On the topic of the budget fights, the NY Times becomes unintentionally humorous.
Watson and Jeopardy: computer vs. people
I watched “Jeopardy” last night to see what all the fuss was about Watson, the computer who’s been coolly cleaning the clocks of previous mega-winners Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.
I don’t like Watson. Seems to me that, although his skills (and those of his programmers) are formidable, they are exactly what you’d expect and not so very interesting, and based mostly on his speed. The most exciting thing about him is his ability to respond to human speech with humanoid speech, to decipher some of the meanderings and indirections and come up with an answer based on the voluminous information stored within his huge files.
More interesting to me is what Watson lacks: emotion, humor, and what we might call nuance. Although I’ve read a bit about artificial intelligence, I don’t see how computers can ever come to have wit or creativity or the ability to understand a joke or make a quip. Jennings and Rutter showed Watson up by clowning around at his expense at the very end of the show (fortunately, Watson’s feelings didn’t seem too badly hurt):
PJ Tatler
I keep meaning to call your attention to a new feature at PJ, the Tatler. It’s a forum for a group of journalists, bloggers, and other writers to sound off on whatever happens to catch their interest at any particular moment.
I’m a member, and every now and then I post something like this. If you want to see the list of people participating, go to the link and look at the right sidebar. But just to whet your appetite, among them are Richard Fernandez, Michael Ledeen, Governor Rick Perry, and Michael Totten.
Chris Christie: big things
I happened to catch about fifteen minutes of NJ Governor Christie’s address to the American Enterprise Institute this afternoon. I haven’t seen any articles reporting on it yet, just advance notice such as this, saying that the title of his speech is “It’s Time to Do the Big Things.”
Christie himself is a very big thing. I say that not only because—well, let’s face it, there’s no other way to say it—the guy is fat, especially for a politician (a fact I happen to find refreshing and part of his rough charm), but also because he is a potentially big force in the Republican Party and in the country as a whole.
Listening to his speech, which was about solving fiscal problems, I could not help but wish that he would run in 2012. Maybe it would be premature, but hardly as premature as the candidacy of our current president. Christie says that New Jersey needs him and he will not run, and I believe him, so it’s probably moot. But I have seen no politician since Paul Tsongas who has the same desirable qualities of straight but articulate talk and common sense coupled with sincerity and humor.
Lara Logan, the press, and the Egyptian street
The “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” of CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan by a crowd in Egypt is a horrific story that raises a host of questions, and has ramifications beyond the immediate threat to Logan and our heartfelt wishes for her swift recovery.
There is the entire question of what so many Western journalists—both women and men—are doing in a volatile crowd like that (which always threatens to become a mob), and how best to protect them. Women run special risks and are especially vulnerable. Is the reportage these journalists do under those circumstances worth it? What do we really learn from a few interviews with a selected group of people on the street, usually the most Westernized and fluent in English? Is it more misleading than not?
Reports say Logan was separated from her crew, but what was the make-up of her crew? Was it just tech people, or did it include bodyguards, and were there an adequate number of the latter and were they trained properly? After the beatings some journalists received at the hands of this crowd a while back, were any extra precautions taken?
Journalists who go into war zones and/or potentially explosive situations such as that in Egypt assume a certain amount of inevitable risk. But are they really aware of the extent of that risk? Or do some of them (not necessarily Logan; I’m asking a general question here) think themselves invincible, and believe their own naive words about the harmlessness and goodwill of everyone in the crowd? And if they do, and they act on it, whose fault and whose responsibility is that?
Who were the elements in this crowd that attacked Logan, and what did they represent?
Who were the women who were part of the group that rescued her, and how did they accomplish that task?
What was going on in the mind of formerly-respected leftist journalist Nir Rosen, who mocked Logan and minimized the vicious attack? And how many more are there like him, in the press and elsewhere?
What does the incident say about the forces shaping the new Egypt? What does the Egyptian street think about the place of women in that society, and will there be new restrictions on their lives once democracy is instituted—if it ever is instituted? And what about the Arab world in general, and the place of women there?
Why did CBS first try to suppress the story of the assault on Logan, only coming out with it after it realized it couldn’t be kept quiet because other media outlets were aware of it? The network says the motivation for the initial secrecy was to protect Logan’s privacy. But could it be that they were also trying to shape Western perceptions of the Egyptian street, and to keep them as positive as possible? And if so, why?
The NY Post article reports that “CBS sources” added to the official CBS statement the fact that the thugs who brutalized Logan were yelling “Jew, Jew!” as they went about their grim work. If that is true, why was it left out of the press release on the subject? That fact has nothing to do with Logan’s privacy and everything to do with the story itself, who the attacking elements are, and what they might believe.
[NOTE: Nir Rosen’s resignation from his position at NYU’s Center on Law and Security was accepted today, and Jim Geraghty writes “there was something profoundly disturbing in Rosen’s complete inability to sympathize with the awful ordeal of Ms. Logan and the fact that when others recoiled at his comments, he kept digging in deeper.” Profoundly disturbing, indeed. I plan to write a longer piece on the subject of Rosen soon.]
Pawlenty on Egypt
Tim Pawlenty gives advice on how he would have handled the Egyptian crisis.
I like what he has to say, and it highlights some of what was missing in Obama’s reaction:
…[F]irst of all, get your own team on the same page. That’s lesson number one in a crisis: communicate clearly. Number two: we have to articulate, when we have that kind of an uncertain crisis unfolding, what our principles are,” the former governor said. “One, we don’t want a radical Islamic result. Two, we favor democracy. And President Mubarak and Suleiman or anyone else who may be purporting to be leading the nation needs to embrace those principles.”
Funny how simple it seems when Pawlenty says it. And funny how hard it’s been for Obama to either say it or do it—especially the “we don’t want a radical Islamic result” part.
[ADDENDUM: Historian Niall Ferguson vents.
Did you know that…
…Ayn Rand is buried in Valhalla?
Valhalla NY, that is.
Andrew Sullivan, Obama’s budget, and feeling duped
This could be the beginning of wisdom for Andrew Sullivan. Or, depending what you think of Sullivan, the return to wisdom. Or just a temporary return to wisdom.
Sullivan’s disillusion with Obama seems to have been generated by the President’s latest whopper, which is that his proposed budget features steep cuts in spending, although he ignores the enormous elephant of entitlements that’s filling the nation’s fiscal room and threatening to destroy it. As Obama-deceptions go, it’s really not so great or so unusual, but for some reason it pushed a button for Sullivan. And quite a large button at that:
But the core challenge of this time is not the cost of discretionary spending. Obama knows this; everyone knows this. The crisis is the cost of future entitlements and defense, about which Obama proposes nothing. Yes, there’s some blather. But Obama will not risk in any way any vulnerability on taxes to his right or entitlement spending to his left. He convened a deficit commission in order to throw it in the trash. If I were Alan Simpson or Erskine Bowles, I’d feel duped. And they were duped. All of us who took Obama’s pitch as fiscally responsible were duped.
And Obama just punted on his promise to cut Medicare payments to doctors, as pledged under Obamacare as a core part of the case that health insurance reform would cut the deficit. So congrats, Megan. We can chalk that up as a cynical diversion (even though Obama pledges to find savings elsewhere in the Medicare budget to make up for this lie – a promise we now have no reason to trust or believe).
We now have no reason to trust or believe? Where were you, Andrew, when Obama showed how profoundly untrustworthy he was way back in June of 2008, when he boldly and apologetically broke his solemn pledge on campaign financing? That was the tipoff as to his character, and it occurred long before the election.
But I say better late than never. And Sullivan doesn’t mince words; this guy feels personally betrayed:
…[By ignoring the deficit, Obama] has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road.
And towards the end:
To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools.
Much too narrow, IMHO—Obama thinks we’re all fools. In fact, he thinks everyone in the world besides him is a fool. As for me, I don’t think those under 30 who worked to get Obama elected are necessarily fools; they are merely young, and they were his natural target, vulnerable to his arguments and his charms. What’s Sullivan’s excuse?
This post by Lexington Green at Chicago Boyz describes exactly what I believe may be happening, and why Obama has done this. I have never thought Obama to be stupid; on the contrary, he is smart and he is bold. However, in the end it will all come down to how smart the American people are, and how closely they have been paying attention.
This is the possible scenario:
Obama is not “failing to lead” as some people are claiming. That is all wrong.
All suggestions to that effect are all wrong. Obama knows exactly what he is doing.
Obama is setting up a confrontation and he plans to win.
Obama is betting that he can force the GOP to make their proposed cuts, which he can blame them for, which he can truthfully say he does not support. Then he can attack the Republicans for making the cuts. He will appeal to the people who are suffering from the cuts, and strip away GOP support. They will be angry and mobilized.
Obama then plans to force the GOP into a funding crisis just as Clinton did. Obama plans to destroy the GOP reform wave of 2011 just as Clinton destroyed the GOP reform effort in 1995.
As for the Republicans, it seems that for now they’re not biting. According to Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP will vote in temporary funding measures through the use of continuing resolutions rather than shut down the government a la 1995.
Let the games begin!
Oldies but goodies at the Grammys
Did you watch the Grammys last night? I did. I happened to tune in after this old guy’s performance was over, but it apparently brought down the house:
Mick Jagger is 67 years old. I would have pegged him for one to burn out a lot earlier than most, but instead he’s still a lean mean machine, thin as a greyhound and just as energetic.
More energetic, I’d say, than when he was a good deal younger. I guess he’s had a lot more satisfaction since then:
I hear tell there was another even older guy there. He’s gonna be seventy in a couple of months, and he’s nowhere near as—ummm—spry as Jagger. But he used to have this to say about aging:
[NOTE: I did catch Barbra Steisand’s performance. She’s not a favorite of mine to begin with, but now she sounds as though she’s lost her voice. I can’t find a photo yet, but her gargantuan dress gave her a certain purple mountain majesty.]
[ADDENDUM: I originally had a YouTube video of Jagger at the Grammys up here. But in the time between my copying the embed code and actually posting the post, YouTube had taken all those videos down for copyright violations.
I love and adore and am practically addicted to YouTube, but it does drive me nuts sometimes.]
Obama’s budget
I’m not sure why the big deal about Obama’s submitted budget. After all, no one expected it to have any substantial deficit-cutting teeth in it. And, with Republicans controlling the House, it’s merely the opening gambit in a chess game.
Did anyone really think Obama would make a serious effort to control spending? Did anyone really think he wouldn’t be proposing to raise taxes? Did anyone really think the numbers wouldn’t be fudged in some way or other?
The Republicans have recommended more severe cuts. But understandably, neither party (with the exception of a few individuals on the right) seems willing to touch the third rail of cutting entitlements, and without that the proposed budget reductions are mostly window-dressing.
Of course, that’s because almost everyone will be squawking if entitlements are reduced. There’s a reason both parties have, in recent years, been so keen on distributing federal government money to give people stuff—it’s because we’ve come to expect and demand it. And with certain entitlements such as Social Security, we’ve paid into it over the years and it is our very own money we expect to get out of it if we manage to live long enough. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works.
Valentine’s Day: a kiss is still a kiss (and a mate-assessment technique)
In 2007, researchers announced the not-so-very-astonishing news that kissing does not mean the same thing to men and to women.
Individuals may differ (and indeed they do). But, as a general rule, kissing is more often a means to an end for men. I’ll leave you to guess what that end might be. For women, kissing is more intrinsically important and even necessary, a sort of measure of the pulse of a romance.
Or, as the researchers rather unromantically put it, women use kissing to “establish and monitor the status of their relationship, and to assess and periodically update the level of commitment on the part of a partner.”
But that’s not all. A psychology professor at Lafayette College reports that kissing has a measurable effect on certain hormones:
[The team] found that kissing reduced the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in both sexes. But levels of oxytocin, a hormone linked to social bonding that they expected to be boosted by kissing, only rose among the men.
For women, a romantic atmosphere (dimmed lights, mood music) helped raised their oxytocin to the level of the men’s.
Ah, women. So very demanding! Especially on Valentines Day—which happens to be today.
And then there’s chocolate:
In 2007 British scientists measured the brain and heart activity sparked by passionate kissing, but found it was less intense that the stimulation produced by eating chocolate.
Speaking of mood music, and kissing:
Victor Davis Hanson sums it up for you
Hanson on the next steps in Egypt:
Few will shed tears for the demise of Hosni Mubarak. But his departure was not the result of an overt reform agenda, a new constitution, or even a group of new visionaries. It was ad hoc furor. So the present coup in Egypt is not the beginning of the end of the revolution, but merely the end of the beginning. Shortly we are going to witness a long period of revolutionary fervor, as small numbers of well-organized zealots, including clerical interests, vie for power. The latter’s ascendance will be marked by disavowals of political ambition, constant organizing for that very purpose, embrace of violence while professing renunciation of violence, and courting of Western interests publicly while privately mobilizing against them.
And I hope James Clapper reads it too.