Something to Build On

Lots of storms in the US and Pakistan over their relationship, but, as it turns out, they may be more alike than we thought:

"Strategy is very un-Pakistani," noted one western official. "You kick the can down the road and hope it lands in the right place." source

Who Cares About Iowa and New Hampshire?

Presidential candidates do.  Why?  Because they go first?  Why do they get to go first in the process for selecting nominees?  Because they do and have done so.  Last time states tried to jump in line, IA and NH sought to penalize the candidates that had the temerity to challenge the Iowan/New Hampshirian entitlement. 

So, check out this post by 'lil Steve which builds on some other stuff to show how wonderfully anti-democratic and distorting this process is.  And that the alternatives are not so great but certainly better.

I have always been annoyed by the increased power of two largely unrepresentative states.  Probably not going to change soon, but not a bad time to vent a spleen or two.

When You Hear Military-Industrial Complex, Duck!

This piece complains about the incorporation of the universities of Canada into the military-industrial complex.  Yes, industry tries to manipulate politics so that it can get more money to build more stuff.  The F-35 is part of that process.  Yes, academics take money from the government and study military stuff.  Does that mean that we are agents of the government in persuading the Canadian public of the righteousness of its military efforts?  Um, no.  Given reactions to the op-eds I have written about Afghanistan, I would say that we academics are not swaying the public all that well.

And to be clear, using academics as your stalking horses is a bad idea.  When I went to Afghanistan with seven or so other academics in 2007 to learn more about the conflict and what Canada and NATO were doing, we were aware that we were part of an "information operation" aimed at the Canadian public.  So, we were not dupes.  And the folks I was with carried with them their skepticism about the mission.  Herding cats not only describes department chairs trying to run a department but any effort to get scholars to say what you want them to say.

This author should actually look at the SDF research and see if it is biased and cheerleading the military. Some of it does, but much of it does not.  I do not have a dataset on what has been funded, but I can tell you that my research, funded by SDF, raises questions about the quality of oversight and ponders whether the absence of any real parliamentary oversight over the military is such a good thing.  Is that what the military wants to hear?  Another SDF-funded project of mine considers the politics of early departures, comparing the Dutch to Canada.  This is probably not what the military wants folks to focus on, as there is less glory in taking off than in other parts of the mission.  My third SDF funded project ponders whether the efforts to un-fail states by creating strong militaries (as we are doing in Afghanistan) may be causing problems down the road in the form of coups and repression.  Most of the rest of the McGill/Montreal research funded by SDF is far more focused on broader security issues than on Canadian defence issues. 

The only roadblock I had in my research was not SDF, which did help me meet with military officers to interview them along the way, but other parts of the military that opposed a survey I wanted to conduct.  SDF is about outreach--the idea is that ignorance is not bliss.   I have had no instructions on how to do the research, what to say or what to publish.  The military, in Canada and the US, mostly just wants to learn any way they can since bad information, poor strategy and the like will get people killed.

The funny thing is that military officers, because of the heavy responsibilities, are actually far more open-minded than the folks who write pieces about the military without doing the research to actually figure out whether there are any infringements of academic freedom.

PS  See Stephanie Carvin's blog for some piling-on.  And h/t to Phillipe Lagasse's tweet that started this ruckus.

Slow Blog Day, May 2011 edition

I am behind on everything as I spent a day going to and from Ottawa to present some research.  Next three trips to Ottawa (over the next three weeks) will be back to asking policy-maker types about their work on Afghanistan to get the civilian side and also more of the military side.  The former is for a new spinoff project that will take me to Australia in July.  The latter is for the book project and associated pieces.  I will be late with the first draft of the Aussie paper (due today) by a few days.  I blame the careless school bus driver.  May not be true, but it is a ready excuse.

So, just a few scattershot thoughts on various news/events/realizations of the day:

• I have a new favorite podcast--Nerdist.  It is supposedly nerd-focused (comic books and such) but the interviews are with a range of interesting people and go in all kinds of interesting directions.  Hosted by Chris Hardwick, who started out on the MTV Singled Out show, it is just very, very funny.  I didn't lose control of my rental car on the way to or from Ottawa, but it was close a couple of times.  Just funny, often profane takes on things.  I will never think of Darth Vader the same after the podcast with Kevin Smith.
• Thanks to the podcast with Kevin Smith, I will always look at Ferris Bueller's day as motivated by Ferris's coke addiction.  It just makes too much sense.
• Thanks to another Nerdist podcast, my crush on Alison Brie of both Mad Men and Community has just deepened.  
• Fun day of powerpoint panics.  My presentation almost had to be ppt-less as the building lost power a couple of hours beforehand.  Luckily it came back AND I was not in an elevator.  Later, on the way home, I stopped by the organizational meeting of a new ultimate league that is based in the western part of the Montreal island.  The head of the Montreal frisbee folks was a bit off his game, since his powerpoint presentation had not been saved right.  So, for the kids out there, always, always print out an outline view or a summary of your ppt so that you can handle a broken computer/file/projector.  I was ready in case the power was out--I could have given the talk, but would have had to draw on a board or something....
• Onto professional type stuff, Prime Minister Harper was in Afghanistan to close out the mission in Kandahar.  He said the usual crap that drives me crazy--that the mission lasted longer than the two world wars.  True but inane.  "We have to look at this mission as a great success,’’ Harper said.  Depends on what you call success.  Roland Paris tweeted today how insecure Kandahar is.  I have no idea if it is better or worse.  The Taliban certainly seem to be generating lots of dramatic attacks around the country, but I do not know if this is more frequent/intense or just more visible.  The prison break shows that there has been no progress at all on that front since it is the second one.  So much for that effort.  I do think that "not losing Kandahar" was an achievement.  I do think that Canada's effort in Kandahar did earn it more influence, so these are successes.  Stopping terrorism--not so much.
• Speaking of achievements, Harper's tour included a farm where an Al Qaeda base used to be, so that he could have Canada take credit for the renovation of a big dam project.  What he did not point out is that improving irrigation not only improves the wheat crop but also the poppy crop.  I don't think that is a bad tradeoff at all, just being honest about it is all.
• I do disagree with a tweet I saw about the Canadian shift from Kandahar to training in Kabul making sense.  I disagree--Canada developed expertise and relationships in Kandahar that are being essentially tossed away to fill a bunch of slots that were not empty (there was no NATO need for lots of clasroom trainers in Kabul, but a heap of need for continued mentors/trainers going into combat with Kandahar-based Afghan units).  More ranting on this later.
• One trend I hate: rebooting an entire comic book.  Worse: DC is rebooting all of its series.  I stopped collecting when my daughter was born since diapers displaced the comic books in the family budgets.  Given the messes made of my favorite characters and groups (mostly Spidey and X-folk), I have few regrets.

Perhaps more tomorrow as I try to get through some deadlines.

Let's Play: Which Is Worse?

The Westboro Church has gained much notoriety for engaging in protests at the funerals of soldiers, asserting that this is God's punishment for the tolerance of gays, I guess. I have stopped paying close attention to their rantings and ravings because, well, these folks are nuts.  And I would like to ignore these folks, but they are not going anyway anytime too soon.  So, they, of course, protested at Arlington National Cemetery today on Memorial Day.  Yes, these folks have no class.  Anyhow, the striking thing is not their appearance but that among the counter-protesters were a certain 3K clan.  I don't want to use their name because I really don't want to be linked to them.  But you know who I mean. 

So, who should we root for in this?  The racists who are supporting our troops?  Or the crazy religious folks who are a different kind of menace to society?  My gut tells me to root for the racists since the issue of the moment is the sacrifice of the troops.  My head tells me that the Westboro folks are a very small, marginal group that are good at getting attention but not much else, and that the racists in the past and in the future have been and will be a greater threat.  I just don't know. What do you, the reader, think: racially motivated hate mongers or religiously motivated hate mongers?  Pick your poison.

Party's Over

Whenever I read a headline like this "In Its Rebound, Detroit Focuses on Selling Smaller Cars," I just want to bang my head against a desk.  How many times must this happen and happen late?  Detroit was surprised by the oil crises of the 1970s and then again and again since.  The lure of easy money by selling big cars packed with stuff always seems to trump the long term challenge--that oil is a scarce commodity subject to the ebbs and flows of international relations. 

Yes, these companies have gotten more serious about electric cars and hybrids, but only because they have been dragged here.  As I prepare to buy a new car (thanks to the maniacal inattentive school bus driver), I have only considered one company, Ford, and only if I cannot get a good deal from a South Korean company (Hyundai).  Sure, I would like to buy a hybrid, but they are out of my price range.  The good news is that the mileage (or, as I am always confused by here, litres per 100 km) is much better than it used to be, so the difference between Prius and Elantra is not so startk. 

Anyway, back to the point: short term profits seem to trump the long-term (which is not terribly surprising), but these companies hedge so very poorly that any price shock (plus a shock to capital markets) threatens their survival.  The funny thing is that Ford is said to have a "head start" by focusing on smaller cars five years ago.  Um, a head of whom?  GM and Chevy, yes.  Hyundia, Kia, Honda and the rest not so much.  The only good news is that Toyota has lost its sheen for being reliable and Honda is not so exalted these days either (plus as we found out, Hondas have been the target of thieves). 

This entire article is far too laudatory--the car companies are coming to the party after the party is over.  Yes, they can make a comeback and do ok, but they hav

He knew G.M. was on the right track when he parked one of the first new Cruzes off the assembly line at a supermarket in suburban Detroit, and a store employee rushed over to check it out. “She said, ‘I can’t believe Chevrolet is building a car this size that’s this good,’ ” Mr. Reuss said.e frittered away so much time and money that it reminds of the US effort in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Not good.

 Ah, the joy of low expectations!

Karzai Issues Last Warning

Ok, so Karzai has issued a "last warning" after the tragic raid/strike that lead to 14 Afghans being killed by NATO forces.  I understand he is engaged in position-taking for the domestic audience.  I understand that it is unfortunate that the international forces have made mistakes in this war.  Still, I would like Karzai to point out occasionally that the Taliban has killed three times as many civilians and its strategies aim at baiting the ISAF forces into killing civilians.

But go ahead, President Karzai, do what comes next: if this is the last warning, then that means that next time, he will do what?  Ask NATO to leave?  If so, then I guess that means it is time to go.  If Afghanistan is a sovereignty entity, then if the President asks the NATO forces to leave, then they should go. 

Karzai has been a very important source of mission failure, so if he wants to have the entire thing on his shoulders, then we all can save money and lives by leaving.  Again, I fear what will happen to the Afghans who did rely upon us, but if the elected (however flawed the election was) government wants us to leave, then we leave. 

Otherwise, what happens after a last warning?  Another one?  Or, he could suck it up just a bit and act like a leader and take some responsibility.  But that would be way out of character. 

We have run out of time and out of choices.

Why the Third Matrix Movie Sucked

Because it ended with an incredible bargain: that the computer and Neo would just agree to an unenforceable bargain with plenty of room for either side (especially the computer) to cheat and renege.  Why do I raise this now?  Because the government of Sudan seems to be pretty fixated on violating the accords that were to end the conflict.  The big question was always the oil-rich territories on the edge of North and South.  Now, Sudan is sending troops into this region.  So much for playing by the rules.

External guarantees really don't solve the problem when civil wars are ended, because it merely moves the credibility problem from between the actors in the country to the actors outside.  Given how much resentment there is in Libya towards the half-hearted NATO [new acronym--Nothing After Take Off]*, you can see why the government of Sudan is not deterred by the possibility of an outside intervention.

*  Reminds me of what folks would say about ISAF [I Saw Americans Fighting] and the CPA of Iraq [Cannot Produce Anything].

The warning lights are blinking, the alarms are sounding for Sudan and South Sudan.  Not that it matters much.

Delusional Democracy

Elitist blogpost of the month: does it make sense to have direct or indirect democracy when the people are so frickin' clueless?  Or does a fact-free/knowledge-free environment not really matter that much?

The prod today is a post at Steve Greene's blog: Americans radically over-estimate the percentage of gays and lesbians in society, with the plurality thinking the number is around one quarter.  Now, maybe this is good, because this misperception might cause people to realize it is not wise to discriminate against 25% of the people except that the survey also showed that this perception did not correlate with more or less tolerance. 

Steve links this misperception to the usual one--that Americans think lots more money is being spent on foreign aid than actually is the case. 

Good thing we have Fox News and its equivalents to provide us with good information about the situations around us.  Oh, and that internet thing is great since everything on it is true.  I am afraid that confirmation bias is everywhere. 

So much bad information.  Isn't democracy based on the idea that if the people have enough information and enough reason, the competition and debate among them will lead to the best outcomes?  Maybe not.  Of course, the old saw is still correct--democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.

Classic Comedy Loses A Laugh or Two

Jeff Conaway died today of a drug overdose.  Alan Sepinwall had a nice piece that considered Conway's career.  He attached a couple of key clips from Taxi. Including this classic, classic bit:


I am amused to see that Alex in this scene espouses a problem I became familiar with once I started teaching graduate students:  "What am I worried about? Two things: that they will not issue a license for him to drive in this city or that they will."

I am sorry that Conaway's life spiraled down from here.  At least, we have youtube to remember him by.

The New Deterrent?

Yesterday, I scoffed about the possibility that EU conditionality was all that important in the arrest of Ratko Mladic, even though the EU re-issued some threats quite recently.  Today, I scoff at the impact of the arrest.

The NYT editorial: "The arrest should be a warning to other butchers that they, too, will be caught and held to account, no matter how long it takes."

Um, about sixteen years after the fact? If one knows that one will be captured almost two decades after the crime, will that serve to deter?  This is especially questionable for middle-aged folks, as Mladic is now, apparently, far more impaired by health than by prison.  Heart attacks and strokes (too much fatty food while on the "run"?) have proved to be more punishing than the international community.

Sixteen years? Political scientists tend to assume that folks focus on the short term, not the long term.  I am pretty sure 16 years is the long term, and Keynes was right about what happens in the long run.

The funny thing is I am pretty sure that if we dig up enough NYT editorials, we might find one or more on how the US death penalty is not a deterrent precisely because it takes so long. 

I am not saying that picking up Mladic is a bad thing.  Not at all.  I am just saying we should not exaggerate how it will impact future genocidal types, who themselves are not known for engaging in long-term utility calculations.

Conditionality Works?!

With Serbia arresting the last big PIFWC (person indicted for war crime--my favorite NATO acronym)--Ratko Mladic (see my post about the previous arrest, of Karadzic), does this mean that I was wrong about the power of conditionality?  That is, the Steve and Bill book argues that we ought not overestimate the threats organizations like the European Union or NATO make about conditions for membership.  We argue there and elsewhere that the requirements are unenforced (Cyprus gets in despite not settling its ethnic problems, Romania and Bulgaria get in with their shaky rule of law); that the rules do not apply to members so that once you are in, you can go back to violating the rules; and so on.

But Serbia seems to have knuckled under to EU pressure and will be sending Mladic to The Hague stand trial for genocide, ethnic cleansing and all the rest.  But the pressure has been applied since 1995.  Can we say that conditionality worked if it took 16 years?  Oh, and enlargement is probably not a realistic option right now since the EU is focused on its own internal crises (driven by past poor decisions about ignoring conditions--letting Greece and others into the Euro zone).  So, the timing here is interesting--submitting to the PIFWC conditions when the conditions are least relevant, as opposed to earlier when other countries were in the queue to join the EU (despite not meeting other conditions).

I have not been following Serbia's politics closely, but this is still a very important decision, whether it is to suck up to the EU or not.  After all, a preceding leader of Serbia, Zoran Djindjić, was assassinated after sending Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague.  So, the stakes are quite high domestically.  Mladic was reputedly more popular than Karadzic, especially among Serbia's military and police.  If there are no nasty consequences from this, then this is an important development for civilian control of the military and Serbia's democratization.

Getting Mladic to stand trial for his crimes is a big victory for Bosnia, for Serbia, and for justice.  I just am not sure that the EU had a lot to do with it.

Update:  For one take by an expert.

Quebec Irony Du Jour

Jack Layton has been getting heaps of flak because his party has taken contradictory positions about Quebec secession.  The Clarity Act says that the federal Parliament would have a say on whether a question is clear enough to count and whether the outcome is clear enough to count, and then a negotiation would ensue.  This is based on a Supreme Court decision.  The Quebec sovereigntist position (and the position of other folks pandering to the nationalists) is that any referendum with a vote of fifty percent plus one is good enough.  I have ranted enough about this before--that 50% plus one is a lousy standard.

The fun point is this: Layton's party, the New Democratic Party [NDP], has more than half of its seats in .... Quebec.  So, yes, the pandering may have worked, but now what?  If there were a referendum and the 50% plus one rule played out, then Layton would find himself with less than half a party.  Or he could try to become a leader in newly independent Quebec, not that he would win or anything.  The irony is that his support of 50% plus one is suicidal politically in the extreme--if such a situation were to arise.

But, of course, if there were a referendum, I would count on the NDP supporting implementation of the Clarity Act--for its own survival, not out of principle.  Not that it matters much really, since the Conservatives a majority in the Parliament where fifty percent plus one is also the rule.*

* I think--I have no real understanding of the Canadian constitution. 

Still, the idea that the NDP's fate would be held hostage by a Quebec separatist effort is actually quite amusing, as long as we do not get close to it in reality.  

Progress On One Front

Despite what I said yesterday about not liking change, arresting Ratko Mladic, who commanded the troops at Srebrenica (biggest case of mass murder in Europe since World War II), is change I can believe in.  Indeed, as the tweets of the morning indicate, not a bad May (Bin Laden, Mladic) and not a bad 2011 with Mubarak and others losing power.

Mladic was THE most wanted war criminal from the Bosnian conflict.  And his arrest, along with that of Karadzic, means that the folks in ye old Balkan Pit of Despair (the J-5's desks on the Balkans) will have to change the talking points about the "redlines" of engaging Serbia.  Serbia has satisfied a crucial set of conditions--picking up the most wanted PIFWC's (Persons Indicted for War Crimes).  I have not been following Serbia closely to see how it is doing otherwise, but this is a big, big step, probably more so than Karadzic since Mladic had strong ties to Serbia's military.  Indeed, this is a real test/accomplishment for civilian control of the military.  Being able to do this (and hopefully not getting shot for it) shows that President Tadic is in command and not the military.

I can only ponder a world in which Serbia seems far more functional than Pakistan.

Of course, Serbia has other problems than this, but it is a good day for Serbia, for Bosnia, and for the international community after way too many bad days in the first half of the 1990s.  I'll leave it to the real experts on Bosnia to judge whether this matters anymore for Bosnia's present and future.

One last thought--just before the G8?  Is this timing accidental?  Or does Serbia want to get on major powers' agenda in a good way for a change?

Dead Parent Movie Escalation

When my daughter was younger, my wife and I would joke about most movies for the kids being "dead parent" movies.  Most of these would have at least one parent of the featured character killed on or off screen.  This, of course, starts with Bambi.  Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and all of the rest of the new Disney classics had dead parents.  So, we have come to wonder if Andy in the Toy Story series has a father or a second mother or what?

I forget all of the discussions we used to have about these as our teenage daughter is less interested in animated flicks these days.  The interest now is in Pirates of the Caribbean, which, now that I think of it, is also a dead parent movie, with both Kiera Knightley's character and Orlando Bloom's having at least one missing parent, right?

I guess getting rid of the parents allows us to focus on the child in the movie with which the children in the audience can empathize.  Anyhow, the inspiration of this post is the new escalation as seen in SPOILER ....

Getting Conservative in My Old Age

Ok, I am not that conservative or that old, but I have come to realize that my views are far more conservative than I had thought, but not Conservative the way Stephen Harper defines it in Canada or the various Republicans do in the US.  I have realized that my starting stance on any policy change is: is it better or worse than the status quo?  I am realizing that change for the sake of change, either to return to some imagined past or to jump to some potentially wonder future, is not really the justification we need.  First rule for Doctors: do no harm.

So, in my running debate with the Anglophone nationalists (see here, here and here), I tend to worry more about how trying to change the status quo might do more harm than good (not to mention that change would require convincing enough Quebeckers, no easy trick).  To be clear, I am not Dolores Umbridge who said: "But progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged. Let us preserve what must be preserved and prune practices that ought to be...prohibited!"  She was hardly conservative as she imposed a bunch of new rules and practices, perhaps to bring Hogwarts back to an imagined past, but imposed radical changes to make this happen. 

I guess I am stuck on the meaning of conservative-as it has multiple and often conflicting definitions:

1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
2. cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.

Clause #1 has conflicting meanings, as preserving existing conditions and restoring traditional ones are not consistent.  I guess I tend to think of conservative as clause #2--cautiously moderate.  Obviously not a label that describes the fictional folks like Umbridge or the semi-fictional folks like Palin, Limbaugh, Bush II, and other "Conservatives."  In Canada, there is much concern about which definition will apply to Harper now that he is no longer constrained by minority government. 

My decision rule, at the end of the day, is that change is not always undesirable but that we should aim for changes that do the least harm, and that we should choose changes that harm those who are best able to weather the harm (that would be rich folks).  So, I am quite Liberal in my conservatism, I guess.  I am a progressive in the sense that I prefer change that improves things (to perfect the union, as Obama has put it often) rather than change to some idealized past (the 1950's were not such a great time for minorities, women, gays and lesbians, but other than that, it was swell, right?).

Does this post conflict with my earlier one where I say I don't like tradition?  No, because I do think that change that improves the status quo is perfectly fine and dandy especially even if it goes against tradition.

Responding to the Anglophone Nationalists

I have gotten a heap of comments from a variety of folks who I would consider members of the Anglophone nationalist community in Quebec.  Perhaps that is not an entirely accurate label, but let's debate that in another post (or in the comments to this one).

Is it ever acceptable, Tony asks, to infringe rights?  To be clear, my specialty in Political Science is not about rights--I have no expertise on the should questions and questions of rights.  I am a specialist on the whys of International Relations--why countries intervene or not, why countries delegate or not to their soldiers on the ground, why institutions might or might not foster ethnic outbidding.  So, I am an amateur on this kind of question.  But that has never stopped me before.  So, the answer is, um, yeah.  A gun rights advocate from Texas would find living in Canada to be oppressive since one cannot buy semi-automatic handguns at the local Walmart here.  Taxes can be seen as oppressive.  What is a right is often hotly debated.  Which is more important:  individual rights vs rights of the community?  I, as an American, focus much, much more on individual rights rather than collective ones, but that does not mean that collective rights are inherently undemocratic (I leave that to the political philosophers).

How Can One Tell I Am Not a Baby Boomer?

I am not a big fan of Bob Dylan.  I think the post-boomers vary in how much they appreciate Bob Dylan, but he does not have a mythic status that is widely shared.  I just don't get the fascination that the boomers have with Dylan.  Some of his songs are pretty good, but mostly, I think he is over-rated.  People will say that he is a great song-writer, but it is hard for me to tell since I have a tremendous urge to change the channel as soon as I hear his voice.  Plus I am a lousy judge of song-writing, so I have to cede people the argument that he has been a great song-writer.  Still, I think the Dylan as icon or not is a big divider between most boomers and most of us who are not.  Give me the Beatles any day.

Will this post antagonize more people than my recent ones on Anglophone nationalism?  Probably.  Will it distract the latter?  Absolutement non.

When Good News Is Spun Badly

Crime continues to go down.  More than we expected, especially in a bad economy.  This article continues significant frustration that the models seem to be broken.  But isn't this a "good news" story?  I would think that the story would have less frustration and more, ahem, glee since fewer people are getting killed (with NY and Philly as notable exceptions).  And having the experts say:

“Remarkable,” said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. “Given the fact that we have had some healthy declines in recent years, I fully expected that the improvement would slow. There is only so much air you can squeeze out of a balloon.”

Um, a city or country is not like a balloon.  We are far from empty.  Yes, crime is historically low, but it is not at or near zero.  Sure, my car was not stolen this year (just rammed by a school bus), nor did I lose any computers to theft this year, but there are still thefts, rapes and murders.  Less of them, but still not close to "squeezed balloon" status.

Anyway, the tenor of the entire piece is one of disappointment that we don't know why the numbers are down rather than taking seriously a big jump in the quality of life, even during a bad recession and with stagnant wages over the past decade.  Perhaps a new model of crime might have been useful.  Surely, there must be some sociologist/criminologist that has a take on this.

Here is one theory that was not brought up: the population is still aging.  Older folks do less crime.  Plus more of our youth are in prison than ever before (more or less), so perhaps we just have fewer people in the right demographic out on the streets.  Which suggests a way to get crime even lower--let's imprison even more of the population.  Oh, we are running out of space, huh? The bright side is that with California being compelled to release tens of thousands of prisoners, we can test my hypothesis that rounding up all the young folk might be doing the trick.  If California's crime rate does not jump up after the 30k-40k jailed folks are released, then there might be something else going on. 

The key takeaway is that the NYT can depress us even with good news.  Well done.

NATO Reads My Blog?

Is it a coincidence that NATO significantly increased its bombing campaign, focusing on and near Qaddafi's compound just after I post a game on when Qaddafi will lose power?  Maybe, maybe not.  On the other hand, they may just be trying to beat the latest ash cloud.

This is Tripoli lit up by last night's attacks (From this twitpic: http://twitpic.com/51ux58  From a twitter account named ChangeinLibya).