For most of history, the state had the monopoly on force, which defined its status as the State. This also meant it was the expert at force; even with private security companies doing business they are not adept at large-scale amphibious landings or intercontinental ballistic missiles.  At the other end of life's business, the U.S. government brought scientific expertise to agriculture, persuading farmers to try new (or old) techniques for land management and crop yield. Advances in medicine were primarily academic or government-administered efforts. Although the first powered airplane flight was by a couple of bicycle mechanics, the majority of technical advances, from jet engines to supersonic flight and spacecraft, again government.

Setting aside arguments about efficiency and economics, the result was that the government, notionally loyal to all citizens, was simultaneously the provider of technological civilization and its most expert repairman. But as private business becomes the expert at various essential services, we have the arrival of Milton Friedman-esque privatized economy.  It is functionally irrelevant whether there are regulatory bodies and laws requiring compliance with this or that rule, when no one in government really understands what they are trying to manage.

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"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

If possession of arms can't be regulated by states or the federal government, why should we limit the definition of "arms" to mean small arms? Nino the Crude says he doesn't care why the 2nd amendment was put in the Bill; "... if it's there, it doesn't seem to me to make any difference why they chose to put that one there." Let's have concealed handguns at the next Supreme Court hearing to encourage John the Shallow to research a little deeper than his decision of two years ago for precedent.

"I don't see how you can read Heller and not take away from it the notion that the Second Amendment, whether you want to label it fundamental or not, was extremely important to the framers in their view of what liberty meant," Roberts said. From what deep waters does this man fish for convenient agreement!

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GOP Senator James Crow said today that it was a bad idea to pay workers in money, since they would not want to work once they had enough. "Paying actual cash to people doesn't create jobs; it only depletes employers' cash reserves." He said it would be better to offer them food and/or housing, then they would be sure to return to the sweatshop the next day. "An empty stomach is a great motivator. So is sleeping in the rain, after the other hoboes kick you out from under the crowded overpass."

He also maintained that the pressure on workers to hold on to their shrinking health benefits was essential to American competiveness. "We can't have these folks simply voting with their wallets and going to a better job. With upward pressure on wages we would have to outsource our fast-food delivery and big-box store clerking, not to mention our hard-pressed health-insurance claims deniers." Informed that those claims already were being handled mostly by call centers in Papua New Guinea, Crow said "Well, we don't want those Fore cannibals asking for cash instead of thigh meat. We all want to hold down the cost of health insurance."

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The Supreme Court will interrupt their summer break to decide whether the need to avoid all restriction on speech requires lifting restrictions on politically-funded media torpedoes like "Hillary: The Movie", a 2008 attempt by conservative group Citizens United to discredit Senator Clinton during the presidential primaries. That they are altering their schedule is interesting, suggesting to me that they want to hurry up and overturn the McCain-Feingold provision prohibiting corporations, unions and special interest groups from using money from their general treasuries for "any broadcast, cable or satellite communications" that refer to a candidate for federal office during election season. A lower court ruled against allowing the 90-minute movie to be distributed over cable TV, citing the law.

Former Solicitor-General Ted Olsen, who previously encouraged David Brock to publish known falsehoods against Anita Hill in order to undercut her attack on Clarence Thomas, is going to argue in front of Thomas, Alito, Scalia, Roberts, and Kennedy (the likely majority) that "When the government of the United States of America claims the authority to ban books because of their political speech, something has gone terribly wrong and it is as sure a sign as any that a return to first principles is in order."

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Washington, July 13, 1969

Leading NASA gadfly Lucius P. Barbour took to the Sunday morning talk show circuit to press his claims that the agency has been maintaining a sham program, that we are woefully behind the Soviet Union in every area of space technology and weapons systems, and that the sham is intended to deflect Americans' attention away from the "fearsome enemy of Godless Communism". When pressed to offer evidence of his contentions, he answered by saying NASA had not shown him any Moon rocks.

"Marco Polo brought rice to the West, why can't we see some dirt?", said the red-faced and sweating Barbour. When informed that astronauts had in fact done so, he said he wanted to hold those rocks in his hands. When told they were reserved for scientists to study, he responded "Pointy-headed intellectuals aren't who Americans want to hear from."

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A common argument between conservative and  liberal is whether more and tougher law enforcement is the best approach to reducing crime, or whether some societal/governmental intervention is appropriate. In other words, conservatives say society can merely expect personal responsibility, and enforce the law when that fails. Same for gun crime, same for exploitative mortgage-sales practices, and same for terrorism---"Liberals want to use psychotherapy."

For Professor Gates, it would have easily avoided a problem to be subservient and polite, ignoring his feeling of being oppressed. This is what Chris Rock humorously advises in this video clip: NYPD Training Video

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Dennis Overbye, in the New York Times, says we did not conquer space 40 years ago when we landed on the Moon, we just learned how hard it is. We also learned how expensive it is.  Scientific and manned-mission efforts will continue as prestige markers for a while yet, and commercial activity will increase slowly. The main driver for space exploration will continue to be military, as has been the case for government support of astronomy since its birth as astrology. It became astronomy when precise measurement allowed navigation and surveying accuracy, which meant substantial advantages for the more accurately piloted naval force, or the efficiently deployed land forces.

Isaac Asimov, who was a leader in making speculative fiction scientific, imagined (among others) a future where robots' installed morals, his Three Laws, would invite a more basic Law, that of promoting the health and future of the human race. One particular robot, who has deduced this new Law, acts to enforce it, by starting a nuclear reaction intended to make Earth eventually uninhabitable. This forces humanity out of its sleepy satisfied state, which comprises a handful of planets colonized by wealthy explorers, and the hugely overpopulated home planet.

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Could the Department of Homeland Security please stop insulting our intelligence by continuing to hold the "threat level" at orange? The implication is that it is unusually elevated, nearly panic time (red). But if it has been there since 2003 or so, as I hear on the intercom every time I enter an airport, it is now the new baseline.

We will never again keep our shoes on, carry on liquids or Swiss Army knives, walk through drinking coffee, and so on. Those new policies will outlast all of us. Even though some major Al Qaeda players are laying low, or dead, and even though we have been keeping suitcases explosive-free for decades, and even though cockpit doors are secure and everyone is watching for swarthy men with boxcutters to congregate in the aisles at the front, we have to act as if beturbaned evildoers are just waiting for the slightest failure of vigilance.

But that lowering of inspection standards is not ever going to happen, anyway. So what is the information carried in the annoying color code? It sounds like an airport novel. Hmmm.

In  a public statement, the American Medical Association argued that a public option would be attractive enough to drive out private insurers, causing a "...surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers." While they are wrong in principle about the second point, higher costs, they are likely right about the first. My guess is most primary-care physicians would encourage their patients to shift, in order to reduce the paper and phone calling those offices need in order to collect from the private companies.

But the large number of specialists that are partners with labs and clinics, who see lots of extra income from tests and procedures that are not prescribed in similar situations elsewhere in the country, will in fact earn less. In this I am not wholly sympathetic to their plight. Since most civilized countries have satisfactory staffing levels at hospitals and in offices for visits, there is not an apparent need for this business model. And it is precisely this approach that drives costs beyond the needed into the wasteful range, as exemplified by studies that showed huge cost differences between an expensive town in Texas , McAllen, and the low-cost but revered Mayo Clinic. Atul Gawande details the differences in the New Yorker magazine. Read more »

The United States has produced the Marshall Plan, but also Hiroshima. It defeated fascism but also had to defeat racism at home, an ongoing project. It has produced both Duke Ellington and Aaron Copland, and if we didn't create the Beatles we sure as heck created ragtime, jazz, and rock and roll.

And we lofted the first Great Observatory into space, Hubble.

This has been our gift to the world's populations, pictures and science for all. Researchers have proprietary privileges for one year, and after that all data is public domain, not needing subscription to journals and so on. Anyone can download the amazing images, print them, and sell them as posters, with only a notice of credit for the image being asked. This may be the most generous gift we have offered to the world, since there are exactly zero strings on it.

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The male bower bird of Australia collects objects to arrange as a stage, on which to display its pleasing stature and song. It weaves grasses into walls to frame the stage, places bright and dark pebbles around it, and makes sure it is oriented east-west, so that noonday sun will illuminate the place of honor. This takes roughly 70% of its day, and a goodly portion of that time consists of defending the bower against destructive attack from competitors, or launching attacks on others' bowers.

Is the bird wasting its time? The bird that opts out of the competition also opts out of the gene pool. We would root for trying harder, reaching higher, just as we applaud small colleges seeking to make the Final Four, or American Idol, or any of thousands of forms of human competition. We spend money on storytelling, whether books or movies. We buy pictures to mount on our walls, even though we can't eat them, or survive attack by sheltering behind them.

The question of necessity is raised by the economic overshoot we have experienced. We were buying for the fun of it, we think, instead of the necessity of it. But economists and writers point to Japan as having been too concerned with saving, back in the 90s, and the government tried hard to inspire spending. Is there a level of frivolous economic activity that is necessary?

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Homo lingua, we talk all the time now. Twitter and texting (sexting!) rule the hubbub. The ultimate tool, language has been used to check genetic data indicating that behaviorally modern humans migrated out of Africa, across the Red Sea, roughly 50,000 years ago. Our first language was click, like Khoisian, or the !Kung and San. The San, in particular, show the widest genetic diversity, and this is considered the best indicator of founding population. Similarly, the widest genetics for apples is found in Kazakhstan, so it is the home of the apple tree.

Eden was probably crowded and contentious, with groups fighting over waterholes, or women. (Amazon Yanomamo laughed at researchers that asked if they fought over food.) But the exodus led across the Arabian Peninsula, into India, and was likely also contentious, given the previous expansion of Homo Erectus and Habilis. This could be where we get legends of trolls and ogres, which could also be Neanderthal, which met the second group of migrants that turned west across Turkey, into Europe. ("Before the Dawn" by Nicholas Wade, is a good source on this.)

It's fascinating to think about the reasons language started. Theories have included grooming becoming gossip and hunters making plans. I doubt the latter, since the plan would be usually the same, and while hunting, no one is talking. I think we can take some clues from what we do now.

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I've been reading about the unholy combination of McCarthyism and MacArthurism that was the toxic atmosphere during the Korean War. Douglas MacArthur's father got his chance to try being Caesar in the Philippines, waterboarding and all, before President McKinley couldn't take him anymore. Harry Truman got a chance to repeat, or rather, rhyme, history, when he had to fire the son of the earlier MacArthur. It is not Shakespearean, but more a Greek tragedy, that this nativist, racist, jingoist strain of characters won't go away. Familiar name from Doug MacArthur's Tokyo sycophants---Alexander Haig. Add Buchanan, Cheney, Rumsfeld. Garnish with the new MacArthur, McCain, who wanted to be Eisenhower. Looked like the same effective mix. (In retrospect, it is a really scary thought to consider the alternative to Eisenhower in 1952, MacArthur. We were lucky.)

The rabid right was not all that happy with Eisenhower, so Kennedy had to out-hawk the hawks, and it trapped him into adventures that we were decades recovering from. I find myself hoping Obama is Eisenhower, with Johnson's domestic emphasis.

None of the dire consequences the rabid right warned of  happened, i.e. no dominoes, no global communism, and China buys our Treasury bonds. More recently we had the exquisite embarrassment of our president promising us he would protect us from Saddam's nonexistent arsenal. At least some people notice how wrong this crowd has been, and how often.

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Actually, the second part is what I don't know, and would like someone to explain. There seems to be a class of rhetorical trick that is the usual technique. Here's one example: "When guns are criminalized, only criminals will have guns." It makes an absurdity out of a sensible issue, mainly by exaggerating and then reversing a point. "So we should let France have a veto over our national security?" "Liberals want to offer psychotherapy for terrorists." "Why do you hate America?"

One of our reflex-slogan specialists here recently asked why a contributing guest had switched from using "global warming" to "climate change". The obvious intent was to make the guest look unsteady, unreliable, unserious, since he can't keep his terms straight. Unfortunately, the guest always used the latter term, as does the International Panel on Climate Change. But it reminded me of an exchange I had with a letter-writer in the Chicago Tribune, in the 90s.

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We are experiencing bit of a drought, perhaps, in popular offerings. But it surely is wrong for posts with zero votes to end up on the "Recommended" list. There should be a minimum count, and the current popular posts should stay up until the new ones reach that threshold.

Given the fact that more new posts also means less time for people to see and vote on them, the threshold should probably be low, like 3 votes. But if there is little new posting, existing recommended posts should stay up. Unrecommended posts should drop away, not default to replace the good posts. Right now the list is clock-driven. It should be value-driven instead.