Angels and Pinheads

Most conventions are seen in an economic framework anymore. So the question of legitimacy has been historically important for reasons of heredity: Only a legitimate child could inherit a parent's property. Even Henry VIII, desperate for a male heir, could not change this law--and he changed plenty--to favor FitzRoy. It was easier for him to kill his wives and create a religious schism than to advance a bastard.

Given the seriousness with which this question was viewed, one wonders what is afoot in contemporary society. Recent studies have shown the illegitimacy rate for children born in the United States is a bit over 40%; it is 33% in Ireland. Ireland! There are some generalities about childbearing that seem to be agreed upon--children should not have children, illegitimacy is bad for for the economic success of both the parents and the child, illegitimacy is a good predictor of high risk social and criminal behavior, single parent households are bad for child development--but despite the agreement on these subjects, there seems to be little effort to discourage the behavior. One could argue that an effort is underway to remove the "social stigma"--whatever residual persists--completely. Television shows now track the pregnancies of young girls--presumably to show the viewer that, while no one would dare impose a judgment, illegitimacy is not a good idea from a utilitarian view--yet these same girls end up on the covers of magazines and are known by their first names by everyone.

One could muse that legitimacy, more than a hereditary clarifying tool, was emphasized because it was learned by the societies over the years to be valuable. If that is the case, the culture is doing a huge, uncontrolled experiment. The effect might be liberating--but it might not be anything more than a revival of ancient and long-discarded errors. If that possibility exists, there is a lot at stake here and contemporary philosophical debates like the financial responsibilities of sperm donors are angels on pinheads.

Lame Duck

lame duck (Online Etymology Dictionary)
mid-18c., "any disabled person or thing;" especially Stock Exchange slang for "defaulter."
A lame duck is a man who cannot pay his differences, and is said to waddle off. [Thomas Love Peacock, "Gryll Grange," 1861]
Sometimes also in naval use for "an old, slow ship." Modern sense of "public official serving out term after an election" is recorded by 1878 in Amer.Eng., from an anecdote published in that year of President Lincoln, who is alleged to have said, "[A] senator or representative out of business is a sort of lame duck. He has to be provided for."


Lincoln did not know the half of it. He was speaking at a time when the government and the people governed were intimate; when the government was an extension of the people. But those days are long gone. The modern politician knows the world far better than we poor souls and the lame duck period allows him free range to inflict the nation with his vision of truth without having to worry about those pesky little problems like responsibility to the voters. It is no accident that this Congress passed so many controversial laws; this gaggle is much more comfortable when given free rein.

The political lame duck is one of democracy's great defiant and arrogant Bathoes; when he acts, it is the democracy that is disabled and "waddles off".

Mr. Assange and the Overburdened State

What to do with Mr. Assange...Some cry "Treason!"--but he's not a U.S. citizen. Some say "Spy!"--but he only publicized what was already exposed by the American Manning. (Who is a traitor.) The libertarians are thrilled with his exposing insincerity and duplicity of government--as if this were some news.

Truth is not the question. What was published were copies. True copies. But does truth always have to be said? Is it important to the moral balance of the universe that the lady in the stupid hat--who spent all day working with it and wears it proudly and confidently into the world--knows that everyone around her thinks it's stupid? Or is that truthful insight gratuitously cruel and self important?

But Assange is more than arrogant and gauche; he is destructive. He has a plan of chaos and disorder and the victims of that plan are us. Read what he said to Time magazine: "It is not our goal to achieve a more transparent society; it's our goal to achieve a more just society."..... (If leaks cause U.S. officials to) ...."lock down internally and to balkanize," ...(they will)... "cease to be as efficient as they were." What he wants is to make the system inefficient. He wants the system not to work.

For some reason those with confidence in state power often attack it by asking more of it than it can do.

Well, which part of the system should fail. The electrical grid that runs the respirators? The economic grid that controls contracts and exchange? The military grid and its fail safe mechanisms?

The world is getting more dangerous. Imagine a malicious soul in a commodity exchange computer. Or a bank computer. Or a military one.

The well-poisoner does not want to kill anyone; he wants to destroy the village.

MI-6 Times One Hundred and Fifty Thousand

There is a thesis abroad that says democracies inherently discourage the successful, competent and ambitious from running for public office because of the debasement that politics demands of a candidate. While this may protect the democracy from the dangers of powerful and potentially dangerous leaders, it does inflict the nation with the less able, the silly--the Bathoes--who become leaders by default. With that in mind, look at the following from The Washington Post:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counter terrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

We have come a long way from the days when we worried over the Clinton staffers who could not pass security clearance to chair their own meetings. How can anyone take a security system with almost one million top-security clearances seriously? Imagine a one hundred mile pipe with one million joints. The Wikileaks fiasco is not just understandable, it is inevitable.

One wonders if we are applying old concepts to new and impossible circumstances. We don't consider nuclear warning shots as reasonable; the two are incompatible. (At least I hope we don't.) It is an oxymoron. How could anybody create a top security intelligence system that employs 800,000 people, 1900 private companies and 1200 government organizations? Security aside, how would they exchange information? Secure skywriting?

Who are these people?

The Budget of a Thousand Cuts

The following numbers are a summary of this year's budget and where the money goes. The hubbub centers on how to deal with the deficit, decrease spending or raise taxes. Now I am very opposed to the transfer of financial decision-making from earners with a vested interest in the result to politicians pretending to have no non vested interest in the results but I look at this simple chart and I can not figure out where the spending cuts will come from. I simply see no alternative to a grossly inefficient tax increase with its attendant decrease in productivity and taxes. That translates into a slow, gradual decline of GDP and living standards for the producers.

National Budget: 3.83 Trillion $

Non-discretionary Budget: 2.417 Trillion $
Components:
1. Social Security: 730 Billion $
2. Income Security: 580 Billion $
3. Medicare: 491 Billion $
4. Medicaid: 297 Billion $
5. Interest Nation. Debt 251 Billion $
6. Vets Benefits: 68 Billion $

Discretionary Budget: 1.415 Trillion $
Components:
1. Military National Security: 895 Billion $
2. Nonmilitary Security: 520 Billion $

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/05/budget-and-citizen-cuts.html

STARTing in any Direction

Any treaty purporting to control and/or limit nuclear weaponry seems on its face to be reasonable and desirable. The current START Treaty under discussion raises several interesting questions. The first is the curious decision to include defensive weapons with attack ones. What could possibly make a nation create and include that equality? One could argue that offense=defense might decrease some effectiveness and desirability of research but, with the obvious danger of offensive weapons and their availability to misuse, it is hard to understand why that equation would become a priority.

The next question is more difficult. What does a treaty mean? Historically treaties created boundaries that could be drawn on maps and compliance could be confirmed from watchtowers. Agreements now are quite different and depend very much upon the nation's honesty and motives. In 1972 the U.N. wrote an agreement that outlawed the development of bioweapons and all the nations eagerly signed--except a few like Israel, South Africa and the United States. The year following its ostentatious signing, Russia opened the first of its bioweapons research center under the umbrella program Biopreparate. At this facility they meticulously developed horrifying hybrids of killer germs, some aimed exclusively at children. At the risk of sounding like "Guns don't kill people, people do", agreeing to outlaw certain weapons and research does not matter much if the party or parties are insincere.

This just raises the truly uncomfortable question: Is anybody here serious? Or is this all the usual public drama and international verbal placebo? Or is this simple the reflex of the lost, to start in any direction.

Knowing the propensity of the Bathoes for posturing and insincerity, one does worry.

Wikileaks and Stuxnet

The recent leaks on government communications will have some interesting effects. First, it will exaggerate the nation's serious problem in finding good government workers; no one with job expectations will want to work where his opinions or musings are periodically made public. Second, those in government will stop being public. Meetings will be done in silent or on notepads passed around written in invisible ink. A lot of information to explore now, a lot less in the future. And the reason these self appointed moralists who leaked the information give: more transparency. The righteous always seem to confound themselves.

Yet these diplomatic leaks are minor invasions compared to Stuxnet. This story, if accurate, signals a new era in international antagonism: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/ So far it looks beyond the capacity of terrorists but at some point nations will be able to infiltrate the computer systems of enemies and disrupt the systems or turn them in some way, either against the host country itself or trigger actions from the host country against anyone, friend or foe. Imagine taking over a country electronically and using its own computers to attack its own ally or to raid a stock market or currency, all by proxy.

Most of these problems are just over the heads of the administrators.