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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, October 21, 2006
20" Inside Diameter Stainless Steel Rings? If you have spent much time looking through Scientific American's classic, Amateur Telescope Making, you will recall seeing lots of pictures of steel skeleton tubes for larger telescopes. A series of rings (often six or seven of them) were welded to a dozen or steel rods. They look really heavy--but were they? I have a 17.5" Dobsonian that was apparently the first telescope that a bunch of Boise families made some years ago. I do not know what they were thinking. It uses a Sonotube--but then it had a massively heavy wooden box built around it, upon which the altitude bearings are mounted. I'm not sure of the exact weight, but with the mirror out, this beast easily weighs 100 pounds. Since 20" inside diameter Sonotube weighs about four pounds per foot, the wood is adding a huge amount of unneeded weight. My goal is to get this beast light enough to mount on a Losmandy G-11 mount, and something that can mount to a dovetail--which would seem to preclude any of the truss tube designs that I have seen. So what if I started over, and built one of those steel skeleton tubes to hold everything in place? Stainless steel is about .29 pounds/cubic inch. If I've done the math right, four 1/8" thick, 1" wide flats 90" long bolted (and lock washered) to five rings that 20" inside diameter, 1" wide, and 1/8" thick, totals less than 19 pounds. Even if I go up to 1/4" thick steel flats (which seems excessive), the weight is 32 pounds. The total stiffness of four 1/8" thick pieces of stainless, mounted to five rings, is quite extraordinary. The flats are easy to get. But is there a source for 20" inside diameter stainless steel rings? Or can someone suggest an alternative material that is readily available? Would epoxying 1" sections of Sonotube add enough stiffness to the flats without the full weight of Sonotube? Perhaps I just should just stick with Sonotube. Alternatively: instead of rings, I use construct this as a skeleton box, with the four flats held in position by 20" long flats of stainless steel. Using a total of five sets of four flats (the equivalent of five impossible to find 20" stainless steel rings), the total weight, if all of these are 1/8" stainless steel, is only 28 pounds (plus the weight of the bolts holding everything together). Add 37 pounds for the primary mirror, and about ten pounds for the secondary mirror, holder, and eyepiece, and this is 75 pounds. The bottom flat could even be machined with a built-in dovetail to fit the Losmandy mount. This is still a bit too heavy for the G-11 mount--but I am wondering if there is some way to calculate the amount of flex that these parts will experience. Perhaps I don't need five rings. Perhaps the 90" long flats don't need to be quite so thick. It makes me wish that I had taken mechanical engineering classes. I know that Young's modulus describes deformation, but I'm not quite sure how to apply all this a real world problem. Perhaps it is time to go hit the library on this exciting subject. Labels: telescopes Friday, October 20, 2006
A Look At Partitioning Iraq There is quite a bit of political talk suddenly about partitioning Iraq into autonomous regions. The analogy to other federal republics (Switzerland, Australia, the United States, Germany) is quite attractive, but there are several reasons why this is unlikely to help the actual problem we are seeing in Iraq, and several severe problems that it will create. Why This Won't Help 1. The maps of Iraq show "Kurds" in the north, "Sunnis" in the west, and "Shiites" in the south. The fact is that those sharp lines are really big, confused, broad paint stripes. Saddam Hussein killed and pushed out Kurds from some northern Iraqi cities, and put Sunnis into their homes. The Kurds are now busily trying to get those cities back. From what I have read, Sunnis and Shiites are heavily intermixed in Baghdad and a number of other cities. Without massive migrations, the existing provinces are going to still include sizeable minority populations. 2. Those Iraqis who are out killing members of the other group will still have plenty of opportunity to do so without leaving their autonomous region. Furthermore, it will not be a big struggle to go from Sunnistan to Shiitestan or vice versa to do some wanton torture and murder. Short of actually making these independent countries, with border controls, the sectarian violence isn't going to be affected by a regional approach. 3. As a number of people have pointed out, the Sunni section has very little oil. The Sunnis are unlikely to go along with any sort of "autonomous" region approach because it will almost certainly lead to three nations. All the promises that might get made about sharing the oil wealth with the Sunnis will be broken within a few years. Terrible Results That Would Come From Partitioning 1. It is not clear to me that all of the regions would be any calmer or more democratic than Iraq as a whole. The somewhat deranged young man who has his own Shiite militia (Muq Tadr--I can't spell it) isn't going to suddenly turn into a democrat. Instead, his militia will now be, relative to the Shiite region's government, more powerful than it is now relative to the Iraqi government. Ditto for the disgruntled Baathists in Sunnistan. The Kurds might end up way ahead as either autonomous region or separate nation, true, but that leads to... 2. Kurdistan as autonomous region or separate nation likely leads to war with Turkey. I have little sympathy for Turkey's problems with the Kurds. Yes, the PKK is a terrorist organization, and Turkey has, unsurprisingly, overreacted. Still, the Turkish government has made clear its concern that an independent Kurdistan would be a center of active assistance to Kurdish rebels in Turkey. Even if the Kurdistan government had the good sense to not be actively involved (and I'm not sure that a democratic Kurdistan would have enough good sense on this), individuals and groups operating across the border into Turkey would inevitably lead to border incidents, followed by war. Turkey is a member of NATO, and would legitimately argue that any incursion from Kurdistan into Turkey requires us to honor the treaty, and make war on Kurdistan. 3. There is a very real danger that a Shiite independent nation (as autonomous regionhood would soon become) would become an Iranian puppet. Muq Tadr is pretty clearly on their payroll already. Iran has a "Once we were a great power, and we shall be again" problem. This isn't new, and it isn't because of the mullahs. The Shah of Iran was just a little more subtle about his approach. Is There a Solution? My wife, who is responding the way many Americans are to the carnage in Iraq, sees no reason to sacrifice American lives for what she increasingly sees as a nation incapable of managing its own affairs. (As I have explained in the past, democracy in the Middle East may be the last real hope to avoid a direct clash of Islam vs. the rest of the world. That confrontation is one that we can win--but only by nuking hundreds of millions of the world's Muslims, which is morally repugnant, and with probably millions of dead in the non-Muslim world.) So she asked me, "What would you do if you were in charge?" It appears at this time that little serious effort is being made to shut off the importation of both al-Qaeda fighters (largely across the Syrian and Saudi borders) and more importantly, the explosives that are being used in the IEDs. At the start, the IEDs were often made from artillery shells, but accounts that I have been reading indicate that increasingly there is nothing improvised about these weapons, and there is almost certainly Iranian government involvement. There are several thousand miles of border. Define a 10 kilometer free fire zone inside the Iraqi border. Declare that anyone crossing the border into Iraq except at the small number of controlled border crossing is liable to be shot on sight. Air patrols would be relatively low risk of American deaths compared to patrols in Baghdad or Ramadi--and shutting off the importation of more fighters and explosives would eventually cool off some of the chaos--perhaps to a point where the Iraqi government could handle this themselves. I am becoming convinced that our military needs to withdraw completely from urban settings, and primarily exist to provide air cover and emergency reserve support for Iraqi forces chasing the terrorists. It sounds like the Iraqis still aren't up to an operational state on this--but if this much time hasn't gotten them to that state, maybe they aren't going to be to that state. At least part of the economic problems of Iraq are a shortage of money. Why? Because they are having a hard time exporting oil, because terrorists keeping blowing up the pipelines and port facilities. It would look bad (like the invasion was about oil), but Coalition forces might be better spent protecting those parts of the system that are under attack. Once Iraq is exporting ten million barrels a day, they will have enough money to put every Iraqi young man to work rebuilding the country. While I don't think that many of the native-born terrorists are launching these vicious attacks because they are just unemployed, I do think that enhancing the economic status of the average Iraqi worker has the potential to make those who may be giving cover or assistance to the native-born terrorists less willing to do so. I really don't want Iraq to go down the tubes. It would be a terrible blow to American prestige, strengthen al-Qaeda, and probably end up putting the power tool torture crowd back in power in Iraq. I am just mystified, however, what is preventing the Iraqis from doing a more effective job with their own forces in finding the foreign terrorists. Yes, they can't do it operating under a strictly observed Bill of Rights type of approach. But a society that can't stop this type of daily barbarism won't need a Bill of Rights--just a headstone. Those Politically Reticent Professors There's a new study out of what professors think about politics, and most of it is no surprise: Professors are three times as likely to call themselves "liberal" as "conservative." In the 2004 presidential election, 72 percent of those surveyed voted for John Kerry.What gave me a bad case of the smirks was this: But Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, says that regardless of their political stance, most professors are reluctant to make their views known on campus.Now, I had a number of professors for whom that was true. I took at least six classes from my thesis chair before I found out that he was actually a moderate socialist--and it never interfered with his teaching, or my thesis. Another of my history professors I managed to finally figure out was a liberal Democrat, but not from anything that he said in class. I had Professor Fallandy for a foreign literature class, and I couldn't tell you if she was liberal, conservative, socialist, or Martian. But a lot more typical were professors who would drop political stuff into the middle of a class that was not only completely irrelevant to the class, but reflected the "I don't know anything about the subject, but I'm a professor, so the opinions that I hold because I listen to NPR, watch PBS, and read The Nation must be right" attitude that I have found distressingly common. I don't just mean in classes where the subject necessarily intersects with current politics is somewhat unavoidable (such as philosophy or history). I mean a freshman biology class where the professor couldn't resist engaging in partisan attacks. I mean a Musics of the World class my wife took where, in the midst of a discussion of American Indian music, the professor suddenly interjects how the Native Americans loved Mother Earth, and protected the environment, but Christian Europeans believed that it was their God-given duty to exploit everything. This is inaccurate history about both Indians and Europeans, roughly equivalent to the sheep in Animal Farm bleating, "four legs good, two legs bad." To Quote Han Solo in Star Wars, "Don't Get Cocky, Kid" The latest survey results on Real Clear Politics are showing some interesting movements in particular races--and one that suggests that as badly as the Republicans have screwed up on pork, on tolerating creeps like Mark Foley (and perhaps Jim Kolbe), voters may be responding to the concerns that Jim Geraghty's book Voting to Kill suggested would dominate American politics for many years: national security. Look here, and you can see that the latest Quinnipac poll for Connecticut now shows Lieberman (the adult supervision wing of the Democratic Party) up seventeen points over Ned Lamont (the spoiled trust fund baby wing)--and the poll in question has a sample size of 881 likely voters--huge for a state race. Lincoln Chaffee, Republican running for re-election in Rhode Island is still behind the Democratic challenger Whitehouse (talk about a name not likely to lead you there), but Whitehouse's lead in the latest poll is only four points, compared to nine points a week earlier. Montana's U.S. Senate race was just about over, as far as many people were concerned, with Conrad Burns (R-MT) almost certainly losing to Democrat Jon Tester. Tester had double digit advantages over Burns a few weeks back--now the latest poll, done on October 18, shows Tester three points up on Burns. I don't know what the confidence interval is on this poll, but the sample is 500 likely voters--my suspicion is that three points is within the 95% confidence interval. In Connnecticut House 2, in August polls, the Democrat had a enough of a lead for the Republican incumbent to be properly scared. Now, an October 18 poll of 774 likely voters shows the Republican incumbent two points ahead. In Indiana House 7, there have been two polls. In early September, Democrat Carson was an insurmountable twenty points ahead (400 likely voters) of Republican Dickerson. A mid-October survey with 600 likely voters now shows Dickerson with a three point lead over Carson. As I said, don't get cocky. The Democrats could still pick up enough seats to gain control of the House--but any Republican who thinks that there's no point in voting in early November is seriously and perhaps dangerously mistaken. (Democrats, of course, should ignore everything that they have read here--you are coasting to overwhelming victory, and don't need to worry about voting.) Oh, and this guy is agonizingly close--eight points behind a Democrat who is outspending him more than 2:1. Even if you can only give $10 or $20 to his campaign, I would appreciate you doing so. Thursday, October 19, 2006
"Better 1950 Than 1250" My wife went shopping at Savers today. Savers is a second hand clothing and junk store here in Boise. (She is probably the highest net worth person that ever goes into the place. We used to struggle financially, and she still shops as though it is 1982.) While she was in there, she noticed a Middle Eastern guy wearing the traditional long gown sort of thing that some Muslim men wear around here--and he was staring at her in the "undress her with your eyes" sort of way that really creepy guys sometimes do. It is strictly an intimidation thing, as far as she's concerned. Now, understand, my wife wasn't dressed to thrill. (She never does.) She was wearing blue jeans (not even close to tight), a sweater (also not tight), and comfortable shoes. And yet this guy is staring at her like a hungry Doberman licking its chops at a steak. She walked a bit farther through the store--and again, this guy is giving that look which is a mixture of intimidation and desire. My wife came home pretty irritated. Over the years, my wife has had this experience with a disproportionate number of Third World men. This is really no surprise; part of what makes Western culture somewhat shocking and horrifying to the Taliban--and to a lesser extent, a lot of men from "traditional" cultures--is that women are actually considered people here. You know, with minds, free wills, and rights. They are not simply baby-making machines, or sexual toys--as seems to be their role in some forms of Islam. I can still recall the shock wave that poured over a twentieth century history class I was in many years ago. Professor Brown responded to the question of one of the very serious young women about women's equality, by explaining that until about 200-250 years, the notion of women as legal equals to men was completely unknown. This was a peculiarly Western idea, an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. In High Middle Ages class, Professor Abbott responded to a student's question about Christianity and women's rights by explaining that no, Christianity didn't lower the status of women, it raised it. (She had done much of her doctoral work in the area of Anglo-Saxon queens.) In both cases, it was clear that the students in question had been heavily indoctrinated into the "Christianity is a patriarchal institution created to oppress women, who were otherwise equal to men" nonsense that passes for conventional wisdom in some circles. If my wife were blogging this, she would go on for several paragraphs about the rise of women playwrights and poets in Civil War and Restoration England, the bluestocking movement, and related activities that lead to Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). My wife is terribly upset about the willingness of feminists and the rest of the progressive coalition to regard George Bush as a bigger danger than al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamofascist movement. Until 9/11, there were many feminists truly concerned about the Taliban--but when forced to choose between George Bush, and people who think that girls shouldn't learn to read, that it is better for girls to burn to death rather than leave the building fully covered, as happened in Saudi Arabia some years--well, that's an easy choice for the feminists and progressives. My wife is furious because feminists should be on the same side as Bush in fighting against the most extreme elements of a culture that would force every woman into a burkha, treat them socially and legally like children--and that sees a woman dressed positively dowdy buying clothes as some sort of sexual temptress. The feminist/progressive agenda seems to focused entirely on the prospect of Bush appointing another Supreme Court Justice, which will suddenly, dramatically, and without any legislative action, take us back to 1950, forcing women to be barefoot and pregnant from 13 to 50. This isn't going to happen; even before activist judges start to strike down laws that they didn't like, American society was already experiencing pretty dramatic legal change. Connecticut's ban on contraceptives struck down in Griswold, for example, while not unique among the states, was also not ubiquitous. Nonetheless, my wife's reaction was, "Better 1950 than 1250." How Much Trouble Are Republicans In? The conventional wisdom is that the Democrats are going to take back the House and maybe the Senate as well. I mentioned yesterday that there is a pretty strong recent history of public opinion surveys being consistently wrong, giving the impression that the Democrats were well ahead, when they were at best even. I was looking over Real Clear Politics list of the House races. They have them ranked in order of what they consider the chances of a change in party. Texas House 22 is no surprise; this was Tom DeLay's seat, and there is no Republican on the ballot. The only hope that they have there is a write-in vote. But the second seat on the list is Arizona House 8--the one that I mentioned where Minuteman founder Randy Graf is only eight points back from the Democrat, who has more twice as much money to spend. If, as seems to often be the case, the actual vote is about 4-5 points closer than the surveys say, Graf is in spitting distance of taking the seat--especially if most of the 16% undecideds vote for Graf at the last minute. And this is the House seat that Real Clear Politics considers the second most likely to change party! The third one down is Florida House 16, Mark Foley's seat--too late to put a Republican on the ballot, so people will be voting for a creep. Here's the shocker--the last poll conducted last week shows the Democrat only seven points up on the virtual Foley. This is a huge lead if the election comes out like the survey--but if the surveys are overstating Democratic votes 4-5 points, this is a horse race still. The fourth most likely seat change is Indiana House 8--and the lead that the Democrat has there is huge--23 points in an early October survey. So why is such an enormous margin for the Democrat put this so far down on Real Clear Politics list? I'm confused--but it seems that Hostettler has a history of surprising wins against far better funded Democrats. The fifth most likely seat change is Pennsylvania House 10, where the Democrat lead is huge--14 points in the last survey. Hint: do not have an adulterous affair, unless you represent a heavily Democratic district, or the adulterous affair is same-sex. I still don't see why this is regarded as less likely to change parties than Arizona House 8. Sixth most likely is Colorado House 7, which was held by a Republican who retired--but the last survey shows the D and R tied, and this was after the Foley scandal broke. I think you get my point. Of the six "most likely" House seats to change parties--and all six from Republican to Democrat--three of them are within spitting distance of victory--especially if the survey overstating of Democratic vote totals that has held in several recent elections ends up applying here. Anonymous Sources "Out" An Idaho Politician Oh yeah, like I'm going to really believe hearsay accounts from one person who won't identify his supposed multiple sources--and he does this just before the election, when there is time to damage reputations but not time to deal with the lies effectively. Even worse, if you spend any significant energy denying it, then the Democratic media decide, "Where there's smoke there's fire." If you don't deny it vigorously, then the Democratic media decide that you aren't really contesting the claim. I think this is actually a pretty good indication of the desperation of the Democratic Party--hardly the sign of an organization that is confident about taking over the House. As one of the gay conservative bloggers pointed out (and I'm not linking to him because that would identify the politician), it is also a pretty clear sign of the willingness of the Democratic Party to exploit homophobia for political ends. I suspect that if it guaranteed them victory to demonize the appropriate groups, the Democrats would be having little badges made up already: pink triangles; yellow stars; and black crosses. Do you remember, back in the 1980s, a miniseries called Amerika? It was set in a United States that, in response to a limited nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, surrendered, rather than suffer overwhelming retaliation. It had Sam Neil playing a KGB official in charge of one region of the Midwest, and Kris Kristofferson as a war hero who ran for President in the only free election allowed after the surrender. There's a scene that we see in flashback through a video clip, where the heroic but somewhat naive politician is politically destroyed just before the election by his wife, a KGB agent. She accuses him on a live television broadcast of having forced her to have sex with Soviet agents--and thus scuttles both his election hopes, and by implication, the last hope for the United States to remain one nation. Really, there's a lot to this accusation that fits that model. It is sudden, unexpected, and timed to maximize damage. I have several times observed that I have developed an increasing concern that the choice may be a reasonably free society, or one where homosexuals exercise power. The problems with Rep. Mark Foley (R), Rep. Gerry Studds (D), questions about Rep. Kolbe (R) going camping with pages--and now this attempt to destroy the reputation of a nationally prominent Republican with the modern equivalent of Joseph McCarthy holding up a sheet of paper and saying, "I have a list of Communists in the State Department" inclines me to think that as unfair as it might be for the Republican Party to engage in a pink purge--that may be the only choice left. That's unfair, and that's unfortunate. There are a lot of gay conservatives and gay libertarians who vote Republican, because they put the policies of the Republican Party above identity group politics. But just like McCarthy's list worked because there were actually Communists in the State Department, and just about rational person knew that this was likely true, this sort of character assassination is surprisingly effective because the Republican Party has accepted homosexuals in its ranks. Democrats seem intent on forcing Republicans to throw every gay Republican out of office, and start snooping into the private affairs of elected officials for signs of homosexuality. But why is this a surprise? Democrats will do anything to get power--even forcing a pink purge. This latest outrage has persuaded me to throw more money into Randy Graf's campaign for Arizona Congressional District 6, and some money into Bill Sali Idaho Congressional District 1 race. We are engaged in a fight between campaigning based on issues, and whispering smear campaigns. The Democrats haven't been content with, "We're not Republicans." Now they are engaged in what can only be called McCarthyism. Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Astrophotography: Best Done Before It Gets Too Cold I rolled the 5" f/9 refractor out last night with the hopes of doing some time exposures on the Andromeda Galaxy. (Yes, the 17.5" reflector gathers way more light, but it isn't an equatorial mount, and even all that aperture still needs at least many seconds to get a decent exposure on a faint diffuse object like Andromeda.) 1. Align the mount on Polaris. If I am doing strictly visual observing, I can point the mount close enough to north that it takes many minutes for objects drift out of the field of view. For astrophotography, you need to do a bit better. The Losmandy GM-8 mount that I use has a polar alignment scope mounted in the polar axis. You unscrew a metal cover that exposes the alignment scope to the sky, and then plug in an illuminator to light up the reticle in the alignment scope. But the illuminator was sitting in a case in the corner of the garage, under a pile of chunk that I really didn't want sort through in the cold and the dark. Turning on the garage lights would have ruined my dark adaptation. 2. It takes a while for the glass on the refractor to completely adjust to the outside temperature--which was freezing or close it. So I went back in the house to cuddle with my wife while watching TV. (Something bizarre on Animal Planet channel, I think.) 3. I came back out, and discovered that finding Andromeda wasn't spectacularly easy. The finderscope on the refractor is a 7x50mm, so it doesn't have spectacular light grasp compared to the 11x70mm binoculars that I normally use to find Andromeda. If that doesn't sound like a big difference--light gathering increases with the square of the increase in diameter, so 70mm means 1.96x time light, and using two eyes rather than one increases perceived brightness by the square root of two, so Andromeda looks about 2.77x brighter in the binoculars than the finderscope. 4. Over the weekend, I had moved the mount from the CI-700 tripod--which puts it up so high that I can't easily attach the camera to the telescope--to the G-11 tripod, which was adjusted to the lowest leg settings. This is a bit too low, because now I have to get down on the ground to look through the finderscope. This is cold and miserable. Unfortunately, adjusting the legs upward with the mount and telescope attached is probably too dangerous to do. 5. Finally, I had the main scope looking at Andromeda. I went into the house for a few minutes to see if the mount was tracking across the sky correctly. I came back ten minutes later, and Andromeda has drifted off to the north. By this point, my injured finger is beginning to hurt a little from the cold--and except where my parka has me covered, the rest of me is a bit colder than is really comfortable. That settles it. I'll try this again starting earlier in the evening, with the G-11 tripod legs extended about a foot. The only really good news of the event is that instead of having to take everything apart to put it back the garage (about a ten minute operation), because I (unsurprisingly) have the ScopeRoller 11 casters on the G-11 tripod, it only takes about 20 seconds to disconnect the battery, and roll everything back inside. Why the Bush=Hitler Meme Is So Prevalent My wife is teaching English composition this semester, and as is so popular, she is teaching writing around the general theme of war and related issues. She does this partly because it interests her, and partly because students write more vigorously and passionately if they have strong feelings about the subject. She's careful to avoid turning it into a political indoctrination session, or expressing her opinions about particular policies, wars, or personalities--both of us had more than enough of that at Sonoma State University. She has been quite disturbed at how readily students use words like "evil" to describe Bush, and the comparisons to Hitler, but she is beginning to figure out why this meme is so widespread. Students are arriving at college with almost no knowledge of history. She found out from her students today that in Meridian school district, their world history class devoted one paragraph to the Nazi concentration camps. In Boise school district, if her students are to be believed, the subject didn't come up. What little her students know about concentration camps comes from watching Schindler's List. While a fine film, this describes a rare and unusually fortunate outcome of the Holocaust. The disturbing films of the liberation of the concentration camps? Her traditional age students have apparently not seen them. Their knowledge is woefully inadequate. It would appear that Hitler's greatest crime, at least from the statements made by students, was aggressive war about the Soviet Union. (And now you can understand Bush=Hitler!) Someone please tell me that all these students were just too busy dozing in high school, and that one of the most horrifying moments of the century got a little more coverage than that. There are some things that you have to know about the past, or you just keep repeating the mistakes of the past. Why Are Pre-Election Polls So Consistently Wrong? The Skeptical Inquirer, a publication of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal (CSICOP) used to have great fun taking the astrologers' predictions for the coming year and revisiting them a year later. Instapundit pointed to this similar retrospective by Riehl World View decided to do likewise with the poll numbers for the November 2002 elections--and points out that in state after state, the pre-election polls showed Democrats handily winning seats that inexplicably, ended up in Republican hands. One state where the Democrat actually won was six points ahead in the pre-election poll--but the actual vote margin was less than one point. The problem here is that election polling has turned out to be wrong--and consistently wrong--for several elections now. I wonder how much of this is "likely" Democrats are turning out to be less likely voters than "likely" Republicans, and how much is a fundamental survey technique problem of unbiased sampling. One of my sisters worked for a survey firm several election cycles back, and about 1/4 of the people that she called simply refused to participate. If this refusal were randomly distributed, it wouldn't matter. If Republicans are more likely to refuse to participate, it could seriously skew the results. Most importantly, if someone doesn't participate in the survey, there's no demographic information available to weight the raw data correctly. My wife, for example, is simply too busy to bother with political opinion surveys. I remember some years ago seeing a survey that asked people if they would rather have more money, or more time. This survey found that Democrats wished that they had more money, and Republicans wished that they had more time. If this is still the case--that Republicans are shorter on time than Democrats--it might explain why these polls are so consistently wrong on the Democrat side. NRA Candidate Ratings Came Out Where I lived in California, my choice was often between candidates who had an F-rating, or a D-rating. In Idaho, things are a bit different. For U.S. House of Representatives, District 1, the choice is an A-rated Republican (Bill Sali), and an A-rated Democrat (Larry Grant). Lower down the ticket, however, things aren't so wonderful. For State Senate, I have the choice of a C-rated Republican (the incumbent, Tim Corder) and a ?-rated Democrat (Henry Hibbert--probably didn't return the questionnaire). The lower house of Idaho's legislature is called the House of Representatives, and I get to vote for someone in District 22A and District 22B. For 22B, an A+ rated Republican (Pete Nielsen) and an A rated Democrat (Dawn D. Best). For 22A, there is a B+ rated Republican (Rich Wills) and an F-rated Democrat (Karen M. Schindele). Hmmm. Maybe I should run against Wills in 2008. I wonder what a typical campaign costs to run in this district? Where I lived in California, if you didn't have half a million dollars to spend (of either your own money, or that of people who would expect favors from you later), you were just wasting your money and your time. I wonder what is required here? UPDATE: Perhaps less than I thought. Wills seems to have raised less than $6000. Issues that I care about: I want to see an extension of either a community college or university in every county in the state, or at least within reasonable driving distance. Yes, it would cost some money, but there are ways to do this on the cheap--especially if a sharing arrangement can be made with a high school to teach classes in the afternoons and evenings. (High school because for some lab sciences, you need a lab.) In many of the outlying counties of Idaho, this would actually work well for working adults. Even a lot of traditional age college students in the outlying counties are working full-time or part-time. To the extent that we improve the job skills of people living in rural Idaho, increasing incomes and therefore income tax revenue, as well as reducing need for transfer payments, this may be at least partially self-funding. More effort to identify mentally ill persons who are unable to care for themselves and find ways to solve this problem, either through civil commitment, or persuasion--although this is an area where Idaho is making a very serious effort already for those mentally ill persons who run afoul of the law. I'm not sure what can or needs to be done about child abuse, but I know that it is a serious problem here. There are so many serious problems in adulthood that start with either physical or sexual abuse. Again, this isn't free, but as with education, solving some of these problems in childhood reduces the costs of mental hospitals, prisons, and jails. UPDATE 2: Actually, the more I look at this, the less sense it makes. Yes, I think a part-time legislature makes a lot of sense, but "Salary: $15,646 per year" means that I will need to be retired first. More Moments in Evolutionary Biology I injured my finger several weeks back with an end mill and drill press; you may recall the gruesome picture. Well, in spite of using neosporin topical antibiotic cream on it, there is clearly still an infection there (red and puffy, and occasionally pus coming out), so I went to the doctor today. Because so many staph infections are now resistant to the most modern antibiotics, the current national recommendation is...sulfa. Why, I felt like getting into my Model T, driving home, and listening to our President give a Fireside Chat on the radio! This was a bit surprising at first, because sulfa drugs aren't really antibiotics; they are bacteriostats--they just prevent or slow bacteria from reproducing, so that the body's own immune system can do its job without being overwhelmed. The pus is a sign that my body's immune is at work; pus has its charming color because of white blood cells that gave everything in the battle against invaders. Sulfa drugs date from the 1930s, and once genuine antibiotics came along, such as penicillin, they became much less commonly used. And that lack of common use has a benefit today: biologists today define species in terms of gene frequency (since the old definition of fertile offspring hasn't survived the dog-wolf hybrids). Those members of the various species of staph that had resistance to a lot of the modern antibiotics have apparently become more common in frequency than the less resistant forms (no surprise), but appear not to be able to handle the bacteriostatic effects of sulfa. The Most Fascinating Science News of the Week, The Month--Maybe The Year The New Jersey Coalition for Self-Defense blog linked to this absolutely fascinating and clearly relevant piece of scientific research about diet and violence--and if the research can be confirmed, suggests a way to substantially reduce violence--although unfortunately, opening up a never-ending string of lawsuits by the ambulance chasers. The article in the Guardian: Demar has been in and out of prison so many times he has lost count of his convictions. "Being drunk, being disorderly, trespass, assault and battery; you name it, I did it. How many times I been in jail? I don't know, I was locked up so much it was my second home."The scientist at the National Institute of Health running this study explains why he thinks this dietary change makes a difference: His hypothesis is that modern industrialised diets may be changing the very architecture and functioning of the brain.Now, this doesn't seem to be case for everyone. I wonder if it might be something where some people are simply not able to handle the shortage of omega-3 as well as others. For example, the article explains that kids without behavioral problems don't seem to get much benefit from omega-3 rich diets. But if a small percentage of our population has a serious inability to control rage because of a dietary problem, that's something that can be fixed. It might also explain why the 20th century saw a rather impressive increase in violence in the U.S.: Over the last century most western countries have undergone a dramatic shift in the composition of their diets in which the omega-3 fatty acids that are essential to the brain have been flooded out by competing omega-6 fatty acids, mainly from industrial oils such as soya, corn, and sunflower. In the US, for example, soya oil accounted for only 0.02% of all calories available in 1909, but by 2000 it accounted for 20%. Americans have gone from eating a fraction of an ounce of soya oil a year to downing 25lbs (11.3kg) per person per year in that period. In the UK, omega-6 fats from oils such as soya, corn, and sunflower accounted for 1% of energy supply in the early 1960s, but by 2000 they were nearly 5%. These omega-6 fatty acids come mainly from industrial frying for takeaways, ready meals and snack foods such as crisps, chips, biscuits, ice-creams and from margarine. Alcohol, meanwhile, depletes omega-3s from the brain.There's a detailed technical explanation as well: Essential fatty acids are called essential because humans cannot make them but must obtain them from the diet. The brain is a fatty organ - it's 60% fat by dry weight, and the essential fatty acids are what make part of its structure, making up 20% of the nerve cells' membranes. The synapses, or junctions where nerve cells connect with other nerve cells, contain even higher concentrations of essential fatty acids - being made of about 60% of the omega-3 fatty acid DHA.You can read the scientific paper about this here. I strongly encourage you to read either the entire article in the Guardian, or the paper. Sobering, isn't it? My wife has noticed that kids today are dramatically less capable of self-control than when we were young. We've assumed that it was the daycare generation. But perhaps what we are seeing is the dramatic transformation of our diet from the early 1960s when my wife and I were growing up, and the 1980s and 1990s. Do you know that Coca-Cola used to use cane sugar, but they switched to corn syrup some years ago? I believe that the only way to get cane sugar Coca-Cola now is to buy the Kosher for Passover Coca-Cola. (Why corn syrup isn't kosher is explained here.) I've seen the claim made that corn syrup places a part in increasing myopia--although at least one of the places that I've seen making this claim is selling omega-3 supplements. However, scientific journals have published papers that would indicate some connections between infant diet and visual development that fit into the omega-3 hypothesis. Can I Persuade The Brady Campaign to Send Me Money? Perhaps. Say Uncle, another gun rights blogger, noticed that, probably because of mentioning the Brady Campaign, that the ad bar started bringing up Brady Campaign ads: I noticed the Brady Campaign is showing up in my Google ads. Thought it was ironic. They are outraged, ya know. But they’re buying me guns, $0.10 at a time.I'm tempted to try the same approach. One of two things will happen: 1. They will run ads in my ad bar--which will be about as effective as when the Mongolian government in the early 1980s tried to sell gold postage stamps by buying the Libertarian Party voter registration list from the California Secretary of State. I can see the marketing idiot involved: "Well, you know, Libertarians are big believers in gold. I'm sure that they will be interested in putting money into the Mongolian government's pockets." This was probably the least successful mail marketing campaign in history. 2. They will stop advertising blindly on ad bars--reducing their presence. Either way is a win. UPDATE: I had originally written "North Korean government" above, and I found myself wondering how this could have been attempted, since trade with North Korea was completely prohibited. I thought about it more, and realized that it was the Mongolian government. Like a Saturday Night Live Skit Different River recently linked to a sad news story of a 63 year old man who robbed a bank because this way he would get free room and board in prison until he could start collecting Social Security benefits. Then Different River followed it up with a story that isn't so much sad as funny: Now, we hear that young Palestinians are carrying small bombs through Israeli checkpoints to get arrested – so they can get an Israeli high school diploma while in prison!Those evil Israelis! We must destroy them! But not until we get them to educate us! More on the Race To Replace Rep. Kolbe (R-AZ) I mentioned a couple of days ago how Republican Randy Graf is now only eight points back from Democrat Giffords in the race for Arizona's 8th Congressional district--and how the national Republican Party has worked hard to make sure that Graf didn't get the nomination, because they perceived him unelectable. After all, Graf is notorious for taking a position about immigration that agrees with the vast majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats in the U.S. Now I see that Graf has pulled up within spitting distance of Giffords while spending far less money: Congressional candidate Gabrielle Giffords has spent nearly $1.4 million on her District 8 campaign, according to recently released financial disclosures. Giffords, the Democrat seeking retiring Republican Jim Kolbe's seat, had raised almost $1.8 million as of Sept. 30. Randy Graf, her Republican opponent, had raised nearly $774,000 and spent $532,000.Wouldn't it have been interesting if the national Republican Party had decided to help a Republican candidate for Congress? I mean, this would assume that the national Republican Party was more interested in retaining control of the House than in keeping the supply of cheap and docile illegal labor coming into the U.S. I keep getting requests from the Republican National Committee for money to help with the campaign. But I think I'll be contributing directly to Randy Graf's campaign instead. Click here to make a credit card contribution to Graf's campaign--I just sent $50 to his campaign. If even 10% of of my readers kicked in $20 each, that would be more than $2000--probably enough to pay for part of a TV commercial or send out 4000-6000 pieces of direct mail. I can think of no better way to get the message across to the RNC that open borders and lowering wages for U.S. citizens and legal residents is not okay. Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Trying To Shove People Into a Slot Doesn't Work Cathy Seipp's otherwise insightful review of Emilie Raymond's Charlton Heston and American Politics does a fine job of demonstrating the difficulty in calling Moses a neocon, but Seipp's suggestion that Heston was more properly aligned with libertarian thought suffers one rather serious problem: They do know that libertarians are for legalized drugs, and against any criticism of bad language or sex in the Hollywood product, so . . . great!Heston took a strong position on the subject of "bad language...in the Hollywood product" with his strongly worded criticism of music companies producing and distributing rap music that encouraged cop killing. This page indicates that Heston penned an article titled, "Song Lyrics Should Be Subject to Free Speech Limitation" which I can't find, but I don't find inconsistent with Heston's often stated positions. I don't know exactly where Heston might have placed himself on the political spectrum, but trying to fit him into the libertarian slot doesn't work. At various times in his career he was a civil rights activist, a gun control advocate (right after the assassination of Robert Kennedy), an opponent of abortion, and a board member of Accuracy in Media, a conservative media watchdog organization. I was disappointed but not surprised to hear him defend the National Endowment for the Arts. I have great respect for Charlton Heston, even when I have not agreed with him. But he sure doesn't fit very well into neat little pigeonholes, whether neocon, conservative, libertarian, or liberal. UPDATE: A reader tells me: The Heston article you can't find isn't online, it's Heston, Charlton. “Song Lyrics Should Be Subject to Free Speech Limitations.” Free Speech. Ed. Bruno Leone. Current Controversies. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1994. 123-125.He also suggests that it may just be a retitling of this National Review article by Heston, which recognizes that the First Amendment is not unlimited, and I would say safely takes Heston out of the libertarian slot: I condemn the responsible officials in this company. Long after police groups across the country, the President of the United States, members of Congress, and major religious and media figures protested Body Count, Time-Warner began to ship CDs to disc jockeys in miniature black plastic body bags. Isn't that cute? A Time-Warner spokesman called this "a promotional gimmick." Is this the same clever executive who proposed as the cover art on another upcoming album a gunman lurking with an Uzi near the White House, waiting for President Bush?In many respects, Heston's position about free speech is what liberalism was, a century ago (hence the quote from the great liberal Supreme Court Justice Holmes), and the position that conservatives take today. Freedom of speech is not unlimited, nor does it preclude criminal and civil liability for its results. Incitement to riot is a crime (although it has always seemed an extreme example of this liablity); libel in some states is still a crime, and carries civil liability; treason (as defined in the Constitution) is a crime; copyright infringement (which is a form of speech--duplicating the speech of others) is a crime. If You Get An Email About Madelyn Murray O'Hair's FCC Petition... Don't ignore it. Do a Reply All to let everyone who received that email know that it is bogus. The email refers to FCC petition 2493--which was filed in 1974, rejected by the FCC in 1975, and while it was an attempt to prevent religious broadcasting, did not involve Madelyn Murray O'Hair. This has produced such a flood of useless mail that the FCC has a specific page about it, here. I would love to know who gets things like this going. If I were prepared to give credit for intelligence to the Democrats, I would suggest that they started it, so as to focus Christians in the United States on everything but what really matters--the elections coming up in three weeks. Especially, Democrats takin control of the U.S. Senate would mean that the next appointment (which many consider likely in the next two years) would be at best a lukewarm Republican like David Souter or Sandra Day O'Connor. You Learn Something New Every Day At least I do. First, a little background on callable bonds. Bonds are either "callable" or "non-callable." This means that if the bond is supposed to mature November 15, 2016, and it is callable, then the bond issuer may redeem the bond before maturity. Callable bonds usually have a call schedule that defines on what dates, and at what price, the bond may be called. For example, if a bond maturing 11/15/2016 is callable, it might have a call schedule that specifies that it can be called on 11/15/2008 at 100% of its face value (also commonly called par value), on 11/15/2010 at 102% of its face value, and on 11/15/2012 at 104% of its face value. I've never seen a call schedule for a bond that allowed the bond issuer to call the bond below par, although I suspect that someone, somewhere has issued such bonds. However: if you buy a callable bond above par, you have to worry about the possibility that if your bond is called before maturity, you may find that whatever spectacular interest rate the bond was paying, what you have lost from buying a bond for $1100--and having it redeemed for $1000--will turn the bond from a spectacular investment, into a disappointing investment--or even a loss, if the difference between purchase price and redemption price is large enough. (Of course, this loss will usually be a long-term capital loss, so you can use it to wipe out your long-term capital gains for the year in which your bond is called.) When you look at a schedule of available bonds, at least on the Schwab website, you will see annualized yield in two categories: YTM (Yield to Maturity) and YTW (Yield to Worst). The YTW column tells you what your worst annualized yield would be if the bond was called before maturity. As a general rule, I don't like surprises--especially on bonds, which are supposed to be boring, safe, and predictable. For that reason, I usually only look at bonds that are selling at or below par. I don't need any capital losses--you can use $3000 of capital losses each year to offset your capital gains, and you get to carry over the unused portion from year to year. The great meltdown of the stock market in 2001 and 2002, and my liquidation of some of my barking, furry mutual funds, left me with enough capital losses to carry over perhaps into retirement. Consequently, if I buy bonds or stocks, I don't really need any more capital losses--I've reached my limit for this year, and next year, and many years into the future. Anyway, today's lesson was the mysterious term "Make Whole Call." What's that? There are callable bonds that have no call schedule--just this mysterious tag. I called up Schwab's bond specialists, and they explained that a "Make Whole Call" bond is one that is generally only called as a result of an emergency by the bond issue--a tax law change, for example, that strongly encouraged them to get out of debt. If they call such a bond, you are guaranteed to get at least the par value of the bond, and generally an interest premium to partially compensate you for losing subsequent interest on the bond. (Although this description of "Make Whole Call" indicates that you are not guaranteed par value for the bond itself, but that it is almost always a win for the bondholder, and this is a rarely used option.) For each bond, the premium tends to be different, but the bond specialist explained that one of the "Make Whole Call" bonds that had grabbed my interest was specified to pay a premium on call of whatever the current 5-year Treasury bond yield was, plus 25 basis points. So if when the bond was called, a 5-year Treasury bond was yielding 4.70%, you would get 4.95% on top of the par value of the bond. Ways To Get Whipped Good By The Treasury Yield Curve The longer the maturity of a fixed-rate bond, the more dramatically the price of the bond can change in response to changing interest rates. A bond that matures next year will be barely affected in value by even dramatic changes in current interest rates or inflation projections; the worst that happens, you can just wait until next year for the bond to mature. A long maturity bond is another matter. If interest rates or long-term inflation expectations rise dramatically, you can see startling reductions in the current value of your fixed-rate bond. Similarly, dropping interest rates or inflation expectations can send the current value of your fixed-rate bond flying upward. If you have been watching the Treasury yield curve carefully (as I do), you've noticed that the far end of the curve--out at 30 year maturity--moves around quite dramatically. I think of it as a whip. The end near your hand doesn't move all that quickly, but at the far end of a 12 foot whip, that tip can start to have supersonic speeds--hence the crack from a smartly handled whip, as the tip breaks the sound barrier. The longer maturity your bond, the more that Treasury yield curve whip can cause you pain or pleasure. I was just looking for deals and I found a bond maturing in 2094 (CUSIP 12614QAK1). If you had enormous confidence that interest rates have reached their peak, this might be a good one grab--and watch it fly upward in value. But if you guess wrong, that tip of the yield curve is gonna hurt! Should Government Officials Try to Pressure TV Stations To Fire Journalists? If George Bush suggested that CBS should fire Dan Rather over the forged documents, there would have been an uproar, and rightly so. But the rules all work differently in the other direction: Last week, KGO radio talk-show host Pete Wilson made some comments about a child born to Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who is gay, and Rebecca Goldfader, who is a lesbian. As Wilson put it, a baby is "not an experiment. It is not an opportunity to see how far you can carry your views on parenting, alternative lifestyles or diversity in family structures." Labels: homosexuality Monday, October 16, 2006
Trivia Question That You Almost Certainly Won't Get Right This governor went on to become president. While he was governor, and under his direction, 30% of the state's mental patients were deinstitutionalized. The state and the governor were? No, the answers aren't "California" and "Ronald Antichrist Reagan." The answers are Georgia, and Jimmy Carter. From Gerald N. Grob, "Public Policy and Mental Illnesses: Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Commission on Mental Health," Milbank Quarterly [2005] 83:3, 425-456: As the governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter had established the Commission to Improve Services to the Mentally and Emotionally Retarded, and his wife Rosalynn persuaded him to appoint her to the commission. During Carter’s term in office, the number of hospitalized patients fell by about 30 percent, and a large number of CMHCs [Community Mental Health Clinics] were created. As early as 1974 Mrs. Carter decided that if her husband were elected president, she would continue to focus on mental health reform. Her hope was that the seemingly beneficial results of deinstitutionalization and the creation of CMHCs in Georgia could be replicated on a national level. Nevertheless, her knowledge of the mental health system was relatively limited. She accepted the prevailing assumption that CMHCs could treat persons with serious mental disorders more effectively than traditional mental hospitals could, a belief based largely on ideology rather than empirical evidence (Ayres 1979; Carter 1984; Gallagher 1974; Stroud 1977). Labels: deinstitutionalization Yet Another Interesting Twist on the History of Deinstitutionalization In the course of my reading, I ran into this fascinating claim by Gerald N. Grob, "Public Policy and Mental Illnesses: Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Commission on Mental Health," Milbank Quarterly [2005] 83:3, 425-456: After World War II, however, mental hospitals began to lose their social and medical legitimacy. The experiences of the military during the wa |
