Whither NATO?

The North Atlantic Treaty is, like most treaties, pretty dry and filled mostly with carefully chosen words. Here are a few of those words:

Article 5

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

Article 6

For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack: on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer; on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.

 So just what would happen if NATO member Turkey were to seek to invoke Article 5 in response to the recent attacks by Israeli Defense Forces commandoes on Turkish flagged vessels in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea?

For good or for ill, the future of the treaty may depend on the answer.

iPad stuff

Paul Thurrott opines:

Put simply, when you use an iPad, you're typically not contributing to anything, as you can on a PC. Instead, you're simply consuming. And this is how I think the iPad should be compared to the PC: Consumption vs. contribution. Yes, you can do things like answer emails (using the virtual keyboard) on the iPad; there will always be exceptions to any vague generality. But for the most part, that's what this is about. Consumption vs. contribution. 

When you go out and about with just an iPad, you're sending a message that you're not going to contribute. You're just there to consume. This is why the iPad is, to my mind, uniquely unsuitable in the workplace. Knowledge workers don't just read documents. They comment on them, edit them, send feedback. They contribute. And contributing means using a device that not just allows editing, but makes that capability a central point of the entire experience. (Multitasking wouldn't hurt either.) The iPad is not a business tool. In fact, for most people, it never will be. (And those who contort their workflow to make this possible are, of course, simply trying too hard to justify their vanity purchase.)

I can't completely disagree with this. The big problem that Apple hasn't solved with the iPad (at least for me) is efficient text entry. I'm typing way faster on my iPhone in landscape view than I can on my pad. It makes writing--everything from blog posts to work emails to shopping lists--on the pad quite impractical. (Yes, I could use a keyboard with the pad, but by that point it makes more sense to just use my MacBook Pro, with it's trackpad and it's power.)

But I really disagree with his somewhat prickish tone regarding the iPad. "When you go out and about with just an iPad, you're sending a message that you're not going to contribute." Do tell. When I go out and about with a book, what message am I sending?

And speaking of the "workplace" (which it's not clear that he was, since we were just "out and about" in what we English teachers like to call the "topic sentence" of his paragraph), he's got a pretty narrow view of the "workplace." I think the iPad, or devices like it, will be fantastic as:

* Moblie cash registers (iPhones are already used for this, the pad will be better).
* To view medical information, including records, xrays, etc.
* To enter common, discrete information rapidly (think, almost anything clipboards are used for in  actual workplaces.. there will be apps for that!).
* Replacements for all sorts of bulky tablet computers already used to replace clipboards (think, cable installation guys, mechanics, etc.)

I also know a realtor who loves it for checking MLS on the fly for availability and pictures, and then handing it to her clients.

Anyway, I like it for myself. It's just about perfect, ergonomically, for reading books or websites. Absolutely wonderful for restaurant menus when you need to hand it around to decide where to go.

One minor quibble I have with my pad is that, when I don't have a case on it, my thumbs are so fat that I sometimes engage the multi part of multitouch without meaning to. And I assure you, dear reader, my thumbs are  not fat.

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It sucks to be Israel [Updated]

When the internet and I were both somewhat younger, I learned what a "blog" was when I stumbled across an Israeli writer's website where he posted daily dispatches from Jerusalem, which, I soon learned, might as well be another planet. 

I engaged with this guy in the comments section and in email to try to get a handle on his version of conservative Israeli politics, and, although our exchange was civil and detailed, I don't think either of us managed to shift the other's attitudes about Israel's place in the world and the best way to address that country's unique problems.

I came to the conversation with a liberal bent, but I have to state clearly that my liberalism did not contain any prejudice about Israel per-se. It's fair to say that I inherited my politics from my liberal parents, and if you subscribe to the conservative worldview, you might say I was further indoctrinated by liberal higher-education institutions. During all this hippy-dippy neo-marxist brainwashing, however, I never received a brief on the correct attitude towards the state of Israel. (It might have been on the curricula. I must have skipped that day.)

What I did bring was a core faith--probably criminally under-examined, but currently still retained--in the core principles of the United States, some of which go back to its founding, including:

* Freedom of religion

* Equal rights for all people, regardless of ethnicity

And this was the cornerstone of my disagreement with my Israeli interlocutor. In retrospect I was naive and uninformed, but at the time I was astonished and somewhat shocked at his commitment to an ethnically pure democracy. All of the approaches I could suggest to his problems were grounded in my own ideals of post-ethnic statehood that--even though we're still struggling with it--my own country represents. 

It still seems now, as it did then, that there are only two ways to preserve a Jewish democracy in Israel. Either they must shrink by giving away land to the Palestenians, or they must resort to war crimes and/or institutional racism to keep the land under Jewish control. I'd like to think there's a third way, but I don't see it. 

But, personally, I have nothing invested in the existence of an ethnically pure state, of any type, anywhere in the world. It's just not something of value to me. And while I am fine with other's valuing it, I am not fine with my own country supporting war crimes or institutional racism to prop up such a state. 

And that's where I think you'll find most Americans my age or younger. And that is not good news for the Israeli project. 

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UPDATE: Mere minutes after posting that, I came across the following post by Kevin Drum.

In David Petraeus's famous phrase, How does this end? Unless something dramatic happens, it ends with Israel as a nuclear-armed pariah state. Where else can it go? Hamas and Hezbollah are never going to stop attacking, Israel's responses will continue to get deadlier and more hysterical, the West Bank will never be freed because no Israeli government can any longer cobble together the public support it would require to take on the most extremist elements among the settlers, and like it or not, Israel eventually becomes a permanently armed camp and an apartheid state. Israelis may have hated it when that's what Jimmy Carter called it, but even if it's arguably not quite accurate today there's very little question that it will be before long.

Unless something changes. But what? I guess it's possible that a crisis like this can prompt both sides to get serious in a way they haven't been for a long time, but there have been crises like this before and they haven't prompted anything of the sort.

So help me out here. Is there any glimmer of hope on the horizon at all? Or is despair the only rational response to all this?

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Before godzilla destroys us all...

... have a great weekend. Here's some haiku:

and many many more.

Just... less talk, you know?

Speaking of video games, they share something with other creative works: The more you talk about them, the longer they they take to finish. And the worse they turn out when finally finished.

Which is why my enthusiasm for Superbrother's iPhone game, Sword & Sorcery EP, has dipped with every new PR update and BoingBoing post.

The thing is, I love the style, and I agree with almost everything in their Less Talk, More Rock manifesto. I'd really like to see an actual game that embodies their design ideas. Until they can deliver something that delivers, though, I'd really prefer that they turn down their hype machine. Their game is famous before it even exists. If it were a novel or an actual EP, that's often the kiss of death.

Playing video games before bedtime may give people an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams

Yep.

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Having kids makes you sad

....there is a large body of evidence suggesting that kids aren't exactly a bundle of joy. For instance, recent work has shown that parents with more kids are more likely to suffer from depression, probably because each additional kid increases the stress burden. As the Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert notes, "The only known symptom of the empty-nest syndrome is increased smiling. Careful studies of how women feel as they go about their daily activities show that they are less happy when taking care of their children than when eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television." According to the data, looking after the kids is only marginally better than mopping the floor. Most people are happier watching bad TV than spending time with their offspring. |via|

"Obama snoozed, oil oozed"

This morning on MSNBC's daily train wreck called Morning Joe, everyone was in agreement that the BP spill was turning into "Obama's Katrina," and that the administration needed to have somebody down there taking decisive action, acting "mad as hell," and solving the problem. 

But it's really not clear that the government or BP has any idea what to do. It's not like Katrina, where the government is failing to pull the trigger on the obvious next steps. There is no obvious solution. And I could be wrong, but I suspect that being "mad as hell" isn't going to accomplish a lot by itself. 

That said, it looks like Obama is going to move in on the operation, pushing out BP. And although it will cause him to "own" the spill more than he already does, I guess I'd rather have Steven Chu running things than the liability lawyers over at BP.     

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Kevin Costner is here to help

Kevin Costner has saved democracy, saved England, and saved the world. He has a brother who is a scientist. Together, they are going to save us from the BP oil spill.


LOL WUT?

Costner's high-speed centrifuge machine has a Los Angeles-perfect name: "Ocean Therapy."

Placed on a barge, it sucks in large quantities of polluted water, separates out the oil and spits back 97% clean water.

"It's like a big vacuum cleaner," said Costner's business partner, Louisiana trial lawyer John Houghtaling.

"The machines are basically sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water," he said.

The "Field of Dreams" star first got a team together to create the device in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

His scientist brother, Dan Costner, helped develop the device, and together, the brothers formed Costner Industries Nevada Corp. to pursue various energy projects, including a non-chemical battery that could last 15 years.

The 55-year-old actor eventually sank $26 million into the Ocean Therapy oil separator project. He obtained a license for the device from the Department of Energy in 1993 and has been trying for years to promote it.

...

British Petroleum - desperate for ideas - gave the okay to test six of Costner's gizmos this week, said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles.

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Rand Paul is not a racist

He's another type of idiot.

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Mozart would have been wicked good at Call of Duty

At his always-excellent Frontal Cortex blog, Jonah Lehrer compiles some evidence that education in the arts is good for the brain in general. And then he starts talking about videogames, self-expression, and flow:

As they say in "Miller's Crossing," it's an interesting question of ethics

A usually unquestioned staple of modern rhetoric is that we should not apply our contemporary moral or ethical values to historical figures. For example, Thomas Jefferson can be a hero of the country, even though he owned slaves, because, hey, everybody was doing it back in the day. But I have questions. 

Question 1: How does this assertion stand up to rigorous analysis by philosophers? What do actual ethicists say about this? (Paging Professor Hamilton...)

Question 2: Can it apply to living people, or do you have to be dead? I mean, Pat Buchanan (along with crazy uncles across the country) gets a bit of a pass for all the crazy stuff he says. But Strom Thurmond, probably because he needed to be re-elected, was expected to evolve with the times.

Question 3 comes from T-Rex:

What's the worst that could happen?

Over at the Atlantic, Joshua Green blogs:

A couple weeks ago, I suggested that the BP oil spill would actually make climate legislation less likely to pass the Senate, neatly highlighting the perversity of that institution. In the past, disasters often helped spur new legislation, rather than kill it. Yesterday, on "Meet the Press," Chuck Schumer agreed. Schumer said the spill "changed the politics" of the bill--for one thing, its Republican co-sponsor, Lindsay Graham, dropped out--and noted that "it's going to be harder to get one done given that drilling off coast was a part of the compromise."

It just goes to show how reality can dramatically trump shallow political calculation. For the last few months, compromising with Republicans on off-shore drilling seemed like good, pragmatic politics. It was a hot-button issue for the Palin-iacs. So offering up some concessions in that area to make important gains in other areas of energy and environmental policy just made sense. I thought so, anyway. Apparently, so did Pres. Obama. 

And, after all, what could go wrong?

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You guys are doing it wrong

Racists and other types of idiots are having a quite a time in Arizona. Over at The Corner*, Mark Krikorian approvingly brings us the following news.

As a protest against Arizona’s controversial immigration law, the chambers of commerce from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros have agreed to set May 25 as a “Day Without Mexicans” on the South Texas border.

Business leaders are calling on all Mexican nationals to avoid crossing the international bridges into the United States for any reason, but particularly for shopping, on that day.

Yes, of the people crossing the border, afternoon shoppers bringing money into the U.S. are clearly the worst.

I've been somewhat dismissive of the whole "Arizona's gone crazy" kerfuffle as a temporary and misguided reaction to legitimate problems with international drug violence. But Josh Marshall points to some uglier stuff going on, and says it is basically overt ethnic strife:

Print this out

Put the print out by your TV. And prepare for some early morning drinking (if that's your thing).

It's time for World Cup 2010. England v USA (USA! USA!) on Saturday, June 12:

Regarding our crushing tax burden

From our nation's most colorful newspaper:

Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year sinceHarry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.

...

Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010. 

"The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts," says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberalCenter for American Progress. 

I've been saying forevers and evers that it's time to raise taxes. An increase to the average tax rate of the last 50 years (properly progressive, mind) would go a long way towards righting our economic boat, especially as revenues are likely to bloom along with the recovering economy.


That's the main point of this post, but let me also register a personal peeve about these kinds of articles. Consider:

Individual tax rates vary widely based on how much a taxpayer earns, where the person lives and other factors. On average, though, the tax rate paid by all Americans — rich and poor, combined — has fallen 26% since the recession began in 2007. That means a $3,400 annual tax savings for a household paying the average national rate and earning the average national household income of $102,000. [Emphasis added.]

Emphasis added. So, aside from my work friends (who are all captains of industry, etc., etc.) I know very few people who have a household income of over $100K. This is a case where "average" really, really, does not mean "typical."


My friends may all be artists, writers, teachers, and other societal misfits, but in terms of income, they are mostly doing better than the typical American family. The typical American family would be thrilled to have their household income skyrocket to $102,000. 


(Of course, if it did, they would immediately start grumbling about taxes and voting Rebublican.)