindus to outnumber them. Agnostics/atheists/secularists are difficult to define but basically share one major attribute: they don't believe in any God with any degree of certainty. This was around 1.5 billion people globally. Islam was next (1.1B). The other religions are generally not actively engaged in proselytizing others and none exceeded the half billion point (yes, even those dreaded Vishnu worshipers). Buddhists, Hindus and Jews for example generally accept new members, but don't bother recruiting new ones in the same way as Muslims or Christians do. Further historical research discovered that the principle reasons behind this were political. Testifying to one's faith or not in some way disregarding it at moments of truth is considered important in most religions. Attempting to sway others into your church is however a completely political means of attaining power (and is not consistent with either Islam or Christianity anyway). Both major religions attest to the importance of free will in the decision to turn toward (or away from) God, and not the means of coercion or force to compel this end. Both have subsequently openly and theologically violated this precondition at various points in their history. The relative importance of this finding was pounded home by an argument with another friend (also unnamed and not on here) in which he claimed that Buddhists do not go to heaven because they do not believe in Jesus. While there are several theological mandates in old testament tradition that hold up God as a jealous being incapable of accepting others, I'm not sure that this is a mainstream Christian mandate (I'm pretty sure Catholics don't hold this for example). I'm quite certain it's not an Islamic mandate (excepting that Muslims who convert out of Islam are punishable..fear isn't exactly interesting means of holding my beliefs either). Besides, it seems awfully arrogant to presume to know what God does or how people are to be judged anyway. Given the precondition that it is arrogant to assume one is right and everyone else is wrong, there are an awful lot of people who are wrong. Basically everyone who believes in heaven and hell is condemned by some other faith and those people who don't are likewise condemned by people who have such beliefs.

I felt it was important next to understand how religions began to take hold of societies as opposed to various individual codes or mystical investigations into the uncontrollable events of the ancient world (such as weather or cataclysm). Historical research into theological practices became the next subject of importance as this line of thinking directly relates to the historical evolution of religions and the political institutions they spawned. Ancient (pagan) priesthoods were essentially models of authority, using the figure of god to speak with great authority on matters like property or women (usually considered property). The means of religion was often held to establish the divinity of leadership and create unquestionable support for the often severe social stratification that emerged as those leaders took more and more to honor themselves off the labors of their subjects. This process continued even as leaders established more secular origins or instead called upon some divine process to establish the rights of dynastic kingdoms. Politics and religion have always made bedfellows. The innovation of separation was a Western instituted idea (starting with philosophers like Socrates or Aristotle) and actually managed to become a seedling in religious doctrine in Christianity. At least while it was a dominated practice persecuted by the Romans. The very fact that the Christian church eventually became settled in the ancient imperial city of Rome, rather than a more locally important holy city like Jerusalem, indicates the political nature of the movement by its leaders.

I suspect most people of faith are disturbed at seeing religious politics in general, preferring instead their own private ministrations. This is laudable. My readings of most theological scholars is that this is precisely the individual purpose of religion: to learn how to orient one's self toward others and toward ourselves (and of course, in the process toward God). The reason none of the major current religions espouse importance on priesthoods or even the necessity of such is that they are, in fact, counter-revolutions to pre-dominating authorities (such as the pantheon of Roman or Greek civilizations). It would make no sense to seek authority from such people on a new divine process. That they have created institutions is largely from political interventionism. It is true that these can be founded upon, and generally do, conducting works of public good and decency to demonstrate the charity and goodwill engendered by people of that shared faith. I'd prefer that this is the usual use of religious associations and have usually found it to be the case personally (certainly from people I am associated freely with who are strongly religious). But that's not how such institutions came about in the first place, it's merely a convenient and useful byproduct of the existence of such institutions.

The most damning effect of religious institutions (and perhaps the reason I was turned off at a young age to them) is the means of mobilizing faithful political support for various means of controlling people outside the congregation itself. This is probably the most significant reason I am Libertarian and not at all interested in Republicanism for its strong ties to faith-based initiatives. I don't see how this is a justifiable use of religion, to impose order and morality upon other people who do not hold the same views. It is acceptable practice to argue, and to demonstrate your own views, but there is no inherent righteousness in declaring others to be sinful, immoral or wrong, to judge the behavior of others yourself and to then declare their actions illegal through the political process. There are innumerable commands or parables in the bible itself, for example, which declare this to be a sin in and of itself.

Unfortunately there are numerous edicts which violate this principle on several issues: the Drug War, Prohibition, abortion, homosexuality, birth control, pre-marital sexual relations (age restrictions on sexual behaviors), prohibitions of specific sex acts (between consenting adults), not to mention the battle over evolutionary theory in science classes, the prevention of sex education in favor of abstinence-only, etc. I have vigorously opposed such initiatives and I freely support religious peoples (and others) demonstrating a need for such things, but only where they can demonstrate an actual legal need for such things as it would necessarily improve societal conditions (and not where it would in someway satisfy their own sense of moral decency). I see no necessary condition between imposing our private sensibilities onto the private domain of other people, so long as it remains the private domain or to engage in legal acts which restrict the ability of people to practice such private acts (usually a common behavior in anti-homosexual laws for example by banning gay unions/marriages or restricting the rights of said unions). All of this is in spite of the fact that I myself am engaged in few, if any, of these supposed moral injustices. I do not use drugs, I do not drink, I wouldn't be in favor of abortions personally (though probably I'd accept someone who had one on my behalf, should that cause arise), I am not homosexual, etc. The people who partake of these activities are not my concern unless they make it my concern by acting in a harmful way; such as by endangering my life by driving while intoxicated..or on their cell phone. I feel that's an important distinction. Others may disagree, but I challenge them to demonstrate that legal restrictions on such activities actually dissuade social harms from occurring and do not in point of fact precipitate other social harms from occurring. The drug war is my most popular example herein, but I could very easily sum up a series of problems posed by restricting homosexuals from certain rights.

There are legal and moral grounds for a number of moral principles that are commonly found in religious doctrines (such as don't murder, rape or steal). None of these however require that people hold religious backgrounds to arrive at the inescapable conclusion that these are generally immoral and should not be done, despite whatever claims of origin they have from religious scholars. It simply makes more sense to organize a diverse and large society in that way. Put another way, why would people want to live in a society where they could be murdered randomly by another person without some just cause (such if as they attacked the other person or their kin physically). Or why would people wish to live in a society where anyone could sexually engage us at anytime, regardless of wish to do so..or why would we wish to live in a society where our possessions could be taken without merit or warning while we work to raise our families (historically our crops, everybody farmed). We would instead live in solitude or in much smaller communities around people who we would trust not to partake of these and to help defend us against those who would (barbarians historically). In other words, one doesn't have to be religious to arrive at many moral conclusions and to live accordingly. The fact that we use secular laws to attempt enforce these conclusions only makes it easier. The fact that religious peoples would use secular laws to enforce their own unique conclusions however is appalling to me and a principle reason why I hold no interest in personal faith because of this potential for manipulation of opinions, and the use of coercive force to impose them on others.

None of these investigations really led me to discern however the purpose of faith itself for other people. So I started reading the actual texts (or rather translations of them, I don't read in Aramaic, Hindi, Arab-Aramaic or ancient Hebrew). I found there a mass of stories. Personally I found little difference between the premises of ancient mythology (usually the polytheistic religions of Greece, Norse, Egypt, etc) and the mythological tales of Christianity, Hindus or Islam. All of them root in metaphysical wonder for many objects within the story. The endowment of supernatural powers is usually a critical feature for having something to worship in the first place for example (and it is curious that Islam generally lacks 'miracles' in this respect). Within each faith's principle texts I found a number of powerful inconsistencies between the words of their prophets and the behavior of the people who supposedly follow them. Gandhi has a quotation where he declares "I like your Christ, your Christians are so unlike your Christ". This seems to be a good summation of my interpretations of religion and religious peoples. I rather liked the stories about Jesus or Mohammad (some more than others). There was much to be admired or learned in them. The trouble seems to be that few people understood what they were trying to say, often taking specific instances out of context or not understanding that a generalization of behavior is rather difficult to achieve. There's a reason that analogy and parable are so common in philosophy and theological text: people have to relate to the content before they're able to practice it at all. This is an important lesson: CONTEXT. The Bible or the Qu'ran were written in specific contexts. There are ways to interpret those contexts into the modern world and there are ways to take it literally and presume that things held as true then are still true now. In fact, a good number of inquisitive peoples have shown a number of religious dogmas to be based on the hokey superstitions of the people who founded the religion (or the people around the person who did the prophesying) or subsequent adaptations as the religions sought to convert new peoples. For example, there is no mention in the Bible of when Jesus was actually born (the specific date). By tradition we celebrate this on Christmas (December 25th) and there is some scholastic support to show this is at least seasonably accurate. But the presence of several pagan rituals on or about the same time frame indicates that the official date was probably an evolution of conversion politics in particular the Roman worship of Sol Invictus and the association of festivals in late December to honor him. It's far easier to convert people when there is a similarity of customs (even if it becomes an exchange of customs). Does that make celebration of Jesus irrelevant, no. In fact I find Christmas to be a worthwhile holiday for people to celebrate, regardless of why because of the natural utility of practicing charity and selfless behaviors. But it does demonstrate that not everything that comes out of a religious dogma or doctrine is based on factual data. It can often be a matter of convenience or the presence of superstitious traditions overriding the general utility of the message.

Islam suffers from similar issues as it adopts the traditional lifestyle of the Bedouin nomads and merchants of the Arabian peninsula and attempts to proclaim this a superior or godly manner of living. The fact that many particulars of Islam (such as the style of women's dress) are ignored in say, Indonesia or America, by modern Muslims may be offensive to some, but it is a perfectly legitimate way of interpreting one's faith. In fact, there's some scholarship on Islam which demonstrates that some of the more rigorous codes (particularly regarding martyrdom and women) arise from translation issues from Arab-Aramaic to medieval Arabic. Words which would be more liberally translated are used in a specific manner most comfortable to the people of the time. For example, the idea of women covering their faces and bodies could be just an edict that they should be chaste with the image of a belt fastened about the waist (not the harsh chastity belt, a simple belt suffices). The strict and harsh interpretation leads to a good deal of feminist aggression toward Islamic countries, but I doubt there are many feminists who would argue that women/humans SHOULD be overtly sexual or that there is no sensible reason to protect against undesirable sexual attention (desired sexual attention is a different story). Simple use of linguistic changes or language abuses in translation could very easily pose similar problems as the Bible or other canonical texts have been passed down over the centuries. And in most cases, the text was received from decades of oral tradition, further amplifying the problem of interpretive scholarship as information passes much less precisely without written records through the varieties of individual inflection upon the original story. I often wondered how Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 would deal with that problem even with individuals memorizing segments of banned books.

After some exposure to the Bible, the Qu'ran, Vedas and others, I came to a few conclusions about religion in general. One: religion is evolved from a political institution. The 10 Commandments for example are largely related to the issue of private property laws at the time, at least if people read the originals and not the paraphrased (political) modern versions. Adultery for example had to do with the value of virgin women as property when married off, not the (useful) fidelity of monogamous human beings. Maybe the modern version is more useful and respectful to women, but it still doesn't really manage to imply a moral code that makes sense. In fact it's often used to imply that sexual relations of any kind are a dirty act, and how people are somehow able to rationalize that they are okay once we have rings on our fingers after years of being told otherwise is a difficult leap. Two: religion typically uses metaphysical and untestable (supernatural) explanations for the unexplained events of the times in which the religion was founded and grew into. Superstition is not my speed and without empirical rational data. I saw no need to accept as unquestioned fact the stories of unwitnessed events (or even witnessed miracles, certainly the explanation of such). When there is a large amount of empirical observation and scientific tests into what were previously mystical events, even documented biblical disasters, I question the need to accept without reservation superstitious explanations for such things. Three: Religion's main purpose and only viable use is on the personal (micro) level. The ability of religious people to organize for good should not be discounted, but the propensity of religious authorities to abuse such organization for nefarious aims seems to historically exceed this behavior. It is reasonable for theological study to occur, and for people who wish to gather to demonstrate or reaffirm their faith to use organized religion as a basis for this behavior. It is not reasonable to extend the belief that this faith is the only sensible way to live or to impose it forcibly upon the will of others. Therefore, organized macro uses of religion are fewer and should engender, even from those within the faith itself, the question of external motivations when they occur. Four: It isn't necessary for secularists or atheists to attempt to remove from public discourse or public arenas all religious directives or appearances, but rather only those which violate fundamental human rights to free associations and freedom of worship (or the absence of such). That's a war we (secularists) do have hopeless odds on, at least in my lifetime, if we want to remove from public life all traces of religion. It doesn't really seem necessary anyway, much as I railed against the forced removal of second-hand smoke from Ohio's bars and businesses despite finding it more annoying than religions.

This does however include removing from scientific inquiry the necessity of studying God, who as a supernatural or metaphysical construct, is not within the bounds of scientific study anyway. Where there remain questions regarding the interpretation of events or the implausible explanations of supernatural causes, more study and more observation is required to elicit answers (not the lazy or overly simplified answer that we can't know or God did it). Most secularists are more concerned with real (physical) questions that have answers, such as how people should relate to one another. There's a Confucian story where he was asked by one of his students "How should I please God?". Confucius replied "There are many matters here concerning man that we should not bother with pleasing God". In further explanation: there's so much out there and so much we as individuals must do to accord ourselves with others, that there's no reason to even worry about what God wants from us. Much less try to ascertain what that might be, and certainly not to proclaim that we know for certain what that is and to direct others as to what we "know" about the uncertain nature of God. People who live in certainty of this may indeed be happier than people who doubt (or don't care), but I question their ability to live in accordance with those beliefs every time one attempts to impose them on someone else.

figures

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/29/palin.republican.vp.candidate/index.html

I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be Romney, Huckabee, or Pawlenty (the three most talked about choices). I had a feeling it would probably be Palin, but I wasn't sure enough to blog on it when I got home yesterday. I would have probably made some kudos on the prognostication effort. It was really the only choice on the board for McCain that I'd heard at least. He could have gone completely off the map. Romney was precisely the old style GOP that McCain tends to oppose. Huckabee is the second most divisive candidate (other than Hillary), and Pawlenty would just need a Democrat backer willing to run a video clip of a well-known bridge collapse to demonstrate a point (he was from Minnesota for those that don't know who the hell this is). I suppose he could have picked Rice, but it doesn't seem like she's that interested and it wouldn't have created some feeling of separation between Bush-McCain.

As with Biden for Obama, this really doesn't do anything. Obama could have just picked Biden as his Sec State to shore up his perceived foreign policy weakness. Outside of that, Biden isn't really known for anything in the Senate in the general public. I was more amused at the fact that Obama's text message announcement about his unexciting choice of VP went out at 3am in some cases and hence probably pissed off hundreds of thousands of young people. This was similar to the Clinton ad with the phone ringing at 3am...and ringing and ringing.. I'm not sure that the idea that NO ONE answers the phone after 6 or 7 rings, even at 3am, is something you want to subliminally plant in your audience. Democrats seem to have trouble with those wee hours of the morning.

Concurrently, I'm not sure that running a woman VP candidate out there was as important as tossing out the idea of experience as a point of contention in the election for McCain. The demographic of women most likely to vote Republican were probably going to do so without a female VP. I'm not sure that the moderate/independent vote is swayed by cheap political movements, which this was in essence a dig at Obama for not picking Hillary Clinton. It will take something like educated sounding responses to policy issues (including foreign policy, something McCain is less versed in than he claims and for which Palin has zero credibility) for Palin to make anything like inroads for moderate voters in the election for McCain's candidacy. And all while trying to shore up McCains' base. In fact, it's sounding more and more like many moderates (and some extremists) may start looking for third parties as Obama's campaign starts to resemble a normal one and McCain's continues to distance itself from moderate/maverick positions in order to score political points. Barr has been nationally polling over 5% in some polls for example. If this is the case, I think it would shake up Washington much more than either candidate claims they will (as they always do make such claims). The idea that we have this easily stratified society into red and blue would be nice to crash down with some other color on the map once in a while.

response to corporate lobbying confusion

"...saying that a lot of government regulation is actually cozy to corporations and is suppressive of new and innovative businesses"


Most of it is. A considerable amount of legislation is written by the lobbying groups. Basic opposition to de-regulation often comes from large corporations who have significant competitive advantages (relative to other companies/small business start-ups). These relative advantages are valued to the cost of consumers and market competition (and possibly to the cost of the corporations themselves at times). The basic idea that regulation is intended to punish corporations is horribly flawed. It can in the short term or will be used to punish specific corporate entities (usually at the behest of a competitor). Think of it this way, a vast percentage of funding of political campaigns comes from lobbyists. A large percentage of lobbying funding comes from corporations seeking to protect large market shares or extract additional markets. Why exactly would politicians seeking re-election endanger their campaign funding to impose punitive regulations. Instead they adopt regulations with marginal or temporary punishments to appease voters while usually exacting some marginal advantage for their specific campaign donors. As examples: Sugar is priced here at three times the world market value because American taxpayers subsidize the purchase of sugar by American producers (and have a tariff on imported sugar). Toyota is specifically written out of the hybrid purchase tax rebate. GM and Ford wanted it that way (because they aren't as competitive with fuel efficient cars). The new regulations on fuel economy supposedly mandate US auto fleet economies by some future date. The regulations are not mandated to increase over time as we approach that date and can even be extended further out into the future at the request of the major auto makers, which they quite obviously will if there's no timetable to incentivize their efforts (reading the fine print on laws rather than listening to the talking heads/politicians helps here). I'm not sure what punitive measures were suggested if they somehow fail to request that additional time that they don't really need, but the point is that our government is often complicit in the failure of a market economy and hasn't been able to make corrective actions to its policies in recent times. In some cases we'd be better off if it got out of the way. In others, we'd benefit from some injections of infrastructural/research funding to boost some obviously useful industries..and then getting out of the way once the barriers are reduced by government.

response to innovation's roots

...Innovation just occurs from exposure to other ideas. The reason it doesn't always become marketable varies by the receptability of the market to it, the skill of marketing the new idea, and the obvious utility of the idea. The reason ideas like electric cars, or initially TV for example often have trouble is that they're either not marketed well or opposed by powerful groups who are well-entrenched in the social infrastructure. There are however plenty of American people who will consume new ideas if someone is willing to bring them to an open market. The reason these ideas "failed" is that we don't have an open market with low barriers to entry in some key sectors of our economy (such as transportation or infrastructure for fuel distribution). Not because having a capitalist society is a bad idea in and of itself. In fact some of those barriers are imposed by government regulation, or by regulation sponsored by non-innovative (ie non-enlightened) corporations. In other words, that wasn't capitalism that you're complaining about.

ID debate final remarks

Why is it that any argument over ID inevitably turns into an argument over the credibility of sources and not at all a discussion of the particular issues being raised by those sources. (there's a lot of name dropping and not much scientific mumbo-jumbo).

I suppose the entire discussion would end much, much sooner if those issues were debated by scientific means with empirical proofs and testable data supports and hence it would be rather boring and one-sided. I haven't seen an issue raised by ID supporters that actually disproves evolutionary theory or any functional mechanism described by it. It's certainly a diverting metaphysical discussion for people who wish to ascertain the nature of the universe without the benefit of factual resources (which is useful if one is in the habit of doing thought experiments). But that's about the extent of its utility as an academic discussion.

response to taxation Q

Ideally that is the point of a tax break on higher incomes; to create injections of business expansion or investment (so the government doesn't have to). The question has been whether or not it has with the current Bush tax cuts (both sets of them, one was marginally useful, the other not so much). A more ideal status would be to tax only profit of a business enterprise (and not inputs like capital expansion). In which case, if the taxes are "raised", you'd not have to pay them (as much) by doing what you'd do anyway: try to grow your business. The larger number of employees or consumers would then pay the tax for you.

Or you could do what large corporations with government monopolies did for decades and waste money by buying golf courses, not using efficiency wages/employee incentives, etc and likewise escape paying taxes.

In any case, if you're running a business for long term growth, it doesn't really matter what the tax rates are now (because they'll probably change several times), it matters what your rate of costs are. I'd be more worried about inflation (depending on what sort of business you run) than taxes. You can always just find a better accountant or buy a politician through a lobbyist group to get around the taxes.

midnight basketball

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/basketball/men/playbyplay?gameId=834

We probably taught a few super criminals to function without sleep by airing the basketball gold medal game at 2:30am, but it was definitely worth staying up for. Nobody played defense consistently making for a nice high scoring romp. Spain finally figured out they needed to zone in the second half but really only got a couple of decent runs together. Good game however.

In other Olympic events, I was impressed more by Bolt more than Phelps. I think that's probably because I was expecting Phelps to win, and generally to dominate. He obviously tired somewhat as the Games went on but there really wasn't ever any doubt (except maybe in the 100m that he barely won). Bolt was insane. I've never seen anyone dominate sprints so completely (at least since Johnson ran the 200m). There wasn't even anyone in the picture in a race where everyone finishes within a few seconds of each other. That's scary fast.

I am reminded of the Seinfeld routine on silver medal winners. (that picture where the guy is leaning in and cheering, I'm that other guy...)

cfc and coal environmentalism

"coal are you kidding, how many more holes do you want in the ozone layer come on we have so many other technologies that we can employ that don't require us to destroy the earth. It should be clear to all by now that fossil fuels are an archaic means of providing energy...lets unstick ourselves from the past and move forward for a change."

I'm pretty sure that it was CFCs and not coal that create problems for ozone and were subsequently banned or at least restricted.

Coal does other things instead.
1) Generates electricity/power inefficiently by burning it.
2) Which then creates air particulates which should either be collected/recycled or else expelled to create pollution (as in the pretty pictures from Beijing or London mid 19th century).
3) That pollution and air quality has several effects which may or may not be playing off one another. For example, the dark particle matter could be refracting solar energy by creating water vapor (cloud cover) as in the case of a volcanic eruption, but not on anything like the same scale. Or the carbon emissions could be trapping solar energy. Neither is a potentially wise course.

If coal can be replaced we could be doing so. The stumbling block as I see it has been getting the infrastructure in place to do it and resolving some issues with energy transfer or storage (such as by creating hydrogen). If it can be cleaned up in the meantime, we should do that as well.