Beating The Spread

Just a thought prior to the VP debate on Thursday.

Sarah Palin will almost certainly perform higher than expectations. That's partly because her recent television exposure has set the bar so low, partly because the structure of the debate will help her to focus, and partly because her preparation will pay off. If she does better than expected she could win this debate, even if Senator Biden shows himself as the more competent of the two.

Presidential debates are unlike most other contests in this sense. Take an example from college football where a team that is supposed to lose by 40 points loses by only 20 points. They did better than expected, but clearly they are still the lesser team. They didn't win the game, they only beat the spread. I just hope that voters use the same criteria for the debate that they do in football. Governor Palin should not be declared the winner simply by beating the spread.

Sarah Palin Sentence Generator

I'm a professor who teaches computer science courses at the college level. When I teach my students about artificial intelligence (AI), I show them examples of computer programs that are able to create English sentences. The simplest, least intelligent programs randomly select pre-programmed phrases and string them together to make sentences. The resulting sentences don't have to make sense and usually don't. Here's an example. This is exactly what I see with Sarah Palin. Her handlers have filled her with little 5- and 6-word catch phrases and she tries to make sentences with them. You can see her searching for them as she pauses, selecting one almost randomly. The resulting sentences don't have to make sense and usually don't. Using this AI related measure, she is demonstrating the lowest level of intelligence.

Now, I don't literally mean that is her functional level of intelligence. Clearly she is more than that. Her progression from PTA member, to mayor, to governor implies that she can operate in the public view successfully. However, during her interviews on the national stage, she has so far shown only that lowest level of capability - the ability to mimic intelligence. It is most likely due to having to learn too much too soon in terms of volume of information on the issues and how to manuever on the national stage. It is a palpable demonstration that she simply isn't ready to lead this nation and by definition that means she is not ready to be in the VP slot.

The $600 Toilet Seat, Deregulation, and You

The DoD is often criticized for wasting money by paying too much for things. An infamous example from the past is the $600 toilet seat. Well, I used to work in the Defense industry and can easily see how a toilet seat can cost $600. It goes like this: A manufacturer makes toilet seats for, say, $20. The DoD approaches this manufacturer with a request for toilet seats. But these toilet seats, being used in an airplane, have different dimensions than the ones currently being made by the manufacturer. So the manufacturer has to invest in new tooling, production lines, and possibly employee training. In addition, the DoD has a set of requirements that the toilet seats must survive rough airplane flights, hard landings, and long term usage. So the manufacturer must invest time and money to create the machines and (more importantly) documentation to prove to the DoD that these toilet seats have been produced and tested in such a way as to meet the requirements. The manufacturer has invested a lot of money. Maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. This outlay must be recouped during the production run. A normal production run of toilet seats may run in the millions. But this DoD contract? Maybe a few hundred seats.
So, at first glance it appears that the DoD is their own worst enemy, insisting on excessive requirements and requesting small numbers of product. Many advocate for the DoD to relax their requirements, to effectively deregulate their suppliers. This has been tried in the past and has always resulted in disaster. Here's an example I remember quite well from the mid-1980s. The DoD buys millions and millions of bolts and they had a requirement in place where every time bolts were procured, a few were set aside and tested to ensure that they were as strong as advertised. These tests cost money and the bolts always passed the testing. So, as a cost savings measure, the rules were changed to allow the bolt maufacturers to simply provide paperwork showing that the bolts were tested at the time of manufacture. The bolt companies were now deregulated. By the mid-1980s the market was flooded with millions of counterfeit and substandard bolts that were not nearly as strong as the suppliers claimed on paper. This was a true scandal and affected the entire DoD (tanks were literally shaking apart), the space program, and even the consumer market. I was working on a satellite project at the time and we had to replace every bolt we still had access to with tested replacements and provide justification for bolts not replaced. The end result was stricter regulation in the form of the Fastener Quality Act of 1990. (More information on the Fastener Quality Act).
This is nothing new. The problem was so bad during the Civil War that the term for it entered our language. Shoddy originally meant an inferior type of cloth. So much of what the government purchased for the war was so bad, the time became known as "The Age of Shoddy," and we still use the word to mean any inferior product. Every time the government spends a lot of money, the contractors try to take advantage of it. The problem is universal, applying to the commercial world and even traditionally non-capitalist markets. Consider China and the recent recalls of pet food , toys, and the scandal over 53,000 children falling ill from poisoned milk.
The root of the problem is that corporations exist solely to make money and are sometimes run by unscrupulous or unwise people doing whatever they can to make that money. Corporations do not exist to make reliable products, they do not exist to donate to community projects, they do not create social justice, or to improve your quality of life - though those things may happen if it improves the bottom line. Some CEOs use their wealth and influence to attempt to improve the world around them, but that speaks to the nature of the people, not corporations. Corporations in and of themselves tend to focus on their agenda at the expense of all other things, much as a sociopathic person does. Again, this is not new. We've all heard of the age of the robber barons.
There are those that believe that the free market will take care of all of this. Companies that produce inferior products will get weeded out of the market. Banks that make bad investments will fail. This is a plausible argument, but goes against history and practicality. History is telling us that when corporations are not regulated, we suffer through shoddy products and practices. The current banking crisis tells us that the principle can apply to entire industries, not just individual players. Allowing the giants to fail will create shockwaves in the economy that in the end punish you and I severely. Knowing that the giants have failed and new giants will arise someday to replace them is small consolation on a personal scale and economic suicide on a national scale. There is little choice but to help them out. In the end, their risk is our risk. And, if we accept that, then We The People should demand that our risk be minimized through regulation.

Tea Leaves Redux

So another possible reason that the media is so thoroughly fact-checking the McCain-Palin claims is that they're mad at the campaign. As we all know, Governor Palin has been kept virtually isolated from the media since her selection as Senator McCain's running mate. It appears the media has finally had enough of this and showed their displeasure at the UN today. The campaign managers were restricting access to the photo-op events and CNN threatened to boycott the event, taking away the only television coverage.

So, should the media be upset? I think so, and I think we all should be upset. America at large was introduced to Governor Palin with only 60 days to decide on her capabilities and qualities. We've known Senator McCain and Senator Biden for years. We've seen Senator Obama being grilled by his opponents for eighteen months straight. But we have no way to gauge Governor Palin. She may be great. She may be incredibly gifted. But, We The People have the right to decide that for ourselves by watching her in the public spotlight. If she were truly competent, one would think she would be making appearance after appearance. The McCain-Palin campaign would be shoving her ability down our throats. The argument that the media might be unfair to her is not valid - a real (self-professed) bulldog would tear apart any interviewer who stepped out of line. Since they are choosing to hide her and protect her at every turn, it is hard to conclude that she is the competent woman they wish us to see. It is even harder to conclude that she should get our votes in any substantial way.

Tea Leaves?

Probably every one of us knows what it's like to watch an interview of our favorite political villain and ask "How can you not ask about ?" Sometimes it can get pretty bad and your spouse has to remind you that the people on TV can't really hear you. And so you ask your spouse "But... how could they not ask about it?" This phenomena happens most often during election season when the politicians are taking their usual liberties with reality and the news people look the other way.
Something new has been happening lately during this election cycle. I noticed it shortly after Senator McCain picked Governor Palin as his running mate. The major media markets have been calling his and her bluffs. Not just the markets you would expect, either. Normally bland news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC are fact-checking the McCain-Palin claims.
I think it started with Governor Palin. Her "No thanks" claim for the Bridge to Nowhere has been challenged repeatedly and pretty well run to ground. Her trooper-gate claims are being challenged by ABC. And when Charles Gibson was hand-picked to give the first interview to Governor Palin, he did not give her the softball interview and "deference" the McCain campaign demanded. Now the NY Times is reminding us that while the McCain-Palin campaign has criticized Barack Obama for receiving donations from Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, McCain's own campaign manager earned $2 million as president of an advocacy group set up by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations. We've seen the Today Show question why John McCain rails against CEO's who are given golden parachutes while their employees are being laid off while one of his top advisors, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, received a $45 million golden parachute bailout while 20,000 Hewlett-Packard employees were laid off. And the low road approach of the McCain-Palin campaign has been criticized by numerous newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, and even Karl Rove on FOX (though to be fair, Karl Rove also said that the Obama campaign has gone too far).
I take this as a sign that the media outlets are betting on an Obama win. There are some out there who believe that the liberal media are simply trying to ensure that Obama wins, but that doesn't take into account past behavior of letting similar claims slide. Nor does it take into account that major media outlets want to be on good terms with the victor, no matter who it is. That's just good business. There was a real change in the pre-Palin and post-Palin actions of the press. I suspect that the major media players were underwhelmed with the choice and believe that the Obama campaign can overcome her positive aspects to win.

Drill, Maybe, Drill!

There's a lot of talk about offshore drilling, but not very much analysis about the benefits and costs. The McCain/Palin campaign says "Drill, baby, drill!" From a political perspective it's a great thing to do, because McCain can pound on the podium and say "Drill here, pay less at the pump" and it gets people all wound up and brings out the vote. But getting out the vote and doing something useful are not always the same thing. Similarly, the Democrats in Congress claimed recently that the oil and gas companies already hold the leases to huge, productive tracts that they simply have not yet developed. This too is a great political claim, but it's hard to find real data to see if the claim is valid. It may be true, but the lack of hard data regarding estimated reserves makes it difficult to assess. Usually reality falls somewhere in between the extremes of broad politically based claims.

We need a real discussion on offshore drilling, not a war of slogans and knee-jerk reactions. The discussion typically takes the form of weighing the environmental costs against the economic benefits of lifting the offshore oil ban.

Conservation: The typical one-liner says that oil exploration and environmental groups can never get along. That makes offshore drilling a show stopper for many. It turns out not to be an absolute truth. In Santa Barbara, CA, an environmentalist group called Goo! negotiated with the Plains Exploration and Production Company to re-open offshore oil fields previously closed down. This does not mean that the entire community is on board with the project, as this Newsweek article points out.

Oil and gas drilling technology is clearly improving. With public and regulatory support, that technology can be used to provide cleaner recovery and transport. A case can be made that in the course of normal operations, oil recovery is quite clean. For example, this 1995 NASA study claims that offshore drilling adds 15 million gallons of oil to the oceans every year, but this is a much smaller source than from natural seepage (62 million), routine ship maintenance (137 million), and poor usage by us landlubbers (363 million). What about abnormal events? Some claim there was no oil rig damage and no oil spillage due to Katrina, but don't believe them! Some 7-9 million gallons from onshore sources and an additional 741,000 gallons from offshore sources were spilled. The numbers for Gustav and Ike are not in yet. Clearly, oil rigs were lost (at least 49 for Ike). Assuming production is shut down prior to the storm, the loss of rigs is an economic issue for the oil/gas companies, but does not have to be a strong environmental issue. I'm not convinced that offshore drilling is environmentally safe in general, but it seems sensible to allow the discussion on a case by case basis.

Effects of Increased Production: It's hard to find numbers estimating how much additional oil and gas could be extracted via offshore drilling. The US Energy Information Administration claimed in 2007 that lifting the offshore drilling ban would increase overall production by about 200,000 barrels per day. That's a trivial amount. It's about 10% of US production, but only about 0.25% of world production. Consider that Saudi Arabia alone promised to increase oil production by 500,000 barrels per day earlier this year, and the global oil market didn't move an inch. Some people put forward a "Every little bit helps!" argument, but it's a non-argument. If I paid you a dollar for a day's hard labor and rationalized it by saying "Hey, every little bit helps!" you still wouldn't take the job. You would use your time and energy in more productive areas. Similarly, this may be a case where utilizing the time and energy that is needed to explore and develop new offshore oil fields may be better used in more productive areas, such as studying alternative energy sources.

I think we can identify a few things we can agree on. One is that environmental effects of drilling are better addressed on a case-by-case basis, rather than blanket statements about certain doom or certain success. Another is that there is no strong case for completely lifting the ban, based on production estimates. New information or new technology could change both of the previous statements and we should be open to that. Lastly, reality-based analysis will have no impact on the political argument. Those that believe they will achieve political advantage by advocating or opposing offshore drilling will advocate or oppose regardless of real world results. And because of this last, it is incumbent on us to be informed so that we can allow reality to shape that political advantage.

Defending the Constitution

I was thinking about the ongoing discussions as to whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be the President of the US should the need arise and re-read the Presidential Oath of Office as a reminder of what the job entails. The Oath reads as follows:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Judging by what I see and hear, the vast majority of people interpret the "protect and defend" clause in its most obvious sense, whereby we are threatened by a foreign military power. Clearly, this is a highly unlikely scenario. We are still the only remaining superpower. Our military budget equals the rest of the world's nations military budgets combined.
Loss of Constitutional power through other actions, however, is always a possibility. Internal power grabs or slow erosion may occur. Preserving the Constitution in this sense requires a deep knowledge of the Constitution itself, as well as a familiarity with Constitutional interpretation and the historical court cases developing that interpretation. In this sense, Barack Obama certainly has the most credentials. He has a JD from Harvard and taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years. Next would be Joe Biden, who earned a JD at the Syracuse University College of Law and has a long career in the Senate. Senator Biden currently chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Next is John McCain. His academic career at the Naval Academy was not directly related to law, but his long service in the House and Senate has clearly given him direct experience with the checks, balances, powers, and limitations laid out in the Constitution. Sarah Palin has none of this. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Communications-Journalism, two terms as the mayor of Wasilla, and is in her first term as the governor of Alaska. There is nothing in her resume indicating a sense of Constitutional Law, or issues that may arise. This unfamiliarity leaves her vulnerable to attack, and by extension, We The People are vulnerable if she is in office.
Sarah Palin has some good qualities. She's confident, articulate, intelligent, and aggressive. But, she doesn't have the training or experience to work within a Constitutional framework. Will she be able to protect Executive powers from a greedy Congress? Will she push back if her advisors attempt to push her further toward the Unitary Executive that George Bush's administration envisioned? I doubt she could gain that kind of insight in such a short time. Regardless of our political leanings, we should be able to agree that putting a Constitutional amateur in the White House is not the most likely way to ensure that the President can fulfill the Oath of Office.

Why Won't They Attack?

One theme I've seen on both conservative and liberal blogging sites is how much better things would be if the [insert political party here] would only take the gloves off and attack the other side. Why say "My opponent's statements aren't always well supported by factual evidence," when you can just call him a liar? We all know he is! He's also a traitor, coward, moron, pervert, etc...
The reason is simple. Ultimately, these people need to work together. While the election lasts for one day, the governance lasts for 2-, 4-, or 6-years. Most of the Senators who start out on the election trail have to return to the Senate. The only way for the Senate, or any governing body, to function in the long run is to maintain a sense of civility and mutual respect. It may be only a thin veneer of civility, but sometimes that's all that's required. So the candidates refrain from the truly harsh, personal attacks during the short campaign out of deference for the long term good of the Senate. They have to walk a fine line, being aggressive enough to fire up the base and get out the vote, but not so aggressive as to harm the working relationship. To do otherwise would be like a chef burning down his restaurant because he didn't like the soup du jour.
It might not be a bad idea for We The People to act the same way. Maybe we shouldn't call so loudly for the red meat. Maybe we should not work so hard to bait and insult each other on the blogs and instead exchange information and our differing points of view in an honest and respectful manner. Maybe a thin veneer of civility is all that's required. After all, the politicians may have to work together but we have to live together.

Protecting the Best of Us

It's easy to express the high ideals of individual rights in a broad and abstract sense. It's harder to do so in the real world, especially in the presence of danger. Fear tempts us to trade in our morality for security. People start to think that violations of individual rights might make sense if they keep us safer. Nothing is off the table, including torture. There is no shortage of people explaining in very practical terms why what we're doing is acceptable. The explanations take many forms. Yet each of them has a very practical refutation.

It's Not Really Torture: The first line of defense for any torturer is to deny, even to themselves, that they do it. Nobody can admit that they torture because the political cost is too high. So people use euphemisms, and rely on legalistic definitions to argue that the specific techniques used aren't really torture. Our government uses the term "enhanced interrogation techniques." Is it a cover for torture? It's hard to say just from the name. We rely on convention and tradition to decide when the line has been crossed.

One of my uncles knew a missionary named Larry Zellers who was held prisoner in North Korea during the Korean War. Larry Zellers wrote of his experiences in "In Enemy Hands", and described the use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, food and water deprivation, psychological stress, and repeated beatings. We in America have no doubt that the techniques used by the North Koreans was torture. But when we use stress positions, deprive people of food and water, and induce psychological stress we claim it's not torture. What's the difference? It turns out the techniques the United States of America is using today in Guantanamo come directly from the techniques developed by the Chinese and used in Korea. The techniques were lifted directly from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese coercive techniques designed to illicit false confessions from American prisoners. Anyone defending the US techniques currently in use must also then admit that the techniques used in Korea were acceptable. My Dad is active in the Korean War Veterans of America (KWVA) . I'd like to see anyone go into one of my Dad's KWVA meetings and explain how the Chinese techniques weren't really torture. Go ahead, I dare you.

We Need The Information: The next line of defense for the torturer is to claim the ends justifies the means. We need to do whatever it takes to win. We need the information. Of course, information gained through torture has been shown over and over to have no bearing to the truth.

You'd think we would have learned our lesson a long time ago. Like over three hundred years ago, in Salem, Massachusetts. A number of people confessed to being witches, knowing the confession meant death, and were hung for it. Do you believe that those who were hung were really witches? Do you believe they thought they were witches? I don't. The confessions were brought out under torture. The information was wrong. You'd think we would have learned the lesson again in Korea and Vietnam. Many US servicemen signed confessions admitting that they were war criminals. Do you think those soldiers were war criminals? Do you think they thought they were? I don't. You don't have to agree with John McCain's politics to see the shame and guilt he still lives with for signing his confession. The information was wrong.

So why do we think that the Chinese methods designed to get Americans to lie will get non-Americans to tell the truth? The "information" is almost certainly wrong. It has no value, but it does have a cost. Our strength has always come from our respect for individual rights. This respect for the person, no matter his station in life, is probably the single strongest reason for our success as a Nation. This focus on the individual has served us well when threatened by the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. The populations of many of those regimes were, in a way, on our side, because in the end we were on their side. Now, once more, we are engaged in trying to win the hearts and minds of a large, diverse population. When we accept torture, we throw our greatest strength away.

They Deserve It: The last line of defense is to claim that the torturer's victims are so awful, their actions so heinous, that they don't deserve protection from torture. They are the worst of the worst and deserve whatever they get. Those that disagree "just don't get it" or care more about terrorist's rights than America. It's an easy sell because people are so angry over the horror that was done and fearful that it may occur again. What people don't understand is that this is not about them. This is about us. Who we are. What we stand for. Torture is outside our system. Once you accept that torture can be applied to anyone, even the most heinous person, you make torture a part of the system. And once inside it will devour the system from within.

People think we can draw circles around certain groups of people and say "We only torture them and it's OK because of what they've done." But circles change. We only torture known terrorists. We only torture suspected terrorists. We only torture those who might lead us to suspected terrorists. We do nothing because we think we are not affected. We are all familiar with the poem that starts "In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist..." The circle grows. New threats appear. More justifications for using torture appear and the bar is lowered each time. Cop killers, those who threaten cops, those who resist arrest. Child killers and pedophiles. Drug lords, drug dealers or drug users who may lead us to dealers. Criminals and suspected criminals of all types. This tears out the heart and soul of the thing most precious to America - the insistence on the rights of the individual. In the end, each and any one of us can be victimized. Taken, tortured, confessed, and then the confession used to justify the act of torture. It can happen to anyone. By protecting the worst of us, we protect the best of us.

Reform Who?

The Republican campaigners have chosen to focus a lot of attention on reform. By definition, reform refers to dismantling a long-standing political system or process. So who are they reforming? George Bush has been President for the past eight years. Republicans have been in the Oval Office for twenty of the past twenty-eight years. Republicans held both the House and Senate for twelve years prior to the Democratic party gaining a slight majority in 2006. The long-standing power structures are Republican. John McCain himself has been in the Senate for the past twenty years and was implicated in the Keating 5 scandal in the 1980s.

Sarah Palin herself is already under investigation for abuse of power of the Governor's office, has ties to Senator Stevens, the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere", and the Alaskan Independence Party. These issues may be resolved in her favor, but it's hardly the environment in which to run a reform ticket.

Political campaigns thrive on powerful, emotional words. You will hear both parties using them to motivate voters to get out to the polls, preferably without stopping to think. In both cases, though, it is our responsibility to stop. Think. This choice of themes seems misguided. If enough people stop to think and ask "Who are we reforming?" it could be bad for the McCain-Palin ticket.