An independent Kurdistan?

This is interesting:

OF all the remarkable things that happened at the Iraqi polls on Sunday, perhaps the most striking was pulled off by the Kurdish independence movement. With almost no advance notice, hundreds of Kurds erected tents at official polling places in Iraq's Kurdish areas and asked those emerging from the ballot booths to take part in an informal referendum on whether Kurdistan should be independent or part of Iraq. From what I saw, almost everyone stopped to vote in the referendum, and the tally was running 11 to 1 in favor of independence.
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Iraq's new Assembly will face the task of preparing a constitution for a country where a sizable part of the population almost unanimously does not want to be part of the whole. The representatives of the Kurdish areas will most likely be the second-largest bloc in the Parliament. They will not press for independence any time soon, but they will be mindful of the referendum vote...The Kurdish region today functions as if it were an independent state. The Kurdistan Regional Government carries out virtually all government functions, and Baghdad law applies only to the extent the Kurdish Parliament chooses to apply it. Kurdistan is responsible for its own security (which is the main reason it has been free of the violence wracking the rest of Iraq) and maintains its own armed forces.

For the people of Kurdistan, the issue is not simply a matter of keeping what they have. What drives the move for independence is not just the love of Kurdistan but also a widespread antipathy toward Iraq.

America doesn't appear to be in favour of an independent Kurdistan, but will they be able to apply sufficient pressure on the Kurds? Turkey and Iran fear that their own sizable Kurdish minorities might wish to secede and join a new Kurdish state.

Also from the same editorial

The United States would do well to learn the lessons of the former Yugoslavia, where policymakers denied the reality of breakup until it was too late to contain the accompanying violence. Just four days before Yugoslavia's wars began in June 1991, the American Secretary of State, James Baker, was in Belgrade focused on the impossible task of stopping Slovenian and Croatian secession when he should have been trying to prevent the shooting.

Read the whole thing; the author (Peter Galbraith), as a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, probably knows what he's talking about.

A Historic Day for Iraq?

Good news from Iraq! Attacks on voters and polling stations have claimed 36 lives (so far), but the violence is less than expected. Much more important, turnout is higher than expected; the current official guesstimate is 60%. Unfortunately, Sunni turnout may not be very good. There are reports of a station where only 7 people voted in 7 hours, and another where the 15 people who cast their votes were the security forces assigned to protect the booth. Still, there are some encouraging signs; we'll probably do much better than Senator McCain's prediction of a 5% Sunni turnout.

So why the question-mark in the title? Partly because I'm an inveterate pessimist, but more because I read again today something we often forget: In fledgling democracies, the second elections are often more important than the first. Africa provides several examples of countries where the second post-colonial elections were never held; the winners of the first essentially became dictators. I don't seriously expect that to happen in Iraq, but like I said, I'm a pessimist.

Today, though, the world has reason to celebrate - to celebrate and honour the courage of millions of Iraqis who braved threats, bullets and bombs to help create a free Iraq.

A Numbers Game

One of my pet peeves is the way people abuse statistics (or numbers, in general). When it's done deliberately, for economic or political gain, mild irritation gives way to extreme contempt. A good example would be President Bush's oft-repeated assertion that 14 out of the 18 Iraqi provinces are safe. This number was widely reported in the media, but very few reports mentioned the fact that the other 4 provinces hold half the population of Iraq.

Paull Krugman reports on another in an editorial for the Times today.

This week, in a closed meeting with African-Americans, Mr. Bush asserted that Social Security was a bad deal for their race, repeating his earlier claim that "African-American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people." In other words, blacks don't live long enough to collect their fair share of benefits.
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First, Mr. Bush's remarks on African-Americans perpetuate a crude misunderstanding about what life expectancy means. It's true that the current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years - but that doesn't mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die after collecting only a few years' worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks' low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years - not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men.

Second, the formula determining Social Security benefits is progressive: it provides more benefits, as a percentage of earnings, to low-income workers than to high-income workers. Since African-Americans are paid much less, on average, than whites, this works to their advantage.

Finally, Social Security isn't just a retirement program; it's also a disability insurance program. And blacks are much more likely than whites to receive disability benefits.

Put it all together, and the deal African-Americans get from Social Security turns out, according to various calculations, to be either about the same as that for whites or somewhat better.

Of course, this form of intellectual dishonesty is hardly unique to the current administration; pretty much every group with an agenda to push is guilty.

The BBC runs a weekly programme on the subject called More or Less. From the website:

The programme was an idea born of the sense that numbers were the principal language of public argument. And yet there were few places where it was thought necessary to step back and think in the way we often step back to think about language, about the way we use figures.
What do they really measure? What kind of truth, if any, do they capture?

Open the pages of any newspaper and you will see risks of this, targets for that, new spending and new cuts, arguments about productivity, performance indicators, measurements, statistics and quantification of every kind.

We all use numbers in so many ways to argue about, understand, help make sense of the world around us. More or Less hopes to make that task easier, more entertaining, more surprising.

More or Less often reports on figures that have featured prominently in recent news; this week's programme describes why a recent survey claiming that a quarter of English boys had committed criminal acts was seriously flawed (Listen here). For example, teenage boys who once pushed a sibling hard enough to leave a bruise or scratch were guilty of 'serious assault.' In fact, merely pushing someone six times a year (even if the victim never suffered injury) makes you a prolific offender!

Here's an amusing example: STATS, an American organization (apparently based at George Mason university) that seeks to"hold U.S. journalists to the highest standards of reporting accuracy, while providing them with concrete assistance to help them better understand the complexities and limitations of scientific and statistical material", annually presents Dubious Data awards to media stories with particularly egregious statistical or logical errors. One of the winners in 2000 was a report on a survey which claimed that 70% of people surveyed had tried to quit smoking, and precisely 0 had succeeded. What wasn't quite so clear was that only smokers were surveyed, and only current smokers. People who had successfully quit were automatically disqualified!

I got this gem from the STATS site: "It is a cardinal rule of social science research that the plural of anecdote is not data."

Thank God for Sundays!

Saturdays are all very well, but there's something special about Sundays. Actually, make that several things: talking to my parents, a wonderful church service, a lazy afternoon, dinner in CampusTown and dessert at Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe. But perhaps best of all are the Sunday editorials.

The Times has two pieces on genetic behavioural/intellectual differences between men and women; both well written, and both referring to Lawrence Summer's recent remarks.

Thomas Friedman writes about Iraq, elections, and the global 'war on terror'. He makes the point that however satisfying it may be to say "I told you so" if the elections aren't a success, the consequences of failed elections will not be good. In the event that the insurgents keep people away from the polls (which Friedman thinks unlikely), the world needs a Plan B. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have one.

This war also can't be won with troops - only with turnout. This is a war between Iraqi voters and insurgents - ballots versus bullets. And the people who understand that best are the fascist insurgents. That is why they are not focusing their attacks on U.S. troops, but on Iraqi election workers, candidates, local officials and police. The insurgents have one credo: "Iraqis must not vote - there must be no authentic expression of the people's will for a modern, decent Iraq. Because, if there is, the world will see that this is not a war between Muslims and infidel occupiers, but between Muslims with bad ideas and Muslims with progressive ideas."

This war also can't be won with troops - only with turnout. This is a war between Iraqi voters and insurgents - ballots versus bullets. And the people who understand that best are the fascist insurgents. That is why they are not focusing their attacks on U.S. troops, but on Iraqi election workers, candidates, local officials and police. The insurgents have one credo: "Iraqis must not vote - there must be no authentic expression of the people's will for a modern, decent Iraq. Because, if there is, the world will see that this is not a war between Muslims and infidel occupiers, but between Muslims with bad ideas and Muslims with progressive ideas."
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I spent Friday morning interviewing two 18-year-old French Muslim girls in the Paris immigrant district of St.-Ouen. (It is about a mile from the school where in March 2003 a French Muslim girl, who had refused the veil and rebuffed the advances of a Muslim boy, was thrown into a garbage can by three Muslim teenagers, who then tossed lighted cigarette butts into the can and closed the lid.)

Both girls I interviewed wore veils and one also wore a full Afghan-like head-to-toe covering; one was of Egyptian parents, the other of Tunisian parents, but both were born and raised in France. What did I learn from them? That they got all their news from Al Jazeera TV, because they did not believe French TV, that the person they admired most in the world was Osama bin Laden, because he was defending Islam, that suicide "martyrdom" was justified because there was no greater glory than dying in defense of Islam, that they saw themselves as Muslims first and French citizens last, and that all their friends felt pretty much the same.

We were not in Kabul. We were standing outside their French public high school - a short ride from the Eiffel Tower.

Senator John McCain has these predictions for the turnout: Kurds - 80%, Shiites - 60%, Sunnis - 5%. Will that be sufficient? I hope so, but I think not, unless the newly formed government is extremely magnanimous to the Sunnis.

While I'm on the subject, I'm currently reading Tom Clancy's Battle Ready, written with (Marine) General Anthony Zinni. Gen Zinni commanded CENTCOM from 1997 to 2000 (during which time he directed strikes against Iraq and Al Qaeda) and later served as Colin Powell's envoy to the Middle East until he resigned in 2003 over disagreements about the probable aftermath of the Iraq War. I've only just begun, but here's an interesting snippet from the first 20 pages.
Gen. Zinni describes how, as CENTCOM Commander-in-Chief, he realised that his plans for defeating Saddam's military did not address the problems of reconstruction. He organised a "war-game" called 'Desert Crossing' that presented several post-Saddam Iraq scenarios and gave experts from several branches of government a feel for the extent of the problems they would face. Unfortunately, no government agency was willing to do anything about it; none of them had a charter to develop a plan for rebuilding Iraq. The CENTCOM planning staff began to work on it, but after Zinni left, nothing came of it. He later testified on the subject before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after it became clear that State and Defense Department officials had neglected such planning.

Also at the Times, the public editor discusses the way numbers are used and abused by the media. This is something I've been meaning to blog about; more coming soon.

Sadly, today's Post Opinion page doesn't seem as good as usual. They're carrying a story on Viktor Yushchenko's inauguration (as President of Ukraine) which reads more like a regular article than an editorial. There is, though, one remarkable column: Samuel Pisar's Will We 'Never Forget'? A survivor of Majdanek and Auschwitz, he writes of his experiences, the cruelty and heroism he witnessed. He writes, too, of the lessons the Holocaust can teach us.

We the survivors are now disappearing one by one. Soon history will speak of Auschwitz at best with the impersonal voice of researchers and novelists, at worst with the malevolence of demagogues and falsifiers. This week the last of us, with a multitude of heads of state and other dignitaries, are gathering at that cursed site to remind the world that past can be prologue, that the mountains of human ashes dispersed there are a warning to humanity of what may still lie ahead.

The genocides in Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda and the recent massacres of innocents in the United States, Spain, Israel, Indonesia and so many other countries have demonstrated our inability to learn from the blood-soaked past. Auschwitz, the symbol of absolute evil, is not only about that past, it is about the present and the future of our newly enflamed world, where a coupling of murderous ideologues and means of mass destruction can trigger new catastrophes.
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In the autumn of their lives, the survivors of Auschwitz feel a visceral need to transmit what we have endured, to warn younger generations that today's intolerance, fanaticism and hatred can destroy their world as they once destroyed ours, that powerful alert systems must be built not only against the fury of nature -- a tsunami or storm or eruption -- but above all against the folly of man. Because we know from bitter experience that the human animal is capable of the worst, as well as the best -- of madness as of genius -- and that the unthinkable remains possible.

If you read nothing else today, read his whole column.

Why Kerry Lost

Much has been said and written on why Senator Kerry lost the election: we've heard everything from Karl Rove's genius (or underhanded tactics, depending on who you ask) to right-wing evangelical voters turning out en masse to oppose gay marriage, to allegations of fraud. Perhaps there isn't a simple answer, but this is one I like:

Mr. Kerry failed because of his inability to tell his own story.

Errol Morris has an op/ed piece in the Times that I think is very well-written.

My guess is that Mr. Kerry and his campaign believed that certain things could not be mentioned. Foremost among these was Mr. Kerry's opposition to the war in Vietnam, which was largely erased from the candidate's life. That was a mistake. People think in narratives - in beginnings, middles and ends. The danger when you edit something too severely is that it no longer makes sense; worse still, it leaves people with the disquieting impression that something is being hidden.

Muting Mr. Kerry's opposition to the Vietnam War had precisely this effect. Remember, this is the man who in 1971 made the following statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

"Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say they we have made a mistake. ... We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
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After the 2004 conventions, a New York Times poll asked people whether they felt that the candidates were not being candid about their war records. Many of Mr. Kerry's supporters were mystified that almost as large a percentage of Americans felt that he was holding something back as felt that Mr. Bush was doing the same.

But the polls made perfect sense. Mr. Kerry was holding something back - his real story about Vietnam. And in the end the questions about his service in Vietnam became questions about how he would deal with the war in Iraq. Was Mr. Kerry for it or against it? Questions about Iraq became questions about his candor, and vice versa.

What's disconcerting here is that Mr. Kerry had an out. He could have explained why he went to Vietnam and then opposed the war, and then he could have used this explanation to help people understand why he voted for the Iraq war and then voted against it. His experience with the changing nature of a war could have shifted those critical swing voters, convincing them that he was just the person to lead them at this juncture in our history.

His thesis may or may not be correct, but it's one that I hadn't seen before, and sufficiently interesting to be worthy of consideration. (Admit it, another reason you liked it was because "People think in narratives" made you think of Terry Pratchett - ed. Yes, well, that too, of course.)

On Social Security

This is one subject I never wrote about; I always figured I didn't know enough. (Or perhaps you instinctively thought of it as the 'third rail of blogging'; post about it and die? - ed.) I've been reading a lot about it, though, and today I found this superb report by Roger Lowenstein in the New York Times magazine. (Warning: 9 pages! What is it with you and multi-page articles from the Times lately? Are you being paid to increase their advertising revenue? -ed.)

Lowenstein, like many other writers for the Times, believes that President Bush is exaggerating when he claims an impending Social Security crisis. One way to use the market, he suggests, is to invest in equities directly; this would provide economies of scale, keep the Social Security Trust Fund out of the government's hands, and have the effect of decreasing risks for individual investors. Another option is to tweak the current system modestly to keep it solvent for 75 years or so; after all, long-term forecasts are notoriously inaccurate.

Personally, I'm inclined to believe that the administration may be manufacturing a crisis like they did with the WMD in Iraq, but I'm not really qualified to comment. If you, like me, are interested in the origins and history of Social Security, Lowenstein's article is well worth the read, regardless of your opinion on the best way to fix it.

In Defence of Lawrence Summers

Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, suggested at an Economics conference on Friday that one reason there are relatively few women in science- and math-related careers could be an innate difference between the sexes. Half a dozen of the conference participants were offended; Nancy Hopkins, an MIT biologist, walked out in protest, saying that she was upset that all the brilliant young women at Harvard were being led by a man who "views them this way." From another New York Times article:

"When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," Dr. Hopkins said. "Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive an automobile."

This sort of thing (the objections, not Summer's comments) drives me nuts: to begin with, Summers was requested by the conference organisers to be provocative, and he stressed that fact repeatedly in his talks. Much more important, the comments did not show a bias. Is it biased to say that most men are taller than most women because of biological differences between the sexes? Research has consistently shown that men tend to score higher than women on mathematical tests; I even blogged about an extensive study last month. On the other hand, women tend to have better language skills. Some of these differences may be (as certain feminists like Dr. Hopkins claim) entirely due to sociological differences, but is it so inconceivable that there is an innate difference in talents? Even if there were such a difference, what does it matter? People like Dr. Summers are not claiming that men are intrinsically 'better' than women; math skills (or intelligence tests in general, for that matter) do not measure a person's worth any more than height does. All Summers did was advance it as one possible reason for the under-representation of women in scientific careers.

Unfortunately, it appears that at least to a few people, political correctness is more important than a genuine understanding of the problem being considered. I'm glad to see that Dr. Summers is standing by his remarks.

Update: Tall, Dark, & Mysterious makes some good points. This is getting more publicity than I thought it would; there's even a Slashdot article.

Revelations from Ukraine

The New York Times is carrying a sensational 6-page article on the role of the army and security service during the recent presidential elections in Ukraine. It's a remarkable story; the S.B.U. (Security Service of Ukraine, the local successor to the KGB), led by its chairman General Ihor P. Smeshko, and other intelligence organisations decided 'to save their country' when it became apparent that Yanukovich would be declared the victor through the use of widespread fraud. It is believed that the S.B.U. bugged the Yanukovich campaign and made available recordings which showed that the results had been manipulated. The security services also refused to co-operate when Yanukovich wished to declare a state of emergency; they insisted on a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Further, when troops of the Ministry of the Interior (M.V.D.) were on their way to begin a crackdown on demonstrators in the capital, General Oleksander Petruk (the army chief of staff) warned the Interior Ministry that the army was on the side of the people, and that M.V.D. troops would face the army and special forces, not the unarmed protesters they were expecting.

Read the whole fascinating account of the post-election crisis. (I blogged about this subject previously here, and linked to these three posts by Dan Drezner.)

Graner Found Guilty

Two stories; will comment further soon.

Considering he had Womack, I'm not surprised. Though in all fairness, it would have been a miracle if any lawyer had managed to get him acquitted.

Anti-Torture Legislation Scrapped

I noticed this Post article a couple of days ago and meant to blog about it, but it somehow slipped my mind. The Post is enlightened enough to keep articles publically available for a couple of weeks after they're published (instead of moving them quickly to a pay-per-view archive), so the link should be good for a while.

The Senate had overwhelmingly (96 to 2) approved restrictions on 'extreme interrogation measures' by American intelligence officers as part of intelligence reform legislation. After pressure from the White House, these restrictions were removed from the bill. One reason given was that the question was 'too complex' to be included in the bill.

I must say I'm not surprised that the current administration would oppose curbs on extreme interrogation, but given that I'm unsure where to draw the line myself, this may not necessarily be a bad thing. Acceptable measures may depend to some extent on the circumstances, which would make legislation on the subject complex. What irked me, though, was the letter opposing the bill written by Ms. Rice.

In a letter to members of Congress, sent in October and made available by the White House on Wednesday in response to inquiries, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice expressed opposition to the measure on the grounds it "provides legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled under applicable law and policy."

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Of course it 'provides legal protections to prisoners to which they are not now entitled'; that was the purpose of the legislation. Does the administration think that this is by definition a bad thing? Imagine that Congress was working on a law on the rights of domestic prisoners. Would the White House object on the grounds that it provides legal protections that go beyond those to which the prisoners are entitled now under law? For a more ridiculous example, consider funding for any government program. Should a bill proposing an increase in funding be stopped because it goes further than the current amount allocated?

I suppose it's useless to expect logic from any government, though. :-)

Forget Graner, Can We Try His Lawyer?

Guy Womack, attorney for Specialist Charles Graner, leaves me speechless. (See here for an earlier post on his incompetence.)

"Sometimes, when you make an omelet, you have to break some eggs," Mr. Womack told the jury, adding, "You had to use approaches that we would not want to do with our own children."

Because 'our children' are completely different from those heathen Iraqi kids dying from hunger and disease, right?

"They were just taking pictures of what they did at work all day," he said of Specialist Graner and his friends.

Yeah, this is just like taking pictures of a regular day at the office, isn't it? It gets better:

"The crime is that somebody leaked the photographs."

So that's what was wrong; torturing the detainees (many of whom weren't accused of any specific crime) was completely ok. But those criminal whistle-blowers deserve to be strung up.

Graner apparently even sent graphic photographs home to his young children, among others. In reply to a message about 'Take Your Children to Work Day', he said, "How about send a bastard to hell day?"

To be fair, Womack did make one good point: the mistreatment of prisoners was common knowledge.

Specialist Graner, he said, was taking the fall for higher-up officers who he said knew the harsh treatment was routine... "The tragedy here is that because of this embarrassment, now those pictures are orphans, and the United States government and the chain of command and the M.I.'s say, 'We didn't know about that,' " he said, referring to military Intelligence. "You know that was a lie."

I guess I have to agree... the 'few bad apples' theory isn't really tenable. Testimony from other witnesses indicates that even if abuse wasn't widespread, knowledge of it was. Several soldiers have said they witnessed treatment they weren't comfortable with, but they were reassured about these being interrogation techniques.

A Question of Ethics

As President/Prime Minister of your country, you have to make a choice: either a million of your citizens die, or an innocent person from another country must be brutally tortured. Which do you choose?

I understand that's not a reasonable question; it's completely unlikely to arise in real life, and there are usually other alternatives. But just think about it; I want to use it as a lead-in to other questions.

Does your answer change if the innocent person is from your own country? If the number of your citizens who will die goes down from a million to ten thousand? One thousand? If the person to be tortured is not innocent, but has planned the attack which will kill your citizens?

And in the real world, there are more shades of grey... what if the person to be tortured is only suspected of having planned the attack? Should he/she not be presumed innocent until proved guilty? What if you are not sure that your citizens will die, but have reason to believe that it may happen?

Seriously, ask yourself these questions. I'm not happy with my own answers; perhaps there isn't a set of 'right' answers. Comments are invited.

I have to get up early tomorrow, so more on this subject later.

Making the Best of a Bad Job

It appears that the administration realizes that the elections in Iraq aren't going to bring a whole lot of good news, so the damage control is already beginning. The Washington Post has a good article on how expectations from the vote have lowered.

[The U.S. is] increasingly emphasizing other steps over the next year as more important to Iraq's political transformation.

The Bush administration played down voter turnout yesterday in determining the elections' legitimacy and urged Americans not to get bogged in a numbers game in judging the balloting, a reflection of the growing concern over how much the escalating insurgency and the problem of Sunni participation may affect the vote.

"I would . . . really encourage people not to focus on numbers, which in themselves don't have any meaning, but to look on the outcome and to look at the government that will be the product of these elections," a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity at a White House briefing yesterday. The official highlighted the low voter turnout in U.S. elections as evidence that polling numbers are not essential to legitimacy.

If there is a better measure than voter turnout to measure a country's faith in democracy, or if a government truly represents a people, I have no idea what it is. And comparing it to the U.S. voter turnout is just plain idiotic: if the turnout in Iraq is in the same ballpark as for the presidential elections here, the elections will probably be deemed a success. Further, his (or her) statement is based on the implicit assumption that the U.S. government is legitimate. Not that I disagree, but if I had been a hostile reporter and present when the statement was made, I would have asked if the low voter turnout did not indicate that the government is illegitimate. At the least, one can infer that a large section of the population:
a) does not support the present form of government
b) is disillusioned with democracy
or
c) doesn't really care.
(No, I don't really believe this is true, but such a statement made by a senior government official always brings out the worst in me; it begs for this kind of response.)

At this late date, the United States also has no viable options or alternatives other than trying to go forward with the Jan. 30 elections, analysts say.

"I don't think they're thinking of a Plan B. What they have is permutations of Plan A: You go for elections, hope for the best and if it doesn't materialize, you go with whatever emerges -- probably a heavily Shiite government," said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department Iraq specialist who is now head of Leheigh University's International Relations Department. "Then you hope that this new government will be smart enough and enlightened enough to make an outreach to the Sunnis."

So the fate of Iraq rests on the hope that the largely Shiite government will be magnanimous? Before I respond to that, I should mention this op/ed piece in the Times by Thomas Friedman, whose opinion I respect more than that of pretty much anyone in the current administration. He strongly supports elections at the end of the month.

I totally disagree with those who argue that the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections should be postponed. Their main argument is that an Iraqi election that ensconces the Shiite majority in power, without any participation of the Sunni minority, will sow the seeds of civil war.

That is probably true - but we are already in a civil war in Iraq. That civil war was started by the Sunni Baathists, and their Islamist fascist allies from around the region, the minute the U.S. toppled Saddam. And they started that war not because they felt the Iraqi elections were going to be rigged, but because they knew they weren't going to be rigged.

They started the war not to get their fair share of Iraqi power, but in hopes of retaining their unfair share. Under Saddam, Iraq's Sunni minority, with only 20 percent of the population, ruled everyone.
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Despite my seventh rule, we have a much greater chance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq by appealing to the self-interest of the Kurds and the Shiites to be magnanimous in victory, than we do of getting the fascist insurgents to be magnanimous in defeat.

He makes a good point - that Iraq is already in a civil war - but I think it could get worse. I agree that a significant portion of the Sunnis want a return to the good old days, with a disproportionate amount of power. On the other hand, if the Sunnis have practically no power after the elections, almost the entire Sunni population will become hostile to the new government.

The 'seventh rule' he mentions is: In Middle East politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, "How can I compromise?" And the minute it becomes strong, it will tell you, "Why should I compromise?". Friedman is optimistic, but I doubt that the Shiites will be generous after the elections, particularly since they've been repressed by the Sunni minority for so long. Again, I'm praying I'm wrong; stories like this are reason for optimism.

And in other good news from the Iraq, it has apparently been decided that American troops should not be present in force around polling booths. This is to reassure Iraqis who fear America may intervene/interfere with the results. Has the lack of security been deemed unimportant? Perhaps I'm just sniping needlessly at the government; I trust the commanders on the ground will provide security without a needlessly overt presence at the booths.

More Bad News from Iraq

The New York Times is carrying two pieces on the forthcoming elections in Iraq.

There are mysterious knocks on his door at night. His friends ask him not to visit. He declines to allow even his first name to be published. This shadowy figure, a young Sunni Muslim from Baghdad, is neither spy nor criminal.

The young man being described is an election worker. Faced with death threats, violent attacks, often murder, Iraqi election workers are "functioning like a political underground", according to an official of the Electoral Council. Many of them believe in democracy, but are resigning now that their families have become targets.

Prime Minister Allawi acknowledges publically that there are provinces which are unsafe for voting, but all the authorities can do is hope that the situation improves by the end of the month. President Bush says that 14 out of 18 provinces are safe, but does not admit that the other 4 (Baghdad, Nineveh, Anbar and Salahadin) contain over half the population of Iraq. Lt. Gen. Metz., the commander of American ground troops, says that he is "not in good shape to hold elections today." Given the length of the American occupation, what reason is there to believe that coalition forces will achieve in two weeks what they have not been able to do in over a year?

The Times editorial is advocating a postponement of elections, and this may not be a bad idea. It may feel like giving in to the terrorists, but reasonably fair elections six months from now are infinitely preferable to a bungled job in seventeen days. The authorities are not even sure whether all the polling stations in the 'Sunni heartland' will be open! Considering that poll booth capturing by armed attackers occurs in India (with a history of over fifty years of democracy, an army deployed during elections, and no popular support for terrorists/naxalites), it's only reasonable to expect the same sort of thing on a much larger scale in Iraq. If the elections are held at the end of this month, it is probable that the Sunnis will feel disenfranchised en masse. The consequences of that are frightening; a civil war becomes a very real possibility. American forces may begin leaving Iraq some time after the elections; if they cut-and-run, Iraq could descend into chaos.

I hate to be a prophet of doom, but I'm profoundly depressed at what's happening in Iraq. I would love to be proved wrong, but I doubt I will be. I can only hope that something remarkable happens in the next fortnight, though I fear that nothing short of divine intervention will make a difference.

In other news, I found this Reuters article about a propaganda video made by Iraqi insurgents, via American Leftist. The makers of the video portray themselves (and they may be justified) as nationalist freedom fighters, not foreign terrorists. The true Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, they allege, were the sanctions and the Oil-for-Food program. Unlike many other videos that have been released, this does not show soldiers being brutally murdered. Instead, a single voice explains calmly (and in English) why 'the resistance' is fighting, their beliefs and their goals. As a result, it is far more effective propaganda than anything I've seen from Iraq. Parts of their message:

We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy Britain or the U.S. nor are we responsible for 9/11... We thank all those, including those in Britain and the US, who took to the streets in protest against this war... We also thank France, Germany and other states for their positions, which we need to say are considered wise and valid until now... We ask you to form a world-wide front against war... Know that by helping the Iraqi people, you are helping yourselves, for tomorrow may bring the same destruction to you... To the American soldiers, we say, "Go back to your homes, families and your loved ones. This is not your war, nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq."

Of course, parts of it are needlessly jingoistic and Anti-American, but it's fairly well done, overall; at the very least, it makes 'the enemy' seem more human. I do not condone the action of the Iraqi guerrillas, but I do hope more people realise that most of the fighters in Iraq today are not hardened terrorists with an unreasoning hatred for all things American; they were once people just like you and me.

Good luck to Palestine

Since I'm awake and blogging, I figured I should mention the recent Palestinian elections. I'm very glad Mahmoud Abbas won with a significant mandate; his moderate message and desire for peace lead me to hope the conflict will begin to diminish. (I'm too much of a pessimist to hope it will end, at least in the near future.)

Israel's willingness to work with him and President Bush's invitation to Washington are very positive signs. I like the president's remarks on the subject:

"It is essential that Israel keep a vision of two states living side-by-side in peace, and that as the Palestinians begin to develop the institutions of a state, that the Israel government support the development of those institutions," Mr. Bush said at the White House.

Not particularly profound, perhaps, but something worth remembering.

The only thing that bothered me was the turnout. For a surprisingly long time after the results were declared, none of the reports I read gave figures. I wondered why, but the Times reports that "The Palestinian Central Elections Commission declined to give a figure for the percentage of eligible voters who cast ballots." It's not that bad, though; over half the registered voters showed up, though if the unregistered voters (who were still permitted to vote) are included, the turnout drops to less than 50%.

Israel is no longer "the region's only democracy." Palestine may now count itself as one, as one of Mr. Abbas' allies said. I fear the forthcoming elections in Iraq will not add a third democracy, though; reports from there are very discouraging.

Re-implementing life

This is incredibly cool. Tom Knight, Drew Endy and others at MIT are working on Synthetic Biology:"specifying every bit of DNA that goes into an organism to determine its form and function in a controlled, predictable way, like etching a microprocessor or building a bridge."

I kind of like the idea of an engineering approach to Biology: while future applications might include things like the mass production of rare drugs or mineral extraction, students at MIT this year are going to focus on building a simple counter. In true engineering style, Endy and Knight came up with Biobricks, a set of standard building blocks (a library of parts, if you will) with a consistent interface. Instead of voltage or current, they are using the rate at which RNA polymerase (which transcribes DNA) moves along the component.

Of course there are ethical issues that will have to be resolved. Eventually, techniques similar to the ones used here may be used to modify the genomes of plants and animals. On the plus side, complete synthesis of genomes (instead of modifications to existing genomes) could allow us to create organisms fundamentally different from any known today, minimizing the risk that they could interact with the environment in undesirable ways. In any event, the fact that science is capable of such things is profoundly exciting.

Via Slashdot.

If you ever need legal help...

... don't go to Guy Womack. Spc. Charles A. Graner, the first soldier being prosecuted for the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, is unfortunate enough to have Mr. Womack as his lawyer at court martial.

Using naked and hooded detainees to make a human pyramid was much like what cheerleaders "all over America" do at football games, the lawyer, Guy Womack, argued. Putting naked prisoners on leashes was much like what parents in airports and malls do with their toddlers: "They're not being abused," the lawyer told the jury of 10 soldiers, "they're being kept in control."

On the other hand, after what Graner did, he probably deserves this kind of incompetent attorney. I hope that all the guilty soldiers are punished severely. (Note that this is not necessarily the same as the set of soldiers accused of crimes. I'm fairly sure at least some of the senior offenders have managed to escape charges, and it's possible that some of their subordinates are being blamed unfairly.)

Writing for Children

Part of my New Year's resolution about blogging was that I would try to avoid consecutive negative posts. It's difficult when you read things like this right after blogging about Alberto Gonzales. I'll leave it to people like Democracy for Virginia to write about Virginia's ridiculous proposed bill requiring women who suffer miscarriages to report it to the police within 12 hours, failing which they could be imprisoned for upto a year and fined $2500 for their heinous crime. This ranks as a class 1 misdemeanour, along with statutory rape, arson, stalking, and bomb threats by minors. (Considering that you intend to leave it to other people to tell the story, you managed to write quite a bit! - ed.)

What I am going to blog about, then, is C.S. Lewis' wonderful essay On Three Ways of Writing for Children. I read this in Cleveland; it was appended to a lovely edition of The Chronicles of Narnia. He explains why good writing for children is good writing for adults, which is why we enjoy at fifty the stories we enjoyed at twelve. The essay is such a gem that I went out and bought the book because I had to have it, and couldn't find it anywhere on the Internet. If it weren't copyrighted, I would host it myself. As it is, I've typed in a large part of it to email to friends, but beyond that, I cannot in good conscience call it personal or fair use. What I can do, though, is to reproduce the conclusion:

Once in a hotel dining-room I said, rather too loudly, "I loathe prunes." "So do I," came an unexpected six-year-old voice from another table. Sympathy was instantaneous. Neither of us thought it funnny. We both knew that prunes are far too nasty to be funny. That is the proper meeting between man and child as independent personalities. Of the far higher and more difficult relations between child and parent or child and teacher, I say nothing. An author, as a mere author, is outside all that. He is not even an uncle. He is a freeman and an equal, like the postman, the butcher, and the dog next door.

Readers are invited to name their 3 favourite children's books (or series, or authors) which still appeal greatly to them. Only books written for children count; not books which you happened to enjoy as a child because you were precocious. The 3 I'll list are (not necessarily my favourites, and in no particular order):
1. The Chronicles of Narnia themselves
2. Most (if not all) of Edith Nesbit's work
3. Richmal Crompton's William books

What are yours?

Ashcroft's sucessor

I must confess I was thrilled when John Ashcroft's resignation from the post of Attorney-General was announced. Unfortunately, Alberto Gonzales doesn't seem to be much better. The New York Times has a few editorials on the subject.

The Associated Press headline that came over the wire yesterday said it all: "Gonzales Will Follow Non-Torture Policies."

You know how bad the situation is when the president's choice for attorney general has to formally pledge not to support torture anymore.

Unfortunately, that seems to be one of the few direct answers he gave; the rest of his Senate hearing was marked by evasion. This Post editorial describes it further.

At the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on his nomination to be attorney general, Mr. Gonzales repeatedly was offered the chance to repudiate a legal judgment that the president is empowered to order torture in violation of U.S. law and immunize torturers from punishment. He declined to do so. He was invited to reject a 2002 ruling made under his direction that the infliction of pain short of serious physical injury, organ failure or death did not constitute torture. He answered: "I don't have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached." Nor did he condemn torture techniques, such as simulated drowning, that were discussed and approved during meetings in his office. "It is not my job," he said, to decide if they were proper.

Also, he claimed to have forgotten his role in the policy on the treatment of prisoners. How can one forget something like that? This is the man who believes "Cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment of prisoners is not necessarily torture." In a Jan. 25, 2002, memo to Bush, Gonzales said the new war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners."
This says it all: In response to the question of whether US personnel could legally engage in torture under any circumstances, , Gonzales didn't give an unequivocal "No." Instead, he said, "I don't believe so, but I'd want to get back to you on that."

(Retired) General Wesley Clark had it right in this Hardball interview. "How", he asks, "can the American people have confidence in a man like Gonzales after what he's written for the President of the United States?"

There's no reason to hope he won't be confirmed by the Senate, so there's probably no point my complaining about it. I had hoped the president would select as Attorney General a man known for his integrity, someone who would uphold the law regardless of inconvenience to the adminstration. Instead, we get a man with 'an inspiring life story', a man whose most positive quality is loyalty to the President.

Stuffed Omelettes!

Everything I wanted to blog about is ridiculously depressing; NOT how I wanted to begin the new year. So our first post is on a subject I've never touched before: cooking. Considering I couldn't cook at all before coming to Champaign-Urbana, it's remarkable how much I enjoy it now. I was feeling slightly out-of-sorts, so I decided to try something different for dinner. We've been eating a fair amount of chicken and fish lately, so I decided to try omelettes with a completely vegetarian stuffing: a mushroom persillade. I was improvising, but they came out fairly well; perhaps I'll experiment a little more sometime. For now, though, here's the recipe, meant to serve 3:

6 eggs (2 per omelette. 3 each is entirely reasonable, but my roommates would have none of it!)
4-6 tablespoons of cubed mushrooms
1 clove garlic, chopped fine
1 tablespoon shallots, chopped fine
3 tablespoons of chopped parsley
1 tablespoon butter
a hint of chives (added at the last minute for no discernible reason)
Salt and pepper to taste. (I thought half a teaspoon of salt per omelette would be excessive, but it turned out just right.)

Blend the persillade ingredients: parsley, garlic and shallots. Melt the butter in a skillet, and add the mushrooms and persillade. Saute for a few minutes, stirring well, and take the mix off the fire.
For each omelette, beat the eggs with salt and pepper, and add the chives. The manner of adding the stuffing depends on your skillet and personal preferences. If you have a reasonably large skillet, you probably want to add oil and heat it well; the omelette will cook in seconds. If so, add a third of the mushroom persillade to the beaten eggs and mix well before pouring the eggs onto the pan.
Our omelette skillet is too small for this technique to work well when cooking more than a single egg. What works for me is to add the eggs to the skillet when the oil is not too hot, immediately followed by the mushroom persillade.
The rest is standard omelette mechanics; remember to serve hot!

I'm back...

... in town after a wonderful holiday, and back to serious blogging. This post is merely for updates on my life for everyone who asked.

I was in Seattle for Christmas, where I spent time with my cousins Rohan and Susan. From Seattle, I went to Cleveland, where I celebrated New Year's day with Natasha and Jesse. (Actually, I seem to recall we celebrated every day but New Year's; we got up that morning, a little disgruntled at the lack of a church service, drove around Cleveland until we realized that every place we wanted to go was closed for the holiday, then went back and vegetated on the couch until dinner.) Actually, I seemed to eat and sleep through most of the holiday... exactly what I needed after a hectic semester and the nightmare that was grading the CS 225 final.

One of the highlights of the trip was learning to play golf; another was The Incredibles (and, of course, Bouncin'). Spanglish was nowhere near as good. Still better was the quantity of shopping I got done; I came back to Champaign-Urbana with over 20 books, 2 paintings now on display in my living room, a dart board, and a miniature foosball table, among other things. Best of all was the time spent with family I hadn't been with in a long time.

Two New Year's resolutions
1. To post here more often!
2. To be more grateful for the wonderful people in my life... my family (all of whom came through the Tsunami okay in spite of being in affected areas; a cousin and his wife had a very near escape.) and friends. I'm not going to list all their names and risk leaving someone out by accident; you all know who you are, and you should also know that I love you very much.

I think I'll move on to some serious posts before this gets any more sentimental. Happy New Year, everyone!

Why don't *I* get credit for Blogging?

Students who register for "Internet and Society" at Northwestern University this winter are going to be required to maintain a blog. Over at Crooked Timber, Eszter Hargittai describes her ideas and motivation. The course will focus on "the social, political, economic and cultural aspects of the Internet." The first two lines of the course description: "What's it like to maintain a blog? How about if you are in Iran or China?"

I found it interesting that several of her commenters say that they have been using blogs for coursework for a while now, and that students seem to respond well. Extra credit for blogging might make me post more regularly. (Don't you blog enough already? You have a final in two hours! - ed. Yes, but I can't disappoint my adoring public. Derisive laughter from ye ed.. Ok, ok, point taken. One last comment and I'll go.)

There was a rumour floating around that Time magazine was considering naming 'The Blogger' its person of the year. (Unfortunately, it now appears that they've decided to go with George Bush.) What is the world coming to?

Soldiers accused of War Crimes

This Washington Post article is horrifying. I sincerely hope the soldiers accused are innocent of any misconduct; but it seems unlikely. As a longtime fan of the US military, I'm extremely depressed by this turn of events.

Interestingly enough, I was thinking about the U.S. Army a couple of days ago. I read an article which casually mentioned 'Col. McMaster' as commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. I was curious to see if this was (then Capt.) H. R. McMaster, who commanded Eagle Troop at the Battle of 73 Easting in the first Gulf War. He was then in the 2d ACR, and I distinctly remember that when I first read about the battle a few years ago, I wondered if he would ever command the regiment. I checked, and it's the same McMaster; I was nearly right, but he's commanding the 3rd ACR instead of the 2nd. For some strange reason, reading about his promotion made my day.

The mind is a remarkable thing; there was no reason that I should have remembered McMaster's name, still less that I should be so pleased about his promotion. What's even more strange is that I have a terrible memory for names in general, but I remember from an interview I read (years ago) that his wife's name is Katie! And yet I often struggle to remember the names of authors of papers I read months ago.

For everyone surprised by my interest in things military: Several years ago, I developed an interest in first small-unit tactics and then the intellectual challenge of developing strategy for larger units in wartime, when information is often unreliable or incomplete. In particular, Armored Cavalry fascinated me because of their emphasis on combined arms at all levels. I've always been impressed by U.S. equipment, training and doctrine.

And for the curious, the Battle of 73 Easting was one of the key actions in the Gulf War of 1991. Eagle Troop of the 2nd ACR, led by Capt. McMaster, made contact with the Iraqi forces and began an assault. With the support of two other troops, they destroyed an entire brigade of the Tawakalna division of the crack Republican Guards. U.S. losses to Iraqi fire amounted to one vehicle and one soldier. The battle is regarded as almost a textbook example of small-unit operations, and has been re-constructed in almost every detail by DARPA for use in simulations.

Yushchenko Definitely Poisoned

I hadn't blogged about the Ukrainian presidential election results before, because I didn't really have anything to say. There's been lots of media coverage; Dan Drezner has a good roundup. In a nutshell, the official results declared a victory for the departing president's protege, Viktor F. Yanukovich. There were widespread allegations of fraud, and supporters of Viktor A. Yushchenko,the opposition candidate, paralysed Ukraine for several days. Given that most (Western-run) exit polls showed a double-digit lead for Yushchenko, most outside observers are convinced that the polls were rigged.

Just to make it more interesting, Viktor Yushchenko fell seriously ill during the campaign. The mystery illness changed his appearance completely; he looks haggard and worn now, while he had been known for almost-movie-star looks earlier. (CNN has good before/after pictures here.) Yushchenko alleged that he had been poisoned; his detractors claimed he had eaten bad sushi. Today, the Times is carrying a story from the International Herald Tribune confirming that Yuschenko had been poisoned. Tests conducted in Vienna indicate that this was a severe case of dioxin poisoning.

I'm not sure what this will mean for Ukraine; I hope it doesn't endanger the agreement to conduct new elections.

All Your Crustless (PB&J) Sandwich are Belong to Us

U.S. Patent No. 6004596 gives Smucker's broad protection on its "sealed crustless sandwich". In 2001, Albie's Food Inc., a small grocery company selling pastries and sandwiches, received a Cease and Desist letter which accused them of violating Smucker's Intellectual Property by selling crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

IEEE Spectrum is carrying an article which comments on the woeful state of the U.S.P.T.O and suggests fixes. Their ideas are reasonable and will probably improve the efficiency of the patent office while decreasing the number of frivolous patents issued. I suppose that means they have a snowball's chance in Hell of ever being implemented.

Why, yes, I'm feeling cynical today. However did you notice?

PISA 2003: Survey Results

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has conducted it's second study of learning skills among 15-year olds. The study (called PISA, to be conducted every three years) was first performed in 2000, and then again last year. Results from PISA 2003 have just been released by OECD. The main focus in this study was on mathematics, while PISA 2000 was only a reading assessment. Over 250,000 students from 41 countries participated in the study; countries that were not OECD members could also choose to be included.

Finnish students were overall the most proficient, though four other countries (Korea, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein and Japan; all in the top 8 overall) had a greater percentage of students at the highest proficiency level. Incidentally, Finland had also led in the reading assessment of PISA 2000. The U.S. was 28th out of 40 countries, just behind Latvia and ahead of Portugal and the Russian Federation. Interestingly, Canada has the third highest performance overall.

The full report is available as a PDF from the OECD website. So far I've only managed to skim through the entire 471-page report; I would read it through except for the fact that I was meant to be working on a unit project for the last 2 hours. They have some obvious conclusions ("Both students and schools perform best in a climate characterised by high expectations [and] supported through strong teacher-student relations"; "Students whose parents have better-paid jobs, are better educated ... perform on average significantly better in all countries than those without such advantages") and some interesting ones.

From the PDF or OECD article, some things that struck me were:
1. Australia, Canada, Finland and Japan stand out for high standards of both quality and equity, with above-average mathematics performance and below-average impact of socio-economic background on student performance.
2. Poland had a dramatic variation of performance between schools in the original study; this has shrunk drastically after the school system was integrated in the intervening period.
3. Most countries have more boys than girls among top mathematics performers, resulting in a slight overall advantage for boys in average terms. On the other hand, boys and girls tend to be equally represented among the low-performers. It's interesting to note that girls attend the higher performing, academically oriented tracks and schools at a higher rate than boys but, within schools, girls often perform significantly below boys. Girls also consistently report lower interest in and enjoyment of mathematics than boys.
4. Better performance was often related to an enjoyment of mathematics, but perception of ability was not as strongly correlated to ability as one might expect. About a third of US children (ranked 28th overall) did not feel as though they were good at math, but nearly two-thirds of Koreans (ranked 2nd) felt the same. (Editorializing: Has worrying about students self-esteem hurt academic performance? Increasingly, schools are refusing to differentiate between students for fear of hurting the image students have of themselves. Readers Digest recently ran a story on how schools are refusing to recognise true merit; some high schools had 50 to 100 valedictorians! In Nashville, one high school principal was told he couldn't release the names of high scorers at basketball games. Another school couldn't announce the winner of the spelling bee! But I digress... I'll leave the subject for a future post)
5. The US also seems to have the poorest outcomes per dollar spent on education. The performance in reading (18th out of 40) is better than that in math, though. "While spending on educational institutions is important," the report says, "it is not sufficient to achive high levels of outcomes." (I wish more administrators would realize that throwing money at the problem wouldn't work!)

Unfortunately, India isn't rated. I'm curious about how Indian students would have performed. I suspect that the reading assessment results would have been abysmal, but the mathematics results very good. This is entirely due to the fact that only students still in school at the age of 15 participate in the survey; the majority of Indian children have dropped out of school by this time, if they ever attended. (It's technically illegal in most states to not send children to school, but this is rarely, if ever, enforced.) Glancing through the questions, I would be shocked if the average 15-year old Indian still in school couldn't solve at least half of the problems listed as most difficult (Level 6). (See my previous post on high-school math curricula.)

From the section titled "The PISA approach to Assessing Mathematics Performance":

PISA therefore presents students with problems mainly set in real-world situations. These are crafted in such a way that aspects of mathematics would be of genuine benefit in solving the problem. The objective of the PISA assessment is to obtain measures of the extent to which students presented with these problems can activate their mathematical knowledge and competencies to solve such problems successfully.
This approach to mathematics contrasts with a traditional understanding of school mathematics which is often narrower. In schools, mathematical content is often taught and assessed in ways that are removed from authentic contexts – e.g., students are taught the techniques of arithmetic, then given an arithmetic computation to complete; they are shown how to solve particular types of equations, then given further similar equations to solve; they are taught about geometric properties and relationships, then given a theorem to prove. Having learned the relevant concepts, skills and techniques, students are typically given contrived mathematical problems that call for the application of that knowledge.

Indian (and Asian, in general) schools usually use the latter (traditional/narrower) approach, in contrast to many Western schools which teach mathematics the way PISA tests it. So I find it strange that Korea, Hong Jong, Macao and Japan would be in the top 8, and I believe India would be up there with them. (Assuming, of course, that questions were appropriately translated into the local language and cultural context; I can see the average Indian student having difficulty on the question about skateboarding.) Perhaps the PISA test doesn't measure what they think it does, then.

The New York Times story had some interesting insights; they've obviously spent a lot more time analysing it than I have... With luck I'll get to it after Finals week. (Don't forget all the exams you'll have to grade! - ed. Siiigh - you had to remind me, didn't you?)

Word-of-Mouth Advertising

I was taking a break from an assignment and saw this article on Slashdot, based on a New York Times magazine story. (Warning: 9 pages!)

Convinced that everyday conversation is the most powerful medium for consumer seduction, companies have begun organizing advertising campaigns based solely on word-of-mouth publicity, and results have been fairly good. Whether you think this is downright sleazy or the coolest thing since the GPL (Slashdot is having a hard time making up its collective mind), the NY Times article is well worth the read.

Give Thanks!

I suspect that the thing I'm most grateful for this year is the fact that we get a week off for Thanksgiving; I need the break! I'm looking forward to seeing Boston and New York and meeting family. Photographs will be forthcoming.

Oh, and I've always been curious about this: What's the origin of "the Bean and Cod"? I googled it, but was surprised to find no useful links except for a poem by William Corbett. I'm too lazy to look it up, so I'd be grateful for a reference.

Updates from Iraq

The Iraqi Electoral commission has confirmed that national elections will be held on Jan 30th. A commission spokesman, Farid Ayar, said that violence-prone areas like Falluja and Mosul will have elections at the same time.

"No Iraqi province will be excluded because the law considers Iraq as one constituency, and therefore it is not legal to exclude any province," he said.

In other news, the Post reports that American forces have found the houses where several hostages were tortured and killed in Falluja. The city appears to be slowly coming under American/Iraqi control, but an increasing number of resistance fighters are using white flags to pose as civilians and then attack deceived soldiers.

One can only hope that elections bring some peace to the country, but it seems doubtful.

And finally...

Firefox 1.0 has been launched. Download it today!

Fighting in Fallujah

Not that it wasn't expected, but Fallujah is under attack. What's most disturbing is that Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has declared a state of emergency, not exactly the best start to democracy. Quoting the Times and Post:

Hours earlier, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, faced with an expanding outbreak of insurgent violence across the country, formally proclaimed a state of emergency for 60 days across most of Iraq. The proclamation gave him broad powers that allow him to impose curfews, order house-to-house searches and detain suspected criminals and insurgents. The order will run for 60 days but could be extended through elections planned for January.

An Eternal Golden Braid

I'm reading (for the first time, much as it pains me to admit it!) Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. I had meant to read it on many previous occasions, but never got around to it; now, that seems like criminal procrastination. So far, it's a superb book; the author's idea to intersperse dialogues with chapters was nothing less than inspired.

I expected to like the book and find the material not too difficult to follow (Four years of a Computer Science had to have been good for something! -ed.), but the presentation is so lucid that the material should be accessible to a high school student with no exposure to formal systems and so on. In fact, the author's interest in the subject was sparked when he was in high school and read Godel's Proof by Nagel and Newman.

Definitely one of November's Books of the Month!

High School curricula

Continuing our math theme, we just conducted our second CS225 mid-term, and I've been grading exams for the last few days. I've noticed something interesting; students tend to provide reasonably good answers to questions which require them to write code, but are often unable to write proofs/justification for running times and correctness of algorithms. When I find a particularly good answer to a mathematical question, I often turn to the front and check the student's name out of curiosity; it appears that the best solutions are often written by non-Americans (judging solely by names). Before I get flamed for being racist, I should reiterate that I mean American, not Caucasian. Students of different ethnicities who went through school in America don't seem to do better than average; at least, I haven't noticed any evidence of it.

The most compelling reason for the discrepancy that I can find (since I absolutely refuse to accept any claim that Americans are 'inherently' less mathematically able than others) is the difference in the way Math is taught at the school level. (Disclaimer: I only have India as a basis for comparison, so perhaps this isn't reasonable either.) An Indian student who enters engineering college has already studied (differential and integral) calculus for two years, probability and statistics for at least as long, some form of co-ordinate geometry (with its emphasis on proofs) and algebra for over five years, besides some combinatorics, matrix algebra, and complex analysis. Some high school syllabi even include a fair bit of group theory! Graders in India also tend to be demanding (bordering on ruthless!) when evaluating exams, so students quickly learn when an answer is sufficiently precise to deserve full credit.

So is that a better system? I'm not sure; many Indian students never see a complex number after leaving high school and years of demanding Math often leave them hating the subject. I know several Indians who feel uncomfortable answering an exam question unless they're reasonably sure how to do it; a lack of partial credit (much less common in India than in America) discourages people from risk-taking. And I've noticed that American students are often more creative with solutions to both exam problems and random problems discussed in section, which makes teaching fun. It looks like they make up most of the relative deficiency in college, so doing less math in school doesn't seem like much of a loss. Perhaps the syllabi will change to embrace the best of both systems.

Right now, though, I often wish that there were more emphasis on rigorously correct solutions. Some of the best students seem to think that proof by example is completely reasonable! And it always makes me feel like I've done a terrible job in section when I have to grade papers which make warm, fuzzy statements like:

Trees are a Good Thing (tm) in general when compared to lists (except when they (the trees) are unbalanced, but that doesn't happen for Red-Black Trees (because they are always balanced), so it doesn't make a difference to this answer) and so searching in a tree is usually better than in a list (because we don't have to look at all the tree nodes), so we would rather use a tree.

(Admit it, that's an exaggeration! -ed.) Granted, but I yearn for a plain O(log n)!

Four More Years!

It looks like President Bush will return to the White House for another 4 years. It was evident for several hours that Ohio would decide the election. With 98% of Ohio precincts reporting results, President Bush leads by 51% to 49%, a margin of 136,000 votes. Provisional and absentee ballots are still uncounted, but given that there won't be more than 250,000 of these (a very loose upper bound) and that some of them will be disallowed, I think it's unlikely that Senator Kerry will win enough of these to offset the Bush margin.

Still, the Kerry campaign is not giving up. Mary Beth Cahill, one of the campaign managers said, "The vote count in Ohio has not been completed. There are more than 250,000 remaining votes to be counted. We believe when they are, John Kerry will win Ohio." A few minutes ago, Vice Presidential candidate Senator John Edwards made this announcement to the Democratic supporters outside campaign headquarters: "We've waited four years for this victory, so we can wait one more night."

Since many Democrats were unhappy with Al Gore for not fighting "hard enough or smart enough" (quoting George Stephanopoulos) after the Florida debacle four years ago, Senator Kerry is understandably unwilling to concede the election until he has explored every avenue that could lead to victory. I'm not exactly thrilled by the prospect of a protracted battle, though; such wrangling could have the effect of polarizing the country further. Surely the statisticians employed by the Kerry campaign have reported exactly how unlikely it is that the Senator can pull off a win.

The Republicans appear set to dominate Congress as well. They held 51 seats in the Senate earlier; they have 52 so far, and are leading in all 3 seats for which final results have not been declared. Democrat Tom Daschle, the Senate Minority Leader, appears to be one of the casualties. The Republicans will also probably have a comfortable majority in the House. We'll have to wait to see how all this plays out.

Record Voter Turnouts?

Looking through early news stories, one thing is clear: regardless of who wins, the turnout at this election will be among the highest in recent memory. In spite of heavy rain in many parts of the country, this election is expected to witness at least 118 million voters, and may set the all-time record. Two newsbites that struck me:

From the New York Times,

In North Philadelphia, Valerie Morman, a legal secretary, walked to her polling place at St. Malachy School. "The last time I voted," she said, "was about 20 years ago."

From the Washington Post,

In north Milwaukee, 19-year-old Maurice Dodson waited in a long line to cast the first presidential vote of his life. "No way I'm leaving," he said after an hour with no ballot in sight. "I'm very excited.

In just a few more hours...

... just over 48, to be precise, the result of the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections will be known. Assuming, of course, that the election doesn't have to be decided by the Supreme Court again; a state of affairs that I'm sure nobody would like. I'm not going to comment further now, though; I'll be up all night on Tuesday as the results come in and will post any thoughts then.

Oh, and a Happy Halloween to all my readers!

Seen in a Slashdotter's signature

"With Microsoft, you get Windows. With Linux, you get the full house" - original source unknown.

Enough said. :-))

More Bad News in Iraq

The New York Times is carrying two stories from Iraq. The first covers the loss of 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives from Al Qaqaa, a former Iraqi military facility now (at least nominally) under American control. From the article:

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it.

"After the collapse of the regime, our liberation, everything was under the coalition forces, under their control," Dr. Omar (Rasheed Omar, the Iraqi minister of Science and Technology) said. "So probably they can answer this question, what happened to the materials."

Officials in Washington said they had no answers to that question. One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives were stored was listed as a "medium priority" site on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. "Should we have gone there? Definitely," said one senior administration official.

Granted, it might not have been possible to secure every pound of arms and munitions in Iraq, but 380 tons of HDX and RDX? Assuming that the looters used 10-ton trucks to carry the explosives away, they would have needed a convoy of 40 trucks! And no-one noticed? (Perhaps they took it away in smaller chunks at a time - ed.) That's even worse; it implies that they waltzed in and out of the facility on a regular basis! Incompetency doesn't begin to describe this. One can only shrug in wonder at his capacity for self-delusion when President Bush portrays himself as the only candidate capable of winning the 'War on Terror'.

In the second story, Edward Wong reports that fifty freshly trained Iraqi soldiers were ambushed and killed by insurgents dressed as police officers in eastern Iraq. He writes

The executions of the Iraqi soldiers on Saturday evening - and what may also have been three civilian drivers in their convoy - raised disturbing questions about the training process and the recruits: Why were the guardsmen allowed to travel unarmed and without protection, given the frequent attacks on the Iraqi security forces? Why did men trained as soldiers not put up a fight, especially when there were so many of them? How did the insurgents get police uniforms and information on the travel plans of the soldiers?

Iraqi and American officials said they had no immediate answers.

One can't invent this kind of story... and there's no need to comment on it. In other news from Iraq, Edward J. Seitz, a 16-year employee of the State Department was killed this morning in a mortar or rocket attack on Camp Victory, near Baghdad International Airport. Camp Victory is the U.S. military's operations center in Iraq. Mr. Seitz seems to be the first American diplomat to be killed in the war.

After a day filled with bad news, a little thing can sometimes make a huge positive difference. This statement in a Washington Post article on voter rights and harassment moved me nearly to tears.

"I'm excited to cast my first vote," said Heidi Carrillo, 24, a new registrant who was born in the United States to illegal immigrants. "They can ask for ID. They can make me last in the line. I don't care. I'm voting!"

Isn't that what democracy is all about?

Biological Nomenclature

Slashdot ran a story on Taxonomy and amusing nomenclature today. Mark Isaak collected some names worth a second look. The page is fairly detailed, but here are some of the more amusing names.

Ba Humbugi (endodontoid snail) from Mba island, Fiji.
Eubetia Bigaulae (tortricid moth, pronounced You betcha, by golly)
Pieza Kake, Pieza Pi, Pieza Rhea (mythicomyiid fly)
Strategus Longichomperus (Honduran scarab with elongated mandibles)
Ytu Brutus (water beetle)
Eristalis gatesi (a flower fly, named after Bill Gates. Someone decided he deserved a bug named after him!)
Montypythonoideriversleighensis (An extinct python whose remains were found at Riversleigh in Queensland, Australia, it was named in a tribute to comedy)
Fiordichthys slartibartfasti (a fish named after Slartibartfast - the award-winning Fjord designer in the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Commelina (day-flower, named after the three members of the Dutch Commelin family, two of whom prospered. The flower has three petals, one of which is small, pale, and shriveled.)
Mephitis mephitis (common striped skunk, variously translated "noxious vapours noxious vapours", "stench stench" or my favourite, "smelliest of the smelly")

Scientists with a sense of humour... my favourite form of life!

Photographs of Champaign-Urbana

Champaign-Urbana is a beautiful town, and Fall is one of its best seasons. I've been meaning to capture some of my favourite views, but never seemed to have the time. I dug my camera out this weekend and finally took a few photographs. I didn't intend to photoblog, but since Faraz and a couple of other people asked for photographs, here they are:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus.
Photographs of our apartment.
Fall in Champaign-Urbana.
Siebel Center for Computer Science. This is very much a work in progress; my snaps of Siebel are very sketchy at the moment.

I uploaded them to Ofoto, but suspect that eventually I'll host them myself at UIUC. Another task for my to-do list. Sigh!

AI-Complete

Ditch (Deepak Ramachandran for the non-cognoscenti) has launched a blog of his own. As you can tell from its title, it's meant to be a weblog about AI research.

... (M)ostly this blog is about the discipline of AI as a distinct subfield of Computer Science - The effort to build machines that think, know, learn and are aware. Along the way, if we could define what these terms mean exactly, well that would certainly help. I hope to take it in the same direction as Lance Fortnow's Computational Complexity Blog.

Ditch was an occasional contributor to Pseudo-random Thoughts; with luck we'll hear more from him now. I hope he'll continue to grace us with guest posts here, though.

The Cost of War

The National Priorities Project documents what federal tax and spending policies mean to America. Among other things, they describe the dollar cost of the war in Iraq. The war has other, more important costs such as the apalling loss of life (mostly Iraqi, and to a lesser extent, American soldiers), the harm to America's credibility and reputation, and so on. They describe these as well, but they are well documented elsewhere (see Iraq Body Count, for example) and often speak for themselves. I'm going to focus on the money, then.

The Cost of War maintains a counter showing the expenditure on the war in Iraq. As of this afternoon, it had reached $138,693,576,310 and was climbing rapidly (yes, that's 138 billion dollars!). This amount could have been used for any of the following:
a) Completely insuring the health of 83 million children for a year
b) Hiring 2.4 million public school teachers for a year
c) Building 1.2 million additional housing units
d) Fully funding global anti-hunger efforts for 5 years, or global anti-AIDS efforts for 13 years.
e) Ensuring that every child in the world would receive basic immunizations for the next 46 years.

What really makes the site stand out, though, is this wonderful statement by President Eisenhower. He was a Republican, and (having been Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in World War II, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and Supreme Commander of NATO) knew war first-hand; no-one could accuse him of being a 'bleeding-heart liberal'. He said, on April 16, 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Food for thought.

UPDATE: This might help you appreciate how rapidly the costs are increasing; in the time it took me to write this, over 2 million dollars have been spent!

Selecting a Research Area

The Computer Science department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign requires all new Ph.D. students to attend a seminar in their first semester. As part of the seminar, various faculty members from different research groups describe the work they are currently engaged in. This is a fantastic idea, as it gives students the opportunity to learn about all the research being conducted in the department and helps us choose which area we would like to work in.

There's one thing I dislike, though; so far, some of the presenters (and almost all the students who I've spoken to) appear to believe that one of the primary reasons to select a research area is the potential impact that your work can have. Don't get me wrong; I completely understand that this could be a motivating factor for many people. Should it be the most important, though? What about research because you enjoy it? Is creating (or discovering) knowledge for its own sake not the most powerful motivation for a researcher? Sure, it must be incredibly gratifying to see your work in daily use. But if that's your reason for research, you might have done better to join a software company and work on products which are used by thousands of people. You could have even joined Microsoft!

Note: I'm not denigrating people who choose such careers; where would the world be if we all spent every waking minute wondering about the precise relationship between NP and BQP? Sure, there are people who would love to work at Microsoft; I'm not one of them. (What about Google? - ed. Ok, you got me!) What irks me is that there isn't anyone presenting their research area and telling us that we should choose it because it's beautiful; because we might love the field, its techniques and open problems. Now that would motivate me. I get a little tired of "Join us because we're relevant!" and "Join us because we're hot today/this week/year!". That's not what I hoped for; it's not what one would expect from people as deeply in love with their field of study as many of the faculty here are.

To be fair, though, even if that's what motivates the faculty, it might be difficult to convey it to students. I wouldn't be able to explain why I love algorithms and not databases to someone who had never taken a theory course. So perhaps this isn't a good way to attract new students to your field. Still, it would be nice to hear it once in a while. And the theory group is presenting their research next week; there's hope yet!

One final comment; what good research does not have an impact? For years, number theory was considered the "purest of pure" mathematics with no practical applications. Today, computational number theory is the basis for cryptography; its impact cannot be denied.

The Sum of all Knowledge

That's the goal of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia: Creating a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of human knowledge. Wikipedia is free both as in beer (meaning that you don't pay to have access to encyclopaedia contents) and as in speech (meaning that you can take the content and do anything to/with it, except deprive other people of that right). Material is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia written collaboratively by its users; anyone can contribute. Pick a subject that you know something about, write an article, and it gets saved to the encyclopaedia database immediately. Millions of people will instantly have access to what you wrote. Considering the number of articles Wikipedia contains, though, it's probable that someone else has been there before you. In that case, you can freely edit their work and improve the article. That is, essentially, how Wikipedia works. They harness the power of thousands of volunteers who share knowledge of a wide variety of subjects. For more information, you might want to read the Wikipedia article on Wikipedia.

Why am I posting this now? After all, Wikipedia has been around for a while. This week is special; Wikipedia reached 1 million articles! In comparison, the Encyclopædia Britannica contains about 120,000 articles.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organisation of Wikipedia, is involved in a Fundraising campaign to support Wikipedia and its sister projects. Spread the news; help Wikipedia today!

Take back the web!

The preview release of Firefox 1.0 has been available for the last few days. The team set themselves the target of 1 million downloads in 10 days, more than ever before. Incredibly, they reached that target in just over 4 days! The new goal is to reach 2 million in the original 10 days.

Determining the actual number of firefox users as opposed to downloads is a little more difficult. For one thing, this count only reflects downloads off the firefox site, not mirrors or bittorrent. Often, a single download is used for multiple installs, as in business offices or educational institutions. On the other hand, some users download the browser several times for different computers at home or work. Still, this is a remarkable achievement by any standards. In all probability, it's a new record for beta-tested software.

(I thought you were an Opera advocate! - ed.) I am, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate other good software or even software marketing. Many (dare I say most?) extensions for Firefox are copied from those integrated into Opera by default and the Opera versions are frequently better. Still, Firefox has better press and I'm happy to support it as long as it gets people to switch from IE.

Note: This is not Firefox 1.0, just a preview release of that version. Firefox is still officially in beta testing, and will remain that way until version 1.0 is finally launched.

P ?= NP

This post will only appeal to a limited audience; if you aren't in CS you probably have no idea what it means.

If you could choose to prove either that P = NP or that P ≠ NP, which would you pick? I'm not asking which you believe; you can decide mathematical truth here. Given that you have the ability to prove either, which one would you rather prove?

Remember to leave your name along with comments.

Back to Blogging!

Now that I've settled down in Urbana-Champaign and have bought a computer, blogging will resume on a regular basis. Thanks to all the people (particularly Faraz) who kept asking for updates.

I'll try at some time in the future to describe UIUC, Champaign-Urbana and life here, but for today I just wanted to post a link to a speech made at the 2004 (American) National Convention of the Society of Professional Journalists.

There are times I seriously consider a career in journalism.