alkali

This mostly-post-1970 "25 questions" quiz responds to Michael Tomasky's (IMHO, unnaturally 1950s-1970s-oriented) quiz:

Domestic Affairs:
$200: What Cabinet department would oversee a card-check system?
$400: Which Supreme Court Justice sat on the commission that wrote the Federal Sentencing Guidelines?
$600: What crop receives the largest share of federal agricultural subsidies?
$800: Alain Enthoven worked for DOD in the 1960s. What area of domestic policy is he now known for?
$1000: What kind of environment does IDEA require?

Foreign/Military Affairs:
$200: If Castro died, who is the individual thought most likely to replace him?
$400: What religion do Uighurs practice, and in what country do they generally live?
$600: Who is the president of Kazakhstan?
$800: How many aircraft carriers do the Chinese have?
$1000: What's the next rank after Captain in the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, respectively?

Science:
$200: What atomic element comprises most of the mass of the sun?
$400: Sum this infinite series: 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 ...
$600: What do the letters A, C, G, T correspond to? (You don't have to recall precisely what they stand for.)
$800: What does the Black/Scholes formula calculate?
$1000: If visible light just passes through carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, how can that carbon dioxide contribute to global warming?

General Political History:
$200: In 1979, President Carter gave a speech in which he referred to a "crisis of confidence." What popular name is ascribed to this speech? (Bonus: who wrote it?)
$400: Who fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox?
$600: Who was Bush 41's OMB director?
$800: What presidential candidate features in the book "On Wings Of Eagles"?
$1000: What significant vote did Congresswoman Mezvinsky cast?

General Knowledge:
$200: What was the title of Martin Scorsese's movie based on the book "Wiseguy"?
$400: Where is Edgartown?
$600: What is a Dyson sphere?
$800: What comedian worked on Jim Garrison's investigation of the Kennedy assassination?
$1000: Complete the title of a famous article on social network theory: "The Strength Of ____ ____."

Answers below.

* * *

Domestic Affairs:
$200: What Cabinet department would oversee a card-check system? [card check is a way of certifying a union, so Labor]
$400: Which Supreme Court Justice sat on the commission that wrote the Federal Sentencing Guidelines? [Breyer]
$600: What crop receives the largest share of federal agricultural subsidies? [corn]
$800: Alain Enthoven worked for DOD in the 1960s. What area of domestic policy is he now known for? [health care; the Clinton plan was based in part on his ideas]
$1000: What kind of environment does IDEA require? ["least restricted"; it refers to the academic environment provided to children with disabilities]

Foreign/Military Affairs:
$200: If Castro died, who is the individual thought most likely to replace him? [his brother Raul]
$400: What religion do Uighurs practice, and in what country do they generally live? [Chinese Muslims]
$600: Who is the president of Kazakhstan? [Nursultan Nazarbayev]
$800: How many aircraft carriers do the Chinese have? [none, but they are talking about building one]
$1000: What's the next rank after Captain in the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, respectively? [Major and Rear Admiral -- the key point is that Captain is a much more senior rank in the Navy]

Science:
$200: What atomic element comprises most of the mass of the sun? [hydrogen]
$400: Sum this infinite series: 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 ... [pi, 3.14159 ...]
$600: What do the letters A, C, G, T correspond to? (You don't have to recall precisely what they stand for.) [the nucleotides which make up DNA and form the genetic code -- adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine]
$800: What does the Black/Scholes formula calculate? [the value of an option contract]
$1000: If visible light just passes through carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, how can that carbon dioxide contribute to global warming? [it absorbs the sun's infrared radiation, which is not visible]

General Political History:
$200: In 1979, President Carter gave a speech in which he referred to a "crisis of confidence." What popular name is ascribed to this speech? (Bonus: who wrote it?) [the "malaise" speech, written by Chris Matthews]
$400: Who fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox? [Assistant Attorney General Robert Bork]
$600: Who was Bush 41's OMB director? [Dick Darman]
$800: What presidential candidate features in the book "On Wings Of Eagles"? [Ross Perot]
$1000: What significant vote did Congresswoman Mezvinsky cast? [the deciding vote in the House for Clinton's economic package]

General Knowledge:
$200: What was the title of Martin Scorsese's movie based on the book "Wiseguy"? [Goodfellas]
$400: Where is Edgartown? [Martha's Vineyard, Mass.]
$600: What is a Dyson sphere? [a hypothetical man-made structure on which people could live that would encircle the entire sun, suggested by physicist Freeman Dyson]
$800: What comedian worked on Jim Garrison's investigation of the Kennedy assassination? [Mort Sahl; his interest in the assassination tanked his career]
$1000: Complete the title of a famous article on social network theory: "The Strength Of ____ ____." [Mark Granovetter, "The Strength Of Weak Ties" -- posits that people obtain more information through "weak ties" (e.g., friends of friends) than close friends and relations, because they have less information that overlaps with what you already know]

I did some commenting on this thread at the Volokh Conspiracy on the odd question of whether, as some on the right claim, the ACLU recently took the position (in the Matthew Limon case in Kansas) that minors have a constitutional right to have sex with adults. I made the pertinent (and I thought dispositive) point that the ACLU's briefing in that case expressly states the contrary. The other commenter addressing the issue was, predictably, not persuaded.

Thomas Geoghegan's new(ish) book The Law In Shambles is so good and so rich that I can't summarize it here, but here is something Jim Kunstler had to say recently that Geoghegan's book reminded me of:

All kinds of assumptions about the okay-ness of our recent collective behavior are headed out the window. This naturally beats a straight path to politics, since that is the theater in which our collective choices are dramatized. It really won't take another jolting event like a major hurricane or a terror incident or an H4N5 flu outbreak to take things over the edge -- though it is very likely that something else will happen. George W. Bush, and the party he represents, are headed into full Hooverization mode. After Katrina, nobody will take claims of governmental competence seriously.

The new assumption will be that when shit happens you are on your own. In this remarkable three weeks since New Orleans was shredded, no Democrat has stepped into the vacuum of leadership, either, with a different vision of what we might do now, and who we might become. This is the kind of medium that political maniacs spawn in. Something is out there right now, feeding on the astonishment and grievance of a whipsawed middle class, and it will have a lot more nourishment in the months ahead.

Take it for what it's worth, anyway.

Incidentally, the other short (~100 pp.) titles I've read by Prickly Paradigm Press -- the press that published this Geoghegan book -- are big winners. In particular, I have re-read Deirdre McCloskey's The Secret Sins Of Economics a couple of times now; it is available as a free PDF from Prickly Paradigm.

[File under: idle speculation.]

I see that GOP uberpol Karl Rove has been tapped to run the NOLA reconstruction. If we have to have a political consultant rebuild Louisiana, can't we get Carville to do it? Could there be anything more right?

Continuing my reading of Hare plays: Skylight is amazing. Briefly, a long night of argument between a widowed entrepreneur and his former lover, a teacher in a poor area of London. Reminiscent of Uncle Vanya, one of my favorite plays (the other is Holiday).

Michael Gambon played the male lead in the Royal National Theatre production and later on Broadway. Apparently, I could have seen that performance, and I missed it, to my great regret. No film of the performance is available (e.g., on DVD) so far as I can tell.

(Other plays by Hare I've read recently: Via Dolorosa, Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, Slag, Licking Hitler.)

[From a comment at this Hit & Run thread.]

[In an essay about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, Christopher] Hitchens writes [in Slate]:

But the president is not permitted by the Constitution to use the military for law enforcement, or not without the permission of the governor of the state, and the fuss about this is at least partly a cover for a feeble governor and a flaky mayor, who seek to displace the blame.

As a purely theoretical matter, before we get to the merits, libertarians and non-libs alike should be suspicious of a defense that runs: "The federal government is not to blame because it lacked sufficient power."

As a matter of practice, I am having trouble believing that this conversation took place:

State/local official: "Please help us; we're in desperate need."

Federal official: "I can help you, but only if you send me a piece of paper saying such-and-such."

State/local official: "We refuse to send you that piece of paper."

Maybe there is more to it than that, but the "state/local official refused to sign form" narrative is just not credible.

[From my comment on a post by Brad DeLong commenting on a post by Alex Tabarrok on education vouchers.]

Public education is not -- to emphasize: not, not, not -- homogenous in the United States.

In particular, there are (a) urban school systems which produce inconsistently educated graduates and have substantial drop-out rates besides, (b) suburban school systems which are often quite good, and (c) rural schools that are reasonably good.

I do not see that there is a strong argument in favor of using vouchers in suburbs and rural areas. The suburban schools are quite good as it is. The rural schools may not be as good but there is little prospect of competition in those areas; either the status quo would remain in place or the religious school of the largest local denomination would become the only option.

With regard to urban areas: it is not clear to me how a voucher program in urban areas would work. It is clear to me that such a program would have the following immediate consequence. Suppose that in city X there are 80,000 students in public schools, 20,000 in private schools. Suppose further that spending in the public schools is $800mm or $10,000 per student per year. If a voucher program is instituted, students in the private schools will be entitled their own shares; city X will either have to cut spending to $8,000 per year or raise another $200mm in revenue. Those are serious numbers; I have no idea how a voucher program would deal with that.

(You could say, well, we'll make the voucher much smaller -- say, $1,000 a year. If we do that, presumably a few more public school students will go to private schools, and the private school students will get a $1,000 per year tuition break. That does not sound anything like a comprehensive solution to the problems of urban schools.)

I mentioned before I was reading some plays by David Hare. I recommend in particular The Permanent Way, which is Hare's recounting of the disastrous privatization of British Rail.

One review describes the play:

The Permanent Way invents a bizarre parallel universe where nothing works as it should. The inhabitants are grumblingly accepting of this incompetence until one day an angel of death appears and sweeps across the land. Now ordinary people are dying: suddenly, randomly, hideously and unnecessarily. Others escape death but are left disfigured and despairing. Without warning these innocents are plunged from the mundane into the monstrous.

Moreover the deaths are mysterious: no one can agree on the cause. No one knows what to do. The victims are too demoralised, the survivors are confused, the bereaved are numb. The best and brightest in the land, or so they think they are, are too distracted by worldly pursuits and pleasures to focus on what is happening to their less fortunate fellows. The government affects a polite interest but does nothing. (Although, in a masterstroke of insensitivity, it does deploy a genial shambles of a minister to comfort the afflicted. This, of course, only makes things worse.) ...

Like Sophocles' Oedipus facing the truth of his own guilt, Hare's nation must finally confront the reality it has conspired so long to deny: this monster is not only man-made, but was made despite the warnings of those seers who prophesied exactly what would come to pass. In their greed and blindness and apathy, the people have wasted their heritage to create that which is destroying them. What can they do now? Can anyone be truly innocent in such a land? Hare poses the question, but leaves us to answer it.

I cannot think of any reason I might find this particularly appropriate at the moment.

[From my comment at Washington Monthly.]

Another thing individuals can do [other than give to the Red Cross] is to call their representatives in Congress and urge them to take a serious look at disaster preparedness. You don't have to share my skepticism about the Bush administration's record on this issue to think that this issue deserves urgent examination.

(If you don't know who your representative in the House is, look here.)

[From a comment on this MaxSpeak post.]

[Max wrote:]

There has been some talk about Bush & Co. defunding programs that would have strengthened the ability of New Orleans to withstand the storm. ... There has been no paucity of Federal domestic spending over the past four years. You could say it went to the wrong places. Does anybody remember anybody in Congress sounding the alarm about inadequate disaster preparations?

Respectfully, this doesn't work. If you hold high office, you are responsible for what happens on your watch. That the Archangel Gabriel did not appear to you and give you specific instructions on the issue is not an excuse.

Did the administration want this to happen? Of course not.

Were their intentions good? No doubt.

But thousands of people are dead, and a city is ruined, and the people who had the power to prevent it have to be held accountable.

This is an amazingly good collection of lectures by David Hare. It will be released in January 2006 but you can get it now from Amazon UK if you want. I am currently reading some of Hare's plays.

[From some comments I left on this Hit & Run thread.]

The notion that there are actually scientists in the world -- complexity theorists, or what have you -- doing actual research on ID is one of the great swindles of the ID program. The number of Ph.D.-level scientists who are doing any actual sustained thinking along ID lines is tiny -- maybe you could count them on one hand. It is not the case that there are a bunch of biologists, chemists, paleontologists and mathematicians out there doing research along ID lines. If there were, maybe we'd have something to talk about.

* * *

I could imagine that you could propose a methodology for detecting the hand of a designer and test it (for example, by showing that applying the methodology reliably identifies genetically engineered organisms). If someone had actually made some kind of proposal like that and had some success with it, then you could imagine that there might actually be something to an ID research program. But no one has done that. The entirety of ID research to date consists of a couple of books and a few essays, which have been meticulously ripped to shreds by other scientists.

By way of comparison, there are a number of physicists who are convinced that string theory is BS, because it seems kind of ad hoc and non-testable. Whether that skeptical intuition is right or wrong, it can't be disputed that there are lots of physicists with Ph.D.s actually doing string theory -- writing out equations, proposing experiments, commenting on each other's work, etc. Accordingly, it makes sense to say string theory is science, regardless of whether string theory ultimately turns out to be true.

The IDers like to pretend that the same is true of ID -- that there are all these scientists working on complexity theory issues and genetics -- but it isn't true. No one is actually doing any ID work. It's sort of an imaginary field of study at this point, like the "Department of Hitler Studies" in Don DeLillo's novel White Noise.

* * *

To step back a bit, I see ID proponents as asking, "If we had a bunch of people doing ID-type scientific research, why couldn't that be science that gets taught in schools?" That question has an empirical premise (whether there are actually people doing ID-type research) and a philosophical component (could ID be science?). I tend to agree with the philosophical answers to that question (no, ID couldn't ever be science, and here's why) but I am more confident that the empirical premise is wrong. There simply aren't a lot of Ph.D.s or similarly trained scientists out there doing ID-type research. There is not an archive of papers on the web explaining what ID researchers are up to. There are a couple of long-since-demolished books and essays and ten tons of propaganda, the end.