Mumbai terrorism; Backup tapes; BCS

The Nightly Build...

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Muslim Condemnation of Terrorism

Jeffrey Weiss, in The Dallas Morning News Religion blog, points out again that, contrary to widespread opinion, Muslims do speak out against terrorism. He publishes in condemnations of the Mumbai terrorist attacks released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, two networks of Indian-American Muslims, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. All are welcome responses to this violence. The condemnations show that blaming violence on religion is too simplistic an explanation. All people of goodwill condemn the attacks. Unfortunately, some want to go farther and condemn the terrorists' religion as well. This furthers the divide among people of goodwill in different religions and is counterproductive.

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Computer Tape Drives Still Going Strong

Trey Garrison, on his personal blog, opposes Dallas County's proposal to delete their email backups after 90 days. He ridicules Dallas County's IT department: "They store email records on 'tape.' What is this, 1962? ... Tapes??? Really? WTF?"

Trey Garrison reveals his lack of knowledge of IT (that's Information Technology, Trey). Magnetic tape continues to be a viable medium for computer backup, with over 500,000 tape drives installed worldwide for just Sony's AIT technology alone. Tape is a medium that allows for the cheapest storage of the largest amounts of data. In fact, it's the very existence of cheap, plentiful, tape backup technology that undercuts Dallas County's argument that it needs to delete emails after 90 days because of the high cost of retention. With tapes, the county could keep archives for years.

Even though tape is a great medium for off-site backup storage, it's a poor medium for quick access and searches. For that, hard disk storage is superior. The Dallas Morning News story reports that by next summer Dallas County will get a new email archiving system that will allow for fast and easy keyword searches. Let's just hope they keep emails around long enough for there to be something to search.

After ridiculing Dallas County for what Garrison sees as 1962 technology, on another topic Garrison reveals his own fondness for 1962 technology: paper phone books over online directories. He says it might be because he's "burned out on surfing." It looks like phone books won't die ... at least until Trey Garrison and my grandmother do.

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BCS: Whining About a Broken System

It's the first week of December and that means it's time for the annual whining about the broken system known as the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the NCAA's method of choosing its national champion for its top division of football. The focus of this year's whining is the decision to rank Oklahoma over Texas, despite Texas' victory over OU in October, giving OU the inside track on reaching the BCS championship game in Miami. Michael Landauer, on The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, seems to take the position that any complaints are simply whining with the way things turned out this year. He argues

"There is no fix. There is no perfect system. But allowing two national polls and a complex computer ranking system to break a three-way tie isn't a bad way to go. It sure beats sending a team to the Big 12 championship that is ranked below another."

Landauer is wrong. There are two things wrong with the BCS system. First, and most obvious, is that the system needs to allow more than two teams to play for the national championship in the field. The NCAA itself recognizes this, organizing a playoff for what it calls the Football Championship Division, but not for what it calls the Bowl Championship Series. Any resistance on the part of the NCAA is due only to financial reasons, not competitive reasons.

Second, and less recognized, is that the system allows for human subjectivity. Most people complain about the computer rankings that are used as part of the BCS rankings, but it's the human polls that have to be kicked out of the system. The computer rankings are just objective tie-breaking rules. The NCAA should choose an algorithm and go with it. All teams know going in to the season what the algorithm is and what kind of schedule and record they will need to make the field for the playoffs, after which results on the field will dictate who gets crowned national champion. Allowing humans to decide who is ranked above whom is folly. This year, it's the Oklahoma vs Texas debate that gets most of the attention, but there's an Ohio State vs Boise State decision that the NCAA also must decide. And that one is most likely to be settled, not based on which team is judged the better football team, but which school is most likely to pack the stands with fans and gather the largest television audience. As long as any subjective human criteria are used to determine which teams get into the prestigious BCS bowls and the ultimate national championship game, expect the annual whining to continue, justifiably so.

A.H. Belo

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How Long Can Belo Hold On?

In a bit of irony, and a bit of what's wrong with local newspapers, you have to turn to Frontburner to find any discussion of the dire straits The Dallas Morning News finds itself in. Wick Allison does a bit of back-of-the-envelope calculating and concludes that A.H. Belo is a media company fast running out of cash. Not even its real estate holdings seem to be a defensible barrier against the economic collapse affecting mainstream media.

In big cities and even in some not-so-big cities, two or even more daily newspapers used to be common. Those days are gone for all but a few cities. The lone surviving daily in each metropolitan area has managed to hang on, but even media monopolies are no longer assured of survival. Which city will be the first to find itself without a newspaper? Newark? The publisher of the Star-Ledger threatened to shut it down if either a buyer wasn't found or enough employees didn't take buyout offers to drastically cut costs (and quality?). Similar stories abound across the country. Will Dallas find itself without a daily newspaper? It's no longer as unthinkable as it once was.

Ron Paul

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Recipe for a Good Society

Rod Dreher, in The Dallas Morning News Points section, is having second thoughts about the horse he backed in the Presidential race. He was a Mike Huckabee supporter in the primaries, then was torn in the general election. He couldn't support John McCain because of his hawkish position on the Iraq War, but he couldn't support Barack Obama because of his support of women's rights regarding abortion. He couldn't bring himself not to vote at all, so he wrote in the name of farmer-poet Wendell Berry (don't ask).

Belatedly, Rod Dreher now regrets that America didn't listen to Ron Paul, although he recognizes he was "eccentric" and an "old crank." Dreher says Paul was right in criticizing America's foreign policy for meddling in the Middle East and was right in his libertarian economic views. Dreher didn't vote for him, but now nominates him for Texan of the Year and the hope for reform and restoration of sanity to the Republican Party and ultimately, the US government.

Well. There's a reason why "old cranks" don't get elected. It's because they are usually extremists and extremists don't govern well, whether from the right, from the left, or from Libertarian outer space. NPR's Marketplace recently interviewed economist and health-care expert Victor Fuchs, who explained what Americans look for in a health care system, and, I would argue, in government in general:

"I want efficiency, and I want justice. I want freedom, and I want security. Now as an economist I know that there have to be trade-offs. I can't have all the freedom and all the security that I would like to have. And that's where the judgment and the political balance comes in. We may have to give up a little bit of efficiency in order to get more justice. On the other hand, I would hold up a stop sign to those people who say, "Well, the only thing I'm interested in is security and justice. And I don't give a hang about freedom and efficiency." That's not right, either. What we have to some extent is, I would't say a polarization, but we have a lot of people who take extreme positions one way or the other. And that's not a recipe for a good society."

Ron Paul's libertarianism is good at delivering freedom, but not security. With libertarianism, efficiency and justice are fortuitous outcomes when you get them, and the free market's responsibility when you don't. "Not my problem," is the libertarian's attitude. "No, thanks" is the electorate's reaction to the libertarian campaign pitch. Given that a criterion for being named Texan of the Year is having an uncommon impact don't expect Ron Paul to be honored. Old cranks get attention. Old cranks entertain. But old cranks don't have the recipe for a good society. Ron Paul is no exception.

Presidential pardons; The Beatles

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Time To Rein In Pardon Power

Nicole Stockdale, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, supports Margaret Colgate Love's argument that Presidential pardon power is a good thing, that it is a fundamental part of the Constitution's checks and balances and ensures that our legal system is applied in a just and moral manner. (Love is a former US pardon attorney.)

I'm with Love in general, but I think the Founders gave a little too much power to the President in this case. Yes, a Presidential pardon can be used to check excesses of the Judicial branch, but there's nothing to check Presidential abuse of the pardon. An eleventh hour pardon of political cronies just before a President leaves office puts criminals beyond the reach of justice without possibility of any consequences to the President, as he is soon out of office himself.

This isn't theoretical, as Bush has already used his power to commute sentences to benefit his Vice President's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby. Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby *all* spoke to reporters about Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent before Robert Novak outed her by printing it in a newspaper. Libby the lied about his role (and Dick Cheney's) and was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. Bush then commuted Libby's sentence and may yet pardon him before he leaves office.

A President using the power of the pardon to benefit his crooked cronies is unjust. A Constitutional check and balance is called for. Just like a Presidential veto can be overturned, a Presidential pardon ought to be reviewable as well. If George W Bush abuses his pardon power, perhaps it will be time for a Constitutional amendment allowing a two-thirds vote of the Congress to override and cancel a pardon.

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What The Pope Is Listening To

Sam Hodges, in The Dallas Morning News Religion blog, tells us that the Vatican newspaper has praise for The Beatles' music. With the Vatican's belated imprimatur, I guess it's now official. The Beatles really were more popular than Jesus.

Economic crisis

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How Big the Coming Economic Tsunami?

Rod Dreher, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, is sounding the alarm that the sky is falling. What with the financial bailout, our already staggering deficit, and the future liabilities built into Social Security and Medicare, Dreher feels like somebody watching the oceans draw away just before the tsunami hits.

People need to keep things in perspective. When economists warn us that we're facing the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, that means that it's not as bad as the Great Depression. It's still plenty bad, but not as bad as Dreher fears. We have a lot going for us today that we didn't back then. We have FDIC, unemployment insurance, and government officials who have learned a thing or two from the experience of the Great Depression. We're not likely to see the depths we saw in the 1930s (soup lines and shantytowns) nor the duration (a decade-long slump that WWII finally brought us out of).

Whether our politicians have the will to administer the bitter medicine needed to pull us through these bad times is the critical question. I admit that history, certainly the last eight years, does not give us much cause for hope. For two years, Barack Obama has promised us change we need, change we can believe in. Now, it's time for him to deliver.

Elsewhere in the blog, William McKenzie expresses his misgivings over "giantism," the notion that some enterprises are "too big to fail." And we grow governments too big to afford, populations too big to educate, health care systems too big to manage, etc.

The problem is not that our institutions have gotten too big, it's that they have gotten out of control. In the 19th Century, businesses were allowed to grow unregulated and the boom and bust business cycles were as ferocious as anything we're seeing today. The Great Depression was the mother of all busts. FDR's New Deal tamed business's excesses and created a business environment that resulted in four decades of stable prosperity and growth as strong as any in our nation's history. Starting in the 1980s, there was a pendulum swing back towards laissez-faire capitalism, starting with Ronald Reagan's declaration that government isn't the solution to the problem, government is the problem and ending with today's collapse of the housing market, the financial industry, and the automobile industry. It's time for the pendulum to swing back towards rational regulation. The business cycle will never be tamed, but at least its worst excesses can be managed, given the political will to do so. Again, it's time for Barack Obama to deliver.

Low income housing; Obama and guns; DISD term limits

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Let Them Eat Cake

Trey Garrison has an uncanny knack for answering his own question without knowing it.

"What, exactly, is wrong with locating all the housing for low income people in one general area? ... Look, it’s not a politically correct fact, but the reality is low income neighborhoods have higher crime rates."

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

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Thorough Vetting by Team Obama

Trey Garrison reveals his bitterness over the recent election by referring to President-elect Barack Obama as "Dear Leader." He also reveals the tinfoil hat he wears that allows him to see into other people's souls.

One of the 64 questions the Obama transition teams asks potential appointees is this:

"Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun? If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage."

Garrison sees it as a "litmus test," implying, without providing any evidence, that gun owners will be denied appointment. More likely, the transition team wants to ensure that appointees are responsible, law-abiding citizens. Conservatives used to consider that a good thing.

You don't think Republicans might try to embarrass Obama if one of his picks turns out to have an unregistered gun in his house? Remember, one of Bill Clinton's cabinet picks had to step down because she didn't pay social security taxes for her family nanny. A Supreme Court nominee had to step down because he had smoked marijuana as a young man. Given the gun nuts' knee-jerk antipathy towards Obama (witness Trey Garrison's reaction to this story), there's no doubt how they would respond to an embarrassing gun story coming out about an Obama nominee.

If John McCain had spent more than about five minutes vetting his own Vice Presidential nominee, we might be watching a President-elect McCain choose a cabinet now. Team Obama is refreshingly competent and on top of their game with this thorough and rigorous vetting process. Conservatives like Trey Garrison, on the other hand, are grasping. Maybe that tinfoil hat that Trey is wearing is on too tight.

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Shut Up He Explained

Matt Pulle, in Unfair Park, reports on the astonishing power grab by the DISD school board last night, when they voted to suspend next year's board elections and extend their own terms from three years to four. Matt Pulle admires their timing: "In the middle of the darkest, deepest financial crisis in the history of the district, the board members who fiddled around while Rome burned want to remain Caesar."

Little debate preceded the vote. No justification for the suspension of democracy was given, other than perhaps the DISD attorneys' claim that the move was legal, as if legality is justification enough. DISD school board president Jack Lowe didn't utter a single word in defense of the measure. Needless to say, the public was not pleased. Blacks were yelling at Hispanics. Hispanics were yelling at each other. Everybody was yelling at the board members. Channeling the great writer Ring Lardner, Pulle ends his account by quoting one Hispanic activist yelling at another, "Shut up, Carlos."

Sarah Palin; eHarmony; California Prop. 8

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Open Mic Night for Republicans

Steve Blow, metro columnist for The Dallas Morning News, is usually congenial, but he has the capacity to occasionally surprise. Today, he tells us of a scheduled "Open Mic Night" at the Dallas County Republican Party headquarters. Blow starts things off with his suggestion: "Ditch the ditz from Alaska."

Sexist? Sure. Unfair? Maybe. Wrong? Hardly.

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eHarmony Agrees to Service Gays

Jeffrey Weiss, in The Dallas Morning News Religion blog, stirs up a hornet's nest by reporting on an out-of-court settlement by eHarmony Inc. to provide support for a same-sex dating service. Weiss isn't sure eHarmony should be forced to do this, given that there are plenty of gay dating services available on the Internet. He does concede that, much like the days of racially segregated lunch counters, "separate but equal isn't."

Since this was a settlement and not a court decision, it offers little guidance as to what the law requires. But we can assume eHarmony thought the law was against them. I'm assuming we're talking New Jersey law, not Texas law or US law, as the settlement involved the New Jersey Attorney General.

If New Jersey law forbids businesses from discrimination on account of sexual orientation and eHarmony cannot show that complying with the law imposes an undue burden, then eHarmony ought to be obliged to accept gays as customers, the same as legal requirements not to discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, or ethnicity. In other words, the debate ought be about whether sexual orientation ought to be a protected class. As long as it is, at least in New Jersey, eHarmony ought to comply with the law.

P.S. Yes, the double entendre in the headline was deliberate.

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Now, the Court's Turn to Decide Prop. 8

Another head scratcher lawsuit comes out of California, where opponents of Proposition 8, which overturned gay marriage rights in the state, have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ballot initiative. Readers of The Dallas Morning News Religion blog ask how a constitutional amendment can possibly be declared unconstitional.

Well, IANAL, but here goes. The California constitution talks about revising the constitution and about amending it, with (maybe) different ways to accomplish each. The ballot initiative is to be used for amending the constitution, not revising it (maybe). The plaintiffs argue that Prop. 8 amounts to a revision of the constitution, not an amendment, so was done through the wrong procedure. The court is being asked to interpret the constitution's (perhaps) ambiguous instructions for how to ... well, change it (amend? revise?). We'll see how it goes, but I think the odds are strongly against the plaintiffs.

Macro-evolution

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Observing Species Jumps

Bruce Tomaso, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, brings us a "dog bites man" kind of story, headlined, "Scientists think science should be taught in science class."

As obvious as you might think that opinion is, nevertheless the reader comments inevitably brought forth complaints that evolution is preposterous. One skeptic demanded examples of "macro-evolution," "where a lizard changed to a dog (or whatever). ... Changes within a species are not sufficient to prove that jumps EVER happened."

Scientists agree with creationists on one thing: species "jumps" never happen. The offspring of a lizard always a lizard. If it were a new species, say a fubar, who would the new fubar mate with, being the only one of its kind.

Nevertheless we can "observe" species jumps over time. The fossil record shows slow changes in a species over time, so much so that there's no doubt that the individual at the beginning of the chain is a different species than the individual at the end, even though each step along the way was the offspring of the previous generation.

We can also observe species jumps over distance. A species spread along, say, a coastline sometimes exhibits a remarkable trait. Individuals living in close proximity have no trouble mating, but individuals at one end of the range cannot mate with an individual at the other end. If a natural disaster, say an earthquake or volcano, separates the range permanently, scientists would identify the individuals at each end as being of different species.

But don't expect these cases to keep the creationists from continuing to repeat the falsehood that "macro evolution" has never been observed.

Christian/gay clashes

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Backlash to Prop 8

Rod Dreher, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, links to a YouTube video of a clash between Christians and gays in California. He headlines his blog item, "Gay mob assaults peaceful Christians."

The video doesn't show what I assume was a Christian protest against gays. It does show the gay counter-protest, which should be condemned for its verbal intimidation. From Rod Dreher's account of it, I expected to see physical violence, but saw none in this video.

Reader "Bill Marvel" laments that "there are unmistakable signs that the bond of mutual tolerance necessary to hold a democracy together is unraveling."

I don't see it that way. I liken it to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. African-Americans had been suppressed for centuries. Clashes were limited not out of mutual tolerance but through the tyranny of the majority. Finally, blacks announced that they weren't going to take it any more. Great good can come when patience finally runs out and a people demands justice. Within the lifetimes of those civil rights pioneers, our nation elected an African-American as president.

I know there are flaws in comparing the African-American experience with the gay experience in America. But in this one way, at least, they are similar. Gays' patience is running out and they are indicating that they are not going to take it anymore. In the 1960s anger boiled over into race riots. Gays don't have the numbers to trigger the same level of violence today, but I am not surprised to see a video showing gays verbally intimidating Christians who come into their neighborhood and threaten gays with eternal hellfire just for being who their are.

Dreher sees it just the opposite. In his morality play, he likens the anti-gay Christians to the non-violent followers of Martin Luther King. And the provoked gays to the Alabama police who used fire hoses and police dogs against the protest marchers. He wants to see this simply as a case of intolerance of the free speech rights of the Christians. He ignores the real issue: the denial of civil rights to gays, just as the real issue 40 years ago wasn't the right of peaceful assembly by blacks, but the denial of a whole host of civil rights to African-Americans. When two sides can't even agree on what the issue is, don't expect them to agree on a solution anytime soon.

Humanists; D Magazine layoffs

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Be Good for Goodness' Sake

Jeffrey Weiss, in The Dallas Morning News Religion blog, notes that the American Humanist Association is launching a holiday advertising campaign to raise awareness of humanism.

Blog readers unsurprisingly took offense. "Spanky" said, "I wish these humanists would stop trying to force their beliefs on us." Another reactionary Christian living in some alternative reality America, "G. Headrick," said, "Is it not ironic that these ads are allowed when an ad such as 'Why Not Believe in God?' would be considered so politically incorrect that it would not get posted?"

Wow. What feverish imaginations at work. The Humanists are simply doing what countless churches do at this time of year with their ads saying come celebrate the season with us. Judging by some of the comments here, you'd think the humanists were pillaging churches and stealing and brainwashing Christian babies. Where's the love, people? Where's the yuletide spirit?

The Christian proselytizers like "Jacquetta Alexander" were quick to proclaim, "God is good. God is love. There is no good without God." Another, "Scott," said, "Where [do] morality, values, and "empathy, fairness, and experience" come from in humans. They have an origin. They don't just happen. The origin is God." Reader "Tom" argues, "The God deniers have a problem and it is evident here as it always is: when one denies the existence of God he has no motivation for being 'good' because there is ultimately no one to answer to." In contrast, he asks, "Why do you think that almost all of the charitable works over the past 2 millenia have been done by religious people, particularly Christians?" Tom points to Mother Theresa as an example of a Christian woman who took care of the poor out of love and devotion to God.

Social cooperation has been a hugely successful evolutionary adaptation for humans. Doing good is hardwired into us. In a sense, the Christians who preach that we are saved by grace, not by good works, are right, even if they don't understand why. We do good, not by choice, but because of millions of years of evolutionary tinkering with the species.

In America, Christianity is the dominant religion and atheists are shunned. That alone is enough to explain why most charitable work is associated with the religious.

Mother Theresa is maybe not so good an example of Christian charity as you might think. She famously despaired of the difference between her public face and her private thoughts. She prayed and felt emptiness in return. The silence was so deafening she doubted the existence of God, but was afraid to give voice to her fears. She wrote to her confessor: "Where is my Faith... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. I have no Faith." And yet she labored on. As do others of no faith, some of whom consider themselves humanists.

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When You Make The News, Go Dark

The Frontburner blog of D Magazine was down this weekend and most of today, replaced by a simple "Hello, World" page. Now we know why. Tim Rogers tells us that D Magazine was in the process of letting go 19% of its staff. As Tim Rogers explains, "Our comments section began to spread news that some even in our company didn’t know yet. In deference to our co-workers and friends, we shut down all our blogs."

I won't criticize management for sparing employees the shock of reading of layoffs in the press instead of hearing it from management directly. But, just as when The Dallas Morning News suffered its own layoffs, I find it ironic that news media cover the news in their own newsroom most poorly. If the future of news is local and news media cannot be counted on to cover the most local news of all, news made in their own newsrooms, then the future of news media is troubled indeed.

Nevertheless, I do sincerely pass on my condolences to everyone looking for other employment today and even those who were spared... this time. The news business is going through tough times.