Publications as Scientific Evidence

In reading on global warming, I've seen the type of argument Think Progress uses in different places:

Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove. It demonstrates that the prevailing operational paradigm in this domain of science research is global warming. OK. I didn't think that was a matter of debate, but OK. That is not the same as evidence in favor of the theory, which is how Think Progress tries to use it.

Science is no different than any other domain. There is an established orthodoxy that is generally accepted, and those who question that orthodoxy are left out in the cold. Peer reviewed journals are reviewed by those who follow the orthodox viewpoints. Therefore, it is hard to get a paper published that questions that orthodoxy. For this reason, you won't find too many papers on steady state theory in cosmology or astronomy journals.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's how science works. The community comes up with a paradigm that is generally accepted and the researchers in the field pursue their research along those lines. That paradigm inevitably runs up against problems and things it cannot explain, at which point some outside-the-box thinker comes up with a brand new paradigm to explain it, and is then met with opposition and resistance by the establishment until the mounting inability of the current model to explain becomes overwhelming, at which point the community goes kicking and screaming into accepting the new paradigm. Witness the rise of quantum physics in the 20th century, which was so traumatic to the physics community that even legendary thinkers like Einstein were left behind because of their refusal to accept the new order. That new order only came about because (a) classical physics just couldn't explain a growing list of phenomena, and (b) renegade physicists kept coming up with explanations, using quantum theory, for the same list.

But as the same history shows, having a certain paradigm as the generally accepted, orthodox viewpoint is not the same as having proof of that paradigm.

M-LAW's Wacky Warning Labels

See the winning labels in M-LAW's Wacky Warning Labels contest. To head off lawsuits, ovenware makers have to warn that ovenware gets hot in the oven, and knife makers have to warn users against trying to catch falling knives. And, of course, a 1000 degree heat gun should not be used as a hair dryer.

And checkout their Whiplash Awards for the most frivolous lawsuits in the land.

What would we do without lawyers?

Movie Review: X-Men: The Last Stand

With this, the third installment, the X-Men movie franchise supposedly comes to an close. (I'll believe that when I don't see a fourth one in a couple of years.) The first two films were strong efforts helmed by Bryan Singer, who departed to replace Brett Ratner on the new Superman movie. In an example of turn about being fair play, Ratner in turn replaced Singer on this installment of X-Men.

At the core of all three films is the tense relationship between ordinary humans and the mutant population, with its obvious parallels to the fate of minority groups throughout society. As the film begins, the two groups have learned to co-exist peacefully, with a federal department of mutant affairs and a mutant in the presidential cabinet. But now a drug is found to suppress mutancy, turning the mutants into normal human beings. The drug soon becomes referred to as a "cure." Initially the drug is offered to whoever wants it, but the military quickly weaponizes it.

The leader of the X-Men, Charles Xavier, counsels his usual caution. But his friend and rival Magneto is outraged at the idea of mutancy being a disease that has to be cured. Even some of the X-Men, especially Storm, are equally outraged, but continue to follow Xavier. But Magneto raises an army of mutants to fight what he sees as the final battle between humanity and mutants.

For some mutants, this cure is a welcome relief from the torment of being set apart, of having to endure powers they never wanted. This is epitomized by Rogue, whose mutant powers have left her unable to touch anyone, including her boyfriend. For others, the idea of a cure is offensive, because there is nothing to cure. The drug tears the mutant population apart.

The other main storyline of the film revolves around Jean Grey, who died in the previous film, but franchises like this don't let death get in the way of bringing a character back. Without explaining how, Grey rises from her watery tomb, into the arms of her lover, Cyclops. But Jean has changed. The limits on her powers have disappeared and she is now the Phoenix, the most powerful mutant around.

I had better not write much more so I don't give away any spoilers.

The strength of the first two films in the series was the character development. Like all the top-tier modern superhero film series, the filmmakers take the characters, though obvious fantasies, seriously and delve into what having those abilities and powers can do to a person. With a story about a cure, this episode attempts to join its predecessors. There's certainly the potential for a substantive film there. If you were set apart all your life by something, what would you give up in order to be accepted, to be treated as normal? Would you give up a part of who you are? Those mutants who accept the cure, are they traitors to their kind, as Magneto charges, or are they simply people tired of persecution and being set apart?

These questions are also foundational to the Grey storyline, but in a very different way.

In the end, this substantive story eventually gives way to the demands of a summer blockbuster, with story being replaced by numerous explosions, and explosions on top of explosions. Is that a bad thing? I like destruction in a movie (I am a male), and it is well done. What's more disappointing, though, is why these come about. For reasons I'm not entirely sure I understand, the X-Men, after initially standing on the sidelines as the humans and Magneto go at it, decide to join the humans in fighting Magneto, and the last stand of the title becomes the last stand of the "good" mutants against the "bad" ones.

In the end, the story really isn't that bad. And Ratner does an acceptable job filling in for Singer. The weakest part of the film is the casting and some of the dialog. In order to get Halle Barry back for the film, they had to expand her role considerably, and she just isn't all that good. She is a lightweight actress, her Oscar for best bare butt in a lead role notwithstanding, and she's out of her element as an action heroine leading a battle. The guy who played Juggernaut is a muscle bound joke.

There's also just too many characters, so many that mainstays like Mystique get little screen time.

Two female mutants are referred to as b**ches. Those lines were totally unnecessary, and stood out like sore thumbs. I guess we can thank Dave Chappelle for that. I'm not all that prudish, but both times it just felt like the writers were trying to deliberately shocking (we'll show you how bad these guys are by calling girls b**ches) and ended up being quite awkward.

Anyway, in the end this is a pretty good movie, nowhere near as bad as I had been lead to believe by the reviews. It would be hard to see how they could continue the franchise after this film. They burned a lot of bridges, but you'll have to see the movie to get the details. But since this one is bound to make a pile of money, I'm sure they will try.

The "Patch" Mentality

Oracle's chief security officer made a recent speech, slamming the software development industry saying, "most software people are not trained to think in terms of safety, security and reliability." She complained about the "patch, patch, patch" culture, using the analogy of bridge construction:

"What if civil engineers built bridges the way developers write code?" she asked. "What would happen is that you would get the blue bridge of death appearing on your highway in the morning."

Well, I can only relate my own experiences.

One commenter on the story retorts, "Bridge makers don't have to put up with ever changing requirements." I am currently lead engineer on a fairly large project. Requirements were supposed to have been completed last December. We were still doing requirements analysis and modification well into April, a four month delay. Was the rest of the project delayed an equal amount? Of course not. Development was given an extra week. We've asked for another week, but I don't yet know if we will get it. So what we should have been doing in March, April, and May gets squeezed into part of May. Do you think that might cause some quality issues that will require subsequent patching?

I would take the requirements complaint a bit further. Not only is the business tardy in finalizing requirements, the requirements often don't make a lot of sense. A significant part of my current project is developing functionality that is all but duplicated in another area of the business. But we have to build it because our business clients think in terms of the process within our application rather than the duplicated process elsewhere.

Furthermore, we have other crazy requirements that are simply a reflection of the inefficient organization of the client area. They have different groups of people doing essentially the same thing. Therefore we have requirements to figure out who will get some report. It's the same report providing the same information, but we have figure out which of these groups gets the report. That adds cost, effort, and complexity to our project for so good reason other than to support the inefficient business organization. Complexity, in turn, leads to bugs and patches.

So, if my employer was serious about cutting costs and shortening projects, management would take a long, hard look at how the business side is structured and how requirements for projects are developed.

In fairness, IS does share in the blame for cost and complexity. Solutions are often overengineered. A few years ago I was lead engineer on a project to build a compensation system for some investment products. We went to the so-called experts, whose job it is to carefully analyze the application's needs and then to conclude that the application should our version of a J2EE application connecting to a UDB database. For that particular project, that would have meant multiple specialist teams (data specialists, source code management specialists, architecture specialists, user interface specialists, etc.) plus a 3-4 person development team working off a design I came up with. That approach would have taken at least 6 months, which would have been seriously pushing it, resulting in lots of bugs and subsequent patches. Total cost: at least $500k.

Instead, I built a Microsoft Access database, with me serving as all those specialists plus the 3-4 person development team (well, I did have two others writing the reports, but I was the development team for most of the project). The project was completed comfortably in about 4 months at a cost of about $100k. The system I delivered was so reliable and cheap that the business area subsequently added other products to it, and it's still around while the more officially sanctioned systems have been heavily worked on and, in some cases, rewritten. (This was supposed to be a short term solution until it could be rolled into an existing platform. That target platform has been subsequently replaced by a many million dollar project, and the replacement will again be replaced by another multi-million dollar effort. Meanwhile, my Access system just keeps on going and going.)

I'll be the first to tell you it is far from an elegant or pretty system. But there are times when an Access database or an Excel spreadsheet are all you need, and the IS sanctioned solutions are vastly more expensive and complex than needed. But few self-respecting IS professionals would ever want to build such systems. Few would even want to admit knowing Visual Basic.

There is a place for an emphasis on elegance and engineering. Absolutely. But sometimes that's overkill. Damiem Katz wrote about crappy programmers. Quite a few of those are situations where the programmer loses focus on what he or she needs to deliver and good design ideas become rigid rules that can never be violated, even if violating them makes a good deal of sense. (And some of the things on his list are things I battle frequently at work. "Enthusiastic UML modeling is typically done by those who aren't strong coders, but consider themselves software architects anyway." Can I please email that to a certain distribution list?) That was a recurring theme when I interviewed for my current position. I was asked several times what I would change, and my answer was always that I would change the mentality of "one size fits all" and get the engineers back to focusing on needs rather than design principles. If those principles don't apply to a situation, don't apply them.

TCS Daily - Inconvenient Truths Indeed

Dr. Robert Balling comments on the scientific aspects of Gore's global warming movie.

Pat Robertson's Age-Defying Shake

Pat Robertson claims he can leg press 1 full ton. When I was in college, I was a regular in the weight room. The leg press was the one excercise where I could keep up with the body builders and the football players. It's been a while so I can't tell you exactly how much I could do, but I'm sure it was under 800 pounds. 720 seems right, which would have been 8 45 pound plates to a side. And that's up with the football players. (OK, we had a lousy team so maybe that says something.) Regardless of what the actual weight was, the point is I was 21 and pretty strong, and was doing much less than half of what 76 year old Robertson claims. So forgive me for raising an eyebrow and this patently absurd claim.

CCJ Blog (and quite a few other bloggers I have found) says the Florida State record is a mere 665 pounds for the leg press. That does not appear to be accurate. It appears, according to the Carpet Bagger report, that the record is 1335 pounds, which means Robertson beats it by 665. (That seems more reasonable. I am sure I was nowhere near a record, and I know I was doing more than 4-500 pounds.) And the blood vessels in the guy's eyes burst under the strain of pushing all that weight.

Like I said, Robertson is back to kooky.

Update Or like Sullivan says, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to say that a leading light of the Republican Party [not to mention a Christian evangelist] is lying to sell protein shakes."

What's even funnier is that CBN claims Robertson's doctor can press 2700 pounds. Chuckle. At least they have a disclaimer directing readers to consult their doctors before starting this excercise regimen. Probably a good idea.

They do have a video of Robertson pressing 1000 pounds. (I haven't watched it, but that's how it's described.) Of course, one thousand is quite a bit different than two thousand.

Wizard of Id on the UN

Nice little satirical comment on the UN:

ABC News: Inside the Darfur Crisis

ABC gives a decent length story on Darfur, a rare occurence for television news. Of course, they did not mention the word "genocide" once. The closest they get is to acknowledge that "thousands" have been slaughtered. Quite a few thousand, in fact. Hundreds.

Back to Kooky

Whew. After a brief moment of lucidity, Pat Robertson is back to his normal kookiness:

In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America's coastline this year.

Storms hitting the US coastline, during hurricane season no less? Wow. That's some deep insight. And, who knows, maybe there will be a tsunami. Or maybe not. The technical term for that type of prediction is covering your butt. The sequel to these predictions might include nuggests like, maybe there'll be an earthquake in California (or maybe not), maybe there'll be forest fires somewhere (or maybe not), and this winter there will be a blizzard here in Milwaukee (or maybe not).

(HT: Andrew Kantor)

Global Warming

I've written before, briefly, about global warming. With Al Gore's movie coming out soon, a lot of people are talking about it, so let me join the fray. I understand this is a political issue, but I want to focus purely on the science side. I won't argue a case, but rather express some questions in the hope that some reader will provide links to additional information.

As I wrote before, the primary evidence I have seen for global warming (hereafter GW) are plots of temperature over time or measurements that show glaciers receding, or similar. These basically show the planet is getting warmer. Wait a minute, though. GW is not a theory that says the globe is warming. Rather it is a theory which attempts to explain why and how the globe is warming. So a plot that shows the earth's temperature rising is not proof of GW, but is instead a statement of the phenomenon GW purports to explain.

Evidence for GW would be to superimpose the predictions of GW on the observed data to show that the theory tracks the observations well. This plot would be accompanied by a statistical analysis to quantify just how well the two match. My understanding is that this is, in fact, a problem because the predictions don't track with observations. (I can't provide a link to prove this, but it's something I remember reading. My recollection is that the theory predicts a sharper rise in temperature than is observed.) As a scientist, what should be the response to a theory that doesn't match nature? Skepticism.

And what does it mean to say the earth is getting warmer, that the temperature is rising? What is this quantity that is being called "temperature"? I know what temperature is. It is a scalar valued function of four variables: space and time. If I measure temperature at a specific spot in my backyard at 3 AM and 3 PM today, the values will most likely be quite different. If I measure at the same spot at 3 PM on Christmas and 3 PM on July 4, the values will almost certainly be dramatically different. So temperature varies in time, quite a bit in fact. If I measure temperature at 3 PM GST today in Nome, AK, Paris, France, and Baghdad, Iraq, I will get different values. So temperature varies according to position on the globe. And finally, if I measure the temperature at 3 PM GST in Baghdad, both on the ground and at 50,000 feet elevation, I will get very different answers. So temperature varies according to altitude as well.

Hence, variability in 3 spatial dimensions as well as time. Then how does one reduce this 4 dimensional function to a simple value varying in time? How does one eliminate the variability in spatial dimensions, as well as the short term temporal variability, which can be much larger than the long term temporal variability (swings of up to tens of degrees in a single day versus one or two degrees over the years)?

And why is it that the climatic theory du jour 30 years ago was that the earth was headed into an ice age, and today it's that we're getting warmer? If the warming trend just started in the last couple of decades, doesn't that pretty much invalidate GW which attributes warming to the build up of greenhouse gasses, which have been accumulating for over a century?

Update 5/19/2006 I found this page which talks about global warming models and matches to prediction. Interesting comments.

Can we match the observation of temperature trends with the model predictions? The temperature record of the past hundred years does show a warming trend, by approximately 0.5 degrees C. However, the observed warming trend is not entirely consistent with the carbon dioxide change. Most of the temperature increase occurred before 1940, after which Earth started to cool until the early seventies, when warming resumed. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, has been increasing steadily throughout the past century. Other factors that could have affected climate during this period include the possible change in the solar energy reaching Earth, the cooling effects of volcanic aerosols, and the possibility that sulfur dioxide and other pollutants might be affecting the amount of solar radiation that is reflected back to space. Some of these effects can cause a cooling that could counteract the warming due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. All of these effects would have to be taken into account and appropriately modeled in order to predict the changes that one might expect in the next century.

This shows one of the big problems I would expect to find in this area. There are numerous natural phenomena which can cause climatic variation, contributions which have to be modeled, a difficult task. He also makes the comment that he earth was, in fact, cooling until the 70's, which might explain the fact that climatologists a few decades were worried about an ice age, not global warming.

Wiretapping Justified

Providing a perfect example of something I've written about before, John Gibson justifies wiretapping as a tool against terrorism:

Also, for a little context here, it should be noted that Britain has recently discovered that there are 700 active Al Qaeda members running around Britain--at large--—whom authorities are trying to locate and, presumably, jail.

How did Britain discover this information? Wiretaps, that's how.

The NSA is doing important work. I hope the people who have been demanding information get the information they need to realize this is not something they want stopped.

The argument boils down to wiretapping can lead to good things, so we should do it. Nice argument. Totally irrelevant to anything, but nice anyway.

The question has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not wiretapping is a good thing. The question is, can the president be allowed to violate the law and pursue this spying in an illegal way or not? The president does not feel himself bound by the law. Is he right or not? I've always been told no one is above the law. Is that meaningless drivel we pound into school children's heads or does it actually mean something? The law provides a process by which the president can do all the spying he wants. He simply chooses to ignore it and do whatever he wants without those pesky and inconvenient laws and Constitutions to get in the way.

Mr. Gibson references a British operation, which I will assume is legally pursued since I haven't actually read about it before. Surely Mr. Gibson can understand the difference between obeying the law and committing a crime? That's obviously too hard a concept for our president to grasp, but, well I won't say it.

SRV

Crooks and Liars also has this video from You Tube to go with Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of Little Wing. I played guitar for years. I've always had very eclectic taste in music, all over the place from jazz and blues to heavy metal. As a kid, my record cabinet had everything from Chuck Mangione to Blondie to the Beatles to Iron Maiden and Ozzy. I loved a lot of guitar players, but Stevie was the only one I really wanted to play like. Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen were long time favorites, but while I tried to learn their songs and licks, I never wanted to sound like them. But, oh to have sounded and played like Stevie.

What Could Have Been

Crooks and Liars has the video of Al Gore's Saturday Night Live opening. Satire that's actually funny. Who knew? Certainly not Mr. Colbert.

Government is Your Best Friend

Matthew Yglesias on the latest attack on American values by this administration:

One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself.

Government is mother, government is father. (Adapted from a slogan in Babylon 5.)

Scary Thought of the Day

Pat Robertson and I are in, I can't believe I would write this, agreement, on multiple points.

Feds Tracking Media Phone Calls

Political Wire:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources... Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation

See, nothing to worry about with the government tracking of phone calls. As the conservatives are wont to say, trust your government. They would never do anything to abuse their power. The government is your friend.

Latest GOP Tax Cuts

Brewtown Politico links to the Washington Post analysis of the latest round of GOP tax cuts, including a nifty little table summarizing the savings. My summary: for most Americans, i.e. those making less than $100k per year, these savings will help buy anywhere from a partial gallon of gas up to several tanks of gas per year; for the wealthy, they can buy a whole car.

I've always found this kind of analysis misleading. Obviously, we would expect the wealthy to have a larger absolute dollar savings in any tax cut, because they pay more to begin with. Cut everyone's taxes 5% across the board and the wealthy will save a lot more dollars than the poor. So showing the real dollar savings doesn't really tell us anything about the cuts.

A more meaningful analysis is to normalize to percentages. Below is a table taking the Post data and taking the ratio of savings to the low end of the income range given:

Income Range (thousands)	Tax Savings ($)	Percentage (%)
10-20	2	0.02
20-30	9	0.05
30-40	16	0.05
40-50	46	0.12
50-75	110	0.22
75-100	403	0.54
100-200	1388	1.39
200-500	4499	2.25
500-1000	5562	1.11
1000-	41977	4.20

As this table shows, only those making more than $100k have anything resembling a noticeable savings. But even the very well off (those around $750k per year) get screwed relative to the truly wealthy.

Senator Frist argues for the cut saying, "Keeping taxes low helps Americans find and keep work, supports families and communities with good job bases, and makes America a great place to do business for companies both here at home and those overseas looking for a place to invest." Yeah, that extra tank of gas per year will really help working Americans support their families.

Media Player Review: Coby MP-C651

I bought this MP3 player a couple of weeks ago. It was at a good price and has 512 MB storage. It's a good device for playing MP3 files. I have had few problems in that area. Navigation through the contents of the player is easy.

What has really ticked me off is playing WMA files. I've bought several songs from MSN music stores. The device is billed as playing these files, but it's quite the exaggeration. I don't know that any WMA file I have bought plays cleanly. Few actually even play. One that does causes the player to hang at the end, forcing me to remove the battery to shut the thing off and then keep pushing the controls to try to get to the next file when I start up, otherwise it will just hang again.

I emailed their customer service to find out what's wrong. All they would tell me is that the file must be protected and can't be played. That one file actually does play apparently does not contradict this statement that the file can't be played. That the files play perfectly on other MP3/WMA devices also apparently fails to contradict this claim that the files cannot be played. (The files can't be played. The fact that you can play them does not contradict the fact that they can't be played!) I have repeatedly pointed this out to Coby, but have been totally ignored. I've even tried to help diagnose the problem by pointing out that the bit rate indicated on the LCD is quite a bit lower than the rate actually in the file.

So my conclusion: If you are in the market for a pure MP3 player, this isn't bad. But take their claim that it plays WMAs as the joke that it is.

NSA Secret Phone Database

The president's latest challenge to constitutional limits on his power is the NSA's secret database of phone calls made by millions of Americans. As usual, the president's defense of this policy boils down to, "Trust me. I would never abuse this kind of power." Administration defenders will say that all they are trying to do is identify terrorists. But here's the basic problem with so much of this guy does: there is no accountability in place to ensure that that is true. This is a common thread to all of Bush's abuses of power.

He claims he can detain citizens for as long as he likes, without having to charge them with anything, simply on suspicion of terrorist activity. What's wrong with that? Well, how about the fact that the administration is never made to justify or defend that suspicion. It's like McCarthy's old trick of holding up sealed envelopes, claiming that the contents proved so and so was a Communist without ever having to actually open the document and show the evidence. That's the point of having to officially charge someone with a crime: the government has to present the evidence that justifies their suspicions. The president has decided he just doesn't have to do that.

The president will claim that the illegal eavesdropping was only targeted at suspected terrorists. But, yet again, he never had to actually justify that suspicion. As long as someone said they thought maybe the person might be a terrorist, spy away without limits. Senator Feingold has said that he supports spying on terrorists, as long as it's done legally. Some administration defenders say this is a contradiction. But it's very simple. The law requires the administration to present its case before a court and to get permission. It's not that the government can't spy on suspects, it just has to justify that suspicion before doing it. That's the point! The president just doesn't feel he has to justify himself to anyone, so there's no need to go to a court like the law demands.

Sen. Koyl gives the standard defense of these kinds of abuses: "We are in a war, and we have got to collect intelligence on the enemy." War justifies everything, I guess. This president has the convenience of waging a war against an undefined enemy, who is whoever the president decides it is at the time, with no defined goal or means of determining when this war is over. War without end. That's the recipe for 1984. Create a perpetual state of war, and then use that war to distort and pervert whatever laws are deemed necessary. No, I'm not on the lunatic fringe that says we're there now. But events are in motion, and what's to stop some future president from taking things another step forward?

For those who can't understand this, answer this. What would Nixon, in all his paranoia, have done if he had had the de facto authority to imprison anyone he wanted for as long as he wanted, so long as he invoked the magic word "terrorist"? That's the kind of power this president claims to have.

Why is it the conservatives, who supposedly have such a distrust of government that they want to limit its power as much as possible, who have such blind trust in both the man currently holding the office and the office itself? Why is it they cannot see the danger of giving such unchecked, unaccountable power to the presidency?

Warner Bros. to Sell Movies Via BitTorrent

Starting this summer, Warner will be selling its movies and TV shows on BitTorrent.com. (Babylon 5 will be included.) This is a good sign. Maybe the movie business will embrace electronic distribution of material more quickly and in a friendlier way than the music business did. Lessons learned?

Robert E. Lee

As long as I'm writing about Civil War related things, this would be a perfect time to write about the romanticized Robert E. Lee. Lee is held in very high esteem. He was a brilliant tactician, certainly, as his performance in key battles, particularly Chancellorsville, attests. But it has always seemed to me he was little different than the Union general he faced.

One of the reasons the war lasted as long as it did, in my opinion, is that no one really wanted to fight it. This was the downfall of most Union generals prior to Grant's rise. They had a superior army, but lacked the will to use it. They lacked a focussed strategy to gain victory. They led invasions of the South aimed at Richmond, but with no real clue of how to win the war. When they won battles, they never followed up. So the first three years consisted of a series of half hearted invasions by the Union, where they met fierce resistance from Lee, which prompted withdrawal. The end result: a long series of ultimately meaningless but bloody battles.

Grant's great contribution was a desire to win. Before he invaded in 1864, he formulated a grand strategy covering the full battlefield, from Virginia to the west, to the sea. When he met Lee in battle, he did not withdraw but continued prosecuting the war. Simply put, unlike his predecessors, he fought the war like a war, and fought it to its conclusion.

Now, what about Lee? The difference between Lee and, say, McClellan is that Lee was on the defense most of the time. Even Union generals, when defending Union territory, could fight well. They were just rarely in that position. Usually they were the reluctant invaders. So, in defense, Lee was a brilliant leader. But, like his counterparts in the Union, he had no real strategy on how to win the war, nor the heart to win it. He was content to simply defend Virginia and repulse the invaders, hoping that eventually they would give up. As an invader, he was little better than the Union incompetents he typically faced. Witness the numerous mistakes at Gettysburgh, which crippled his army.

Webb's Confederacy Offense

Instapundit quotes an excerpt from the speech James Webb gave that is causing controversy. (The full text of the speech is available on Webb's website.) Like I said, there's really nothing to get all up in arms about.

Senate Race in Virginia and the Confederacy

The Virginia Senate race is getting bogged down in debate on the Confederacy. Both Republican George Allen and Democrat James Webb are facing questions, Allen about his displays of the Confederate flag and Webb about a speech he gave in 1990 expressing admiration for the bravery of the Confederate army. On Webb's problem, I simply point out that even US Grant, the general who lead the campaign to crush the Confederacy, expressed admiration for the soldiers of the Confederate army. He admired the bravery of the army in pursuing its cause while abhorring the cause itself. How many modern American generals have admired German generals like Rommel, while abhorring their cause?

As to Allen's issue, well, I'm someone who drew swastikas on his school book covers in junior high and early high school (there goes my political career) because I thought it was a cool symbol, and because I was a stupid kid who really did not understand what the thing stood for. (Not that the Nazis have a patent on the design. I've seen swastikas on floor tiles from the Roman empire.) I've never, even then, remotely admired Nazi ideology, so drawing a swastika was no reflection of my personal beliefs. So Allen wore a Confederate flag pin in a high school picture. Barring anything to indicate his true beliefs, I would chalk that up to the eternal stupidity of youth.

More on Colbert

Salon.com complains about the slow media coverage of Colbert's "deadly performance." Apparently simply mocking the president must automatically become news which the media are obligated to cover. (And our top story tonight, Doc makes fun of the president!)

Colbert Speaks Truth To Power

By now everyone knows about the Stephen Colbert show at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Blogs supporting Bush see it as disgraceful, those opposing view the act as inspired. I watched the spots. I'm all for satire, but shouldn't satire be, I don't know, funny? No one will ever accuse of being a Bush-man, but Colbert just wasn't all that funny. I gave up a couple of snickers, I admit. But that's about it. We're talking about Bush, and this is the best he could come up with? I guess the opposition is easily amused.

Immigration Rally & Debate

I took a stroll through the immigration rally here in Milwaukee yesterday. The rallies have been described as well organized, but that didn't seem to apply to the local one. To be fair, I caught it near the end, so that could be why. What I saw was a large mass of people, primarily Hispanic and speaking Spanish, just standing around. I had to work my way to the middle of the crowd to realize there actually were speakers and to hear what they had to say. SWAT teams were all around the perimeter of the gathering, but the event was peaceful.

One amusing sight: there was a single protester holding up a sign saying "Enforce Immigration Laws", with about 5 cops around him. I don't know if they were protecting him, or if they were just patrolling the perimeter and that's where he chose to stand. Regardless, it was amusing.

The theme of the rally seemed to be summed up in the placard carried by many in the crowd: Liberty and Dignity for All Immigrants. A secondary theme was a T-shirt several people wore proclaiming "I am not a criminal." This is one of the things that bothers me about this whole debate, and why it's so difficult to find common ground for discussion. For discussion to happen, we have to agree on a few basic parameters. We have to recognize there is not an equivalence between legal and illegal immigrants, such as is implied by the placard calling for liberty for all immigrants, regardless of legal status. We have to recognize that there is a fundamental difference in the legal status of two different groups of immigrants: those who are here legally those who are not. The question is, what do we do with those who are here illegally. This has nothing at all to do with those who have followed the rules and are here legally. I presume most of those proclaiming they are not criminals are here legally, in which case they're absolutely right and nothing is being proposed to change that. The statement is a non sequitur.

What is the answer? Both sides, those who call for stricter enforcement of existing law and deportation, and who call for some form of amnesty, have valid points. Certainly we should always enforce the law, and deal with those who break the law. But we have to also recognize the terrible impact that might have on families. Many of these illegal immigrants have had children born in the US, and who are therefore citizens. If we start mass deportation of millions of illegals, how many families will be ripped apart? How many poverty-stricken families back in Mexico will lose what little they have because they are supported by family members who cross the border illegally to get better pay? This is very much a human story, not simply a law & order question. Personally, I choose to err on the side of compassion.

What the hard-liners don't want to talk about is the economic impact of the mass deportation they want. Illegal immigrants comprise a significant portion of agricultural labor, not to mention other industries. Use of this cheap work force allows the agriculture industry to keep prices down at the grocery counter. What happens to those prices if the industry is forced to use a more expensive labor force? Prices go up, obviously. Inflation is not a good thing for the economy.

The hardliners, while having a valid point that must not be forgotten, must consider the personal and economic impact of their policies.

Movie Review: Good Night, and Good Luck

I finally saw the movie Good Night, and Good Luck last night. The multiply Oscar nominated film (6 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director) tells the story of newsman Edward R. Murrow's coverage of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950's and how the news media helped bring the fool down.

For such a well reviewed film, I wish I could say I was surprised at how overrated it is, but I can't. Films like this are going to be received well, regardless of merit. (I will focus purely on the movie, not the political context of the film, which is the motivation for much of the praise.) The best summary of why it's overrated is simple. The film features a cast with several known actors, Jeff Daniels, Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, David Straithairn, and George Clooney among them. Having watched the film, I can't tell you any of their character's names, save Straithairn who gets the lead role of Murrow. I can't even tell you what their characters did in relation to the story. They all work for CBS. Clooney is, I guess, a producer who hides in the shadows of the set to tap Murrow on the leg to give him cues. The rest? I really couldn't tell you.

As to the story itself, it's told in a by the book manner, perhaps consistent with Murrow's approach to journalism. But there's no real drama in it. As Steve Rhodes writes in his review, "In probably the year's most wildly overrated movie, director George Clooney takes an extremely exciting piece of history and sucks all of the life out of it. The movie is about as flat as the Pillsbury Doughboy after being run over by an 18-wheeler." McCarthy was a fool (and it fills my heart so much whenever I think he was a Senator from Wisconsin) so all CBS had to do was show footage of the guy putting his foot in his mouth and point out a few facts. I understand that was risky back then, and I'm not trying to minimize that. But as an antagonist, McCarthy is pretty lightweight.

The film, in telling this story, relies on a lot of archival footage. Too much archival footage. There's one section that was just one very lengthy excerpt from the hearings with some Senator standing up to McCarthy for a change, when McCarthy wasn't there. The excerpt must have lasted at least 5 minutes, and was not germane to the story, which is about CBS' coverage, not Senators standing up to McCarthy. It's just a long break in the story. (An amusing note about the archival footage: "Test audiences felt that the actor who portrayed Joseph McCarthy was overacting; they were unaware that only archive footage of the actual Joseph McCarthy was used in the film.")

Speaking of breaks in the story, the film features several segments of a lady singing jazz songs at CBS studios. Whole songs. Who she is and why she's singing is never stated. It's good music and she's a fine singer. But again, it's just padding. I have read that the band and the songs were those of Rosemary Clooney, aunt to the director. That may explain why George Clooney included the material, but it's still another break in the story, which isn't sufficiently interesting to begin with that it can handle the pauses.

On the positive side, the movie is beautiful. As one who once tried to be a good photographer, I have a soft spot for black and white. This movie was actually shot on color film, then changed to black and white in editing. Regardless, it looks fantastic. As a director, Clooney and his photography team definitely have a feel for the camera and compose great images.

But beautiful images do not make up for lack of a strong story.