Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.

Don't get me wrong - the abstract moral argument is important too. But as the perspective of time sets in, what I hope people also see is that abandoning the rule of law had real concrete harm -- not merely to the poor souls we tortured, but to our country and its status in the world.

Yet once you adopt a risk-management perspective, then uncertainty becomes a reason to do something rather than a reason not to do something.

Now don't get me wrong, this is not going to be a rant about how great the old days were. I love my leash.

You can't argue against the fact that there are more bears now than before. There are more bears and more humans. I believe that most attacks are due to the wrong bear being at the wrong place at the wrong time. People have to keep things in perspective.

"One bear will teach another bear, and then that bear will do it. There are bears that peel and bears that don't peel. We target peeling bears."

Don't get me wrong, I like ponies and rainbows like everybody else ...

"You can't argue with his security success," said student Col. Steven Williamson.

Don't get me wrong -- tools have their place.

While I can't argue with his logic, there's something ghastly about its inexorability.

Amitav Ghosh:

There is no such thing, Gandhi tells us, as a means to an end: means are ends.

It affords me no satisfaction that the "incendiary circumstances" of these essays are no longer exceptional anywhere in the world. But their contemporary relevance lies, I hope, not merely in the circumstances they address but also in the renewed urgency of the question of means and ends. For if there is anything instructive in the present turmoil of the world, it is surely that few ideas are as dangerous as the belief that all possible means are permissible in the service of a desirable end.

From the archive:

After 9/11 the gloves came off.

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will.

Bush said he wanted to be remembered "as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process."

Mind you, he's not denying that he sold his soul (and yours). He's just saying he wasn't motivated by a desire to be accommodating.

"While there's room for honest and healthy debate about the decisions I've made -- and there's plenty of debate -- there can be no debate about the results in keeping America safe."

Bush's offer of "room" for debate is fallacious. There is only one debate. Means are ends. While the ends to date are "inarguable", which is to say indisputable, their status as historical fact is not the subject of the essential debate. The questions are moral questions, and the consequences are predominantly ahead of us, not behind us.

According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"

This is a cross-generational issue. It's caring for children, grandchildren. In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years.

And now this current generation is pretty much fucked.

So his self-praise for "keeping America safe" is just a polite, roundabout way of saying, "I hope you all have enjoyed the past eight years of comfort and joy, because the next eighty are going to be rather uncomfortable."

Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of our Times

David Brooks:

Great people aren’t so great. Social forces largely explain why some people work harder.

As usual, Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought — the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes.

Yet, I can’t help but feel that Gladwell and others who share his emphasis are getting swept away by the coolness of the new discoveries. They’ve lost sight of the point at which the influence of social forces ends and the influence of the self-initiating individual begins.

Control of attention is the ultimate individual power.

From the archive:

Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. In this new world, something crucial is missing -- attention. Attention can keep us grounded and focused -- not diffused and fragmented.

The first study ever to look at where sensations of dread arise in the brain finds that contrary to what is widely believed, dread does not involve fear and anxiety in the moment of an unpleasant event. Instead, it derives from the attention that people devote beforehand to what they think will be extremely unpleasant.

Peter Schiff:

Tens of millions of people unemployed, inflation spiraling out of control, the government instituting price controls that result in shortages and blackouts and long lines for things.

I think things are going to get very bad.

Lost in the Crowd

President Bush took credit yesterday for "keeping America safe" from terrorists since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, arguing that his administration had prevented more bloodshed at home through aggressive policies and that such a result should outweigh any second-guessing of his methods.

The speech was the latest in a series of appearances aimed at highlighting accomplishments during Bush's tumultuous presidency.

Bush listed a series of terrorist plots allegedly foiled by U.S. officials since 2001, including some, such as a fanciful plan to topple the Sears Tower in Chicago, that counterterrorism officials have called aspirational at best.

The president focused on the defeat of the Taliban and the holding of elections in Afghanistan, making no mention of the rapidly deteriorating security situation there.

From the archive:

He said he wanted to be remembered "as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process."

Officials seem to think urgency to act absolves them from considering the longer-term implications.

He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not.

Overestimating the threat, when you're lining people up against the wall without due process, does have a cost, and frankly it's your soul.

Those who flourish in this environment are those who can sit through long meetings without falling asleep. The people who can peer through the darkness and see the truth are either sucked into the surreal world of modern management or shunted aside.

Bush Says His Post-9/11 Actions Prevented Further Terrorism

“When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

At a panel discussion Monday at the Harvard Kennedy School, Maleeha Lodhi evoked Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat to describe the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

From the archive:

A war born in spin has now reached its Lewis Carroll period. (“Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”)

The court's opinion ridiculed the government argument, comparing it to the statement of a Lewis Carroll character: "I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."

Is Afghanistan Lost?

Have you seen "The Wire"?

"They don't teach it in law school." - (Assistant State's Attorney) Pearlman

Detective Lester Freamon and Detective James "Jimmy" McNulty huddle in the utility closet of the homicide unit. Freamon has rigged a phone wire to mask as Marlo's cell number and orders McNulty to stick to the script as he dials a number. When Scott Templeton answers his cell phone at the Baltimore Sun, McNulty reads from a scripted serial killer rant, accusing Templeton of making things up about him in his newspaper reports. A panicked Templeton, shocked to get an actual call, rushes to alert the other reporters and editors to what's going on and to get Det. McNulty on the phone.

Ignoring his buzzing cell phone, McNulty starts to enjoy his performance and, playing up a heavy Baltimore accent, he begins to ad lib. Meanwhile, in the wire tap listening room, Vernon Holley springs into action to trace the first call he's ever picked up on the serial killer tap.

In a tourist-heavy area of the Baltimore Harbor, Detective Leander Sydnor waits with a cell phone in one hand (the cell that the phone company paperwork has linked to the serial killer wire tap) and a police radio in the other. McNulty's serial killer warns Templeton that they won't even be able to find his victims any more, as Freamon sends two photos of McNulty's homeless foil, "Mr. Bobbles," over the re-routed phone line. When Sydnor hears over the police radio that the call has been traced to the Inner Harbor, he switches off the cell, wraps it in foil, and pockets it. As the police swarm the area he shows his badge and pretends to help search for the serial killer's cell phone.

Back at the Baltimore Sun, Managing Editor Thomas Klebanow and Executive Editor James C. Whiting III gather around Templeton as he relays what the killer said. Just as they ask if the guy threatened him, Templeton receives an alert on his cell phone: the photo of a new apparent victim -- the homeless man that McNulty dumped in Richmond.

Best. Show. Ever.

HBO: The Wire: Episode Guide: Summary: Season 5: Episode 57

A bright shiny new Gold Star for Mark Twain:

When an entirely new and untried political project is sprung upon the people, they are startled, anxious, timid, and for a time they are mute, reserved, noncommittal. The great majority of them are not studying the new doctrine and making up their minds about it, they are waiting to see which is going to be the popular side.

It is desire to be in the swim that makes political parties.

Paul Auster reads from the essay at NPR:

Mark Twain died almost a hundred years ago, but this week The New Yorker will publish one of his essays for the first time. It is titled "The Privilege of the Grave," and it speaks of how freedom of speech is exercised better by the dead than the living. Brooklyn-based author Paul Auster reads some excerpts — and those are today's parting words.

(Unfortunately for non-subscribers this essay is currently behind the paywall.)

The Privilege of the Grave

"We know that the citizens of East Albany [Georgia] have complained about drugs and prostitution. This is just the tip of the iceberg in what we are going to start doing in that neighborhood. We have heard the citizen's complaints, and they have not fallen on deaf ears."

A young Chinese woman was left partially deaf following a passionate kiss from her boyfriend. "While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution," wrote the China Daily.

Bruce Cohen also urges everyone to "proceed with caution" when it comes to reacting to Prop 8, chiefly when it comes to boycotts and finger-pointing.

We still often hear that same-sex marriage would destroy traditional marriage, but now the claim is not so much that actual marriages would be harmed; rather, it's that the dictionary would have to be changed.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of our private slang, and we're only two people. Multiply our sample by all the groups, large and small, who improvise with the English language for their own convenience and pleasure, and you see the problem.

"Spinach isn't poison," said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist. "Yes, there has been a problem. But there are outbreaks in hamburgers that make the news, and we haven't quit eating hamburgers."

Just as surely as the SUV will yield to the hybrid, the half-pound-a-day meat era will end. “Who said people had to eat meat three times a day?” asked Mr. Pollan.

To my mind, the lesson of the Donner party is not so much about what they did or did not consume as it is about our appetite for such dramas.

But minor drama is the lifeblood of suburbs.

It's not so much that these are bad movies -- well, they are -- it's that they are the kind of movies that have helped turn vampires from scary, miserable, creatures of the night into S&M enthusiasts who sit around in their mansions all day long.

I mean, at the end of the day, is this a great language — or what? I mean, it's a language to die for.

Decius wrote:

Here is the definition of "mid-career:"

Full-time employees with 10 or more years of experience in their career or field who are Bachelors graduates.

For the graduates in this data set, the typical (median) mid-career employee is 42 years old and has 15.5 years of experience.

I get the impression that in general, there is a stronger correlation between age and salary than there is between merit and salary.

Could you expand on this impression? I gather you're saying that most of the 10th percentile mid-career people are the people who are only 10 years out of school, and the 90th percentile of "mid-career" people is mostly the ones who are a few years away from retirement.

When I look at the mid-career "salary spread", which I define as "Mid-Career 90th Percentile Salary" - "Mid-Career 10th Percentile Salary" for each major, I find that salary spread is always greater than "early gain", which I define as "Mid-Career Median Salary" - "Starting Median Salary". But it varies widely from one major to another.

This data suggests that age and merit may be weighted differently in each major/field. In music, for example, the median early gain is only $19,100, whereas the salary spread is $107,300. In computer engineering, the early gain is $43,600 and the salary spread is $95,900.

I found an interesting result when I sorted the list of majors according to the ratio between "mid-career" salary spread and early gain. At the top of the list, with the largest ratios, are music (5.6), drama (5.5), hospitality & tourism (4.5), and education (4.25). At the bottom of the list, with the lowest ratios, are computer engineering (2.2), aerospace engineering (2.3), civil engineering (2.3), electrical engineering (2.3), and computer science (2.4). The majors with the highest mid-career median salaries have the lowest ratios.

Although major-dependent variations in career duration could also be a factor, it seems that merit has a much bigger effect on the salaries of musicians and actors than it does on the salaries of engineers.

Seeing that, one might argue that merit naturally varies more widely in the performing arts, and thus the greater influence on salary is warranted. Of course, it's also possible that although merit varies widely in many fields, only a few have developed effective methods of performance evaluation.

RE: Salary Increase By Major | WSJ

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