Hunting The Muse

Dean's Position Switching

Dean shifts stands on some issues

This is such a stupid article. It's very slanted, which is really disappointing considering that it comes from the Washington Post.

Dean from the beginning has been someone who defends the practice of changing positions depending on situation and fact. That's what a policy-maker should be able to do, adapt to circumstances. Here he's being criticized (or it is being implied that he is now open to criticism, an artful way for a "journalist" to slant his writing) for evolving his positions.

The craziest example is Social Security. He's actually being criticized for not being in support of raising the retirement age. That's just backwards. Previously he had remarked that raising the age was an option that would help solve it, but he had never firmly advocated it. Now he advocates raising the limit at which Social Security stops being taken out of a person's income.

The Cuba thing is another example. He said one thing months ago ("relax the embargo"), and says a different thing now ("maybe we shouldn't"). And in between that time Castro has started executing dissidents again. Is that really not supposed to matter?

Finally, the campaign finance reform thing. Before he said he'd accept public financing, because the alternative was relying on rich special interests rather than the public. Now he's finding the public might actually be able to outscore the rich special interests, so he might refuse the upper limit. The reason it's not a problem is because of the reasoning and integrity behind it. These critics, including this journalist, are being false.

$10,000 Contest

I am holding a contest for $10,000. I have $10,000 and I am going to give it away as a prize for a contest I am starting. All you have to do is write an essay detailing why you think you deserve my $10,000, and submit it with a small $10 entry fee. At the conclusion of the contest I will read the essays and award the winner my $10,000. The contest is not over until there are at least 1500 entrants. If 1500 entrants are not reached, the contest is void, although I will keep all entrance fees for contest administration purposes. Multiple entries are allowed.

Toby Keith And Iraq

Hoffmania! - The Chronicle of the American Condition

Man. Even Toby Keith is questioning the war in Iraq.

Jose Padilla

We Have Ways of Making You Talk

A sobering article - glad the thoughts are all in one place.

I'm seeing a lot of analysis lately about "testable hypotheses" and "self-justifying assertions", glad to see that line of thought is coming out into the open. The little tricks are becoming more exposed.

As Josh Marshall writes in Talking Points Memo, in reference to the administration using the Iraq failure as justification for the war on terror, "they're yet again trying to bend logic and chronology into a metaphysical pretzel in which the failure of the policy becomes the justification for the policy."

And the US's methods for making Padilla talk are used as justification for not allowing him to talk.

Josh also earlier wrote that usually for a scientific hypothesis, it must be accompanied by a test case that would show how it can fail, and how our current foreign policies don't have this.

The best way to stop this kind of behavior is to expose it, over and over again. Point out how it is not rational, but bullying - tyranny, actually. The problem, though, is that they have no accountability. I know what happens to a person when they live as if something is true because they believe it should be true, rather than because it actually is true, and what happens is that it works for a little while and then they get a big reflection back that affects them negatively. In this case though, the reflection will hit the country, not the leaders. These men do not care about what they are doing to the country. They simply don't care.

Charity Idea

Oslo is world's most expensive city

Deep in this article is an explanation that this bank came to this analysis by comparing "incomes and the cost of living based on the cost of a basket of 111 goods and services."

This is exactly the concept that Peter came up with to help with my idea of a charity that would balance it against exchange rates to find out where someone's charitable donation would have the most value. Would you rather spend $50 to help a homeless man catch three bus rides in Oslo? Or to help a village repair roofs for twenty of their houses in the South Pacific?

IRR for Perl

LJ 48: Financial Calculation Programs for Linux

After doing a lot of looking, I found a perl script that calculates IRR. I'll be incorporating this into my little portfolio-tracking app.

What's Great About Dean?

In a previous comment, DC asks what is so great about Dean.

Well, two things. One is that he's allowed normal citizens to participate in the political process of his campaign, so there's more a sense of participation and ownership there. I think that's really a huge deal. They've also demonstrated again and again their willingness to adjust the campaign based off of feedback given from normal citizens. So there's a community-building vibe to it.

Second is he's relatively immune (so far) to the various tricks and attacks from the right. A good test is when someone from the right asks a leading question. Some people allow themselves to be restricted by the framework of the question. Others have the ability to recognize the trick and actually object to the entire premise of the question. That's really the heart of why people feel like Dean will stand up for them, because they see him standing up for himself. A common feeling in the population is that they're being tricked and are not sure how. So they appreciate when someone can actually point out how.

In that sense, Dean is better than the other five reasonable candidates. I've seen them all of them except for Graham fold at one point or another, and Graham bugs me for other reasons. I've seen Kucinich fold too. I saw Lieberman fold in the 2000 Florida election, and it basically cost Gore the presidency.

The only prospective candidate better at that part of things than Dean is Wesley Clark. I've seen some interviews with him on Meet The Press, Fox News, etc - the guy is awesome and handles himself extremely well, and even turns it around on the questioner. There was a great exchange on Hannity and Colmes, where Hannity started by showing a clip of Tony Blair giving speeches, right in the middle of the big recent Blair controversy, and at the end Hannity said, "A great speech, a great man. Don't you think Tony Blair is a great leader, General Clark?" in that smarmy tone of "of course you agree with me". Clark's response: "Oh he sure is - in the darkest days of the Kosovo conflict, he was right there when we really needed someone." Hannity must have been seething because he railed on Clinton and Blair about Kosovo, but Clark turned it on him in such a way that Hannity couldn't exactly go back on what he just said.

My number on criteria on a candidate is actually how effective he is in avoiding those traps. The right's biggest skill is in convincing idealists to compromise themselves. So I think a centrist with the ability to stand up for himsellf would probably lead to a more liberal result than a President Kucinich who would just get run over.

My Todo List Application

This is the sample output for the web-based todo list application I wrote. (Click for full size). This is the graph view - there is also a list view where you can mark off completed items from the top layer. For the graph view, it made it a lot easier on me when I found the GraphViz library for php. GraphViz is something AT&T Research invented that automatically makes extremely complex bubble graphs just by being told what nodes link to what. So my application allows people to specify the relationships, and then the application automatically draws the bubble graphs like you see on the left.

I was also able to make the image a client-side image map so that clicking on a bubble will take you to the todo item in question. That's not what you see here, though - right now the application only exists here on my iBook. I'll end up pushing it live on my business website... whenever it is that I actually end up launching my business website.

As with any application, once you get the first batch of goals done, you come up with all sorts of other ideas for stuff you could add to it. For a todo list application, you can just throw the entire kitchen sink in there if you want. But, I think I want to keep my completely conceptual, to emphasize relationships rather than scheduling. Once I start adding in due dates and stuff, it turns into a Gantt Chart, and there are already applications for that.

Suicide Terrorists

Suicide Bombers Can Be Stopped

And this is the sort of thing that if a democrat would be saying it, the republicans would be screaming "Appeasers!" for the faint implication that sometimes concessions work.

How To Get Smarter

Win Wenger - Proven Techniques to Boost Your Brain's Performance

"What would it be like," Einstein wondered, "to run beside a light beam at the speed of light?" Normal adults would squelch such a question or forget it. Einstein was different. He played with this question for 10 years. The more he pondered, the more questions arose. Suppose, he asked himself, that you were riding on the end of a light beam and held a mirror before your face. Would you see your reflection?

According to classical physics, you would not -- because light leaving your face would have to travel faster than light in order to reach the mirror. But Einstein could not accept this. It didn't feel right. It seemed ludicrous that you would look into a mirror and see nothing. Einstein imagined rules for a universe that would allow you to see your reflection in a mirror while riding a light beam. Only years later did he undertake proving his theory mathematically.

This is an article that explores how to make yourself smarter. I love that excerpt. Some of it is just about allowing yourself to wonder.

Beyond that it's a set of techniques like you'd find an a Creative Visualization book. I definitely know for myself that insight comes from imagining and attempting to reconcile things that first seem contradictory.

Dean Poster

What a funny, cool poster.

They're for his Sleepless Summer tour of rallies.

More On Voting Machines

Jolted Over Electronic Voting (washingtonpost.com)

People are slowly (but too slowly) paying attention to the vote machine reports.

The WP Examines Iraq Evidence

Depiction of threat outgrew evidence

All right, this article seems like a big deal. I'm just not sure how big of a deal. But it's definitely well-researched and it's definitely exposing Bush "exaggerations" in a very journalistic, Washington Post kind of way.

Justice Kennedy And Minimum Sentences

Kennedy: End minimum sentences

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy called on Congress Saturday to end mandatory minimum sentences, which he says are unwise and unjust, jamming U.S. prisons with young people who lose all hope.

Wow! Wow, wow, wow! This justice has been on a hot streak lately. :)

California Recall

Well, there are probably going to be a couple of more surprise candidates, judging from how it's gone so far, but in my mind the story's just about been written.

First, Darrell Issa gets idiot of the year award. This guy blew millions of dollars only to see Arnie enter the race. He withdrew, and I'm betting he was "encouraged" to withdraw by some Republican something-or-other. But honestly, he was an idiot before then. He blew millions of dollars without ever even considering the impact of the no votes, basically betting that the no voters wouldn't be able to vote for a candidate. This was a very bad bet.

And I'm thinking that Arnie's being an idiot too. I'm just about convinced that Bustamente is going to win this governor's election by a landslide. Here's why.

Davis has 20-30% approval. Those people are going to vote no on the recall. There are also people that disapprove of him, but are still going to vote no on the recall just on principle. This is at least 30% of the vote - and yet, they all get a free vote, to vote for a backup candidate.

If these voters are educated properly, they'll know not to use that vote frivolously. If people are against the recall, they are basically saying that the believe the recall is a sham, and if Davis is ever going to be replaced, he must be replaced using non-recall methods. Bustamente is the only valid choice for them; if Davis were to die or step down, Bustamente would be governor because he's first in line for succession.

And yet, there are also people - many, many people - who are going to vote YES on the recall and then vote for Bustamente.

I just don't see any candidate overcoming Bustamente's support and the majority of the no votes.

So, two stories are going to come out of this.

• Will the California voters opposed to the recall recognize that their best strategy is to band together to support one candidate on the second part of the ballot?
• Will some republican-strategist in disguise take the opportunity to sponsor a "populist" protest vote, for instance petitioning people to write in "None Of The Above" in an effort to make their votes not count and boost Arnie's chances?

Bush Manipulates Science

Politics & Science

Henry Waxman (D-CA) put this site together. I'm seeing Waxman's name in the news a lot more. This site is really good to see - an itemization of when the Bush administration has manipulated scientific findings for political purposes.

Harris and Florida

GRAND THEFT AMERICA

Here's a pretty dramatic presentation about Florida's disenfranchisement of voters in 2000.

Dean Machine

Two amazing articles about Howard Dean over at the Washington Post. It's been an amazing couple of days, too - all of a sudden he's on the cover of both Time and Newsweek, and, polls all of a sudden show him in the lead in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the first big two primaries/caucuses.

Money Learning

So, I'm in this investing club. And since I'm a bit of a delver, I've been diving headlong into stock stuff. Tonight I learned about Compound Annual Growth Rates. Like if you have a 50% gain one year, and a -30% gain the next year, you can't just average them together and call it a 10% gain both years, because that's messed up.

• $100 * 1.5 = $150 * 0.7 = $105 (actual)
• $100 * 1.1 = $110 * 1.1 = $121 (wrong)

They don't match, as you can see. It turns out the CAGR is actually something like 2.47%

• $100 * 1.0247 = $102.47 * 1.0247 =~ $105

So how do you get this number? One of two ways: multiply all the rates together (with 1's; 5% would be 1.05), take them to the Nth root (where N is the number of rates/years), and subtract one, OR average the NATURAL LOG of the gains (plus 1), antilog them, and subtract one. That's complicated. And that's actually a simplified version of IRR, the granddaddy of time-based performance measurements. Anyway it is actually kind of interesting learning about it all.

I'm also learning about stock screens. There are stock screens I'm learning about that have a CAGR of almost 40%, tested over fifteen years. That's insane. I want in. But, they also have Geometric Standard Deviations (where you antilog the standard deviation of the natural logs) that are a bit high. Which means nothing to you, I know. I'm just showing off because I'm a showoff. Bleah! CAGR! GSD! STDEV! Nyeah! But it basically means the risk is high since it measures volatility.

Okay good night. Go Dean.