PeaceMaker Review - Part 1

Peacemaker Review - Part 1

Hello, all - I'm that long-winded infidel character you may have seen in comments around here. Grim recently received an invitation to play a new computer game, and proclaim its vices and virtues in this Hall. He has done me the honor of handing this task to me, and I hope to give satisfaction.

The game is called PeaceMaker, and it is a short strategy game based on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I intend to review it in three parts: first to discuss it as a game, then to discuss its limitations as a model of a real conflict, then to talk about the useful lessons that it can teach. Before I proceed, there are two things you should know:

1 - There is already an excellent review from a gamer's standpoint at Gamasutra. I will not be so thorough.

2 - I have to tell you: I played the game several times, but I didn't pay a penny for it; I received it as a free download. If you decide to buy it, you must pay $20. And the company that made it, Impact Games, plies its wares on the Pajamas Media network.

Now, on to the game aspects -

PeaceMaker is a turn-based strategy game; a single game takes 1-2 hours (if you're slow like me). You can play as either the Israeli Prime Minister or the President of the Palestinian Authority. The game tracks two vital opinion scores that start at zero: what the Palestinian population thinks of you, and what one other group thinks of you (the Israeli population if you're Israel, the "world community" if you're Palestine). If both scores reach 100, then Israel and Palestine reach a two-state solution, and you win a Nobel Peace Prize and the game. If both fall below -50, a "third intifada" sweeps the land and you lose. If the opinion of the people who elected you (Palestinians if you're PA, Israelis if you're Israel) falls well below -50, you are removed from office and you lose. The game also tracks the opinions of other entities (the UN, the US, Jewish settlers, Arab militants, etc.) and polls that measure your performance in different areas -- such as economy (Palestine), leadership (Israel), or security (both).

There's a medium-sized list of actions that you can take. Every turn, you click on one action. It has its result - including any effect on the opinion scores - then random events occur (if they do), and it's the next turn. The available actions depend on which side you're on: they include security actions, like sending in the Army (Israel) or training the police (Palestine); political actions like making speeches to the world community (either side) or asking the UN for foreign aid (Palestine); and economic actions like offering medical care to the Palestinians (Israel) or asking the EU to fund agricultural projects (Palestine). Some of the actions Should Never Be Taken.

As noted in the Gamasutra article, the results are not as simple as you might expect. If you're Israel, a suicide bomber strikes, and you send in the Army, your Israeli popularity will go up a little bit - but your PA popularity will go down a lot, and as a result there will be more attacks, which will lower your Israeli popularity, and the situation spirals. The temptation is to play see-saw-Margery-Daw, doing something tough to please the Israelis, then making a conciliatory gesture to please the Palestinians, then getting tough again. But the non-player entities see through that and it doesn't help you at all. You can find the right strategies with a little experience.

I played the game without a manual, and believe it should be sold that way (there is a tutorial to show you basic gameplay mechanics). Part of the game's appeal is the way you flail at first, looking for anything that'll fix your numbers quickly. If the designers tell you what effects the actions will have up front, the game is reduced to a pointless exercise. Of course, this means some of my statements about how the game works may be in error; I am going by how it looked to me when I played it, and not by any documentation.

The game is intended to be educational. At the beginning, you can click on a "timeline" of major events in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It's written in very neutral language: "1948: Israel declares independence and the first Arab-Israeli war ensues," or, "1968-80: Jewish settlements emerge in the West Bank and Gaza." (As if no human choices were involved in these acts...) There's a map, and you can click on the cities to see their populations and little notes about their significance, but the map has no effect on gameplay; every action you take is "nationwide."

To be blunt, if you're looking for a strategy game to play just for fun, this one is not for you. It has very little replay value. Once you have figured out the right basic strategies, there is little pleasure in repeating them. There are higher levels of difficulty, based on how often bad random events happen, but by the time you play those levels you know how to beat the game. Unlike other strategy games, this one doesn't let you see the things you're building, count the money you're making, or watch your tactical plan come together. Given the frustrations and the educational nature, this game could actually be used as punishment for a difficult adolescent - stay in detention 'til you beat PeaceMaker on Tense level, and then there's a short quiz on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Other notes: The game is highly accelerative. Once you get the scores above 50, attacks have fallen off so much that the rest of the game is a breeze; conversely, if they fall below -25, you might as well restart the game. Thus, the hardest part of the game is easily the beginning. It can be frustrating - you get the numbers to creep up to 11 and 6, a suicide bomber strikes and makes them fall to 4 and -2, you get them to creep up again, there's an atrocity and they fall...but once the numbers get well above zero, you can notice how much easier it's getting.

You don't see how much money you have - the PA does have an "Economy bar" - but the economic side of the game is important.

I respectfully disagree with the Gamasutra reviewer on one thing: I thought the Palestinian side was the easier one to play. This may be because the right actions were more obvious to me.

The remainder of my review will focus on the strategic and moral sides of the game, and what it can and can't teach.

Superbowl notes

Superbowl: First Half

Indiana is stomping Chicago so far, in spite of all the turnovers, in spite of the fact that Chicago was the only one to make a score on a turnover, and in spite of the fact that the opening runback basically spotted Chicago 6 points. The Bears -- for whom I'm rooting -- had best get their act together over halftime. That whole "run the ball at them until the defense wears out" only works if you don't go 3-and-out every time.

Whose idea was it to put Prince in the halftime show?

Commercials seem weak this year. I think Budweiser's are all right, but the others... mostly off.

UPDATE: Oh, except that Gina Torres -- Firefly's Zoe -- was in one of the Sierra Mist commercials (the one in the dojo). Nice to see she's working, though I am sure we all wish she had a different project.

Selfish Punks

Those Selfish Punks:

The Independent in the UK has a story today called, "Generation Y Speaks: it's all us, us, us." Yeah, those young people, only thinking of themselves. Let's see what they want now:

Michelle Harrison, director of HeadlightVision, part of the Henley Centre, said: “In 1997, when Tony Blair moved into No 10, almost 70% of our respondents opted for the ‘community-first’ approach.”

“This held steady for the first couple of Blair years but by 1999 individualism was on the rise. At face value, it seems that last year (when individualists outnumbered community-firsts) we formally fell out of love with the Blair project. Over the decade we have seen a fast-moving shift towards people feeling more individualistic.”

Today, 52% feel “looking after ourselves” will best improve the quality of life, according to the poll of more than 2,000 people.

Wait... so what they want is to be left alone? To take responsibility for their own lives?

Hallelujah!

It's stronger among the poor, too, the ones who need it most:

Among poorer people in the social brackets C2, D and E, that rises to 60%. “Poorer people . . . gave up on the Blair project five years ago . . . Less affluent people . . . are focusing on making ends meet and avoiding hassle on the streets in their less ‘desirable’ neighbourhoods,” said Harrison.

"Avoiding hassle on the streets" is a euphemism for "avoiding rape, robbery, and other violence."

Now, what's a good individualist way of approaching that problem? Anyone? Hint: it used to be a prominent feature of English life, before the "community first" folks made their communities into places where all prey will be safely disarmed.

Happy Superbowl

Happy Superbowl Sunday:

I'll be taking off the evening to watch the game with my father. I'd like to take a moment to point to a couple of things.

First, Joseph W. -- who has been debating with me for a week or so on the issues of souls and metaphysics -- has offered to review the Peacemakers game mentioned below. I've invited him to join the Hall as a co-blogger for that purpose, and also because I like arguing with him.

Michael Yon has given an interview to PJM from Mosul, where he is embedded with the 2/7 Cav -- Custer's old unit, most famous in Iraq for its role in the second battle of Fallujah.

PJM has also started a JetBusters site, to try and shut down production and use of private jets. This is InstaPundit's idea as a means of fighting carbon emissions.

I always wanted to own a private plane myself, although not a jet -- one of those bush planes that would let you fly into the Alaskan backcountry and land on a lake. My sense about the science involved is close to InstaPundit's, though. I don't put a lot of faith in the UN's appointed groups, and having read a lot of the science myself, I don't find that I'm convinced that there is nearly as much "consensus" as the press suggests. However, I have other reasons for wanting energy independence and lower carbon emissions that have nothing to do with whether Global Warming is genuinely menacing or human-caused.

So, I'm broadly open to a lot of "green" measures, even if my reasons for it are different from those of the people who proposed the ideas. In addition, I am a genuine conservationist, who would love to see a larger amount of wild land and low-impact land in America (open, however, to public travel and hunting and fishing in managed ways -- I'm a conservationist, not an evironmentalist). However, I do have two basic concerns:

1) Not trampling on peoples' rights, and,

2) Not doing damage to the economy.

The very first commenter at PJM points out that GulfStream is a major employer in Savannah, a town which (in my experience) depends on major employers. If you recommend banning their product, you'll put them in quite a bind. That seems like the wrong approach to me.

What might be a right approach is paying them more to produce something else -- perhaps replacement parts for military aircraft. Thoughts?

NASCAR Notes

Saturday Notes:

For NASCAR fans out there, I saw Bill Elliot at lunch. I was eating with my father at the Dawsonville Pool Room, and Elliot came in and had a bite too. He sat right under a portrait of himself, painted in the days when he was "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville," or "Million Dollar Bill" after the Winston Cup victory. Of course, it would have been hard for him to sit anywhere in that place that wasn't near a picture of himself.

Nice guy. Dawsonville is a small town, so no fuss was made about him being there -- everybody knows most everybody, including Bill. He used to sell cars up here, too, and several of the people will have bought a Ford from him.

Another note: Captain's Quarters had a good post on George Soros' comments at Davos.

He went on to say that Turkey and Japan are still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany's rejection of its Nazi-era past. "America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany," Soros said. "We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process."

This is highly inflammatory and, quite frankly, anti-American. We do not purge people from the political process here. We use elections and free speech to determine the policies the nation wants implemented, and we elect our leaders on the basis of a free and unfettered franchise. Equating Republicans to Nazis and then suggesting that the government impose a process to exclude them from public office makes Soros much more of a fascist than anything he decries.

CQ notes that Obama has been Soros' favorite prospective '08 candidate, and looks for a repudiation of this idea. It would be nice, though I wouldn't expect it, given how much money there is to be had from remaining Soros' favorite.

I still think Bill Richardson is the best in the Democratic field so far. By the way, the second week of that PJM Straw Poll is ongoing. Grim's Hall is standing for Richardson on the D side, and Duncan Hunter on the R side.

Also, you'll sometimes see ads on the sidebar for a new video game that tries to simulate a political peacemaking process for the Israel-Palestine conflict. Grim's Hall has been offered an evaluation copy, should we wish to review it. If any of my co-bloggers would like to have a go, drop me a line and I'll arrange it. I'm a little curious about it, but Israel/Palestine has never been one of my areas of interest. Another of you could probably do a better job of telling if it model the conflict well.

Weirdness

Weirdness:

Fuzzy has tagged me with a meme called "Six Weird Things." I'm a little bemused by it.

"Post 6 weird things about yourself and tag 6 people. Leave a comment on their blogs to let them know they're tagged."

Well, I never pass these things on, though as always, anyone who reads here is welcome to play in the comments.

Usually, though, I at least know what to say. In this case, though, I'm being asked what makes me unusual. There are probably only two kinds of replies to make: things you already know ("Grim has a particular fondness for Stetson hats and bowie knives"), and things that are none of your business (thanks aye).

So, rather than bore you by repeating things about myself you already know, I'll invite you to post your favorite weird things about me in the comments. I'd appreciate some gentleness in how you phrase it. :)

Pundits

Molly Ivins died on Wednesday, same day Grim posted about that idiot Arkin.

When I arrived home from night classes, I kissed the three kiddoes goodnight (Kaitlin, Emily, and Barrett), walked my two dogs (a Chocolate Lab named Belle and a Great Dane named Max), tried to entice the dogs to eat my wife's cat, and settled in for another hour of hitting the books. Finally, bedtime rolled around so I turned on the news and I crawled into bed and it was then that I heard the good news. For those who have seen 'Boondock Saints', I did the William DaFoe 'river dance' jig and then crawled back into bed.

I've heard that it's necessary to have the extreme ends of both sides in order to better gauge the middle-ground. I don't know if I believe that or not; what I do believe is this lovely piece of gnomic wisdom from the Bubbamal translation of the Havamal:

Bubbamal 22.
And let me tell you about them idiots
who're always laughin' like hyeeners at stupid shit;
they ought to realize that they ain't exactly prizes,
but they ain't figured that one out yet.

I lament the fact that it is only going to get worse as the days wear on.

Election Fraud

Election Fraud:

Feeling bad about how little trust there is in our elections? Read this, which features famous gunfighter Johnny Ringo in the role of Democratic Party delegate and election official:

Almost every election in the post-Civil War era held the fervor of a religious crusade, and the first Tuesday in November of 1880 caused high fever in the West. Republican James Garfield [Who was later assassinated... -Grim] and Democrat Winfield Hancock battled for the presidency, while Pima County [Arizona]'s most contested race centered on Bob Paul's bid to unseat Sherriff Charile Shibell. Garfield won the presidency by fewer than 10,000 popularvotes.... The race in Pima County proved even more complex. Democrat Shibell, despite appointing Wyatt Earp as his Tombstone district deputy, was perceived as more an administrator than a tough lawman and received the support of the [outlaw gang known as the] cowboys. Oddly, outlaw John Ringo served as a delegate at the Pima County Democratic convention despite a question of his legitimacy because he had no legal residence. The Democrats chose to avoid problems and seat Ringo [shades of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there]....

Shibell won reelection by a close margin as rumors ran through town of massive election fraud. The San Simon Cienega precinct recorded 103 votes for Shibell and one for Paul, in a district that had no more than 50 eligible voters. All but one of the 23 Democrats on the ticket received those 103 votes... while nearly all the Republican candidates polled only one vote each. The [Tombstone] Epitaph noted: "The odd vote is said to have een cast by a Texas cowboy, who when questioned as to why he was voting the Republican ticket, said: 'Well, I want to show those fellows that there wasn't any intimidation at this precinct.'"

From Casey Tefertiller's Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend, p. 53-4. Election fraud on the frontier... but of course, we know it was better in the cities. Ha ha!

Well, out of such things is democracy made. Maybe it will make you feel better about the current situation -- or even the problems in Iraq, where democracy is having a similarly rough start amid armed and dangerous factions.

CFR Thailand

CFR on Thailand:

The Council on Foreign Relations has a new fact sheet on the Thai insurgency. I appreciate people trying to make the complex nature of the insurgency easy to understand, and for the most part this is a good primer. On the other hand, there's this:

Why isn’t the new government’s approach working to end the insurgency?

Experts say Thaksin's stance set in motion a rise in bloodshed that will take time to control. "Once the spiral of violence starts it is difficult to stop," says Croissant. Liow predicts "the problem will get worse before it gets better" and that Thaksin's policy mistakes "set the government behind several decades in terms of critical intelligence gathering" necessary for effective counterinsurgency operations.

What? You stage a military coup against an elected government and suddenly you get "decades" before you have to prove effectiveness in your COIN activities? Maybe we should revisit that Arkin idea after all...

Seriously, guys, that's not helpful. The military coup in Thailand seems to have had the backing of the palace, which is a reasonable source for legitimacy -- the monarchy in Thailand is not only widely beloved, but has produced monarchs of the sort you really might want to follow, including the current one. Cutting them "decades" of slack, however, is too much. Ultimately, if you just want to say that the King's people were right to back the overthrow of the democracy, just say it.

Trunk Monkey

The Trunk Monkey:

I know it sounds odd, but I have seen nothing lately so encouraging about the good sense of the American people than this ad. That is, of course, precisely right.

Arkin II

Arkin II:

I don't think I'm going to spend any more time on Arkin, thanks. However, he's decided he's enjoying the attention, and so has a second piece on the awfulness of the military (at least, that part of it which supports the war it's fighting).

In deference to my diverse readership, I'll offer links to three different pieces, from which you can choose depending on your own leanings.

If you want an outraged-but-reasoned response, here's Cassandra.

If you want a thoughtful-but-not-especially outraged response, try Ed Driscoll.

Or, if you want the full flavor of outrage, there's always Jimbo.

As for me, I think I'm going to take Eric Blair's position -- forget this guy.

J. Reagan

The Ultimate Indoor Philosophy:

Via Arts & Letters Daily, we have an article on Judith Reagan. Reagan, who once promised to 'eat the testicles' of a man who'd crossed her by giving someone besides her a job she wanted, practices what must be the last word in indoor philosophy.

It would have been a hard couple of months, even if she had been eating.

Judith Regan loves to fast. She likes the high you get, the way it makes you feel clear, intuitive, even telepathic, transforming your skin into a baby’s and launching your energy level into the stratosphere. Says Natalia Rose, Upper East Side detoxing guru, “She loves eating really clean. When I tell her my big picture of how I want everyone to understand their connection to the light, and by healing each other we heal the world, she totally believes that.”

Later in the article, our guru of this particular metaphysics explains the system further.

A gorgeous brunette in a striped cashmere sweater drifted into the room—it was Natalia Rose, on to talk about a book that she had published with Regan, and about living clean. “Negative emotions are something in a food context,” said Rose, her face glowing with health. “What’s happening in our head is happening in our colon.”

So, human morality is reducible to brain activity; and brain activity is reducible to colonic activity. If indoor philosophy is the philosophy of people who spend their lives inside rooms, this is the philosophy that arises from living in just one room: the bathroom.

It's interesting that the philosophy claims a higher ethical purpose: "to heal the world." All that is demanded of devotees, however, is obsessive attention to themselves. By purchasing extravagant diets and trips to exotic spas, they purify themselves to the point that they become a healing force in the world.

Sound familiar? By pursuing their connection to the 'inner light' through devotion to attending to their body, they are fulfilling Chesterton's prediction perfectly.

Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within.

Well, how does that doctrine work itself out? Let Reagan tell us herself.

In her office the day before she was fired, she had a meeting with Anna David, the author of the book Party Girl—You’re so gorgeous you should be on the cover of your book!—and chatted in the corridors with some of her staff: One of the moms told her about her ex-husband, who seemed to be ignoring their kids at Christmastime and reneging on special presents. “Of course he doesn’t have to get them presents,” she fumed. “He’s a man—the only thing they’re good for is semen. They’re inseminators! That’s all they are!”

A stray male walked down the hallway.

“Not you,” she called after him, dissolving in laughter. “Every man except you!”

Ah, yes. Spreading healing among... well, not "mankind," exactly, but perhaps to the occasional "stray male."

Of course, if Judith shall worship Judith, it makes sense for her to feel that Jones has fallen from the pure faith. If the image of perfection is your own perfect self, than anyone who is different from you -- by sex, by race, by metaphysics -- is removed from that purity precisely by the degree of difference. Even if Jones were a fellow devotee, he is a man. Probably his colon is unclean; certainly his chromosomes are.

Well, this works.

And Arkin can DIAF.

Ahem

Ahem:

You should probably read Fuzzy's post about Mr. Arkin. This is a remarkable sort of writing:

These soldiers [from the NBC piece, who said you can't support the soldiers without supporting their mission] should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President's handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.

Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.

I'd have to say that the soldiers probably are grateful to their fellow American citizens who do support them. I'm not sure they ought to be grateful to Mr. Arkin's ilk, who would like to suggest that Abu Ghraib and Haditha, rape and murder are not unusual violations of the military's accustomed discipline and honor.

Nor do I think that they shouldn't be allowed to say what they said. There is a fine line in what military men can express in terms of political ideas, but given that these were low-ranking servicemen plainly speaking for themselves, I think they're in line.

Oh, Arkin also goes on to suggest that a military coup would be likely, 'if this weren't the United States.' I agree that the United States is uniquely unlikely to suffer a military coup, but I wonder if he has given any thought as to why that might be. "Because the military wouldn't consider participating in a coup," is one answer; "Because the American people are well enough armed to resist it" is another. Neither of these stabilizing factors have anything to do with Arkin's kind.

Not Quite Yet

104.3: Not Quite Yet

I went into the barn this morning to get the axe, and the radio was on (as always). It was set to 104.3 FM out of Atlanta, which is a country music station. The disc jockey was saying that it was George H. W. Bush's birthday, and he was going skydiving as he always did.

'President Bush won't be joining him,' the jockey said. 'He wanted to go, but the last time he got into an airplane he couldn't find the way out. See, he has this problem finding exits. Yeah.'

That was a poor attempt at humor, I thought, just from a structural view. A joke normally relies on something unexpected to create the sense that there's something funny about what was said. This wasn't humor, but simple mockery. I thought to myself, "That's the end for Bush, then. When they feel comfortable mocking him on country music stations in Atlanta, it's all over."

Well, I went off and did some chores, and about half an hour later was back in the barn to get some hay. The disc jockey had a caller on the air -- which this station normally doesn't do, I don't think -- and she was reading him the riot act.

"I love George Bush," he was saying defensively. "I mean, I think he makes fun of himself sometimes?"

She gave him another load of verbal buckshot.

The message is clear: If you're Leno or Letterman, or MTV, or a disc jockey on a rock and roll station, or a professional comic, or just about anyone else, you can make fun of the President.

If your business is country music, though, it's still not quite time. Willie Nelson excepted, of course -- old Willie can do just about what he wants. He's earned it.

Maybe if it had been a better joke?

I don't recall Clinton having defenders who were ready to assert that it was wrong to mock him; maybe there were some, but I seem to remember him being roundly mocked by everyone, left and right, although for different reasons. Probably that's to do with the fact that Clinton's supporters weren't Southerners, for whom it's important that the people they respect not be mocked. GWB seems to have hit rock bottom in terms of his approval ratings, but that bottom is solid. That lady who called the radio station wasn't someone I'd be in a hurry to tangle with, from the sound of her.

I don't think this is an important story, just an interesting one.

ABTF

"A Bridge Too Far":

Given the difficulties with the "New Blogger," I'll take the liberty of reminding everyone that we were meant to watch the movie this weekend. If you have comments, leave them here. It's a fine discussion to be had.

Which reminds me -- Eric, you get to pick the next movie. I don't think you've picked yet. I'm only going to ban Gladiator. Anything else is fair game.

Updation

Updation:

I apologize to all my co-bloggers, who will have to create Google accounts to post here. Blogger went through the "hey, want to Beta test the New Blogger?" phase, to the "the New Blogger is now available!" phase, and has finally reached the, "The New Blogger is now mandatory if you ever want to access your blog again, buddy," phase.

So, we're stuck with it. Hopefully it won't be too painful.

On a happier note, I see that FreeSpeech is up and running again. Del Simmons used to run one of the best blogs in the 'sphere, until... well, let's call it a little lesson in the dangers of unbridled libertarianism. It was a great theory, giving anyone who asked an author's account, but in practice...

Anyway, once he gets his legs under him, I'll expect to see some good discussions going on over there again.

(The title of this post is in honor of the Commissar.)

Indoor Philosophy

Indoor Philosophy:

Edward Abbey famously slammed a whole school of metaphysics using a phrase I think he had from Muir himself. Muir used the phrase "indoor philosophy" to explain why Bostonians in the company of Emerson refused to let the old man join in one of Muir's wild treks.

He seemed as serene as a sequoia, his head in the empyrean; and forgetting his age, plans, duties, ties of every sort, I proposed an immeasurable camping trip back in the heart of the mountains. He seemed anxious to go, but considerately mentioned his party. I said: "Never mind. The mountains are calling; run away, and let plans and parties and dragging lowland duties all gang tapsal-teerie. We'll go up a cañon singing your own song, "Good-by, proud world! I'm going home, in divine earnest. Up there lies a new heaven and a new earth; let us go to the show." But alas, it was too late,—too near the sundown of his life. The shadows were growing long, and he leaned on his friends. His party, full of indoor philosophy, failed to see the natural beauty and fullness of promise of my wild plan, and laughed at it in good-natured ignorance, as if it were necessarily amusing to imagine that Boston people might be led to accept Sierra manifestations of God at the price of rough camping.

Abbey took the phrase and used it as a weapon. "In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms," he said. "It is an indoor philosophy."

I find that I have the same complaint with Stephen Pinker's latest, "The Mystery of Consciousness." This is a fascinating piece, as it should be since it treats a fascinating problem. What is the nature of consciousness?

I'd like you to read his article in full, but I want to treat a couple of parts of it. First, the scientific data he advances to us is full of import. The advances in our understanding of the working of the brain are astonishing at times, and something I greatly enjoy thinking about. His explanation of how people are less rational than they think they are, or even than they seem to be, is I think one of the most useful lessons to be learned about Mankind.

When an experimenter got people to endure electric shocks in a sham experiment on learning, those who were given a good rationale ("It will help scientists understand learning") rated the shocks as more painful than the ones given a feeble rationale ("We're curious.") Presumably, it's because the second group would have felt foolish to have suffered for no good reason. Yet when these people were asked why they agreed to be shocked, they offered bogus reasons of their own in all sincerity, like "I used to mess around with radios and got used to electric shocks."

There is a lot to be said for his work on "the Easy Problem," as he calls it. What I want to point to is what he has to say about "the Hard Problem."

The Hard Problem, on the other hand, is why it feels like something to have a conscious process going on in one's head--why there is first-person, subjective experience. Not only does a green thing look different from a red thing, remind us of other green things and inspire us to say, "That's green" (the Easy Problem), but it also actually looks green: it produces an experience of sheer greenness that isn't reducible to anything else. As Louis Armstrong said in response to a request to define jazz, "When you got to ask what it is, you never get to know."

The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience arises from neural computation. The problem is hard because no one knows what a solution might look like or even whether it is a genuine scientific problem in the first place. And not surprisingly, everyone agrees that the hard problem (if it is a problem) remains a mystery.

He says this early in the piece, but then goes a long time before he explains what he means by 'not a genuine scientific problem in the first place.' What he means is that it may not be possible to approach the problem through science.

TO APPRECIATE THE HARDNESS OF THE HARD PROBLEM, CONSIDER how you could ever know whether you see colors the same way that I do. Sure, you and I both call grass green, but perhaps you see grass as having the color that I would describe, if I were in your shoes, as purple. Or ponder whether there could be a true zombie--a being who acts just like you or me but in whom there is no self actually feeling anything. This was the crux of a Star Trek plot in which officials wanted to reverse-engineer Lieut. Commander Data, and a furious debate erupted as to whether this was merely dismantling a machine or snuffing out a sentient life.

No one knows what to do with the Hard Problem. Some people may see it as an opening to sneak the soul back in, but this just relabels the mystery of "consciousness" as the mystery of "the soul"--a word game that provides no insight.

Many philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, deny that the Hard Problem exists at all. Speculating about zombies and inverted colors is a waste of time, they say, because nothing could ever settle the issue one way or another. Anything you could do to understand consciousness--like finding out what wavelengths make people see green or how similar they say it is to blue, or what emotions they associate with it--boils down to information processing in the brain and thus gets sucked back into the Easy Problem, leaving nothing else to explain. Most people react to this argument with incredulity because it seems to deny the ultimate undeniable fact: our own experience.

The most popular attitude to the Hard Problem among neuroscientists is that it remains unsolved for now but will eventually succumb to research that chips away at the Easy Problem. Others are skeptical about this cheery optimism because none of the inroads into the Easy Problem brings a solution to the Hard Problem even a bit closer. Identifying awareness with brain physiology, they say, is a kind of "meat chauvinism" that would dogmatically deny consciousness to Lieut. Commander Data just because he doesn't have the soft tissue of a human brain. Identifying it with information processing would go too far in the other direction and grant a simple consciousness to thermostats and calculators--a leap that most people find hard to stomach. Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.

And then there is the theory put forward by philosopher Colin McGinn that our vertigo when pondering the Hard Problem is itself a quirk of our brains. The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius--a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness--comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us.

I'll ask Karrde, given that his education in mathematics is far better than mine, to explain how mathematics has some problems that cannot be solved even in theory. The point is that science as a whole has some similar limitations. There are some questions it cannot answer, even in theory. Pinker's answer is that this is a fault of our brains; but perhaps someone may develop a better theory. Yet this too is subject to the limit that Dennett identifies.

What this means is -- barring some future Einstein who throws open windows that for now are closed to us -- what we have in the "Hard Problem" is a problem of metaphysics, not a problem of science. Metaphysics is in the realm of philosophy, which is an art rather than a science.

Metaphysics is the art of trying to guess the rules that lay behind the world. For example, given a world in which conscious people suffer terribly, inevitably decay and die -- well, what kind of a world is that? We can learn everything there is to know about how people suffer and decay and die, without knowing anything more about why the universe is set up that way.

A famous example of a metaphysical question is the status of the human fetus. Is it a person, or is it a clump of cells? There is finally no scientific way to decide. You can know a lot of scientific facts about it. You can know the moment when it can survive outside the womb, for example. You can know the point at which its genetic code is set. You can know the point at which it develops a brain.

None of those items of knowledge, though, do anything at all to answer the question, "Is it a person?" Finally, you just have to go with your gut.

Metaphysics is ultimately about judgment calls, which you make as much because they feel right for any other reason. This is where we return to the problem of "indoor philosophy." The philosophy that is all in the head uses only the rational part of the brain; metaphysics cannot be done there only. You need to feel as well as think to come to stable results.

Pinker's conclusion is that we should find the Easy Problem destructive to our idea of a soul; and that we should therefore rebuild our metaphysics based on his best guess about the Hard Problem.

Whatever the solutions to the Easy and Hard problems turn out to be, few scientists doubt that they will locate consciousness in the activity of the brain. For many nonscientists, this is a terrifying prospect. Not only does it strangle the hope that we might survive the death of our bodies, but it also seems to undermine the notion that we are free agents responsible for our choices--not just in this lifetime but also in a life to come. In his millennial essay "Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died," Tom Wolfe worried that when science has killed the soul, "the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase 'the total eclipse of all values' seem tame."

MY OWN VIEW IS THAT THIS IS backward: the biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul. It's not just that an understanding of the physiology of consciousness will reduce human suffering through new treatments for pain and depression. That understanding can also force us to recognize the interests of other beings--the core of morality.

He's entitled to that view, which I think is honestly delivered. He tells us cleanly where the lines are -- this is science, and that is just how I feel about it. Nothing wrong with that.

My own sense is different, and it is just as well informed. This is the one place where the old advertising line really works: "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." That's all right. Playing one on TV imparts its own sense of things, which a real doctor would not have. This isn't a medical question. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I am a man.

My sense of things is that the brain and its activity isn't all there is; that it is as if we were studying a television set. You can study the television, and it will show you everything about how the picture is being formed on the screen. Every process involved is resident right there in the television. If you damage parts of the set, the reception blurs. The television still thinks its putting the image together correctly, but we can see it isn't -- just like a damaged brain can't quite get its information together, but can't tell that it is failing to do so.

Yet you can break that set with a hammer, and the signal is still there. You can't see it anymore -- without the set, have no way of sensing that it still exists -- but you can't stop the signal. That's my sense of the soul, and of what it means to die.

Eyesight works that way. The eye receives and the brain interprets light. The eye takes the light waves, converts them into electric signals that the brain can understand, and the brain projects them into a three-dimensional image of the world around you. It's fair to say that there may be seven dimensions instead of three, and our brain simply can't understand or interpret them.

What you can't do is get hung up on the eye and the brain, and forget that the light came from somewhere. If the eye shuts down, the light is still there. If the television set breaks down, the signal is still there. If the brain shuts down, the soul is still there.

That's an outdoor philosophy. I can't prove it, but I've felt the cold and seen death, and it seems right to me. I recognize that it's subject to McGinn's problem -- that it is a sense that may simply be a quirk of the brain. Well, it may be. But so, as the man himself says, may be any other explanation.

A scientist, who spends his life in rooms, may come to love the rational too much. A man has a rational and an irrational side to his soul. The scientist, focusing so much on the one, may come to see the other as a liability, a quality to be overcome with data and analysis.

So it may be, in scientific questions. I'm not against rationality, and I am eager to learn what new secrets science has to reveal.

But science has a place, and metaphysics another. Until and unless some future Einstein finds a way to transport these questions from the one realm to the other, we should approach them as whole men. That's a metaphysical position too -- a belief that the irrational part of us is valuable and vital, and something we should seek to involve in the most important questions of life.

I can't prove it, anymore than Pinker can prove the opposite. I invite the reader to follow Muir -- to camp rough in the high country -- to meet the brown bear of the forest -- and see if he still doubts it.

Perhaps it's only a trick of the brain that makes the man accept it. But perhaps that is the brain he was meant to have; perhaps that is the man he was meant to be.

Meant by whom? I don't know. But I have heard that a man can seek manifestations in the Sierra.

ABG

"Orchid Daze" at the ABG:

Today, grandma was meant to run off with the boy, and I was meant to take my wife on a nice horseback ride up into the Georgia hills. This plan changed due to a last-minute invitation by grandma to the wife to go down to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for an art show. The "Orchid Daze" exhibit featured blown-glass orchids, mixed in with the large collection of real orchids, and glass frogs in with the real Amazon frogs, which was to inspire a blah-blah-blah about the cunningness of man-made artwork to reflect the beauty of nature.

It's not that I don't know anything about art. It is, I think, that I know too much about it. My mother (that is, grandma) is an artist and an art-teacher; as I just mentioned, my wife is an equine artist. I've grown up with art education, then, and when dating I spent years hanging around the world-famous Savannah College of Art and Design, discussing art theory and going to exhibits both of famous artists and up and coming ones. I've been surrounded by art and art theory, folk art and fine art, since I was a child.

I've long ago figured out that there are just three kinds of artists: craftsmen, spiritualists, and people who are faking it. There are more of the last kind than anyone else, and they make up almost all the "concept" artists. The more somebody has to say about what their art means, the less it is really worth. Not in terms of dollars -- most consumers of art aren't smart enough to see through the line of salesmanship to realize they are buying a piece of canvas with one red line on it. (This is a fact that the Pop Artist, Warhol and the like, openly enjoyed.) The real depth of the work, though, is not going to be found in concept art.

This Frabel is a craftsman, and his stuff is good. His orchids in particular are very good. It's no wonder they liked them at the garden -- but if you're not that into orchids (and I am definitely not), you'll quickly tire.

On the other hand, there was some faker art out in the gardens that was... well, as you'd expect it wasn't that great. There was one real exception to the rule, however: the six-ton skull.

What made this piece great was not the concept, which... ah, well, read the article if you want the line of chatter. Supposedly it's all about earthy feminism and a 'new age of martiarchy.' Hey, maybe some people find it deeply feminine to sit in a giant skull and meditate. That wasn't what made it work, though.

What made the six-ton skull great wasn't its feminist qualities, but the fact that it was a huge, brightly-colored skull that you were allowed to crawl on. It wasn't its ability to speak to martiarchy, in other words, but its ability to speak to children.

Every child in the place, and especially every boy, loved it. They could clamber all over it. They could sit in the nose like a chair. They could crawl down into the jaws and howl out through the teeth. They could stick palm fronds out through the mouth like a big tongue, and try to "lick" other kids as they ran past. They could sit inside and scream, making it echo.

They loved it. That doesn't make it "great art" -- after all, kids love Barney the Dinosaur. Still, it does make it a worthy investment on the part of the Garden. I say that without knowing exactly how much was invested -- even a six-ton skull is only so valuable. Assuming they didn't let the line of chat drag more money out of them than was reasonable, though, it was a nifty thing to buy.

Oz Day

Happy Australia Day:

I had meant to say some words about the wonderful people of Australia, our most faithful ally and truest friend in the world. I had meant to say something about their history, landscape, and enviable culture.

But why gild the lily? (H/t: InstaPundit.)

PJM 2

PJM Specials Today:

The second part of the "Islands" series is available. It's interesting to see his comments on the role of "political correctness," Philippines style, in hampering the GWOT. To whit, if the government is seen as being too compliant with the US, political opposition flares. Thus, needed laws don't get passed.

There is certainly some truth to the complaint. There is another side, too. In Indonesia, for example, the US State Department pushed pretty hard -- and Australia's Foreign Ministry also -- for radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir to be arrested on charges of supporting terrorism. The Indonesian government ended up doing just that, but the charges that were necessary to satisfy the US/Oz were not supportable given the admissable evidence and judicial climate. As a result, Bashir ended up getting off lightly. His early freedom was taken as a public rebuke to the US and made him a rallying point for Islamists in Indonesia.

Still, the point is well taken. You have to balance the pressure you bring to bear with the reality of the political situation. Less than optimal results happen if you err on either side.

Today's report from Baghdad is here.

HiHK: ID

Horses I have Known II: Design v. Evolution

Since you folks liked the horse pictures so much the last time, I thought I'd post a couple more. I have all these pictures because my wife, who is an equine artist (chiefly a sculptrix, but also a painter) is always trotting out to get photos of the beasties to use as references.

Today's horse is Tobias:



(The truck in the background, for reasons most of you will understand, is named "Serenity.")

Tobias is obviously a draft horse, a heavy, stocky horse of substance. Drafts are cold bloods, horses that we have for hundreds of years bred to be powerful, and easygoing. This is because they are meant to pull carts or plows, or work in teams, and it is harder to control a horse in that context than it is to do so while riding them with proper tack. As a result, you need a brave horse (i.e., it won't spook easily) that is gentle and easygoing.

The problem is that the horse's evolved nature runs totally against both propositions. In spite of their size, horses are prey animals in the wild. They are thus conditioned by a million years' survival to spook easily, and to respond to such spooks by running like the devil in the opposite direction. These are not desirable qualities, but they are deeply embedded. (A side note -- there is a piece in this month's Equus that argues that cold bloods branched off from the rest of horses at a much earlier period in evolution, which explains both their different dietary needs and some tempermental differences. See "Nutrition: Feeding Big Eaters" in the EQ Consultants column, p. 74-5.)

What can you do about that? Well, one thing you can do is breed horses that aren't particularly smart. They will go happily about their business because they are bad at threat recognition. However, genuinely dumb horses create other problems for the working horseman.

What people have done instead is select horses for breeding that have shown a certain tendency to go on "autopilot" when they're in harness. Humans do this too, so you'll understand what I mean. If you regularly make a trip by car, you get to where you can make it without thinking about it. Thus, your brain is free to be otherwise occupied. You may only be pulled back to full consciousness if something unexpected happens on the road. If a semi suddenly pulls out in front of you, you're suddenly "awake" -- but otherwise, the autopilot takes you there.

The best draft horses are bred for a similar quality. Tobias is a good example. He is a smart beast, when he's out of his harness -- but you tack him up, and he sort of sighs and his brain goes away. He does his job, but you can tell he is not all there while you're working him.

For example, he will walk straight into a tree.

You have to be very careful, therefore, about where this horse's ears are pointed. That's where he's going to go. If they're pointed at a tree, you have to turn him. This is the opposite of a horse like the Colonel, who has a good sense for his surroundings. The Colonel has excellent trail sense. Tobias is smart enough to have it, and in alarming situations -- for example, if you are riding him down a steep and rocky hillside -- you can feel his brain come awake. Like with you and the semi, he's suddenly "all there" and careful. Most of the time, he's not, and you'd better be watching where he's going.

He's a good looking beast, though:



Tobias is a former driving horse, and has only recently begun to be trained for trail riding. He hasn't learned to neck-rein yet, which is one of the things I like to teach the horses. He still rides like he thinks he's pulling a cart, and he still steers like a wheelbarrow.

He has the best of his breeding, though. He's gentle and sweet, and he never fails to come over when he sees you to seek some friendly attention. He's afraid of absolutely nothing -- today I thought he was going to run the UPS truck off the road rather than give way. He's a bit lazy, which is common with cold bloods, but he's a good horse all around.

Best to BlSp

Good Wishes to BloodSpite:

Horseman and former Special Forces blogger Bloodspite had some hard news this week. I'm a little late getting to this, as I don't get around to reading "the community" as quickly as some -- but I do get by eventually. I join with Fuzzy in wishing him all the best.

It looks like people have been responsive, but for what it's worth -- drop him an email, if you have the time.

Dick Cheney's death stare

"Dick Cheney's Death Stare"

Heidi at Euphoric Reality laughs at Wolf Blitzer, who backpedals as fast as I've ever seen a media personality go. His guest was Dick Cheney, and so of course it was necessary to ask about his lesbian daughter.

This is such a popular topic that Google shows over million hits. Yay.

I understand Wolf's real question, which was this: "Focus on the Family is an important Republican interest group. They've taken it upon themselves to lecture your daughter and suggest she is immoral. Don't you wish to defend her against them, and therefore create a rift within your party?"

Of course, the answer is, "No, and no thanks for asking."

It's none of Focus on the Family's business, of course, and they could usefully shut up. The same goes for people who would like to publicize the dispute to the greatest degree possible, because it might hurt the Republican party. I have noticed that busybodies, in both parties, have trouble minding their own business. I believe there is even a Hank Williams song on the topic.

For those who can't carry a tune, a nice quiet death stare is almost as good.

Op Baghdad

Operation Baghdad:

PJM also has a reporter in Baghdad. Mohammed Fadhil is reporting on the fighting in the city. The reporting is informative, and the picture of the Stryker flying the Jolly Roger is worth the price of admission by itself.

RF in PHIL

Islands in the War:

Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club, longtime resident of the Philippines, is back there on special assignment to PJM. He has a very useful writeup on the background of the conflict in the southern, Muslim regions. He also has a much darker forecast than mine about the region's prospects.

For example, when counterterrorist intelligence learned that Jemaah Islamiyah cadres were being trained in terrorist skills in a Moro Islamic Liberation Front area, they hesitated to raid the site because the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was a officially a "peace partner" of the government.

A Filipino intelligence official attempted to square the circle by persuading his Muslim contacts in the MILF to attack the JI camp with government sanction. Asked whether this may have tipped the JI off into escaping, the official said "That was a risk, but what else was there to do? The official policy is to pursue a political settlement whether anyone really wants it or not." But if the chance of a comprehensive political solution seemed distant ("They’ll solve the Israeli-Palestine problem before we solve this") a military solution seemed equally remote.

I still think exactly that is the way forward -- using the MILF's natural pursuit of its own interests to deny the area to the JI. The MILF has been a "peace partner" in more than name, having assisted government forces on several occasions; and its spokesman, Eid Kabalu, has a devotion to peaceful rhetoric unusual in armed Muslim movements. Even when his brother was killed by police in a drug raid, he kept to formulations built around investigations and negotiations. Rhetoric is just words, but you'd have to go a long way to find another movement of this type which was as willing to be judicious with its words.

There is little doubt that some elements of the MILF, and its parent organization the MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front), have had contacts with terrorist groups. There are persistant reports that the two have allowed terrorists to train in their camps. However, there is also a record of cooperation -- sometimes grudging, sometimes ready -- that marks the MILF and MNLF alike as a different sort of movement from al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah. If the right tools can be found, we should be able to disaggregate the MILF from the true terrorist groups in Southeast Asia. Given the fact that Mindanao is beyond the capacity of the RP government to truly control, that seems a wise policy.

Knife Fighting

Knife Fighting Link:

Kim du Toit suggests this as a preemptive defense, should you shoot someone who comes at you with a knife. The original post is here. The pictures are graphic.

I'd like those of you who are interested in the subject of knife fighting to take a look at those pictures. This is what a good knife can do when used improperly.

Photo 1 shows three slash wounds across the back, two across the spine. The knife was used right-to-left on the top, left-to-right on the second wound, and top-to-bottom on the vertical wound. In each case, the knife was used to slash instead of stab, and it was held with the blade leading -- whereas it should have been held with the backstrap leading.

The wounds did serious damage to the muscle, but were not in any way life-threatening (save for the possibility of blood loss). The two vertical wounds could have been stabs directed at the spine, in almost any situation in which it was possible to deliver those two blows. The vertical wound should have been a stab driven into the lung.

If the knife had been held correctly (the opposite way from how it was held), and the knife's wielder had known where to stop slashing and drive it home, the victim here would be dead.

Photo 2 is the same, but a single wound. A stab delivered there would have penetrated the liver and/or lower lung, depending on the angle.

Photo 3? Again, the same. I wonder if these wounds were all delivered by the same person. The incompetence is noteworthy. The fighter had four separate opportunities to kill his opponent, but delivered blows that were only ugly, not incapacitating.

Absolutely any of those wounds could have been fatal, and would surely have been incapacitating, if the wielder had known how to fight. If you are interested in the ancient arts of fencing and bladework as a form of self-defense, learn from the example. Hold the blade upwards toward your thumb, not downwards toward your little finger. Slash until you are over something vital, then drive home with the weight of your body behind the attack.

This is the way to use a blade. A gun automates this process, and is therefore easier for some, either physically or mentally. If you choose a blade, though, this is how it is done.

3 from AL

Three from AL Daily:

Arts & Letters Daily has three outstanding pieces today, which is unusually good even for them. The first is on Andrew Jackson, from the War of 1812 to his "assault on habeus corpus." The piece gives a good sense of Jackson, and while it disagrees with him, I think it gives a window into why he was so widely beloved by Americans.

The second looks at the 'nonwar' on Iran, with Israel, the US, and Saudia Arabia as allies. Confronting and stopping Iran is obviously the most important problem currently extant in the Middle East, though our allies (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan particularly) likewise present problems.

The third is Christopher Hitchen's review of Mark Steyn's newest book. In any conflict between the two gentlemen, I have to side with Steyn -- but both are deep thinkers, and important allies in the current struggle to defend the West and its best traditions. It's worth seeing where they cross.

SF use of pack animals

"Special Forces' Use of Pack Animals"

Secrecy News, which I just cited the other day, has a real gem in today's issue. It points us to a new Army Field manual, on the use of pack animals by Special Forces.

The comments on elephants are hilarious, as SN notes. But I liked the manual overall -- it's a pretty good primer on horsemanship, as well as packing. It suffers from the usual Army FM problems, but within the genre, it's a good one. The section on first aid and common disorders for pack animals is particularly good. Indeed, the entire fourth chapter is full of useful information for horsemen that might otherwise take a long time to learn.

Good work, Army.

Links

Some Good Links:

Bthun, in the comments to a post at Cassidy's place, points to a fascinating talk on Jefferson and the Barbary pirates. It's a video recording, but very interesting.

Also, here are couple of good reads on education, thanks to Arts & Letters Daily. The first posits that reading is more than a skill, but rather a compliation of everything you've learned. As a result, you can't improve overall reading comprehension among students without teaching them a very broad base of knowledge indeed:

An educational experiment in 1989 pitted a group of students with high reading scores, selected especially for their lack of interest in baseball, against a group of low-scoring students who happened to be avid baseball fans. The two groups were asked to demonstrate their reading comprehension of a passage on baseball. Can you guess which team won?

A followup piece looks at the degree to which even librarians no longer like books. The nexus of the two pieces is this: if we want smarter students, we need to increase the awareness of the whole tradition of the West among those students; but we've settled on the easier task of teaching them to use search engines.

PJM has a piece that says the State of the Union is a disaster. And, indeed, it is. I think, though, it is for far wider and deeper reasons than contemplated here. We've talked about the cracking structural faults in the Republic's foundational institutions.

What if we can't fix it? I wonder.

SN CRS

A New Broom Sweeps it Under the Rug:

Regular readers of Grim's Hall know that excessive government secrecy is one of my major complaints. Often, others who share the complaint point to the Bush administration, and it does seem that Bush has a particular love for secrecy. That said, it's not only the administration that suffers from this particular addiction.

Today's Secrecy News notes that the new Democratic-led Congress has tightened the rules regulating Congressional Research Service contacts with the media. As SN notes, "The new policy 'will obviously have a chilling effect on staff,' said one CRS analyst on a not-for-attribution basis. 'That's what it is intended to do.'"

Much of the CRS' research is on pragmatic matters, and the service is meant to be nonpartisan. As a result, there is often little reason to deny public access to their work -- or to make it hard for journalists (or even bloggers) to ask a few questions about it.

Sovay, if she drops by, will also be interested in today's SN update on the Hatfill case.

Go Bears

Champions:

Now that was a fine set of championship games. Congratulations to the victors! I am pleased to say that my favored teams won in both of the conference championships.

Now, though, I have to decide whether to root for the Colts -- who are the native team of the in-laws, and led by Peyton Manning, an old UT vet -- or the Bears, to whom I feel a certain primal loyalty. They play the kind of ball I like best: a defense-heavy, running game. I remember the "wild bunch" of 1985, and want to see the Bears back on top of the league.

Well, I have a couple of weeks to sort that out. My thanks to all of the players for a fine couple of games today.

Some Horses

Horses I have Known:

I thought that some of you might like to see a couple of the horses I've been working with lately. I mentioned Sequila a few months back. Sequila is an Appaloosa mare of foundation stock. Here's a photo of the little brat:



Sequila is always a pain to get saddled. Yesterday, I went out to get her from the second field. I knew she was there, because when I topped the hill on the way down to the fields, I could see her. When I got out into the field, though, she'd totally vanished. The other horses were out there, but no Sequila.

Knowing her, I figured she'd jumped the fence or something when she saw me coming with a rope. I walked out to see if I could figure out where she'd crossed, when I came to a low place in the field, just a dip in the land. There was Sequila, laying down to hide from me.

If a horse could grumble, this one would have when I showed up there and put the rope on her. She'd also stripped off her halter, so I put the rope on her "war bridle" fashion. Naturally, when I started back to the barn, she didn't want to come -- but when the rope pinched down, she grudgingly agreed. As usual, she had her ears plastered back for the saddling. I always take some time to soothe her and scratch her during the process, but you never get a better reaction from her than to see her ears raise forward an inch.

Sequila is a bad-tempered brat, and though she's very smart, she uses all her intelligence in the service of evil. Nevertheless, once you get the saddle on her, she's a real pleasure to ride. She's got a great canter in particular. The canter is a three-beat gait just short of a gallop, but faster than the two-beat trot. The trot is easy on the horse, but harder on the rider. The canter is easy to ride, if you've ever done any boxing -- just like you were taught in the ring, you let your body snap like a whip. This distributes away all the energy, and makes it a pleasure.

Anyway, we had a great ride yesterday, and by the end of it she was too tired to fight. She was gentle and sweet while I put her blanket on her, and took her back to the field.

My favorite horse we have right now is a grey quarter horse. He has a registered name which I've forgotten, but I call him "Colonel Mosby" after the famous cavalry officer (the "Gray Ghost," is why). The Colonel is a friendly animal, and a lot of fun to be around, but a bit sickle-hocked, as well as being cow-hocked. It gives his trot a kind of sway to it, which is really sort of fun. It's going to be hard on his joints, though, as he gets older.

The Colonel and I get along very well, but apparently he tries to pull the reins out of other riders' hands. As a result, we are training him with a martingale and a noseband. Personally, I don't see the need, but his owner really wants to break the habit. I just do what the owners want. If it were my own, I would avoid the training aids, and just use a good bit to "communicate" my displeasure if he tried to yank the reins out of my hands.

Here's a picture of the Colonel:



Here's a second, where you can see the cow-hocked confirmation:



As you can see, he's a very good horse in spite of everything. I like a smart, friendly horse best of all. This one is about the friendliest I have ever met, which goes a long way with me.

Choosing a Stetson

Choosing a Stetson:

Doc Russia wrote the top post on first aid kits, giving us the benefit of his skills and knowledge. I'm going to write about an item of kit that I know a little something about, which you can expect to use more often than a first aid kit -- but which can be just as useful to your survival, if you spend a lot of time outside.

I'm going to say a few words about how to pick a Stetson hat. Most of what I have to say will be useful to you if you prefer another brand of hat, or a custom hat; but a Stetson is what my grandfather passed to me, and so Stetsons are what I wear. Also, I want to warn you a bit about some bad marketing ideas Stetson is undertaking at this time, so you avoid getting a bad hat that ought to have been good.

Don't get me wrong -- they still make hats in the old fashion. They just also now make hats in other fashions, one of which is very good, and the others of which are not. The old fashion is their "authentic X" beaver felt; the new fashion that is very good is the buffalo felt hat.

Stetson is, however, making the same bad mistake that Harley Davidson made a few decades ago. They're letting their brand be affixed to substandard products. They've added their product name to several lines of cheap hats, including wool felt (their "Stallion" line, for example) and various Australian style hats. It took Harley years to overcome the collapse in their value that this marketing strategy brought on. I hope the folks at Stetson will reconsider before they ruin an old and highly-respected name.

By the way, if you want an Australian hat, buy an Akubra -- they're not expensive, they're better than the Stetson variants, and they're the real thing. Don't buy from David Morgan (who sells some fine goods, but overcharges for their Akubras). Rather, buy from the Strand Hatter in Australia. They'll be glad to ship to you, they have more styles on offer, and it's cheaper.

If you're buying a Stetson, though, don't buy online at all. This is one of the few items you will always get cheaper at a bricks-and-mortar store. Find a good feed-and-seed, or a Western wear store, that can order one for you. If you have more than one in the area, shop around. You'll often get prices half of what you can find online.

CHOOSING A STYLE:

The main thing about the style of hat you pick is the use you intend for it. That's why you should pick one style over another.

I will only give you one general rule on style that is aesthetic: the bigger the man, the bigger the hat. This is to to with width, not height. A broad shouldered man needs a broad brim, as a small brim will look foolish on him. If you have a big chest and a thick neck, you don't want to wear something tiny. Get a big hat. By contrast, if you're a relatively slim fellow, a big hat will look a bit awkward.

That said, choose what suits your life. If you're outside a lot in open country, you'll want a broader brim to shade your face and eyes. If you spend most of your time in wooded country, you'll want a smaller or upturned brim to make it easier to move around the trees. If you live in a city, you may want a smaller hat like a fedora that's easy to fit in the tighter spaces of crowds and elevators. Function is more important than look.

CHOOSING A FELT:

Use determines this also. You'll need to know how much rain your area gets, how hot it's going to be, and how bright. You'll also need to know if you want it mostly for horseback riding, or walking afoot, or for use on camping expeditions.

There are three kinds of hats Stetson makes that I recommend: authentic beaver felt, buffalo felt, and woven Panama straw hats. The straw hats are actually made under contract in Panama, but they're very good. I am not going to say more about them than that -- just pick a style you like, in your size, and buy it if you like Panama straw hats. These are good for summer wear in hot climates (like the South). They breathe well, but offer more substantial protection from the sun than the sort of straw hat you can buy at Walmart. I have one of these, but remember, you'll get it cheaper than that if you work with a local store.

You might want a straw hat as well as a felt hat, if you live in a hot enough place. Otherwise, one hat can do you for your whole life, if it's the right hat.

Now, as to the felt hats: never buy a wool felt hat, or a "fur" felt hat that doesn't tell you what kind of fur. It's probably rabbit. They're cheap and good looking, but when they get wet, they get soggy. You can put Scotch-guard on them if you want, but you're better off buying a better hat. (Same for those Aussie hats, by the way: they're mostly rabbit fur felt. Great hats, when it's not raining.)

Also, I wouldn't buy a Stetson "fur" felt hat that isn't either from its American Buffalo collection, or bearing "authentic X" beaver-felt. For example, its "Gun Club" hats have Xs stamped in the hatband, but they are substandard hats. One of them I encountered had water-soluble dye! Great, just what everyone wants: first rainstorm, and black or dark-brown dye is dripping over your face and into your clothes.

What you want is a beaver-fur felt hat, or a hat from Stetson's American Buffalo collection. They have different qualities, though, so let me tell you a bit about how they're different.

First, the buffalo hats are cheaper. You can get them for half the price of a modestly good beaver hat.

Second, the buffalo felt is a lot less stiff. It'll seem stiff in the store, because it's been starched. Once you've used it for a while, in wind and rain, it will become somewhat floppy. It holds its shape well enough, but when the wind hits it the brim will push up, for example.

This has good and bad effects. Buffalo felt hats are ideal for hiking and camping, for example. If you're hiking under trees or through canyons, they'll give against limbs or rocks. If you're wanting to fan a fire to life, they've got a bit more "snap" than a beaver. The best thing I've ever found for kindling a fire, in fact, is my buffalo Stetson.

For horseback riding, they're less ideal. They're fine at the trot, but you get up into a canter or a gallop, and the wind you generate can take the hat right off your head, even if the hat fits perfectly.

They are also not as waterproof. If you live in a climate with a wet season, or you think you might get caught out in a long rain, a beaver is what you want.

The amount of beaver fur felt in the hat is expressed as a number of "X"s. This is not a standard. Every manufacturer uses different percentages. Thus, a XXX hat may have ten percent beaver felt, or only five, or twelve. A XXXX hat may be twenty-five percent, but it may be less. It used to be that 20X was 100% beaver, but that's not true any more either.

I find that a XXXX hat (that's four X's) is good enough for the roughest wear. If you want a purer hat, and can afford it, go for it: but beaver pelts get more expensive every year. That's why even a XXXX hat, far from a 20X or 100X hat, costs twice what a buffalo hat costs.

CHOOSING A SIZE & SHAPING YOUR HAT:

You only need two things to shape a hat. The first is hot water. The second is a hat jack. The hat jack is optional, actually, but it does help.

You want to make sure that you get the right size. The biggest mistake you're apt to make is to try the hat on, and decide which one feels best. That seems reasonable, but it's the wrong way around.

What you want is a hat that fits you all the way around your head. You want to make sure there is no place at which you can fit a fingertip between the band and your skull. A lot of people have more-or-less oval shaped heads. The hat from the factory may be tight front and back, but with a gap at the temple. Though it's too tight, the hat is too big.

You want to find a hat that is the right size for your head. Try on several, until you find the one that seems likely to fit if all the gaps were expanded into the tight areas. We can do that -- I'm about to tell you how. Once it's shaped to your head, this hat will fit perfectly.

Take your hat home, and pour water into a kettle. Boil the water, so a stream of hot steam blows out of the spout. Fold the sweat band inside the hat down, and expose the felt to the steam until the hat is moist and warm all the way around. Now, fold the sweat band up, and put it on your head (or the hat jack). Wear it until it is cool and dry. The hat will now be formed to your head.

By the way, the same tactic will let you reshape the brim or the bash. The bash is somewhat harder to do, but if you're patient, you can learn. The brim is easy: just steam it, put it where you want it, and let it cool.

This technique will also let you repair a hat that's gotten out of shape through use.

OTHER HATS / CUSTOM HATS:

Resistol hats and Stetson hats are closely related these days. Custom hats depend on the hatmaker. I've seen some good results and some bad ones. I can only endorse two from personal experience.

Peter Brothers makes fine hats. I gave one of these as a gift once, and it was beautiful.

Also, Sackett's in Jasper, GA, has a hat maker who goes by the name "the Hat Man." He is a fine old gentleman of eighty years or so, who used to make hats for the Hollywood cowboys back in the heydey of the Western film. They don't have a web page, but you can reach them at 678 454-4677. His stuff is outstanding. I've never owned any of it, but I've seen what he can do close up.

Any kind of felt hat you buy -- rabbit, wool, whatever -- can be reshaped/resized using the steam method I was talking about above. You can put it back into shape that way as often as you like without hurting it.

The only thing it might not work on are those "crushable" hats you see for sale at department stores these days. I wouldn't suggest buying one of those, as they are neither waterproof nor likely to last through hard wear.

CONCLUSION:

A single good hat will last you a lifetime. It can protect you from rain or sun, keep you warm, kindle a fire, or dip water to dump on the head of a pretty girl... I mean, to offer for your horse to drink. This should give you a basic notion of how to buy a hat that will fit you and last, will be well-made of high quality materials, and suit the practical needs of your life.

If you have any questions, shout out.

Movie Night

Howdy,

Anyone feel like having a "movie night" next weekend? I was thinking of 'A Bridge Too Far'. That said, I won't be making the Grim style long posts that analyze the movie; I'll be keeping it short. I'm back in college after a six year hiatus, and these philosophy courses, my major, have me doing some heavy reading.

Thank God for the Chinese

"Thank God for the Chinese."

China Daily is an English-language, state-run mouthpiece publication for the People's Republic of China. It can be counted upon to put forth the official propaganda of the state. This stuff is naked propaganda of a type that you just don't see in the free world. For example:

The railroad station in the Angolan town of Dondo hasn't seen a train in years. Its windows are boarded up, its pale pink facade crumbling away; the local coffee trade that Portuguese colonialists founded long ago is a distant memory, victim of a civil war that lasted for 27 years. Dondo's fortunes, however, may be looking up. This month, work is scheduled to start on the local section of the line that links the town to the deep harbor at Luanda, Angola's capital. The work will be done by Chinese construction firms, and as two of their workers survey the track, an Angolan security guard sums up his feelings. "Thank you, God," he says, "for the Chinese."

That sentiment, or something like it, can be heard a lot these days in Africa, where Chinese investment is building roads and railways, opening textile factories and digging oil wells. You hear it on the farms of Brazil, where Chinese appetite for soy and beef has led to a booming export trade. And you hear it in Chiang Saen, a town on the Mekong River in northern Thailand, where locals used to subsist on whatever they could make from farming and smuggling--until Chinese engineers began blasting the rapids and reefs on the upper Mekong so that large boats could take Chinese-manufactured goods to markets in Southeast Asia.

Just the sort of thing China Daily loves. All the world is joined in praise of the wise leadership of Hu Jintao, and the Chinese Communist Party!

Only one thing is different in this case.

The article was originally printed in Time. The editors of China Daily are only reprinting it.

If you'd like to compare it with something the Chinese wrote for themselves, you might consider their opinion piece from the same issue, "China Implementing Harmonious Diplomacy." I'd have to say the folks at Time have learned the lessons well.

Straw Poll

PJM Straw Poll:

Pajamas Media is running a 2008 Presidential Straw Poll. You can vote here, just click on the flag.

It's a little unusual, in that you get to vote for a nominee from each party. That might give us a sense of which candidates have the biggest cross-party appeal, since it will let us know which Democrat is most acceptable to Republicans, and vice versa, while also allowing independents of various stripes to select which candidates best suit them.

I'm going to endorse -- for the purposes of this poll only -- these candidates:

Democratic Party: Bill Richardson

Republican Party: Duncan Hunter

Richardson is the best of the Democratic list, being NRA endorsed, and a successful diplomat. He's weak, in my reading, on North Korea. Even though that was one of the areas of his success as a diplomat, his proposal to directly engage the DPRK in negotiations is foolish. The DPRK wants us to slim down from the six-way talks to bilateral talks, as a breakdown in the six-way talks reflects badly on China. Since China is the only party that can really put pressure on the DPRK, it is in our interests to have Chinese "face" concerned with their ability to bring the DPRK to a settlement on these issues. If we go to bilateral talks, the DPRK is free to break off from the talks at any time. There is no practical penalty to doing so; they will blame the US, which will cost them nothing.

China, meanwhile, wants to be in the six-way talks as a point of international prestige. The price tag for that is forcing at least some concessions from the DPRK every time we come to the table. If we're going to try to resolve the DPRK's nuclear situation through diplomacy, the six-way talks are the right way.

That said, he's a pretty good, moderate candidate. Among the Democratic party's current national leadership, I'd say he was the best by a long shot.

On the Republican side, I think Duncan Hunter may need an introduction to many readers, but a few words should suffice. He is a former Army Ranger (75th), former Airborne (173rd in Vietnam), and has in Congress chaired the Armed Services Committee. Our friends at China E-Lobby have endorsed him in the Presidential race over all candidates of both parties. He is stronger on the immigration/border problem than Richardson (from my point of view), but has a weakness in his connection to a firm involved in Duke Cunningham's scandals. Investigations have not found that Hunter committed any inappropriate actions, as Wikipedia notes:

A Department of Defense inspector general found that the department awarded ADCS, a company owned by Brent Wilkes, a $9.8 million contract in mid-1999 after "inquiries from two members of Congress." Hunter has repeatedly acknowledged that he joined with Representative Randy Cunningham that year to contact Pentagon officials, who then reversed a decision and gave ADCS the contract, one of its first big ones.

Between 1994 and 2004, Wilkes and ADCS gave $40,700 in campaign contributions to Hunter. In 2003, Wilkes's foundation hosted a "Salute to Heroes" gala to give Hunter an award, just as it did for Cunningham a year earlier. The Wilkes Foundation also gave $1,000 in 2003 to a charity run by two of Hunter's staffers. However, Hunter has not been found to have committed any crimes or ethical violations. Wilkes is currently an unindicted co-conspirator.

Again, compared to the rest of the field he looks pretty good. It's amazing how much chaff there is in each of the parties' candidate fields this time around.

Second choices, for me, if it interests you:

Democratic: Hillary Clinton (Yes, I know, but she's tough.)

Republican: Newt Gingrich (Yes, I know, but he's smart.)

Haditha unmasked

"Haditha Unmasked"

I haven't said anything about the Haditha case, except that we ought to keep silent about it until the process is complete. I also detest reporting based on anonymous sources.

Nevertheless, I will pass on this article, which my anonymous source says lines up with his anonymous sources, though the article is based on still yet other anonymous sources.

So what does that mean about the accuracy of the piece? Hell if I know. But if you're compiling reports and analysis on the subject, here's one thing more to read. It's got some analysis of the investigation itself that I won't endorse, but you can match up the analysis with how the case appears in the press.

I wish to stress that you should apply your own critical analysis to what's offered here. See if the accusations it makes match up with the details from the case as it develops. If so, this may explain why the case is developing as it is. If not, set it aside. I'm offering it as information, not intelligence.

Choose lawyers

Freedom of Choice:

Thanks to reader CC for this piece on military counsel.

In our society, people have long had the right to choose to have a lawyer represent them in almost any matter, whether they are seeking benefits from the Social Security Administration, filing a lawsuit against a corporation or defending a parking ticket. Veterans were uniquely denied the option until last year. In historic legislation signed by President Bush on Dec. 22, 2006, Congress repealed an anachronistic 19th century prohibition.... For veterans, there will be more choices and competition. Veterans' service organizations will continue to offer free representation. Attorneys will have no incentive to prolong proceedings, as they can only be paid if their client prevails. They will focus on helping the VA find evidence to substantiate their client's claims. Everyone will benefit if veterans' claims are more efficiently processed. Claimants for every other kind of government benefit have long been permitted to choose to retain counsel. Veterans are joining their ranks. Now is no time for Congress or the president to retreat.

Abu Sayyaf Leader Killed

Abu Sayyaf Leader Killed:

It's a good day for the GWOT in the Philippines. That means it's a good day all the way around, as the islands in the southern Philippines are an area of refuge for the region's Qaeda-linked terror groups.

I think the real solution in the area is to work with the MILF, who (Islamic militants though they are) seem mostly to want to be left alone to run the place. If we could come to some arrangement whereby they got to do so, in return for denying sanctuary to terrorists and keeping the land clean of Qaeda-style radicals, that would improve the situation. Naturally, however, there are political difficulties that have made it hard to do that -- the alternative claims of the MNLF and its "peace process," as well as the ties of regional grandees to the Arroyo government. The MNLF/MILF claims to authority have to be integrated, which is harder than it sounds even though they were once a single group. The political patronage issue is just as sticky as you'd expect in a place like the Philippines.

So, they'll be a while sorting out that mess. In the meantime, this is good news.

UPDATE: Francis Marion, just back from the bush, promises updates at his place. Go see what he has to say.

Praise of Zippo

In Praise of Zippo:

Last month we had a discussion on survival, in which I suggested you ought to carry a matchbook in your wallet or about your person as a regular matter. Special Forces blogger Francis Marion dropped by to offer a suggestion:

They say a good Boy Scout can start a fire with two matches; I say any Green Beret can start two fires with one lighter. So, why matches when a lighter can start more fires easier and it's waterproof.

This reminded me that I had, somewhere, my grandfather's old Zippo lighter. It had long ago stopped working. Still, the lighter advice sounded wise, and it would be a chance to reconnect with something my grandfather had left me. (This would be my mother's father, not the grandfather who left me his Stetson hat.)

So, with some effort, I dug the thing out of where I'd put it for safety's sake. Then, I sat down to find a repairman who might be able to fix an old Zippo.

I'm probably the last person in America to learn this, but I wouldn't need to look far. Zippo fixes their lighters, free, forever. I mailed it to them; they sent it back today, less than a month after I'd shipped it. It works perfectly.

Having not smoked much in my life -- an occasional cigar only, on Doc Russia's recommendation -- I was not steeped in the Zippo legend. It turns out they've got quite a history, including honorable participation in WWII.

My thanks, ladies and gentlemen of Zippo. I'm glad to have my grandfather's old lighter back. I'll carry it proudly, and pass it on to my son.

A Peaceful Teacher:

Michael Totten's latest from Lebanon visits a moderate imam, one of a high degree by the accounting of such things. It's worth reading, to see something good growing up right in the middle of Hezbollah country.