In a 2004 paper, Steven D. Levitt argues, honestly and with some statistically rigor, that the decline in crime in the 1990s was largely a product of more cops, greater incarceration, the end of the crack cocaine epidemic, and legalized abortion. He largely rules out other factors such as gun control, the death penalty, policing methods, economic prosperity, and baby boom demographics as factors. Thus, his approach endorses several key tenants of the conservative approach to crime management, while ruling out a couple of conservative favorites (policing methods and the death penalty). And, he largely rules out most liberal favorites to explain what happened.
Neither conservatives nor liberals are comfortable touting legalized abortion as important in reducing crime. Conservatives are reluctant because increased abortion is off the table in their political agenda; in their view, abortion is a crime. Liberals because the pitch for legalized abortion has largely been rooted in female autonomy, rather than utilitarian benefits, and because liberals aren't comfortable describing crime as the fate of poor, unwanted children.
The trouble is that when Levitt looks at those same figures for the period 1973-1991, increased incarceration in that period suggests that there should also have been a major decline in crime in that period which didn't materialize; instead that period witnessed a major increase in crime. This potentially discredits his entire analysis, and he deserves credit for raising the problem himself in the body of his paper.
One missing factor that could remedy his analysis could be the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill (from roughly 600 people per 100,000 in 1961 to roughly 50 per 100,000 in 1991, with most of the change from 1968 to 1977), although I doubt that this would be a sufficient explanation. Another factor or two, perhaps lead exposure or the impact of the Vietnam War on a crime prone young non-collegiate male demographic (first removing it from the U.S. and artificially depressing domestic crime via the draft, and possibly the returning it to the U.S. mentally scarred by the war experiment at the end of the war, but possibly not), would probably be necessary to reasonably accurately post-dict the entire post-World War II data set. If one goes back to the early part of the 20th century, does Prohibition need to be considered? What about the Great Depression? Is statistical parsing of the impact of such events possible, even theoretically? What data would be needed?
His study is as good at any, however, at illustrating the difference between heuristic post hoc explanation and genuine prediction. Almost everybody predicted that crime would go up in the 1990s, when in fact, it declined dramatically. But, they were wrong.
It is much easier to fit multiple factors to actual results post-hoc in a statistically plausible way, for a particular set of data, than it is to produce a rigorous model that holds up with a different data set. Obviously, Levitt's model is wrong as an overall cause of crime rate model, because it doesn't come even close to success in the 1973-1991 time period.
But, even if fitting in another plausible factor or two could explain 1973-1991 as well, who is to say that it would accurately capture what was going on in the 2007-2017 time period? Will the Flynn effect, or a decriminalization of illegal drugs create period specific changes in crime rates?
16 September 2007
Secular Parenting
Some wisdom on the art of secular parenting, via the Kiosk at the Secular Web:
It starts off with:
It closes by noting that:
Read it all.
It starts off with:
Earlier this year on the way home from school, she told me about a chat she'd had that day with Mrs. W, her teacher at [her] Lutheran preschool. "I told Mrs. W I think God is just pretend. But I said I'm still thinking about it. And I asked if she thinks God is pretend."
I looked at her in the rearview mirror, munching on the apple I'd for once remembered to bring for her snack, so beautifully innocent of the fact that she had stood with her little toes at the edge of an age-old chasm, shouting a courageous and ancient question to her teacher on the far rim. My daughter, you see, hasn't heard that there are unaskable questions.
"So what'd Mrs. W say?"
"She said no," Laney said, matter-of-factly. "She said, 'I think God is very real.'"
"Uh huh. Then what did you say, Laney?"
"I said, 'That's okay--as long as you're still thinking about it, too.'"
It closes by noting that:
I often find myself humbly suggesting that it is possible to raise children every bit as ethical, caring, loving, humane, inspired and well-adjusted without religion as with it. In reality (my favorite place to be, after all) I don't believe parenting without religion is merely "as good" as parenting with it. I think it is immeasurably better. I think it blows the doors off religious parenting in every respect--powerful inquiry, reasoned ethics, ecstatic inspiration, cosmic humility and profound humanity--and I am floored by my good fortune to live in one of the few human generations to date when raising children without religious indoctrination is a practical possibility.
Read it all.
Thirtysomething
MSN has a cute little article about the financial realities of life in your 30s.
Some factoids:
*Median net worth $44,200
*Median net worth of top 25% $128,100
*Median net worth of top 10% $317,800
*Median income $48,263
*Life expectancy* 70-72.9
*Children in household 67.6%
*Homeownership 60.3%
*Median value of home $150,000
*Own a car or cars 88.10%
*Median value of vehicle(s) $13,000
*Households with debt 87.0%
*Median total debt $86,000
*% carrying credit card debt 55.00%
*Median balance $2,000
*% carrying student loans 21.2%
*Median amount owed $13,000
*% carrying installment loans 61.4%
*Median amount owed $12,000
*% with a mortgage 55.9%
*Median amount owed $112,000
*Negative net worth 11.1%
*60 days late on a bill 11.8%
*Owe $10,000 or more on credit cards 8.4%
*No health insurance 21.4%
*Households with a pension 20.6%
*401(k) or IRA 53.4%
*Median value of accounts $17,000
It is always nice to have benchmarks against which to measure your own life.
Some factoids:
*Median net worth $44,200
*Median net worth of top 25% $128,100
*Median net worth of top 10% $317,800
*Median income $48,263
*Life expectancy* 70-72.9
*Children in household 67.6%
*Homeownership 60.3%
*Median value of home $150,000
*Own a car or cars 88.10%
*Median value of vehicle(s) $13,000
*Households with debt 87.0%
*Median total debt $86,000
*% carrying credit card debt 55.00%
*Median balance $2,000
*% carrying student loans 21.2%
*Median amount owed $13,000
*% carrying installment loans 61.4%
*Median amount owed $12,000
*% with a mortgage 55.9%
*Median amount owed $112,000
*Negative net worth 11.1%
*60 days late on a bill 11.8%
*Owe $10,000 or more on credit cards 8.4%
*No health insurance 21.4%
*Households with a pension 20.6%
*401(k) or IRA 53.4%
*Median value of accounts $17,000
It is always nice to have benchmarks against which to measure your own life.
Atheism Is Front Page News
The Denver Post decided to run a story on the growth of atheism in response to religious extremism, both Muslim and Christian, from the Washington Post on the front page of its Sunday edition today. Their fact box was particularly lovely:
The fact box does leave out the Barna bombshell that atheists divorce less, while born again Christians divorce more than the general population, but I'm not complaining.
I also like the brief mention about terminology:
The term "secular humanist" is both relatively unambiguous, and provides a nutshell description of beliefs and values held by the lion's share of American, European and former Muslim atheists.
I think that the article has its history wrong.
After coming into its own as the next big thing in the Englightenment era (late 18th century), often then under the flag of deism, and then making progress in connection with Darwin's discoveries (the Origin of the Species came out in 1859) and the growth of transcendentalism and Unitarianism in the Northeastern United States (early to mid-19th century), atheism had a long dark era, interrupted a bit by the insanity of warfare in Civil War and World War I.
Religion's triumph over atheism climaxed first in the triumph and subsequent debacle of Prohibition and then again in the McCarthy/Eisenhower era that brought "In God We Trust" to our coins and put God in the Pledge of Allegiance as anti-communist symbols at the dawn of the Cold War, when mainstream protestantism dominated the nation's pulpits.
Atheism started to reinvigorate itself in the general liberal social revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, gained ground and motivation in the 1980s in opposition to the rising political power of Christian fundamentalism (the most organized atheists in Colorado are in evangelical tinged Colorado Springs), with help from the likes of Carl Sagan, who helped popularize the factual history of the universe to counter the religious one. Atheism was quite a mature movement by the time 9/11 came along.
The pre-9/11, post 60s trend has been even more dramatic across the pond in the Church of England, where church attendance has fallen about 45% in the last 40 years.
The current Pope in the Catholic church has been remarkably warm towards Islam, making some of the most overt overtures in that direction in recent memory, while remaining constantly wary of secularism which has left him with a hollow empire across Catholic Europe with near universal official membership matched by negligible actual involvement in the church. Some Catholic countries now have less than 10% of its members who actually worship regularly, and the countries which historically established the Lutheran Church are in similar straights.
The long term decline in religious beliefs has as much to do with the rise of science and the declining moral relevance of religion. Also, despite the 9-11 attacks and our bumper crop of fundamentalist preachers, the United States remains one of the most religious countries in the world. Indeed, the polls have shown that the post 9-11 era has turned public opinion increasingly against both atheism and Islam.
The difference between the American situation and the European one is in part that Americans have less tolerance of, and less need for hypocrisy. The First Amendment has spared us an established church and the need for atheism to be an underground movement. There are far fewer people in the United States, on a percentage basis, who are non-religious, but we can afford to be far more public about our beliefs.
As a result, atheism has just recently dared to say its name in England, despite the fact that a non-religious worldview is shared by a huge percentage of the population, while it has been much more bold in the United States, where only 1-2% of the population identifies as atheist and only one in four to one in six are "non-religious" or mostly "secular" in the way they view the world.
28 percent: Atheists with post-graduate degrees or professional training.
15 percent: Non-atheists with post-graduate degrees or professional training.
1.3: Atheists' average number of children.
1.95: Non-atheists' average number of children.
3 percent: Atheists who are "strong Republicans."
16 percent: Non-atheists who are "strong Republicans."
Source: 2005 Baylor University Religion Survey and Barna Group
The fact box does leave out the Barna bombshell that atheists divorce less, while born again Christians divorce more than the general population, but I'm not complaining.
I also like the brief mention about terminology:
The term atheist can imply aggressiveness in disbelief; many who don't believe in God prefer to call themselves humanists, secularists, freethinkers, rationalists or, a more recently coined term, brights.
The term "secular humanist" is both relatively unambiguous, and provides a nutshell description of beliefs and values held by the lion's share of American, European and former Muslim atheists.
I think that the article has its history wrong.
After coming into its own as the next big thing in the Englightenment era (late 18th century), often then under the flag of deism, and then making progress in connection with Darwin's discoveries (the Origin of the Species came out in 1859) and the growth of transcendentalism and Unitarianism in the Northeastern United States (early to mid-19th century), atheism had a long dark era, interrupted a bit by the insanity of warfare in Civil War and World War I.
Religion's triumph over atheism climaxed first in the triumph and subsequent debacle of Prohibition and then again in the McCarthy/Eisenhower era that brought "In God We Trust" to our coins and put God in the Pledge of Allegiance as anti-communist symbols at the dawn of the Cold War, when mainstream protestantism dominated the nation's pulpits.
Atheism started to reinvigorate itself in the general liberal social revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, gained ground and motivation in the 1980s in opposition to the rising political power of Christian fundamentalism (the most organized atheists in Colorado are in evangelical tinged Colorado Springs), with help from the likes of Carl Sagan, who helped popularize the factual history of the universe to counter the religious one. Atheism was quite a mature movement by the time 9/11 came along.
The pre-9/11, post 60s trend has been even more dramatic across the pond in the Church of England, where church attendance has fallen about 45% in the last 40 years.
The current Pope in the Catholic church has been remarkably warm towards Islam, making some of the most overt overtures in that direction in recent memory, while remaining constantly wary of secularism which has left him with a hollow empire across Catholic Europe with near universal official membership matched by negligible actual involvement in the church. Some Catholic countries now have less than 10% of its members who actually worship regularly, and the countries which historically established the Lutheran Church are in similar straights.
The long term decline in religious beliefs has as much to do with the rise of science and the declining moral relevance of religion. Also, despite the 9-11 attacks and our bumper crop of fundamentalist preachers, the United States remains one of the most religious countries in the world. Indeed, the polls have shown that the post 9-11 era has turned public opinion increasingly against both atheism and Islam.
The difference between the American situation and the European one is in part that Americans have less tolerance of, and less need for hypocrisy. The First Amendment has spared us an established church and the need for atheism to be an underground movement. There are far fewer people in the United States, on a percentage basis, who are non-religious, but we can afford to be far more public about our beliefs.
As a result, atheism has just recently dared to say its name in England, despite the fact that a non-religious worldview is shared by a huge percentage of the population, while it has been much more bold in the United States, where only 1-2% of the population identifies as atheist and only one in four to one in six are "non-religious" or mostly "secular" in the way they view the world.
14 September 2007
Soldiers Healthier and Safer
Your odds of dying while in military service aren't that much higher for most military personnel in 2006 than they were in peacetime 1980. Death rates for active duty service members are double what they were in the years immediately prior to the war, largely as a result of hostile action casualties, but are only about 20% higher than they were in the early 1980s, a peace time period.
Three big factors have offset deaths from hostile action in Iraq and Afghanistan: fewer accidents, fewer deaths from illnesses and fewer non-combat or terrorism related homicides.
First, far fewer soldiers are dying in accidents. In absolute terms, the number of accidental deaths in the U.S. military have been consistently about two-thirds lower than they were in the early 1980s. Even adjusting for the fact that the active duty military is a third smaller now than it was in the early 1980s (indeed, the active duty military force is actually smaller than it was on the eve of the 9-11 attacks in 2001, despite the fact that we are fighting two regional wars), the rate of accidental death for soldiers is still consistently down more than 50% from the early 1980s. This probably has to do with a combination of improved safety engineering of military systems and facilities, and improved medical care.
Over the duration of the Iraq War, fewer accidental deaths have saved about 1,800 lives of active duty military service members.
Second, there have been significant reductions in the number of military personnel who die from illnesses, with the rate of deaths from illnesses down about 12%. This is probably due to increased quality of medical care, in part, due to advances in medicine generally.
Over the duration of the Iraq War, fewer deaths from illnesses have saved about 210 lives of active duty military service members.
Third, there has been a significant drop in the number of active duty service members who are victims of criminal (as opposed to terrorism or hostility related) homicides. The homicide victimization rate in 2006 for active duty service members was about two-thirds less than it was in 1980. This coincides with a generally reduction in the U.S. homicide rate (most soldiers spend most of their time in the United States and many live outside military bases), and with improved medical care.
Over the duration of the Iraq War, reduced homicide rates have saved about 80 lives of active duty military service members.
Overall, increased safety, health treatment and reduced homicides of service members have saved about 1,990 lives. Certainly, it is still more dangerous, on average, to be in the military now than it was in peace time, and this is particularly true if you happen to be in the Army or Marines in a military occupational specialty that could put you out and about in Iraq or Afghanistan. But, if you are in the Air Force or Navy, or in some military occupational speciality that keeps you out of the war zone, you are probably safer now than you were in the early 1980s.
Also, contrary to the widespread myth in military analyst circles that reduced accidents are tied to fighting wars, the reduction in accidents has actually been a gradual but persistent one over time, and the accident rate has actually increased during the Iraq War as the pace of operations has stepped up. The same trend has been observed in deaths from illnesses. They have gradually fallen but spiked modestly since the Iraq War began.
The suicide rate of active duty military personnel has remained roughly constant for the entire time period from 1980 to 2006. The suicide rate during the Iraq War has been roughly 18% higher than it was in the four years prior to the Iraq War, resulting in roughly 100 more suicide deaths than would have occurred in the rate of the previous four years has continued. But, the increased suicide rate, because suicide rates are based on quite small raw numbers of suicides each year, exhibit a great deal of variability, and this increase, while probably statistically significant, is just barely statistically significant.
The causes of suicides by service members have been studied at some length, but, as the number show, no one has discovered and implemented a way to meaningfully reduce the incidence of these suicides.
Three big factors have offset deaths from hostile action in Iraq and Afghanistan: fewer accidents, fewer deaths from illnesses and fewer non-combat or terrorism related homicides.
First, far fewer soldiers are dying in accidents. In absolute terms, the number of accidental deaths in the U.S. military have been consistently about two-thirds lower than they were in the early 1980s. Even adjusting for the fact that the active duty military is a third smaller now than it was in the early 1980s (indeed, the active duty military force is actually smaller than it was on the eve of the 9-11 attacks in 2001, despite the fact that we are fighting two regional wars), the rate of accidental death for soldiers is still consistently down more than 50% from the early 1980s. This probably has to do with a combination of improved safety engineering of military systems and facilities, and improved medical care.
Over the duration of the Iraq War, fewer accidental deaths have saved about 1,800 lives of active duty military service members.
Second, there have been significant reductions in the number of military personnel who die from illnesses, with the rate of deaths from illnesses down about 12%. This is probably due to increased quality of medical care, in part, due to advances in medicine generally.
Over the duration of the Iraq War, fewer deaths from illnesses have saved about 210 lives of active duty military service members.
Third, there has been a significant drop in the number of active duty service members who are victims of criminal (as opposed to terrorism or hostility related) homicides. The homicide victimization rate in 2006 for active duty service members was about two-thirds less than it was in 1980. This coincides with a generally reduction in the U.S. homicide rate (most soldiers spend most of their time in the United States and many live outside military bases), and with improved medical care.
Over the duration of the Iraq War, reduced homicide rates have saved about 80 lives of active duty military service members.
Overall, increased safety, health treatment and reduced homicides of service members have saved about 1,990 lives. Certainly, it is still more dangerous, on average, to be in the military now than it was in peace time, and this is particularly true if you happen to be in the Army or Marines in a military occupational specialty that could put you out and about in Iraq or Afghanistan. But, if you are in the Air Force or Navy, or in some military occupational speciality that keeps you out of the war zone, you are probably safer now than you were in the early 1980s.
Also, contrary to the widespread myth in military analyst circles that reduced accidents are tied to fighting wars, the reduction in accidents has actually been a gradual but persistent one over time, and the accident rate has actually increased during the Iraq War as the pace of operations has stepped up. The same trend has been observed in deaths from illnesses. They have gradually fallen but spiked modestly since the Iraq War began.
The suicide rate of active duty military personnel has remained roughly constant for the entire time period from 1980 to 2006. The suicide rate during the Iraq War has been roughly 18% higher than it was in the four years prior to the Iraq War, resulting in roughly 100 more suicide deaths than would have occurred in the rate of the previous four years has continued. But, the increased suicide rate, because suicide rates are based on quite small raw numbers of suicides each year, exhibit a great deal of variability, and this increase, while probably statistically significant, is just barely statistically significant.
The causes of suicides by service members have been studied at some length, but, as the number show, no one has discovered and implemented a way to meaningfully reduce the incidence of these suicides.
13 September 2007
At Least They're Not Your Lawyers
Two St. Louis area attorneys were given peace disturbance violations Thursday after they got into a scuffle in the hallway of the Civil Courts building. Michael J. McAvoy and Edward F. Luby are on opposite sides of a civil suit involving a breach of contract. . . . The attorneys were scheduled to meet in Division 2 courtroom Thursday to discuss a motion that Luby filed to end mediation.
The judge, showing great prescience, granted the motion before the fight broke out.
From here, via the Contract Law Profs Blog.
Bumper Sticker Of The Day
The one-third size bumper sticker, seen on Colorado Boulevard near 6th Avenue, on an unmarked white Chevrolet Express commercial van with about half a dozen workmen in it said simply: "Peace" in Arabic, English and Hebrew (in that order from top to bottom).
The Never Used Weapon Paradox
As noted in my previous post, there have been just two submarine kills in the last 62 years. Submarines have damaged civilian ships since World War II, but only by accident.
No one has ever used a nuclear missile, either submarine or ground based, in anything other than a test.
Air to air combat, colloquially called dog fighting, has become so rare in the post-World War II era that there is not a single fighter ace (i.e. a pilot with five kills) flying today. Only about three U.S. pilots have shot down even three enemy planes each in the last decade and a half. One estimate, trimmed to include only post-World War II conflicts is as follows:
Amphibious assaults have likewise been rare in the post-World War II era:
Wikipedia briefly sums up post-World War II Naval warfare history:
Tanks haven't vanished from the military scene, but the tank on tank battles envisioned by Cold War planners haven't materialized to the extent expected. Infantry with anti-tank weapons and road bombs have been the biggest threat to Israeli and American tanks. Aircraft, helicopters and anti-tank missiles on Bradley fighting vehicles were all comparable in importance as anti-tank missiles to American tanks in the Iraq War.
It isn't that the last 62 years have been peaceful. There have been at least a hundred wars at any given time for the majority of that time period, but most have been civil wars/insurgencies overwhelmingly fought on the ground with relatively light weapons. There have also been a fair number of major air bombing campaigns in that time period. And, the last 62 years have also seen dramatic changes in technology.
I am not trying to make the point that these weapons systems or modes of military combat are irrelevant to modern military planning, although some may be. Instead, the main point is that a very large share of military procurement budget is spent on weapons systems and combat modes that have never been thoroughly tested in modern warfare. War games have been the sole real test of a great many of them. And, real warfare almost always brings surprises.
The Iraq War and Afghan War caught the U.S. with too few people with Middle Eastern language skills, too few light armored patrol vehicles, too little body armor, too little counterinsurgency training, insufficient protections for tank gunners, and surprisingly poor performances by Apache attack helicopters. On the other hand, it has rejuvenited support for the B-52 and A-10 military aircraft, which turned out to be more useful than anticipated. Difficulties associated with convoy operations in these recent wars have also spurred development of a light cargo aircraft for the Army, and have greatly boosted the use of drone aircraft. These wars have also pointedly shown the importance of long term planning in military operations -- both were wildly successful early on, but have shown that capitalizing on early military victories in an asymetric conflict isn't easy.
The sheer number of lessons learned by U.S. troops in these recent conflicts is particularly notable because the wars the U.S. has joined in Iraq and Afghanistan are the kind of conflicts that the world has had a great deal of experience with since World War II. Both countries have hosted prolonged ground wars themselves prior to U.S. involvement. The U.S. fought in Vietnam. And, there have been a great many insurgencies, especially in the post-colonial area.
If U.S. troops had to make this big of an adjustment to the lessons of historically well precedented ground warfare, how much more do we have to learn when and if naval warfare or aerial warfare or worse yet, nuclear warfare, breaks out? There are simply so many imponderable points that no one can credibly predict how events would actually play out in a major conflict of these types. Subtle limitations imposed by the quirks of rules in a war game, and simply a failure of ingenuity on the part of participants whose lives aren't on the line, can profoundly change real world outcomes. In times of peace, no military planner is really reality based.
It is hard to tell from isolated small incidents, like the Falklands War, or an F-117 shot down over Serbia, how much of the outcome was a fluke and how much represents a systemic problem with U.S. military planning. One can learn the wrong lessons from an event, and if everyone learns the wrong lessons, the experience can actually be counterproductive.
We prepare in the hope that we will never have to put our preparations into action, but the longer we go without using modes of warfare in real life, the less anyone can be confident that we are actually prepared.
No one has ever used a nuclear missile, either submarine or ground based, in anything other than a test.
Air to air combat, colloquially called dog fighting, has become so rare in the post-World War II era that there is not a single fighter ace (i.e. a pilot with five kills) flying today. Only about three U.S. pilots have shot down even three enemy planes each in the last decade and a half. One estimate, trimmed to include only post-World War II conflicts is as follows:
Korea:
USA 38
USSR 52
China 6
Canada 2 (additions to WWII scores)
North Korea 2
Vietnam:
PRV 16 (17?)
USA 2
Others:
Israel 39
Egypt 5?
Syria 3
Pakistan 2
Iran 1?
Amphibious assaults have likewise been rare in the post-World War II era:
During the Korean War the U.S. Marine Corps landed at Inchon. . . this battle eventually resulted in intervention by Chinese forces on behalf of North Korea.
The Royal Marines made first post-WWII amphibious assault during the Suez War of 1956 when they successfully landed at Suez on 6 November.
In the Falklands War, the Royal Marines' 3 Commando Brigade, (augmented by the British Army's Parachute Regiment) landed at Port San Carlos on 21 May 1982.
During the Persian Gulf War, a large amphibious assault force, composed of US Marines and naval support, was positioned off the coast of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This force was composed of 40 amphibious assault ships, the largest such force to be assembled since the Battle of Inchon.[1] The object was to fix the six Iraqi divisions deployed along the Kuwaiti coast. Due to early misadventure, the mission for this amphibious force turned into a feint. . . .
The most recent amphibious assault was carried out by the Royal Marines when they landed at the Al-Faw Peninsula on 20 March 2003 during the Iraqi War.
Wikipedia briefly sums up post-World War II Naval warfare history:
Three major naval conflicts took place in the second half of the 20th century, of which two pitted fleet against fleet.
One was the well known Falklands War, pitting Argentina against the United Kingdom. The Falklands in particular showed the horrible vulnerability of modern ships to sea-skimming missiles like the Exocet. One hit from an Exocet sank HMS Sheffield, a modern anti-air warfare destroyer. Important lessons about ship design, damage control and ship construction materials were learnt from the conflict.
The other took place 11 years earlier in 1971. It was the third and last of the Indo-Pakistani Wars, in which Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan with Indian assistance.
The third major naval war took place between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988. It did not feature any large fleet battles, but it featured attacks on merchant ships as routine for the first time since 1945. It also featured the largest surface action since WWII, when United States Navy ships went after Iranian oil rigs to punish the Iranians for their actions in the war. Iranian naval vessels intervened, and Operation Praying Mantis resulted.
At the present time, large naval wars seem to be very rare affairs, with the main function of the modern navy being to exploit its control of the seaways to project power ashore. Power projection has been the primary naval feature of conflicts like the Korean War, Suez Crisis, Vietnam War, Konfrontasi, Gulf War, Kosovo War and both campaigns of the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Tanks haven't vanished from the military scene, but the tank on tank battles envisioned by Cold War planners haven't materialized to the extent expected. Infantry with anti-tank weapons and road bombs have been the biggest threat to Israeli and American tanks. Aircraft, helicopters and anti-tank missiles on Bradley fighting vehicles were all comparable in importance as anti-tank missiles to American tanks in the Iraq War.
It isn't that the last 62 years have been peaceful. There have been at least a hundred wars at any given time for the majority of that time period, but most have been civil wars/insurgencies overwhelmingly fought on the ground with relatively light weapons. There have also been a fair number of major air bombing campaigns in that time period. And, the last 62 years have also seen dramatic changes in technology.
I am not trying to make the point that these weapons systems or modes of military combat are irrelevant to modern military planning, although some may be. Instead, the main point is that a very large share of military procurement budget is spent on weapons systems and combat modes that have never been thoroughly tested in modern warfare. War games have been the sole real test of a great many of them. And, real warfare almost always brings surprises.
The Iraq War and Afghan War caught the U.S. with too few people with Middle Eastern language skills, too few light armored patrol vehicles, too little body armor, too little counterinsurgency training, insufficient protections for tank gunners, and surprisingly poor performances by Apache attack helicopters. On the other hand, it has rejuvenited support for the B-52 and A-10 military aircraft, which turned out to be more useful than anticipated. Difficulties associated with convoy operations in these recent wars have also spurred development of a light cargo aircraft for the Army, and have greatly boosted the use of drone aircraft. These wars have also pointedly shown the importance of long term planning in military operations -- both were wildly successful early on, but have shown that capitalizing on early military victories in an asymetric conflict isn't easy.
The sheer number of lessons learned by U.S. troops in these recent conflicts is particularly notable because the wars the U.S. has joined in Iraq and Afghanistan are the kind of conflicts that the world has had a great deal of experience with since World War II. Both countries have hosted prolonged ground wars themselves prior to U.S. involvement. The U.S. fought in Vietnam. And, there have been a great many insurgencies, especially in the post-colonial area.
If U.S. troops had to make this big of an adjustment to the lessons of historically well precedented ground warfare, how much more do we have to learn when and if naval warfare or aerial warfare or worse yet, nuclear warfare, breaks out? There are simply so many imponderable points that no one can credibly predict how events would actually play out in a major conflict of these types. Subtle limitations imposed by the quirks of rules in a war game, and simply a failure of ingenuity on the part of participants whose lives aren't on the line, can profoundly change real world outcomes. In times of peace, no military planner is really reality based.
It is hard to tell from isolated small incidents, like the Falklands War, or an F-117 shot down over Serbia, how much of the outcome was a fluke and how much represents a systemic problem with U.S. military planning. One can learn the wrong lessons from an event, and if everyone learns the wrong lessons, the experience can actually be counterproductive.
We prepare in the hope that we will never have to put our preparations into action, but the longer we go without using modes of warfare in real life, the less anyone can be confident that we are actually prepared.
ASW SNAFU
Asymmetric warfare isn't just for terrorists anymore. It also plays out in anti-submarine warfare (ASW).
In a replay of events of the 1982 Falklands war*, a $285 million South African Type 209 class diesel-electric submarine "avoided efforts by surface ships and aircraft to detect it, and proceeded to "destroy" several NATO ships" in joint South African-NATO exercises. This sub, at 1300 tons displacement, is about a fifth the size of American nuclear attack submarines is, at least, a third the price.
Once again, the submariners motto that there are only two kinds of naval assets, submarines and targets, seems to have been proven true. The other major examples in involve two Department of Defense war games, one designed to replicate an Iranian attack on a U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf that involved major losses to the surface fleet, and there other of a World War III scenario in the Atlantic that predicted that surface fleets would be quickly vanquished.
* According to Wikipedia (and widely discussed in military analysis):
The only other time a submarine has actually made a kill since World War II was when the PNS Hangor, a diesel electric submarine, did so during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971.
Both China and North Korea have large submarine fleets.
In a replay of events of the 1982 Falklands war*, a $285 million South African Type 209 class diesel-electric submarine "avoided efforts by surface ships and aircraft to detect it, and proceeded to "destroy" several NATO ships" in joint South African-NATO exercises. This sub, at 1300 tons displacement, is about a fifth the size of American nuclear attack submarines is, at least, a third the price.
Once again, the submariners motto that there are only two kinds of naval assets, submarines and targets, seems to have been proven true. The other major examples in involve two Department of Defense war games, one designed to replicate an Iranian attack on a U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf that involved major losses to the surface fleet, and there other of a World War III scenario in the Atlantic that predicted that surface fleets would be quickly vanquished.
* According to Wikipedia (and widely discussed in military analysis):
[M]ilitary historian Sir John Keegan noted that the brief conflict showed the irremediable vulnerability of surface ships to anti-ship missiles, and, most importantly, to submarines. Thus, despite the seemingly limited consequences of the war, it, in fact, confirmed the dominance of the submarine in naval warfare. This is especially so, Keegan argues, because submarines are far less vulnerable than aircraft to counterattack, being able to approach and destroy their targets with almost complete impunity.
The only other time a submarine has actually made a kill since World War II was when the PNS Hangor, a diesel electric submarine, did so during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971.
Both China and North Korea have large submarine fleets.
General Motors' Priorities
General Motors is in deep financial trouble. This is mostly because its products are, on average, inferior to the competition. Secondarily, this is because it carries a lot of legacy costs in the form of old plants, high wage structures and lots of retiree benefits to support. The secondary reasons are to a great extent a result of its declining market share. But for favorable accounting rules, it might even be considered insolvent on a balance sheet basis.
It has tried to postpone the inevitable a little longer by spinning off Delphi and selling a big portion of the one profitable portion of its business, GMAC. But, the time it has bought with these manuevers is not going to last forever. Month after month of double digit declines in sales from the same month in the previous year, despite huge discounts from MSRP on retailers lots are going to catch up with you, and every available resource of the company needs to go into changing that trend.
General Motors shouldn't be squandering its limited resources bringing half baked lawsuits trying to shut down body kit companies making a product that is vaguely similar to its Hummer line of vehicles, which have virtually no impact on the General Motors bottom line. How many neighbors do you have that have purchased a body kit for their four wheel drive truck?
If General Motors had any sense, they'd be encouraging this kind of activity, because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and creates hype that money can't buy for your product. But, their general counsel is too focused on possible legal rabbit holes that can keep their the intellectual property firm they have on retainer occupied, and not focused enough on focusing on litigation that creates value for the company from a strategic perspective.
They'd be better advised to do something along the lines of what Hyundai did with its 10 year warranty, i.e. look for a way for the legal department to create value for the customer, instead of trying to harass the competition.
For years, General Motors has decried the too strong dollar as the source of its woes. Well, the dollar has never been weaker in recent memory, and General Motors still has an anemic bottom line that flows from weak sales. Until General Motors can convince the reality based Consumer Reports reviewers that its flagship products don't suck, the trend is going to continue.
It has tried to postpone the inevitable a little longer by spinning off Delphi and selling a big portion of the one profitable portion of its business, GMAC. But, the time it has bought with these manuevers is not going to last forever. Month after month of double digit declines in sales from the same month in the previous year, despite huge discounts from MSRP on retailers lots are going to catch up with you, and every available resource of the company needs to go into changing that trend.
General Motors shouldn't be squandering its limited resources bringing half baked lawsuits trying to shut down body kit companies making a product that is vaguely similar to its Hummer line of vehicles, which have virtually no impact on the General Motors bottom line. How many neighbors do you have that have purchased a body kit for their four wheel drive truck?
If General Motors had any sense, they'd be encouraging this kind of activity, because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and creates hype that money can't buy for your product. But, their general counsel is too focused on possible legal rabbit holes that can keep their the intellectual property firm they have on retainer occupied, and not focused enough on focusing on litigation that creates value for the company from a strategic perspective.
They'd be better advised to do something along the lines of what Hyundai did with its 10 year warranty, i.e. look for a way for the legal department to create value for the customer, instead of trying to harass the competition.
For years, General Motors has decried the too strong dollar as the source of its woes. Well, the dollar has never been weaker in recent memory, and General Motors still has an anemic bottom line that flows from weak sales. Until General Motors can convince the reality based Consumer Reports reviewers that its flagship products don't suck, the trend is going to continue.
12 September 2007
Courts Martial Statistics and What They Imply
Army Courts Martial Statistics
In the fiscal year 2000, the last year before the current war arrived and complicated the statistical analysis, the United States Army, which at the time had 482,176 active duty soldiers, tried 731 General Courts Martial (the equivalent of a civilian felony prosecution), with 78 resulting in acquittals; 393 Special Courts Martial (the equivalent of a civilian misdemeanor prosecution) with 75 resulting in acquittals, and 666 Summary Courts Martial (petty offenses in proceedings to which only enlisted men can be subjected, on the order of municipal ordinance violation cases in seriousness) with 28 acquittals.
This includes all cases where there was an arraignment, even if there was no actual trial, because charges were withdrawn or dismissed.
The Courts Martial equivalent of a jury was requested in 24% of General Courts Martial and in 19% of Special Courts Martial, with the rest of those Courts Martial tried by a military judge alone.
There were also 41,285 non-judicial punishments in the Army under Section 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that year. These involve "minor offenses" and the potential punishments are more serious than what a civilian employer or residential educational institution could impose on an employee or student, respective, although they overlap, but no more serious than the punishment for a petty offense or ordinance violation in a court not of record (complicated by elaborate provisions for greater discretion when punishment is imposed by a more senior officer). These are generally consider "non-criminal" and on a par with traffic offenses.
These data exclude civilian criminal justice actions both domestically and in foreign jurisdictions. Between 3,000 and 4,000 Army soldiers in a typical year face foreign criminal or quasi-criminal prosecutions, but roughly 94% are released from those prosecutions to military jurisdiction, and the sentences in those cases were servicemen are not released to military jurisdiction and are convicted are overwhelmingy minor, with about 86% consisting only of fines or a reprimand, with only about dozen consisting of any period of incarceration pursuant to a foreign conviction, and with about four dozen producing suspended incarceration sentences. It appears therefore, that most soldiers released facing foreign prosections who are transferred to military custody are involved in cases of minor offenses and receive no punishment from any source or a non-judical punishment. Good data on domestic civilian prosecutions of soldiers for crimes is not available, but certainly could be significant.
In non-war years, typically fewer than twenty Army officers are discharged through the military justice system, something that would normally result from a court martial conviction of a serious offense (the rate is almost twice as high in the Navy and Marine Corps for some reason).
There were 706 general and special courts martial cases referred for review to the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the direct appeal from a court martial. Under military law, there is automatic appellate review of "all cases in which the approved sentence includes death, a punitive discharge, or confinement for at least a year, and all cases referred to it by the service Judge Advocate General.", but appellate counsel was involved in 97% of these cases. Another 113 general courts martial cases were reviewed by the Judge Advocate General's office, but not by an appellate body. The statistics don't indicate the results of these appellate or quasi-appellate reviews.
In all, 239 were appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which reversed 48 of those.
Analysis
Courts Martial have a reputation for being venues in which conviction was almost automatic, and that was once the case. But, acquittal rates in serious cases are now actually comparable to, or even slightly higher than, those found in the civilian criminal justice system, where 90% of felony defendants and 75% of misdemeanor defendants are convicted. Appellate review, likewise, based on the part of the reversal rate that the statistics reveal, is meaningful.
Colorado had 46,501 felony prosecutions in the 2006 fiscal year, and 75,703 misdemeanor prosecutions (including petty offenses) that same year. There were also 168,155 traffic cases in Colorado state courts (municipal courts also handle many traffic cases) that year. In that year, Colorado has an estimated population of 4,753,377.
Thus, the Army had about 1.5% of the felony prosecutions, and about 1.4% of the misdemeanor prosecutions of the entire state of Colorado.
This is despite the fact that the Army has 10.1% as many people as Colorado, although the active duty soldier to general Colorado population comparison, without further refinement, is pretty meaningless.
For example, 25% of Colorado's population consists of children (whose offenses are overwhelmingly, although not entirely, handled in a separate juvenile justice system), is 50% female (men make up 85% of convicted misdemeanor and felony defendants, and men accounted for 84% Army soldiers in 2000), and 19% of its residents over the age of 54 (who are largely absent from the Army and have much lower crime rates than younger adults, also within the 18-54 range the Army's population is skewed towards younger and hence more crime prone ages).
Colorado had about 1,325,000 men of military age in 2006, while the Army had about 405,000, about 31% of the number in Colorado. This implies that the prosecuted crime rate in the Army is less than 5% of the crime rate in the general population, for individuals of comparable age and gender.
It is also worth noting that the U.S. Army has a far larger percentage of African-American men than the comparable military age men demographic in Colorado does, because military aged African American men are charged with felonies and misdemeanors at a far higher rate than the general population in civilian life.
Likewise it is worth noting that 32.7% of the adult population of Colorado over age 25 have earned bachelor's degrees, while considerably fewer Army soldiers are or will, by age 25, will earn bachelor's degree. This is notable because college educated people are far less likely to commit crimes.
On the other hand, all but a tiny percentage of Army soldiers are high school graduates, most people of low intelligence are excluded by Army entrance exams, so the Army excludes about a quarter of the people in its demographic who are most crime prone, and unlike the civilian population, the Army has almost no ex-felons, as felons are almost never accepted for military service and persons convicted of the military equivalent of felonies or serious misdemeanors are routinely discharged from the military, so it doesn't have to worry about recidivism. Also, while the Army isn't particularly aggressive about screening for mental illness, it is more thorough than, for example, the civilian gun purchase screening process and the 24 hour a day observation by colleagues that the Army involves and a certain percentage of wash out of soldiers, particularly in basis training, probably screens out a quite high percentage of soldiers with mental illnesses that could pose a danger to their colleagues or themselves.
The Army also has no one who is unemployed, no one who is so poor that he can't obtain the basic necessities of life (a small percentage of junior enlisted men with families are technically in poverty, but non-monetary benefits and food stamps largely bridge this gap), and no one who lacks health insurance for himself and his family. The Army doesn't like to call it mental health treatment, but Army bases have family education, support groups and chaplain services for every soldier and their families.
In short, while Army discipline is one possible explanation for low crime rates in the military, the statistics can also be read to make a convincing case that 95% or more of crime is driven by some combination of dire economic circumstances and the percentage of the population who are at high risk of committing crimes because they have dropped out of high school, have low intelligence, or have been convicted of crimes in the past.
Also, while the statistics above don't show it, and I don't have sources at hand as I write this, I have previously seen data that show that marginal soldiers, who scored at the bottom end of Army entrance exams, or were admitted despite a lack of high school education, through waivers for example, have much higher rates of court martial, wash out and other military discipline than other soldiers.
Finally, of course, this analysis is a major blow to the theory that race itself is an important cause of crime rates, as opposed to being a mere marker for other circumstances. A young black adult man with no college education in the Army is very unlikely to commit a crime, compared to a young black adult man who is not in the Army. Part of this is due to the screening effects of Army entrance exams and requirements, and the purging of those with prior criminal records from the system, I have not seen any studies (although I suspect some exist) that look at crime rates for young black men after controlling for the kind of factors that the Army screens for in its admission process. But, the economic security and constant employment associated with Army life may also be a major factor. It is also possible that the screening process in the military and low crime rate of soldiers are major factors that reduce racism within the Army compared to civilian life, which in turn may make the military justice process less prone to racial biases.
And, as the military is an armed society, it is worth mentioning that it is a good example of the "guns don't kill, people kill" slogan of the NRA, although this doesn't mean that the NRA is right as a policy matter, because potential gun owners in civilian life aren't screened nearly as tightly as prospective members of the Army are screened. Moreover, since civilian life is not so tightly controlled, preventing guns from passing from people who are suitably safe gun owners to those who are not, whether through gifts, or non-commercial sales, or theft, is a far more difficult proposition. It is easier to keep guns monitored by a military quartermaster out of the hand of criminals, than it is to do so for guns in millions of private households of people who have strong 4th Amendment protections from search and seizure.
In the fiscal year 2000, the last year before the current war arrived and complicated the statistical analysis, the United States Army, which at the time had 482,176 active duty soldiers, tried 731 General Courts Martial (the equivalent of a civilian felony prosecution), with 78 resulting in acquittals; 393 Special Courts Martial (the equivalent of a civilian misdemeanor prosecution) with 75 resulting in acquittals, and 666 Summary Courts Martial (petty offenses in proceedings to which only enlisted men can be subjected, on the order of municipal ordinance violation cases in seriousness) with 28 acquittals.
This includes all cases where there was an arraignment, even if there was no actual trial, because charges were withdrawn or dismissed.
The Courts Martial equivalent of a jury was requested in 24% of General Courts Martial and in 19% of Special Courts Martial, with the rest of those Courts Martial tried by a military judge alone.
There were also 41,285 non-judicial punishments in the Army under Section 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that year. These involve "minor offenses" and the potential punishments are more serious than what a civilian employer or residential educational institution could impose on an employee or student, respective, although they overlap, but no more serious than the punishment for a petty offense or ordinance violation in a court not of record (complicated by elaborate provisions for greater discretion when punishment is imposed by a more senior officer). These are generally consider "non-criminal" and on a par with traffic offenses.
These data exclude civilian criminal justice actions both domestically and in foreign jurisdictions. Between 3,000 and 4,000 Army soldiers in a typical year face foreign criminal or quasi-criminal prosecutions, but roughly 94% are released from those prosecutions to military jurisdiction, and the sentences in those cases were servicemen are not released to military jurisdiction and are convicted are overwhelmingy minor, with about 86% consisting only of fines or a reprimand, with only about dozen consisting of any period of incarceration pursuant to a foreign conviction, and with about four dozen producing suspended incarceration sentences. It appears therefore, that most soldiers released facing foreign prosections who are transferred to military custody are involved in cases of minor offenses and receive no punishment from any source or a non-judical punishment. Good data on domestic civilian prosecutions of soldiers for crimes is not available, but certainly could be significant.
In non-war years, typically fewer than twenty Army officers are discharged through the military justice system, something that would normally result from a court martial conviction of a serious offense (the rate is almost twice as high in the Navy and Marine Corps for some reason).
There were 706 general and special courts martial cases referred for review to the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the direct appeal from a court martial. Under military law, there is automatic appellate review of "all cases in which the approved sentence includes death, a punitive discharge, or confinement for at least a year, and all cases referred to it by the service Judge Advocate General.", but appellate counsel was involved in 97% of these cases. Another 113 general courts martial cases were reviewed by the Judge Advocate General's office, but not by an appellate body. The statistics don't indicate the results of these appellate or quasi-appellate reviews.
In all, 239 were appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which reversed 48 of those.
Analysis
Courts Martial have a reputation for being venues in which conviction was almost automatic, and that was once the case. But, acquittal rates in serious cases are now actually comparable to, or even slightly higher than, those found in the civilian criminal justice system, where 90% of felony defendants and 75% of misdemeanor defendants are convicted. Appellate review, likewise, based on the part of the reversal rate that the statistics reveal, is meaningful.
Colorado had 46,501 felony prosecutions in the 2006 fiscal year, and 75,703 misdemeanor prosecutions (including petty offenses) that same year. There were also 168,155 traffic cases in Colorado state courts (municipal courts also handle many traffic cases) that year. In that year, Colorado has an estimated population of 4,753,377.
Thus, the Army had about 1.5% of the felony prosecutions, and about 1.4% of the misdemeanor prosecutions of the entire state of Colorado.
This is despite the fact that the Army has 10.1% as many people as Colorado, although the active duty soldier to general Colorado population comparison, without further refinement, is pretty meaningless.
For example, 25% of Colorado's population consists of children (whose offenses are overwhelmingly, although not entirely, handled in a separate juvenile justice system), is 50% female (men make up 85% of convicted misdemeanor and felony defendants, and men accounted for 84% Army soldiers in 2000), and 19% of its residents over the age of 54 (who are largely absent from the Army and have much lower crime rates than younger adults, also within the 18-54 range the Army's population is skewed towards younger and hence more crime prone ages).
Colorado had about 1,325,000 men of military age in 2006, while the Army had about 405,000, about 31% of the number in Colorado. This implies that the prosecuted crime rate in the Army is less than 5% of the crime rate in the general population, for individuals of comparable age and gender.
It is also worth noting that the U.S. Army has a far larger percentage of African-American men than the comparable military age men demographic in Colorado does, because military aged African American men are charged with felonies and misdemeanors at a far higher rate than the general population in civilian life.
Likewise it is worth noting that 32.7% of the adult population of Colorado over age 25 have earned bachelor's degrees, while considerably fewer Army soldiers are or will, by age 25, will earn bachelor's degree. This is notable because college educated people are far less likely to commit crimes.
On the other hand, all but a tiny percentage of Army soldiers are high school graduates, most people of low intelligence are excluded by Army entrance exams, so the Army excludes about a quarter of the people in its demographic who are most crime prone, and unlike the civilian population, the Army has almost no ex-felons, as felons are almost never accepted for military service and persons convicted of the military equivalent of felonies or serious misdemeanors are routinely discharged from the military, so it doesn't have to worry about recidivism. Also, while the Army isn't particularly aggressive about screening for mental illness, it is more thorough than, for example, the civilian gun purchase screening process and the 24 hour a day observation by colleagues that the Army involves and a certain percentage of wash out of soldiers, particularly in basis training, probably screens out a quite high percentage of soldiers with mental illnesses that could pose a danger to their colleagues or themselves.
The Army also has no one who is unemployed, no one who is so poor that he can't obtain the basic necessities of life (a small percentage of junior enlisted men with families are technically in poverty, but non-monetary benefits and food stamps largely bridge this gap), and no one who lacks health insurance for himself and his family. The Army doesn't like to call it mental health treatment, but Army bases have family education, support groups and chaplain services for every soldier and their families.
In short, while Army discipline is one possible explanation for low crime rates in the military, the statistics can also be read to make a convincing case that 95% or more of crime is driven by some combination of dire economic circumstances and the percentage of the population who are at high risk of committing crimes because they have dropped out of high school, have low intelligence, or have been convicted of crimes in the past.
Also, while the statistics above don't show it, and I don't have sources at hand as I write this, I have previously seen data that show that marginal soldiers, who scored at the bottom end of Army entrance exams, or were admitted despite a lack of high school education, through waivers for example, have much higher rates of court martial, wash out and other military discipline than other soldiers.
Finally, of course, this analysis is a major blow to the theory that race itself is an important cause of crime rates, as opposed to being a mere marker for other circumstances. A young black adult man with no college education in the Army is very unlikely to commit a crime, compared to a young black adult man who is not in the Army. Part of this is due to the screening effects of Army entrance exams and requirements, and the purging of those with prior criminal records from the system, I have not seen any studies (although I suspect some exist) that look at crime rates for young black men after controlling for the kind of factors that the Army screens for in its admission process. But, the economic security and constant employment associated with Army life may also be a major factor. It is also possible that the screening process in the military and low crime rate of soldiers are major factors that reduce racism within the Army compared to civilian life, which in turn may make the military justice process less prone to racial biases.
And, as the military is an armed society, it is worth mentioning that it is a good example of the "guns don't kill, people kill" slogan of the NRA, although this doesn't mean that the NRA is right as a policy matter, because potential gun owners in civilian life aren't screened nearly as tightly as prospective members of the Army are screened. Moreover, since civilian life is not so tightly controlled, preventing guns from passing from people who are suitably safe gun owners to those who are not, whether through gifts, or non-commercial sales, or theft, is a far more difficult proposition. It is easier to keep guns monitored by a military quartermaster out of the hand of criminals, than it is to do so for guns in millions of private households of people who have strong 4th Amendment protections from search and seizure.
11 September 2007
Nominate This Man For A Darwin Award
Nominate this man for a Darwin Award (actually, I already did, don't bother). From the Denver Post:
The girlfriend escaped unharmed.
A Commerce City man's apparent murder plot backfired when he lit himself on fire while igniting his former girlfriend's home in Basalt, officials say.
The man, whose identity has not been released, fatally shot himself in the head with a high-powered assault rifle after running from the duplex on fire, Basalt Police Chief Keith Ikeda said today.
The man, on probation for a federal explosives conviction, had not seen his former girlfriend for several years, Ikeda said.
At 5 a.m. Saturday, he entered the duplex without breaking into the home and started a fire in the living room, Ikeda said.
One theory is that he intended to shoot the woman, whose identity has not been released, as she ran from the burning home, he said.
But the man's clothing caught fire, and he ran from the house enveloped in flames, witnesses reported to police, Ikeda said.
"It appeared at the scene that his clothes had pretty much burned," he said.
The man had several Ruger mini-14 cartridges in his pockets, which exploded while he burned on the front lawn, Ikeda said.
The girlfriend escaped unharmed.
The Segregation of Iraq
In terms of a long term future of Iraq, its growing segregation is more relevant than the relentless casualties. Juan Cole, citing McClatchy, recaps the situation (emphasis Cole's):
More from Cole's source article:
The Baghdad metropolitan area has an estimated 7,000,000 people, although exactly when this estimate dates from isn't clear. Thus, it is about three times as large as Denver, and about 40% of the size of New York City. Big, but not big enough for several hundred unidentified bodies turning up in the street each month to be ordinary.
Baghdad may have already reached a tipping point from which there is little hope of return. Also, while many Iraqi refugees have fled the country, many more have relocated internally to places where their ethnicity is in the majority. Places like Anbar are become more Sunni, while places like Baghdad and Basra are becoming less Sunni.
This is happening either despite, or because of, the U.S. military presence, and does not appear to have been greatly slowed by the surge. The net effect, politically, is to make it harder and harder to make Iraq into anything other than a weak federal union or a group of new independent states or to divide Iraq among its neighbors.
Prime Minister Maliki has taken a tough rap for his failure to marshal a governing coalition:
But, honestly, maybe this is simply a function of democracy working as designed. There is no coalition because there is no national consensus. Iraq may be, for any democratic system that operates according to basic democratic norms, ungovernable. If the Belgians, the Italians, and the Canadians sometimes have trouble holding together majority governing coalitions, is it any wonder that the Iraqis likewise find this task difficult? It isn't even obvious that there is majority support in Iraq for democratic government at all. Varying shades of monarchism and theocracy are quite popular there at the moment, and its only sustained historical experiences during its existence as a country are with monarchs, one party rule and dictators.
Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs. Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in the southwest, by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbors. . .
[In Baghdad] the push to drive Sunnis from Shiite neighborhoods continues in a city that U.S. military officers say has gone from being 65 percent Sunni to being 75 percent Shiite . . .
Unidentified bodies continue to show up daily in Baghdad, though the pace is lower than it was last December, when 1,030 bodies were found . . . dropping . . . to 428 in August. Some military officials and many residents attribute the generally lower numbers not to the U.S. security plan, but to the purges in mixed neighborhoods that have left militants with fewer people to kill.
Of an estimated 1 million Iraqis who’ve fled their homes since February 2006, 83 percent are from Baghdad, the IOM says.
“There have been very few returns,” Ladek said. Those that have come back have done so only briefly to gather belongings. “They are waiting for long-term stability. . ."
More from Cole's source article:
Late last year, Sadr's Mahdi Army militia had moved from Baghdad’s mostly Shiite eastern half across the Tigris River to the Sunni-dominated western half, pushing Sunnis out of the city’s northwest. That campaign has continued during the surge, with the Mahdi Army fighting to control the Jihad, Bayaa, Amil and Saidiyah neighborhoods in the city’s southwest.
The push is particularly evident in Saidiyah, where Sunnis and Shiites are displaced daily. Military experts say that if the Shiite militias take control of the area, the Shiites will have limited Sunnis in the capital to just a few enclaves.
The Baghdad metropolitan area has an estimated 7,000,000 people, although exactly when this estimate dates from isn't clear. Thus, it is about three times as large as Denver, and about 40% of the size of New York City. Big, but not big enough for several hundred unidentified bodies turning up in the street each month to be ordinary.
Baghdad may have already reached a tipping point from which there is little hope of return. Also, while many Iraqi refugees have fled the country, many more have relocated internally to places where their ethnicity is in the majority. Places like Anbar are become more Sunni, while places like Baghdad and Basra are becoming less Sunni.
This is happening either despite, or because of, the U.S. military presence, and does not appear to have been greatly slowed by the surge. The net effect, politically, is to make it harder and harder to make Iraq into anything other than a weak federal union or a group of new independent states or to divide Iraq among its neighbors.
Prime Minister Maliki has taken a tough rap for his failure to marshal a governing coalition:
Maliki’s cabinet still has nearly as many vacancies as it has sitting ministers, and no major legislation governing Iraq’s major issues, including a militia disarmament program, has made it to the floor of the Iraqi parliament.
Last week, the parliament, back from its summer vacation, barely had a quorum in its first meetings. . .
". . . No Iraqi McClatchy spoke to in preparation for this article said he or she had confidence in the government. . ."
But, honestly, maybe this is simply a function of democracy working as designed. There is no coalition because there is no national consensus. Iraq may be, for any democratic system that operates according to basic democratic norms, ungovernable. If the Belgians, the Italians, and the Canadians sometimes have trouble holding together majority governing coalitions, is it any wonder that the Iraqis likewise find this task difficult? It isn't even obvious that there is majority support in Iraq for democratic government at all. Varying shades of monarchism and theocracy are quite popular there at the moment, and its only sustained historical experiences during its existence as a country are with monarchs, one party rule and dictators.
Six years later
The day started out a lot like today for me, six years ago. It was pleasant enough. I had breakfast and read the morning paper, and started my morning way across town for a work related matter, leaving directly from home. I chose to listen to a CD rather than news on my drive.
I arrived at court that morning ignorant that anything was going on. Most of those around me, as I waited in the county court cattle call, knew little or nothing. Some mumblings started just as I was sent by a court clerk to schedule a hearing at a different office, but it sounded so absurd that it must be a joke. By the time I'd made it upstairs, it was clear that it was more serious. Security was starting to seal off the court house as I left that morning. I spent the better part of the rest of that day on the Internet, trying to glean news of the day's events.
Six years later, it is still almost impossible to start your day before thinking about anything else. The date, 9-11, is how we have collectively chosen to describe the events of that day.
No, 9-11 did not change everything. It didn't impact how we provide health care to one in seven Americans who lack it. It didn't change the lackluster state of public education. It didn't make much of a dent in the economy in the long or medium term, outside the airline industry. But, it did leave an indelible mark on our nation.
The response to 9-11 has defined the Bush Presidency, and he has badly bungled it. The Afghan war began rather well at the beginning. A small U.S. force, about a division in size, toppled a Taliban regime on the verge of completely winning a civil war, and a home grown political regime to follow it was put in place rather cleanly. The regime was not all we might dream of, but it had reasonable legitimacy. Osama bin Laden got away, due to bungling, but he was on the run.
But, five and a half years later, the new regime may be in charge, but the Taliban are resurgent and certainly not wiped out. Osama bin Laden or his successors have regrouped at a new base in the wilds of Northwest Pakistan, a nation whom we cannot invade as we did Afghanistan, because its undemocratic regime has nuclear weapons. Detainees from that conflict remain at Guantanamo Bay, symbols of a failed detention policy that has destroyed our nation's international standing, even as the war in Afghanistan itself that these men were fighting (never intending to fight Americans in the first place) is arguably over. There hasn't been another 9-11 attack, but there is little evidence to indicate that the policies taken in reaction to 9-11 helped. It turns out that we had more warning of 9-11 than one would have expected and failed to act.
We have the Patriot Act, but there is little indication that it has made us safer. In any case, the administration has gone far beyond the longer leash it was granted in that legislation. We have the Transportation Security Administration and the terrorist watch list, neither of which has made us safer. We have an ominously named, but half sensible in concept, Department of Homeland Security. But, the Department of Homeland Security has frittered away its credibility with anti-terrorism grants to municipal safety departments in the middle of nowhere, undue attention in its financial transaction and emigration monitoring to Cuba, and an immigration policy focused on deporting Mexican family men supporting their families in construction and meat packing jobs. We have gutted civil liberties and pardoned American war criminal with the Military Commissions Act and the President's pro-torture and anti-due process policies that it ratified, again, with no practical benefit in making us safer. We have reorganized the intelligence establishment and grown the CIA enormously, but it isn't clear that this has been more than a bureacratic reshuffle or that the increased investment is producing increased results. Instead, we've learned just how poor an instrument of policy the CIA has been historically.
We have every reason to quarrel with Saudi Arabia. It was the main sponsor of the Taliban. Most of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis, as is Osama bin Laden. It has no respect for human rights. It is a powerful anti-Democratic force in the Middle East, and a powerful supporter of radical Islamists. It is a main source of foreign fighters in Iraq. But, instead, we routinely sell them many of our most advanced weapons in large quantities, arming them for a war in which Israel, our ally, is the most plausible opponent. But, they have oil, and that changes everything when we have an oilman in the White House.
Mysteriously, 9-11 was used as a justification for the Iraq War, despite the fact that it had nothing to do at all with Iraq, and contrary to our claims, had no weapons of mass destruction. Honestly, Iraq was one of the more multi-ethnic and secular countries in the region and had a larger middle class than most. Like the Afghan War, it began with a stunning victory for U.S. troops. No country so large, with a military comparably modern, has ever fallen so fast, with such a disproportionate casualty rate between the invaders and the invaded. Iraq was conquered in a couple of months. But, things fell apart. We were prepared to invade, but not to occupy. We blew the brief honeymoon period in which we could have established a legitimate successor government and a climate of peace and order. As a result, we have spent four and a half years fighting a brutal guerrilla war with multiple insurgent groups. The political institutions we have put in place haven't worked well. Iraq is now a breeding ground for terrorism and a failed state. We remains there solely because we broke it and haven't managed to fix it. We are simply looking for a graceful exit and can't find a way out.
Moreover, we have fought the Iraq war on a peacetime footing, with reserves, the national guard, and by overtaxing our troops. Funding of non-war related defense expenditures has continued largely on a business as usual basis. The active duty Army and Marines have grown only slightly, unlike every other war we have fought, and the total active duty military is constant in size, although we have spent much, much more money to fight a war than we would in peace time -- but we have financed the war with debt, while allowing tax cuts for the rich to remain on the books and growing domestic spending. There has, of course, been no draft, either. We have also, adapted our procurement to the current military demands slowly, at considerable cost in loss of life, as items like armored patrol vehicles and body armor and improved small arms have taken a back seat to medium to long term big ticket purchases like new ships and supersonic stealth fighter aircraft.
The 9-11 lawsuits are almost over. Rudy Giuliani was crowned as a leader for how he reacted, George W. Bush was shamed as an incompetent coward. The structural engineers have almost finished digesting the lessons learned from the collapse of the towers. The reconstruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has begun. The passengers of flight 92 that prevented another tragedy by fighting back, are epic heroes of the American consciousness. American business and the American military, the targets of the attacks successfully hit, have fully recovered from the direct damage caused by the attacks. New York is still thriving. The 9-11 widows and orphans have been provided for now, shoved out of the national consciousness by the families of soldiers in our Afghan and Iraqi war who return dead, brain damaged, afflicted with post traumatic stress disorder, or who are simply in peril and far away for long periods of time.
Six years later, we are ready to try to return to normalcy and ordinary problems, but afraid that another attack will set us back all over again. We are weary of war. We are not safer. We are not doing much that is constructive to solve the problem. We need a leader to take out out of this wilderness. We hope that one of the leading Presidential candidates will rise to the challenge. We don't have high hopes.
I arrived at court that morning ignorant that anything was going on. Most of those around me, as I waited in the county court cattle call, knew little or nothing. Some mumblings started just as I was sent by a court clerk to schedule a hearing at a different office, but it sounded so absurd that it must be a joke. By the time I'd made it upstairs, it was clear that it was more serious. Security was starting to seal off the court house as I left that morning. I spent the better part of the rest of that day on the Internet, trying to glean news of the day's events.
Six years later, it is still almost impossible to start your day before thinking about anything else. The date, 9-11, is how we have collectively chosen to describe the events of that day.
No, 9-11 did not change everything. It didn't impact how we provide health care to one in seven Americans who lack it. It didn't change the lackluster state of public education. It didn't make much of a dent in the economy in the long or medium term, outside the airline industry. But, it did leave an indelible mark on our nation.
The response to 9-11 has defined the Bush Presidency, and he has badly bungled it. The Afghan war began rather well at the beginning. A small U.S. force, about a division in size, toppled a Taliban regime on the verge of completely winning a civil war, and a home grown political regime to follow it was put in place rather cleanly. The regime was not all we might dream of, but it had reasonable legitimacy. Osama bin Laden got away, due to bungling, but he was on the run.
But, five and a half years later, the new regime may be in charge, but the Taliban are resurgent and certainly not wiped out. Osama bin Laden or his successors have regrouped at a new base in the wilds of Northwest Pakistan, a nation whom we cannot invade as we did Afghanistan, because its undemocratic regime has nuclear weapons. Detainees from that conflict remain at Guantanamo Bay, symbols of a failed detention policy that has destroyed our nation's international standing, even as the war in Afghanistan itself that these men were fighting (never intending to fight Americans in the first place) is arguably over. There hasn't been another 9-11 attack, but there is little evidence to indicate that the policies taken in reaction to 9-11 helped. It turns out that we had more warning of 9-11 than one would have expected and failed to act.
We have the Patriot Act, but there is little indication that it has made us safer. In any case, the administration has gone far beyond the longer leash it was granted in that legislation. We have the Transportation Security Administration and the terrorist watch list, neither of which has made us safer. We have an ominously named, but half sensible in concept, Department of Homeland Security. But, the Department of Homeland Security has frittered away its credibility with anti-terrorism grants to municipal safety departments in the middle of nowhere, undue attention in its financial transaction and emigration monitoring to Cuba, and an immigration policy focused on deporting Mexican family men supporting their families in construction and meat packing jobs. We have gutted civil liberties and pardoned American war criminal with the Military Commissions Act and the President's pro-torture and anti-due process policies that it ratified, again, with no practical benefit in making us safer. We have reorganized the intelligence establishment and grown the CIA enormously, but it isn't clear that this has been more than a bureacratic reshuffle or that the increased investment is producing increased results. Instead, we've learned just how poor an instrument of policy the CIA has been historically.
We have every reason to quarrel with Saudi Arabia. It was the main sponsor of the Taliban. Most of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis, as is Osama bin Laden. It has no respect for human rights. It is a powerful anti-Democratic force in the Middle East, and a powerful supporter of radical Islamists. It is a main source of foreign fighters in Iraq. But, instead, we routinely sell them many of our most advanced weapons in large quantities, arming them for a war in which Israel, our ally, is the most plausible opponent. But, they have oil, and that changes everything when we have an oilman in the White House.
Mysteriously, 9-11 was used as a justification for the Iraq War, despite the fact that it had nothing to do at all with Iraq, and contrary to our claims, had no weapons of mass destruction. Honestly, Iraq was one of the more multi-ethnic and secular countries in the region and had a larger middle class than most. Like the Afghan War, it began with a stunning victory for U.S. troops. No country so large, with a military comparably modern, has ever fallen so fast, with such a disproportionate casualty rate between the invaders and the invaded. Iraq was conquered in a couple of months. But, things fell apart. We were prepared to invade, but not to occupy. We blew the brief honeymoon period in which we could have established a legitimate successor government and a climate of peace and order. As a result, we have spent four and a half years fighting a brutal guerrilla war with multiple insurgent groups. The political institutions we have put in place haven't worked well. Iraq is now a breeding ground for terrorism and a failed state. We remains there solely because we broke it and haven't managed to fix it. We are simply looking for a graceful exit and can't find a way out.
Moreover, we have fought the Iraq war on a peacetime footing, with reserves, the national guard, and by overtaxing our troops. Funding of non-war related defense expenditures has continued largely on a business as usual basis. The active duty Army and Marines have grown only slightly, unlike every other war we have fought, and the total active duty military is constant in size, although we have spent much, much more money to fight a war than we would in peace time -- but we have financed the war with debt, while allowing tax cuts for the rich to remain on the books and growing domestic spending. There has, of course, been no draft, either. We have also, adapted our procurement to the current military demands slowly, at considerable cost in loss of life, as items like armored patrol vehicles and body armor and improved small arms have taken a back seat to medium to long term big ticket purchases like new ships and supersonic stealth fighter aircraft.
The 9-11 lawsuits are almost over. Rudy Giuliani was crowned as a leader for how he reacted, George W. Bush was shamed as an incompetent coward. The structural engineers have almost finished digesting the lessons learned from the collapse of the towers. The reconstruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has begun. The passengers of flight 92 that prevented another tragedy by fighting back, are epic heroes of the American consciousness. American business and the American military, the targets of the attacks successfully hit, have fully recovered from the direct damage caused by the attacks. New York is still thriving. The 9-11 widows and orphans have been provided for now, shoved out of the national consciousness by the families of soldiers in our Afghan and Iraqi war who return dead, brain damaged, afflicted with post traumatic stress disorder, or who are simply in peril and far away for long periods of time.
Six years later, we are ready to try to return to normalcy and ordinary problems, but afraid that another attack will set us back all over again. We are weary of war. We are not safer. We are not doing much that is constructive to solve the problem. We need a leader to take out out of this wilderness. We hope that one of the leading Presidential candidates will rise to the challenge. We don't have high hopes.
08 September 2007
Belgium's Future
This week's edition of The Economist is only half joking when it says "Belgium has served its purpose. A praline divorce is in order."
The reference is to the Velvet divorce of Czechoslovakia in 1993, that gave rise to the modern Czech Republican and Slovak Republic. (Parlines, meaning chocholates generally, are one of Belgium's defining culinary specialties.) The Velvet Divorce's peaceful separation, which some think in hindsight has speeded up the ability of each to integrate into the West by reducing bureaucratic barriers, made dividing federal countries respectable.
The less delicate but necessary breakups of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have also contributed to that view -- Montengro completed the break up of each of Yugoslavia's former Republics into autonomous units and the West is applying pressure resisted only by Russia and Serbia to give Kosovo independence.
Further afield, division has gained credibility as Ethiopia ended (by fits and starts) a seemingly eternal civil war by granting independence to Eritrea, and by the nearly consumated move to give Southern Sudan independence, largely resolving one of that nation's two great conflicts (Darfur remains an oozing boil not soluable by division because the oppressed population is not an overwhelming majority in the region). Israel, likewise seems set on a path of separation; it is building a wall between Israel proper and the West Bank (whose detailed location, constituting a land grab, rather than general concept, have been the main source of international consternation), and has withdrawn all Israeli settlers from the Gaza region.
Belgium, like Czechoslovakia, has two main semiautonomous regions with clear nation identities and geographic boundaries. Belgium isn't a perfectly simple question, Brussles is multi-cultural and comprises about 10% of the population. There are German speaking enclaves as well, but those are entirely within just one of the autonomous regions.
Belgium's constitution has been amended three times in the last forty years, most recently in 1993, each time largely to address further demands for regional autonomy. The European Union, meanwhile, has made some of the functions previously served by the federal government, like regulating international trade and providing a common currency, irrelevant. Current talk of division is fueled by a political deadlock on regional lines that has prevented the current round of federal legislators from selected a prime minister and group of department heads called a "government" in parliamentary systems of government, for months, despite interventions from the Belgian King, mostly as a result of a failure to agree on further devolution proposals.
The Economist captures the situation with this bit of pith:
Wikipedia is equally frank about the lack of common ties:
The Belgian situation is only one piece of a European Union fueled movement towards regional autonomy. In Spain, the Galacians, Catalans, and Basques want more autonomy and are getting it. In the United Kingdom, greater autonomy has been awarded to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Canada, has likely seen growing pains that the weaker economic union of NAFTA in 1987 doesn't excacerbate to the same extent as the quasi-federal European Union. But, Wikipedia again, does a good job of summing up the trend, which barely avoided reaching a major division in 1995:
Not every country has followed the trend towards division. East and West Germany reunited in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. The growth of the European Union has been a consolidating force at a new level -- in some respects, the E.U. insists on greater conformity than the federal government in the United States.
Belgium is hardly the hottest forum in which national division is being contemplated in Europe. The 2004 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine came close to breaking the country apart into Eastern and Western portions at one point: "local officials in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, the stronghold of Viktor Yanukovych, started a series of actions alluding to the possibility of the breakup of Ukraine or an extra-constitutional federalization of the country, should their candidate's claimed victory not be recognized."
Even tiny Moldova has already had a civil war that remains unresolved:
Columbia tolerates an autonomous region within its own boundaries held by rebel forces, and Nigeria appears to be facing fierce regional tensions as its Northern states adopt Islamist governmental systems not contemplated by its post-Colonial constitution. Somolia is united in name only. And, I haven't even begun to make a comprehensive list of the regional divisions that could easily errupt into new nations in this post.
I am inclined to agree with the Economist. Belgium probably has outlived its usefulness, and a broken Belgium might very well mean a stronger European Union, as smaller nations require stronger international institutions to survive.
This doesn't even mean that the King needs to be without a job. Queen Elizabeth manages to serve as Queen of many independent nations at once, and King Albert II is no slouch and could surely manage the same feat. Indeed, having three children, Crown Prince Philippe, Princess Astrid, and Prince Laurent, he could leave the Flanders to one, Walloonia to a second, and Brussles to a third, ensuring an orderly monarchical succession should the parted nations desire their own monarchs, a relationship that could be kick started by making the heir-apparent a governor-general for the King in each location.
One other point a review of the international scene of division reveals is how comparatively minor the regional divisions within the United States are today. Yes, we have Puerto Rico in an awkward autonomous relationship to the rest of the United States which most Americans would be happy to take or leave as the locals deem fit. But, as deep as the wounds of the American Civil War run, even today, the North and the South have considerably more in common than the Flemish and the Walloons, culturally anyway.
The reference is to the Velvet divorce of Czechoslovakia in 1993, that gave rise to the modern Czech Republican and Slovak Republic. (Parlines, meaning chocholates generally, are one of Belgium's defining culinary specialties.) The Velvet Divorce's peaceful separation, which some think in hindsight has speeded up the ability of each to integrate into the West by reducing bureaucratic barriers, made dividing federal countries respectable.
The less delicate but necessary breakups of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have also contributed to that view -- Montengro completed the break up of each of Yugoslavia's former Republics into autonomous units and the West is applying pressure resisted only by Russia and Serbia to give Kosovo independence.
Further afield, division has gained credibility as Ethiopia ended (by fits and starts) a seemingly eternal civil war by granting independence to Eritrea, and by the nearly consumated move to give Southern Sudan independence, largely resolving one of that nation's two great conflicts (Darfur remains an oozing boil not soluable by division because the oppressed population is not an overwhelming majority in the region). Israel, likewise seems set on a path of separation; it is building a wall between Israel proper and the West Bank (whose detailed location, constituting a land grab, rather than general concept, have been the main source of international consternation), and has withdrawn all Israeli settlers from the Gaza region.
Belgium, like Czechoslovakia, has two main semiautonomous regions with clear nation identities and geographic boundaries. Belgium isn't a perfectly simple question, Brussles is multi-cultural and comprises about 10% of the population. There are German speaking enclaves as well, but those are entirely within just one of the autonomous regions.
Belgium's constitution has been amended three times in the last forty years, most recently in 1993, each time largely to address further demands for regional autonomy. The European Union, meanwhile, has made some of the functions previously served by the federal government, like regulating international trade and providing a common currency, irrelevant. Current talk of division is fueled by a political deadlock on regional lines that has prevented the current round of federal legislators from selected a prime minister and group of department heads called a "government" in parliamentary systems of government, for months, despite interventions from the Belgian King, mostly as a result of a failure to agree on further devolution proposals.
The Economist captures the situation with this bit of pith:
[W]hen they vote, as they did on June 10th, they do so along linguistic lines, the French-speaking Walloons in the south for French-speaking parties, the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north for Dutch-speaking parties. The two groups do not get on—hence the inability to form a government. They lead parallel lives, largely in ignorance of each other. They do, however, think they know themselves: when a French-language television programme was interrupted last December with a spoof news flash announcing that the Flemish parliament had declared independence, the king had fled and Belgium had dissolved, it was widely believed.
Wikipedia is equally frank about the lack of common ties:
Belgian cultural life has become concentrated within each language community, and a variety of barriers have made a shared cultural sphere less pronounced. There are no bilingual universities except the Royal Military Academy, no common media, and no single large cultural or scientific organisation in which both main communities are represented.
The Belgian situation is only one piece of a European Union fueled movement towards regional autonomy. In Spain, the Galacians, Catalans, and Basques want more autonomy and are getting it. In the United Kingdom, greater autonomy has been awarded to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Canada, has likely seen growing pains that the weaker economic union of NAFTA in 1987 doesn't excacerbate to the same extent as the quasi-federal European Union. But, Wikipedia again, does a good job of summing up the trend, which barely avoided reaching a major division in 1995:
Quebec underwent profound social and economic changes during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Québécois nationalists began pressing for greater provincial autonomy. The separatist Parti Québécois first came to power in 1976. A referendum on sovereignty-association in 1980 was rejected by a solid majority of the population, and a second referendum in 1995 was rejected by a slimmer margin of just 50.6% to 49.4%. In 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession by a province to be unconstitutional; Quebec's sovereignty movement has continued nonetheless. . . .
In response to a more assertive French-speaking Quebec, the federal government became officially bilingual with the Official Languages Act of 1969. Non-discriminatory Immigration Acts were introduced in 1967 and 1976, and official multiculturalism in 1971; waves of non-European immigration have changed the face of the country. Social democratic programs such as Universal Health Care, the Canada Pension Plan, and Canada Student Loans were initiated in the 1960s and consolidated in the 1970s; provincial governments, particularly Quebec, fought these as incursions into their jurisdictions. Finally, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau pushed through the patriation of the constitution from Britain, enshrining a Charter of Rights and Freedoms based on individual rights in the Constitution Act of 1982.
Not every country has followed the trend towards division. East and West Germany reunited in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. The growth of the European Union has been a consolidating force at a new level -- in some respects, the E.U. insists on greater conformity than the federal government in the United States.
Belgium is hardly the hottest forum in which national division is being contemplated in Europe. The 2004 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine came close to breaking the country apart into Eastern and Western portions at one point: "local officials in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, the stronghold of Viktor Yanukovych, started a series of actions alluding to the possibility of the breakup of Ukraine or an extra-constitutional federalization of the country, should their candidate's claimed victory not be recognized."
Even tiny Moldova has already had a civil war that remains unresolved:
The part of Moldova east of the Dniester River, Transnistria, which included a larger proportion of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians— claimed independence in 1990, fearing the rise of nationalism in Moldova and the country's expected unification with Romania at the dissolution of the USSR. This caused a brief military conflict between Moldova and Transnistria in 1992. Russian forces intervened on the Transnistrian side, and Russian troops of the 14th Army remain there to this day. Negotiations between the Transnistrian and Moldovan leaders have been going on under the mediation of OSCE, Russia, Ukraine, European Union, and USA. Despite expectations of the Popular Front of Moldova, Moldova did not unite with Romania in 1991. In the early 1990s, the future of Moldova was a source of tension in Romania's relations with Russia. A March 1994 referendum of the new constitution saw an overwhelming majority of voters favoring continued independence. . . . relationships between Moldova and Russia deteriorated in November 2003 over the Transnistrian conflict.
Columbia tolerates an autonomous region within its own boundaries held by rebel forces, and Nigeria appears to be facing fierce regional tensions as its Northern states adopt Islamist governmental systems not contemplated by its post-Colonial constitution. Somolia is united in name only. And, I haven't even begun to make a comprehensive list of the regional divisions that could easily errupt into new nations in this post.
I am inclined to agree with the Economist. Belgium probably has outlived its usefulness, and a broken Belgium might very well mean a stronger European Union, as smaller nations require stronger international institutions to survive.
This doesn't even mean that the King needs to be without a job. Queen Elizabeth manages to serve as Queen of many independent nations at once, and King Albert II is no slouch and could surely manage the same feat. Indeed, having three children, Crown Prince Philippe, Princess Astrid, and Prince Laurent, he could leave the Flanders to one, Walloonia to a second, and Brussles to a third, ensuring an orderly monarchical succession should the parted nations desire their own monarchs, a relationship that could be kick started by making the heir-apparent a governor-general for the King in each location.
One other point a review of the international scene of division reveals is how comparatively minor the regional divisions within the United States are today. Yes, we have Puerto Rico in an awkward autonomous relationship to the rest of the United States which most Americans would be happy to take or leave as the locals deem fit. But, as deep as the wounds of the American Civil War run, even today, the North and the South have considerably more in common than the Flemish and the Walloons, culturally anyway.
Numbers Relevant To Children's Health Care
Colorado Medicare:
* 249,000 children are covered by Medicaid (22% of Colorado children)
* 14.3% of Colorado children are uninsured
* 96,860 Medicaid eligible children aren't covered
* 76,104 uninsured children aren't Medicaid eligible
* Medicaid $19,350 income cutoff for a family of four
* Medicaid $25,736 income cutoff for a family of four for preschool children
* $2,036 per child cost of Medicaid coverage (half of which are federal dollars)
* 69% Medicare's reimbursment rate is paid by Medicaid.
* $100 per month approximate cost of individual health insurance for a child with a $2,000 deductible and certain preventative coverage not subject to the deductible.
The Denver Public Schools spend $7,315 of general fund money per student, of whom 64% receive free or reduced price lunches. It's their fault that their parents can or cannot afford health insurance (or think they can't because they don't know the cost).
The $55 million cost of providing health insurance along with free and/or reduced price lunch to every eligible child would cost roughly $100 per resident of Denver per year. It would cost much less per Colorado resident, statewide, as Denver is disproportionately poor. But, some of this money could come out of the Medicaid budget, which is already responsible for providing health care to many of these children, but doesn't do so because of paperwork barriers, leaving Medicaid as a secondary provider -- covering only out of pocket after insurance costs, for many children. This isn't chump change, but it isn't beyond the realm of the possible either.
Indeed, why shouldn't a right to a public education include a right to the good health needed to participate in that education? Perhaps everyone who gets a public education should simply get health insurance as part of the package.
What else flows from this kind of approach:
1. An employer based or payroll tax based system of health insurance works better when it only has to provide for working adults, because different family situations don't has a huge impact on insurance benefit costs.
2. Universal school based health insurance for school aged children would parallel the government funded health care system we have in place for the other largest group of people outside the work force, Medicare retirees. It also parallels the work based insurance system as well, because for school aged children, their "employer" is their school.
3. We are seeing a marriage divide in America. The upper middle class is staying married, while working class families are falling apart. Part of this development may be a product of increasing financial pressures on low income families, who have not shared in income growth over the last generation. By relieving a significant financial pressure on working class families, there may be a significant reduction in the divorce rate, and a significant increase in the marriage rate. It also reduces welfare eligibility incentive for couples to fall apart.
* 249,000 children are covered by Medicaid (22% of Colorado children)
* 14.3% of Colorado children are uninsured
* 96,860 Medicaid eligible children aren't covered
* 76,104 uninsured children aren't Medicaid eligible
* Medicaid $19,350 income cutoff for a family of four
* Medicaid $25,736 income cutoff for a family of four for preschool children
* $2,036 per child cost of Medicaid coverage (half of which are federal dollars)
* 69% Medicare's reimbursment rate is paid by Medicaid.
* $100 per month approximate cost of individual health insurance for a child with a $2,000 deductible and certain preventative coverage not subject to the deductible.
The Denver Public Schools spend $7,315 of general fund money per student, of whom 64% receive free or reduced price lunches. It's their fault that their parents can or cannot afford health insurance (or think they can't because they don't know the cost).
The $55 million cost of providing health insurance along with free and/or reduced price lunch to every eligible child would cost roughly $100 per resident of Denver per year. It would cost much less per Colorado resident, statewide, as Denver is disproportionately poor. But, some of this money could come out of the Medicaid budget, which is already responsible for providing health care to many of these children, but doesn't do so because of paperwork barriers, leaving Medicaid as a secondary provider -- covering only out of pocket after insurance costs, for many children. This isn't chump change, but it isn't beyond the realm of the possible either.
Indeed, why shouldn't a right to a public education include a right to the good health needed to participate in that education? Perhaps everyone who gets a public education should simply get health insurance as part of the package.
What else flows from this kind of approach:
1. An employer based or payroll tax based system of health insurance works better when it only has to provide for working adults, because different family situations don't has a huge impact on insurance benefit costs.
2. Universal school based health insurance for school aged children would parallel the government funded health care system we have in place for the other largest group of people outside the work force, Medicare retirees. It also parallels the work based insurance system as well, because for school aged children, their "employer" is their school.
3. We are seeing a marriage divide in America. The upper middle class is staying married, while working class families are falling apart. Part of this development may be a product of increasing financial pressures on low income families, who have not shared in income growth over the last generation. By relieving a significant financial pressure on working class families, there may be a significant reduction in the divorce rate, and a significant increase in the marriage rate. It also reduces welfare eligibility incentive for couples to fall apart.
Kudos To Anthem
Progress Now rightly gives kudos to Anthem for including domestic partnership benefits in its small business health insurance plans.
Anthem also deserves credit for marketing relatively low cost, about $100-$150 a month per person based on age and location, albeit with a relatively high $2,000 deductible, individual health insurance plans to the public who often have no idea how much it would cost to get insurance separately from an employer, although the website to which the newspaper ads refer you to pathetic, requiring you to subject yourself to broker pressure at the stage when you are just gathering information, rather than making information easily available.
Like most marketing of individual health insurance plans it also fails to make clear how these plans differ from conventional employer provided plans, which are more heavily regulated. Still, if you don't have a health insurance option through your employer, this is a must have item, and at $1,200 per year, per child, is not entirely out of reach for many families. A child's major illness is still a hardship to a family with coverage, but it isn't a catastrophe.
At a recent visit to the local school playground, one of my fellow parents was keeping an especially tight rein on her child because she had no health insurance and an ER visit for a broken bone could put her family in debt for years.
Anthem also deserves credit for marketing relatively low cost, about $100-$150 a month per person based on age and location, albeit with a relatively high $2,000 deductible, individual health insurance plans to the public who often have no idea how much it would cost to get insurance separately from an employer, although the website to which the newspaper ads refer you to pathetic, requiring you to subject yourself to broker pressure at the stage when you are just gathering information, rather than making information easily available.
Like most marketing of individual health insurance plans it also fails to make clear how these plans differ from conventional employer provided plans, which are more heavily regulated. Still, if you don't have a health insurance option through your employer, this is a must have item, and at $1,200 per year, per child, is not entirely out of reach for many families. A child's major illness is still a hardship to a family with coverage, but it isn't a catastrophe.
At a recent visit to the local school playground, one of my fellow parents was keeping an especially tight rein on her child because she had no health insurance and an ER visit for a broken bone could put her family in debt for years.
2007 Denver Election Information
The 2007 election in Denver will be a mail in election, but there will be drop off locations for ballots. According the the Denver Clerk and Recorder's election division:
Campaigns need to plan now to get this information out widely.
The following drop-off locations will also be available from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday, October 29, through Friday, November 2, and again on Monday, November 5 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.:
Athmar Recreation Center, 2680 W. Mexico Ave.
Barnum Recreation Center, 360 Hooker St.
District 3 Police Station, 1625 S. University Blvd.
Eisenhower Recreation Center, 4300 E. Dartmouth Ave.
Glenarm Recreation Center, 2800 Glenarm Pl.
Green Valley Ranch Recreation Center, 4890 Argonne Way
Harvey Park Recreation Center, 2120 S. Tennyson St.
Hiawatha Davis Recreation Center, 3334 Holly St.
Montbello Recreation Center, 15555 E. 53rd Ave.
Montclair Recreation Center, 729 Ulster Way
Scheitler Recreation Center, 5031 W. 46th Ave.
Tattered Cover Bookstore, 1628 16th St.
Tattered Cover Bookstore, 2626 E. Colfax Ave.
Wellington Webb Municipal Office Building, 201 W. Colfax Ave.
Westerly Creek Elementary School, 8800 E. 28th Ave.
The Denver Elections Division, located at 303 W. Colfax Dept. 101, will also be available for ballot drop-off Monday, October 29 through Friday November 2 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Election Day November 6 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
There will also be a drive through ballot drop-off on Court Place between Colfax Ave. and 14th St. on Election Day.
Campaigns need to plan now to get this information out widely.
Face Lift
I've given this blog a minor facelift, for the first time since shifting to New Blogger software. It was just due for a change.
07 September 2007
Death Penalty Without A Dead Victim
A useful recap of the crimes for which U.S. state or federal law allows the death penalty to be imposed without proof that someone has died as a victim of the crime is found here. Only one person is currently on death row for such a crime: Patrick Kennedy in Louisiana who was convicted of child rape.
Six Southern states and Montana have child rape death penalties.
The other non-murder crimes on the books are as follows:
Three address cases where death is likely but hard to prove:
* Treason (Arkansas, Calif., Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Washington, Federal)
* Espionage (New Mexico, Federal)
* Aggravated kidnapping (Co., Idaho, Il., Missouri, Mont.)
Three more amount to particularly aggravated cases of what amount to attempted murder:
* Aircraft hijacking (Ga., Mo.)
* Placing a bomb near a bus terminal (Mo.)
* Aggravated assault by incarcerated, persistent felons, or murderers (Mont.)
* Attempting, authorizing or advising the killing of any officer, juror,or witness in cases involving a Continuing Criminal Enterprise, regardless of whether such killing actually occurs. (Federal)
One is a product of war on drugs hysteria:
* Drug trafficking (Fl., Missouri, Federal)
The only Colorado crime on this list, First Degree Kidnapping, Section 18-3-301, Colorado Revised Statute provides that: "no person convicted of first degree kidnapping shall suffer the death penalty if the person kidnapped was liberated alive prior to the conviction of the kidnapper." Likewise, life in prison without parole is not a sentencing option for the offense "if, prior to his conviction, the person kidnapped was liberated unharmed."
Note also that many states, including Colorado, allow the death penalty to be imposed in cases where the victim is killed, but not directly by the person who is sentenced to death (e.g. by a fellow participant in a felony).
Six Southern states and Montana have child rape death penalties.
The other non-murder crimes on the books are as follows:
Three address cases where death is likely but hard to prove:
* Treason (Arkansas, Calif., Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Washington, Federal)
* Espionage (New Mexico, Federal)
* Aggravated kidnapping (Co., Idaho, Il., Missouri, Mont.)
Three more amount to particularly aggravated cases of what amount to attempted murder:
* Aircraft hijacking (Ga., Mo.)
* Placing a bomb near a bus terminal (Mo.)
* Aggravated assault by incarcerated, persistent felons, or murderers (Mont.)
* Attempting, authorizing or advising the killing of any officer, juror,or witness in cases involving a Continuing Criminal Enterprise, regardless of whether such killing actually occurs. (Federal)
One is a product of war on drugs hysteria:
* Drug trafficking (Fl., Missouri, Federal)
The only Colorado crime on this list, First Degree Kidnapping, Section 18-3-301, Colorado Revised Statute provides that: "no person convicted of first degree kidnapping shall suffer the death penalty if the person kidnapped was liberated alive prior to the conviction of the kidnapper." Likewise, life in prison without parole is not a sentencing option for the offense "if, prior to his conviction, the person kidnapped was liberated unharmed."
Note also that many states, including Colorado, allow the death penalty to be imposed in cases where the victim is killed, but not directly by the person who is sentenced to death (e.g. by a fellow participant in a felony).
November 2007 Election in Denver Update
All three school board seats that are up for election in 2007 will be contested (there are 7 seats in all, five from districts and two at large). Two have incumbents (at large, and District 1 in Southeast Denver), one is an open seat (District 5 in Northwest Denver). These will be the only candidate races on the ballot in Denver. I know very little about the candidates yet -- but, we have two months to figure that out.
From the Denver Post via Coyote Gulch:
There will also be nine city financial issues on the ballot (which George in Denver has covered extremely well), and a marijuana deprioritization issue. These should be the only ballot issues on the ballot in Denver. For the record, I favor a yes vote on all ten issues.
From the Denver Post via Coyote Gulch:
The two incumbents are Theresa Peña and Bruce Hoyt. Peña is the board president and is running for an at-large seat against challengers John McBride and Rita Montero. Hoyt is the board's vice president and represents District 1. He is being challenged by Frank Deserino and Lawrence Botnick. The open seat is being vacated by Lucia Guzman, who is stepping down as District 5's representative. Candidates for District 5, which represents northwestern Denver, are Tony Curcio, Arturo Jimenez, Raymond Gutierrez and José Silva.
There will also be nine city financial issues on the ballot (which George in Denver has covered extremely well), and a marijuana deprioritization issue. These should be the only ballot issues on the ballot in Denver. For the record, I favor a yes vote on all ten issues.
06 September 2007
Updated: Colony Collapse Disorder Suspect
We have a suspect for colony collapse disorder, a phenomena of massive death of bee hives, has been fingered. Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) is the suspect, which would have arrived in America via Australian bees in 2004. According to the BBC:
Even if a primary culprit has been found, this doesn't mean that there is a cure to the problem, although it certainly helps in finding one.
UPDATE via Science News:
Study author Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University in University Park "suspects that bees become susceptible to the virus only when weakened by some other factor, such as pesticide exposure."
The researchers also found genes from parasites, fungi, and viruses, in both healthy hives and in those which had undergone collapse. But IAPV only appeared in samples from CCD populations.
Even if a primary culprit has been found, this doesn't mean that there is a cure to the problem, although it certainly helps in finding one.
UPDATE via Science News:
IAPV was detected in 83 percent of samples of bees from faltering colonies but in only 5 percent of samples from colonies without symptoms . . . . The bee analysis included two fungi that have been suspects in colony collapses. Nosema ceranae and Nosema apis occurred in 90 percent and 100 percent, respectively, of samples of sick colonies, says the Lipkin team, but also in 72 percent and 92 percent, respectively, of symptomfree colonies.
Study author Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University in University Park "suspects that bees become susceptible to the virus only when weakened by some other factor, such as pesticide exposure."
Missile Defense Status Report
The Air Force is firming up its plans to deploy modified Boeing 747s with a laser that could shoot down ballistic missiles in flight. The laser doesn't incinerate the missile; it just uses its own fragility in intense flight conditions and its onboard explosives to cause it to blow itself up.
The Air Force wants 7 planes at a cost of $1.5 billion each, for a total price tag of about $10.5 billion. The plan has passed preliminary tests with lower energy lasers, and would like to test it against a real missile in 2009, although a 2011 test date seems more likely given budgetary constraints.
The down side of the program is that you need to know who is going to fire the missile at what place and time, within a fairly narrow set of constraints, for it to work. Ballistic missiles can clear 4,000 miles in 30 minutes, which means for all practical purposes that the laser defense is useless unless the plane is in the air, within a thousand mile or so of the launch site, when the enemy missile is launched. A sustained twenty four hour patrol regime isn't cheap when you are using $1.5 billion planes with touchy chemical and optical components.
Also, while the system would work against isolated missile attack from a terrorist or rogue state, it would be useless against a simultaneous barrage of missiles -- it would provide virtually no defense against a large scale Russian nuclear attack, for example. Indeed, the same caveat can be placed on all current ballistic missile defense work. Stopping a North Korea with a handful of missiles may be possible, stopping a major nuclear power is vaporware, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
Since it is harder to keep a 747 on station 24 hours a day than it would be to, for instance, keep a proposed 25,000 ton anti-ballistic missile cruiser afloat in a high risk of missile launch area, the Navy has a continuing edge in anti-ballistic missile defense. The other Air Force project, a land based interceptor missiles progam, has been dismal failure so far.
On the other hand, the notion of a defensive laser gun that causes fragile airborne objective full of explosive materials to blow up before hitting their target has a wide variety of other potential applications. Experimental projects are looking at similar concepts for point defense against anti-ship missiles, mortar rounds, tank and artillery shells, rocket propelled grenades, and rocket attacks such as those that characterized the Israeli-Lebanon war. They could also be used as anti-satellite weapons, and as a form of point defense for satellites against projectiles aimed at them.
Lasers also show promise as anti-aircraft weapons (with a focus on pilot vision, avionics and igniting a plane's fuel supply and ordinance), although it isn't clear that our soon to be completed fleet of F-22s doesn't already have that problem well in hand-- wouldn't 7 more F-22s be superior to 1 new unproven laser plane that would be toast if it was the victim of a surprise attack?
Similarly, one can imagine a laser plane being used to destroy ground based missile launchers, tanker trucks, fuel depots and ammunition depots, when there is no ballistic missile threat to worry about -- although in this last case, we already have comparable good solutions to the problem with relic planes like the A-10 and the B-52, ground based armor and artillery, the AH-64 Apache, and more. But, a $1.5 billion laser plane is an expensive solution to that problem. But, it could probably do the job if other military resources were tied up.
The big virtue of a laser over a projectile for these jobs is that a laser can hit the target as fast as you can see it, which makes them ideal for fast moving targets. The downside is that lasers using current technology as sufficient wattage are quite big and bulky, and also mostly rely on horribly polluting chemicals. But, because of the immense power of the laser need to do damage in its own right, laser weapons are likely to be a "match" that sets off secondary explosions, rather than a powerful destructive weapon in its own right, for many decades to come, at least. They are likely to be virtually useless against infantry or a tank, for example.
The Air Force wants 7 planes at a cost of $1.5 billion each, for a total price tag of about $10.5 billion. The plan has passed preliminary tests with lower energy lasers, and would like to test it against a real missile in 2009, although a 2011 test date seems more likely given budgetary constraints.
The down side of the program is that you need to know who is going to fire the missile at what place and time, within a fairly narrow set of constraints, for it to work. Ballistic missiles can clear 4,000 miles in 30 minutes, which means for all practical purposes that the laser defense is useless unless the plane is in the air, within a thousand mile or so of the launch site, when the enemy missile is launched. A sustained twenty four hour patrol regime isn't cheap when you are using $1.5 billion planes with touchy chemical and optical components.
Also, while the system would work against isolated missile attack from a terrorist or rogue state, it would be useless against a simultaneous barrage of missiles -- it would provide virtually no defense against a large scale Russian nuclear attack, for example. Indeed, the same caveat can be placed on all current ballistic missile defense work. Stopping a North Korea with a handful of missiles may be possible, stopping a major nuclear power is vaporware, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
Since it is harder to keep a 747 on station 24 hours a day than it would be to, for instance, keep a proposed 25,000 ton anti-ballistic missile cruiser afloat in a high risk of missile launch area, the Navy has a continuing edge in anti-ballistic missile defense. The other Air Force project, a land based interceptor missiles progam, has been dismal failure so far.
On the other hand, the notion of a defensive laser gun that causes fragile airborne objective full of explosive materials to blow up before hitting their target has a wide variety of other potential applications. Experimental projects are looking at similar concepts for point defense against anti-ship missiles, mortar rounds, tank and artillery shells, rocket propelled grenades, and rocket attacks such as those that characterized the Israeli-Lebanon war. They could also be used as anti-satellite weapons, and as a form of point defense for satellites against projectiles aimed at them.
Lasers also show promise as anti-aircraft weapons (with a focus on pilot vision, avionics and igniting a plane's fuel supply and ordinance), although it isn't clear that our soon to be completed fleet of F-22s doesn't already have that problem well in hand-- wouldn't 7 more F-22s be superior to 1 new unproven laser plane that would be toast if it was the victim of a surprise attack?
Similarly, one can imagine a laser plane being used to destroy ground based missile launchers, tanker trucks, fuel depots and ammunition depots, when there is no ballistic missile threat to worry about -- although in this last case, we already have comparable good solutions to the problem with relic planes like the A-10 and the B-52, ground based armor and artillery, the AH-64 Apache, and more. But, a $1.5 billion laser plane is an expensive solution to that problem. But, it could probably do the job if other military resources were tied up.
The big virtue of a laser over a projectile for these jobs is that a laser can hit the target as fast as you can see it, which makes them ideal for fast moving targets. The downside is that lasers using current technology as sufficient wattage are quite big and bulky, and also mostly rely on horribly polluting chemicals. But, because of the immense power of the laser need to do damage in its own right, laser weapons are likely to be a "match" that sets off secondary explosions, rather than a powerful destructive weapon in its own right, for many decades to come, at least. They are likely to be virtually useless against infantry or a tank, for example.
04 September 2007
Perspective on Virginia Tech and Columbine
A lot of the discussion of gun control and public safety comes from multiple victim murder incidents like Virginia Tech and Columbine. But, these incidents are a poor basis for policy.
According to the United States Justice Department, in the United States:
In 2005, of all homicide incidents--
* 4% involved 2 victims
* .6% involved 3 victims
* .1% involved 4 victims
* .05% involved 5 or more victims
There were 16,692 homicide victims that year.
These incidents are without a doubt horrible. But, this doesn't justify turning our nation into an armed fortress. At least half of murders in the United States are committed by someone the victim knows.
A significant number of multiple victim murder incidents are also one off affairs. The killer frequently ends up dead, or is captured on the spot or shortly thereafter and spends the rest of his life incarcerated, whether or not he is convicted or executed.
Put it this way. It is safe to guess that everyone who will commit a mass murder in the next decade is alive today. There are fewer than 100 people alive right now who will commit a mass murder in the next decade in the United States. There are 300,000,000 people alive in the United States right now. Some are seriously disturbed individuals for whom intervention is possible before it is too late. But, some of these incidents provide very little warning.
There are tens of millions of people with felony records. There many millions of people who suffer from mental illnesses which from which previous mass murdered have also suffered. There is considerable overlap between these two populations, because of the way that our criminal justice system has been used as a backup alternative to a mental health system. Yet, even a sieve that focused on these populations alone wouldn't cut it. Virginia Tech and Columbine were both committed by people with no criminal record. Many mass murders are committed by people for whom there is no public history of mental illness. Mass murderers are overwhelmingly relatively young men, but that sieve again, isn't nearly fine enough to isolate the 100 people an early warning system would like to identify.
Mass murders are by and large unpredictable and unpreventable, compared to other kinds of murders.
In contrast, a mere 1% drop in murders involving a single victim would save far more lives than a complete elimination of mass murders, and there are enough predictable patterns to some other kinds of murders that reducing them by a small percentage is a much more viable proposition. It is far easier to identify violent gang members or people likely to kill in the context of abusive domestic relationships than it is to identify someone who will errupt into becoming a mass murderer.
Similarly, the prospects of preventing traumatic deaths through improved suicide prevent systems that cut suicides 1-2%, would be much easier.
Likewise, increased public awareness of safety measures directed at accidental deaths like deaths from lightening strikes and floods, that significantly reduce particular kinds of preventable accidental deaths, would be more effective. You'd save more lives by modestly cracking down on reckless teen driving, or drunk driving, or increasing use of trigger locks and locked gun cabinets, than you could by an all out, resource intense effort to prevent mass murders.
According to the United States Justice Department, in the United States:
In 2005, of all homicide incidents--
* 4% involved 2 victims
* .6% involved 3 victims
* .1% involved 4 victims
* .05% involved 5 or more victims
There were 16,692 homicide victims that year.
These incidents are without a doubt horrible. But, this doesn't justify turning our nation into an armed fortress. At least half of murders in the United States are committed by someone the victim knows.
A significant number of multiple victim murder incidents are also one off affairs. The killer frequently ends up dead, or is captured on the spot or shortly thereafter and spends the rest of his life incarcerated, whether or not he is convicted or executed.
Put it this way. It is safe to guess that everyone who will commit a mass murder in the next decade is alive today. There are fewer than 100 people alive right now who will commit a mass murder in the next decade in the United States. There are 300,000,000 people alive in the United States right now. Some are seriously disturbed individuals for whom intervention is possible before it is too late. But, some of these incidents provide very little warning.
There are tens of millions of people with felony records. There many millions of people who suffer from mental illnesses which from which previous mass murdered have also suffered. There is considerable overlap between these two populations, because of the way that our criminal justice system has been used as a backup alternative to a mental health system. Yet, even a sieve that focused on these populations alone wouldn't cut it. Virginia Tech and Columbine were both committed by people with no criminal record. Many mass murders are committed by people for whom there is no public history of mental illness. Mass murderers are overwhelmingly relatively young men, but that sieve again, isn't nearly fine enough to isolate the 100 people an early warning system would like to identify.
Mass murders are by and large unpredictable and unpreventable, compared to other kinds of murders.
In contrast, a mere 1% drop in murders involving a single victim would save far more lives than a complete elimination of mass murders, and there are enough predictable patterns to some other kinds of murders that reducing them by a small percentage is a much more viable proposition. It is far easier to identify violent gang members or people likely to kill in the context of abusive domestic relationships than it is to identify someone who will errupt into becoming a mass murderer.
Similarly, the prospects of preventing traumatic deaths through improved suicide prevent systems that cut suicides 1-2%, would be much easier.
Likewise, increased public awareness of safety measures directed at accidental deaths like deaths from lightening strikes and floods, that significantly reduce particular kinds of preventable accidental deaths, would be more effective. You'd save more lives by modestly cracking down on reckless teen driving, or drunk driving, or increasing use of trigger locks and locked gun cabinets, than you could by an all out, resource intense effort to prevent mass murders.
Beating the Fluke Effect
Anyone who regularly deals with statistics is aware of the fluke effect, which is really just the flip side of the law of averages. The smaller the absolute number of data points a category in a data set has, the more likely it is to be unusually high or low.
For example, in the world of crime statistics, local murder rates vary much more from year to year than any other measure of crime, because they are so rare, so a very small number of incidents can have a dramatic effect on the overall rate.
It is, of course, possible to quantify the variability associated with a small sample. Margin of error calculations are common place, and you can find calculators on the web not only for "stupid margin of error" that assumes an infinitely large total population and a 50% result, but also more sophisticated margin of error calculations.
The trouble is that this is rarely reflected in the presentation of data. When you want to rank 200 cities by murder rate, for example, you almost always use the actual murder rate to order the cities, relegating the margin of error to a footnote that sophisticated analysts have an intangible understanding of, but neophytes simply ignore because they don't know how to use it. The only time margin of error usually enters into lay analysis of statistics is when someone retires that a survey result (say of Candidate A and Candidate B) is irrelevant, because the options are within the margin of error of each other (which itself, isn't strictly the right analysis).
How could a ranked data set be presented in a way that would convey the relative significance of both the actual results and its likely variability? One way to do it would be to do a ranking based not on the middle of a confidence interval, but on one of its extremes.
Suppose you want to prepare a ranking of how extreme the high temperatures were in 3000 U.S. cities this year, expressed as a percentage of the days when temperatures were within two degrees of the all time high for that city.
Traditionally, you would do this by simply calculating the number and ranking them. But, this is going to disproportionately overrepresent locations with short histories of recorded weather data. Excluding short data sets would eliminate the flukes, but would also miss trends in newly settled areas. The compromise would be to assign each result a margin of error based upon sample size, and then use the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval to conduct the ranking (to be conservative).
For an East Coast or Southwest City with four hundred years of continuous weather keeping, the confidence interval will be smal, and the actual rate will closely corrospond to the bottom of the confidence interval. For some suburban Nevada hamlet, with only twenty years of records, only a truly phenomenal year would be sufficient to rank it highly, but such a truly phenomenal year would appear (on a muted basis) somewhere in the mid- to high- part of the rankings.
The chart wouldn't be too hard to explain. You could say this list shows the percentage of days where we are 95% sure that this year's temperatures were within 2 degrees of an all time high on last year. The presentation would also serve the useful purpose of highlighting the inherent limitations of the even non-fluke data which often would otherwise be buried in minutae, or simply relegated to a user's general knowledge of statistics and probability.
The result would be to focus the attention of readers on the substantive task of parsing the statistically significant data points, rather than merely immediately calling valueable "first impression" attention to explaining flukes in the data set, which, while it may have curiousity and technical virtue, really doesn't tell the most important story that the data have to show.
For example, in the world of crime statistics, local murder rates vary much more from year to year than any other measure of crime, because they are so rare, so a very small number of incidents can have a dramatic effect on the overall rate.
It is, of course, possible to quantify the variability associated with a small sample. Margin of error calculations are common place, and you can find calculators on the web not only for "stupid margin of error" that assumes an infinitely large total population and a 50% result, but also more sophisticated margin of error calculations.
The trouble is that this is rarely reflected in the presentation of data. When you want to rank 200 cities by murder rate, for example, you almost always use the actual murder rate to order the cities, relegating the margin of error to a footnote that sophisticated analysts have an intangible understanding of, but neophytes simply ignore because they don't know how to use it. The only time margin of error usually enters into lay analysis of statistics is when someone retires that a survey result (say of Candidate A and Candidate B) is irrelevant, because the options are within the margin of error of each other (which itself, isn't strictly the right analysis).
How could a ranked data set be presented in a way that would convey the relative significance of both the actual results and its likely variability? One way to do it would be to do a ranking based not on the middle of a confidence interval, but on one of its extremes.
Suppose you want to prepare a ranking of how extreme the high temperatures were in 3000 U.S. cities this year, expressed as a percentage of the days when temperatures were within two degrees of the all time high for that city.
Traditionally, you would do this by simply calculating the number and ranking them. But, this is going to disproportionately overrepresent locations with short histories of recorded weather data. Excluding short data sets would eliminate the flukes, but would also miss trends in newly settled areas. The compromise would be to assign each result a margin of error based upon sample size, and then use the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval to conduct the ranking (to be conservative).
For an East Coast or Southwest City with four hundred years of continuous weather keeping, the confidence interval will be smal, and the actual rate will closely corrospond to the bottom of the confidence interval. For some suburban Nevada hamlet, with only twenty years of records, only a truly phenomenal year would be sufficient to rank it highly, but such a truly phenomenal year would appear (on a muted basis) somewhere in the mid- to high- part of the rankings.
The chart wouldn't be too hard to explain. You could say this list shows the percentage of days where we are 95% sure that this year's temperatures were within 2 degrees of an all time high on last year. The presentation would also serve the useful purpose of highlighting the inherent limitations of the even non-fluke data which often would otherwise be buried in minutae, or simply relegated to a user's general knowledge of statistics and probability.
The result would be to focus the attention of readers on the substantive task of parsing the statistically significant data points, rather than merely immediately calling valueable "first impression" attention to explaining flukes in the data set, which, while it may have curiousity and technical virtue, really doesn't tell the most important story that the data have to show.
Moses For President
Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, author of "The Culture Code," is a French expatriate and Jungian psychologist whose made a fortune as a marketing guru (some dismiss him as a con man, or an oversimplifier).
His method is use three hour, increasingly personal focus groups to discern the archetypal emotional meaning people tend to assign to various concepts; something generally distinct from the conscious "alibis" that people use to justify their behavior. He distills these emotional subcurrents into a word or three that he calls "Culture Codes" which he claims very greatly from one nation's culture to another, but tend to be stable within a culture. He then offers anecdotes to illustrate the perils of marketing "off Code" and the positive results that come from marketing "on Code."
His book explores the emotional attachments that Americans have to concepts like Love, Seducation, Sex, Beauty, Fat, Health, Youth, Home, Dinner, Work, Money, Quality, Perfection, Food, Alcohol, Shopping, Luxury, the American Presidency and America.
Some are counterintuitive: He claims the American Code for sex is "violence." Other observations are pedestrian, claiming that work is "who you are." Not terribly counterintuitive, but nevertheless interesting, is his claim that the American Code for the Presidency is "Moses." We don't need a perfect person to be President, nor do we need an intellectual (an ideal held by the French), but we do need an optimistic, visionary chief revolutionary.
The question then, is which of the viable candidates fits that bill?
This emotional criterion certainly does a lot to explain Bill Richardson's relative lack of success in the Presidential race, despite the fact that his resume of public service outshines that of most of his fellow Democrats running for the nomination.
It also helps explain why John Edwards in near the top of the pack, despite minimal government service and few legislative accomplishments. Moreover, it provides a lens with which to evaluate him vis-a-vis fellow candidates Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.
Of course, from an electability point of view, the question is how each of these candidates measures against likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney on the "feels like Moses" scale, which Rapaille argues, matters more than partisan affiliation, intelligence (which is almost a defect) or policy positions. Dire circumstances can upend this consideration, but the 2008 nominee won't actually be running against George W. Bush, whom, in Rapaille's view, prevailed over Gore and Kerry respectively, because both men were far too cerebral.
I'm not going to conduct the analysis of the front runners myself at this point, and I don't have a firm handle on the public perception of them. I haven't spent much time watching the debates so far, and remain muddled and ambivalent about my choices from among the top four Democrats, upon whom I and other Coloradans will be asked to pass judgment in five months. But, Rapaille's approach certainly offers one means, which is as good as any political science has to offer, by which to handicap the race.
His method is use three hour, increasingly personal focus groups to discern the archetypal emotional meaning people tend to assign to various concepts; something generally distinct from the conscious "alibis" that people use to justify their behavior. He distills these emotional subcurrents into a word or three that he calls "Culture Codes" which he claims very greatly from one nation's culture to another, but tend to be stable within a culture. He then offers anecdotes to illustrate the perils of marketing "off Code" and the positive results that come from marketing "on Code."
His book explores the emotional attachments that Americans have to concepts like Love, Seducation, Sex, Beauty, Fat, Health, Youth, Home, Dinner, Work, Money, Quality, Perfection, Food, Alcohol, Shopping, Luxury, the American Presidency and America.
Some are counterintuitive: He claims the American Code for sex is "violence." Other observations are pedestrian, claiming that work is "who you are." Not terribly counterintuitive, but nevertheless interesting, is his claim that the American Code for the Presidency is "Moses." We don't need a perfect person to be President, nor do we need an intellectual (an ideal held by the French), but we do need an optimistic, visionary chief revolutionary.
The question then, is which of the viable candidates fits that bill?
This emotional criterion certainly does a lot to explain Bill Richardson's relative lack of success in the Presidential race, despite the fact that his resume of public service outshines that of most of his fellow Democrats running for the nomination.
It also helps explain why John Edwards in near the top of the pack, despite minimal government service and few legislative accomplishments. Moreover, it provides a lens with which to evaluate him vis-a-vis fellow candidates Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.
Of course, from an electability point of view, the question is how each of these candidates measures against likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney on the "feels like Moses" scale, which Rapaille argues, matters more than partisan affiliation, intelligence (which is almost a defect) or policy positions. Dire circumstances can upend this consideration, but the 2008 nominee won't actually be running against George W. Bush, whom, in Rapaille's view, prevailed over Gore and Kerry respectively, because both men were far too cerebral.
I'm not going to conduct the analysis of the front runners myself at this point, and I don't have a firm handle on the public perception of them. I haven't spent much time watching the debates so far, and remain muddled and ambivalent about my choices from among the top four Democrats, upon whom I and other Coloradans will be asked to pass judgment in five months. But, Rapaille's approach certainly offers one means, which is as good as any political science has to offer, by which to handicap the race.
03 September 2007
How Do Economies Develop?
Standard economic theory is a poor predictor of how economies develop. This appears to be largely because it has failed to recognized how particularized the infrastructure and skills associated with many forms of economic endeavor are, and hence, how tight a fit new economic activities that build on that basis must have with existing economic activities to usefully transfer that productive culture.
Empirical evidence from the last couple of decades of export data indicates that an economy mostly develops by expanding into industries that require extremely similar infrastructure and skill bases to existing products (e.g. from one kind of garments to lingere, or from electronics to cameras). Many of the industries that turn out to have similar requirements (e.g. fish exports and produce exports) are not terribly intuitive, and some industries have much more portable requirements than others.
This helps explains conundrums such as why resource poor countries like Israel and Japan have proved far more successful at economic development, than resource rich countries. Natural resource based economies tend to have industry specific economies that don't easily translate to economic activity in other sectors. Resource poor economies, in contrast, have no choice but to develop economies in areas that are more easily generalized.
Empirical evidence from the last couple of decades of export data indicates that an economy mostly develops by expanding into industries that require extremely similar infrastructure and skill bases to existing products (e.g. from one kind of garments to lingere, or from electronics to cameras). Many of the industries that turn out to have similar requirements (e.g. fish exports and produce exports) are not terribly intuitive, and some industries have much more portable requirements than others.
[P]roducts tightly connected to each other . . . include the vast majority of industrial products, from machinery and steel to chemicals. Garments, textiles, and electronics form their own, smaller, clusters. . . . [A]lmost in isolation . . . are products such as oil, minerals, cereals, and coffee. . . . Fast-growing developing countries such as China, Thailand, and Hungary are strong in some of those central, well-connected [products]. The poorest countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, tend to specialize in a few of the peripheral products—such as oil for Nigeria and copper for Zambia.
This helps explains conundrums such as why resource poor countries like Israel and Japan have proved far more successful at economic development, than resource rich countries. Natural resource based economies tend to have industry specific economies that don't easily translate to economic activity in other sectors. Resource poor economies, in contrast, have no choice but to develop economies in areas that are more easily generalized.
Faith Doesn't Make Your Heart Healthy
It has long been established that statistically, having someone else pray for you does nothing to improve your health. A new study looks at the benefits or lack thereof of religious belief to certain cardiac patients who are depressed or lack social support, and finds no benefit. According to the study's abstract:
Hat Tip to Science News.
Objective: To assess the prospective relationship between spiritual experiences and health in a sample of patients surviving an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) with depression or low social support.
Methods: A subset of 503 patients participating in the enhancing recovery in coronary heart disease (ENRICHD) trial completed a Daily Spiritual Experiences (DSE) questionnaire within 28 days from the time of their AMI. The questionnaire assessed three spirituality variables—worship service/church attendance, prayer/meditation, and total DSE score. Patients also completed the Beck Depression Inventory to assess depressive symptoms and the ENRICHD Social Support Inventory to determine perceived social support. The sample was subsequently followed prospectively every 6 months for an average of 18 months to assess all-cause mortality and recurrent AMI.
Results: Of the 503 participants who completed the DSE questionnaire at the time of index AMI, 61 (12%) participants either died or sustained a recurrent MI during the follow-up period. After adjustment for gender, education level, ethnicity, and a composite medical prognosis risk score derived specifically for the ENRICHD trial, we observed no relationship between death or nonfatal AMI and total spirituality as measured by the DSE (p = .446), worship service attendance (p = .120), or frequency of prayer/meditation (p = .679).
Conclusion: We found little evidence that self-reported spirituality, frequency of church attendance, or frequency of prayer is associated with cardiac morbidity or all-cause mortality post AMI in patients with depression and/or low perceived support.
Hat Tip to Science News.
Titanic Survivors
In honor of a Labor day weekend family visit to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's Titanic exhibit, a breakdown of the survivor's of the sinking of the Titanic by gender, age and ticket class/crew status is shown above.
First class passengers corresponds to "rich" in contemporary terms. A first class ticket cost about $40,000-$75,000 for the six day trip in contemporary dollars. Upper middle class passengers generally bought second class tickets. Third class tickets, also known as steerage, cost about $600-$700 in contemporary dollars and were purchased by everyone else, except, of course, the crew.
Everyone who survived the Titanic disaster made it onto a lifeboat before rescue arrived. Very few were plucked from the waters onto a lifeboat, although the numbers are disputed and some of those removed from the waters died from hypothermia afterwards. The exact number plucked from the waters is disputed, with the best evidence roughly as follows:
[According to the official inquiries] only thirteen people were taken out of the water into lifeboats; boat 4 picked up eight crewmen (seven are mentioned in the hearings by name), two of whom died; boat 14 picked up four, one of whom died.
Some people in boat 14 say that actually only three were picked up by this boat; Mr Hoyt, who died, a Japanese young fellow (actually, one of the Chinese sailors travelling third class - Fang Lang) and a young steward (Harold Phillimore, even though he is not mentioned by name). There have been suggestions that steward Jack Stewart was one of those picked up by boat 14, but his name is mentioned nowhere in either of the hearings. The alleged fourth person is not mentioned at all. Perhaps this was second class passenger Emilio Portaluppi or third class passenger Abraham Harmer, who died and was buried from the Carpathia. Perhaps there wasn't a fourth person at all...
Collapsible D picked up Frederick M Hoyt, who had put his wife into that boat and jumped into the water immediately after it had been lowered and subsequently was picked up. This is a matter of fact one has to bear in mind when reading male passengers stories about how they escaped from the ship. Many claim they were on one of the collapsibles.
Collapsible A floated away from the ship, waterfilled. During the night perhaps 20 people managed to get onto it, but many succumbed to the cold and died. Most of the survivors in the boat said there were 'ten or eleven' or 'ten or twelve' saved from the boat (Olaus Abelseth, Richard N Williams, George Rheims). This obviously limits the number of people in the boat; many would later claim they were in this boat or in the other Collapsible, B.
Boat B floated away, upside-down. According to most of those on the boat, there were between 25 and 30 on it, but 'two or three' or 'three or four' died during the night. Officer Lightoller also testified to this effect. He also said there were mainly crewmen, stokers, on the boat. There were only three passengers according to him. Colonel Gracie on that boat also suggested there were three or four passengers, the rest were stokers.
Thus, nine or ten survivors were plucked from the waters onto Boats 4, 14 and D; ten to twelve survived on collapsible A (some of whom may have been plucked from the water), and twenty-one to twenty-eight survived on collapsible B (some of whom may have been plucked from the waters).
This suggests that probably no more than fifty survivors about of more than 700 survivors did not go directly from the Titanic to the lifeboats, with no time in the water, and that the actual number could have been considerably less. Almost all of those who survived in this manner were men.
Several hundred more people could have survived if the lifeboats available had been filled to capacity. The freezing water would have caused death by hypothermia within about fifteen minutes for a typical healthy person. Three hundred and thirty people kept afloat in life preservers or other support and had bodies recovered, but died from the cold; the cold also likely killed most of those whose bodies were not recovered.
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