Chinese intelligence was translating for the NSA

The Washington Times reported on December 21 that several years ago, Chinese intelligence successfully subverted the National Security Agency in Hawaii. First, by creating a company based in Hawaii to do Chinese translations which successfully obtained government contracts with the NSA to translate intercepted Chinese communications. The intercepted communications included sufficient information to identify the sources, giving the Chinese the ability to control what information was obtained by the NSA either by preventing significant information from being carried over by the compromised channel or by introducing disinformation.

This shows one of the problems that faces a world superpower whose own language is commonly used and which does little or nothing to encourage its citizens to learn other languages. Understanding communications in other languages require the assistance of translators who may be working for the enemy, and the enemy can almost get away with speaking freely anywhere while being overheard, since the likelihood of comprehension is so small. The more communications you need translated, the more translators you need, and the greater the likelihood of compromise.

UPDATE (January 2, 2008): Noah Schachtman at Wired and Jeffrey Carr at IntelFusion cast some doubt on this story.

Books Read in 2007

As another year comes to a close, I've again put together a list of the books I've managed to read this year. Once again, there are many that I've not finished, some of which were started but left uncompleted in 2005 or 2006, but I'm not going to bother listing those this year. While in previous years I've reviewed almost every book I read on Amazon.com, this year I've hardly done so at all, and my Amazon.com reviewer rank has dropped accordingly--I had hopes at one time of cracking the top 2000 (and got up to 2,171), but that won't happen if I don't write some more reviews. I'm disappointed with how few books I've read this year--this is the first time I can recall purchasing more new books than I've finished reading, so I plan to use my vacation days (the rest of the year) to see if I can finish a few more.

• Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography
• Barton Biggs, Hedge Hogging
• Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
• Giles Foden, Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika
• Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection
• Barry M. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative
• Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (nowhere near as good as I remembered, and the other two I read were so bad I didn't buy the fourth)
• Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door
• Madeleine L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• Mark R. Levin, Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish
• Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
• Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, Goedel's Proof
• Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World
• Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (revised edition)
• Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
• William Poundstone, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street
• Rudy Rucker, Frek and the Elixir
• Jim Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer"
• Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
• Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State
• Carl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea

(Previously: 2006, 2005.)

Chris Hedges gives Huckabee too much credit

Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, has written an article about how the religious right's support for Mike Huckabee "represents a seismic shift in the tactics, ideology and direction of the radical Christian right" in that Huckabee is a candidate who repudiates many of the core principles of conservatism in favor of populism. I'd say he's more of a William Jennings Bryan than a Barry Goldwater.

Hedges' article correctly identifies some very serious reasons to be concerned about a Huckabee candidacy, with his ties to Christian reconstructionism and his complete ignorance of foreign policy. He concludes with a few paragraphs about Huckabee's opposition to the HPV vaccine and his desire to quarantine AIDS patients. It's here that Hedges gives Huckabee too much credit, when he writes that "Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme position." In fact, Huckabee hasn't backed off from the position, only from the specific words he used to describe it.

Here's what he said about it to Chris Wallace, as reported at the Huffington Post (with the accompanying video record):

This morning, Huckabee first tried to deny his comments. "Chris, I didn't say that we should quarantine," he said. In fact, he said we "need[ed]" to isolate AIDS patients.

Pressed repeatedly by host Chris Wallace, however, Huckabee relented. "That is exactly what I said. I don't run from it, I don't recant from it. Would I say it a little differently today? Sure, in light of 15 years of additional knowledge and understanding, I would."

That's not backing off from the position.

What would happen if Jesus converted to Islam?

The Onion has the story. The part about Jews for Jesus splitting into three groups is priceless.

Irony

Unlike the examples in Alanis Morissette's misnamed song, this is both unfortunate and ironic:

Roofing billionaire dies in fall through roof

The 91st richest man in the U.S., a roofing company billionaire, has died after falling through his home garage's roof, local authorities said Friday.

Ken Hendricks, 66, was checking on construction on the roof over his garage at his home in the town of Rock Thursday night when he fell through, Rock County Sheriff's Department commander Troy Knudson said. He suffered massive head injuries, according to his company, ABC Supply Co.

Lakota Nation withdraws from U.S. treaties

Yesterday, a group of Indians from the Lakota Nation announced that it has withdrawn from all U.S. treaties and will be issuing its own passports and driver's licenses and creating a tax-free state where non-Native Americans are welcome to move so long as they renounce their U.S. citizenship. They've stated that they will be filing liens against the properties within their territory which have been illegally homesteaded, and have contacted the governments of Bolivia, Chile, and Venezuela seeking recognition.

You can find a map of the Lakota Nation territory here, with more detail and explanation here. It covers western North and South Dakota and Nebraska, and eastern Montana and Wyoming.

This declaration of independence was made yesterday by Russell Means, leader of the American Indian Movement (who was nearly the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president instead of Ron Paul), and is based on many years of U.S. government failure to live up to its treaties with Indian tribes. But Means actually has no authority to speak for the Oglala Sioux (the Lakota tribe he is a member of), since he did not win the 2005 election for president of the tribe, though he unsuccessfully contested it.

I haven't seen any specific mention with regard to the Lakota Nation's action of the case of Cobell v. Kempthorne, a lawsuit which has been in federal court since 1996. This lawsuit is over the U.S. Department of the Interior's mismanagement of Indian land lease trust funds, in which they've lost the accounting records for 118 years of data about $13 billion in funds and its accumulated interest, which the plaintiffs would like to see returned to them. (I previously mentioned this lawsuit two years ago as one of the issues former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth was on the right side of.) Eloise Cobell is a member of the Blackfeet tribe of Montana.

Mention has been made, however, of a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision which awarded the Lakota $122 million in compensation for the land that had been taken from them in violation of treaties, but not any land. The Lakota refused the award, which has accrued interest bringing it close to $1 billion today.

Depends on what the meaning of "saw" is

Mitt Romney said on national television several times this year (including at least twice this month) that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1978, he claimed to the Boston Herald that he and his father both marched with King.

Susan Englander, assistant editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, did some research and found that while Gov. George Romney (Michigan) issued a proclamation in support of King in June 1963 for a March in Detroit, he declined to attend, saying that he did not attend political events on Sundays. He participated in a civil rights march in Grosse Pointe a few days later, but King did not attend that march.

Now, after defending the claim repeatedly, Romney has admitted yesterday that neither he nor his father marched with King--but not that he has said anything false. Instead, he says that he "saw" his father march with King in a figurative sense: "If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described. ... It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort."

Blackwater shoots the NY Times' dog in Baghdad

A Blackwater bodyguard shot and killed Hentish, the mascot dog of the New York Times that has lived its entire life in the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. Blackwater claims Hentish attacked one of their bomb-sniffing dogs and had to be shot.

Former U.S. military officials against "enhanced interrogation"

December 12, 2007

The Honorable John D. Rockefeller IV, Chairman
The United States Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Silvestre Reyes, Chairman
The United States House of Representatives
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Reyes and Chairman Rockefeller:

As retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, we write to express our strong support for Section 327 of the Conference Report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, H.R. 2082. Section 327 would require intelligence agents of the U.S. government to adhere to the standards of prisoner treatment and interrogation contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Collector Operations (the Army Field Manual).

We believe it is vital to the safety of our men and women in uniform that the United States not sanction the use of interrogation methods it would find unacceptable if inflicted by the enemy against captured Americans. That principle, embedded in the Army Field Manual, has guided generations of American military personnel in combat.

The current situation, in which the military operates under one set of interrogation rules that are public and the CIA operates under a separate, secret set of rules, is unwise and impractical. In order to ensure adherence across the government to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and to maintain the integrity of the humane treatment standards on which our own troops rely, we believe that all U.S. personnel - military and civilian - should be held to a single standard of humane treatment reflected in the Army Field Manual.

The Field Manual is the product of decades of practical experience and was updated last year to reflect lessons learned from the current conflict. Interrogation methods authorized by the Field Manual have proven effective in eliciting vital intelligence from dangerous enemy prisoners. Some have argued that the Field Manual rules are too simplistic for civilian interrogators. We reject that argument. Interrogation methods authorized in the Field Manual are sophisticated and flexible. And the principles reflected in the Field Manual are values that no U.S. agency should violate.

General David Petraeus underscored this point in an open letter to the troops in May in which he cautioned against the use of interrogation techniques not authorized by the Field Manual:

What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight. . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect.... Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong.

Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone "talk;" however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.

Employing interrogation methods that violate the Field Manual is not only unnecessary, but poses enormous risks. These methods generate information of dubious value, reliance upon which can lead to disastrous consequences. Moreover, revelation of the use of such techniques does immense damage to the reputation and moral authority of the United States essential to our efforts to combat terrorism.

This is a defining issue for America. We urge you to support the adoption of Section 327 of the Conference Report and thereby send a clear message - to U.S. personnel and to the world - that the United States will not engage in or condone the abuse of prisoners and will honor its commitments to uphold the Geneva Conventions.

Sincerely,

General Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.)
General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)
General Charles Krulak, USMC (Ret.)
General David M. Maddox, USA (Ret.)
General Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.)
Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, USA (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, USA (Ret.)
Major General Paul Eaton, USA (Ret.)
Major General Eugene Fox, USA (Ret.)
Major General John L. Fugh, USA (Ret.)
Rear Admiral Don Guter, USN (Ret.)
Major General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, USN (Ret.)
Major General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.)
Major General Gerald T. Sajer, USA (Ret.)
Major General Antonio 'Tony' M. Taguba, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.)
Brigadier General James P. Cullen, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Richard O'Meara, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Anthony Verrengia, USAF (Ret.)
Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, USA (Ret.)

The bill in question has passed in the House. It still needs to pass in the Senate. Bush has threatened to veto the measure.

UPDATE (December 20, 2007): Notes on a few of the above--Taguba did the investigation of Abu Ghraib. Guter and Hutson were Judge Advocates General (i.e., the top Navy-Marine Corps lawyer). Turner was former Director of Central Intelligence (i.e., head of the CIA).

Who gets Jesus' endorsement, and is it a good thing?

This political advertisement explores those questions.



Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.

"Untraceable" looks unwatchable

In January 2008 the film "Untraceable," starring Diane Lane, will be released. It looks awful. The premise is that a serial killer is killing people live on the Internet, via an "untraceable website" that is connected to contraptions that kill his victims as more people visit the site.

The whole concept of an "untraceable website" or the idea that such a thing would be unstoppable by ISPs and law enforcement is absurd--the immediate upstream provider of the site would merely need to null route the IP address(es) where the website is hosted, and traffic stops. They'd also be able to quickly identify the customer who owns the server in question. Even if that server was compromised and being used to reverse proxy or redirect traffic to other servers, it would still be a relatively simple matter to track that backwards, though it would be somewhat more difficult than stopping the traffic. Even if the domain name pointed to a new server on a compromised host every second, it would still be possible to contact the domain name registrar and get the domain name shut down.

If users can get to it, it can be seen how and what they're getting to, even if that's only the front end in a chain of successive proxies. If it has a domain name, that provides another path to shutting off access.

UPDATE (January 2, 2008): I came across the script online while searching for information about the writers. Let's just say that my opinion above is not nearly negative enough. In the first 16 pages are at least six or seven scenes that really bring on the stupid. For example, FBI Agent Jennifer Marsh, who works in the FBI's cyber division, is monitoring machines that are being compromised by hackers (honeypots, essentially, though the script doesn't use the word). One of her machines gets compromised and she sees that it copies her files including fake financial information. It then accesses eBay to use a stolen credit card to purchase a watch. In reality, the stolen financial information wouldn't be likely to be used from the same machine, it would be sold to another player in the underground economy. Marsh then types commands to look for the IP address of the connecting host--but if they've already got honeypots or honeynets in operation, that should already be logged. She then does the usual CSI-style conversion of an IP address into a name and address without issuing a subpoena to an ISP, and discovers that it's a home belonging to a 56-year-old woman. She immediately concludes that the actual criminal must be a neighbor using her wireless connection, despite the fact that she has no evidence that the woman has a wireless access point and isn't just another victim with a compromised machine being used as a proxy. Without doing any more verification, she arranges to get a warrant to knock the door of the neighbor down, and it turns out to be a teenage kid.

On p. 16 appears this nice quote: "She types several commands into a unix shell. Trace routing algorithms begin to run. A different screen shows possible IP addresses. The list begins growing, from ten to hundreds to thousands.... Marsh shakes her head at the futility." There are multiple methods of performing traceroutes and even of adding fake hops to a traceroute, but traceroute is unnecessary to find out the IP address of a website--it's only useful for finding the path traffic takes to get to that website, e.g., for finding the upstream provider. But getting a list of upstream providers is better done by looking at routing tables rather than doing traceroutes, anyway. The real investigative steps would be to look at the DNS information for the domain, get the IP address or addresses from the authoritative name server (and check to see if those are changing with a short TTL), then find the upstream providers.

Funniest exchange I've seen so far in the script (p. 26) is this marvel of self-contradiction:

[FBI agent] GRIFFIN: I traced it to a Georgetown sophomore named Andrew Kinross. But then I looked closer and saw the post didn't actually originate from his computer.
MARSH: Our guy got into his computer and posted it from there.
GRIFFIN: That would be my guess.
MARSH: So let's go after the originating computer's IP.

And so far, I've not mentioned how the hacker mastermind hacks into the FBI agent's car (which features the fictional "NorthStar" instead "OnStar")--in the preview, the hacker apparently is able to control the steering of her car. I suspect drive-by-wire steering will come soon in the future of the automobile, but I don't believe it exists today. (Turns out the preview gives a misleading impression of what the script says is happening--the hacker doesn't actually control the steering, but remotely shuts off the car's electrical systems and power steering.)

Mike Huckabee's problems

Mike Huckabee's problems continue to accumulate. There's the little problem of his son David hanging a dog by its neck, slitting its throat, and stoning it to death--and the fact that Huckabee himself defends this animal cruelty (of the sort that's often a precursor to serial killing of human beings) on the grounds that the dog was emaciated and had mange. (You may recall that Mitt Romney has a similar, though not nearly as nasty, poor record with dogs.) David Huckabee killed the dog when he was 17 and was never prosecuted, but in April he faced a weapons charge for trying to take a loaded handgun through airport security in Little Rock.

Huckabee also claimed to Pat Robertson's CBN that "I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree," but he doesn't have a theology degree--he only attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a year, he's a theology-school dropout.

Then there's his role in calling for the 1999 release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who was strongly defended by Baptist minister Jay Cole, a close friend of the Huckabee family. Some conservative activists apparently defended Dumond on the grounds that one of his rape victims was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor. Several victims wrote letters to Huckabee describing Dumond's brutality, but Huckabee was quoted in a column by Steve Dunleavy titled "Clinton's Biggest Crime--Left Innocent Man in Jail for 14 Years" saying that "There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime." But as we know today, Dumond was guilty--he was released from prison in September 1999, apparently with some help from Huckabee, and he raped and murdered two women. Huckabee has refused to release his administration's records pertaining to Dumond on grounds that they contain sensitive law enforcement information.

In 1992, Huckabee called for AIDS victims to be quarantined, and refused to retract that position just recently, despite the fact that the disease is not spread through casual contact (which was also well known in 1992).

On top of all of this, Huckabee appears to be genuinely dumb. While governor of Arkansas, Canadian comedian Rick Mercer fooled Huckabee into congratulating Canadians on preserving their capitol building, the national igloo. He is a proud disbeliever in evolution and has publicly supported creationism, though now he refuses to answer questions about it. He thinks that women's role in marriage should be to "submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband". And in the December 11 Republican debate, Huckabee pledged to repeal the laws of thermodynamics, stating that "We ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is."

Intrade currently puts Huckabee's chances of obtaining the Republican presidential nomination at 16.8%, third behind Giuliani (36.0%) and Romney (22.0%) and ahead of McCain (8.8%) and Paul (8.5%). But it also puts him at the leading candidate for getting the Republican vice presidential nomination, at 28.9%, well ahead of Pawlenty (10.1%), Romney (8.6%), Thompson (7.6%), and Gingrich (6.5%).

UPDATE (December 25, 2007): Mike Huckabee's tied to Christian reconstructionists and thinks that the Ten Commandments are the basis of U.S. law (even though seven of the ten would be unconstitutional).

"War on Christmas" casualties in NYC

When Walter Adler and three friends, all Jewish, said "Happy Chanukah" to a group of subway riders who were yelling "Merry Christmas," they found themselves physically attacked and beaten by the group of ten Christian defenders of the sanctity of Christmas.

Adler and his friends were aided by Hassan Askari, a Muslim student who tried to stop the attackers, which allowed Adler to pull the emergency brake and get help.

Apparently no atheists were involved in the incident.

Do ID theorists generate data?

In an excellent blog post at Quintessence of Dust, Stephen Matheson patiently examines the details of DI Fellow Jonathan Wells' only attempt to engage in scientific research in support of intelligent design by putting forth a hypothesis to be tested. By doing more of the work that Wells himself should have done, Matheson shows that Wells' efforts were far below expectations for scientists and that his hypothesis has subsequently (but with no thanks to ID theorists, who did no work on the subject) been falsified.

(Via Pharyngula.)

Signs in my neighborhood

Gives you some idea of the local demographic and economic conditions (or at least what the people behind these signs believe it to be).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali receives Goldwater Award

Last night Einzige and I attended the Goldwater Institute's award dinner for Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, where she was given the 2007 Goldwater Award for her work in support of freedom, in defense of women against the oppression they face in Islamic countries. Copies of her autobiographical book, Infidel, were given to each table and I obtained the copy at our table since most everyone at the table had already read it and no one accepted my challenge to fight for it.

It was a rainy night and it was a huge event, with about 800 attendees. It took me about 25 minutes to get from the entrance of the Phoenician to the event venue, where I later heard that valets parked 400 cars for the event. It seemed as if the Phoenician wasn't used to hosting an event of that size, which can't possibly be true.

I was extremely surprised to see that the schedule for the event included an *invocation*. I have attended multiple Goldwater events in the past (such as the screening of "Mr. Conservative"), but this was the first time I had been to one that included a prayer. I noted at the table that it seemed disrespectful in the extreme that an event honoring an atheist would begin with a prayer. The prayer itself was an ecumenical, non-sectarian "meditation" (as the individual who spoke referred to it) of the sort likely to be as offensive to hardcore Christians as it is to atheists for its failure to appeal to Jesus Christ, but it was still a public verbal appeal to an imaginary being for his approval and support. It reminded me a little bit of the "Agnostic's Prayer" in Roger Zelazny's book Creatures of Light and Darkness, which goes like this (p. 40):

Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you [a man about to die in a "suicide show" who the speaker has put his hand upon the head of] be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.

And I continue to fail to understand why Christians cannot abide by Matthew 6:5-7.

The dinner at the event was phenomenal, though portions were small (filet mignon was the main course). Steve Forbes gave a keynote speech which was well done; it was primarily a recounting of some of the basic principles necessary for economic freedom, such as the importance of the rule of law and a system of stable property rights. Regarding property rights, I was pleased that he commented on a survey of businesses and property in Egypt that found that most businesses and buildings were illegal under the country's laws, and noted that this is common throughout the world. Having recently read Robert Neuwirth's excellent book Shadow Cities, I'm aware that over a billion people in the world live in squatter cities where they are illegally occupying land and often develop their own informal property rights that are not legally enforceable but tend to be respected within their own communities. Countries which manage to give some kind of enforceable title to such people can dramatically unlock wealth and improve their conditions.

The part of Forbes' talk which most caught my attention, however, was his discussion of the current mortgage crisis. He stated that this is a mere blip, so long as the government doesn't overreact. He claimed that there is perhaps $400-$500 billion in losses hiding in securitized mortgage packages, which should be easy for the market to take since that's the amount lost in a bad day on the stock market. The concern is that government or bankers will overreact and withdraw liquidity from everyone (rather than just bad risks) at a time when it is needed. In my opinion, Forbes understates the risks because he repeatedly assumed that the problem exists only within subprime loans, which is already demonstrably false. American Home Mortgage of Tucson, which filed for bankruptcy in August, did not originate subprime loans at all, only "Alt-A" loans, which fall between prime and subprime. The root of the problem has been people of all levels of credit risk using their homes as ATMs who are now underwater, and in particular those using adjustable rate mortgages. This article from someone inside the mortgage industry sets out a worst-case scenario that I think is far more plausible than Forbes' rosy picture, which fails to account for the cascading effects of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and loss of real estate jobs on the broader consumer-driven economy. But in any case, he predicts that the mortgage crisis will be over before the end of 2008, so by this time next year we will know who is right.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's talk was actually an interview conducted by Darcy Olsen, the president of the Goldwater Institute, who asked her a series of questions about growing up in Somalia, her subsequent life, what motivated her to escape Islamic fundamentalism and her arranged marriage, and so forth. She was well-spoken (especially for a non-native speaker of English) and charming, and told of being inspired by works of fiction about individual freedom while living in a community that emphasized submission to family, tribe, and nation. Her sources of inspiration were all secular, of course, though surprisingly included Barbara Cartland romance novels and Nancy Drew mysteries as well as books like Huckleberry Finn.

Afterward, I stood in line to get my book signed, and had a chance to speak to her directly. Although I thought of asking her what she thought of being honored at an event that opened with a prayer, our brief exchange went something like this:

JL: Have you heard of the Internet Infidels?
AHA: No. (She smiles.)
JL: It's at infidels.org, it is a group critical of religion. Are you familiar with Ibn Warraq? [I had also meant to mention Internet Infidels supporter Taslima Nasrin, but couldn't remember her last name.]
AHA: Yes.
JL: Some of his material is published there, though it mostly focuses on Christianity, since it's a bigger source of problems in this country.
AHA: I think I would disagree that Christianity is a bigger problem than Islam in this country.
JL: It's Christianity that has control of the government here.

And then I stepped away with my book, and joined the long line at valet parking right behind Barry Goldwater, Jr. I tipped my valet with a $20, which he seemed very pleased to receive, and then thought that I should have said "this is a tip from an atheist," since I saw several other people (not Goldwater) apparently fail to tip at all, even though they were more elegantly dressed and driving vehicles several times the price of mine.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali seems to be focused exclusively on Islam--not surprising given her history. Several of her answers were somewhat defensive of Christianity (no doubt appealing to her audience), at least by comparison to Islam, much like her response to me above. Yet the Bible contains teachings very similar to the Koran in regard to calling for the death of unbelievers, the subjection of women, slavery, and so forth--the difference is that there are fewer who endorse those teachings, perhaps in part because Christianity has gone through a Reformation while Islam has not.

UPDATE: Note that Wikipedia reports that Hirsi Ali has admitted to falsifying some information in her application for asylum in the Netherlands (specifically her name, date of birth, and claim to have spent time in refugee camps on the border of Somalia and Kenya), and her family disputes her account of her forced marriage, though Hirsi Ali has provided letters from family members (including her father) to the New York Times which substantiate her account. It was the exposure of her fabrications on her asylum application that led her to step down as a Member of the Dutch Parliament and led to Rita Verdonk saying that her Dutch nationality was therefore invalid, which was subsequently overridden by vote of Parliament.

This blog post quotes from a Reason magazine interview of Hirsi Ali that shows that she is somewhat extreme and illiberal in her position regarding Islam, as well as having some unusual ideas about Christianity (e.g., she thinks Catholics have a conception of God where there is no hell). One commenter at the Reason blog compared her to Ann Coulter. This post critiques her understanding of Islam as overly simplistic, like confusing all of Christianity with its most extreme fundamentalist varieties.

UPDATE (February 20, 2008): I've just finished reading Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel, and I highly recommend it. Contrary to my statement above, it wasn't the "exposure of her fabrications on her asylum application that led her to step down" as an MP; she had been open with many people, including the press, about having used the name Ali instead of Magan on her asylum application and claiming to be a refugee from Somalia instead of a resident of Kenya fleeing a forced marriage to a Canadian.

UPDATE (May 5, 2024): Since at least November of 2023, Hirsi Ali now identifies as a Christian, which for her seems to be a cultural stance not grounded in any reasons for believing Christianity to be true.

False confessions from torture produced Iraq WMD claims

It turns out that part of the intelligence case for Iraq WMD claims and a concern about al-Qaeda trying to obtain them was the result of false confessions extracted via waterboarding and hypothermia treatment.

UPDATE (January 27, 2010): The CIA operative, John Kiriakou, who claimed in the media that Zubaydah produced accurate intelligence information as a result of waterboarding has now retracted the claim in his new book. He gave accurate information before waterboarding, and, as Andrew Sullivan points out in the link above, inaccurate information as a result of waterboarding.

Mitt Romney on religious freedom

Mitt Romney made his long-awaited "JFK-style" speech, which was hoped to alleviate concerns that he would rely on Mormon religious authority as the ultimate authority in making political decisions rather than the Constitution. His statement to that effect was rather weak, however, and he never actually came out and said that he would rely on the Constitution as the ultimate authority for his political decisions. He stated that "I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith." But he did assert that lack of faith was grounds for rejection of a candidate, and made the absurd statement that "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

Romney did say (as the Arizona Republic reported, but CNN did not, in the above link) that "Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin." Conversely, the Republic failed to report Romney's "freedom requires religion" statement.

For Romney, it is clear that he does not agree with Jefferson, Madison, and the Constitutional Convention that the First Amendment protects the nonbeliever as well as the believer (as is clear from their writings, their actions as president, and from earlier drafts of the First Amendment that were rejected). Instead, his version of the Constitution requires everyone to belong to some religion, whether it's a cult founded by a con artist or an ancient world religion. He thinks that freedom and religion always must coexist, despite thousands of years and millions of people worth of evidence to the contrary. (Though perhaps his "requires" is a moral claim, that in order to be worthwhile or good, those things must come together--in which case I'd agree that religion requires freedom, but not that freedom requires religion.)

The Republic also noted another serious defect in Romney's comprehension of the First Amendment:

At the same time, he decried those who would remove from public life “any acknowledgment of God,” and he said that “during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.”

Such scenes are already welcome in public places, so long as those public places are equally open to religious and secular displays by believer and nonbeliever alike. The only thing that is forbidden is exclusively allowing displays by a particular religion, which of course is what many Christians are actually demanding. For such an exclusive right favoring a particular religion or religion over nonreligion, displays must be on private property. It's a simple and fair concept, but the religious right repeatedly misrepresents it and falsely claims to be oppressed because they aren't given special privileges that no one else has, and whines and complains when something happens like a Hindu giving a prayer before Congress. And nobody has tried to prevent Romney, Giuliani, and the rest of the presidential candidates from their repeated references to God, despite the transparent phoniness of most of their claims to faith. It's clear that most of them are simply signalling to the religious right that they will continue to be granted special preferences, rather than truly displaying what they believe--their records of political expedience and lack of integrity speak more loudly than their words.

With people of such opinions in political power, explicitly willing to deny political freedoms to those who are nonbelievers and grant special privileges to anything calling itself a religion, it should not be surprising that some people will, out of pure expedience and self-defense, take steps to convert atheism into a religion. Yet that should be unnecessary under our Constitution, as a Washington Post editorial on Romney's speech agrees.

UPDATE: DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds comments on and posts the entirety of Romney's speech, which is certainly better than the quotes above would suggest--he does criticize the establishment of religion in the Massachusetts colony, for example: "Today’s generations of Americans have always known religious liberty. Perhaps we forget the long and arduous path our nation’s forbearers took to achieve it. They came here from England to seek freedom of religion. But upon finding it for themselves, they at first denied it to others."

UPDATE: P.Z. Myers and Greg Laden each give their take on Romney's speech. And here's Christopher Hitchens' view.

Christian dating service uses unChristian sales tactics

The "Watchblog" at the Arizona Republic reports on how the local Christian Internet dating site, Equally Yoked Christian Singles in Phoenix, operates:

C[***] P[***] says a sales manager at Equally Yoked Christian Singles in Phoenix blocked her exit, made unauthorized charges on a cutup credit card and told her she would never find a man before the holidays without their help.
P[***], who filed a police report over the incident, says the dating service virtually emptied her bank account to secure a $1,700 membership fee, refused to cancel her contract and demanded that she sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to get a refund.

Other commenters at the blog report similar, though less extreme, experiences:

I feel for this lady, I know from experience what Equally Yoked is like. They used to call me every month or so and literally harass me into coming in for the preliminary meeting. Luckily, I usually so busy I never had time to go in, I am glad I read this article and I will avoid this place like the plague.

and

A friend joined Equally Yoked a couple of years ago and asked me to join with her so we could attend some of their events. I called them and made an appointment. My favorite cousin's wife died, however, the night of the appointment. I called and got Voice Mail to tell them I was too distraught to make the meeting. They called me back at least five times that night leaving increasingly nasty messages about how unprofessional I was cancelling my appointment. It's 18 months later and they finally stopped calling in October. I would never use Equally Yoked.

The Republic notes that Equally Yoked has had eight BBB complaints in the last 36 months, four of which are contract issues, one a billing issue, one a service issue, and one a product issue, at least six of which were not resolved in a way acceptable to the consumer ("The consumer failed to acknowledge acceptance to the BBB" or "BBB determined the company made a reasonable offer to resolve the issues, but the consumer did not accept the offer."). For the BBB, that's good enough for a "satisfactory" record for a company that's an accredited member. That kind of complaint record would certainly make me avoid such a company, however.

Other complaints about Equally Yoked in other locales can be found online at ripoffreport.com.

The service sounds like a Christian version of another dating company that offered services through local offices in major cities at an equally ridiculous price, Great Expectations. That video-based dating service, once shilled for by Harlan Ellison, has received similar complaints about high pressure sales tactics, deceptiveness, and failure to deliver on promises. Equally Yoked has simply taken this concept and applied it to an even more gullible segment of the population than those who think video dating is a good way to meet people--those who think that an organization catering to Christians (and which suggests, but never actually says that it's run by Christians) couldn't possibly rip them off.

The online dating services that charge minimal fees are clearly a much better deal--they have more people participating, they can often be used without cost or at a minimal monthly cost, and they don't have sleazy salespeople pushing you to sign ridiculous contracts. The one potential advantage of the expensive services is that they may perform criminal history checks, credit checks, and checks to make sure their clients are unmarried, but these are also all checks you can obtain on your own online at a much lower cost. And if you're really looking for someone on the basis of membership in a particular religion, wouldn't a church, mosque, or temple of your favored sect be the best place to search?

Hitchens' "Happy Hanukkah" message

Christopher Hitchens gets right to the point with his piece on Hanukkah:

...to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism's bastard child in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.

A similar point is made, in a more tactful way, in Jennifer Michael Hecht's excellent book, Doubt: A History, which she also told on the New York Times' blog last December. She tells the story of how the events that led to the celebration of Hanukkah were a triumph of religious dogmatism and zealotry over secularism. She recommends lighting an extra candle in the memory of Miriam, the Hellenized Jewish woman who thought sacrifice was superstition and was "punished" for striking the temple altar with her sandal, yelling "Wolf, wolf, you have squandered the riches of Israel!"

Dan Smith's critique of Rep. Jane Harman's HR1955

Dan Smith has written a very nice critique of Rep. Jane Harman's attempt to create a new McCarthyism with her HR1955, the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act."

UPDATE (July 18, 2009): I must agree with commenter Jack--HR1955/S.1959 doesn't criminalize anything or create any law enforcement powers for the commission that it orders to solicit testimony and write a report. There's nothing in the bill that amends the Homeland Security Act to add any new crimes or enforcement capabilities. No doubt the commission will make legislative recommendations (and I think having such a commission is a bad idea), but this bill itself doesn't do so.

Have things finally peaked?

I figured I'd present the foreclosure notice data a little differently, to make it easier visually to compare it with Maricopa County's median price and sales data. If you're interested in seeing the numbers prior to 2001, check out last month's post. And, by the way, if you somehow found your way to this page via a Google search for "Phoenix foreclosures" or something similar and it's not currently December of 2007, you'd do well to click here so you can see the latest information.

November was yet another record month for notices of trustee's sales in the Phoenix area, with 3543 filed.

Meanwhile, home sales are the lowest they've been since January of 2001. Note that the graph's latest data point is from October, since ARMLS is not quick to update its stats, but I can't imagine that November's numbers are going to be any better, since traditionally it's a slow month, regardless.

Texas Education Agency director of science curriculum fired for announcing Barbara Forrest talk

Chris Comer, the director of science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency, was forced to resign from her position. Her offense? Forwarding an email from the National Center for Science Education announcing a talk by philosopher and intelligent design critic Barbara Forrest, and adding the text "FYI."

The call to fire Comer came from Lizzette Reynolds, formerly at the U.S. Department of Education and former deputy legislative director for Texas Gov. George W. Bush. She wrote in an email to Comer's supervisors that "This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities."

The movie "Expelled" makes a big deal about cases like the Sternberg affair, where nobody lost a job or responsibilities, and the denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzales, whose publication record didn't merit tenure. But here's a case of someone who appears to have actually been removed from her position for sending out an announcement of a talk critical of intelligent design--a subject which the courts have already ruled is unconstitutional to teach in the science classroom. TEA officials claim that Comer was removed for "repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination," which Comer describes as really meaning her concerns about teaching creationism in schools. The Texas Republican Party platform explicitly advocates teaching intelligent design in public schools.

Wesley Elsberry has more about the Comer case at the Austringer blog, where he wonders whether the Discovery Institute will decry Comer's firing, since they've been willing to stretch the facts to complain about cases with far less substance to them:

Will the Discovery Institute come forward to say that the TEA is repressing Ms. Comer’s free speech rights? Will they urge her to become the star of the “Expelled” movie? After all, she did actually lose her job over her stance on evolution in education, as opposed to various people noted as being featured in the film who did not. But the DI is unlikely to do so because Ms. Comer is on the opposite side of the issue from them. They aren’t defending a principle, they are pushing a particular line of propaganda.

I agree with Wesley. The Discovery Institute has a long record of misrepresenting facts (and not just about science) in order to promote its views. I suspect they will either remain silent or try to defend Comer's removal.

Pharyngula also comments on Comer's removal, including the following explanation from Comer's boss:

the forwarding of this event announcement by Ms. Comer, as the Director of Science, from her TEA email account constitutes much more than just sharing information. Ms. Comer's email implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral. Thus, sending this email compromises the agency's role in the TEKS revision process by creating the perception that TEA has a biased position on a subject directly related to the science education TEKS.

As P.Z. Myers comments: "Whoa. The Texas Education Agency is neutral on the subject of teaching good science? It's bad if the TEA takes a position on the subject of science education? Apparently, TEA members are supposed to close their eyes and maximize ignorance before making decisions. I really feel sorry for Texas."

UPDATE (December 2, 2007): And more, from Texas Citizens for Science (via Pharyngula).

UPDATE (December 4, 2007): The New York Times editorializes on this subject.

UPDATE (December 6, 2007): DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds agrees that TEA is in the wrong here.

UPDATE (December 12, 2007): The Society for the Study of Evolution has sent an open letter to "Texas TEA."

UPDATE (December 20, 2007): Glenn Branch has written a nice blog post about his email that cost Comer her job.

UPDATE (July 3, 2008): Chris Comer has filed a lawsuit regarding her termination.

Theists and atheists less depressed than agnostics?

A letter in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine suggests that theism and atheism are both correlated with "fewer reported depressive symptoms than the in-between state of 'existential uncertainty'."

Sunday School for Atheists

The November 21, 2007 issue of Time magazine includes a story titled "Sunday School for Atheists," about how the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, California has been offering Sunday school classes for kids for the last three years. The article notes that similar programs are under consideration in Albuquerque, NM, Portland, OR, and Phoenix. It doesn't mention it, but the Phoenix group considering offering such a program is the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, a group which has meetings for adults, often with quite interesting speakers, every two weeks. (Kat and I are members, but we have a pretty poor attendance record.)

Also mentioned in the article are Camp Quest, a summer camp program operating in five states and Ontario, Canada, and the Carl Sagan Academy in Tampa, FL, the nation's first humanist charter school.

UPDATE: Mark at Protestant Pontifications has written a blog post on this Time magazine article, and I've submitted this comment:

When you write “But there is danger in thinking one can siphon off certain aspects of community and still achieve the same result - especially when trying to mimic the benefits of religious community,” do you mean to suggest that any religion can have such benefits, or do you mean to restrict it to Christianity (and perhaps Judaism)?

It seems to me that other religions clearly have communities with the same social benefits and same self-ascriptions of worship and spiritual value. Yet clearly not all religions are true, which means that either some of the participants are self-deceived or that the benefits do not require the religion to be true. I think the latter is better supported by the evidence.

Since I happen to think that there is no true religion, I don’t see the problem with what these humanists are trying to do. I’ve recently attended memorial services of deeply religious evangelical Christians, of a liberal universalist Christian, and of an atheist, and they each evoked the same emotions and sense of community and fellowship with the people at the services; in my case, I felt a deeper fellowship and companionship with those at the atheist service since those are like-minded people. The emotions were the same–a combination of grief at the departure yet happiness at the memories of the departed’s life–yet there was no self-deception about seeing the departed again in the future.

BTW, it is somewhat ironic for a member of such a syncretistic religion as Christianity to criticize an atheist group for “trying to mimic” a religious practice. Virtually every component of the Christian religion was appropriated from other religions, and that’s not even counting holiday celebrations. The most rapidly growing religious sect in the world today, Pentecostalism (from 0 to 400 million members in about a century), is also quite syncretistic, appropriating components of local religions everywhere it spreads.

The Christian CADRE blog has a post on the article titled "The Cult-like Culture of Atheism, Part II," which says that "If atheists cannot see how that is just another step on the road to finally recognizing themselves as a religion then they really need to think a little bit more about how they act." I've responded with this comment:

Humanism (which is not just atheism, it has specific positive tenets, and should be distinguished from "secular humanism") *does* recognize itself as a religion, and has for many years. The American Humanist Association is a 501(c)(3) *religious* organization. It has officiants who perform marriage and memorial services, it has groups that hold regular meetings and social events in most countries of the world. In the Netherlands, 26% of the population consider themselves humanists (vs. 31% Catholic, 13% Dutch Reformed, 7% Calvinist); another 18% are non-religious and non-Humanist.

BTW, "cult" is a term that, in my opinion, should be restricted to religious groups that have most or all of a set of features that include being centered around an authoritarian leader, requiring members to restrict contact with non-members, controlling all aspects of the group's lives, etc. Steve Hassan's book _Combatting Cult Mind Control_ has a good list of cult characteristics. Most sects of Christianity are not cults; there could certainly be atheist cults, and Madalyn Murray O'Hair's American Atheists group was probably close to one, if not one, while she was alive.

I disagree with Mr. Ragland [another commenter who said this shows man to be a religious creature] about what this particular evidence shows--I think it shows that man is a *social* creature, though I think there are other reasons (put forth in Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained book, for example) to think that man is, indeed, a religious creature.

Fake weeping Virgin Mary painting

I wish I had seen this before my Channel 3 News interview about a similar painting coming to Phoenix.

From Associated Press, September 19, 2007:

BLANCO, Texas -- Samuel A. Greene Jr., the founder of a monastery that closed amid scandal over the alleged sexual abuse of novice monks and a fraudulent weeping Virgin Mary painting, has died. He was 63.

Greene's death was being investigated as a suicide, but officials were waiting for autopsy results before ruling on the cause of death. Greene's body was found Monday morning in his home on the grounds of Christ of the Hills Monastery.

The monastery was allied with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia from 1991 to 1999, but the church broke ties with the monastery when allegations surfaced of indecency by Greene with a juvenile novice monk.

Greene, who founded the monastery in 1981, pleaded guilty in 2000 to indecency and was sentenced to 10 years probation. In 2006, Greene told his probation officer in a secretly taped interview that he had sexual contact with boys over a 30-year period starting in the 1970s.

Greene also reportedly confirmed that the monastery's weeping painting was fake. Authorities seized the icon, which was said to cry tears of myrrh, a sign of divine intervention. It had drawn thousands of visitors, and their donations, to the area.

The interview also prompted authorities to file child sexual assault and organized crime charges against Greene and four other monks in July 2006. Greene maintained his innocence and was released on his own recognizance because of health problems.

Greene was due Friday in court, where prosecutors planned to seek to have his probation revoked. Assistant District Attorney Cheryl Nelson said she would have asked the judge to sentence him to the maximum 20-year term on each of his nine indecency counts.

This obituary omits what Time magazine reported (I don't have the exact issue, but it was cut-and-pasted into the November 20, 2007 issue of Saucer Smear):

When the compound was closed, investigators found eyedroppers and bottles of rosewater used to fake the tears that prompted donations. Last year Greene confessed to the ruse, and his sexual relations with teenage students, to his probation officer.

It's interesting how AP omitted that information.

The Rise of Pentecostalism and the Economist Religion Wars issue

In 1901, Bible college students at Charles Fox Parham's Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas prayed to be baptized by the Holy Spirit. At a New Year's Eve service that year, as Parham preached, Agnes Ozman began to speak in tongues, and Pentecostalism was born.

William J. Seymour, a one-eyed black minister, attended Parham's college in Houston, Texas, though he had to sit in another room across the hall and listen in, due to Texas race laws of the time. Seymour moved to Los Angeles, where he sparked the Azusa Street Revival in 1906.

Today there are over 400 million Pentecostals in the world, and it is the world's fastest-growing religious sect. The Mormons are lightweights by comparison, having only reached 13 million followers worldwide after nearly twice as long an existence. In Guatemala, Pentecostals have built a 12,000 seat church; in Lagos, one church supposedly has 2 million followers; and South Korea is home to five of the world's ten largest megachurches.

What makes Pentecostalism successful? It's not intellectual argument. Pentecostalism is what The Economist's recent special report on "The new wars of religion" refers to as a "hot" religion. It's not particularly concerned about doctrinal details (which is not to say it doesn't have them), but about religious experience and personal interaction and participation. The Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest megachurch in South Korea, has 830,000 members (one in 20 Seoul residents is a member), holds seven Sunday services each of which has 12,000 people in the main auditorium and 20,000 watching on television in chapels in neighboring buildings. While you wait (and you will wait, especially if you want to attend one of the two services led by founder David Cho), you can listen to choirs sing, and sing along with the help of karaoke-style captions on TV screens. Translation is supplied to provide the services in English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Malay, and Arabic.

The Yoido church, like many U.S. megachurches, works by organizing around many small groups. For Yoido, these are "home cells" of around a dozen people that meet in people's homes. Yoido has 68,000 female deacons and half as many male deacons, who may make 35 visits a week to parishioners. There's little hierarchy, and an emphasis on evangelizing, sending out missionaries, and producing more and more "home cells." And it's a methodology that appears to be winning the religious competition.

An earlier Economist story (from 2005, pay content) on the business practices of U.S. megachurches, likewise observed that they function by providing a diverse variety of services to lots of small niches, with groups for hikers, skateboarders, mountain bikers, book readers, and so forth, creating many small communities out of which a larger one is formed.

The lesson I take from this for the nonreligious is that a diversity of groups that cooperate with each other on common causes is far more likely to grow and have influence than individual groups that take a hard line on admissions requirements and require conformity to a narrow notion of what it is to be a freethinker or a skeptic, such as an adherence to scientism or atheism. The late Clark Adams of the Internet Infidels and Las Vegas Freethought Society was a strong proponent of cooperation between a broad set of secular groups as a way of strengthening their influence and being able to create organizations like the Secular Coalition for America. He was also a supporter of groups that engaged in social activities rather than intellectual navel-gazing, and promoted his views with humor and popular culture references more than with step-by-step argument.

If you've thought about starting a secular, freethought, or skeptical group around some interest of your own that's not currently served by an existing group, go for it. Meetup.com is a great way to get started or to find an existing group--you can find atheist groups, agnostic groups, deism groups, ex-Christian groups, Discordian groups, humanist groups, secular humanist groups, brights groups, skeptics' groups, separation of church and state groups, and many more.

"Surfer dude" comes up with unified theory

The Telegraph reports on a "surfer dude" (who happens to have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. though he spends his time surfing and snowboarding) who has come up with a unified theory of everything that is getting some serious attention from other physicists.

(Via The Agitator.)

Prohibition creates profitable black markets

As this story from the Boulder Weekly shows. (This link is to a copy since the Boulder Weekly's website has a database issue at the moment.)

(Via The Agitator.)

Discovery Institute loses, gains a Fellow

When law professor (and President of the Evangelical Theological Society) Francis Beckwith converted from evangelical Christianity to Catholicism earlier this year, he made somewhat of a public splash. When he subsequently resigned as a Fellow of the Discovery Institute in July, neither DI nor Beckwith made any public comment. But law professor Peter Irons writes at Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog:

Beckwith, who is a recognized scholar on church-state issues, has made no public statement on the reasons for his resignation (and his private comments on those reasons, while revealing, are not for publication, at least now). After Beckwith resigned, the DI quietly removed his bio from its website, and he just disappeared into the ether.

Ed Brayton's blog post is reporting on the addition of a new Discovery Institute Fellow, movie reviewer and culture critic Michael Medved, an intellectual lightweight who believes in Sasquatch. (The link here also includes criticism of Medved for an article about American slavery, but I actually think Medved's article is better than the critique of it.)

As Irons notes in his comment, "In replacing Beckwith with Medved, the DI has traded intellectual substance for Hollywood glitz."

And Medved isn't even a good movie reviewer.

Discovery Institute steals content and presents it as their own

ERV has found that William Dembski (and apparently other DI fellows) have misappropriated a computer animated video of the cell from Harvard and XVIVO, replaced the narration with their own, and presented it as though it's their own work without giving credit to the original source.

Her blog shows the original video and a presentation of the video at a lecture by William Dembski.

The Discovery Institute really is shameless.

(Via Pharyngula.)

Earth setting as seen from lunar orbit

Some nice high-definition video images have been taken by the Japanese lunar orbiter "Kaguya," showing the earth setting behind the moon's surface.

John Allen Paulos comes out with an atheism book

John Allen Paulos, the mathematician and author of such excellent books as Innumeracy, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (all three of which I recommend), has a new book coming out on January 3, 2008 titled Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up. Here's the review from Publishers Weekly:

Few of the recent books on atheism have been worth reading just for wit and style, but this is one of them: Paulos is truly funny. Despite the title, the Temple University math professor doesn't actually discuss mathematics much, which will be a relief to any numerically challenged readers who felt intimidated by his previous book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. In this short primer ("just the gist with an occasional jest") Paulos tackles 12 of the most common arguments for God, including the argument from design, the idea that a "moral universality" points to a creator God, the notion of first causes and the argument from coincidence, among others. Along the way, he intersperses irreverent and entertaining little chapterlets that contain his musings on various subjects, including a hilarious imagined IM exchange with God that slyly parodies Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God. "Why does solemnity tend to infect almost all discussions of religion?" Paulos asks, clearly bemoaning the dearth of humor. This little book goes a long way toward correcting the problem, and provides both atheists and religious apologists some digestible food for thought along the way. (Jan. 3)

I hope the IM exchange described is as witty and funny as Raymond Smullyan's dialogue with God, "Is God a Taoist?" (also found in his excellent book The Tao is Silent and in Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter's anthology, The Mind's I).

UPDATE (January 14, 2008): Jim Holt reviews Paulos' book for the New York Times.

Guantanamo Bay operations manual leaked to Internet

The unclassified, for official use only, operations manual for U.S. soldiers stationed at Guantanamo Bay has been leaked to the Internet on the Wikileaks.org website, which is being crushed by traffic at the moment.

The manual allegedly contradicts U.S. military claims that the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been denied access to some parts of the facility at Guantanamo.

The manual unsurprisingly prohibits soldiers from subjecting prisoners to "abuse, or any form of corporal punishment," since specific interrogation procedures are no doubt covered in separate classified documents. Still, it's a good thing to see in writing.

A Reuters story at Yahoo has more specifics, and I'm sure we'll see mirrored copies of the document appearing elsewhere to reduce the load on Wikileaks.org.

Creation Ministries explains settlement breakdown

Creation Ministries International has put up a web page explaining the breakdown in settlement talks with Answers in Genesis:

Unfortunately, the actions of AiG-US since the ‘Hawaii handshake settlement’ have meant that, barring a near-miraculous change of heart on their part, the situation appears to have broken down once more.

The terms of settlement were, in the understanding of all parties present, effectively finalized and agreed upon in Hawaii in mid-August (see two ‘stop press’ announcements below) by duly authorized and empowered representatives of the ministries—even though Ken Ham was not present, although we had been led to believe that he would be.

The only thing left was to discuss the details of how to commit the handshake agreement to writing. Both sides agreed to reconvene in Hawaii 60 days later (at the latest), if absolutely necessary, if we failed to finish the process of committing it to writing.

The page goes on to explain that this has not happened, because AiG waited until after the 60 days was over to respond to CMI's written proposal based on the verbal agreement, and AiG's response was to invent an entirely new agreement which omitted conditions that had been verbally agreed to and inserted new conditions which had not been agreed to.

CMI proposed that they move forward by meeting again in person in a neutral country (such as Singapore or New Zealand) with an independent Christian arbitrator and hammering out an agreement in writing. AiG's lawyers responded with a rejection.

At the same time, John Mackay's mailing list in Australia has been ratcheting up the assault on the alleged "spiritual problems" of CMI, which CMI has responded to by sending out this email:

From: CMI INFObytes
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 7:53 AM
Subject: Serious slander issue against CMI

Serious slander issue against CMI

A short time ago, we were in receipt of a very vicious document circulating from a professing Christian ministry (which not many are aware is operated by an unrepentant church excommunicant) that made astonishing allegations against CMI-Australia and in particular its Managing Director, Dr Carl Wieland.

We did not react at the time, because the vendetta has been in operation for some 20 years now, and we assumed that surely people would have sufficient discernment to contact us to check the veracity of these allegations. However, we are concerned that some might think there might be some substance to the allegations, without understanding that they are clearly designed to undermine the confidence of the Christian public, and to thus attack CMI's ability to do outreach.

We have prepared a written response which makes it plain that these are falsehoods, documentable as such by eyewitness testimony. In it we have challenged the perpetrators to 'front up' and make these claims openly in a proper Christian forum, instead of by slanderous gossip techniques.

If you know of any person who has been in receipt of this particular 'spiritual-sounding' slander, or if your church leaders have heard these unfortunate allegations, please encourage them to email us at [mail at creation.NOSPAMinfo -- edited to prevent spam harvesting -jjl] and request our response to the article in question. If after reading that response, they have any further questions, we will be pleased to answer them. It is a real pity that we cannot just continue our ministry in peace and safety without such distractions.

If you are unaware of any such contemplated move against CMI in your circles, please just pray for this situation in general terms. Your ongoing support of the outreach is much appreciated.

Yours in Christ,

Gary Bates
Head of Ministry, CMI-Australia

It will be interesting to see if AiG makes any public comment.

Multics source code released

The full source code to the last official release of the Multics operating system has been released to the general public (though full source was always made available to all customers, except for specific "unbundled" applications). Multics, the predecessor system to Unix (and in a number of ways still its superior), was a general purpose commercial operating system best known for its security.

That release, Multics MR12.5 (MR = "Multics Release"), was released to customers in November 1992. The last Multics system was shut down in 2000.

The software can be downloaded from a website at MIT, though it requires specialized hardware to run on, so don't expect to be able to run it. My name appears a few times throughout the software, as I worked as a Multics software developer from 1983 to 1988. The MIT site incorrectly states that Multics development was ended by Bull in 1985--that may have been the time when Bull decided to pull the plug, but there was still development (though primarily bug fixing) going on in 1988 when I left.

One of the pieces I wrote was a rewrite of the interactive message facility, in some ways a predecessor of instant messaging (except that it operated on a single timesharing host rather than over a network between hosts).

Most of the software is in the "ldd" hierarchy (for library directory directory, the directory of directories of libraries). The software is in Multics "archive" format which is similar to Unix tar files. The message facility software is in /ldd/sss/source/bound_msg_facility_.s.archive.

Kudos to Group Bull, the copyright holder of Multics, for making the software open source. Bull purchased Multics as part of its acquisition of Honeywell's Large Computer Products Division in the mid-eighties.

AiG/CMI settlement seems to have fallen apart

After Answers in Genesis met with Creation Ministries International in Hawaii to hammer out their differences verbally in mid-August, CMI issued a statement indicating that they had agreed to convert their verbal agreement into a written one over the next 60 days. The time has come and gone, and apparently no written agreement has been reached.

CMI's web pages about their lawsuit are back online.

For more information about the dispute, see the "Answers in Genesis schism" label on this blog or the excellent summary at Duae Quartunciae.

UPDATE (November 16, 2007): I've posted a more detailed account of the settlement breakdown.

How to improve education

The October 20, 2007 issue of The Economist has an interesting article about a study by McKinsey & Co. which looks for explanations of the differences in standards and performance of primary education systems between OECD nations, based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results.

The top performing countries are countries which do the three things the studies recommend: hire the best teachers, get them to do their best, and intervene when students fall behind. In South Korea, primary schools recruit teachers from the top 5% of college graduates, Singapore from the top 30%. Finland requires primary school teachers to have a master's degree. Yet they don't offer as much money as possible to attract the best, nor try to obtain as large a pool of teachers to choose from as possible--countries with the highest teacher salaries, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland, are not among those with the best-performing schools.

Singapore and Finland both provide significant teacher training and encourage teachers to share information and lesson plans. In Korea, secondary school teachers have lower status than primary school teachers: "Its primary school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities. ... In contrast, secondary-school teachers can get a diploma from any one of 350 colleges, with laxer selection criteria."

The McKinsey study offers an explanation for why there's no correlation between spending or class size and student performance. Increasing spending doesn't guarantee that you get the best teachers, train them well, or intervene appropriately for students who fall behind. Reducing class size means a need for more teachers, which all else being equal means lower salaries and lower status, when the apparent way to succeed is to be more selective about who is teaching, not less.

Phoenix-area foreclosures up 566 percent

From January through the end of October, there were 7,139 foreclosures in the metropolitan Phoenix area, compared to 1,072 foreclosures during the same period last year. It's expected to hit 10,000 by the end of the year, compared to fewer than 2,000 last year.

Fox News Anchor calls for U.S. to support terrorism in Iran

If you advocate torture and car bombs, how can you have any moral justification for saying that those who use such tactics against us are wrong or evil?

Parents Television Council demonstrates their own pointlessness

The Parents Television Council, the organization that is responsible for generating over 99.8% of all indecency complaints to the FCC, has further demonstrated its own complete pointlessness by putting out a website that assembles a collection of the most indecent clips from broadcast television, with no parental controls of any kind on the page. Each clip is categorized with labels like "sex," "violence," and "foul language."

What's a kid more likely to come across? A five-second bit in one of thousands of television shows, or a huge collection of the worst of the worst all in one place on the Internet?

It's high time for broadcast television indecency rules to be dropped.

(Via The Agitator.)

Americans are so fat...

...that they're now "bottoming out" the boats on the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland, for the first time in its 41-year history. Disneyland is now redesigning the ride, and preventing overweight patrons from bringing the ride to a halt is part of the plan.

Macintosh security lags behind Windows and BSD

Tom Ptacek at Matasano Chargen has a rundown on the new security features in Mac OS X Leopard, which are still not quite up to snuff with what's in Windows Vista or OpenBSD.

Here's a followup with more details.