Economic Rationalism And Smoking

In what is perhaps the greatest news story/public policy on the face of the planet, read the following excerpt from an article in today's Age titled Chinese Ordered To Smoke Until They Drop:

LOCAL government officials in China have been ordered to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packets of cigarettes to boost the local economy during the global financial crisis.

The edict, issued by officials in Hubei Province, in central China, threatens to fine officials who "fail to meet their targets" or are caught smoking rival brands manufactured in neighbouring provinces.

Even local schools have been given a smoking quota for teachers, while one village was ordered to buy 400 cartons of cigarettes a year for its officials.

This is part genius and part rational. While the absurd(ist) moron in me is giggling with excitement about this, I find it hard to see how this is very much different from Rudd's cash-splash. Spend, dammit, spend. Don't save, don't invest in the future, spend now. Even if it means putting a shotgun to a child's head and screaming at them to start smoking, (slight exaggeration here), we must support the economy at all costs.

In fact, if you expand this out a little, this is the very argument put forward by the Australian coal lobby et al. that we can't afford to impose hefty carbon debts on high polluting industries. Jobs (as an abstract economic quantifier) are for more important than the health or well being of the people inhabiting those jobs, their families or those in their community. So smoke up, kiddoes, because Jobs are jesus, and the Economy is god.

Religion V Religion

Morning folks.

Well come back. '09. And what a year it has been. So far, we have seen floods fires and famine. Whoever said that armageddon didn't happen when the clocks ticked over on '99 certainly didn't have a grasp of armageddon stretching out over a few years.
Speaking of religious intolerance, my brain was s(t)imulated by an article in the paper today.
Very simply described, a comedian in Israel has responded to recent a holocaust denier/revisionist/moron from a certain club by having a skit where jesus walking on water and mary's virginity are called into doubt.

While this itself is of little interest to me, I was wondering if this parallels the Jyllands-Posten controversy? If it does compare are we able to draw conclusions about different religious behaviours, and if it doesn't compare, then what is morally different between the two satires?

Any thoughts and ramblings would be encouraged.

Yours, in love, Mr. TriSickle.

Why I am not an economist

I was reading The Times and came across this from Dominique Strauss-Kahn,the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - "The IMF has called for governments in leading economies to spend a combined 2 per cent of global GDP, or $1.2 trillion (£1,075 billion), to try to fend off the danger from global recession.“If we are not able to do that, then social unrest may happen in many countries - including advanced economies,” Mr Strauss-Kahn suggested.

Kind of reminds me of what Peter Singer argues for in One World, among other places, where he calls for members of the developed world to donate 1% of their annual income, which he argues will not only meet the UN Millenium Summit Goals of halving world poverty, but eliminating it. (see pp 180-195, in particular p 193)

Now, I read these comments by Strauss-Kahn, on the necessity to deal with a global recession, and think of Singer's arguments and a certain frustration builds up in my liver. Trillions of dollars so far have been spent on saving a global financial system which is at best plagued by problems, at worst pathological, yet millions of people world wide live in preventable poverty. Citibank amongst others was 'too big to fail' yet a scheme like Thomas Pogge's pharmaceutical re-incentivisation scheme, estimated to cost 45-90 Billion US anually, seems too big to fund. Simplifying the issue, white collar jobs and investments trump basic health.

Now I am sure that there are peoples out there wondering what loose connections I am drawing, pointing out that what Strauss-Kahn is demanding is 2% of GDP, while Singer's 1% is individual contribution, or that the collapse of Citibank would precipitate great suffering, while Pogge's pharmaceutical ideas are suspiciously socialistic. All true, but this is why I am not an economist. I don't care about protecting an endangered habitat like the Global Economy, or saving endangered species like those poor financial specialists with the dodgy 700 Billion US Bailout.
In fact I don't really care about much at all. But my blood angers up at the weird disconnect that is going on world-wide at the moment between throwing money at a problem for reasons like the importance of national stability, whilst ignoring other preventable causes for unrest. And don't just listen to me. Try that bastion of left-wing intellectualism and academic communism, the US National Intelligence Council:
" New and reemerging infectious diseases will pose a rising global health threat and will complicate US and global security over the next 20 years. These diseases will endanger US citizens at home and abroad, threaten US armed forces deployed overseas, and exacerbate social and political instability in key countries and regions in which the United States has significant interests."

Curiouser and curiouser!

After a recent talk here at CAPPE on virtual friendships, I have been a little interested in the various questions and concerns raised by having internet only friends. One of the problems that people find with virtual friendships is that they remove the need for social interaction, thus reducing contact with real in-flesh'd humans, leading to less ability to socialise etc etc.

And then I read this article: Japanese Man Petitions To Marry Comic-Book Character.

Edited highlights include:

A Japanese man has enlisted hundreds of people in a campaign to allow marriages between humans and cartoon characters, saying he feels more at ease in the "two-dimensional world."...Taichi Takashita launched an online petition aiming for one million signatures to present to the government to establish a law on marriages with cartoon characters..."I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world," he wrote..."However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?"

Now, am I being a stupid old-fart here, and not being up-to-date, hip-wit-da-kidz and down-with-it or has this guy completely lost the plot?

Palin into insignificance

I just red some leftist propaganda about my sweet love, Sarah 'I-can-see-Russia' Palin.

Supposedly, McCain's (i.e. Palin's boss) support among women is far behind that of Obama. One poll puts 55% of women backing Obama, while 38% back McCain. I must admit, I am a little bamboozled. She is a women, a pretty one too. Isn't this enough for women to support her? Why are they so stupid. She is a women and so are other women. Women should vote for her, that's how it works. (Ignore her failings as a politician, her inexperience, her jarring ignorance and general ineptitude and vote her in dammit!)

Tonight Sarah Palin gets to go toe to toe with Joe Biden tonight. Fairness dictates that no-one will ask her any questions that she cannot answer. It will be telling to see how the heartless baby-murdering democrap sympathisers show their hands by asking questions that they know she cannot answer. I mean, sure, she may not know much about foreign policy, economics, health care, but she was a beauty queen. And as George W has shown, a lack knowledge of foreign policy, economics and health care is certainly no impediment to a successful presidency.

iViva Life!

As the US economy shits itself, we look on in confusion...

I am not an economist. I know nothing of economic theory, and have a five year-old's grasp of economic practice. Yet even a five year-old can see that there is something hideously wrong with the US/World economic system. Some of the big thingies* in the US have encountered troubles - Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie May. Now the US federal reserve has bailed out the insurance company American Insurance Group with a loan of US $86 Billion.

It seems that the so called 'sub-prime' crisis is tearing apart the fabric that holds together modern economic theory. Fascinating to watch, unless of course, your house is being repossessed, your job cancelled, or your food is too expensive to buy for eating. No-one, it seems, knows how long this recession will last, what the long term effects may be, or if there even is a recession at all. (In The Doubter's Companion John Raulston Saul argues that the world economies have been in a depression since 1973 (pp 95-99). Coincidentally, the same year that Black Sabbath released Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. But I don't think you can blame them entirely). I am sure that there are a stack of tricksy economic sleight of hand tricks to pull, and like rabbits out of a hat, we will all emerge unscathed and better for the experience.
One idea, that is so simple that it must surely be wrong is put by former US senator in a NY Times article today: “We’ve been consuming more than we’ve been producing. We’ve been spending more than we’ve been earning...It’s been a big holiday.”

Governments in the developed world have followed the mantra of privatisation to the letter, and privatised debt, shifting debt from a public responsibility onto the backs of 'working families'. Now, the US government is throwing money hand over fist to prevent full scale collapse of the US and world economy. For years, free market advocates have been voiciferously opposed to the state interfering in economic matters. Should we now demand that the state remove its hand and let the world economy collapse, or will the invisible hand come to the aid of struggling economists to explain why the system is not working?

As should now be entirely clear, I don't really know what I am talking about, and have no idea of what I want to say. But when US $86 Billion is thrown at something, I wonder what in hell is going on, and could that money be spent elsewhere?


* Again as the use of the technical term 'thingies' shows, I am not an economist. I don't know who these Freddie Mac or Fannie May people are, why they had a fight and are now not talking. And I don't know who let the Stearn Bear into the US stock exchange, causing a Bear-ish market. I think there is some gun related freedoms going on here: as some of you know I fully believe the Second Amendment and the right to arm bears, but maybe not in a crowded stock exchange. But more on that some other time.

Things making me laugh today

I agree with Catie. Things make me angry. Morons is stupid. Me is the smart one.

Proof? Read these and make with the laff-laff.

Here is the Washington Post's 2008 Mensa Invitational, which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

The winners are:

1. Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozonelayer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

12. Karmageddon: It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes, and it's a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon: The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic fit: The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug: This is when Satan, in the form of a mosquito, gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

18. Caterpallor: The colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

Emo Brings Down The Russian Bear

Supposedly, according to the Blogosphere Russia is banning Emos, because they might kill themselves or bring down the Russian Government.

Well, it looks like I might have to ditch the Heavy Metal/Punk stuff that I have been holding onto for so long, and get with the real winners, Emos.

To paraphrase Bill Hicks:

A guy says, “I hate Emos,” and I said, “Why?” He goes, “Because they killed Russia.” They believe that. If I believed that the Emos killed Russia, I’d worship the Emos, ’cause shit, there’s some badasses on that team, man. I haven’t seen Russia ever, I see Emos all the time – go figure.

Ethics And Politics?

Yes, though strange befellows they may be, it looks like some people are trying to arrange a marriage between the most unlikely of partners: Ethics and politics.

This brings to mind the old joke - How do you know if a politician is lying? Their lips are moving.
Also bings up a new joke - How do you know if a politician is acting ethically? Their lips are moving, but no forks are involved, and they are standing.

What?

In the U.S. the 2007 'Honest Leadership and Open Government Act' has had what some would consider a strange effect on the current electioneering process. As reported in the NY Times article "Corporations and convention party planners are scrambling to comply with sweeping ethics rules in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 that prohibit lobbyists from paying for gifts, including meals and music, for members of Congress and their staffs." Some lobbyists are finding it so hard to work out what is allowed (hence ethical) that they are having to resort to talking to lawyers to find loopholes to exploit. And in the worse case scenario, the poor lobbyists have had to cancel events.

Boo hoo. In a system where there are more lobbyists than congresspeople and where almost US$3,000,000,000 was spent on lobbying politicians in one year, perhaps these parasites, predators and vermin can do with a little less food, and a little more self reflection.

Whether legislating 'ethics' will actually work or not, is a different question. As we all know, basing laws on good intentions can have some horrible results. As the old saying goes, if you outlaw ethics, only the outlaws will have ethics. Spooky eh?

Psychologists and torture -- the APA saga

When the US government started using psychologists in interrogation techniques against terrorism suspects at Guantanamo, the members of the American Psychological Association expected some sort of condemnation from their professional organisation. Instead they argued about whether psychologists had actually been present and essentially avoided discussing the issue. Eventually a task force of members was set up to investigate the ethics of psychology and interrogation, but it turned out that most of the members of the task force were part of the military. The report was denounced by the non-military members and since then some anti-torture resolutions have been established, but they are full of exploitable legal holes, not to mention the fact that they haven't applied these to a single case, even though there have been some high-profile obvious cases of psychologists being involved in interrogation.

This month a lot is happening in the APA, as general elections are being called. It'll be interesting to see how it unfolds.

More info from The Boston Globe and Mind Hacks.

Wikileaks -- when does freedom of information go too far?

I read with great interest this article on wikileaks.org, a fascinating site that allows whistle-blowers to do their thing. As the article mentions, it's already played a huge part in several astonishing cases around the world -- disclosure of information about the looting of Kenya by a former president, money laundering by a Swiss bank, and US interrogation procedures in Guantanamo Bay.

The article looks at criticism of its "free-for-all" policy, publishing actors' tax bills with their SSNs, or scripts for upcoming movies, and for its publishing of Scientology and other secretive religious documents.

All this got me wondering, where should the line be drawn? The old saying "information wants to be free" seems to be the key ethic of wikileaks itself, but how is publishing movie scripts or innocuous tax bills at all useful?

I'm all for freedom of information, but if there's no greater good to be gained from the publishing of it, it seems purely malicious and somewhat counterproductive to the aims of wikileaks itself (establishing it as a reputable source for information, for example). There are certain industries where whistleblowing, although legal, will get you in a lot of trouble if you go through the official channels, and wikileaks adds a good level of anonymous abstraction to the process which can certainly be used for a lot of good.

What do you think?

The Measure of a Robot (from io9)

io9.com gives us this amazing chart, The Measure of a Robot:

I find it intriguing how they explain the placement of the robots on the good/evil axis: they explain that some robots are good because they were just programmed to be evil, yet many of those far on the evil scale are just pure evil. How do they know? Surely those robots are as much a victim of their programming as the good ones?



I'm sure there's some dual-use dilemma stuff in here, Nick!



But what I want to know is, where does GladOS fit? :) (and since when is a "box" a robot? HAL & MCP & the Wargames computer were computers, not robots...)

(Via io9.)

Its virtually war (just)?

I was reading today about the escalation of hostilities between chinese hacker-patriots and u.s. hacker-patriots. <>
Now, there is every possibility that this is a media beat up, grasping at virtual straws in an effort to restore interest in a populace with an imploding attention span. A few years ago, there was a big hack done on some microsoft stuff, using worms or trojan horses or some other techno-monsters. In response, microsoft supposedly sent out its own worms to follow the original worm and patch things up. Or something like that, maybe I'm making it up. But at the time, the idea of virtual warfare really interested me. And then this article reignited my interests.

If this mutual chinese v. u.s./anyone v. anyone else aggression is the beginnings of a virtual war (if being a very big if), then it raises a few questions. In virtual wars, do theories of just war apply? If not, is there a continuum between virtual war and direct warfare, with parallel evolution/devolution of just war theories? With the recent discussions on this blog about neuroweapons, do they sit in the grey area between recognised domains of just war, and virtual war? How do you determine casualties in a virtual war? Is it in economic terms (which seems to miss the point of at least some key elements of just war theories) or does there have to be human (and/or animal) suffering? What of attacks on virtual worlds like Second Life? Do avatars have souls? Can we count our dead if they are only avatars? Do avatars have rights? If not, when do they gain them?

ANSWER ME!

Neuroweapons, oh my!

From this post of Catie's. I'm not going to delve too much into the legal ramifications too much, the article mentioned in the post, and the mindhacks article go into this a lot.

Now this is a juicy dual-use dilemma. White, in his paper, mentions the beneficent side of this technology: enabling people with severe physical disabilities to gain back some of their independence. Specifically, White mentions mind-control prosthetics. Hello bionic revolution! This has numerous potential positive effects on the level of health care in western societies, and White notes that DARPA has plans for using the research to help out veterans. This is great news, to my mind, because the greatest cost to a country in terms of war is not necessarily the death toll, but the number of injuries. Now, I'm not saying that getting hurt is worse than dying (in all cases, at least), but in terms of the burdens inflicted upon the wounded soldier's psyche, the burdens on the health care system, and the families of all those involved. it'd be lovely if a quadriplegic could have some mobility. For a pentaplegics (so neck also immobilised, which often entails lack of speech, and essentially is full paralysis), this could mean better communication with the outside world, something terribly important.

What about the negative, though? Obviously, there is the new set of weapons coming out, which have many implications for what it means to commit a war crime, as White mentions in detail. But I'd like to raise another negative outcome of this new technology. This requires me to digress slightly, to fill in a couple of points about the nature of combat. I'm referring here primarily a conception taught to me by the late Philip D'Alton, who was a lecturer in sociology at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and I had the great fortune to be taught by personally. The conception of war we have, unsurprisingly, is a glorified one. Even to look at the dioramas in war memorials, in all their `realism,' we fail to understand the sheer brutality summed up best by Karl von Clausewitz, the immortal slogan: "War is Hell." We fail to understand that in the scenario of modern war, although casualties may be low compared to the advent of total war, or the analogues we can best envision in nuclear holocaust or world war, injuries are generally present in combat at a 1:8 ratio, death:injury. This ratio, in the case of certain recent maneuvers by the United States military, may be as high as 1:16. So imagine that in the current actions in Iraq, not claiming in excess of 3,000 lives, that between 24,000 and 48,000 men have been wounded in one aspect or another. not all of these are life threatening, and not all of these are disabling, but many are. We here "1 killed, 6 wounded" on the news, those 6 may be cuts and bruises, or amputations, internal bleeding, organ failure, etc. And those of us back home have no conception of this, short of the occasional movie that bothers to go partly into this detail (there have been more recently, but still not many compared to the swathe of rambo-esque movies out there).

So what does it mean for an army controlled from home? What does it mean to have a soldier whose understanding of the nature of war is, even after a tour of duty, no more than a kid's after a run through on a video game (although if you believe Jack Thompson, they are more likely to kill you...)? As war becomes not only more clinical and sterile on our TV screens, inuring many in our society to be tacitly accepting of whenever a country decides to head off to another conflict, but more sterile for the soldiers, it would be my opinion that the normative concepts that stay our hand when we conceive of going to war are eroded, and this is a terrible thing. The foundations of any conception of a Just War rely on an intuition that understands that war is hell. People die, limbs are shot off, landmines tear face apart, people walk in a daze with vital organs spilling out. I'm not sure how many of you, dear readers, have ever actually been in a fist fight of any kind, but for myself at least there is a certain understanding that if that's what getting punched in the face/ribs/ear feels like, getting shot is going to be a darn sight worse.

I'm not one of those guys who disagrees with the conflict in Iraq because I "don't support the troops." I support the sacrifice a career soldier makes in choosing to take the act of killing and dying on as his principal vocation. But what has to remain in the consciousness of those who sanction a war, and in a democratic society the citizen forms a part of that process, is that there is a fundamental aspect of war which, while necessary, should inform our decision. If we take the understanding of suffering away from the process of war, this could be highly problematic.

So, not so much a rant on neuroweapons, so much as a rant on what removing the soldier from combat could mean. It's almost 10, I should, you know, write my thesis. Or something.

E Coli is going to need a labour union...

So we've finally made itty bitty bacterium start to pull their weight. Scientists have recently discovered how to turn on and off certain switches in the RNA of Escherichia coli, enabling it too chase the pesticide atrazine. The artcile in Nature, released last week, relays the views of the scientists on a couple of possibilities associated with this technology. I'm sure, even as an unlearned non-biologist, that finding pesticides and programming bacterium to move things around are just the start.

I mean, the life sciences community has made bacteria able to create biological sensors to find Uranium in Water (for a less technical explanation, I refer you to this handy comic), and the ability to program bacterium to selectively bind to chemicals is old hat by now. Soon we could be using bacterium to do the grunt work in environmental renewal operations. And with the advances we've had in physical chemistry, recently, such as the leaps and bounds we've taken in Uranium Metallurgy, these are exciting times indeed.

The question that any ethicist working with dual-use or risk assessment will pose, of course, is one enquiring into the risks of creating these novel bacterium to do our (at times, quite literally) dirty work for us. What if these bacterium were to breed uncontrollably and start their own biological-disaster-party? My view? I'm skeptical as to the likelihood of this nightmare ever occurring. The study that prompted this post illustrated the problems associated with taking these things out of the lab: the poor likkle bacteria just can't compete with the rest of nature. plus, I hear it's not that hard these days to effectively 'neuter' bacteria. I agree that genetic mutation is a concern we should look at, and certainly more work needs to be done, not just technically but to see how these things react with natural systems. But such new technologies have the power to clean up a world that is badly in need of some cleaning. And when you have rivers like the Ganges bestowing bathers, washers, drinkers and worshipers with hearty doses of poisonous heavy metals, I think the benefits seriously outweigh the risks.