Distributed Mind

I spotted a couple of items on the web recently that touch on points about Independence Day that I've been meaning to write about for a few years now and haven't gotten around to (though I'm not claiming these authors' opinions match mine).

First, conservative (theologically and politically) blogger "Mr. Dawn Treader" writes a piece about whether the Revolution was justified from a Christian perspective (making a point about Biblical exegesis along the way) and points to an "ancient" (1999) piece by Mark Noll (who wrote an entire book related to Christians and the Revolution). The Revolution's shaky Biblical foundation and the paradoxical celebration of the Revolution by the church in America is something I've been interested in for a while.

And then, from David Gushee on Associated Baptist Press some remarks about church celebrations of Independence Day (pointed to by "Jesus Politics"). Gushee makes some probably fairly reasonable points. I don't have much to add, other than I'd actually like to make some more general points about the relationship between the church and patriotism, but also about secular celebrations of this country and some of their often unrealistic portrayals of our history. If I ever get around to it...

I remember Barack Obama's speech at Call to Renewal 2006 (Call to Renewal is connected with Sojourners). I didn't hear it, but I was familiar with it. And I've read the transcript recently. So I know the speech fairly well. James Dobson on the other hand, has only heard of it recently, but having heard about it, he felt the need to address some deficiencies in it, which he did on his radio show today.

Now, I don't think Obama's speech was perfect. It wasn't even brilliant. But it was a good speech that made some good points. Especially notable were Obama's emphasis on his own identity (and thus responsibility) as a Christian, his defense for religion's participation in the public realm, and his reminder that separation of church and state began as a way to protect religion not government. I personally found it to be a little theologically liberal for my taste, to be sure, and I don't like Obama's defense of his views on abortion in it (though he does make a point to at least grant an acknowledgement of good faith on the part of his opponents on the issue). But on the whole I thought it was a good speech.

James Dobson and Tom Minnery (apparently Focus on the Family's Vice President of Public Policy), unsurprisingly, don't think it was a good speech. Quite the contrary, in fact. Of course, it probably doesn't help that Dobson was mentioned in the speech in direct contrast with Al Sharpton. (Dobson also blatantly misinterprets part of the speech and claims that Obama thinks he wants to kick all non-Christians out of the country, which is clearly not what Obama meant, and in fact that part in context didn't even have anything to do with Dobson directly.) That's not his primary complaint, though.

First, they criticize the speech for not raising the "Judeo-Christian heritage" of the United States and for putting too much emphasis on other religions. Specifically, Obama said, "Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers." Pointing out that 78% of Americans identify as Christian, they find this to be problematic.

They also take Obama to task for bringing up interpretive difficulties with the Bible - interpreting this as "disparaging serious understanding of the Bible." What Obama said was,

Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

Dobson and Minnery criticize Obama for suggesting that political moral arguments need to be universalizable to those of other religions (or of no religion) to be politically acceptable. Dobson quotes George Washington in supporting the idea that religion is the basis of morality (a view I'm not ashamed to admit I do not at all agree with - in part because I read Romans 2 to be saying the exact opposite) to criticize this argument.

Dobson also badly misinterprets Obama's call for universalizable arguments as a claim that in order to make a moral argument, the majority of people must agree with the argument in advance or else the argument is undemocratic. Which would not make any sense and be completely insupportable - if anything like it had actually appeared in the speech. But it didn't.

That last part really shows the underlying problem with this commentary: it is ignorant. Dobson and Minnery don't appear to have spent any time thinking about this speech, or even reading it accurately. Some of their complaints may be valid, though those are subject to interpretation at a very broad level, but others are, to be generous, ridiculous. Which is unfortunate on several levels, not least of which because substantial discussion of Obama's views on religion in the public sphere could be very interesting and productive.

Now, as I said, I don't want you to think I subscribe to everything in this speech. But I really do think it deserves better than Dobson gave it. But both the speech and the radio program are available and I invite everyone to examine both.

The inevitable has finally come to pass, as Arthur C. Clarke, the great science fiction author passed away at 90 early Wednesday in Sri Lanka.

Clarke was always my favorite science fiction author, as he was both a competent writer and scientist, and produced very readable and interesting hard science fiction.

Incidentally, I hope my raving about conservatives and enviornmentalism isn't offensive. I tried to be nice when making generalizations, but sometimes I'm a little blunt. Also, I was going to clarify my statement that I was inclined to follow the apparent consensus opinion among climatologists, etc. but (1) Firefox ate that post and (2) looking back, I was pretty careful the first time. I realized though that saying things like "well, I'm going to trust the climatologists on this" carries with it a lot of dangerous assumptions, or at least appears to - believe me, I'm no modernist believer in the religion of science (as I tried to indicate in my original post). The reason why I wanted to clarify that was first because I thought it was the weakest point in the post but what finally pushed me over the edge was reading a comment by the late Stephen Jay Gould in the preface to his revised (1996) edition of The Mismeasure of Man defending his right to critique what had traditionally been considered the domain of psychology. His insistence there on the traditional claim that such critiques should be judged on their content and not the qualifications of their authors is absolutely correct, of course. In the world of quick judgments though, I have to admit I sometimes look first to who is making a statement - not all statements are equally trustworthy or informed, and often one can find out a lot about whether the content of a particular critique is worth evaluating in advance simply by checking who the author is. To return to our specific problem, as I said, when Newt Gingrich (who ironically has apparently recently reversed his position on global warming - I'm pretty sure I already knew that but had forgotten it) says something about environmental science, I take it with some skepticism since he is avowedly and openly political. One could also consider things written by people like Bjørn Lomborg or economists (of which I believe there is a lot of literature, though I haven't checked recently). Now, I know that there have also been plenty of critiques of the idea from within climatology and absolutely should those (or even arguments from the aforementioned economists) be evaluated on their merits if there is reason to assume they have any (which is to say, I believe that people who are seriously interested in the theory of anthropogenic global warming will publish in peer-reviewed journals or at least a forum where it will be seen first by scientists even if not peer-reviewed, rather than in the popular press; I mean, shoot, even Alan Sokal had the decency to publish about his hoax in a journal). Now, so far I have not seen too many good arguments though from climatologists against the idea (and I know several points are subjects of debate, though with the mainstream position appearing to stand strong in most of those cases), though there are a few that seemed worth investigating. Certainly one should not be religious about the whole topic - modern science is premised on the idea that people will try to shoot down any given theory. In that sense, as I said before, I agree with some people's concerns that people are indeed turning global warming into an ideology. But just because some people are doing that, let's remember that does not mean the science is automatically wrong.

And this is where we get to a much more complicated issue that I rather side-stepped in the original post. How does one legislate based on science? I mean, we may know that the mainstream opinion among a certain group of scientists is some thing, but we do not know how long such an opinion will hold. It would be foolish to assume any current understanding of science will remain permanently. There are, of course, some theories that are better established than others and action should be taken accordingly in those cases (it would be silly at the moment, for example, for Congress to fund faster-than-light spaceships...) but even those theories are standins for more developed models to come. And some things are much more variable than that. Some well-accepted ideas of science in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries were ridiculous, harmful, or downright directly immoral. But again, we need to be aware that science is not monolithic, and not all theory is equally good, and just because theory may in some cases be adequate, we should not accept every proposed practice built on top of that. Eugenics is a classic example of how not to legislate based on science. A lot of the theory was dubious, but practice was even worse - and we shouldn't take serious the idea that things like forced sterilization were the realm of science (though certainly some scientists tried to put it within the realm of science). I think that the relationship between science (whether natural or social) and policy (especially given the limitations of both) is something that deserves continual and deep consideration. You can take that as a caveat on both sides (though perhaps not euqally) of the global warming debate, for one. But we can't stop there - this an issue that affects us all the time.

Speaking of both eugenics and The Mismeasure of Man... Last week I was whining about statistics and their abuses to one my colleagues, which resulted in that book being brought up. I've been doing a lot of reading on statistics for work lately (more on in another post soon, perhaps) and the idea of doing some non-technical reading about further abuses of them at the same time seemed like a fairly good idea. But, being preoccupied with other things, I did not immediately set out to do so; nor did I have any long-range plans to do so, for that matter. However, on the way to work today, I saw someone carrying a couple bags from the campus book store and the odd thought that they might be having a sale crossed my mind, so I decided to investigate. Indeed they were having a sale; in fact, all books except textbooks were 50% off - way too good to pass up. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it, I suppose) there were no books I was even remotely interested in. Well, except for one, the title of which you can guess. Serendipity.

Gould's book is about what he saw as the fatally flawed hypothesis of intelligence as reduceable to a single measurable and rankable number that carries with it some sort of measure of worth or value. Or so I take it so far; I have only gotten as far as the (lengthy) preface to the revised edition so far. This is a topic I've been following with some casual interest since I first heard about Herrnstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve in college and with some additional interest since I read another essay by Murray on the same topic a couple years ago (which led to further reading which led to at least one post on race and crime, for example). In fact, I've been meaning to write something about this from a more philosophical perspective for some time; verily, even this week I considered doing so. I might have to now that I'm reading on the same topic. Basically what I want to lay out is that regardless of the quality of the science underlying such things (which plenty of peopke, Gould included, have taken difference with) we need to be careful how we deal with such things - this goes back to the question of "science" and policy. There's good moral reason to not treat groups or individuals differently based on "intelligence" regardless of what the theory says (and in this case the theory turned out to be pretty bad, though it continues to have a life of its own with people like Charles Murray). Which is sort of like saying "all men are created equal" is an excellent basis on which to build a country regardless of whether scientific opinion agrees with that idea at any given moment or not. But as I said, I think that ought to be a post of its own.

I'll have more to say about statistics soon; I've been reading too much about them recently, but I've picked up a lot of useful stuff about them, and a few more entertaining bits (such as an amusing rant by one of the authors whose book I have here to the effect that chaos as a science is more or less nonsense since noise in data prevents the formation of chaos in the real world).

Why does Firefox not ask for confirmation when a text area contains lots of entered text and one hits a button (by accident...) that causes it to navigate away from the page? Why, oh why? Incidentally, this particular missing feature of Mozilla and Firefox has been being complained about for at least 6.5 years as a little searching will show. While we're at it, why are users stupid enough to enter text directly like this instead of using text editors and copy-and-paste? (Frankly though, despite my stupidity, this is mostly on Firefox.)

Why, oh why, is Firefox so slow, especially when downloading files (nearly freezing just over updating the little download window)?

And while we're at it, why do government agencies supply Excel files of their report data for all 50 states and D.C. and Puerto Rico and then organize the Excel file so that none of that data can be used directly without extensive manual rearrangement?

While computers may be fairly advanced, we're doing a really bad job with very basic design issues (of all sorts - not just software interfaces, as my complaint about the Excel file shows). Grr.

It's interesting to see how conservatives deal with environmental issues. Take, for example, everyone's favorite dinner topic ,anthropogenic global warming.

As I recall, up until about ten years ago, no conservative would even admit there was any global warming, regardless of supposed cause. Eventually, that position became largely untenable, and most conservatives took to (1) merely denying anthropogenic global warming while (2) simultaneously pointing out that global warming wouldn't be all bad. Incidentally, denying anthropogenic global warming seems to have slipped more into denying conclusive evidence of anthropogenic global warming (attempting to take the intellectual high road). In addition, the claim has been added that it would be too expensive to prevent global warming and cheaper to fix later. (There's also the absolute last ditch argument that it's not the government's job to prevent environmental catastrophes, but... Well, need I say more?)

These arguments all have several things in common. The first is that these arguments didn't sound all that bad when they were first made (the actual quality of the arguments is a different story). The second is that they have steadily moved to agree more with the environmentalist position of the mid-1990s - momentum is almost exclusively in one direction on this issue. Based on those two properties, you might see that these arguments look suspiciously like rationalizations; that would be the third thing they all have in common.

Now, I'm not saying they are rationalizations, I'm saying they sound like rationalizations. Actually, I could go further and say I think that they are rationalizations. The problem is we can't say for certain they are - rational arguments based strictly on evidence but with a strongly skeptical perspective might look similar. Note I'm also not saying they are good arguments, just that I can't prove they're irrational.

Furthermore, I think if we looked at many other environmental issues we'd see a similar pattern. For all the complaints about economy-killing pollution regulation, for example, we seem to have survived somehow. Car emission and fuel standards, I think we can safely say, were not stringent enough - the conservatives blew that one big time. About the only issue environmentalists really look conclusively incorrect on was nuclear power, and even there there remain problems, just most of them will only really be an issue long after we're all dead. (There's also the DDT thing, but the word "conclusively" is not evoked by that debate, nor am I familiar enough with the details to even attempt to sound reasonable about it.)

What I'm trying to say with all of this is... It's true environmentalism makes bold claims. And it's true that those claims can't always be proven (which is not to say they are not rational). And it's even true those claims occasionally affect the way some people want to live their lives. But, environmentalism has a pretty good track record, and converesly the opposite is also true: anti-envrionmentalism has a bad track record (I bet a lot of people who have been opposed to gas milage standards could go back in time and change their position). But what really strikes me is that anti-environmentalism seems to be merely reactionary, not rational but rationalization. I can't prove it, but the history of its battles suggests it strongly.

Incidentally, it seems that conservative opposition to environmentalism is based largely on opposition to governmental regulation. This outweighs the desire to preserve that one would tend to expect out of people who do after all call themselves "conservatives" (and in other places and times that indeed would have been the case, I'm sure). People who take a cautious approach to resources which can't be readily replaced tend to view the environment as a public good and hence one that can be protected by the government. On the other hand people who take a cautious approach to laws which supposedly can't be readily repealed tend to view the environment as an issue of private property and hence something that should not be regulated by the government. The problem is we have to put up with the earth a lot longer than the laws. Governments that have lasted more than a few hundred years are rare (and at 220, we're getting up there), and laws that have lasted that long are even rarer. On the other hand, we're more than capable of inflicting envrionemental damage that last much longer than that, besides the immediate effects of pollution and such.

As a final gripe, I get really sick of people denouncing environmentalism because of Mother Earth-types and neo-pagans. I try not to evaluate all conservatives on the basis of Pat Robertson, and I'd like the same courtesy.

Alright that's mostly what I wanted to say. But, since I brought up global warming, and since it seems to be the topic du jour, let me add a few thoughts on that.

First, I agree, as everyone does, that anthropogenic global warming is not "proven" though we need to keep in mind that most things in science aren't "proven" per se. Of course, anthropogenic global warming isn't even up to the standard of a looser definition of proof like relativity or something like that; it's definitely something that requires going farther out on a limb than that. But, and I want to stress this, that doesn't make it irrational. It doesn't even make legislating on the basis of the theory irrational. Actually, probably the opposite is true.

Also, I don't want to claim that I "believe in" anthropogenic global warming. I don't "believe in" things in science. I just don't have reasons to doubt them. I'm not signing on to some doctrinal statement here. In fact, I would not be surprised if anthropogenic global warming turns out to be wrong. I've always given it worse odds than a lot of people. On the other hand, I sure ain't betting against it, both because I do believe (there's that word finally) in the general quality of physical scientists in the world and because of the potentially cataclysmic effects if they're right. I don't think, by the way, one should blindly believe scientists (and especially in some fields - not all disciplines are held to equal standards, but also given the ability of scientists to buy into weird theories) and I even realize that some scientists doubt anthropogenic global warming. But in so far as this is unfortunately an issue where it seems to be impossible to remain neutral - if only because policy decisions must be made - I'm going to go with the people who I know to be most credible. And I generally am inclined to trust climatologists more than New Gingrich, especially on something they specialize in. True, they could turn out to be wrong (which even they admit, I'm sure), but short of becoming a climatologist myself, I'm going to have to rely on their judgment to an extent.

Also, I think everyone needs to look deep into their intellectual soul and ask themselves why they think we ought to assume anthropogenic global warming is happening or not. I happen to think that a large portion of conservatives would have to admit, if they were really being honest, that they don't buy into the the idea largely because they don't like it's implications and not because they have any real basis for doubting it. At the same time, I'm sure that because of their initial bias some conservatives may have discovered interesting and good reasons to doubt global warming that they might not have seen if they hadn't been so skeptical. I'm not sure what to say to those people, other than they'll have to be patient with those of us who are still waiting for more climatologists to come around to their way of thinking.

Ironically, had conservatives just left the whole global warming thing alone in the '90s, there would have been no partisan backlash and they would probably have found it easier to promote skepticism now. If global warming really does become the religion they're accusing it of becoming (and in some ways they probably are correct with that complaint), a large part of the impetus for that will probably be traceable to their opposition. But isn't that always how politics works? (I suppose we could blame the 60s for modern conservatism, for example...)

And absolutely finally, a quick shot at all those arguments I brought up way back in the opening: Nearly everybody believes global warming is happening, so I don't need to address that (other than to say, sure, it's always a good thing to have a better understanding of the data, and it's not completely nailed down just how much warming is happening or even that it's 100% certain it is, though it seems to be pretty close to that). Obviously the arguments about the source of global warming are the crux of the whole thing, so I won't dealt with those. But global warming is not as far as I can tell a good thing. Oh sure, it's probably alright if you live in Montana, but if you live on a coast line it's pretty bad. Some bad predictions about agricultural impacts have also been made. The mere existence of this argument suggests both a large amount of ignorance about global warming and a certain provincialism. Next, I've already said a little about why denying conclusive evidence is not useful. That also has to do with the next argument, which is that global warming is too expensive. I've never actually heard a good argument for why fixing the problem is supposed to be so expensive (actually I've never heard any argument - it always just seems to be stated as a fact) but worse this argument seems to completely ignore the history of regulation to the small degree I am familiar with it (that is, regulation usually ends up costing way less than predicted and sometimes ends up actually causing higher profitability). But even if one were to buy into it, first, the potential economic effects are also large, but more importantly, the thing is you're staking a certain percentage of your economic growth against the fate of billions of people - it hardly seems a fair approach.

[Update, May 31: I was not entirely correct when I said I had not heard an argument for why global warming was supposed to be too expensive to fix. Bjorn Lomberg's Copenhagen Consensus had something to say about that.]

Apparent discrepancies (I say "apparent" since there is no "apparent discrpenacy" that is not a subject of dispute) in the gospel accounts are an interesting problem - and I don't just mean in an apologetic sense, but also a literary sense. I mean, on the one hand they have become a source of contention about the accuracy of the gospel accounts, but on the other hand they can be used to extract more information from the rather terse literary form of the gospels.

Take, for example, the dying words of Jesus. Matthew and Mark merely record that Jesus "cried out in a loud voice" when dying (though they make a point to note that Jesus said "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" earlier). Luke reports that "Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!' Having said this, he breathed his last." And John says that "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, 'It is finished.' He bowed his head, and gave up his spirit."

This is what I thought of when I was reading an article by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker, "Angels and Ages" pointed to by Language Hat. Gopnik deals with two interesting examples of this sort of problem. The main part of the article is concerned with whether Edwin Stanton at Lincoln's death said that he belonged to the "ages" or to the "angels." But there is also the interesting case of what John Wilkes Booth said when he shot Lincoln. Gopnik, explicitly referencing the problem with the gospels, writes,

It is not hard to see, in this exegetical exactitude, something that recalls the attention that scholars give to fine-point disputes about the words and tales of Jesus and his apostles. This attention to verbal minutiae extends to the secondary figures in the Lincoln gospel, not least his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Booth either did or did not say, just as, right before, or shortly after he murdered the President, “Sic semper tyrannis,” the motto on the state flag of Virginia. Possibly, he cried “The South is avenged!” or “Revenge for the South,” and he cried this in the box, or on the stage, or paired with another cry. Of the forty or so reliable witnesses to the assassination whose accounts are collected in Timothy S. Good’s “We Saw Lincoln Shot,” some sixteen heard the Latin or the English, only four heard both, and many say that they didn’t hear the assassin say anything at all. Two witnesses heard Booth say, “I have done it!” Well, which was it? It is possible that he said only Sic semper tyrannis, onstage or off, and that the words were easily misheard by a stunned audience: “The South is avenged.” On the other hand, he may have cried out both, and then added the gloating remark as he fled. But then why didn’t more people hear him?

Booth himself, for whom the assassination was, Swanson says, a kind of diabolical work of performance art, insisted on the “right” reading. “I shouted Sic semper before I fired,” he wrote a few days later, in his own note, which he intended to be sent to the newspapers.

Mind you, Gopnik is talking about eyewitness accounts - no one is disputing that these people saw the event, but only whether their accounts are accurate.

At the end of the article, Gopnik makes the point that even had we been at Lincoln's death bed there's no guarantee we would have known exactly what Stanton said - certainly the eyewitnesses at the Ford's Theatre didn't know exactly what Booth said. And things are no different today - there are often arguments about recorded comments and speeches.

I think there has to be a lesson here - or more than one. On the one hand, one might be inclined to say that naysayers who take minor discrepances in the gospels to be indicative of fundamental contradictions that show the gospels are either majorly inaccurate or, worse, complete fiction should lighten up a little. Probably true. But there is a problem for those practicing a conservative hermeneutic too, because usually of how much weight is often placed upon exact phrasing in the gospels. I understand all the theology that has been built up around that practice - not all of it sound, I'd be inclined to say - but still, I think it ought to give people pause. Now, no credible scholar would ever buy into "proof-texting" as they call it (though they might disagree about what constitutes proof-texting), but people still do it all the time, even people who say we shouldn't do it (I plead guilty, your Honor).

Do you know who Charles Babbage is? Probably not, as very few people seem to know who he is. This seems to be true even in technological fields. Now, while Babbage may not have been a pivotal figure in the history of science, he certainly was an interesting one - as I think you will agree.

You see, Charles Babbage designed what was presumably the first "general purpose" digital computer. This is, however, not what makes Charles Babbage interesting. What makes him interesting is that he did so in the middle of the Nineteenth Century.

His computer was called the Analytical Engine, and of course, it was mechanical, not electronic. Furthermore, as you have probably guessed by now, it was not completed. Had it been, it would have beaten the first actual general purpose computer by decades.

What made me think of Charles Babbage tonight, though, was not his Analytical Engine. It was the title of his autobiography: Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. Someone (I have forgotten whom, though it may have been Anthony Hyman who wrote a biography of Babbage) once pointed out that the word "philosopher" in the title is presumably short for "natural philosopher," that is, a scientist, and that furthermore the archaic term "natural philosopher" dates to a time when scientists were not specialists but generalists. And the reason I thought of that is because it's that sort of generalization that I always sought (oftern unsuccessfully) as a student of the sciences. I hope to write more on this subject in the near future, but for now I will leave you with the thought that is possible there might still be room for generalists in science. (And I will hint that the answer, at least for some, may lie in part in Babbage's invention: computers.)

Incidentally, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher is avaiable online (scanned pdf). I own two books related to Charles Babbage, both of which I have found to be interesting (though I must add a disclaimer that I have never read them "cover-to-cover" as it were). The first is the aforementioned biography by Charles Hyman called Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer from 1982. The second is a more recent book by Doron Swade, The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer (the Difference Engine was an earlier computer design by Babbage that was not for a general purpose computer). For the more technically minded, John Walker has some excellent resources on the analytical engine, including an emulator for those who feel like programming a hypothetical machine.

Incidentally, if anyone feels deprived of good biographies, the early history of computing provides some very interesting life stories. Besides Babbage we have his contemporary and colleague Ada Lovelace, touted by many as both the first programmer, in so far as she wrote programs for the Analytical Engine, and who was, obviously, a woman no less - a rarity in the field still, sadly, but certainly so in the Nineteenth Century. Then later there is, Alan Turing, who is an important figure in computing theory. Turing's biography actually makes for a good spy story too, or at least part of one: Besides laying some pivotal ground work for modern theory of computing (which concerns itself in large part with what can and cannot be computed), Turing worked as a cryptographer during World War II and designed a machine to read the German Enigma cipher; and at age 51 he died from cyanide poisoning in what is most often explained as a suicide. And of course there is always John von Neumann who is known largely for, well, doing a lot of stuff; besides his involvement in computer science, he worked in many other fields, and he was involved in the Manhattan Project. I suppose that all goes back in some ways to the question of generalists. Though, I certainly don't want to claim everyone can be Von Neumann.

Why don't people attend college after high school? That was the question I asked myself. I still haven't found really good information on that,and I did not perfectly predict the responses even among what I did find. Nor did that turn out to be the most interesting question one could ask about this issue. But, first, reasons students gave for not enrolling in college can be found in a 1999 survey of Oregon high school students (specifically, see Table 18). I'm sure there's better data on this, but I don't have time to spend all night looking for it. Maybe some other time, or at least if people are interested (of course, maybe someone can suggest some source?). Now, the more interesting thing I found: "Factors Related to College Enrollment" (executive summary also available), a 1998 study. It looks like it was done for the Department of Education, but its not clear (though certainly they're using it - it's on their web site after all). Interesting but odd things in there. Turns out a lot of small things correlate really well with "post-secondary education" (as they call it) attendence. None of that will necessarily tell you why students end up attending college or not, but it will give you a pretty good mechanism for predicting which students will.

I just caught a talk on C-SPAN (yes, I am an addict) by one Stephen Flynn, fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, security expert, and author of The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation, blah, blah, blah, before the World Affairs Council of Houston on March 27th. Basically, Flynn was harping on the idea that one critical role in protecting the United States from terrorism is to make it an unattractive target through strengthening domestic security - such as securing chemical refiniries - and infrastructure. He also talked about the need to emphasize "hazard" rather than terrorism, since terrorism is not the only threat but so are natural disasters and accidents. Furthermore, he claimed a need to involve everyone in the process, for example, emphasizing "preparedness as a civic duty." And he gave some scary examples of lack of preparedness.

Brilliant. Well, of course, I am not an unbiased observer; I've made claims similar to Flynn's in the past as well. (But then, you know, I'm not a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations or a security expert, and all that stuff.) But, anyway, I really do think the general point is a good one. The cost of preventing or drastically mitigating a disaster relative to the cost of a full disaster is insignificant. Furthermore, regardless of the risk of terrorist attacks, we know that natural disasters will occur, so it pays to be properly prepared. And, we really have no excuse, given the low cost and high risk without it, and finally the fact that this is not a partisan issue and there's no opposition.

I don't have any specific policy recommendation on this one. I'm not familiar with the particulars of all the issues to weigh in. Though, I would like to suggest that some more emphasis be placed on the issue than is now. One thing we can all do is obviously to find out how prepared our own community is. And if you don't like the answer, you'll know what to do. This is not just, or even primarily, a national issue, it's a local and regional issue in most ways. So we certainly have more influence here than we might elsewhere. Furthermore, this is an interesting issue in that we can all take direct action. We can as individuals or families or whatever prepare for disaster by taking the proper direct steps (keeping bottled water, and all that stuff) and through training and practice. There's Red Cross classes on these sorts of things, and amateur radio licenses, and organizations that can be joined, and so on.

Okay, my major project for this weekend somehow became a list of literature and nonfiction recommendations. It's highly idiosyncratic, of course, since the point is to list things I have found to be of particular value.

I'm a few days behind on this one, but still, it's good enough I want to give it some attention. David Wayne, a more doctrinally conservative and reformed blogger, wrote a great post this week called Emeril as Theologian. Dumb title so ignore that. But basically, Wayne is diagnosing the problem of taking issues that in the past have not been considered essential issues by many people and "kicking them up a notch" into essential issues. He brings up eschatology, adherence to six day creationism, and even one I've brought up in this forum before, namely women in ministry. This promotion of non-essential issues is a big problem in my opinion, as you may have noticed from posts here in the past. I'm just glad to see it getting more attention elsewhere.

Why is it that in this nation we believe that individual economic choice is a fundamental right, but we don't believe in pure democracy, instead adhering to that questionable substitute of representative democracy? I mean, you're telling me that I don't have to go along with everyone else if they choose to buy compact cars instead of SUVs or vice versa, but if a majority of 425 persons in Washington feels like making transporting kittens across state lines illegal or some guy elected by 51% of voters feels that launching nuclear weapons, say is a good idea, then I'm stuck? (Of course, technically I have to go along with a majority of 425 representatives, but we've conveniently dispensed in large part with even that pretense of democracy.) Not that anyone has actually proposed making the transportation of juvenile felines illegal, or proposed nuking anyone, at least not in the last 5 minutes, but you get the point. Frankly, I'd rather be able to vote on everything my representatives in Congress get to vote on than chose whether to buy at the Gap or Old Navy, but that's just me. And besides, if you have a truly democratic socialist country, isn't that in a lot of ways the same as having "economic freedom?" Probably not in the technical sense. Ah, I don't care, I just want democracy.

Incidentally, I do think people should be able to buy what is most relevant for them within reason, and I think people should have the right to seek employment where they want, or start their own business and work for themselves. I'm much less keen on the idea of corporation as individual entity. The idea of freedom is, you know, to give people freedom, not some soulless entities choice. The idea that people shouldn't be forced to go along with certain economic decisions made by others is distinct from the idea that anything that makes more money is a good thing. Not being intimately familar with the history of economics, I'm not entirely clear how all of this relates to the original economic ideas on which our nation's economy was supposedly built. No, I haven't read anything by Adam Smith. Yes, I know I should. It's on the to-do list somewhere, I think. (Consider it moved farther up the list.) Oh, and I did add "within reason" for a, well, reason. We happen to live in what political scientists call a liberal democracy. That implies, among other things, that you can't vote to kill me, for example, just because you don't like me. Similarly, you shouldn't be able to wipe out all the individuals of some species just because you own the land they live on - you don't have the right to take resources, in this case, biodiversity, from the rest of us. And, yeah, I think you might even be able that argument to extend that to whether you get to own handguns or a 2 mpg vehicle (though the application is not always trivial). I mean, I wish you could do whatever you want, but let's face it, sometimes things have consequences.

On a completely different nore, one of the commenters on the post by Fred Clark I linked to brought up "cognitive dissonance." It might be worth reading more about that, come to think of it...

By coincidence, after what I posted yesterday about media bias and such, I read tonight a post by Fred Clark, "The best lack all conviction" in response to an article in the Washington Post (which I'm inclined to think he was too hard on, but, that's irrelevant to the rest of this discussion). His timing was fortuitous because his post ties in quite well with some anyway of what I was getting at. Basically, in my very rough paraphrase, he claims that (1) while one should always begin by assuming good faith not bad faith (an idea he has addressed in the past) and that (2) the assumption of bad faith can lead to breakdowns in rational discourse, (3) if the assumption of good faith is made and yet the other side seems out of touch with the facts/reality, one might have a basis for questioning motives, and that at any rate, the facts do not cease to matter simply because bias and false assumptions are present. Thus, it must be allowed that persons can be wrong. Just because we know we will assume that as a result of inevitable biases doesn't mean that someone isn't wrong.

Alright, so that's Fred Clark's argument. Even though he doesn't directly deal with media, or even the same type of bias I was talking about yesterday, his argument basically parallels my own: accusations of bias are irrelevant when the facts of the matter are clear. In my case I would also add if the morality of the matter is clear. (In fact, in the case of the war, I'm really not concerned about who knew what when and all that - if preemptive war is wrong, it's wrong, and however nice of a reason you have, if you can't counter that fundamental claim, what basis do we have for discussion? I'm going to stop there before I decide I agree with Alasdair Macintyre in After Virtue.)

Of course, to a certain extent one must be careful about what "clear" means. Perhaps instead of "clear" we should also consider the possibility of "very likely" or "the most likely given the available evidence" with a corresponding weakening of our own right cause in an argument. That is, if the evidence suggests that something is not just somewhat likely, but very likely, but not perhaps certain to the point where we would stake human life on it, or at least the universe's existence, then we might still take that side of the argument, though we need to acknowledge that there is the slight possibility we are wrong/some other side is right - but if some sort of action is required we should take that action, with constant attention to the idea that we could be wrong. This is the sort of end of things where I would consider, say, anthropogenic global warming, as opposed to the immorality of murder which we are all 100% certain of. (And before you become too smug with even that level of certainty, just ask yourself, what would I have done if I was Dietrich Bonhoffer? And I can think of many moral disputes that don't rise to anywhere near that kind of certainty.)

Now, I may be a little more cautious than Fred in that I am, at least at the moment, rather wary of anything that looks too much like ideology. Though, of course, in fact, a lot of my complaints are ideological, but I hope in my case those are usually claims involving morality, in which case ideology is unavoidable. I mean instead, in practical matters. Which isn't to say that I've entirely purged myself of ideological convictions (anti-corporatism?), or even that I necessarily intend to. But where my opion is influend by ideology, I must be aware of that, and I must be even more willing than usual in that case to consider the possibility that my idea is inaccurate or unnecessary.

(And yes, all of this does suggest I would be wise to consider the very remote possibility that opposition to war will bring about some evil world dictatorship ("The City on the Edge of Forever", anyone?) but that doesn't mean, given my disclaimer above about very likely things, that I have to operate under the assumption that possibility is a likelihood. It remains only a possibility, and even less applicable in the case of preemptive wars. And, I have to consider the possibility that for us to base policy on the idea that freedom of movement and freedom of government choice might lead to an overwhelming influx of immigrants that would somehow crush American civilization as we know it thus having the immoral effect of creating additional poverty and suffering. But, that sort of far-fetched outcome with little empirical support is not something that I have to assume will happen, either. It also means that those of us opposed to abortion should be clear on the fact that we don't really know with 100% certainty when "life" begins. And I already mentioned the Bonhoffer dilemma. And so on and so on. )

Okay, so I've strayed very far from my original point, which remains: I don't care what bias any given media entity seems to have, as long as they are correct.

Do you think you can handle a glimpse into my thought process? If that's too scary, turn back now...

First, let me begin by reproducing here something that I almost posted:

I just read again, for an arbitrarily large numbered time, that CNN is left-leaning. (In this case it was at least in a context where it was admitted that Fox News "leans to the right.") Now, to me, CNN feels very moderate, if not even just slightly conservative, as do most of the established entities in journalism, The New York Times and The Washington Post included. But, of course, I have something of a reputation for radical, leftist views. Now, there are people who study - and actually attempt to measure - these things, and like most things in life, the political bias of various media entities turns out to be rather complex. (And, of course, many people believe that sensationalism, not politics, is the driving force behind most television news. But that's another whole discussion, and it doesn't really deal with printed news sources quite as well.) But, it can at least apparently be studied.

For the moment, I'll leave such arguments to the professionals. In fact, I'm not especially interested in whether CNN or any other source is moderate or centrist or anything else on the right-left political spectrum. I don't find those measures to be particularly useful in this case.

I happen to remember back to 2003 when such supposedly leftist publications as The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories (and editorials, I think) that in my estimation went out of their way to argue for the presence of non-conventional weapons. Now, I've also seen stories that were more skeptical, but on the whole my impression was that these publications felt that the argument for war based on the presence of such weapons was sound. Rarely was mentioned the obvious point that it really didn't matter whether there were non-conventional weapons in Iraq or not. I'm not saying that these publications were wholly behind the invasion, but on the whole, as they have consistently done in my memory, mainstream media sources tended to go along with an administration's argument for war. (In libertarian or anarchist terms, this goes a long way toward implicating the mainstream media as essentially statist. Obviously, I'm sympathetic at least somewhat to that claim, but that's not really what I'm saying here.)

(This is independent, by the way, questions of competence of mainstream sources. This includes the practice of giving "equal time" regardless of the factuality or logic of the claims of two or at most three arbitrarily-chosen perspectives; the practice of reproducing press releases as news stories; shoddy research, especially for science stories. Again, those are all problems with much of popular mainstream media, but largely irrelevant here, especially since they don't apply to the most commonly chosen bogeymen of the large national entities.)

What I'm getting at here is... I don't care if The New York Times, The Washington Post - and whomever else to the right of The Nation that is being accused of being liberal these days - are conservative, moderate, or liberal. Whatever they are, the aren't liberal enough.

Fortunately (or, actually, in a way, unfortunately), many of these news media entities have chosen to take a more independent path, I imagine as a result of the hard times of the Bush administration. And I'm not just talking about war: questions have been raised about extraordinary rendition and torture, privacy abuses in the name of national security, and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists (including citizens like José Padilla), and I'm sure other things which escape my memory at this moment. Of course, all the while questions were also being asked about the traditional business of politics (say, Social Security reform and Medicare and taxes and health care arguments and so on) which is not something that "the press" has tended to give free passes on in the past (though, just for the record, I don't find CNN or The Times or anybody else's coverage to be particularly left-leaning on these issues, but again, my perspective is admittedly skewed). What I hope is understood by all, though I recall having seen statements suggesting it is not, is that when media sources raise such questions, they aren't exhibiting liberal bias - at least not beyond what being a news publication in a democratic society entails endemically. What they are doing is their job by any reasonable definition of journalism I can think of. Perhaps first and foremost a news publication's job is to give its readers or viewers the information they need to make decisions, but that certainly entails knowing what one's government is doing, even if, especially if, such doing is likely to raise ethical caoncerns. If ensuring that individuals, whether in this country or others, are protected from the occasional over-reaching of our government is liberal, then so be it. Let the press be liberal.

May violence, injustice, usurption, and oppression always be questioned regardless of place, time, or perpetrator.

I wrote that all out, but I knew I had made some strong statements, and I thought that I might think the better of it later. So I saved a draft and went off to do other things. And then I decided to see if I could find some specific accusations of why CNN was left-leaning. I didn't real find anything (not surprisingly). But wthin about five minutes it had occurred to me why I hadn't felt completely comfortable posting it.

So, why didn't I post it? Well, first off, it's not written all that well, but that doesn't usually stop me. This journal is as much about content as form. The real reasons are that it is (1) likely an overstatement of a claim, and (2) a claim that I don't necessarily know I back completely.

Now, for point (1) that this is an overstatement, or that is to say, somewhat "over the top": I do indeed sometimes make strong, emotive statements, on immigration for example. But for me freedom of movement and human dignity are things that I'm pretty certain are moral absolutes, so I can afford to be cavalier about those things. And while telling the truth and reporting injustices and even perhaps rational inquiry are things that I think are absolutes, the suggestion that journalism should have a certain inherent bias runs more toward a pragmatic claim in some ways, it seems to me (at least, at this moment.)

As for point (2), why am I not certain I believe the press should have a liberal bias in the sense that I presented? Well, in my argument I concerned myself largely with national security issues, where it is hard in my estimation to stick to the truth and morality without being labeled "liberal" or "leftist" (and of course that is by my measure of truth and morality, so...). But, certainly on issues that don't involve killing or dying or search warrants, that is not true. In fact in such circumstances one should be as pragmatic as possible, it would seem, which involves considering all options. And if someone's bias causes them to assume the conclusion, that's a problem. One should be, I would suggest, open to whatever is the best solution (in light, of course, of moral concerns, as always). And that will sometimes result in one being associated with being too far to the left, but also often too far to the right. That's a problem that has been often observed in the context of all moral discourse, especially in the realm of Christianity (I've seen several times statements to the effect that "being Christian" in a moral sense will sometimes entail siding with those on the left and sometimes siding with those on the right - a claim that I've seen even more often in light of much recent discussion about William Wilberforce who is somewhat hard to characterize with modern terms).

So, while perhaps my now-not-posted post might have made some relevant claims with regards to media coverage of national security issues, I don't think it really helps the discussion much in general. So what I'd like to offer instead is a more specific formulation of what I think journalism should be like. The first thing is moral. A journalist should assume that all humans have dignity, for example. Obviously in contested areas like abortion, it's not going to be as clear what that means, but the vast majority of the time it will be clear. And there's plenty of other lesser moral issues. The second thing journalism needs to be is rational. That's sort of like "objective" but that word gets abused so badly I wouldn't stand by it. Besides, that just means the reporter doesn't take sides. But if one side is obviously factually wrong, it should be said. And journalists should be free to do real actual research instead of just relying on things people tell them about things. Sometimes, these things happen. But lots of times, they don't. "Equal time" is not rational inquiry... Now, I tend to think that rationality entails pragmatism (on issues outside of morality, of course). So I'm inclined to think that reporters should be seeking the truth about political issues including what solutions are practical and efficient. Sometimes, if there is a clear side (obviously there isn't always, or else we wouldn't have "objective" journalism in the first place), that may entail a slant that appears to some conservative; doesn't bother me. Follow the trail of what's true and what makes sense, and who cares what they call you, because the people caught up in the game will always call you something, whether good or bad. So, that's more what I want to say than, "be liberal!" (You may notice here that I don't hold to traditional notions of objectivity in journalism, not strictly anyway. What I want are for reporters to use their brains, even if that means taking a side. Some issues require expert input, and some are just too complex, so a journalist shouldn't always - I don't want them to be politicians. But I also don't want them to sit back and assume that the discourse that comes off the Capitol Hill, for example, is somehow the entire body of things that needs to be said about any particular issue. How I wish that politicians were allowed to occasionally not have opinions as well, as a matter of fact.)

Incidentally, what got me started on this whole thing specifically was a post by Patrick Ruffini on Hugh Hewitt's blog (Hewitt of course being a prominent conservative blogger and personality) which makes a passing reference to CNN and Fox and their relative prespectives, as well as the reader responses to the post. I think one of the comments got more directly to the point than I did; it makes reference to sources that are "non-conservative" sources being considered "liberal" or "anti-conservative." And while that might be a slight exaggeration, some of the comments on that post (for example, one questioning Fox's conservative credentials for running a special on global warming) suggest exactly that (not that I think blog readers are strictly representative of conservatives as a whole). But, still it is a claim stronger than perhaps I want to make. As usual, I'm inclined to think that are level of discourse is just too base to really get to the essense of the issues. So, I'm going to stick with my claim for a moral and rational approach to journalism. Give me that, and I don't care about claims of bias.

(More specific examination of what moral and rational journalism looks like will have to wait for some indefinite time in the future.)

I was just watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing held today on immigration reform from February 28th. Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez were providing testimony. Near the end of the hearing, one of the senators (I've forgotten who it was, but it was someone from out west) asked why the administration has not been supportive of promoting English as an "official" language. Gutierrez responded that we needed make it clear to immigrants that they need to learn English otherwise "we do them a disservice," but at the same time that it was in our best interests to encourage everyone to learn a second language, and we shouldn't do anything to send a signal that knowing only English was best. While I think he may have overstated slightly the need to learn English (though I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage people to learn English!) I think his second point was dead on. I've said similar or implied the same thing in the past, of course, so I am biased.

(I also find it interesting that with as much as I disagree with this administration - on nearly every issue, as a matter of fact - I find their immigration policy to be, well, better than nearly everyone else's, which isn't saying much (Immigration is one of the most regressive political issues in this country) except when they cave in to belligerent factions in Congress. Bush started out more progressive on immigration than he has ended up, at least as I remember it, and I'd lay the blame on last year's House. Still, the administration, and everyone else, could be a lot more progressive on this issue, and I wish they would.)

Language Log points to Nashville, TN mayor Bill Purcell's statement regarding vetoing a measure to make English the "official language" of Nashville and requiring communication "except when required by federal law or when necessary to protect or promote public health, safety or welfare" (according to an article "Veto does not end English debate" from the Tennessean). Purcell provides a fairly pragmatic, if sometimes vague, argument for not legally requiring the use of English. While I wouldn't make exactly the same arguments he does, it's interesting to see a practical political perspective on the issue.

I was just considering the possibility of proposing an amendment to the Constitution along the lines of this:

The President shall not order engagement in any military combat without a prior declaration of war by Congress (in accordance with Article I, section 8).

Exception shall be made in the case of a defensive engagement when the territory of the United States is under direct and immediate threat and there is insufficient time to obtain such a declaration of war. In that case, a declaration of war shall be asked for as soon as possible after the beginning of hostilies, if not issued by Congress first.

Nothing in this amendment shall be interpreted as preventing the limited use of force by military units or craft stationed abroad or at sea to defend themselves from hostile actions. However, military units and craft shall not be delpoyed outside of a state of war in a such a way as could be reasonably interpreted as expected to incite attacks upon them or as threatening by anoter nation.

Furthermore, nothing in this amendment shall be interpreted as preventing the limited use of military force to defend civilians of any nationality when there is insufficient time to obtain permission from Congress for such an action. In such a case permission for such a deployment shall be asked for as soon as possible after the beginning of deployment, if not issued by Congress first.

I am not sure the last paragraph could not be improved, though I feel the rest of this proposed amendment seems fairly straightforward and reasonable. Of course, I am not a lawyer, so I am sure a professional could come up with something better than this. (And I invite anyone to try to do so.)

One weakness of such an amendment as worded would be that it still requires a declaration of war before defending an ally, which most of the time would be alright, but one could imagine circumstances where that would be inadequate. The danger of adding such a clause to allow action in such a case without a declaration of war is that not all allies are equal, and not all should be automatically protected (an ally might be intentionally provocative, for example). Furthermore, it raises the question, who decides who is an ally? I would not be absolutely opposed to such an addition to the amendment, though.

Such an amendment is neccesary in part because since World War II, the Constitution has been read as not requiring a declaration of war by Congress prior to miltary engagement. In fact, several important pieces of legislation have been written around this interpretation. Obviously, it could be suggested that the Constitution as written should be enforced. While this is not necessarily a bad idea, it has the disadvantage of (1) requiring someone to enforce it, while the only people who could even attempt to do so (namely Congress) currently don't even agree with the straightforward interpretation of Article I, section 8, and thus have no incentive to do so, and (2) it opens the door of potentially having to resort to a original intent for other cases where that might not be such a good idea (the Second Amendment and the Constitutional right to bear nuclear arms comes to mind...). While I have previously felt that simply enforcing the Constitution as written was the obvious right thing to do, it occurred to me this morning that this might be a pragmatically better approach. Such an amendment has the further advantage of reducing some ambiguity as to what circumstances military force might be used without a prior declaration of war.

One concern that occurs to me is that if such an amendment were to fail, it might provide further incentive to ignore the obvious intent of the Constitution on this matter. On the other hand, if such an amendment were to pass, now would not be a bad time to introduce it. I am not sure I would be optimistic about its chances though, even now.

(It also occurs to me that if I were bolder, I could suggest a further amendment that prevented any military action outside of immediate and direct defense of our nation's territory, regardless of declarations of war. I think such an amendment would have very little chance of passing. I'm not even entirely sure that such an amendement is a good idea, but then when I consider the history of United States aggression which was conducted with declarations of war, whether the ridiculous anti-democratic expanionist wars we have fought even with declarations of war (such as the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War) or just the ones of questionable wisdom (World War I might be the only war that really fits in that category, and even that classification could be arguable), it seems like it would not be such a bad idea. One of the ideas of a "liberal democracy" is that democracy is not enough to prevent the abuse of liberties without the proper laws to protect minorities, or in the case of war, non-citizens.)

Yes, I know I still haven't written anything more about platform issues. We're in no hurry, herem though. And, I have to admit I have been sidetracked a little since I started thinking about electoral reform, and, more specifically, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as my mentioned in the last entry.

Some quick research seems to suggest that there are no organizations pushing IRV specifically in Indiana (and it doesn't look like Illinois either for you Illinoisans). Well, of course, we have the Green Party, at the least, but they have a much broader platform, of course. And they don't really have a lot of traction in Indiana, sadly. Anyway, if I'm mistaken and anyone knows of anyone in Indiana (or any other states relevant to this limited, I mean, exclusive, readership) pushing this, please let me know. If it's true that there aren't any, I suppose that means I better be thinking about ways to fix that.

I think you all get the idea that I think this is important. The main reason why is that I can't imagine there being any long term hope of getting elected lawmakers who care about the issues I care about. It might happen every once in a while, but not often enough to make a difference. So, everything else I want to write about here is most like one giant waste of time without a change in the system. But even beyond that there's a fundamental principle of democracy at stake here. Democracy isn't democracy if people don't have a choice, and too many of us right now are voting for people we don't agree with much or even most of the time, or for candidates that have no chance of getting elected not because they don't represent voters but because they don't have the right party label. If you've ever felt like you didn't have a real choice in an election, then alternative voting systems are something you should be interested in. If you've ever voted for a candidate you didn't like instead of one you did because you thought it was more important to make sure a third candidate wasn't elected, this is something you should be interested in. If you think voting turnout is too low, alternative voting systems are something you should be interested in. (Am I being too hyperbolic? Maybe. But probably not.)

So, anyway, if I've convinced you, spread the word. If you want to step it up even more than that, be thinking about ways to make this happen in your state of residence. And if you live in Indiana, let's coordinate.

Okay, break!

[And on a related issue, the blog "Fort Wayne Observed" raises the issue of ballot access.]

[After spedning (too much) additional time looking to see what was out there, I found still nothing for Indiana - so if you know anyone who's currently doing this let me know! - but I did find that Illinois progressive activist (I guess you would call him) Dan Johnson-Weinberger is more than a little interested in IRV as is the Midwest Democracy Center, local chapter of the Center for Voting & Democracy (which is what prompted my meory and how we got started on this whole thing, as you'll recall), though their web page doesn't seem to be too actively updated and I wonder how active they are these days.]

[And, in case you're wondering who doesn't like IRV, I found an example of people saying it's too complicated and thus will make voting harder for minorities, etc. thus actually effectively disenfranchising voters. It's a legitimate concern though I'm inclined to say the cost is worth it, but it bears thinking about and discussing, I suppose. This stuff has been studied, so time to start doing some research... Of course, IRV and other such systems are used internationally, and also in certain places in the United States, so it's certainly doable. Minneapolis just approved IRV for certain city elections, that is set to start in 2009 according to the Star Tribune. That article also quotes the president of the Minnesota Voters Alliance who seems convinced that this is a bad idea and vows to oppose it in court. The article doesn't say why he doesn't like it and looking up the Minnesota Voters Alliance didn't really give me any more informtation, so... Council President Barbara Johnson opposes IRV becasue of added cost for implementing it.]

[Update, 8:37: On the topic of IRV making voting for minorities harder... A Pew survey showed that in 2006 while a majority of registered voters were satisfied with their available choices for their candidates for Representative, a significant minority of 43% was dissatisfied (which has been decreasing apparently, and in fact in 1990 the majority were dissatisfied - not the direction I would have expected). But the real kicker is that a larger percentage of blacks (they don't say how much, I'll try to find out later) were dissatisfied. (Also, oddly enough, those surveyed were less likely to be happy with their choices if their districts were considered to have "competetive" races, where apparently competetive was deefined by Pew.) On the other hand, a San Francisco State University study indicated that in terms of actual elections (based on one election in San Francisco, so not necessarily universally), minority voters were more likely to encounter problems. On a different angle, a League of Women Voters survey that alientation is not a factor in non-voting - though they do have a rather narrow definition of alienation, perhaps.]

[Update, 9:17 (last one, really!): I found the Minnesota Voters Alliance argument against IRV. I am sure one can formulate very convincing arguments against IRV, but that just isn't one...]

Well, no one has contributed anything on issues yet, so it looks like I will have to do my own work! Of course, I had already planned on writing some things up, but life has a tendency to get in the way. But, I'm taking a few minutes here to hopefully get the ball rolling farther, on my part at least.

First thing is a good example of the kind of thing I was looking for that I saw earlier this week. It's even on an issue I've thought about before, but was not high on my list of things to write about. But now someone has done the work for me... Anyway, the issue is food. That might not seem like a huge thing to worry about but it certainly has the potential to have some big impacts - some of which you can think of yourself probably, but Dustin Kidd suggests some too - and it certainly represents an issue that isn't being thought about at the policy level (and there is some room for improvement on that front, even, I think, for people who are generally opposed to gvernment involvement). So, go read Kidd's post on the topic.

The second is electoral reform, which I was reminded of this week when someone linked to Fair Vote. I've ranted about this in the past, and I don't want to spend all night writing about it, so I'll be brief (thus violating my own rules of carefully laying out the problem...). Basically, it's easy to see that getting people elected who we actually want elected is hard. I haven't seen any surveys, but anecdotally that seems to be true. There are all kinds of things that could be done to fix that. The most useful would probably be to implement alternatve voting systems, of which Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is a good one that currently has momentum. (You'll occasionally here debate on which alternative voting system is best, and frankly I haven't done enough research to be able to back any particular system over another. One thing everyone agrees on though is that all of the main alternative voting systems are better than the present one, which system is chosen is less important than choosing one. If it proves problematic, it could always be replaced later anyway.) In terms of making it easier for third party or independent candidates to get elected, there are lots of other reforms that could be useful, but most of those don't have to do with voting so I won't adress them now, but of course they are also things that should be considered. Fair Vote is an example of an organization promoting IRV (and similar systems) among other electoral reforms, and IRV and similar systems are part of the Green Party platform and is backed my most other smaller parties as well. I've never heard any one present an argument for why any of these systems are a bad thing (though I could imagine some entrenched partisans might present such arguments...) so this issue seems non-controversial; it just needs some more momentum.

Another major electoral issue that was talked about a lot six years ago but has been sadly mostly ignore since is switching to a popular vote for the presidential elections. National Popular Vote is a campaign to get a popular vote to replace the old electoral system, and it has had a fair amount of fanfare. I haven't followed it closely, I'll admit, but it sounds like it could have chance of being implemented.