The Army of the Future

Last night I had an epic dream.  I call the dreams that are massive and have a strong impact "epic" because that's kind of what they feel like.  Like they are in all caps or bold or something.  They are usually characterized by a memorable and bigger than life feel while they are going on, and they tend to last so that you remember them when they wake up.  They also make you think.

In this one, I was an older recruit for the Army.  I remembered my own real-life history in the dream, remembered the physical training and weapons training from my own era of the mid-eighties.  This was very different.

I remember looking around and wondering how these young people were going to handle it, they didn't seem very tough.  However, I quickly found out that I was the one being outmatched.  There were some similar issues, the whole BS of having to be in perfect uniform and the relentless scheduling that drives you nuts.

What was different was that this was an information based force.  These guys had electronics on everything.  they were controlling miniature and large sized drones and sucking in logistical and tactical information all while communicating constantly with peers and superiors.  I remember thinking, "what the hell is going on?"

It was my first distinct feeling of being too old to get it.  We've often heard people opine that the youth of today are better trained for combat in some ways because they spend so much time playing video games.  This was a twist on that theory.  In this version, these people were good at this form of combat because they were always plugged into their i-phones and social media.  The skill set was that you had to be able to constantly juggle all the input while keeping each individual thread as a distinct data stream.  I wasn't completely out of my depth, I could track a lot of what was going on, but I was totally distracted. 

One odd element to the dream was a strange representation of the uniforms they were wearing.  There was some kind of virtual screen each person was watching, so they looked like they were all watching their own computer screens.  At the same time, you could see other people's screens.  When I looked at other people's uniforms, and my own, for that matter, it was strangely pixelated.  There were little elements in it that looked like computer chips. But instead of being plugged into a fixed point on a circuit board, these chips were crawling all over you like ants or spiders, plugging into different parts of the uniform, then getting up and moving to another.  It was like those videos of the guys that smear themselves in honey and the bees swarm all over them, only it was in green/black/brown camouflage and they were little rectangular chips.

I woke up fascinated by the dream, and even had a strange experience of being able to close my eyes and plunge back into the dream a couple of times.  When I woke up, it still felt like the dream was going on.  It was as if it was in my active memory, but slowing down to a stop.  I felt like the dream was interrupted, we were going to go on a mission once we got our skills down, and I found myself looking forward to it.

I think there are a couple of things that melded together from real life that sparked the dream.  I'm turning 50 soon, and I've been thinking more in terms of being on the downward slide of life, where your skills and abilities erode and it becomes harder to keep up.  I was also listening to some programs that had combat zone scenes in them, which was more high tech than it used to be.  I was talking to someone a few days ago about powering equipment that soldiers carry, and this was similar to that.  We've been looking at cyberwarfare as a concern, and that, too has been on my mind.  We also had the Sandy Hook school shooting last week, and part of me was wondering if the spate of shootings these last couple of years had anything to do with young men's total immersion into computer games like halo, and the other first person combat games.  These shootings have a feel a little like that, as if the goal is to rack up a high body count, there's no repercussions for your actions and no morality or permanence to it.  We also had an office Christmas party this weekend, and for the first time, people were zoning out on their phones at dinner.  This trend of people not being there with you is something that I notice, something that I tire of, so it has been on my mind.

However, regardless of the inspiration for the dream, it seems to have a bit of prophecy in it.  I can see a time where controlling and communicating through your computer network would be highly integrated into a battle scenario.  It makes me wonder how much it already is, we just don't know about it.  Special Forces would be the place to flesh those systems out, and keeping a battlefield superiority with those skills would depend in part on keeping them secret until you had a chance to figure them out.

NYC Storm Shield

After Hurricane Sandy, I have seen proposals for a seawall to protect NYC from storm swells. This would be similar to the massive Deltawerken Dutch seawall project. Perhaps a good way to justify such a massive public works project would be to make the seawall a tidal generating station. The flow from the Hudson (as well as the tidal flow) should be enough to generate power across the entire face of the seawall. The generating sections would be locked down and form a wall in the event of a storm, and open and generating power the rest of the time. Making the seawall generate power would offset the cost of construction by providing a way of paying back the initial investment. The project would also allow public funds to be used for a model/pilot plant. The resulting R&D could be used for future tidal power projects, as it would be public knowledge. The project would keep people employed (economic stimulus now) with a lasting long term benefit of power generation. This is all in addition to protecting NYC from Hurricane Sandy-styled storm surges.


I’m not sure how you deal with ship traffic, as these seawalls usually have an opening in the middle that allows the transit of shipping. When that center portion is open, I believe you would have a lessening of power generated across the seawall, as fluid flows tend to follow the path of least resistance. This is a technical issue that could be solved, I’m sure.

Dutch Engineers are world leaders in this technology, so perhaps they would be willing to cooperate with us in the design. They would also benefit by developing the power generating technology, and may employ it in their own seawalls.

Perhaps the structure could also be topped with a motorway, as I understand that the condition of some of the existing NYC bridges is such that they will need to be replaced at some time in the next few decades anyway.

Politically, I believe that technology such as this that benefits so many should be government developed so that it can be freely shared, but that is another issue. I realize the political environment is not conducive to big government projects right now, so perhaps, once constructed, it could be turned over to a utility which would collect the fees from the power generated in order to provide maintenance. Perhaps other locations could be sited to copy the concept, which might find private power companies interested in repeating the project in other estuaries and bays that need tide surge protection.

NYC is such a crown jewel of our country, it is the perfect place to construct such a showcase of engineering. Projects such as this also generate public interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics) disciplines, which furthers our competitiveness, similar to the boost STEM disciplines got from the moon shot.

Hogwash

I listened to some of the local news in Iowa over the Thanksgiving break.

They have a big debate going on over large livestock growing and slaughtering plants in the state.  On one hand, these operations are big and bring a lot of jobs and money to the state.  On the other hand, they create a lot of pollution.  The problem is when you get a huge number in one location, the waste becomes greater than the land can easily absorb or process.  It gets into rivers and streams and the high nitrogen content kills fish and other wildlife.  I'm familiar with the same situation in western Kansas where the cattle operations are so prevalent that they are polluting the soils with excess nitrogen.  The problem there is so big that the nitrogen is showing up in the water table and some small towns that depend on well water are not able to remove it.  In northern Missouri, we have some hog operations that were run so poorly that their waste containment dams broke and flooded the rivers with millions of gallons of hog waste, effectively killing the rivers.

Iowa's problem is similar and it's playing into the politics.  The corporations threaten to move out of the state if they are forced to comply with environmental laws they see as excessive.  The EPA and some citizen groups want the corporate farms to stop polluting.

It seems to me that the solution could come from a big government imposition of a separate entity to deal with the waste.  You figure out what the cost of treating the waste conventionally would be, and then you subsidize the operation to the extent that it becomes less of a burden to the corporation, and you force them to pay into the solution.  You take the solution out of their hands. The state government sets up a facility on the grounds of the corporate operation that will treat the waste.  You bring in State University researchers and managers, and their goal is to develop leading edge technology to convert the waste into a slow release fertilizer and energy.  After startup costs are realized, the energy is supplied back to the feedlot operation, in some equitable arrangement that offsets the cost of setting up the operation.  Perhaps you even give them the ability to take over the operation once it's set up.

The catch is that the Universities develop the technology and they own it and can patent anything they come up with.  However, this is done with the understanding that these are publicly disclosed patents that can be used for a nominal licensing fee to offset the development cost, then expanded and improved upon.  In this way, you use a combination of private and public funds to develop the technological solution to the waste problem in a way that keeps the waste out of the water, extracts usable energy from it, and provides a slow release form of fertilizer that can be used by farmers without putting as much nitrates back into streams and rivers as typical methods now do.  Another added benefit would be if the operation recovered water in a good enough condition that it could be cycled back into the feedlot operation.

The point is that the feedlot corporations don't want to deal with their waste. They are not experts in this field and they have no inclination to want to become experts in it.  However, past models have let them pollute without having to pay the costs to the environment.  This model, rather than forcing them to figure out how to deal with the problem, forces them to pay for some of the solution, and provides them with experts and a possibility of feedback.

I'm convinced that once the university scientists get ahold of this environment, you might find other technologies spinning off of it.  It gives graduate and undergraduate students some real world experience and provides a revenue stream for the university.

Sometimes the solutions is a combination of government, academia, and industry.

47 Percenters are actually 99 percenters

In the wake of their 2012 Election defeat, Republicans and conservative commentators were saying that Americans had selfishly voted their own economic self interest and that this was proof that the nation had suddenly changed into lazy people that just wanted to be given stuff. 

They claim that the election was stolen because a slim majority of voters are getting handouts from the government, while everyone else is working hard to create businesses and jobs.

It's a great story, but it's completely inaccurate.

Unforturnately, the rich vote Republican because they are keeping their taxes down and paying the big corporations subsidies, or giving them huge tax breaks. Alternately, they are proposing removing (or not enforcing) regulations on big companies.  This would tend to unburden corporations from a lot of additional effort in complying with regulations, and would tend to make corporations more profitable.  Some of those regulations are there to insure that corporations play fair and don't trash the environment, so throwing out the regulations would no doubt allow for some abuse of smaller businesses, workers, and the environment.  I'm all for some regulations being eased, we have some ridiculous laws in this country.  I wish they would pass laws removing the laws and regulations from the books rather than gutting them without review or through inaction.

My point is that you could accuse any side of an election of voting because the government was going to "give them stuff".  That's the unfortunate side effect of democracy.  Politicians certainly have learned it well.  Each election cycle is full of people being promised goodies by the government.

The biggest and best example of a government program that people on the right are in love with is our defense industry.  There are plenty of non-military people out there without defense jobs or defense contracts that support this.  Many people that genuinely believe that our military capability either keeps us safe or keeps bad people of countries in the world from doing bad things.  However, just as Republican President and WWII war hero Dwight Eisenhower warned, you don't want to build a defense industry that is so powerful that it becomes the tail that wags the dog (government).  People see defense as a jobs and pro-growth industry.  What people forget is that in order to justify a big defense industry, you have to actually use your military.  This means that there are ideologues out there that will push for conflicts given the slightest provacation in order to justify all the time and money spent on military power.  The problem with jumping into a fight at the slightest provacation is that after a while people realize that you are scary and dangerous and they arm themselves in order to protect themselves against you.  I can totally understand why Iran would want nuclear weapons.  It's the only way they could operate exactly as they want without fear of retalliation.  Think about Pakistan.  My guess is that we probably would have invaded them by now if it had not been for their nukes.  Where does this end?  If you look back on lots of wars in history, the best most recent one being WWI, you'll see that a situation where all sides are convinced that a war will come usually results in just such a war.  People spend a lot of time and money getting ready, and then some inevitable trigger occurs and the war kicks off to a grand start!  Hooray!  We'll kick there ass now!  However, the resulting war inevitably eats up a lot of lives, destroys a lot of property and environment, and then takes years for both sides to recover from.

War is stupid.  Defense spending is a waste.  Can you imagine any politician getting elected if he stood up and said such a thing?

I don't think the average voter cheers on war and wants massive military build-ups.  I think the average voter is swayed by a lot of public discource that makes it impossible to say otherwise.

Many people tell themselves that they are voting for a person because they trust them to run the country in the right way.  What they don't consider is that the "right way" has certain advantages to themselves.  Imagine people being told the truth, that we're going to have to pay more taxes and take less from government programs if we hope to get not just the deficit, but the debt under control.  Otherwise, it's like saying you are going to either diet or exercise, but you can't be bothered to do both.  You may make some marginal gains by hacking away at only one side of the problem, but you can't be expected to make dramatic results unless you attack both sides.

So before you level your accusations at the cursed other side about their selfish motives, please try to explain how your own motives are not so selfish.  If you are a Republican, are you willing to pay some more in taxes to get rid of the deficit?  If you are a Democrat, are you willing to control government programs that expand each year automatically without any restraint or controls?  We're like one of those Siamese Twins with one body and two heads.  One side wants to diet and the other wants to exercise, but it doesn't matter because the other side is blocking the body from doing both.  We're doomed if we can't realize we're all in this together and be motivated to work harder for less until the problem is fixed.

Debt Crisis

Here's another partially written post saved from 8/7/11 that I am just now getting around to writing:

A friend related to me the gist of an Atlantic Monthly article that told about how the debt was deliberately manufactured by GOP actions (see August 2011 article).

In 2011, the Republicans shifted their tactics and began to hammer the subject of the deficit.  The main reason they wanted it handled then was because they wanted to use it as a issue to help them defeat Obama.

I often think of the psychological term Projection when I watch the Republicans.  You have to watch what they say when they criticize their opponents, because that's a big clue as to what they do and what their plans are themselves. It seemed to me that they really did want the country to fail in order to get in power.  Enough Republicans came out and stated that this was their goal, that it's easy to project that motive onto the entire party.  After all, when parties vote as solid blocs, it's difficult to convince the public that anyone within the party is actually weighing the merits of any particular course of action to determine what's best.  They are simply adding their weight and voice to the issue.  It's bloc strategy (or block strategy, more like it).

On the other hand, Democrats are just as guilty in doing nothing when they are in the minority to slow down rampant spending, or going into expensive wars.   You saw no evidence of principles or personal courage in the years following 9/11, just a dejected and cowed mass of snivelling cowards with no voice and nothing better to offer.

The rest of the article talked about how bad the jobs situation was and forecasted a double dip recession.  While this was not true, the jobs situation did not get worse, but it did not improve.  Fears of what was going to happen still made stocks drop.

Then we had the downgraded credit "crisis".  The GOP said they would allow this to happen if we failed to control deficit.  The real reason we had to downgrade the credit rating is a lack of confidence in the ability of the US government to put together a budget and govern rationally.  Gridlock and political posturing is worse than bad decisions.

The irony of a downgraded credit rating is that this would most likely increase interest rates and that would most likely benefit the banks that got bailed out in the crisis that created this mess.

Societal Diet

I was thinking about people when they are going on a diet.  This is typically necessary when you've been in the habit for a long time of binge eating whatever you wanted without constraints.  The act of cutting back would come with immediate consequences.  Your high calorie fueled body would have to calm down and accept lower energy content. You would have to convince yourself to not answer to the screaming voice inside of your head that is saying "NEED MORE SUGAR!" and make due with what you really need, which is much less than you want.

This is exactly like society, which needs to be saying it needs less energy, not always screaming for more.  It's about as possible and likely as going on a diet.  There is too much resistance on a societal level to make these changes voluntarily without some kind of threat or price explosion.  It may not be impossible to do, but it's very difficult.

Excess energy in a single human body turns to fat. I wonder if there is an analogy in this in society as a whole?  Have we grown fat with our energy consumption?  In some ways, cheap and easy energy allowed us to bulk up our economies with high industrial output.  Has there been a downside that makes us less reluctant to get out and work hard or less able to exert effort because of the extra weight we carry in having grown into the shape we are now in.  We rely on not just the energy we consume, but the way we generated it.  We might have a hard time transitioning to new forms.

During World War II we had lean production, and ran a lean country with no extravagant energy use. Like the way that an individual soldier is in shape, we as a country were in shape and producing more equipment than any point in our history.

It seems we will be able to dodge the bullet and put off the day of accountability for a few more years.  I heard a report from the new North Dakota oil fields.  It was a jobs story, detailing the incredible amount of oilfield work available and the difficulty finding enough people to fill the jobs. It also outlined the extent of what was found in the oil fields.  It said we will be producing more energy in the form of oil and natural gas just 3 years from now, than the national increase in energy demand requires.

This makes us fat in the head.  Rather than spending the time and money developing the next forms of energy, sustainable forms that will not have a looming end point at some time in the future, we get lazy sucking out the last dregs of our old way of powering ourselves.

I have a co-worker that is fond of saying that American needs a crisis before it takes action.  Imagine if we treated our person health that way.  If we waited until we had a heart attack before we started going to the gym, would that not be too late?  You'll never get into good shape if you let yourself go for so long that you harm your health.  It seems to me that this is what we are doing with our planet and its environment.  You need to work toward sustainable energy in order to map out a sustainable long term future.  We don't want to have a planetary heart attack before we start going on an energy diet.  By then, it's too late.

Short Sighted

I've often thought that short sightedness is going to kill us. We are in an era when few branches of government get much respect from the public.  When you look at polling data with historically low approval ratings of congress, and presidential ratings pretty low, too, I think it reflects on the fact that people are asking what's wrong with out Government.

Our government is dysfunctional and seems to be unable to work toward solving any of our current problems.  I am convinced that one of the big problems is that Government has evolved to be an extremely short sighted institution. With elections every two years, we are in perpetual campaign mode.  With election promises divorced from any kind of accountability, we have no way of insuring that politicians will do what they say they will do.  When coming out on top in the barroom brawl that is supposed to pass as political debate is the only goal, because to lose any verbal exchange in the news cycle is seen as a way to lose an election, is there any doubt why our politicians can't even seem to tell the truth in their political speeches?

Elections have become competitions, like a football game.  The electorate divides up and decides which party they are going to vote for, and it doesn't matter how bad their team's sportsmanship is, they will still be blind to the virtues of the other party, or the faults of their own party.  It's like watching a die hard fan get mad at the referee, but only when the call hurts his team.  Few sports fans will say, "that's a bad call" if it helps their team, and few electoral partisans will call members of their own party when they are put their foot in their mouth or do something that adds nothing to help the country.

I get particularly frustrated when I hear the Republicans try to bash the Democrats over the issue of personal responsibility.  As long as we can wage two wars while giving out big tax breaks, nobody should be lecturing the other party about responsibility.  Imagine how long the Iraq War would have lasted depended on voluntary War Bonds in able to finance it.  Yet, we were perfectly willing to put it on the national credit card.

Our corporations don't seem to be any better at being responsible, either.  They're perfectly willing to give CEOs enormous bonuses, whether the company is doing well or not, but they are not willing to give anything for research and development, which is the only way most companies can hope to survive in the long run.  Corporations have devolved to the point where they would rather make good quarterly profits at the expense of their future well-being.

We talk about personal responsibility, yet we are collectively unwilling to do anything for the environment, short term or long term.  It's irresponsible to neglect the impact our actions have on our environment when damaging the environment will hurt us all in the long run, as well as making it more difficult to run profitable businesses.

We shouldn't have to lurch into a crisis in order to think about the long term consequences of our actions, and we shouldn't have to have a gun to our head to make good decisions.  We shouldn't be thinking about our children's lives, we should be thinking about our great great grandchildren's lives, or the life of the planet and our species in 200, 500, or 1000 years from now.  What will those people think when they look back on us now.  Will they praise or curse the decisions we make and the actions we take today?  It's pretty clear to me what those distant descendants will be thinking if we keep behaving the way we do now.

Maturation Gap

Almost a year ago I had a discussion with a friend.

We agreed that people are sexually mature way earlier than emotionally or intellectually mature and that culturally we do not recognize a person as mature until long after they become sexual beings. There is a 6 to 8 year gap between coming of age and being recognized as coming of age.  It is as if our evolution has been lopsided, we still mature physically earlier than we are able to cope with society.

Our discussion started because many conservatives had recently stated that they did not want young women to get the HPV vaccine.  This vaccine could prevent cervical cancer and save millions of women's lives.  Many people don't want to think of their children as sexual, and because they deny this simple fact of nature, they endanger their children, as well as making it much more difficult to raise them. By the same token, when a person opposes abortion but also denies their children's sexuality, they often prevent them from getting birth control.  They create a situation where then increase the chances of having a child having to face the decision of whether or not to have an abortion.

Culturally, we have the same kind of gap. You have science advancing knowledge and religion dragging its heels, gripping humanity and trying to prevent enlightenment. Often, those that are on the cutting edge of science will be attacked by the religious and traditionalists. It is difficult to reconcile a part of society that would rather hold on to irrational beliefs than do what is right. This is not something that is new, this has been a constant throughout history.  Science often reveals the truth of the world at their own peril for how this will be taken by the religious authorities.  Today, there are no official religious authorities.  There is no religious rule in this day and age, so it is easy for me to fall into the trap of expecting science to be unconstrained by religion.  Not much time has to pass between incidents that prove that this is not the case.

Stem Cells and Symbiotic Behavior

The July 22, 2011 episode of Science Friday was about putting stem cells in damaged heart muscles to repair them.

After a person has a heart attack, the blood gets cut off to portions of heart and this causes those portions to die and scar tissue to form.  Some scientists are working with a new cure where they inject the patient's own stem cells into the heart to repair it.  The part of the heart that dies and forms scar tissue makes the heart swell up like a balloon and then it can't flex as easily, so it has a hard time pumping.  The stem cells actually start to replace the scar tissue, the heart's shape returns to normal, and the heart becomes healthy again.  They have only just started human trials, so the therapy will probably be available to the general public in a few years.  This will reverse the old way of thinking that heart attack damage was permanent and that someone that survived a heart attack would have a permanently decreased quality of life.

Stem cell research has a lot of promises, and it surprises me how they come to be expressed.  In this case, the stem cells being used are blood stem cells of the patient, being conditioned and transplanted after being harvested.  There is very little research resistance for this type of procedure from the standpoint that you are not introducing something foreign or potentially toxic to the body, so much of the barriers inherent in other drug or transplant therapies are not present here.  They are already studying to see if they can copy this procedure in other organs.  The procedure is extremely simple, and training medical professionals to do it would be simple.

The bulk of the funding came from NIH, so here's another example of big government totally wasting taxpayer's money (not).

The second story I heard was from the same July 22, 2011 episode of  Science Friday was about all the bacteria that are found in and on the human body.  Scientists are just starting to study these bacteria, surveying them and trying to discover what they are for.  They think they are going to find that rather than being something unwanted that has "infected" their human hosts, that many of these bacteria will prove to be beneficial in some way.

It's interesting to consider that we probably co-evolved with many of these species and may even share some genetic traits with them.  We are in symbiosis with many types of bacteria and probably viruses and maybe some parasites, yet we've never really considered this or studied it before.  There is some evidence that wiping out populations of bacteria, either through the use of antibacterial soap when we wash, or through taking antibiotics, may take away some of our protection and make us more susceptible to getting sick.  We may also have more allergies due to living in an environment that is too clean.  Early studies are finding huge numbers of bacteria that have never been cataloged before.  Some scientists are theorizing that the appendix, rather than being this useless vestigial organ that is no longer useful, is actually there to provide a refuge for your healthy bacteria strains.  They think that the body gets exposed to things from time to time that wipe out your healthy bugs (not just modern antibacterial use) and that this provides a refuge to repopulate those bugs after they are wiped out.  The study of all these passengers on our body is another field in its earliest stages and is bound to uncover a lot of discoveries in the coming years.

Arab Spring, Riotous Fall

Recently, a large portion of the Arab world has erupted in protests against America. It seemed to kick off with the bombing and attack of the American Embassy in Libya, where our Ambassador and 3 other Americans were killed.

The protests were supposedly over outrage about a video posted in YouTube by a Christian Coptic Egyptian person living in America. I don't know whether the person was born here of Egyptian parents or moved here, and whether he became naturalized or is not a citizen, so I'm not sure if they are even mad about the actions of a "true American". It doesn't matter, because anyone can post anything they want on YouTube, and if you don't like it, don't watch it.

It seems bizarre that anyone would get mad at a whole country for what one person in that country did or said. What was done may have been in poor taste, but it was not illegal. The protesters seem to be further enraged that the man has not been arrested or put to death by hanging.

I have no sympathy for these enraged protesters. I can appreciate that they have no understanding of our legal system or the rights we enjoy in this country, but even so, I cannot fathom why they want to hold our whole country accountable for an insignificant and poorly produced video. I had to see what it was all about, and couldn't stomach watching it because of the terrible quality of the clip. I can't believe this guy was able to get as many actors as he did to make such a stinking piece of garbage. I can't even get to the content, you have to wade through too much embarrassingly amateur footage to even stick around that long. It's about as painful to watch as a Barney video. Or reality television, for that matter. One report I heard said that most of the people that were protesting had not seen the clip. Perhaps if they had, they would not be so mad at America for harboring someone with such terrible views, but they would be mad at the studio for letting someone waste their money and time producing this crap.

The Muslim world rioted after some Dutch cartoonist wrote a cartoon critical of Islam some years back. I didn't understand that, either. I can't believe anyone can be so thin-skinned about their beliefs. I guarantee that their behavior is not getting them any converts in the world at large for their cause when they can see such lunacy.

When we invaded Afghanistan, I assumed that many people in their country thought that we were overstepping our bounds to invade an entire country for the actions of one man. However, it wasn't that simple, the country had a religious leadership that was harboring and protecting people that wanted to launch attacks on us, so you justify the action with a "rogue nation" argument, that a lot of people can agree with, relate to, and support. It still doesn't stop individuals from getting extremely angry about the occupation when bystanders are also killed in the military strikes against legitimate targets (or when the occasional mistake happens and a wedding party is bombed). I can see why those people would get mad at our actions and think our actions were unjustified. Iraq is just a more egregious example of this kind of thing, a situation where people are legitimately uncomfortable with our presence and incensed when it leads to the killing of innocent lives. In my mind, I was leery of the possibility of our presence being a recruiting tool for the jihadis.

Then these protests and the violence directed at Americans makes me take another look at my views. Any sympathy anyone may have had against an Arab person because we invaded their country has to realize that the fundamentalist Islamic masses have just validated our course of action. If someone saying something they dislike is cause to kill our Ambassador and bomb our Embassies, then they must understand perfectly why we would invade a country because someone killed a bunch of Americans. I should stop feeling guilty that we use a strong arm against anyone in an Arab country, because surely they condone that level of action if mere words justify rioting and attacking a country's embassy.

My emotional reaction to these countries is to want nothing to do with them. I think we should just pull our entire diplomatic missions out and put travel advisories on each of the countries. We should urge Americans to stay out, we're not welcome anyway. I think this should be backed up by cutting off trade. I don't even want to engage with these countries. I realize from a practical standpoint this is not realistic. No one will advocate this kind of reaction, and no trade restrictions will be considered. Many individuals faced with the prospect of travel to any of these cesspools of unrest should think twice about going there. Your life is cheap and you are not welcome. There's plenty of other places in the world that would welcome you and your dollars. Go there instead.

I'm guilty of the same mistake that the Arab protestors are making, which is to generalize from the actions of a few to the motives of the rest. However, they are generalizing from the actions of a single individual who is only exercising his right to free speech. There is no actual harm being done by this speech, and they can simply ignore the film and there will be no effect whatsoever. On the other hand, while the number of protestors compared to the general populace is a small percentage, these are large mobs, and they have killed people for simply being
American. You would not have the option of simply ignoring them, as they have the option of doing with our miserable individual. So while I am extrapolating on the actions of a few and criticizing them for the actions of an individual, my hypocrisy protects individuals from being harmed in a real way, blown up by a mob. We felt the same way about the French Revolution, so it's not even a Muslim or Arab thing, it's a stupid enraged mob thing.

Missouri Amendment 2

I was getting ready to go vote during this summer's second Missouri Primary of 2012 and wanted to know what was going to be on the ballot. This was a really particularly sleepy election. For someone in the political middle, disenchanted by both parties, a primary is a not something that raises much motivation. Even though I complain that most elections give you two bad choices and you have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, I still don't want to try to influence who is going to be on the ballot.

I looked up the ballot and discovered that there was going to be a state constitutional amendment on the ballot. That's pretty rare. I know that the U.S. Constitution has not added any amendments for a long time and the process to get the constitution amended on the national level is almost impossible when the country is evenly divided on most issues (try to imagine an amendment about guns or gay marriage making it to through congress).

The proposed change was to insure school prayer was a protected right in the state. No one can prosecute anyone that wants to pray in school. It seemed pretty straightforward and completely unnecessary, as this was already guaranteed. No one else in my office knew about the amendment until I told them. My brothers, who I immediately called, both knew about it, but had only just found out about it.

I considered this a really poor choice of elections to put such a supposedly important matter on the ballot. If you are truly up in arms about a subject to the point where you think there needs to be a Constitutional Amendment over it, why do a sneaky stealth move and put it into an almost ignored primary election?

This primary happens to be one that insures that the majority of voters going in would be conservatives and Republicans. Not many Democratic positions were even being contested, but the Republican field was rife with candidates, and many races had far right candidates poised against moderate Republicans. So this field was really heated up.

After the election, the results came in and the amendment passed with about 80% of the vote, an almost unheard of majority. I was disappointed, and still riled about the sneaky way that the measure was put onto the ballot, but I moved on and started to forget about it.

Then I heard one of my science podcasts report that the measure would mean that people that did not want to learn evolution in schools would have the right to refuse to learn it, and that the measure would be challenged.

My first reaction was that this was not what was on the ballot. It said nothing about the conduct of people in classrooms being able to refuse to learn something, it simply said that you couldn't stop someone from praying in school.

I got online to see what the language of the ballot was, and found that it was already taken down from the election board's website. I did find the original Amendment as approved by the General Assembly and read it in full. It did indeed say that anyone that disagreed with any subject in school on religious grounds could not be forced to participate in the curriculum.

That's alarming on two levels. One, the ballot did not even hint about his aspect of the Amendment, and the language of the ballot was both abbreviated and deceptive in that respect. Two, the original article 5 of the state constitution had language in it that already specifically provided for religious freedom, and the ballot language didn't sound that different than the original section. The Amendment was to replace article 5 so most people reading the short ballot description would naturally draw the conclusion that religious freedom in schools was not something that was already a right. The only thing that really changed was the ability to opt out of any education that one deemed against their religion.

It seems to me that there would be no limit to what you could opt out of. The obvious courses would be those including Evolution and Geology, because not only do people not want to be taught something that they feel contradicts Genesis from the Bible, but many people believe the 17th century theologian's accounting of the years in the Bible that puts the age of the earth at about 6,000 years instead of the generally accepted 4.65 billion years. So Geology is, by definition, blasphemy. I can see people opting out of Chemistry because it fails to say that an intelligent creator designed all the elements and molecules. People could probably figure out ways to opt out of English class and Gym class. Once you put a vague exception that allows people to get out of the hard work of learning, they will expend considerable effort in applying that exception to anything and everything they dislike and hope that their feigned religious piety will get them out of it.

We look to the Muslim world and see people in some countries educating their young in Madrases where they read the Koran for 12 hour a day while being beaten and yelled at and we shake our heads at what a shame it is that these people will use their religion to keep their people willfully ignorant. Yet we have plenty of people in this country that will gladly follow that model and hand our youths all the tools they need to avoid opening their minds and learning something true about the world.

Crime Scene Investigation

I "read" a book recently called Crime Scene Investigation, Philosophy, Practice, and Science by Professor Robert C. Shaler of Pennsylvania State University.

This is part of The Modern Scholar series, where exceptional Professors with excellent lectures get a chance to record it and put it in an audiobook. These versions always have the Professor/author read or perform the class themselves. The disadvantage when an author reads his own book is that the typical author does not have a good speaking/reading voice.

In this case, the Professor has a pretty good voice, as he's used to delivering lectures, but he has a definite New York or Philadelphia accent. There is a stereotype of people with this accent to those of us in the Midwest. This stereotype is obviously not fair to everyone, but often people from the thickly populated area near New York City have a belligerent and condescending way of speaking. There is a tough guy kind of bravado and a know-it-all sound to the way some from that region say anything, it seems. This guy had this voice in spades.

What he had to say was also in that vein. I was describing the course to my brother a few days after I started listening to it, and I told him that this guy knows everything and everyone else is completely full of shit. That's the way he came across, and I kept waiting for him to get over it and start describing the science of Crime Scene Investigation. He never really did.

To be fair, he imparted a lot of information, but the attitude that it was delivered with was way too distracting for me. I kept waiting for him to explain why methods that he deemed to be erroneous or misguided had ever been attempted in the first place. My expectation was that people would approach the science of something as complicated as crime with a early theory based on some kind of logic, which would later be superseded by more modern science or more thorough methods. The way Professor Shaler presents it, everyone was stumbling around in the dark, hampered by their own incompetence, until he showed up to shine his brilliance down on the field.

That's a pretty harsh assessment, and I don't mean to take away from the obvious intelligence of the guy and his mastery of the field. I am frustrated by my own inability to ignore the tone of the lectures, and I feel it distracted me from understanding the subject as well as I could. One last criticism, though, is that he would often state what he thought was the correct method, or the clear facts of a subject, but he would rarely explain how they got to the point where they figured that out. I was hoping and expecting to hear a little of the history of the science, like in the Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum.

One of early facts about Professor Shuler that made me think that he was a pretty heavy hitter was that he was head of the Forensics Department in New York City, he pioneered the use of DNA evidence, and was responsible for identifying the victims of 9/11. He also mentioned Kansas City, which lead me to believe he had been here before. I had the impression that he had worked here, but perhaps he had simply advised the unit here. I kept listening for more information on this, but there was none.

That leaves us with actual subject matter. The thing that really stuck with me is how violent people can be. The matter of fact way that he described people that would continue to beat a person long after they were dead sticks in my mind. It also was quite telling when they went over blood splatter pattern analysis. You don't think about a wounded human as some kind of blood geyser. It's impressive, when you think of it, just the fact that people are inflicting damage on their fellow human beings in such an overwhelming way that blood is splattering 15 feet in the air.

In the end, I thought that the techniques are interesting and they do an amazing job of solving crimes. However, I cannot imagine that there are enough scientists, let alone investigators to truly study all crime scenes. On one hand, you get the impression that police forces are stretched thin. On the other hand, you get the idea that there is no such thing as the perfect crime, and no way to commit a crime without the strong possibility that YOU WILL GET CAUGHT.

Divide and Fall of the Empire

I've been listening to The History of Rome Podcast for a few years now. Through 178 episodes, he's gotten to the point where the last few years of the Roman Empire are at hand. I will regret listening to the last episode, as it has been an enjoyable experience.

Learning about the last century of Roman history, I've been impressed by one fact about their decline. They were their own worst enemies. Sure, the Goths and Vandals and Huns put pressure on the Empire, but this pressure could have been brushed aside by the earlier Empire, when they were strong and united. The worst thing that lead to the decline is that every few years, some strong military leader or some conniving palace insider would decide that they should be emperor. Suddenly, it's Roman legions against Roman legions, and the strength of the empire gets continually drained. Near the end, no one wanted to pay their taxes and the Emperor couldn't muster enough funds to field a decent Army, and they spent more time bickering than actually trying to mend and strengthen the empire.

It reminds me of this country today. We seem hell-bent on attacking ourselves and finding trivial and artificial faults toward our fellow countrymen in order to scramble for supremacy in some childish "King of the Hill" style melee. All we're succeeding in doing is tearing down our proverbial hill and making the lofty heights that America used to occupy an ever declining hog waller.

Even near the end, there were people that understood the glory of Rome and longed to restore its place. Rome was an Empire that could be brutal and warlike to its enemies, but within the Empire, there was peace, literacy, and civilization. There was one language, and one law, and being a Roman citizen meant something in the world. They amassed wealth and built magnificent cities and structures that survive to this day. The groups that tore the Empire apart plunged Europe into a dark ages that lasted almost 1000 years and much of the knowledge and history that had been carefully preserved during the Empire was completely lost.

Perhaps it's inevitable, when you build a strong society with wealth, strength, and progress, people within the society become obsessed with rising to power and controlling the society. Many of the people that rise to power are not suited to rule, they only have one talent, fighting for position and destroying those that are in their way.

I see many parallels to our current situation.

College is for Snobs?

Rick Santorum is still running for President at this time, but I'm certain that anyone reading this in the future will find that laughable. He made a stump speech where he said: "President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college, what a snob. There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day, and put their skills to test, that aren't taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he (Obama) wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image."

Newt Gingrich is also still running for President at this time (again, something that will seem very odd 10 years from now). He gave a speech at a church recently where he attacked colleges as bad places because they try to liberalize and secularize people. Was the message not to go to college?

These people are still in the primaries, which means they are trying to get the conservative Republican Party nomination for President. This always becomes a "how far right can you go?" contest, which ends up hurting any eventual nominee if he goes too far. These guys just went too far.

Conservatism is defined as people that resist change and are usually convinced that some time in the past was a better time. They tend to admire people from the past as having better values and being more respectable because they have not been tainted and corrupted by these modern times.

I would find it very interesting to whisk Newt and Rick back in time to the post WWII era. I would like to see them give their stirring stump speeches to crowds of World War Vets, who they would probably describe in glowing terms as from the Greatest Generation. Can you imagine these people, many of whom eagerly took advantage of the new GI Bill to educate themselves and launch themselves back into the work world with more marketable skills and a chance at prosperity that they couldn't have dreamed of prior to the war? Can you imagine them cheering Newt and Rick telling them that college was bad? Can you imagine these men that faced down fascism and imperialism agreeing that ideas from professors at American colleges were somehow irresistably subversive and should be avoided? Would they consider that the power of these professors to brainwash them would be so strong that they should avoid college completely just in case they might fall victim to it?

I imagine that a WWII vet would probably not have a problem talking back to a college professor if he said something bad about America. I also imagine that a WWII vet would probably tell Newt & Rick to shove it if they went back in time and told them not to go to school.

In what world is it a good idea to discourage people from going to school? Here we have a situation where one of the major fears in retaining a U.S. edge in the world is that we aren't educating ourselves enough, and these people are running for President and attacking the best path to personal prosperity and the best method for maintaining U.S. superiority? How is that leadership?

Fair Tax

I was listening to the Slate Political Gabfest and they were discussing the reaction when Mitt Romney released his tax returns. Romney has been reluctant to do so, and after a lot of pressure from Newt Gingrich during the current Presidential Primaries, he finally opened up the books and revealed that he made $20 million dollars last year and paid around 13% in taxes. The top rate for people in this range is supposed to be 35%, and at the $20 million income level, the tax should be 34.9%. Mitt Romney's special tax break cut his taxes by 62.8% or $4.4 million.

They made the comparison that most people at much lower incomes pay a much higher rate and John Dickerson asked if we are supposed to be enraged because Mitt's taxes were too low or because everyone else's were too high. That was a big government/budget/taxation in general question, but what was of interest to me what what he said next.

He asked if it was ludicrous that we have a tax structure that favors capital gains and investment. I saw a recent piece on the Daily Show by Jon Stewart that showed that the tax shelter for venture capital firms (like Mitt Romney's former firm, Bain Capital) fought for and got a special tax exemption for their people at the 15% rate. If true, that's a example of an interest group lobbying the government and getting a special exemption to help themselves get richer. The average person does not have anyone looking out for them to this degree. Of course, the Daily Show went on to show Mitt Romney giving a campaign speech where he said that everyone should pay some taxes. He's saying that people that are exempt from income taxes because their income is so low (poor people) should have to pay more taxes, when he himself is rich beyond most of these people's wildest dreams and he has worked hard to pay less taxes.

The point I was getting to was that tax codes have been to a certain degree the government's attempt at social engineering. There are some good arguments for social engineering through the tax code. If you believe that home ownership is good because it is a cornerstone of the American Dream or maybe a good economic engine for the country, then you are justified in lobbying for a tax exemption for home ownership. So, let's assume that someone has the argument that people that are "investing" (in other words, buying stock, presumably to invest in corporations and companies) are helping the country. They are saying that this activity is noble, drives the economy, and should be rewarded.

I would probably have agreed with that position many years ago, but let's look at what we get for this "investment". The financial meltdown of 2008 was engineered by "investors" playing with other people's money in speculative complex financial instruments, all the while lobbying to be exempt from government regulation. So you can point to an enormous recent example of how the investment class of people have not helped the economy, in fact they did such enormous harm that they had to be bailed out lest the entire world's economy get sucked into their slip stream as they sank beneath the financial waters. So, in other words, the debt generated from their greedy miscalculations is now on the backs of the rest of us (our taxes, our debt) after they were bailed out by the government. This does not seem to me to be the kind of thing they should be rewarded for. In fact, you could ask why no one is being punished for this. Unless you call record bonuses some perverse kind of punishment.

My concern is that these "investors", even in times when things are working right, are not helping our American Companies to be healthy. Stock investment's influence on corporate decision making is at best a burden and at worst an exercise in short term thinking. Stock holders believe that their imposition of fiduciary responsibility (the obligation of a company to do whatever it takes to make a profit for their shareholders) is not only justified to insure profits, but also that this is a healthy standard for a company to be held to. The problem is that stocks are rated on a quarterly basis, and what is good for a company in the short term is not good for the company in the long term. It's very healthy in the short term to lay everyone off, thus saving on payroll, or to cut R&D, thus cutting expenses. However, a company that whittles its staff down to the point where they cannot deliver when they are asked to produce something will not remain viable in the long term. A company that will not invest in ideas and learning, or bother to test products for the future, will not have a future.

I'm all for rewarding people who save and invest in industry here in the U.S., but the responsibility of a company should be to insure that they will be around for many years, not generate a quick profit today at the expense of burning through a company's assets and capabilities and leaving a worthless hulk behind.

We have a word for this kind of behavior, when one entity sucks the life out of another, killing it in the process: Parasitism. When we allow investors to treat our American companies as carcasses they can bleed dry, and then pay as little taxes as possible to the government that sustains and serves the country, then why are we surprised when the country begins to resemble the companies that these parasites have sucked dry?