Pangloss

Sure there was. They weren't operating there, but they had a presence, major figures were in-country, they had safe houses, contact with existing terrorist figures, etc. But I don't think that's really the point of the discussion, and I think Obama cleverly changed the subject by bringing that up. The issue was whether he would return troops there, not why they're there in the first place. That's another subject, and changing the subject doesn't answer the question.

You're welcome to think that, of course. My personal opinion is that Clinton and Obama will also keep troops there indefinitely. They're just not going to say so.

I see what you mean. Ouch. That's just painful to read. Are people listing arXiv.org articles on their CVs?

I think that's what many folks here would like to see, and some are willing to state such outright. They have some valid points regarding futility and security impact, which I feel are countered by legitimate disagreement over those two issues, plus the responsibility I feel we've incurred to help Iraqis get back on their feet. But I think it's fair to say that both sides have legitimate concerns. But realistically, I don't think anyone here actually believes that all troops are coming home immediately (i.e. early 2009) under most election scenarios. My personal opinion is that the level of and timeline of withdrawl will be largely the same regardless of whom we elect this fall, because both sides have put so much emphasis on paying attention to boots-on-the-ground analysis.

What did you all think about the dust-up this week between Obama and McCain over Obama's debate message that he would send troops back to Iraq if Al Qaeda resurged there?

It was a remarkable book, I must say. My copy is heavily dog-eared.

The president's job, regardless of which party he's in (which is what this thread is really about), is to be optimistic about the economy in public statements. That's because being a pessimist doesn't help the economy, but being an optimist can (and often does) have an positive impact. As any Wall Street analyst will tell you, what matters is not what the president says about the economy, but what the president does about the economy.

How much error would there be in the translation? That's always the question in DAC scenarios, if I'm not mistaken.

That's a shame, but I guess the question would be whether 30:1 is a good ratio or a bad ratio, in terms of what it could be compared with. How would you rate it against the old Physics newsgroups, for example? Also, do you think it has any value filling the perceived gap between popular magazines and peer-reviewed journals? It seems to me that it could have some value for people who are not "in the work" and are just trying to follow it out of personal interest, but are able to do so at a higher level than what is typically published in SciAm, for example (which of course also runs several months behind current events).

Well regardless of the NASA count, I think your point about bad numbers being quickly spread around is well founded, and has been recognized for some time by many media analysts and observers. The common meme is that journalists are lazy and/or underpaid for the amount of work they have to do (when I was at CNN in the early 1990s an typical video journalist started at less than $16,000/yr, and that was a fairly prestigious job!). There's also too much dependence on specific outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, which end up setting the top stories for the entire industry on a daily basis. According to Howard Kurtz in his latest book, the morning shows -- Today, Good Morning America, and whatever they have on CBS these days -- begin calling agents for guest slots at 10:30pm on a typical weeknight. It's no accident that this is shortly after the New York Times posts the next morning's edition on its web site. As to whether or not this is actually a problem, Kurtz goes on to say: (From Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War, by Howard Kurtz, page 430, published in October 2007.) The point being that reading the New York Times, Googling, and scanning Wikipedia articles is no substitute for good journalism. But too many journalists stop right there, considering their jobs to be about shovling the same story over to a different audience. On a more positive note, some of the best journalism ever to happen still takes place on a regular basis. It's just harder to find these days, that's all.

This is the site I was thinking of: http://arxiv.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv.org It focuses on an "endorsement" system rather than peer review. I think the idea is that it provides relatively useful information without the high signal-to-noise ratio and non-academic, expository information common to regular web sites and popular magazines, etc.

Well I don't know about that, I think your observation about overextending our reach is quite accurate. In fact it's also extremely current, given comments yesterday from one of the generals that Iraq seriously stretched the capabilities of our armed forces (I'm afraid I can't find a link at the moment). It also has currency in the way our behavior impacts other country's actions. Turkey made a statement yesterday regarding the Kurdish situation that would have been comical if it wasn't so serious -- they said they would set "no timetable for withdrawl from Iraq"! No, really, they actually said it that way. Talk about hubris! I could here West Wing and State Department employees cringing en masse from all the way down here in South Florida. And I had no idea we were about to send troops to Kosovo, so that was interesting as well. For what it's worth, I wish you the best of luck.

I agree. We have talked about other approaches TO peer review here from time to time, trying to deal with the various cons of traditional approaches without introducing too many new cons. There's one web site (the name eludes me at the moment) that's sometimes used for journal publications -- someone help me out here?

I can do even better than that. According to Carl Sagan in his last book ("The Demon-Haunted World"), the oldest scrap of parchment ever found, something like 3 or 4 thousand BC, says something to the effect that "these kids today don't care about their elders".

Yes I have seen that movie, and it was critical of unilateralism, and I recall that it also parodied armchair ideologues who use cliches and witicisms to gain attention out of ignorance. Parker and Stone are radical moderates, and personal heroes of mine. But I agree with your point about overextending our reach. I don't think we should have gone to Iraq either, and I agree with you that people seem to have generally arrived at that same conclusion. (Which seems in stark contrast with your OP, but okay. I'd be happy to change the thread subject, if you wish -- you were kinda stuck with the one I gave you, which may not be entirely fair.)

Perhaps. But, and I mean no offense, you seem to be your own case in point. I don't believe in criticizing use of punctuation and grammar, but since you brought up education standards I feel compelled to point out that you used a pretty low standard in that post -- lower-case letters beginning sentences, the use of "u" instead of "you", skipping inconvenience apostrophes, etc. I don't think they were accidental errors, either, they look like a deliberate choice. Not that there's anything really wrong with that -- we prefer full use of grammar here in general, but it's not a rule -- but as I say you seem to be illustrating your own point. I also don't think it's a language barrier thing -- you seem to understand English perfectly well, you just don't want to waste your time on full words and proper punctuation. See my point? As for the larger issue, we were just talking about this in another thread, and I don't agree that "everything has gone to hell". I think it's just our awareness of issues and human suffering that has changed. Things were worse in the past, we just didn't know about it until much later.

Any scientist can work without peer review. Write what you want, research what you want, it's a free country. Okay, I guess that's not entirely right -- research methods can violate laws or conventions in inappropriate or illegal ways, and that can have an impact on your career. But there's nothing to stop anybody from saying what they want. It's a free society. I'm curious whether what he's really saying is that they should be taken at face value without peer review -- accepted in what they're saying -- or if this is really about acquiring funding, or if it's something else entirely. Maybe he's just pissed-off because we dumped his anonymous post on WTC Building 7 into Pseudoscience and Speculations.

100k for human history, 10k for human civilization? Something like that. I meant civ, since that's when we start to really control the human condition on a large scale.

Mod note: Iraq-related threads have been moved to here.

So your point in saying that "nobody gives two shits about Iraq" was that not enough Americans care about the situation? I don't think that's accurate -- it's consistently been one of the top national issues for 5+ years now.

I think the main thing is that our awareness of problems has become more accute. In the past we didn't find out about things until they were already resolved, if we found out about them at all. There are a lot of screwed-up things going on in the world, for sure. But look at it this way: More people than ever before AGREE that those things are screwed up. In the past that was most of the battle right there. Now it's only half the battle. Also it helps if you take the long view. In ten thousand years of human history, when have things really been better for more human beings than they are right now? We're in the midst of the greatest uplifting of the human condition in history. That's worth celebrating, isn't it?

In short, it's a tough sell convincing the Kurds to give up 83% of their oil revenue (same source) in exchange for security in the region, but many Kurds do understand the value of that purchase. Every single person who lives in that region sees what has happened to the Palestinians, and want to do everything they possibly can to avoid that fate for their own people. It's a very strong motivator. (some commentary along those lines may be found here)

I can break this off in a new thread if it persists, but let's see how it goes. US officials continuously state our support for Turkish sovereignty, the importance of Kurdish representation in Iraqi government, the position that the PKK and various affiliated organizations are terrorists and seeks the withdrawl of Turkish forces as soon as possible. That's a clear statement that we do not support a new Kurdish state. (And if memory serves, most Kurds don't support the PKK either.) You may find this site to be more helpful than traditional/partisan media outlets on this subject: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/ci/tu/c2784.htm

I think we're doing a lot more in Iraq than "destructing it in a horrible way".

IT with business emphasis is big right now. One of the things that so often happens with business majors is that they really don't know IT, but IT is critical to basic business functioning these days. Your typical MBA-weilding manager is really pretty daft about what constitutes an efficient network, and his network is often one of the biggest cost-drains on his enterprise. If you can storm in there with a lot of IT knowledge AND a lot of business knowledge, you can really grab the bull by the horns. I've been suggesting to a lot of our BIT (bachelors in info tech) graduates that they pick up an MBA, which from what I've seen has got to be one of the easiest Masters degrees on the planet (a joke in many schools -- come on, 8 classes???) which gives them a very diverse background. Imagine the power of walking into an interview with a bachelors in IT and a masters in business administration. Very impressive. (This also applies strongly to the administration of network security, btw.) Just to give you an idea of another direction IT folks can go with their careers, I have a BIT and a Masters in CIS (basically IT with a little more emphasis on CS theory and basic programming techniques), and I'm currently working on a PhD in Information Systems (an NSA-approved security-oriented program), and I had about 45 people in my class last term. Most of the students were in their late 30s and early 40s, and many of them are employees at such places as Raytheon, IBM Research, the Pentagon, Cisco, Microsoft, and so forth. They're not engineers or scientists, and they haven't been inventing products. They're network administrators, network security personnel, software testers, etc, who have decided to see if they can explore an academic level to cap off their careers. The main thing most of us will focus on after graduating is either teaching (that's me) or working on developing/supporting/implementing better IT security systems. The point being that computer science is kind of an equal-opportunity arena. Everyone gets a chance to explore pretty much anything they want. That's one of the nice things about the field.