Sunday, August 31, 2008

Tuna are hot

I just learned that Blue Fin Tuna are warm-blooded. Their body temperatures are 15-20 degrees warmer than their environment. This heat reserve allows them to catch prey in areas that are too cold for some other fish.

Measuring Code

Using lines-of-code or cyclical complexity to measure software is like using average word length or frequency of the letter 'n' to measure the quality of a novel. Having said this, though, there are situations in which knowing how many words or pages a book has might be useful.

Both candidates

Why can't I like both candidates? What is wrong with that? Obama and McCain are two of the best and most exciting politicians in Washington. They both have shortcomings, but both are great leaders and could make good presidents, in my opinion.

Sure, McCain isn't an expert on economics, by his own admission. But he's honest and humble about it, which is refreshing. And he's been in the Senate for a long time, so he has analyzed and voted on bills that affect the economy for an equally long time. That's great experience.

Obama doesn't fully subscribe to the basic premises of market economics, and whether that's because he's fundamentally more of a New Dealer or because it's simply politically expedient not to, I don't know, but either way it's mildly disappointing that he wants to selectively ignore the lessons of the last 100 years of capitalism.

Sure, Obama's messianic tone and image are reminiscent of one of the less good parts of George W. Bush, and sure, McCain is more similar to Bush in terms of economic policy (they are both Republicans, after all), but neither is very similar to George W. Bush, so stop pretending that either is. And George W. Bush was good at some things, so being like in some ways isn't bad, anyway.

Sure, Obama seems to be committing the same error that Bush did by not admitting he was wrong about Iraq, and sure, McCain's positions on Iraq and Iran might be more aggressive, but neither man is stupid, and I don't think either is going to start senseless wars or withdraw troops if it leaves us (or the Iraqis) worse off (even if they say they will). Furthermore, you readers out there should blame Obama's inability to "change his mind about Iraq" on yourselves. It is senseless to punish people for changing their position. Changing one's mind is not a crime. Pretending to believe something just to get votes is much worse. You need to start discriminating between the two.

Both Obama and McCain are visionary men, who understand things about the ways in which the world has changed (Obama seems enlightened about how class and race relations in the US have changed and McCain understands how international relations and defense have changed). Both of them are willing to take on the establishment, and both have proven that they can do it successfully. Both are honorable and respectable. Either would be a good ambassador for, and representative of, our country. Either would make a competent commander-in-chief. I think either would do what was right, not what would get him the most votes.

Both have already restored much of what has been missing in American politics for the last 16 years.

The State of Nature

The so-called state of nature is a very important concept in philosophy and political science. What is "natural" is harder to call "wrong" and what solves problems in "nature" is easier to justify as useful. I have been re-reading Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, lately, and I had this thought about the state of nature of man:

Man is neither totally free nor totally un-free in the state of nature. In an ancient society, I may have been free to do many different things, owing to the lack of laws and enforcement, but I might not have been free to violate certain essential customs or traditions. I might have been punished to the point of exile or death for violating certain rules. In any group of people, norms or rules will evolve and develop that limit individual freedoms. In such a primitive society, some will test the rules, and others will enforce them. Sometimes the rules will change.

The push toward freedom *is* the state of nature. Our constitution enshrines this by limiting the powers of government and then making it hard to amend the document, itself. Progress in political science, ethics, and even economics, should be viewed as a move toward a system that allows more freedom. Often, limitations on freedom are necessary, such as a prohibition of my right to kill you, or your right to steal my food. If freedom-limiting tactics, like taxes or new regulations, were generally seen as "temporary," we might be better for it. Rather than making tax cuts temporary, we should make tax increases temporary. The Patriot Act should be temporary and free trade agreements should last indefinitely. Religious freedoms should be protected and relegation of a group to cult status should be temporary.

Rather than making new regulations every time an industry experiences a market failure or corruption, we should make new rules with the expectation that eventually a system will be designed which needs less additional regulations. We will never achieve a society with no market safeguards, no rules, and no intervention by government, nor would one be desirable. But, we should always try to unburden people of rules and redistributions when we can. We should, at least, remind people that freedoms should not be taken for granted, and that our society should have, as its goal, the continued emancipation of its citizenry.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Necessary War?

I'm sick and tired of the idea that we shouldn't go to war "unnecessarily." I *might* accept this concept, if it weren't racist and patently ludicrous OR if people understood necessity as more than greed and selfishness.

The argument goes something like this, "We didn't have to go to war in Iraq, so we shouldn't have." I will now proceed to attack this argument from several directions.

1) We didn't have to go to war in Rwanda, either, and we didn't, and 1 million innocent people died. How is this good? What if we had gone, and 10,000 US soldiers and 100,000 Rwandans had been killed in the ensuing several years of violence. Would that have been worse? If so, how? Unless the loss of *any* American lives outweighs the loss of 1 million Rwandan lives, which smacks of racism. Millions of innocents died as a result of wars Saddam started, or because he gassed them. Therefore, how could we NOT have removed him from power, unless we're saying that we don't care if millions of Iraqis die. That's how many Americans think. And then we wonder why everyone else thinks we're arrogant.

2) If we want to have international rules, don't they have to be enforced? If they are to be enforced, then don't we have an obligation to enforce them? No one was enforcing UN regulations on Iraq. We did.

3) The concept of "just" war has been around a long time. Necessary war is not really an interesting concept. A Just War, whether offensive or defensive, is one that passes the tests of morality. The only test of justness of war which even kind of sounds like "necessity" is the idea that war should be a last resort. Iraq started flaunting the regulations imposed upon it in 1993 and escalated their violations in 1998. No one was able to do anything about it. The situation was worsening, the sanctions regime was collapsing, Saddam had slaughtered Shi'ites AFTER the first Gulf War and was pursuing a genocidal policy toward the Kurds. I don't know whether there were any peaceful options left. Can you think of any reasonable ones?