starting over

it's been a while, and my interests have shifted (again) in the meantime. I hope I'll be able to produce some new content, but I'm pretty sure it won't be on politics again. We'll see ...

Everybody must burn

I notice my perception of issues is occasionally clouded by the black smoke rising from all the burning strawmen in the blogosphere. Heck, I'd say about half of all argumentative blog-posts could be said to be concerned with knocking down strawmen.
In some cases it's a rhetorical tactic, trying to beat your opponents into submission, just getting them to concede to your frame or it's about enjoying a brief moment of intellectual "superiority". Often it is not.
IMO most strawmen are the result of sloppy reading of what the other side has to say, failure to process information sufficiently, reducing it too far in the process and loosing important distinctions, or a general inability/unwillingness to give some serious thought to positions one's gut feelings and core values do not immediately agree with. It should follow, that people are more prone to erecting strawmen the faster they blog.*
The other reason for strawmen is "code". Within the respective echo chambers positions or talking points often get reduced to soundbites and slogans. This makes communication among the in-crowd easier and quicker and - especially if you throw in some hyperbole and nastiness - more fun. One downside is that participants (especially newcomers) may start to believe the slogan. In that case, the public burning of the strawman/slogan is actually useful. The other downside of in-group code is the effect on outsiders, who will often find the slogans repelling and mistake the slogan/strawman version of the argument for the real thing, especially if they're merely visiting. It should follow that people are more prone to burning strawmen the more often they visit echo chambers of the other side and the less often they have genuine debates with those they disagree with.*

* in both cases personality and circumstances obviously go a long way

Bush's religion

Matthew Stinson wonders whether there's an inconsistency in liberal criticism of Bush, seeing that the stared down the Southern Baptist Convention on the matter of one vs. many gods. Matthew argues that this is evidence Bush is not a "Bible-thumping zealot". To which I'd reply.
sorry Matt, but we haven't lowered our standards far enough to credit Bush for _not_ going on a crusade, not making the war on terror about religions and for not being bigoted and intolerant.

Snark aside, AFAIK the criticism is not that Bush is a "Bible-thumping zealot" but that he (a) runs a pretty calculating political machine for someone supposedly of simple faith and honesty - so his piety is considered faux (b) he actively panders to the theocrats, like when nominating Ashcroft (to crack down on porn;) giving money to their charities or on the FMA. (c) his faith -ostensibly- motivates the way he divides the world into good and evil, us and them. It also motivates him to consider himself "on a mission from god" (like the Blues Brothers).
So, I'd say the criticism isn't that he's a Falwell clone, but rather that he's assuming the garb of the pious for political reasons and also believes it himself to the extent it helps him get away with stuff. He is said to use his faith to rationalise (actually it isn't using "ratio" but faith, but I don't think there's a word for using that to justify stuff) his policies, both to himself and to the public. So, to the extent that in doing so he steps outside the boundaries of rational discourse and onto the field where "truth" depends on being well connected to divine powers, he is a "zealot".

Finally, on the one-god stuff: When thinking of the merits of the Bush administration two things always come to my mind (not much else unfortunately). The way he guided the country immediately after 9-11 (IMO he is just a good image (with bad policies) but that was what the country needed then) and his insistence that the WoT has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims as such. Concerning the latter, I probably should give him more credit for it than I do, simply because in his position (with the theocrats as part of the conservative coalition) this stance is not without controversy. I find that hard to do however, because I think fighting islamophobia (as your commenter Scott so nicely put it) should be the duty of any decent person. It feels like congratulating someone for having basic manners or for not being racist/anti-Semitic/homophobic.
Then again, it's also comparable to having basic manners among the vandals, and under that circumstances it's possibly worthy of praise. So yes, I (and other liberals) should give Bush more credit for resisting islamophobia, but I'd ask you, OTOH to accept that we wonder occasionally why he has to hang out with them in the first place.

TCS final

MattY has produced two stellar posts on the matter (one, two), noting that (a) sources do matter

Voters want to know whether or not a given proposal is a genuine free market proposal that the corporations happen to like, or if it's a corporate proposal being dressed up in free market rhetoric. One of the ways you get a sense of this is by looking at the opinions of professional political observers at the conservative and libertarian think tanks and magazines. Thus, if you can gain control of a libertarian opinion outlet and ensure that, at crucial points, it pretends that a pro-corporate, anti-market stance (prohibition of drug reimportation, for example) is, in fact, a pro-market stance that just happens to be pro-corporate, you'll have gained a great deal.

and the fact that the undisclosed DCI connection simply means that anyone needs to think thrice before accepting an argument from TCS, more so than with other venues.

I don't think people should refuse to write stuff for TCS, even stuff that clearly advances the agenda of their corporate sponsors. Sometimes I think big corporations happen to be right, as on the GM food issue. It's just that TCS readers ought to be aware of the nature of the situation over there. Until Nick published his piece, they weren't.

.
I've added some (actually a lot) examples of "shilling" to the former post, but they're too long to reprint here. Pay a visit to MattY.

Earlier posts: one, two, three (or scroll down)

Updated the blogroll

Apologies to every blogger that got thrown out. Nothing to do with quality, just my poor taste.

Apology to Dave Neiwert

I've always regarded David Neiwert as a little, mmh, kooky on account of his strange "rise of the new fascism" thesis, and a cursory reading of his blog. Well, I was wrong. His theses are actually laid out well and carefully, and he goes to great lenghts to distance himself from the Bushitler crowd (I knew he wasn't one of them). His arguments are very convincing, and I'd heartily recommend reading his 12 post epic Rush, Newspeak and Fascism (my favourites are X and XIV), both as the author intended, and as a commentary on the structure of radical Islam. Substituting "rural America" with Iraq, the series should be interesting to both left and right.
Still, concerning Neiwert's central thesis, that there is an imminent danger that fascism might rise in America, I'd disagree. Not because I dispute the wealth of evidence he collected, but because I believe theses signs do not mean what he thinks they do. This is of course a little arrogant of me, since he was/is there and I'm not. Still, I believe conventional explanations in terms of polarisation and demographic shifts which necessitate changes in constituencies can sufficiently account for both the conservative's move to the right, and the increasing intolerance. I think, Neiwert essentially provides a team B assessment, an instance of "Feith-based" intelligence, because he underestimates the basic decency of most conservatives, who would not stand by while their side is highjacked by extremists. The populists might be tempted, but the conservative intelligentsia, which IMO has grown rather important for the conservative cause, just wouldn't accept that sort of thing.
Still, David Neiwert is right in that it's necessary to remain alert of the fascist potential even in mature democracies, and that there is a danger in the continuing overuse of the label "fascist". I hope I'll remember to revisit his "outlandish" theses once in a while, to check whether I still think he's wrong. Thanks for staying on guard.

Conflict resolution

googling around for the previous post, I found a training program on intracable conflict. The main features are the complicating factors and the treatment to them, the core problems and the respective treatment. I'd especially like to recommend their pages on hard bargaining, soft bargaining, principled negotiation and negotiation timing. I think the hard/soft distinction is pretty readily applicable to conservatives and liberals respectively, though I suspect that the side who feels screwed will always assume it's using the soft negotiation style.
Apart from the principled negotiation stuff, attention to I/you statements, options for face-saving surrender and some consideration of destructive speech might also be useful for elevating the level of debate in the blogosphere.

The Corporate Shill 3

Thanks to russell arben fox (whom I don't read, but should), I noticed John Holbo providing both his general opinion and personal thoughts on his writing for TCS. In both, he shows his brilliance. He neither obfuscates the issue, nor attempts to gloss over it, and neither does he consider the revelation that TCS is run by an "astroturf" lobbying firm the greatest breach of journalistic ethics of the year, since he sees no strong slant in commentary. I disagree a bit on the latter, but on the whole his take makes sense, and in his personal take he aptly boils it down to the questions of whether one would want to be associated with DCI, and how one feels about the possibility one's writings might provide cover for astroturf.
The failure to address these two questions/concerns, was what got me so worked up about the TCS authors' responses, and it still does. In Holbo's comments, "William" suggested a comparison to one's reaction to the fact that ANSWER was organising anti-war demonstrations. That comparison works nicely for me, since I wouldn't want to be associated with ANSWER and would have been troubled to lend a hand to their claim that "their" demo was supported by XXX protesters. OTOH, I would maybe have gone anyway, trying to stay away from them as far as possible, and still uneasy about the association.
"William" further states he didn't consider the ANSWER association a big deal, and while I can't really understand that, I can accept it in the spirit of "I went there to speak my voice, who cares who else was there". Ironically, that's the stance most TCS authors have taken, which provides a nice test of integrity, considering their reactions to ANSWER. By that token (AFAIK), Glen Reynolds, Pejman Yousefzadeh, Michael Totten and John Cole (though not a TCS writer) are clearly hypocrites, Jane Galt I don't know about, Daniel Drezner, Matthew Yglesias and John Holbo are in the clear. Provided I remember their positions correctly, why am I not surprised who turns out a hypocrite by this measure and who doesn't?

earlier posts:one, two

Those Uppity Iraqis

whose dissent is undermining the WoT, and whose ingratitude stinks to high heaven: Lileks said

Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you’re the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there’s a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Ba’athists. You owe him.

in response to a somewhat snarky Guardian letter from Salam Pax.
Daniel Drezner shows there's still a decent right, as does Robert Tagorda. OTS is tempted by the argument, Insty jumps to Lileks defense (who expected anything else?). "Liberal" Roger Simon is a good example of the rabid-right's response to insufficent acknowledgement of Dear Leader, (but you can also get that in DD's comments). Atrios' response is short and to the point: "More Gratitude please, it took longer to get to this point in Vietnam, while MattY offers some snark of his own, but his comments provide the best discussion.
Personally, yes, I think I can see where Lileks is coming from and what pissed him off about Salam's letter. Point is, there can be a reasonable debate about the amount of gratitude necessary, there can be reasonable criticism of Salam's tone, but reducing it to "Fuck you, you owe them/us" ("us", since Lileks is probably not talking about a one-to-one gratitude to the three dead Minnesotans) is no different than saying "Me thinks the negro doth protest too much". And that poisons the discourse, since it enables a de-humanising view of the Iraqis, creates the "dumb and ungrateful Iraqi" stereotype. This IMO in turn, is the surest and quickest way to loose in Iraq, for all sides (Let's not kid ourselves, if the US withdraws too soon Iraqis will likely see civil war. Which is why "you bought it, you own it" is the right stance.). Such de-humanisation has already been reported from individual soldiers, and while it's understandable, it nonetheless makes it harder to win hearts and minds. However, once a similar sentiment becomes acceptable to those sitting at home, those not regularly shoot at, who take offence with opinions, not bullets, coming their way, the war may truly be almost lost, because it shows idealism is running out. It's only a small step from stereotyping Iraqis as ungrateful to abandoning them, since the don't appreciate the sacrifice anyway. Sure, Lileks is not stereotyping, but the mindset from which he operates is not that dissimilar. And it's becoming mainstream: In this recent post, I quoted Michelle Goldberg, reporting from a weekend among Republicans. Let me repeat that quote

"Some suggested that the Iraqis themselves are our enemy, that we owe them nothing. Pipes referenced "The Mouse That Roared," the 1959 film in which a poor country declares war on America, hoping to lose and be rebuilt like Germany and Japan. The implication seemed to be that Iraq is both lucky and greedy.
[snip]
Williams chose his words carefully, because while he may believe in democratic reform, he's dismissive of the idea that democracy itself can work in Iraq. Sitting on a panel called "The Media and the War," Williams spoke of Muslims' knack for being wrong about everything. [snip]
After the panel I asked Williams how this Muslim failing bodes for democracy in Iraq. He snorted. "That's a pipe dream," he said, laughing. "Democracy in Iraq?" he repeated, as if he'd never heard anything so preposterous. Noting that the country had never been democratic before, he asked, "What makes you think it's going to work now?"
Many Weekenders shared Williams' doubts. Introducing a panel called "The Iraq Battlefield Now," moderator Kayne Robinson, former chairman of Iowa's Republican Party, indicated that he's stopped believing the administration line. "The premise that people would want passionately to be rescued is of course in question," he said. In fighting the Iraq insurgency, "We're going to kill a lot of Iraqis and restrict their movement. We may well become a guerrilla-manufacturing machine."[snip]

To paraphrase T. S. Eliot: "This is the way the war ends, this is the way the war ends, this is the way the war ends, not with a bang but a whimper."

We're all so predictable

Enjoy Ian Murray admitting he underestimated the number of protesters and watch him spin it so hard it hurts

But it was also a success for Bush and Blair too, in a way. [...snip...] because of the nature of the protests. They were peaceful, restrained, civilized (...).
Now that is good for the leaders. There was no spitting hatred, no violence, nothing to say that the British are violently against the war. That means that the dispute will be seen as a reasoned one -- a genuine disagreement such as is important in a democracy. The protests as seen were exactly the sort of protests that lend legitimacy to the arguments of both sides. Good.
Yet in the end, the protests were those of a minority, as the Guardian poll showed. As the Press Association article has it, the usual suspects were strongly represented: Groups involved included CND, Socialist Workers, the Muslim Association of Britain and many peace groups. Many of the protesters appeared to be students.
To sum up, the protests cannot be taken as evidence of overwhelming hostility to Bush and Blair's policy, they can't be taken as indicative of British public opinion when the polls say otherwise and they show that minorities and radicals can demonstrate in a peaceful and civilized fashion about things they feel strongly about.

No, the protests certainly don't mean anything, merely a small disgruntled minority, and people's actions certainly don't count louder that the words they spend on some pollster. In the end, 100,000 people protesting against him was a victory for Bush.
Ian Murray may have had the decency to admit his glaring prediction error on the number of protesters, but he remains a partisan idiot, unable to face reality when it doesn't hit him in the form of hard facts/numbers. The sad thing is, I'm convinced (a) Murray would have vigourously defended the protests of 100,000 against Clinton and (b) some lefty partisan idiot would have written Murray's post, saying the protests against Clinton meant nothing.

The Corporate Shill 2

Expanding on this earlier entry. It's amazing, how many of those who have written for TCS respond in the same manner.
I didn't know, I certainly never was forced/asked to lend my name to a predetermined opinion. I only had contacts to Nick Schulz. The whole thing is a smear campaign or a tempest in a teapot.
Now Andrew Northrup explains what's wrong with this argument in an extension to his earlier entry and while it's understandable that those concerned would want to defend their integrity first, I'm somewhat surprised, that not one of them seems to contemplate the idea that they have allowed themselves to be used or at least were used. It also seems strange that not one of them would want to distance themselves from TCS in light of this, while standing by the articles they wrote. The latter part suggests a serious case of poor ethics, and I hope those concerned will catch up in this respect once they've calmed down a bit. Confronting the possibility that one may have been used is probably even harder, and possibly extra hard for libertarians, when the abusers is a corporate entity.
While I think one should wait before passing judgement, I must confess I'm somewhat surprised that not one of them (AFAIK) would so much as state that they're troubled by this news and will have to think about this some more.
UPDATE: Kieran Healy wrote a good parody on TCS at CT.
Besides, it just occurred to me, there is a another reason why TCS writers wouldn't want to reconsider their engagement. If TCS is a lobbying front, that means their articles were perhaps not selected on their merits, but because they agreed with some lobbying purpose. Which in turn might simply mean that they're not as good writers as they thought. (Remember, the market tells you how good you are in the libertarian view. Finding that they're merely good enough to provide some cover for lobbying might hurt.)
Which is not to say their arguments shouldn't be weighted on their merits or that they are poor writers. I'm merely trying to explain the unwillingness to question themselves and TCS in terms of assuming your success stems from the merits of your writing and the sudden intrusion of information that would undermine that belief, and the possible loss of/threat to self-esteem that causes.
UPDATE 2: Tim Lambert has summed up Linux coverage on TCS. Alternatively, compare and contrast MS coverage and Linux coverage for yourselves.
another one:Ars Technica's take

Atta in Prague

I just cooked up something that is possibly a crazy conspiracy theory in the comments to this Matthew Yglesias post on the Epstein article in Slate which tries to re-argue the case for Atta meeting Al-Ani in Prague.
Update: via this TPM post, this Newsweek article offering a different perspective.

Lion's den

UPDATE: Ok, forget this post, it's lame, lame, lame. Read Jesse's post and don't bother to come back, quality is elsewhere

via Norbizness (in comments to this post at Pandagon) I found this article by Michelle Goldberg on a weekend with the GOP. The interesting parts:

Here is what I learned: The self-regarding humanitarianism that the right wrapped itself in before the war with Iraq is beginning to fray and chafe. At Restoration Weekend there was anxiety about the postwar situation, and anger. Senators and congressional representatives avowed their faith that Bush's fabled steadfastness made victory assured in Iraq, a stance they struggled to reconcile with the White House's recently announced decision to expedite the transfer of power to Iraqis and scale back the occupation by election season. Meanwhile, the right's intellectuals and activists had largely scrapped talk of democracy. Some suggested that the Iraqis themselves are our enemy, that we owe them nothing. Pipes referenced "The Mouse That Roared," the 1959 film in which a poor country declares war on America, hoping to lose and be rebuilt like Germany and Japan. The implication seemed to be that Iraq is both lucky and greedy.
[snip]
Williams chose his words carefully, because while he may believe in democratic reform, he's dismissive of the idea that democracy itself can work in Iraq. Sitting on a panel called "The Media and the War," Williams spoke of Muslims' knack for being wrong about everything. [snip]
After the panel I asked Williams how this Muslim failing bodes for democracy in Iraq. He snorted. "That's a pipe dream," he said, laughing. "Democracy in Iraq?" he repeated, as if he'd never heard anything so preposterous. Noting that the country had never been democratic before, he asked, "What makes you think it's going to work now?"
Many Weekenders shared Williams' doubts. Introducing a panel called "The Iraq Battlefield Now," moderator Kayne Robinson, former chairman of Iowa's Republican Party, indicated that he's stopped believing the administration line. "The premise that people would want passionately to be rescued is of course in question," he said. In fighting the Iraq insurgency, "We're going to kill a lot of Iraqis and restrict their movement. We may well become a guerrilla-manufacturing machine."[snip]
The members of the panel included U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.; U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.; U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.; and the controversial pro-Israel scholar Daniel Pipes, whom Bush recently appointed to sit on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Perhaps constrained by politics, Coleman and Pence offered strings of banalities, euphemisms and professions of faith in the president's faith.

Maybe this will put an end to the dumb rumour being peddled on the right, that the left wants to "cut and run".
I also liked her explanation of "the left"'s motive, since it's really quite simple

I'm quoting now from the speech I wrote, which may not actually be the speech I gave, since I improvised as I spoke. There's something strangely exhilarating about standing before your opponents and, after two days of keeping your mouth shut, telling them what you think, though perhaps I could have been more eloquent if I had been less angry.
"Few liberals doubted the righteousness of ridding the world of Saddam," I said. "They doubted the competence of the Bush administration not to make a mess of things. Can you really look at what's happening in Iraq and say they were wrong?"
This, of course, was an obvious mistake, since much of the crowd shouted, "Yes!"
A little thrown, I continued, saying that many liberals would have supported a multilateral war waged on humanitarian grounds. They protested, though, because they "believed that the administration's case for war was dishonest and its plan for occupation dangerous, and I suspect some of you know in your hearts that they were right."
"Groups like ANSWER let you dismiss Bush's opponents as loony nihilists," I said, "but I met many people at antiwar demonstrations who have as much claim to American-ness as anyone at this conference, and they're afraid of where you want to lead this country."
I ended by saying that, because Bush ignored the country's uneasiness about the war, there was now diminishing support for the deteriorating occupation, creating the danger that America will simply give up on Iraq. "If the American people, feeling betrayed, force their country to betray the Iraqis, this war will have won us nothing at all," I said, a line that, surprisingly, was applauded by some of the audience, people who perhaps really believed that this was a war for democracy.

The Corporate Shill

Via Josh Marshall I learned of Nick Confessore's article on the lobbying firm behind TCS, TechCentralStation. Per Marshall's post the company is famous for creating phoney grass-roots campaigns.
Initial reactions include Chris Bertram, Andrew Northrup (with some older bonus material, TCS parodies, MattY, Daniel Drezner (who hereby stops being "Liebling des Monats", not because of this, but because it's a convenient excuse. The new liebling will be Andrew Northrup, for another post, but it's fitting) and Glenn Reynolds.
I've noted that some on the right seem to be prone to a particular misunderstanding in the matter, assuming it is about "sponsoring". It isn't. It's about (a) keeping this secret and (b) being owned (not sponsored) by a lobbying firm, which, unlike a think thank, can't be said to have an ideology one may adhere to (unless "making money" has become a new philosophical or political school of thought and I just didn't notice) and which is also probably not interested in making money by selling articles to the reader, but more likely to sell articles to the sponsor. Of course, if done well, the latter part comes naturally and the author may not be aware. Nonetheless, the whole operation seems to come down well on the public relations side of the journalism-PR distinction.

UPDATE: read some of these articles if you don't see the point. Especially this one from Megan McArdle, who offers her own take on TCS here.
UPDATE 2: Pejman got a bit worked up and IMO completely misses the point (then again, IMO that the usual run of things)

The 20 percent canard

I'll just reproduce the e-mail I sent to the WP ombudsman, Richard Cohen and (with small additions) to Spinsanity, concerning Cohen's How to loose a friend in today's WP:

dear Sir

while I would like to thank you for your kind words for the Germans, and your attempt at highlighting some of the sources of our current transatlantic difficulties, I'm saddened to see you also contribute to these difficulties by spreading the 20 percent canard.
I'm aware it has been repeated several times elsewhere, the last time I think by Anne Appelbaum in the NYT[ed: WP! read it here and the corresponding CT post for context]. Your assertion in the oct 23rd column of the WP, while probably blameless, is nonetheless incorrect.
For one, 20 percent of Germans in that poll said that Bush (not the United States) could (not has) have commissioned (not sponsored) the 9-11 attack. That's three factual errors, the second undoubtedly the most grave. Your addition "to provoke a war" was not part of the question and hence is an unmarked interpretation on your part.
On top of these severe factual errors, you assert the poll result as fact, when in fact the 20 percent number is the number of people who said they believe it. The actual number of people who believe Bush could have commissioned 9-11 may be smaller or larger, we don't know. I'm aware that journalists are prone to consider poll results as wholly representative of opinions without questioning the validity of the poll. However, in this case the distinction is important, since the poll consisted of two questions only, the first about doubts concerning media coverage (a result, which, by the way, I haven't seen repeated elsewhere) and the second deliberately worded as to draw as yes response even from "those that consider a Bush involvement in 9-11 merely a vague possibility" (poll question author Dr. Bittner, private e-mail, available on request). Obviously, considering something a vague possibility is not the same as believing something happened, right?

So, while repeating my thanks for your kind words, I nonetheless demand that you correct the record concerning the 20 percent your errors become the source of the next columnist/journalist.

yours sincerely
markus XXXX
p.s.: more on the poll: http://brmic.blogspot.com/2003_07_20_brmic_archive.html#105903902626051528

Trip to Washington

I'll be going to Washington, DC for a workshop on nonlinear methods in psychology at the NSF (which incidentally makes me extremely happy, but that isn't the point). I'll be arriving Wednesday the 22nd and leaving Tuesday the 28th, and the workshop is on the 24th and 25th IIRC. I'll definitively have some time to kill on Monday the 27th and maybe on the other days as well (and I've been to DC previously).
I'd be delighted to meet someone while over there, so if you're in DC, just drop me a mail.

It is not dead what forever lies

sorry for the lack of updates, I'm still terribly busy at work and likely will remain so until the end of the year. So at least until November, don't expect any updates, I will however continue reading what you can find on my blogroll (and some others). Sorry about that, but right now work has to take top priority.

What I've been reading
- John Holbo and Daniel Davies discuss the benefits of killing the music industry.
- Steve Verdon does some fact checking on Corn (one, two). Turns out Corn was misleading. Which of course explains why it doesn't really bother Steve that Bush uses false numbers in his speech, Steve is sure an incompetent underling is responsible. Corn OTOH is a lying liar. It's a pity to see the exposure of Corn's trickery tarnished by reflexive Bush defense which in the end IMO leaves Steve looking pretty stupid.
- Mike from Unassigned topics explains what's wrong with Proposition 54 and why the 9th has a point in postponing the recall in California
- Nitpicker sees a disturbing picture cult (link not bi-partisan safe)
- what your sleeping position reveals (sorry, forgot the source)
- M. C. Escher pictures in LEGO (Relativity, Waterfall, Ascending, Belvedere) (link from The Sideshow)
- Nick Barlow on Hellblazer and a never realised Alan Moore comic
- The Gweilo asks the Imam about dildos and masturbation (link via Fearful Symmetry)
- a good discussion between Timothy Garton Ash and Charles Moore on Britain and the EU (link from A Fistful of Euros)
- An interview with Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder's op-ed in the NYT. (link from Fearful Symmetry)

I need help

I've asked a couple of economists about this per e-mail, but I thought I might put it up here as well in case someone who knows the answer happens to come along.
The problem I have is that we're having a discussion in psychology concerning a dynamical systems account of cognition versus the more traditional serial modular accounts. One argument for dynamic systems is the presence of 1/f noise* in experimental performance, which is taken as indicative of underlying self-organised criticality by the advocates of the dynamic systems perspective. The problem is of course, that 1/f noise can be mimicked by overlaying several different autocorrelations (AFAIK this is the usual approach in mechanics). The question is, why is this the wrong approach? Specifically, considering the excerpt below, what happened to Granger's theory (1980) in economics.** If you happen to know, please take the time to drop me a hint.

Jensen (1998, p. 13) noted, “Although 1/f-like spectra might be indicative of critical behavior, they do not guarantee it. There are plenty of ways to produce 1/f spectra without any underlying critical state (…)”. One such explanation is popular in econometrics, and is due to Granger (1980). Granger hypothesized that the 1/f^α noise observed in global economic measures come about via aggregation of multiple component processes that separately generate transient correlations. Specifically, assume each of a possible infinite number of component processes, X_t(i)=1,2,..., is a simple independent first-order autoregressive process (i.e., AR[1]), where behavior on time t depends partially on behavior on time t-1: X_t(i)=Φ_i X_t-1(i) + ε_t(i), where Φ_i ε(-1,1) is an independent white noise process with mean zero and variance σ_i². It is well known that each of these component AR(1) processes generates rapidly decaying serial correlations. The overall behavior of the system is assumed to be a simple aggregation of the behavior of the component processes: X_t=∑_i=1^∞ X_t(i). When the parameters Φ_i come from a beta distribution with suitable parameters, Granger (1980) showed that the aggregate series X_t displays persistent serial correlations (see also Beran, 1994, pp. 14-16).

Beran, J. (1994). Statistics for long-memory processes. New York, Chapman and Hall.
Granger, C. W. J. (1980). Long memory relationships and the aggregation of dynamic models. Journal of Econometrics, 14, 227-238.
Wagenmakers, E-J., Farrell, S., & Ratcliff, R. (2003). Human cognition and a pile of sand: A discussion on serial correlations and self-organized criticality. Manuscript submitted for publication.

*1/f noise is autocorrelation across the whole frequency range (0 to Nyquist), decaying in strength as frequency increases
** in addition, I'd be interested in some simple models (from economics or elsewhere) that generate 1/f noise.

What I've been reading

- Cronic Dishonesty: Crooked Timber, Josh Marshall, Emma and the Washington Post rip apart Cheney's attempts to fool voters. Kevin Drum 1, 2) thinks the problem is more widespread, see for instance DailyKos quoting Tucker Carlson

- Jim Henley smashes several flypaper theories in one post.

- Tim Dunlop get's denbestesque in two long post on the WoT (one, two). Fortunately he provides the Shorter Version himself: "No-one is happy about the mess the US has made, and we don't want to give them a post-dated rubber stamp for their error of invading, but the war is over and the peace must be won and of all the awful options available the best is to internationalise the occupying force asap and make Iraq a viable state, even if that means the US stays in control."

- WTO talks failed, Crooked Timber says it's a sign it wasn't about free trade after all, the anti-globalisation activists were right. Brad DeLong more or less agrees.
- the Onion reports on the end of relations between U.S. and Them.

- Paul Krugman: More comments on his Sunday Times piece: TAPped thinks the deficit is a deficit of choice. Don't miss Kevin Drum's interview with Krugman (Brad DeLong elaborates on the "Argentinia scenario") and it you think that's too shrill, take the time to re-read some older Slate columns. This treasure is available through the Official Krugman Web Page at MIT. I can recommend supply-side virus, hot-dog globalisation, praise of cheap labour, savings and growth, democracy and rat choice, The awful German economy.

- I never expected to, but I finally got a chance to use my professional training in the blogosphere. There's some story going round that
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae.
This is of course nonsense. The joke relies on the redundancy or language (more than 50% for English) and syntactic and semantic cues to the next word in a sentence (IIRC people can guess the next word in an interrupted sentence with above 80% accuracy). Still, modern models of visual word recognition in humans don't emphasise letter order that much, but that's mostly due to the fact that they are basically neural networks, which work out the correct word from the visual stimulus based on cohering and conflicting activation of single letters. I dropped some thoughts on the matter at Crooked Timber and Language Hat, spamming their comments to a certain extent. I've spared Uncle Jazzbeau, Tim Dunlop, Inert Ramblings, semantics etc, Stanna, Unfogged and Metafilter.
Oh yes, it seems the joke comes from David Harris' blog, as his confession seems to indicate. I lack the time to write a long post on this now, but if you're interested in visual word recognition (drop comment/mail) I'd be delighted to write about it by the weekend.

Tax Cut Con

Amazing Krugman article in the NYT, pointing out the difference between supply-siders and starve-the-beasters, considering the economic validity of supply-side economics (in a rather even-handed fashion by Krugman standards) and in the ends saying the American people will have to choose between tax-cuts or social programmes.
I can't vouch for the economics (I'm still educating myself with the Brad DeLong course) but Krugman makes sense both at an intuitive level and by his arguments. Worth reading I'd say. (link from Crooked Timber)
UPDATE: From a second CT post I took the link to a David Firestone column, which is more detailed and a Matt Miller column Andrew Tobias archived.

Criticism of Krugman comes from Just one minute, who notes omissions and goes on to make some snide comments. Still, he's not finished yet and a solid critique might yet emerge. Take a look.
Atlantic blog OTOH is merely nitpicking, but provides no substantial critique IMO. Arnold Kling basically agrees with Krugman.
Also check out Emma's take on Krugman in general.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More reactions from Matthew Stinson who basically agrees, as do Chris Lawrence and Robert Prather. The latter brings up the quite reasonable point that the deficit is good reason to start talking about cuts/reform in social services now. (latter link from Outside the Beltway). Matthew Yglesias thinks that such a discussion is a sure way to lose an election (I agree).
In related news Kevin Drum tells us that Krugman's real predictions are even more bleak that he usually let's on.

What I've been reading

- Matthew Yglesias has 2.5 great posts on what's wrong with Bush (hint: it's _not_ the lack of debate on the right in general), and on a a modest foreign policy.
- Nick Barlow defends the "Yes, but"
- Joe Conason does a good job admitting his errors in Big Lies.
- The mighty reason man provides a guide to right wing blogs, and a Luskin case study
- riting on the wall has a nice list of things that should make you uneasy
- Nitpicker found a funny reason why the media is conservative (funny for partisans only ;)
- Jim Henley explains why Rumsfeld shouldn't whine about criticism.
- Jack O'Toole answers Sullivan's slur, and Rumsfeld's remarks.
- Tacitus explains why it isn't the media's fault and agrees with Henley concerning Rumsfeld

- TAPped has Obey's polite letter to Bush calling for Rumsfeld to resign.
- the WP reports Bush frequent reference to 9-11.
- through a discussion on Pandagon I got the link to an Albert Hunt 2001 article in the WSJ about what would have happened under a Gore presidency. Bleak to say the least.

- Steve Verdon teases apart what Demosthenes conflated in the debate on Lying in ponds and Krugman. Go read it if you're still undecided. (btw, D's comments are back, so my earlier take is available again. But Steve's is better.)

Smearing the Spiegel

German magazine Der Spiegel has come under attack by a bunch of idiots like Hans ze beeman*, Eamonn Fitzgerald (twice*) and Jeff Jarvis. The issue: the cover depicts the burning towers of the WTC upside down and the lead article is about conspiracy theories.
In the spirit of the Ann Coulter school of fact-checking, this became evidence of the Spiegel's cynicism, a new low, a pandering to prejudices and suspicions, and promoting of conspiracy terrorists.
Unfortunately none of these idiots read the article, otherwise they'd have know that the Spiegel is fisking the conspiracy terrorists real hard, calling them "a panoply of the absurd" and "complete nonsense". My favourite is this one: "But to conspiracy theorists, discovering the truth is like solving a crossword puzzle for children: What's a four-letter word for a domesticated animal? Hrse" (in German it says: pet with four letters? Ktze (cat=Katze)).
To sum up, the critics of the Spiegel mentioned above are in league with the conspiracy terrorists, making something from nothing and distorting the truth. In a related article the Spiegel said: Forgers and braggarts are using the Internet to disseminate legends and lies. No other medium is so suitable for selling falsehoods as the truth. Nowhere else can cranks and pranksters achieve a greater effect with less effort. Exactly.
Fortunately some people jumped to defend the magazine against the smear, most notably Wortfeld, Sadly, no! and Randal Robinson. Thanks guys.
Instead of wasting more time on this, just read the summaries or better still read the article, you might learn a thing or two about fisking.

*To be fair, Hans corrected his post but couldn't resist covering his embarassment with a few snide remarks about the Spiegel. update: Eamon's second post focusses on the cover only, I've responded in his comments.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the major downside of the article, the reliance on a Forsa poll showing Germans believe Bush might have been behind 9-11. I worte about it here (scroll down to "It's possible Bush was behind 9-11"). Short version: it was a two question poll, lead question on doubts about media coverage, second one deliberately worded as to get a juicy result. Still the result is embarrassing. Not surprisingly the poll became a favourite with Germany-bashers everywhere.

Remembering 9-11

I didn't post yesterday because I feel nothing I can say or do will do justice to the tragedy. I might make a feeble attempt to describe my horror and rage on that day, but I believe I still haven't properly grasped 9-11 and likely never will. To me, each death leaves a hole in reality, someone who was "always" there is suddenly gone and the memory of them is suddenly all that is left, and I feel it is a feeble and poor substitute for the person that is gone. Turning to 9-11, I can recognize it for the attack on humanity it was, I can draw lessons from it and so on and so forth, but I for one, can not "understand" the death of so many. To me it remains a huge a hole, a gap in reality that we'll never be able to fill.

The lesson I draw from 9-11 is probably best described by saying the world is united against those responsible, we're only arguing how best to destroy you. That's why I'll fight any attempt to use 9-11 for partisan purposes or the justification of one's own agenda. Commemorating 9-11 I stand with Bush and the neoconservatives and the Christian fundamentalists as well as with the hard left and any other decent person on the planet. We may not share the conclusions we draw, but we share the sorrow and grief and the sense of loss.

Riefenstahl is Nazi-bitch finally dead

Hitler's favourite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl died of cancer.
I'm sorry to have to admit that in that black heart of mine I'm glad she's dead. One shouldn't feel like that about another person, but she's a special case. Having that woman around, someone I hold responsible for Nazi success and who symbolized Nazi-coddling, and having her brush that off with feeble defenses, "rebuilding her reputation" as CNN puts it, curiously omitting the quotation marks always felt like an albatros hanging around my neck.
Though it shouldn't be that way, I know I'll sleep more soundly tonight.

She has committed --
Fornication -- but that was in another age;
And besides, the wench is dead.
-- C. Marlowe, The Jew of Malta

What I've been reading

Still busy, so I can offer only these:
- Tips for Good Weblog Design and Layout (link from Plastic Thinking)
- Josh Marshall on Comical Wolfi
- via Hellblazer: Stratfor on UN-Iraq backroom deals
- Coldfury on the ever changing WMD storyline
- at Tompaine: Richard Blow praises Dean and Franke for their passion
- Daniel Drezner on (academic) criticism
- an old (2001) essay from Paul Berman in TAPped explain why it's war on terrorism, not policing. I don't agree, but it's a good article worth (re-)visiting. (the link came up in a thread at Michael Totten's blog)
- speaking of which, he also has a good fisking of a stupid Chomsky interview
- Kevin from Lean Left is inspired by the Corner to apologize to the White Sox
- Oh yes, and I liked Bush's speech. The Washington Post wasn't impressed especially considering the price tag. I for one was simply glad that Bush acknowledged some harsh realities. One's got to be grateful for small mercies these days.
- OTOH, I was really happy with this Paul Bremer's plan for postwar Iraq. Add dates and details and we're ready to go. (Then again, why is this an op-ed in the WP and not headline news?)
- Nitpicker tries to find the blame America crowd, and when he can't find them he vents his frustrations by ripping apart Hitchens
- A fistful of Euros introduces Work Freedom Day

German news

- we are still 'not convinced'
...of the proposed UN resolution. The opposition argues

it would be wiser if Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac found a diplomatic way to inform Washington of their reservations, “instead of once again presenting this public coordinated action.”

While I support the criticism of bluntness (we can't out-bully the likes of Rumsfeld) I see no fault in public and coordinated action between France and Germany. However, I'm happy to see the opposition and Schröder agree to Chirac's statement

'We are ready to examine the proposals, but they seem quite far from what appears to us the primary objective, namely the transfer of political responsibility to an Iraqi government as soon as possible.'

I'd love to see them use their new-found leverage at the UN to make Bush come up with a proper plan which truly 'liberates' the Iraqi people as soon as reasonably possible. OTOH given the current security situation demanding anything beyond a plan would be unreasonable. Apart from that it's sad to see the Greens in denial about the need for more troops.
Die Zeit has a fine idea how UN involvement in Iraq might work. Like Afghanistan. Sound's like a joke, but the idea of separating the search for Baathists (a US job, like Enduring Freedom) from the peacekeeping (a UN job, like ISAF) might be a good starting point.
UPDATE: Cum grano salis comes to similar conclusions from the other side of the road.
- it's official, we're idiots:

...a majority of U.S. participants would support the use of force to rid countries of weapons of mass destruction. Even less surprisingly, this was not a view shared by those Europeans surveyed...
The percentage of Germans who want their country to play an active role has risen to 82 percent ...with 70 percent in favor of the EU becoming a superpower... However, that figure would drop to 36 percent if becoming a superpower meant European countries spending more on defense.

The first result may be due to poor wording, but the second opinion is just downright idiotic. 34% freeriders? One in three? I need to have some talks with my countrymen. You OTOH should visit A Fistful of Euros who've got more. BTW, let me be the first to observe that 'A fistful of Euros' abbreviates as A FOE. I guess the europhobes and French-bashers will have a field day when they realize this. They'll be even more delighted to find out conspiracy theories sell well. (btw, that Forsa poll the article mentions is the one I discussed here.)
- the German economy is in bad shape and will likely remain so, and I'm beginning to suspect that the multitude of supervisory board positions our "old boys" hold might have more than a little to do with this.

Comment trouble

Something's wrong with the comments, I see them on Squakbox, but they don't show up on the blog. I've no idea why this is or how to fix it, but I'll keep monitoring Squakbox directly until I find out.
I apologize to everyone whose comment was ignored, I just didn't notice them until now.
UPDATE mike says (in comments) he can see them, and I found even I can, provided I use IE instead of Safari (which is _not_ an option). I'll keep trying to fix it.

Foreigners

Thomas Nephew from Newsrack blog has two posts up on expatriates in America and Germany who qualify as "German bloggers". He introduces Andreas Schaefer author of dekaf, the anonymous author of Siebenviertel, Konstantin Klein (who was recently mentioned in a journalism magazine, but the rest of the article was useless), and Scott Hanson aka Papa Scott.
Oh yes, and don't miss A Fistful of Euros the new group blog focussing on European matters and a European perspective. The haven't posted much yet, but I'm very confident this will be a great blog. I can personally vouch for the quality of bloggers Tobias Schwarz from Almost a diary, Scott Martens from Pedantry, and Nick Barlow (I'm confident the rest are equally good, I just don't know them yet.). I've really been looking forward to this kind of blog and meant to turn more of my attention to European matters myself for a while, but couldn't get a proper grip. Most German commentary somehow seems trivial, in the sense that I know the line of reasoning/thought and have already formed an opinion on the matter. Similarly most news is not newsworthy to me in the sense that everyone around me knows about it anyway.
Musing on neo-conservatives seems more interesting by comparison, but I'll try to change that.

What I've been reading

in no particular order:
- one, two, three, four great posts by Josh Marshall and a his fine article about Bush's post-modern presidency
- a fine interview with Paul Krugman (link from Hesiod)
- a stupid article pseudo-psychoanalysing Bush in the Guardian. I explained why it's bullshit in Michelle's comments. (for the record, Hellblazer linked to the article earlier, but I didn't bother to comment)
- speaking of which, an old post (Toadies from Hell) of his was recently reproduced at the Big Picnic. It's strong stuff and I don't agree with all of it, but it's a great post I heartily recommend.
- Lawrence Kaplan says the American public can stomach dead soldiers but not the prospect of defeat. (link from Daniel Drezner) You read it here first.
- Arthur Silber has a great post on the Bush administrations post-war planning. Highly recommended.
- oh yes, and JB's back. He's got a good post on the future of conflict and some details on tea. I'm still undecided which post is more informative.
- Demosthenes responds to the LIP-Krugman debate I contributed to earlier (1, 2). Since his YACCS comments are down and his grasp of methodology is still disappointing I'll refute his argument again for the record. Demosthenes argues the operationalisation of partisanship used by LIP is worthless because it is simplistic (3 possible ratings) and crude (fails to take into account sentence structure, tone and theme). He's right in this, but that doesn't make the method worthless. As I said repeatedly, this isn't logic where a flaw ruins the entire argument. The faults Demosthenes points out reduce the quality of the analysis, that is we can't be too sure of the exact position of each columnist in the ranking, but generally the order will be about right. The methodological reason for this is that to wholly discount LIP's rankings we'd have to make the case that LIP is measuring either something unrelated to partisanship or that the error component completely dominates the results. The second is the only plausible option, but we can safely rule it out as well, noting that positive/neutral/negative references to parties and politicians are a obviously a component of partisanship and with rare exceptions (e.g. ironic praise) the theme, tone and sentence structure of columns do not contradict the quality of the references. However, to follow Demosthenes you would have to believe and argue that these other components regularly _do_ contradict the references counted and rated by LIP. It doesn't matter whether they in theory could, to affect LIP's results their adverse influence has to be shown to be at work both constantly and to a major degree. Good luck.
In case this was unclear, let me try an analogy (hate them, really. this is the first on this blog AFAIK). Suppose you want to measure aggressiveness among bloggers. To do this properly you'd have to be a qualified psychologist, visit them at their house, check biographical data, interview them, their family and friends and administer several different tests. Since you're not really that interested, you focus on the use of insults like "objectively pro-Saddam", "pinko", "commie", "facist", "racist", "Nazi" and additionally rate each reference to either side of the debate as aggressive, neutral or gap-bridging (sorry, couldn't think of a better term). Counting direct insults will allow you to identify the thugs, but you won't be able to say a lot about moderately aggressive or "dovish" bloggers (admittedly, the latter group may be the product of my deranged imagination). Taking a look at references will get you a clearer picture, and you might want to break up the results into the "fight everybody", the "fight the enemy" and the "peaceful" crowds. Noting that aggression against one's one side can be seen as a form of auto-aggressive you can also use a single dimension and order thugs, fight everybody, fight the enemy and peaceful crowds. Now suppose along comes blogger D, telling you that your whole analysis is a bunch of bull because a) there are valid reasons for aggression and some people have more of these b) your method is crude and c) you failed to consider the context of the individual references (I'll assume you already made an effort to score passive and covert forms of aggression, so D refers to tone and theme and sentence structure) and finally d) blog posts are a poor indicator.
How would you respond ?
I'd say a) good point, but in the long run this should even out somewhat. If someone finds a valid reason to fight everyday I assume they are looking for it b) admittedly, but you don't claim to have measured aggressiveness exactly, you use a decent indicator c) admittedly aggression can also manifest itself e.g. in particularly strong language. Nonetheless it is safe to assume that most bloggers either use strong language and aggressive references simultaneously or use strong language to express their emotional reaction while keeping in mind that they actually have very few real enemies. A serious distortion would only occur if a large number of bloggers subtly channelled their aggression into strong language while keeping the references neutral to appear balanced (this type exists, but I haven't come across a lot of them). Finally d) admittedly you only capture the aggressiveness of blog posts, you can't say a lot about their aggressiveness in real life.
The latter point is actually important, and I forgot the distinction myself in previous posts (stupid me). The conclusion from LIP's analysis is not that Krugman is partisan, but that Krugman writes partisan columns. For all I know, he might be the patriot saint of bipartisanship in real life, I (and LIP) can only evaluate his columns.