Monthly Archives: March 2012

The Drums of War and Nuclear Terrorism

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51% of Americans support military action to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon (source). 36% are against such military action.

The above statistics scare me. To me it shows that while Americans are tired of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are not tired of war in general. There is still a fundamental hope among the majority of Americans that good can overwhelm evil by hard military force.

For every word I write or speak on the subject, I make sure to read 10 more, and listen much more than speak. There are many very difficult moral, political, social, and financial questions here. How bad is it if Iran gets the bomb? How bad is it that China, Pakistan, and North Korea already have the bomb? What is the best way to prevent the bomb from being used anywhere in the world? Does the United States support Israel if it invades Iran?

The more I learn about war, the more anti-war I become. And the older I get, the more willing I am to stand up for what I believe. I am in support of having a large military but with an emphasis on defense, not preemptive offense.

I don’t want to write much more here today, because a blog is not the correct medium for such discussion. But this is simply a request that you keep your ears and mind open to the facts, costs, and ideas around war before you declare that you are for or against it.

Think not only of the short term, but the long term effects as well.

The Pebble in Your Shoe

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“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” – Muhammad Ali

If I learned anything from life, it’s that success comes from years of the daily grind (both hard work and “smart” work). It’s all about deliberate practice in whatever field you wish to master. So it’s not about some grand plans or undertakings. It’s about the little steps you take every day toward one goal, never giving up, but never over-stepping either.

The flip side of that idea is that the thing that makes you quit in the end is not some big obstacle, it’s the wear and tear of the many little obstacles.

So, remove the little obstacles. Remove the pebble in your shoe.

For me, this applies for computer programming, math, and academia in general, as well as the physical activities such as jiu jitsu and judo. But I think, it more practically applies to relationships (at work or at home). Even in my own life I’ve seen little tensions grow over months and years to become major issues.

So I wrote this quick post mostly as a reminder to myself to fix the little problems now before they get out of hand down the line.

Common Sense Reminder: You Will Get Sick and You Will Have To Pay

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The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of the new health care law’s individual mandate today (hear the arguments on C-SPAN). The individual mandate requires that everyone in America purchase health insurance.

The debate over the morality and fiscal potency of the health care law very interesting, but that’s not what the Supreme Court court is deliberating. They’re simply trying to figure if the federal government has the power to mandate that you buy something, overriding state’s rights. It’s really a debate about the relative power of the federal government relative to state governments.

The constitutional opponents of the law believe that allowing a mandate would remove any identifiable limiting principle. This means that the government can next force you to do anything else because it’s “good for you”.

The best question (in my mind) asked by the proponents of the law (such as myself) is: what happens when an uninsured person shows up at the hospital and can’t pay out of pocket even a small fraction of the cost? In fact, no one is really asking this question fully. It seems everyone assumes that of course we treat the person to the best of our abilities and then the taxpayer has to flip the bill. It seems that the people that are demanding their personal liberty be protected are really operating on the assumption that they will not get sick or will be able to save enough to cover the costs. In their minds, they can do a better job at fighting off sickness than their less-clever neighbor. That assumption reminds of the assumption folks have when they recite the wedding vows. You can’t base a policy that determines the well being of millions on hope.

Just to be clear, whether the health care law is deemed constitutional or not, to me, is much less important than the fact that our current health care system is broken and this law is one of the possible fixes. If it’s not constitutional, then we need to do something else that is, but we can’t afford (literally) to do nothing.

As a side note, I discovered that there are services out there that allow you to hire a person to stand in line for you. The rate I saw was $36 per hour. This came up because people stood in line for days to be able to get one of the 60 seats open to the public for individual mandate hearing.

The History and Future of C-SPAN

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Some people are addicted to heroin. Some are addicted to pornography.  Some are alcoholics. Of all the vices one might have, I consider mine to be of the more socially acceptable variety. I am addicted to C-SPAN, NPR, and any other sources of balanced debate and information on current events, history, non-fiction literature, philosophy, science, etc.

Behind every addiction is a tragic flaw. Mine is a kind of manic curiosity about the way the world works. So in that sense, C-SPAN is one of my drug dealers.

The reason I write about it now is that Brian Lamb (founder of C-SPAN) is stepping down from his post as CEO of CSPAN. So why not take this chance to celebrate one of my favorite organizations…

What I like most about CSPAN is the non-political programs such as Book TV. It provides interviews with or presentations by authors of complex and fascinating non-fiction books. The more political programs such as Washington Journal are also interesting. They have a variety of experts (actual ones, not simply pundits) on to discuss the major events of the day. It’s really one of the best methods to get informed in a balanced way about the major happenings of the day.

What I don’t like about the Washington Journal is that they take callers and purposefully are very loose about screening those calls. They don’t just take callers with calm intelligent questions, but they also take the calls that are neither intelligent, well-informed, calm, or even have a question. Even more, some of these people has trouble stringing together words and sentences that make any sense. Some others simply read out talking points they undoubtedly picked up from an ultra-partisan website or radio show. When I listen to Washington Journal, I like to skip over these calls and just listen to the answers, allowing my blood to remain room temperature for the most part.

PS: The tone and style of this blog post reflects not so much my outlook on a life of learning, but the fact that I’ve had several cups of coffee back to back, and believe that this gives me the power to be clever. Denial is a wonderful thing.

Codifying Public Transit Routes: Colors, Letters, Numbers, Destinations

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I have a love/hate relationship with public transit. I think of it as a dysfunctional marriage. As a whole, I’m unhappy with most aspects of it, but on a day-to-day basis, the alternative seems considerably less desirable.

Plus, in the digital age, figuring out how to get from point A to a new far-away point B is a lot easier than I imagine it must’ve been in the ancient times of the 20th century.

In all seriousness though, I truly believe in the power of public transit. It’s just that very few cities (e.g. NYC) have pulled it off effectively, and it seems that they are usually severely underfunded. If you were looking for the silver lining of $4 per gallon gas, it’s that maybe public transit will get a little more attention.

One or two years ago, the Philadelphia public transit authority SEPTA has changed the codifying (I like this word, so I’ll use it) of its regional rail lines from colors and numbers to the names of the destination stops. So, the line that went from Thorndale to Doylestown used to be called R5 (and was colored blue), but now is two lines called Thorndale and Doylestown respectively, both colored black like the vapid nihilistic nature of the reasoning behind the change. Why? According to SEPTA, tourists would get confused about the fact that R5 (and the other lines) went two ways. Apparently most tourists that come to Philadelphia expect their trains to run one way, much like the Soul Asylum’s Runaway Train:

I wrote this quick post to put my two (cynical) cents out there. I believe that saying and remembering colors and numbers is much easier than terminal stop names at least for people like me that don’t ride the regional rail more than once a month.

Storing DNA At Birth

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Concerns over violations of privacy can too easily fall into a fear spiral of worst case scenarios. I think privacy is a very important staple of a free society, but we have to keep it in perspective, and weigh both the pros and cons of privacy (and the government-backed violation of it) in a reasonable, calm, logical manner.

I say that because it always surprises me just how outraged people are at the proposed idea that the government will store the DNA of all newborns for the purpose of quickly identifying them via matching of DNA samples at the scene of a crime. It’s a good instinct, but I don’t like how much irrational emotion (vs reason) is often behind it.

DNA, like fingerprints, is biometric information that can be used to efficiently identify an individual with near-perfect accuracy. At hearing this, immediately people begin imagining the oppressive horrors of a mass surveillance state. But does a national DNA database really provide the government with broad oppressive power? And if it did, do we really have the kind of system that would utilize that power to violate the fundamental rights of individuals?

If it’s not clear yet, I’m a proponent of storing DNA of all citizens. I believe that DNA information is the perfect kind of identifier that the government should have. It can’t really be used to track an individual, but it can be used in the case of a crime to identify potential suspects.