B2 Bomber Problem

I thought of an interesting and not too difficult go problem. Black to play and escape with his B2 bomber.

Add a comment if you have seen this somewhere before.

The Wrong Speech

Obama's race speech was brilliant. Unfortunately it was the wrong speech.

Many things were explained by it, but the gist that I got out of it was: the history of race in this country explains the source of the hateful remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Various sound bites were distilled and reported in the media, none of which are likely to influence casual voters.

The problem is, the pastors remarks were not racist, they were anti-American. An anti-war candidate's biggest weakness is the impression of a lack of patriotism. The picture of Obama smiling with pastor Wright puts him smack in the middle of the 'blame america first' crowd. This is political suicide. Look what it did to Ward Churchill, who described WTC victims as 'little Eichmanns'. Surely it is academically worthwhile to try to understand the motives of the enemy. Yet he lost his tenure at a liberal university, even though that is impossible for controversial speech.

Americans don't want to know that an anti-American tirade is an understandable consequence of historical injustice, they want to know deep in their gut that the candidate disagrees with it. The speech Obama should have given would have said: "America is blamed by many people for all sorts of things. Here's why they are wrong."

An Open Letter to Geraldine Ferraro

Dear Geraldine,

A political orator of Obama's caliber comes along once in a generation. When they are white males, they usually become president. Even Obama's political enemies admire his skills in this area. Yet you do not believe he could have even contended for the democratic nomination if he were white.

When you resigned from Clinton's campaign, we could have given you the benefit of the doubt. You're not a latent racist, you just honestly don't see the skills that we do - the genius that more than adequately explains his popularity. But now you have described his race speech as "brilliant" (which it was), and yet somehow still feel his support is race based.

If this is not convincing, consider this: every successful african american since the civil rights era has been accused of exploiting affirmative action to get where they did, without exception and regardless of their skills. It was only a matter of time before someone made that accusation about Obama. That someone was you.

I feel sorry that you were referenced negatively in a speech that may well be taught in future history classes, but you have noone to blame but yourself.

Why the Pastor Matters

Obama is doing the best he can to distance himself from inflammatory remarks by his pastor. Each day he repudiates them in more strident terms, and has now removed the man from his campaign. But it is not enough.

Suggesting that we deserved to be attacked on 9/11, or asking that "god damn america" are certainly deserving of repudiation. The problem is, this man remains Obama's spiritual advisor. Now some people might consider a misguided spiritual advisor to be just another acquantance, like the boor who spews sexist jokes at the weekly poker game. But a lot of people don't. To a huge number of americans, a spiritual advisor is someone who has a profound and somewhat mysterious influence on their lives. And this man has already had a profound influence on Obama. From NYT: "Mr. Obama credits a sermon of Mr. Wright’s, 'The Audacity of Hope,' with drawing him to Christianity, and he used those words as the title of his second book". Obama claims the pastor is not a political advisor, but for many people that will not be good enough, and many of these are people who would otherwise vote for him.

I think Obama needs to seriously consider a new pastor. (Bonus political points if he chooses, or even just consults with Billy Graham.)

Gaming Inflation

Have you noticed that prices are going way up, but the government still gives us a low number for inflation? There's a reason for that. In 2000 the Federal Reserve switched to the PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, or Core Inflation) instead of the CPI (Consumer Price Index, or Headline Inflation) to produce a smaller value. This can be justified by noting that inflation has a large psychological component. Those green papers with Franklin's picture are only worth something if people believe they are.

But it is getting a bit ridiculous. First they remove 'volatile' products (such as gas and food) from consideration, as those prices may fluctuate temporarily. But the huge increases in those prices are not temporary. Gas is high and will continue to rise because of billions of people in China and other developing countries buying cars and using energy. It's a simple supply and demand problem. It has very little to do with middle east tensions. And food price increases reflect gas price increases.

Next, they consider consumer substitutions. The idea is if price fluctuations temporarily lower the price of an alternative, so consumers switch products, then the other product can be used in the PCE. The problem is, the change in buying habits may be permanent too.

For example, you bought a Toyota last time for 10k. This time, you have 11k to spend. You can't afford a Toyota, which is now 20k, so you have to buy a Yugo. The PCE substitutes your Yugo for the Toyota and sees 10% inflation. But the actual inflation was 100% over that time period.

Since the categories of things consumers spend money on is relatively constant, and they tend to spend all their money, the PCE most closely measures the rise in consumers' income.

Here's how the fed describes it:

"The chain-type price index for PCE draws extensively on data from the consumer price index but, while not entirely free of measurement problems, has several advantages relative to the CPI. The PCE chain-type index is constructed from a formula that reflects the changing composition of spending and thereby avoids some of the upward bias associated with the fixed-weight nature of the CPI. In addition, the weights are based on a more comprehensive measure of expenditures. Finally, historical data used in the PCE price index can be revised to account for newly available information and for improvements in measurement techniques, including those that affect source data from the CPI; the result is a more consistent series over time."

—Monetary Policy Report to the Congress, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Feb. 17, 2000

Guys, that "upward bias" you are tying to manipulate away is called "inflation".

Hillary the Tactician

Has anyone else noticed the dramatic shift in press coverage of Hillary and Obama? By some counts Hillary gained 3 delegates on March 4, barely denting Obama's lead of nearly 100 delegates. Yet the press practically threw a ticker tape parade for her Hillaresurgence. There was virtually no fallout when in a fit of paranoia, Clinton likened Obama's intention to increase his emphasis on their differences to Ken Starr. Meanwhile, the press has been skewering Obama left and right.

This is of course a direct result of Hillary's complaints about the media treating her unfairly, as evidenced by the now infamous SNL skit, and the media's neurotic self conscious nature. Realizing this was happening, the Clinton campaign took advantage and threw everything but the kitchen sink at Obama in the runup to the March 4 primaries.

If nothing else, the Clintons are tactically brilliant. Welling up before the New Hampshire primary and Super Tuesday are two more examples. (Once could have been considered a fortunate coincidence)

The problem with tactical leaders is they garner intense opposition. Karl Rove comes to mind. Bill Clinton too is not remembered for his ideas, but for his political skills. How many of you remember what the Clinton Doctrine says? The Republican revolution of 1994 was largely a reaction to his tactical victories.

Contrast this with Reagan. Not tactically brilliant, but he is remembered for his ideas of small government and defeating communism by outspending it.

(For the record, the Clinton Doctrine was about military intervention against genocide)

Talking to Enemies

GW Bush, McCain, and Hillary all agree that we should not talk to hostile leaders without preconditions. Obama disagrees. He is right and they are wrong.

This can best be seen by turning the issue around. Consider the case of Suu Kyi, an opposition leader in Burma/Myanmar. The burmese government (a repressive dictatorship) refused to meet with her about the recent unrest unless preconditions were met, such as "she renounce widespread calls for international sanctions against the military regime".
Here is a news item.

Surely renouncing sanctions should be a result of negotiation, not a precondition. Otherwise what motive does the junta have for giving any concessions at all?

Predictably GW Bush insisted (correctly) that the meeting should take place without preconditions.

Such hypocracy arises when one takes the attitude that our people are good and the other side are evil people who need to be controlled. I will not argue that those who are hostile to us are not evil, but asking them to implicitly accept that categorization for all to see by submitting to preconditions is not going to work, for obvious reasons.

Here's another analogy: in a hostage situation, imagine the police refuse to answer the phone when the hostage takers call, claiming that 'taking hostages was wrong and so they should release the hostages first, before we talk'.

Bhutto's Assassination

Well it looks like Scotland Yard's report on Bhutto's assassination will not be published anytime soon. I suspect they don't want to be embarrassed by shamefully sloppy work. I'm not talking about the technical details, but of the obvious questions that are ignored by the report, as evidenced by excerpts that are available. There are many, but the two biggest in my view are these:

1. They do not explain why they did not investigate who ordered the hosedown of the crime scene. It is not hard to find out something like that. If the authorities will not cooperate, they should say so.

2. Why is the injury on the right side of her head instead of the left? The report implies that she was thrown into the escape hatch. But that is rather silly. She is inside the vehicle. The blast is outside. The left side of the car could be instantly compressed, driving the left side of the escape hatch into her skull. But her body does not feel the blast pressure directly, so she can't be thrown with that much force into the right side. Put another way, if a rightward velocity is imparted to her body, a greater rightward velocity will be imparted to the car, which has a much larger surface area and is exposed to the blast directly. The relative velocity of her body to the car will be leftward. (A 'swingback' of the car would occur much too slowly to cause such violent damage.)

Watch the video and decide for yourself: