Primary season

Just a quick rant: why on earth do we need to be doing this so early? We still have 9 months to the general election, heck 6 months before the conventions. Why don't the states all make a deal: Iowa and New Hampshire can keep their "first" status (as illogical as it is to do so, but it seems to give them a sense of purpose that they otherwise lack) but everybody shift their primaries/caucuses to May or June.

A common mistake

There is an initiative that will likely be on the ballot here in Washington State in November to provide "death with dignity" (if you support the measure, "assisted suicide" if you don't) rights to terminally ill patients.

While I personally support the idea that government should not prevent anybody of sound mind from deciding to end their life, my purpose in this post is not to discuss the initiative specifically but rather to observe what I believe is a very common error in how people think about such issues, particularly when one is against a particular practice.

In particular, when dealing with something that we find repugnant, our inclination is to support things that ban it. After all, if it's bad we want people to do less of it, and banning it will reduce that. I think that this is a non-sequitur. We should not confuse the desire for a behavior to diminish with a justification for it being illegal. There may be justification for banning the practice, but it must come from other sources.

I happen to support the right to assisted suicide, so I will pick an example of things that I oppose to illustrate my point. Smoking comes to mind. Ideally, nobody would smoke. But banning smoking is probably the least effective - and most freedom-reducing - mechanism for achieving this result. And frankly, it's not government's business to ban smoking just for being a bad idea. Alas, the legitimate reasons to ban smoking all derive from other principles, such as protecting one person from harming another (hence the bans in public places). But smoking is still legal in private locations - as it should be - because there is no legitimate reason for banning people from making decisions like this when they are not hurting others in the process, even if the decision is demonstrably stupid. (Heck, if "demonstrably stupid decisions" were sufficient to justify a ban, then Britney Spears should be locked up for life).

I do not believe that it is a goal of government to protect us from ourselves.

When checks and balances fail

Here's a disturbing piece highlighted by Slashdot yesterday. Basically says that our intelligence agencies would like the ability and authorization to more or less snoop on anything electronic anytime.

This (fortunately) appears to still be proposal rather than policy, but it's chilling. What I find particularly disturbing about this is the slippery-slope aspect. I am generally not a subscriber to slippery-slope theories (which usually involve conspiracy theories and border on the paranoid - just ask any gun owner about new firearm regulations), but I think there is a systemic reason why slippery-slope applies here.

The problem here is that there is no check on the degree to which the agencies charged with our safety may go, other than their own good judgment and budget. They are tasked with preventing another terrorist attack (among other jobs), and given the choice between doing anything and everything (whether constructive or merely cosmetic), or trying to be "reasonable" and thus failing to cover any potential security hole, they will go for former. After all, if a terrorist attacks and there was something - however minor or obscure - that they didn't do, they will have failed, but if they do more than is necessary or even reasonable and there is no attack, then they are perceived to have done their jobs.

Of course, they humans who are just responding to the incentives that we have placed before them, but the net result is that we are taking away basic freedoms and economic growth in exchange for "security" that is quite often strictly cosmetic. My favorite example here is the billions of dollars we are spending to have people remove their shoes at airports. This may well weed out the amateurs, but it is far too effort on the 99.9% of the people who pose no threat, and as such it is diverting money and attention from less visible but more productive approaches like better intelligence. And traveling to the US has become so inconvenient for foreigners that tourism is down dramatically - so we're hurting our own economy in the pursuit of the illusion of security.

Which brings me to the story mentioned above. I'm all for giving our government more ability to protect us, and I believe that better intelligence is key to that. But I have two conditions on this. First, per my rant above, it must actually be effective, which all too often it is not. But secondly, it must not destroy the very freedom that we strive to protect. As awful as terrorism is, I think it would be far better to have a free, open, and vibrant society that suffers the periodic tragedy of a terrorist attack, than to have a suspicious, burdened, invasive society even if that society did not have to suffer terrorism (though I doubt such a trade off truly exists).

Somehow we treat terrorism as "different" and have a zero-tolerance for it where we have a non-zero tolerance for other evils in our midst. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should tolerate terrorism, or in any way excusing it. But if we reacted to terrorism the way we react to other crimes, we'd have roadblocks and strip searches and x-rays of every car entering Manhattan because - shocking! - there are murders committed there. We don't "tolerate" murder, but we don't let the existence of it drive every aspect of our lives either - we take reasonable precautions and reasonable risks, and do what we can to drive the murder rate as low as we can.

But with terrorism, it seems there is no rationality about limits on what we will do to drive it to absolute zero, even though I believe (regrettably) that zero is an unattainable goal.

I wonder how long it will be before they decide that in the interest of aviation safety that they ban all people from travelling by air.

Zimbabwe

One of the things I was particularly struck by while traveling in South Africa a few weeks ago was the contrast between it and its neighbor Zimbabwe. OK, I admit that it's hard not to see the contrast. And I admit that observing that Zimbabwe is an unmitigated tragedy (or that it didn't have to be) makes "stating the obvious" a rather startling demonstration of understatement. And I think the blame for all of Zimbabwe's many problems rests squarely upon Mugabe.

It's interesting that even in South Africa people I met shake their heads when speaking of Zimbabwe and Mugabe. I think they see what could have happened in their country. I think that Rhodesia (I'm using that name deliberately) and South Africa represent a rarity in political systems: a controlled experiment. Here were two countries with very similar initial conditions - white rule, strong self-reliant/self-sustaining economies (at least by African standards), and the potential for great wealth. Yet they had dramatically different outcomes for what can only be attributed to political strategies. South Africa sought reconciliation; Zimbabwe, retribution.

I can understand the desire for wealth redistribution, and how that can lead to a desire for land transfer. (I don't believe that forced redistribution is in fact morally justifiable; I am just saying that I can see why people might believe it to be so.) But sadly, people often confuse what is morally justifiable with what actually will achieve the desired ends. In the case of Zimbabwe, while chasing the goal of wealth redistribution (putting aside the fact that it was far more about cronyism than righting past wrongs), they ended up merely performing wealth destruction. Giving a productive farm to people who have no experience farming simply results in an un-productive farm; the moral arguments behind the action simply are not relevant.

If only Mugabe's motives were pure then perhaps he could be forgiven for the tactical missteps, but he has only compounded the tragedy because he has not demonstrated that he has the people's interests at heart.

He is quite simply and evil man, and he has singlehandedly destroyed a jewel of a country.

A quick rant about smokers in cars

Want to lose money quickly? Next time you are driving behind a car with a driver that is smoking, bet your passenger that the ashes from cigarette as it burns, and the resulting butt, will stay in the car. You'll lose every time.

It's still a (mostly) free country (despite the best attempts of the security-obsessed among our "leaders", but that's another rant), so I'm not advocating a ban on smoking while driving or other various stupid activities in which you wish to behave that don't directly impact my safety.

But I would ask my fellow citizens who choose to smoke and drive the following questions:

1. I notice that you inevitably have the window down to let the smoke out, even on rainy or cold days. If you can't stand the smoke in your car, isn't that a clue that you should quit?
2. Why do you think that the world is your ashtray? You have one in your car, why can't you use it?
   
3. You're generally a law-abiding citizen. Why do you think it's OK to toss your butt out the window? At best, it's littering, but it's not unusual for forest fires to start this way either.

No irony here

The EPA denied California's request for a waiver that would allow it (and several other states, including Washington, which follow California's lead) to set its own emissions standards. This despite the EPAs own lawyers advising that if California sued, it would likely win.

President Bush defended the EPA saying that this is a matter of federal jurisdiction, while governors such as Washington's Gregoire (a Democrat) made a state's rights argument in favor of California's waiver application.

So we have a staunchly conservative president asserting federal rights and a bunch of Democratic (and centrist Republican) governors asserting state's rights. Did I miss something or hasn't it always been a conservative hallmark to favor state's rights and a liberal hallmark to favor strong federal power?

TSA: I can't say I'm surprised.

There's a news report out today about a study that says that there is no evidence that the TSA's screening procedures actually provide any additional security. My favorite quote from this is the fact that the TSA defended itself by citing the number of prohibited items that they've confiscated - completely ignoring the question of whether or not prohibiting the item enhances safety.

My biggest complaint with the TSA isn't the annoyance of it all (although I do complain about that.) My biggest complaint is that the illusion of providing security can be more dangerous than no security, and can distract resources from providing actual security, and I think that the airport security process provides nothing more than that illusion of security.

Not surprisingly, the public is not a big fan of the TSA.

Telecommunication immunity

I have to say that I can't find anything other than a completely cynical explanation for why congress would even consider granting immunity to the telephone companies who cooperated with the NSA on warrantless wiretaps (for which they are getting sued).

To me, it is really quite simple. What the cooperating companies did was either illegal or it wasn't. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know for sure which side of the line what they did fell on. But it doesn't matter. If it wasn't illegal, then they don't need immunity. If it was illegal, then they shouldn't be granted immunity.

I suppose there's also a middle ground, whereby what they did wasn't illegal but was a violation of their policies with their customers (i.e., not a criminal offense but a potential civil liability). Even here, if they promise something and then break that promise - even if its for good reasons - they should not have immunity; those reasons - if in fact "good" - can and should mitigate any penalties, but they shouldn't prevent any attempt to claim damage.

I'm unfortunately left to conclude that there are only cynical explanations for the attempt to grant immunity here. For shame.

Death penalty

The death penalty has been in the news again lately, focused largely around the question of whether or not lethal injection is unconstitutionally "cruel and unusual" punishment.

On that particular question, I'd say "hardly." Folks get shots every day, it's not that big a deal. It has a bit of pain, sure, and I suppose there's certainly some mental anguish on the part of the condemned that the moment or two from injection to death are one's last. If either of these, though, meet the "cruel and unusual punishment" bar, then I can't imagine of any sort of punishment that doesn't.

Of course, this sideshow discussion ignores the larger moral/constitutional question of whether the death penalty itself meets that bar. I'd have to say that no, I don't think it does, when correctly applied. (Ahh, but there's the rub.) Mass murderer who has confessed? Seems perfectly reasonable. Parking violator? Seems a tad excessive. Good, so that's clean, but what about the 98.3% of all other criminals on death row fall somewhere in between those two extremes? That's, of course, a judgment call and what juries/judges are for.

Even though I have no a-priori opposition to the death penalty from a moral point of view, I've found that it's problematic from a pragmatic point of view. It all boils down to the basic question of whether or not the death penalty is doing what it is supposed to do, which is to (a) deter the most abhorrent crimes, (b) punish those who commit them, and (c) never ever punish an innocent person. The evidence for (b) is pretty strong; the evidence for (a) is weaker, and (c) is getting weaker every day. And given other claims that it's more expensive (due to appeals and so forth) to execute someone than to lock them up forever, the pragmatic qualities of the death penalty as applied today (a key qualifier!) look weaker.

A common argument in favor of the death penalty is that nobody has ever been proved to have been incorrectly executed. I think that's a bit of a false argument: once someone is dead, few people have the means or the standing to pursue post-mortem appeals, useful evidence is rare, and survivors generally want to move on.

But over the past few years, we have seen quite a few death-row inmates freed using DNA evidence, something that wasn't even available 20 years ago. If a measurable percentage of all current death-row inmates today are guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt until DNA proves otherwise, then one must assume that similar convicts 20+ years ago would have been executed. And there's no reason to think that the percentage of convicts who are actually innocent would vary much over time. Therefore, the overwhelming likelihood is that we have, in fact, executed innocent people.

I think the proscription against executing the innocent is so strong that we should certainly halt any execution where there is a possibility that DNA or other new techniques have a possibility of proving innocence.

But other than beefing up safeguards to ensure that the guilty truly are guilty - not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond a shadow of a doubt - I don't have a moral issue with the death penalty. If we can fix the system to where there is no risk of innocents being executed, then the decision of whether or not to keep the death penalty really should be dictated by whether it is cost effective (vs. life in prison) and actually achieves its deterrent goals.

Is a hate crime a distinct crime?

News today that congress is trying to tie hate crime legislation to the must-pass defense spending bill. Bush is threatening an unprecedented veto, it will be interesting to see if he actually does it.

What intrigued me about this story was not the surface story about the relevance of hate-crime legislation in a defense bill, or the political fight or model for passing this. Rather, it was this nugget in the story:

But Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas maintained the measure has nothing to do with the defense authorization bill. He argued that crimes should not be considered more or less despicable because of the victim's identity.

"All crimes of violence are crimes of hate," said Cornyn, a strong ally of the White House. "All ought to be judged according to the same criteria. All ought to be subject to the same range of punishments, given to juries able to convict people based on evidence produced in court (and) not based on (the) politically correct notion that some crimes are more heinous than others."

What is interesting about this statement is that it essentially argues that there is no such thing as "terrorism," that Sept. 11 was nothing more or less than a mass murder, a sort of Green River Killer on steroids.

The fact is that we do distinguish motive (pre-meditated crimes are considered more serious than heat-of-the-moment crimes) and, yes, victim as well. Fortunately, nobody is arguing that genocide is somehow distinct from - and more evil than - simply killing random people.

I've seen the argument before that "hate crimes" are problematic because, by weighing the intent/motivation, or the identity of the victim, they essentially criminalize thought. This is a pretty strong and compelling argument, but it doesn't quite pass muster for me for a pretty simple reason. Terrorism or hate crimes are distinct from the crime of the underlying act precisely because they carry a chilling message beyond the basic act. Burning a shed in a random person's yard is arson; burning a cross is clearly something more menacing to society, yet by Cornyn's argument, it is also simply arson.

Maybe I'm actually making Cornyn's point. Burning the cross is actually two distinct crimes: it's the underlying crime of arson, with an additional crime of harassment/intimidation (or whatever is the technical legal issue). But Cornyn seems to ignore the latter point.

When Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in Wyoming 9 years ago (the inspiration for the bill), it wasn't a random petty crime; it sent an intimidating message of fear among a population of people simply for being who they were. Whether you treat it as a distinct crime or as an attribute of the crime - is to miss the big picture entirely.

Good commentary on piracy and digital media

Good blog today on CNet about NBC/Universal's recent cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face move in cutting off their contract with Apple's iTunes. If people want your product and you're not making it available to them in a way that they can use and at a reasonable price, you shouldn't be surprised that you suffer piracy. That's not a justification for piracy at all - merely an explanation. Big media wants high prices and stringent controls; the market says "nope, not gonna happen." Big media needs to become much more customer-centric.

The Elephant and the Dragon

Late blog post, but a few weeks back I read The Elephant and The Dragon, a book about the rise of China and India and their differences by Robyn Meredith. I had seen her speak in Los Angeles in April; she plugged her book and it sounded quite interesting. Indeed it was - if you like Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" then this book is definitely in the same vein, providing more historical/cultural context for Friedman's thesis with a little less focus on the "what's happening now."

The book is a quick read and perhaps a bit superficial (especially if you've read Friedman's works), but - partly due to its currency - nevertheless an enlightening comparison and contrasting of the quite different tracks that these two Asian Giants have taken.

Bush is finally comparing Iraq to Vietnam

But I think he's missing the point. He frames Vietnam as a war that we abandoned too early - and points to a lot of badness that happened subsequently (Khmer Rouge, re-education camps, etc.) as the result of our withdrawal.

What this misses is the exact same lesson that I believe he is missing in Iraq today: that you can have all the military success in the world, but having great success on a military mission that is fundamentally a political/social problem is like trying to keep your house dry by building the most incredible concrete foundation while ignoring the leaky roof above. You need the dry foundation for sure, but without the roof you're kinda wasting your time.

As far as I can tell, our military is doing a very good job of providing security, given the job we're asking them to do. The problem, however, is that our floundering on healing of ethnic divisions is counterproductive to the job we're asking the military to do. Every day that the divisions are not addressed leads to more people growing frustrated and taking up extremist roles. This is not "blaming America", but merely pointing out that we haven't fixed the leaky roof so we should hardly be surprised that the watertight basement is nevertheless filling with water.

Scary potential overreaching power grab

I've posted here a number of times about how the recording industry just doesn't get it with regard to DRM (Digital Rights Management) and copyright. While in no way condoning copyright violation or abuse, I feel quite strongly that the industry is usually its own worst enemy.

Today I saw news that the industry may consider sharing of music on one's home network to be a violation of their rights. Fortunately, this is still in the "novel theory" category, but it is a chilling point of view to advocate.

I personally have a rather large (5000+) collection of songs ripped from CDs (perfectly legal - for now, at least!) to my hard drives throughout my house. How often do I listen to a CD? Never anymore. How often do I listen to music from whichever hard drive is closest to me? Quite frequently. It's not worth the inconvenience of searching for the disc and moving it to the nearest player in order to play it.

Yet somehow, the (potential) argument being made by copyright holders is that somehow it is perfectly legal for me to listen to music in any room of my house if I go through a bunch of hassle-inducing steps to move the CD from room to room. But if I don't go through the physical motions, somehow that provides the basis for a copyright violation. How does the physical medium possibly change the copyright status of my listening to music? I've legally purchased the CD, which means I've legally purchased the right to listen to the music therein. I could certainly run speakers throughout my house, so why is playing it through arbitrary speakers in my house OK while playing it through a network to another computer which then puts it on speakers in my house somehow crossing the line? (To clarify above: I play from one of two sources; I keep two sources so that one is a backup of the other).

Here I am, playing by the industry's rules (i.e., actually BUYING the CDs!), and now they're saying they'd like to criminalize my behavior. If that isn't hating one's customers, I don't know what is.

Heck, now I'm seeing news stories of ASCAP demanding that restaurants and others pay royalties for playing copyrighted songs. This makes sense to me when the restaurant plays a CD (that's a public performance, not a personal use) or hires a band that plays covers (although in that case, shouldn't the musicians pay?), but they're also going after restaurants that have a TV or Radio playing. Maybe I'm missing something, but didn't the TV/Radio station already pay for the right to broadcast to an unlimited # of people? And if so, isn't making the restaurant pay "double dipping"?

Executive Privilege out of control

Congress wants Harriet Miers and others to testify about the firings last year of US attorneys that may have been politically motivated. Bush has claimed executive privilege and directed Ms. Miers not to testify, and she herself has declined to so much as show up for the hearings. And if Congress holds her in criminal contempt for doing so, they can only enforce that by going through the US attorneys, who work for Bush, who clearly will not pursue the matter. Check-mate.

Wow.

A few things have become painfully clear to me here:

• Ms. Miers should indeed be held in contempt. The claim of executive privilege may or may not apply here, but either way that's no excuse for ignoring a congressional subpoena. If you get a subpoena, you show up, even if all you do is repeat "I'm sorry, I cannot answer that due to (fifth amendment, executive privilege, I'm washing my hair, etc.)" all day. If your claim of executive privilege is valid, then you've fulfilled your duty.
• As for the application of executive privilege: I am too much of an amateur to judge that, but if there is a suspicion of illegal activity (and political considerations in hiring/firing of career attorneys or political pressure that has the effect of interfering with day-to-day duties of attorneys would be illegal if true), my understanding is that privilege does not in fact apply.
  
• If she is held in contempt and Bush sits on the contempt charge, then he should be impeached for obstruction of justice. This is a serious statement I'm making, but he's doing an end-run around the careful system of checks and balances. At this point, it is not about executive privilege, it's about responding to congressional subpoenas, and nobody should be above the law on this point, even if they are a friend of the president.
• President Bush is clearly making a strong statement that he believes that executive privilege applies to anything to which he declares that it applies, and that such declarations are not subject to any sort of challenge or review by anyone but himself. This a remarkable statement - privilege may or may not be as broad as he claims, but the notion that it is essentially unquestionable is quite disturbing and I have a strong hunch that the judiciary might take a different view of this. Normally, I'd think that such an accusation against the president is overly harsh and cynical, but after the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity and the commutation of Lewis Libby's sentence, there is a pretty strong pattern of not accepting oversight within this White House.
  

I am going to be writing a bigger check to the ACLU than I wrote last year.

UAW/Detroit labor negotiations

So it seems that the UAW is beginning its bargaining with the Big 3, hoping to walk the fine line between acknowledging that they have to help a troubled industry, and avoiding the face-loss of giving up any benefits.

Seems to me that this is rooted in an unfortunately too-typical short-sighted/self-defeating tactic of winning the battle at the expense of losing the war. If the unions preserve benefits packages that are uncompetitive, they may keep benefits or jobs in the short term, but they will ultimately find themselves with fewer members overall as the industry downsizes.

I suppose I should be up-front here about my general anti-union bias: while I support unionization and the right to collective bargaining, I feel that the vast majority of unions are net-negatives for their workers and for the unionized industries. They all-to-frequently foster an us-vs-them attitude within a company (as opposed to "our company vs. our competitors", which it should be), or a highly inefficient and unhealthy bureaucracy (the NEA and UAW are classic cases of this), or general impediments to innovation and nimbleness.

This time the UAW professes to understand the trouble that the Big-3 are facing. I would propose that the negotiators try to call this bluff. If in fact the union recognizes this, then they should be part of the solution. Instead of negotiating a contract that enshrines certain benefits or jobs, they should negotiate a performance-based contract. If the union improves productivity, provides more flexibility/nimbleness/innovation/quality, and otherwise meets lower costs-per-car or increase efficiency targets, then the automakers should actually promise them a net INCREASE in benefits than they currently receive. But if things remain the same or net efficiency decreases, then the union should see their benefits shrink accordingly.

The same should go for executive pay, frankly: although their performance is, in theory, already tied to performance by being so heavily weighted towards stock/stock-options, it is far too common for them to preserve compensation through other means even when the stock does poorly. If they're going to ask the UAW to have more skin in the game, then the executives should do likewise and truly and unambiguously tie their compensation to specific performance targets.

It's funny what can happen when people's interests become aligned.

Ahh, justice.

In case it got overshadowed by the Paris Hilton circus, I thought I'd highlight an example of our judicial system showing common sense, albeit far too late. Trouser guy lost.

The bad news: how did this ever make it to a trial?
The even scarier news: this guy (the plaintiff) is a judge in our legal system? Yikes!
The scarier still news: Paris is out of jail, which I fear means she'll be even more in the news.

When religion and career collide.

I came across this story a few days ago about doctors who are unwilling to provide medical services for which they have a moral objection. This is similar to other cases in the news lately about pharmacists who are unwilling to provide RU486 or even less broadly controversial things like birth control pills, or Muslim cab drivers who refuse to carry passengers who are carrying alcohol, or checkout clerks at Target who refuse to handle pork.

The common thread, of course, is the imperative of one's religion vs. the needs of one's employer or one's customer. My view, however, is that if your religion and the duties of the job collide, you should take another job.

This position is easiest to defend in the case of employees serving customer demands. Let's use McDonald's as an analogy. You don't hear cases of kosher Jews seeking employment at McDonalds but demanding to be exempted from handling non-kosher food. And I suspect that if such a case were to arise and a lawsuit ensue, it would be laughed out of court. Employers are required to make reasonable accommodations for their employees, but changing the fundamental business that they're in cannot be considered "reasonable."

Similarly, employees who patronize McDonalds would be aghast to order a cheeseburger and be dissuaded from doing so by a kosher or vegetarian server. This is essentially no different from the Target, taxi, or even pharmacy examples above.

Of course, one might note that a vegetarian or Jew is obviously free to leave McDonalds and open a vegetarian or Kosher restaurant, but there are two key differences that differentiate this from the examples above: (a) doing so is no longer contradictory to the stated goals of their employer, and (b) customers can clearly see the focus of the new offering and make an informed judgment whether to eat at the new restaurant or elsewhere.

This is where things get a bit tricky for the MD example with which I started this post. A doctor takes an oath to do no harm, and if one's view is that abortion is murder, then this is a judgment about crossing a medical line (doing harm) and hence it seems to me perfectly appropriate for the doctor refuse treatment or to refuse to make a referral. However, just as I wouldn't want a vegetarian to lecture me when I patronize a McDonalds, I think that the decision by a doctor to exercise this conscientious objection imposes on them a responsibility to inform patients up front of this fact so that the patient can make a decision whether or not to see that doctor, in much the same way that the kosher person can discover and patronize kosher restaurants.

Heck, faith healers and witch doctors are free to offer their services to anybody that chooses to utilize them, but obviously would label their services as such (and in fact, legally must not put forth as being licensed physicians).

Here's the rub, though: fast food is a pretty efficient free-market system. Customers weigh choices according to a variety of factors and make a decision, and providers compete for their business. Medicine, however, often does not operate according to these principles - especially emergency medicine. Insurance takes cost out of the equation for many, and when one is dealing with one's health much of the normal tradeoffs go out the window: you want the best treatment you can have. In an emergency, of course, such as the rape example cited above, there's no time to make a decision, and the doctor therefore is in quite a powerful position to not only treat the patient, but to also inappropriately impose their particular world view upon them, whether wittingly or not. After all, you wouldn't want to go to an emergency room after a car crash and be refused a much needed transfusion by a physician on religious grounds if you did not in fact share that religion. As a result, I have a very hard time supporting emergency room physicians who are unwilling to provide legal services requested by their patients.

If you're not willing to make the cheeseburger, don't work at McDonalds. If you're not willing to treat your patients or fill valid prescriptions, then you should clear your moral conscience by not working in emergency situations or in a pharmacy.

New Blokus Champion?

Tonight Parker saw our Blokus game and asked me to play it with him. At first I said no, it's a grown-up game, thinking that the rules were too hard, but he persisted and I relented and taught him how. The rules are actually pretty simple: you take turns putting down your color's tiles, your tiles have to touch corner-to-corner but cannot touch side-to-side; whoever has the fewest leftover tiles at the end wins. He picked up on the rules immediately, and even though we were both basically playing random pieces (there's a fair amount of strategy that you can/should employ), he almost beat me: I had 40 pieces left over, he had 41. Wow, Not bad.

Another great Fareed article

I've long been a fan of Fareed Zakaria's approach to world events, but I thought that this week's Newsweek cover story was exceptional.

Two quotes in particular, I think, are worth highlighting:

If one day bombs do go off, we must ensure that they cause as little disruption—economic, social, political—as possible. This would deprive the terrorist of his main objective. If we are not terrorized, then in a crucial sense we have defeated terrorism.

I've been railing for a while about the stupidity and futility of our approach to security, particularly at the TSA line at airports. Our approach is reactive and focuses on the symptoms, and in a quest for perfect safety against terrorism has imposed incredible costs for a gain in perceived rather than actual security. Banning liquids on airplanes simply does nothing serious for security - it presumes that the bad guys are not clever enough to think up ways around it, or other ways to attack. (For this reason, I've taken to declaring that I'm traveling with 6-8 pints of blood and asking if I need to drain it into 3oz bottles in a clear plastic bag.)

Such overreactions are precisely what Osama bin Laden has been hoping for. In a videotaped message in 2004, bin Laden explained his strategy with astonishing frankness. He termed it "provoke and bait": "All we have to do is send two mujahedin ... [and] raise a piece of cloth on which is written 'Al Qaeda' in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses." His point has been well understood by ragtag terror groups across the world. With no apparent communication, collaboration or further guidance from bin Laden, small outfits from Southeast Asia to North Africa to Europe now announce that they are part of Al Qaeda, and so inflate their own importance, bring global attention to their cause and—of course—get America to come racing out to fight them.

More successful manipulation of us by the bad guys. Why can't we recognize that we're being played?