ob4 stands for "of, by, and for," which echoes the last line of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:
"that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Humans—smart enough to have ideas; foolish enough to believe them
"that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
"Political observers recently got to watch Republican wedge politics go down, in textbook fashion.This is an excellent column, and I recommend that you read it in full.
At a fundraiser in New York for Sen. John Kerry, Whoopi Goldberg said something naughty about President Bush. Ken Mehlman of the Bush campaign called the formerly obscure event a 'star-studded hate fest' and demanded the Kerry campaign release it on video — implying even naughtier tidbits to come. Fox News, then the rest of the media, granted Goldberg's attack legitimacy as an 'issue.' The mighty GOP ax had fallen again, predictably, right at the point where two key constituencies of the Democratic coalition are joined.
One segment of the party is both reliably rich and reliably liberal — 'Hollywood.' Another — they used to call them 'hard hats' — is culturally conservative but seeks a dependable protector of its economic interests."
"Do you have a problem with Whoopi Goldberg expressing her opinion? Are you suggesting that Whoopi Godlberg be censored? Don't you believe in freedom of speech? How dare you suggest that I or anyone else should tell Whoopi Goldberg what to say. If you don't like what Whoopi Goldberg has to say, take it up with her. In the Democratic party, people are free to express themselves without having to clear everything they say with command central. That's the kind of America I believe in. What kind of American do you believe in?"
"The distinction between a tight fit versus a loose fit is marked in Korean but not in English. A cap on a pen would be a tight fit relationship, while a pen [in a shoe box] would be a loose fit relationship. English does not mark this distinction in the same way"Yet 5-month old babies of both English-speaking and Korean-speaking parents notice the distinction, apparently indicating that we are born knowing how to make and see such a distinction but that English speakers learn to ignore it as they grow up.
"'Adults were glossing over the distinction that the babies were actually detecting,' said co-author Sue Hespos, an assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University.
'These findings suggest that humans possess a rich set of concepts before we learn language,' added co-author Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. 'Learning a particular language may lead us to favor some of the these concepts over others, but the concepts already existed before we put them into words.'"
"Your government failed you, and I failed you. ... We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed."Why haven't we heard anything remotely resembling such a statement from Bush?
"[Bush] had always listed, throughout his campaign and since, the reasons ... he had given as acceptable for running fiscal deficits: for war, recession, or emergency. As he said to me in mid-September, 'Lucky me. I hit the trifecta.'"
"Ocean currents can be divided into two types of flow based on the forces that drive them. Most currents in the upper kilometer of the ocean are driven by the wind. Mixing drives deeper currents, which brings very cold dense water up to the surface. The dense water is replaced by cold dense water that sinks to the bottom near Greenland, Norway and Antarctica. Deeper water is affected by long variability of climate. Climate controls salinity and temperature of the water, which has everything to do with density. "
"H.R. 3313 would prevent unelected, lifetime-appointed Federal judges from striking down the protection for states Congress passed in the Defense of Marriage Act (`DOMA')"(Apparently, this is the actual form in which it is submitted to the house. It is neat to have all this online.)
"It is especially galling to see the governor point at a handful of school bus drivers and excoriate them as 'special interests' that he must fight before we can have a budget. ...Lillian Taiz, California Faculty Association Vice President, and Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles commenting on Governor Schwarzenegger's insistence that the budget include a provision that would allow local school districts to outsource school bus-driver positions to companies that pay lower wages than those paid by the school district.
The governor ran for office promising 'fantastic jobs for every Californian.' But his actions are just the opposite. He wants to help a corporation to cut bus drivers' pay. This kind of policy would increase the number of working poor in our state."
Steve Lopez writes a terrific column for the LA Times. Today he took on our Governor. Here are some highlights.
"I'm the commander. See, I don't have to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
"My response was exactly like then [sic] as it is today, that I asked for the Central Intelligence Agency to give me an update on any terrorist threats. And the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat. There was not a time and place of an attack. [emphasis added] It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to?"In other words, since bin Laden hadn't sent him a telegram explaining how and when he intended to attack, there was nothing to do,
"It was just a random statistic, but a telling one: Only 300 books were translated into Arabic last year. That is about one foreign title per million Arabs. For comparison's sake, Greece translated 1,500 foreign-language books, or about 150 titles per million Greeks. Why is the Arab world so far behind, not only in this but in practically all the arts and sciences?"This is an interesting statistic on its own. Dyer goes on to blame it on the west for supporting Arab dictatorships. I think that's a bit too much of playing the victim.
Colin Powell's visit to Sudan was an excellent first step, but President Bush has remained passive. As for John Kerry, he averted his eyes from Darfur for months, but last week he finally demanded action against what he termed genocide. ...
If readers want to help, I've listed some actions they can take on www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds Posting 520 (but please don't send money to me). Moral choices lie not only with those who, like Carl Wilkens, risk death to help others, but also with the millions of ordinary people who are spared the risks but still face a basic decision: Do we try to save lives, or do we simply turn away?
"Bloom's central thesis is that what makes us uniquely human is our dualism: our understanding that there are [both] material objects, or bodies, and people, or souls."No one in the reading group thought the book itself was very good. It rambled on, skipping from one point to another, without an overall coherent structure. But the issue it raises is central to how we look at the world. (By the way, Bloom does not argue that dualism is true, only that we are wired to see the world from a dualistic perspective.)
"I call them girlie men."As I understand it, the Democrats, who control the legislature, and the Governor have agreed on all the financial issues in the budget. (But see Dan Weintraub for recent complications) The only unsettled issues are Schwarzenegger's insistence on two additional provisions: (a) that the legislature repeal a law passed during the last days of the Davis administration that made it easier for employees to sue their employers and (b) that the legislature approve a provision that makes it easier for government agencies to outsource service such as driving school buses.
"If Kerry really shared our values, he probably wouldn't have to tell us so every minute, and once, just once, he might actually say what the values we share actually are."I wonder if Brooks noticed that just a few days ago President Bush said
"I did well here in 2000 because the North Carolinian voter understood we shared values. I'm going to do well again in 2004. They know we share those values."
"With [Reagan's] faith that government tax policy was the problem, not the solution, and a firm grasp of the fundamental principle of economics -- free enterprise works -- he released our creative energies and entrepreneurial spirits. "A few days later, we read (Santa Rosa Press Democrat: News for California's North Bay and Redwood Empire)
"Students throughout the [California] North Bay will have a chance to join a new 'virtual' charter school, part of a national network backed by former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett.Is anyone surprised to see how happily private enterprise finds its way to the hated taxpayer-funded checkbook?
Bennett is coming to Santa Rosa on Friday to tout his national, taxpayer-supported [emphasis added] school program ... .
[Bennett's] California Virtual Academy will receive about $4,700 in state aid for each primary grade student. Of that amount, the charter school will pay Bennett's K12 company about $1,800 for curriculum and online resources, plus about $600 for administrative support."
"Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire: 'Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again.'"Kristoff goes on to say that
"These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide.Even
It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety." [emphasis added]
"the horses [of the non-believers], their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, ... [rattle] to the pavement."As Kristoff says, "One might have thought that Jesus would be more of an animal lover."
"If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of [this sort of fiction] and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit.
As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam.
[W]e should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels.That's not what America stands for, and I doubt that it's what God stands for."
"The latest innovation in identity fraud typically begins with an unexpected e-mail message from a financial institution proclaiming something like: 'Your account information needs to be updated due to inactive members, frauds and spoof reports.'I received one of these. It had the correct logos and other graphics of my own bank. I was a bit suspicious and wanted to send an email to the bank before filling out the form. (The form requested my account number and password. It seems harmless; they just want me to log in.) When I noticed that there was no way to contact the bank from the web page I decided not to fill out the form. I'm glad I made that decision.
Anyone who clicks on the included hyperlink and types in their personal details is unwittingly connecting not to their own bank, but to a scam artist engaged in the sport of "phishing" for illegally obtained credit card numbers, bank account information, and Social Security numbers."
I regret that the preceding was not as complete and coherent as I would have liked it to be. But the dynamic web itself is neither complete or coherent, and we just don't know in which directions it will grow.
"[A] 105-foot-long dove, which will be decorated in stars and stripes and retain the message about democracy, will wrap around the Conde Nast building, at Broadway and 42nd Street, said Deborah Rappaport, a board member for [Project Billboard].This resolves the dispute, discussed in Why we need courts.
[A] 'Total Cost of Iraq War' ticker will hang vertically at the W Hotel, at Broadway and 47th Street, with those words, she said. The price stands at more than $122 billion. "
"Supporters of the amendment were careful in their arguments not to criticize gays and lesbians, reflecting the potential political ramifications of the debate in an election year.As far as I know, no Senator has recently said that same-sex sex is an abomination. The position that Democrats took of reframing the issue as one of intolerance instead of one of "defending marriage" forced the Republicans into having to defend themselves as not intolerant. In other words, reframing the issue worked!
'Gays have a right to live the way they choose,' said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah."
"Senators Block Initiative to Ban Same-Sex UnionsThe Senate didn't vote against moving forward, the Senate voted not to impose cloture.
After more than three days of debate, the Senate voted 50 to 48 against moving forward on the proposal, effectively killing it for now."
"We have no objection to the text. We have absolutely no political agenda."The same spokesman also said,
"[W]e've agreed to the copy, subject to Marriott approval."So the first question is whether the Clear Channel contract with Marriott actually give Marriott veto rights over ads on that billboard. That should be simple enough to determine. Just look at the contract. That certainly can be established in court.
"In Lawrence, the Court explicitly and unequivocally listed 'marriage' as one of the 'constitutional' rights that, absent a constitutional amendment, must be granted to same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples alike. Specifically, the Court stated that 'our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.... Persons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do' (emphasis added). The Lawrence majority thus adopted the view endorsed decades ago by one of its members -- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. While serving as general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, she wrote that traditional marriage laws, such as anti-bigamy laws, are unconstitutional and must be struck down by courts."If Cornyn's is a fair reading of the Lawrence decision, I can understand how the right might be concerned. Did a majority of the Supreme Court really agree with Ginsburg that same-sex marriage is a right guaranteed by the constitution? (Did Ginsburg even express that opinion? I don't know. But Cornyn seems to think so.)
"[A]ctivist courts have so dramatically altered the meaning of the Constitution, that traditional marriage laws are now under serious threat of being invalidated by judicial fiat nationwide — indeed, the process has already begun in numerous states across the country."is he including a majority of our current the Supreme Court among those activist judges? And if the process is so widespread, can he really argue that it is just a few judges. According to Cornyn it is a virtually unstoppable nationwide trend. Most of the article urged the passage of the amendment as a way to stop that trend.
"Marriage is not about discrimination — it is about children."I doubt that Cornyn means to restrict the possibility of marriage to parents. But it wasn't clear what he meant -- and he didn't bother to say. The problem is that so many of those opposed to same-sex marriage get so upset that they can't think straight.
"Within six years, China's economy will be double that of Germany's, now the world's third largest. By 2020, it is expected to surpass Japan as the world's second-largest economy. Japan already imports more from China than it does from the United States. And China has become the largest trading partner of South Korea, the world's 12th-largest economy. Clearly, the juggernaut has already begun."We all know this. Their point is that
"while Mao once claimed that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, today's leaders in China know it also grows from trade. Tokyo and Seoul know this, too. Aware that China is now vital to their economic well-being, they are no longer as willing as they once were to position themselves opposite Beijing, even if this means going against Washington. Put another way, while the Bush administration still thinks of the United States as the sole superpower in a unipolar world, Tokyo and Seoul do not share this view. To them, the United States and China are both powers to be reckoned with in a bipolar Asia. ... [Our] influence will only decline further as India's economy grows to the point where it passes that of Japan and China."The world does not stand still. We have been the sole superpower since the fall of the USSR. Rumsfeld notwithstanding, that arrangement won't last more than another decade or so. Are we planning for what we will do then?
"You take out your mobile phone and tap in the name of the restaurant where you're hanging out. You get a list of friends, and friends of friends, within 10 blocks. You can message each other about getting together, and maybe send a photo of yourself. 'We're taking social software off the desktop and moving it into the environment where people actually socialize' ... ."The fact is, we now live in two worlds, the physical world of streets, buildings, trees, automobiles, and flesh, and the internet world. Dodgeball is the latest in an growing list of services that integrate these worlds. The most famous is the GPS location system. Others include map services like MapQuest and Maps.Yahoo.com and their ability to tell you what stores, restaurants, hotels, etc. are near a given physical location.
"Project Billboard's representatives said the contract they signed in December with Spectacolor, a division of Clear Channel, required the antiwar group to pay $368,000 to use the billboard space from Aug. 2 through Nov. 2, Election Day. ...
A Project Billboard spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said the group planned to file a lawsuit today in federal court in Manhattan charging Clear Channel with breach of contract and asking it to live up to what the group said were the terms of the deal."
"NEC Electronics' Software for Microcontrollers Verifies Authenticity of Mobile Phone and Digital Still Camera BatteriesIn other words, if you put a cheap replacement battery in a device equipped with this software, the device will reject it. You will be obligated to buy manufacturer-approved batteries. Neat for the manufacturer, who will have a captive market, not for the consumer or battery maker.
KAWASAKI, Japan, and DUESSELDORF, Germany, July 6, 2004 -
NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723) and its subsidiary in Europe, NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, introduces a new software for microcontrollers that detects counterfeit battery products in mobile phones and digital still camera batteries. ..."
"The software will be introduced in Japanese digital cameras by year's end and is expected to be used in 50 million units by 2007. The software is ideal for use in mobile phones and batteries, but NEC Electronics is also considering extending this technology to "smart" keys, printers and ink cartridges, as well as bundling the technology into hardware options.Here is a market innovation that does nothing to help the consumer. Manufacturers must pay NEC to use the software, thus increasing the original price of the product. Then consumers are locked into using only the manufacturer's replacement parts, thus eliminating competition in that area and gouging the consumer a second time.
Pricing and Availability
The software is available now. Pricing dependent on volume; please contact info@necel.com for details."
"'With great power comes great responsibility' is the central tenet of [Spider-Man's] faith, passed down not from God but from his Uncle Ben ... .Both candidates might learn something from this movie.
He takes it seriously. Spider-Man wants to vanquish evil, but he doesn't want to be reckless about it. Like the reluctant sheriff of an old western, he fights back only when a bad guy strikes first, leaving him with no other alternative. He wouldn't mind throwing off his Spider-Man identity entirely to go back to being just Peter Parker, lonely Columbia undergrad. But of course he can't. This is 2004, and there is always evil bearing down on his New York. ...
As a man locked in a war against terror, Peter Parker could not be further removed from the hubristic bravura of Mr. Bush and his own cinematic model, the Tom Cruise of Top Gun. There's nothing triumphalist about Spider-Man; he would never declare 'Mission Accomplished' after a passing victory, and his very creed is antithetical to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war.
But neither is he a stand-in for John Kerry. Whatever inner equivocation he suffers over his role as a superhero, he stops playing Hamlet when he has a decision to make. Nor does he follow Mr. Kerry's vainglorious example of turning his own past battles into slick promotional hagiography."
"The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges. All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate. I called on the Congress to pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. The need for that amendment is still urgent, and I repeat that call today."To summarize the problems:
"In California, even though 60 percent of voters recently approved a statewide ballot initiative to maintain traditional marriage, the California supreme court is now considering the constitutionality of that democratic action. In Nebraska, the American Civil Liberties Union has challenged a duly passed state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.Senator Hatch is an intelligent man, and he understands our constitutional system. Yet he ignores the fact that it is precisely the job of the judiciary to strike down laws that are inconsistent with the rights guaranteed to us by our constitution.
Second, there will likely be a federal court challenge to state marriage laws, similar to the challenges that have eliminated state laws against certain sexual activity.
Third, a federal lawsuit in Florida is challenging DOMA's traditional definition of marriage for purposes of federal benefits."
"Well, it turns out that StorageTek allegedly uses some kind of algorithmic "key" to control access to its "Maintenance Code", the module that allows the service tech to debug the storage system. The court found that third party service techs who used the key without StorageTek's permission "circumvented" to gain access to the copyrighted code in violation of the DMCA, even though they had the explicit permission of the purchasers to fix their machines. ...If you are interested, the Anti-DMCA Website looks like a good source of information.
The Court also found, in a bizarre twist of logic, that while it is legal to load a program into RAM for repairs, it's illegal to allow it to persist in RAM while you fix it."
"an influential organization of lawyers and judges, the American Law Institute, has already recommended sweeping changes in family law that would equalize marriage and cohabitation, extending rights and benefits now reserved for married couples to cohabiting domestic partners, both heterosexual and homosexual."others must be convinced as well.
"The proposed tariffs on Chinese exporters range from about 8 percent to 113 percent. Vietnam exporters face duties ranging from about 12 percent to 93 percent. Those numbers could change as the department continues investigating.For a lucid explanation of the issue, see The Fallacies of Shrimp Protectionism
Besides China and Vietnam, shrimpers allege India, Brazil, Ecuador and Thailand also have dumped shrimp on the U.S. market. Later this month, the Commerce Department is expected to rule if those countries are guilty of dumping."
"[T]he International Trade Administration (ITA), a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce [has a] history of ruling in favor of most every dumping claim that comes its way, [making] it difficult to conclude that the U.S. antidumping law is anything other than pure protectionism.But Mr. Free Trade President was never one to let the benefits of private initiative and free markets stand in the way of politics, especially if the initiative is foreign and the politics is domestic.
In the shrimp dumping case, the conclusion is inescapable. Modern shrimp farming was developed in the early 1970s and proliferated rapidly. In 1975, shrimp farms accounted for about 2.5 percent of world shrimp production. By 1985, they accounted for 10 percent of world shrimp production. By 2001, shrimp farms were operating in over 50 countries and accounted for 40 percent of world production.
Shrimp farming has proliferated for one simple reason: efficiency. Trawling for shrimp is costly, and the harvest often varies considerably from year to year with changes in weather and ecological conditions. Shrimp farms not only produce shrimp at much less cost, they produce a steady and reliable volume. Seafood processors value the reliable volume: these companies buy harvested shrimp and produce finished products for consumers whose desire for shrimp does not fluctuate with weather and ecological conditions.
As shrimp farming has expanded, world shrimp production has increased and shrimp prices have fallen. Shrimp prices are now so low that they threaten the market survival of U.S. shrimp trawlers. So the trawlers have turned to the U.S. government and its antidumping law to protect themselves, not from dumping, but from market competition with their more efficient foreign competitors."
"In 1987, 68.3 percent of workers employed by foreign affiliates of U.S. corporations were located in high-wage countries; in 2001, this share fell to 61.4 percent.(1)"Finally, a third important consideration is the intended destination of the products produced overseas. Only 11%, on average, is shipped back to the United States. Although that number is higher in low-wage countries, the bulk of production is generally for local markets. Quoting from the report,
"For example, in 2001, 28 percent of the sales of U.S. affiliates in Mexico were exported to the United States, whereas 64 percent of the sales went to the local market.Exporting jobs may not be the scourge of our employment market that we fear it is.
In China, 71 percent of the production by U.S. affiliates was sold to the local market. This indicates that for some companies the attractiveness of investing in China is not the access to cheap labor but access to a billion consumers."
"On February 18, 2004, 62 preeminent scientists including Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science recipients, former senior advisers to administrations of both parties, numerous members of the National Academy of Sciences, and other well-known researchers released a statement titled Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making. In this statement, the scientists charged the Bush administration with widespread and unprecedented 'manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions.' The scientists' statement made brief reference to specific cases that illustrate this pattern of behavior. In conjunction with the statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released detailed documentation backing up the scientists' charges in its report, Scientific Integrity in Policy Making.
Since the release of the UCS report in February, the administration has continued to undermine the integrity of science in policy making seemingly unchecked. Many scientists have spoken out about their frustration with an administration that has undermined the quality of the science that informs policy making by suppressing, distorting, or manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies and on scientific advisory panels. For instance, Michael Kelly, a biologist who had served at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration�s National Marine Fisheries Service for nine years, recently resigned his position and issued an indictment of Bush administration practices. As Kelly wrote, 'I speak for many of my fellow biologists who are embarrassed and disgusted by the agency's apparent misuse of science.'1
Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: Further investigation of the Bush administration's abuse of science investigates several new incidents that have surfaced since the February 2004 UCS report. These new incidents have been corroborated through in-depth interviews and internal government documents, including some documents released through the Freedom of Information Act."
1. Michael Kelly’s resignation letter is available online.
"A couple was removed in handcuffs from Bush's July Fourth rally in Charleston for wearing a T-shirt with the message 'Love America, Hate Bush.'"The full story: The Charleston Gazette. Reference from Unfogged