My friend Jayson has emailed me a New Yorker article, “In the Air” by Malcom Gladwell. I previously saw it referenced by Peter Robinson over at The Corner, so it has now caught my eye twice.

The article talks about multiple discovery, where independent researchers or teams invent the same thing at about the same time — but have little to do with each other. The famous example is calculus for which (after being unknown for all of human history) Isaac Newton and Gottfiend Leibniz created systems so similar that their main difference was the philosophical question of whether the super-small things changing were “infinitesimals” or “fluxions.”

In truth, most discoveries are probably multiple discoveries.

Consider two papers, one an article and the other a blog post, which help explain the issues John Sweller’s peer-reviewed article, Instructional Design Consequences of an Analogy between Evolution by Natural Selection and Human Cognitive Architecture,” published in the January 2004 edition of Instructional Science,” describes how thinking relies on stored information in long-term memory, and how the random errors that happen during remembering provide opportunities for feedback, “good mistakes” are rewarded while bad mistakes are discarded. Similarly, Razib’s primer, “8th grade math for the rest of us,” published November 2005 at gnxp, describes the probability of an gene that is helpful actually becoming common in a population.

Essentially, chance operates two ways in evolution: introducing new versions of things by chance, and rewarding or discarding new versions by chance. In order to become common, a new thing both most be lucky enough to be crated, and lucky enough to spread. (Even if a mutation is helpful, for example, if the animal carrying it is struck by lightning, it’s gone.)

The same is true of inventions. Chance operates two ways: for the invention to be created, or the invention to be accepted. Just because an inventor is inspired to build a new product that works, and works better than anything else at its job, doesn’t mean that the creator will be able to convince other people that it’s worth while, etc.

Of course, sometimes multiple versions of an invention become known. This has happened with skin color: East Asian and European “whiteness” derive from different mutations. This has also happened with calculus: Newton’s and Liebenz’s systems derive from different assumptions. But in both cases, the need for the invention was there, the tools needed to create the invention was there: all it needed to do was happen.

Of course, there may have been a third version of calculus, created in about the same circumstances, that is now lost and forgotten. Likewise, there may have been another evolutionary fork for creating light skin that is lost.

All of this has important implications for intellectual property law. But that is a post for another time…

Remember just two days ago when Obama slurred John McCain, because McCain noted that Obama’s foreign policy was more compatible with Hamas’s ends with his owns.

John McCain had at least one person inside the Obama campaign who agreed with him: Robert Malley.

Barack Obama sacks adviser over talks with Hamas - Times Online
One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him.

Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council.

The timing — just days after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries — would be suspicious if one didn’t realize that Barack Obama was a “typical politician.” But if one accepts that he is, disclosing these ties when they can hurt the least (after the media declares the Democratic Nomination over, but before the general election gets in gear) is a smart move.

(Obviously, most candidates haven’t associated with the people — Robert Malley, Jeremiah Wright, etc. — and said the things — unconditional direct negotiations, etc. — to get themselves so associated with Hamas in the first place.)

Relatedly, also Obama refuses to meet with the President of Iran. Obama won the nomination on the feathers of the left wing of the Democratic Party, and now that he has won, no longer stands by his foolish but original foreign policy vision.

Weekly Standard begins…

By now you’ve seen the footage of Barack Obama ruing the fact that he hasn’t been able to visit all 57 states in this great union of ours. If you haven’t, scroll down a bit and read Goldfarb’s post on the matter. I’ll wait.

and continues…

Has Obama absorbed such expansionist designs to such an extent that he’s already counting his proverbial new chickens before they’ve hatched? Is he planning on adopting Canada? Perhaps he only has his eyes on the cool parts of Canada like Montreal and Toronto, and will let the remainder of our northern neighbor peacefully tend to its hockey playing and curling. And what of our neighbors to the south? Will we find ourselves in an Obama administration forced to refer to Haiti as Really South Dakota?

Now, if Obama actually supported the annexation of 7 new states, I would support him. However, his cowardice on immigration reform (allowing non-showhorse politicians like Ted Kennedy and John McCain to stick their necks out), his nativism on trade (opposition to NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, and the Colombian and Korean free trade areas), and his coalition’s hostility to latinos (as also reflected in latin wariness of him) makes that unlikely.

If John McCain used rhetoric as bigoted and hateful as Barack Obama, he would some comment about this is what you get with an affirmative action hire. Fortunately for political discourse in this country, John McCain isn’t a race-baiter in the way that Barack Obama is a race-baiter… or a baiter of other prejudices, for that matter.

Barack Obama should denounce his own divisive rhetoric on race and age, and in so doing help elevate politics in this country.

Major props to Stephen Pampinella, for his glowing review of Revolutionary Strategies in Early Christianity: 4th Generation Warfare (4GW) Against the Roman Empire, and the Counterinsurgency (COIN) Campaign to Save It.

As Stephen wrote in his review:

The best of Dan’s strategic analysis involves integrating Boyd’s PISRR steps to victory and the gendering of different aspects of war. PISRR stands for Penetrate-Isolate-Subdue/Subvert-Reorganize-Reharmonize. However, to successfully PISRR an enemy, and harmonize its existence according to one’s own strategy, it is necessary to use both male Panzers and female Soldats. Panzers crash gates, Soldats build societies. Using one without the other leaves one strategically vulnerable to further annihalation or eventual subversion. Femininity and Masculinity go hand in hand in warfare, a velvet glove to an iron fist. Christian Panzers spread the Good Word, Soldats ensured it stayed in the hearts and minds of the people. When the Empire was weak, it could switch to a Christian ideology that was already well received among the people. Thus, Christians destroyed the Roman will to resist it, as it became more rational to embrace it.

Thanks Stephen!

The window is still open for free review-copies for interested reviewers. Want one? Just comment below!

If the above question offends you, you wouldn’t be alone. But it is exactly the sort of stereotypical garbage that Barack Obama personally trucks in.

My Way News - Obama accuses McCain of ‘losing his bearings’
NEW YORK (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Republican John McCain was “losing his bearings” for repeatedly suggesting the Islamic terrorist group Hamas preferred Obama for president.

That brought an angry response from McCain’s campaign, which accused Obama of trying to make an issue of McCain’s age.

Age is a touchy subject for McCain, who turns 72 in August and would be the oldest person to be sworn in as president if elected.

Obama’s point is as follows

(a) John McCain possesses a non-trivial degree of age, and this cannot be changed
(b) It is known that age correlates negatively with intelligence
(b) Therefore, is some statement by John McCain evidence that he is too old?

Of course, if one replaces “age” with “African ancestry,” the attack, this prejudicial line of reasoning would still work. Barack Obama’s insinuation that McCain is ‘too old’ is analogous to if John McCain claimed that Obama was ‘too black.’

Obama’s already a race-baiter, so I suppose his age-baiting shouldn’t come as a surprise. Still, as I was stupid enough to think Obama would be an improvement, Obama’s latest bigotry it is dispiriting.

What’s ironic, of course, is that Obama’s bigotry might well be besides the point — even if his specious conflation of group and individual levels of analysis is ignored. Yesterday, I wondered if the luckiest nations have intelligent populations and unremarkable leaders. If so, we could do worse than an affirmative action hire.

Certainly, our legacy pick has been worth the trouble.

“Skipping Tomorrow,” which was previously featured on tdaxp, is a finalist in the Narrative Feature category of the 2008 Boomtown Film and Music Festival. It is also now on sale on DVD!

Skipping Tomorrow trailer

The film is directed by Rob, a close friend from undergraduate days, whose rise to success in the film program of a Texas university has been as stunning as it is expected.

Good job!

We’ve been warned against using
unstable nuclear devices
to generate artificial earthquakes,

But, in the unlikely story that is America,
there has never been anything artificial
about earthquakes.

I prefer football legends as my cult-idols, but for those who need to worship a politician: Vote Cobra.

(Hat-tip to Brendan of I Hate Linux.)

If facts are against you, you an still win an argument by claiming you are insulted by those facts, and pretending reality is a personal insult to you.

Consider, for instance, Obama-backer Donna Brazile’s respond to Clinton-backer Paul Begalada’s statement that Obama’s coalition of blacks and educated whites is the “Dukakis Coalition”

Here’s the specific remarks. Begala points out that Obama’s coalition has led to Democratic defeats in the past:

If there’s a new democratic party that doesn’t need or want white working-class people and latinos count me out. We cannot win with eggheads and african-americans. That’s the Dukakis coalition which carried 10 states and gave us 4 years of the first George Bush.

And Dona Brazile queues up “you insult…”:

We need to not divide adn polarize the Democratic Party as if the Democratic Party will realy entirely on white blue-collar males. You insult every black blue-collar democrat by saying that. So stop the division, stop trying to split us into these groups.

Obviously, I’m against race-baiting anti-COIN protectionists — I oppose Barack Obama. In a just world, he wouldn’t have a chance of being a major party’s nominee.

We don’t live in that just world, though we may live in one almost as good: the Democratic Party may be retreating into the Dukakis Coalition.

As long as it works as well for the Democratic Party in 2008 as in 1998: good.

Obviously, I’m in favor of any references to steampunk appearing in the New York Times, but the article never mentions “steam” once! The entire alternative-universe vision of steampunk assumes that the electrical industrial revolution never happened, and steam still being the motive power behind the economy. Now, granted, much of the article is interesting:

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds - New York Times
She takes her emotional cues from scientists and inventors like Nikola Tesla, magicians like Harry Houdini and soulful spies like Mata Hari, each of whom injected a spirit of enterprise, intrigue and discovery into their age. Contemporary fictional parallels in film include the wildly ingenious scientist played by Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man,” who hopes to save the world by retooling himself as a flame-throwing robot made of unwieldy scrap metal parts.

If steampunk has a mission, it is, in part, to restore a sense of wonder to a technology-jaded world. “Today satellite photos make the planet seem so small,” Mr. Brown lamented. “Where is the adventure it that?” In contrast, steampunk, with its airships, test tubes and time machines, is, he said, “sort of a dream , the way we used to daydream. It’s like part of your childhood’s just bursting forward again.”

But without steam, what’s the point?

An example (I believe) of actual steampunk is The Difference Engine, which describes an Industrial-age Britain in which an actually designed (but not implemented) steam-operated computer sparks a steamcyber revolution.

Half Sigma adopts the Jacksonian line that war is about destroying enemy states, and that other definitions are dangerously “liberal”

Half Sigma: We are not “losing” a “war” in Iraq
I’m sick and tired of hearing people say that we are “losing” the “war” in Iraq.

If fifty years ago, you told someone that our troops went into a country, took the place over in a few weeks, and now run the place, they would have responded, “wow, you guys won a really big victory!”

But someone has managed to redefine the term “win” so it means that you have to transform a nation into a peaceful Democracy while taking zero casualties and not being allowed to attack and kill enemy guerillas unless you have a clear shot at them without any women, children, or Mosques in the way.

Obviously the political left is responsible for this redefinition, and the political left is so powerful that they managed to sucker a lot of people in the Bush administration into believing this nonsense.

Yes, the Bush administration is thought of as hardcore conservative, but actually Bush has been brainwashed into believing in liberal left-wing hate-America nonsense. He has bought into the idea that you can’t just win a war by taking over a country; he has bought into the nonsense that America is inherently evil and that the only way to cleanse the evilness of a military victory is by subsequently taking a lot of casualties and showing that we are the good guys by bringing peaceful Democracy while, all the time, respecting the most absurd and evil religion on the planet.

As I wrote as a comment:

War is about the correlation of forces — those forces that support your efforts, minus those forces that oppose your efforts. Taking out Saddam’s Iraq succeeded in removing a dangerous enemy from the Middle East, but if Iraq would have degenerated into a state controlled by al Qaeda or a hostile Iran, we would not have improved our correlation of forces in the region.

It was foolish to expect Iraq to develop into a modern liberal democracy without undergoing deeper and harder reforms first. However, the importance of managing Iraq’s government and security for some time was a wise one. We appear to be heading to a type of victory that is familiar to us in these small wars: spoiling our enemies while setting up a government that can keep the peace, cooperative with us militarily, and push the question of liberalization off to the future.

The blogger at half sigma likes his rhetorical flourishes, but he is influential, and I have seen him change his position as new facts come in previously. So: join the discussion at halfsigma.com!