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Virginia Tech shootings
This is horrible. I just checked the news for the first time all day. 31 people dead?
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Taxes done
Surprisingly they were within a few hundred dollars of what I thought they would be, which is not to say what I’m happy with, but at least they’re filed.
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A paper worth reading
On the rise of privateers. We’ve let this option go as our country has become wealthier, but it’s worth looking at.
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Best headline of the year so far
From the Grand Rapids Press: Snow won’t dampen global-warming rallies
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What I got wrong about the Iraq war
I was going to write this a while back, but here it is. I was on the fence about it at the time, but history did not to wait for me to reach a position.
What I was wrong about with regard to Iraq (2003 assumptions)
- I thought we would have over 10,000 military deaths by this point.
- I thought the war would take about a year of heavy fighting.
- I thought it would be over after that year
- I thought the Sunni-Shia split would not play out as it has, rather that it would stay at or around the 2004 level
- I thought we would have much more negative blowback – for all of the shouting and protests, not much has really happened on that front
- I thought we would have found at least chemical weapons (in large quantities)
- I did not think that Kurdistan would turn out as well as it has
- I thought Turkey would have intervened in some form by now
- I thought al Qaida would have benefited more, it seems that they have been hurt (in terms of their ideological appeal) by the Iraq war (more on that later)
- I did not think that we would still have this many troops (fighting) at this point.
- I thought that there would be much more conventional combat, and much less of this gang warfare
- I thought that the Iraqis would have scored at least three major wins (surprise attacks in some fashion) in the scores of battles that have happened since the war began. They don’t seem to have won any against American troops.
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Friday round up
- Crime Crews
- Where the Fortune 50 CEOs went to college – appearances by Georgia State and Georgia Tech, surprisingly little Ivy League.
- Government menstrual forms, really, to quote
Women officers must write down their “detailed menstrual history and history of LMP [last menstrual period] including date of last confinement [maternity leave],” the form says.
I like the use of the term “confinement” for maternity leave.
- Solar Power – I was wondering why companies like this didn’t already exist. Essentially they install (and own) solar panels on top of your house, and you buy it from them them at the rate you’re paying the power company. I met them yesterday at the Home Show at the World Congress Center. A good idea.
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Chinese people cannot know my wisdom
I’m being blocked by the Great Firewall of China. How cruel.
Oddly enough, Jargondatabase.com is freely available.
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More Friedman
While looking over David Friedman’s blog today, I came across this article on “The Economics of War“. It’s an interesting read. Here is another one I haven’t read in ten years or so, Paying for Crime Prevention it winds up being a partial defense of the system we have in America where the government is not liable if a defendent is acquitted at trial. To wit:
The outcome of a criminal case depends, among other things, on decisions made by police and prosecutors. Consider a situation where, at some point in the proceedings, the police begin to suspect that they may have the wrong man. Suspicion is not certainty; they can choose to ignore the evidence that their suspect is innocent or someone else is guilty. They can also choose to do their best to keep such evidence out of sight of the defense. How likely they are to do so depends in part on the cost to them of being proven wrong. Under a legal system in which acquitting the defendant, or dropping charges after he has been imprisoned for some time, results in sizable cash penalties against the police department or its individual officers, the police have a strong incentive to repress their doubts and push for a conviction.
How serious this problem is depends on a variety of factors. If there is a substantial chance that the conviction of an innocent will eventually be discovered and reversed, a police department that suppresses such evidence risks having to pay for years in jail instead of months. If, on the other hand, such a reversal is unlikely, suppressing evidence may be an attractive gamble.
I suppose that is another variant of the Gandhi game, or turning the other cheek as it’s less tactically known.
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Schelling points
I refered to these in an earlier post, so I figure a definition is in order. I originally came across it in David Friedman’s ruminations on the origins of Natural Rights theory. He defines it broadly as “a possible solution to the problem of coordination without communication”.
“Communication” might be better defined as meaningful communication. He lists many examples in the essay where no communication is possible, as well as zero-sum conflict where communication would not be believed.
The functional definition (i.e. the way I use the term) is that a Schelling Point is a point or marker that is obvious to both sides without explanation, and could also mark some point of principal to one of the sides, which would cause that side to expend more effort defending it than the point might seem to be worth.
The usual example of a Schelling Point is a river (flowing North to South in this example), with an opposing tribe on each side who need to set a border. There is no significant difference difference in land between using the river as the border, and using the river plus five feet West of the border. However, the river itself will always be chosen as the border because A)it’s obvious, and B) one tribe could very well attach special meaning to the river above and beyond the land itself, i.e. the Western Tribe shall not stain the ground made holy by the River God (or something like that).
The other example is abortion. The two popular Schelling Points at which “life begins” are considered to be either at conception (by the pro-lifers) and birth (by the pro-choicers). Both of these points are trivial in a lot of ways; the components are largely the same as they were before each event (differing in union in one way, in location and dependence the next). But, both of them are obvious to both sides in the dispute and both can be plausibly seen as having special meaning to either side (Ensoulment in one case, no physical attachment to the mother in the other).
In looking over this, I see I’ve called birth “trivial”. Oh well, the point still stands.
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Quick Tuesday rapid fire
- Prominent 30s fascist sympathizer was actually black! Favorite quote: “One could perform whiteness to some degree, and that is precisely what Dennis did”
- The best author’s site ever
- Real Estate Photography – As I’m doing some light house hunting at the moment, I can definitely say that most online real estate listings are horrible.
- Chet Richards interview