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From Photo Albums to Digital Asset Management

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

If you asked someone ten years ago if their house was on fire or about to be washed away in a flood what objects they would try to save, old photographs would have been high on most people’s lists. Clothing, furniture, televisions, or kitchen items can all generally be replaced. Photographs of children, vacations, or deceased relatives represent memories that cannot be recaptured. Nonetheless, most people were not particularly careful about these precious artifacts. The more organized among us would put together albums. Many simply dump photographs into shoeboxes comforted by the vague promise that those pictures would be organized at some indefinite point in the future. Photos were not usually lost to disasters, but many times photographs would pass on to children who could no longer identify the people in the photographs or even vaguely when the photographs were taken.

I purchased my first digital camera in 2000. Several consequences of the new technology were clear. It was much easier to organize digital photos. They were inherently time-tagged, if you remembered to set the clock on your camera. Digital photos can now also be tagged with metadata including geographical location and the name of the persons included. The embedded information also allows digital photos to be rapidly searched and sorted into different albums.

However, in an key sense digital photos are more fragile. The disks they occupy can of course suffer, like traditional physical photographs, from fire, flood or other disasters, but are additionally vulnerable to mechanical disk failures or the inability to read outmoded media. This vulnerability is partially offset by the ease with which digital data can be duplicated.

It is not clear that most people recognize the vulnerability of digital information and are taking appropriate back up precautions. I am fearful that there will be many families who will loose irreplaceable photos until a culture of digital data backup is fully adopted.

In 2000, there were many fewer options for backing up data. My first strategy was to copy my data, mostly photos, to CDs or DVDs. I made two full backups every six months. One, I kept home for easy access, and another at work in case there were some disaster at home. There are clearly a few problems with this approach. First, it requires more discipline than most busy people are willing to commit to. In addition, even a 4 GByte DvD is quickly filled, and backups begin to require many multiple disks. It is also possible to loose data saved between backups.

The second version of my backup strategy was a hybrid. I purchased an account on fotki.com ($35/year) which would allows me to upload an unlimited quantity of picture files. After each photo session, I uploaded the files there. Note only could I retrieve the files in bulk using ftp, but I could allow friends and relatives to view the images on line. Other files, tax records and the like I continued to backup on DvDs.

Last summer I implemented a more modern backup system. The new system was coincident with my switch from a Windows PC to a Mac. The Mac comes with a backup utility called “Time Machine.” I connected an external USB drive to my iMac, and Time Machine provided a complete backup continuously. The term “Time Machine” refers to the fact that, depending on the size of the disk, different, older versions of the same file could be retrieved. This would come in handy if one modifies a file and later thinks better of it.

Even with the convenience of this local backup, it was still important to maintain an off-site backup. If one has an upload bandwidth of better than 1 Mbit/s, there are several choices to do this automatically in the “cloud.” The three I examined were Carbonite, Mozy, and Backblaze. All provide roughly the same functionality: unlimited backup for a monthly fee of about $5 for each computer. All allowed encryption for privacy. I ended up choosing Backblaze primarily because it allowed backup of cross mounted (not network attached) disks.

Unfortunately, this fall I had an opportunity to test the efficacy of this backup strategy. My wife and I returned home one evening to discover that our house had been broken into. Among other items, my iMac was stolen. I was relieved that I was backed up on line so that no data were lost. However, closer examination showed that the thieves had left (through more oversight than kindness) the external hard disk I had used for back.

After we were certain that we would be reimbursed from the insurance company, we purchased a new iMac. The question was how to perform the recovery. The old iMac was running OS-X 10.5 (Leopard), while the newly purchased one came with OS-X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). How would Time Machine deal with the recovery?

The people at the Apple Store told me that the retrieval process would not write over newer files, so by inference the newer operating system would not be overwritten in the recovery process. It was worth a try. After all I could always rebuild the new system.

I attached the USB backup drive to the new iMac. At the initial bootup, I responded to a few questions and the system asked if I wanted to recover data from a Time Machine backup. I clicked “yes” after a few moments the computer informed me that the recovery would take 48 minutes. I went to eat dinner.

When I returned and logged in, I had my old system: the same applications and the same settings, even the same wallpaper. Indeed it was so identical that I suspected that the old 10.5 version of the operating system had been over installed. However, the “About the Mac” menu item confirmed that the newer 10.6 operating system was installed. This was further confirmed by the fact that I had to upgrade a few minor applications to run on the new OS. In sum, I could not have had a better recovery experience from “Time Machine.”

I mention here an interesting side note. I checked with Backblaze and the last auto update had occurred at 5:30 pm on the day the computer was stolen. Hence, the robbery had occurred between that time and the time we arrived home a 9:00 pm.

Since the incident I have looked more carefully at the whole concept of Digital Asset Management (DAM). The general strategy for long-term backups is referred to as the 3-2-1 rule:

“To be fully protected, you should have three copies of any file (that’s three different devices, not three copies on the same device), two different media types (like hard drive and DVD, for instance), and one should be stored off-site. If you can adhere to this rule, your images will be extremely well-protected.”

I guess my strategy does not quite meet this high standard. There are three copies: my hard disc, my external hard disk, and my off-site storage. However, I am not really using two different types of media. All the data are stored on hard disks – though I do print out some small subset of images. Except for that asteroid or electromagnetic pulse from nuclear blast, it is hard to imagine what situation could wipe out all these disks at the same time. In that event, recovery my photos might fall to a lower priority.

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Government Annuities?

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

For many people, 401(k) or 403(b) savings form a key component of their retirement plans. When these plans were first instituted in the early 1980s, few people anticipated how important these programs would become in many people’s portfolios. Perhaps most importantly, such savings free individuals from dependence on their companies for retirement benefits. These accounts, in most cases, allow individuals to choose investments that would provide growth and income irrespective of the long-term prospects of their companies. The holdings in reasonably diversified 401(k) plans would not be significantly affected by the fortunes of any few companies.

During retirement, individuals have many choices with respect to what to do with their retirement account accumulations. They could maintain their own investments and withdrawal a portion every year to live upon. The advantages of such an approach are that individuals have control over their investments and that when they pass on they can leave some money to their heirs. The disadvantage is that people can make unwise investment decisions or they can simply outlive their resources. To mitigate this possibility, some people purchase annuities. For a fixed investment, an insurance company agrees to pay a person pension for a fixed period of for life (and sometimes the life of the spouse). The insurance company assumes the risk of longevity. If an individual retiree dies earlier than expected, the insurance company makes money. A long-lived retiree may cost the insurance company money. In essence, the risk of longevity is shared.

Apparently, the Federal government is looking at encouraging people to move more to the annuity option. The government may be reasonably concerned about encouraging rational evaluations of risk and the informing the choices about retirement options. The government could deal with this by making investment tools and advice available to aid in retirement decisions.

However, some people are concerned that the government is looking enviously on all the assets accumulated in retirement accounts. It is possible for the government to offer annuities at actuarially unsound rates to obtain current funds in exchange for government-backed promises of future income. The House Education and Labor Committee is focusing on ways of directing 401(k) funds into Treasury bonds. Indeed, the goal seems to be melding 401(k) resources into a Social Security like system – first as a voluntary choice, and perhaps later as a requirement. In the open market, Treasury bonds are priced at their market value. A government promise for future incomes in a government social program, need not be priced appropriately. The underfunding of Social Security demonstrates this.

Whether bailing out banks, car companies, or individuals, the government exercises much of its power by transferring funds from people who make responsible decisions to those who make unwise ones. Those frugal enough to have forgone current income to save in 401(k) plans now are conspicuous targets. I suspect that people have such a proprietary view of the money they have saved, that any attempt by government to unfairly seize these funds (regardless of any promised benefits) will doom any politician that suggested it. People feel strongly about what they consider the Social Security they “earned.” How much more protective of will they be of funds they more directly earned?

Posted in Economics, Politics, Social Commentary | No Comments »

Iraq Victory Has a Thousand Fathers

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

On January 10, 2007, then Senator Barack Obama expressed his opposition about a US troop surge in Iraq to create a security window within which the Iraqis could begin secure their own country, `’I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” This was not an off-the-cuff analysis offered without serious consideration.. Four days later, Obama he explained:

“We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality — we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.”

That same month, 86 Americans and 1800 Iraqis were being killed in Iraq. The surge was not in place until the summer of a 2007, and by that time nearly 2,000 Iraqis and 100 Americans were loosing their lives each month. But Obama was certain “…that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.”

By the time President George Bush left office, American service deaths were down to 16 per month, many of these were non-combat related. Perhaps more impressively, Iraqi civilian casualties were reduced by more than an order-of-magnitude. The situation had turned so dramatically, that the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government signed the Status of Forces Agreement, whereby American forces would leave Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and US forces would be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011.

Reluctant to give the Bush Administration credit for its judgment but required by events to concede the improvement in Iraq in late 2008, Barack grudgingly offered that, “I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated — by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters. It has gone very well.” May all presidents be praised with the assessment that their policies were more successful than even they expected.

However, this last week came the final turn around when Vice-President Joe Biden claimed credit for the success in Iraq when he said,

“I’m very optimistic about — about Iraq, and this can be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the, uh, end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”

This was particularly amusing coming from Joe Biden’s mouth (an orifice through which many odd words have passed). Biden’s solution had been to divide Iraq into three. As President John Kennedy famously quipped,“Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” Biden’s proud assertion of achievment put Iraq in the category of victory, when everyone claims credit for it. When things go badly like the economy, it was Bush’s fault. When things go well its the Obama Administration that succeeded.

Even after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, the Left refused to acknowledge that President Ronald Reagan’s policies were part of the cause of that victory. Despite, what the Left was saying in the 1980s, we are now told that the Soviet Union was ready to collapse of its own weight and Reagan was just fortunate to be president at the time. Whatever Reagan’s policies their effect was imposed over a decade so any cause and effect are more difficult to link. In the case of Iraq, violence was growing so rapidly in 2007 and was quelled so quickly after the surge that therelationship between the surge and the improvement in Iraq is impossible to deny. While the surge may not have been a sufficient condition for the improvement in Iraq, it was certainly a necessary one.

Posted in Iraq, Politics, Social Commentary | 1 Comment »

The Culture of the Constitution

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

The US Constitution is the longest living constitution that has provided an effective framework for self government for over two hundred years. It has served a country that began as thirteen relatively independent states that grew into a continental nation. Although there have been twenty-seven amendments, the document has remained largely intact. The longevity of the US Constitution is not just a consequence of its clever design. Indeed, is product of both considerable political genius as well as the compromises necessary to weld together the original disparate states.

Despite the genius of the US Constitution, it can not be simply adopted by any country with the same success. The functioning of the US Constitution also relies upon a deference to the disciplines of the US Constitution by government officials and the people. A president must rely on the Congress to pass legislation, Congress must grant latitude to the chief executive to manage the government, particularly in foreign relations. Both must respect the Constitutional limits adjudicated by the US Supreme Court. Because the Supreme Court is the least democratic branch of government, it must be reticent overrule the decisions of the other two branches.

Of course, the Civil War was the ultimate challenge to the Constitution and the Union, but there have been cases where the three branches of government have chafed up against one another. President Andrew Jackson largely ignored the US Supreme Court when it ruled in favor of Cherokee Indians over the depredations of the state of Georgia (Worcester v. Georgia). President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court with additional justices, when it ruled against hist initiatives. Congress has tried to constrain the discretion of the President with War Powers Act. And many have suggested that sometimes the Supreme Court has exceeded its authority, particularly the Warren Court. Despite these and other important lapses, it is important to maintain the forms of respect, especially between the different branches of government.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that the speech of corporations were protected by the First Amendment. Specifically, corporations and other associations of people could spend money on independent — uncoordinated with the candidates’ campaigns — efforts to persuade people to vote one way or another. There is some disagreement with the ruing both those who believe, as George Will explains, “Americans need to be swaddled in regulations of political speech.”

Despite the attendant controversy, it remains remains disconcerting for President Barack Obama to use his the latest State of the Union address to lecture Supreme Court to the applause of Congress for a decision he disagreed with. Obama said:

“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. [Applause.] They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.”

Leave aside for the moment that the President’s remonstrance was based on false premises. The Court in its decision explicitly allowed restrictions of foreign expenditures in US campaigns. It was disrespectful and rude to argue with and criticize the justices, when they are in no position to respond. The remarks smacked of presidential imperialism and was beneath Obama who is supposed to be a Constitutional scholar. Obama knows better. He may come to regret undermining the Court when some time in the future the Court must suffer under diminished authority and respect when issuing a ruling with which Obama is sympathetic.

One the other hand, Obama is to be congratulated when he met with the Republican caucus this week. The exchange was civil and benefited both the Republicans and the President. Obama should consider institutionalizing the meeting on perhaps a quarterly basis.

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Edward Kennedy’s Gifts

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

All politicians make political calculations, weighing different options in the messy process of legislation and forming political arrangements. Political compromise and adjustment is a necessary and important skill for free societies governed by a combination of chief executives and legislatures, often of different political parties. However, is it wrong to admit a guilty pleasure – schadenfreude – when Machiavellian manipulations, outside the scope of political good faith and respect for free institutions, backfire? For at least a couple of these pleasures, we can turn to the late Senator Edward Kennedy.

Perhaps Edward Kennedy’s greatest unintentional gift to Conservatives came during the 1980 presidential campaign. High inflation, high unemployment, and high interest rates had severely eroded the political popularity of President Jimmy Carter. The political positions of Kennedy and Carter did not differ much substantively, but a weak incumbent gave Kennedy an opportunity for a primary challenge and ti serve personal ambition. Although Kennedy won only ten primaries to Carter’s twenty-four, Kennedy ate away at Carter’s support by continuing his challenge to the convention, hoping for rules changes there that might give Kennedy the nomination. The number of Carter delegates was too overwhelming and they defeated Kennedy’s procedural challenges at the convention. Out of respect, Kennedy was given the opportunity to address the convention. In a rousing conclusion, Kennedy acknowledged defeat but despite his loss “the work goes on, the cause continues, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” The speech made Carter’s later performance seem mediocre. Although Carter survived the Kennedy challenge, he emerged from the Democratic National Convention weaker, leading a demoralized and divided Democratic Party, helping in part to usher the Reagan era. Thank you.

In 2004, the other Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, was running against President George W. Bush. If Kerry managed to defeat the incumbent president, under state law, Republican Governor Mitt Romney would appoint a Senator to fill out the term. A Republican Senator from Massachusetts was too much for Democrats to stomach. With the encouragement of Kennedy, the Democratically-dominated state legislature gamed the system. They changed the law to establish a special election to fill vacancies. Reasonable and well-intentioned people can disagree about the appropriate procedure for filling a senatorial vacancy. However, this change was not based on principle, but was intentionally designed to gane the system for immediate political advantage. This decision would ultimately come back to haunt Kennedy and Democrats in Massachusetts.

Kennedy’s signature issue was health care. He has always advocated a government managed and financed health care system. When he unfortunately took ill in 2009 with what proved to be terminal cancer he knew that he might not survive to usher through health care reform. His last votes in the Senate were in early April 2009. If Kennedy had resigned under these circumstances, he could have provided ample opportunity for a hand-picked successor to win election as Senator with his direct endorsement. However, political vanity was more important and Kennedy hung on to his office until his death in August, 2009. The cause of health care reform would have been better served if he resigned, but a personal desire to keep his office-for-life overwhelmed this calculation. Kennedy did not know with certainty that clinging to office would undermine the cause of his life, but he did know that he was no longer capable of leading or even participating in the fight in the Senate. Kennedy clutched to his office until the end. Is it too mean-spirited to exploit the metaphor that while health care legislation was drowning, Kennedy was swimming to the shore of personal political indulgence?

If the Massachusetts senatorial succession procedure had not been altered in unashamedly political manipulation in 2004, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick would have appointed a Democrat to fill out Edward Kennedy’s term. There would have been no opportunity for Republican Scott Brown to ride a wave a political dissatisfaction with conspicuous manipulations and payoffs to arrive at medicare legislation, and to upset the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley. Scott’s election killed health care legislation in its current form and wounded the Democratic Party. For this we, we can in no small measure thank Edward Kennedy and recognize the justice that self-aggrandizement and political corruption was not in this case rewarded.

Posted in health care, healthcare, Politics, Social Commentary | No Comments »

Cool and Sedate Reflection

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

There are two traditional models for political representation: that of a “delegate” or a “trustee.”

A delegate is sent to a representative body to vote the way he believes his constituents would want him to. Such a delegate aligns his views directly with the collective views of the people he represents. He embodies his constituency. The delegate theory of representation is favored by populists and some early founders. In the extreme limit, the delegate theory reduces to a more efficient way to implement a plebiscite democracy — the kind of democracy that through referenda has made California almost ungovernable.

The trustee model of representation holds that a constituency votes for a representative whose judgment they trust and rely upon. A trustee has the time to consider legislation in detail, and pursues legislation that would balance the benefits of the whole polity and the local constituency – even if the constituency disagrees with a particular position. In the extreme limit, a trustee model of the representation can degenerate to rule by the elite.

Some Congressional and Senatorial representatives subscribe to a hybrid of the above models. They believe they are sent to Washington to vote a certain way on one or two conspicuous issues (e.g., gun control, abortion, farm legislation), while they are free to exercise their judgment in most other areas.

Conservatives, at least those who have not surrendered to populist temptations, subscribe to the trustee theory of representation, as advocated by William Burke and articulated by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 71:

“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they entrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse… When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.”

How should the trustee model of representation apply to the current debate about health care “reform?” A clear majority of Americans are doubtful of and opposed to the current version(s) of health care reform as they understand it (them) . Nonetheless, if in its best deliberative judgment, Congress believes the reform is in the best interests of the country, then the trustee model of representation would suggest that they vote in accordance with their best judgment.

There remain, however, several mitigating factors. The current health care reform proposal represents very radical adjustments of present arrangements, and prudence suggests that we can expect comparably large unintended consequences. The results of truly “cool and sedate” deliberation rarely result in abrupt or radical changes. Moreover, the ultimate success of such a complicated enterprise depends in part on its acceptance by the polity. Even if one believes that health care reform could theoretically produce better results, if the country does not subscribe to the same conclusion, it may reduce the probability of success. Strong public animosity to legislation is not an irrelevant consideration to someone entrusted as a representative.

It would be disingenuous for Democrats to argue that they are modulating the passing whims of the people with “cool and sedate reflection,” while negotiating behind closed doors and buying off special interests with targeted deals for Louisiana, Nebraska, and the unions. Rather than reducing volatility, Congress seems to be rushing headlong to pass a bill before popular sentiment makes it more difficult for representatives concerned about re-election to support the bill.

Liberal Democrats would be understandably disappointed if they cannot manage health care reform. However, the compromises being agreed to (and supported by large pharmaceutical and insurance companies) will likely create a system far different from the one they originally envisioned. Indeed, if presented with the current proposal a year ago, they would likely be embarrassed by it. The drive to get something — anything — rather than calm consideration is the driving ethos. Part of the discipline of a democracy is to maintain the good judgment not to push the polity too far from the direction they can be persuaded to travel. This political discipline and respect for the governed has been trampled in the stampede to health care. It is time for Congress to step back, pause, and reflect coolly and sedately about appropriate changes to current health insurance arrangements.

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Progressive Justice

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Colleges and universities are unique and critical constituents of the culture. They can be monastic refuges where professors are permitted to live the life of the mind, free to pursue ideas and knowledge for their own sake, unfettered by the necessity of immediate practical benefit. At the other end of the spectrum, professors can both seek knowledge and pursue remuneration for the practical benefits of their research.

Universities and colleges are also businesses that must pay the bills. They exist in an in between world, more or less dependent on tuition income, government grants or subsidies, and alumni contributions. Recently, universities and colleges — especially the elite ones — have become islands of “progressive” thought in a sea of a center-right republic. As a consequence, they can provide a glimpse into what the world would look like ruled by progressives free of the accountability to a constituency.

In 2006, members of the Duke lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. In a complex society, there will always be serious accusations both with and without merit. It is the responsibility of law enforcement and the courts to sort through these. In this particular Duke case, it turned out that the district attorney in Durham North Carolina, Mike Nifong, did not conduct himself properly. It came to light that he withheld exculpatory DNA evidence, while at the same time insisting on the guilt of those charged. Fortunately, the parents of the accused were sufficiently affluent to hire quality legal representation. If not for their representation, the accused might have been ground down under the wheels of aggressive district attorney. Ultimately, Nifong was disbarred and served one day in jail for criminal contempt of court.

Part of Nifong’s motivation was the necessity of re-election in Durham, NC. Eighty-eight Duke faculty members (eleven from the History Department) signed a statement implicitly assuming that the rape charges were not only true, but symbolic of the behavior of white males. It was in this context that Nifong came to the case. It may have been Nifong’s eagerness to demonstrate his sensitivity to minority groups that clouded his prosecutorial judgment.

One might have thought that the whole situation would have caused those who rushed to judgment, particularly the Duke faculty, to be self-reflective and recognize the importance of waiting for due process.However, progressive thought is not so easily contained. None of the eighty-eight faculty who signed the petition apologized. Perhaps they assumed that even if these individuals were not guilty in this case, there must be something that the white jocks were guilty of.

Current actions by Duke are more revealing of the perverse logic of progressive justice. According to the National Journal, Duke has adopted a new sexual misconduct policy that creates a situation ripe for the same notorious injustice perpetrated by the lacrosse player accusations. The new rules assume very simple-minded and easily swayed Duke co-eds who must provide very explicit consent lest some male Duke student uses his high IQ to persuaded a fellow Duke student into sex. The new rules do not allow the someone accused of sexual misconduct the representation of an attorney or the right to face the accuser. The accuser can also receive copies of the investigative documents, while the accused can not.

The rules are an invitation to a lawsuit by someone falsely accused, an alternative mostly available to one who afford an attorney. The irony is that this example of progressive justice was developed and adopted by those, one would be willing to wager, who are convinced that the former President George W. Bush eviscerated the Constitution by granting limited due process to illegal enemy combatants.

Posted in Law, Social Commentary | No Comments »

Health Care and the Consent of the Governed

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

It is easy to fall into the conceit that we face greater political challenges than our predecessors; that politics now is meaner and more divisive than it used to be. One virtue of studying American history is to remind us that the many of the same challenges we face now were faced before, albeit on a different political terrain and by almost certainly greater minds.

Modern students should also be suitably chastened to recall that political positions have shifted over time in unanticipated ways. Contemporary Democrats, who worship at foot of their political patron saint Thomas Jefferson, should remember his visceral antipathy to a strong national government. Republicans, who trace their political heritage to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, may be disconcerted as his willingness to use strong national power when necessary.

In their eagerness to pass heath care reform, Democrats should perhaps consider the counsel of the first chief justice, John Marshall. In 1823, many were focused on legislation to limit the power of the national judiciary. Ultimately, the effort failed in no small part because the passions of the moment created bills that were so single-minded that legislators failed to provide due deliberation on the full impact of what they were considering. It seems that the perceived necessity of passing something is overwhelming the true necessity of passing something well considered.

With the current health care bill widely unpopular and that structure of the bill complex to accommodate the necessity of cobbling together a narrow majority, Democrats would do well to consider the words on Marshall in a letter to Henry Clay.

One of the most dangerous things in legislation is to enact a general law of great and extensive influence to effect a particular object; or to legislate for a nation under a strong excitement which must be suspected to influence the judgment. If the mental eye be directed to a single object it is not easy for the legislator intent on that object to look all around him and to perceive and guard against the mischief with which his measure may burn.

If we are to embark changes of wide consequence in a society ruled by the consent of the governed, it is undoubted wise to do so only buttressed with wide public acceptance and support.

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The Just War Speech

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

In 1933, a period when Great Britain was still staggering and exhausted by the human loss of World War I, the Oxford Union Debating Society considered the proposition, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” Even given the extremely categorical nature of the resolution, it passed overwhelmingly 275-153. It is amusing at this distance in history to see those in favor of the resolution unselfconsciously arguing, “It is no mere coincidence that the only country fighting for the cause of peace, Soviet Russia, is the country that has rid itself of the war-mongering clique.” The prevalent attitude then in Great Britain, as evidenced by the outcome of the debate, is part of the reason that in the words of President John Kennedy, “England slept” as European Fascism grew in power.

Ultimately, the consummate evil of the Nazi Regime and the ensuing war after a period of shameful appeasement woke England and the rest of the world from the pleasant dream of a world ruled by pacifist sentiments. It was a lesson that should be hard to forget, but the peace in Europe for decades — a peace secured by World War II — has largely erased the memory of the terrible necessity of war. The Europeans have enjoyed a generation where disputes in Europe are resolved by politics and committees. Wars as a means of resolving disputes seem barbaric and unnecessary.

In this context, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarded President Barack Obama the its prize. President George Bush represented an America that sometimes found it necessary to its security to wage war. Obama was not Bush and ran for election on a policy that was largely critical of Bush’s war efforts. To his credit President Obama and the the chagrin of his hosts recently stepped up to his duty to lecture the European elites, especially those on the Nobel Committee, on Just War Theory:

“But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Even if Obama appreciated Just War Theory long ago, we can be certain that his appreciation of its importance has grown given his responsibilities as President. It is a reminder of just how far European elites have fallen from this understanding, that Obama’s elucidation of the possibility of a just war took his hosts in Norway by surprise. The paragraph above represents words that could have been delivered by any elected leader and particularly by any American president. The Nobel Committee may have been disappointed.

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Temptation to Betray the Scientific Process

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

Any properly trained scientist is uncomfortably embarrassed with the assertion that the science is in on global climate change. Science is inherently provisional, open to new ideas and new data. Scientific revolutions have been the consequence of new data that needed to be explained. Sometimes these new interpretations undermine established theory. A Newtonian approach to understanding the universe was largely consistent with observed data, particularly, for example, the motion of the planets. In the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, the photo-electric effect, X-rays and other radiation, and spectral lines emitted from heated materials, all created observations that could not be explained with conventional physics. Out of these measurements and new interpretations grew the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

The science underpinning global climate change is no different. In the 1970’s, scientists were concerned about global cooling. Additional measurements and careful theoretical modeling form a solid basis for concluding now that the Earth is warming in some important measure due to human introduction of additional green house gases into the atmosphere. Nonetheless, there are important questions to be addressed. In the last 10 years there has been a mild global cooling that is difficult to model. Additional work is necessary to understand potential feedback mechanisms that could either accelerate or modulate global warming. Long-term temperature measurements are constructed from proxies, such as tree ring diameters. Honest efforts at these reconstructions can either produce the famous “hockey stick” graph showing an unprecedentedly high global temperatures or roughly analogous temperatures in the Medieval Warm period. The latter graph might suggest a larger role for natural variability in the current period of temperatures.

If man is responsible for climate changes with negative consequences like sea level rise, it is incumbent on humans to address the problem. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions will increase the cost of energy and very likely reduce economic growth, increase unemployment, and reduce living standards. It is, therefore, rational to balance these consequences against the consequences and possible uncertainty in global climate change. It is in taking positions with regard to this tradeoff that can tempt scientists to circumvent the the scientific process.

Recently, the e-mail server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a scientific institution at the forefront of climate research, was hacked. Some the correspondence was made available on line. Some of the e-mails are incriminating, writing of “tricks” to hide the recent decline in temperature. Perhaps most damning are discussions about pressuring journals in the peer review process, keeping articles from consideration by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and refusing to make data available to skeptics of global warming. Although is hard to conceive of contexts that would make these e-mails less damning, we need to acknowledge that this possibility still exists. We shall see what time reveals.

The revealed e-mails suggest less that a climate warming hoax is being perpetrated, and more that the correspondents wanted to make sure that modest scientific disputes are not used to undermine in the public mind a general consensus about global warming. Since climate analysis and modeling is a new science, there will be anomalies and discrepancies that are difficult to explain with theory. The fear among some is that this natural scientific uncertainty and debate will hide an overall generally-accepted conclusion that the Earth is warming.

It is the appropriate scientific (rather than political) disposition that the aggressive and even combative review of data and analysis, especially by skeptics, enhances rather than subverts scientific inquiry. We can be most sure of results if they have passed through such gauntlets. By appearing to eschew to the ethos of open inquiry, these analysts have undermined rather than enhanced the ability to persuade policy makers of the importance of global warming. Worst, they have made publicly suspect people involved in climate research with results similar to theirs.

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