It is the first day of school in the Denver Public Schools today. Parents, myself included, ushered their children to the elementary school in my neighborhood, located teachers, and saw their children into their classrooms. It was a rare moment of personal contact in a world where supporting a non-profit or political campaign often means writing a check, and civic organizations have given way to competing demands from work and family. Donuts and coffee greeted parents on the playing fields as student gathered. Few students appeared to mourn the summer vacation they were leaving behind. We saw many familiar faces of parents and teachers my daughter encountered in kindergarten at the same school last year.
It is the first day of school for my daughter's first grade teacher as well. Her teacher has a particularly daunting challenge. In a world of school choice and transitory parents, her roster had 36 children on it. Last year it was 37, but only 19 materialized on the first day of school. The rest ended up finding a slot in another public school, went private in the end, or simply moved on to a new city or neighborhood without notifying their old school. Who would think to do that? Moreover, when the dust settles, her class will likely have a smaller enrollment than the other first grade classes, which means that she will receive almost every first grader who transfers into our school in the middle of the year.
Although it is only first grade and is a public school, the children are not coming to her as blank slates or as a representative sample of the children in our community. The Denver Public Schools replaced busing, with neighborhood schools supplemented by school choice when the desegregation order that had dominated the district expired. As it happens, my daughter's school is one of the most "choiced into" schools in the district – it is in the top six out of eighty-four elementary schools in the District. This results from a particular combination of factors.
One important, but not particularly obvious, factor is that there is room in the school for children to choice in. My neighborhood is affluent. Many parents with school aged children who live in the neighborhood don’t trust the Denver Public Schools and send their children to private schools or choice into an entirely different neighboring school district. Also, to a great extent as a result of decades of parental concerns with the Denver Public Schools, valid or not, during the school busing era, the character of the neighborhood I live in has been impacted. Lots of childless single people and couples with no school aged children live in the neighborhood. There are far fewer children living in the neighborhood and far fewer of them attending the local public school than there were forty or fifty years ago. Schools further into Southeast Denver have more families with children and more families who choose to stay in the Denver Public School system.
Another important factor is that this school is completely on one side of the invisible lines that segregate Denver. The next schools over to the West and North are not. Parents who choose to choice out of their neighborhood schools are overwhelmingly middle class, white or both, and overwhelmingly live in neighborhoods that are low income, heavily minority in population, or both. (There are actually many Asian children at the school my children attend but, the vast majority of them are adopted. My children are among the few who actually live with an Asian-American parent). Often, they are seeking the closest school that they feel comfortable in (since they have to provide transportation every day in most cases), which is ours.
Our school also has a special program that covers some, but not all of the students. While there is no formal tracking in the first grade, parents do have some say in which program their children are placed in, and this influences the students in the class. My daughter’s class is the “ordinary program”. As a result it tends to have parents who either don’t terribly like the special program at the school, or were not bureaucratically adept (or lucky, there is a lottery) enough to find themselves in the special program.
The result, in my daughter’s case, is a class devoid of extremes. The upper middle class (almost no one admits to being rich), and the ranks of the working class and below are underrepresented. The class is ethnically diverse, although it does not “look like Denver”, but almost no one in the class is poor. As a highly choiced in school, many children aren’t from the neighborhood, and because the decision to undertake a school choice means transporting your children to school every day, it also means that the parents disproportionately are committed to their children’s educations and have at least one parent with a flexible schedule.
Of course, in addition to all of the sorting that goes on, even at the point where one might think that children come as a blank slate into the system, each child in her class has been profoundly influenced by six years of life before the first grade and by their own personalities. There are already children who are prone to be rough and children who are shy. There are notable differences in how prepared the children are to do school work, and notable differences in the children’s social skills. There are children who come from homes with strict discipline and children who come from homes with more relaxed expectations. Some of the children can read already, some can’t, and some are just starting to get the idea. Some are entering the first grade on the old side, others are entering just old enough to be eligible to join the class.
The point of all of this, I suppose, is to make clear that teachers, as important as they are, are not the only or even the primary effect on a child’s educational success. The level playing field is a convenient and socially valuable myth, but it isn’t reality. My daughter’s green teacher isn’t going to ruin my daughter and isn’t going to make her a genius either. In elementary education, enthusiasm can make up for a variety of instructional sins. Indeed, this is probably still true at the graduate level where I am a green professor.
15 August 2005
12 August 2005
Massive Problems.
A large share of the great unsolved problems of fundamental modern physics involve issues of mass and the force that couples to mass, gravity.
Both of the most consenus hypothesized particles to extend the standard model of particle physics, the Higgs Boson and the Graviton, relate to mass. Indeed, it is quite troubling that our theory requires seperate particles to explain inertia and gravitational mass, when the equivalence of the two is one of the foundations of general relativity. Likewise, one of the most notable instances in which a standard model prediction has been proved wrong is that discovery that the neutrino is massive. Many of the more esoteric hypothesized particles to extent the standard models are used to explain "dark matter" and at least one of them has to exist for conventional dark matter theory to fit the empirical evidence.
Most of the constants that the standard model requires us to treat as "fundamental" are fundamental particle masses, and there are a lot of them, at least sixteen.
Gravity is a primary motivating force for one of the latest twists in string theory (aka M-Theory), the notion that us and just about everything but gravitons, might be confined to a brane with a lower dimensionality than the universe itself.
Gravity, as formulated in Loop Quantum Gravity, Casual Dynamic Set Theory, Causal Dynamic Triangulation, and various other approaches to explaining gravity at a quantum level with a discrete or quasi-discrete space-time geometry rather than gravitons also, of course, involve gravity.
Two of the biggest problems in astronomy involve missing mass (aka dark matter) or alternately an incorrect theory of relativity in certain weak fields, and missing energy (aka dark energy) or an incorrect theory of relativity at cosmological scales.
Then there is the issue of the Pioneer Anomoly, an unexplained deviation of our space probes from the paths they would be expected to take using standard gravitational theories.
It is also worth noting that the gravitiational constant itself is one of the least accurately known fundamental constants.
In short then, many of the remaining unsolved fundamental physics problems are intimately related. Is it too much to hope that a small number of discoveries might solve all of them?
Both of the most consenus hypothesized particles to extend the standard model of particle physics, the Higgs Boson and the Graviton, relate to mass. Indeed, it is quite troubling that our theory requires seperate particles to explain inertia and gravitational mass, when the equivalence of the two is one of the foundations of general relativity. Likewise, one of the most notable instances in which a standard model prediction has been proved wrong is that discovery that the neutrino is massive. Many of the more esoteric hypothesized particles to extent the standard models are used to explain "dark matter" and at least one of them has to exist for conventional dark matter theory to fit the empirical evidence.
Most of the constants that the standard model requires us to treat as "fundamental" are fundamental particle masses, and there are a lot of them, at least sixteen.
Gravity is a primary motivating force for one of the latest twists in string theory (aka M-Theory), the notion that us and just about everything but gravitons, might be confined to a brane with a lower dimensionality than the universe itself.
Gravity, as formulated in Loop Quantum Gravity, Casual Dynamic Set Theory, Causal Dynamic Triangulation, and various other approaches to explaining gravity at a quantum level with a discrete or quasi-discrete space-time geometry rather than gravitons also, of course, involve gravity.
Two of the biggest problems in astronomy involve missing mass (aka dark matter) or alternately an incorrect theory of relativity in certain weak fields, and missing energy (aka dark energy) or an incorrect theory of relativity at cosmological scales.
Then there is the issue of the Pioneer Anomoly, an unexplained deviation of our space probes from the paths they would be expected to take using standard gravitational theories.
It is also worth noting that the gravitiational constant itself is one of the least accurately known fundamental constants.
In short then, many of the remaining unsolved fundamental physics problems are intimately related. Is it too much to hope that a small number of discoveries might solve all of them?
Pen Pals Forever?
One of my first observations at this blog was that "We aren't even going to have a substantial percentage of the human population outside of Earth orbit 10,000 years from now."
This does not mean that I think that life on Earth is likely to be unique. As turbo-1 over the Physics Forums aptly observed DNA based life can live in very extreme environments and there is no reason to think that some other form of life, perhaps silicon based, couldn't evolve to survive in even more adverse environments. You can't just take one look at a place and say "No life could exist there." You have to look for the "sweet spots". If you are looking a Jupiter, you look at its volcanic and ice covered moons, or floating in its atmosphere. If you are looking at Venus, you look at the clouds, not the incredibly hot surface. On Mars, you look at buried ice that may periodically take liquid form when the sun shines on it, not on the peak of Mons Olympus. Astronomy so far has provided abundant evidence that gas giants planets are common, and there are early indications that rocky planets, which are much harder to detect because they are smaller and don't emit light, may be common as well.
I don't even think that humans are alone in our galaxy as a relatively advanced tool using species. Evolution is a process which can take place just as easily on some other planet 50,000 light years away as it can on Earth. The laws of nature are out there to discover and manipulate.
Will we ever encounter life elsewhere? Who knows? There are "formulas" for determining the likelihood of that happening, but those forumulas are so devoid of good data that they better resemble ways of thinking about the problem than any meaningful tool for determining a real probability.
On the other hand, I think that one can make some reasonable assumptions about what a first contact is likely to resemble if we ever have one. You see, any other technologically advanced species is going to face the same constraints, more or less, that prevent humans from doing much interstellar space exploration in the next 10,000 years or so. Space is big. There is a speed of light speed limit. Living things don't live forever. The amount of resources necessary to carry out space travel is immense. Even if one is engaged in space travel, that doesn't mean one will go very far or make a very comprehensive examination of all of the stellar systems that are out there.
The fastest way to spread your impact across the galaxy if with photons, like radio waves. They go as fast as it is possible to go, and the energy costs are far less demanding than sending something with mass at anything approaching that speed.
It could be that some alien species has already detected our radio waves. Even if they replied in short order, unless they were very close to us, we might not have received a response yet. But, if we ever do encounter an alien species it may very well be in the form of messages picked up by SETI or some other radiotelescope array.
Even if that alien species is quite close, say 100 lightyears away in a galaxy that is 100,000 light years across, it would take many centuries before we could ever exchange even the slightest artifacts, let alone encounter a member of that other species. And, when even a simple message and response loop takes 200 years, that communication wouldn't be anything like talking on the phone. Most likely, if we do encounter an alien species (or many of them), the relationship will be, more than anything else, like having a pen pal in a foreign country who doesn't speak your language. It would be an odd, mysterious thing indeed.
An encounter like this would profoundly change how we view the universe. But, it seems unlikely to lead to clashing interstellar empires or a War of the Worlds.
This does not mean that I think that life on Earth is likely to be unique. As turbo-1 over the Physics Forums aptly observed DNA based life can live in very extreme environments and there is no reason to think that some other form of life, perhaps silicon based, couldn't evolve to survive in even more adverse environments. You can't just take one look at a place and say "No life could exist there." You have to look for the "sweet spots". If you are looking a Jupiter, you look at its volcanic and ice covered moons, or floating in its atmosphere. If you are looking at Venus, you look at the clouds, not the incredibly hot surface. On Mars, you look at buried ice that may periodically take liquid form when the sun shines on it, not on the peak of Mons Olympus. Astronomy so far has provided abundant evidence that gas giants planets are common, and there are early indications that rocky planets, which are much harder to detect because they are smaller and don't emit light, may be common as well.
I don't even think that humans are alone in our galaxy as a relatively advanced tool using species. Evolution is a process which can take place just as easily on some other planet 50,000 light years away as it can on Earth. The laws of nature are out there to discover and manipulate.
Will we ever encounter life elsewhere? Who knows? There are "formulas" for determining the likelihood of that happening, but those forumulas are so devoid of good data that they better resemble ways of thinking about the problem than any meaningful tool for determining a real probability.
On the other hand, I think that one can make some reasonable assumptions about what a first contact is likely to resemble if we ever have one. You see, any other technologically advanced species is going to face the same constraints, more or less, that prevent humans from doing much interstellar space exploration in the next 10,000 years or so. Space is big. There is a speed of light speed limit. Living things don't live forever. The amount of resources necessary to carry out space travel is immense. Even if one is engaged in space travel, that doesn't mean one will go very far or make a very comprehensive examination of all of the stellar systems that are out there.
The fastest way to spread your impact across the galaxy if with photons, like radio waves. They go as fast as it is possible to go, and the energy costs are far less demanding than sending something with mass at anything approaching that speed.
It could be that some alien species has already detected our radio waves. Even if they replied in short order, unless they were very close to us, we might not have received a response yet. But, if we ever do encounter an alien species it may very well be in the form of messages picked up by SETI or some other radiotelescope array.
Even if that alien species is quite close, say 100 lightyears away in a galaxy that is 100,000 light years across, it would take many centuries before we could ever exchange even the slightest artifacts, let alone encounter a member of that other species. And, when even a simple message and response loop takes 200 years, that communication wouldn't be anything like talking on the phone. Most likely, if we do encounter an alien species (or many of them), the relationship will be, more than anything else, like having a pen pal in a foreign country who doesn't speak your language. It would be an odd, mysterious thing indeed.
An encounter like this would profoundly change how we view the universe. But, it seems unlikely to lead to clashing interstellar empires or a War of the Worlds.
Rutt Bridges Out.
Rutt Bridges is out of the race to be Governor of Colorado, leaving only Bill Ritter as an announced candidate in the race. Joan Fitz-Gerald, Mark Udall, and John Hickenlooper are the most likely to enter the race (Ritter is naturally going to attact primary opposition because he is pro-life and was soft on police brutality while he was DA).
I'm not surprised. When I saw him run for Senate, it was clear that while he was a decent guy that he had no knack for being a candidate. Now, he's come to understand this himself.
Bridges does get particular kudos for one thing that is ever so rare in politics. Rather than letting rumors about his motives for what he did fester, he promptly quashed them when they arose. The rest of the political caste in this nation would do well to learn from his example. As the former President of CU learned recently, if you don't engage the blogosphere, it will devour you.
I'm not surprised. When I saw him run for Senate, it was clear that while he was a decent guy that he had no knack for being a candidate. Now, he's come to understand this himself.
Bridges does get particular kudos for one thing that is ever so rare in politics. Rather than letting rumors about his motives for what he did fester, he promptly quashed them when they arose. The rest of the political caste in this nation would do well to learn from his example. As the former President of CU learned recently, if you don't engage the blogosphere, it will devour you.
34,942 words, 33 scenes, 18 chapters.
That's what I've started off with at Wash Park Poet. You are encouraged to take a look. Additional scenes will be added from time to time.
11 August 2005
Iraqi Federalism.
If you want to know what sort of boundaries the Shi'ites envision for a Southern autonomous region that a Supreme Counsel for Islamic Revolution in Iraq figure demanded today, look at this map from the last election. The nine light brown provinces in the Southeast corner are it and Juan Cole states that they are starting to call the region by the ancient name of "Sumer". This leaves nine provinces outside the region.
A map at this link shows the Kurds aspirations, although they'd be happy with the part of that map that is within Iraq for now. It claims parts of six Northern provinces (the boundaries were redrawn in an effort to make partition more difficult under the Baath Party regime). Basically, it claims most, if not all, of the provinces of Dahuk, Arbil, Sulaymaniya, and the highly controversial Kirkuk. It also claims some of Ninevah and some of Diyala.
Central Iraq (Baghdad and Salahuddin and some of Diyala), and the Western desert of Anbar Province and much of Ninevah province, would remain less autonomous provinces.
Federalism in some form or another makes an immense amount of sense for Iraq. It allows the Southern Shi'ites and the Northern Kurds to get more or less everything they want politically. And, while the Sunnis are naturally concerned about losing access to oil money, if that is not retained by the central government, they have far greater prospects of gaining a meaningful say in a post-Saddam government in a strong provincial legislature than they do in a central parliament where they are grossly outnumbered.
Oil revenues are the main impediment to federalism. The oil wells themselves are in the South and the North, with the richer ones apparently located in the South. The Kurds could probably leave with their oil wells and break even on the deal (which they would very much like to do if they could avoid military intervention in the process). The Southern Shi'ites, as their leading political party's name implies, would like to follow in the footsteps of Iran and perhaps even join it. But, if both the Kurds and the Southern Shi'ites left, rump Iraq would be left high and dry without the oil revenues that drive Iraq's economy. Anbar and non-Kurdistan Ninevah where old guard Baathist forces remain strongest are also conveniently near Syria which happens to still have a Baathist government.
One can imagine a not so far fetched scenario where a few years after a new constitution is adopted, Kurdistan becomes an independent state (which makes Syria, Turkey and Iran which are also home to Kurdish regions very unhappy), Anbar and much of Ninevah joins Syria, a newly autonomous "Sumer" becomes a province of Iran, and the provinces of Baghdad and Salahuddin and some of Diyala remain as a small, multi-ethnic rump Iraq with none of its predecessor's oil wealth but much of its modern infrastructure and professional class -- a sort of Eastern counterpart to the Kingdom of Jordan. This clearly isn't what the Bush administration had in mind when they set out to reshape the Middle East, but it would certainly change the map and the international dynamics of the region.
The sensible solution for now is to keep the purse strings with the central government, while giving two large autonomous regions and a number of highly independent provinces broad say over how their internal affairs are managed and how their share of the funds they receive from the central government are spent.
Terrorism is a symptom of other problems. The problem in Iraq is that the new government has not yet earned legtimacy with much of the population. The solution is develop a governmental system in which every substantial player feels like they have a stake in the system. I don't see any way other than federalism to achieve that end.
A map at this link shows the Kurds aspirations, although they'd be happy with the part of that map that is within Iraq for now. It claims parts of six Northern provinces (the boundaries were redrawn in an effort to make partition more difficult under the Baath Party regime). Basically, it claims most, if not all, of the provinces of Dahuk, Arbil, Sulaymaniya, and the highly controversial Kirkuk. It also claims some of Ninevah and some of Diyala.
Central Iraq (Baghdad and Salahuddin and some of Diyala), and the Western desert of Anbar Province and much of Ninevah province, would remain less autonomous provinces.
Federalism in some form or another makes an immense amount of sense for Iraq. It allows the Southern Shi'ites and the Northern Kurds to get more or less everything they want politically. And, while the Sunnis are naturally concerned about losing access to oil money, if that is not retained by the central government, they have far greater prospects of gaining a meaningful say in a post-Saddam government in a strong provincial legislature than they do in a central parliament where they are grossly outnumbered.
Oil revenues are the main impediment to federalism. The oil wells themselves are in the South and the North, with the richer ones apparently located in the South. The Kurds could probably leave with their oil wells and break even on the deal (which they would very much like to do if they could avoid military intervention in the process). The Southern Shi'ites, as their leading political party's name implies, would like to follow in the footsteps of Iran and perhaps even join it. But, if both the Kurds and the Southern Shi'ites left, rump Iraq would be left high and dry without the oil revenues that drive Iraq's economy. Anbar and non-Kurdistan Ninevah where old guard Baathist forces remain strongest are also conveniently near Syria which happens to still have a Baathist government.
One can imagine a not so far fetched scenario where a few years after a new constitution is adopted, Kurdistan becomes an independent state (which makes Syria, Turkey and Iran which are also home to Kurdish regions very unhappy), Anbar and much of Ninevah joins Syria, a newly autonomous "Sumer" becomes a province of Iran, and the provinces of Baghdad and Salahuddin and some of Diyala remain as a small, multi-ethnic rump Iraq with none of its predecessor's oil wealth but much of its modern infrastructure and professional class -- a sort of Eastern counterpart to the Kingdom of Jordan. This clearly isn't what the Bush administration had in mind when they set out to reshape the Middle East, but it would certainly change the map and the international dynamics of the region.
The sensible solution for now is to keep the purse strings with the central government, while giving two large autonomous regions and a number of highly independent provinces broad say over how their internal affairs are managed and how their share of the funds they receive from the central government are spent.
Terrorism is a symptom of other problems. The problem in Iraq is that the new government has not yet earned legtimacy with much of the population. The solution is develop a governmental system in which every substantial player feels like they have a stake in the system. I don't see any way other than federalism to achieve that end.
Liberal Colorado Cities.
The allegedly non-partisan Bay Area Center For Voting Research has ranked all 237 cities in the United States with over 100,000 people from liberal to conservative. It is a cute gimmick and doesn't even provide its methodology, although one can easily come up with some plausible ones, like percentage of the population voting for Kerry as opposed to Bush in the 2004 election. You'll also be shocked, shocked I say, to discover the general finding of the study that cities with large minority populations tend to be liberal, while cities that are all white and have lots of conservative Christians in them tend to be conservative.
Despite being a gimmick, we'll play along and give you the rankings of Colorado's cities, from most liberal to most conservative, which should be no great surprise:
49 Denver
77 Aurora
131 Fort Collins
132 Pueblo
153 Lakewood
158 Westminster
174 Arvada
231 Colorado Springs
Boulder, with a population of about 93,000, doesn't quite make the cut, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that it is more liberal than the median city.
This non-profit bears the stink of astroturf, so I looked up the authors, who seem legitimate enough, with the stink coming from the fact that both are in the public relations industry. There are several Jason Alderman's in the world, including an astrophysicist in Florida, a felon in Georgia, and an aide of a Chicago Congressman famous for arranging to put an appropriation for a dog park in his neighborhood in a bill after his was arrested for running his dog without a lease there (this last one could also be our guy). All are about the right age. But, I'm fairly certain that our man is this fellow:
Wofford is a prominent Democrat, so Alderman likely started out the same way, although his political leanings could have changed since then.
Phil Reiff runs a San Francisco video production company.
Despite being a gimmick, we'll play along and give you the rankings of Colorado's cities, from most liberal to most conservative, which should be no great surprise:
Boulder, with a population of about 93,000, doesn't quite make the cut, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that it is more liberal than the median city.
This non-profit bears the stink of astroturf, so I looked up the authors, who seem legitimate enough, with the stink coming from the fact that both are in the public relations industry. There are several Jason Alderman's in the world, including an astrophysicist in Florida, a felon in Georgia, and an aide of a Chicago Congressman famous for arranging to put an appropriation for a dog park in his neighborhood in a bill after his was arrested for running his dog without a lease there (this last one could also be our guy). All are about the right age. But, I'm fairly certain that our man is this fellow:
Jason Alderman handles media relations at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) in San Francisco. One of the largest utilities in the country, PG&E serves 14 million people in central and northern California. Mr. Alderman's tenure at PG&E includes the Super Bowl of utility communications challenges: the California energy crisis of 2000-02.
Mr. Alderman learned about communications hardball over ten years ago, working on the U.S. Senate campaign of Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania, were he served under the then-unknown team of James Carville and Paul Begala. This was one of many political campaigns Mr. Alderman worked on, which included a stint in Washington, D.C. where he worked on energy issues as a staff member on the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee in the House of Representatives.
Mr. Alderman moved to San Francisco in the late 90's, toiling as a lobbyist and doing public relations for different companies until 2001, when he became the spokesperson for Pacific Gas and Electric Company. At PG&E, Mr. Alderman handles crisis communications and has helped build a robust, pro-active media outreach campaign which has helped dramatically changed the perceptions of customers, regulators, elected officials and the news media.
Wofford is a prominent Democrat, so Alderman likely started out the same way, although his political leanings could have changed since then.
Phil Reiff runs a San Francisco video production company.
The World Wonder that is Soj
If you haven't read Soj's Flogging the Simian Blog, you should. Indeed, if you are not the sort of person for whom buying a coffee or getting a meal at McDonalds is a major economic decision, you should give her money, so she can continue her good work. The only person I know of with a similar knack for finding scoops is Seymour Hersh. Soj is a one woman CIA for the public, currently based in Romania (although she worked in a Florida police station as a transcriptionist for a while, and as a U.S. intelligence analyst before that). Simply put, she discovers three (if not a dozen) impossible to learn through the American mainstream media things before breakfast almost every day. She discusses her methods here.
If you listen to National Public Radio, which provides fine coverage of the stories that it does cover, you will notice that its international coverage is immensely overweighted with coverage of what the President had for breakfast, Russia and Israel. All of those, except the first, deserve throrough coverage. But, unlike the British Broadcasting Company, NPR does not provide through coverage of international happenings in Africa, in Asia, and in parts of Europe that are not home to U.S. soldiers. Soj's daily briefing, in a herculean effort, fills much of this gap.
If you listen to National Public Radio, which provides fine coverage of the stories that it does cover, you will notice that its international coverage is immensely overweighted with coverage of what the President had for breakfast, Russia and Israel. All of those, except the first, deserve throrough coverage. But, unlike the British Broadcasting Company, NPR does not provide through coverage of international happenings in Africa, in Asia, and in parts of Europe that are not home to U.S. soldiers. Soj's daily briefing, in a herculean effort, fills much of this gap.
10 August 2005
Dying Languages.
Twenty-five languages a year are expected to die every year for the next hundred years, about a quarter of all languages in existence today. Some money is being spent to, at least, develop some record that they ever existed -- a record of their vocabularies, grammars and sounds, but they will die never the less.
There are only about 231 languages spoken by 2 million people or more in the world. Moreover, even many of these languages are mere secondary languages even in the countries where they are spoken. To take European examples, because they are familiar: Germany is home to Upper Saxon (2 million), as well as German (95 million). Italy is home to Emiliano-Romagnolo (2 million), Venetian (2 million), Piemontese (3 million), Sicilian (4 million), Napoletano (7 million), and Lombard (9 million), as well as Italian (61 million). Spain is home to Galician (3 million), and Catalan (6 million), as well as Spanish (322 million) (the figures are all worldwide numbers).
I doubt that there are many Upper Saxon speakers who don't also speak German, and I doubt that there are many Venetian speakers who don't also speak Italian. In the same way, almost all speakers of Welsh and Gaelic can also speak English.
When almost all speakers of a language are also fluent in another common language, its raison d'etre fades. It becomes an elaborate hobby and tradition. When your language has only five fluent speakers, how different is what you are doing in passing it on to your children from raising your children to speak Klingon? In the most prominent example in the United States, it may be a noble and culturally meaningful thing to learn to speak Navajo. It may even have niche applications -- as the Code Talkers proved. But, there are virtually no Navajo speakers who do not also speak English or Spanish, and those very few who speak only Navajo, if there are any, live a very restricted existence.
It is remarkable that the other 9,750 languages out there have survived as long as they have managed to survive. Modern society can't handle the situation that Papua New Guinea has where there are 820 languages among fewer than 5.5 million people, an average of fewer than 7,000 people each. Imagine what Colorado would be like if every neighborhood and county had its own language.
Vital languages, languages that thrive rather than merely exist, need authors and poets and newscasters and political speeches and schools and so much more. They need compact regions where they are the dominant language, the language in which people think and communicate with each other and do business and learn new things. It takes hundreds of thousands of listeners to make a viable television station. It takes tens of thousands of listeners to make a viable radio station or newspaper. It takes several thousand book purchases a year to support a single author, and many authors to create a real literary climate. A language has to be the dominant one in a state or province or area of comparable political authority, for legislators to carry on business in a particular language. The number of languages that can meet these thresholds are in the hundreds and not the thousands.
Languages which are not vital languages are really all endangered, although some may be dying more quickly than others. Numbers don't tell the entire story. Lombard is spoken by many more people than Hebrew, but Hebrew, because it is the primary language of a nation state, has brighter prospects than Lombard.
It is sad to see the richest part of so many cultures vanish from the Earth, but I see no way to prevent it from happening.
There are only about 231 languages spoken by 2 million people or more in the world. Moreover, even many of these languages are mere secondary languages even in the countries where they are spoken. To take European examples, because they are familiar: Germany is home to Upper Saxon (2 million), as well as German (95 million). Italy is home to Emiliano-Romagnolo (2 million), Venetian (2 million), Piemontese (3 million), Sicilian (4 million), Napoletano (7 million), and Lombard (9 million), as well as Italian (61 million). Spain is home to Galician (3 million), and Catalan (6 million), as well as Spanish (322 million) (the figures are all worldwide numbers).
I doubt that there are many Upper Saxon speakers who don't also speak German, and I doubt that there are many Venetian speakers who don't also speak Italian. In the same way, almost all speakers of Welsh and Gaelic can also speak English.
When almost all speakers of a language are also fluent in another common language, its raison d'etre fades. It becomes an elaborate hobby and tradition. When your language has only five fluent speakers, how different is what you are doing in passing it on to your children from raising your children to speak Klingon? In the most prominent example in the United States, it may be a noble and culturally meaningful thing to learn to speak Navajo. It may even have niche applications -- as the Code Talkers proved. But, there are virtually no Navajo speakers who do not also speak English or Spanish, and those very few who speak only Navajo, if there are any, live a very restricted existence.
It is remarkable that the other 9,750 languages out there have survived as long as they have managed to survive. Modern society can't handle the situation that Papua New Guinea has where there are 820 languages among fewer than 5.5 million people, an average of fewer than 7,000 people each. Imagine what Colorado would be like if every neighborhood and county had its own language.
Vital languages, languages that thrive rather than merely exist, need authors and poets and newscasters and political speeches and schools and so much more. They need compact regions where they are the dominant language, the language in which people think and communicate with each other and do business and learn new things. It takes hundreds of thousands of listeners to make a viable television station. It takes tens of thousands of listeners to make a viable radio station or newspaper. It takes several thousand book purchases a year to support a single author, and many authors to create a real literary climate. A language has to be the dominant one in a state or province or area of comparable political authority, for legislators to carry on business in a particular language. The number of languages that can meet these thresholds are in the hundreds and not the thousands.
Languages which are not vital languages are really all endangered, although some may be dying more quickly than others. Numbers don't tell the entire story. Lombard is spoken by many more people than Hebrew, but Hebrew, because it is the primary language of a nation state, has brighter prospects than Lombard.
It is sad to see the richest part of so many cultures vanish from the Earth, but I see no way to prevent it from happening.
Asking the Wrong Question About Nuclear Waste.
The Environmental Protection Agency current plans to set a 1,000,000 year safety threshold for the high level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The theory? It takes a million years for high level nuclear waste radioactivity to fall to background levels. Setting high standards is a good thing, right? What is wrong with this approach?
There is nothing wrong with trying to use the best possible safety standards. But, the problem with this standard is that it rules out options that may be the best available options simply because they can't last 1,000,000 years, a ridiculous time period considering that human civilization is only about 11,000 years old, and homo sapiens haven't even been around that long.
We do not have the luxury of saying that nuclear waste will be disposed of in a place that will be safe for 1,000,000 years or not at all. High level nuclear waste exists now. It appears that proponents and opponents of the plan agree that there are about 40,000 tons of high level nuclear waste (including about 500 tons of weapons grade material) in existence now from the entire history of nuclear energy and weapons operations in the United States, and that there will be about 70,000 tons by 2015 or so, when Yucca Mountain would be ready to come on line, with Yucca Mountain having a proposed capacity of about 77,000 tons. It is now held in temporary facilities that we'll be lucky if we can manage to keep safe for a few decades, at nuclear power and nuclear weapons facilities across the nation. The right question is not, how long does it take for high level nuclear waste to become inert. The right question is, what is the safest practically available option for disposing of the high level nuclear waste that exists now. If Yucca Mountain can be proven safe for only 200 years, but the next best option is safe for only 40 years, the decision is a no brainer: move the high level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.
If there is a safer option than Yucca Mountain out there, that's great. Somebody should tell us what it is and push for it as an alternative. But, the status quo is clearly worse than the Yucca Mountain option. Opponents of Yucca Mountain argue that existing storage sites are safe for 100 years, that the dangers of moving the waste outweight the benefits of moving it, and that we should study more carefully before finding a long term solution. Some of those local sites may be safe for 100 years. But, I'm deeply skeptical of the claim that all, or even most of them will be safe that long. And, even if they are right, then 100 years plus a transporation risk premium, and not 1,000,000 years is the proper safety standard for Yucca Mountain. Others argue that nuclear waste recycling programs are the best choice, but nothing prevents those kinds of activities from taking place at Yucca Mountain. Another site in Utah has been considered for about 40,000 tons of material, but it is hard to tell if that is simply NIMBY politics, or if it is actually safer.
Strictly speaking, this analysis applies only to existing high level nuclear waste. When it comes to the question of new nuclear weapons production and nuclear power production the proper question is: On balance is the environmental harm caused by storing high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain more serious than the environmental harm caused by alternatives such as using coal to generate electricity? This is a closer question, but to do it right you have to look at both potential sources of environmental harm over the same time horizon and measure them with the same measuring stick. The environmental harm caused by the alternatives, and the human harm caused by the alternatives considerably lower the bar on what we need to expect of nuclear waste disposal to still make nuclear power a more environmentally sound option than the alternatives.
There is nothing wrong with trying to use the best possible safety standards. But, the problem with this standard is that it rules out options that may be the best available options simply because they can't last 1,000,000 years, a ridiculous time period considering that human civilization is only about 11,000 years old, and homo sapiens haven't even been around that long.
We do not have the luxury of saying that nuclear waste will be disposed of in a place that will be safe for 1,000,000 years or not at all. High level nuclear waste exists now. It appears that proponents and opponents of the plan agree that there are about 40,000 tons of high level nuclear waste (including about 500 tons of weapons grade material) in existence now from the entire history of nuclear energy and weapons operations in the United States, and that there will be about 70,000 tons by 2015 or so, when Yucca Mountain would be ready to come on line, with Yucca Mountain having a proposed capacity of about 77,000 tons. It is now held in temporary facilities that we'll be lucky if we can manage to keep safe for a few decades, at nuclear power and nuclear weapons facilities across the nation. The right question is not, how long does it take for high level nuclear waste to become inert. The right question is, what is the safest practically available option for disposing of the high level nuclear waste that exists now. If Yucca Mountain can be proven safe for only 200 years, but the next best option is safe for only 40 years, the decision is a no brainer: move the high level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.
If there is a safer option than Yucca Mountain out there, that's great. Somebody should tell us what it is and push for it as an alternative. But, the status quo is clearly worse than the Yucca Mountain option. Opponents of Yucca Mountain argue that existing storage sites are safe for 100 years, that the dangers of moving the waste outweight the benefits of moving it, and that we should study more carefully before finding a long term solution. Some of those local sites may be safe for 100 years. But, I'm deeply skeptical of the claim that all, or even most of them will be safe that long. And, even if they are right, then 100 years plus a transporation risk premium, and not 1,000,000 years is the proper safety standard for Yucca Mountain. Others argue that nuclear waste recycling programs are the best choice, but nothing prevents those kinds of activities from taking place at Yucca Mountain. Another site in Utah has been considered for about 40,000 tons of material, but it is hard to tell if that is simply NIMBY politics, or if it is actually safer.
Strictly speaking, this analysis applies only to existing high level nuclear waste. When it comes to the question of new nuclear weapons production and nuclear power production the proper question is: On balance is the environmental harm caused by storing high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain more serious than the environmental harm caused by alternatives such as using coal to generate electricity? This is a closer question, but to do it right you have to look at both potential sources of environmental harm over the same time horizon and measure them with the same measuring stick. The environmental harm caused by the alternatives, and the human harm caused by the alternatives considerably lower the bar on what we need to expect of nuclear waste disposal to still make nuclear power a more environmentally sound option than the alternatives.
09 August 2005
More Metablogging.
Last week I discussed Blog Spam. Today, more kinds of useless, to me, blogs.
First off, there are the non-English language blogs. Don't get me wrong. The Internet is an international medium and they have every right to be there. And, they are there in force with a far higher signal to noise ratio than the English language blogs. Maybe half of non-spam blogs are not in English. But, I can't read them, so I quickly pass them by.
Within English language, non-spam blogs there are also numerous genres.
One of the more annoying is the abandoned blog. Someone posts one or twice or three times and that's it. These rarely have quality content in the posts that they have either. Some of these will become good blogs and are just very new, but most won't.
Another catgory is the "God blog". These contain prayers, efforts to convert the unconverted, and other religious stuff which have a MEGO (my eyes glaze over) effect on me. The next blog button gets hit quickly when I arrive at these.
This leaves mostly three categories of blogs. The best of them is the photoblog. Pictures are fun and sometimes beautiful and easy to absorb quickly. The second is the serious blog, like this one. The third is the "dear diary" blog which basically contains details on someone's very boring personal life, usually all in lower case letters and irregular formatting, although occassionally more witty.
I wish there were a way to screen out all but the last three categories to get a better sense of the content worth looking at at blogspot, but apparently that isn't possible. I can dream, I guess.
First off, there are the non-English language blogs. Don't get me wrong. The Internet is an international medium and they have every right to be there. And, they are there in force with a far higher signal to noise ratio than the English language blogs. Maybe half of non-spam blogs are not in English. But, I can't read them, so I quickly pass them by.
Within English language, non-spam blogs there are also numerous genres.
One of the more annoying is the abandoned blog. Someone posts one or twice or three times and that's it. These rarely have quality content in the posts that they have either. Some of these will become good blogs and are just very new, but most won't.
Another catgory is the "God blog". These contain prayers, efforts to convert the unconverted, and other religious stuff which have a MEGO (my eyes glaze over) effect on me. The next blog button gets hit quickly when I arrive at these.
This leaves mostly three categories of blogs. The best of them is the photoblog. Pictures are fun and sometimes beautiful and easy to absorb quickly. The second is the serious blog, like this one. The third is the "dear diary" blog which basically contains details on someone's very boring personal life, usually all in lower case letters and irregular formatting, although occassionally more witty.
I wish there were a way to screen out all but the last three categories to get a better sense of the content worth looking at at blogspot, but apparently that isn't possible. I can dream, I guess.
Strange Justice.
While I am a lawyer, and have argued such technicalities in my own practice, I'm also removed enough from the process as a citizen to find it disturbing that issues like whether a Wal-Mart store does or does not get located in a particular community (one decision has gone each way so far on this basis) get decided based on whether someone sent a letter by certified mail rather than first class mail, when there is no dispute that the letter was received by the right person at the right time. Matters of importance shouldn't be decided based on technicalities in those common situations when the technicalities involved turn out to be harmless errors.
New Urbanism.
The New Urbanism movement is the most important intellectual force changing the way we build our cities. The name captures the idea. New Urbanism wants to restore the urban planning and architectural design values the were behind the cities and small towns built before zoning laws took hold as the dominant paradigm in pre-depression America.
It is, in part, a reaction to the ugliness of suburbia wraught by seperating uses and designing communities around cars instead of people. Who in the United States hasn't driven down an arterial street full of strip malls? When times are good, they end up looking like Denver's Colorado Boulevard. When times are bad, they end up looking like Denver's Colfax Avenue. Throw in the sterile office parks that typify metropolitan Denver's Denver Tech Center (and similar office parks in the route 36 corridor), and the suburban tract homes built from the 1960s to 1980s, and you have a pretty complete picture of what New Urbanism is a reaction against. Environmentalists like it because it counteracts sprawl and encourages walking and public transportation useage.
I first became aware of the movement when I was living in Buffalo, New York in the early 1990s, where it was a hot topic of conversation for the local historic preservation group. They were the only people with practical ideas for addressing the woes of a city that had seen its population dwindle, a large swath of the East Side of the city abandoned by traditional merchants and turned into a dangerous ghetto (this group of neighborhoods was home to a very large share of all murders in the metropolitan area), and its downtown stagnate.
Important principles of the movement include encouraging infill development (i.e. on vacant land or by renovating property in existing urban areas), encouraging walkable space and transit oriented development, permitting mixed use development -- like storefronts with offices or apartments above them, encouraging mixed income housing developments, favoring traffic systems that keep people connected rather than isolating them in cul-de-sacs, building large common parks instead of large individual yards, permitting high density housing, and marginalizing parking, for example, to alley ways in residential neighborhoods.
Denver is a major test bed of the new urbanism movement, where it has been a great success. Its Lowry and Stapleton developments, both built on abandoned airfields, incorporate New Urbanist concepts, indeed, Stapleton is one of the most purely new urbanist developments in the nation. Denver's zoning codes encourage renovation and have been changed to allow development of otherwise worthless small lots. Denver's Sixteenth Street Mall, a pedestrian walkway going right through downtown with a free shuttle bus, makes the city walkable. Denver's Old Elitch Gardens development, its successful effort to turn its once skid row Lodo neighborhood into a vibrant center of bars and lofts, its creation of a new "Central Platte Valley" neighborhood adjacent to downtown near an old railyard, its transformation of the Golden Triangle into a high end, multiple family building residential neighborhood, its revitalization (some would call it gentrification) of the 32nd and Lowell area in Northwest Denver, its transformation of a neighborhood of rundown small, single story 1950s frame houses into the prestitigous high end townhome dominated Cherry Creek neighborhood, and the active pop top and scrape off activity throughout the city's healthier neighborhoods, all attest to the influence of New Urbanism in the city, largely under the influence of Denver Mayor Wellington Webb.
Denver Mayor Hickenlooper is continuing that legacy, for example, by dealing with the City's homeless problem most importantly by committing the city to restoring its supply of "single occupancy hotels" (less charitably called flop houses) so that low income single people can afford to sleep in a room, instead of on the street. Also on deck is a conversion of the Gates Rubber factory site into a major new mixed use, transit oriented development, and the passage of FasTracks, a plan to greatly expand the city's urban rail system.
It isn't just Denver proper that has been influenced by the movement either. Denver is one of the only metropolitan areas in the country where new suburban development is at urban residential densities.
A final piece of the puzzle is about to come into play. The city is coming close to adopting a major overhaul of its zoning code which will likely be more "form oriented". To quote the August 2005 edition of the Washington Park Profile (a neighborhood paper not available on line) at page 15:
Another likely change will be to ease parking requirements on Colfax Avenue, where those requirements have essentially mandated a strip mall approach because underground parking isn't economically viable.
This post doesn't really explain why New Urbanism is a good thing (and it is, in my opinion), or get into the details of how it works, but it is an introduction to the idea and enough to digest in one blog post.
It is, in part, a reaction to the ugliness of suburbia wraught by seperating uses and designing communities around cars instead of people. Who in the United States hasn't driven down an arterial street full of strip malls? When times are good, they end up looking like Denver's Colorado Boulevard. When times are bad, they end up looking like Denver's Colfax Avenue. Throw in the sterile office parks that typify metropolitan Denver's Denver Tech Center (and similar office parks in the route 36 corridor), and the suburban tract homes built from the 1960s to 1980s, and you have a pretty complete picture of what New Urbanism is a reaction against. Environmentalists like it because it counteracts sprawl and encourages walking and public transportation useage.
I first became aware of the movement when I was living in Buffalo, New York in the early 1990s, where it was a hot topic of conversation for the local historic preservation group. They were the only people with practical ideas for addressing the woes of a city that had seen its population dwindle, a large swath of the East Side of the city abandoned by traditional merchants and turned into a dangerous ghetto (this group of neighborhoods was home to a very large share of all murders in the metropolitan area), and its downtown stagnate.
Important principles of the movement include encouraging infill development (i.e. on vacant land or by renovating property in existing urban areas), encouraging walkable space and transit oriented development, permitting mixed use development -- like storefronts with offices or apartments above them, encouraging mixed income housing developments, favoring traffic systems that keep people connected rather than isolating them in cul-de-sacs, building large common parks instead of large individual yards, permitting high density housing, and marginalizing parking, for example, to alley ways in residential neighborhoods.
Denver is a major test bed of the new urbanism movement, where it has been a great success. Its Lowry and Stapleton developments, both built on abandoned airfields, incorporate New Urbanist concepts, indeed, Stapleton is one of the most purely new urbanist developments in the nation. Denver's zoning codes encourage renovation and have been changed to allow development of otherwise worthless small lots. Denver's Sixteenth Street Mall, a pedestrian walkway going right through downtown with a free shuttle bus, makes the city walkable. Denver's Old Elitch Gardens development, its successful effort to turn its once skid row Lodo neighborhood into a vibrant center of bars and lofts, its creation of a new "Central Platte Valley" neighborhood adjacent to downtown near an old railyard, its transformation of the Golden Triangle into a high end, multiple family building residential neighborhood, its revitalization (some would call it gentrification) of the 32nd and Lowell area in Northwest Denver, its transformation of a neighborhood of rundown small, single story 1950s frame houses into the prestitigous high end townhome dominated Cherry Creek neighborhood, and the active pop top and scrape off activity throughout the city's healthier neighborhoods, all attest to the influence of New Urbanism in the city, largely under the influence of Denver Mayor Wellington Webb.
Denver Mayor Hickenlooper is continuing that legacy, for example, by dealing with the City's homeless problem most importantly by committing the city to restoring its supply of "single occupancy hotels" (less charitably called flop houses) so that low income single people can afford to sleep in a room, instead of on the street. Also on deck is a conversion of the Gates Rubber factory site into a major new mixed use, transit oriented development, and the passage of FasTracks, a plan to greatly expand the city's urban rail system.
It isn't just Denver proper that has been influenced by the movement either. Denver is one of the only metropolitan areas in the country where new suburban development is at urban residential densities.
A final piece of the puzzle is about to come into play. The city is coming close to adopting a major overhaul of its zoning code which will likely be more "form oriented". To quote the August 2005 edition of the Washington Park Profile (a neighborhood paper not available on line) at page 15:
This alterntive to coventional zoning supports mixed-use neighborhoods by looking more closely at size, form and placement of buildings and parking, with less reliance on land use (residential/commercial) or density (units/acre). There are still regulations affecting building heights, parking and other issues, but there is more flexibility for landowners to adjust to market demand, as long as the building form fits the established community vision for that area.
Another likely change will be to ease parking requirements on Colfax Avenue, where those requirements have essentially mandated a strip mall approach because underground parking isn't economically viable.
This post doesn't really explain why New Urbanism is a good thing (and it is, in my opinion), or get into the details of how it works, but it is an introduction to the idea and enough to digest in one blog post.
Reducing Traffic Deaths
Not all technological advances are high tech. Simple, low tech, proven methods can save hundreds of lives that would otherwise be lost to traffic deaths each year.
Helmet laws for motorcycle riders save lives. In Florida, the repeal of a mandatory helmet law for motorcycle riders sent motorcycle accident deaths up 81% and doubled hospital costs related to motorcycle injuries. In Kentucky, the deaths increased by 50%. In Louisiana, the deaths increased 100%. The simple fact is that motorcycle riders systemically make poor risk assessments for themselves without helmet laws. Who pays? We all do, because government invariable ends up footing a large share of the medical bills that result. What does it cost to have helmet laws? Nothing. The police are already out there enforcing traffic laws and traffic fines pay for processing cases where there are violations. Moreover, almost all motorcycle riders own helmets, even if they often choose not to wear them.
Another proven method of reducing traffic deaths is the use of modern roundabouts. The empirical evidence shows that: "Roundabouts are safer than both traffic circles and traditional intersections—having 40% fewer vehicle collisions, 80% fewer injuries and 90% fewer serious injuries and deaths." They have been used since 1963 in England, and since 1990 in the United States, where about 800 have since been built. They are cheaper than the stoplights they typically replace, and work basically by providing fewer opportunities for people to get into deadly head on and T-bone collisions.
These two measures, together, have the proven potential to save several times as many lives as we lose to the combined war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan and deaths to terrorism in the United States each year, and each one actually reduces net government expenditures, rather than tightening budgets. The deaths we eliminate aren't as shocking, but they are just as real and we should act now, so that more people don't die unnecessarily.
Colorado is on the cutting edge of adopting roundabouts. Vail, Colorado was the first place in the country to use one at a highway exit (I've used it and it works fine). But, it is also one of those states that doesn't require motorcycle riders to wear helments. We're idiots for doing so and should change that law.
Helmet laws for motorcycle riders save lives. In Florida, the repeal of a mandatory helmet law for motorcycle riders sent motorcycle accident deaths up 81% and doubled hospital costs related to motorcycle injuries. In Kentucky, the deaths increased by 50%. In Louisiana, the deaths increased 100%. The simple fact is that motorcycle riders systemically make poor risk assessments for themselves without helmet laws. Who pays? We all do, because government invariable ends up footing a large share of the medical bills that result. What does it cost to have helmet laws? Nothing. The police are already out there enforcing traffic laws and traffic fines pay for processing cases where there are violations. Moreover, almost all motorcycle riders own helmets, even if they often choose not to wear them.
Another proven method of reducing traffic deaths is the use of modern roundabouts. The empirical evidence shows that: "Roundabouts are safer than both traffic circles and traditional intersections—having 40% fewer vehicle collisions, 80% fewer injuries and 90% fewer serious injuries and deaths." They have been used since 1963 in England, and since 1990 in the United States, where about 800 have since been built. They are cheaper than the stoplights they typically replace, and work basically by providing fewer opportunities for people to get into deadly head on and T-bone collisions.
These two measures, together, have the proven potential to save several times as many lives as we lose to the combined war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan and deaths to terrorism in the United States each year, and each one actually reduces net government expenditures, rather than tightening budgets. The deaths we eliminate aren't as shocking, but they are just as real and we should act now, so that more people don't die unnecessarily.
Colorado is on the cutting edge of adopting roundabouts. Vail, Colorado was the first place in the country to use one at a highway exit (I've used it and it works fine). But, it is also one of those states that doesn't require motorcycle riders to wear helments. We're idiots for doing so and should change that law.
08 August 2005
Point Defense Technology.
Warfare is a constant tug of war between offense and defense. We are just a little bit past the pinnacle of offense in that ongoing battle. A 70 ton Abrams tank (which weighs more than 140,000 pounds), which owes its immense weight primarily to its armor, can be destroyed with a well placed hit from a 70 pound Hellfire missile. Torpedos or cruise missiles, which weight about 1 to 2 tons, can destroy nearly 10,000 ton destroyers, notwithstanding their armor plating. A 500 pound roadside bomb can flip a 25 ton armored vehicle.
A new class of point defense technologies, however, are on the verge of upsetting that balance. We don't yet have any technology that can reliably shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles directed at any place in the continental U.S., as the national missile defense that Republicans since Ronald Reagan have been pushing demands. But, several technologies on the verge of introduction can defeat incoming missiles, mortar rounds and artillery shells, or at least, identify the source of incoming projectiles. The technologies that do this are varied, although all rely on some sort of computer technology to target incoming projectiles faster than any human could.
* One of the earliest of these technologies to receive prominence was the Patriot Missile system, which destroyed several Scud missiles in the Gulf War.
* The Canadian "Ferret" technology is a projectile locator without any active defense. It is intended primarily has an anti-sniper tool that can locate instantly the source location of even a single incoming bullet.
* The THEL system combines targetting technology with a laser that destroys artillery shells, mortar shells and missiles as the come in, apparently by triggering the explosives that they carry.
* Another laser system, designed for use on commercial aircraft, renders useless incoming anti-aircraft missiles by frying their guidance systems. Apparently, many of our high end fighter jets can do a similar trick using their active radar systems (an actively electronically scanned array)in a directed way against incoming missiles.
* The Navy's Phalanx Close in Weapons System (CIWS) shoots grenande sized rounds with computer controlled radar at incoming cruise missiles. The system has also been adapted to actively defend against mortors and artillery shells directed at the green zone in Baghdad.
* There is talk of developing similar systems based on a high rate of fire "metal storm" system, or an electromagentic inert round railgun system (such as the one contemplated for the next generation destroyer, the DD(X)).
* Yet another approach would have a computer locate incoming projectiles and have chunks of armor shoot off a vehicle for a short distance towards the projectile so that the worst of the impact explosion would take place further from the armored vehicle.
The great virtue of all of these systems is that they make it possible for a vehicle or ship or military base to protect itself from the kinds of weapons that a rogue nation or insurgent group might acquire without piling on immense quantities of armor. Conceivably, a five ton active defense system might better protect the crew of a lightly armored vehicle better than 30 tons of passive armor on a main battle tank. And, such a system might make it possible to make a "secure" military base or urban safe haven truly secure.
On the other hand, if these system don't work effectively, we could see a very different trend. No one has yet tested the Phalanx CIWS in battle against multiple cruise missiles. Suppose it doesn't work. Then, any nation able to afford half a dozen $500,000 cruise missiles would be able to destroy a $1,000,000,000+ American warship. The mere threat of such an attack, made credible by a handful of real world combat examples, would keep the entire United States surface fleet hundreds of miles away from any nation with that relatively inexpensive capability. Military analysts have stated that it takes less technological savy to build a cruise missile than it does to build a jet fighter, so this is a real concern.
Likewise, a nation that could afford several dozen Hellfire missile knockoffs at $100,000 each could decimate an assault by American main battle tanks before the tanks even got within range of the enemy firing upon them.
And, the mere possibility that ground forces might have mobile anti-aircraft missiles (also in the $100,000 range) has been enough to radically alter the way the United States has chosen to use its air power in both Kosovo and Iraq.
Thus, in short, the continued existence of the surface fleet, low alititude military aircraft manuvers and the continued use of armored vehicles on the battlefield hinges to a great extent on the ability of engineers in the defense industry to develop reliable point defense systems. Either way, military vehicles are likely to get lighter, either to secure greater stealth and speed if active defenses can't be developed, or because active defenses are lighter than passive ones, if they do work. Passive heavy armor will remain useful only against infantry that lack access to missiles and heavy explosives -- keeping only small arms fire at bay.
A new class of point defense technologies, however, are on the verge of upsetting that balance. We don't yet have any technology that can reliably shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles directed at any place in the continental U.S., as the national missile defense that Republicans since Ronald Reagan have been pushing demands. But, several technologies on the verge of introduction can defeat incoming missiles, mortar rounds and artillery shells, or at least, identify the source of incoming projectiles. The technologies that do this are varied, although all rely on some sort of computer technology to target incoming projectiles faster than any human could.
* One of the earliest of these technologies to receive prominence was the Patriot Missile system, which destroyed several Scud missiles in the Gulf War.
* The Canadian "Ferret" technology is a projectile locator without any active defense. It is intended primarily has an anti-sniper tool that can locate instantly the source location of even a single incoming bullet.
* The THEL system combines targetting technology with a laser that destroys artillery shells, mortar shells and missiles as the come in, apparently by triggering the explosives that they carry.
* Another laser system, designed for use on commercial aircraft, renders useless incoming anti-aircraft missiles by frying their guidance systems. Apparently, many of our high end fighter jets can do a similar trick using their active radar systems (an actively electronically scanned array)in a directed way against incoming missiles.
* The Navy's Phalanx Close in Weapons System (CIWS) shoots grenande sized rounds with computer controlled radar at incoming cruise missiles. The system has also been adapted to actively defend against mortors and artillery shells directed at the green zone in Baghdad.
* There is talk of developing similar systems based on a high rate of fire "metal storm" system, or an electromagentic inert round railgun system (such as the one contemplated for the next generation destroyer, the DD(X)).
* Yet another approach would have a computer locate incoming projectiles and have chunks of armor shoot off a vehicle for a short distance towards the projectile so that the worst of the impact explosion would take place further from the armored vehicle.
The great virtue of all of these systems is that they make it possible for a vehicle or ship or military base to protect itself from the kinds of weapons that a rogue nation or insurgent group might acquire without piling on immense quantities of armor. Conceivably, a five ton active defense system might better protect the crew of a lightly armored vehicle better than 30 tons of passive armor on a main battle tank. And, such a system might make it possible to make a "secure" military base or urban safe haven truly secure.
On the other hand, if these system don't work effectively, we could see a very different trend. No one has yet tested the Phalanx CIWS in battle against multiple cruise missiles. Suppose it doesn't work. Then, any nation able to afford half a dozen $500,000 cruise missiles would be able to destroy a $1,000,000,000+ American warship. The mere threat of such an attack, made credible by a handful of real world combat examples, would keep the entire United States surface fleet hundreds of miles away from any nation with that relatively inexpensive capability. Military analysts have stated that it takes less technological savy to build a cruise missile than it does to build a jet fighter, so this is a real concern.
Likewise, a nation that could afford several dozen Hellfire missile knockoffs at $100,000 each could decimate an assault by American main battle tanks before the tanks even got within range of the enemy firing upon them.
And, the mere possibility that ground forces might have mobile anti-aircraft missiles (also in the $100,000 range) has been enough to radically alter the way the United States has chosen to use its air power in both Kosovo and Iraq.
Thus, in short, the continued existence of the surface fleet, low alititude military aircraft manuvers and the continued use of armored vehicles on the battlefield hinges to a great extent on the ability of engineers in the defense industry to develop reliable point defense systems. Either way, military vehicles are likely to get lighter, either to secure greater stealth and speed if active defenses can't be developed, or because active defenses are lighter than passive ones, if they do work. Passive heavy armor will remain useful only against infantry that lack access to missiles and heavy explosives -- keeping only small arms fire at bay.
Biochemistry and Morphology
It took 2,100 million years for life to evolve from bacteria and bluegreen algea to multi-celled creatures like jellyfish. It took another 1,900 million years to get from them to trilobites with shells. It took almost another 100 million year for vertabrates to arise, and another 100 million years after that for the first mammals to appear. Primates have existed for a mere 67 million years. Hominids go back only about 5 million years. Neaderthals go back perhaps 0.2 million years. The Neolithic revolution, which brough us agriculture, written history and fixed urban settlements is only about 0.01 million years old.
Perhaps then, it shouldn't be a surprise the a huge amount of our DNA is involved is establishing the biochemistry of life which took so long to evolve, while a relatively small amount of our DNA is involved in determining our far more recently evolved gross anatomy.
It takes a tweak in just a single gene for a fruit fly to grow on eye on its leg. A single common human mutation causes children to be born with an extra toe or finger. The famous statistic is that we share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, whom no one would mistake for humans in a police lineup. The fruit fly isn't the only example of a very subtle change in genetics having a huge macroscale effect. Experminents have show that just a single gene can account for homosexual behavior in a certain kind of animal -- causing males to follow instictual female mating rituals. A single chemical can engender a psychological response as complex as what we call "social trust".
How is this possible? Clearly, in the case of the fruit fly with the extra eye, somewhere deep in the fruit fly DNA there are elaborate subroutines for creating eye tissues (which have no doubt been evolving since the first flatworms had a light sensitive spot). The final gene simply tells the body when to trigger that subroutine. Similarly, our bodies have codes for leg or arm subroutines that can probably be tweaked with just a slight adjustment. Indeed, it appears that just a single gene govern's our body's chirality -- a mutation of this gene that causes someone to have organs that are on the opposite sides of the body from where they are usually found is not that uncommon.
What is the significance of this reality? One is that it strikes a dagger in the heart of the "irreducible complexity" arguments for intelligent design. Most intelligent design proponents see a big distinction between speciation accompanied by major morphological change, and incremental evolution within a species. Yet, because so much of our DNA is already encoded with "subroutines" for different kinds of biochemistries and tissues and even larger structures, a very small number of mutations can produce major, speciating morphological changes. Most animals have the same basic biochemistry as all other animals. Most plants have the same basic biochemistry as all other plants. Almost every living thing has basically the same basic DNA scheme with the same basic biochemical "letters" arranged in the same basic way, which in turn operates within cells. All of the "complex" life on this planet is based on the same basic concept of a multi-cellural creature with certain kinds of specialized cells that cluster together to form different kinds of tissues.
It also explains why mutations from time to time produce viable new forms that blend gracefully, rather than being nearly always fatal. Why do wolphins (whale-dolphin mixes) manage to develop inside their mother's wombs and live lives unaware that they are a cross-species mix, rather than aborting in all cases out of gross incompatability of form? Because, both species have basically the same biochemistry and set of subroutines. The adjustment that comes from hybridization take place at a very high genetic level with only a modest number of parameters setting forth the animal's gross form. Both have subroutines for brains, for hearts, for intestines which automatically kick in at an appropriate level for the overall scale of the animal and which have evolved in a manner that naturally blends seemlessly with other components of the overall animal.
The scenario of the "War of the Worlds" where alien invaders are defeated upon their arrival on Earth not by our weapons of war, but through contamination by our biosphere, in which they are not adapted to live, is not far fetched. One need look back no further than our Native American ancestors who were wiped out by small pox, to which they had no prior exposure, after a mere 10,000-30,000 years of living as seperated populations, to see just how easily this could happen. Our immune systems are in many respects far more sophisticated than our anatomy in the codes that give rise to them.
As we grow to better understand matters like the biochemistry of the brain, our very language will change. The analytic tree which we use to sort mental illnesses and conditions into categories will change from being symptomatic to causal. Once we classified physical ailments by symptom, like fever or vomitting. Now, our first cut is often amongst ailments caused by viruses like the flu, bacteria like many infections, parasites like sleeping disease, or certain classes of proteins call prions (not to be confused with preons which are theoretical subatomic particles), like Alzheimer's. Similarly, in the future we may very well classify mental conditions into those associated with the lympic system, with dopamine production, with serotonin production, with the hypocampus, and so on. These classifications will in turn, by their very names, suggest cures. Who would have guessed that research into M.S. would be likely to also have benefits for lupus, for example, until we knew that both are autoimmune diseases. Conditions with very dissimilar symptoms may all be treated with dopamine regulating drugs, and so on. We may even begin to have a biological basis for classifying emotions in particular categories based on the chemistry behind them. Some conditions which seemed very complex in symptom, multiple personality schitzophrenia, perhaps, might turn out to actually be quite simple deficencies in a single biological process, while other seemingly symptomatically simple conditions, depression, perhaps, might be prove to have multiple complex causes.
Once we do manage to link cause and effect to a wide variety of conditions, some difficult questions of identity and philosophy will arise. Which conditions do we accept as part of who we are, and which do we classify as ailments that should be cured. For example, most people who really understand what homosexuality is (i.e. a biological predisposition, at least in substantial part), tend to see homosexuality as part of who someone is, rather than as a hereditary disease to be cured, despite the fact that statistically homosexuality is "not normal". But, as biotechnology improves, those distinctions will increasingly be socially agreed classifications, rather than questions of practical ability to "treat" conditions.
Perhaps then, it shouldn't be a surprise the a huge amount of our DNA is involved is establishing the biochemistry of life which took so long to evolve, while a relatively small amount of our DNA is involved in determining our far more recently evolved gross anatomy.
It takes a tweak in just a single gene for a fruit fly to grow on eye on its leg. A single common human mutation causes children to be born with an extra toe or finger. The famous statistic is that we share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, whom no one would mistake for humans in a police lineup. The fruit fly isn't the only example of a very subtle change in genetics having a huge macroscale effect. Experminents have show that just a single gene can account for homosexual behavior in a certain kind of animal -- causing males to follow instictual female mating rituals. A single chemical can engender a psychological response as complex as what we call "social trust".
How is this possible? Clearly, in the case of the fruit fly with the extra eye, somewhere deep in the fruit fly DNA there are elaborate subroutines for creating eye tissues (which have no doubt been evolving since the first flatworms had a light sensitive spot). The final gene simply tells the body when to trigger that subroutine. Similarly, our bodies have codes for leg or arm subroutines that can probably be tweaked with just a slight adjustment. Indeed, it appears that just a single gene govern's our body's chirality -- a mutation of this gene that causes someone to have organs that are on the opposite sides of the body from where they are usually found is not that uncommon.
What is the significance of this reality? One is that it strikes a dagger in the heart of the "irreducible complexity" arguments for intelligent design. Most intelligent design proponents see a big distinction between speciation accompanied by major morphological change, and incremental evolution within a species. Yet, because so much of our DNA is already encoded with "subroutines" for different kinds of biochemistries and tissues and even larger structures, a very small number of mutations can produce major, speciating morphological changes. Most animals have the same basic biochemistry as all other animals. Most plants have the same basic biochemistry as all other plants. Almost every living thing has basically the same basic DNA scheme with the same basic biochemical "letters" arranged in the same basic way, which in turn operates within cells. All of the "complex" life on this planet is based on the same basic concept of a multi-cellural creature with certain kinds of specialized cells that cluster together to form different kinds of tissues.
It also explains why mutations from time to time produce viable new forms that blend gracefully, rather than being nearly always fatal. Why do wolphins (whale-dolphin mixes) manage to develop inside their mother's wombs and live lives unaware that they are a cross-species mix, rather than aborting in all cases out of gross incompatability of form? Because, both species have basically the same biochemistry and set of subroutines. The adjustment that comes from hybridization take place at a very high genetic level with only a modest number of parameters setting forth the animal's gross form. Both have subroutines for brains, for hearts, for intestines which automatically kick in at an appropriate level for the overall scale of the animal and which have evolved in a manner that naturally blends seemlessly with other components of the overall animal.
The scenario of the "War of the Worlds" where alien invaders are defeated upon their arrival on Earth not by our weapons of war, but through contamination by our biosphere, in which they are not adapted to live, is not far fetched. One need look back no further than our Native American ancestors who were wiped out by small pox, to which they had no prior exposure, after a mere 10,000-30,000 years of living as seperated populations, to see just how easily this could happen. Our immune systems are in many respects far more sophisticated than our anatomy in the codes that give rise to them.
As we grow to better understand matters like the biochemistry of the brain, our very language will change. The analytic tree which we use to sort mental illnesses and conditions into categories will change from being symptomatic to causal. Once we classified physical ailments by symptom, like fever or vomitting. Now, our first cut is often amongst ailments caused by viruses like the flu, bacteria like many infections, parasites like sleeping disease, or certain classes of proteins call prions (not to be confused with preons which are theoretical subatomic particles), like Alzheimer's. Similarly, in the future we may very well classify mental conditions into those associated with the lympic system, with dopamine production, with serotonin production, with the hypocampus, and so on. These classifications will in turn, by their very names, suggest cures. Who would have guessed that research into M.S. would be likely to also have benefits for lupus, for example, until we knew that both are autoimmune diseases. Conditions with very dissimilar symptoms may all be treated with dopamine regulating drugs, and so on. We may even begin to have a biological basis for classifying emotions in particular categories based on the chemistry behind them. Some conditions which seemed very complex in symptom, multiple personality schitzophrenia, perhaps, might turn out to actually be quite simple deficencies in a single biological process, while other seemingly symptomatically simple conditions, depression, perhaps, might be prove to have multiple complex causes.
Once we do manage to link cause and effect to a wide variety of conditions, some difficult questions of identity and philosophy will arise. Which conditions do we accept as part of who we are, and which do we classify as ailments that should be cured. For example, most people who really understand what homosexuality is (i.e. a biological predisposition, at least in substantial part), tend to see homosexuality as part of who someone is, rather than as a hereditary disease to be cured, despite the fact that statistically homosexuality is "not normal". But, as biotechnology improves, those distinctions will increasingly be socially agreed classifications, rather than questions of practical ability to "treat" conditions.
07 August 2005
Designer Immune Systems.
Humans aren't intelligently designed. But, that doesn't mean we can't do some redecorating ourselves. Some of the technologies on the horizon are stunning in their potential implications.
Researchers are making serious progress in developing a wide spectrum flu vaccine. That's right. One jab and you'll never get most strains of the flu ever again in your entire life. It may be ten or more years off, but it could still come soon enough for people like me to benefit before we become elderly. We already have vaccines against many diseases, and we already have narrow spectrum, short term flu vaccines, so this is really only an incremental change, but given how many people are affected by flu every year, its importance is monumental. And, it isn't just a matter of convenience. Geriatric influenza remains a leading cause of death.
Even more remarkable is that we may be able to vaccinate against tooth decay. This one wouldn't even take a shot. Swish some vaccine in your mouth as a toddler, and you'd enjoy a lifetime with far fewer cavities.
Little enhancements like this add up. Another time they may develop vaccines for HPV (which causes cervical cancer), for AIDS, and for who knows what else.
We're also making progress on other fronts. We aren't there yet, but targeted cancer drugs, which kill the cancer without the many acute side effects associated with traditional chemotherapy, are in the early stages of coming to market. One can imagine reaching a point where treating cancer, once it is discovered, isn't much different than taking antibiotics. People will still die of cancers discovered too late, but a single class of drugs like these, which would have a significant impact on one of the top three causes of death in this country (and cancer death rates have been stubbornly unchanged for decades while heart disease and stroke deaths have declined greatly), would single handledly extend the life expectancy of everyone in the nation by a decade.
We already know that very simple therapies, like daily mini-Asprin pills, and daily glasses of alcohol, have independent and dramatic effects on heart disease and stroke. Statins also have a similar effect. In a few decades, I suspect that Asprin will be viewed as a vitamin instead of a drug. It will be part of the standard recommendation for every middle aged and older adult. Indeed, serious progress is being made on a single pill that would contain everything in the "drug cocktail" that most older Americans take every week.
There are developments in biotechnology which will be controversial. But, none of these proposed remedies fit that profile. All treat conditions that are nearly universally viewed a diseases that should be banished to the fullest extent possible. By extending the human life span, and reducing the amount of suffering we experience during the course of that life span, they will change our society forever.
Researchers are making serious progress in developing a wide spectrum flu vaccine. That's right. One jab and you'll never get most strains of the flu ever again in your entire life. It may be ten or more years off, but it could still come soon enough for people like me to benefit before we become elderly. We already have vaccines against many diseases, and we already have narrow spectrum, short term flu vaccines, so this is really only an incremental change, but given how many people are affected by flu every year, its importance is monumental. And, it isn't just a matter of convenience. Geriatric influenza remains a leading cause of death.
Even more remarkable is that we may be able to vaccinate against tooth decay. This one wouldn't even take a shot. Swish some vaccine in your mouth as a toddler, and you'd enjoy a lifetime with far fewer cavities.
Little enhancements like this add up. Another time they may develop vaccines for HPV (which causes cervical cancer), for AIDS, and for who knows what else.
We're also making progress on other fronts. We aren't there yet, but targeted cancer drugs, which kill the cancer without the many acute side effects associated with traditional chemotherapy, are in the early stages of coming to market. One can imagine reaching a point where treating cancer, once it is discovered, isn't much different than taking antibiotics. People will still die of cancers discovered too late, but a single class of drugs like these, which would have a significant impact on one of the top three causes of death in this country (and cancer death rates have been stubbornly unchanged for decades while heart disease and stroke deaths have declined greatly), would single handledly extend the life expectancy of everyone in the nation by a decade.
We already know that very simple therapies, like daily mini-Asprin pills, and daily glasses of alcohol, have independent and dramatic effects on heart disease and stroke. Statins also have a similar effect. In a few decades, I suspect that Asprin will be viewed as a vitamin instead of a drug. It will be part of the standard recommendation for every middle aged and older adult. Indeed, serious progress is being made on a single pill that would contain everything in the "drug cocktail" that most older Americans take every week.
There are developments in biotechnology which will be controversial. But, none of these proposed remedies fit that profile. All treat conditions that are nearly universally viewed a diseases that should be banished to the fullest extent possible. By extending the human life span, and reducing the amount of suffering we experience during the course of that life span, they will change our society forever.
Intellectual Property Abuse
Al Lewis at the Denver Post has a classic example of a
corporation, in this case Chipolte, abusing a confidentiality agreement.
They key points: Douglas Bolle worked a Chipotle for two years from February 1999-2001, then moved to Las Vegas and opened Zabas Mexican Grill which expanded to three stores with sixty employees. Chipotle didn't open a restaurant there until August 2003. In 2004, they sued him for violating a confidentiality agreement he signed while he was a manager there.
Like most of these suits, Chipotle's claims are dubious. Colorado law is very restrictive of what sort of non-competition agreements can be validly entered into with employees. Basically, only "trade secrets" can be protected in a case like this one. What is a trade secret? It is a secret kept from the public which relates to the business. If a customer can observe it, it isn't a trade secret.
Guess what? Restaurant designs, menus, the prices charged to the public, and "look and feel" are, by definition, not trade secrets. For that matter, neither are the rough quantities of fixings which they put into the burritos in public view. As the few facts we have make clear, no secret recipes (spice proportions, for example) were ever disclosed and so no secret recipes could be stolen. And, Chipotle was barred by Colorado law from doing what it really wanted to do, which was enter into a non-competition agreement with its employees. It didn't patent that look and feel, and you can't copyright a look and feel either. Chipotle is simply going to have to compete in the competitive marketplace, if it can't bully Bolle into submission with a bogus lawsuit.
We can only hope that Mr. Bolle won't settle the case and that Chipotle will be hit with punitive damages and attorneys' fees on the counterclaim. It probably won't play out that way, but we can hope.
corporation, in this case Chipolte, abusing a confidentiality agreement.
They key points: Douglas Bolle worked a Chipotle for two years from February 1999-2001, then moved to Las Vegas and opened Zabas Mexican Grill which expanded to three stores with sixty employees. Chipotle didn't open a restaurant there until August 2003. In 2004, they sued him for violating a confidentiality agreement he signed while he was a manager there.
"The 'look and feel' of a Zabas Mexican Grill is confusingly similar to the 'look and feel' of a Chipotle Mexican Grill," the big burrito-maker claims in a lawsuit filed in Jefferson County.
Chipotle accuses Bolle of copying everything from restaurant design to menus, pricing and service. When it comes to Bolle, clearly the company still has a big chipotle on its shoulder.
Bolle denies all of his former employer's claims. He was a store manager but says he never learned the recipes because a lot of the food was prepared in a commissary and came in bags.
"I don't know how you could figure out a recipe if something comes in a bag," he said. "I knew what it smelled like, and that's about it."
Like most of these suits, Chipotle's claims are dubious. Colorado law is very restrictive of what sort of non-competition agreements can be validly entered into with employees. Basically, only "trade secrets" can be protected in a case like this one. What is a trade secret? It is a secret kept from the public which relates to the business. If a customer can observe it, it isn't a trade secret.
Guess what? Restaurant designs, menus, the prices charged to the public, and "look and feel" are, by definition, not trade secrets. For that matter, neither are the rough quantities of fixings which they put into the burritos in public view. As the few facts we have make clear, no secret recipes (spice proportions, for example) were ever disclosed and so no secret recipes could be stolen. And, Chipotle was barred by Colorado law from doing what it really wanted to do, which was enter into a non-competition agreement with its employees. It didn't patent that look and feel, and you can't copyright a look and feel either. Chipotle is simply going to have to compete in the competitive marketplace, if it can't bully Bolle into submission with a bogus lawsuit.
We can only hope that Mr. Bolle won't settle the case and that Chipotle will be hit with punitive damages and attorneys' fees on the counterclaim. It probably won't play out that way, but we can hope.
Religion Rant
I'm going to take a moment to stop being understanding, analytical and sympathetic.
What do these anti-science idiots think they are trying to accomplish?
Our President thinks "intelligent design" is good science that should be taught in our schools. His administration has ignored the consensus evidence that global warming exists and is caused by us. The FDA is giving more credence to an ideological nutcase who operates a criminally unethical gynecological practice and treated his ex-wife like a prostitute while claiming to have god on his side, than it does to the vast majority of its advisory panel on the issue of over the counter status for emergency contraception. They want to stop stem cell research using tissue that otherwise would have been incinerated in a medical waste bin and call that humane. And, don't get me started on the parents who aren't willing to give their kids vacinations or blood transfusions. The EPA is planning on ignoring all scientific advances of the past quarter century as it sets out to classify endangered species status. Something like a third of Americans are young Earth creationists. They object to the Big Bang Theory, and to plate tectonics, which they want to strike from school curriculums, and have this weird idea that our schools are teaching the "Biology of Abortion" whatever that means. It is only a matter of time before they'll be arguing for equal time and pay for demon exorcists in hospitals because that's the medical approach which Jesus and his disciples used. They are more exorcisms in the Gospels than there are communions, baptisms, ordinations or funerals.
And, it isn't as if the non-scientific side of the worldview these anti-science idiots are trying to preserve by ignoring science is any better. Hate gays. Treat women like shit. Dancing is bad. Execute people who received sub-standard trials and let God sort it out. Our country is by and for Christians only. Convert or kill non-Christians. Keep brain dead people on life support. Believe in God and you'll get rich. Ban Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons. Your own sins don't matter because they'll all be forgiven.
Are these all Christians? No. But, they are the majority of evangelical Christians (from denominations that often didn't even disavow slavery until the 1960s) and they are a growing share of the more traditional varieties. Somewhere, the messages of tolerance, anti-materialism and charity got lost. I'm not a Christian (the metaphysics are plain wrong and the Biblical God is a pretty evil being on occassion), but I do see that it is possible to find good moral foundations in Christianity and that Christianity can be a force for good in the world. But, the recent track record doesn't look good. Many 19th century Christian philanthropists would be turning in their graves if they could see what a mess has been made of the then uncontroversial cause they gave their riches to advance.
Also, it isn't as if the "good" Christians are very active in keeping their faith from being perverted. I spent a lot of years in more moderate churches, and while the sermons advanced a generally positive view of life, I never once heard a pastor with the temerity to publicly say that the other side had it wrong. You don't see a lot of Lutheran or Episcopal or Methodist preachers take to the airwaves denouncing Dobson's latest faux pas (the United Church of Christ did try to run an ad campaign but the networks wouldn't let them).
The religious right is a dire threat to what makes this country great, and it is taking moderate Christianity down with it, as they feel compelled to imitate it or die.
Also, just for equal time, Islamists seem hell bent on returning the world to a middle aged vision that is brutal and backward, the BJP Hindus are hardly a positive force for change in India, and the ultra-orthodox Jews casting freaky graveyard curses on their own Prime Minister would be laughable if they weren't serious. Joe Lieberman is a reminder that many of the faults of right wing Christianity are buried deep in Orthodox Judiasm as well.
Wake up people! Science is real, it works. You don't need God (or gods) to be moral. Hate and ignorance are not positive forces for change in our world.
What do these anti-science idiots think they are trying to accomplish?
Our President thinks "intelligent design" is good science that should be taught in our schools. His administration has ignored the consensus evidence that global warming exists and is caused by us. The FDA is giving more credence to an ideological nutcase who operates a criminally unethical gynecological practice and treated his ex-wife like a prostitute while claiming to have god on his side, than it does to the vast majority of its advisory panel on the issue of over the counter status for emergency contraception. They want to stop stem cell research using tissue that otherwise would have been incinerated in a medical waste bin and call that humane. And, don't get me started on the parents who aren't willing to give their kids vacinations or blood transfusions. The EPA is planning on ignoring all scientific advances of the past quarter century as it sets out to classify endangered species status. Something like a third of Americans are young Earth creationists. They object to the Big Bang Theory, and to plate tectonics, which they want to strike from school curriculums, and have this weird idea that our schools are teaching the "Biology of Abortion" whatever that means. It is only a matter of time before they'll be arguing for equal time and pay for demon exorcists in hospitals because that's the medical approach which Jesus and his disciples used. They are more exorcisms in the Gospels than there are communions, baptisms, ordinations or funerals.
And, it isn't as if the non-scientific side of the worldview these anti-science idiots are trying to preserve by ignoring science is any better. Hate gays. Treat women like shit. Dancing is bad. Execute people who received sub-standard trials and let God sort it out. Our country is by and for Christians only. Convert or kill non-Christians. Keep brain dead people on life support. Believe in God and you'll get rich. Ban Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons. Your own sins don't matter because they'll all be forgiven.
Are these all Christians? No. But, they are the majority of evangelical Christians (from denominations that often didn't even disavow slavery until the 1960s) and they are a growing share of the more traditional varieties. Somewhere, the messages of tolerance, anti-materialism and charity got lost. I'm not a Christian (the metaphysics are plain wrong and the Biblical God is a pretty evil being on occassion), but I do see that it is possible to find good moral foundations in Christianity and that Christianity can be a force for good in the world. But, the recent track record doesn't look good. Many 19th century Christian philanthropists would be turning in their graves if they could see what a mess has been made of the then uncontroversial cause they gave their riches to advance.
Also, it isn't as if the "good" Christians are very active in keeping their faith from being perverted. I spent a lot of years in more moderate churches, and while the sermons advanced a generally positive view of life, I never once heard a pastor with the temerity to publicly say that the other side had it wrong. You don't see a lot of Lutheran or Episcopal or Methodist preachers take to the airwaves denouncing Dobson's latest faux pas (the United Church of Christ did try to run an ad campaign but the networks wouldn't let them).
The religious right is a dire threat to what makes this country great, and it is taking moderate Christianity down with it, as they feel compelled to imitate it or die.
Also, just for equal time, Islamists seem hell bent on returning the world to a middle aged vision that is brutal and backward, the BJP Hindus are hardly a positive force for change in India, and the ultra-orthodox Jews casting freaky graveyard curses on their own Prime Minister would be laughable if they weren't serious. Joe Lieberman is a reminder that many of the faults of right wing Christianity are buried deep in Orthodox Judiasm as well.
Wake up people! Science is real, it works. You don't need God (or gods) to be moral. Hate and ignorance are not positive forces for change in our world.
05 August 2005
The Simplicity Movement
The simplicity movement is one of the important cultural forces in what you might call, for want of a better word, Blue State America, although I'm not precisely referring to the states that Kerry or Gore won in the most recent election, so much as the side of the culture divide in this country that those states exemplify. It is a movement that certainly influences my thinking, although I'd hardly consider myself a hard core member. (Indeed, just a few posts back I was criticizing an important figure in the Simplicity movement and author of the book "Affluenza" for taking the wrong approach to protecting the environment.)
Anyway, what is the simplicity movement about?
* Owning less "stuff", so that you own only what you need.
* Trading income for leisure when possible.
* Achieving financial independence by avoiding consumer debt and saving.
* Trying to be less wasteful in the way you use your time.
* Enjoying cultural and non-material riches beyond those expected for your income.
Jerome Segal's book Graceful Simplicity is one of the better manifestos of the movement, looking at its philosphical underpinings and correctly noting that political action, rather than just personal discipline, is necessary for the movement's goals to be achieved widely. The movement has even spawned a magazine, Real Simple, although it is a bit "decadent" for purists.
In the tradition of many of the big initiatives of modern liberalism it is in part an attempt to accomplish things that Western Europe has achieved, but the United States has not. Europeans have long vacations, work fewer hours a year, and have non-material goodies like health care and education handed to them by the government, while Americans have to work long hours to pay for the same things out of pocket. Europeans may have lower per capita GDPs than the U.S., but in part this is a conscious choice to trade income for leisure.
Segal correctly notes that it isn't easy to live a "simple" lifestyle in the United States. You can live in a less expensive house, for example, but often at the cost of either a long commute or a dangerous neighborhood with "bad" schools. Few employers are willing to offer more than the standard two to four weeks of vacation a year, no matter how much of a pay cut you are willing to accept. Most jobs simply are not structured that way. Creating your own job through self-employment requires you to provide health insurance for yourself at a cost that far exceeds what your employer would have to pay if you worked for a big business. Keeping your debts down and savings up isn't easy if you have a middle class income, because the cost of living a decent life -- with appropriate health care, a safe neighborhood with either "good" schools or additional expenditures for private education, healthy food, vehicles you need to go to work and meet your daily needs, and so on, while suceptible to reduction, cost far more than a poverty level income in most places. You can control your housing costs by living far out in the suburbs, but at the cost of wasting lots of your time commuting, and lots of your money on cars and their care.
What does my family do that flows from this philosophy?
We live in a small house (two bedrooms), but in a "good" neighborhood that has a "good" public school and allows us to do a great deal without driving. We have just one car, and it is a modest, fuel efficient sedan which we plan on keeping for ten years from when we bought it. I intentionally made a career choice that resulted in less work and less money -- by entering academia, for a while, at least, and my wife has chosen to stay at home rather than joining the work force, at least while our children are young. We give substantial loads of stuff to the Lupus Foundation, the Association of Retired Citizens (ARC), and Goodwill, once or twice a month (a smaller house helps encourage this tendency). We don't carry credit card balances, and do our best to pay down our other debts and save. We almost never spend time watching TV and don't have cable or satellite TV. We've put off the expense of a cell phone as long as we can, although we may soon sucumb to buying one. We are restrained in our consumer spending and rarely eat out. We look for free or low cost membership entertainment options for ourselves and our children. We often get books and videos from the library, instead of buying them. It isn't that we don't indulge a luxury or two. We aren't stripped to bare necessities. But, by and large, we try to live a less materialistic lifestyle than many Americans.
This doesn't mean we live a low income lifestyle either. Denver housing in a "good" neighborhood with "good" schools is not cheap (although housing in Boston, where my brother lives, and in Seattle, where my sister-in-law lives, is even more expensive). We could certainly have spent less up front on an older and smaller used car than the new car we bought a number of years ago. Among people we know, we are hardly the least cluttered household -- we could toss more stuff. We could be more extreme in our purchasing habits -- we have a family friend who is thrifty to a fault. But, simplicity isn't about living a low income lifestyle, or even being "The Millionaire Next Door". We don't want to spend less because we value poverty in some quasi-monastic way, or to save simply so that we can die with millions in the bank. We simply choose to favor financial security over spending we don't necessarily appreciate all that much anyway. One of Segal's great observations is that many people's happiest memories are of the days when they were just starting out and had few material possessions. We read our children a bedtime story about a musician who grew unhappy because he had too much stuff. Diminishing marginal utility isn't just an economic concept, it is a code to live by in your daily life. One couch is great. The third one doesn't add much value to your life.
I'll close with a footnote. I've put references to "good" and "bad" schools, and to "good" and "bad" neighborhoods in quotations, and I am wary of using the terms "safe" and "dangerous", although I have done so at least once. These words are often used as code words that cover up the ugly issue of race. And, it is true that there are heavily minority neighborhoods in a highly segregated city like Denver, which truly are dangerous and which truly do have schools that don't succeed in their objective of providing a good education to the children who attend them. It is also true that there are neighborhoods in a city like Denver which are overwhelmingly white which are both safe and have schools that do a good job of providing a good education to the children who attend them.
Talking about what does make schools good and bad, and what does make neighborhoods good and bad, or safe and dangerous, is beyond the scope of this entry. I think these terms do have meaning, and I don't think that they have to be code words for enforcing a regime of racial segregation that is a blight on urban America, although they can certainly be used in that way. But, doing that discussion justice will take another few posts.
Anyway, what is the simplicity movement about?
* Owning less "stuff", so that you own only what you need.
* Trading income for leisure when possible.
* Achieving financial independence by avoiding consumer debt and saving.
* Trying to be less wasteful in the way you use your time.
* Enjoying cultural and non-material riches beyond those expected for your income.
Jerome Segal's book Graceful Simplicity is one of the better manifestos of the movement, looking at its philosphical underpinings and correctly noting that political action, rather than just personal discipline, is necessary for the movement's goals to be achieved widely. The movement has even spawned a magazine, Real Simple, although it is a bit "decadent" for purists.
In the tradition of many of the big initiatives of modern liberalism it is in part an attempt to accomplish things that Western Europe has achieved, but the United States has not. Europeans have long vacations, work fewer hours a year, and have non-material goodies like health care and education handed to them by the government, while Americans have to work long hours to pay for the same things out of pocket. Europeans may have lower per capita GDPs than the U.S., but in part this is a conscious choice to trade income for leisure.
Segal correctly notes that it isn't easy to live a "simple" lifestyle in the United States. You can live in a less expensive house, for example, but often at the cost of either a long commute or a dangerous neighborhood with "bad" schools. Few employers are willing to offer more than the standard two to four weeks of vacation a year, no matter how much of a pay cut you are willing to accept. Most jobs simply are not structured that way. Creating your own job through self-employment requires you to provide health insurance for yourself at a cost that far exceeds what your employer would have to pay if you worked for a big business. Keeping your debts down and savings up isn't easy if you have a middle class income, because the cost of living a decent life -- with appropriate health care, a safe neighborhood with either "good" schools or additional expenditures for private education, healthy food, vehicles you need to go to work and meet your daily needs, and so on, while suceptible to reduction, cost far more than a poverty level income in most places. You can control your housing costs by living far out in the suburbs, but at the cost of wasting lots of your time commuting, and lots of your money on cars and their care.
What does my family do that flows from this philosophy?
We live in a small house (two bedrooms), but in a "good" neighborhood that has a "good" public school and allows us to do a great deal without driving. We have just one car, and it is a modest, fuel efficient sedan which we plan on keeping for ten years from when we bought it. I intentionally made a career choice that resulted in less work and less money -- by entering academia, for a while, at least, and my wife has chosen to stay at home rather than joining the work force, at least while our children are young. We give substantial loads of stuff to the Lupus Foundation, the Association of Retired Citizens (ARC), and Goodwill, once or twice a month (a smaller house helps encourage this tendency). We don't carry credit card balances, and do our best to pay down our other debts and save. We almost never spend time watching TV and don't have cable or satellite TV. We've put off the expense of a cell phone as long as we can, although we may soon sucumb to buying one. We are restrained in our consumer spending and rarely eat out. We look for free or low cost membership entertainment options for ourselves and our children. We often get books and videos from the library, instead of buying them. It isn't that we don't indulge a luxury or two. We aren't stripped to bare necessities. But, by and large, we try to live a less materialistic lifestyle than many Americans.
This doesn't mean we live a low income lifestyle either. Denver housing in a "good" neighborhood with "good" schools is not cheap (although housing in Boston, where my brother lives, and in Seattle, where my sister-in-law lives, is even more expensive). We could certainly have spent less up front on an older and smaller used car than the new car we bought a number of years ago. Among people we know, we are hardly the least cluttered household -- we could toss more stuff. We could be more extreme in our purchasing habits -- we have a family friend who is thrifty to a fault. But, simplicity isn't about living a low income lifestyle, or even being "The Millionaire Next Door". We don't want to spend less because we value poverty in some quasi-monastic way, or to save simply so that we can die with millions in the bank. We simply choose to favor financial security over spending we don't necessarily appreciate all that much anyway. One of Segal's great observations is that many people's happiest memories are of the days when they were just starting out and had few material possessions. We read our children a bedtime story about a musician who grew unhappy because he had too much stuff. Diminishing marginal utility isn't just an economic concept, it is a code to live by in your daily life. One couch is great. The third one doesn't add much value to your life.
I'll close with a footnote. I've put references to "good" and "bad" schools, and to "good" and "bad" neighborhoods in quotations, and I am wary of using the terms "safe" and "dangerous", although I have done so at least once. These words are often used as code words that cover up the ugly issue of race. And, it is true that there are heavily minority neighborhoods in a highly segregated city like Denver, which truly are dangerous and which truly do have schools that don't succeed in their objective of providing a good education to the children who attend them. It is also true that there are neighborhoods in a city like Denver which are overwhelmingly white which are both safe and have schools that do a good job of providing a good education to the children who attend them.
Talking about what does make schools good and bad, and what does make neighborhoods good and bad, or safe and dangerous, is beyond the scope of this entry. I think these terms do have meaning, and I don't think that they have to be code words for enforcing a regime of racial segregation that is a blight on urban America, although they can certainly be used in that way. But, doing that discussion justice will take another few posts.
03 August 2005
Cities and Terrorism
Conservative scholar Joel Kotkin argued in his article "City of the Future" in the Washington Post, that tighter immigration laws, preventive detention, widespread surveillance of suspected terrorists, and measures to force immigrants to assimiliate (like forced immersion into the national language and political institutions) is necessary for cities to survive. Without these measures, he argues, the modern city, because it fails to provide security, will go the way to Rome. He is wrong.
He dismisses the notion, out of hand, that economic causes, like energy, food and water shortages, as opposed to security, could be the cause of urban declines. As modern examples he cites cities like Baltimore and Detroit. Certainly, those cities have declined and certainly, security has been a problem that has pushed people out of those cities. But, one has to be blind not to see the crime waves for what they are, a direct consequence of the demise of manufacturing jobs in the United States, as they have given way both to automation and to foreign production (both in the form of foreign competition and off shoring of jobs).
He notes that "terrorists have attacked . . . transporation systems to kill more than 11,000 people in cities from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Baghdad to Madrid and London." This is true, but deceptive. The number of deaths due to terrorism aimed at both Madrid and London has been modest and the number of attacks that have killed people can be counted on your fingers. (I'm surprised he didn't add Tokoyo, which had a single incident in its subway system for additional effect). Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have endure hundreds of suicide bus bombings. But, those very examples show the flaw in his security is necessary for a city to endure theory. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are still vibrant cities where people still use the buses, and it is unfair treatment of Palestinians which has created their problem, not insufficiently harsh treatment. Likewise, Beruit still thrives despite its bloody history. And, we all know that Jack the Ripper did not dent London's population growth. There is, as he notes, epic levels of crime in Johannesburg, yet it is also in many respect one of the most vibrant cities in sub-Saharan Africa.
New York has had one of the most diverse and least assimilated immigrant populations in the world since before the United States existed. It has also endured two terrorist attacks on the same complex of symbolic buildings. Notably, the second and more deadly one was not committed by New Yorkers. And, notably, New York City is safer now than it was in the 1970s, when an economic recession let crime take hold.
He notes the influx of Muslims into Montreal and Toronto (he could easily have added Detroit). He fails to note that none of these cities has seen a single incident of Islamic terrorism. The most recent incident of terrorism most close to Toronto was the assassination of a doctor who did abortions in Buffalo, by an American Christian fundamentalist. Oklahoma City isn't known for its cultural diversity either. The terrorist who struck it was another right wing American.
It took about 400 armed insurgents to sustain the troubles in Northern Ireland for decades, despite 10,000 British troops deployed to stop them. How did so few prove effective against so many? Because a hundred times as many were willing to not cooperate with the British troops in apprehending them. The best surveillance of would be terrorists doesn't come from domestic anti-terrorism agencies, it comes from domestic and immigrant populations in communities terrorists come from who are willing to report suspicious behavior before an attack can be carried out. Kotkin decries London Mayor Ken Livingstone for welcoming conservative Egyptian cleric Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi to his city. But, it is worth noting that the people who carried out the attacks on London subways weren't Egyptians -- they were British nationals of Pakistani origins. Had Livingstone tried to suppress that cleric, those bombers could easily have been Egyptians.
Immigration laws can't prevent your own citizens from committing terrorist acts. Terrorist acts like those committed in the London subways. Terrorist acts in many cases committed by American citizens in Oklahoma City, in Buffalo and in Atlanta. Special terrorism laws aren't necessary either. The civil courts successfully imprisoned the first World Trade Center figures. They have also prosecuted, convicted and punished the Oklahoma City bombing principals, the Buffalo and Atlanta terrorists, and a terrorist mentioned in Kotlin's article who entered the United States from Canada planning to attack the Los Angeles International Airport.
Terrorism is rare. It is a form of war. It comes from people who believe that a government is illegitimate, people who haven't gotten a fair shake in the legal/political process and as a result have felt entitled to ignore it. Walls don't protect cities. Cities are made safe by the loyalty of their people.
He dismisses the notion, out of hand, that economic causes, like energy, food and water shortages, as opposed to security, could be the cause of urban declines. As modern examples he cites cities like Baltimore and Detroit. Certainly, those cities have declined and certainly, security has been a problem that has pushed people out of those cities. But, one has to be blind not to see the crime waves for what they are, a direct consequence of the demise of manufacturing jobs in the United States, as they have given way both to automation and to foreign production (both in the form of foreign competition and off shoring of jobs).
He notes that "terrorists have attacked . . . transporation systems to kill more than 11,000 people in cities from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Baghdad to Madrid and London." This is true, but deceptive. The number of deaths due to terrorism aimed at both Madrid and London has been modest and the number of attacks that have killed people can be counted on your fingers. (I'm surprised he didn't add Tokoyo, which had a single incident in its subway system for additional effect). Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have endure hundreds of suicide bus bombings. But, those very examples show the flaw in his security is necessary for a city to endure theory. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are still vibrant cities where people still use the buses, and it is unfair treatment of Palestinians which has created their problem, not insufficiently harsh treatment. Likewise, Beruit still thrives despite its bloody history. And, we all know that Jack the Ripper did not dent London's population growth. There is, as he notes, epic levels of crime in Johannesburg, yet it is also in many respect one of the most vibrant cities in sub-Saharan Africa.
New York has had one of the most diverse and least assimilated immigrant populations in the world since before the United States existed. It has also endured two terrorist attacks on the same complex of symbolic buildings. Notably, the second and more deadly one was not committed by New Yorkers. And, notably, New York City is safer now than it was in the 1970s, when an economic recession let crime take hold.
He notes the influx of Muslims into Montreal and Toronto (he could easily have added Detroit). He fails to note that none of these cities has seen a single incident of Islamic terrorism. The most recent incident of terrorism most close to Toronto was the assassination of a doctor who did abortions in Buffalo, by an American Christian fundamentalist. Oklahoma City isn't known for its cultural diversity either. The terrorist who struck it was another right wing American.
It took about 400 armed insurgents to sustain the troubles in Northern Ireland for decades, despite 10,000 British troops deployed to stop them. How did so few prove effective against so many? Because a hundred times as many were willing to not cooperate with the British troops in apprehending them. The best surveillance of would be terrorists doesn't come from domestic anti-terrorism agencies, it comes from domestic and immigrant populations in communities terrorists come from who are willing to report suspicious behavior before an attack can be carried out. Kotkin decries London Mayor Ken Livingstone for welcoming conservative Egyptian cleric Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi to his city. But, it is worth noting that the people who carried out the attacks on London subways weren't Egyptians -- they were British nationals of Pakistani origins. Had Livingstone tried to suppress that cleric, those bombers could easily have been Egyptians.
Immigration laws can't prevent your own citizens from committing terrorist acts. Terrorist acts like those committed in the London subways. Terrorist acts in many cases committed by American citizens in Oklahoma City, in Buffalo and in Atlanta. Special terrorism laws aren't necessary either. The civil courts successfully imprisoned the first World Trade Center figures. They have also prosecuted, convicted and punished the Oklahoma City bombing principals, the Buffalo and Atlanta terrorists, and a terrorist mentioned in Kotlin's article who entered the United States from Canada planning to attack the Los Angeles International Airport.
Terrorism is rare. It is a form of war. It comes from people who believe that a government is illegitimate, people who haven't gotten a fair shake in the legal/political process and as a result have felt entitled to ignore it. Walls don't protect cities. Cities are made safe by the loyalty of their people.
Modern Physics: Some Analogies.
Just to make the point about emergent physical phenomena clear, and to make my terminology clear, I'd like to use a chess analogy.
We know most of the rules of the game. There are a couple we're not quite sure about. We don't know what happens if a pawn makes it all the way to the other end of the board, indeed, while we note that the distances moved by pieces seems to be pretty consistent, we're color blind and actually can't see the squares on the board. We're not sure if a King can capture pieces, as we've never seen it happen, although we hypothesize that it can. We don't know for sure how the board looked when the game started, but we have a good idea about how it looked.
On the other hand, we still have only a dim idea about what strategies are the best ones. We've discovered a couple, like forking, but there are plenty that we have no clue about.
We know most of the rules of the game when it comes to fundamental physics, although we still have a few questions about issues that don't come up in our ordinary experience very often. And, when I use the term "modern physics" I'm really referring to new developments in fundamental theories of quantum mechanics, the standard model of particle physics and general relativity. But, clearly there are many "emergent physical phenomena" (by analogy, the strategy that flows from the basic rules), which we don't yet understand well.
Of course, studying emergent physical phenomena (which is not part of what I am calling "modern physics" in most cases) is easier when you know all of the relevant fundamental theories (and in many cases we know all of the relevant fundamental theories, even if we haven't mastered some that are irrelevant). Why? Because it allows you to rule out lots of oddball explainations for emergent physical phenomena and focus on the realm of the possible, instead. Someone trying to understand superconductivity doesn't have to spend a lot of time wondering how many atoms per gram of material are in a substance when formulating a model, or pursuing models where current propogates at faster than the speed of light. Likewise, our supercondictivity researcher can do back of napkin calculations to see if gravitational effects can be safely ignored in an experiment and be assured that this is sufficient due diligence on that front.
In other words, we are nowhere close to putting physicists out of work, even though we are quite close to being able to hand would be physicists a "rule book" that explains all of the laws of nature along with extensive annotations to show the precise experimental basis for each of them. It is a lot easier to fix a car if you have a book giving you detailed information on your particular model of car and all of its parts, than it is if you have to guess on points like what size piston was before it blew out.
We know most of the rules of the game. There are a couple we're not quite sure about. We don't know what happens if a pawn makes it all the way to the other end of the board, indeed, while we note that the distances moved by pieces seems to be pretty consistent, we're color blind and actually can't see the squares on the board. We're not sure if a King can capture pieces, as we've never seen it happen, although we hypothesize that it can. We don't know for sure how the board looked when the game started, but we have a good idea about how it looked.
On the other hand, we still have only a dim idea about what strategies are the best ones. We've discovered a couple, like forking, but there are plenty that we have no clue about.
We know most of the rules of the game when it comes to fundamental physics, although we still have a few questions about issues that don't come up in our ordinary experience very often. And, when I use the term "modern physics" I'm really referring to new developments in fundamental theories of quantum mechanics, the standard model of particle physics and general relativity. But, clearly there are many "emergent physical phenomena" (by analogy, the strategy that flows from the basic rules), which we don't yet understand well.
Of course, studying emergent physical phenomena (which is not part of what I am calling "modern physics" in most cases) is easier when you know all of the relevant fundamental theories (and in many cases we know all of the relevant fundamental theories, even if we haven't mastered some that are irrelevant). Why? Because it allows you to rule out lots of oddball explainations for emergent physical phenomena and focus on the realm of the possible, instead. Someone trying to understand superconductivity doesn't have to spend a lot of time wondering how many atoms per gram of material are in a substance when formulating a model, or pursuing models where current propogates at faster than the speed of light. Likewise, our supercondictivity researcher can do back of napkin calculations to see if gravitational effects can be safely ignored in an experiment and be assured that this is sufficient due diligence on that front.
In other words, we are nowhere close to putting physicists out of work, even though we are quite close to being able to hand would be physicists a "rule book" that explains all of the laws of nature along with extensive annotations to show the precise experimental basis for each of them. It is a lot easier to fix a car if you have a book giving you detailed information on your particular model of car and all of its parts, than it is if you have to guess on points like what size piston was before it blew out.
02 August 2005
Modern Physics: The Idiot's Version.
You can understand almost everything you need to know to explain almost everything in real life with a quite simple (and wrong) set of physics theories.
In the abridged version, there are just two forces: gravity and electro-magnetism.
Gravity is Newtonian. In other words, the only thing you need to know about gravity is F=GMm/r^2, where G is the gravitational constant, M is one object's mass, m is the other objects mass, and r is the distance between them. It is for all practical purposes instantaneous.
You still need a quantum mechanics level understanding of electro-magnetism, and you still need Einstein's theory of special relativity (the speed of light speed limit and related ideas about clocks ticking at different speeds for different observers).
There are just five kinds of particles you need to know about: protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons (i.e. anti-electrons) and photons. You assume that all of these particles are stable except in situations that are beyond the scope of this simplified theory.
Everything else in the universe is relegated to "nuclear physics" and "astronomy", neither of which are relevant in the vast majority of cases in real life. For example, the abridged rules of physics I've presented above is completely sufficient for any purposes within the realm of chemistry or biology or non-nuclear engineering applications.
I say this because it is important to make clear what is at stake in modern physics. No one is proposing any changes to the laws of gravity in situations at the Earth orbit level or below in cases where Newtonian gravity is currently sufficient as an approximation of the theory of General Relativity to get the right result. No one is proposing substantive changes to QED (the theory of electromagentism). No one is proposing that special relativity is wrong in the kinds of circumstances where we ordinarily apply it.
For that matter, we really know all we need to know to create nuclear fission and fusion bombs, and to operate nuclear fission based nuclear power reactors. And, the physics of the most plausible candidates for nuclear fusion based power reactors are quite well understood. Modern physics is about understanding the universe. But, it is unlikely to have much in the way of technological benefits that flow from the theories themselves. Most scientists expect, at best, a new theory that would explain what "higher level theories" have already observed.
In the abridged version, there are just two forces: gravity and electro-magnetism.
Gravity is Newtonian. In other words, the only thing you need to know about gravity is F=GMm/r^2, where G is the gravitational constant, M is one object's mass, m is the other objects mass, and r is the distance between them. It is for all practical purposes instantaneous.
You still need a quantum mechanics level understanding of electro-magnetism, and you still need Einstein's theory of special relativity (the speed of light speed limit and related ideas about clocks ticking at different speeds for different observers).
There are just five kinds of particles you need to know about: protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons (i.e. anti-electrons) and photons. You assume that all of these particles are stable except in situations that are beyond the scope of this simplified theory.
Everything else in the universe is relegated to "nuclear physics" and "astronomy", neither of which are relevant in the vast majority of cases in real life. For example, the abridged rules of physics I've presented above is completely sufficient for any purposes within the realm of chemistry or biology or non-nuclear engineering applications.
I say this because it is important to make clear what is at stake in modern physics. No one is proposing any changes to the laws of gravity in situations at the Earth orbit level or below in cases where Newtonian gravity is currently sufficient as an approximation of the theory of General Relativity to get the right result. No one is proposing substantive changes to QED (the theory of electromagentism). No one is proposing that special relativity is wrong in the kinds of circumstances where we ordinarily apply it.
For that matter, we really know all we need to know to create nuclear fission and fusion bombs, and to operate nuclear fission based nuclear power reactors. And, the physics of the most plausible candidates for nuclear fusion based power reactors are quite well understood. Modern physics is about understanding the universe. But, it is unlikely to have much in the way of technological benefits that flow from the theories themselves. Most scientists expect, at best, a new theory that would explain what "higher level theories" have already observed.
Modern Physics: An Introduction
There are three main areas of ongoing investigation in modern physics. One is an effort to better understand the world of the very small. This is the realm of quantum mechanics and the standard model of particle physics. Another is to understand gravity better, an understanding currently summed up in Einstein's theory of general relativity. The third is an effort to understand "emergent phenomena" -- things that happen in nature where the fundamental physical laws are well understood, but how they play out is not.
Quantum mechanics and general relativity are not consistent theories. General relativity is a "classical theory." It is deterministic and assumes an infinitely smooth universe. Quantum mechanics is a stochastic theory. It predicts in a highly accurate way the probability of individual or small groups of fundamental particles acting in particular ways. Quantum mechanics is normally considered in "Minkowski space" which means that the ordinary geometrical rules of Euclid modified by Einstein's theory of special relativity is used, but that Einstein's rule of general relativity is not used.
Both quantum mechanics and general relativity are four dimensional, with three dimensions in space and one in time.
The four forces
Modern physics is based upon the working assumption that there are four fundamental forces in the universe that govern everything. Three of those are described by quantum mechanics: electro-magentism, the nuclear strong force and the nuclear weak force. Part of quantum mechanics that explains electro-magnetism (i.e. electricity, magentic behavior, light, radio waves, X-rays, etc.), called QED, is about as close to perfect as a physical theory can get (although there remain some questions of how to interpret certain phenomena whose empirical behavior can be predicted). A generalization of QED called electroweak theory also does a good job of explaining the weak force (the weak force is the force that causes heavy radioactive elements to decay). A similar theory called QCD (for quantum chomodynamics) explains the nuclear strong force (which is what holds the nuclei of atoms together) although our ability to come up with experimental results is better than our ability to use the very difficult equations involved to actually make theoretical predictions.
The fourth force, of course, is gravity, explained by general relativity, which basically says that mass and energy curve space causing the phenomena we call gravity, which behaves in non-intuitive ways in very strong gravitational fields and when masses and energies are moving. In general relativity, gravity affects massless particles, like photons, as well as massive particles.
Why do we ordinarily not observe strong and weak forces? Because they only operate at very short distances, generally within atoms. Gravity and electromagnetism are the only long range forces known to modern physics.
The "fundamental" particles
In addition to the four basic forces, there is list of particles which have been discovered which appear to be "fundamental". These are broken into "force carrying" particles which have "spin zero", and the particles that make up more ordinary matter which have "spin one half".
The spin zero particles are: the photon (which carries the electro-magentic force, has no mass, and has the characteristics of both frequency and polarization), the W, Z+ and Z- particles (which carry the weak force, are massive, and have neutral, positive and negative electrical charges respectively), eight kinds of gluons (which carry the strong force) which are distinguished by their "color charge" which comes in types R, G and B (which have no connnection to real colors, they are just useful names).
The spin one-half particles all come in three generations, the first being the "electron generation", the next being the "mu" generation which is heavier and shorter lived that the previous generation but otherwise identical, and the thrid being the "tau" generation which is even heavier than the "mu" generation and even shorter lived than the previous generation. (What I have called generations are also sometimes called "families"). These are broken into two kinds of "leptons", the neutrino and the electron in each of three generations, and two kinds of quarks (the up and the down in each of three generations). All spin one-half particles are currently believed to have mass. Electrons (and their higher generation kin) have an electrical charge called -1. Up quarks have an electrical charge of +2/3 and down quarks have an electrical charge of -1/3. The strong force affects quarks but not leptons, and quarks have color charge (R, G or B or anti-R, G or B). All spin one-half particles come in matter and anti-matter versions. All spin one-half particles except neutrinos also come in "right handed" and "left handed" versions.
A proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark. A neutron is made of one up quark and two down quarks. Quarks only combine in combinations that are color neutral (i.e. either a color and its anti-color, or one of each color). There are also a great many of two and three quark combinations involving both up and down quarks, and higher generation quarks. Two quark particles are called mesons. Three quark particles are called bayrons. (Mesons and baryons collectively all called hadrons). In theory, five and six quark combinations (or more) are possible, but the experimental evidence for a pentaquark or higher is very new and has not been strongly and repeatedly confirmed.
Why is the world almost entirely composed of up quarks, down quarks, electrons and neutrinos? Because everything else is highly unstable and rapidly undergoes decay.
There are at least 165 different kinds of unstable particles whose lifetimes have been experimentally measured. Protons, electrons and first generation neutrinos appear not to decay. A neutron is the longest lived unstable particle and lasts on average about 886 seconds. The muon (a second generation electron) lasts on average for only 10^-6 seconds (a hundred million times shorter than a neutron). The next three longest lived particles that decay, kaons and pions (common two quark particles called mesons), last 1% of the life of a muon (one ten billionth as long as a neutron), which is 10^-8 seconds, and no other particle lasts more than about 1% of the life of a kaon or pion (a trillionth as long as a neutron), which is 10^-10 seconds. Only 36 possible particles last on average longer than 10^-22 seconds. The W and Z particles discussed above last on average 10^-25 seconds. The data is reviewed at length in this very long paper. In short, anything with a second generation particle in it is unstable, anything with a third generation particle in it is even more unstable, and the more unstable particles there are in something, the more unstable it will be.
The gaps
There is no good theory to tell us why some "fundamental" particles are short lived and others are long lived, and why each has the mass that it does (although mass and lifetime appear to be related). We don't know for sure if there are really only three generations, or if this is all that our particle accellerators have been able to detect. We don't know whether or not there is a photon like particle to transmit the gravitational force (the hypothetical particle would be called a "graviton" and would have no mass and "spin two") or whether gravity is strictly a function of the curvature of time and space (which may be either infinitely continuous or come in small finite chunks), or both. In addition to the graviton, many theories propose (for mathematical reasons) that there exists a particle called the Higgs boson (which is massive and spin zero) which imparts mass to particles through intereactions with a "Higgs field" that fills the universe.
The theories
Almost nobody thinks we really understand all the fundamental laws of the universe, although many people think that we are tantilizingly close.
Two of the most important research programs to get to the bottom of it all are string theory and loop quantum gravity (and a number of similar quantum gravity theories).
String theory (also called M theory) argues that all particles are manifestations of one basic kind of particle, called a string, excited in different ways, and interacting with particular rules. It suggests that gravity is transmitted by a graviton, that there are probably 11 dimensions, that the universe as we know it may be confined to a slice of that multi-dimensional world called a brane, that gravitons cause gravity, that gravitons are not confined to the brane, and that there are a whole host of undiscovered particles out there (at least one for each one yet discovered) which are "supersymmetric". String theory seeks to be a "theory of everything" which describes all four forces and all the particles. It has produced very few results so far, despite about three decades of effort.
Loop quantum gravity is a more modest project. It seeks to develop a quantum mechanical theory of gravity. It does so by trying to view time-space as made of discrete chunks (its cousins also look at the structure of time-space), rather than gravitons. It is generally four dimensional, although often in an "emergent way" rather than fundamentally. It is also a work in progress, although it is currently moving along better than string theory.
A non-mainstream theory that tries to get to the bottom of the questions left by the standard model of particle physics is Preon Theory which argues that the "fundamental particles" may actually be composed of more basic units.
The big issues
Mainstream theories have issues. No supersymmetric particles have been discovered, nor have the Higgs boson or the graviton. Gravity waves predicted by general relativity have not been discovered yet either, although given our experimental limits this isn't necessarily too surprising.
Two big problems in astronomy are staring us in the face. One is the dark matter problem. Basically, the matter we can see cannot explain using general relativity, the way galaxies and galactic clusters and cosmic background radiation appear. The vast majority of matter required by general relativity to explain this behavior is invisible. Moreover, the evidence has shown that likely candidates like neutrinos and particles made of quarks and electrons don't fit the data. Thus, there must either be a new kind of matter (in the leading lambda cold dark matter theory, the main candidates are called WIMPs for weakly interacting massive particles, which don't exist in the standard model of particle physics), or the theory of general relativity must be wrong (the idea behind the minority view modified newtonian dynamics theories often called MOND, which holds that gravity is stronger than expected by general relativity at very large scales where gravitational fields are exceptionally weak).
The other problem is the dark energy problem. The universe is expanding at an increasing rate. There is no obvious reason for this, but it would match a uniformly spread weak field of energy throughout the universe or a cosmological constant in the equations of general relativity. This is called the dark energy problem and in the energy field version would account for 70% of the matter-energy density in the universe.
Quantum physics does predict that there is a "vacuum energy" associated with "empty space", but the amount of energy it predicts is vastly (hundreds of orders of magnitude) greater than that which would be necessary to account for "dark energy".
There are also potential problems at small scales. While standard gravitational equations work at scales down to 0.1 mm, there are rumors that unpublished work that could be published in the next year or two could show it to be weaker than expected at smaller scales.
Meanwhile, science is still struggling to understand a phenomena called CP violation (where charge and the left or right handedness of particles called partity don't comply with certain theories in certain situations) and to find deeper connections between the three forces of the standard model (which is called creating a GUT for grand unified theory).
Conclusion
We live in interesting times and while science has practical explanations for most phenomena, the ultimate basic laws are elusive. The physics world is full or more and less bizzare theories to explain it all, but none has one a consensus endorsement. Later posts on this blogs will examine some of the particular debates going on as physicists try to sort it all out.
Quantum mechanics and general relativity are not consistent theories. General relativity is a "classical theory." It is deterministic and assumes an infinitely smooth universe. Quantum mechanics is a stochastic theory. It predicts in a highly accurate way the probability of individual or small groups of fundamental particles acting in particular ways. Quantum mechanics is normally considered in "Minkowski space" which means that the ordinary geometrical rules of Euclid modified by Einstein's theory of special relativity is used, but that Einstein's rule of general relativity is not used.
Both quantum mechanics and general relativity are four dimensional, with three dimensions in space and one in time.
The four forces
Modern physics is based upon the working assumption that there are four fundamental forces in the universe that govern everything. Three of those are described by quantum mechanics: electro-magentism, the nuclear strong force and the nuclear weak force. Part of quantum mechanics that explains electro-magnetism (i.e. electricity, magentic behavior, light, radio waves, X-rays, etc.), called QED, is about as close to perfect as a physical theory can get (although there remain some questions of how to interpret certain phenomena whose empirical behavior can be predicted). A generalization of QED called electroweak theory also does a good job of explaining the weak force (the weak force is the force that causes heavy radioactive elements to decay). A similar theory called QCD (for quantum chomodynamics) explains the nuclear strong force (which is what holds the nuclei of atoms together) although our ability to come up with experimental results is better than our ability to use the very difficult equations involved to actually make theoretical predictions.
The fourth force, of course, is gravity, explained by general relativity, which basically says that mass and energy curve space causing the phenomena we call gravity, which behaves in non-intuitive ways in very strong gravitational fields and when masses and energies are moving. In general relativity, gravity affects massless particles, like photons, as well as massive particles.
Why do we ordinarily not observe strong and weak forces? Because they only operate at very short distances, generally within atoms. Gravity and electromagnetism are the only long range forces known to modern physics.
The "fundamental" particles
In addition to the four basic forces, there is list of particles which have been discovered which appear to be "fundamental". These are broken into "force carrying" particles which have "spin zero", and the particles that make up more ordinary matter which have "spin one half".
The spin zero particles are: the photon (which carries the electro-magentic force, has no mass, and has the characteristics of both frequency and polarization), the W, Z+ and Z- particles (which carry the weak force, are massive, and have neutral, positive and negative electrical charges respectively), eight kinds of gluons (which carry the strong force) which are distinguished by their "color charge" which comes in types R, G and B (which have no connnection to real colors, they are just useful names).
The spin one-half particles all come in three generations, the first being the "electron generation", the next being the "mu" generation which is heavier and shorter lived that the previous generation but otherwise identical, and the thrid being the "tau" generation which is even heavier than the "mu" generation and even shorter lived than the previous generation. (What I have called generations are also sometimes called "families"). These are broken into two kinds of "leptons", the neutrino and the electron in each of three generations, and two kinds of quarks (the up and the down in each of three generations). All spin one-half particles are currently believed to have mass. Electrons (and their higher generation kin) have an electrical charge called -1. Up quarks have an electrical charge of +2/3 and down quarks have an electrical charge of -1/3. The strong force affects quarks but not leptons, and quarks have color charge (R, G or B or anti-R, G or B). All spin one-half particles come in matter and anti-matter versions. All spin one-half particles except neutrinos also come in "right handed" and "left handed" versions.
A proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark. A neutron is made of one up quark and two down quarks. Quarks only combine in combinations that are color neutral (i.e. either a color and its anti-color, or one of each color). There are also a great many of two and three quark combinations involving both up and down quarks, and higher generation quarks. Two quark particles are called mesons. Three quark particles are called bayrons. (Mesons and baryons collectively all called hadrons). In theory, five and six quark combinations (or more) are possible, but the experimental evidence for a pentaquark or higher is very new and has not been strongly and repeatedly confirmed.
Why is the world almost entirely composed of up quarks, down quarks, electrons and neutrinos? Because everything else is highly unstable and rapidly undergoes decay.
There are at least 165 different kinds of unstable particles whose lifetimes have been experimentally measured. Protons, electrons and first generation neutrinos appear not to decay. A neutron is the longest lived unstable particle and lasts on average about 886 seconds. The muon (a second generation electron) lasts on average for only 10^-6 seconds (a hundred million times shorter than a neutron). The next three longest lived particles that decay, kaons and pions (common two quark particles called mesons), last 1% of the life of a muon (one ten billionth as long as a neutron), which is 10^-8 seconds, and no other particle lasts more than about 1% of the life of a kaon or pion (a trillionth as long as a neutron), which is 10^-10 seconds. Only 36 possible particles last on average longer than 10^-22 seconds. The W and Z particles discussed above last on average 10^-25 seconds. The data is reviewed at length in this very long paper. In short, anything with a second generation particle in it is unstable, anything with a third generation particle in it is even more unstable, and the more unstable particles there are in something, the more unstable it will be.
The gaps
There is no good theory to tell us why some "fundamental" particles are short lived and others are long lived, and why each has the mass that it does (although mass and lifetime appear to be related). We don't know for sure if there are really only three generations, or if this is all that our particle accellerators have been able to detect. We don't know whether or not there is a photon like particle to transmit the gravitational force (the hypothetical particle would be called a "graviton" and would have no mass and "spin two") or whether gravity is strictly a function of the curvature of time and space (which may be either infinitely continuous or come in small finite chunks), or both. In addition to the graviton, many theories propose (for mathematical reasons) that there exists a particle called the Higgs boson (which is massive and spin zero) which imparts mass to particles through intereactions with a "Higgs field" that fills the universe.
The theories
Almost nobody thinks we really understand all the fundamental laws of the universe, although many people think that we are tantilizingly close.
Two of the most important research programs to get to the bottom of it all are string theory and loop quantum gravity (and a number of similar quantum gravity theories).
String theory (also called M theory) argues that all particles are manifestations of one basic kind of particle, called a string, excited in different ways, and interacting with particular rules. It suggests that gravity is transmitted by a graviton, that there are probably 11 dimensions, that the universe as we know it may be confined to a slice of that multi-dimensional world called a brane, that gravitons cause gravity, that gravitons are not confined to the brane, and that there are a whole host of undiscovered particles out there (at least one for each one yet discovered) which are "supersymmetric". String theory seeks to be a "theory of everything" which describes all four forces and all the particles. It has produced very few results so far, despite about three decades of effort.
Loop quantum gravity is a more modest project. It seeks to develop a quantum mechanical theory of gravity. It does so by trying to view time-space as made of discrete chunks (its cousins also look at the structure of time-space), rather than gravitons. It is generally four dimensional, although often in an "emergent way" rather than fundamentally. It is also a work in progress, although it is currently moving along better than string theory.
A non-mainstream theory that tries to get to the bottom of the questions left by the standard model of particle physics is Preon Theory which argues that the "fundamental particles" may actually be composed of more basic units.
The big issues
Mainstream theories have issues. No supersymmetric particles have been discovered, nor have the Higgs boson or the graviton. Gravity waves predicted by general relativity have not been discovered yet either, although given our experimental limits this isn't necessarily too surprising.
Two big problems in astronomy are staring us in the face. One is the dark matter problem. Basically, the matter we can see cannot explain using general relativity, the way galaxies and galactic clusters and cosmic background radiation appear. The vast majority of matter required by general relativity to explain this behavior is invisible. Moreover, the evidence has shown that likely candidates like neutrinos and particles made of quarks and electrons don't fit the data. Thus, there must either be a new kind of matter (in the leading lambda cold dark matter theory, the main candidates are called WIMPs for weakly interacting massive particles, which don't exist in the standard model of particle physics), or the theory of general relativity must be wrong (the idea behind the minority view modified newtonian dynamics theories often called MOND, which holds that gravity is stronger than expected by general relativity at very large scales where gravitational fields are exceptionally weak).
The other problem is the dark energy problem. The universe is expanding at an increasing rate. There is no obvious reason for this, but it would match a uniformly spread weak field of energy throughout the universe or a cosmological constant in the equations of general relativity. This is called the dark energy problem and in the energy field version would account for 70% of the matter-energy density in the universe.
Quantum physics does predict that there is a "vacuum energy" associated with "empty space", but the amount of energy it predicts is vastly (hundreds of orders of magnitude) greater than that which would be necessary to account for "dark energy".
There are also potential problems at small scales. While standard gravitational equations work at scales down to 0.1 mm, there are rumors that unpublished work that could be published in the next year or two could show it to be weaker than expected at smaller scales.
Meanwhile, science is still struggling to understand a phenomena called CP violation (where charge and the left or right handedness of particles called partity don't comply with certain theories in certain situations) and to find deeper connections between the three forces of the standard model (which is called creating a GUT for grand unified theory).
Conclusion
We live in interesting times and while science has practical explanations for most phenomena, the ultimate basic laws are elusive. The physics world is full or more and less bizzare theories to explain it all, but none has one a consensus endorsement. Later posts on this blogs will examine some of the particular debates going on as physicists try to sort it all out.
01 August 2005
Blog Spam
I am indebted to blogspot because it gives me a free resource, an internet blog of my own, that I enjoy a great deal. But, from time to time I do a random blog tour for a dozen or two blogs at the site to see what else it out there, and it is amazing how many are blog spam, the same sort of stuff you'd expect to see in a spam e-mail (OK, a few are slightly more sophisticated commercial come ons), with little or no redeeming value. I'd guess that a third to two-thirds of blogspot blogs are blog spam.
I suppose it is an inherent flaw of any free medium, but one wonders if there couldn't be a better way to thin it out.
I suppose it is an inherent flaw of any free medium, but one wonders if there couldn't be a better way to thin it out.
Tax Complexity.
The Tax Profs blog has reported on a vigorous debate in the blogosphere over whether the tax code is too complex. Here are my two bits:
Very few people are qualified to use the tax code directly to resolve questions of tax law. I teach graduate students in personal financial planning for a living and empirically, I have discovered that it is a hit or miss proposition for them, and they help clients deal with the tax code as part of their professional duties. The percentage of lawyers who are capable of doing it is small -- as a young attorney in a medium sized law firm I routinely had non-tax expert lawyers come to me for the most basic information. For example, they routinely misunderstood how graduated tax rates work, assuming that moving into a new tax bracket affected the income earned in the prior tax bracket.
Fortunately, very few people use the tax code directly, so its drafting flaws are largely a nuisance for highly skilled tax specialists. The principal means by which ordinary people interface with the tax code are tax forms, instructions to tax forms, commercial guides aimed at lay audiences, and IRS publications, roughly in that order.
Tax complexity is not an equal concern for every taxpayer. Insurance companies, banks, multinational companies, securities brokers, retirement plan sponsors, muncipal bond offerors, and large oil companies, to name just a few examples, do not need a transparently simple tax code. They have highly skilled accountants and lawyers at their disposal who can devote massive amounts of time to understanding complex tax code provisions without unduly inflating the percentage of total revenues spent on tax compliance in large, complex enterprises. In contrast, a single mother who has dropped out of high school, has three kids, and is working at a non-professional job is far less equipped to deal with tax complexity. Thus, I'm far less concerned about complexity in interpreting Code Section 482 (transfer pricing) than I am about complexity in interpreting Code Section 32 (the earned income tax credit).
The number of complex tax provisions which affect your ordinary wage earner is modest and those can be reformed with modest effort -- important progress has been made recently on some of these points, for example, in the tax treatment of the sale of a residence and in the formulas used to compute required minimum distributions from retirement plans.
The number of complex tax provisions which affect small businesses is much greater, but could still be greatly thinned with modest political will (and even more modest distributional effects). For example, there is no reason that choice of entity decisions should be as complex as they are under the existing code (even though the check the box regulations have made vast improvements over the early days of the LLC).
The number of complex tax provisions which affect particular big businesses is vast, but irrelevant.
Complexity is not just, or even primarily, a matter of hard to read tax code sections. A code section whose meaning is exactly spelled out, but consists mostly of cross references, can be puzzled through in 15 minutes at most. Most of the work for tax professionals involves locating and utilizing situations in the code where transactions with similar substance can have significantly different tax implications with modest adjustments in form. These opportunities are largely a product of conceptual problems in how entire areas of the tax law are defined. For example, in my speciality, estate taxation, some of the biggest tax break opportunities come from a failure to formulate a good rule for taxing split interest transactions (QPRTS, GRITs, CRTs) (an incomplete gift treatment would produce more fair results) and from a failure to formulate sensible rules for valuing interests in closely held business entities (e.g. valuing minority interests in companies where family members are likely to cooperate at the same discounts that apply when third parties own minority interests).
One of the main sources of complexity in the tax code is a political unwillingness to be bold. Rather than adjusting tax brackets, we get tax deduction and credit phase outs. Rather than disallowing or limiting abusive deductions and credits, we get the alternative minimum tax. Rather than overhauling the rules for retirement plans generally, we get another half dozen types of plans to worry about.
The process that worked to reduce tax complexity in the 1986 Act needs to be repeated and will have to be similar to fast track treaty rules or the base closure process. A relatively small group of people need to formulate bold changes, with real but limited room for consultation on major issues, which then needs to be given an up or down vote on a package that has something for everyone. As observers noted after 1986, this is not necessarily bad for members of Congress if it happens all at once. Why? Because a member can't be blamed for a lost tax break and because once it has passed, every tax lobbiest in town has to return to you in an effort to get their own tax breaks restored in future years.
The tax code does need to be simplified because its complexity makes alternatives, like a national sales tax, which are bad policy, look artificially attractive.
Very few people are qualified to use the tax code directly to resolve questions of tax law. I teach graduate students in personal financial planning for a living and empirically, I have discovered that it is a hit or miss proposition for them, and they help clients deal with the tax code as part of their professional duties. The percentage of lawyers who are capable of doing it is small -- as a young attorney in a medium sized law firm I routinely had non-tax expert lawyers come to me for the most basic information. For example, they routinely misunderstood how graduated tax rates work, assuming that moving into a new tax bracket affected the income earned in the prior tax bracket.
Fortunately, very few people use the tax code directly, so its drafting flaws are largely a nuisance for highly skilled tax specialists. The principal means by which ordinary people interface with the tax code are tax forms, instructions to tax forms, commercial guides aimed at lay audiences, and IRS publications, roughly in that order.
Tax complexity is not an equal concern for every taxpayer. Insurance companies, banks, multinational companies, securities brokers, retirement plan sponsors, muncipal bond offerors, and large oil companies, to name just a few examples, do not need a transparently simple tax code. They have highly skilled accountants and lawyers at their disposal who can devote massive amounts of time to understanding complex tax code provisions without unduly inflating the percentage of total revenues spent on tax compliance in large, complex enterprises. In contrast, a single mother who has dropped out of high school, has three kids, and is working at a non-professional job is far less equipped to deal with tax complexity. Thus, I'm far less concerned about complexity in interpreting Code Section 482 (transfer pricing) than I am about complexity in interpreting Code Section 32 (the earned income tax credit).
The number of complex tax provisions which affect your ordinary wage earner is modest and those can be reformed with modest effort -- important progress has been made recently on some of these points, for example, in the tax treatment of the sale of a residence and in the formulas used to compute required minimum distributions from retirement plans.
The number of complex tax provisions which affect small businesses is much greater, but could still be greatly thinned with modest political will (and even more modest distributional effects). For example, there is no reason that choice of entity decisions should be as complex as they are under the existing code (even though the check the box regulations have made vast improvements over the early days of the LLC).
The number of complex tax provisions which affect particular big businesses is vast, but irrelevant.
Complexity is not just, or even primarily, a matter of hard to read tax code sections. A code section whose meaning is exactly spelled out, but consists mostly of cross references, can be puzzled through in 15 minutes at most. Most of the work for tax professionals involves locating and utilizing situations in the code where transactions with similar substance can have significantly different tax implications with modest adjustments in form. These opportunities are largely a product of conceptual problems in how entire areas of the tax law are defined. For example, in my speciality, estate taxation, some of the biggest tax break opportunities come from a failure to formulate a good rule for taxing split interest transactions (QPRTS, GRITs, CRTs) (an incomplete gift treatment would produce more fair results) and from a failure to formulate sensible rules for valuing interests in closely held business entities (e.g. valuing minority interests in companies where family members are likely to cooperate at the same discounts that apply when third parties own minority interests).
One of the main sources of complexity in the tax code is a political unwillingness to be bold. Rather than adjusting tax brackets, we get tax deduction and credit phase outs. Rather than disallowing or limiting abusive deductions and credits, we get the alternative minimum tax. Rather than overhauling the rules for retirement plans generally, we get another half dozen types of plans to worry about.
The process that worked to reduce tax complexity in the 1986 Act needs to be repeated and will have to be similar to fast track treaty rules or the base closure process. A relatively small group of people need to formulate bold changes, with real but limited room for consultation on major issues, which then needs to be given an up or down vote on a package that has something for everyone. As observers noted after 1986, this is not necessarily bad for members of Congress if it happens all at once. Why? Because a member can't be blamed for a lost tax break and because once it has passed, every tax lobbiest in town has to return to you in an effort to get their own tax breaks restored in future years.
The tax code does need to be simplified because its complexity makes alternatives, like a national sales tax, which are bad policy, look artificially attractive.
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