Blogging on and off since 2003
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Quote for the day: PZ discussing Bronowski’s wonderful TV series “The Ascent of Man”:
A dead civilization is one that has stopped progressing, that ends that dynamism in the stasis of preservation and numbing reverence for the past — when a 2000 year old myth becomes the greatest knowledge worth knowing, we have abandoned the process and begun the contraction into the shells we built while still vital.
This is one of my deepest objections to the religious stance. When one encounters a source of wisdom – an idea, a book, a teacher – the responsible attitude is not to worship it, but to ask, “How can we learn from this and do even better, so that others may learn from us?” This is the human experience, going back over tens of thousands of years. It is also our future: it’s what human beings do. The religious impulse to ascribe supernatural perfection to people and ideas of the past is defeatist. It is, ultimately, inhuman.
Quote of the day:
I’m not an economist, but we’ve got five applicants for every single job opening. If you tell me that the best response to that situation is to lay off hundreds of thousands of teachers, I will not accept that this means that you’re smarter and more expert than I am. I will instead conclude — regardless of your prestige or position or years of study — that you’re a moral imbecile.
— Fred Clark at Slacktivist
Those who voted for Cameron in the UK: is this really what you want?
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I arrived at SFO this morning, looked up at the flight information screens, and saw that my flight was shown as “Scheduled 1:20PM, Actual 1:10PM”. Optimism, perhaps, given that departure was still over three hours away. And as it turned out, the cleaners took longer than usual to prepare the 747, and we boarded late. Oh, well.
The flight was full. Not, I think, as oversold as the Singapore flight a couple of gates away, but I didn’t see a singe empty seat. I had a middle, between two people each of whom had bulky carry-on bags which they had placed under the seat in front of them. Not only did their bags remove a lot of my legroom; both of them kept on diving into their bags to retrieve or stow items. This inevitably meant them bumping and crowding me, and the upshot was that for the first time in years I didn’t get any sleep on the long flight. And since United’s 747s don’t have personal in-flight entertainment systems, I was reduced to listening to music while wearing eye-shades. At least we had Channel 9 for the last few hours….
After the very uncomfortable flight, the rest was easy: bought a ferry ticket, took the train to the new Sky Pier, caught the 7:30 ferry, zipped through passport control at Shekou, got a few minutes sleep in the taxi (the best way of coping with Chinese driving), and I was checked in at Baicao Gardens just after 9. I turned on the TV, and they were showing the European Grand Prix from Valencia. I watched laps 47 to 53, and then suddenly they cut away to squeeze in a huge block of advertisements before the start of the England-Germany world cup match, which is on right now as I type this.
I’d like to watch, but I think I’m going to have to sleep instead. Good luck, England!
I’m heading off again tomorrow – SFO-HKG, then the ferry to Shekou, and a taxi to the Huawei campus in Shenzhen. I’m trying to pack light, with no camera and no books (except for Kindle books on my iPad). No toiletries – I can get them cheaper in Shenzhen. I’ll take my laptop, iPad and both phones (iPhone 4 for the US, Android G1 for China). I had hoped to unlock my iPhone 3G and use that in China, but I haven’t been able to download a copy of the relevant IPSW firmware without MD5 errors.
This is just a short, one week trip. This means that I won’t miss too much of the World Cup….
Via Michael Cohen, here’s the part of Article 88 of the Uniform Code which deals with insubordination:
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
Americans are fond of quoting John Adams’ description of their country as “a nation of laws, not of men.†So when do the courts-martial start?
UPDATE: I was just reminded of Truman’s wonderful assessment of MacArthur:
I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.
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Via Andrew, this graph shows the US Incarceration Rate from 1880 to 2008:
As the CEPR report cited in the original post points out, the financial cost of this absurd policy is astronomical. “[A] reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of non-violent offenders” would save U.S. state and local governments at least $14.8B/year, and would still leave the incarceration rate quite high in historical terms.
So what tipped the country into collective lunacy in 1980? Ronald Reagan? Or was he just a symptom?
On Friday night we drove up to Sacramento for the weekend. My son Chris was being ordained as an Episcopal Deacon on Saturday, and we decided that it would be a great opportunity to explore Sacramento.
The ordination went off very well, although unfortunately Chris’s grandparents weren’t well enough to make the journey. I took a number of photos, and although they capture the feel of the event, the quality is pretty abysmal. I blame myself for adhering to the rules (“no flash photography”) – rules which many others ignored. (It’s tough having those first-born, rule-observing instincts!)
On Saturday afternoon, Kate and I explored the “Old Sacramento” area. It was very hot, and the crowds made it hard to appreciate the historic character of the place. We took the steam train ride, which was a bit underwhelming – a short trip to nowhere. Hmmm. Fortunately when we returned on Sunday morning, things were very quiet, and we could really enjoy the nicely-restored district.
The main reason for the Sunday morning visit was to go to the California State Railroad Museum. This was a wonderful experience; I’ve been to many railroad museums around the world, and the CSRM is clearly the best so far. Mostly this is because of the holistic approach: it’s not just a place of pilgrimage for hard-core enthusiasts, like Didcot or Lancaster, Pennysylvania. As you can see, it brings in the history, politics, sociology, business, and culture of the railroad in California, as well as the resulting love affair with toy trains. Nice touches: the sleeper car, which vibrated on its tracks just as if it were rolling down the track, and the enormous “cab forward” freight engine of the Southern Pacific:
After lunch on Sunday, we decided to head back, rather than waiting for the rush-hour. (Even so, the traffic heading back from Reno to San Francisco was quite impressive.) On the way, we stopped to look at the “ghost fleet” moored in Suisun Bay. You can just make out the clipper bow of the USS Iowa, BB-61:
