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09 Feb 2006 — Star-cancelled lovers

The United States Postal Service informs us (PDF) that customers can send their Valentine’s Day cards to the postmaster at Romeo, MI 48065 and get “a pictorial postmark illustrating Romeo and Juliette [sic] with the Romeo, MI cancellation”.

One postal customer in Malden, MA 02148 responded: “Don’t both Romeo and Juliet wind up killing themselves due to communications issues? Is this really the message we want to be sending to those nearest and dearest to our hearts?”

My wife pointed out that this would be an excellent way to send a letter to your in-laws.

04 Feb 2006 — Sympathy for the Borg

For a moment there, I actually felt sorry for Microsoft.

Two years ago, the European Union decided that Microsoft was violating the EU’s antitrust laws, and ordered Microsoft to license and document Windows server protocols, so that other companies could interoperate with Windows. Microsoft turned over 12,000 pages of technical information, but according to the EU’s geeks, those documents were “totally unusable”. So instead, Microsoft announced with great fanfare that is was licensing Windows server source code. You want to know how to write a program for another operating system that can use the special Windows networking protocols? Just read the Windows source code, and it will all be clear!

(A note to our less technical readers: This is like trying to figure out why your car has started to make that funny metal-grinding-on-metal noise by touring the assembly line and looking for places where two metal parts are installed next to one another. Oh, wait, cars are assembled from components built by outside vendors, so you’ll need to tour the vendors’ assembly lines, too.)

Reading this, I felt a glimmer of sympathy for Microsoft, because I have had my share of tech jobs in which I had to deal with a horribly convoluted and undocumented system, where every time I needed to figure out What’s Really Going On Here, I had to choose between asking the guy who knew how the whole system was put together because he put it together himself five years ago and had been maintaining it ever since then (and of course, since he was the only one who knew how the whole system was put together, he was too busy fixing its bugs and shoehorning in new features to spend much time explaining it to anyone else), or reading the source code (see previous comment about touring the assembly line).

And now, we have a whole operating system—or at least, a major component of an operating system—that has accreted over at least ten years, without anyone responsible for documenting it and keeping that documentation up to date, and every Microsoftie who’s had to learn something about its inner workings has learned it by receiving an oral tradition. (“Oh, you’re getting that error code? The last time I got that, I talked to Mike. He wrote three-quarters of that DLL…”) And now, all of a sudden, they need to provide enough documentation that complete strangers can do things with their code that, up until now, were in their exclusive domain. They don’t just need a tech writer; they need a tech writer with experience in operating system design, investigative reporting, and archeology.

So, for a moment, I felt sorry for Microsoft. But then I remembered that Microsoft has over 37 billion dollars in the bank, i.e., more than the Gross Domestic Product of Luxembourg. With that amount of spare change, they should be able to find someone up to the task.

via Groklaw and Slashdot

28 Jan 2006 — Our pre-schooler contemplates weighty themes of Jewish philosophy

When told, on Friday afternoon, that he was not allowed to watch TV on Shabbat, The 3½-Year-old declared, “Hashem is a bad Hashem.” Pause. “But he brought us out of Egypt.”

25 Jan 2006 — Only a frum parent…

...can read this book review and calculate, as if by instinct, how $2,000 per month compares with day-school tuition.

via Mark Kleiman

25 Jan 2006 — A too-keen-by-half psychological insight

Chullin 109b has these, er, comforting words:

Yalta said to Rav Nachman [her husband]: Because for everything that the Merciful One forbade us, He permitted something equal:

He forbade us blood—He permitted liver;

having sexual relations during menstruation—having sexual relations when the blood does not cause ritual impurity;

forbidden fat from a domesticated animal—the fat from the same place on a wild animal;

pork—shibuta brains;

giruta—lishna d’kavra [two species of bird, according to Rashi];

a married woman—a divorcée while her ex-husband is still alive;

a sister-in-law—a brother’s widow [cf. Deuteronomy 25:5–6];

a non-Jew—the beautiful woman captured in wartime [cf. Deuteronomy 21:10–14].

I’m trying not to think too much about #6, and failing. Ugh!

24 Jan 2006 — Toddler blogging (one in a very occasional series, I promise)

“But with the blast shield down, I can’t see anything!”

21 Jan 2006 — Annals of media consolidation

NYT:

While other ABC shows have gay characters – including the new comedy “Crumbs” – “Neighborhood” features a real gay couple and their prospective neighbors in a continuing dialogue about homosexuality, including interpretations of the Bible.

In a recent interview, Richard Land, an official with the Southern Baptist Convention involved in the negotiations with Disney last year to end the group’s boycott of the company, said he did not recall any mention of “Neighborhood.” He added, however, that had the show been broadcast – particularly with an ending that showed Christians literally embracing their gay neighbors – it could have scuttled the Southern Baptists’ support for “Narnia.”

In the corporate world, I think that’s what they call “synergy”.

via rm

16 Jan 2006 — An Authentic Indian™

The Globe profiles Q’orianka Kilcher, who will play Pocahontas in the upcoming movie The New World:

At age 14 and a veritable acting novice, Kilcher was cast as Pocahontas after an international search for an age-appropriate, indigenous-culture actress. Though she lives with her Swiss-Alaskan mother in Los Angeles and studies music, her father is a Peruvian Indian of Quecha/Huachapaeri ancestry.

I assume that since the Algonquian tribes (including the one that Pocahontas belonged to) were the first to encounter the English, they got reamed more thoroughly than almost any other indigenous American group, so a director looking for an actress from one of those tribes wouldn’t have very many candidates at the audition.

Still…look at a frigging map! This is like casting Robert De Niro as Peter the Great and congratulating yourself for finding an actual European actor to play this important figure from European history.

09 Jan 2006 — Theologically incorrect

“Shall we accept pleasure from God, and not accept pain?” —Job 2:10

A Jew, a Christian, and an atheist on my blogroll have all grumbled about how the press throws around terms like “miracle” and “prayers answered” to describe good news, but avoids such language to describe bad news. On the one hand, these reporters and headline-writers clearly endorse the idea that our mundane lives are influenced by divine force. On the other hand, they don’t acknowledge that a single divine force is responsible for everything in our mundane lives, the sweet and the sour.

If our newspapers are going to be written by polytheists, the least they can do is be straightforward about it. I would kvell to open up the Boston Globe and see headlines like these:

Nike Scorns Red Sox
Dionysus Kills MIT Freshman
Int’l Math Test: Athena Still Favors Japan
For Years, Aphrodite Shielded Abusive Husband
CO₂ Levels Higher; Apollo Fiercer
New Quebec Autonomy Vote: Will Toutatis Prevail?

08 Jan 2006 — The God he doesn’t believe in, I don’t believe in either

In a much-blogged-about interview with a German magazine, the philosopher Daniel Dennett waxes theological:

SPIEGEL: Another idea of Nietzsche’s was that God is dead. Is that also a logical conclusion reached by Darwinism?
Dennett: It is a very clear consequence. The argument for design, I think, has always been the best argument for the existence of God and when Darwin comes along, he pulls the rug out from under that.
SPIEGEL: Evolution, in other words, leaves no room for God?
Dennett: One has to understand that God’s role has been diminished over the eons. First we had God, as you said, making Adam and making every creature with his hands, plucking the rib from Adam and making Eve from that rib. Then we trade that God in for the God who sets evolution in motion. And then you say you don’t even need that God—-the law giver—-because if we take these ideas from cosmology seriously then there are other places and other laws and life evolves where it can. So now we no longer have God the law finder or the law giver, but just God the master of ceremonies. When God is the master of ceremonies and doesn’t actually play any role any more in the universe, he’s sort of diminished and no longer intervenes in any way.

I find this argument profoundly unconvincing, and I don’t think it’s just because I believe in both evolution and God. Dennett’s claim can be attacked from a number of angles that the interviewer didn’t address; I want to focus on two.

First, the idea that God is present in activity that seems mechanical or random is not some kind of fallback position. The whole Book of Esther, for instance, is a story of God working to save the Jews of Persia through what a skeptic would perceive as mere coincidences. Dennett considers this a “diminished” vision of God, compared to a God who is constantly intervening in history with overt miracles. But this is like saying that Orson Welles is a lesser director than George Lucas, because the special effects in Citizen Kane are not as impressive as those in The Phantom Menace.

Second, one can find fault with the argument from design even without knowing anything about evolutionary theory; David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion were written a century before Origin of Species, and Hume finds several ways to undermine the argument.

It is true that the authority of institutionalized religion went downhill since the theory of evolution became widely accepted, but Dennett is mistaken to believe that the latter is the cause of the former. Ironically, Dennett’s argument is the flip-side of a common creationist claim—-the claim that if you teach people that they evolved from animals, then you teach them that they have no greater moral obligations than animals have.

In the late 19th century, science evolved, pardon the expression, from a hobby of wealthy men to a driving force behind the Industrial Revolution. Once scientific institutions earned credibility by providing the tools that created such staggering economic growth, people who spoke in the name of Science got respect when they spoke about politics, ethics, and morals. Unfortunately, people had trouble distinguishing empirically-well-grounded theory from handwaving, so a lot of handwavey ideas got passed off as serious science. (My favorite handwave is the claim that if a woman develops her brain—-by, say, attending college—-her uterus will shrivel up. This theory is firmly grounded in the Law of Conservation of Energy, one of the great discoveries of nineteenth-century physics; who could deny it?)

As scientific institutions gained influence over public policy, religious institutions could only lose. I would suggest that this resentment over lost status has motivated the fundamentalist movement, in the past and in the present. Accepting the theory of evolution does not require one to reject religion in general. Rather, it requires one to reject a certain kind of religion: the kind that arose as a specific reaction against the modern science-driven world.

via Joho the Blog and Pharyngula

03 Jan 2006 — Ten words

Steve Benen passes along Governor Vilsack’s question: “What are your ten words that define the Democratic Party’s message?” Here are mine:

When shit happens, the government should be on your side.

see also Mark Kleiman’s entry

30 Dec 2005 — “Yes, Detective Fontana, that’s the work of an Intelligent Bomber”

Some thoughts inspired by Kitzmiller v. Dover:

Suppose you are walking through a field and you find a watch. As every student of theology knows, once you see the watch, you know there must have been a watchmaker. But that’s not all you know. You can look at the brand name and determine what company made the watch, and then you’ll know where you could go to get another watch like it, and you could even estimate how much it would cost. If you’re a horologist, you might be able to figure out when the watch was made. If you’re a customs inspector, you might be able to tell if the watch labeled “Rolex” is a real Rolex or a counterfeit.

In every field where people examine sapient-created artifacts, the examiners want to learn about the creators, not just confirm their existence. Historians analyzed The Federalist Papers to determine which documents were written by which Founding Father. An archaeologist who finds a stone blade will try to determine what it was used for and when it was made. A homicide detective wants to identify the perpetrator.

One of the basic propositions of Intelligent Design Theory is that while “microevolution” takes place, “macroevolution” is a fiction created by those wily Darwinists. Walter Brown of the Center for Scientific Creation distinguishes micro- and macroevolution by saying that the latter “requires new abilities, increasing complexity, and new genetic information”. If a baterial strain develops resistance to an antibiotic, does that count as a “new ability”? Of course not, says a recent article in the Creation Science Research Quarterly, because a strain that gains resistance to an antibiotic usually loses some other quality, such as virulence. But by that logic, any change in an organism’s traits can be dismissed as “microevolution”, since any change has both benefits and costs. (Humans have bigger brains than apes. The benefit is that we can think of solutions to problems that apes can’t solve. The cost is that in order to fit our skulls through our mothers’ pelvises at birth, we are born premature by primate standards, and we depend on the care of adults for a longer period of time.)

Suppose, for the purpose of argument, that there is a meaningful distinction between micro- and macroevolution, and that the latter does not occur. Given two organisms, how can we tell whether or not they have a common ancestor? At what point would they become just dissimilar enough to be classified in separate trees? This CSRQ article goes on at great length about “the ten-year-old field of baraminology” (the term is derived from the Hebrew ברא מין, “He created a type”), defining the terms “holobaramin”, “monobaramin”, “apobaramin”, “polybaramin”, “archebaramin”, “neobaramin”, and “paleobaramin”, without answering this question.

Instead of performing this kind of actual research, creationists focus on packaging themselves for school boards. First we had outright Biblical creationism taught in taxpayer-funded schools. When the Supreme Court declared that unconstitutional, we had “creation science”. When the courts remained unconvinced by the renaming, “Intelligent Design Theory” burst onto the scene, and to make sure the theory was not challenged as unscientific, the Kansas Board of Education redefined “science”.

It’s as if a police department, frustrated by accusations that they were not solving enough murder cases, declared every case closed as soon as they classified it as a homicide, and didn’t bother to actually look for the murderer. We wouldn’t put up with that kind of laziness from our police; we shouldn’t teach our children that the same attitude is acceptable from a scientist.

for the contrary view, see Cross-Currents: 1 2 3 4 5

28 Dec 2005 — If only Don Adams were alive to see this

Last year, it turned out that our MPs knew how to beat the crap out of prisoners in Abu Ghreib but had trouble keeping the prisoners from escaping.

Now, we learn that the CIA agents who abducted Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from Italy left their cell phones turned on, then used those cell phones to call both the US consulate and their friends back home—allowing the Italian police to identify them and reconstruct a minute-by-minute timetable of the abduction.

So amateurish was the Milan rendition that the Italian lawyer for Robert Seldon Lady, whom prosecutors identify as the former CIA chief in Milan, says Lady’s primary defense will be that he was too good a spy to have been involved with something so badly planned and carried out.

Yeah, that strategy never fails to impress the judge.

Is there anyone left in the Directorate of Operations who (a) is competent, (b) has a job that doesn’t involve waterboarding, and© hasn’t pissed off the Vice-President?

28 Dec 2005 — Dang, I’m in the wrong line of work

First to arrive in Milan was the surveillance team, and the hotels they chose were among the best Europe has to offer. Especially popular was the gilt-and-crystal Principe di Savoia, with acres of burnished wood paneling and plush carpets, where a single room costs $588 a night, a club sandwich goes for $28.75, and a Diet Coke adds another $9.35.

According to hotel records later obtained by the Milan police investigating Abu Omar’s disappearance, two CIA operatives managed to ring up more than $9,000 in room charges alone. The CIA’s bill at the Principe for seven operatives came to $39,995, not counting meals, parking and other hotel services….

Once Abu Omar was safely behind bars in Cairo, some of the operatives who had helped put him there split up into twos and threes and headed for luxury resort hotels in the Italian Alps, Tuscany and Venice.

Hotel records indicate at least two couples on those trips shared the same rooms. Asked if there had been some operational or other official reason for the ultra-expensive hotels and side trips, the senior U.S. official shrugged. “They work hard,” he said.

Oh, and by the way, according to Milan’s chief anti-terrorism prosecutor, at the time that Abu Omar was captured, the police already had him under surveillance and were preparing to arrest him. It’s a good thing we Yanks understand that Nine Eleven Changed Everything and didn’t bother with this whole “arrest and trial” nonsense. After all, what do the Italian police know about terrorism?

via a comment in The News Blog

25 Dec 2005 — ...and anti-Narnia

After reading several references to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series as a riposte to the Narnia series, Jen and I decided that we had to read it. I enjoyed the series a lot—probably because I was able to pretend that when the good guys delivered their speeches on the evils of God and the Church, they were characters expressing opinions about other characters, and any correspondence between the bad guys in the book and deities, mythological systems, or religious institutions in the real world were purely coincidental.

I probably should be annoyed that Pullman inverts a Christian rhetorical trope going back (at least) to Pascal’s Wager, i.e., you have to either believe in the Christian God or be an atheist. Lyra’s world, from what Pullman shows of it, lacks Episcopalians and Lutherans, let alone Jews and Muslims; he seems to be agreeing with the Christians about what his options are and merely disagreeing on which side to join. But for some reason, that didn’t bother me while I was reading the book.

There was a detail that did irritate me a little, but describing it involves some minor spoilers, so I’m putting it below the fold…

The villians of the series, except for the priests, are distinguished from the heroes by acting on their sexual desire. The closest thing we have to a love scene is toward the end of The Subtle Knife, where Mrs. Coulter seduces Lord Boreal into giving her information about the knife, and then poisons him before they actually endanger the book’s “Young Adult” classification. (Coulter goes over to the good guys by the end of the series, but she still gets the traditional fate of Loose Women in Western literature, i.e., death.) We are told that Metatron, the most powerful of the angels on the Authority’s side, had sex with numerous human women.

By contrast, Will and Lyra enter the story as preadolescents, and while they fall in love, they don’t have anything more explicit than romantic walks through the forest. John Parry stoically endures years of separation from his wife, and is killed by the witch from Lyra’s world whose love he did not requite. Mary Malone left her religious order because she realized she wanted to the freedom to enjoy the pleasures of this world, but like the Protestant husband in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, there’s no sign she has used this freedom to seek out a lover.

So for Pullman, there’s no heavenly reward for a life of chastity, but you still shouldn’t have sex. Englishmen. Go figure.

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