ROFLMAOPMP

Tanzanian al Qaeda suspect captured, mother says son harmless

Why the U.N. Doesn't Work

In this report:

"Implicitly" is key here:


Instead of "sanctions":


Any obvious synonym for "war" was an objectionable word in November 2002, when Resolution 1441 on Iraq was being debated, despite the fact that everyone knew that the purpose and spirit of Resolution 1441, as voiced by its authors, was to give Iraq one last chance to comply or face war. The final wording passed unaninmously only because it threatened "serious consequences" rather than "war". These innocent changes of explicit wording (innocent especially in the context of the known spirit of the resolution) are the seeds for nonenforcement of the resolution later on.

Countries such as France and China can argue about seemingly trivial matters such as this word or that word, and if the United States demands that a resolution not be diluted, it is accused of being "uncooperative" and "unwilling to compromise". Yet, these minor changes are what allow the other members of the council to avoid participating in enforcing these resolutions, and, further, to deny that these resolutions ever meant what we all knew they meant at the time they were adopted.

The only way to hold the U.N. accountable is to remember what the spirit of the resolution was at its adoption. Well, let's remember, this time.

It's clear that sanctions are the intended effect of this new resolution against Sudan, right? If Sudan does not comply with this resolution, I predict governments like France and China will fail to impose sanctions. Let's see if I'm right.

Permanent Geopolitical Shifts

The Axis aggression in the 1930's was the last time international opinion allowed unprovoked, conquest-driven attacks of one nation upon another. Sure, there was the League of Nations, which condemned aggression. But until the British declaration of war on Germany, those condemnations were not backed by any credible will to enforce the peace.

Nowadays it is unthinkable that such acts of conquest would not meet with swift opposition from the entire world, and that American forces would not, with allies, intervene to stop the aggression. Yes, attempts at conquest were made, for example in Korea, Vietnam, and Kuwait. And sometimes they succeeded. But the first instinct of free nations is to throw their full weight into the ring on the side of right, defending against those in the wrong.

This is because the free world took to heart the lesson of Munich: that appeasement doesn't work and aggressive dictators need to be confronted. Churchill tried to tell this to the world before it was too late. Ultimately, his country recognized his wisdom the hard way. When it did, he was chosen to lead it to victory.

Imagine a parallel universe: Winston Churchill voted out of office in the middle of the war.

Sure, his successor carried on to lead the British forces, along with their allies, to victory. But the voters, in their haste, sent a message of weakness to the world: that they weren't quite sure they should have gotten involved in all this to begin with. In effect, they squandered and destroyed the opportunity to permanently alter the geopolitical landscape so that aggression of that nature could never happen again.

George W. Bush isn't the visionary Winston Churchill was. He did not foresee a terrorist threat of this magnitude. He promised a foreign policy of "humility", eschewing nation-building. He did not at the time know the doctrine necessary to win against our enemy. But he is the man that is leading the fight now, and that fight is against more than the singular organization that attacked us on that singular day. It is against every state sponsor of terrorism, every totalitarian government, every irresponsible proliferator of terrible weapons.

This election is a referendum on whether that is the right fight. We have the opportunity to, by reaffirming that policy, again permanently alter the geopolitical landscape just as the defeat of Axis aggression did 60 years ago. The world will know that the American people will from here on out demand responsibility from all states, not just regarding direct military conquest, but also regarding support for terrorism, totalitarianism, and proliferation, the three forces which combine to threaten our civilization.

If we fail to reelect George Bush, John Kerry will see through our existing engagements, but he will not have the mandate to continue that doctrine. We will be destroying this one-time opportunity to send a message which would, once again, permanently alter the geopolitical landscape for the better, by limiting the options available to civilization's enemies.

Four Letter Words

I was rooting for Howard Dean to get the Democratic nomination. Not because I'd vote for him, and not because I think Bush would easily beat him either, but simply because Howard Dean was willing to talk about whether the U.S.'s bold new doctrine is correct. Our country could have had a substantive debate.

I disagree with Pat Buchanan just as much, but at least he can say what he believes without apology. His recent post on Hardblogger is quite an eloquent condemnation of what we've watched on TV the last several days:

In some ways, this is a good thing. It is a recognition by the Democratic Party leadership that there is popular support for Bush's basic view of the War on Terrorism: that it must be a broad operation targeting all terrorist states.

But in another respect, it is a tragedy that our country cannot be permitted to have a real debate about the defining issue of our time.

Gee

Gee, who do you think they're rooting for?

Even-handed is bad enough

France says Arafat should be able to travel freely:

Yet Sharon is not welcome in Paris:

Our Enemy

Perhaps the best-put explanation of why we cannot confine our offensives to Al Qaeda alone:

(From David Warren, via Belmont Club)

Gay Marriage and Subjective vs. Objective Equality

Andrew Sullivan has argued that a ban on gay marriage is discriminatory because it prevents gay people from marrying, while allowing straight people to do so. Steven Den Beste disagrees. While Steven also believes gay marriage should be legal, he takes exception to Andrew's particular justification. Steven draws a distinction between objective equality and subjective equality.

He goes on to argue that objectively, gay people and straight people have the same rights, since both have the right to marry someone of the opposite gender, and so he says that Andrew's statement that opponents of gay marriage oppose the civil rights of gay people is to beg the question of whether the right to marry a person of the same gender is a civil right to begin with.

I think Steven has missed a subtle point, however. Objectively, a ban on gay marriage is discriminatory. It's gender discrimination! Men are only allowed to marry women. Women are only allowed to marry men. This means that men are denied a right that all women have (the right to marry men), and women are denied a right that all men have (the right to marry women).

Subjectively, of course, only gay people are affected by this. But it's still objectively discriminatory, gender-wise.

UPDATE 7/18/04 6:50 PM: Steven has updated his post to respond to my point, also made by many others including Brian O'Connell:


But this is exactly the definition of "separate but equal" treatment! As long as the 14th amendment can be interpreted as prohibiting this sort of "separate but equal" treatment (as it should be), then I don't know how you can say "separate but equal" discrimination is not discriminatory.

UPDATE 7/19/04 4:11 PM: Let me cut through the confusion by asking a simple question (as I do in the comments): suppose it was legally mandated that black people could only marry white people, and white people could only marry black people. Would that be discriminatory, or not?

Best Toilet Ever

Best Toilet Ever

On second thought...

I recently said I switched my voter registration from Libertarian to Republican. But this is giving me second thoughts:

Switched

Had to register a change of address so I can vote in November. I took the opportunity to change my registration from Libertarian to Republican.

The Libertarian Party's right on most issues. It's just that when they're wrong, they're horribly and disastrously wrong.

Is John Kerry a dangerous pick?

In my previous post, I introduced the concept of idea futures exchanges. Now I want to talk about a particularly interesting application of those exchanges: measuring correlation between two events.

Let me explain what I mean. Say Event A has a probability of 50%, and Event B has a probability of 10%. If the two events are totally uncorellated, you'd expect the odds that both Event A and Event B will happen to be 50% x 10% = 5%. Suppose you want to measure whether the two events are in fact correlated. You create a contract, C, which pays out on the condition that both A and B pay out.

However, say C actually ended up trading at $0.09, rather than the expected $0.05. You can draw a probability table thusly:

	A	Not A
B	9%	1%
Not B	41%	49%

Notice the A column adds up to 50%, the B row adds up to 10%, and the topleft cell, which corresponds to events A and B coming true, has a value of 9%, or the price of C.

What does this table tell us? Well, it tells us that of the circumstances where A comes true, B comes true 9/50 = 18% of the time. Of the circumstanes where A does not come true, B only happens 1/50 = 2% of the time. Thus, the result of A is an extremely strong predictor of whether B will also happen.

This has an implication for public policy decisions. If you have two contracts, one which corresponds to an important decision, like, say, if the U.S. reelects Bush in 2004 (Bush04), and another which corresponds to a very undesirable event, such as a nuclear attack on U.S. soil by the year 2010 (NukeUS), you might be interested in whether there is any correlation between the two events.

Someone has created a contract to determine just that: GBNuke, which pays out if George Bush is reelected and the U.S. is not nuked by 2010.¹ The current market prices are as follows:

Bush04: 53
NukeUS: 21
GBNuke (Bush04 and not NukeUS): 48

That gives us the following probability table:

	Bush04	Not Bush04
NukeUS	5%	16%
Not NukeUS	48%	31%

In other words, the odds of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil are 5 / 53 = 9.4% if Bush is elected, and 16 / 47 = 34.0% if Bush is not elected, meaning that the U.S. is over three times as likely to be nuked by 2010 if Kerry is elected than if Bush is reelected.

A poster on the Foresight Exchange's discussion list recently observed this anomaly, and a very interesting discussion ensued, where various theories were floated to explain it.²

There are several facts to keep in mind when looking at this data. The first is that the usual distortions may apply, in particular the fact that NukeUS and GBNuke are both contracts which may not expire for up to five and a half years, so their prices may be somewhat detached from their actual probabilities as a result.³ Also, the unpredictable nature of nuclear terrorism makes it very difficult to discern accurate probability estimates, never mind determining accurate estimates of correlation between nuclear terrorism and the odds of particular election results.

Nevertheless, if we assume the prices reflect actual probabilities, there is still the very important question of causality. In other words, just because election of John Kerry is correlated with a higher chance of nuclear terrorism, that doesn't mean that it would cause that higher chance. Logically, it is possible that there is some underlying circumstance or set of circumstances which has a causal affect on both Bush04 and NukeUS.

One such circumstance could be the mindset of the American people. In other words, it could be that an election of John Kerry could signify a more complacent attitude toward terrorism. Then, the election of Kerry per se might not directly increase the odds of a nuclear attack, but it might be symptomatic of an overall attitude by America which would make nuclear terrorism more likely.

A contrary explanation could be that Kerry is perceived by the American people as better at fighting terrorism, and if nuclear terrorism is a real possibility, the American people are going to elect Kerry. On the other hand, if nuclear terrorism is not a real possibility, voters will concentrate on what they perceive as more important issues such as the economy, and vote for Bush. But this contradicts opinion polls which give Bush more confidence in waging the War on Terrorism, and put him behind on issues such as the economy.

There are many other possible ways to interpret these numbers, many of which are talked about in the discusson thread I mentioned earlier. It is quite interesting to note how very few of the posters can actually bring themselves to interpret these numbers favorably for Bush! Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Bush is in bed with Saudi royals, discouraging Arab terrorists from waging war on the U.S.! Uh huh...

My personal theory is that electing Kerry would cause quite an increase in America's vulnerability, because I support Bush's view of the War on Terrorism and I don't think Kerry would provide the leadership necessary to wage the war correctly, broadly targeting all terrorist organizations and their state sponsors. I also think there is something to the theory of complacency: i.e., a vote for Kerry signals that the American people are tired of worrying about terrorism, and that this will have effects in anti-terrorism policy beyond simply the election of Kerry.

Idea Futures Exchanges

There's an interesting and novel concept called an idea futures exchange. It works just like a stock or commodities exchange, in that market prices are set by a two-sided auction of bids and asks. The difference is that, instead of trading shares of a company, or quantities of a good, you're buying contracts which become worth something if a predefined event happens. So, for example, if you believe that George Bush is going to be reelected, you could currently purchase shares of such a contract at $0.53, and if he is in fact reelected in November, the shares become worth $1.00.

At first glance this may look like a glorified form of gambling. But because of the significance of the events being traded, these markets actually provide a very valuable service: information. They aggregate all the knowledge contained by their traders, and set prices that correspond, roughly, with the perceived probability of the event actually happening. Thus, the market currently believes that George Bush has 53% odds of being reelected.

Now, there are some caveats. Besides the fact that the market could be plain wrong in its odds estimation, there are also reasons why the market price wouldn't be the same as the market's perceived odds. There are several factors which could cause this.

One of them is risk management: a good analogy to this phenomenon is insurance. Insurance companies lose money when their customers suffer setbacks such as injury or property damage. Like any profitable business, they make money because they charge enough in premiums so that their revenues exceed their expected payouts. This means that, from a customer's point of view, you can expect that, over your lifetime, buying insurance will probably not pay off. Yet, most people buy insurance, as they should, because the value of insurance in risk protection far outweighs the cost. So, in the case of an idea futures market, a particular contract may have what's called hedge value. If investors perceive the election of George Bush to be bad for the economy, they might buy shares of George Bush as insurance, at prices higher than the actual odds of him being reelected. Similarly, if they think George Bush would be good for the economy, then the market price of Bush's reelection will be below the actual odds. It can be hard to separate this effect from the market price, to derive the implied probability.

Another factor is contract expiration date. Currently, you can purchase a five-year U.S. treasury bond (considered one of the safest investments possible), at a rate which would give you a virtually guaranteed return of 3.64% per year, which would compound to a 19.57% return over five years. The only way you would not receive this return is if the U.S. Government defaults on its loans, and if it does that, you've got bigger problems to worry about. Therefore, no one will pay more than $0.84 ($1.00 / 1.1957), today, to receive $1.00 in five years. In other words, even an idea futures contract which is guaranteed to be worth something in five years, will trade at a sharp discount today. Unlike the first factor, however, this effect can be relatively easily separated from the market price, because U.S. treasury bonds serve as a base of reference.

Despite these and other caveats, the market price of an idea futures contract still provides a very valuable, and usually very accurate odds prediction of the underlying event it is based on. And, as I said, though the market is sometimes just plain wrong about the odds, it rewards traders who can detect this and drive the price in the correct direction, so over time the market improves its predictive ability by giving the best traders more money to trade in the market, and therefore to effect the prices.

I trade on three idea futures exchanges. The first, the Foresight Exchange, uses fake money. The other two, the Iowa Electronic Markets, as well as Intrade, involve real cash, and I've done fairly well, turning a $250 initial investment into $780, in about seven months.

Kerry/Edwards

More humor via InstaPundit.

Apartheid Wall?

Arab Israelis know what's up.

Rock, Paper, Saddam

This is pretty damn funny. (via Iraq the Model)