Category Archives: Politics

I Drafted Laos. I am So Hosed

Posted on by

League of nations

The prospect of fantasy geopolitics.

Has the GDP grown? Angola and Bhutan’s astonishing growth in the 2008 season are stories that fantasy geopolitics players will not soon forget.

Inflationary measures and exchange rates are also factored in, making Iceland a bad bet to hold this past year due to its economic meltdown. And if you had Zimbabwe in your active lineup in January, when its government unveiled the 100 trillion dollar bill, you would have probably considered going back to losing at fantasy football.

Bra – vo

Posted on by

House panel passes college football playoff bill

Good god, we still don’t have a budget, and congress is futzing around with this? The budget is your JOB. Continuing resolutions SUCK for the people who have to live under them. It impedes work.

“We can walk across the street and chew gum at the same time,” said the subcommittee chairman, Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush, one of the bill’s co-sponsors. “We can do a number of things at the same time.”

Apparently not. Did I mention how we still don’t have a budget? It’s December, and that was supposed to be done by the end of September!

If you must do something football-related, revoke the NFL anti-trust exemption. I’m tired of being forced to watch the Redskins and having good alternatives blacked out.

Hard to Avoid

Posted on by

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Tiger Woods has gotten himself into a little trouble the past week or so. But, no matter what Tiger has done in regard to fidelity of marriage, it has absolutely no bearing on whether or not he won the 1997 Masters, or 2000 U.S. Open, or any of the 70-odd PGA events he’s won. Yes, his indiscretions are a blow to his image and may affect his endorsement deals, but golf history is unaffected, and (psychology aside) his status as a golfer is unchanged. How he is perceived by the public is what has changed, because he has tarnished his clean-cut image. His golf swing is unaffected. The people that didn’t like him before have one more reason not to like him, but rooting for or against someone on the tube doesn’t affect the outcome of the match.

And so it is with climategate. Public perception is affected, because of the political aspects of the scientists’ words and actions, but not so much the science. But it matters, because it’s one more excuse to cast aspersions, regardless of the validity of the claims. The ones making the most noise about this aren’t the type who let facts get in their way. The asymmetry of the situation is very striking: the publicly active climate change deniers have been shown to be wrong many times in the past, on a variety of points, and yet none of them seem to have folded their tents. The problem is that with any complex problem, it’s fairly easy to make an incorrect statement that sounds plausible, and yet it takes far longer to set the record straight than it does to misinform. And yet the act of misinforming doesn’t seem to damage the credibility of the denialists, which is probably one of the reasons scientists in general don’t wish to engage them. This isn’t a clash between scientific views, it’s science vs propaganda, and that’s not a level playing field.

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

(h/t to the infinite one for the vid)

Yes, Virginia, There is a Climate Conspiracy

Posted on by

Just not the one you might think.

Climate change cover-up? You better believe it

There is, in fact, a climate conspiracy. It just happens to be one launched by the fossil fuel industry to obscure the truth about climate change and delay any action. And this release of emails right before the Copenhagen conference is just another salvo—and a highly effective one—in that public relations battle, redolent with the scent of the same flaks and hacks who brought you “smoking isn’t dangerous.”

I Have the Right to Remain Silent

Posted on by

Sheriff Threatens to Submit Photographer to FBI’s Hit List

As someone who likes to take photographs, this kind of scenario scares the crap out of me: cops who overstep their bounds. I’ve never been hassled, but then I take a lot of nature photos, so I’m not exactly a prime candidate for that while I’m out in the middle of nowhere. What’s perhaps scarier than the treatment of the photographer are some of the comments — people who think that it’s perfectly legal for the police to detain you for any (or no) reason whatsoever, and up to 72 hours, or that not answering questions is probable cause that you’ve broken the law. Some people may think the person on the video is being rude. I disagree; I think he was merely prepared. Rights do not evaporate based on your tone, anyway.

I am not a lawyer. But … In general, photography in public places is legal in the US. If cops stop you — for any reason, not just photography — your wisest course of action is probably to say nothing at all. Or just walk away — if there’s no probably cause to stop you, you can’t be detained. The police are allowed to ask questions if they are suspicious and investigating that suspicion, but you are not compelled to answer. (Florida v. Royer, citations and notes omitted)

The person approached, however, need not answer any question put to him; indeed, he may decline to listen to the questions at all and may go on his way. He may not be detained even momentarily without reasonable, objective grounds for doing so; and his refusal to listen or answer does not, without more, furnish those grounds.

In fact, without probable cause, they can’t even demand to see ID (Brown v Texas)

[E]ven assuming that purpose is served to some degree by stopping and demanding identification from an individual without any specific basis for believing he is involved in criminal activity, the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment do not allow it.

(United States v Mendenhall further defines what constitutes seizure/being detained.)

One should also note that the police do have the authority (and rightly so, IMO) to make sure they are not in danger, and can frisk you for, but only to determine whether or not you are armed (Terry v Ohio)

[T]he police should be allowed to “stop” a person and detain him briefly for questioning upon suspicion that he may be connected with criminal activity. Upon suspicion that the person may be armed, the police should have the power to “frisk” him for weapons. If the “stop” and the “frisk” give rise to probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed a crime, then the police should be empowered to make a formal “arrest,” and a full incident “search” of the person.

It seems pretty clear to me that the sheriff overstepped his authority, though his request for the subject to keep his hands out of his pockets is one reasonable part of the exchange. Appeals to patriotism make for good sound bites, but are no excuse for stomping on rights, or for threatening someone.

I suspect that the average innocent person stopped by the police has some sense of civic duty, and wants to assist them if they can; I know I would have this feeling. Or they may feel that since they have done nothing wrong, there’s no harm in trying to clear themselves — certainly a common theme on some of the crime dramas I watch on TV*. But these are the rights that you have in the US, and while I respect the police and recognize that they have a tough job, the proximity with Veterans’ Day reminds me that plenty of people served in the military and fought in wars to secure and preserve these rights, and that just giving them away and letting them be trampled on would not be the proper way to show them the respect and gratitude they deserve.

*I have to wonder if defense attorneys ever watch shows like CSI or Law & Order as drinking games — drink whenever they violate someone’s rights or do anything else that would render evidence inadmissible. I suspect there are times they’d be blotto by the second commercial break.

Superfreaka-something-or-other

Posted on by

The New Yorker: HOSED

Elizabeth Kolbert has some not very flattering things to say about Levitt and Dubner’s new book. (along with RealClimate and several other blogs)

According to Levitt and Dubner, the story’s message is a simple one: if, at any particular moment, things look bleak, it’s because people are seeing them the wrong way. “When the solution to a given problem doesn’t lie right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists,” they write. “But history has shown again and again that such assumptions are wrong.”

Solutions do exist. But there’s money to be made in proposing easy solutions to difficult situations, and there’s a supply of credulous customers for quick fixes, assuming they haven’t spent all their money on diet- or male-enhancement pills.

Another Country Heard From

Posted on by

Family is the number one reason for women leaving academia

Their data, taken from extensive surveys of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers within the University of California system, shows that work-life issues, and particularly decisions about when to get married and when to have children, account for the most significant loss of academic scientists in the pipeline between PhD and tenured positions.

“The leak is almost entirely, or least due primarily to family formation,”

I shall now duck and cover.

Caveat Emptor

Posted on by

I remember walking to lunch one day back in 2002, in early October, discussing some shootings that had been reported either that morning or the morning before. This was not a normal topic for conversation — shootings in the DC area are not uncommon — but these were sniper attacks and not taking place in the “bad” sections of town. After news of a few more attacks rolled in, there was a palpable sense of uneasiness that began to permeate the area, rising to out-and-out fear. People, including myself, changed their behavior about going out in public areas; I remember putting off getting gas until I could go to a station where I would be on the inboard side of the pumps and not present myself as a target to someone who might be hiding across the street. A few days later, an FBI employee was shot at a Home Depot parking lot a block or so away from that station — a store in a mall I frequent, and within walking distance of my abode (this has been empirically determined, repeatedly). I’ve stood in that lot, and often drive by the lot across the street where the snipers’ car must have parked.

It doesn’t much matter that the odds of getting shot were small. Fear is a raw emotion. When pitted against rational thought, it’s a good bet that fear is going to win, even if the level of fear is not rational. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo terrorized the people of the greater DC area for three weeks and killed ten people. Today, Muhammed is scheduled to die, and barring an intervention by the governor, he will. I’m not generally a supporter of the death penalty; I think it’s handed out too freely and I have a hard time reconciling it with the notion of a civilized society. But today, Muhammed is scheduled to die, and I find that I have no problem with that.