Iraq war costs underestimated--could reach $1 trillion

In 2003, the Bush administration said that the $200 billion estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq from Larry Lindsey, Bush's economic advisor, was too high. Paul Wolfowitz suggested that the cost of reconstruction would be financed entirely by Iraq. Congress has so far appropriated $251 billion for military operations, and the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that we should expect another $230 billion in costs over the next ten years.

Now a paper by Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes argues that the CBO's estimate leaves out some significant costs, like healthcare for injured soldiers--lifetime care for brain injuries alone may cost $35 billion. Their paper argues that $1 trillion is a conservative estimate of the total costs.

(Story at The Guardian.)

Rev. Lusk's support for Alito

In a Washington Post article about conservative Christian support for the confirmation of Samuel Alito, Rev. Herbert H. Lusk II, a recipient of over $1 million in federal grants from the Bush administration's Faith Based Initiative, says:

"My friends, don't fool with the church because the church has buried a million critics. And those the church has not buried, the church has made funeral arrangement for."

As Pharyngula points out, this sounds a little threatening...

Urban legend becomes reality, again, as mouse burns down house

From the BBC, how not to dispose of live rodents:

A US man who threw a mouse onto a pile of burning leaves could only watch in horror as it ran into his house and set the building ablaze.

Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, found the mouse in his home and wanted to get rid of it.

"I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," he was quoted as saying by AP.

Though no-one was injured, the house and everything in it was destroyed.

UPDATE: This is not true--the mouse was dead when thrown into the fire, which was blown into the house by wind.

UPDATE January 12: Now Mares is sticking with the original story.

SF Fox affiliate's Emily Litella moment

KTVU in San Francisco used this background image when discussing the NSA warrantless wiretap issue. (John Hazelton on the SKEPTIC list spotted this and got the screen capture.)

Cell phone call records available online

America's Blog has brought up a story that was published in the mainstream media last year (in the Washington Post) and a few days ago (in the Chicago Sun-Times) but which for some reason hasn't resulted in an uproar. The story is that there are sites on the Internet from which you can purchase copies of calling records for cell phones and land lines, such as Locatecell.com. John in DC, who runs America's Blog, purchased his own cell phone records, and indeed got a list of all the numbers he had called.

Cingular thinks this is an "infinitesimally small problem" for them.

How are sites such as Locatecell getting their information? They could be purchasing it from insiders, they are no doubt using "pretexting" (social engineering) to persuade customer support representatives to give them the information, or gaining access to customer account information via the web (Verizon Wireless had another major security hole in their online billing system last year, similar to one in 2001 which they took two weeks to act upon).

Whichever mechanisms are used, it is clear that privacy is being violated and likely that laws are being broken, yet there seems to be little visible interest on the part of the telephone companies in going after the criminals--perhaps because doing so might expose how poorly they are securing the information.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has a good collection of material on this issue here. (Updated January 9: They filed a case against Bestpeoplesearch.com, which admits to using "pretexting" as their method to obtain the information.)

(Thanks to cowmix for bringing this to my attention.)

Phoenix Union High School District: Evolution too controversial to survey science teachers about

The latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education includes an article ("The Taboo Standard") by Marni Landry of Paradise Valley High School, who reports that she proposed a study to survey life science teachers in the Phoenix Union High School District on the subject of evolution. The survey, intended to support her M.A. thesis work at the University of Phoenix, asked the recipients whether they agreed or disagreed slightly or completely with the following statements:

I have helped to write the district or state science standards.

I would like to contribute in the writing of the district or state science standards.

I know specifically what the district standards are concerning the theory of evolution.

I have avoided details about the origin of life in order to avoid conflict in my classroom.

The theory of evolution goes against my religious beliefs.

If I were to get into a confrontation with a student or parent concerning the theory of evolution, I feel that [the] administration would support my actions.

I feel that creationism (creation science) should be taught parallel to evolution in the classroom.

I am concerned over the fact that many states have removed evolution from their science standards.

Students must understand the theory of evolution in order to understand the study of biology.

I have experienced conflict with a student, parent, or administrator concerning my teaching of evolution.

This survey and edited versions were rejected by school district administrators as "too controversial." The irony of being unable to conduct a survey of science teachers about a subject that they are required by state science standards to teach is explicitly noted.

The author was able to complete a pilot study, and her article reports the percentages for the above statements (16.5% say that evolution conflicts with their religious beliefs and that creationism should be taught).

The same issue of Reports has stories from Texas and Arkansas about high school teachers being unable to teach about evolution or (in Arkansas) even mention the ages of rocks in millions of years.

This, to me, is far more frightening than attempts to force the teaching of intelligent design or creation science--that teaching about evolution has already been removed from or watered down in many of the classrooms of the United States. It's no wonder that the average American is completely ignorant on the subject.

Jeff Lowder's blog: Naturalistic Atheism

Jeff Lowder, one of the founders and former president of the Internet Infidels, now has a blog, Naturalistic Atheism.

Books Read in 2005

I read (and completed) the following books in 2005. I've reviewed most of them at Amazon.com (where the links point):

• Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church
  
• Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
• Rachel DeWoskin, Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China
  
• Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe
• Mark Haddon, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
• Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
  
• Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills, The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
  
• Penn Jillette, Sock
  
• David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else
  
• Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
  
• Joel Levy, The Scam Handbook: The Secrets of the Con Artist
  
• Richard Marcus, American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside-Down--My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off the World's Casinos
  
• John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
  
• Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
  
• Ben Mezrich, Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions
  
• Kevin D. Mitnick and William L. Simon, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers
  
• Matthew Modine, Full Metal Jacket Diary
  
• John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market
  
• V.S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness
  
• Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare At Goats
  
• Paul Scharbach and John H. Akers, Phoenix: Then and Now
  
• Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy
  
• Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
  
• Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus
  
• Teller, "When I'm Dead, All This Will Be Yours!"--Joe Teller, a portrait by his kid, Teller
  
• Vicki Lewis Thompson, Nerd Gone Wild
• Ira Winkler, Spies Among Us: How to Stop the Spies, Terrorists, Hackers, and Criminals You Don't Even Know You Encounter Every Day
  
• Richard Yancey, Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the IRS
  

I began, but haven't yet finished:

• James Bovard, The Bush Betrayal
• Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
• Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection
  
• Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History
  
• Olivia Judson, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation
• V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
  
• Spammer-X, Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side
• Thomas J. Stanley, The Millionaire Mind
• Robert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard, Pump & Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy
• John Viega and Gary McGraw, Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way
• Andrew Vladimirov, Konstantin V. Gavrilenko, Andrei A. Mikhailovsky, WI-FOO: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking

Bush can bypass torture ban

The Boston Globe reports that the "signing statement" issued by George W. Bush after signing the bill outlawing the torture of detainees contains caveats that indicate that the restrictions in the law can be bypassed in situations where he sees fit.

Bush seems to be under the impression that executive powers granted to him as president allow him to violate any law he deems inconvenient.

It's high time for this corrupt, dishonest president to be impeached.

Alito Senate confirmation room anointed with holy oil

Rev. Rob Schenk of the National Clergy Council in D.C., Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, and Grace Nwachukwu, general manager of Faith and Action were barred on Thursday from entering the hearing room where the Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding a confirmation hearing for Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday. They were permitted to bless the doors--reading three Psalms, kneeling to say the Lord's Prayer in front of the doors, and marking a cross in oil on a door.

They also said that they had actually entered the hearing room a day earlier to anoint the seats with oil. "We did adequately apply oil to all the seats," said Schenk.

Schenk and Mahoney say they had done the same prior to the hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts and were pleased with the results.