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| Wednesday, Apr 30, 2003
New Mexico resolution Andy writes: New Mexico leads the way in state nullification of the PATRIOT law. The resolution passed the House by a remarkable 53-11 vote. Though the resolution is pro-immigration, it has other provisions that are well-written and impressive, such as the way it address the encroachments on education privacy (FERPA), medical privacy (AAPS is suing over this), and sneak and peek.It is not just pro-immigration -- it says that NM will not cooperate in expelling illegal aliens; that NM will not use profiling; that NM will treat citizens the same as non-citizens in criminal investigations; and that NM will blame Ashcroft for its own privacy invasions by its libraries. Patriot Act helps privacy John writes: Another public library admits it has been violating citizen privacy by keeping records of patrons' reading habits. Without the USA PATRIOT Act, we would never have learned about this.It is amazing how these public libraries think that they have right to keep nosy records on citizens, but share them with federal terrorism investigators. Tuesday, Apr 29, 2003
Court appointment John responds to Andy: John says that the expected confirmation of Jeffrey Sutton is "big". Big what? Sutton, the former Ohio state attorney, is famous for defending govt against lawsuits. That's not even particularly conservative. I haven't seen anything to suggest he is pro-life.Yes, Sutton's confirmation to the 6th Circuit today is a big victory. He is only the 4th of Bush's "controversial" appellate nominations to be confirmed (the others were McConnell-10th, Shedd-4th, and Smith-3rd). Sutton is famous for defending state and local govt against suits by individuals claiming rights under federal laws passed by Congress under the Commerce clause. Yes, I think this is a "particularly conservative" objective. The Language Police A new book The Language Police is a devastating criticism of how political correctness has ruined the school textbooks and tests. A typical publisher’s guideline advises thatIt is not just an American disease -- British teachers are being told to avoid the term "brainstorming" because it might offend epileptics. No, the epileptics are not even complaining, just the political correctness police. The Origin of Dragons UFO scholars like to cite the fact that many reports of UFOs and space aliens look similar, and to argue that the similarity add credence to the reports. I think they are just all watching the same movies. Now this NY Times article tackles the older question of why ancient cultures all over the Earth seem to have the same dragon images and stories. New S&W handgun My revolver is now obsolete. The Dirty Harry movies say that the .44 Magnum is the most powerful handgun made, but it has been passed up. This blog says: The ol' reliable 9mm Glock fires a 124 grain bullet.The new Model 500 costs $1000, and each round is about $3. Maybe I can use my .454 Casull as a backup gun. Update: I've changed my mind -- a .454 Casull pistol is a better choice. It uses standard ammo, while the S&W 500 uses peculiar ammo that is only available from one maker and is very expensive. Furthermore, the regular ammo isn't really any better than the S&W 500 ammo. For reviews of both, see Chuck Hawks. Music CD profits Orin Kerr says: However, Professor Fisher estimates that for a typical $18 compact disc, about $7 goes to the retail store that sold you the disc; $3.75 goes back to the artists, performers, and composers; $1.50 goes into manufacturing the disc; $1.50 goes into the distribution of the disk from the manufacturer to the retailer; $1.50 pays for marketing the disc; $2.50 pays for the record company's overhead, and a whopping 19 cents is record company profit.He's missing something. First of all, "profit" just means shareholder profit, and does not include things like executive salaries. The profits are expected to be small compared to retail prices. If they were larger, then the label would sign more bands. It doesn't mean much, except just a reflection of ordinary capitalist economics. Second, the royalties are often prepaid in advances and signing bonuses, with no additional payments coming from sales. Sometimes the artists even have to pay back money to cover record label marketing costs. So even if those average figures are correct, buying a CD does not necessarily put any money in the artist's pocket. Third, retail sales of shrink-wrapped jewel cases with music CDs are going to continue to decline because of changing technology. Horse-and-buggy sales decline when cheap automobiles hit the market. So yes, retailers are taking a hit, just like any other technology that booms, peaks, and declines. It is the music labels who are trying to keep the artists, retailers, and consumers from moving to better distribution technology. I happen to think that the artists will be in a better position if music downloading drives all the label bankrupt. Time will tell. Monday, Apr 28, 2003
More on Santorum If an animal rights advocate wants a ban on fur, then it is fair to ask if he also objects to leather shoes. If a gun nut wants the right to own an assault rifle, then it is fair to ask if he also want a tank or a bazooka. If a tax protester wants a radical tax cut, then it is fair to ask if he is willing to pay any taxes at all. You don't really know what someone is advocating unless you know some limits on it. Likewise, those who advocate a constitutional right to sodomy need to explain whether that right would include other practices like adultery, incest, and zoophilia. That is the issue that Santorum raised, and the Santorum critics are being completely dishonest in refusing to address it. I live in California which has fairly liberal sex laws, and I have no complaints about it. Sodomy laws are not really enforced anywhere, so why does anybody care? Apparently they care because they want the courts to come out with a dictatorial ruling that will be useful in promoting a social change in attitudes. That's what I resent. I'll make up my own mind. Judges are the last people I'd want to listen to about social change. Great American publications Andy sends this list of the most influential American publications. He feels that publications have been more influential than presidents.
John writes: Isn't it funny that Andy cites his class as if it were an independent authority?Joe writes: Capitalism and Freedom - FriedmanAndy writes: John wrote, "So you construct a list with that in mind, and sure enough - not a single president made the list! Imagine that!"I will post Andy's revised list. Sunday, Apr 27, 2003
Revoke the Oscar There is a campaign to revoke the Oscar for the movie Bowling For Columbine. The movie was supposed to be a documentary, but include many dishonest distortions of the facts. Surely, Winged Migration was a better picture. Update: John sends this FoxNews article. Saturday, Apr 26, 2003
Implanted ID chips This NY Times story wonders why more people don't have ID chips implanted in their pets. Several states are considering laws requiring the chips. The main purpose is for govt agencies to track dogs, cats, and owners in a big database, and to return wandering pets to their owners. Apparently owners only get the chips when they have to: Virtually every shelter in the country implants chips in captured strays or in pets put up for adoption. But private veterinarians say that requests from pet owners are still relatively rare. Most requests, they say, are made to comply with international regulations when taking animals abroad: all pets traveling to Britain and France, for example, must have both a blood test to check for disease and a microchip.This shouldn't be so surprising. The program is sold to the public based on benefit to the pet owners; but the benefit to owners is minimal. It is really a privacy-invading pet licensing scheme. Andy on Bush Andy writes: The Bushies have succeeded in removing all conservative advocacy from top official positions. Frist and Hastert advocate little to nothing. Bush and Cheney don't touch social issues. The outspoken conservatives Senators, Smith and Fitzgerald, have been pushed out of their seats. Every Republican in power is now just trying to hang on. Liberals are making their arguments and winning by default, as in the battle for the judiciary.Woody Allen has a joke in Annie Hall: Two old ladies are vacationing. One says, "The food here is so bad." The other says, "Yes, and the portions are so small." 19th century history is irrelevant. More recently, Truman (1948), Kennedy (1960), Nixon (1968), Clinton (1992), and Clinton (1996) all lost the popular vote. (Their opponents got more than 50% of the vote.) Election results are here and here. Andy disputes my definition of winning the popular vote, and argues that one can win the popular vote with a plurality of the votes. You can make any definition you want, I guess, but you should define your terms if you are using a peculiar definition. In my book, winning the electoral vote means getting a majority of the electoral vote, and winning the popular vote means getting a majority of the popular vote. If you want to count presidents who failed to win a plurality of the popular vote, then say so. If the election rules were such that the winner is decided by a plurality, then I guess that would be it. But otherwise, ordinary usage requires a majority, IMHO. If party A elects 48 senators, party B 47 senators, and party C 5 senators, then has party A won the election? I say no, because it didn't elect a majority. Parties B and C could form a coalition to take the majority and control the senate. In the 20th century, GW Bush (2000) and Kennedy (1960) failed to win a plurality of the popular vote. Scott Peterson Scott Peterson has been charged with murdering his pregnant wife Laci and their 8-month old fetus. The prosecutor wants the death penalty, but the death penalty depends on being able to prove both murders. Scott's motive was apparently that he wanted to abort the fetus, and she did not. If it had been the other way around, then Laci would have been acting entirely within her constitutional rights to kill the 8-month-old fetus without her husband's permission. A few anti-abortion activists are unhappy about this. If Scott can be executed for doing a late-term abortion, then it will start us down the slippery slope of suppressing female sexual freedom. No, it doesn't make sense to me either. Friday, Apr 25, 2003
Judge rules in favor of Napster clone A federal district judge just dismissed an RIAA/MPAA lawsuit against Morpheus and Grokster. Meanwhile, Verizon is being forced to ID P2P users by another federal judge. Here is the Wash Post story. The RIAA will probably try to spin their Morpheus loss by saying that the judge found the users to be infringing copyrights. But he really didn't say that. He merely said that Morpheus was not responsible for possible user infringement. I still think that the music labels would have been better off cutting a deal with Napster. Napster was willing to pay a royalty on downloads. The legal theory for shutting down Napster was that if a P2P service monitors downloads, then it should enforce copyrights. So the gnutella P2P services were designed so that no one could monitor downloads. The music labels are just getting what they asked for! News A Forbes article says the Baby Bells are cheating consumers out of billions of dollars. A Univ. of Chicago student agreed to plead guilty to violating the rarely used 1996 Economic Espionage Act. I don't think that what he did should be prosecuted severely as economic espionage. He did not benefit financially, and it is not clear that anyone else did either. He just released some info that may allow some Canadians to watch American TV. Canada doesn't let the American satellite TV companies sell to Canadian customers, so I don't know what is so bad about Canadians watching American TV on their own. It's not enough to send missiles into Baghdad, we are planning to bomb the moon! Not for oil -- just water. Thursday, Apr 24, 2003
The Double Helix Until this PBS Nova special on Photo 51, I didn't know how Watson and Crick dishonestly and maliciously stole the work of Rosalind Elsie Franklin. The importance of DNA was already known, and Linus Pauling and others had published models of it. The critical breakthru was some excellent x-ray crystallography photos taken by Franklin. Here is a neutral account in Physics Today. It says: In their 1953 paper, Watson and Crick state that they had been "stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin and their co-workers at King's College, London." That oblique acknowledgment misrepresented Franklin's role and, whatever its intention, left most people with the impression that her work mainly served to confirm that of Watson and Crick. It has to be one of the greatest understatements in the history of scientific writing. Franklin died before the Nobel Prize was awarded. I was expecting a story about how Franklin was a lowly grad student or lab technician carrying out Watson & Crick's instructions, or a poor brilliant woman who suffered from sex discrimination. In fact, she was an accomplished and respected scientist who was studying DNA on her own, and she had other significant accomplishments before she died at age 37. It was Watson's famous book, The Double Helix, that revealed how crucial it was to get Franklin's results, stab her in the back, and publish before anyone else gets her photos. The book became one of the big-selling science books of all time, but the first publisher rejected it because of the inaccurate and nasty comments about Franklin and others. (Franklin was dead at the time, and probably never knew how she was cheated out of a Nobel Prize.) Because of people outraged by Watson's book, a couple of other books were written to tell the true story of the discovery of the helical structure of DNA, and Franklin's role in it. If Watson and Crick had missed the boat, then Linus Pauling would have solved it as soon as he saw Franklin's work. But if Watson and Crick did not have Franklin's work, they never would have gotten to first base. It might have been several years before anyone solved it. Watson and Crick used Franklin's unpublished work without her knowledge or permission. Watson admits to that. Maybe you think that's ok in Watson's culture, whatever that means. But Watson and Crick dishonestly misrepresented her work and their dependence on it back in 1953, and have refused to give her proper credit ever since. They were worse than naive and arrogant; they were dishonest back-stabbers. Bob says that Watson honestly explained the whole story in his 1968 book. To ameliorate criticism over the nasty and belittling comments about Franklin in his book, Watson wrote an epilogue that said: "In 1958, Rosalind Franklin died at the early age of thirty-seven. Since my initial impressions of her, both scientific and personal (as recorded in the early pages of this book), were often wrong. I want to say something here about her achievements. The X-ray work she did at King's is increasingly regarded as superb. The sorting out of the A and B forms, by itself, would have made her reputation; even better was her 1952 demonstration using Patterson superposition methods, that the phosphate groups must be on the outside of the DNA molecule. ....Sorry, but this epilogue doesn't cut it. Her unpublished work was essential to the Watson-Crick research. She showed them what they were doing wrong, and they got her photos. Watson and Crick were so excited by her photos that they immediately dropped what they were doing to publish a DNA model, as they were sure that the molecular structure of DNA would be obvious to Linus Pauling as soon as he got the photos. They should have made Franklin a co-author to their famous paper, and properly acknowledged her contribution. The above passage consists of self-serving back-handed compliments. Watson is happy to credit Franklin for unrelated work, and miserly when it was work on which he depended. The closest he comes is "The X-ray work she did at King's is increasingly regarded as superb." That is academic-speak for "she was merely a technician". Here is an online account of the race for DNA. It is disillusioning that 2 of the heros of 20th century science turned out to be such jerks and liars. I am not even sure that they should get most of the credit for DNA. It was Oswald Avery who showed that was was the DNA that contained the genetic material, Linus Pauling who figured out how to model the molecular structure of such compounds, and who first proposed a helical structure for DNA, and it was Rosalind Franklin who did the experiments that showed precisely what was wrong with Pauling's model. Watson and Crick just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and put the pieces together after others had done all the brilliant work. George writes: This sounds like another one of those politically correct attempts to rewrite history in favor of some oppressed group. If Franklin were really so smart, why didn't she prove herself by doing later work and earning a Nobel Prize for that?Actually, there was another Nobel Prize awarded for later work that she collaborated on. She was not eligible, because the prizes are not awarded to dead people. It doesn't appear that her scientific career suffered from sex discrimination. The only discrimination story I saw was that she was that the college had some sort of men-only faculty dining room. But that really doesn't explain Wilkins and Watson mistreating her. There is also a story about Linus Pauling missing out because he was a commie and the US revoked his passport. But that story is also exaggerated. Pauling has visa problems once, but traveled to England at other times. This seems to be mainly a story a professional jealousy, egotism, and backstabbing. Wednesday, Apr 23, 2003
Asbestos settlement A $100B settlement is in the works. 70 companies have already been bankrupted. All because our incompetent court cannot handle junk science claims. Santorum's remarks The bloggers and pundits are on the warpath against Penn. Sen. Rick Santorum for his remarks about sodomy laws. He said that he thinks that the US Supreme Court should uphold the Texas sodomy law because if it finds an unrestricted constitutional right to private consensual sexual acts, then it would also legalize incest, bigamy, polygamy, adultery, and bestiality. He thinks that such laws should be up to the political wishes of the people in each state, and not dictated by the US SC. Here is the transcript. Those on a PC witchhunt are saying he is bigoted, ignorant, unfit for office, etc, but none explain what the SC rationale would be for saying that there is constitutional right to homosexual sodomy, but not those other sexual acts. I don't see it. Maybe there ought to be a constitutional amendment legalizing whatever people do in the privacy of their own property. Such an amendment would legalize drug abuse, prostitution, and all sorts of other unpopular practices. Very few politicians would support it. I agree with Santorum that our political system puts these issues before the state legislatures, and the US SC should stay out of it. I hope he sticks to his guns, and refuses to apologize. George writes: Santorum's comments were offensive because he equated homosexuality with incest. Homosexuality is an innate orientation. Incest is a crime. He and his ultra-right-wing Republican allies want to police the bedroom, and he shouldn't be allowed to stay in office if he says such prejudiced things. He sounds like Trent Lott.Santorum was careful to distinguish between orientation and acts. Sure, incest is a crime. That's the point. It is a crime even if it is between consenting adults. Likewise with bestiality. In some states, at least. Santorum is not trying to impose his personal views. He wants laws defined by the usual political process, instead of getting social engineering changes dictated by unelected SC judges. He finishes the interview with: I would put it back to where it is, the democratic process. If New York doesn't want sodomy laws, if the people of New York want abortion, fine. I mean, I wouldn't agree with it, but that's their right. But I don't agree with the Supreme Court coming in.I don't agree with the Supreme Court coming in either. Most of the states have now gotten rid of their anti-sodomy laws, and the SC does not need to cook up some phony constitutional principle to expedite the process. This Slate column supports Santorum's legal argument, and ridicules the gay rights lobby for sidestepping the issue. (Update: He has more comments here. He notes that some people are hung up on the distinction between child molesting and incest, but that just obscures the main issue. He gives an example of an 18-year-old girl who went to jail for seducing an uncle.) This NY Times op-ed has the usual idiotic attack on GOP hypocrisy. But the main complaint is that Santorum meant exactly what he said: Unlike the former majority leader, Mr. Santorum didn't slip up and say something in plain English that every good Republican knows must only be said in code. Unlike Republican appeals to racist voters, Republican appeals to homophobic voters are overt.So how is it hypocrisy? Somebody needs a dictionary. It would be hypocrisy if Santorum said something that he didn't believe. When liberals disagree with someone, and don't want to articulate why, their favorite epithets are intolerance, ignorance, and hypocrisy. But it is a good bet that the people using these terms are prime examples of intolerance, ignorance, and hypocrisy. This op-ed, like all the other attacks on Santorum, takes quotes out of context to misrepresent what he said. Eg, Santorum said: And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. ... It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold ...The op-ed quotes this as: A right to privacy, he said, "doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution" — for gays, straights, anybody.The 4A protects against unreasonable searches. That is surely a right to privacy in the Constitution that Santorum would not dispute. What Santorum said was "this right to privacy", in reference to a hypothetical SC ruling. The op-ed dishonestly misquotes Santorum because it refuses to address the ramifications of such a ruling, and the possibility of those ramifications was really Santorum's main point. George writes: You are missing the point. Gay people are deeply offended at the suggestion that they should be locked up just because they are gay. Just read the Andrew Sullivan or Jacob Levy blogs if you want their point of view.I guess Jacob Levy is saying he is gay on the Volokh blog. Levy says he agrees with someone who says he is gay and against sodomy laws, and in the same sentence says he disagrees with someone else who says he is not gay and against sodomy laws. But it is a little hard to tell. Both Sullivan and Levy stubbornly refuse to address Santorum's main points, and misleadingly twist his words into something else. Sure, the laws on sodomy and adultery are silly and archaic and so little prosecuted that they aren't worth debating. These laws could not be prosecuted without gross invasions of privacy. Everyone understands that. But none of these Santorum critics can explain how the US SC could read into the US Constitution the distinctions on private sexual practices that they want. Update: I see Sullivan and Levy and accusing Santorum defenders like Stanley Kurtz of ignoring the main issue. Sullivan says: Stanley simply ignores the implications of Santorum's full comments, which clearly place Santorum in the position of believing that homosexual relationships should be criminalized, as well as equating homosexuality with child abuse and bestiality.Santorum did say that the definition of marriage has never included homosexuality, bestiality, or child abuse. He doesn't include bigamy or polygamy in this list because those have been included in the definition in many countries (and even in Utah). He is not equating homosexuality, bestiality, and child abuse. I guess you could say he is associating them, but so what? It is Sullivan and his friends who are lobbying to redefine marriage. To debate the subject you have to be willing to say what it is and what it is not. I suspect that Sullivan doesn't want to do that, because he doesn't want to reveal the radical extent of his agenda. Chilling effect of RIAA lawsuits This NY Times story tells about students who were intimidated into shutting down academically useful computer networks. And this C-Net story says the Napster investors are being sued by the record labels. And this AP story says students have been cut off the internet just because the university got a copyright complaint. We are losing our free speech rights just because of greedy corporations trying to control people listening to music. Tuesday, Apr 22, 2003
XML sucks I have an xml rss feed for this blog, but not everyone likes xml. Eg, see http://www.xmlsucks.org/. There is a point with critics: Unlike Latex or HTML whichNo one is going to want to edit that by hand. And if no one edits by hand, then why the ascii? It would have been better to have a simple binary format. XML is like the Windows registry -- it seems like a good idea until you see how people abuse it. Patent agents I am a patent agent. People sometimes ask how that differs from being a patent attorney. The federal govt licenses people to practice law before the US Patent Office (USPTO). Those with current licenses are called patent practitioners. If a patent practitioner is also licensed to practice state law in some state, then he is also called a patent attorney; otherwise he is called a patent agent. Because federal law expressly provides that patent agents can practice patent law without a state license, and because state regulations are preempted by the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, the US Supreme Court unanimously struck down a Florida law restricting patent agents. See Sperry v. Florida, 373 U.S. 379 (1963). This opinion makes it clear that patent agents can draft and prosecute patents before the USPTO, advise clients on patents, draft patentability opinions, record patent assignments, and otherwise practice patent law as it relates to USPTO actions. Patent attorneys sometimes jealously argue that patent agents are narrowly limited in what they can do, and that patent agents cannot draft license agreements, write infringement opinions, or assert attorney-client privileges. However, there is no controlling legal authority for any of these positions. The USPTO allows patent agents to record licenses and assignments, so giving appropriate advice to clients should be covered by the Sperry decision. It seems possible that some state like Texas, that aggressively restricts the unauthorized practice of law, could try to prohibit patent agents from negotiating licenses or writing infringement opinions. But none has, too my knowledge. Here in California, prosecution for the unauthorized practice of law is targeted mainly at those who lie about their credentials. The rules about what can be kept confidential under a privilege are trickier, and widely misunderstood. The attorney-client privilege is only supposed to protect the confidentiality of communications made by a client to an attorney, for the purpose of obtaining legal advice or a legal opinion. The privilege belongs to the client, not the attorney. (There is a related work-product privilege that arises in litigation.) At one time, there was no patent attorney privilege. United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corporation, 89 F.Supp. 357 (D. Mass. 1950). In American Standard Inc. v. Pfizer Inc., 828 F.2d 734, 3 U.S.P.Q.2d 1817 (Fed. Cir. 1987), an opinion letter which was not signed, not on letterhead and recommended no legal action was found not to be privileged because it "did not reveal, directly or indirectly, the substance of any confidential communication." Nevertheless, there doesn't seem to be any rationale or precedent for treating the privilege differently for patent attorneys and agents. If it were really true that an inventor could only fully protect the rights to his invention by consulting a patent attorney instead of a patent agent, then it would frustrate the intent of Congress in licensing non-attorneys to prosecute patents before the USPTO. See In Re Ampicillin Antitrust Litigation, 81 F.R.D. 377 (D.D.C. 1978). So I occasionally write a patent opinion letter. Monday, Apr 21, 2003
Online bill paying This NY Times article tells how banks are promoting online bill paying. I think that they still have a ways to go, before it is more reliable and convenient than ordinary paper bill paying. I looked that Bank of America and Yahoo, and they are more trouble than they are worth for me. Mailing paper checks is still a lot easier and faster. Town opposes Patriot Act This WashPost story about how the Arcata California town council opposes global warming, the Iraq war, and cooperating with govt subpoenas for the records of terrorists. I think they'd change their minds if they ever saw any terrorists in their little town. Edgar F. Codd died Edgar F. Codd, the IBM SQL inventor, died. The Si Valley story says: In 1953, Codd moved to Canada, frustrated that no one insisted that Sen. Joseph McCarthy produce proof of his charges that Communists were embedded in the U.S. government.Sounds a little kooky. At least he later moved back to the USA and became a citizen, so I guess he eventually read about the proof. Sunday, Apr 20, 2003
Matrix sequels The movie sequel The Matrix Reloaded will be out soon, so check out this explanation of some of the dubious science in the movie. Deconstructionism Phyllis writes: Roger's definition of deconstructionism may be the what the deconstructionists would like us to believe. But as it is taught and practiced in college English departments (probably the most corrupt of all academic departments, well, anyway just as corrupt as Women's Studies), deconstructionism means that we don't have to consider what the author may have meant when he wrote the text; that's irrelevant! All that matters is what the reader would like to think it means. Ergo, there is no such thing as a classic. Rape statistics Joe writes: I heard Schumer castigating some hapless Bush judicial nominee for a comment he made about rape victims getting pregnant. What are the real stats on how many "rape pregnancies" there are - Schumer said something like 36,000 per year. I'm suspicious that a lot of these encounters get "re-characterized " after the fact.Joe writes: You're right to be suspicious [about rape stats]. There are no "real stats" on this because there is no independent third-party review of such claims. Wherever and whenever abortion has been allowed on the ground of rape or incest, the uncorroborated say-so of the woman is accepted without question.Rape pregnancies are extremely rare. The number would be closer to 36 cases a year, not 36k cases a year. I've never even heard of any cases. When a woman reports a rape, she is given a morning-after pill (or equivalent) and pregnancy does not occur. TiVo evangelists Here is a NY Times article about how PVR users are so happy about their PVRs that they tell all their friends to buy one, and PVR market share is very small. It is an odd phenomenon. Having a PVR is like having a color TV while everyone else has black-and-white. Actually, I think the difference is bigger. It makes the difference between TV being watchable and unwatchable. It is easy to understand why PVR users are happy with the product. It is harder to explain why market share is so small. The article doesn't try to explain that, except to note that TiVo hasn't advertised since 2000. Saturday, Apr 19, 2003
Biased polls This blog complains about a biased WashPost poll. Meanwhile, NPR just had one on taxes that has lots of problems. The poll tested tax knowledge by asking some questions like whether the respondent understood the difference between the federal income tax and the payroll tax. I understand that they are collected and accounted somewhat differently, but the Social Security tax is a federal tax on income. Both taxes are collected primarily from employee salary withholding, and both just put money into the federal treasury. I don't think there is much difference. The poll gets on thinner ice when it tries to summarize policy arguments, such as: There is a proposal in Washington now to do away with personal income taxes on corporate dividends. Dividends are what many companies pay to owners of their stock. ...I don't think that is a very good statement of the arguments. The double taxation argument is a lousy argument, as lots of money is double taxed. People want to do away with the tax in order to encourage investment in dividend-paying corporations by making the taxation more similar to other types of investments, and thereby create jobs and stimulate the economy. John writes: The difference is that paying the SS tax entitles the payer to receive valuable benefits in return - a pension, annuity, disability and survivor benefits. The benefits are roughly proportional to the amount paid in. As a class, payroll (SS and Medicare) taxpayers get all their money back, and then some.No, I don't see a huge difference there. Retired people are not getting their money back -- they are getting mostly getting money from the SS taxes of current workers. The SS trust fund is an accounting fiction. But even if I accept that there is a difference between how the SS tax is spent and how the rest of the federal income tax is spent, the SS tax is certainly a federal income tax. It is federal, it is a tax, and it is a tax on income. You pay it to IRS just like the rest of the federal income tax. Joe writes: If you look at the mismatch in future workers v. benefits, it's hard to believe that evil rich people will get all of the promised benefits. If future benefits are cut, it will be at the top end. So I don't buy the argument that the SS tax (when the benefit side is considered) is regressive - that only makes sense if the benefits are ultimately paid out. So SS tax looks a lot like the income tax to me.John writes: I did not say that retired people get "their" money back. But (1) they do get money back and (2) the money they get back is in exchange for the money they put in and (3) the amount of money they get back is a function of the amount of money they put in.Ok, there is some relationship between SS taxes and future benefits. I am not sure that the relationship will still be there when I retire. But anyway, so what? Gasoline taxes are used for road maintenance. Property taxes are used for schools. Sales taxes are used for police. Income taxes are used to fund foreign wars. Cigarette taxes are used for anti-smoking campaigns. Some of these things may seem like benefits to you and some may not. There are all taxes. How do you answer this question, which is designed to test your knowledge of taxes: 13. When you think of the federal taxes that you pay, do you think the amount deducted from your paycheck for Social Security and Medicare is part of the federal income tax, or isn’t it part of the federal income tax, or don’t you know enough to say?I say Yes, the SS tax is absolutely part of the federal income tax. But the later questions seem to imply that the pollster thinks that the answer should be No. John writes: The fundamental difference is that SS and Medicare benefits are placed in individual accounts, and paid out of those accounts to beneficiaries. All the other so-called "benefits" you cite are just general social improvements that no individual taxpayer has any particular claim to and may never benefit from. Google maps John points out that Google now has links to maps. Eg, you can search on my phone number, and it gives my address and maps to my house. The Yahoo and MapQuest maps have the same error, so I guess that they are both derived from the same database. Another useful and little-known feature is the Google Glossary. Bible does not translate Andy writes: A fundamental reason for opposing a multilingual America is the impossibility of precisely translating our Rule of Law into another language. To translate the Constitution, for example, is to revise it. As languages degrade -- which no one else here recognizes -- the problem magnifies.John replies: For this reason, according to Bernard Lewis, there is no authorized translation of the Koran. Only the original Arabic will do. Thus, the Saudi-funded madrassas in Afghanistan and Pakistan train illiterate boys to memorize the Koran in a language they do not understand. Under similar reasoning, the Catholic Church for centuries opposed any translation of the Bible (except the Latin Vulgate, which the Church believed was more authentic than the original Greek).That's the beauty of his argument -- if Andy's right, then it cannot be explained in english. Andy writes: This debate will only be of interest to those who agree that translation does change meaning. Frankly, I'm not sure who else here accepts this basic premise.John writes: No one doubts that translation *can* change meaning. But it is also true that even within a single language, the meaning or common understanding attached to words can change drastically over time. Even today, hundreds of English words have a different meaning in the UK than in the USA.Those differences in Engligh are declining, and English is becoming more standardized as a result of TV, movies, internet, etc. You cannot teach someone by using word he doesn't understand. If you cannot explain a concept in your own words, then you do not understand it. Period. There is no such thing as a concept that can only be described in one way. Andy, what makes you think that the Greek was accurate? It was written many years after the fact, and after the stories had been retold and translated many times. It is about like someone today writing an account of the US Civil War in Swahili using an oral tradition of a few people. Did he die, or not? Unless you can explain the sense in which he died, you cannot possibly understand it. Andy writes: John replied "No one doubts that translation *can* change meaning. ..."Math can be translated without changing meaning. Other things also. Laws can be translated and explained. Eg, your law school textbooks. But: John writes: Andy seems to be saying that translation always and necessarily changes, distorts, and degrades the original text. That is an astounding claim which illustrates once again how Andy has internalized the philosophy of Plato rather than Aristotle. Joe writes: Andy is sounding like a deconstructionist to me.Andy's approach is similar to literary deconstructionism: Deconstructionism - An approach to literature which suggests that literary works do not yield fixed, single meanings, because language can never say exactly what we intend it to mean. Deconstructionism seeks to destabilize meaning by examining the gaps and ambiguities of the language of a text. Deconstructionists pay close attention to language in order to discover and describe how a variety of possible readings are generated by the elements of a text. Andy writes: Folks, you're arguing against the position I took for Eagle Forum in our Supreme Court brief: "An idea does not pass from one language to another without change." Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, Author's Preface, xxxiii (J.E. Crawford Flitch transl. 1921) (quoted in the brief).Translating laws is usually no problem as long as the meaning is clear. The difficulty is that the meaning is often not clear. Eg, just look at the laws on student privacy and terrorism. They are hopelessly ambiguous, and deliberately so. They would be hard to translate only because people won't agree about the english meaning of the text. Friday, Apr 18, 2003
Zoophilia The Philadelphia newspaper says: Zoosexuality is described in the "Zoo" community as a sexual orientation, in the same category as hetero-, homo- and bisexuality. The profound emotional and/or physical attraction to animals can be manifested in many ways, including sex. Not everyone has an emotional attachment to his or her animal lover; some just do it for the sexual release.Soon, people will call me a bigot if I object to man/dog marriages. SARS alarm People are getting very agitated over SARS. The CDC now says that there are only 35 probably cases in the USA, and only 1 confirmed transmission in the USA. All the other cases are imported from Asia. Reason magazine says the problem is that info now spreads faster than a disease. Iraq oil for food I didn't know that the UN "oil for food" program in Iraq was just a big corrupt scam. See the NY Times op-ed. Thursday, Apr 17, 2003
Atkins diet guru died Dr. Robert Atkins died of injuries related to a fall. For 30 years, his diet was attacked by the AMA and others as dangerous and no good. Actually, there is good science behind his diet. Here is the NY Times obituary. Registry cleaners A lot of programs leave unused junk in your Msft Window registry. Some of this can be automatically removed -- namely references to files that don't exist. There are lots of utilities to do this, and I always assumed that they did more or less the same thing. But actually, most of these are sloppy, and sometimes even remove good entries. Here is a comparison. Does the Patriot Act violate student rights? Some people claim that the Patriot Act seriously limits student rights that were granted by FERPA. Andy writes: Are you familiar with the PATRIOT Act's modifications of FERPA? The PATRIOT Act eliminated the notice requirement, allowing DOJ to obtain ex parte orders to examine student records without opposition or real accountability.John responds: I haven't followed this issue closely. It just seems to me that, with all the leftist whining about the Patriot Act, they'd be able to point to some specific way in which it infringes our liberties. Mainly, I've heard: 1. some foreign terrorists are being held as enemy combatants in Guantanamo under conditions that are worse that what a citizen criminal defendant or POW would get. 2. the FBI can get library records of foreign terrorists, with some potential for abuse. No. 1, I agree with. No. 2, I think there should be some better safeguards, but overall I think the effect will be positive. The FBI may abuse my privacy, but I know that the Santa Cruz libraries were abusing my privacy until this law was passed, so the net benefit is favorable. I agree with John that if the Patriot Act gives the feds the power to determine whether a foreigner on a student visa is complying with his visa requirements, then it is a good law. Some of the opposition to the Patriot Act comes from people who think, for ideological reasons, that aliens should be able to immigrate to the USA on student visas, and no one should be able to check up on them. I don't agree with those folks. Andy writes: As to the substance of Section 507 of the PATRIOT Act, you can read it here. John writes: Andy, the above link summarizes all the FERPA exceptions, most of which predated PATRIOT. Hence, it does not explain how (or if) Sec. 507 of the PATRIOT Act changed existing law. Section 507 of PATRIOT can be found here.Andy writes: The tip-off is the phrase it "seems to me." You cite the link, and it expressly states that the only requirement is a certification by a federal official: "An application ... shall certify that there are specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that the education records are likely to contain information described in paragraph (1)(A)." In other words, a federal agent makes his (biased) determination and submits a certification for rubber stamping by the court. Contrast that with the requirement for a search warrant, which requires a neutral magistrate himself to determine if a fair probability exists that contraband will be found in the place to be searched.John sends this story: Washington - House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. said Thursday that he would fight any effort now to make permanent many of the expanded police powers enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks as part of the USA Patriot Act. Wednesday, Apr 16, 2003
Blog software By popular request, I am posting the software I use for this blog. See the RogBlog link on the left margin. I'd appreciate any feedback. It is just alpha software, and is only suitable for a simple blog like mine, running on a simple server. Tuesday, Apr 15, 2003
Illinois Senator Quits Andy writes: Last night, the brilliant email service of the "Illinois Leader" had the scoop: Peter Fitzgerald will not run for reelection. It's a devastating blow to the Republican Party's power in the Senate, because the Democrats will likely pick up the seat. It could even strengthen the Democratic resolve to filibuster Bush's appointment to replace Rehnquist.John responds: Fitzgerald's retirement is not that surprising given that he was almost sure to be defeated for reelection. But in other states, Republicans are likely to pick up at least 4 Democrat Senate seats in 2004: GA, SC, NC, FL. See: NewsdayPhyllis writes: Fitzgerald is a wealthy independent man, and he didn't see any reason why he should spend his fortune on the Republican Party. He doesn't need a job. The party treated him badly. He was one of our great victories. I am proud of what I did to nominate him in his primary against the entire Republican establishment, including Bob Dole's endorsement of his opponent (Lolita). It was an outrage when LaHood said he was looking for someone to run against Peter in the 2004 primary.Andy writes: John's excuses for Fitzgerald's ouster range from (1) Republicans will win Democratic seats anyway, (2) Fitzgerald can't personally afford to spend another $12M, and (3) Republicans can't hold the Illinois seat anyway. Even if these claims were true (which I doubt), they are irrelevant.Joe writes: Should conservatives have vocally opposed the "ouster" of Trent Lott? Doomsday Scientist Here is another doomsday scientist who thinks that new research may cause the end of the world. Update: Here's more in a Wired article. EE unemployment John sends this story about how electrical engineering unemployment is at an all-time high because of American workers being displaced by cheaper foreign labor under the H-1B program. Some congressmen want to increase the H-1B quota on the theory that we have jobs that can only be filled by foreign workers. But that is plainly false, as the EE unemployment figures show. Naval students disciplined The Naval Academy students who got caught listening to music on their computers finally got disciplined. The Baltimore Sun story quoted an academy official saying: "They had enormous drives - multigigabite drives - and they were on all the time. They became little Web sites."Of course they had multigigabyte drives. You can't even buy a disk drive any more that has less than about 20 gigabytes. Millions of people have web sites, and yes, they are usually on all the time. Monday, Apr 14, 2003
Poincare conjecture A Russian claims to use the Ricci flow to solve the 3-dimensional Poincare conjecture, according to this NY Times story. I had heard about this, but there have been a lot of alleged proofs before. Arming pilots John Lott complains in the LA Times that federal rules are still keeping our commercial pilots unarmed. This is more evidence that (Dept. of Transportation Secretary) Mineta is not doing his job. Turing Award The ACM is giving its Turing award to the inventors of RSA cryptography. Here are the past winners. This was the first award to cryptographers. A lot of people think that RSA invented public-key cryptography. They did not. It had previously been invented by Merkle, Diffie, and Hellman at Stanford and Berkeley, and by some British spooks (in unpublished papers). Rabin also invented a signature scheme similar to RSA. The RSA folks were directly inspired by the Stanford research, and their method is really just a minor variation of the Stanford ideas. I wrote a Crypto Mini-FAQ. Comments welcome. Everyday economics Steven E. Landsburg is back with his Slate columns. He argues that the Iraq war will be worse than expected, because almost everything in life goes worse than expected. And he makes a contrarian argument for looting. Medical privacy John sends this USA Today op-ed about how new federal privacy rules give the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) access to your medical records. So why aren't the Bush-Aschcroft haters complaining about this? Why is it ok for the feds to get my private medical records, but not ok for the feds to get the public library records of a suspected international terrorist? Update: JG sends a link to the Medical Privacy Coalition. Sunday, Apr 13, 2003
The Reagan Salute A NY Times Op-ed attacks Ronald Reagan's military salute as "puerile", and says: But about 20 years ago the militarization of the image of the presidency began. It started with Mr. Reagan, who had no record of military service and who spent World War II in Hollywood (something that he tried on occasion to obscure).It is hard to see how the NY Times could make such an egregious mistake about one of our greatest presidents. From Grolier's encyclopedia: Reagan interrupted his acting career in 1942 and served for three years in the U.S. Army, for which he made training films. After he was discharged, with the rank of captain, he began turning toward a political career.Even worse, the op-ed continues about Reagan: There was, too, his easy and self-satisfying willingness to employ the armed forces of the United States in rapid and spectacular military operations against minuscule targets and "enemies" like Grenada, Nicaragua and Libya.Reagan also directly and boldly challenged the Soviet Union by doing things like putting nuclear Pershing missiles in Europe, and ultimately won the Cold War with his military strategy. He demonstrated that he was willing to use our armed forces in a way that his predecessors were not. Update: Volokh's blog also remarks on another idiotic comment in the op-ed column. Actually, several remarks. Update: The NY Times has now published this correction: An article on Monday mischaracterized Ronald Reagan's history of military service. Although he was disqualified from combat duty because of poor eyesight, he was a captain in the motion picture unit of the Army Air Corps.This is the minimal sort of correction I expected. Fix what was blatantly and outrageously wrong; but ignore all the other distortions in the column. I should say that Reagan served for 3 years in the Army during WWII (something the NY Times has tried on occasion to obscure). Bush backs gun ban This article says Bush is endorsing a continuation of the federal assault weapon look-alike ban that is scheduled to expire next year. I never thought that the ban would expire. The significance of the ban is almost entirely symbolic. The banned weapons are mainly the scary-looking guns that have militaristic looking features like bayonnets. The ban has had no impact on crime. The anti-gun folks just wanted to prove that a class of guns could be banned, and the guns look nasty enough that hardly anyone wants to defend them. Update: Joan sends this BBC story about Wal-Mart getting into trouble for selling toy guns. The toy guns were painted orange according to federal law, but not NY state law. Did polio vaccine cause AIDS? Joe sends this Edward Hooper article with new evidence that the oral polio vaccine caused AIDS. The theory is plausible, and no one has a better one. According to the article, it turns out that some of the oral polio vaccines were made in Congo from chimp tissues in the late 1950s. HIV is widely thought to have come from chimps. The earliest known case of HIV is from the same part of Congo in 1959. A million experimental doses of oral polio vaccine were given in Congo during 1957-1960. Maybe it is all coincidence, but I haven't heard a better theory. Bob sends this story about how the debate over AIDS transmission in Africa still rages. Some research indicates that it is mostly dirty needles, but a UN agency insists that it is unsafe sexual practices. Bob also says: I think you are on shaky ground endorsing the Polio vaccine theory of the origin of AIDS. This has been looked at seriously and I believe impartially and nothing was found.The polio-HIV theory may be wrong. All they have to do is to find one AIDS case before 1957, and the theory will be shot. Bob says that if someone could show that a simian virus could mutate into HIV during polio virus attenuation in chimp kidneys, then he'd get a Nobel prize. They did give a Nobel prize for growing polio virus in animal tissue, but they never gave a Nobel prize for development of the polio vaccine, and never gave one for finding that HIV causes AIDS, so I don't think that they'll give one for showing that the polio vaccine caused AIDS. This polio-HIV theory is upsetting to some major sacred cows. Vaccine and AIDS research are extremely politicized, compared to other scientific areas. The medical establishment does not want to admit the possibility that a vaccine could have done so much harm. Patriot Act and libraries John sends this WashPost article about how libraries have been enlisted for anti-Bush scaremongering. One librarian says, "The government has never had this kind of power before. It feels like Big Brother." Yes, the govt has always had this power because nosy librarians who work for the govt have unnecessarily kept records on patrons. If the libraries really want to push for privacy, all they have to do is to avoid keeping the invasive records in the first place. In Santa Cruz, Calif., all 10 branches of the library are destroying records daily ... Do not call I just submitted my phone number to the California do not call registry. Now that the FTC is doing a national registry, California will just forward the number to the feds. I don't expect it to do much. There are exemptions for charities, political groups, small businesses with five employees or less, and companies that have an established relationship with a consumer. It should block the telemarketing companies, but they almost always block caller ID and I don't accept those calls anyway. The FTC says the new law is supposed to require telemarketers to transmit Caller ID information. Hmmm. I might have to change my screening procedures. The telemarketers hate to transmit caller ID info because they like to mislead the consumer about who is really making the call. Eg, Bank of America might hire a sleazy telemarketing firm which calls and describes an offer from Bank of America, giving the impression that the Bank of America is calling. If caller ID says something else, then the consumer knows that someone is lying. I even get calls claiming to be from the phone company (SBC in my area), and the caller ID says something else. Saturday, Apr 12, 2003
Gun turncoat PBS had a just had a Bill Moyers special on Bob Ricker, the former gun industry lobbyist who is now a paid witness for the groups suing the gun industry. Ricker is being hailed as a whistleblower. The gist of the gripe is that the BATF tracks guns that are used in crimes, and has lists of gun dealers who sold those guns. Apparently a relatively small number of dealers is responsible for many of those sales. Rickers thinks that the gun makers should refuse to sell to those dealers. I'm not sure I get the point here. If GM discovers that a few dozen car dealers account for a disproportionate number of drunk drivers, then should GM stop selling cars to those dealers? Bob Ricker's testimony is supposed to be a smoking gun, because he claims to have inside info that the gun companies became concerned that their knowledge of the bad dealer problem would be a liability in the anti-gun industry lawsuits, so they made a deliberate attempt to ignore the problem. But the question still remains: If the BATF has evidence that a few bad gu | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
