Monthly Archives: March 2011

Potholes and the Political Career of Sisyphus

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“They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” – Winston Churchill

In this Charlie Rose interview of Michael Bloomberg & other Mayors, you get a chance to listen to politicians that have to make decisions, stand by their decisions, and HEAR criticism (or praise) directly from the public on a daily basis.

The fundamental challenge mayors face is the need to invest in the future, when there is not enough money to fix potholes in the present. I don’t envy their job, and for that reason can’t help but respect these politicians. In some ways, this is the level of government at which real leadership emerges: the leadership of responsibility.

Several quick observations:

  • Where the heck are the female mayors? There’s generally few women in public office, but the mayoral position is especially crowded by men.
  • Michael Nutter is very impressive in this interview medium. He came off intelligent, funny, and visionary.

Nuclear Proliferation: Walking Up to the Edge of the Cliff

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I watched an interview with Scott Sagan and was impressed and terrified by a refreshing level of insight into the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of deterrence theory.

The idea of deterrence is that the promise of mutual destruction is sufficient to prevent nuclear war. What Scott Sagan argues is that nuclear-armed states are unfortunately not rational single players in a game (in game-theoretic terms). He argues that the control of nuclear weapons is in the arms of large hierarchical organizations (i.e. governments). As such, their behavior is unstable and “noisy”. For example, a false alarm may lead to escalation with the spread of misinformation or misinterpreted information up the chain of command.

What is the scenario that he is so concerned with? Something like the Cold War. Where two or more states walk up to the edge of the cliff in order to threaten that they may jump. And since states are not individual people but chaotic organizations, they are much more likely to accidentally slip once they are standing at the edge of that cliff.

All this, of course, is ignoring the elephant in the room which is a terrorist organization acquiring a nuclear weapon (through theft or some back-door deal). From the cold hard perspective of probability, it seems inevitable that this will happen sometime in the future. Given that people do not learn from history, I can’t help but think that we will be reminded of the destruction that a nuclear weapon can bring once we forget, and we will forget, we always do.

Culture of Corruption

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We are approaching our tenth year of the war in Afghanistan. A recent Charlie Rose update on this topic reminded me of just how dire the situation there is.

The biggest problem in my mind is not the violence, the poverty, the instability, etc. The biggest problem is the corruption at all levels of government including at the village level (though it could be argued that corruption is just the symptom not the disease).

This is especially clear to me when compared to an example on the other side of the ethical spectrum, a person who I happen to work with closely: a research advisor, colleague, and friend of mine, Moshe, who happens to be the current IEEE president. We talk often and joke about many absurd aspects of the world, but even in jokes or careless conversation there is never an indication of a chink in his professional ethics “armor”. IEEE is an international organization in the full meaning of the word international, so garnering a culture of ethical behavior in all those regions is a tough job but it starts at the top. In this regard, to me, IEEE is a success story, while the government in Afghanistan (with Hamid Karzai at the head) is a failure. What is the difference? What makes one ethically sound and the other a chaos of unproductive greed.

What drives the ethics of a human being when he receives one hundred, one million, or one billion dollars to distribute to the people he represents? I don’t know, but it feels like the right decision requires character, and a strong character requires a lifetime of practice. This makes me think that the culture of corruption in Afghanistan is not going to be resolved by July 2012, July 2022, or perhaps any of our lifetimes.

What then is the role of the United States in all this mess? … When every dollar we send there is more likely to end up in a pocket of a fat cat than a starving child with no access to clean water, medicine, or school.

Balanced Energy Diet: Nuclear Dessert

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A balanced diet of macro-nutrients (carbs, protein, fat) is good for you. Why? Don’t make me bring the stupid broccoli analogy out again…

The point is that balance, in general, is a good idea. It’s good for reducing risk through diversification. It’s good for productive evolution through competition.

That’s why I’m a big supporter of (in alphabetical order!): bioenergy, coal, geothermal, hydro, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, and yes oil as energy sources for the future. I don’t root for the underdog or the champion. I root for everyone equally.

The growing concern of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan has brought the debate about the safety of nuclear power to the public. For the most part this debate has suffered from a lack of rational weighing of risk and benefit. People should be scared of radiation poisoning, but they should also be scared of a million other more likely sources of health concerns. Every energy source has it pros and cons. What’s important however is that the list of pros and cons is constantly evolving due to technological innovation. We need to promote this innovation in as many areas as possible.

A balanced diet of energy expands the field of innovation and competition. How do we achieve such a balanced diet? This is a tough question. But I believe subsidizing the underdog is the way to go. I think of it as a long distance Olympic running event where the leader of the pack at every lap gets punched in the face to slow him down. It seems unfair that you get punched in the face for doing well, but it’s for his own good ;-) Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

Here’s a good Charlie Rose debate on the future of Nuclear Power:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11551

Google Innovates, Microsoft Duplicates

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I think implied in the title, and the observation that Microsoft seems to copy other company’s innovations, is that copying is a bad thing. As a researcher myself, I obviously respect and admire innovation. That’s why I love Google and other companies that fearlessly push the envelope of the possible. So from that perspective, copying ideas or making small incremental improvements on existing ideas is less than admirable.

However, I think that Microsoft is serving a critical role, and doing so better than almost any other technology company out there. They are the elephant in every room of every building, so risky innovation is perhaps the wrong strategy for them. The release of Internet Explorer 9, for example, is claimed by many to come “too late“. It’s essentially a good copy of the Google Chrome browser, just like Zune was a copy of iPod, that came out much later than the original.

I disagree with the claim that IE 9 came out “too late”. I think IE will regain market share, because it will be the default browser on all new Windows machines and now that the major problems with IE are fixed, non-technical people will be less inclined to switch away from it when they purchase a new computer.

That’s what seems to work for Microsoft, and is keeping me (arguably, a power user) happy switching back and forth from Linux to Windows (instead of just staying in Linux 100% of the time). The strategy is to let other people fight it out in the realm of risky innovations, and then copy the winners of that process as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t do it that way, but I’m glad someone is. The world runs on incremental improvement.

Justice in the War on Hatred

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It appears U.S. has no intention of closing Gitmo. Why did Obama promise he would, and is now failing the world on that promise? Because of the shallow political reality of the “war on terror”?

Here’s a good article providing 4 reasons in predicting why Obama will fail to close Gitmo. The article was written more than two years ago.

The problem is that there may not be enough hard evidence to convict the prisoners of Gitmo were they brought to trial, especially for those suspected to be higher ups in terrorist organizations. It’s kind of like convicting Al Capone. It is a fundamentally different challenge than convicting the Nazi leaders during the Nuremberg Trials. Al-Qaeda is not a nation state; it is a criminal organization. For example, were we to capture Bin Laden, what is the actual evidence except a bunch of threatening video tapes that would link him to 9/11?

I think about the torture and obvious violations of the Geneva conventions going on at Gitmo…

The question to me is two-fold:

First, suppose none of the world knew about the practices in Gitmo. Would it be just, in that case, to violate the basic human rights of many innocent people in order to detain the few terrorist leaders?

Second, suppose the world knows (as it does now) of the fact that U.S. is torturing these prisoners and detaining them without trial. Is it just, in this case, to violate the basic human rights of many innocent people in order to detain the few terrorist leaders?

What is the difference between those two questions? I can’t escape the thought that every legitimate terrorist we don’t put on trial (and potentially, though unlikely, having to let him go) we are creating hundreds, thousands more potential terrorists… Young kids in the Middle East now growing up (in poverty) with a fundamental hatred for the United States. Should we not be fighting this hatred as opposed to the symptom of it: terrorism. Should we not declare a “war on hatred”, where the weapons are schools, hospitals, etc?

Unions: Pros and Cons

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Pictured is what appears to be a 12 year old girl working at a cotton mill in 1908.

I am very torn on whether a union is a good thing or not. First step in deciding this for me is to separate the pro and cons from the people that are pushing each (workers and “billionaires”, respectively), because if I didn’t I would definitely be pro-union. Regular folks always take precedence in my book to people with an excess of money and power.

Pros:

  • Fighting for a living wage (which grows a strong middle class)
  • Fighting for good working conditions

Cons:

  • Ignoring market forces (natural incentives)
  • Higher unemployment
  • Job security = less competition = lower productivity

No matter what, the recent events in Wisconsin are outrageous. The people have spoken, and the government is not listening. I think Governor Walker is David Koch’s lap dog, and that’s the kind of weakness in a political leader that has the potential to seriously damage the democratic fabric of our great country.

I Heart Huckabee, Except on Every Single Issue

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I watched a recent Charlie Rose interview with Mike Hukabee and was reminded of two things. First is that Charlie Rose is a great interviewer in that he remains objective (unlike most people that claim to be) but still can call the interviewee out on any obvious contradictions.

Second thing I was reminded of was that I liked Mike Hukabee for some unknown reason from ever since the 2008 campaign. I literally disagree with him on every single issue. Let me list some of the things he stands for proudly (source):

  • Women should not have the right to choose
  • Homosexuality is unnatural
  • Teacher-led prayer in public schools
  • Death penalty
  • Guns!
  • Less federal funding for health coverage
  • Do not replace oil & coal with alternatives
  • Cut taxes on the rich (opposes progressive taxation)
  • No path to citizenship for illegal immigrants
  • No public financing of campaigns
  • Patriot Act does not harm fundamental liberties
  • Opposes withdrawal from Iraq

He is running for president in 2012. That much is clear. The above is his platform. I disagree with him vehemently on every single one of those issues.

Still, I can’t help but like how down to Earth he is. Unlike most politicians with even a remote chance of winning, to me, he seems like the only one who is not saying one thing and thinking another. Just comes off as a good human being. I would love to see him win the Republican primary for two reasons. First, he would bring civility and clarity to the debates with Obama, and two, he has no chance of winning against Obama ;-)

 

Parade of Horribles

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I saw the Daily Show interview with Donald Rumsfeld from last week (part 1, part 2). Part 2 starts with a discussion of a “parade of horribles” that Rumsfeld presented to the administration in the process leading up to the invasion of Iraq. It was a list of things that could happen, such as not finding weapons of mass destruction, having to spend 6-8 years in Iraq, etc.

What is the purpose of such a list? For example when deciding on whether to get a dog, making such a list is an effective way to talk yourself out of it. There are a lot of positives, but there are also a lot of costs (likely and possible) to owning a dog. It’s easy to get excited about the thought of a cute little puppy, but it is in the long-term best interest of everyone involved (including the puppy) that every major aspect of having a puppy is thoroughly considered.

This is where his famous line of about “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns” comes in. While this gives a perception of deliberation, sitting back and watching Rumsfeld during the interview, I got the sense that the “parade of horribles” was never taken seriously. As we known now, most of the items on that list have come true. So Rumsfeld was at least on some level aware of the risks. Why were these risks not presented to the American people? Why were WE not part of this deliberation? Lastly, why did the Bush administration rain on Rumsfeld’s parade?

 

How to Make a Good Human Being

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As Albert Camus describes in The Plague, there are three types of people: the ones who spread the plague, the ones who succumbed to the plague, and the ones who fought the plague. The third category is what I refer to as “good” here.

Where do these mythical people come from? Many places, but having watched a recent interview with Kumi Naidoo, I felt I could answer that question with at least one example.

So, how do you make a good human being? Step 1 is you have him be born black in South Africa under apartheid. Step 2 is you take the lives and well-being of many of his friends and family who dare resist the government-enforced racial segregation. Step 3 is you continuously arrest him and threaten his life, thereby motivating him to seek exile. Step 4 is you let him escape to England. Step 5 is you make him a Rhodes scholar and give him an Oxford education (a PhD even, why not). Step 6 is you let him somehow slip into the leadership position of a large non-governmental peace-promoting organization such as Greenpeace. Oh, and last but not least, Step 7, you give him a sense of humor and lightness about the absurdity of his life experience.

And there you have it, just 7 easy steps. The result is a good human being that tirelessly fights human suffering in every corner of the world on all scales.